Chapter 35

I met my teacher in the hallway as I was on my way out for recess the next morning. She was definitely expecting me this time because she pulled me back into the classroom.

“How are you doing today Lily?”

“I’m okay.”

“Good. Now, I’ve found a solution to your math problem.”

“What is it?”

“I found a student in the sixth grade to help you with your work. You can meet during afternoon recess for now, but once the two of you are comfortable I’ll allow you to work out your study times together. How does that sound?”

“Good.” I was happy, just imagining how it would be having a tutor of my own. And in the sixth grade. She would have to be smart, which meant that she wouldn’t be mean. Maybe we would become friends too.

“You can go to the sixth grade room starting Monday morning,” she told me. “Okay?”

“Alright. Thank you.”

I was on edge the entire afternoon trying to think of who my tutor could be. I was trying to remember who I knew from the sixth grade, and at recess Mary Alice and I even tried pointing them out in the schoolyard. I didn’t even mind having to return home straight after school again just so I could do my homework and try and think of who it would be. Would she be pretty? Would she like me? Most of all though I just wondered if she had a little sister of her own.

Friday was almost the same way. As I walked down the hall I checked to see if any older kids looked at me strangely, like they knew we were going to have to start working together. There was nothing though, so I knew that I was going to be left wondering all weekend long.

“You want to come to the park with me?” Mary Alice asked as we were walking home that day.

“I can’t. I have to go home again.”

“Again? What’d you do anyway?”

“Nothing. Darry just wants me home.”

“And he isn’t even telling you why?”

“No.”

“Well I wish you could come out. It’s boring being all alone.”

I thought that over. It was boring being at home too, and this was Friday. Besides Darry had been coming home late from work every night that week, and he hadn’t even noticed that I had been home each of those afternoons. He never would have noticed if I actually had gone out, so would it really be a big deal if I did this time?

“Can I drop my books off at your house,” I asked. I didn’t want to go home and risk being told that I had to stay, and so I didn’t. Instead we dropped our books off and then had some milk and cookies that her mother had just made with Laurie. We had to come up with a creative way to get out of the house without Laurie seeing. Mrs. Weston didn’t mind if we went off and played without her, but she didn’t want us leaving her home screaming either. So instead with went into her parents’ bedroom and climbed out their window onto the porch. We jumped off the porch too, not because we had to but because we felt like it, and went over to the park to play. There were a couple of really small kids using the swings, so we decided to play on the monkey bars for awhile.

As we were climbing the top Mary Alice stopped near the middle and waited for me.

“What?” I asked casually as I wrapped my knees around a bar and lowered myself into an upside-down position.

“Did you wear your bras this week?” she questioned once she had joined me in hanging from our knees.

“Yeah. Did you?”

She attempted to nod but it just looked like she was having a spasm of the head. “Do you think anybody noticed?”

“I don’t know. Did anybody notice yours?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are people supposed to notice it?”

“Well isn’t that the point?”

“I thought it was so that we could prove we need one.”

“Well yes but, oh never mind.”

I could tell that there was something she was trying to get to but didn’t bother pressuring her to continue. She was always thinking something crazy and I didn’t need any new worries in my head about what people were thinking about me.

As we were sliding back up through the bars this little boy ran up and started laughing at us. He was usually playing in the park when we were there, but he was only about six and the most annoying thing I had ever met.

“What is it Mikey?” Mary Alice asked angrily as we sat back down properly.

“I can see up your skirt!” he sang. “I can see up your skirt!”

My friend and I exchanged evil glances before jumping off the bars and chasing after the little brat. He ran fast, I’ll give him that, and the accompanying screams were something for a little guy to be proud of, but this wasn’t the first time that we had been bothered by Mikey and it probably wouldn’t be the last either. From what I knew about him he lived alone with his mother, but she was out working during the day so he was on his own after school to do whatever he wanted. This meant that he was terrorizing the kids in the park until supper time, but it also meant that he couldn’t go crying to his mother after we got a hold of him.

When we finally caught him it was near the other side of the park nobody was around to see us.

“Let go of me!” he cried, but even he knew that this was really just a game because it wasn’t a cry of desperation.

“Take it back!” Mary Alice said.

