The New Girl

by R. L. Stine

  The coast was clear. And would probably stay clear.

  He slipped into the inner office and pulled the door nearly shut. His hand went for the light switch, but then he realized it might be a bad idea. Miss Markins was sure to notice it.

  He crept over to the principal’s desk in the center of the small office. Framed photographs of Mr. Sewall’s two sons seemed to stare at him disapprovingly. Cory walked silently around the desk to get to the object of his search.

  Against the back wall were the gray filing cabinets. They contained the permanent records of every student at Shadyside.

  These were the sacred permanent records, the secret files that could make you a success in the world—or destroy your life forever.

  At least, that’s what most Shadyside High students were led to believe.

  “I’m sorry—but this will have to go on your permanent record.” If a teacher or Mr. Sewall ever said that to you, you knew you were doomed forever. Whatever it was, whatever crime you had committed, whatever error you had made would follow you for the rest of your life. There it would be, in your permanent record.

  Cory ran his hand over the first row of file drawers, quickly scanning the little identification cards on the front. Just being in the same room with the permanent records made him nervous. The fact that he had no business in there and that he’d have to do some fast explaining if he was caught made him so nervous, he could barely read the ID cards.

  He stopped his search for a second, held his breath, and listened. Miss Markins was still typing away. Whew. He allowed himself to breathe once again.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this. What am I doing in here?” he asked himself, stooping low and pulling out a long file drawer on the bottom row.

  He knew the answer to that question. He was going to take a look at Anna Corwin’s permanent record. He was going to find out the truth about her. He was going to find out everything he could about her.

  His fingers sifted quickly through the files. He knew this wasn’t right. He knew it was crazy behavior. He knew he never did things like this. At least, before Anna he never did things like this.

  Footsteps.

  He took a deep breath.

  He listened for her typing, but it had stopped.

  He dived under Mr. Sewall’s desk just as she entered the room.

  “Safe!” he told himself. Or was he? Had she heard him in there?

  He almost cried out. He had left the file drawer open. If she saw it, she’d know he’d been in there.

  She stood behind the desk. Her legs were three inches from his face. For a second he imagined reaching out and grabbing her knees just to see how loud she’d scream. Just for a laugh.

  A last laugh before they took him away. Suspended him forever. Put it all on his permanent record.

  He held his breath. It seemed as if he’d been holding it ever since he sneaked into this office. She was leaning over the desk, writing something. Leaving a note for Mr. Sewall, most likely.

  I can’t believe I’m sitting here under Mr. Sewall’s desk, he told himself silently. But Anna’s face flashed into his mind again. And he heard the words of the strange young man at the doorway of her house. And he remembered why he was there.

  Miss Markins finished her note and walked out of the office without noticing the open file drawer. As soon as he heard her resume her typing, Cory darted out from under the desk and returned to the file drawer, moving his hands quickly through the C’s.

  What would Anna’s file tell him? What truths would it reveal about this beautiful girl who had so completely taken over his thoughts?

  Corn… Cornerman… His hands moved quickly, pushing the files back. At last! Cornwall… Corwood… Corwyth…

  Wait a minute.

  He went back through the last five or six. Then he moved forward nine or ten more.

  He hadn’t missed any. And none of them were filed out of order. The files went from Cornwall to Corwood.

  There was no file for anyone named Anna Corwin!

  CHAPTER 8

  “Timberrr! Look at that guy go down!” Annie’s voice boomed over the cheers of the crowd.

  “He’s too tall!” David cried. “He’s seven feet tall, and he’s just a freshman!”

  “He’s still growing!” Arnie added.

  They looked over at Cory, who was staring straight across the gymnasium.

  “Hey, Brooks—Earth calling Brooks!” David shouted right in his ear. But Cory didn’t respond.

  The Shadyside cheerleaders did a quick routine during the time-out. Then the basketball game resumed. It wasn’t much of a game. Westerville, with its seven-foot freshman center, was running the Shadyside Cougars off the floor.

  “They have only one play—toss it to the big guy,” David observed.

  “I’d like to toss it to that cheerleader on the end!”

  Arnie shouted, loud enough for half the auditorium to hear.

  David and Arnie both waited for Cory to add his opinion. But he didn’t say anything. He looked at them as if seeing them for the first time. “Good game, huh?” he said, forcing a smile.

  “What game are you watching?” Arnie snapped. “We’re losing by twenty points.”

  The weak, forced smile faded from Cory’s face. He turned and started surveying the auditorium again.

  “You’re a lot of laughs these days, Brooks,” Arnie said, reaching across David to punch Cory as hard as he could on the shoulder. “Aw, I’m goin’ down to get a Coke.” He pushed his way down the aisle and disappeared around the side of the bleachers.

  “You feeling okay?” David asked. He had to ask it twice before Cory heard him.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  “Well, how come you missed practice this afternoon?”

  “I don’t know. Just forgot, I guess.”

  “Welner was furious. That’s the second practice you missed this week, Cory. And the Friday practice is the most important—especially since we have a meet tomorrow.”

