Peeled (13 page)

She smiled. “Food and revolution—that’s what I know about.”

Elizabeth gushed, “I swear, Hildy, when we were at Minska’s, I felt like we were all being called to this greater thing that I don’t understand yet, but somehow it’s right out front for us to grab. It was just way so inspiring. Do you know what I mean?”

“Kind of.”

“I mean, Minska has lived through history!”

“We’re living through history, too.”

“I never thought of that.” Elizabeth was wearing black leggings and a beaded T-shirt that read
CUTIE
. “But I’ve been thinking about the girl and ghost and sources. Roddy’s sister Ann is a nurse in the ER. If that girl had been brought in, she might have some information.” Roddy is Elizabeth’s boyfriend, loyal beyond words.

“That’s a great idea.”

“So, get over there, Hildy!”

“It’s your idea, Elizabeth. You want to come?”

She bounded up, grinning.

We were in the hospital cafeteria with Ann. “You understand I can’t give you names,” she said.

“Oh, we totally do,” said Elizabeth. She gives up fast.

“You understand that I’d prefer if you’d not use my name,” Ann said quietly.

I glanced at Elizabeth and said, “Could you tell us what you can?”

“A little girl was brought in around three on that day. She had hurt her elbow after falling off her bike in front of the Ludlow house. The elbow needed a few stitches. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” I asked. “Did she mention seeing a ghost?”

“No.”

“Could there have been another girl who was injured?”

“I was here all day.”

“Could the girl
The Bee
mentioned have gone to another hospital?”

“The closest hospital is thirty miles away.”

“Was her mother with her?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes.”

I leaned forward. “What was she like?”

“She was a little worried, but none of this was in any way remarkable.”

“What do you think of that article in
The Bee?”
I asked.

Ann sipped her tea. “I think it’s highly inaccurate.” “Could I quote you?” I asked. “Because this could—”

She shook her head. “I want to help, but I’m not sure
how the administration would feel about it.” She dipped her tea bag up and down in the mug.

I sure wished Baker was here.

“Your name would help us,” I tried again, “because—”

“I
can’t.”

“We don’t want you to get in trouble,” Elizabeth said gently. “We so appreciate you telling us this much. We want to write the truth and you’re helping us find it.”

I wrote my number down, tore off the sheet, and handed it to her. “If you remember anything else, Ann, would you let us know?”

She looked at the paper, put it in her pocket. “Look, you girls are doing a good thing. I’ve got to get back to work.”

“I think we let her off the hook too easily, Elizabeth!” I backed the truck out of the parking lot fast to make the point.

Elizabeth sat there with her hands folded.

“We’re never going to get to the heart of this thing if people won’t go on the record!”

Elizabeth hung her head and didn’t say anything. It’s hard to fight with a person who doesn’t fight back.

A dark car pulled up alongside ours. Madame Zobek was driving. She smiled at us a little longer than was comfortable. Then she drove off.

“She gives me the creeps,” I said, turning down our street.

“I think she’s interesting. She knows things, Hildy.” Elizabeth’s voice rose. “Jackie told me she’s amazing.”

My antenna went up. Elizabeth and Jackie were spending more time together in and out of school.

“Jackie said her entire psyche was exploding when she went to Madame Zobek,” Elizabeth added.

“I like my psyche in one piece.”

“You would, Hildy.”

I pulled into our driveway. I didn’t like how Elizabeth was sounding. I turned to her.

“Elizabeth, you’re not seeing Madame Zobek, right?”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Good, because that would be really dumb.”

She looked at me sweetly. “I’m not dumb.”

“I know. But sometimes you can be kind of impressionable, and I don’t mean that as—”

“I resent that!” She climbed out of the truck fast, slammed the door, and ran into the house.

I have a true heart
—that was the chipmunk’s line in Missy Grimes’s book.

And
The Bee
had in-depth coverage of the Ludlow place, including interviews with unidentified sources “too afraid to come forward.”

It’s a funny thing how fear grows. It moves like a virus, infecting person after person.

There wasn’t any medicine to stop the epidemic, either.

Children were having nightmares about the killer ghost; some were afraid to leave their houses and come to school.

One kindergarten teacher stopped taking her students out to recess because several of them said they saw a bad ghost behind a tree on the playground.

I remembered my long year fighting fear in eighth grade after Dad died.

“Everybody’s afraid of something,” Gwen, my therapist, told me back then. “And fear isn’t always a bad thing, Hildy. It can alert us to real danger.” The operative word, Gwen said, was
real
, not imagined.

Imagined fears are hard to nail down. For a while I was afraid every time my mom would go out that she’d get in a car accident and never come back. I was afraid that I’d never be happy again, I’d always be crying. I was
scared that I had a weak heart like my dad and I’d die at thirty-eight just like he did.

I was in my bedroom. I slid open my mirrored closet door and pushed through clothes to the old file cabinet. I pulled out an article Dad wrote about how the family of a murdered policeman was trying to cope with the loss.

The chair where Larry Olen used to sit is empty now. It sits as it always did by the bookcase filled with history books, sits as a symbol of loss, and something the family can’t quite discard. “We’ve tried moving it into the other room,” said Mary, his widow, “but it doesn’t seem right there. I guess we just need to have this memory of him, even though it’s hard.”

I looked at Dad’s old hiking boots that I kept near my bed. We were always hiking in the woods together.

