by B. A. Frade
Mom dropped me off. She wanted to talk to Mrs. Murdock, but Sam’s mom had run to the store for a few last-minute things and wasn’t back yet.
“I’ll check in later, then,” Mom said, and gave me a big “I’ll miss you” kind of kiss.
As she got into the car to leave, Sam and I did a happy dance and she whispered, “I thought your mom was ruining your life.”
“I was wrong.” I had goose bumps as a flash of Mrs. L’s goopy goo went through my imagination. “She’s not ruining my life. By leaving me here, she’s saving it!”
I waved good-bye one last time as Mom drove away.
We’d barely gotten inside when a cab pulled up in front of the house. It wasn’t one of those normal-sized taxis. It was a big van.
Sam grabbed my hand, dragging me back outside, toward the van. “Come on, Emma. Cassie and Riley are here early! Come meet them.”
I had to jog a little to keep up.
The cousins didn’t get out right away, so we hung back as the driver began piling luggage on the sidewalk.
“Wow,” I said to Sam. “They sure come with a lot of baggage.” I looked at my own little tote. “I hope I have enough clothes.”
Sam laughed. “If you need more stuff, just take what you want.” For years, Sam and I had been sharing clothes. We had the same casual style, meaning we weren’t the best dressed at school, but we weren’t the worst either. She added, “Half the stuff in my closet is probably yours anyway.”
Sam lurched forward when Cassie got out of the van, but then pulled back again because Cassie wasn’t ready to be welcomed. She was arguing with the taxi driver. From the bits I could hear, she was mad that he wasn’t careful enough with a massive wooden trunk she’d brought. I could see her eyes flitting from the driver to the trunk and back again.
There was something aggressive about the way Cassie stood, hands on hips, chest puffed out. If I were the cab driver, I’d have apologized, told her that the ride was free, offered to pay for the damage, and fled. But he wasn’t me, and he wasn’t going to give up the fare that easily.
While they fought it out, Sam and I waited.
After what seemed like a really long time, Cassie and the cab driver settled their differences. Only then did Sam’s cousin Riley climb out of the backseat, hauling two overstuffed backpacks. Sam had told me that Riley sometimes modeled kids’ clothing for catalogs, and I had to admit, she was adorable. Cropped blond hair, carefully styled. She was wearing a short dress with leggings and boots. I had to smile. Riley was better dressed, with way more fashion sense than me and Sam together.
Cassie, on the other hand, looked like she was about to join a death metal band. Or rob a bank. She was wearing all black. Black jeans with a black shirt and a black belt, and not surprisingly, her hair was black as well. So deeply black, in fact, it reminded me a little of that young school librarian I had met today. The one who might or might not have existed.
“Is Cassie a vampire?” I whispered to Sam, who totally didn’t get the joke.
“Huh?” She gave me a sideways glance.
I shrugged and pretended I hadn’t said anything at all. Instead, I pointed at the house next door. Sam lived on a quiet tree-lined street with historic houses. Sam’s house was old but had a hip antique vibe. The house next door, on the other hand, looked like the model for a haunted house, with ivy and vines covering the front. It had been empty for years and would need a lot of work to get it up to the neighborhood standards. Movement caught my eye.
That new kid at school, Duke, was peeking out between the thick red living room curtains. Sam spotted him too. When he saw us looking at him looking at us, he quickly closed them.
“I think you scared him away,” I said to Sam.
“Not me,” she countered. “I’m not scary. You are.…”
“Nu-uh,” I teased.
We went back and forth like that a few times like preschoolers, until we both started laughing.
Finally, we turned our backs on Duke’s creepy house. It was time to greet the cousins.
“Hey,” Cassie said as the taxi pulled away. She had her eyes pinned on Sam, without giving me as much as a glance.
Sam leapt into Cassie’s arms. “I am so happy you’re here!” Sam cheered. “Where are Aunt Alice and Uncle Bernie?”
“At the hotel. They’re meeting your parents there later for the reunion,” Cassie said.
