And this was nonsense.
Back upstairs, Mally took two Tylenol PM’s and ate a handful of Nilla wafers with a cup of Drowsy tea. The combination would knock her out within minutes, she hoped.
When it didn’t, Mallory tried to add another element of boredom. She began her Algebra II homework. She hated all math, but it was satisfying to be able to do it. She’d have only two courses in math to take in high school to complete her requirement—while she was convinced that Meredith still did her multiplication on her fingers. But she finished all of the problems within twenty minutes.
Now what? Desperate, she dove under Merry’s bed, a sure trove of trash magazines with skinny singers on the covers. She read all about Lindsey’s feud with Natalie, and Ashley’s feud with Tammie. Another ten minutes by the clock. Finally, she lay awake, her teeny reading light with its five-square-inch pool of light like a candle at her bedside. She listened to every click and snap in the old house, to the mice skittering across the attic floor, the bats rustling above the mice. Tim was always going to do something about them, but Campbell liked bats. Over it all, she heard the soughing of the wind in the big Celebration maple tree. What was wrong with her? She thought she should pray to Saint Bridget, as her grandmother had suggested. But wasn’t Saint Therese better for protecting children? At thirteen, was she still a child? Saint Anne? Would Saint Anne look down and see a thirteen-year-old not-even-pregnant girl and think she had just tuned in to the wrong station?
Holy Saint Bridget, protect me, your daughter who sees and wants only to help
, Mally prayed.
I don’t even know why I’m afraid for myself, when I should only be afraid for Deirdre. I am afraid that whoever is after Deirdre might be after me, too. At least, he might be eventually. If you are there, protect me, so that I may serve. I want to be of service, but you can’t if you’re dead. Although you are dead and you’re of service. I didn’t mean it that way
.
Please don’t be offended. I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. Amen.
Mallory gave up praying.
She went over to full-time worrying.
The Scavos’ poor dog was one thing, but what she had seen tonight was truly . . . way around the bend. It was the beginning of a rape. A rape? Maybe a murder. She should call Eden, no matter what Eden thought of her. Eden was older. She got it instantly when Mally saw the woodsy guy who was her crush. Or she should tell Campbell everything, even if it meant that her mother took her to a therapist?
Someone’s life could be in danger.
A girl’s
life
.
But in danger only based on the whacked-out wide-awake dreams of a crazy person who probably had posttraumatic stress disorder.
How could God let this kind of picture be shown to a thirteen-year-old kid who couldn’t do anything about it? And how did she know for sure it hadn’t happened yet?
I can’t figure this out
, Mallory thought, on the very edge of tears,
and f iguring out is what I do
.
Why didn’t her parents come home? Mallory wished, again, she could fall asleep. She knew that the active ingredient in the Tylenol was Benadryl. Could you overdose on Benadryl? Should she take more?
She fought to think about something else.
What was wrong with her? She was no sissy, afraid of the dark.
This house had stood for eighty-seven years. Brynns had lived in this house for eighty-seven years. She thought of all her great-grandparents, one of whom, Walker Brynn, was still alive in Florida. She thought of her great-greats before him and tried to pull all of them around her like a puffy quilt.
It didn’t do the trick. She put out her hand for her phone to call Grandma Gwenny, but then, suddenly, the Tylenol PM kicked in.
Just as she fell asleep, Mally heard a sharp, loud pounding on the front door.
Three short, sharp knocks.
Oh, thank you
, she thought. That was Meredith’s signal, but why didn’t her dad just come in? And she couldn’t hear Meredith’s thoughts, not even in the muddy way she could when Meredith was thinking about Will or splits or toe jumps. Though she would rather have pulled her own teeth than answer the door, Mally made herself wake up.
She crept downstairs and stood on her toes to look through the peephole. No one was out there.
Merry,
she cried with her mind. As she turned to go back upstairs, she noticed it was sleeting now—a dark, punishing, sideways spit of frozen rain, the kind late March always brought before giving it up to spring.
And then the same sharp knocks came again, but this time on the back door.
What would happen next? A gigantic blast? Was this going to be some horrible instant replay of New Year’s Eve that would
actually
kill her this time?
