“He’s just a bully,” Peter said, although not that confidently. “If you stand up to bullies, they leave you alone.”
“Riiiight. And if you leave killer hobos alone, they don’t ever attack you in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping and eat your brains. Never happens.”
Peter stopped Dill by putting a hand on his chest. “You keep talking about that over and over. What are we going to do about it?”
Dill shook his head. “We’ll worry about it at 3 o’clock. Until then, you just do what I say and worry about getting home in one piece. If Tad Turnerpike gets ahold of you, you’ll wish the killer hobos ate your brains first.”
19
Dill was right. It was a tough day.
It started with his teacher, Mrs. Cashew. She was the overweight lady, the one who looked like a pumpkin in a calico dress. At the start of the class, she called roll. Peter wasn’t on there.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Peter Normal.”
“Well, you’re not on my attendance sheet.”
“Maybe you don’t have to go to school,” Dill pointed out hopefully.
“Mr. Bodinski, do NOT get on my bad side on the very first day,” Mrs. Cashew snapped. “You, Mr. Normal, go to the office and see Principal Wooddale. He’ll get this sorted out.”
On the way to the office, one of the kids from Tad Turnerpike’s gang slammed Peter into a locker and kept on walking without even a look back. Peter thought about running after him and decided against it.
Once in the office, Peter asked to see Principal Wooddale. A secretary ushered him in to see a tall African-American man behind a desk. The man stared at him as though he was trying to see Peter’s insides with x-ray vision.
“What did he do?” he asked the secretary.
“He’s a new student we don’t have on the records,” the secretary explained.
The principal immediately become friendlier. “Ah. Sit down, Mr. Normal, we have some paperwork to fill out.”
Things went okay until Peter gave his address.
Principal Wooddale looked up sharply. “Is Seamus Flannagan your grandfather?” he asked suspiciously.
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know his name.”
“And why not?” the principal barked.
Peter was shocked. “I just call him ‘Grandfather.’ That’s all I know, honest.”
“I’ll be watching you, Mr. Normal,” the principal warned. He didn’t get any nicer after that.
Peter got three forms to take home to have his mother sign. On the way back to Mrs. Cashew’s class, another one of Tad Turnerpike’s buddies slammed him into a locker and kept on walking.
“Hey!” Peter yelled.
The kid turned around, a menacing look on his face.
Peter whipped around and hustled back to his class.
“A kid slammed me into a locker,” Peter told Mrs. Cashew.
Behind his tiny desk, Dill started waving his arms and shaking his head no no no no no.
“Well, why did he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, who was he?”
“I don’t know, but he was hanging out with Tad Turnerpike this morning.”
Dill banged his head on his desk.
“What did you do to provoke him, Mr. Normal?”
“Me?! I didn’t do anything!”
“Why didn’t you get a teacher when it happened?”
“I just did! That’s what I’m doing now!”
“Don’t be smart with me, Mr. Normal. Go sit down.”
“But – ”
“SIT DOWN. And Mr. Bodinski, stop banging your head on your desk!”
“Why, why, why, why…” Dill murmured under his breath as Peter returned to his seat.
At lunch, the pizza was soggy and had almost no cheese, the milk was lukewarm and smelled funny, and all the ice cream bars were sold out. As they were eating, Mercy came up and continued to talk about her penny collection. Dill and Peter moved, and Mercy followed them as though absolutely nothing was wrong. She got up to 1971 before the bell rang.
On the way back to class, Peter felt a hand on his shoulder. Before he could turn around, members of Tad’s gang pulled him behind a brick wall where prickly bushes surrounded the air conditioning units. Dill joined them seconds later, pushed by Tad Turnerpike himself.
“So, jerkface, I hear you’re ratting me out to the teachers,” Tad snarled.
“N-no,” Peter stuttered. He looked around wildly. There weren’t any adults anywhere to be seen. He thought about yelling for help, but that could just make it worse.
Tad picked Peter up under the armpits, lifted him easily off the ground, and stared up into his face. “Don’t you EVER do that again, or I’ll make you wish you were never born.”
Peter nodded quickly. “Okay.”
Tad nodded back, silently.
Maybe that’s it…maybe he’ll let me go…
And then Peter was flying.
Well…maybe ‘falling into the prickly bushes’ was a better way to put it.
Hundreds of holly leaves stabbed his arms and back and face. The sound of boys laughing rang in his ears, then got farther and farther away as Tad and his cohorts ran off. Peter pulled himself out onto the cement. Dill emerged from the holly bushes a second later, scratched and red and even a little bloody in a couple of places on his arms.
“This is not a good way to start the school year, man,” Dill sighed.
Mrs. Cashew took one look at them when they walked in and exclaimed, “What happened to you two?”
“We – ” Peter began.
Dill kicked the back of his shoe.
“…uh, we fell down,” Peter finished.
Mrs. Cashew got very angry. “Fighting in school! I won’t have it! Go see Principal Wooddale, right now!”