It seemed strange to me that Cassie and Riley had come alone in a cab. My mom would never have let me go anywhere in a taxi by myself. Then again, maybe things would be different when I was sixteen. I really hoped so.
Moving from Cassie to Riley, Sam gave her little cousin a bear hug and then a high five. “Wait until you hear what I have planned!” Sam told her. “We are going to have so much fun.” She tugged me forward. “Meet Emma,” she told the cousins. “She’s my best friend.”
Cassie looked at me as if seeing me there for the first time. “I thought it was just us,” she said to Sam. “You know, the cousins.” She lowered her voice and said, “We haven’t seen each other in a few months. I thought we were going to catch up.”
“We are going to catch up!” Sam didn’t seem to feel the negative vibes I was getting. “Emma’s cool,” she said, but I immediately knew that I was not welcome, by Cassie at least.
Riley was the opposite. She popped forward, and instead of a handshake, she hugged me around the waist. Her hair smelled like roses. She not only dressed better than I did, she smelled better too. “Hi,” Riley said, looking up at me with a big grin. “Can we be best friends too?”
“Sure,” I said. “I can have two best friends.” I glanced over at Cassie, wondering if there was any chance that we could be friends as well. I hoped she’d realize I hadn’t meant to crash whatever she had planned.
Riley let me go, and I approached Cassie, wondering if I should hug her or shake hands, but she kept her arms crossed. So I crossed mine too.
“Emma, right?”
I nodded. “Hi.”
“We’re going to carry this trunk inside.” It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.
I looked over at Sam, but she seemed oblivious to Cassie’s attitude. This wasn’t the cousin Sam had described. The writer inside me wondered what her story was. Had she changed from the way Sam remembered?
“Riley and I will take the other bags,” Sam announced. “We’re going to sleep in the living room so we can all be together. I have sleeping bags and pillows and a Nature Channel documentary to watch before bed!”
A Nature Channel documentary… that was so Sam. I would have laughed if Cassie hadn’t been staring at me with those huge brown eyes of hers. She looked so serious. I hoped she wasn’t going to ruin Sam’s fun.
“Let’s take everything to my room,” Sam said as she and Riley headed into the house, each carrying two suitcases plus a backpack.
I hefted the trunk by one handle while Cassie took the other. The leather straps cut into my hands. “What’s in here?” I asked. “A dead body?”
“No,” Cassie said, but didn’t react to my joke.
“Did the cab driver complain the trunk weighted down his car?” I asked with a smile, trying again.
“No,” Cassie said simply.
“Was—” I gave up my questions. She’d only say “no” anyway.
We moved slowly, step by step, into the house. Crossing through the living room, I stepped toward the stairs leading up to Sam’s room.
“No,” Cassie suddenly blurted.
“I didn’t ask anything,” I told her, wiggling my hands around a little. My fingers were getting numb.
“I knew you were going to ask about going upstairs,” she told me. “The answer is no. The trunk goes in the basement.”
There was nothing in the basement. Just storage and spiders.
I opened my mouth to tell her that, but she shot me a look that clearly said “Don’t ask. Don’t argue.” So I clamped my lips shut.
Very slowly, we hauled th
at trunk through the narrow basement door and down the steep stairs.
“Over there.” Cassie instructed me to set it in a far corner under a dimly glowing lightbulb swinging on a wire. I was very careful so I didn’t get yelled at like the cab driver.
“Whew,” I breathed when I stood up. Things were off to a strange start. I was anxious to get to Sam’s room and let the fun begin.
Without waiting or asking about my rough red hands, Cassie walked past me to the stairs. When she reached the landing, she flicked off that lightbulb. I distinctly heard her say, “I don’t know why you came this weekend. It’s going to be hard enough to keep Sam from finding out. I need you to leave. As. Soon. As. Possible.” And then, more quietly, “Before it gets too dangerous.”
With that warning, she shut the door before I was even out of the dank basement, leaving me alone.
I wasn’t usually afraid of the dark, but there was something terrifying about being left in it after being lectured about how you weren’t wanted. I put my hands out to feel the side walls, and I stepped cautiously up each step. Every time a floorboard creaked, I shivered. That familiar feeling was back again. Dread with a touch of fear settled in my stomach.
