Don't Move a Muscle!

by P. J. Night

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Evan answered. “But you made it too easy. Why weren’t you hiding?” Then he looked closely at Cora. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Cora swallowed. “You’re not—you’re not going to believe me. But it happened. It really did!”

  “What did?”

  Cora pointed a shaking hand at the statue of the girl next to them. “Sh-she’s looking at me! Before, she was staring up.”

  Confused, Evan glanced around. “Wait. Who’s looking at you?”

  “The statue.” Cora paused, realizing how ridiculous that sounded. “I know it’s insane. But she wasn’t looking at me before.”

  Evan looked up at the sky. “It’s getting foggy. You must’ve seen some mist blowing by that made you think the statue had moved.”

  But Cora was insistent. “Fog wouldn’t make me think she had shifted her head! Anyway, I felt her move before I saw her. I thought it was an earthquake at first.”

  “That would make more sense,” Evan said. “I didn’t feel anything, but it could’ve been one of those quakes that are too small to measure.” He sounded very sure of himself now. “It had to have been something like that. Because this statue’s head has always been facing the same way.”

  “Not true!”

  Evan shook his own head. “Cora, I’ve been in this garden at least thirty or forty times. I know every statue here. I’m telling you, this girl has always been looking down and back.” He tapped the statue a couple of times. “Maybe what you felt was the stone cracking somewhere. Although it looks okay to me.”

  Cora sighed. Evan had to be right. And yet at the same time, she felt positive that the statue had moved.

  She stared at the stone girl. The statue’s opaque gray eyes stared blindly back.

  “My turn to hide,” said Evan. “Are you ready?”

  But whatever fun the game had held was gone for Cora. No way did she want to prowl around this garden alone. “I don’t think I—”

  “Cora! Over here!”

  A few minutes earlier Cora would have been dis­appointed to see her mom’s car pulling into the garden entrance to take her home. Now she was relieved. This thing with the statue was really bothering her. She wanted to go back to normal life even if it meant homework and chores.

  “Coming!” she called, waving back at her mother.

  “Any chance you’d like to help me this Saturday?” Evan asked quickly. “I have to get out more invitations for the unveiling of the new statue.”

  Cora paused. “I’d like to see you, but inside. Not out here.”

  “I understand,” Evan replied. “The garden is kind of creepy. I guess I’ve just gotten used to it. But this would start at six o’clock. I have to work at the pizza place all afternoon. So no garden—we’ll just be sitting in a conference room.”

  This sounded more like a real date. Cora said, “I think I can handle a conference room. I’ll need to check with my parents, though. Want me to text you?”

  “Why go to the trouble? Can we ask your mom right now?”

  Seconds later Cora was introducing Evan to her mother.

  “It’s not much of a date,” Evan told Mrs. Nicolaides. (He had called it a date! Now it was official!) “But if Cora’s up for it, it would sure help me a lot. My bosses will both be there if we need chaperoning.”

  Mrs. Nicolaides was checking her calendar. “Cora’s dad and I aren’t doing anything on Saturday. We can bring her and pick her up.”

  Evan’s face brightened. “Great! Thanks a lot, Mrs. Nicolaides.” He turned to Cora. “I’ll bring a pizza from work. What do you want on it?”

  “Anything except meat. Especially anchovies.”

  “I love anchovies,” said Evan. “But for you, I’ll give them up.”

  “Also no green peppers. Red ones are okay, though.”

  “At least we agree about that,” said Evan. “Okay, I think I can remember all this. See you Saturday night. Good to have met you,” he added to Cora’s mother.

  Mrs. Nicolaides smiled warmly at him. “You too, Evan. See you soon.”

  “He seems nice,” she told Cora as the car pulled out into traffic.

  “He is,” Cora said after a second.

  “Everything okay, honey?”

  “Oh! Yep.”

  But as Cora and her mom made their way through the town and back home, Cora couldn’t shake the terrifying moment with the sculpture from her mind. It really hadn’t moved. Had it?

  Evan was waiting on the front steps of the museum. He jumped to his feet when he saw her.

