by R. L. Stine
Of course, there’s making sacrifices … and then there’s starting a new school in the middle of the year with your mom as your vice principal.
Which was more like sacrificing yourself into an active volcano.
She drove us to school the next morning and pulled into her faculty parking spot. “All right! Let’s go make friends!”
She sounded like an overcaffeinated cheerleader. My mom is a morning person. It’s incredibly annoying.
I locked the doors before she could get out. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Going to work,” she said. “Do some educatin’, some administratin’!”
See what I mean about the perky?
Maybe it was time to lay down some ground rules. “Mom. I’m the new kid, which presents its own set of obstacles. Not sure walking in with the vice principal is the play.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not just the vice principal. I’m also your mom.”
What is it about parents and their inability to grasp the most basic facts of life?
She unlocked the doors; I locked them again.
“Tell you what,” I proposed. “Give me a sixty-second head start, so I at least have a chance.”
“Deal,” she said. Then, more seriously, “Promise you’ll give it a shot.”
I sighed. “You know I can’t promise you that.”
This time, she was the one who locked me in.
“I promise,” I said, accepting defeat. “And this door-locking thing, come on. You’re better than that.”
I winked at her, then jumped out of the car and headed toward school. I had sixty seconds to put as much distance between me and the vice principal as I could, and I wasn’t wasting a single one.
The school was pretty much like any other school, or at least, like every school I’d ever been to. I mean, the campus was a lot bigger than I was used to, but the kids looked about the same. You know, the usual: artsy kids, preppies, nerds, jocks.
The day ended with an assembly to introduce the new vice principal. I was waiting for it to start when a skinny kid with a bucktoothed grin dropped into the seat next to me.
“Hi, I’m Champ,” he said. “So, how are you liking Madison so far?”
“It’s everything I hoped and more,” I told him.
Onstage, the principal stepped up to the mic, talking straight through the screeching feedback. “All right, settle down. I’m pleased to introduce our new vice principal, Ms. Cooper. I hope you show her the same respect you show me.”
Judging from the fart sounds coming from the back row, I was guessing all that respect didn’t add up to much.
“Who did that?” shouted Principal Garrison, squinting into the audience. “Who did that?!”
Shockingly, no one raised a hand.
My mom stepped forward to the microphone. The football coach applauded wildly, but as for everyone else? Dead silence.
“Hey, everyone,” she said, not sounding nervous at all. I was proud of her up there—but I couldn’t help wishing she was up onstage at any other school but this one. “I know I speak for the entire administration when I say we’re all excited for tomorrow’s Fall Dance. I can’t wait to get jiggly with it.”
Seriously, any other school.
Champ leaned toward me. “She’s worse than the last one,” he whispered.
I glared at him. “That’s my mom.”
“And the last one was excellent,” he added quickly.
“And, as a final reminder, be safe and have fun,” my mom said.
“You going to the dance with anyone?” Champ asked me. Like I didn’t have does not do dances written all over me?
“No.”
“Cool. Neither am I,” he said, totally not getting it. “Maybe we should go together.”
“Uh, together?”
“Not ‘together’ together,” he said quickly. “Not, like, dancing together—although we could get the crowd into it and then we each split off with different girls. Yeah, it could work a bunch of different ways.” He handed me a business card. “Here. Give me a call or text me or tweet me. This card has all my contact info.” He pointed to the tiny print. “This is my home address, and that’s my locker number.”
“Thank you, I guess?”
And just like that, I had officially made my first Madison High School friend.
Way to go, Zach.
Even in the sitcom suburbs, someone had to take out the garbage. And just like back in the city, that someone was me. I tugged the bags around the back of the house and stuffed them into the garbage cans. It got really dark out there at night, and I still wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t used to the quiet, either. Nothing but chirping crickets and the rustle of grass.
It was all too easy to imagine someone out there in the darkness, hiding. Watching. Waiting.
Actually, it was kind of easy to imagine I wasn’t imagining it. “Hello?” I said, feeling kind of stupid. But I just had that feeling. That feeling you get when you’re being watched.
I lifted the garbage can lid and held it in front of me like a shield. A lame, plastic shield that reeked of garbage, maybe, but you use what you got. “Someone there?” I said into the night, hoping I sounded tough.
Behind me, a branch snapped. I spun around, ducking behind the garbage lid. I peeked out from it just enough to see a shadowy figure watching me.
It was Hannah, the girl next door, waving at me from her side of the fence. “Did I scare you?” she teased.
“Pfft. No.” Then I realized I was still holding the garbage can lid.
“Because you jumped, like, ten feet in the air.”
“I, uh, jump a lot. That’s how I stay in such great shape.” I decided it was probably time to change the subject before she took a closer look at my muscles. (Or lack thereof.) “Didn’t see you at school today.”
She smiled that cat smile of hers. “Why? Were you looking?”
“No, I just—”
“I’m homeschooled.”
“Oh, by your dad?” I didn’t know what to say about that. Stuck in a room all day, every day, with Professor Creepy? “He seems … nice,” I said. “Intense. And a little tense.”
