Freeks(40)

I flicked on the small light above the kitchen sink, bathing the trailer in dim yellow light. Using my grandma’s ancient kettle, I put a pot of tea on the tiny stovetop. I grabbed my still-unfinished V. C. Andrews novel and settled back on the couch, preparing to spend the rest of my night reading and drinking a cup of tea.

I’d only just finished reading a page when I heard a strange sound outside. The nights were cool, so all the windows in the motorhome were open. Setting the book aside, I tilted my head, listening more closely, and it came again—a hushed hissing sound, not entirely unlike the one I’d heard right before Seth was attacked.

Last night, I’d assumed it had been the punks spray painting the trailer. They could be back to cause more havoc. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

Then I heard a loud clattering sound—metal on metal—and I jumped to my feet. I’m not sure what exactly I planned to do, but I had to see what was going on, so I threw open the screen door.

“You woke up Mara,” Luka grumbled, speaking barely above a whisper, probably so as not to wake anyone else in the campsite.

With the aid of the full moon and the streetlamp on the other side of Gideon’s trailer, I could easily see in the dark. Luka stood with his arms crossed over his chest, while Hutch sat on the ground beside him, struggling to untangle himself from a lawn chair.

“It’s not my fault that Betty didn’t put away her chairs before she went to bed,” Hutch protested.

I climbed down the steps of the trailer and walked over to them. “What are you two doing?”

“Luka thought he heard a noise, and he made me go out with him to investigate.” Hutch shot a glare up at Luka. “Stupid buddy system.”

Luka held up his hands. “These are Gideon’s rules, not mine.”

“You didn’t have to go out and check out the noise. It’s seriously like you’ve never seen a horror movie.”

Hutch grimaced because he still hadn’t freed himself from the chair, so I crouched down and helped him. I pulled apart the plastic slats, and his foot was finally able to slide free.

“Thank you,” he whispered before standing up.

“Sorry about accidentally outing you with that guy,” Luka said to me. “Since you spent the rest of the night holed up in your Winnebago, I’m assuming that it didn’t go well?”

“Don’t worry about it.” I shook my head and tried to ignore the painful lump in my throat. “It’s not like it could last forever, anyway, right?”

“I know, but it still sucks when things have to end abruptly like that,” Luka said.

“So what was the noise that drew you out of your trailer?” I asked, changing the subject.

“It was like a hissing, kind of, like the air being let out of a very large tire,” Luka explained.

“That wasn’t you guys?” I glanced around the campsite, realizing that it meant that we weren’t alone.

“Why would we hiss?” Hutch asked incredulously. “People don’t hiss.”

“Exactly,” I said under my breath.

“There!” Luka said, managing a whispered shout. He pointed frantically to the far side of the camp, where Gideon’s trailer butted up to the overgrown swamp behind us.

“What?” Hutch asked, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, I saw it.

A dark, low shadow moving quickly behind the trailers. I couldn’t tell if it was a dog, a bear, or even a man. It was just a blur of darkness running around the campsite.

Without thinking, I sprinted after it, and Luka ran beside me. We raced around Gideon’s trailer, following the shadow, but we were always too many steps behind to really see it. We chased it around the periphery of the campsite, and when it turned beside Betty and Damon’s trailer, I knew we had it. Beyond their trailer was just the open field that backed up against the chain-link fence. There was nowhere for it to hide.

I sped up, my legs pumping as quickly as they could beneath me. I rounded the trailer with my heart pounding in my chest, knowing I’d finally have caught sight of whoever—or whatever—it was that had probably attacked Seth.

But then there was nothing. The field was completely empty, and there wasn’t any sign of the shadow running anywhere. It was just gone.





22. apologies

The motorhome smelled like coffee, and that’s what pulled me from my sleep. After the shadowy thing had disappeared, Luka, Hutch, and I had sat on the picnic table in the center of the campsite, waiting for it to return. But it never had.

Eventually, when the sun began to rise, I decided to call it a night and head back to my camper. Hutch had actually fallen asleep on the picnic table, lying on his stomach on the bench, and Luka woke him up and dragged him back to their place.

I curled up on the dinette bench, propping my head on the cushions, and attempted to read my book, but I must’ve dozed off, because I woke up to my mom brewing coffee and humming an old Fleetwood Mac song. A quilt had been draped over me, the same one that Blossom used whenever she crashed on our couch.

“Morning,” Mom said without looking back at me, as if she could somehow sense me waking up behind her.

“Morning,” I mumbled, and pushed myself up so I was sitting. “What time is it?”

“Eight thirty.” She kept her back to me as she put a pan on the stovetop. “Are you hungry?”