Publisher's Synopsis
The high school on the north side of Birchdale has been on an emotional roller coaster experience as fall was transitioning into winter. Just as the students were basking in the glory of their first state championship in football, they had to bear the devastating death of one of their most popular classmates. The passage of months has also brought about significant changes in the individual family and social lives of the young people, especially in the boy-girl relationships. Ted and Natalie, the shy couple whose security was their unswerving devotion to each other, is experiencing new strains as the beauty of Natalie's emerging physical maturity has catapulted her into the limelight of the most desired girls in the school. Jeff has been getting along quite comfortably with Gina, the second girlfriend of his teen years, but just when he thought that his first girlfriend, Jill, had faded out of his life, he unexpectedly encounters her again. His certain world is profoundly shaken as he realizes that the "old feelings" haven't really gone away for this girl who he once loved so crazily that he was certain he couldn't never love anyone else. Yet returning to her presents as impossible since she has rejected him for three other guys and is pregnant by the last one, his younger brother! As conflict rages within his family over what to do about Jill, Jeff tries to focus on his studies and after-school job, only to get kidnapped by the school hoodlums and dragged into what is for him, the scariest place on earth, the now closed old Century Inn. If he gets out of there alive, he may still have to prove that he was not the perpetrator in the breaking and entering of the building. A few secrets of the ancient hotel have been revealed, but the teenage boys who worked there, and the young thugs that break into it, find yet more puzzling mysteries to ponder, not the least of which is whether the building is haunted.
