hall. Which is so totally unfair since I've never touched a cigarette since.

But I guess the fact that he'd recently been forced to rescue me in the middle of the night when this ghost made a building collapse on me didn't exactly help form any warm bond of trust between us. Especially since I couldn't tell him the ghost part. I think he believes I'm just the type of girl buildings fall on top of all the time.

No wonder he doesn't want me in his car.

"Come on," I said, opening up my camel-colored calf-length coat. "How much trouble could I get up to in this outfit?"

Sleepy looked me over. Even he had to admit I was the epitome of innocence in my white cable knit sweater, red plaid skirt, and penny loafers. I had even put on this gold cross necklace I had been

awarded as a prize for winning this essay contest on the War of 1812 in Mr. Walden's class. I figured this was the kind of outfit an old guy like Mr. Beaumont would appreciate: you know, the sassy schoolgirl thing.

"Besides," I said. "It's for school."

"All right," Sleepy said at last, looking like he really wished he were someplace else. "Get in the car."

I hightailed it out to the Rambler before he had a chance to change his mind.

Sleepy got in a minute later, looking drowsy, as usual. His job, for a pizza stint, seemed awfully

demanding. Either that or he just put in a lot of extra shifts. You would think by now he'd have saved enough for that Camaro. I mentioned that as we pulled out of the driveway.

"Yeah," Sleepy said. "But I want to really cherry her out, you know? Alpine stereo, Bose speakers. The works."

I have this thing about boys who refer to their cars as "she" but I didn't figure it would pay to alienate my ride. Instead, I said, "Wow. Neat."

We live in the hills of Carmel, overlooking the valley and the bay. It's a beautiful place, but since it was dark out all I could see were the insides of the houses we were driving by. People in California have these really big windows to let in all the sun, and at nighttime when their lights are on you can see

practically everything they're doing, just like in Brooklyn, where nobody ever pulled down their blinds. It's kind of homey, actually.

"What class is this for, anyway?" Sleepy asked, making me jump. He so rarely spoke, especially when he was doing something he liked, like eating or driving, that I had sort of forgotten he was there.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"This paper you're doing." He took his eyes off the road a second and looked at me. "You did say this was for school, didn't you?"

"Oh," I said. "Sure. Uh-huh. It's, um, a story I'm doing for the school paper. My friend Cee Cee, she's the editor. She assigned it to me."

Oh my God, I am such a liar. And I can't leave at just one lie, either. Oh, no. I have to pile it on. I am sick, I tell you. Sick.

"Cee Cee," Sleepy said. "That's that albino chick you hang out with at lunch, right?"

Cee Cee would have had an embolism if she'd heard anyone refer to her as a chick, but since,

technically, the rest of his sentence was correct, I said, "Uh-huh."

Sleepy grunted and didn't say anything else for a while. We drove in silence, the big houses with their light-filled windows flashing by. Seventeen Mile Drive is this stretch of highway that's supposed to be like the most beautiful road in the world, or something. The famous Pebble Beach Golf course is on

Seventeen Mile Drive, along with about five other golf courses and a bunch of scenic points, like the Lone Cypress, which is some kind of tree growing out of a boulder, and Seal Rock, on which there are, you guessed it, a lot of seals.

Seventeen Mile Drive is also where you can check out the colliding currents of what they call the

Restless Sea, the ocean along this part of the coast being too filled with riptides and undertows for

anyone to swim in. It's all giant crashing waves and tiny stretches of sand between great big boulders on which sea gulls are always dropping mussels and stuff, hoping to split the shells open. Sometimes surfers get split open there, too, if they're stupid enough to think they can ride the waves.

And if you want, you can buy a really big mansion on a cliff overlooking all this natural beauty, for a mere, oh, zillion dollars or so.

Which was apparently what Thaddeus "Red" Beaumont had done. He had snatched up one of those mansions, a really, really big one, I saw, when Sleepy finally pulled up in front of it. Such a big one, in fact, that it had a little guard's house by the enormous spiky gate in front of its long, long driveway, with a guard in it watching TV.

Sleepy, looking at the gate, went, "Are you sure this is the place?"

I swallowed. I knew from what Cee Cee had said that Mr. Beaumont was rich. But I hadn't thought he was this rich.

And just think, his kid had asked me to slow dance!

"Um," I said. "Maybe I should just see if he's home before you take off."

Sleepy said, "Yeah, I guess."

I got out of the car and went up to the little guard's house. I don't mind telling you, I felt like a tool. I had been trying all day to get through to Mr. Beaumont, only to be told he was in a meeting, or on another line. For some reason, I'd imagined a personal touch might work. I don't know what I'd been thinking, but I believe it had involved ringing the doorbell and then looking winsomely up into his face when he came to the door.

That, I could see now, wasn't going to happen.

"Um, excuse me," I said, into the little microphone at the guard's house. Bulletproof glass, I noticed. Either Tad's dad had some people who didn't like him, or he was just a little paranoid.

The guard looked up from his TV. He checked me out. I saw him check me out. I had kept my coat open so he'd be sure to see my plaid skirt and loafers. Then he looked past me, at the Rambler. This was no good. I did not want to be judged by my stepbrother and his crappy car.

I tapped on the glass again to direct the guard's attention back to me.

"Hello," I said, into the microphone. "My name's Susannah Simon, and I'm a sophomore at the Mission Academy. I'm doing a story for our school paper on the ten most influential people in Carmel, and I was hoping to be able to interview Mr. Beaumont, but unfortunately, he hasn't returned any of my calls, and the story is due tomorrow, so I was wondering if he might be home and if he'd see me."