by Lois Duncan
I should have washed it, she thought. I should have put on blush, my face looks so pale. What am I doing, going out on a date, looking like this? What is Bud going to think of me? Not that it mattered. Bud was just Bud—he could think what he chose. If he didn’t ask her out again, that was all right too. When she thought back upon last year, on the hours she had spent getting ready to go out with Ray—hair always clean and wavy, makeup perfect, heart filled with excited anticipation—it was like looking back at another girl in another world.
Sometimes she wondered how she had ever started dating Bud in the first place. If their meeting had not been so simple, she probably wouldn’t have. But he had just come over to her at the library and gestured to the book she was selecting and said, “You’ll like that one. Let me show you another by the same writer that’s even better.” They had left the library at the same time, and it had seemed natural that he would fall into step beside her since they were headed in the same direction.
After that, date had followed date, because it had been easier to say yes than no. It had been a distraction, and it had gotten her through the long evenings. She had even tried to convince herself that she might come to care for Bud if she just kept seeing him long enough.
That was before Ray had come back. Fight it though she would, it had taken all of one instant, one glimpse of the quizzical green eyes, the thin face now bearded but warm and familiar, the merest touch of a hand, and she was back exactly where she had been in the beginning, when she had looked at this boy whom other girls hardly noticed and told herself, “This is the one.”
And it wasn’t fair, not to Bud, not to any of them. She should not be leading him on with false hopes when she felt like this about someone else.
The doorbell rang.
“That’s Bud now,” Julie said, and as she turned toward the door she caught a glimpse of her mother’s face and stopped.
“Okay, Mom,” she said softly. “I won’t go.”
“I know I’m being silly but—”
“That’s okay. I don’t really want to go anyway. I was just being stubborn.” She went to the door and opened it. “Hi, Bud.”
“Hello, Julie.” He looked past her into the living room. “Hello, Mrs. James. How are you tonight?”
“Fine, thank you, Bud,” Julie’s mother said. “Come in and have a piece of cake with us, won’t you? The coffee’s fresh in the kitchen.”
“I’ve decided I’d rather not see a movie tonight,” Julie said apologetically, “if you don’t mind too much, that is. Mom is sort of uptight and not feeling too great, and I’d kind of like to stay around home. Would it be okay with you if we just watched TV or something?”
“But it’s a good film,” Bud said. “I thought we’d agreed on it.”
“Can’t we see it another night?” Julie asked him. “It’s going to keep playing all week.”
“You promised you’d go tonight,” Bud said.
His voice was flat and demanding. How funny, Julie thought in surprise, I’ve never seen him act impatient before.
Bud’s face was set with a look of intensity. His eyes seemed very dark. There was something, some trick of light and shadow from the rays of the living room lamp filtering out as they reached him in the doorway, that made him for a moment look almost like a stranger.
I’m glad Mom made me promise not to go, Julie realized suddenly. I don’t want to go. I don’t think I want to see this guy anymore at all.
“If you’re so hung up on seeing the movie tonight, why don’t you go ahead without me?” she suggested.
“Look, Julie, we’ve got a date. You’re not trying to dump me, are you, because your old boyfriend’s back in town?”
“Oh, is that what this is about?” Abruptly the situation became clear to her. “Ray doesn’t have anything to do with this, Bud, honestly. I just want to stay home tonight, that’s all. You’re welcome to hang out here or go on to the show on your own, whichever you want.”
Bud stood silent a moment. His eyes flicked past Julie’s face to her mother, then back again. He seemed to be considering.
“Okay,” he said finally. “I recognize a brush-off when I’m getting one. How about walking me out to the car?”
Julie hesitated. She too wanted to turn and look at her mother, to consult with her in a glance, but to do so would have been actively rude.
This is crazy, she told herself firmly. This is just Bud Wilson, just good old Collingsworth Wilson, and I’ve been out with him over a dozen times. What am I getting so jittery about tonight?
