The Second Life of Abigail Walker

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  After she’d been walking for a few minutes, she noticed that a dog was following her. At first she made friendly noises at it, hey, boy, good boy, but it didn’t come any closer. It stayed about ten feet behind her. She guessed it was some kind of hound; it had long ears and a brown nose and was speckled black and red, with freckles across its face.

  The dog wasn’t friendly or unfriendly. It was just there, and after a while Abby forgot about it and started looking around. The houses on Blue Valley Lane looked pretty much like the ones on Ridge Valley Road. They all seemed to be half house, half garage, and most of the houses were close to the street, so there was more backyard than front.

  Abby glanced at the dog again, and that’s when she saw Kristen and Georgia riding their bikes down the street in her direction. They were still about two blocks away. Abby didn’t think they’d seen her yet, but her knees got wobbly anyway.

  I’ve got to get out of here, she thought, and looked wildly around, in case there was an obvious bush to jump under or a car to duck behind.

  The dog seemed unconcerned. Without any ado, he trotted across the street and scampered down a driveway. Abby decided to follow him. Maybe this was where he lived. Maybe his owners would come to the door and invite Abby inside for a drink of water. She wasn’t supposed to go into strangers’ houses, but it had to be safer than letting Kristen and Georgia catch up with her.

  But the dog didn’t go to the house. Instead he led Abby to a steep hill at the end of the driveway. Abby crashed down after him into the woods, the cooler smashing into her leg with each stride. The air turned cool as soon as they crossed into the deep shade, and Abby could hear running water. She followed the dog for another fifty yards, and there it was, a creek.

  And on the other side of the creek, a boy.

  how do you know Wallace?” the boy called to her from across the creek. He was kneeling by the water and poking a stick at something.

  Wallace? He must have meant the dog. “I don’t know him, actually. He’s just been following me. And now I guess I’m following him.”

  “He’s a pretty nice dog,” the boy said. “I was afraid I’d be allergic to him, but I’m not. I’m allergic to a lot of other things, though.”

  “My brother’s allergic.” Abby set the cooler on the ground next to a large rock. She felt like she was in a safe place now and could take a minute to rest. “But we got the kind of dog that allergic people can live with.”

  “A bichon frise?”

  “No, a cockapoo. He’s really nice.”

  The boy nodded. “My dad says hypoallergenic dogs cost, like, seven hundred dollars.”

  “Yeah,” Abby agreed. “They’re expensive.”

  The boy stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Do you come to this creek a lot?”

  “This is the first time. I didn’t even know it was here,” Abby admitted.

  “I come here all the time,” the boy told her. “But I’m not allowed to cross over. It’s beyond the safe perimeters. I’ll get in a lot of trouble if I even think about it.”

  The boy’s name, it turned out, was Anders, and he was older than he looked. Abby would have guessed seven, but it turned out he was almost nine. They stood across from each other for a few minutes while Anders told her some things about himself: He was being homeschooled by his grandmother, he liked the Star Wars movies and books, but he didn’t like any Clone Wars stuff.

  Abby waited for Anders to pause, but he just kept going. He was like Gabe talking at the breakfast table about a hockey game he’d seen on TV the night before, cramming in every single fact there was to report.

  He was just starting to tell her about some science project he was doing, which involved separating groups of vertebrate animals into their different classes, when Wallace began to bark behind them. Something—or someone—was barreling down the path through the woods to the creek.

  They were chasing her? They were really out to get her? Abby panicked. “Someone’s after me!” she cried across the creek to Anders.

  Anders waved both of his arms in wild circles. “Get over on this side! The water’s hardly deep at all here—you can get across and run away!”

  Abby didn’t even know if it was Kristen and Georgia racing down the wooded path. It could have been some neighborhood kids. But Wallace howled and she thought maybe he knew something, so she splashed into the creek and crossed to the other side.

  “Where can I go now?” she demanded after she’d scrambled up the bank.

  Anders grabbed her arm. “Up the hill—come on!”

