Sara, Book 3 (5 page)

C
HAPTER
8

S
ara opened her eyes and lay in bed for a moment, wondering what had awakened her. Her alarm clock was quiet. She rolled over
and looked at it. 7:45.
Oh yeah, it’s Saturday,
she remembered. She could hear her mother clanging around in the kitchen. Her mother had a not-so-subtle way, when she thought
it was time for Sara to get up, of making just enough noise that it wasn’t likely that Sara could continue to sleep. And then
she always pretended to be surprised when Sara would enter the kitchen.

“Well, good morning, Sara! Did you sleep well?”

“I guess.” Sara sighed, still in the process of waking fully.

“I’m going to the grocery store in a little bit. Would you like to come with me?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sara agreed. She had no great desire to accompany her mother, but she knew there would be many bags of groceries
and that her mother could use some help. And it was sort of fun to get to offer her input as to what might be good for the
family to eat for the next week. Her mother sometimes seemed to get stuck in the monotony of cooking, day after day, week
after week, so she was always probing Sara for another idea of what they might try. And of course, Sara had her favorites,
which seemed to win out, for the most part.

Sara and her mother moved systematically through the grocery store, up one aisle and down the next. “Oh, Sara, I forgot the
onions. Would you run back and get a couple for me, honey? Yellow ones, not too big. Oh, and a quart of ice cream. Vanilla.
We’ll make a pie.”

Sara went back to the produce department. She knew right where they would be; the yellow onions had been on the same shelf
in the same place for as long as Sara could remember. She chose two medium-sized onions and headed for the frozen-food aisle.
Sara playfully tossed the two onions back and forth from hand to hand, pretending that she was juggling. And as she came around
the corner of the frozen-food aisle, she was looking up at the onions crossing in midair instead of where she was going, and
she ran right into someone’s grocery cart, dropping both onions at the same time. Sara scrambled to retrieve her onions, which
had rolled several feet across the floor.

“I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I should have been watching where I was going.”

“Sara!” a startled voice said.

Sara stood up, and there was Annette, standing over a shopping cart filled to the very top.

“Hey, Annette, how are you doing?” Sara could not believe it. This was the second time in only two days that she’d run into
Annette, while being totally preoccupied with food.
She must think I’m crazy,
Sara thought.

“I’m good,” Annette said, turning her cart around and walking away from Sara. “I’ll see you at school.”

That’s odd,
Sara thought.
I wonder why she’s in such a hurry.

As Annette hurried down the aisle, Sara noticed that her shopping basket was filled to overflowing. There were cans of food,
lots of them, and cardboard cartons of frozen dinners—the kind you put in the oven and warm up—and on the very top was a big
bag of chocolate chip cookies.

Sara found her mother, and added her only slightly bruised onions and quart of ice cream to the cart. They stopped at the
deli section, and bought some cheese and a few olives, and then went to the checkout counters at the front of the store. Sara
wanted to hurry. She hoped that she would catch a glimpse of Annette, and maybe get the chance to see her mother.

I don’t think she wants me to meet her mother,
Sara thought.
Maybe that’s why she rushed off.

But when Sara and her mother reached the checkout counter, Annette was nowhere to be seen. Sara didn’t know why she was so
interested in all of this. And something about it felt a little bit like spying.
I should just mind my own business,
Sara thought.
It’s clear that Annette doesn’t want me sticking my nose in, so I’ll just mind my own business. That’s what I’ll do.

C
HAPTER
9

“D
o you believe in ghosts?” Annette just sort of blurted out.

Sara and Seth both looked up with surprise.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” Sara said. “I mean, I’ve never actually seen one, but I guess I believe that they’re real. Do you?”

“What about you, Seth? Do you believe in ghosts?”

Seth wasn’t sure of the best way to answer Annette’s question. He sensed, from the serious look on her face, that she wasn’t
kidding about this. “What do you mean by ‘believe in’ something?” Seth stalled.

“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’” Annette answered sharply. “I think that’s a pretty simple question.”

Seth could tell he had hurt her feelings, but he did have an important point that he wanted to make: “Well, I mean, lots of
people believe in things just because other people tell them that it’s so. My grandpa says if you tell people anything enough
times, before long they’ll start to believe it, whether it’s true or not. He says people are gullible, like sheep. They’ll
follow along with anything you want them to believe. And I don’t want to be like that. So I decided a long time ago not to
take anyone’s word for anything. So I don’t accept anything as true until I’ve proved it to myself, with my own experience.”

Sara watched Seth as he spoke with such clear determination.
He’s certainly sure of how he feels about this,
she thought.

“And so, since I’ve never actually had a personal relationship with any ghost, I can’t say for sure, from my own experience,
that I believe that they exist. But I do think that it might be possible. I mean, I’ve had other weird experiences. . . .”

Seth’s voice trailed off as he realized that he might be opening doors into subjects he wasn’t really ready to discuss with
Annette. Sara looked up sharply. She hoped that Seth wasn’t going to tell Annette about Solomon.

Annette noticed Sara’s sudden interest. “Well, what about it, Sara? Do you really believe in ghosts?”

“Well,” Sara said slowly, “I guess I do.” She remembered the night Solomon visited her in her bedroom after Jason and Billy
shot him. She hadn’t really thought about Solomon being a ghost that night; she’d been so glad to see Solomon. But thinking
about it now, she realized that most people, if they’d seen what she had, would probably say they’d seen a ghost. But she
sure wasn’t ready to tell Annette what she knew about Solomon.

