She walked slowly to her room, hands pressed against her temples, which were aching fiercely with tension. She knew those photos were of Abby—every single one of them. Yet, logically, they could not be.
Logically, people couldn't vanish into thin air, either. Nor could they be heard crying when they weren't even there.
Once in bed, the quilt pulled up to her chin, her eyes watching the flakes of snow illuminated by moonlight sail past her window, Miranda tried in vain to return to the safe, warm haven she had found in Dan's arms. But the memory of Abby crouched on the bed, shuffling all the old-time photographs in her small, thin hands, played through Miranda's head like a film, and she shivered.
Chapter Nine
IN ASSEMBLY on Wednesday the school was buzzing with excitement. The principal, stern Mr. Raphael, actually cracked a smile when he announced that ticket sales to the Valentine's Dance on Saturday night—added to the money raised by the walk-a-thon, the flea market, and the baked goods and T-shirt sales—had brought the school's total contribution to the Prindle House restoration project to over $40,000. Then he went on to say that the high school fund-raising efforts had been so successful, the Historical Society would reward students by offering them first chance at after-school and summertime jobs working on the project. Everyone cheered. His address ended with an unusual request from a man who was usually very dour: "If you haven't bought your dance tickets yet, please do so. We want to see each and every one of you right here on Saturday night, dancing as hard as you can!"
When the bell rang to send the students off to their first period classes, Susannah boogied up to Miranda's locker. "I wonder if old Raphael will be here on Saturday, dancing up a storm?"
"Well, I know I'll be." Miranda was preoccupied, but she smiled at her friend. "With Dan." She hesitated, then added, "We sort of want to make it a date."
Susannah smiled. "That's great. I'm going with Dave Dunlop. He called last night to ask me. Isn't that fantastic? Can you believe it?"
"Of course I can believe it," said Miranda. "But watch out. Sometimes he acts like he's God's gift to girls. Remind him that you're a gift, too."
"Oh, I will." Susannah hugged herself. "Hey, don't forget to come to the gym during study hall. We have to start getting the decorations up if we want everything to be ready for Saturday." She danced along beside Miranda as they made their way through the throng of students in the hallway, all chattering about the coming dance and the happy prospect of guaranteed summer jobs.
Miranda tried to feel happy and excited, too, but there was little room left inside her now for anything other than anxiety. She knew she had to see Abby's photos again, had to figure out who Abby really was. Getting the photos would not be easy, for Abby kept them inside her beaded bag and rarely left it unattended. But Miranda was determined now to take them the first chance she got.
Miranda was standing on a stepladder in the gym later that day during her study hall, a long, pink streamer looped around her shoulders, her fingertips lined with pieces of tape, when a sudden movement made her look up to the windows near the ceiling. The gymnasium was in the basement of the building, and the high, narrow windows looked out onto the playing field behind the school. In the window directly above her she could see a pair of feet in familiar bright yellow boots. On the ground next to the boots, lying in the snow against the window, was the beaded pink satchel.
Abby had geometry this period, Miranda knew—so what was she doing out in the playing field? Cutting class to go off and steal again? Miranda remained motionless, watching. After a moment the yellow boots moved out of view. But the beaded pink bag still lay in the snow.
This might be her only chance.
Miranda stuck the streamer up as high on the wall as she could reach, then jumped off the ladder. Pulling her sweater off a bench by the door, she raced out into the hall, paying no attention to her friends' startled calls. She slipped out the door of the school and ran back into the playing field behind the building;
Miranda hurried over to the gym windows but arrived too late. The beaded bag was gone. The ridged prints from Abby's yellow boots were well defined in the snow, but Abby herself was nowhere to be seen. Miranda bit her lip, then set off across the field in Abby's tracks.
