December Park(22)

A light winked on in one of the downstairs windows.

“I told you I saw someone,” Scott said.

“Let’s beat it.” Michael backed away from the edge of the property.

I didn’t move. I felt Peter whoosh by me and snag a fistful of my sweatshirt, but I jerked myself free. Just as Naczalnik’s front door opened, spilling a sliver of yellowish light onto the porch, I hurled my egg. But not just at the house—at him.

My aim was poor: the egg detonated against one of the front windows, causing the pinch-faced silhouette of Mr. Naczalnik to swing in that direction. A set of carriage lights on either side of the door blinked on. Then his voice boomed out, a sonorous bassoon, but I was already fleeing down the street with my friends, my heart thudding loudly in my ears, and I made out none of what Mr. Naczalnik said.





Gradually, we made our way back across town toward the evening’s final destination—what Michael promised would be the pièce de résistance. The air was crisp and smoky with the distant scent of fireplaces. Cigarettes jouncing from our lips as we slunk through the shadows, we catcalled after some of the girls we recognized from school.

When one of the girls separated herself from the crowd and came over to us, I was surprised at her brazenness. But as she passed beneath the glow of a streetlamp, I recognized her.

Rachel Lowrey was the first girl I’d ever kissed. We’d been eleven or twelve, so it wasn’t like a real openmouthed, fencing-tongues scenario, though it had been pretty intense at the time. The kiss came not because she liked me but because of the Kiss War.

The Kiss War started when a group of neighborhood girls ambushed Michael one summer and peppered him with kisses. Before the summer was over, all of us were casualties of the war. Rachel Lowrey had been my attacker. She had tackled me to the ground as I’d crested the dunes of the Shallows where I’d spent the afternoon swimming with my friends. Startled, the wind knocked out of me, I attempted to roll over and push myself to my feet but wound up only breading myself in the sand like a cutlet. Immediately, she dropped on top of me, straddling my waist, her knees driving divots into the sand on either side of my hips. Then her face was against mine, her lips on me. To my surprise, I didn’t shove her off, and maybe that’s why she stopped.

When she pulled away, there was a questioning look on her face. Before it could get too awkward, I bucked my hips and knocked her to the sand. Laughing, she scrambled to her feet, but by that time I was already tearing across the dunes, my bare feet punching boomerang shapes in the sand.

“I should have known it was you guys.” Rachel materialized out of the darkness like a ghost taking form. She was dressed minimally in a red cloak, her face powdered white. Her dark curls were fashioned into pigtails. Fake blood on the left side of her neck gave the appearance of a gaping wound. She looked at each one of us, her gaze finally resting on me. “Why do you hang out with these creepazoids?”

Michael tittered. “What are you supposed to be, anyway?”

“I’m Little Red Riding Hood. Only I wasn’t lucky enough to get away from the Big Bad Wolf. See?” She tilted her head to show off her glistening neck wound.

“Awesome,” Scott said.

“You guys think you’re so cool, standing around smoking,” Rachel said. “Those things cause cancer, you know, in case you haven’t read a newspaper or anything.”

“She’s like a goddamn public service announcement,” Peter said.

Scott and I laughed.

Rachel reached into her cloak and pulled out a Krackel bar. She smiled sideways at me, then extended the candy bar to Michael, the only one of us without a cigarette. “Here. For not smoking.”

“Sweet!” Michael snatched up the candy bar and unwrapped it. “Thanks.”

“So, anyway, it looks like you guys are up to no good. I thought I’d warn you that there’s a ton of cops out tonight. It’s because of that girl they found. And the other kids, too, I guess. The missing kids. They’re not messing around. We’ve already been stopped twice.”

“We’re not up to nothing,” Peter said. “But thanks.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks, Rachel.”

Across the street, Rachel’s friends shouted after her.

“Listen, I gotta go. Sasha Tamblin’s having some people over. You guys want to come?”

I shrugged. So did my friends. Michael grunted something unintelligible around his candy bar. We had heard about the party but had more important plans for the evening. Yet I suddenly found myself wondering what it would be like to attend a party with Rachel . . .

“You guys.” She looked like she wanted to shake her head at our hopelessness. “It must be exhausting having to look so tough all the time.”

“Quit flirting,” Michael said.

She smiled. “So what are you guys supposed to be?”

“We’re ghosts. We’re the disappeared.” Michael waved a hand in front of her face, Jedi-style. “You never even saw us.”

“I wish,” she said, and laughed. Then she spun on her heels and hurried across the street to join her friends. A few of them shouted nonsense at us and made kissing noises before disappearing around the darkening bend in the road.





The streets were suspiciously silent. Aside from the occasional police cruiser tucked into a darkened alley, we were utterly alone. Even the older kids who usually meandered around town, laughing too loudly and talking in raised voices, or perched on the hoods of their cars, passing around bottles of beer—my grandmother referred to these troublemakers as neighborhoodlums—were noticeably absent. I didn’t know if it was the presence of police patrolling the neighborhood or the whispers about the Piper that kept people inside.