Can You Keep a Secret?

by R. L. Stine

  She straightened her legs over the bed, stuck out her arms, and leaning forward, stretched her hands over her bare feet. Sophie runs track, and she’s also on the tennis team. She’s an athlete. Something I’m not. And she’s always stretching. Keeping loose. Testing her body.

  I stopped pacing and stood over her. “Sophie, do you remember anything at all about when we flew to Prague when we were little and visited Great Aunt Marta?”

  She stopped stretching. She narrowed her eyes at me. “That again?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I know you told Mom you couldn’t remember anything. But—”

  “Hmmmmmm.” Sophie scrunched her face up and shut her eyes. She does that when she’s thinking hard about something. “Well…” She opened her eyes. “All I remember is that Aunt Marta was nearly blind, and she liked you better than me—even though she had trouble telling us apart.”

  Sophie smiled. “And I remember those weird little pies she made that tasted like sour meat and were totally gross.”

  I crossed my arms in front of me. “So you do remember a little bit.”

  “Well…”

  “Do you remember anything about me being bitten by an animal? A dog or something that jumped out of the woods and attacked me?”

  Sophie scrunched up her face again. “No. Not really. I don’t remember that. Was I there when it happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t remember it, either. But mom swears it happened.”

  “Was Mom there?” Sophie asked.

  “No. Aunt Marta told her about it. Mom was visiting someone in the next town when it happened. But wouldn’t I remember something as frightening as that?”

  Sophie shrugged. “Emmy, are you coming to watch my track meet Monday after school? Mom and Dad can’t make it.”

  “I’m really sorry. I can’t either,” I told her. “I have to pick up Eddie after his job. And then I’m having dinner at his house.”

  “But you promised.” Sophie’s voice became shrill. She pounded the bedspread with both fists. “You promised you’d come, Emmy.”

  “I wish I could,” I said. “Really. I—”

  “How come I always come last?” Sophie demanded.

  “Hey, I thought we had a truce,” I said. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  Sure, I felt guilty. I had promised to come. Sophie’s track meets were very important to her. It was the only thing she was into, except for hanging out at the library and reading and studying all the time.

  But then Eddie needed me to pick him up. And invited me to dinner.

  I knew I should support Sophie more. But what could I do? I had a busy life. I had a boyfriend. I mean, I had friends to see and my own stuff to do after school. And frankly, track meets are way boring. Waiting two hours to watch your sister run in a thirty-second race? Yawn.

  So, I apologized to Sophie a dozen more times. But she wouldn’t remove her pouty face. She turned to the wall and pulled the covers up over her head.

  I got undressed quickly, pulled on a wrinkled-up pair of pajamas I’d stuffed in a dresser drawer, turned off the light, and climbed into my bed across the room.

  It took a while to get to sleep. I kept running the scenes of the evening over and over in my head, like one of those six-second Vines that just won’t stop. The campfire … the gun … our names carved on the tree … the brown leather briefcase of money …

  When I finally fell asleep, I had another wolf dream.

  In this dream, I was in a house I didn’t recognize. In a brightly lit living room filled with red furniture. Everything red. I felt puzzled. Where was I? How did I get there?

  In the dream, I wanted to figure everything out. I was frightened by my confusion. But before I could get clear on anything, I saw the wolf across the room.

  Tall and powerful-looking, standing stiff and alert. The black wolf, gazing at me with those intelligent blue eyes. Ears straight up, jaw open just enough to reveal yellow, curled teeth.

  My confusion gave way to fear. A terrifying staring match, the wolf and I. Neither of us blinked. Neither of us moved a muscle.

  Studying each other. Testing each other.

  And then suddenly, in my sleep, in my dream, I’m asking myself a frightening question:

  Is the wolf watching me? Or am I the wolf?

  16.

  When I picked up Eddie at the pet cemetery the next afternoon, Mac Stanton stood with him near the gate. Mac had a white paper shopping bag in one hand and was shaking it in front of Eddie.

  “Do you believe this?” Mac greeted me. “People dump their dead dogs over the fence in the middle of the night and expect me to take care of them.”

