Summer of Fear

by Lois Duncan

  She doesn’t care! Terrible—incredible—the knowledge swept over me. Her parents are dead, and we’re all so sorry for her—but to Julia, Julia herself, it doesn’t matter! We think she’s so brave, but she isn’t brave—she just doesn’t care!

  When Mike arrived I didn’t stay in the room to see him. Instead I went through to the kitchen and slipped out the back door into the yard. The moon hung huge and yellow about halfway up the curve of the sky, and by its light I could clearly see the tree to which Trickle was tied and his water bowl and the sad little heap that was Trickle himself. He had crept over to the edge of the hydrangea bush, but the rope wasn’t quite long enough for him to get underneath it, so he lay half in moonlight, half in the bush’s shadow.

  I said, “Trick?”

  He lifted his tail politely and let it fall, but made no attempt to get up.

  I went over to him and sank down beside him in the cool grass and stroked his back. His hair felt strange to my hand, lifeless and dry, and when I reached to scratch him behind his ears he raised his head and turned it to lick my hand. His nose felt warm and rough.

  “You’re sick,” I whispered. “Poor little thing, I should have guessed it sooner. If you were feeling good you wouldn’t have bitten anybody, even Julia. I’ll take you to the vet tomorrow and get you some medicine. Then you’ll be your old self again and you can come in the house and everything will be like it always was.”

  I sat with him a long time there in the moonlight, petting him and talking to him. When at last I went back into the house, it was after ten. Mom and Dad were in the family room. I could hear their voices, but I didn’t stop to speak to them; I knew that if I heard either of them comment on how pretty Julia had looked tonight and how brave and wonderful she was, I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  I went upstairs and put on my pajamas and got into bed to read. It was nice to have the room to myself again. As I reached over to get my book from the table between the beds, I was surprised to see that the base of the reading lamp, which was shaped like a cup, was filled with burnt matches.

  “What the hell?” I said softly to myself. “Where could these have come from?”

  I leaned over farther and saw two empty matchbooks stuck down on the far side of the lamp. They must be Julia’s, I thought, but what could she have used them for? Maybe Julia smoked? It seemed unlikely. I had never smelled cigarette smoke on Julia or in the room itself after she’d been alone in it.

  Still, why else would she be lighting matches?

  I opened my book and tried to concentrate on the words on the page in front of me, but my mind wouldn’t focus. The question of the matches bothered me too much to let it drop. If Julia did have cigarettes or was smoking weed, she would have to keep those in the dresser, since there was nowhere else she could store things. The dresser was, after all, mine as well as hers. Just because Julia kept her things in two of the drawers didn’t exactly make them private drawers, especially since they were part of a piece of furniture that had been mine since childhood.

  Hurriedly, before I could feel any guiltier about it than I did already, I set my book down, got out of bed and went over to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. All I could see at first glance was a neat pile of underwear and a pair of pajamas. Gingerly, I reached in and lifted the pile of clothing to run my hand underneath it.

  There were no cigarette packs and no plastic bags that might contain pot.

  I was beginning to feel disgusted with myself, but having started the investigation, I couldn’t stop. I ran my hand down the side of the drawer to the back, and then I did feel something. It was smooth and hard and had the same texture as a candle.

  I pulled it out and looked at it. It wasn’t exactly a candle. It had no wick, but it was a brown, waxlike substance that had evidently been melted and molded into an oblong shape with four stubby appendages forming a kind of stand for it. At one end there was another such protrusion, shaped somewhat like the head of an animal.

  “What?!” I exclaimed, regarding the little wax figure with bewilderment. It was the sort of thing one might expect from a child modeling with clay, but the wax had melted and run together so that the shape was indistinct. As I turned it over and over in my hands I saw something else strange. Several long, white hairs were embedded in the wax.

  I was still examining it when, through the open window, I heard the sound of a car pulling into our driveway. Guiltily I thrust the wax figure back into the spot in which I had found it and shoved the drawer closed. I was in bed with my book in my hands when footsteps sounded on the stair. One pair of footsteps.

