Jonah skated between them.
The huge clumpy feet he tripped over in class were graceful in long, black, men’s skates.
Jonah said firmly, “Leave it alone.”
Jonah’s mother acted as if Christina came every afternoon. They made hot chocolate in a big, friendly, messy kitchen, with Jonah’s little sister swinging her legs from the counter and Jonah’s little brother yelling because it was his turn to sort the laundry. They played Monopoly on the table, and Mrs. Bergeron hardly noticed when chocolate got spilled on a Community Chest. There were dripping winter boots and newspapers sliding off their stacks; school books tumbling into the unsorted laundry; and between Monopoly turns they all investigated the freezer for things to microwave.
It was like her own home, cluttered with love and talk.
Christina bit into a sugar cookie, and suddenly she was so homesick she wanted to weep. She could actually taste home: a taste of crunchy sweetness, of cookies still hot from the oven.
Jonah walked Christina home because it had grown dark. She felt the way she might after Thanksgiving dinner: stuffed. But with friendship, instead of turkey. Jonah’s mother had said to come back anytime.
Can I come back to live? she wanted to beg. Can I stay with you? I’ll sleep in the hall, I’ll sleep standing up — oh, please let me live here instead of at Schooner Inne! But of course she didn’t. She said, “Thank you, I will.”
And when Jonah said good-bye on the steps of the Schooner Inne, and she went inside all alone, it was truly a temperature change. The chill of loneliness lowered Christina’s resistance. All her fears lived here, and none of her allies.
In the gloomy front hall, where the slender white railings twirled up and up toward the black cupola, she remembered her slumber party and the game of murder. In the dark, she thought, there will be an accident.
After all, little girls get silly. Would it be surprising if one toppled off the balcony onto her spine? The Shevvingtons would be absolved of all blame. People would feel sorry for them and bring casseroles and potted plants.
Chapter 10
MRS. SHEVVINGTON RENTED A charming, antique maid’s costume for Anya. It was a long, black cotton dress with a starched lacy white apron and cap. “That’s sick,” cried Christina. “You should make her wear school clothes and go back to school. Not dress her like a maid!”
“She’s happy, Christina,” said Michael irritably.
“I think she looks pretty neat,” Benjamin added. This was amazing. Benj never expressed the slightest interest in girls or their looks.
Christina tried to explain her point to the Jayes. Benjamin, Michael, and Dolly Jaye frowned at Christina, an impenetrable family unit.
Mr. Shevvington said sadly, “Can’t you rejoice when poor Anya has a moment of pleasure? Must you always keep happiness for yourself?” He put an arm around the trio of Jayes and the other arm over Anya’s black shoulder.
Christina, the outsider, flushed.
Benj and Michael teased their little sister, told her to have fun, and dashed out before the guests arrived. The girls came in a clump, giggling and pushing. Including Gretchen and Vicki; Katy, who never got invited anywhere; and Dolly, who wasn’t in seventh grade at all.
The first game Mrs. Shevvington organized was Pin the Tail On The Donkey.
“Mrs. Shevvington,” protested Gretch, laughing. “Nobody’s played that since they were little. That’s a baby game.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Shevvington, “but we need to be in a certain order, and however well you do in this game is the order in which you will enter the second game.”
Christina was not surprised when Gretch won, Dolly came in second, and Vicki third. She was not surprised when Mrs. Shevvington lined up the girls in order of winning, so that fat Katy was marked the loser, last in line, while Dolly stood up front, between Gretch and Vicki.
“Everybody pair up now!” ordered Mrs. Shevvington. “Next game is in pairs!”
“I get to play with Gretchen!” cried Dolly joyfully. She beamed at Gretchen, who said to her, “I love your red hair, Dolly. And your name! It’s so sweet. You are sort of a dolly.” Gretchen and Dolly held hands and talked about dancing class.
Christina stood with Katy. We’re the losers, she thought.
She gave Mrs. Shevvington the dirtiest look she could. Mrs. Shevvington said loudly, “Why, Christina! As hostess I expect you to make sure every guest has a good time. Are you complaining about your partner?”
