“Lots of people drive trucks here,” she says, brushing pie crumbs from her black hoodie. “Drew’s uncle has a truck. It’s gray, though. He was going to sell it to Drew, but now that Drew is moving to the far reaches of the planet I guess he won’t. Too bad, I really like that truck. I drove it last night when I helped Drew move some of his stuff into his uncle’s basement.”
“You drove it? What time?” I can’t help but ask.
“It was after midnight when I finally got home,” she says, and she swipes some cherry filling off the plate and into her mouth. Thick, sticky, red goo. Just like on the mirror in the bathroom.
“Are you okay?” Kasey asks, staring at me.
“Oh, yeah. Just thinking. Um, do you have some quarters? I only have bills and I need to go down and do laundry too.”
“Sure, Lu.”
“Where’s Aunt Jane?”
“She was back, but now she’s on another work trip.” We go into the kitchen, and I dig into my backpack and hand her two bills as she takes a rectangular gold box from the countertop. It looks Egyptian, with a golden woman wearing a bird on her head next to a man with some hieroglyphics underneath. Kasey opens the box and takes out eight quarters.
“Neat box,” I say.
“Yeah, it was a gift. Last Christmas . . . ” She pauses to hand me the quarters, shakes her head and sniffles, and seems to realize why she was holding the box in the first place. “Hey, do you need soap? I left a big jug down there; go ahead and use some. Now excuse me while I go lie down and cry my eyes out.”
Patricia comes into the kitchen through the back door from the basement and motions for me to come closer. “Did Drew really break up with her?” she whispers.
“Sort of?” I whisper back. “I’m not really sure what’s going on.”
“Wait, they actually broke up?!” Tony’s harsh voice suddenly comes out of Patricia’s laundry basket. Just now I notice her phone sitting on the pile of clothes—she must have him on speaker. “So much for promising to be together! I thought their love was ‘tru’ . . . ”
Before Tony can continue, Patricia hastily turns off the speaker. “Ugh, anyway,” she says, “I have so much laundry to do. It’s a drag to pay for it. Should be free if we live here, right?”
“Yeah, but at least you’ve got a place to stay since you got kicked out.”
Patricia narrows her eyes. “I didn’t get kicked out.”
“You didn’t?”
“No,” she says, cheeks flushed. Patricia starts to turn away from me, but then adds, “I get along great with my parents. They’re remodeling, that’s all.”
That isn’t what Kasey said, I think.
I want to ask her more, but Patricia quickly says, “Hey, I used up the dryer sheets that were down there,” she says. She’s out of the kitchen before I can even respond. I guess that conversation’s over.
Needing to grab some dryer sheets from our side of the duplex, I head to the front door and pass Kasey’s bedroom. She’s lying on her bed, crying into a pile of teddy bears.
chapter 6
Wednesday
“Patricia! Lu! Come look at this!” I hear Kasey yell from the driveway early the next morning.
Kasey stands at her little red car, holding a piece of paper.
“What is it?” I rush down the front steps, with Patricia right behind me, as she holds the paper out. In scratchy letters it reads, “People who brake promises get hurt.”
“What does this mean?” Kasey asks.
“It’s the curse!” Patricia says.
“Shut up, Patricia!” Kasey snaps, shaking her head. “Besides, Drew’s the one who chose Mexico over me! I didn’t break anything!”
“Wait,” I say. “It says brake, like car brakes. What if someone messed with your car? I don’t think you should drive it.”
“I’ve got to get to work,” Kasey says. “Patricia, can you call Tony? He’s good with cars, he can look at them.”
“He’s already on his way here, but he can’t be late anymore or he’ll get suspended. Sorry,” Patricia says, not sounding sorry at all.
“I guess I’ll call Drew,” Kasey says, obviously hurt by Patricia’s lack of concern. “I can drop him off at school and use his car—if he’ll let me.”
Just then, Tony’s truck pulls up. Without a word, Patricia gets in, and the truck squeals out onto the road. Jeez, I think. She could have at least mentioned Kasey’s brake issue to Tony.
