Nightmare

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Even me?” Carole asked, the news sinking in.

  “Even you, my darling. It’s the law and I’ve got to follow it, even when it hurts. I’m going to be okay. Nothing to worry about, I promise. It’s you we have to take care of. I thought we might call Aunt Joanna and Uncle Willie to see if you could stay with them—”

  “But they live in Florida!” Carole exclaimed.

  “Great weather,” said her dad.

  “But that’s so far away. You must think you’re going to be gone a really long time …” She was near panic.

  “No, no, that’s not necessarily true,” Colonel Hanson said. He reached for her hand and held it tightly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought maybe this might be an opportunity for you to have a nice long visit with them. But not too long. Really, not too long. I’m sure.”

  Carole breathed deeply. She knew that as a Marine, her father had to go where the Corps sent him, and if it was a classified mission, she couldn’t press for information. She also knew that it wouldn’t be fair to him to show how worried she was. Then he’d just be worried. If he had to be away, doing something important and secret, then he had to be able to do it well. If he spent all his time worrying about Carole, he might mess up, and she hated to think what that might mean. She didn’t want to cry. She swallowed hard.

  “Um, this isn’t a good time to leave school,” she said. “It’s, like, the middle of the semester. Can’t I stay here?”

  “Alone?” her father asked.

  “No, I mean like with one of my friends. That way I won’t miss school, and I won’t miss Starlight.”

  She bit her lip right after she said Starlight’s name. Carole had always found comfort in being with horses. When her mother was ill and the world was topsy-turvy, horses and riding had been a safe haven for her. As long as she could ride, something was right in the world. She couldn’t lose that now. She just had to stay near Starlight.

  It didn’t take too long to arrange. Together they decided that it would make the most sense to ask if Carole could stay with Lisa’s family. Now that Lisa’s brother had graduated from college and was working in New York, Carole might be able to use his bedroom.

  Colonel Hanson called the Atwoods and made the arrangements. Carole wanted to talk to Lisa, but she wasn’t home yet. Her mother thought she was at the library. That didn’t surprise Carole. Lisa spent a lot of time at the library—and she put the time to good use.

  Mrs. Atwood told Carole she’d have Lisa call when she got home, and in the meantime, they were happy she’d be visiting them. She was welcoming—warm and kind. Carole knew she was trying to be especially nice, and that made her uncomfortable. That meant that Mrs. Atwood thought it was as awful as Carole did that her father was going away so mysteriously.

  She hung up the phone and put on her best smile before she turned to face her dad.

  “That settles that,” he said. “Now, what’s your news?”

  Carole had no idea what he was talking about.

  LISA FROWNED AT the history paper in her hand. It had her name on it. It said “A” at the top. Normally that would have been enough to satisfy her that she’d done her best. Today, it wasn’t enough.

  She stared at the pile of books in front of her. She was trying to learn everything there was to know about the buildup of arms in Germany in the 1930s. She thought it might be a good topic for her term paper, which would be due in the spring.

  She thought she’d done a good enough job on the paper she’d just gotten back, but when Mr. Mathios had decided to read one student’s paper out loud to the class, it wasn’t Lisa’s paper. It was Fiona Jamieson’s.

  Lisa stood up and took the pile of books to the return desk. The library was closing. It was time to go home.

  Lisa shoved her paper into her book bag. As she walked slowly home, it was as if she could still hear Mr. Mathios reading Fiona’s paper. “ ‘Virtual political vacuum,” ’ she muttered. That was how Fiona had described war-torn Europe at the end of World War I. Mr. Mathios loved it. Lisa did, too. She just wished she’d written it.

  Lisa actually liked Fiona Jamieson. She was a nice girl—very hardworking, and everything she did was good. In fact, everything she did was as good as everything Lisa did. They had almost identical grades all through junior high school. She and Fiona were in eighth grade and would be graduating to high school in the spring. What Lisa wanted, more than anything, was to be valedictorian at her junior-high graduation. The valedictorian was the person with the best academic record in the class, and being valedictorian meant getting special privileges, like course choices, in high school. It also meant it would be on her record when she applied to college. She knew that would look good to any college admissions officer. Yes, this was a time when second place meant losing.