  Something thumped heavily in the bag as Mac shook it. I assumed it was a dead dog.

  “That’s terrible,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I could see that Mac was really angry.

  “Do you know what the rent on this property is?” he demanded. He didn’t expect an answer. He was just ranting. “It’s sky high. So why do these idiots think I’m going to bury their dogs for nothing?”

  I glanced at Eddie. He looked embarrassed.

  “People are upset when their pet dies,” I said. “I guess they’re just not thinking clearly at the time.”

  Mac scowled at me. His gold tooth caught the sunlight. His face was bright red. “Well, I’m thinking clearly. I’ll tell you that.” He pointed up to a tree limb overhanging a row of graves. “See that? That’s a security camera. I put them up all over the grounds. Next time someone comes in here at night to dump a dead dog, I’ll know who it is.”

  He gazed up at the camera. “And don’t think I won’t come after them.”

  Swinging the shopping bag at his side, he spun around and stormed toward the office.

  I stepped close to Eddie. “Wow. Is he always like this?” I whispered.

  Mac slammed the office door behind him.

  “He has a temper,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “Sometimes he’s a little out-of-control. But then a few seconds later, he’s his usual grouchy self.”

  We both laughed. We climbed into the car, and I drove toward Eddie’s house in the Old Village. It was a hot day, hazy and wet, the kind of day that made your skin prickle at the back of your neck, made you wish you were at the beach.

  The air-conditioner in Mom’s Corolla always takes twenty minutes to get cold. I smelled something sour, like rotted meat.

  Eddie saw me sniffing the air. “It’s me,” he said. “The smell from the cemetery, it sticks to my clothes … to my skin. I can’t figure out why it smells so bad there.”

  “Is it the crematorium?” I asked, turning onto Village Road.

  “I don’t think so,” Eddie said. “Mac hasn’t fried any animals since I’ve been working there.”

  I stopped for a light. My phone buzzed and vibrated. I pulled it out and gazed at the screen. A text from Sophie: “Finished second. Thanks for your support.”

  “What’s that?” Eddie asked.

  “My sister being bitter,” I said. I tucked the phone back into my bag. “Sophie’s feeling neglected these days.”

  “How come?” he asked.

  “Because I’ve been neglecting her?”

  We both laughed again. But I cut my laughter short. “She’s going through a hard time. I’m not really sure why. We don’t confide in each other a lot.”

  Eddie nodded. Traffic was moving slowly. Cars always got backed up around the Division Street Mall. Passing the mall made me think of some tees I wanted to buy at the Old Navy store. And that made me think about money. And that made me think about the briefcase full of money.

  “Did Mac notice the filled-in grave?” I asked.

  Eddie blinked. My question caught him by surprise. He shook his head. “No. He walked right past the grave. He was so steamed about the dog being heaved over the fence, he didn’t notice anything.”

  “So you really think the money is safe there?”

  “Sure,” he said. “There are a
bunch of recently dug graves. Mac won’t notice anything.” He swept a hand back through his dark hair. “It’ll be safe there. But I’d love to dig it up and hand everyone their shares.”

  I shivered. It was one thing to see all that money and bury it at night. It was all kind of dreamlike. It was definitely the kind of thing that would happen in a dream.

  But talking about it in the daylight made it seem so much more real.

  And so much more scary.

  “I Googled bank robbery in Shadyside,” Eddie said. “But nothing came up. As soon as we know for sure where the money came from.…”

  “I won’t be able to keep it a secret from my parents,” I said, shielding my eyes from the low sun that filled the windshield. “I mean, once I have my share. Thousands of dollars. I’ll have to tell them about it. But how? How can I explain it?”

  Eddie smiled and patted my hand. “Let’s worry about that when the time comes. We can tell them you won the big bingo prize at the school fair.”

  “Not funny,” I said.

  “Hey, one step at a time, Emmy. When it’s safe to take the money, we’ll figure out a way to tell our parents. Do you really think they’ll be shocked and horrified and want to turn it in to the police immediately?”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Eddie said. “My stepdad will grab it up. He’ll be thrilled. Sure, Lou is a cop. But he won’t care where it came from. We need the money so bad … he’ll be dancing on the dining room table, tossing it up in the air like confetti.”