The rest was a blur: Principal Wooddale, angry again. On their way back to class, one of Tad Turnerpike’s gang tripped Peter. Back in class, Peter was totally lost. Mrs. Cashew had started a fractions lesson ten minutes ago, and he didn’t understand the first bit of it. His stomach grumbled loudly from not eating the soggy pizza. He was bored, tired, and starving. Mrs. Cashew gave them two hours of homework assignments. Finally the bell rang. On the way to the bus, he and Dill got pushed into the lockers again by another one of Tad’s gang. On the bus, Mercy talked her way up to her three hundred and fifty-eight 1989 pennies.
At 3:22, Dill and Peter stumbled off the bus and collapsed in the grass by the sidewalk.
“See what I mean?” Dill asked.
“Bring on the hobos,” Peter said. “I don’t care if they kill me.”
Dill smiled blissfully. “At least we’ll never have to go to school again.”
20
Peter opened the kitchen door of his house and poked his head inside. The place was silent and empty.
“Hello?” he called. “I’m hooooome.”
Dill stood behind him and held onto Peter’s shirt. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” he fretted.
“Nobody’s here,” Peter reassured him, when he spied a note on the refrigerator. Grandfather’s whole house was totally devoid of things people usually had – no TV, no photographs on the walls, and nothing on the ancient Frigidaire, so a piece of paper stood out like a neon light in a pitch black room.
It was a note from Peter’s mom. She had had to tape it on there – Grandfather didn’t even have any magnets on the fridge door.
Peter,
The car started stalling and backfiring this afternoon, so I went into town with Beth to get it fixed. We’ll be back this evening. I’ll stop by the grocery store and get some real food – until then, eat some canned stuff. Grandfather went out to run errands, so don’t get into trouble.
Love, Mom
“Huh,” Peter said. He looked in the pantry and found nothing but can after can of peas, beets, asparagus, and Brussels sprouts. The fridge was no better – some eggs, old hard cheese, and wit
hered lettuce.
He caught Dill tiptoeing through the kitchen and craning his neck around the doorway.
“He’s not here. The note say he’s out running errands.”
Dill perked up considerably. “Really?”
“Yeah, but there’s no food. You wanna go back to your house and get a snack?”
“As long as we’re here…and your grandfather’s NOT…how’s about a tour?” Dill grinned.
21
“Holy cow,” Dill gasped.
They were standing on the third floor, looking down at the open foyer.
“This is CRAZY, man. You live in a freakin’ mansion.”
“I do NOT.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. So where’s your room?”
Peter showed him. Dill peered out the window. “Looks different from the outside,” Dill mused.
“Huh?”
“When I climbed up here the other night.”
“Oh, yeah.” Peter realized he had tried to block out as much of that night as possible.
Dill climbed up on the ledge and sat on the pillows. “This where you chickened out and hid like a little girl?”
“Very funny.”
“So where were the hobos?”
Peter pointed to the end of the fence, which stretched far beyond the garden and hundreds of feet from the house.
“Huh,” Dill said. “And they were pointing at you?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s pretty far away…are you sure they were pointing at you? It was the middle of the night, right? How could you see?”
“I think they were pointing at me,” Peter said, suddenly not so sure anymore. Had he just imagined it?
Dill swung his legs off the ledge, obviously bored now. “So, what else is there to see?”
“My mom’s room, and my sister’s, I guess.”
“Uh huh…what else?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You haven’t been exploring yet?” Dill asked incredulously.
“No! Remember, ‘on pain of death’?”
“That was that door under the stairs, right?”
“Yeah.”
Dill’s eyes got bigger. “Let’s go try it.”
“No!”
Dill puffed up his cheeks and pffffd out the air. “Well, let’s go looking around.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Dill walked out of the bedroom and into the hall. “I do. This might be the last time I ever get in this place again. Where’s the attic? I bet he’s got a lot of crazy stuff in the attic.”
“No – what are you doing? Stop that!”
Dill was opening doors willy-nilly. A coat closet, another bedroom.
“Come on, man, where’s your spirit of adventure?”
“Where did you get yours? You don’t seem to have it when my grandfather’s around!” Peter snapped.
Dill opened another door and paused. “Hey, what’s this?”
Peter looked over Dill’s shoulder and through the door. There was a corridor inside with a ceiling at least fifteen feet high. Everything was lit by a small skylight above, so they could clearly see the boxes of junk stacked along the walls. There was a big coil of rope, several chairs without seat bottoms, a dressmaker’s dummy without head or arms (which freaked Peter out – he hated mannequins), a stuffed owl, and several large paintings leaning against the wall.
At the end of the corridor was a circular iron staircase that twirled around and around up into darkness.
“This can’t be the attic,” Dill thought aloud. “It’s too small.”
“Come on, Dill, let’s get out of here. Hey – what are you doing?”
Dill had already started forward into the corridor. “Come on.”
“Cut that out!”
“Come onnnnnnn, quit being such a worrywart, let’s see where it goes.”
Before Peter could stop him, Dill was already climbing the spiral staircase.
“Arrrrrgh,” Peter groaned, then followed behind him.
The staircase was cramped. Peter’s shoulders barely fit between the iron railing and the single metal pole that shot straight up to the ceiling. The thing was rickety, too. It creaked and groaned under their weight, and shook with every step.