  “I know I promised we’d be working inside,” he said. “But it’s been such a nice day, and it’s still light out. Wouldn’t you like to work in the garden after all? At least until it gets dark?”

  “Okay,” said Cora after a second. It was beautiful out, and they’d be together—and anyway, what could happen? The more she thought about it, the more Cora had persuaded herself that the statue couldn’t possibly have turned its head. Things like that just didn’t happen.

  “Great! I’ve got the invitations right here.” Evan gestured toward the box on the steps. “We can sit on that bench over by the river nymph.”

  The river nymph was a statue, of course. Again, the sculptor had carved her with amazing realism. Cora could practically feel the water streaming from the nymph’s long hair. Somehow, too, Cora could tell that the nymph had just stepped out of the water. She didn’t look as scared as some of the statues in the garden, although she did have a startled expression. But maybe that was supposed to be realistic too. After all, a water nymph might be just as surprised to see a human as the other way around. I guess it does make sense, Cora thought.

  She and Evan sat side by side on the bench, and he pulled out a pile of envelopes. “These need address labels,” he told Cora. “Labels which I . . . don’t see in this box.” He shuffled the paper in the box around a bit. “I must’ve left them inside. I’ll run in and get them.”

  Cora jumped to her feet. “Wait!” she called. “I’ll come too!” But Evan had already disappeared inside the museum.

  A cloud slid over the sun, and Cora shivered. How could one cloud turn the air so much colder?

  And how could that fog be coming on so fast? The sun had been shining brightly just a few seconds ago. Now the garden was wreathed in low-lying patches of damp, clammy mist so thick that Cora could barely see the statues around her.

  An icy drop of water ran down the back of Cora’s neck. Then another. She glanced up. To her horror, the face of the water nymph was now only inches from her own. The nymph’s skin was gray stone. Her carved eyes were blank and blind. But her granite curls were dripping real water.

  Cora heard a splash and saw that the nymph was now standing in a spreading pool of water. Was it raining? No, the water was pouring off the nymph herself, drenching the ground under her. It was getting deeper and deeper. Cora could feel it splashing against her own feet. Then it reached her ankles. The pool was becoming a whirlpool now. Cora could feel the current around her legs.

  The nymph reached out and pressed her cold, heavy hands onto Cora’s shoulders. She was pushing Cora toward the center of the whirlpool. . . .

  Where was Evan? Wild with terror, Cora looked toward the museum. There he was—standing outside the gate and staring at her.

  “She’s going to drown me!” she screamed. But incredibly, he was farther away. His eyes locked on hers, he was stepping backward toward the building. He was going to leave her alone.

  Now she realized that Evan had left her with the nymph on purpose.

  Cora struggled as hard as she could, but there was no escaping the nymph’s icy grip. In a second it would all be over. . . .

  “Cora! Cora! Honey, wake up!”

  As she rose out of the water and her nightmare, Cora realized that the hands on her shoulders were her mother’s. Her mom was gently shaking her awake. She wasn’t in a whirlpool—this was her own bed at home.

  “Mom,” Cora said gr
oggily, struggling to sit up. “I’m glad it’s you.”

  “You were screaming in your sleep,” her mother told her. “Really screaming. You must have been having a terrible dream.”

  Cora rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “I was. What . . . what day is it?”

  “It’s still Wednesday, honey,” said her mother. “For a few more minutes, anyway. It’s almost midnight. Dad and I were on our way to bed when we heard you.”

  Cora flopped back down with relief. It really hadn’t happened. Saturday hadn’t come yet. Evan hadn’t tricked her. Everything was fine.

  Cora turned onto her stomach and snuggled down under the covers. Her mom got up and turned out the light. “Thanks, Mom,” Cora murmured. “G’night.”

  But as Cora tossed and turned, she realized getting back to sleep wouldn’t be quite as easy as she hoped. She couldn’t get the image of the granite nymph with stone eyes out of her mind.

  “All right, people. Let’s talk about the reading for today,” Ms. Finch announced during first-period English class the next morning.

