I woke up to the sound of a truck backing up, beeping, grinding gears, and making such a racket that even pressing my pillow to my ears wasn't enough to give me peace. After a week and a half of summer, I had grown accustomed to a life of relaxed luxury. I’d sleep until noon when Mom took my sister to soccer practice, then rule the house like a king until they got back. But this truck started making noise around seven in the morning, and it was still going at noon, long after I had slid out of bed and started reading on the floor where I landed. I was too lazy to stand up or find something else to do, and the book was already on the floor.
“Jamie! I'm taking your sister to soccer now,” Mom called out, her feet drumming a beat as she walked up the stairs and to my bedroom.
She knocked on my door, and I said, "Ok," just as I always did but with a little more life in my voice since I was awake. She took my response as an invitation and opened my door.
"What are you doing down there?" She laughed at me before picking up some clothes I’d left on the floor—the way moms do. She folded the clothes and sat on the corner of my bed, all in one swift motion. “The family moving in next door has a boy your age.”
I looked up from my book and said, “Cool.” She didn’t take the hint that I wanted her to leave me alone.
“You should go say hi.”
I groaned.
“Anyway. I told them you might stop by. They said it would be fine.”
I groaned a little louder.
“You’ll never make friends if you don’t talk to anyone.”
I put my book down and looked at her until she got up and left. Once I'd heard mom's car pull away, I let out a sigh, rolled over, and got off the floor. I looked out my window and saw the moving truck that had woken me up parked in the driveway next door.
A kind-looking black woman was standing behind the truck with one arm crossed and the other leaning on it so that her hand could rest on her chin. She was obviously the mother of the household judging by how intent she looked on having everything go exactly according to plan. I didn't see the new neighbor boy Mom was talking about, and that was all good and well. Saying “hello” was the last thing on my mind.
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Thirty minutes later I was rotting my brain with all-day cartoons, eating a bag of cheese puffs, and drinking a tall glass of soda. The sounds of the family moving in had died down. Out of earshot out of mind. Suddenly, my doorbell rang, and I jumped up to go answer it. My friend Aaron was at the door. He lived two blocks over and came to hang out almost every day it seemed. The routine was so normal after three years of knowing each other that we barely exchanged hellos anymore. I just opened the door, and he came inside.
“Who’s moving in?” Aaron asked.
“New neighbors.”
“Oh thanks, Jamie. I never would have guessed.”
I went back to the TV room to turn down the volume—commercials were blasting. Aaron found a pack of hair ties Phoebe had left on the kitchen table. He picked them up and inspected them with a type of uninterested curiosity, the way he did with all my sister's things. Aaron didn't have a sister, so I guess they confused him with their girliness.
“Do you want to go to The Lot today?” Aaron asked. “It would be a shame to stay inside on such a beautiful day.” He mimicked my mom because she was always telling us to go outside when she saw us together.
I shrugged my shoulders, picked up the remote I had just set down, turned the TV off and went to get my shoes. I turned around to lock the door behind me, and Aaron took off running while I wasn't looking. The Lot was just one street over from my house, and we had a tradition of racing to it. We almost never played fair. Aaron laughed hysterically as he got farther away and looked over his shoulder to see me falling behind. I didn't want to run, but I saw the new neighbor-mom standing in her yard looking at us, and I took off. Aaron was already at the Lot by the time I caught up.
The Lot was what we called a small playground near our houses. There were better places to play, but since it was within walking distance to about a hundred kids, there were always several dozen of us hanging around. Aaron and I had avoided going for the last few days because we knew it would be overcrowded with the kids who had fresh intentions of not spending the whole summer indoors again. But by now there would only be a small crowd and not a massive army packed into the tiny playground.
We called it The Lot because it was technically just six house lots that the developers built a playground on. There were exactly eight swings, two slides, two seesaws, one set of monkey bars, one playground fort, three basketball hoops, and one tree on The Lot. A third of it was taken up by a small field that was the perfect size for other kids to play football or soccer. Aaron and I might join in if they played tag, but we generally stayed in the shade. The mulched area and the basketball court shared the rest of the space equally with the tree right between them like a barrier.
The natural laws of childhood etiquette dictated that there were three social classes on The Lot: those younger than you, those older than you, and those your own age. No one ever broke the social contract and talked to anyone more than two years younger or older than themselves. The older kids were always playing basketball, usually three games at once. The younger ones waited in lines to go down the slides while kids our age preferred to run up them. Mostly, they just ran around in the field with a football or something until the older kids left the basketball court open.
