Paul recalls his childhood, thinking he was a loser. He is now married with a daughter. One day his mother brings a box of his old things. After she leaves, he is alone. His wife Catherine and his daughter Lizzy went on a trip and will be back the next day. He goes through the box and is disturbed by a picture he finds. He thinks back to the summer of 1984. In the past, during seventh grade, Paul rides his bike by Kelly’s house. Kelly and her sister are having a lemonade stand. He has a crush on Kelly. Kelly and her sister say they will pop his tires if he does not buy lemonade. He has no money on him, so the next day he returns with quarters. However, there is no lemonade that day. Instead, the girls offer a haunted house tour. Paul pays and waits for the girls to set up. He thinks about how the house seems scary now that the word haunted is attached to it. They begin the tour of the house. Kelly reads off notecards. She describes that a woman previously murdered her husband in the kitchen. Kelly and her sister continue the tour throughout the house asking if it is satisfactory to Paul. Paul is not scared and lets his mind wander to what Kelly is like. They enter a new room and Kelly tells another story about a shut-in person who went mad. The sister makes sound effects upstairs. Paul becomes upset as the stories are so similar, he thinks they are insinuating that he is weird and will become a murderous shut-in. They go upstairs to the girls’ bedrooms. Paul thinks the behavior of their parents is odd—insofar that they leave the young girls alone and sleep so far away from them. They go into Kelly’s sister’s room and the girls tell the most gruesome story of all. In the nineteen fifties, a different family owned the house. Their son, Will, slept upstairs next to rooms that were rented out to two other tenants, Rolph and Gregg. The young boy’s stuffed animals went missing. So did the tenants. Rolph’s remains were found inside the stuffed animals, which eventually reappeared. Gregg was spotted in Salem and Rhode Island but was never found. The girls said sometimes their stuffed animals disappear. They go into Kelly’s room, which is bright and nice. Kelly sits on the floor and says she dreams of it every night. Paul realizes she is talking about a picture propped up on her bed. Kelly admits that she drew it. The picture is of a mutilated cartoon person with odd, non-human characteristics. Paul says this is the first time he thought of or intellectualized that he would die someday. Kelly says she's tried to make up a story for the ghost in the drawing but the real reason for it is that it appears in her nightmares. She asks Paul what he thinks it is. They hear footsteps upstairs which they assume are the little sister. Paul gives his best guess about the picture. Kelly’s sister jumps out of the closet and scares Kelly. They do not know what the sound upstairs is as that floor is supposed to be empty. The three go upstairs. Paul sees a figure of an old man who approaches him. He screams and runs downstairs. Kelly laughs at him and says it is just her grandpa. Paul is very offended and upset. He races out of the house, stealing Kelly’s ghost drawing on the way out. He keeps the drawing in his drawer. Nothing happens after that until one day the drawing disappears. One day at school that Fall, he sees Kelly who gives him an odd look. Kelly eventually moves away, and Paul feels like he stole a piece of her. In the present day, Paul stops thinking about 1984; he looks for Kelly online but cannot find her.