  “Wait a minute,” Lisa said to herself. “I’m forgetting something. I’m forgetting that trying to be the very best—better than everybody at everything all the time—may seem like a good idea, but it’s not always good for me.”

  Lisa’s compulsion to be the best sometimes got her in trouble. At summer camp, it had made her lose sight of a lot of things that mattered, like her friends. She’d gotten so tied up in excelling that she’d refused to eat half her meals, worried her friends and her parents half to death, and ended up in a therapist’s office.

  The therapist was really helpful sometimes. Her name was Susan, and she’d helped Lisa see that she was using her own excellence and her ability to ignore food in order to control her universe. If she couldn’t control her success at some things, she could at least control her appetite. Susan had shown Lisa how twisted that thinking could be. Proving that she could be in control of her body wasn’t the same as doing what she wanted to do. Now, with Susan’s help, Lisa was eating properly again. She was also trying to learn that her best was good enough, even if somebody else happened to be better.

  Whew, Lisa said to herself, finally realizing what a terrible road she had been heading down. Doing her best was the only thing that mattered. Being better than Fiona wasn’t at all important.

  She turned the final corner onto her street, shifted her bag to the other shoulder, and headed straight for her door. By the time she got there, all thoughts of beating Fiona had gone from her head. She was totally focused on making herself a schedule for her term paper so that she’d have all the work done on time. Beginning early and sticking to her schedule was a sure road to a great paper.

  “Hi, Mom, Dad—I’m home!” Lisa called out.

  Lisa’s mother was in the kitchen and her father was reading the paper in the living room. They greeted her warmly and she kissed them both. When she came down from putting her book bag in her room, she returned to the kitchen to give her mother a hand with dinner.

  Mrs. Atwood gave Lisa the potato peeler, a small pile of potatoes, and a surprising piece of information all at the same time.

  “Guess what? We’re going to have a houseguest!” Mrs. Atwood said. “Carole is going to come stay with us while her father is away on a business trip. No, I guess it’s not really a business trip when you work for the Marine Corps, but anyway, he’s got to go someplace and he’s not sure how long he’ll be gone, but I promised him we’ll take good care of Carole while he’s away. Isn’t that great, dear? Colonel Hanson has to leave at dawn, so Carole will be here before breakfast. You’ll be able to walk to school together. It’ll be just like having a sister!”

  Carole? Here? Maybe for a long time? What could be better? Lisa felt her pulse quicken with anticipation. They’d stay up until midnight every night talking about horses and riding and Pine Hollow. If Lisa and Carole were both at the Atwoods’, that meant Stevie would be there most of the time, too. It was going to be like the world’s longest sleepover.

  They could do their homework together every night. It wasn’t as if they had the same assignments. Lisa was in the class ahead of Carole and Stevie. That had come in handy sometimes when her friends needed help with their homewor
k. Both Carole and Stevie were pretty good at school, but they weren’t as good as Lisa, and they often asked her to explain something their teachers hadn’t made quite clear. Lisa was good at that, and she never begrudged them her experience. They’d been more than helpful to her when it came to riding.

  She had a mental image of Carole sitting in the big comfortable chair in her room, studying pre-algebra while Lisa worked on her paper. It was a cozy image.

  “What’s x squared times x cubed?” she’d ask.

  “X to the fifth,” Lisa would say.

  “Why?” Carole would ask.

  And Lisa would explain it to her, even if it meant losing her train of thought in the book about Germany in the 1930s. That was what it meant to be part of The Saddle Club—helping. She’d be glad to help.

  Lisa’s mother was speaking, and Lisa realized she hadn’t heard anything she’d said.

