Half running, half walking up the sidewalk, Lena let her mind work along with her legs, in fits and starts, lurching along, connecting the dots. Selling a ring to a pawnshop with “a group of boys” sure didn’t seem like Robbie’s style. Nevertheless, he could have been involved.
As she rounded the corner, Lena’s train of thought jumped the tracks as she almost ran right into Abby. “Whoa,” she called out in spite of herself, her cheeks reddening. She had broken her promise not to think about anything related to Robbie, and now she’d been caught — for the second time that day. She had to turn the tables, fast.
“Hey. Where’ve you been?” Lena asked. She tried to act casual, like she always spent her lunch period downtown.
A guilty look flashed across Abby’s face, then disappeared. “Nowhere,” she replied with a shrug. “Where were you?”
Lena wanted to tell her friend the truth, but didn’t dare. “Nowhere,” she answered instead. It was true, in a way. Because that was exactly where she was getting with this whole Robbie thing.
Nowhere. And fast.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Give it back. Give it back.” The words echoed in Lena’s head while she slept. In her dream, Mrs. Henson was yelling at her from the castle window. At least, she thought it was Mrs. Henson. Was it Mrs. Henson? Yes — Mrs. Henson in Abby’s Boy Scout cap. Weird.
“I didn’t mean to take it,” Lena shouted in reply. But the wind carried her words in the opposite direction — she was too far away. Suddenly, a figure charged toward her from the base of the castle — Robbie riding a shrunken bottle-cap truck as if it were a horse. He carried the Impulse, aiming it at her like a weapon. His lips moved frantically.
Lena resisted the urge to run. She needed to hear what Robbie was saying. He charged closer and closer, and Lena braced herself, willing her legs not to move. Then, finally, she could hear him. “Help me,” he said. His eyes were desperate, pleading. “Give it back.”
“We have to give everything back,” she announced, barging into Abby’s room. She felt pretty awkward, because she and Abby had barely spoken all week. But her latest nightmare had set her on a new path, and she needed Abby’s help.
Abby was still in bed. She barely moved under the covers. Lena glanced at the clock. It was 7:32, ridiculously early for the first Saturday of the school year, and even more ridiculously early to be waking up your currently estranged best friend.
“Um, I mean, sorry to wake you up so early. But I need all the Robbie stuff so I can send it away.”
Abby threw back the covers and sat up. “Finally!” she crowed, looking up at the ceiling. “The girl has come to her senses!”
Lena sheepishly dropped the cardboard box she was carrying and looked around the room. It was a disaster area — piles and piles of stuff. Magazines, clothes, books, dishes, and more clothes — many of which Lena recognized from their thrifting adventures. Her dresser was covered with every kind of concealer, powder, blush, eye shadow, eyeliner, lip liner, and mascara ever created. The floor was practically invisible. Lena clucked her tongue. “Girl, how do you find anything in here?”
Abby yawned and got to her feet. “I don’t, usually,” she admitted. “But you already know that.”
Lena used a foot to gingerly lift a heap of clothes, then threw up her hands. “Well, I need you to find that sketchbook. I’m sending it back … along with my Impulse.”
“Really?” Abby raised an eyebrow.
“It’s the only way I’m going to actually sleep again in this lifetime.”
“Right. But what about Ghost Boy?”
“I think this is what Robbie wants.”
“Excellent!” Abby beamed. Then her face fell. “But what about all that free film?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll give it away,” Lena replied. “I can decide that later. Right now I need to know where the stuff is….” She looked around the room worriedly. “Do you know where you put it?”
“Of course I do,” Abby replied, sounding a little offended. She got to her feet and picked her way across her room to the closet. Shoving a pile of books aside, she opened the door, turned on the light, and disappeared inside. A moment later she reappeared with a pile of stuff.
“Here you go,” she said, handing it over.
“You can toss the photos,” Lena said, taking the sketchbook and dropping it into the box as if it burned her fingers. Then, before she could change her mind, she set the Impulse on top, shoved in a bunch of crumpled-up newspaper, and closed it up. “Packing tape?” she asked.