Poor Katy bit her lips and stumbled. Her plain face turned splotchy red and her eyes welled up with unshed tears.
Dinner was wonderful: huge platters of lasagna, soft hot rolls with sweet butter, and salad for greenery. “Nobody is actually required to eat any salad, of course,” said Mr. Shevvington, smiling down at the girls, “because this is a fun time, and we want even vegetable haters to have fun all night long.” The girls applauded Mr. Shevvington, who bowed and escorted each girl into the formal dining room. During dinner Mr. Shevvington told wonderful scary stories about the sea captain who built the house and his bride, who flung herself to a horrible death from the cupola of this very house, exactly one hundred years before. “Tonight, when it’s dark,” he whispered, “I’ll tell you what happened to the sea captain after his wife vanished in the terrible tides of Candle Cove.”
Gretch and Vicki screamed with delight. “Horror stories!” shouted Vicki. “I love them.”
“You are one,” muttered Katy.
Christina laughed for the first time that night. Katy had potential.
After supper they popped popcorn and made caramel popcorn balls. They sang crazy songs — the sort with twenty verses you learn in summer camp. Mrs. Shevvington had them play Charades of brand names. Gretch did Wrangler jeans; Vicki got Coca-Cola; Dolly got Burger King. Mrs. Shevvington explained that Christina would go last, because the guests always came ahead of the hostess. Then, when it was finally Christina’s turn and she was aching to act, Mrs. Shevvington said everybody was bored now, and they would do something else.
Mr. Shevvington looked across the popcorn at his wife. Mrs. Shevvington looked back. Their smiles seemed to fit in midair like a key and a lock. Their eyes slid around the room and landed on Dolly. Dolly was sitting between Gretch and Vicki. Vicki was feeding Dolly a popcorn ball, Vicki holding it, Dolly nibbling. Gretch talked about Dolly as if she really were a doll. “Isn’t she adorable?” giggled Gretch.
“She’s so sweet,” agreed Vicki, stroking Dolly’s braids as though she had just purchased Dolly in a department store.
Dolly preened.
“We’re going to play,” said Mr. Shevvington softly. “Murder.”
The girls all screamed joyfully.
“Now you must listen to the rules very carefully. Especially the first one. This is a big house and a scary one. You must not go into the cellar. Is that absolutely clear? Everybody repeat the promise. ‘I will not go into the cellar.’ ”
They all promised.
There is something down there, Christina thought. They don’t mind if I am trapped by the thing. They don’t mind if it comes and goes from the school and the cellar. But they mind if people like Gretch and Vicki find out.
“Next rule,” said Mrs. Shevvington. Her eyes never left Dolly. She was smiling, her little corn teeth lying between her thin lips. “You will all hide in pairs.” She was breathing heavily, excited about things to come.
Christina thought how the stairs narrowed on the third floor and the balcony tilted. “If we hide in pairs,” Christina shouted, “I want to be Dolly’s partner.”
“No way,” said Gretch, irked. “She belongs to me.”
“I’m with Gretchen,” Dolly agreed. “You stay with Katy, Christina.”
Katy hung her head. “You don’t have to stay with me, Christina,” she murmured. “You can find somebody else.”
Mrs. Shevvington looked at Christina. Every girl at the party could read that expression. Really, Christina — can’t you be
nice to that poor, ugly, little fat girl for one evening?
They’ve won a round, Christina thought. They’re making me look like the bad guy when they’re the bad guys. “They’ll never find us, Katy,” said Christina. “I know all the best spots in the house. Stick with me! We’ll get that Murderer.” She lifted her chin, staring into Mr. Shevvington’s eyes, blue tonight. But Mr. Shevvington looked youthful and innocent, as if all he had in mind was a silly game in a silly house with silly girls.
But Mrs. Shevvington’s lips curled, like an animal preparing to eat raw meat. It’s her, Christina thought. She’s the dangerous one.