  One?

  I lay still, listening, as they came opposite the door and continued on down the hall. I recognized those footsteps, and they weren’t Julia’s.

  Shoving back the covers, I got up again and went to the bedroom door and opened it. At the far end of the hall, Peter was entering his own room.

  I said, “Pete?”

  He paused, but he didn’t turn around.

  “Peter,” I said, “where’s Julia? I thought you were going to bring her home.”

  “Yeah. I thought so too.” He did turn now and looked not at me but past me, as though by not meeting my eyes he could conceal the hurt in his own. “I guess my bass playing wasn’t good enough to make up for the rest of me. When the dance was over I went to find her, and she wasn’t there. They took off during the last break.”

  “They?”

  “Julia and Mike, who else? That’s some boyfriend you’ve got! I thought he was going to introduce her around so she could meet a bunch of people. They never spoke to anybody else all evening, and when I went over to the table they were so wrapped up in each other they acted like they didn’t even know I was there.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t believe that. Mike just took her tonight because I asked him to do it as a favor. You’re just telling me this because—because—”

  But there was no ending for the sentence. There was no reason for Peter to tell me this if it wasn’t true. Besides, the pain in his voice was equal to that in my own.

  “I’m sorry, Sis,” he said and opened his door and went into his room, and I went back into mine.

  Julia didn’t come in until close to dawn, and when she did I lay quiet with my back toward her, feigning sleep, because there was nothing I could say to her that would help in any way, and I knew if I tried to speak I would start to cry.

  When I think back, I don’t think I slept at all that night. I was aware of all the soft night noises—a tree rustling outside the window, a lone car passing along the street in front of the house, Julia’s heavy, even breathing in the bed across from me. She fell asleep at once and never stirred again.

  I didn’t sleep—and yet, I think I dreamed. Is that possible? No, of course not, so I must have slept a little without realizing it, for in the dream I was running along the edge of a winding road. There were stark, red cliffs on one side of me and on the other there was a drop-off into a deep valley. My legs ached and my breath was coming in gasps, and I cried to Mike, who was running beside me, “Will we get there in time? Can we get there before it happens?”

  He said, “Are you crazy, Rae? If you’d only explain—”

  “I can’t!” I cried. “There’s no time!”

  Up ahead, far, far ahead, a tiny reflection of the bright noon sunlight signaled the approach of a car coming directly toward us down the road.

  “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!” And in the dream I ran straight into the middle of the road with my arms outstretched. The car came roaring toward me, and I was able to look directly into the eyes of the driver, wide, familiar eyes that recognized me as I did them.

  Then, as with most dreams, before the ultimate climax occurred the dream was gone, and I was lying stiffly in bed, watching the sky outside the window lighten and turn pale and soften into pink, then brighten into orange and burst at last to shining gold as the sun appeared above the ragged edges of the Sandia Mountains. Bi
rds began to sing in the trees outside the window as if someone had suddenly pressed a button to bring them to life, and I thought, It’s morning. The longest night of my life is over, and it’s morning, and I haven’t slept at all.

  I lay there a while longer, until the sun had risen into the branches of the elm tree. Then I got up and dressed. The face that looked back at me from the mirror over the dresser was my normal face, no longer splotchy and bloated. The hives were gone as though they had never existed. I was Rachel again.

  I went down the stairs and through the silent house and outside into the backyard. Trickle was still sleeping in the grass beside the hydrangea bush. I could see him there, a soft shadowy mound, curled up just as I had left him the night before.

  I crossed into the Gallaghers’ yard and went up and rapped on the kitchen door.

  Mrs. Gallagher opened it. She was a bright, cheerful woman, a little on the plump side, with Mike’s blue eyes.

  “Hello, Rae,” she said with a smile. “You’re up bright and early for a girl who was out most of the night. Does your mother need to borrow something for breakfast?”

