Sally's Bones

by MacKenzie Cadenhead

  “GGGgggrrrr-uff!” Bones barked, and he showered Seymour with big, wet kisses.

  The stunned adults were still frozen in shock when Sally darted past. She briefly stopped at her father, giving him a drive-by peck on the cheek. She snapped her fingers at Bones, who leapt out of Seymour’s arms and ran to her side.

  “I love you, Daddy!” Sally called as she raced into the Vanderperfects’ house.

  Chapter 17

  The grand foyer was more extravagant than Sally had imagined. Two stories tall with a seven-tiered chandelier at the center, it showcased a sweeping staircase that curved along the room’s perimeter and ended on a high landing to the right. Sally saw Princess Poopsy disappear into a hallway off the balcony, but as she made for the stairs, Sally lost her footing and slipped on the buffed marble floor. Bones followed suit, and the duo slid across the length of the room. They landed in a tangled heap at the entrance to the Vanderperfect’s formal dining room, where Viola was waiting impatiently for her mother to return.

  “Oh. My. God!” the displeased diner declared. “I thought I was rid of you. What are you doing in my house?”

  Sally rose to her feet and charged at her fair-haired foe. “What do you think I’m doing here, you horrible lying thief? It’s one thing not to like me but to go after an innocent animal? That is beyond mean, and I am so going to take you down.”

  “What are you talking about?” Viola slammed her utensils on the table. “What are you talking about?!”

  Hands on her hips and justice on her side, Sally laid it out. “I know you’re the real bone snatcher, Viola. I know you set us up. The night of your birthday party, you told your mom someone had been stealing Princess Poopsy’s bones. You told her it’d been going on since the day we met, which, lucky for you, also happened to be the same night I found Bones. You then went around town stealing the bones of other innocent pets until you finally planted the evidence in the shed where you knew Bones and I hung out. Then you called the D.C. and tipped him off.” Sally took a moment to let her brilliant deduction set in.

  “Unfortunately for you,” she continued, “your plan didn’t work, because Bones and I figured it out. And we’re going to comb every inch of this place until we find the proof we need to expose you as the cruel, calculating criminal you are!”

  Viola stared at Sally in disbelief, stunned, it seemed, into silence. The quiet, however, did not last long. The accused adolescent began to scream. “I am so, so, so sick of you, Sally Simplesmith! You and your stupid zombie dog! Get out of my house! Get out of my house!!”

  Sally and Viola were close to blows when their parents, Officer Stu, and the D.C. arrived.

  “Grwoff!” Bones warned. Sally turned her attention to the gathered grown-ups and prepared to run.

  “Girls, please,” Officer Stu pleaded, surveying the stand off. “Clearly there’s more going on here than I know about, and I’d like to get to the bottom of it. So, why don’t we call a momentary truce and—”

  Before Stu could finish his proposal, a serving woman entered through a swinging door at the far end of the dining room. The D.C. lunged at Bones. The nimble corpse leapt up onto the table and raced across it, deftly navigating napkins and plates, candles and glasses.

  “Bones. Kitchen!” Sally called as she sprinted toward the swinging door. The D.C. and Mrs. Vanderperfect chased after them. Terrified at the sight of the skeleton, the Vanderperfects’ soon-to-be-fired maid dropped the large serving bowl of soup she had been carrying and covered her eyes. Sally and Bones cleared her before the basin hit the ground. Vivienne and the dog catcher were not so lucky. As she pushed through the kitchen door, Sally stole a quick but satisfying glance back at her pursuers, who were now covered in clam chowder.

  Racing through the kitchen, she searched for an exit but saw nothing. It seemed the only way in or out was through the swinging door from which she had just escaped. Sally felt the room begin to spin. She was on the verge of passing out when a loud crash from the far corner caught her attention. Another server had just spotted Bones and regarded him with horror. Though she had had just about enough of such narrow-minded reactions, Sally couldn’t have been more thankful for this one. As she looked in the direction of the dumbfounded waiter, she spied an actual dumbwaiter. Sally whistled to Bones, who followed her into the small elevator.

  “Second floor, if you know what’s good for you!” she told the gaping garçon. He closed the hatch instantly and sent them upstairs.