I’d seen enough horror movies and read enough scary stories to know this was only the beginning.
Chapter Six
I walked into Sam’s room to find that Sam had already handed out schedules for the weekend. They were on computer-printed stationery that had the image of the moon across the top.
One of the things Sam loved about science was the order and predictability of it all. Her room was so organized I never wanted to touch anything. Colors were grouped, books sorted by author’s last name, and everything was in its place.
Her schedule was highlighted. The times marked in yellow. Activities in blue.
She was sitting with the cousins on the floor, reviewing the pages.
It was as if nothing strange had happened.
I wanted to ask Cassie what she had been talking about in the basement, but the way she was acting made me wonder if I’d imagined it. She was happily chatting with Sam about dinner plans.
I stood in the doorway until Sam noticed me there.
“What took you so long?” Sam asked, as if I’d been gone for hours.
There was no good answer for that one. I could have said something snarky like “Please tell Cassie that it’s impossible to lock someone in a basement with no door lock.” The other option was to tell the truth: “Your creepy cousin ditched me in the basement, and it took me a little while to navigate the last few steps in the pitch-black.”
It was too early to cast a judgment, but it seemed to me that Cassie had two personalities: one for Sam and a different one for me.
I wasn’t sure that complaining about my version of Cassie was the best way to go, so I changed the subject. “What did you get at school today?”
“I got an A in science.… Oh!” She laughed at her misunderstanding. “You mean what did I get during recess?” She picked up her school pack from next to the small desk. Tipping it over, Sam poured out the things I’d heard clank in class. She quickly put the items in an organized pile.
“I have a big metal tube, glue, scissors, electrical tape, a piece of cardboard.…” she rattled off the list. “I got the pipe and the tape and the other stuff from Mrs. Popski, the janitor.” She waved her hand at the stuff on her desk. “Mr. McCarthy gave me the rest after school.”
I hadn’t seen Sam after school. I was in too much of a hurry to get home and tell my mom about the book. Thinking about it, I felt a strong surge of relief that the thing, and whoever/whatever lived inside it, was far away from here.
“I got these on the Internet.” Sam opened her drawer and pulled out two glass discs. “One concave and one convex.” She looked past me to Cassie and Riley. Cassie was scrolling through her phone, but Riley was interested. “Want to guess what we’re making?” Sam asked her.
“A microscope?” she asked, coming over to get a better look at the supplies.
“Nah. But close.” She looked at me as if I knew.
“A telescope?” I asked. It was the glass lenses that gave it away.
“Yes! For tomorrow’s full moon!” Sam exclaimed, handing me a copy of the schedule and catching me up. “We’re going to do all kinds of things this weekend to celebrate astronomy. In the morning, we’ll bake moon pies, then build a telescope. Tomorrow night, we’ll check out the moon, eat the pies, and take a moonlit walk.”
There was other normal sleepover stuff detailed in the schedule too, like taking selfies, watching online videos, and the whole “sleeping in the living room” part, but it was the moon stuff that I was excited for.
Moon-related activities might not sound fun to everyone, but I’d been her best friend long enough to know whatever Sam wanted to do was going to be amazing. She could make waiting for leaves to change color into something fascinating.
“Tonight, we’ll just hang out,” Sam said. “And watch that documentary I told you about.”
Sam loved the Nature Channel. I wasn’t that into it, but she usually chose things that kept my interest. Thanks to Sam, I knew more than the average middle schooler about beekeeping, the Arctic Circle, and sedimentary rocks.
“Is it about the moon?” I asked.
“You betcha,” Sam said. Her eyes glittered with pure joy.
“I can’t wait.…” It was then I realized that Riley and Cassie hadn’t said anything about Sam’s big Saturday-o-fun. I turned to look at them. They’d moved over by the doorway, where Cassie was whispering to Riley. She nodded. Cassie whispered some more.
