by P. J. Night
CHAPTER 10
When Ashley got back from the barn, lugging two sleeping bags, two duffel bags, and the rest of the candy from trick-or-treating, the kitchen floor was spotless—and Mary Beth was nowhere to be seen. For one awful moment, Ashley suddenly worried that Mary Beth had ditched her too.
“Ash? You back?”
A relieved smile spread across Ashley’s face as she heard Mary Beth’s voice. “Yeah,” she called back.
“I’m in the basement,” Mary Beth said.
Ashley kicked the sleeping bags down the basement stairs so that it would be easier to carry the duffel bags and candy.
“Did you get everything from the barn?”
“Um, I got our stuff,” Ashley said. She didn’t want to talk about the mess in the barn that she couldn’t bear to clean up all by herself, or about how lonely it had felt to turn off every lamp in the jack-o’-lanterns and leave Stephanie’s and Danielle’s backpacks behind.
“I hope it’s okay that I brought some snacks downstairs,” Mary Beth continued.
“Of course it is.” Ashley giggled. “I see you found the chips.”
Mary Beth started laughing too. “I guess I have a salty tooth instead of a sweet tooth,” she replied. “Is that even a thing? A salty tooth?”
“I have no idea,” Ashley said, “but all I know is that means more candy for me!” She dumped the bags of candy on the table and started to rummage through the pile of treats.
“Hey,” Mary Beth said, perking up. “Are those sour gummy worms?”
“Maybe,” Ashley said slyly, raising an eyebrow at her. “But you wouldn’t want those. You don’t have a sweet tooth, remember?”
“For sour gummies, I do!” Mary Beth laughed. “Can I have them?”
“You got it,” Ashley replied as she tossed the packet of candy across the room.
Mary Beth caught it with both hands and ripped it open. “Mmmm, they’re the kind that have been dipped in sour sugar crystals!” she said as she pulled out a green-and-yellow striped gummy worm. “The best.”
“It’s weird you like those,” Ashley replied. “They’re really sweet.”
“More sour than sweet, I think,” Mary Beth said as she ripped the head off a gummy worm and began to chew. “Especially these ones. These ones are supersour. Ahhh, my mouth is all puckery! You want one?”
Ashley shook her head. “Nope. I just remembered I have those chocolate-dipped marshmallow pumpkins my dad gave me,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
When Ashley returned to the basement with her favorite candy, Mary Beth had finished the gummies and turned on the TV. “So, what do you want to watch?”
“A scary movie, for sure,” Ashley replied.
“I’ve never seen a scary movie before,” Mary Beth said, slouching into the corner of the couch. “Are they really scary?”
“Sometimes,” Ashley said. “And sometimes they’re just ridiculous. Like, funny-ridiculous because the special effects are so bad or the plot is so stupid. Especially old scary movies can seem really silly today.”
“It’s funny how you know so much about scary stuff and I don’t know, like, anything about it,” Mary Beth said. “You must think I’ve lived some completely sheltered life or something.”
Ashley wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, so she grabbed the remote control and started flipping through the channels. If Mary Beth has never seen a scary movie before, I don’t want to traumatize her, she thought. Probably better to find something old and tame. “Hey, this looks good,” Ashley said out loud as she came across a black-and-white monster movie that had probably been made way before her parents were born. “What do you think?”
“Sure, whatever you want to watch,” Mary Beth replied. “It’s your birthday, after all!”
Ashley turned off the lights, and the girls sat next to each other on the couch, snacking on chips and making fun of the movie’s ridiculous special effects. The monster costume, in particular, was hilarious—so much less believable than any of the costumes they’d seen on the trick-or-treaters that night. Ashley howled with laughter when the monster mask slipped so that she could see the actor’s face beneath it.
After a while, though, Ashley realized that she was the only one cracking jokes. She sneaked a glance at Mary Beth, worried that her friend didn’t like the movie and was just too polite to say anything. Mary Beth stared into the distance, unblinking. Ashley couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed like Mary Beth wasn’t even looking at the TV.
“Hey,” Ashley asked gently. “Do you want to watch something else?”
Mary Beth jumped a little, as if her mind had been miles away. “Oh, no, this is fine,” she said, clearing her throat. “Actually, I’m really thirsty. Do you have anything to drink?”