The boots that Mitch Biddle used to wear are empty now. They sit in the corner of his only daughter’s room, sit as a symbol of an important life being taken too soon.

MacIntosh padded over and the sniffed the boots.

“I miss him, too, Mac.”

MacIntosh sat by the boots. I went over, kicked off my shoes, put my feet in Dad’s big boots, and stood there.

I couldn’t exactly fill his shoes, but there was enough of him in my heart that shoe size didn’t matter. I clunked over to my desk, opened my laptop, and wrote,

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

FDR said that during World War II.

I wondered if some kind of war was trying to break out in Banesville.

“Are you afraid to go out? Are you afraid to stay inside? Safety First has a line of home and personal security devices to make you feel safer. Stay on the line and one of our representatives will assist you.”

Nan got the call and hung up, but lots of residents didn’t. One by one people began ordering extra-loud house alarms, mace, nightsticks.

Banesville’s citizens were becoming alarmed and armed.

The Bee
had a new front-page section called “The Terror Grows.”

Random aggression
, they assured us,
was breaking out everywhere.

At Jethro’s Gym:
A bodybuilder erupted in rage at a man who had taken his dumbbell by mistake. The man said he was pushed and suffered bruises to his hand. The bodybuilder is still at large.

At Lull’s Cheap Gas:
A shoving contest over a gasoline pump erupted in violence.

At the middle school:
Lunch money was stolen from students on Thursday, prompting worried parents to ask, “Are our schools safe?”

I called Tanisha’s mom, the middle school counselor, and asked her if she knew about the stolen lunch money.

Mrs. Bass was furious about
The Bee
’s coverage: “No money was stolen, Hildy. One kid dropped a few quarters, another grabbed them, and he was ordered by a teacher to give the money back. Everyone had lunch! I think
parents in town should be worried, but not about this school. They should be worried about the irresponsible journalism printed in
The Bee
!”

“Can I quote you, Mrs. Bass?”

“You bet!”

It was all we could do to try and set the record straight. Staying ahead of scare tactics is a full-time job.

Elsewhere around town, Crescent Furl at A to Z Convenience now stocked a complete line of Safety First products, including the Make My Day Pepper Spray Key Chain, which, she said, was flying off the shelves.

The Elders Against Evil dragged their lawn chairs in front of the Ludlow house and started “observation shifts,” peering through binoculars.

“Have you seen anything?” I asked Pinky.

She checked her observation shift report. “A tour bus, a plumber, six dogs, the mailman.”

“No ghosts?” I asked her.

“Not a one.”

“What’s going on with you and Zack?” Tanisha turned her Honda onto Red Road and drove toward the high school. “And don’t say ‘nothing,’ Hildy, because that’s not going to cut it. You know what I’m talking about.”

“He’s the research director.”

She drove past a
FOR
SALE
sign for one of the orchards that now said
SOLD
. “He’s been around long before that. Tell me. And by the way, you’re blushing.”

“I don’t blush,” I said. “And keep your eyes on the road.”

“I’m the one who doesn’t blush, girl!” We started laughing. “You do not have the right to remain silent about this issue,” she insisted. “You like him, don’t you?” She turned into the parking lot and avoided the first of three huge potholes.

“I don’t know.”

“Hildy, he’s not a Lev or a Nathan.”

“He’s a scientist.”

“And?”

I didn’t want to talk about this. “He’s helpful.”

“And?”

“Brainy guys are helpful.”

“And your relationship is
what
?”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“I’m going to need more than that, Hildy.”

Okay, you asked for it.
“Zack and I fight evil together.”

That stunned her to silence.

Colorful brochures started appearing around the high school—in the cafeteria, on seats in the library, on car and truck windshields in the parking lot. The cover had a close-up of a girl’s big blue eyes; across the top in curlicue writing were the words

Inside, the brochure showed Bonnie Sue’s most meaningful moments—looking gorgeous while working at the St. Claire soup kitchen, looking stunning while collecting canned goods for the poor, looking perfect as a baby, toddler, kindergartner, etc.

Bonnie Sue breezed past me in the hall, waving hello like we were close friends. She was campaigning round the clock for people to vote for her as Homecoming Queen.

The other contestants, Lacey, Chelsea, and Jackie, didn’t have Bonnie Sue’s big-pocket funding. As president of the horticulture club, Lacey tended the apple trees on the school property and ran programs that brought inner-city kids to the country to learn about rural life. She didn’t honk her horn about it, she just did it. Lacey said that if elected, she was coming to the dance alone, since she didn’t have a boyfriend and she didn’t believe in dredging one up for show. Every unattached student threw her their support.

I walked to the Student Center and grabbed a ballot from the back table.

If you don’t vote, your voice won’t be heard.

I skipped Bonnie Sue Bomgartner’s name and put a fat X by Lacey Horton.

I dropped my ballot in the box and noticed my two former boyfriends, Nathan and Lev, watching me. My relationship failures crashed in like waves.

Finding a good boyfriend was like trying to find a ghost.

Or Sallie Miner’s father. I’d finally drummed up the
courage to start calling the eleven Lawrence Miners on the list I’d compiled from the Miami phone book. I’d called ten names and hadn’t found him. The three men I’d spoken to weren’t very friendly. I left messages for the others; no one called me back.

I went to
The Core’s
office and called the last Lawrence Miner on my list, number eleven.