I was trying to be polite, but she looked like she knew what I was getting at. “Don’t take it personally. He doesn’t like anybody.”
“I totally misread that,” I joked. “I thought we had a good connection. So …” I wracked my brain, trying to think of something fascinating to say. I didn’t want her to go back inside yet. “Is there anything fun to do around here? Aside from Sushi Wednesdays, obviously?”
Not exactly fascinating, but it did the trick.
“I’m the wrong person to ask,” she admitted. “It’s just me and my dad, and I don’t like to leave him alone.”
“Come on,” I pressed. “There’s got to be something fun you do, aside from scaring your neighbors.”
“Well …” She paused for a second, like she was trying to decide whether or not I could be trusted. “There is one thing I like to do.” She nodded toward the street. “Come on.”
Hannah wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but I followed her anyway. Down the block, around the corner, and down an extremely unlit street that dead-ended in an overgrown grove of trees.
“Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?” I joked. Well, mostly joked. “I’m just curious.”
“I’m playing it by ear.” She slipped behind a tree and disappeared into the shadows. Leaving me alone in the empty night.
“Yes, Zach, follow the stranger into the woods,” I muttered. Then I followed the stranger into the woods.
I followed her through the trees, and I followed her as she slid beneath a rusty old fence. Then I gasped when I saw what lay on the other side.
It was an amusement park.
Hannah flipped some kind of power switch hidden in the dirt, and the place lit up like … well, like an amusement park. A lot of the bulbs were burned out, and the ones that were left flickered and
strobed, but there was enough light to see the place. The rides were creaky and rusted over, but you could tell that once, a long time ago, this park had been something amazing.
“They started building it years ago, but they ran out of money,” Hannah explained. “So now it just sits there.”
A whole amusement park that no one had ever used? It felt like a violation of some law of nature. All those rides, just waiting to be ridden. All those fun-house rooms, echoing with the laughter of invisible children.
I shivered, feeling a sudden chill down my spine.
Hannah hopped a rusty turnstile and headed straight for a Ferris wheel that was missing half its spokes. Then she started to climb.
“I come here all the time,” she called down to me. “What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid,” I insisted. “I’m, uh, just not current with my tetanus shot.” The Ferris wheel was studded with rusty nails and bolts. You could probably get tetanus just from looking at it.
Hannah was already halfway to the top.
“So? What’s a little gangrene?” I muttered. Then I followed her up.
It wasn’t such a hard climb, but it was a long one, and my arms were aching by the time we made it to the top. But it was worth it all for the view. The whole town was spread out beneath us like a bunch of dollhouses twinkling with lights. From up there, it almost looked like civilization.
“You can see everything from up here,” I said in awe. I could see why Hannah loved it. Up there so close to the sky, the quiet didn’t bother me as much. And I had to admit, there was one good thing about being out in the middle of nowhere: You could see the stars.
I’d almost forgotten what that was like, to look up at a sky sparkling with the light of all those faraway suns. I wished I could stay up there forever.
“So, why’d you move to Madison?” Hannah asked.
“My mom said to me, ‘Zach, if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?’ And I said, ‘Can we please move to Madison, Delaware? That’s my dream.’ ”
She didn’t smile. “Are you always this sarcastic?”
“Always? Not always.” I thought about it. “Usually.”
I don’t know if it was the place or the girl, but something about that night made it seem okay to tell the truth. Not just okay—necessary. “It’s just been my mom and me since my dad died last year,” I admitted. “So … yeah.”
“Sorry,” she said, and I got the feeling she understood everything I was saying and everything I wasn’t saying. Like how it was easier to be sarcastic than to be real, because being real meant saying things that hurt. How not feeling anything was easier than feeling something, when that something was so huge and so sad.
“I don’t really think about it much anymore.” That was a lie, but I think she knew that. We both just pretended to believe it. “What about you?”
“I never knew my mom,” she said. “And my dad and I are always moving from one town to the next.”
“That really sucks.”
We sat there together for a while without talking, but it was the good kind of quiet, the kind where you know you’re both thinking about the same thing. It felt good, not having to explain myself or pretend things were okay when they weren’t. But it couldn’t last forever.
“Hannah, can I ask you something?” I said finally.
She nodded.
“How do we get down?”
She laughed, and showed me the best way to shimmy down the spokes. Somehow, we both managed not to plummet to our deaths. And when my feet were safely back on solid ground, I managed not to kneel down and kiss the dirt. (Although I was tempted.)
I would never have been able to find my way back home in the dark, but Hannah knew exactly where to go.
“Thanks for tonight,” I told her as we reached the fence that separated our houses. “It was the least terrible time I’ve had here.”
She clasped her hand over her heart. “Awwwww.”
Then she waved good-night and turned to go inside. I had no idea if I’d ever even get to talk to her again. If it was any other girl, I might have tried to psych myself up to ask her out on a date. But Hannah didn’t really seem like the dinner-and-a-movie type. Which was a good thing, because neither was I.