  Together they ran away from the creek, through a jumble of brambles and bushes, up a craggy hill that seemed to go on forever, and finally they got to the top. Beyond the tree line was an open field.

  When they reached the field, Abby flopped down on her back, trying to catch her breath. Could a person’s lungs explode? She was pretty sure her lungs were about to explode. While she waited for that to happen, she wondered why some people could run for miles and not even breathe hard, and she couldn’t go twenty yards without feeling like the air was being sucked from her throat with a vacuum cleaner. Even Claudia, who was terrible at most sports, could run without collapsing at the finish line. But not tubby Abby.

  Anders sat down beside her. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess,” Abby told him, not 100 percent convinced. She sat up and examined her arms for scratches. “Except now I have to figure out how to get back home without getting caught.”

  “Who’s trying to catch you? Are you in trouble with the police?”

  “I’m in trouble with two very mean girls. That’s much worse than the police, believe me.”

  Anders seemed to think about that for a minute. “So, what can they do to you? The girls, I mean.”

  “Well, they can—” Abby paused. How could she explain to an almost nine-year-old boy the terrible things girls did? The secret, down-low, parents-never-figure-it-out, terrible things that girls did to you if you were too fat or too skinny or had pimples or wore the wrong kind of jeans.

  “They can kill you,” she said after a moment. “Only, other people don’t know that you’re dead. Only you know, on the inside.”

  Anders stayed quiet for a long time after that. And then all he said was, “Yeah.”

  Wallace howled in the distance. When Abby looked up, she saw him across the field. “How did he get over there? Wasn’t he just back at the creek a minute ago?”

  “Wallace has powers,” Anders told her. He stood up and held out his hand, and Abby grabbed it.

  “I guess we better follow him, then,” she said, scrambling to her feet. They took off running through the weeds and the clover, and though she still thought her lungs might explode, she didn’t want to stop.

  abby kept running, her chest on fire, and she was wondering when it was going to be time to stop running when she looked up and saw a farm.

  A farm! What on earth was a farm doing in her neighborhood? Okay, looking around her, she had to admit that maybe she wasn’t in her neighborhood anymore, but she wasn’t that far away from it. So where did this farm come from, with its big red barn and whitewashed outbuildings, a split-rail fence enclosing a pasture? Abby sniffed the air. All around her were farm smells—freshly mown grass, manure, and animals.

  “There’s horses in there,” Anders told her, pointing toward the barn. They’d slowed to a walk by now. “Eight of ’em.”

  “You live here?” Abby asked.

  “Well, I only sort of live here. Me and my dad are staying here with my grandmother until everything gets figured out.”

  Abby wanted to ask what needed figuring out, but she could tell by the way Anders was looking at the ground instead of at her that he didn’t want to say anything else about it.

  The house was on the other side of the field, close to the road, tucked in beneath a stand of oak trees. The wooden steps creaked as they walked up to the front door, which opened before they’d even made it to the porch. An old woma
n poked her head out.

  “No more magazines, thanks,” she said. “I’ve got all the magazines I need.”

  She started to close the door again, and Anders called out, “Grandma, it’s me. And this is my friend Abby. She needs a ride home.”

  “Well, what are you hiding over there for?” Anders’s grandmother asked him, squinting in his general direction.

  “Grandma, I’m right here,” Anders protested. “You forgot to put on your glasses.”

  Anders’s grandmother harrumphed. Then she turned to Abby. “We’ll have to take the truck,” she said. “Anders’s dad took the Impala to pick up some things at Walmart.”

  She leaned forward, as if to get a better look at Abby. “You can call me Mrs. Benton, if you want to call me something. You thirsty? You look wrung out. Well, I’ve got orange juice. Let’s get you something to drink before you collapse.”

  Abby stood there blinking, still trying to process what was happening. She was on a farm and someone was talking to her very rapidly about orange juice. Were Kristen and Georgia still looking for her? Well, they’d never find her now, would they?

  Abby followed Anders and Mrs. Benton into the house. The blinds in the front room were closed, but there was enough light for Abby to see papers scattered everywhere and walls with pieces of torn-out notebook paper and maps and charts taped to them. She desperately wanted to read what was written on those pieces of paper, but she thought that she might be violating somebody’s privacy if she did.