“Take what back?”

“That you saw up our dresses.”

“But I did see up your dresses!”

“Fine,” I said. “We’re just gonna have to tickle you till you take it back.”

“No!” he shouted over dramatically as we pushed him to the ground. Mary Alice got his shoes off and tickled his feet while I got him on his sides and under the arms.

“Take it back!” we ordered.

“I can’t!” he said in a laughing agony. “I can’t breath! I can’t breath!”

We stopped tickling just long enough for him to catch his breath and then started up again.

“Please!” he begged, and I knew that he was really beginning to hate this.

“What?” I cried, looking at Mary Alice.

“I think he wants us to stop,” she said, clearly understanding what I was doing.

“He does? But he didn’t take it back.”

“Oh,” she laughed. “Too bad.”

“Alright!” he said, and we paused. “I take it back.”

“Good,” Mary Alice said as we let go of him and stood up.

He stood up and scratched his dirty blond hair and picked up his shoes. “I’m gonna tell my mama that I got jumped by a couple of crazy girls!”

“Go ahead,” I said, laughing.

“Yeah,” Mary Alice added. “See if we care.”

Mikey ran off then, leaving us to find something else to do. The park had lost it’s fun and besides that we didn’t want to risk having Mikey tell someone on us.

“Want to go to the woods again,” she asked me. “I bet we can find our way around this time.”

“Alright,” I agreed, not being able to come up with anything better myself.

There was one thing Mary Alice seemed to be interested in in those woods, and it was that beaten up old car we had seen the last time we were there. It took us a while to find it, but when we did it looked just as it had when we left it, mostly covered in leaves and branches and other debris.

“So do you think it’s haunted?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Could be.” I didn’t think it really was, but I didn’t want to rule out that possibility either.

“If it is then why isn’t there a ghost here?”

“It only comes out at night.” I didn’t mean to sound so matter-of-fact about that, it’s just the way it came out.

“How do you know if it only comes out at night?” she asked. “You just said that you don’t know if it’s really haunted.”

“I don’t,” I sighed. “I just mean that all ghosts only come out at night.”

“But you do think it could really be haunted?”

“I guess so.”

She was starting to brush some of the branches off the top of the car and tried to get through the window.

“What are you doing?” I asked, pulling her back.

“I want to see if there’s a body inside.”

“Why?” I asked. “That’s gross!”

“What if there is? What if this person got into an accident and nobody knows what happened to them?”

“Have you heard of any missing people from around here?” I asked.

“No, but maybe they’ve been here awhile.” She went to get in the car again, but I just stood back. I had a bad feeling about this and I didn’t want to be around that car anymore. It just made me think about my parents and their accident and I didn’t want to think about them getting hurt.

“Come on Mary Alice,” I said worriedly. “Let’s go.”

“Hold on!” she said from inside the car. “I’ll be out in a second. I think I see something.”

“I’m going!” I said loudly and walked away from the car.

“What’s your problem?” she asked as she followed after me. She sounded somewhat concerned and I did feel bad for wanting to leave suddenly, but didn’t know how to explain my feelings to her either.

“I just don’t like being out here,” I said plainly. “It’s creepy, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” she agreed, then seemed to be a little frightened herself. It wasn’t a sunny day like it had been when we were out there the last Friday, but instead the sky was clouded over and it looked like it might rain. I could tell that it was going to start to get dark out soon too, and just wanted out of there.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“We can go back to my house,” she suggested.

“What about Laurie?”

“Well we can go back to the park then. We just wont go near Mikey.”

“Okay,” I agreed. We didn’t have any trouble finding our way out this time, and before long we were on our way back to the park.

The swings were free when we got there and so we took them quickly, then looked around as we were flying through the air for any sight of Mikey.

“There he is,” Mary Alice said, pointing towards the other end of the park. He was playing with a couple of other little kids, and we were relieved to hear his laughter.

“He probably wont tell on us anyway,” I thought out loud. He was just at the age where he could still tell on people without feeling guilty but I knew that it wouldn’t be long before he realized that kids didn’t tell on other kids, no matter what.

“Even if he does tell on us it’s not like we did anything wrong,” she pointed out.

