The Locker

by Richie Tankersley Cusick

We didn’t tell them much, really.

  I used the story about Dobkin and me going to Tyler’s cabin and having the van break down and Jimmy Frank stopping to help. Jimmy Frank told them a deer had run in front of us, and he’d had to swerve to miss it and crashed the truck into a tree.

  They seemed to believe us.

  It turned out they were going to Tyler’s cabin themselves to take some supplies his mom wanted to use there for the summer, and they couldn’t get over how lucky they’d been to find us. They asked if we minded going with them first, and of course I had to say no, I didn’t mind, even though all I wanted to do was get home so I could sort everything out in my mind and try to make sense of it.

  Thank goodness it didn’t take long. After we finished at the cabin, Tyler dropped Jimmy Frank off at his house, then went on to town with Noreen and Dobkin and me. Dobkin fell asleep on my lap. Noreen rode in back and leaned forward between the bucket seats. Tyler entertained us the whole way by singing every song that came on the radio.

  “Don’t worry about your van,” he assured me as the lights of town finally came into view. “I’ll call the gas station and have a tow truck come out and get it in the morning.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate it.” I gave him a half-hearted smile and felt Noreen squeeze my arm.

  “You’re awful quiet tonight,” she said. “Something wrong?”

  And even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t talk about it anymore, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Just being out there on that road.” I sighed. “It was so spooky. So isolated. You feel so helpless in a situation like that.… If anything happened to you, probably no one would ever know the truth about it.”

  “Stop!” Noreen shuddered. “That sounds like Suellen.”

  “But I did think about Suellen,” I said softly. “I can’t seem to stop thinking about Suellen.…”

  Tyler reached over and turned the radio louder.

  “Do you ever think about Suellen?” Noreen asked him, but when he only shrugged his shoulders, she glanced quickly at me. “Sometimes I think about Suellen,” she murmured.

  She lowered her head, and I nodded sympathetically.

  “I mean, how can anyone not wonder what really happened to her?” Noreen went on. “If she just left town or if she’s—”

  “Stop it, Noreen,” Tyler said quietly. “Just leave it alone.”

  “But you know what I mean, don’t you?” Her voice rose in earnest. “You wonder what her last minutes were like. Was she afraid? Was she happy? Did she know what was happening to her?”

  “God, you’re morbid.” Tyler made a face and squirmed in his seat. “You two are giving me the creeps.”

  “Well, it is creepy,” Noreen insisted. “And I thought I’d really gotten over it. I mean, I hadn’t been thinking about it at all till Marlee got stuck with Suellen’s locker.”

  Tyler’s eyes widened in annoyance. “Will you stop it? If you keep putting ideas in her head, she’ll keep imagining things.”

  “I didn’t imagine anything,” I said stiffly. “It happened just the way I said it did. Just because you didn’t see it happen doesn’t mean it didn’t.”

  “Touché,” Tyler mumbled, a hint of admiration in his voice. Noreen nodded in silent affirmation. I tried not to, but I just had to ask one more question.

  “Her parents,” I said. “How can they go on, day to day, just wondering?”

  “Everyone felt sorry for them.” Noreen’s voice was tight as she shook her head. “They never gave up hope. They just kept believing she’d turn up, that she was …”

  Her words trailed off. Tyler finished her thought.

  “Safe. Alive somewhere.”

  “She didn’t have brothers or sisters,” Noreen mumbled. “She was the only child they had.”

  For a long moment Tyler stared out the windshield. “They didn’t want to move. They really believed she’d come home one day, and they wanted to be there when she did. But the construction job ended, and her dad had to find work.”

  “I can’t imagine,” I whispered. “I just can’t imagine what that would be like.”

  “Would you think of your parents at the end?” Noreen went on, talking more to herself now than to us. “Would you be wondering if they were worried about you … if they’d already given up hope? Would you be thinking about how warm and safe home is … knowing you’d never see them again—”

  “Stop!”