Aaron and I were a little different. As the neighborhood’s fat kid, I had no interest in playing most games that required running. As for Aaron, I think he was just weird. He seemed content hanging out with me under the tree as if I were his only friend just as much as he was mine. We would talk or play games under the tree until we got bored and moved around a little. Aaron was always trying to climb to the top of the tree, but I could hardly get to the first branch.
I saw Aaron panting with a big grin on his face, waiting for me as I casually strolled over to him by the tree.
“What… took you… so long?” he said between gasps of air.
I just shook my head and walked over to him. Before I could think of what to say, I heard a voice coming from behind us. It was Dallas Moore. Aaron and I turned to see him strolling over with his arms out and a malicious smile on his face. Dallas was the closest thing to a bully either of us ever encountered. Even the way he walked said he was looking for trouble. He liked to smile and laugh at you to your face while pretending he was your friend. His goal was to make you say something stupid so he could laugh. Neither of us liked him.
“Get lost Dallas,” Aaron said immediately, his grin disappearing as he scrunched his forehead.
“Chill. You have that look on your face again.” Dallas chuckled. “You look funny when you’re angry.”
I glanced over at Aaron, hoping he wouldn't do anything stupid. But I knew better. Within seconds, Aaron grabbed a big tree branch that had fallen to the ground and started chasing Dallas with it. Dallas laughed like it was a game. Aaron’s overreaction was a pastime for him, but I don’t think Aaron had figured that out yet. I sighed and leaned against the tree, watching the two of them run across the street and into Mrs. McCredie's yard.
"Does he always act like that?" An unfamiliar voice spoke to me from the tree. I looked up to see a black boy sitting on a branch about half way up. He climbed down with as much grace as anyone can climb out of a tree—not much at all—and stood next to me. I hadn't answered him by the time he'd come down, and he said, "Your friend is weird. Who is he?"
"That's just Aaron. He's not weird."
"Stupid then?" the boy said.
"No!”
“Right. Special?”
I didn’t say anything.
“He’s pretty weird. My name’s Darius Parker. My family just moved into a house down the street.”
I told him my name and awkwardly explained that he was my new neighbor. Then we stood there in silence for a while, trying not to make eye contact and figuring out what to do with our hands.
Darius was a skinny kid. His hair was buzzed short like most other black boys. His face was long, but he looked perpetually happy. The way he smiled felt insincere, though, like Dallas Moore. We sat down under the tree together, and he asked a lot of questions: What do you all do around here? What's the school like? Are there always so many people on The Lot? I did the best I could to answer each question, and eventually, he asked the question that really mattered.
“What’s that swing set doing over there?”
He got up and looked around the tree as if he needed to point out which swing set he was talking about. It wasn't one of the eight swings in the mulch. He was talking about Susan's Swing. The lot was a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the road. On the fourth side, past the field, The Lot was bordered by houses. Between the houses and the neatly mowed field was a patch of overgrown grass, bushy trees, and tall weeds. It wasn't a part of The Lot, it was just abandoned.
"Ok. But what about the swing? It's kinda stupid to just let it go to waste like that," Darius said.
"No, it's not."
"Shut up. Yes, it is."
“No. That’s Susan’s Swing. It’s haunted.”
Darius looked at me with a face that said, “Are you dumb?” and, for a second, I felt stupid for saying it. But I knew that it was haunted, and so did everyone else. The swing set was one of those small, two-swing, aluminum sets that kids get in their backyards. All the white paint had peeled off, and one of the swings had a broken chain. It was called Susan's Swing because Susan Shafman was the name of the dead girl that haunted it.
Legend said that the Shafmans used to live in a house on that plot of land before The Lot was built, so their parents got a swing set for Susan and her older brother, Dylan. The siblings were two years apart in age, but they were best friends and loved swinging together. One day, Dylan went crazy and stabbed his entire family—in some versions of the story. Most versions said he only stabbed his sister and let his parents die when he burnt the house down. Some versions said he pushed Susan's swing so hard that it looped over the bar, and she fell off and died. Either way, his sister died and their house burnt down shortly after, and Dylan was most certainly the reason for both of those things.
When they tore down what remained of the house, they left Susan’s swing because she killed anyone who tried to remove it. In the first year after the murder, the swing claimed five victims—some said three—and would move on its own every night like Susan was still using it. Apparently, she’d gotten tired of swinging, though, because I’d never seen it move.