“I know,” I said. “And he bothers people all the time. Why would we be the-”

“Lily Curtis!”

I was startled to hear someone shouting my name, and stopped pumping my legs immediately.

“Who’s that?” Mary Alice asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, jumping to the ground and looking around.

“There,” she said, jumping down next to me. “It’s your brother.”

I looked over towards the street and saw that it was Soda who had called my name. Then I realized that he wasn’t actually looking at me, and figured that he hadn’t actually spotted me yet.

“Do you have to go?” Mary Alice asked me.

“No,” I said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” We ran to the closest place we could find for cover, which just happened to be behind a tree.

“Are you in trouble?” she asked.

“Maybe not,” I said hopefully, but I knew that the only time Soda would be out looking for me and calling me by my last name was because I was in trouble.

“How long are we going to wait here?”

“Until I think it’s safe to go out again.”

“But you said that you might not even be in-” She stopped talking when a long shadow appeared in front of us, and as I turned to look I saw that Soda was standing there next to the tree. He did not look happy.

“I gotta go,” Mary Alice said quickly, then ran off right away. I couldn’t blame her. It’s one thing to try and protect your friend, but when you know there’s nothing you can do to get them out of trouble then the only decent thing to do is leave them alone and spare them the embarrassment.

“Hi,” I said quietly.

“You were supposed to come right home after school,” he said accusingly.

“I was?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “and don’t say it’s not true because I was right there this morning when Darry told all of us that he wants us to stick around the house.

I didn’t know what to say. He was right, and there wasn’t anything I could do to try and fix this. I wasn’t about to get angry either. I could handle snapping and being disrespectful to Darry, because that was the only defense I had against him, but I couldn’t act that way to Soda when he was upset, only because I knew he would hold it against me for days and take it personally.

“Is Darry home?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Is he mad?”

“Oh yeah.”

“But why? He never told me why I had to stay home.”

“Yeah well we found out why about an hour ago.”

“Why?”

“Darry’s been worried all week that a social worker’s gonna show up for a surprise visit.”

I had an awful feeling in my stomach. “Did she come?”

He nodded again.

“What happened? Why’d she come? Are they taking me away!”

“Calm down,” he said, but he didn’t sound very sympathetic. “She just came to check up on us. And they aren’t taking you away. You’re lucky she likes us. Darry made up some story about you being at a sleepover tonight and you’re lucky he did too because you know how much he hates to lie about stuff like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and felt tears coming to my eyes. I felt bad partly because I knew that I was in trouble but mostly because I knew that if the social worker made a surprise visit it was because somebody wanted her in there. And maybe Soda was wrong, maybe they were going to take me away.

“Look don’t cry,” Soda said, and I could tell that he was starting to let his guard down a little bit. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”

“Yeah but I’m in trouble now.”

“You’re always in trouble.”

“If that was a joke it wasn’t funny.”

He looked at me seriously. “It wasn’t a joke.”

I tried not to cry, I really did, and was moderately successful. Though the tears weren’t pouring down my face I still wasn’t able to keep them from filling my eyes.

“We’ve got to go home,” Soda said.

“How mad is Darry?”

“He’s pretty mad.”

“As mad as when I skipped school?’

“Not quite that mad, but pretty close.”

“Great,” I sighed.

“Don’t worry though,” he said somewhat spitefully. “I won’t tell him how you ran away from me when I called you.”

“You saw me running?”

“How else would I have known that you were behind the tree?” He pushed my back to get me to start walking, and although I went slowly I did start to head towards home. “Besides,” he said, “we couldn’t find any of your school stuff at home, and you didn’t change clothes either. We thought something might have happened to you.”

I tried to avoid telling him that I had intentionally stayed away from the house by asking, “How come Darry’s home so early?”

He half-laughed half-snarled, “It’s almost six o’clock.”

I was uncomfortable walking with Soda, and I couldn’t tell if he was really angry or only pretending to be to scare me. I wanted it to be just pretend, but even if he was pretending it was because he knew that I had done wrong. I wasn’t looking forward to facing Darry either , and prayed that something might happen in between that moment and when I got home. Nothing did though, and about ten seconds later Soda and I were walking up the front steps of the house. I could see through the window that Darry was just waiting to kill me.