  “No,” I said, trying to smile back at her. “She and Dad aren’t even up yet. I just wanted to talk to Mike before he left for the pool.”

  “I’ll call him.” She held the door wide and called back over her shoulder, “Mike, Rachel’s here!”

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” Mike’s voice called back from somewhere in the upper floor of the house.

  It was a lot more than a minute. In fact, it seemed like hours as I sat at the table in the Gallaghers’ pleasant kitchen, sipping at the glass of orange juice that Mike’s mother had forced into my hand and trying to make polite conversation.

  When at last he appeared in the doorway, Mike was wearing swim shorts and his T-shirt with “Coronado Club” across the front, and he had a towel draped around his neck.

  “I’ve got to run,” he said. “I have to hose down the sun area and set out the deck chairs before the pool opens.”

  “You could say ‘good morning,’” I said.

  “Good morning, Rae.” He spoke the words in my direction, but his eyes flicked past me, unable to focus on my face.

  “I want to talk to you,” I said, “before you go.”

  “I don’t have time,” Mike began, and then—“Okay, but it’ll have to be fast. Why don’t you walk out to the car with me?”

  So we walked out to the car, side by side with our arms swinging, but not swinging together, our hands not touching, with the bright morning sunlight warm upon our shoulders and the back of our necks and the birds still singing away in a joyful chorus high over our heads.

  Neither of us spoke until we reached the car, and then Mike said, “I guess you want to know what happened.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think you should tell me.”

  “I would if I could,” Mike said. “I just don’t know myself. I never had anything like this happen before.”

  “Are you in love with her?” I asked. I knew the answer, but I had to ask.

  “It happened so fast,” Mike said. “We didn’t plan it or anything, Rae. It just happened like—well, like being hit by lightning.”

  “The way it was with us?”

  “No, not that way at all. You and I—we just sort of grew into it. I mean, we’d known each other so long, and it was a friendship thing first, and then it got to be more. But with Julia and me, it was like an explosion the first time I put my arm around her to dance. I’m sorry, Rae.” He did look at me now, and those honest blue eyes were wide and bewildered and guilty and happy and worried and sad, all at the same time. “I never wanted to hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything if I could help it. You’re—well, you’re great.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  He stood there by the car with his hand on the door handle, looking down at me uncertainly. “Can we still be friends?”

  “I’ve got plenty of friends already,” I told him. “I don’t need another friend.”

  “You don’t have to be nasty.”

  “I’m not the one who’s nasty,” I said, my voice trembling. “I’m not the one who goes around snatching other people’s boyfriends. It was my pink dress she was wearing—my new dress!” It was a stupid thing to say, but I could see her there in my mind’s eyes as she must have been at the dance with her face lifted to Mike’s and that thick black hair falling rich and soft across the pink fabric over which I had worked so long and hard. “I ran a sewing machine needle through my finger making that dress!”

  “Now you’re being silly,” Mike said, sounding relieved because I guess he’d been afraid I would cry. “The dress had nothing to do with anything. Hey, what happened to the hives you were supposed to have had last night? You look just like normal.”

  “They disappeared overnight,” I said bitterly. “That’s one thing that hives and boyfriends seem to have in common.”

  It was a perfect parting line, and I turned quickly and walked back across the lawn to my own yard, hoping it would ring in his ears all morning. I didn’t feel like crying. I was far too angry to cry. I wanted to scream and stamp my feet. I wanted to go upstairs and haul Julia out of bed and yank all that black hair out of her head. I wanted to untie my dog and take him up to the room where Julia lay, vulnerable and defenseless, and dump him on top of her and let him bite her. Or, if he didn’t do that, he could at least growl and scare her. Anything he did would be better than nothing.

  Why not? I asked myself. It’s my room, isn’t it, and Trickle’s my dog. I can have my own dog in my own room if I want him there, and if Julia doesn’t like it she can move out!

