Page 43 of The Wrong Quarterback

He stuffed the entire thing in his mouth, resembling a man-bunned chipmunk as he grinned at me.

“Sorry, QB,” he said in a muffled voice.

I rubbed at my forehead. At this rate, I really could dig up a grave by myself faster than I could with the two of them.

“There’s no ghosts,” I told Matty. “Jace is way too annoying. They’ll get fed up immediately and leave the premises until we’re gone.”

That had to be the dumbest argument that a person had ever made, but Matty seemed to be considering it, finally turning his head to look at us.

Jace stuffed another cookie in his mouth.

“That’s a good point,” Matty said, making a face as Jace somehow showered the two of us with cookie crumbs.

I couldn’t believe we were really having this conversation.

A dog barked somewhere nearby, and Matty jumped, like that was further evidence to support his ghost argument.

“You didn’t even blink when we watchedSilence of the Lambs,” I said incredulously, resisting the urge to hit him over the head with a shovel. Jace and I had been about to wet our pants, and Matty had fallen asleep while a guy wore someone’s skin on his face.

“I cankilla serial killer. I can’t kill a ghost!” Matty snapped back, like that should be obvious to me.

“Matthew Clay Adler, get your fucking ass out of the truck, or I swear, I will find a ghost, and I’m going to sic him on your ass for the rest of eternity!” I growled.

“God bless you, you’re an American classic,” commented Jace, clapping me on the back.

Matty must have realized I was on my last, tired straw, because he finally dragged himself out of the truck, muttering something aboutcoming to haunt us if a ghost attacked him.

“I’ll take that chance, buddy,” I grumbled back.

I felt like some kind of Bond villain as we crept down the sidewalk…with shovels. Trying to stay in the shadows in case anyone had decided to peek out of their windows in the middle of the night.

“I have to say, when I decided to go to college, this wasn’t what I pictured,” mused Jace as we got to the cemetery gates.

I humphed in agreement, studying the wrought iron twisted into elaborate almost sinister patterns that were casting jagged shadows across the gravel path. Why the fuck did cemeteries have to be so creepy? If I was ever in charge…of cemetery design…I was going to make everything look way better. I wasn’t sure how. But I was pretty sure I could do it.

“Alright, do you have the bolt cutters?” I asked Jace.

“Yep, and I’m ready,” he said, holding them up like a blond Edward Scissorhands.

I took a step away, for safety’s sake, and watched as he went to work on the gates, grunting as he cut the metal.

What seemed like an hour later, the chain finally clattered to the ground. I winced, glancing at the houses across the street. But they all seemed to be quiet still.

The hinges squeaked as the wind nudged the gates apart, and we paused, staring out at the headstones that jutted from the earth like rotting teeth. This was one of Tennessee’s older cemeteries.

And it showed.

The headstones were covered in moss and cracked by time, and I was a little worried Matty wasn’t going to make it through the night.

This place really did look haunted.

“Let me know if you see any ghosts,” Jace muttered to Matty, followed by anoomphas Matty punched him in the arm. “Or not,” Jace grunted, rubbing where he’d been hit.

“Come on,” I whispered. “We’ll turn on the flashlights when we get further in.”

We set off in relative silence, the crunch of gravel beneath our feet and the occasional rustle of wind through the trees the only sounds breaking the thick stillness. The deeper we went into the cemetery, the older the graves became, marked with weathered stone angels and crosses that loomed over us.

I turned on my flashlight at that point, and the beam cut through the mist that had somehow developed, casting pale, shaky circles of light over the uneven ground.

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