“Oh, sure,” Ashley replied, jumping up from the couch. “Sorry; I forgot about drinks. I’ll be right back.”
In the kitchen, Ashley dropped some ice cubes into two tall glasses. Then she opened a bottle of soda and filled each glass nearly to the brim. She walked slowly and carefully down the steps of the basement so that she wouldn’t spill a single drop.
Mary Beth’s eyes were filled with gratitude as she took the soda from Ashley. “Thank you,” she said before raising the glass to her lips and drinking greedily, finishing the entire soda in one gulp.
“Wow, you really were thirsty,” Ashley remarked as she sat back down on the couch and sipped her own soda. The girls were quiet for a few moments as they watched the movie. Then Mary Beth cleared her throat again.
“Ash? I’m still thirsty.”
“Here you go,” Ashley replied, never taking her eyes off the TV as she pushed her own soda toward Mary Beth. “You can have some of mine.”
But Mary Beth shook her head. “I don’t want any more soda,” she said. “I think it just made me thirstier.”
“Oh. Okay,” Ashley replied. “Hang on. I’ll get something else.”
Ashley brought Mary Beth’s glass back to the kitchen, rinsed it in the sink, and filled it with cold, clear water. Then she brought it back down to the basement.
“Thanks so much, Ashley,” Mary Beth said. But when she took a sip of the water, she made a face. Then she put the glass back on the table without drinking any more.
“Is something wrong?” Ashley asked.
“It just tastes . . . I don’t know . . . bad,” Mary Beth replied. She swallowed hard. “I’m still so thirsty, though.”
“Um, well, we have orange juice, and milk,” Ashley began, trying to remember what was in the fridge. “And apple cider, I think.”
Mary Beth shook her head again. “I don’t want any of that,” she said, her voice cracking. “That all sounds awful.”
“Well, sorry,” Ashley said, stung. “I don’t know what to tell you. Soda, juice, water, milk. That’s what we have. What else would you want to drink?”
“I don’t know,” Mary Beth said.
Ashley tried not to sigh with annoyance. It had been a really long and lousy night. All she wanted to do now was watch some scary movies before she went to sleep. Why did Mary Beth have to start acting so high maintenance all of a sudden?
Then Mary Beth made a strange noise. Almost a whimper, almost a sob—it was unexpected enough that Ashley turned on the light so she could get a better look at her friend. Mary Beth’s face was screwed up like she had started to cry, but her eyes were dry. No tears.
As Ashley’s eyes adjusted to the light, she realized that Mary Beth’s skin was dry, too. And her lips. Her lips were so dry that they had cracked. Now they were speckled with tiny white shreds of flesh.
“Ashley, please,” Mary Beth begged. “I’m so thirsty. Please. Please get me something to drink. I need something to drink.”
“Of course,” Ashley whispered, worried. She ran upstairs and poured glasses of milk and juice, then rushed them back to the basement. Liquid spilled out of the glasses all over the stairs, but Ashley didn’t care.
“I brought ev
erything we have,” she said as she set the glasses on the table.
Mary Beth lunged for the juice, took a sip, and spat it on the floor. “This is terrible,” she said, her voice tight and cracking. “It’s spoiled or something.”
Ashley reached for the glass and took a sip. “It tastes fine to me,” she replied.
By this time Mary Beth had started pacing around the room. Her skin was deathly pale, growing whiter by the second. “I’m so thirsty,” she said again. “I’m so thirsty. I can’t—I can’t swallow—”
“Here,” Ashley said helplessly. “Try some more water.”
“No. Terrible,” Mary Beth snapped. Then she looked straight at Ashley with haunted, hollow eyes. “Ashley, what’s happening to me?”
“I—I don’t know.”
As her anxiety increased, Mary Beth starting chewing on her cuticles as she paced. Suddenly, she cried out in pain.
“What? What happened?” Ashley exclaimed.
“I bit myself,” Mary Beth replied. “My thumb. I’m bleeding.”
Ashley laughed from sheer anxiety. “Next time take your fangs out before you start biting your nails.”
“I did,” Mary Beth replied. “I took them out hours ago.”
As Ashley looked at Mary Beth, she noticed that a single drop of blood from her thumb glistened on her mouth.
Then Mary Beth licked her lips.
