Herbie sat in front of me in math class.

He had moved into the old house down the street from me last semester. People used to laugh and say that the old house was haunted, but I know different. I know all about the real monsters living there.

I could see the moving men carrying their stuff into the house. The old furniture, the huge trunks, and mounds of clothes. I figured that his mom must have been a movie star, having all those clothes. She looked like one of those high society women that day, standing out on the lawn in her red dress and her golden hair, pointing here and there and yelling to the moving men.

Herbie's dad was ugly even from a distance. When I first saw him that day, getting out of the family's white station wagon, I could tell he was ugly. When I met the man, I almost peed my pants!

Like I said, Herbie sat in front of me in math. I thought that he was cute and tried to get his attention, but he didn't notice me. I went out of my way to get in his way, but it didn't work. He didn't seem to care.

I called the operator and got his number. I called his house every night; I just never got up the nerve to say anything when he picked up the phone.

I started getting to math class as early as possible—before anyone else was in there--so I could leave notes on his desk. But after he read them, he just folded them up and put them in his pocket. He never said a word. I never really wondered why I never saw him talking to any guys at school. I never noticed that he didn't have any friends. I was too busy dreaming about him talking to me...and liking me.

As I said before, Herbie lived down the street from me, and after about two weeks of nothing, I started taking walks past his house at night. The house was a big, three-story Victorian mansion, and after a week of walking by his house, I figured out that his room was on the third floor. If only there was a tall enough tree in the yard, then I could climb up and look in his window. At the time, all I wanted to do was to be a part of his life, a place in his world.

I had dreams about what his room looked like. Some of them were scary dreams. I would wake up from them crying, but I couldn't remember what had made me cry.