“Dill, come on, let’s go,” Peter pleaded.
“It’s some kinda trap door,” Dill called from above. “It’s…”
There was a clatter overhead, and sunlight spilled down on Peter’s face.
“Coooooool,” Dill announced.
Peter blinked against the light, then continued his climb. At the top of the steps, a three-foot square hatch framed both Dill’s scrawny legs and the blue sky beyond.
Peter pulled himself up through the trap door and stood next to Dill on the top of the house. The very top. They were on the wooden platform with the white railing, the one Peter had seen from Mom’s Honda as they had approached the house that very first day in Duskerville. Around them, the roof sloped down at dangerous angles. To the left and the right of the platform, two belltower-looking things with tiny windows in them pointed to the sky.
Down below, the rose bushes looked like bonsai trees. Peter could see the entire field of corn, not just the front half of the garden that was visible from his room. Beyond the giant meadow of overgrown grass, the ocean was a thick line of gray on the horizon. Peter could even pick out the lone, crooked tree jutting off the edge of the cliff. There was Dill’s home, a rundown dollhouse…and the forest, which stretched on forever…and the road in the woods that led to school. It was like flying in an airplane, they were so high up.
“This is freakin’ awesome,” Dill whooped. “So, you still say you don’t live in a mansion?”
“I don’t live in a mansion.”
Dill narrowed his eyes like Come on.
Peter grinned. “I live in a castle.”
Dill jerked his thumb. “I bet that’s your room over there.”
Peter looked down. There was a dangerous, twenty-foot slope of roof from here to where Dill pointed. Though he couldn’t see the window, there was the tree they had climbed two nights ago. They were so high, Peter could see all its branches from the top. And beyond it he could see the end of the fence, the place where the thirteen hobos had pointed up at his room before disappearing into the woods.
Peter shivered at the memory. But then he saw something that absolutely terrified him: Grandfather’s battered truck chugging up the tree-lined road towards the house. From this height, it looked like a matchbox car driving through potted plants.
“Oh crap,” Peter whispered, although there was no need to be quiet since the truck was still so far away. But it was getting closer. Fast.
“What?” Dill asked, alarmed.
Peter pointed to the roadway.
“OH CRAP,” Dill yelped. “Get down, get down!”
He pushed Peter down to the floor of the outlook.
“You think he saw us?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know, and I don’t wanna find out. Let’s go!”
They hustled back down the spiral staircase after closing the trapdoor, then raced through the piles of junk. Peter stuck his head out into the main hallway.
No sounds from the foyer.
“Come on!” he hissed at Dill, and they stepped out of the room and shut the door.
From the first floor came the click click of a key in the lock.
“Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap,” Dill whined.
“Follow me!”
They dashed into Peter’s room and he flung open the window.
“Outside, quick!”
Out in the hall Grandfather’s voice boomed, “PETER!”
“Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap,” Dill babbled.
They scooted out of the window, found their footing on the roof, and grabbed the tree branches. Dill began climbing down immediately. Peter took a second to look up, and noticed how awfully steep the roof looked from this angle…
&n
bsp; “Come on!” Dill called from below, and Peter started his descent down the tree.
As soon as they reached the ground, they began running. First for the crumbling wooden fence, and then Dill’s house.
22
They crouched on their knees, drank from juice boxes, and waited around the corner of Dill’s house for any sign of Grandfather. He never appeared.
“Think it’s safe yet?” Dill asked.
“I don’t need to go home anytime soon,” Peter said.
“Huh…wanna watch TV?”
Images of Woody kicking Dill, the smell of wet dog, and screams for Charlene to get off the phone filled Peter’s mind.
Ugh.
Peter looked at the fence separating Grandfather’s property from Dill’s. “Let’s go check out where the hobos went into the woods.”
“Why?”
“If we’re already in trouble, we might as well just go ahead and get it all over with. There’s only so much trouble you can get in.”
Dill shook his head. “Totally not true. No matter how much trouble I get in, I always get in more.”
“We gotta check it out sooner or later.”
“Why?”
“Aren’t you scared about those things eating your brains anymore?”
“Oh yeah.” Dill considered the situation. “Well, why go out there and give them the chance? ‘Hey, hobo dude, here’s my brains, come and get ‘em.’”
“It’s the daytime. I think we’ll be okay. I’ve only seen them at night.”
Dill rolled his eyes.
“What?” Peter asked.
“How long are you gonna keep this up?”
Peter was bewildered. “What are you talking about?”
Dill did a scaredy little dance, waving his arms in the air. “‘Oh, I saw hobos. Oh, I saw thirteen of them.’ It was a great story, man, but I’ve had enough for one day.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You mean you’re totally serious?”
“YES!”
“Oh,” Dill said, and looked at Peter funny.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just wondering if crazy runs in your family, that’s all.”
Peter blew up. “What was that whole thing about being afraid this morning at the bus stop? ‘They’re gonna eat my brains, man!’ What was that?!”
Dill shrugged. “It was fun. I was playing along.”
“You didn’t believe me?”