Unspeakable Things(60)

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Getting ready for summer school, dummy.”

“Are Mom and Dad up yet?”

“Yup.” She headed down the stairs. “They’re packing.”

The flutter gave way to a hollow feeling. “For what?”

I had my answer when I hit the bottom step and turned into the kitchen. Mom was shoving a toothbrush into her overnight bag, which was already stuffed with clothes. “We’re going on a trip!”

Dad appeared from the direction of their bedroom holding a folded T-shirt. “Found it! Will this fit?”

“You bet, love,” Mom said, grabbing the shirt from him and cramming it into the bag.

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. “Where are we going?”

Dad grinned at me. “Just me and your mom. We’re driving up to Duluth. Jim Kendum is having a party. You remember the Kendums?”

I wiped sleep out of my eyes. Mom and Dad had never taken a trip without us.

“Are they the ones with the motorcycles?” Sephie asked.

“You bet!” Dad said.

“Who’ll take care of us?” I asked. Fear was warring with relief. No Dad, but also no Mom.

“Sephie’s old enough to watch you both,” Dad assured me.

Mom’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t argue.

Sephie stood next to me. Our shoulders were touching. She smelled freshly showered, and I smelled crusty. “When are you coming back?” she asked.

Dad shrugged, his tone teasing. “Maybe never.”

“Donny.” Mom playfully punched his shoulder and then grabbed his hand. “We’ll be back early tomorrow. It’s a short trip. We decided we need a vacation is all. You can roast a chicken for supper tonight. No parties. Sephie, you’re on your own for getting to summer school. I called the Gomezes, and they said you could call there if you are in trouble.”

Sephie grabbed my hand. We were mirror reflections of our parents.

We all turned toward the open kitchen window at the sound of tires coming down the gravel from the direction of the Gomezes’, and I wondered if they were coming right now to check on us. Or maybe it was super-early mail delivery and I was getting another package from Aunt Jin! My heart leaped at the first bright spot of the confusing morning but plummeted when the green car crested the rise and appeared in our driveway.

Goblin.





CHAPTER 38

I was sure I was about to get in the worst trouble of my life.

We stepped outside as a family.

Dad had tied one of his sculptures to the top of the van, a blue-and-yellow tulip the size of a kayak. I thought we must have looked like the Joads taking off for California, with our misfit van all packed up and my parents dressed in their frayed best. I didn’t think Goblin would get that reference. He didn’t strike me as the type of guy who’d read The Grapes of Wrath, or any book for that matter.

“Gary,” Dad said when Goblin pulled up and stepped out of his car without turning it off. Dad’s stiff posture told me he liked Goblin on his property even less than he liked him at the liquor store. That was one thing we agreed on.

Goblin lifted his feed cap off his head almost high enough for me to get a peek at what was underneath and then tugged it back to where it’d started. The bill shaded his face, but his tight-slice mouth and big lumpy nose were visible, just like yesterday. So was the wormy snake tattoo at his neck and squirming down his arm. “I’m looking for my hound.”

Dad had moved so he stood in front of me and Sephie. I had to crane my neck to see around him, surprised that Goblin’s first words weren’t to rat me out.

Dad still hadn’t answered, so Goblin repeated his question.

“My dog. You seen it?”

“No,” Dad finally said. “But it’s within my rights to shoot strays. I have kids to protect.”

Those words were loaded, and Goblin knew it.

“My dog ain’t a stray.”

Dad sneered. “Then you know where he is?”

I wondered how Dad knew it was a male dog, or maybe he was just guessing? But then I had the most awful thought that turned me inside out, bones to the sun. Had Dad gone and killed Goblin’s dog because I said he’d chased me?

“I’m looking for it, I told you.” Goblin stared off toward his place. It was a speck across the rolling cornfield. If I ran as fast as I could, I could be there in under fifteen minutes, winded. “You heard about that boy being hurt?”

The abrupt subject change caused Mom to stiffen and wrap her arms around me and Sephie.

“More than one boy,” Dad said. “It’s in the papers.”

Goblin shook his head. “Naw, this is a new boy. Mark Clamchik.”

My shoulders slumped in relief. “That was a couple weekends ago.”

Goblin made a wheezing noise, and I realized he was laughing. The sound made a cold sweat break out across my back.

“He got attacked again.”

I flinched.

“Donny,” Mom said, releasing us to grab Dad’s shirt.

Dad pushed her away and stepped forward until only five feet separated him from Goblin. “I want you off my property.”

Goblin hadn’t expected that, judging by how long it took him to answer. “Not very neighborly,” he finally said. “This going to be like high school, when you and Rammy Bauer come at me?”