  “I know,” Cory said, sounding annoyed. “Give me some slack, David. You’re not my mother.”

  “Hey—” David looked really hurt. “I’m your teammate, aren’t I? I’m your friend, aren’t I?”

  “So?”

  “So—you tell me. What’s your problem, Brooks?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just—”

  The crowd roared. All around them people jumped to their feet. Something had obviously gone Shadyside’s way. But David and Cory had missed it. The cheerleaders came back on the floor. The bleachers were shaking under the deafening noise. Cory looked to the scoreboard. The Cougars were only behind by fifteen now. That must explain the excitement.

  “It’s that blond girl, isn’t it?” David said when it became quiet enough to talk.

  “I guess.” Cory shrugged. He didn’t really want to get into any big discussion with David. He felt bad. He really had forgotten about gymnastics practice. How was that possible? Was he really losing his mind over this girl?

  “You going out with her?” David asked.

  “I haven’t seen her,” Cory said, looking across the basketball floor.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I haven’t seen her all week. I looked for her every day, but she hasn’t been in school.”

  “And that’s why you’re acting like a zombie?”

  “Get off my case, Metcalf,” Cory scowled.

  “You’re screwing up your gymnastics rating because of a girl you don’t know that you haven’t seen? Well, that makes sense to me.”

  Cory didn’t say anything. Then he suddenly blurted out, “I don’t even know if she exists!”

  He regretted saying it immediately. It didn’t make any sense, and he knew it. And now he had given David even more of an opportunity to put him down and give him a hard time.

  But to Cory’s surprise, David reacted with real concern. “What do you mean, Brooks? You told me you saw her—more than once. You told me you talked to her. You told me she’
s in Lisa’s physics class. You told me all this stuff about her because that’s all you talk about these days. So what do you mean, she doesn’t exist?”

  “I work after school in the office on Mondays. You know. So Monday afternoon I went into the permanent files and looked her up. There was no file for her!”

  David looked shocked, but not for the reason Cory imagined. “You—you can get into the files?” he cried. “Great! What does mine say about me?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I’ll give you ten bucks to look at my file. Better than that, I’ll pay you back the ten bucks I owe you!”

  “No deal,” Cory said disgustedly. “You don’t understand. I went to her house last week, and this guy said—”

  The crowd groaned. Loud boos echoed off the tile walls. Cory’s eye caught the scoreboard. Shadyside was losing by twenty-two.

  Arnie pushed his way back into the row and plopped down beside David. “That guy’s too tall,” he said. He had spilled Coke down the front of his sweatshirt. “They’ve gotta raise the baskets!”

  “Or lower the floor!” David said, and they both began to howl.

  Cory stood up. “Guess I’m going,” he told them. “This is a drag.”

  “You’re a drag,” Arnie said, grinning.

  “She’s a transfer student, isn’t she?” David said, pulling Cory back down to the bench.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, maybe her file hasn’t been sent over from her other school yet.”

  David was smart. Maybe he was right. But Cory didn’t really believe it. It was November already. How long did it take to transfer files?

  “Is he talking about that weird blond girl again?” Arnie boomed, leaning over David to shout right in Cory’s face. “What have you been doin’ to her?” he leered. “Must be pretty good or you wouldn’t be missing practice so much.” Arnie laughed as if he had just said the funniest thing ever spoken.

  Cory just shook his head wearily. He realized he must seem pretty weird to his two friends. He seemed pretty weird to himself.

  He’d never been haunted by someone this way before. He’d never had anything that he couldn’t shut out of his mind, that he couldn’t force himself to stop thinking about. He had always been in control of his thoughts. And now… now…

  Was he out of control?

  “See you guys later,” he said, and quickly headed the other way down the row so they couldn’t pull him back. The crowd groaned, then groaned again. The small contingent of Westerville fans across the floor was cheering wildly.

  It looked like a bad night for the Cougars. A bad night for everyone, Cory thought. He had searched the bleachers row by row for Anna. But she wasn’t there.

  He climbed into his car, shivering against the chill. After three tries he got it started. He drove around aimlessly for a while, heading down Park Drive, then across Hawthorne to Mill Road. The streets were empty. Most houses were already dark. He turned on the radio, but no one was playing any music he liked, so he clicked it off.

  He realized he was very tired. He hadn’t slept well all week. He spun the car around and headed for home.

  He was asleep when the ringing phone woke him. He squinted at his alarm clock. It was one thirty in the morning.

  His hand knocked the receiver off the phone. He fumbled around until he grabbed it up. “Hello?”

  “Stay away from Anna.”

  “What?” The voice on the other end was a hoarse whisper, so quiet he could barely make out the words.

  “Stay away from Anna,” the strange voice whispered slowly and distinctly, each word filled with menace. “She’s dead. She’s a dead girl. Stay away from her—or you’ll be next!”

  CHAPTER 9

  Cory suddenly felt very cold. He climbed out of bed and walked in darkness over to his bedroom window. He checked to make sure the window was closed. Then he reached down and felt the radiator. Heat was coming up full blast. He stood there for a long while trying to get rid of the chill, staring out at the silent stillness of his backyard lit only by a pale half moon.