  Tyler slammed so hard on the brakes that the car skidded. If Noreen hadn’t flung out her arm, poor Dobkin would have slid right onto the floor.

  “You’re making Suellen sound so … so … sentimental or something!” Tyler’s look was incredulous. “You know that nobody liked her, Noreen. I mean … everyone was sorry it happened, but nobody ever really liked her.”

  I stared at him in confusion. “But … I thought—”

  “Well, sure, nobody would ever wish something like that on anyone,” Tyler said defensively. “But nobody liked her. She didn’t have any friends. She wasn’t popular. The first few weeks with all the publicity and news coverage, everyone was all sorry and stirred up about it. But then things got back to normal. And it wasn’t like there was this huge void in school just ’cause Suellen wasn’t there. No one paid any attention to her when she was there.”

  I couldn’t have been more surprised. I looked at Noreen to see what she had to say about it, but she was staring at the floor.

  “Well”—Tyler nudged her impatiently—“am I right or not?”

  It took a few minutes, but Noreen finally nodded. “I felt sorry for her,” she said, almost reluctantly. “She wasn’t very pretty or—”

  “Yes, she was,” Tyler spoke up. “She was very pretty, let’s be honest here.”

  “Well, your concept of pretty and my concept of pretty are obviously very different,” Noreen said indignantly. “And her personality was—well—”

  “She didn’t have a personality.”

  Noreen threw Tyler an impatient glance. “She showed off in class, tried to act like she had the answers to everything all the time. And she flirted a lot with guys. Especially the ones who already had girlfriends. Most of the girls didn’t like her ’cause of that.”

  “Most of the guys didn’t like her, either,” Tyler retorted. “She was weird.”

  “Understatement, Tyler. She was absolutely, madly in love with you.”

  Again I stared in surprise. Tyler gave Noreen a reproachful glance and shook his head.

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Yes, she was, and you know it.”

  “How can you say that?” Tyler threw back at her. “She was in love with every guy. Or at least, she thought she was.”

  “Hopelessly in love with him.” Noreen turned to me, as if Tyler wasn’t even there. “Everyone knew it, and Tyler knew it, too. He was just embarrassed ’cause everyone teased him about it.”

  I looked over at Tyler, who was looking plenty embarrassed now.

  “Well, it isn’t like I encouraged her,” he mumbled.

  “No, of course not,” Noreen said dryly. “You just looked at her with those big brown eyes, and the poor girl never had a chance.”

  Tyler recoiled at that. “Don’t give me all that ‘poor girl’ stuff. She was the queen of manipulation.”

  “And this coming from a guy who can get anything from anybody”—Noreen sighed—“especially if the anybody is a female.” She rushed on before Tyler could object again. “Okay, he’s right about that,” she conceded. “Suellen was a manipulator. She wanted to belong, but she didn’t. She would have done anything to be accepted.

  “She made up things,” Noreen recalled, her face going grim. “She lied. And tried to come off as special and important and knowing things nobody else knew, just so people would pay attention to her. I guess she thought that meant they were accepting her.”

  “All they were doing was laughing at her,” Tyler said.

  “I think she knew they were laug
hing.” Noreen’s expression was somewhere between disgust and sadness. “But negative attention was better than none at all, I guess.” She got quiet for a minute, then added, “She really had the hots for Tyler, though.”

  “She did not!” Tyler protested again, his voice rising slightly. “Will you stop saying that?”

  “It’s the truth. And really, Tyler,” Noreen said sternly, “you could have done lots better than Suellen Downing.”

  “Like it’s your business. Who are you, my mother?”

  “No, thank God. If I had a son like you, I’d sue the doctor for damages.”

  Tyler’s mouth opened, but Noreen wasn’t phased.

  “Look,” she rushed on, hardly stopping to take a breath, “I never told you this before ’cause you’re new, and I didn’t want to upset you, but some kids do say Suellen’s ghost still haunts the school and—”

  Tyler groaned. “Noreen!”