  “Not sure about my parents,” I said softly. I couldn’t get rid of the heavy feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I wished I could have Eddie’s confidence. He was so good at never letting anything get in his way. He just always seemed to be in control, ready to face anything.

  “I think we can trust the others to keep the secret for now,” Eddie said. He wasn’t really talking to me now. He was thinking out loud. “I was worried about Danny. If anyone decided to dig up the briefcase and take his share of the money, it would be Danny. But I don’t think…”

  “Danny can be a jerk,” I said. “And he loves to fight. But he would never do a thing like that.”

  Eddie remained silent, thinking about that, I guess.

  I found a parking spot half a block from Eddie’s house and squeezed into it. The houses are small and close together in the Old Village, and there are no driveways, so there’s always a scramble for parking on the street.

  We climbed out of the car, and I locked the doors. This isn’t the best neighborhood in town. The sidewalk was cracked and rutted with weeds growing through the cracks. We walked along the curb. I wondered what Eddie’s parents were like. I’d never met them. Never seen them at any school events.

  “Mom’s very quiet,” Eddie said, as if reading my thoughts. “She doesn’t say much, and she waits on Lou hand and foot. But she’s the real boss of the family. When she has a strong opinion, Lou gripes and mutters, but he always backs down.”

  “And is he the tough-cop type?” I asked.

  “Not really,” Eddie said. We crossed the street. The house on the corner had its front window boarded up. “Lou likes to talk tough. But he isn’t a bad guy. He used to take my brother Johnny and me hiking and fishing all the time, before Johnny went into the army. We had good times. Lou’s favorite thing is to lie on the couch and watch sports on TV. He doesn’t care what the sport is. It doesn’t matter. He always falls asleep after about twenty minutes.”

  We started up the concrete steps to Eddie’s house. It was a narrow gray shingle house with black shutters. The paint was peeling on some of the shutters, and one rain gutter was tilting off the roof at the side of the house.

  “Of course, Lou’s been totally depressed since he was suspended,” Eddie said, lowering his voice as we crossed the front stoop. “Depressed and angry.”

  I heard country music pouring from the open front window. And a man’s voice from inside, shouting to someone in another room, “How can you burn spaghetti?” Followed by a woman’s laughter.

  Eddie pushed the front door open and led the way inside. There was no front hallway. We stood in a small, cluttered living room. A fat brown armchair had a stack of magazines on a square table beside it. A matching brown couch faced a flat-screen TV, a soccer match on the screen. The mantel over the narrow fireplace was lined with family snapshots.

  Eddie’s stepfather had a phone to his ear and was pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. He nodded hello, but kept talking. He was a tall, nice-looking man with a head of thick salt-and-pepper hair brushed straight back, tanned cheeks, and round blue-gray eyes. He had a black-and-white Shadyside Police T-shirt pulled down over ragged denim cutoff shorts.

  “My hearing is a month away,” he said into the phone. “Can you believe what they’re doing to me? Another month I’ve got to live like this?” He kept gesturing with his free hand, as if the person on the other end was here in the room.

  Shaking his head, Eddie guided me into the kitchen. It was bright with white cabinets and a long white counter. Eddie’s mom turned from the stove where she was boiling a big pot of spaghetti. “Emmy? Nice to meet you,” she said with a warm smile, waving her wooden spoon.

  She was really young looking. She had Eddie’s wavy dark hair and gray eyes. She was short and very thin, in dark straight-leg jeans and a red-and-white-striped top. “Monday is spaghetti night,” she said. “Hope you like pasta. I make a very spicy tomato sauce.”

  “Love it,” I said.

  Lou’s voice boomed in the other room. I could hear the floorboards creaking under his heavy footsteps.

  “Lou is ranting again,” Mrs. Kovacs said, turning back to the boiling pot. “He’s talking to his brother up in Buffalo. But his brother can’t help him. He’s a pharmacist. He can only tsk-tsk.”

