“C’mon, do it. Just once.” We were half-a-day into a two-day road trip to my parents’ house in Iowa for the holidays. We had been listening to a smutty book for the past hour, and we were both wound up. I put my blinker on and slid into the passing lane. “One time. C’mon, it’ll probably wake him up. You could be a lifesaver.” “Fine.” Donna untucked her shirt and rolled down the window. As we came even with the cab of the...

PAK! I opened my eyes to a sharp cracking sound. I wasn’t sure if I had dreamed it and was trying to remember what I had been dreaming when [PAK!] I heard something hit the window again. I carefully peeked out, making sure not to move the curtain. With no lights on, my brother, on the lawn below, couldn’t see me looking down. “Charlie, wake up! Charlie, you douche,” he hissed. “Wake up!” I thought about going back to bed....

I told them I was too old to be scared. My older cousins, herded into each room of the High School of Horrors, laughed, screamed, laughed again, but the masks and strobes terrified me. Rushing from one room, cardboard coffins spilling vampires onto my screaming/laughing cousins, I got snatched. I wailed, struggled, but a black-wigged teenager yanked me into her standing coffin while my cousins fled. “Quiet, kid. You’ll go...