  When the dumbwaiter reached its destination, Sally threw the latch and crawled onto a landing at the end of a long hall. “I think this is the hallway where I saw Princess Poopsy. The stolen bones have to be here. Do you think you can find them?”

  The dead-but-determined dog growled softly and began sniffing all around. Sally prayed that they would find what they were after. But as she threw open door after door, they uncovered nothing but overpriced furniture and more than enough portraits of Viola to fill a museum.

  Sally crumpled against a door midway between the dumbwaiter and the grand staircase. “I just don’t get it,” she whimpered. “If it wasn’t Viola, then who?”

  “You, Sally Simplesmith. It must have been you,” a vicious voice replied. Less than fifteen feet away stood Vivienne Vanderperfect, triumphant at the top of the stairs. Viola, the D.C., and Officer Stu were close behind. “I think it’s high time you cease trying to blame someone else for your own heinous crime and simply take what’s coming to you. Officer Stu, arrest them!”

  “Arrest us? For what?” Sally balked.

  Vivienne smiled cruelly. “Breaking and entering, fraudulence—”

  “Your hideous fashion sense,” Viola muttered.

  “Framing me for a crime I didn’t commit!” Vivienne cried.

  “Wait, what?” Sally asked. “Framing you? Why would I frame you? Not that I did anything wrong, but why wouldn’t you think I was after Viola?”

  Mrs. Vanderperfect stiffened and crossed her arms. “What? Oh, well, yes, of course. Of course I meant Viola. Framing Viola for a crime she didn’t commit. That’s what I meant to say.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” Sally gasped. “It wasn’t Viola. It was you!”

  “What was who?” Vivienne stammered. “You dare accuse me? Isn’t that just…I absolutely never…Why would you even…”

  Viola walked around to face her mother. “Mom? What did you do?”

  Vivienne Vanderperfect looked past her daughter at Sally. She raised her perfectly manicured claws and lurched in the startled girl’s direction. “I’m going to get you, you ungrateful little—!”

  Sally ducked, narrowly escaping Vivienne’s clutches just as Mr. Simplesmith came charging up the stairs.

  “Sal—the banister!” her father hollered, and he threw himself on top of the mini-mob on the landing. Sally whistled to Bones, who leapt into her arms. Throwing her leg over the side, she straddled the banister and slid down to the ground floor.

  Bones hopped onto the floor and went straight to work, sniffing out the marrowbone’s pungent perfume.

  “Ggruff, Ggruff!” he barked and hightailed it past the living room, through the solarium, and out to the side yard. “Rara, Ggruff,” he called to Sally, who ran as fast as she could to keep up. When they reached the Vanderperfects’ richly landscaped garden, Sally felt a stitch dig into her side. She didn’t know how much farther she could run when Bones once again came to a sudden stop that took Sally by surprise. Tumbling over the little skeleton, she crashed into one of Mrs. Vanderperfect’s oversized planters. She felt the wood split against her back and wondered how much jail time property damage would add to her sentence.

  As she dug herself out of the mountain of soil that surrounded her, she was faced with a curious tableau. On the far left stood the D.C., his fists clenched as tightly as his teeth. Beside him was Officer Stu, arms crossed, frowning as he shook his head. To the right was V
iola, with gaping mouth and bulging eyes, and then Sally’s father, who had taken off his glasses but stared clear-eyed in his daughter’s direction. Kneeling beneath them all was Vivienne Vanderperfect, her outstretched arms paralyzed, reaching for something she would never quite grasp.

  Bones trotted over to Sally and crawled into her lap. Sighing, he leaned over to her shoulder and pushed something off it with his nose. Sally heard the object land with a thud and turned to see what it was. There, in a pile of dirt, was a partially chewed marrowbone. Sally turned and beheld the broken planter behind her.

  “Whoa,” she whispered, as she watched mounds of soil spill out…and dozens of stolen bones fall forward.