They led in a straight line, each print widely spaced as if Abby had been running. Miranda took giant steps to stay in Abby's tracks. Just at the edge of the playing field, where the woods began, Miranda stopped and stared down. A sick throbbing began in the pit of her stomach. The footprints were gone. Again. They had not been obliterated by more falling snow; the sky was a steely, empty blue. They simply stopped, just as they had on the sidewalk around the corner from the grocery store.
Terror is a funny thing, Miranda thought giddily, her heart pounding. Sometimes it made you want to run and hide. But sometimes it made you strong, determined to stay and fight. She strode on.
The snow on the ground was smooth and deep; only her own footprints marred the feathery white expanse. When she reached the fence surrounding the school property, she climbed right over and kept on walking. Where could Abby have gone? She couldn't fly—she had to be here! In spite of herself, Miranda found her eyes turning skyward.
She lost track of time as she circled around in the woods. She grew chilled. Finally she found herself back at the fence. She climbed it and hung at the top for a few minutes, peering back into the woods for a sign she might have missed. Then she looked upward again. Gray clouds hovered—more snow seemed imminent. But Abby wasn't anywhere at all. Miranda jumped down from the fence into the playing field, then gasped as a heavy hand clapped her shoulder and spun her around.
"Mr. Raphael!"
"The pleasure is mine, Miss Browne," said the principal, his voice hard-edged. "And now, if you have finished your little nature walk, perhaps you are ready to return to the seat of learning?" He was unsmiling and as grim as the gray suit he wore.
Miranda shrank from his sarcasm. She tried to explain. "Have I missed the bell? I'm sorry, but I was just following Abby. You know, she often sneak? out, and I just wanted to find out where she goes—"
Mr. Raphael, whose thick lips were beginning to look a bit blue with cold despite his gray wool suit, glowered at her. "Abby? I take it you mean Abigail Chandler?" He wheeled her around so that they faced the school building. "March back inside, Miss Browne. Straight to the office, if you please. Then you can tell me your tale."
She stumbled ahead of him along the trail she had followed. His voice close behind her acted as a prod. "You might have taken the time to think of a better story, however. Abigail is in her geometry class. It was she, in fact, who stopped by the office to report that she had seen you wandering off into the field toward the woods."
Miranda trudged on, her mind in turmoil. How could Abby be in class? Miranda had clearly seen those yellow boots, and the beaded pink bag. She had seen the running footprints deep in the snow, the prints ending impossibly.
The terror changed now. Instead of feeling strong and determined, Miranda wanted to hide. She drew the bitterly cold air into her lungs until they ached with protest, and heard herself blubbering aloud as she lumbered along in front of the principal, the words flowing out unchecked in a garbled stream. "You've got to know she's not normal, Mr. Raphael. She has powers—she can do all sorts of things. I think—I think she can fly...."
His voice thundered behind her. "Stop your nonsense now." She pressed her hands, numb with cold, to her mouth. She had to get a hold of herself, had to contain her fear. It wouldn't help matters if he thought she were tripping out on some drug.
In Mr. Raphael's office Miranda recovered her poise and tried to apologize, but the principal halted her flow of words. "Not so fast, Miss Browne. An apology won't be enough this time, I'm afraid. I have a note here from Ms. Taylor that you've already been cited for cutting English recently. You know what that means, don't you, young lady? First offense, extra homework. Second offense, suspension from extracurricular activitie
s for a week. Third offense, suspension from classes." He flipped through a sheaf of computer printouts on his desk, searching for her name. "Ah, yes, here you are. Second offense. This is Wednesday. So you are barred from school activities until next Wednesday morning. No clubs. No meetings—"
"But the dance—"Miranda said weakly.
"No dance." He scribbled something on a pink slip of paper and handed it to her. "I'm sorry. You heard me say this morning I hoped every student would be there. But we take a dim view of people who cut classes. Now take this paper and go to your next class. I hope you won't repeat these errors in judgment again."
