Hunter Moran Hangs Out (3 page)

At that moment, all the lights in our house go on. Shades snap up. Doors slam. Mom and Linny barrel down the steps and tramp over the new lawn. There isn't one spot left that's . . .

. . . . pristine, as Sister Appolonia would say.

They stop in front of the gravestone and lean over Pop.

Zack and I race across the street toward them.

“I knew it.” Linny shakes her head so hard her hair flies. She points directly at us. “This is your work.”

By this time, Pop is sitting up, leaning on the gravestone, yelling that both arms and one of his legs are broken.

I have a quick picture in my mind. Zack and I will have to wheel Pop around in Mary's stroller for the rest of his life.

“Can you walk, John?” Mom asks calmly.

“Of course I can walk.” He sits up against the gravestone.

“Whew,” I whisper.

Pop waves one of his broken arms around. “The lawn is ruined. And how did this rock get here in the middle, anyway?”

“It's a gravestone,” I begin, but suddenly I have major doubts that our coyote story is going to work. Besides, Linny opens her mouth, ready to give us right up.

Now Steadman is at the door. “Something's buried there,” he says around a caramel pop. “One of those huge tannish”—he snaps his sticky fingers and squints up at the light over the front door—“with horrible teeth.”

How did he come up with that?

Spying on us, of course.

Pop hobbles into the house, holding on to Mom and Linny. “I'll get to the bottom of all this in the morning,” he says.

“Wicked bad news,” Zack whispers to me.

But then . . .

. . . over my shoulder . . .

I look across the street at that gloomy empty house.

Wait! Is there a light flickering inside?

Wait again! Down at the end of its weedy driveway where the woods begin, I see a shadow again.

A huge . . .

Someone?

Something?

And it's definitely not Sarah Yulefski.

Zack turns to see what I'm looking at. “It's worse than a coyote,” he says.

There it is, a terrifying clue.

The kidnapper is hanging out in the empty house . . .

. . . spying on us.

On Steadman.

We dart into the house behind the rest of the family, almost knocking Linny over as we head for our bedroom and lock the door behind us.

It's morning. A red-hot sun beams through the window. Outside, something is banging.

Is William bouncing his basketball against the house?
Boom-ba. Boom-ba
. No. It's
swish-a, swish-a
. He's painting something.

I stretch, wondering why I feel uneasy. Maybe it's because I had a nightmare; it was something to do with books.

Something I'm supposed to remember?

But what?

Everything that happened last night comes back to me: kidnappers and gravestones. In one move, I'm out of bed. At that moment, footsteps pound down the hall, straight for our bedroom.

Pop's footsteps, heavy as an elephant's.

Zack pulls the pillow over his head. “It's time for the gravestone inquisition.”

But Pop keeps going down the stairs. The whole house vibrates. “This is it!” he yells.

Zack leans up on one elbow. “Pop's leaving home, and it's all because of us.”

Mom's footsteps come next, a little slower, a lot lighter. She opens our door and smiles at us. “We're on our way to have the baby. Nana will be here to take care of things in an hour or so.”

Nana. Terrific.

Mom frowns a little. “Pay attention to Linny in the meantime.”

“Have a boy,” we call after her, crossing fingers and toes.

“Think of names,” she calls back.

We don't have to think. We've figured it out already. K.G. for Killer Godzilla. We'll tell Mom it's for Kevin George, or something regular like that.

The banging goes on. It sounds as if it's coming through the window. The day has a whole new look, though. Nana will cook for hours, humming, patting our shoulders as we go by. She hardly remembers who's who. We can search for the kidnapper in peace.

Except for Linny. She bangs on our door with both fists. “Let's get this house cleaned up before Nana gets here,” she says. “The whole place is a mess because of you guys.”

She's got to be kidding. Nana loves to clean.

I pull a T-shirt out from under the bed.
DON'T WORRY
is splashed across the front in huge red letters. I'm worried. We have two days to solve this kidnapping.

Zack and I go down the hall. We pass William's room. Mom says he has a head on his shoulders. Too bad there's nothing in it. A huge Gussie's Gym bag is on the floor, probably stuck to the new paint. He said he paid Gussie a fortune for it. That means ten bucks, at least.

Airhead William.

We peek in at Steadman. He's fast asleep with his thumb in his mouth and a half-eaten Baby Ruth bar melting on his pillow. We peek quietly, though. Once he's up, we'll have to follow him around all day to be sure he's safe from the kidnapper.

For once Linny is right. The kitchen is a mess. She's standing at the sink, bubbles piled high, dishes piled even higher. “Grab a towel,” she says over her shoulder.

“The dishwasher's still broken?” Zack asks.

“What do you think?” she says.

“I think you're doing a terrific job, Linny,” I say. “Just keep an ear out for Steadman while you're at it, will you?”

We dive out the door and stand on the back steps, listening. “Is that noise coming from Werewolf Woods?” I say.

Zack looks across the street. “I think so.”

I can hardly hear him. Linny is screeching at us from the kitchen. It sounds as if she's being dragged away by the kidnapper.

Who'd want her?

“Close the window,” Zack calls in to her.

Surprisingly, she slams it down, yelling something about a pile of books on the hall floor that anyone can fall over.

Books! Last night's dream! Something floats into my mind, then out again.

Linny presses her nose against the glass. “What about those worms?”

“Don't worry,” I call back. “They're healthy. They won't catch anything from you.”

We grin at her to show we're joking; then we concentrate on the noise coming from the woods.

“The kidnapper is building a prison, right there in the middle where the vines are thick,” Zack says.