  Cora had done the reading, but she didn’t want to be the first to raise her hand. She always tried to ration her hand raising throughout the school day to keep from looking like a show-off. Along with the rest of the class, she sat motionless and hoped Ms. Finch wouldn’t call on her.

  “Cora? What can you tell us about Perseus? I know your team’s been working on that story.”

  Oh well, Cora thought.

  “Perseus was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman named Danaë,” Cora began. “Danaë’s father, Acrisius, had been told that his daughter’s son would grow up to kill him, so when Perseus was born, Acrisius decided to kill him first. But then he found out that Zeus was the father of Perseus. He was scared to kill Zeus’s son, so he put Perseus and Danaë into a trunk and had the trunk thrown into the ocean. He figured that if they died, Zeus would blame it on Poseidon, the god of the sea.”

  “It was an evil deed.” Ms. Finch used her admonishing voice, as if she were warning the class not to try the same trick with their own relatives. “Go on, Cora.”

  “So anyway, Zeus made the trunk float to an island. A fisherman rescued Danaë and Perseus and took them in. And . . . and . . .” Cora stopped to suppress a yawn. She had gone back to sleep an hour or so after her nightmare, but it hadn’t been a sound sleep. She’d woken up a couple of times and had finally decided to get up for good at five. Her head wasn’t nearly as clear as usual.

  She swallowed another yawn. “So Perseus found a princess named Andromeda chained to a rock in the middle of the ocean. And he—”

  “Wait a second, Cora,” Ms. Finch broke in. “You’re jumping ahead. What happened before Perseus rescued Andromeda?”

  “Oops. He killed Medusa.”

  “Is Medusa the one with snakes for hair?” asked a boy in the class.

  “Yes, Liam,” said Ms. Finch with heavy patience. “As I’m sure you remember from your reading, Medusa was the one with snakes for hair. Do you remember another unusual thing about her?”

  “Um . . . she was ugly?” ventured Liam.

  “Very ugly. So ugly that anyone who looked at her turned to stone. And the king of the island where Perseus lived gave him the task of slaying Medusa.”

  Ms. Finch turned and wrote PERSEUS SLAYS MEDUSA on the board.

  “Ms. Finch, why do myths always say stuff like ‘slay’ instead of ‘kill’?” asked Hailey.

  Good question, Cora thought drowsily. She yawned again. Then she pinched her forearm as hard as she could, hoping that the pain would make her more alert. But that only worked for as long as the pinch lasted. Cora shifted restlessly in her seat, twisting her head and shoulders to stretch her cramped neck.

  And as she was twisting to the right, she saw someone peering through the window in the classroom door.

  Evan.

  No one else in the class seemed to have noticed, and Ms. Finch had her back to the door. The only person who saw him was Cora. Her heart started beating faster at the sight of him, but as she looked at his face, the fluttery feelings disappeared.

  Why did she suddenly feel scared?

  It’s Evan, Cora told herself. Not some bad guy.

  Still, his expression made him look completely different from the Evan she knew. His eyes were coldly darting back and forth as if he were searching for someone. And that someone could only be herself.

  Cora felt as if she were pinned to her chair waiting to be caught.

  And then his eyes locked on hers.

  Cora jumped to her feet so fast that she knocked over her chair. But the instant she moved, Evan’s face dis­appeared from the little window.

  “Are you all right, Cora?” asked Ms. Finch.

  Everyone in the class was staring at her.

  “I—I’m fine,” Cora said sheepishly as she picked up her chair and sat down again. “I just—uh—I thought I saw a bee.”

  “A bee? Where?” That came from Randi Abelson, who could be counted on to have hysterics whenever she got the chance. “I think I’m allergic to bee stings! Can I go to the nurse’s office?”

  “Calm down, Randi,” said Ms. Finch. “There’s no bee.”

  “But Cora saw one!”

  “I thought I saw one,” said Cora. “I was wrong. Sorry, everyone.”

  The imaginary bee had done its work. No one was thinking about Cora now.

  That was lucky, she said to herself as the class settled down again. But was she going crazy? Evan couldn’t have been at the window. What would he be doing out of school at nine in the morning? And even if he had been out of school for some reason, why would he have come to the middle school?