Miranda left the office without a backward glance, her cheeks suffused with color. Everyone in the school knew what an intractable disciplinarian Mr. Raphael was. His word was law. Miranda's anger at being forbidden the dance and her embarrassment at having lost control in front of Mr. Raphael merged into new fury at Abby. There was something wrong about Abby, and she'd sensed it from the first day they'd met. Miranda knew without a doubt now that her family was harboring someone who was not only a liar and a thief, but something even worse. The mysterious photographs, the crying in the empty room, and the disappearing footprints in the snow were all linked in her mind as impossibilities that were possible because of Abby.
Abby was not on the school bus home. Miranda sat next to Dan. With tears in her eyes, her mittened hands in his, she told him what had happened. "And now everything is ruined. I'm not even allowed to go to the dance."
"What a criminal you are, Miranda Browne," said Dan severely. "Good thing I've found out about your true nature. I wash my hands of you. You can forget about all the other dances, too. No April Fool's dance, no spring prom. In fact, I don't think I should even be sitting on this bus with you...."
Miranda sniffed. "You don't mind?"
Dan squeezed her hands. "Hey, we can have a better time somewhere else."
"Somewhere else," she echoed. "Far away from Abby."
The bus spilled them out at the bottom of the hill, and they began the slippery hike to their houses. Miranda headed directly up the stairs when she arrived home, straight to her father's office. She tapped softly on the door and entered when he said, "If you must."
"I must, Dad," she said as he looked up from his word processor. "I'm glad you're home. I really need to talk to you."
"I've got to finish the new museum catalog by Monday," he said, and poked a few more keys. "But this sounds serious." He swiveled around to face her and lifted a pile of paper off the chair next to his desk. "Okay. Shoot."
She related as honestly as she could what had happened at school. He raised his brows when she told him of cutting two classes, being suspended from extracurricular activities, and being barred from the dance. But he did not comment until she finished. Then he leaned back in his chair and sighed. "There are a lot of things in your story, Mandy, that don't meet the eye."
"What do you mean? What eye?"
"The eye of reason." He looked at her soberly. "First of all, I'm sorry about the dance. But what can you expect if you keep cutting classes?"
"Oh, Dad, I don't keep cutting classes. Both times were just accidents. I was following Abby and just lost track of time—"
"No, that isn't true. Let's stick to what you told me. You meant to follow her today—and there's a lot I could say about that, Miranda Jane." When her easygoing father called her by her full name, Miranda knew he was very upset. "But you weren't following her after all because she was inside reporting you to Mr. Whosits for cutting. So you must have been following someone else, or—"
"Or what, Dad?" Her voice held a warning note, as if she knew what he would say next.
"Mandy, Mandy." His voice was tired. "I don't know. I'm really starting to get worried about you. Mither and I both are." He held up one hand to stave off her interruption. "Listen to me, honey. I know you don't like Abby. You've made that very clear. You know Mither and I won't force you to live with her past March if you don't like her. But I just wish you'd try a little more. It sounds to me like you and Abby are really determined not to get along. You're playing games with each other—setting traps. This time you tried to catch her, but she caught you instead. Maybe you'll beat her next time, but I wish you'd both just give up the games for a while and work at getting along peacefully. If you can't, even having her through March is going to be horrible for everyone. How about it? Don't you think you can give it an honest try?"
Miranda stared at a worn space on the patterned carpet. "She scares me, Dad." Should she tell him about the photographs or wait till she could show him?
He put his hand on her arm. "How do you mean? Because you think she's hiding something from us?"
"Don't you feel it, too? That her story isn't true?"
"I think Abby has had a hard life, honey. Harder, perhaps, than she wants us to know. I sense she's left bits and pieces out of her account, that's all. She may have been mixed up with a rough crowd. We have no idea how hard it's been. But thank goodness she came to Garnet instead of hiding out on the streets of Boston or New York. Runaways don't have an easy time of it out on the streets. Maybe her rudeness to you—her rough edges—are the result of her troubles."
"It's not just that." Without the photographs, he would believe nothing. She needed to have them as proof.