“That’s a load of crap,” Darius said. “That swing isn’t haunted.”
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"Yes, it is. And if you touch the swing set Susan's ghost will kill you. And if you try to swing on her swing, you'll explode."
Darius laughed and repeated his sentiment: “That’s a load of crap.”
I tried to defend my story by saying I didn't remember all the details. But he didn't believe me about the ghost. I tried to tell him that everyone knew the story of Susan's Swing. But he wasn’t listening.
“Have you ever met someone who died from touching it?”
“No, but Billy Bennett’s brother went over to take a picture of it once and he was sick for a week.”
“That’s not the same thing. I need proof if I’m going to believe this stupid ghost story.”
I wanted to say, “Then go touch it yourself,” but I didn't have the confidence. I was starting to wish Aaron would come back to chase Darius away next.
“Go touch it,” Darius said. “If you die then I’ll believe you.”
I shook my head and said, "No." He called me a coward and tried to pick out flaws in the legend: How do you know what will happen if you’ve never seen it happen? Why did the boy murder his sister in the first place? Is the boy still alive? How come there were so many versions of the story? Didn’t anyone know what actually happened?
I was still arguing with Darius when Aaron made his triumphant return from battle. The branch he had was gone, and Dallas Moore was nowhere to be seen. I assumed Aaron had gotten tired of running and given up—took him long enough. He heard us talking from a distance, and asked, “Are you talking about Susan's Swing?”
Darius still didn't believe the story even after hearing Aaron tell it. He just kept saying that I should go over and touch it to test the theory. He said it would be scientific. “How can we know if we’ve never seen it happen? You owe it to the world. It would make you a legend.”
“People have died from that,” Aaron said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but they have. Didn’t Billy’s cousin die?”
I corrected him.
“See,” Darius said, “this is why Jamie should go test it out. Who knows if anyone actually did die?”
Aaron looked at Darius, who hadn't introduced himself still, and said, “If you want proof so bad, go do it yourself.”
I was glad to have someone stick up for me, but Darius had a trump card. “What good would it do? If I touch it and die, then I'll never know you were right because I'll be dead. But if one of you dies, then I'll know you were right, and you’d die knowing it.”
We couldn't rebuttal his watertight argument. There were two of us, so if we were right, there would still be someone around to rub it in his face. We bickered for a while longer before Aaron volunteered.
“I’ll touch it. One finger. Then I’ll run back.”
“No, Aaron.”
“Yeah. Jamie has to be the one to do it,” Darius said. “I dare him to do it, not you. I already know you’re crazy.”
Aaron pulled me aside and tried to convince me to let him do it. We had always talked about how he wanted to die in a blaze of sacrificial glory. But I didn't want him to fight my battle for me, not this time. He was the only friend I had, and I didn't know what I would do if Susan's ghost killed him.
My legs were quivering, and I was sweating under my arms. I wished we’d stayed in my house and watched TV. There weren't a lot of things I wanted in life. Peace and quiet. Relaxed time with friends. Not to be murdered by the ghost of a dead girl. But—
“I’ll do it,” I said and immediately wished I hadn't because Darius heard me, and I couldn't take it back.
We all walked over to the tall grass, nearly getting run over by some kids playing frisbee in the process. Aaron put his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes as if to ask if I was sure about this. I puffed my chest and took my first step into the tall grass.
“I believe in you, Jamie,” Aaron called out.
“I don't.” Darius had his arms crossed. “Just get it over with. You're not going to die because there isn't a ghost.”
I got closer to the swing set than anyone else, ever—as far as I knew. It was close enough that I could see the individual flakes of paint that had yet to fall off. My heart was pounding, now, and I thought I saw the swing move, but it was just a light gust of wind. I don't know how long I stood there, three feet from the haunted swing set. I wanted to run away, but instead, I kept chanting to myself, "Do it, do it, do it!"
I held my breath and reached out my hand as fast as I could, confident it would be my last action ever, and I wrapped my entire hand around the rusted metal bar. I opened my eyes, and stared in astonishment at the sight of my hand grasping death itself. I released my grip and ran away from the swing as fast as I could.
I was hoping to see a crowd forming near Aaron and the new kid, but no one had noticed my bravery. I did see Dallas Moore casually walking towards us, though.
“I told you it wouldn’t kill you,” Darius said.
I was actually a little relieved to admit he was right.
“Jamie Cooper, did you just commit suicide?” Dallas Moore called out from a distance, ruining any hope for a celebration. “You could have just come to me. I would have killed you.”