  Chapter 18

  Two months, twenty-eight days, three hours, and forty-four minutes earlier, Vivienne Vanderperfect stood atop Hope Hill Cemetery, towering over her dead friend’s grave. “Sorry Patty, but it’s my turn now,” she whispered through tightly clenched teeth. “It’s my Viola shining in the spotlight, my daughter that no one will ignore. Your reign is over. Let the age of the Vanderperfects begin!” Thunder cracked, and a light rain began to fall. Vivienne laughed.

  “Oh, what do you care?” She hollered to the headstones and the trees. “It’s not as though you produced a worthy heir! I mean, really, Patty. Your Sally is a bit of a disappointment, wouldn’t you say? I was ready for some competition, but that little freak you raised…well, let’s just say I’m not quaking or shaking!”

  Lightning streaked through the sky, followed by another blast of thunder.

  “Not to worry, old friend,” Vivienne assured. “My Vi will be a benevolent ruler, so long as your Sally stays in her place. There’s plenty of room for her in the shadows.” She kicked a pebble against Patty’s headstone. “I should know. Thanks to you, I lived there for a very long time.”

  The spitting mist turned to heavy rain, and Vivienne pulled the hood of her black rain poncho over her head. “All right, all right. I can take a hint. I’ll leave you to eternity. Enjoy yourself six feet under, while I finally savor the view from up top. I just wanted you to know that all those years I pretended to be your friend, all those times I stood nobly by your side are over. It’s my turn now. My turn to shi—”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Vivienne spied a skinny, wet figure trudging up the hill. Though she hated being interrupted in the final moments of her victory speech, she was curious to see who else would visit the cemetery on this dark and stormy night.

  Slipping into the shadows of a nearby mausoleum, Vivienne watched silently as Sally Simplesmith collapsed on her mother’s grave and asked for death. She witnessed lightning hit the towering oak tree above but made no move to see whether or not Sally was all right. She was about to reveal herself when a skeleton creature, risen from the dead, appeared to attack the girl, but she froze in shock when she saw actual signs of friendship develop between the terrible twosome.

  Yet of all the bizarre and disconcerting things she had witnessed that night, only one event was disturbing enough to stir Vivienne to action. As Sally and Bones prepared to head home, Patty Simplesmith’s pathetic daughter said the single most dangerous thing Vivienne could ever have imagined.

  You’re special, Vivienne heard Sally tell her foul four-legged friend. And for the first time in my life, I think I might be special too.

  “That was when I realized Sally Simplesmith had to be stopped,” Vivienne Vanderperfect now confessed. She sat in a crimson-upholstered chair at the far end of her living room as Officer Stu stood above her, jotting notes in his official police memo pad. Viola stared out the window at the dark, cold night, and the D.C. hovered uncomfortably by the door. Bones, Sally, and Seymour huddled together on a sofa across from the real bone thief.

  Seymour Simplesmith had not stopped hugging his daughter or petting her dog since the family had been reunited after the discovery of Vivienne’s stolen bones. As he sat listening to the confession of the woman who had framed his child, Seymour’s grip tightened, and Sally had to pat his hand more than once to get him to loosen up.

  “And what was it you needed to stop Sally from doing?” Officer Stu asked.

  “Why from actually being special, of course,” Vivienne replied brightly. “Everything was fine when she was a miserable, pathetic little nobody. Viola was the most important girl in Merryland, and that was that. But when that little monster came along and Sally stopped being so extremely depressed and uninteresting, people began to notice her more and my Vi less.

  “It was the same with Patty, you know.” She grimaced. “Nobody stood a chance when she was in the room. Of course, she never even noticed the effect she had. She was just so naturally charming and lovely.” Vivienne shook her head. “At least in Watta City I didn’t have that to contend with. Too bad Sally has more of her mother in her than just the eyes.”

  Mrs. Vanderperfect gestured for Stu to come closer, as if confiding in a sympathetic friend. “I tried sending Sally anonymous threatening notes, assuming she would have enough sense to keep her playmate under wraps, but I guess she’s not as bright as her father.”

  Seymour’s body tensed, and Sally leaned into him, hoping he would remain calm.

  “By the time the girls went to the Tone Death concert, the problem had gotten quite serious. That Sally stole all Viola’s friends. Had them over to her house with promises of bootleg CDs and dead dog diversions—all of them except my poor Vi.”

