Unspeakable Things(33)

Seph rolled her eyes, but they had a spark in them. “I’m too old for that.”

“You’re never too old to be sheet-seeking. Please? We only have a little bit before it’s suppertime.”

She looked at the toothbrush, and at the line of grout she’d cleaned. It was white to the remaining grout’s gray. I could tell she was wondering what more she could squeeze out of this deal, but her better nature won out. “Fine.”

“Yee-haw!” I wasn’t going to allow her time to change her mind. I sped off to locate the materials, then led her outside. The giggling started after we were covered in the sheets like Halloween ghosts but before we’d donned the headbands that would hold them in place.

“We should tie ourselves together at our ankles,” Sephie offered.

That’s when I knew she was full in. The ankle tie was the most challenging. It required us to orchestrate every step or fall over like a sack of potatoes. I let Sephie tie the knots. She was always better at it than me.

“Hey,” I said while she wound the twine around my ankle, “I really do think Wayne has a crush on you. He asked about you in school yesterday. I forgot to tell you.”

I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was grinning. “What’d he ask?”

“What your favorite color is.”

A yank on the twine told me she’d wound her end of the rope around her own ankle. Bimbo peeked under my sheet, and I pushed him away.

“Do you think he was attacked by Chester the Molester, like Clam?” Sephie asked.

The humiliation and fear I’d felt when Clam cornered me in the instrument room returned, wrapping itself around my ribs like a too-tight rope. “I think Dad might know. I think him and Sergeant Bauer have talked about it. Want to help me look through his stuff later?”

“What would we be looking for?”

I shrugged under the sheet. “I dunno.” I thought of what Mom had said, that the man who’d attacked Clam wore a mask. “Clues, I suppose. Like maybe Bauer gave Dad a copy of a police report, and it lists the names of the boys who were hurt and what happened to them?”

We were quiet for a while.

“Do you really think Wayne likes me?” she asked softly.

“What’s not to like?” I shook off the uneasiness and stepped forward, testing the rope. Sephie glided with me without needing to be told. “Except that you snore. Oh, and you smell like donkey. But other than that . . .”

“I don’t snore.”

We were cruising now, nearly running, hands held in front, the anticipation of a collision tingling along my skin. The mowed lawn gave way to the thick grass and crunchy sticks at the forest perimeter. We headed into the woods, the smell of secrets and rotting leaves growing stronger, the air cooler.

“And besides, you smell like a donkey’s sister,” Sephie finished.

I laughed, and she did, too. “Tree!” I called, my hand meeting the solid wood. We both shifted to the right, bonking against each other.

“Another tree!” Sephie giggled and stumbled.

I caught her hand before she fell. “Hey, Sephie. I bet Mom and Dad will be okay with you wanting to be a hairstylist.” They wouldn’t be. I was feeling good, though, and I wanted to share that.

“You think so?”

“For sure.” We crunched along silently for several minutes. When a narrow valley appeared beneath us, we both pitched into it. My elbow grazed something sharp as I crashed to the ground. “Ow!”

“Where are we?” Sephie asked from beside me. The rule was that we couldn’t look, couldn’t remove the sheets until we were hopelessly lost. Her voice was too thin, though.

“I don’t know. Are you okay?”

A flurry of fabric told me she was removing her sheet, which was expressly against the rules. “Sephie!”

“I’m bleeding.”

I gasped, pushing the headband off and then the sheet. We were so deep in the woods that the trees cast underwater shadows. Sephie and I lay hip to hip in a grove of wet-looking oaks, a place we’d never seen before. It smelled like loam and rot and copper. Sephie’s knee was bleeding a thin red streak. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“What happened?” I asked her.

She pointed past our sheets, which were a shocking white against the moldy forest floor, to bones nearly the same color jutting from the ground.

I screamed.





CHAPTER 19

My dad killed someone.

It came to me all clean and laid out, just like that, landing in my belly rather than my brain, like most thoughts did. When I tried to grab on to it, though, to examine it up close, it slithered away. Of course my dad wasn’t a murderer. By the time he’d heard Sephie’s sobbing and my yelling and found us in that moldy oak grove, I’d marked the thought as outrageous.

Once Dad pointed out that the skeleton belonged to a vulture—look, you can even see some of the wing feathers here—and not a small child, I almost couldn’t even remember that I’d had it.

Almost.

Dad carried Sephie to the house, where Mom cleaned and bandaged her punctured knee. The phone rang in the middle of the process. Surprisingly, Dad went to answer it. He must have been expecting a call, because normally he hated talking on the phone. He said the government was always listening and that anything you had to say you should say in person. When he returned moments later, he was working his jaw. “The new neighbors need a babysitter for tonight,” he said.