Aaron scowled at him and got ready to chase him off again, but I was feeling brave and stood my ground.
“I’m still alive, Dallas. It didn’t kill me.”
He stopped next to us and looked each of us over, too dense to realize he didn't know who Darius was. His crooked smile was forcing itself into a frown as he tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. He gave off his usual impression of fake sympathy, and he said, “Don't you know it takes Susan's ghost up to twenty-four hours to kill you?”
“Does not.”
“Yeah. My brother told me. He’s friends with Billy Bennett’s brother. He didn’t get sick until the next day. It’s a delayed effect because Susan follows you home and kills you while you’re sleeping.”
“Shut up, Dally,” Aaron said and lunged forward like he would start running after him. Dallas flinched a little and laughed. “You're just trying to scare him. That's not how it works.”
“Whatever. Don’t believe me. It was nice knowing you, Jamie.”
I wanted to say something like, “Well it wasn’t nice knowing you.” But I didn’t think of it until after he’d made his exit.
“What does that kid know?” Darius said. “You're not going to die because there isn't a ghost.” But I heard a little bit of hesitation in his voice—like his cocky attitude had been ripped away after hearing a third person who believed in the legend.
None of us knew what to make of Dallas Moore’s new information. I was hoping to find a bit of reassurance in Aaron, but he looked like he believed Dallas for once. And so, what should have been a time of celebration for all three of us turned into an agonizing period of waiting around and worrying that I could drop dead at any moment.
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It started getting late, and I decided I wanted to go home. Darius was following me like a lost dog. He’d stuck around after I touched the swing set, but he didn’t say much after that. When we were walking home he said he was following us because he lived next to me, and it was just a coincidence that he decided to leave The Lot at the same time. I watched him weasel his way past piles of boxes left in his garage to get into his new house, and then he disappeared. Aaron patted me on the back before he left.
“Dallas is a big dumb idiot. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I looked at the ground and kicked my shoes on the sidewalk. “Yeah. See you tomorrow.”
Mom learned, through mother magic or something, that I’d met Darius at The Lot, and she kept asking about him during dinner. My dad said it would be nice for me to have another friend living next door. And I tried to stay as quiet as possible. What would I say? “I hate his guts. He’s a jerk and might have gotten me killed.” They would make me go over and apologize if I said that.
After dinner, I thought about telling Phoebe that I had touched Susan’s Swing, but I didn’t think she would care. The girls in the neighborhood were so far removed from the real world, playing their princess tea parties or whatever, that they probably didn’t even know who Susan Shafman was. I elected to go to bed early. If I was going to die in my sleep, I figured I should get it over with.
I slumped over in my bed, thinking about how much I hated the new neighbor kid for a few minutes. Then Phoebe came into my room without knocking—as sisters do.
“The neighbor kid wants to talk to you,” she said. “He’s out the window.” Then she shut the door and went back to whatever she was doing.
I looked out my window, and sure enough, there he was, looking up at me while the setting sun glowed on him with an uncanny orange light. I opened the window and asked what he wanted.
“Come out here. I want to talk to you.”
I closed the window, and despite my better judgment, I went outside to talk to him. We stood on my driveway and he told me about how he found a news report about Dylan Shafman. It said Dylan was serving twenty years for the death of his sister and arson, that the lawyers tried to say it was an accident, and that the jury didn’t believe them. The information he found online didn’t say anything about Susan’s Swing, but he was more inclined to believe the legend now that he knew that Susan really did die there.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “I was kinda mean to dare you to touch the haunted swing or whatever.”
There was no way I’d accept an apology that vague.
“What I’m saying,” he continued, “is that I hope you don’t actually die tonight.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean… I don’t want to get in trouble for being the one who got you killed.” He looked down at his feet. “If you want, I’ll do whatever I can to help you stop Susan’s ghost from killing you tonight.”
I turned around and looked at my house, mostly to look anywhere other than at him, partly to see if my mom was peeking through the curtains at us. She was.
“Do you think there’s anything we can do?” he asked.
I did appreciate the offer.
“People get possessed by ghosts all the time,” he said. “We can look up how they survive.”
I relented, and invited him inside. My mom was thrilled to meet him, and I thought she would never stop talking so we could go upstairs to my computer. I didn’t like working with the enemy, but I put aside my feelings for the sake of the mission. We Googled it several times: How to stop ghost from killing you? What to do when you are going to die? How to stop ghost possession? After a while of looking through forums on different internet pages—none of them specifically about Susan’s Swing—we pieced together that the swing set was cursed, not haunted. Susan’s ghost wouldn’t follow me, but she had placed a curse on me. It was very reputable information based on a horror movie we’d never seen—but the movie was based on a true story.