Proof of what? She felt very much alone in that moment. "Dad—Never mind." She would wait until she had the photos in hand.
Downstairs the piano music began again. Miranda stood up, her head beginning to pound. Hugging herself tightly, she turned to go. He could not help her, after all.
"I'm sorry about the dance, Mandy," he said as she walked out into the hall.
Miranda followed the sound of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata played with furious intensity, and found Abby seated as usual at the piano. The beaded pink satchel was on the floor next to the piano bench. Miranda stood in the doorway to the music room, trying to formulate a plan to get the bag. She was taken aback when Abby lifted her hands in mid-chord and stopped playing.
Abby spoke first. "So have you come to apologize? I'm waiting."
"You'll be waiting forever, in that case. I'm waiting for you to apologize." They glared at each other. "And to explain. You have an awful lot of explaining to do."
"Not at all," said Abby. "I have nothing to say to you at all. You are beneath contempt. There's no reasoning with you. You're a spoiled child. Or else there's something really wrong with you."
Miranda glared at her. "I'm not the one with the problem."
"Oh, really? I just think there's something pathologically wrong with someone, Mandy, who can't keep her nose out of other people's business. Look at the way you act. You're always barging into my room hoping to catch me—at God knows what. You practically tore those photographs out of my hand the other night, you were so nosy. You cut school to track me through the streets the other week. I hate being followed. And today you went too far."
"Then it was you, wasn't it—crossing the playing field?"
"Maybe, maybe not," Abby taunted. "But it was I who told Mr. Raphael where to find you. I saw you wandering out there in the snow and stopped by his office on the way to class."
"And now I can't go to the dance." Miranda's voice was bitter.
"That's what you get for snooping. Besides, I had to tell him, didn't I? There you were, poor dear, off in the snow, all alone in the cold. Without a proper coat on. I thought you might be imagining things again—gone off the deep end. You can understand why I'd have to get someone to, ah, help you, can't you?" Her voice was smug, the smirk twitching at one corner of her thin mouth. "For your own good, of course. After all you've done for me."
Miranda clenched her fists at her sides, longing to hit Abby. Then she met the other girl's opaque eyes for an instant and caught a glimmer of ... something. Something old and secret. And she had to look away.
She strove for a casual tone. "Look, how did you make those tracks? Where did you go after you stopped walking
?"
Abby's smirk was fully in place now. "I flew, of course."
The terror throbbed dully in Miranda's stomach. But she kept her voice even. "Come on. There's no way you could get back to school without leaving tracks, unless you walked backward in your own footprints."
Abby shrugged, but she was watching Miranda closely. "Well, then, I guess that's just what I did."
Miranda shook her head. "No you didn't. Because I was right behind you. I'd have seen you, you liar!"
Abby just shrugged again. "But I guess you didn't, though."
Miranda's eyes grew hard and angry. "You just vanished, and I want to know how."
"Shall we call it a draw, Mandy?"
Miranda stalked out of the room, expecting to hear the piano music begin again. She got as far as the kitchen, where she saw Abby's yellow boots neatly lined up on newspaper just inside the back door, when Abby's voice made her stop.
"Mandy?" Abby was right behind her, hugging the pink satchel.
Miranda stopped cold. "Now you're following me! Just leave me alone."
"When haven't I left you alone?" retorted Abby. "It's always you snooping and spying on me. But don't worry, I'll be leaving you alone. It always has to happen sooner or later. And I guess it'll be sooner, this time."
"What do you mean?" asked Miranda. The light in Abby's eyes made her uneasy.
"You can keep your precious house and parents and friends all to yourself. I won't steal them away, and I won't make you share them." Her voice was low, barely audible. "Because soon I won't be here. You won't even have to wait it out through March."
"Wait a minute, Abby!" Miranda moved toward her and looked the other girl right in the face. This was going too far. True, she didn't want Abby living with them, but she didn't want to live with the guilt of having driven her away, either. Or could she be threatening suicide?
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