Had she locked the back door?
No.
No one used it. As Campbell said, they preferred to wear out her only thing of value, an Oriental carpet runner in the front foyer. Mallory grabbed the kitchen phone, dropped to the floor, and dialed 911.
“Please,” she whispered to the woman who answered. “I’m home alone and someone is knocking on all the doors and scaring me.”
“Are the doors locked?” the dispatcher asked. “Is this Mally Brynn? Or Merry?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I mean, I know I’m Mallory, but I don’t know about the back door.”
“Mally, it’s Rita Andersen, Caitlin’s mom. We’re sending a car to check things out right now, but you go lock that door. Okay?”
“I’m too afraid.”
“You have to, honey. I’ll stay on the phone with you.” Mallory crawled to the door and straightened up enough to flip the deadbolt. Did the knob quiver as she flipped the lock? Did it
turn
? Was that the pressure of another person’s hand she felt on the other side when she tried the door to make sure it was locked?
“Please, Mrs. Andersen,” Mally whispered. “Make them come quick.”
“Where are your folks, Mallory?”
“At the Belles Artes.”
“You give me your mother’s pager number now. . . .” But as Mallory began to repeat the numbers, there came a huge bang on the front door, as if someone had used a mallet instead of a fist—three short, sharp blows, each louder than the next. “Mally, I heard that. Stay on the line. Thirteen, what’s your ten-twenty? Possible two-eleven . . . sole occupant at one-one-three Pilgrim Street is a thirteen-year-old girl. You’re okay, Mallory. They’re a block away.”
There was a full minute of silence. Then Mallory screamed as the knocking began again, fierce and sharp.
“Mallory? Mallory?” a man’s voice shouted. “Look out the window. This is Denley Hames. It’s Officer Hames, the school officer. Open the door, Mally.”
Mallory threw open the door and leaped into Denley Hames’s arms. “Someone was hitting the door! Someone was trying to break the door down!”
“Well, let’s step inside, honey. This is Susan Moss. Do you know Officer Moss? She’s the drug-and-alcohol teacher at the middle school now, for the fifth graders. May we come in, Mallory?”
“That could be a dent,” Officer Moss said, pointing to a black mark on the pale blue door.
“It is,” Mallory said. “But my brother made it when he rode his bike up the steps.”
“What did it sound like?”
“At first, like knocking, then like someone was using a hammer to smash the door in.”
“Let’s take a look at the back,” said Officer Hames. He unlocked the back door carefully, without stepping outside. “Lots and lots of footprints out here . . . if there was a roof over these stairs, we might be able to keep some of them from washing away. I’m still going to call for a photographer and a tech.”
“What in the hell is going on?” Tim Brynn cried, bursting in the front door. “Mally, are you okay?”
“Daddy,” Mallory cried, hugging Tim’s waist. “Someone was trying to break in. Or scare me.”
“Are you sure?”
Mallory was so shocked she let her arms drop. “Am I sure?”
“Every time we’re away, something weird happens.”
“Dad, do you think I’m lying?”
“No. But you’ve been having these spells. . . .” Tim said.
“Do you think I’m trying to get attention?”
“Of course not, Mallory! I just thought you might have been dreaming.”
“Did you pass out, Mally?” Campbell asked.
I can never tell them
, Mallory thought.
They would lock me up in my room forever
.
Or worse.
“Mr. Brynn, someone was out there. There’s mud on that back porch,” said Officer Moss.
“There’s mud all over those steps and half of the mud from Ridgeline on our kitchen floor,” said Tim. “I have three kids who never heard of taking off their boots.”
“Dad!” Merry scolded him. “You can see how scared she is.”
“You
heard
me, didn’t you?” Mally asked her sister. “It was . . . siow, Merry. Siow the worst.”
“Yeah, I heard you! But I thought you were mad!”
“I was scared to death, Mer!”
“Who do you think it was?”
“The devil!” said Mallory.
“Talk sense, honey,” Campbell said wearily. “All this drama! It had to be kids . . .”