Abby unearthed a pair of jeans from a pile next to her bed and slipped them on. “Downstairs,” she said, pulling her sleep tee over her head and donning a turquoise blouse instead. The bright fabric looked great against her dark skin. Checking her braids in the mirror, she nodded approvingly and added gloss before stepping over several mounds on her way to the door.
Abby found a roll of packing tape in the laundry room junk drawer and a mailing label in the family room desk. “Let’s see if we can look up the address,” she said, switching on the now-functioning computer. She typed in “Ruth’s Thrift” and “Phelps, NJ” and hit ENTER. A moment later the address appeared on the screen.
“We could probably just send it to Ruth Henson in Phelps and it would get there,” Lena said as she copied the address onto the label. “But I don’t want to take any chances. The last thing I want is to see this box back on my front porch. Or anywhere else, for that matter.” She smoothed the clear tape across the top of the brown cardboard. It was ready to go.
Lena felt a pang of sadness but shook it off, remembering the dream. As much as she loved that Impulse, she had to give it back. Wasn’t that what Robbie — and Mrs. Henson — had told her to do? “I’m going to drop it off at the post office right now, then head to Saywell’s for breakfast. Wanna come?” She felt oddly shy asking. “I’ll buy — it’s the least I can do.” It wasn’t quite an apology, but she hoped Abby would understand her intent.
Abby grinned and licked her lips. “Mmmmmm, ricotta pancakes,” she said. “You’re on.”
That afternoon Lena helped her dad process the final pounds of peaches for jam. With her hands in a bowl of blanched, overripe O’Henrys, she peeled the damp, fuzzy skins away from the luscious insides. Her hands dripped with juice and the sunny smell of ripe peaches wafted past her nose, and still the cold spot inside her could not be warmed.
Lena heaved an inward sigh. She’d thought that everything would be all right once she mailed the camera and the sketchbook, but without that camera around her neck she felt a little … naked. Not to mention sad. Of course it was great to have her friend back, but the rest was so unresolved. And her mind kept drifting back to Robbie. Would he ever get the help he needed?
“I’m short!” Lena’s dad suddenly cried. He smacked his hand on the counter, making Lena jump.
Lena glanced up from her pile of peaches and eyed her father’s six-foot-four frame. “Actually, Dad, you’re pretty tall,” she retorted.
Lena’s dad chuckled. “No, no. I mean I’m short on fruit — I need more peaches. How about another trip to Phelps? They might have a few stragglers. We could go tomorrow morning….”
Lena felt a cold shiver run through her. She shook her head. “No, thanks. I have, uh, plans tomorrow.” That wasn’t exactly true. In fact, she had no plans at all for the following day. But she didn’t want to go to Phelps. Not tomorrow. Maybe not ever.
Lena peeled the last O’Henry and plopped it into the bowl. The pile of shiny, juicy fruit was impressive.
“Anything else, Dad?” she asked.
Mr. Giff shook his head. “No thanks, honey. I’m just going to pulp these babies up and put them in the fridge for tomorrow.”
Rinsing her hands in the sink, Lena felt anything but peachy. Slowly, she climbed the stairs to her room. Plopping onto her bed, she gazed out the window at the cloudless sky. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and crisp, and yet she felt as gloomy and heavy as lea
d. She had done exactly what Robbie and Mrs. Henson had asked her to do in the dream. So why didn’t she feel even a little bit better?
Rolling away from the window and onto her back, Lena spied the one picture Abby hadn’t confiscated sitting on her bedside table — the window at Don’s Pawn. Lena picked it up and looked at it for what felt like the hundredth time. The ring was still there, and as she studied the picture she began to see something she’d missed before….
Robbie was in the picture, which she already knew. But now she noticed that his hand was carefully cupped as if he were holding something, but his palm was empty. His gaze, intense as ever but also full of longing, was resting squarely on the butterfly ring in the window.
Help me, his voice said, clear as anything, in Lena’s head. Give it back.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“So what’s the big surprise?” Lena asked, sliding onto a stool next to Abby at Saywell’s Soda Fountain the following Saturday.