  “… well, she must find it frightening, you know, since her father can’t even tell her how long he’ll be gone. I guess that’s just part of being in the service. We’ll have to be sure to be there for Carole. I’m glad she’s staying with us. You two get along so well.”

  “Definitely, Mom,” Lisa said, picking up another potato to peel. Her mother was right. They did get along well. It would be wonderful to have Carole there, even if it wouldn’t be wonderful for Carole. Although Carole rarely talked about her mother, Lisa knew she was often on Carole’s mind. Lisa thought the only thing worse than losing one parent would be losing two parents. As long as Colonel Hanson was away in an unknown place for an unspecified length of time, it was going to feel as if he were lost. Helping Carole with her pre-algebra might not be anywhere near as difficult as helping her with her worry about her father. And that was what friends were for.

  Speaking of friends, Lisa had to call Stevie right away. For one thing, she couldn’t wait to tell her that Carole was coming to stay—for a long time. She also wanted to ask Stevie if she could ask her brother Chad about something.

  Chad was currently very interested in airplanes. It was just possible he’d have a book with some information about Messerschmitts and the Krupp family in the 1930s. If Carole was going to be staying with Lisa for a while, it was going to take a lot of Lisa’s time, and that meant it was all the more important to get to work on her paper right away.

  TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS TO the chaos around her, Stevie fluffed her pillow and kept reading her book.

  Well, the chaos was really outside her door. All three of her brothers were having a pillow fight in the hallway. They weren’t fighting with one another, either. The pillows were all aimed at her door—in retaliation for the fact that Stevie had locked their bikes with a chain that morning and then had forgotten to tell them that she’d changed the combination on the lock. But that was a long time ago. Stevie had practically forgotten about it. How could they still be harping on it?

  The fact was that it didn’t matter to her anymore. She’d forgiven them for whatever it was they’d done to her that made her lock the bikes up. It was now time for them to forgive her. She kept her attention turned so completely to her book that she never even noticed when the pillow-pummeling of her door stopped.

  The book was The Path to Freedom by Elizabeth Wallingford Johnson. It was the story of a young slave woman’s escape on the Underground Railroad. Hallie, the young woman in the book, had been born a slave on a plantation in Georgia. She had had a baby, and she loved this child, whom she called Esther, more than her own life. When the baby turned five and was old enough to do work, she was sold to another plantation. Hallie made up her mind to find Esther and run away with her to safety and freedom in Canada. When they’d left the last station at dusk, the farmer had told her to look for the rock with the cave and the arrow-shaped cleft in it. “It points the way,” he said.

  Hallie crouched down behind a boulder. She could feel Esther’s sweet breath on her neck as the child slept, oblivious to the danger that lurked behind every tree in the woods. Hallie almost regretted her decision to travel on this, the night of the full moon, but time was a luxury she and Esther didn’t have. She’d heard the slave hunter’s hounds baying all day long. Now what darkness there was would have to hide them through the long night. The moon cast eerie shadows through the bare branches of the forest overhead.

  Stevie shivered. She could almost feel the warm breath of the child on her own neck.

  Hallie felt the rough surface of the boulder that made a shelter with a second rock, which seemed to be a flat piece that had broken off the larger boulder. It was like a cave, perched, as it was, on the hillside. On the larger boulder, she could feel something, like a mark cut into the stone. Was that the arrow? Had she found her marker? She would not know until dawn—if dawn ever came for her.

  Nearby, she could hear the gentle bubbling of a brook. Fresh, cool water awaited them. She peered through the darkness. Yes, there was the creek. There was another boulder next to it, silhouetted in the moonlight.

  Swiftly and silently, Hallie stood and ran to the creek. It would refresh them. It would also help hide their scent from the hounds. She knelt and put her fingers into the water, then scooped a handful of its cool goodness into her mouth.

  Without a word, she woke her sleeping child and gave her a drink, too. Then she returned to the slight shelter of the rock. They could rest awhile. She slid into the crevice, bringing Esther with her. She pulled some dry leaves after them, hoping to cover her tracks and hoping to hide their presence.