“Look, I need to tell you something,” Bud said. “It’s important. Just walk out with me, okay?” He paused and then added, “I had lunch with him today. With Ray Bronson.”
“You did?” She was startled.
“We did some talking, he and I.”
“About me?”
“Among other things. Are you walking me out to the car, or aren’t you?”
“All right,” Julie said.
He held the door open for her, and she stepped out onto the front porch. They went down the steps together. The night air lapped around them, soft and sweet, and overhead the sky seemed to curve like a dark bowl, studded with stars.
“It’s a pretty night,” he said, and he reached over to take her hand. Julie felt a shudder run through her.
What’s wrong with me? she asked herself in bewilderment. Bud’s held my hand before. It doesn’t mean anything. I’ve never minded it. Why am I reacting like this now?
She thought some of her Mom’s funny feelings must be rubbing off on her.
But she didn’t want to hurt him by drawing her hand away,so she let it lie in his as they walked across the yard to his car.
“Get in for a minute,” Bud said. “Let’s sit and talk.”
“We can talk out here.”
“What I want to say needs to be said with you sitting down,” Bud insisted. “Get into the car, will you? It’ll just take a minute.”
“Bud—” Julie brought out the words in a burst, “whatever it is that you’re going to tell me, I don’t think it’s something I should hear. You were right in what you said just now about Ray. Whatever he told you when you saw him today is true. We used to matter to each other very much at one time and—and that feeling hasn’t gone away. I hoped it would, but it hasn’t. I don’t think you and I ought to see each other anymore.”
“Funny,” Bud said, ignoring her statement. “You’ve never called me Collie.”
“Collie?” She could not see his face in the darkness, but she was very much aware of his hand tightening on hers. “I didn’t know you wanted me to. When we first met you told me that everybody in your family called you Bud.”
“My kid brother started it.” He spoke quietly. “Danny was a cute little kid. He couldn’t say ‘Collingsworth.’ He called me Bubba—you know, for ‘brother.’ That was when he was a little guy. When he got older he changed it to Bud. He called our sister ‘Sissy.’ ”
“That’s—that’s cute,” Julie said uncomfortably.
What is he talking about? she asked herself in confusion. He’s acting so odd. I wonder if he’s sick. I wonder if he’s been taking drugs or drinking or something.
She said, “I have to go in now. Mom isn’t feeling well. Honest.”
“My mother isn’t either,” Bud said. “She’s in a lot worse condition than your mother. I have an account to settle with the four of you, but it hasn’t all worked out as I planned it. You’re the most important one, though. You’re the one who made a joke of it by sending the flowers.”
“Flowers?” Julie whispered. “You mean—oh, no! You’re not—”
He released her hand. For a frozen instant Julie stood rooted, gathering herself to scream. Then the strong hands were around her throat and the scream started and ended in one short moan.
“Roses,” Bud said. “Yellow roses—tons of them! Pa described them to me, all those roses that looked like sunshine! If you’d wanted to give him
sunshine, why didn’t you go back to him? Why didn’t you sit in the road with him and hold his hand and wait with him? Did you really think you could buy us off with roses? What good are roses to a little boy who is dying alone in the dark?”
The hands were squeezing. There was nothing in the world now except those hands—the hands and the pain and the roaring in her ears and a million lights flashing behind her eyes.
He’s going to kill me, Julie thought incredulously. He’s going to kill me! It was impossible, the thing that the hands were going to do.
I don’t want to die, Julie thought frantically. I’m not ready to die. I haven’t even lived yet. There’s so much still ahead—college and work and a husband and children, my own home…so much living still ahead for me!
What will this do to Mom? First Daddy and then me. She can’t lose everybody!
I’ll never see Ray again.
There was a time when she had looked into those tilted green eyes and said, “I love you.”
So long ago. He’ll never know, she thought wildly. He’ll never know that I still do!