Abby looked like she was about to burst but remained silent as she pointed to the swinging door.
“Someone’s coming?” Lena guessed.
Abby shook her head.
“There’s something outside?” Lena tried again, attempting to squelch her frustration. She wasn’t much of a guesser.
Abby shook her head.
“I give,” Lena said. She could tell her best friend was seriously excited, and she wanted to be excited, too. But she still wasn’t sleeping much. She’d tried her best to convince herself that she had washed her hands of Robbie, that she had done everything she could to help him. But the image of the ring and the boy’s desperate refrain were still troubling her.
You don’t have a hundred and fifty dollars! she told herself. And stealing the ring was out of the question — her thieving days were over, not to mention the high security at Don’s Pawn. She had to let it go.
“The contest! The contest!” Abby finally erupted with the news she’d been dying to share. She pointed to the flyer on the door. “You won the contest!”
Lena stared at her friend in shock, her mouth hanging open. “That’s impossible. I didn’t even enter.”
“Oh yes, you did,” Abby corrected. “I entered one of your photos on the first day of school, and it was chosen. You won!”
Lena was still for a moment, trying to let this information sink in. The prize money for the contest was two hundred dollars — serious cash. It was more money than Lena had ever had at once. More money than she had ever spent.
More than enough to do what she needed to do.
Even though she was expecting it, the sound of the buzzer made Lena jump. She staggered into the dimly lit pawnshop, out of breath from biking all the way home to bargain with her dad, then turning around and biking all the way back to town. But she was also elated, because after seeing the contest winner announcement Abby gave her, her dad had agreed to loan her the prize money in advance, which meant she had exactly two hundred dollars in her pocket.
“I’d like to buy that ring in the window,” she said.
The woman looked up, surprised. “You’re going to spend a hundred and fifty bucks on that bug ring?” she asked with a skeptical squint.
Lena’s smile stretched from ear to ear. “Well, I didn’t say that….”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“There it is! There it is!” Abby tugged on Lena’s arm, dragging her over to where her prizewinning picture was hanging. This wasn’t easy since the gallery was crowded with folks eating tiny appetizers and sipping wine and sparkling water from little plastic glasses.
Dazed, Lena allowed herself to be led through the crowded room.
Suddenly, Abby stopped in her tracks. “Act natural,” she said, smiling at an elderly couple who were also moving in the direction of the winning photo.
Lena bit her lip and tried to look like an artist — creative, cool, and appropriately aloof. She felt anything but.
“She’s the winner!” Abby blurted to the passing couple.
“Congratulations,” the white-haired woman said. “I just love that photo. So moving, so real. Tell me, did your subject have to sit for long?”
Lena smiled graciously at the lady. “No, it was just candid, actually. A moment I felt compelled to capture on film.”
“Well, it’s wonderful,” the man agreed as the couple moved away.
“Come on, the coast is relatively clear,” Abby said, tugging Lena over to her photo. The poignant moment of Mrs. Henson’s anguish was no longer a floppy Polaroid image. It had been blown up and framed, and now hung proudly on the gallery wall.
Lena looked at the photo and smiled despite the sad subject matter. It was, she knew at once, the best photograph she’d ever taken — the photo of a woman hiding behind her wizened hands. She felt proud — proud of the photo, and proud of helping Robbie at last. Finally, that great weight had been lifted.
Still, as she gazed at the photo, Lena couldn’t ignore a pang of sadness that stemmed from knowing that the camera she’d captured it with, Robbie’s Impulse, was gone forever.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get another one,” Abby said, reading her mind. “I just saw one on eBay last night for forty bucks, and according to my calculations that’s just about what you have left over after buying that ring … which, by the way, was totally nuts.”
Lena smiled slyly. “Actually, I have a little more than that.”
“No.” Abby looked dumbfounded. “You haggled? At Don’s?” Her smile grew as she spoke. Her eyes sparkled and she beamed at Lena with newfound respect. “How much?”