  “Trick,” I called. “Hey, Trickle! Here, boy!”

  He was still lying there in a little hollow of grass at the edge of the bush. When he didn’t move I went over to him and knelt down beside him and touched his back. There was a strange rigidity about it.

  I rolled him over on his side, and his head flopped limply, and I knew that he was dead.

  Dead!

  I’d never known anything that had died before. Oh, I’d seen dead birds lying on the lawn, tiny ones that had fallen out of nests and once a larger one that had flown into a plate glass window. Back when Bobby was little and had kept turtles, they had all died at once because of some strange turtle disease, and I had once seen a cat that had been run over in the street. But there had never been anything of my own that had died, never anything I had loved, and for a while I could only kneel there numbly stroking the soft white coat, unable to accept the fact.

  “I’ll take you to the vet tomorrow,” I had told him. I would never take him anywhere now. Not to the vet. Not to the park for a run. Not to my room to lie patiently beside the desk as I studied. There would be no more use for the red plastic dishes that held his food and water or for the blue collar with the name tag that read Trickle. I belong to Rachel Bryant and gave my cell phone number.

  He’s gone, I thought incredulously.

  I knelt there a long time, and finally I got up and went into the house.

  The coffeemaker was on, which meant that Mom was up and about, and an empty cereal dish on the table, which meant that Bobby was also. I could hear the television blaring out the awful Saturday-morning cartoon shows that Bobby loved now as much as he had when he was the right age for them. There was no sign of my father, so I knew that Mom had left him sleeping and was probably trying to get some film developed before she came in to fix breakfast.

  I went out to the garage and rapped on the darkroom door.

  “Don’t come in,” Mom called from inside. “I have film exposed.”

  “Trickle’s dead,” I told her through the door.

  “What?” There was a pause, and then Mom’s voice said, “Oh, honey!” There was the sound of a locker opening and closing as the film was shut away, and then the door opened and Mom emerged with a look of shock on her face.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  �
�I’m sure.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s terrible!”

  She reached out to put her arms around me, but I pulled back, not wanting to be touched.

  “You made me tie him out in the yard,” I said. “You and Dad made me do that. He died of grief because he thought nobody loved him any more.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Mom said. “He must have been very sick. That would explain why he bit Julia. That seemed so strange—so unlike him. He was always such a friendly little dog until then.”

  “He’s out in back, still tied up,” I said.

  “Oh, dear.” Her forehead crinkled into worry lines as she tried to decide what to do. “I suppose we should cover him with something.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “I don’t want anybody handling him but me. I’m the only one who loved him. All the rest of you hated him because he bit your precious niece, your sneaky, two-faced, darling Julia!”

  I felt the tears trying to come, and I fought against them.

  “Rachel, dear,” Mom said, “I know how upset you are, but don’t say things like that. Julia has been through grief too, you know, a far worse grief than this. She’s a brave, wonderful girl—”

  “She’s hateful!” I spat out the word. “She’s a mean, hateful witch! I bet she killed Trickle herself. Maybe she put poison in his water bowl!”

  “Rachel!” Mom’s face went white.

  “She could have done it!” I cried. “She’s bewitched all of you—Pete and Bobby and you and Dad and Carolyn—and Mike. Even Mike! That’s why Trickle bit her! Dogs can judge people better than anyone—they know when somebody is evil!”

  The storm broke within me and the flood of tears came, pouring down my face, running salt into my mouth, and I turned to run up to my room and throw myself across the bed and weep it all out until I could think clearly again. Then I remembered that the room was no longer mine. I couldn’t possibly go into it with Julia there, and where else was there? I was locked out of my own house as much as Trickle had been.

  Whirling on my heel, I stumbled blindly in the other direction, out the garage door into the yard, and flung myself face down in the grass beside the body of my dog. I didn’t touch him now, for the shape that lay beside me was no more the real Trickle than a stuffed animal, and I buried my face in my arms and let the sobs come until I was too exhausted to cry any longer.