  The kitchen was brighter. A picture window looked out over the field they’d just walked across, and now Abby could see the other side of the barn and a corral. Loose-leaf paper was stacked in messy piles on a round table in the corner of the room, and a huge encyclopedia was opened to a page on—Abby walked over to get a better look—foxes. Foxes!

  “Are foxes part of your science project?” she asked Anders. “Because I saw a fox across from my house a couple days ago.”

  Anders’s eyes widened. “A red fox?”

  “I think so,” Abby said. “Not bright red or anything. More rusty than red.”

  Anders looked at his grandmother and raised his eyebrows. “Did you hear that, Grandma?”

  Mrs. Benton was pouring juice into two striped glasses. “I heard. That’s good news. Anders’s dad, Matt, is always talking about how much he’d like to see a fox. There used be lots of them around here, but the suburbs drove them out.”

  She handed Abby a glass. “I guess we ought to sit on the porch. Matt’ll have a fit if we spill juice on his notes. We’ve been eating dinner on the couch for the last two months.”

  When they reached the porch, Mrs. Benton nodded toward two rocking chairs. “Sit down, you two. But no slouching.”

  Anders turned to Abby. “Grandma teaches horseback riding. You should probably try to remember to sit up straight and suck in your stomach around her.”

  “All the girls slouch these days! They’ve got no abdominal muscles, no core strength,” Mrs. Benton complained, patting her belly. “Abdominals are the key to everything. Of course, I’ve spent half my life on horseback, so I’ve known that for ages. Ride tall in the saddle, that’s my motto. Suck in your gut. That’s my other motto.”

  Mrs. Benton settled onto the porch swing and turned to Abby, who had taken a seat in a rocking chair and was now trying to sit up as straight as possible. “You ride?”

  Abby reddened and shook her head. Last spring, after Claudia moved and Abby was trying to get in good with Kristen and Georgia, she’d claimed to be an expert on horses. She’d said she’d grown up riding horses on her grandmother’s farm. She knew better than to lie to Mrs. Benton, though. She had the feeling that Mrs. Benton would throw her on the back of a horse just to make sure Abby was telling the truth.

  “You should consider it,” Mrs. Benton said. “In fact, why don’t you come over Tuesday and eyeball my afternoon class? I need more students. I’ve got my Saturday morning class, and Thursdays are close to booked up, but that’s not enough.”

  You couldn’t pay Abby to get on top of a horse. She’d break her neck in a minute! Still, to be polite, she said, “I’ll talk to my mom about it.”

  “Good, good. She’ll be all for it, I’m sure,” Mrs. Benton replied. “So, tell me about your fox. You say it was a red fox?”

  Abby nodded. “Its fur was red. Well, like I said, brownish-red. It was little. And it didn’t seem to be scared of me.” Abby decided not to say anything about the fox biting her.

  “Be interesting to know exactly what kind of fox it was. There’s more than one species in these parts, if you go out into the countryside.” Mrs. Benton leaned forward and peered at Abby. “You know much about the Lewis and Clark expedition? Ever study it in school?”

  Where did that question come from? Was Mrs. Benton always this random? “I saw a special on PBS once,” Abby offered. “My mom teaches history, so we watch a lot of PBS specials.”

  She could tell from Mrs. Benton’s expression that she wanted more—that she was going to be disappointed if Abby couldn’t come up with an interesting Lewis and Clark fact on the spot. “I remember that they had a dog,” she offered lamely after a moment. “It was pretty furry.”

  Mrs. Benton nodded. “Seaman. Interesting character. We’re doing a kind of Lewis and Clark study around here right now, and to be perfectly honest, we could use a little help.”

  “It’s a family project,” Anders put in. “Me, my dad, and Grandma.” He turned to his grandmother. “Did I tell you what I read? They sent a prairie dog to President Jefferson in a box. Alive. And it made it there alive too.”