  “Lou just likes to rant,” Eddie said, smiling.

  “Actually, that’s not true,” his mom said seriously. “He … he’s so upset, he can’t stop himself.” Her voice caught. “And I think he has a right to be upset. I mean, they haven’t treated him well. Not at all. And he’s been on the force for over ten years.”

  I turned as Lou came bursting into the kitchen, his face red, waving his phone in front of him. “Tony didn’t know what to say,” he told Mrs. Kovacs.

  She stirred the pot without turning around. “Your brother means well, but he never knows what to say.”

  “He told me to be patient!” Lou exclaimed. “Do you believe that? Be patient? If I wanted advice like that, I’d open a fortune cookie.”

  His eyes went wide, as if he didn’t realize I was there. “Sorry, Emmy,” he said. He reached out and shook my hand. He had a huge hand, and I don’t think he meant to squeeze my hand so hard. I mean, he practically crushed it.

  “Eddie told me about your … uh … trouble,” I said. Awkward.

  Lou opened a cabinet, pulled out a box of Ritz Crackers, and began tossing them into his mouth. “Yeah. Trouble,” he muttered bitterly.

  “Go ahead. Spoil your appetite,” Mrs. Kovacs said without turning around.

  “When is the last time I spoiled my appetite?” Lou shot back. “Like never?”

  “We have pasta every Monday,” Eddie chimed in. “And Lou makes the meatballs. They’re awesome. It’s the only thing he knows how to make.”

  “It’s an old Polish recipe,” Lou said with a mouthful of crackers. “My grandmother taught it to me. You’d laugh if I told you the secret ingredient.”

  “What’s the secret ingredient?” I said.

  “Salt and pepper.”

  I laughed. Eddie laughed, too. I think he was trying to lift the mood. Maybe get his stepfather to stop ranting and being angry for a few minutes.

  Lou studied me. “Your family Polish, too?”

  I shook my head. “No. My great-grandparents came from the Czech Republic. I think it was called Czechoslovakia back then. I still have some family there. My Great Aunt M
arta lives in Prague.”

  I suddenly pictured the black wolf with the blue eyes. I guess it was because I mentioned Aunt Marta. I felt a tremor of fright, but I forced the image of the wolf from my mind.

  Lou shoved the box of crackers back in the cabinet. He turned to Eddie. “No offense. I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friend here. But you’d better take a shower before dinner. You stink, fella.”

  “I know—” Eddie said, blushing.

  “What were you doing? Rubbing dead dogs on your clothes? Rolling around on top of them?”

  “Yes,” Eddie said. “That’s what I was doing, Lou. That’s what I do when no one is looking.”

  “You’re funny,” Lou said, frowning. He shook his head, his eyes on me. “Not much to laugh about around here, Emmy. The whole town thinks I’m some kind of crazed maniac. One mistake and … and…”

  “Lou, let’s try to have a pleasant dinner,” Mrs. Kovacs said, finally turning around to face him. “I know you’re in pain, dear. But—”

  “The funny thing is…” Lou said, ignoring her. “The funny thing is, they really need me right now. They’re getting nowhere with the robbery investigation. I mean nowhere.”

  Eddie’s eyes went wide. I felt my heart skip a beat. We were both suddenly alert.

  “Robbery?” Eddie said. “What robbery?”

  17.

  “I guess you young people wouldn’t want to read a newspaper,” Lou said sarcastically. “Where do you get your news, anyway? From “SpongeBob SquarePants?”

  Eddie rolled his eyes. “We don’t watch cartoons, Lou. That’s more your style.”

  Lou opened his mouth to answer, but thought better of it.

  “I have a breaking news app on my phone,” I offered.

  Lou squinted at me. “And you still don’t know about the robbery here in town a few nights ago?”

  “Cut her some slack,” Eddie said. “Just tell us about it. Come on, Lou. Just tell us what you’re so fired up about.”

  Lou leaned back against the kitchen counter. His big hands squeezed the counter edges, then relaxed, then squeezed again. I could see how tense he was, how he was nearly bursting from his anger.