Only Child(81)

“Time to be brave,” I said to myself in my head.

Maybe Ricky and his mom had graves at the cemetery, too, like Andy and Charlie’s son. I was going to check when I got there.

At the top of the hill came the big green field. Behind the field I could see the college, and no college kids were outside of it, so that was good. I made a check mark next to “college” on the map.

Everything was fine until I got to the road. It was quiet at first and I didn’t see anyone, but just when I got ready to walk around the firehouse, cars came from the left and the right, and people were going to see me from the cars. I noticed a doorway next to the firehouse and I stepped inside it and turned around in it. I pretended like I was opening the door. The cars drove by me and didn’t stop. I peeked my head out of the doorway to see if more cars were coming, but I didn’t see any.

I walked around the firehouse fast, and around the corner from it, before the street goes up the next hill, there was a parking lot with benches, so I decided to sit down for a minute. I made a check mark on the map next to “firehouse” and looked at Andy’s watch: 2:34. I decided to get out one of the snacks I packed. Snacks and my water bottle were in the middle pocket of my backpack. I pulled out a granola bar and I was trying to get it open when all of a sudden I saw a white van coming down the hill and it was going very slow.

My heart started beating at super speed. I dropped my granola bar on the ground and my map and I grabbed my backpack and looked around fast. I spotted the clothes bin that Mommy and I went to a few times to drop old clothes in that we didn’t need anymore but poor people were going to use them, and I ran and scooched in behind it.

It was very tight because the clothes bin had a fence right behind it, and it smelled bad like throw-up or something. My breath was going in and out fast, and my heart was still beating very fast. “Please don’t let the bad guy find me. Please don’t let the bad guy find me,” I said in my head and I hugged my backpack tight.

There was a white van with a bad guy in it in Wake Gardens, and in the summertime the bad guy was driving around with a big Scooby-Doo stuffed animal in the van, and he tried to get kids to come to the van to look at the Scooby-Doo, because he wanted to steal them. Andy told me that, and it made me really scared, and I didn’t want to go outside to play anymore. Mommy said it was true. There really was a bad guy in a white van. She read it on Facebook. She told me it would be better if I stayed close to the house, and it was definitely a no to going up to strangers’ cars. “So much for being safer in the burbs,” Mommy said.

Now I wasn’t close to our house. I was all by myself, and now the bad guy was going to steal me and put me in the white van. I tried not to move and not to make any sounds. Maybe the bad guy didn’t see me when I was sitting on the bench. But then it looked like he did, because I heard the white van drive up in the parking lot. My whole body was shaking, and I started to cry a lot. I put my face in the backpack so no sounds were coming out of my mouth. I really wished I didn’t go on my mission. If I was still at home in my room, the bad guy wouldn’t be coming for me right now.

I heard a car door slam and then another car door, and I didn’t let any breaths go in and out of my mouth. Then I heard voices, but it was woman voices, and they were talking about the crazy long line to see Santa at Macy’s. I knew what they were talking about because we always went to see Santa at Macy’s in the city before Christmas, and the line always took super long, like an hour, except this year we didn’t go.

The woman voices sounded like they were moving away from me. My heart wasn’t beating so super fast anymore, and the crying got better, but I still tried not to move in case the white van was still there somewhere. I checked Andy’s watch and it said 2:39. I stared at the watch and nothing else happened, so at 2:45 I decided to look around the clothes bin. There was no white van anywhere.

I really wanted to go back home because I still had a bad scared feeling and I wasn’t feeling brave at all anymore. But then I thought about my mission and about how I didn’t want Charlie to go in jail, so I decided to do Dicky Dicky Diamond between going back home or keep going to the cemetery: “Dicky Dicky Diamond, step right in. Dicky Dicky Diamond, step right out.” Home was out.

I got out from behind the clothes bin and looked up the hill where my old preschool and the cemetery were going to be. I put on my backpack and started walking up the hill fast.

There were buildings on the left side of me, and some teenagers were hanging out there. One called over to me, “Hey, kid, are you going camping? That backpack is bigger than you!” and all the other teenagers laughed, and some made whistling sounds. I tried not to look at them. I kept my eyes on the sidewalk, square and rectangular stones, and I tried to get all the way up the hill without touching any rectangular ones.





[ 48 ]


    Whispering Winds


I WALKED UP THE HILL to where my old preschool was on the right, but I walked on the other side of the street where the cemetery was going to be. It took me a long time to walk up there, and then the watch said 3:10, so it was one hour minus three minutes from when I left my house. I saw the preschool up on the right side, and lots of cars were driving in and out and that made sense, because 3:00 is pickup time.

I walked the rest of the way fast and turned left and went through the big black gate in the cemetery, because I didn’t want someone from the school to spot me. The big gate had two like towers made out of rocks on the sides, and half a circle made out of black metal went from one tower to the other one, and a sign said HOLY SEPULCHRE CEMETERY. On the two ends of the half-circle were lamps that looked like big candles. I didn’t see the gate when we came here for Andy’s funeral because we drove here from the church and parked our car on the other side of the cemetery on the little road inside. Through the gate I could see the cemetery, and this part looked different from the part where they put Andy’s grave. Maybe this was the old part or something.