  The voice on the phone still whispered in his ears. Cory reached up and pulled his black curls hard, trying to make the harsh whispers disappear, trying to make the threatening words stop repeating in his mind. It didn’t work.

  Realizing his chill came from the inside, Cory stepped away from the radiator and, tripping over a pair of sneakers he had left in the center of the room, made his way back to bed.

  Someone had threatened his life. Someone knew where he lived. Someone knew how to reach him.

  Someone knew him and knew he was interested in Anna.

  Someone wanted to make sure he stayed away from Anna. But who?

  Was it one of his friends playing a joke?

  No. This was no joke. This was for real. The whispers were filled with true menace, true hatred. The threat was sincere.

  Stay away from Anna—or you’ll be dead too.

  Who was it? The strange, puffy-cheeked young man who answered the Corwins’ door? Maybe. It was hard to tell from whispers, hard to tell if it was a man or a woman.

  Cory closed his eyes tight and tried to drive the whispers from his mind. He felt a little warmer now, but he was still far from sleep. He turned onto his side, then slid over onto his other side, then tried sleeping on his stomach.

  For some reason he found himself thinking about the strange neighbor who had stopped him that night on Fear Street. He had been thinking about that man all week, picturing his worn gray slicker, his stubbled face, the menacing way he had stared at Cory. He said he was a neighbor, but why was he directly outside the Corwins’ house so late at night? He had claimed to be walking his dog. But Cory had seen no dog. And why had the man warned Cory to stay away from the Corwins? Was he warning Cory—or threatening him?

  Cory forced the man’s face out of his mind. He decided to think about Anna instead—those clear blue eyes as bright as a doll’s, the dramatically red lips on that pale ivory skin. He remembered the dream where she was kissing him again and again.

  The phone rang.

  He was still wide awake, but it startled him, making him jump straight out of bed. He picked up the receiver at the beginning of the second ring. “Hello?” The word came out choked and dry.

  “Cory—is that you?” A tiny voice, very faint.

  “Yes.” His heart was pounding so hard, he could barely get the word out.

  “Can you help me, Cory?”

  He had spoken to her only once, but he recognized her soft, almost childlike voice.

  “It’s me. Anna. Anna Corwin.”

  “I know,” he said. Then he felt terribly foolish. How would he know that she would be the one calling him in the middle of the night—unless he had been thinking of nothing but her for weeks?

  “I need you to help me,” she said, speaking rapidly, her voice just above a whisper. “I don’t know anyone else. You’re the only one I’ve talked to. Can you help me?”

  She sounded so frightened, so desperately frightened. “Well…” Why was he hesitating? Was it because of the first whispered call telling him to stay away from her?

  “Please—come quickly,” she pleaded. “Meet me on the corner of Fear Street, just past my house.”

  She sounded frightened. But her tiny, breathy voice also made her sound very sexy. The chill Cory felt now wasn’t entirely fear. It was mixed with excitement. He looked across the room at his alarm clock. It was one thirty-seven. Was he really seriously considering sneaking out and meeting this strange, frightened girl on Fear Street in the middle of the night?

  “Please, Cory,” she whispered, now more enticing than frightened. “I need you.”

  “Okay,” he said, not recognizing his own voice, not sure it was him saying the word.

  “Hurry,” she whispered, and the line clicked off.

  He listened to the silent phone for a few seconds, trying to figure out if he was awake or dreaming this. Had Anna Corwin really just called and begg
ed him to meet her? He had been thinking about her, searching for her all week. Was it possible that she had been thinking about him at the same time?

  The idea was more than a little exciting. But why had she sounded so frightened, so frantic for him to come at once? And why did she want him to meet her out on the street?

  The street.

  Fear Street.

  Cory had started to pull on his jeans, but he stopped as he remembered where Anna lived, where she wanted to meet.

  “I’m sixteen years old,” he told himself. “I’m not a child. There’s no reason for me to be afraid of a silly street.” But he had to admit that the idea of waiting alone for someone on Fear Street in the middle of the night was pretty frightening.

  He suddenly remembered another Fear Street story in the newspaper, this one from the previous spring. Two cars going in opposite directions on Fear Street late at night had collided head-on. A Fear Street resident heard the crash, ran out in his pajamas, saw that both cars were filled with badly injured people. Some of them were unconscious. Some were pinned inside the crushed cars.

  He ran back to his house and called the police. The police arrived less than ten minutes later. They found the cars crushed together in the middle of the street. But both cars were empty. There was dark blood on the seats and blood on the street. But all the passengers had disappeared without a trace.

  No sign of them was ever found. Six people, six injured people, who had been trapped inside two cars, vanished in less than ten minutes.…

  Cory finished getting dressed. He knew he had no choice. He had to go. He had to go to her. She needed him.

  Sneaking down the steps to the front hallway, he tripped in the darkness and nearly fell. He grabbed the banister and steadied himself, hoping his parents hadn’t heard. Taking a deep breath, he continued down the stairs. He groped around until he found the car keys on the counter in the entranceway. Then he silently let himself out of the house.