  There was a noise. Hallie held her breath. Esther’s eyes opened wide in terror. Hallie put a warning finger to her lips. Esther was silent.

  Boots. Someone was walking nearby in boots. They shuffled the leaves carelessly, pausing, then moved forward, to the creek and back to the rock. Then they stopped close enough to Hallie’s face for her to smell the grease that had been used to polish them.

  “Nobody here,” said the man wearing the boots.

  “But I could swear—” another voice protested.

  “Nobody here,” the first voice said insistently.

  Hallie couldn’t help herself. She looked up. The man was looking right at her. “Let’s go,” he told his companion.

  Stevie let out her breath when she was sure the man in the leather boots and his companion were out of the area. “Whew!” she said out loud. She could hardly remember when a book had seemed so real to her.

  She felt as if she’d been right there with Hallie and Esther, and she loved it. It was as if she could see the moonlight filtering through the bare branches of the woods, as if she knew those woods, then or now. It could have been Willow Creek.

  With a start, Stevie realized that it could have been. Really. The book was based on the diaries of a real runaway slave. The author’s note at the beginning explained that Hallie’s actual route had never been known. It was a historical puzzle that might never be solved.

  Stevie reread the passage that described the land. The hill, the direction of the moonlight, the rock with the crevice where Hallie and Esther hid. And then there was the creek and the rocks next to it.

  It wasn’t just that Stevie felt as if she’d been there. She was sure she’d been there—not a hundred and fifty years ago, but recently. It was a perfect description of the woods behind Pine Hollow! If this was a historical puzzle, then Stevie was a historical detective, and she was well on her way to cracking her first case!

  Eagerly she picked up the book. She couldn’t wait to read the rest of it so that she’d know for sure.

  The door of Stevie’s room flew open. It was Chad. He dropped a book on her bed, said, “Phone for you. It’s Lisa,” and left with as much grace as he’d entered with.

  Stevie had been so excited about Hallie’s route that she hadn’t even heard the phone ring. She picked it up now.

  “Hi, Lisa,” she said. Then she looked at the book Chad had brought her. It was all about World War II aircraft. Wasn’t that just like her dorky older brother to give her a big old boring
book?

  “Did Chad give you the book?” Lisa asked eagerly. “Can you bring it to Pine Hollow tomorrow? Oh, it’s going to be great for this paper I’m working on.” Lisa chattered on about her latest history project. Since Stevie now had a history project that excited her, she could understand Lisa’s enthusiasm.

  “Oh, and there’s other news, too,” Lisa said. “Carole’s dad has to go on some kind of top secret mission. It’s awful because he can’t tell anyone where he’s going or how long he’ll be gone, but the good news is that Carole will stay with me. Won’t it be great having her here in our very own neighborhood?”

  “Nonstop Saddle Club meetings!” Stevie said excitedly.

  “Well, that, of course, and then there will be times when I’ll be too busy to spend as much time as I’d like with her, but you’ll be practically next door and you can visit with her, too, right?”

  “Count on me,” said Stevie. Stevie knew that if she’d had those two pieces of news to share with a friend, the fact that Carole was coming for a visit would have come before the history paper. But that was Stevie. This was Lisa. For Lisa, friends were really important, but so were history papers. Thinking about history papers again reminded Stevie she wanted to tell Lisa about The Path to Freedom.

  “Oh, listen, I’m reading this great historical novel,” Stevie said. “I bet you’d love it.”

  “Is it about Germany in the 1930s?” Lisa asked.

  “No way,” said Stevie. “It’s about—”

  “No, the next thing I want to read is that book Chad gave you.”

  “Well, this is a good book and I know Carole will like it. It’s about the Underground Railroad. She had a relative who escaped slavery that way, remember?”

  Lisa did remember. The man’s name was Jackson Foley. Carole had told her the whole fascinating story. Lisa thought it might be interesting sometime to learn more about that part of American history, but not until after she’d finished her current school project.