Mr. Shevvington explained the complex rules of Murder. They had to keep on the move, avoid being killed, and yet find out who the killer was. They had to stay with their partners. They could not get in large groups.
Mr. Shevvington put a cassette into the stereo and flipped the switch, which played the music in every room. The slithering strings of violins trembled in the air like old ghosts.
Mrs. Shevvington turned out the lights.
The guests scattered through the house, banging their shins on furniture. The stairs creaked as they dashed up and down. Crazy giggles ricocheted like bullets.
In the dark, Christina could watch nobody. Katy held so tight to her hand Christina thought her bones might break.
Wherever it would happen, it would happen up high in the mansion. So Christina dragged Katy up the first flight of stairs and then up the second. “I don’t wanna be up here,” Katy wailed. “It’s too scary up here.”
“Sssssshhh,” Christina said.
“Let’s hide under the dining-room table, Chrissie,” Katy whispered.
“Shut up,” Christina hissed.
The house began to fill with screams as heavy hands and cold fingers unexpectedly touched a player in the dark.
Then the girls began screaming just for the fun of it. Somebody turned the eerie violins up higher.
Anya began screaming for real: the ghastly high scream Christina remembered so well. Once, screaming like that, Anya had tried to step out the third-floor window, seeing fire where there was only fog.
Anya screamed like an animal. Christina imagined Anya frozen with fear in the dark. Was Anya to be the victim, not Dolly? Had the Shevvingtons seen Anya’s improvement after all? Was playing with Dolly just intended to confuse Christina?
“Chrissie! Chrissie! Chrissie, where are you?” screamed Anya.
Once Anya’s fears had pulled her to the edge of the cliffs. Now — during the slumber party — was something pushing her instead?
“I’m coming, Anya!” She abandoned Katy, racing in the blackness down the stairs. “Stand still, Anya, so I can find you. It’s all right, it’s just a game; don’t be afraid.”
“Christina, shut up!” Gretch yelled from some other location. “You’re ruining the game. Let her scream. It’s wonderful. She has the best scream of all.”
Christina felt her way into the kitchen, to the source of the screams. “I’m here, Anya.” Christina edged forward. A white splotch appeared in the dark. Anya was only inches away. Christina reached for the lace trim on the apron.
Too late, Christina heard the giggle.
She caught desperately at the wall, at chairs, at anything — but there was nothing to hold.
The giggle turned into a groan.
The white vanished. The dark turned into a black hole.
And it was Christina who fell. Down the cellar stairs. Hitting the steps, hitting the rail, hitting the stone floor.
Down into the waiting giggle.
Chapter 11
MORNING SUN GLITTERED ON new-fallen snow.
The snow had blown into wonderful drifts, like whorls on top of a lemon meringue pie.
Christina’s knees hurt. She stumbled to school.
Jonah came running to meet her. “What happened, Christina?” he asked. “I know Mondays are pretty bad — but limping?”
Gretch and Vicki bounded up. “We had the best slumber party ever!” cried Gretch. “They live in the most wonderful house. You should just see all the treasures. Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington are so terrific to those island children. We should all be so lucky. We had the best food and the best fun. I got to sleep in a bed with its own little stepstool because the mattress was so high: me and Dolly and Vicki. It was perfect.”
“I was asking about Christina’s limp,” Jonah said, turning his back on Gretch.
Gretch and Vicki threw back their heads and howled with laughter. “When we played Murder, Mr. Shevvington said the only rule was, ‘Don’t go near the cellar.’ So who goes into the cellar? Christina!”
Jonah knew Christina’s cellar stories. He knew she would never have gone into the cellar again in her life. Jonah put a brotherly arm around her and said, “Chrissie, are you all right?”
It was comfort, not romance, but Vicki and Gretch were furious with jealousy. “She just skinned her knees,” said Vicki, brushing it off. “Anyhow it was her own fault. She opened the bolt on the cellar door herself.”
“I did not!” cried Christina. “The door was wide open when I got there! I was trying to save Anya.”