  “Did you tell Matt?” Mrs. Benton asked. “He’d want to know that.”

  “I’m going to tell him the nanosecond he gets home.”

  Mrs. Benton pushed herself up from the rocking chair with a groan. “I’ll go find my keys and my glasses. Finish up your juice. I’m sorry my son’s not here. It’s good for him to meet new people. Maybe you could come back sometime. Help out with the project a little, if you’ve got a mind to.”

  “Okay,” Abby said, feeling unsure. “Maybe.”

  “You could come back tomorrow,” Anders said eagerly, like he couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than another visit from Abby. “I’ll show you the horses.”

  Abby only nodded. She liked Anders, and she wouldn’t mind knowing what was written on all those pages tacked to the wall in the front room. But she could tell there was more going on here than you could figure out by just looking around. Something a little bit strange. Maybe more than a little bit. Why did Anders’s father need to meet new people? Why did he want to see a fox so badly? He was a grown-up! What was so important about a prairie dog in a box? Why the pieces of paper everywhere? Why would you ask a total stranger to help you with a family project?

  She felt a nudge against her leg and looked down to see Wallace. He looked up at her. There was a peculiar expression in his eyes. It was almost apologetic, but also firm. Abby leaned down and patted him on the head, and an electric buzz pulsed up through her fingertips. She remembered how he’d led her to the creek. Led her to Anders. Maybe it hadn’t been an accident.

  Maybe she was supposed to be here.

  when abby got home, her mother was in the kitchen making pizza. They always had homemade pizza on Saturday night, but Abby had mixed feelings about it. Because she loved pizza, she wanted to eat slice after slice until she was too full to eat one more bite, but what stunk was that she knew her parents would be watching her. Her mother’s eyebrows would rise a little higher with each piece Abby ate, and her dad would make comments like, “Save some for the rest of us, Ab,” which were supposed to sound like jokes. But Abby knew he wasn’t joking.

  “I’m going to make two sausage and one cheese,” her mom announced when Abby walked into the kitchen. “But the sausage is for the boys and Dad, okay? You and I can share the cheese pizza.”

  “But I like sausage,” Abby complained. “Why can’t I eat sausage p
izza?”

  “Abby,” her mom said, sounding as though Abby were being unreasonable. “Come on, sweetie, you don’t need sausage. It’s so fatty.”

  Abby didn’t care if she didn’t need sausage. She wanted sausage. Why should John and Gabe get to have sausage just because they were skinny? Fatty foods were bad for everybody, weren’t they? If her brothers could eat foods that were bad for them, she should be able to, too.

  “Fix the salad, would you, sweetie?” Her mom pointed to a bag of lettuce on the island in the middle of the kitchen. “And grate the carrots, don’t chop them. Grated is nicer.”

  Abby opened the fridge and pulled out the carrots and a green pepper. She eyed the shelf with the salad dressing. Blue cheese, Thousand Island, and fat-free ranch. The fat-free ranch was for her. It tasted like garlicky glue with artificial sweetener stirred in. She wondered if she could sneak some Thousand Island on her salad when no one was looking.

  By the time the pizza was on the table, Abby was starving. Her father was the official pizza cutter and server, and when it was Abby’s turn, he put a single slice of cheese pizza on her plate. “Maybe that’ll do ya, Ab, what do you think?”

  Abby thought that one piece of cheese pizza would not do her, but she didn’t say so. She took the plate from her dad and set it down in front of her. At least it wasn’t a tiny piece, she consoled herself. At least it had some crust on it.

  “What are you trying to do, starve her?” John asked, and Abby smiled at him for sticking up for her, even though she wished he wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. She didn’t want the dinner table discussion to be about her eating.

  “You just worry about what’s on your plate, John-Boy,” Abby’s dad said. “I’ll worry about Abby.”

  Abby concentrated on tearing her paper napkin into tiny pieces on her lap. She wanted to yell, Quit making a big deal about how much I eat! Just let me have some pizza! But she didn’t have the kind of dad you could yell at. You could maybe joke with him a little bit, but never yell.