And then she was thinking no longer. The heavy blackness was all around her. And she knew at last what it was like to be alone in the night.
“Julie! Come out of it, Julie!” From a long way off the voice came down to her. Muffled and almost lost in the pounding of the blood through her head, the words came trickling through.
“Julie! Come back to us, Julie!”
It’s a dream, she thought. Do you dream when you’re dead, I wonder? Is Danny Gregg dreaming? Is my father dreaming?
“She’s coming out of it,” the voice said. It was familiar. It was not a dream voice. “Julie?”
She opened her eyes. The stars were so low that they seemed to be resting against her face. The porch light was on, and its dim yellow rays illuminated the features of the boy who bent over her.
“Julie, can you speak to us?”
“Ray?” She whispered his name, and the effort sent a thrust of agony through her throat. “Bud—he was going to—”
“I know,” Ray said. His hand was on her hair, pushing it back from her face. “You don’t have to worry. He’s not going to be doing anything much for a while. I clobbered him with a flashlight from behind. It’s not the way the good guys do it on television, but there wasn’t time to think about that.”
“Are you all right, darling?” Her mother was there also, kneeling on the ground beside her. “That boy must be crazy to attack you like that for no reason!”
“He had a reason,” Julie told her. “And it was a good one. Ray, how did you know to come? How could you have guessed?”
“I didn’t guess,” Ray said. “Barry called me a few minutes ago. He said he was releasing us all from the pact, that we were in danger, all three of us, and to get hold of you and Helen. I tried calling her, but there wasn’t an answer, and when I called you the line was out of order. Then I remembered something. It just flashed through my mind.”
“What?” Julie asked him.
“Bud’s hands. I sat with him today while he ate lunch, and he had paint on the back of one of his hands. It didn’t register then, but after I talked to Barry it hit me. It was yellow paint—the same shade as the trim around the Greggs’ roof. Remember, I wondered then how somebody as short as Megan could have reached it?”
“And the shirts on the line?”
“They were Bud’s, of course. Megan’s his sister.”
“Please, tell me what this is all about,” Mrs. James said in bewilderment. “I don’t understand this at all. Did you come here tonight, Ray, knowing that Bud was going to try to harm Julie? If so, how—” She broke off the question. “What’s this?”
Headlights cut the darkness of the street, and a car with a flashing red signal light pulled up to the curb in front of the house.
The car doors opened and slammed shut, and two uniformed figures hurried up the driveway.
“There was a 911 call,” the first of the patrolmen said as he reached them. “The caller said you people might be having some trouble. A girl fell from a second-floor window at Four Seasons Apartments. She was knocked unconscious in the fall, but when she came to, she told the people who found her that a man named Wilson had tried to attack her. She thought he would be headed over here. From the looks of things—” His eyes took in the three of them and then shifted past them to the inert form that was lying on the ground a short distance away—“she was right.”
“She was,” Ray said. “There has been trouble, and it didn’t just happen tonight. We want to tell you about it, from the very beginning.”
He slid his arm under Julie’s head and lifted her gently to a sitting position. Leaning against him, she looked across at her mother’s worried face.
We can never erase it, she thought. What we did last summer is done. We can’t undo it, ever. But we can face it. That will be something.
Aloud she said, “Why not you, Ray? You were involved as much as the rest of us. Why is it that Bud never tried to do anything to you?”
“He did,” Ray said softly. “Tonight.” His arm tightened around her. “He knew the worst punishment for me would be to stay alive in a world that didn’t have you in it.”
Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR
Young adult author Barry Lyga sat down with
Lois Duncan to ask her all about
Barry: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER is probably the book that is most familiar to so many people for many reasons—one of which is the movie. I know many of your readers have seen the movie version and wondered about the differences between the book and the movie. Would you like to talk about that a little bit, and maybe give some insight as to why the movie turned out so differently from the book?