“Easy for the kidnapper, just steps away from the empty house where he's hanging out,” I say.

In front of the house, we try not to look at Pop's ruined lawn with the gravestone looming up in the middle.

We zigzag across the street, heading for the woods, and take a shortcut along the driveway of the empty house. Strangely, there are shades on the window. Black. You can't see an inch inside, even though we take a couple of jumps to look.

“Crummy house,” Zack mutters.

Even William's painting would be better than the peeling wood. Perfect for a kidnapper.

In the woods, we pass Pop's barrel of nails. Some of his wood is missing. Now the kidnapper is turning into a thief.

The noise is closer, earsplitting. We look up.

And up.

Whatever is there is well hidden. We walk around the trees, squinting. I can see a couple of boards at the top of one of the highest trees.

A lookout tower? It slants to one side, as if the whole thing will topple over any minute.

Sarah Yulefski leans over the edge. She's mostly hidden by the leaves. It's an improvement.

“Excellent view from up here,” she calls down. “I built it wide so there's plenty of room.”

Zack and I shrug. Should we build a platform of our own or become partners with Sarah Yulefski? Either option wears me out.

Zack leans closer. “Isn't that our wood? So that makes it our platform.”

“Hey, Yulefski, where'd you get the wood?” I yell up, trying to remind her that she's actually a thief.

“Some idiots left it here,” she says. “Most of it was rotten, anyway.”

I open my mouth to tell her it's our property, but what's the use? We don't want the whole world to hear that we're the idiots.

“Want to join in?” she asks. “A buck a day.”

“You're crazy,” Zack says.

“Listen,” she says. “This was a tough job. I had to get my brother, Jerry, to help. We used ropes and—”

“All right,” I say. “We'll just have to owe you.”

I hear footsteps and look over my shoulder. Bradley the Bully is coming along, muttering to himself.

Most of the time, he hangs out at Gussie's Gym; he wants to be a world champion wrestler someday. What he doesn't have in teeth he makes up for in muscle. He could probably take Sister Appolonia right now.

I heard her call him devious.

Devious is right. He has a Vinny's Vegetables shopping cart in his garage filled with potato chip bags and weight-lifting stuff. Probably all stolen.

Get too close to him and he wraps one beefy arm around your neck until you beg for mercy. Zack and I scramble up the tree like a pair of mice escaping from a fox and throw ourselves onto the platform. It rocks a little, then settles back.

Yulefski has outdone herself.

A pair of binoculars hangs from a rotten branch above. A notebook hangs from another branch. Two thick books rest on the edge.

Yulefski has a pencil behind each ear. “If you're going to observe,” she says, “you have to take notes.” She points down as Bradley passes by underneath.

He never looks up. He goes straight to the pond.

“He might even be the kidnapper,” I say.

“I never heard of a twelve-year-old kidnapper,” Zack says. “He can't even drive a getaway car.”

Yulefski reaches for her binoculars. “You have to look
with one eye,” she says. “I cracked the other lens over my brother Jerry's head.” She draws in her breath. “I can't believe it.”

“What?” Zack and I say together. But I don't need binoculars to see what Bradley's doing.

He's poking around in the pond with a big stick. And what does he come up with?

“Is that what I think it is?” Zack forgets to whisper.

I swallow. From here it looks like a head of hair, curly, dark, swamped with muddy water.

I remember what Bradley said that time, “Thaw a floater mythelf.”

Never mind a world champion wrestler. He's turning into a murderer.

I lean a little too far over to watch. Yulefski's books topple over the end of the platform and crash onto the ground below.

We lie on the skinny planks, hardly breathing. With one eye, I peer between the spaces and catch a glimpse of Bradley down below.

He looks around, squinting. One huge hand is closed in a fist that would knock your teeth out. The other holds the stringy hair up high.

Is there a head attached to that hair?

If not, where is the head?

Yulefski opens her mouth. “I'm not afraid of him, the big bully.
Ya-ya!
” she shouts.

They can hear her in Timbuktu, wherever that is. She's going to get us killed.

Across the street, Fred begins to yowl and howl.

Bradley turns and starts toward our tree.

But someone else is yelling; it's Linny, screeching again. “I'm coming after you!”

Bradley stands frozen for about a quarter of a second; then he throws the hair over his shoulder into the pond and lumbers out of there.

Zack gives me a high five. “Good old Linny after us again,” he says.

“Bradley's nothing but a sniveling coward.” Yulefski grins. “I read that in a book.”

I close my eyes for a second. Who can bear to look at those teeth of hers? That snarly hair?

She slides off the edge of the platform and wraps her legs around the tree trunk. “I have to get my books. Wait until Sister Appolonia hears I've read forty-two this summer.”

It hits me hard.

No wonder I had that nightmare. We were supposed to read three books this summer, then write essays on how they changed our lives.

Zack realizes it, too. He looks as if he's going into a coma.

Linny yells again. “I'm not fooling. Nana's here, and lunch is ready.”

Hand under hand, we climb down the tree and jump the last hundred feet or so. The shock of it goes from my toes straight up to my head.

Yulefski's waiting for us, rubbing the mud off the book covers. “Mrs. Wu at the library will have a fit if they aren't in good condition,” she says.

“See you when school starts,” I tell her. “Or maybe around Christmas.”

Nana's car is in the driveway, a tomato-red Caddy, probably as old as she is.

Linny's still yelling. And is that her friend Becca chiming in? Becca who's one big black-and-blue mark from working out at Gussie's Gym?

Halfway down the street, Yulefski adds to the screeching. “I just remembered the third thing about the you-know-who.”