Will You Be My Friend? (2 page)

ALMOST ONE YEAR LATER . . .

Beth raced down the hall, pausing every few seconds to look back over her shoulder.

She's still after me,
Beth thought, picking up her pace.

It didn't make logical sense, but the faster Beth ran, the closer the girl in the mirror at the end of the hallway came toward her. And everywhere Beth turned, the mirror and the girl in it followed. Beth stopped short, but the girl in the mirror kept running, getting closer and closer. Spinning back around, Beth found herself staring into a blank wall, as if the hallway she had just come down had vanished.

Who is she . . . and why is she following me?

A door suddenly appeared on Beth's right. She yanked it open and sped through the doorway, slamming it behind her. Beth breathed a sigh of relief. But when she eyed the room she had just stepped into, she was faced with mirrors on every wall. Even the ceiling was totally covered in mirrors jutting out at every angle.

And in each mirror she saw the girl. She knew the girl. That much was certain. But how? From where? Who was she?

Suddenly, impossibly, one of the images of the girl popped out of a mirror in the ceiling and dropped to the floor in front of Beth. From this close, she recognized the girl. She looked exactly like Beth.

What is going on?

The girl said nothing but stared at Beth with a puzzled look on her face. Then she reached out suddenly, grabbed Beth's arm, and said, “You're coming with me!”

“Nooo!” Beth screamed.

When she stopped screaming, Beth realized that she was awake in her bed with her eyes wide open.

It was just another dream,
she thought, as her heart pounded away in her chest.
Why do I keep having them?

Rubbing her eyes and trying to shake the bad dream from her mind, Beth climbed from her bed and walked to the bathroom. She had woken up only a few minutes before her alarm was about to go off. Soon it would be time to begin her daily homeschool lessons with her mom.

Bad dreams aside, Beth was happy in her new life. In the year that had passed since she and her mom had moved into their house, Beth had become comfortable with her routine: school lessons in the morning, hanging out with Chrissy in the afternoon, homework in the evenings, and then bed when her mom went to work and Joan, the overnight babysitter, arrived. Life was pretty good.

Especially because Beth and Chrissy had become great friends.

But the best part of the past year was the fact that Beth's memory problems seemed to have disappeared. She still couldn't conjure up memories from before the move, but she tried not to dwell on that, especially because everything that had happened to her during the past year, down to the tiniest detail, remained sharp in her mind.

She could remember the shapes of the snowflakes during the first snowfall at her new house and building a snowman with Chrissy. She remembered the day they painted her bedroom a shiny purple and the day she decided she hated it and then repainted it lime green.

After breakfast that morning Beth and her mom settled down at the dining room table, books spread across its gleaming oak surface.

“Okay, let's go back to the chapter on Native American history,” said Beth's mom, flipping open her book. “I think we left off with the evolution of the Cherokee Nation.”

“Yup,” said Beth. “Right here in chapter five, the ‘Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation.' ”

“What can you tell me about the leaders of the Cherokee Nation East?” Beth's mom asked.

“Chief Black Fox was the first great leader of the Cherokee Nation East in the early 1800s,” Beth reported. “He was one of the signers of the Holston Treaty and led the tribe for a decade.”

“Excellent,” her mom said.

Beth grinned proudly. Native American history was a topic that she really enjoyed.

“Let's move on to the Lakota,” said her mother, but Beth made no move to turn the page. “Beth, are you okay?”

“What?” Beth replied absentmindedly.

“Am I boring you?” her mom asked, sarcastically. “You're usually very interested in history.”

“What? Oh, I'm sorry, Mom. I just had a thought that took me away for a minute. It's funny, but I know more about the history of people who lived hundreds of years ago than I do about my own history.”

Beth's mom squirmed a bit in her seat. “But your memory has gotten much better,” she said, unable to disguise the disappointment in her voice.

Beth felt bad, hearing her mother sound upset. She knew her mother wanted nothing more than for Beth to be happy, and she was. She just couldn't help but wonder about her past. She also wondered if her missing memories would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“You're right,” she told her mom. “It has, as far as remembering the events since we've been here. But it still feels weird not to remember anything before that.”

“I know, honey,” Mom said, her tone now much more sympathetic. “That accident robbed you of a lot. But think of all you have now. A nice home. A good friend.”

“Absolutely,” Beth said, smiling. “Okay, no more feeling sorry for myself. Back to history.”

When the morning's lessons were over, Beth and her mom took a ride into town for a shopping trip.

“I'm psyched about getting my new shoes,” said Beth as she and her mom stepped into the local shoe store.

“Me too,” said her mom. “I can't remember the last time I bought myself a pair of shoes.”

Beth and her mom wandered through the aisles pulling out boxes of shoes.

“I love these!” Beth squealed, slipping on a pair of bright orange sneakers. “Chrissy has a pair just like them, and she said everyone at her school is wearing them.”

Beth's mom rolled her eyes but then shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “I'm glad
you
like them. Now it's my turn.” She headed down the women's aisle.

“I need to run next door for some new sunglasses,” Beth called out to her mother. “I'll be right back.”

Beth's mom stopped what she was doing.

“Wait for me, please,” she insisted, sounding uncharacteristically stern.