“One twenty-five,” Lena replied proudly.
Abby laughed. “Looks like my reign as haggle queen might be ov —!”
“Hold it right there.” A gravelly voice interrupted, freezing Abby and Lena in their tracks. “Now, say cheese.”
They turned slowly to see Mrs. Henson, all dressed up and holding the Impulse — Robbie’s Impulse — up to her eye. On her finger she wore her butterfly ring. On her face she wore a smile.
Lena grinned back as the old woman pushed the button. Mrs. Henson had obviously found the gift Lena had left on her front porch the night before, the one she’d carefully wrapped in a flyer for the gallery event.
As soon as the picture had popped out of the Impulse, Mrs. Henson lifted the strap from behind her neck and placed it over Lena’s head. “Robbie would want you to have this,” she said warmly. As she stepped back, she smiled and twisted her ring around her finger.
“And he would have wanted you to have that,” Lena said, gesturing to the butterfly. The pearlescent jewel gleamed in the gallery light, throwing off sparks of color. “I don’t think he meant to take it, really. He just wanted to keep it safe, and then …”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Mrs. Henson said, her eyes glistening with tears. Lena understood. Mrs. Henson was happy to have the ring back, but would give it up in a flash for just another moment with her beloved grandson — a moment to tell him that she forgave him for taking the ring, that she loved him no matter what.
Lena reached out and took Mrs. Henson’s hand. “He knows,” she said softly. “He knows how much you love him.”
“Of course he does,” Mrs. Henson agreed with a sniffle. “And I can’t thank you enough for helping him. For helping us.”
“You’re welcome.” Lena felt the familiar weight of the Impulse around her neck, and noted that the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach had melted away. She felt warm all over.
Beside her, Abby bounced back and forth on the balls of her feet, looking from the old woman to Lena and back. “So, Robbie’s Impulse is yours to keep?” she babbled.
Lena recognized the crazed look in Abby’s eyes right away. She had seen it hundreds of times before.
“Does this mean what I think it means?” Abby asked, clearly unable to contain her excitement.
Lena grinned and patted her pocket. “Yes, indeedy,” she declared. “Cash in pocket.”
“Time to hit the thrift!” Abby
hopped up and down.
“I can offer you a twenty percent discount at my store,” Mrs. Henson said with a laugh.
“We’ll take it!” Abby said. She held out her hand and they shook on the deal.
Lena looked down at the just-developed photo in her hand. There she stood with Abby, both of them grinning from ear to ear. And in the reflection of the glass of her now prizewinning picture was another, familiar face — Robbie’s. But instead of a scowl, her unhappy ghost wore the biggest smile of all.
Preview
BITE INTO THE NEXT POISON APPLE,
IF YOU DARE….
HERE’S A
SPINE-TINGLING SNEAK PEEK!
Midnight Howl by Clare Hutton
“You are going to die,” my best friend, Tasha, said. Her brown eyes were wide with horror.
I laughed. “You’re being ridiculous.”
Tasha made a face. “You’ll be lost out there. And I won’t survive here without you.”
We were sitting under a big oak tree on the grounds of our school, eating sandwiches. The sky was blue, the sun was sunny, and warm breezes lifted strands of curly brown hair from my ponytail. It was a perfect September day.
School had been back in session for two weeks, and it seemed like Tasha and I had spent most of that time having the same conversation. Tomorrow, I was leaving Austin for three months, and I couldn’t wait.
“You love Austin!” Tasha insisted, tucking her chin-length black hair behind her ear and making a sad face at me. “And seventh grade has already started! We need to be study partners! And plan the Halloween Dance together!” She crumpled up her empty chip bag and looked at me, lips trembling. “Marisol, you can’t leave. You won’t be able to make it out in the middle of nowhere.”
Tasha is very, very dramatic. One day last year, she called me crying so hard she couldn’t talk. I thought she was sick, or that something had happened to her family. I rushed over to her house on my bike, but it turned out she had just gotten a bad haircut. And it wasn’t even that awful!
Now You See Me ... Page 9