Our search for “how to break a curse” yielded few results, and we started losing hope as we sat in my dark bedroom lit only by the computer screen. My mom burst in and blinded us by turning on the lights. She was urging me to say goodbye to Darius for the night, but we convinced her to let us “play” for a little longer. And that’s when we found it. Buried in a chat page about real-life ghost sightings, someone said that a curse could be broken by ringing a bell three times at midnight—preferably during a full moon. We didn’t have time to wait for the moon since my curse was death. But we still had a few hours before midnight.
We made our plan. If I was still alive by 11:50, we would meet in my back yard and go over to The Lot. Darius’s mom had a bell liked to ring when it was dinnertime. He was going to find it. I was glad to see him taking responsibility for once. Also, I didn’t have a bell. My mom came back in, though, and we fell silent.
“You’ll have plenty of time to play together this summer. But you boys need to go to bed,” Mom said and started ushering us downstairs. “Darius, it was nice meeting you. Tell your family they’re welcomed here any time.”
“Ok Mrs. Cooper,” he said. I watched from behind my mom as the new neighbor-boy jogged back to his house from our porch.
I met Darius like we planned since I was still alive. I’d never had to sneak out of the house before, and I was worried my parents would catch me. Then I would die while I was grounded—what a way to go. But they had the TV volume so loud that they didn’t hear a thing when I went out the back door.
“Did you bring the dinner bell?”
“No. I couldn’t find it. But I did find this.” He held up one of those bells secretaries keep on their desk at doctor’s offices.
“It’ll have to do.”
While Darius and I were walking to The Lot in the darkness of night, our path lit only by streetlight, all I could think about was how glad I was to have someone else with me. He promised we would go up to Susan’s Swing together so I didn’t have to do it alone. I would have preferred anyone else for my company, but under the circumstances, I wasn’t complaining.
The Lot was eerie at night. I’d never been there after dark, so I never realized the nearest streetlights were across the road, nothing to light up the playground. We ran over to the tree and leaned on it, squinting to make out the image of Susan’s Swing sitting in the tall grass.
“Let’s do this quick,” Darius said.
I looked down at my watch; we had five minutes left before midnight, so we waited. Those five minutes were filled with an awkward silence that made me even more anxious. Neither of us said a word until we were just about to move forward.
“Just in case this doesn’t work. I’m sorry I got you into this,” Darius said in a hurried whisper.
We slowly crept across the field, crouching like ninjas because we thought it would help. Neither of us brought a flashlight, and we nearly tripped three or four times. We both took a deep breath as we stepped across the threshold into the tall grass. It occurred to me for the first time that Darius was just as afraid as I was. He had been all along, I guessed.
“Is it time?” he asked.
The time changed to 12:00 as soon as I looked down at my watch, and I nodded. He handed me the desk bell, and I cupped it in the palm of my left hand. One ring. The high-pitched bell hurt my ears and sent a shiver down my spine. Two rings. Three rings.
We exhaled. If something was going to go wrong, it would have done so already, at least as far as we could tell. We ran away from Susan’s Swing and stopped back at the tree. The bell jingled in my had while I ran.
“That’s that,” he said.
“I hope.”
“You probably weren’t in any danger to begin with, but now we’re sure.”
“Right. Now we’re sure.”
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In the morning, my mom burst into my room while I was still asleep. She said, “Your friend is at the door,” as if she were being purposefully vague. Aaron almost never came over so early, but I assumed he wanted to check to see if I was alive. But, of course, it wasn’t Aaron at the door. It was Darius. The two of us went over to The Lot again, this time in the light of day. Neither of us said anything about the night before, he just asked me if I liked superhero comics. I did.
When Aaron showed up at The Lot a while later, he said he was worried about me all night. He and Darius competed to see who could climb higher in the tree while we told him everything that happened with the bell at midnight. He was always a little bitter that we hadn’t included him. Neither of them ever let me forget about my reckless act of bravery or how I had survived the ghost of Susan Shafman. They always said it was the bravest and stupidest thing I ever did and that I'd go down in history. I never felt like a legend, and I always said I never wanted to come that close to dying again. “You guys can do all the dangerous stuff from now on. I’ll just watch.”