“So,” Cassie addressed the rest of us. “I think we can do some of that tomorrow,” she said, not committing to the entire day-evening schedule. “But Riley and I have different plans for tonight.” She crossed to one of her two suitcases and opened a pocket on the outside. “I brought her favorite movie.” Riley took it and passed it to Sam. “Do you have a DVD player?”
“Sure,” Sam said. “Lots of stuff I like to watch is still only on DVD.” She held up the box. “Closer Encounters of a Different Kind.” The back read, “Interviews with teenagers who have had close contact with werewolves, vampires, and zombies.”
“It’s a documentary,” Riley said proudly. “Just like your moon one.”
I could have guessed what Sam was going to say.
“This is fiction,” she snorted. “Not a documentary.”
She tossed the box to me. I missed it, of course, and it slid on the carpet, stopping at Riley’s feet.
“I like it,” Riley told her, scooping the box up and holding it to her chest. “And I say it’s all real.”
“Aren’t you too old for that kind of made-up nonsense?” Sam asked. “Vampires and werewolves don’t really exist.” She added, “Neither do zombies.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Riley said, casting a quick glance at Cassie.
I saw the look that passed between them but was pretty certain Sam missed it.
Sam asked her cousin, “Cassie, do you believe in supernatural beings?”
“Of course,” Cassie said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to joke again about how she dressed like a vampire, but I held back, swallowing hard. Instead, I asked Riley, “Doesn’t this stuff scare you?”
“Nah.” She shook her head. “It actually makes me feel better about stuff.”
I felt an immediate connection with this girl who loved horror like I did, but at the same time, I wouldn’t say watching something scary made me feel “better.” It made me feel tense, anxious, edgy.…
“It calms her down,” Cassie added, with another quick look to Riley. “That reminds me,” she sort of said to us, but more to herself, “I’ll be right back.”
Cassie was on the way out when Mrs. Murdock stuck her head in. She had her hair up in two pigtails and was wearing her weathered high school spirit jacket. After some warm hugs and “My, how you’ve grown!” ex
clamations, she said, “All right, kids. Unfortunately, there’s no time for chitchat. I’m leaving. Everyone else is already at the hotel. I’m running late as always!” She rubbed her hands together. Sam and her mom looked so much alike, just like me and my mom used to—before she discovered the magic of the beauty parlor. “I can’t believe we’ve been planning this weekend for a whole year. And here it finally is. I’m excited to see all our old friends!”
Sam groaned as her mom gushed a little about her days as a cheerleader.
Mrs. Murdock finally said, “Cassie, you’re in charge. If you need anything whatsoever—call.”
“Of course.” Cassie grinned in a way that made me nervous. Her mouth seemed to be smiling, but her eyes were narrowed and her teeth gnashed together.
I shut my eyes and counted to three. My imagination had been on fire ever since that creepy book spoke to me at school. It was a growing list of weirdnesses: first the journal; then the trunk; now Cassie’s attitude, secretive glances, and awkward grins.
I told myself to relax. I was acting ridiculous—just on edge from the whole journal fiasco. Nothing strange was going on. I was wrong about Cassie trying to chase me out of the house. If I gave it time, we’d be friends.
I said all that to myself, but I didn’t believe any of it.
Right after Mrs. Murdock left, Cassie went to do whatever it was that she’d forgotten. I moved downstairs with Sam and Riley to the living room. It was early still, so we’d agreed to watch both movies. Vampires, werewolves, and zombies before dinner and moon landings after.
We settled into the couch, surrounded by pillows and blankets. Cassie still wasn’t back from whatever she was doing when Riley put in the disc.
“Press play, Sam. It’s okay. My sister’s seen this one a thousand times,” she told us. “She knows it by heart.”
I settled back on the couch, determined to enjoy the movie. I wasn’t like Sam. I wasn’t 100 percent negative about the existence of werewolves or vampires, but to call the movie a “documentary”… well, that was a stretch.
The movie began with a fake-looking news report about a boy who had encountered a teen vampire in a dark hallway at his high school. There was a really quiet part where the boy paused dramatically in his story, pulling back his long brown hair to reveal two puncture wounds in his neck, directly above his collarbone.