  “And kids have heard footsteps in the halls after school sometimes, but the halls are empty. They hear doors slamming, and some of them even say they hear ghostly laughter from classrooms, but when they look in, there’s nobody there.”

  “They say those things just to see which kids are stupid enough to believe them.” Tyler’s voice was patronizing. “And what a surprise! You win, Noreen. You’re the stupidest one of all.”

  Noreen ignored his comment, but turned sideways to look at him. “Maybe Suellen really is trying to make contact with Marlee, trying to make everyone realize what really happened to her. Maybe she’s been trying to do that all this time, but Marlee’s the only one who’s ever listened to her!”

  Tyler groaned and slid down in his seat.

  I thought about all this for a few seconds, then ventured carefully, “If more than one person has sensed Suellen … then maybe it’s true. Maybe she is still there trying to make herself heard.”

  “Make herself heard?” Tyler sighed again. “She’s probably somewhere in another city by now, and if she knew she’d finally caused all this interest in herself, she’d feel successful at last. Not to mention smug.”

  “Marlee”—Noreen touched my arm and leaned close—“if this stuff is true … if Suellen is trying to make contact with you … what do you think she’s told you so far?”

  I balked. It’s one thing to be certain in your own mind about something, but to share it is something else. There’s that thing about responsibility. Feeling like I should tell the police, but having no proof. Feeling like I should let Tyler and Noreen in on what I was sure of, but not being able to back it up.

  Dobkin nudged me in the stomach, and I said slowly, “It’s all mixed up. Sometimes it takes a while to sort it out.”

  “But you must have opinions,” she pressed me. “I mean, I saw your face that first morning when you said something was wrong with your locker. I could tell you weren’t faking.”

  “I think …” I began slowly, “I think she felt a whole lot of fear right before she … disappeared. I think she was really terrified. And I think …”

  Now Dobkin was practically punching me, and I knew Noreen must be able to feel my body jerking with each silent blow. I managed to grab his arms and pin them at his sides.

  “What Noreen means is,” Tyler said, his glance flicking casually to me and then back to the road, “where is Suellen?”

  Noreen was staring at me intently. Tyler’s hand had started toward the radio dial, but stopped now half-way to the dash.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled.

  “But … you think you could know, right? That it’s possible you’ll find out?” Noreen’s voice dropped. She was barely whispering, and she wasn’t looking at me anymore. “I mean … just suppose she is dead or something awful like that. You’re probably going to know sooner or later, aren’t you?”

  I glanced at her, but she was staring at the luminous dials on the dashboard. Tyler wasn’t looking at either of us, but had his hand still suspended in the air.

  “If she is dead,” Noreen murmured again, “would you know? And …”

  Her voice faded. She took a deep breath, but it trembled in her throat.

  “And … would you know how it happened?”

  Why was I so afraid to answer? I just sat there squeezing Dobkin tight against my chest, and the air in the car had suddenly gone very hot and very, very close—

  “I … I’m not sure,” I murmured.

  “But the truth is, you could know,” Tyler spoke up at last, his voice steady and reasonable. “The truth is, you could know what nobody else has been able to find out. What happened to her. Where she is … how she died …”

  I nodded. “I might,” I whispered.

  There was a long stretch of silence.

  “This is really scaring me,” Noreen finally whispered. “I hate things like this—all this weird stuff—”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in it,” Tyler scoffed, and she turned on him, her voice going shrill.

  “Well, I never knew anyone like Marlee before—this kind of stuff has never happened around here before! It’s really scaring me—of course I don’t want to believe in it—I don’t know what to think about it!”

  “If anyone should be scared,” Tyler said solemnly, “it should be you, Marlee.”

  His warning was so unexpected that I felt a cold stab of fear go through me.

  “What? Why do you say that?”

  “If I had that kind of gift,” he said, and his wide dark eyes shone calmly through the shadows as they settled on my face, “being able to see what others aren’t even supposed to know … I’d be really scared.”