An instant peace, an enormous calm, flooded Mary Beth’s face as she closed her eyes and smiled as if she’d just tasted the most delicious stuff in the world. She sighed with relief and brought her thumb to her mouth. Then she started sucking on it like she was a baby.
All right. Time to go, Ashley thought. Her eyes must have flicked toward the staircase, and Mary Beth must have noticed, because in one seamless motion, Mary Beth moved in front of the stairs, blocking them. She gave Ashley a thin smile; there was a smear of blood on her chin, real blood, not the fake stuff from earlier.
“Where are you going, Ashley? You don’t have to go anywhere.”
“I—”
“We have everything we need down here, right? Stuff to eat. Stuff to drink.”
Was it Ashley’s imagination, or was Mary Beth staring at her neck?
“Let’s just hang out,” Mary Beth continued. “Just sit down, okay?”
“Sure. Yeah. Of course we will. I just, um, have to go upstairs first,” Ashley rambled. “Just for a second.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Mary Beth’s face. “Come on, Ashley, what’s the problem? It’s not like I’m going to bite you. Sit down. Sit.”
Is there another way out of the basement? Ashley thought frantically.
There wasn’t.
Ashley edged back toward the couch, never taking her eyes off Mary Beth, still dressed in her vampire costume, still sucking on her thumb. When Ashley finally perched on the edge of a cushion, Mary Beth smiled with relief. Ashley, her hand shaking, reached for the soda. She took a sip as Mary Beth approached the couch, licking her lips. Her dry, cracked, bloodstained lips.
Then Ashley threw the soda into Mary Beth’s face.
As Mary Beth stood there, soaked and sputtering, Ashley shoved past her and ran up the stairs, two at a time, all the way to her mom and dad’s bedroom. No slivers of light escaped around the closed door; her parents were probably asleep, Ashley knew, but she had to wake them up. Whatever was happening to Mary Beth was way too serious—and way too scary—for Ashley to handle on her own.
She tapped on the door, then knocked a little louder and pushed it open a crack. “Mom?” Ashley called in a soft voice. Then louder: “Mom? Mom?”
Mrs. McDowell sat up in bed. “Ashley?” she asked groggily. “Is everything okay?”
“Can you come downstairs?” Ashley said. “Mary Beth’s not—she’s not feeling well—”
“Of course,” Mrs. McDowell replied, hurrying out of bed and grabbing her bathrobe. “Is she sick?”
“I don’t know,” Ashley replied. “She’s just acting really weird. We were in the basement watching a movie, and then she—”
But Ashley couldn’t finish her sentence. She followed her mom to the basement stairs, then suddenly thought, I can’t let her go down there!
“Mom, wait!” Ashley exclaimed, grabbing her mother by the arm. “Never mind. Forget it.”
Mrs. McDowell sighed. “Ashley, what’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry I woke you up,” Ashley continued. “Just—just don’t go downstairs.”
As soon as she’d finished her sentence, Ashley knew that she’d gone too far.
“Exactly what is going on down there?” Mrs. McDowell asked, pulling her arm free of Ashley’s grasp. “Mary Beth? Can you come up, please?”
Okay, Ashley thought wildly. That’s better. There are more ways out of the house up here than down in the basement.
But Mary Beth didn’t appear. And she didn’t answer, not even when Mrs. McDowell called her name again. Without another word, Mrs. McDowell marched downstairs. Ashley started to follow her but recoiled as she stepped in something wet and sticky. Oh no, she thought. Oh no oh no oh no.
She took a deep breath and clenched her fists so hard that her fingernails made pale little crescent moons in the flesh of her palms. Then she looked down and realized that she had stepped into a wet footprint.
The juice, Ashley realized. I spilled it on the stairs. Mary Beth must have walked through it. . . .
“Ashley? Is Mary Beth upstairs?” Mrs. McDowell called from the basement. “She’s not down here. And where is everybody else? Stephanie and Danielle—”
“Hang on, Mom!”
Ashley crept across the kitchen floor, following a trail of moist, glistening footprints. They led straight to the back door, which was open just a crack, just enough to let in the night air so that a damp chill filled the entire kitchen. Ashley shivered and hugged herself, but she knew that her goose bumps didn’t come from the cold air. They came from what she saw on the doorknob.