It took two hours for the police to finish photographing, measuring, and dusting. Finally Denley Hames said, “It’s not that it’s just vandalism. Someone knew she was here. That’s just not right.” He added, “We’re going to do our best to figure out what’s going on here, just like we’re still working on catching whoever was responsible for that fire. But I’d bet my redbone hound that the two things are related.”
“Just don’t put a yellow plastic tape up in front of my house,” Tim Brynn pleaded. “My family’s been through enough.”
In bed that night, Merry whispered, “You don’t think it was David.”
“I don’t think it
wasn’t
him. I saw him driving around when I was running.”
“So he bangs on the door? That makes no sense.”
“Maybe he’s mad about you knowing about the dog.”
“Maybe.”
“You admit I was right about the dog now.”
“I semi-admit it. Or if I don’t, at least I’m scared by tonight. Scared in my own way. Can you sleep?” Merry asked.
“I’m afraid to sleep. I’m afraid to dream. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Merry decided that this wasn’t the time to bring up her own dream about the old lady. And her fainting spell, in which she saw David burying Sunny’s dog. It was still possible that just came to her because Mallory suggested it, because Kim said it.
There had to be an upside to this. She asked, “Didn’t you get any idea of who it was out there? Nothing? Not even if it was a girl or a guy?”
“No,” Mallory said. She was still sitting up, shivering, despite the old quilt Campbell had draped around her shoulders. Campbell offered to camp out on the girls’ floor, which Mallory would have loved, except that then she and Merry wouldn’t have been able to talk. “That’s what’s so harsh about this. I didn’t see it coming. Maybe . . . I’ll tell you this. I don’t ever want to sleep again. And I have to tell you what else I saw, before any of this happened, when I took a nap.”
“What? You mean you saw something
else
?” Meredith asked slowly, dreading what Mallory would tell her. “You can tell me, Mally.”
“I’m afraid to,” Mally whispered, sliding down into her nest of quilts.
“Mal, you have to. If I’m going to believe this . . .” But she hadn’t even finished her sentence when she saw that Mally had fallen asleep, fast asleep, while Meredith was talking.
It was Merry who lay awake until the sky behind the branches of the maple turned gray as a dove’s breast.
BAITING THE TRAP
It was after seven o’clock on Saturday night, and Mally rejoiced. Sitting in the darkened theater between Eden and Drew, she inwardly jumped up and down. Her sister hadn’t called. She felt pure, total joy of having nothing happen.
She could have predicted that Merry wouldn’t believe her about Deirdre Bradshaw. When Mallory finally got her alone, after the night of the knocking prowler, she told her about her blackout, about David and Deirdre. At least, Meredith
said
she didn’t believe her twin. How she looked told a different story.
She doesn’t want to believe me
, Mallory said to herself.
She’s trying her best. I don’t blame her. Put the dream with the door thing and it’s definitely too spooky to handle.
“You were just thinking about Deirdre because we were going to follow him,” said PART Merry.
“I hope you’re right,” Mally told her. “I never hoped anything more.” Now it seemed that she really had hallucinated the ghastly picture of David hurting the girl—and maybe the dog as well.
But only five minutes later, Mallory’s phone vibrated.
Merry’s text read
ODD
.
Mallory texted back, her fingers nimble in the dark.
Where?
Within seconds, the phone trembled again.
Pizza Papa,
it read.
5 mins lev.
“Drew,” Mallory whispered. “I have to go.”
“You’re little. You can squeeze past.”
“Not to the bathroom, you dip. I have to go, go, leave. It’s an emergency.”
“Come on, Mal,” Drew huffed at her.
“I really have to go.”
“Call your dad, then.”
“I can’t. They’re at my aunt’s.”
“Call your grandmother.”
“Please, Drewsky.”
“No. All you do is have emergencies. Fires and midnight door-banging assaults . . .”
“I really have to leave! Now!”
Eden turned to Drew. “She means it. If you won’t drive her, I will.”
“Oh shit. Great. Fine,” Drew said.
Everyone in the row behind shushed them.
As they drove, Mally kept consulting her cell phone. No word from Meredith.
“Can you stop at my house?” Mallory suddenly asked Drew.