  And if, just possibly, he had somehow come to the middle school because he wanted to see her, then why had he been staring at her in that strange, expressionless way?

  Since none of those things could have happened, it followed that Evan hadn’t been at the window. Cora’s busy imagination had tripped her up again.

  Why had she been seeing things these last few days? It had to be because she was tired. I’ve got to get to bed early tonight, Cora thought with another yawn.

  “What’s up with you, Cora?” Skye asked at lunch. “Have you heard anything I’ve been saying?”

  Cora looked blankly at her friend. “Have you been talking?”

  Cora, Hailey, Amber, and Skye were at their usual lunch table. They had been there for—Cora checked the wall clock—fifteen minutes. And in all that time, Cora might as well have been on the moon.

  She forced a smile. “Sorry, Skye. I was thinking about something else.”

  “Obviously,” said Skye. “Because if you’d been paying attention, you would have known that in about two minutes, Caleb Lasser is going to be coming over here to ask you something. He told me so this morning.”

  “Ask me something? What do you—”

  “Shhh,” squealed Amber. “He’s coming this way!”

  Cora didn’t know Caleb well, but he was one of the cutest guys in the eighth grade. She’d had an on-and-off crush on him for a couple of years. As he walked toward the girls’ table now, though, Cora wasn’t getting the same sort of floaty feeling she usually got when she was around him. Maybe it’s just because I’m still tired, Cora thought.

  Her friends were suddenly finding their food tremendously interesting. All three of them were staring fixedly down at their lunches. What was going on?

  “Hi, Cora,” said Caleb, smiling at her as he smoothed back his blond hair.

  “Hi,” answered Cora.

  “I was wondering if you had any plans for the dance.”

  “Plans?” echoed Cora.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, do you want to go with me?”

  “Oh, that dance! Um—thanks, Caleb.” She took a deep breath in and stared down at her mythology book. “But I can’t.”

  Her three friends whipped around to stare at her. “What do you mean, you can’t?” asked Hailey.

  “I—I guess I didn
’t tell you,” Cora faltered. “I’m planning on going with someone else. With Evan, actually.”

  “No, you certainly didn’t tell us.” Skye sounded annoyed. “That’s why I told Caleb you’d say yes.”

  Caleb was looking from Cora to Skye, confused. “Who’s Evan?” asked Caleb.

  “Just a friend,” said Cora.

  Maybe Caleb wasn’t used to having girls turn him down. He didn’t seem to have brought a plan for being refused. For a few awkward seconds, no one knew where to look. Then Caleb slowly said, “Okay, then. Thanks anyway, I guess. See you around.”

  As soon as Caleb was out of earshot, Hailey asked, “Are you really going to the dance with Evan?”

  “Sort of,” said Cora groggily. “I’m planning to ask him . . . soon. . . .”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Skye sounded indignant.

  “Well, I haven’t actually asked him yet.”

  “Asked him yet” was an understatement—Cora hadn’t even mentioned the dance to Evan yet! But somehow, in that moment Cora realized that she’d already made up her mind to ask Evan. Evan was cute and hardworking and smart. He cared about volunteering, and he liked to talk about books and mythology—things that she was sure Caleb Lasser had never thought twice about.

  I’m going with Evan, or I’m going alone, Cora suddenly vowed to herself. Now I just have to convince him to say yes.

  When Saturday night finally came, Cora still hadn’t mentioned the dance to Evan. She’d felt so bold in the lunchroom on Thursday, but as she walked up the path to the museum’s front door, Cora’s excitement dis­appeared. With every step she took toward the monstrous house, a bit of happiness drained out of her.

  A note was taped to the museum’s front door.

  C—

  I’m in the first room on the right—the one with the lion outside. Come on in!

  —E

  Cora took the note and pushed open the heavy front door. She found herself in a large lobby that would have been elegant if it hadn’t been crammed with vases, urns, and animal sculptures. What looked like a forest of them covered much of the floor and the entire reception desk. They were even precariously piled against the room’s tall windows. It was easy to see that the Metaxas sisters had another whole collection, one that could have filled its own sculpture garden.