“Hey, Hannah,” I said, thinking fast. “I’m probably gonna take out the trash on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so if you feel like creeping up on someone, that works for me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Scaredy-Cat.” She smiled.
I smiled.
I think we were about to have A Moment when a hand reached out of the darkness and seized her shoulder.
Hannah gasped. I nearly screamed.
Then her father’s face peered out of the shadows.
“Where were you?” he snapped.
“I’m sorry.” In a heartbeat, she’d transformed into a completely different person, meek and terrified.
Mr. Shivers was practically shaking with rage. “Get. In. The. House. Now.”
Her head dropped. She slunk up the driveway, looking just about as defeated as anyone I’ve ever seen. What kind of a dad treats his daughter like that? That’s what I wanted to say—in fact, there were a lot of things I wanted to say. But then Shivers fixed his glare of fury on me, and I lost my voice.
“This is the last time I’m warning you.” He wasn’t shouting anymore, and somehow, that was even scarier. The guy was like a nuclear bomb, just waiting to go off. “If you don’t stay away from us, something very bad will happen.”
“I believe you,” I said, and I did. This guy was beyond creepy.
This guy was dangerous.
I was a little afraid to turn my back on him … but I was even more afraid that if I kept standing there, he might set me on fire with his eyes.
So I ran into the house, and I didn’t stop running until I’d made it up the stairs and into my room. I slammed the door behind me, finally safe.
For now.
The next night, the wind rattled against the windows. I tried to tune it out. This was no time to be creeped out by middle-of-nowhere night noises—I had math homework to do.
“What is X?” I murmured to myself, skimming my pencil tip across the word problem. “Wait, where is X?”
Then there was a noise I couldn’t tune out.
A scream.
A loud blood-curdling, horror-movie-style, someone’s-murdering-me-right-now-with-a-gigantic-knife scream.
And it sounded like Hannah.
I bounded to the window. In the house next door, shadows flickered behind the closed curtains. I couldn’t make out any shapes, but it must have been Hannah and her dad.
There were more noises: Glass breaking. Wood snapping. And then …
Nothing.
The Shiverses’ house went totally dark—and totally silent.
“Hannah!” I cried, and ran downstairs. I flung myself through our front door, climbed over the fence, and pounded on Hannah’s door until it swung open.
Mr. Shivers stood in the doorway, glaring down at me. “What.”
I was panting.
I was terrified.
“I heard a scream. Is Hannah okay?”
“There was no scream,” he said flatly. “You didn’t hear anything. Now, get out of here, or the last scream you’ll ever hear will be yours.”
The door slammed shut in my face.
The guy was unbelievable. And unbelievably creepy.
I knew he’d done something to Hannah. I had to do something to help. I ran back to our house, heading straight for the kitchen.
My mom looked up from her computer like nothing was wrong. She pulled off her headphones. “Hey, sweetie, how do you feel about quinoa for dinner?”
“Mom! Hannah’s in trouble!” I didn’t have time to explain. I grabbed the phone from the table and dialed 911.
My mom looked clueless. “Who’s Hannah?”
It took the operator forever to pick up.
My mom grabbed my shoulders.
“Zach, you’re scaring me. What is going on?”
I explained it to the 911 operator—then I explained it to my mom. We sat there together, waiting for the sound of sirens. Finally, a cop car came screaming down the street, turning into Shivers’s driveway. I ran out to join it, my mom hot on my heels. I knew she’d want me to stay safely on the sidelines.
Absolutely. No. Way.
There were two cops, and they marched up to Shivers’s door like they meant business. This time, he opened it on the first knock.
“You’re under arrest!” the guy cop said.
His partner put a hand on his arm. “Whoa, whoa. Love the enthusiasm, but we’re not there yet.” She turned to Shivers. “I’m Officer Stevens, this is training Officer Brooks.”
“Sorry about that,” Officer Brooks said.
I couldn’t believe they were being so polite. Or so slow! I was about to crawl out of my skin. When were they going to get inside and find Hannah?
“We got a call about a possible ten-sixteen at your residence,” Stevens said, “which is …” She turned to Brooks, waiting for him to fill in the answer.
“A domestic disturbance,” he said eagerly. Wait, was he flirting with her?
She beamed, practically batting her eyelashes. “You are such a fast learner.”
Shivers looked as disgusted as I felt. “What do you mean, domestic disturbance?”
“Do you want to take this one, Brooks?” Stevens offered.
“A domestic disturbance is … it’s like a … it’s domestic, so it’s inside the house, and, uh …”
“Exactly, yes.” Officer Stevens nodded sharply. “And I would just add to that, it’s basically anything going wrong inside your house. On a domestic basis.”
I wanted to shake them both. Even more, I wanted to push them aside, shove Shivers out of the way, and go find Hannah for myself. But they were cops, Shivers was a grown-up, and as far as they were concerned, I was just a kid.
So I stood there with my mouth shut, waiting.
Sometimes, being just a kid stinks.
“Hmm,” Shivers said, playing nice for the cops. He took a moment to pretend he was actually thinking about it. “I’ve been alone here all night. Haven’t heard a thing.”