A smear of bright-red blood, still wet, dripping, even. Someone who was bleeding—someone with a bleeding thumb, perhaps—had rushed from this house, rushed through this door so quickly that she hadn’t even stopped to close it. And in that chilling instance, Ashley realized that Mary Beth was gone. Her three new friends—the three girls who had made the move to Heaton Corners bearable—had all walked out on her birthday party, without even saying good-bye.
“Ashley! Did you hear me?”
Ashley turned around to see her mom standing in the doorway. “What?”
“I asked where everybody is?” Mrs. McDowell repeated.
Ashley shrugged and looked away. She didn’t want her mom to see that her eyes had filled with tears. “I don’t know. They left. I guess.”
“They left?” Mrs. McDowell asked incredulously. “In the middle of the night?”
“Well, Stephanie and Danielle left earlier,” Ashley said. “And I guess—I guess Mary Beth decided to leave too.”
Mrs. McDowell gave Ashley a look—the one with the raised eyebrows, the one that said I think there’s something you’re not telling me—but Ashley didn’t care.
“Did you girls have a fight?” Mrs. McDowell finally asked.
“No,” Ashley said. “I have no idea what happened! They didn’t even say good-bye. None of them did.”
Then it happened: A single tear spilled down her cheek. Ashley wiped it away with the back of her hand, angry at herself for crying.
Mrs. McDowell sighed. “I would’ve driven them home! I can’t imagine what got into Mary Beth to leave like that. She didn’t need to walk home all by herself at night. I’ve got to call her parents.”
“Mom, no,” Ashley said. “Please. You can’t do that.”
“Ashley, I have to,” Mrs. McDowell replied. “If it were you, I’d want someone to call me.”
“Please, please don’t,” Ashley begged. “Do I have to spell it out for you? They all walked out of my birthday party. If you call their parents,
you’re only going to make it worse. Please, Mom, please don’t call them.”
Mrs. McDowell gave Ashley a long look while she tried to decide what to do. Then she sighed. “Okay, Pumpkin, I won’t,” Mrs. McDowell finally said. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget how tough middle school can be. This must be a really disappointing birthday for you.”
“Yeah. You could say that,” Ashley replied in a soft voice.
Mrs. McDowell walked across the kitchen and gave her a big hug. “Why don’t you go to bed now, Ash?” she asked. “It won’t seem so bad in the morning.”
Yeah, right, Ashley thought to herself, but all she said was, “Okay. I just have to go back down to the basement for a sec.”
“Good night, Pumpkin,” Mrs. McDowell said as she gave Ashley another kiss. “Happy birthday. Next year will be better.”
It can hardly be worse, Ashley thought as she tried to smile at her mom. Then she slipped into the basement, where she ripped off her Medusa costume and threw it in the trash. The only thing she kept was the lemniscate necklace; it was a present from Maya, which made it special.
Next Ashley gathered up all the Halloween candy so that she could throw it away too. Ashley didn’t want any reminders of the worst night of her life. But just before she dumped it all in the garbage, Ashley saw a simple chocolate bar and thought, Why not?
She ripped off the wrapper and ate it in two bites. It tasted stale and waxy; not even worth the effort of chewing. Ashley swallowed hard, on the verge of tears again, as she trudged upstairs to her bedroom. No matter how much she tried to focus on something else—on anything else—all she could think of was the way her friends had walked out on her birthday party, leaving Ashley all by herself on what should’ve been the best night of the year.
It was the meanest trick anyone had ever played on her in her whole life.
CHAPTER 11
Ashley was used to the disappointment of November first, a day marked by sleepiness and a steady, deflating realization that the fun of Halloween and her birthday was over for another full year. The sugar crash didn’t help, either. But this year, November first really was the worst. It was the longest, loneliest day, a day during which Ashley wished, constantly, that her friends would call. Or text. Or stop by. Or do anything to explain their behavior the night before—to reassure her that it was all just a joke. That they still wanted to be her friends. The more Ashley thought about that scene in the basement with Mary Beth, the more she started to doubt her own memories. It made no sense that Mary Beth would start acting crazy like that. And the soda—Ashley nearly groaned when she remembered throwing a soda in her best friend’s face. No wonder Mary Beth had stalked out of her party without even saying good-bye. Ashley desperately wanted to apologize . . . if Mary Beth would ever speak to her again. When she hadn’t heard from anyone by late afternoon, she finally mustered up to courage to call them, but there was no answer at the Medina, Gloucester, or Ramos households.