  “Of what?” I could feel my throat tightening up, and he seemed to be taking forever to answer—

  “The knowledge,” he spoke at last. “The connection.”

  “What connection?”

  “Well, if it’s true what you’ve told us, then you and Suellen are connected and she’s using you to communicate. So suppose she’s dead and you’re not … what if she just decides to take over? Her mind becoming your mind … and you becoming her.”

  I’d never thought about the possibility before. It was a chilling consideration, and I shivered violently and held Dobkin closer.

  “Yeah … maybe he’s right,” Noreen mused, thinking out loud. “And what if you two are so connected, things that happened to Suellen will start happening to you?” She covered her face with her hands and squealed. “I’m scaring myself! Let’s not talk about it anymore!”

  Tyler made a stab at the radio, and the car filled with music, and he shifted his eyes back to the road once again.

  “Maybe it’s not such a good thing to have supernatural knowledge,” he said quietly. “Maybe there are some things just not meant for people to know.”

  I was glad when they let Dobkin and me out at our house.

  I locked the door tight and stood in the hall a long time, trembling from head to foot, and knowing something horrible was about to happen to me.

  18

  I didn’t get much sleep that night.

  I tossed and turned a whole lot and had horrible nightmares. In one of them I dreamed that I went to Dobkin’s room and his bed was empty, and I knew he’d been kidnapped, but no matter how hard I tried to picture his whereabouts, I couldn’t find him. It was so horrible that I woke up crying, and I gripped the covers to my chin, letting the hot tears roll down my face.

  I got up as quietly as I could and tiptoed down the hall to Dobkin’s room, and then I stood for a long time beside his bed watching him sleep. He looked so innocent and helpless lying there, with this faint smile on his face and one hand resting against his cheek. I watched him, and I started thinking how ever since Mom and Dad had died, I’d never believed I could ever love anything ever again, but here was Dobkin, my pain-in-the-butt little brother, and the absolute light of my life. And then I reached over and smoothed his hair back from his forehead, and he stirred a little and squinted up at me, all sleepy.

  “Marlee?” he mumbled.


  “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  “How come you’re in here?”

  “Checking your window. It looks like rain,” I lied.

  That seemed to satisfy him. He was out again in an instant, and I slipped back out into the hall.

  Aunt Celia’s room was downstairs, and I kept quiet so I wouldn’t wake her going back to my bedroom. I’d left the door partway open, and as I approached it, suddenly every hair on my arms stood straight up. I froze in my tracks, one hand raised to touch the door, and something told me not to touch it, not to take one more step across the threshold.

  I felt a cold lump of fear lodge in my chest.

  I tried to swallow, but there was only cotton in my mouth.

  A faint, faint sound floated out through the door. I thought I heard the faint creak of bedsprings … the muted thud of something touching wood … a muffled tread across the floor …

  Oh, God … there’s someone in my room.…

  My mind spun in a dizzying circle—half of me praying I was imagining things, the other half terrified to go in there. After what seemed like forever, I finally gave the door a little push and froze there in the threshold, a cry lodged in my throat.

  Pale moonlight filtered in, angling down through the gnarled tree outside the house, speckling the walls, scattering tiny droplets across the covers of my bed. I could see the curtains flapping crazily in the wind, darkness sucking them in and out my open window, and the empty windowsill, and the huge old branch scraping against it.

  It’s cruel the way your mind plays tricks on you when you’re scared. I stared wondering—did I throw the covers back like that, or had they been moved since I was in there? And when the floor creaked again, I gasped and looked behind me, not sure if the sound had come from inside the room or out in the hallway.

  I took a step toward the window.

  I didn’t leave my closet open … did I?

  I felt like a little kid—just standing there and staring at that open closet—afraid to go any farther. I opened my mouth to call for Aunt Celia, but nothing came out.

  This is silly … you’re not a child … go close the door and get back to bed!