Sara and Seth looked at each other. Both of them knew that if anything would fall into the category of ghosts, Solomon was
most likely it, but they both held back, uncertain about divulging their special secret. Sara wished that they could just
forget about it and swing on the rope.

“Well, do
you
believe in ghosts?” Seth asked, looking hard at Annette’s serious face.

Annette looked at Seth and then at Sara and then at Seth and then back at Sara.

Sara and Seth sat quietly, each waiting to hear Annette’s answer.

“No, I just wondered if you did,” Annette answered abruptly. “Hey, let’s swing.” And without taking her usual time to carefully
execute her perfectly calculated leap from the platform on the swinging rope, Annette grabbed the rope and leaped off the
platform as if she couldn’t do so fast enough.

“Well, what was that all about?” Sara asked as soon as she thought Annette was out of earshot.

“I think we should tell Annette about Solomon,” Seth said excitedly.

“No, Seth, no! I don’t think we should tell her. Promise me, Seth, that you won’t tell her.”

Annette looked back at them and waved.

“Sara, are you sure? I mean, I think—”

“Please, Seth, promise me?”

“Okay.”

C
HAPTER
10

A
s Sara made her way to school the next morning, her thoughts kept coming back again and again to Annette. Her decision to
mind her own business seemed to have already faded from her thoughts. She saw Seth a little more than a block away, walking
out ahead of her. “Hey, Seth!” she called out. “Wait up!”
I don’t know why I’m yelling,
Sara thought.
He’s too far away to hear me.

But Seth stopped and turned around and waved, and began walking toward Sara. Sara ran to meet him.

“Hey, Seth,” Sara said, out of breath, “have you seen Annette’s mother?”

“No,” Seth said, pausing awkwardly. “I can’t say that I have.”

“Oh, I was just wondering . . .” Sara felt a slight twinge of guilt as she realized that she wasn’t keeping her promise to
herself to mind her own business.

They crossed the bridge on Main Street, and as they stood in the crosswalk, waiting to cross the street, a big, black, shiny
car passed in front of them.

“Isn’t that Annette’s dad’s car?” Sara asked. “I heard them talking in Pete’s Drugstore about what an expensive car it is.
Wow! That’s the prettiest car I’ve ever seen!”

The large, sleek-looking car, with lots of shiny chrome, turned down the street to the grade school. It was hard to see who
was inside because of the very darkly tinted windows, but Sara thought she could see a man driving, probably Annette’s father,
someone quite little in the front seat, and one person in the backseat. Probably Annette.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that we haven’t seen her mother?”

“No, not really.”

“I mean they’ve been here over a month now. I saw Annette in the grocery store, with a whole cart full of—”

“Sara, I just remembered I forgot something I need for class. You go ahead. I’ll catch you later.” Seth suddenly turned around
and began running back down the road toward his house.

Sara watched him running about as fast as she’d ever seen him run. “Seth, wait!” she called out. But Seth didn’t look back.

Sara didn’t believe that Seth had forgotten something. It was as if something she’d said had upset him. Why had her questions
about Annette’s mother gotten to him? This was weird.

Sara didn’t see Seth all day long. It was strange not to run into him between classes even once. It was as if he were deliberately
avoiding her. That made no sense, but his strange behavior that morning hadn’t made any sense either.

After school, Sara felt an urge for a candy bar, so she stopped by Pete’s Drugstore on her way to the tree house.
I’ll get one for everybody,
she thought, reaching deep into her bag for a handful of coins that always seemed to end up in the bottom corner.

“I think it’s so sad that those sweet little girls have no mother,” Sara overheard a woman commenting from the soda fountain
area. “Isn’t that just the saddest thing you ever heard?”

Sara’s ears perked up. Who were they talking about?

And then she knew. They were talking about Annette and her sister. Annette’s mother was dead! Sara’s heart began to beat faster.

“Well, that certainly is sad. I didn’t know,” Sara heard someone else say.

“I don’t think many people know. But Sam Morris, the new man who moved in last year, lives at the old Thacker place. He’s
the new foreman on the Wilsenholm ranch, and he works with my husband. Anyway, he told my husband that he and his boys helped
Mr. Stanley and his girls move in to a new house up on the river. Took ’em all of one weekend and a few evenings, too, I guess.
Says he never saw so much furniture and so many boxes in his whole life. He said he was glad to help out, though. Said they’re
all real nice people. And he said that they were told then, that first day, about Mrs. Stanley’s death. Such a sad, sad thing.”

Sara couldn’t believe her ears. Annette’s mother is dead. And Seth knew about it! Why didn’t he tell her? Why would he keep
such a secret from his very best friend? Sara left the candy bars in the middle of the counter and wheeled out of the drugstore.

I’m never going to talk to him again! Annette can be his new best friend—his only friend, for all I care. I’m never going to speak to him again! Or to her, either!

Sara stared blindly ahead as she walked toward her house. She passed Thacker’s Trail without even looking in that direction.
There was no way she was going to the tree house today.

“Sara,” Seth called out to her. “Sara where are you going? Don’t you want to swing with us?”

Sara looked straight ahead. She knew that Seth knew that she’d heard him, but the very last thing Sara felt like doing was
talking with Seth or Annette. She broke into a run and ran all the way home.