I hung upside down outside of Donna’s house, waiting for Cassie to knock on their door.

The final plan had turned out to be Cassie’s with a few tweaks, and maybe not enough, but there’s a lot to be said for simple plans. You don’t have as much to think about. Not that that automatically meant it was a good plan, but it was still better than a great plan I couldn’t remember.

Quietly I hung to the side of the window, slowly turning the little pieces of metal that held the screen in. I couldn’t remember their names. The house had the old style of screen windows. Modern screen windows let you control whether you have the screen or the storm window from the inside. In the old style (and I mean really old, like the 1920’s), you swapped the screen window out for the storm window when spring came.

So I was loosening the screen window so that I could crawl through if I had to. It seemed nicer than punching a hole in the wall or knocking down their back door. Beating up a little girl’s uncle would be bad enough. I didn’t want her to have to sleep in a hotel too. Continue reading Haley: Part 8 →

“Monster?” he asked. “A monster muppet, maybe. No, better yet, a vampire Smurfette. She’s tiny. One good punch should take her down.”

“Vampire Smurfette? Didn’t you do any research? Rod, I watched a documentary about superheroes in World War 2. You know what they used Night Wolf for? You know what it was? He was a killer.” Continue reading Haley: Part 7 →

I fired a grappling gun while I was still falling, and I didn’t do it right away. I waited, and I shot at the next building over—another big, brick building—and let the rope turn me until I was above the semi-truck. Then I let out the line until I was just a few feet above it, set the gun to release it’s hold, holstered it, and dropped.

It was almost perfect. Continue reading Haley: Part 5 →