“Save Anya?” they repeated. Vicki and Gretch fell on each other, laughing. “Christina, it was a game. Nobody needed saving. We were all having a good time screaming. Anya’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top anyhow, you know. Her mind melted last year. Only the world’s best shrink could save her now.”
Christina was trembling. “Somebody opened the cellar door on purpose, Jonah.”
“Oh, right,” Vicki said. “You’re always trying to blame somebody, Christina Romney. You tell people you have this terrible life, but it’s all lies. The Shevvingtons are fabulous. And no matter how rotten you are to your guests, like poor Katy, and no matter how demanding you are and how you try to force Dolly into stuff — the Shevvingtons forgive you and try to help you. Now you’re even trying to blame somebody else because you went and opened the cellar door, which you’re not allowed to do.” They flounced away.
Jonah asked, “Did you fall, Chrissie? Or were you pushed?”
He believes me, Christina thought.
At the party not even Anya had believed her!
She had felt the thing’s fingers on her skin. They were cold, and they stank of the sea. It was like being stroked by a fish.
But the crash of her body on the stairs had saved her. The noise brought Katy, Jennie, Amanda, and Linda running. The slimy fingers retreated to the shadows in the back of the cellar. Christina lay in a crumpled pile at the bottom of the rickety stairs.
Every guest at the party gathered in the door to tell her what an idiot she was, falling down the steps in her own house.
“Jonah,” Christina whispered now. “It was there. It’s real. It lives. It touched me.” Everything granite in Christina disintegrated. She put her arms around Jonah, hung her troubles around his neck, and wept.
But they were too young, and it was too soon. Jonah was appalled. His friends would see; it was too intimate; they were in public; what was she doing? He forgot the cellar and the giggle and the Shevvingtons and pulled back, trying to disassociate himself from all that affection and need. “I — um — I’ll see you in — uh — class,” he said desperately. “And — I’m busy this afternoon — I — I hope your knees are okay.” And he fled.
Christina snapped an icicle off the row that lined the school and threw it like a tiny javelin into a drift of snow. When she turned around, Jonah, Vicki, and Gretchen had disappeared. Christina stood alone.
It was seventeen below. The cold chewed her fingers. By the time the last warning bell rang and she forced herself into the building, her fingers were stiff and blue.
In homeroom they had to fill out forms for statewide testing, which would take place later in the month. When she tried to write, the letters came out looking like Egyptian hieroglyphics. My mind feels like that, thought Christina. Meaningless curves and twitches.
The day
passed in a similar fashion, twitching and curving.
Who was the next victim of the Shevvingtons? Did they want Dolly or Anya or Christina? Who was the thing? What did he want?
“The essay,” said Mrs. Shevvington in English class, “is to write a contemporary parallel of a fairy tale. I will assign the fairy tale. Jonah, for example, will have The Little Red Hen. In this story, of course, no farm animal will help the little red hen raise the wheat or grind the flour, but when the loaves are baked, they all want to eat it. The moral, of course, is that if you want to enjoy the results you must put in the work first.”
Mrs. Shevvington circled the room. She stopped at Katy’s desk and smiled at Katy. Christina knew that smile. She tried to think how to stand between fat, ugly Katy and that smile, but no solution came to her. “I’m hoping to make each story match the student,” Mrs. Shevvington said to the class. “That way it will be more fun.”
Fun for whom? wondered Christina.
Katy must have had the same thought. She gathered herself, ready for the blows.
“You, Katy,” said Mrs. Shevvington, the smile growing like a blister on her skin, “will do the story of the ugly duckling.”
Katy went so white the pimples stood out on her face like a rash.
Gretchen and Vicki giggled.
Mrs. Shevvington turned to Christina.
Die, you hateful woman, Christina thought, willing Mrs. Shevvington to have a heart attack.
Mrs. Shevvington simply smiled wider. “Christina, you will update the story of the boy who cried wolf.” Her little teeth lay between her thin lips like pellets from an air gun. “Of course in the new version, it will be the girl who cried wolf.”
The class had expected something that would make Christina cry. This was nothing. They were disappointed.