  Vivienne stared in her daughter’s direction but seemed to look right through her. She did not see Viola at all. “It’s a good thing I’d already taken action,” she continued. “Immediately following Viola’s ruined birthday party, I called the pound and reported a perfectly crafted crime for which there could only be one suspect. And when I ran into Seymour at the concert, it didn’t take much to get him to spill all the Simplesmith’s secrets. He even told me about the abandoned shed at school! That’s how I knew where to plant the evidence.”

  Mr. Simplesmith looked at his daughter, shamefaced. Sally squeezed his hand to let him know it was all right.

  “Of course, it was rather unpleasant, sneaking about in the middle of night, stealing already-chewed, sometimes even buried, animal bones,” Vivienne admitted. “But what other choice did I have? The way that little scene-stealer turned my elegant soiree into a three-ring circus, well, I determined to put an end to her right there.”

  Sally shuddered as Vivienne snapped her head in the Simplesmiths’ direction. “How could you, Sally? After I took pity on you, primed you to be Viola’s second-in-command? It was more than someone like you could ever have hoped for, more than you deserved. But no. You had to be different, unique, your own girl. Well, good luck with that, honey,” Mrs. Vanderperfect snorted. “If it wasn’t me this time, it’ll be someone else the next. Someone will kill that spirit in you soon enough. You just wait and see. Your day will come, Sally Simplesmith. Your day will soon be—”

  “That’s enough,” a voice sighed from the corner. Sally knew it well; soft and lilting, pretty and singsong, even when it said some of the cruelest things on earth. But here, now, Viola Vanderperfect’s sweet soprano was sad and tired. Sally beheld her former nemesis as she approached her mother.

  “What was that?” Mrs. Vanderperfect asked.

  “I said, you’ve done enough, Mom. Let’s forget about the Simplesmiths and just be the Vanderperfects.” Viola kneeled at her mother’s feet. “Nobody defines us, we make the rules, isn’t that what you always say? So let’s not worry about anyone else anymore. Let it go. Please? For me?”

  Mrs. Vanderperfect cupped Viola’s face in her hands. She leaned down as though about to kiss her daughter on the cheek, but she moved her lips to her ear instead. In a hissing whisper, she said, “For you? But I did this all for you. All of it. I can’t believe this is the thanks I get.”

  Disgusted, Vivienne tossed her daughter aside. Viola lost her balance and fell to the floor. “A
fter everything I’ve put into you: the ballet classes, the etiquette lessons, the clothing allowance, the personal trainer. After all I’ve done to make you: as perfect as you can be, to see you accept quiet defeat at the hands of a freak-show nobody like Sally Simplesmith—well, it gets me right here, kid. It gets me right here.” Vivienne beat her breast as Viola gaped at her mother. “Oh, close your mouth, Vi. It’s unbecoming.”

  Mrs. Vanderperfect rose to her feet and paced the room. “We already moved once because you couldn’t hack it. Always first runner up, never top prize. You floundered in the big pond, so I thought giving you a smaller one might fix things; that you’d finally become the great white shark I had always wanted.”

  Vivienne glared at her child. “I guess I was wrong. You’ll never be anything but a guppy.”

  “All right, Mrs. Vanderperfect,” Officer Stu interjected uneasily. “I think we might be getting off track here. Why don’t you and our dog-catching friend go into the kitchen, and we’ll work out the details of how you’re going to repay the town for the missing bones.” He motioned to the couch on which the Simplesmiths sat. “As for how you’re going to make this up to Sally—”

  “Make what up to whom?” Vivienne hooted. “This is all her fault, or haven’t you been listening? Well, her fault and Viola’s. If you think I’ll ever…”

  As Mrs. Vanderperfect geared up for another spectacular rant, Sally focused on Viola, who was slowly crossing the living room. She resumed her post by the window, once again staring blankly into the night sky.

  “I don’t want anything,” Sally said abruptly. Mrs. Vanderperfect glared at the girl who had interrupted her. “I mean, I don’t want anything except Bones’s and my names cleared. Other than that, I just want to go home.”

  “Sally, are you sure?” asked Officer Stu.