Lois: I guess the answer to that is, it’s just plain more commercial to have things happening as they did in the movie. The movie was a shock to me. For one thing, this book was written in 1973, and I had almost forgotten I’d written it, so it was veryexciting to learn that it was going to be a major motion picture. I could hardly wait to see it.
I went to the theater, bought my ticket and popcorn, and found a seat. Then onto the screen came an insane fisherman carrying an ice hook. He wasn’t in my book. I thought, You know, this is a big complex; maybe I’ve walked into the wrong theater. So I was preparing to leave and then, no, up from below rolled the words “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and I thought, That is my book, but who is that man and what is he going to do with that ice hook? Well, I soon foundout. He was going to decapitate my characters. Their heads were flying off, and their blood was spurting, and everybody was screaming, and I was screaming. I was so horrified I couldn’t even open my popcorn. It was quite a shocker.
Barry: So you had no idea going into the movie what they had done with it? You had no communication with the movie production people at all?
Lois: Oh no, no. They kept me as far away as possible. I think they were afraid of how I might react if I realized what my little masterpiece was going to turn into.
Barry: Was it the fact that it was a slasher movie, period, or the fact that it had changed so radically from the book that shocked you? Or maybe a combination of the two?
Lois: Well, both, because I had expected it to be my story, and it wasn’t. It was my characters and my plot gimmick, but then it went in all directions. Even the double-identity twist, which was the crux of the story, had been omitted. Also, I was quite horrified by the sensationalized violence. Several years earlier my own teenage daughter, Kait, had been chased down in her car and shot to death, and I had seen, right in front of my eyes, what real violence is. To have people screaming and laughing about it did not go down well.
Barry: So it almost sounds like this really drove home for you the difference between suspense and outright horror.
Lois: Yes, it did. I don’t consider myself a horror writer, and this was horror. As I said, if you’ve known it in real life, then seeing it portrayed like that on the screen is a tra
vesty. So I was not happy with the movie, but I have to admit I was happy with the fact that the book had been made into a movie, because that made all my backlist suddenly very popular. It was like getting a rebirth, but in a very strange way.
Barry: It’s very bittersweet in a way. I want to talk a little bit about the character of Helen. She seems like an interesting mix of insecurity and ambition; did you want readers to like her or to find her shallow?
Lois: I never think about how readers are going to find a character. I just try to create the character, and then readers can relate or not relate, and that’s going to depend on the reader. In real life we relate to people whom we have something in common with or understand, and it’s the same with characters in books. So you can’t create a character and say, “This is a character everybody will like,” because we like different things, and we relate to situations that reflect our own lives and past history. So people can feel about Helen any way they choose to. There she is—I made her.
Personally, I think that Helen is one of the more interesting characters in this book because of her background. Helen sees her mother and the life her mother is living, and she wants to get out of that. She does not want to be drawn into following in her mother’s footsteps. Yet Helen does not have a lot to work with the way Julie does, as far as being intellectual and having finances to further her education. So Helen, very cleverly, zeroes in on what her strong points are and she makes them sharper. She concentrates on where she wants to go by using the weapons at hand. So she really is a strong character. Julie is not in that situation, and Julie is hit much more strongly with guilt than Helen.
Barry: Speaking of characters, with the four main characters in the book you’ve set up a set of opposites. You have what some people would consider a “good girl” and a “bad girl,” a “good boy” and a “bad boy.” Was that intentional? Were you looking for that dichotomy? And do you see them as “bad” or “good”?
Lois: I see very few people either in real life or in books as totally “bad” or “good.” In life, there are a few who may be totally “bad” because of some psychological disorder, but we see them very seldom, thank goodness. What I try to do is present the main viewpoint character as someone the reader can relate to, because I want at least one person the reader can like. If you don’t have that, then the story itself doesn’t matter, because the reader doesn’t care what happens to anybody in it. So, in this case, I did have Julie and Ray, who are the more likable of the characters, and it was my choice to have a male and a female, because it gives you a double readership.