Beth sighed. “Whenever we go anywhere, you never let me out of your sight even for a minute. I'm not a baby, you know, Mom. Don't you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you, honey,” Beth's mom replied. “It's just, you know, things can happen. What can I say? I'm a worrier. Please wait. I'll only be a couple of minutes.”

“Oh, all right,” Beth said. Now it was her turn to roll her eyes.

Chrissy's mom isn't overprotective like my mom is,
she thought.

Beth slumped into a chair and stared out the window. She watched people walk by, thinking about how they could go where they wanted, when they wanted. She wished, for a moment, that she was someone else. Anyone else.

“Look at these, Beth,” her mom said a few minutes later.

Beth turned back from the window. Her mom extended her feet, revealing a pair of white tennis shoes.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“You look like you're ready for a tennis match,” Beth joked, smiling. “Either that, or you're going to work as a nurse.”

“Well, I do work in a medical research lab, you know,” her mom replied. “I'm on my feet a lot.”

“I know, Mom,” Beth said. “I'm just giving you a hard time. They're nice.”

“Okay then,” said her mom. “Let me pay for these and yours, and then we'll go next door together and get you some sunglasses.”

When they returned home that afternoon, Beth's mom went to bed. She usually slept through the afternoon, before getting up to have dinner with Beth, then heading off to work.

Beth worked on her school assignments until three thirty. That's when Chrissy got home from school and they could hang out. Beth loved going to Chrissy's house, not just because they were such good friends, but because it was just about the only place Beth's mom ever let her go by herself.

“How was school today?” Beth asked as she walked into Chrissy's house.

Chrissy grimaced. “Some days I wonder how you can deal with being homeschooled and not being around lots of people. Then there are days like today, when Greg Hammer decided that it would be funny to smear his bubble gum all over my science book. Today I thought about how nice it must be to not have to deal with other people all the time.”

“Bubble gum?” Beth asked. “Really? Did he get into trouble?”

“Of course not,” Chrissy replied. “His older brother is the starting center on the high school basketball team, and Mr. Dunkins, my science teacher, is the assistant coach. So Greg got the usual fake-stern lecture about being mature, blah blah blah, and I got to scrape gum off my book. Really fair, right?”

“That sounds awful,” Beth said. “The next time I start to feel sorry for myself about not going to a school every day, I'll try to remember that. Of course, remembering stuff is not exactly one of my strong suits.”

“But that's not true anymore,” Chrissy replied. “I know you don't remember a lot from before you moved next door—”

“I don't remember
anything
,” Beth interrupted.

“Yeah, but you've actually got a better memory than I do since then,” Chrissy pointed out. “I mean, you're the one who can name just about every river in the United States. You're the one who knows the name of each vice president.”

“Well, I like history and geography, that's all,” Beth said.

“Anyway, let's talk about something else. I have some news,” said Chrissy, changing the subject.

“What? What?” Beth asked eagerly.

“My cousin Alice is sleeping over tomorrow night,” Chrissy explained. “She's fourteen and lives in Glenside.”

“That'll be fun for you,” said Beth.

“And you! You're invited!” added Chrissy excitedly.

“Wow, thanks. That's very cool,” said Beth. Then her mood instantly sank. “Now all I have to do is convince my mother to let me come.”

“You'll be right next door,” Chrissy said.

“
I
know that.
You
know that,” said Beth. “But overnight? We've never done a sleepover before and that might be too much for her.”

“It would be very cool if you could come,” said Chrissy. “I think you'd really like Alice.”

“I think it would be great,” said Beth. She'd always wanted to go to a sleepover. She hadn't been to any in the past year, and she had no idea if she'd ever been to one before her accident.

“Let me ask my mom tomorrow morning,” Beth added. “She's usually in a really good mood when we start lessons for the day.”

Chrissy clapped her hands and jumped up and down. “Great, then it's settled.”

“No, settled is the last thing it is,” said Beth. “I'll let you know.”

“Okay. Now let's watch a movie,” suggested Chrissy.

“Have anything in mind?” asked Beth.

“A scary one, of course!” Chrissy replied.

“Cool!” agreed Beth. She didn't really love scary movies, but she could see how excited Chrissy was to watch one.

“Have you seen
Creature from the Cellar
?”

Beth shook her head no.

“Oh, wow! Great! I could see that one a hundred times.”

Chrissy and Beth sat on the floor in Chrissy's bedroom and leaned against the side of her bed. Chrissy flipped open her laptop and started streaming the movie on her computer.

In the movie two girls, not that different in age from Beth and Chrissy, were preparing a snack in the kitchen of an old house. They had set out four pieces of bread beside an open jar of jelly. Then one of the girls opened a cabinet. . . .

“Oh!” she cried. “No more peanut butter!”

“In the whole house?” exclaimed her friend. “That's horrific.”

“No, silly,” the first girl replied. “You know my mom. She buys like fifty jars at a time at the Giant Mart. I just have to go down to the cellar and grab another jar.”

That's when the girls heard a sound—a low banging coming from down in the cellar.

“Is your brother home?” asked the girl's friend. “I thought we had the whole house to ourselves.”

“We do.”

“Then who is making that noise?”

Again they heard the banging, followed by a scraping sound, and then a low moan.

“This is crazy,” said the girl. “I'm going down there to see what's going on! Plus, we still need peanut butter.”

“Wait. You're going where?” asked her friend.

“To the cellar. It's my house. I know what's down there.”

“But that's where the noise is coming from!”