By the time I’m ready for school, Drew pulls up. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and notice he looks less than thrilled about helping Kasey with her car. Watching through the screen door, I can’t help but wonder how this will turn out.
Kasey winces as Drew slams the car door. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks, clearly taken aback by his attitude.
Drew reaches in through his open window and pulls out a teddy bear with a knife in it. Both of its eyes are ripped out. He flings it at Kasey’s feet. “You think this is funny?”
“Whoa!” Kasey lifts her hands and takes a step back. “What are you talking about?”
Red-faced, Drew shakes his head. “Leaving this on my front steps? Kasey, my mom found it. Practically gave her a heart attack.”
“Me?” Kasey says, “I didn’t do that.”
“Then who did?” Drew asks. “The ghost of Billy Jones?”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” she says, her voice trembling. She grabs the note from her pocket. “Drew, someone left this on my car.” He reads the note and his face softens. He wraps her in a tight hug, and they murmur to each other.
I’m going to be late for school if I don’t leave now. Kasey and Drew pull apart as I open the door. Kasey wipes her eyes, and Drew slides into her front seat, looking under the dash. He pops the hood and inspects what I assume is the car’s braking system.
“I can’t tell if anything is wrong,” he says, “But you should definitely take the car in to have the brakes looked at. It’s not safe to drive until you know for sure.”
“Can I borrow your car to get to work?” Kasey asks. “I’ll drop you off at school first.” Then she turns to me as I come down the porch steps. “Want a ride?” I nod appreciatively and hop in.
On the way to school I ask, “Who do you think did those things?”
Drew shakes his head. “Somebody who’s not right in the head.”
***
As I three-hole-punch papers for Mrs. Whyse, my thoughts turn back to Kasey and the weird note. It has to be something about the breakup. Who else knew about it besides me and Patricia? It couldn’t have been Patricia because I was up until past midnight doing algebra, and I didn’t see or hear her leave to go to Kasey’s car. A chill comes over me. It’s not a ghost, I tell myself. It has to be someone here in Middleton. But who?
Be logical, Lu, I tell myself. If I were a detective, I’d talk to others who have their names on the bridge, other potential victims. Isobel and Henry graduated, but Annie and Alex are still here. Maybe they could give me a clue as to who’s doing these things.
At lunch I plop down next to Annie like we’ve been friends since preschool.
“Hey,” I say. “How’s it going?”
She takes a slow bite of her burger. “You’re the new girl,” she says.
“Yep. We have art together.”
She takes another bite and looks around as if maybe she’s at the wrong table.
“So,” I say, “you and Alex broke up.”
“Alex and me? Everybody knows.” She flips her hair over her shoulder.
She looks at me like maybe I’ve got something contagious. I ignore it and continue. “I saw the mirror in the bathroom. It said ‘liar.’”
“Oh. Yeah. That was creepy.”
“Any idea who did that? Do you think it’s about the breakup?”
“I don’t know,” she says as she chews. “Maybe it was the girl Alex drove home from the party.”
“But why would she write ‘liar’?” I ask. “You’d think she
’d be happy you guys broke up, not sad.”
Annie takes a drink of her milk and shakes her head. “You’re right, I don’t know,” she says.
“Did you see who followed you in?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“You did?” I sit bolt upright.
“You.”
I sink back down, exasperated. “No,” I say. “I mean right after you first walked in, before you came out of the stall.”
She shakes her head and takes another gulp of milk. “Somebody who doesn’t like it when people break up, I guess.” Now her look says that I’m the one at the wrong table.
I try not to roll my eyes. This has been absolutely no help. Time to change tactics.
“What about Alex? Did he ever see who tried to run him off the road?”
She sighs. “Somebody in a black hoodie. That’s all I know. It’s probably the curse. The same thing happened to Henry.”
“What? What same thing?” I say.
“After Henry and Isobel broke up—a few weeks after the accident, he went to the bridge to get rid of their names and someone, like, came at him in the dark. They struggled for a while, and Henry got hurt pretty bad: crushed fingers. His hand got smashed or stepped on or something, and then he was pushed into the river.”
“So what happened to him?”
“I mean, he was fine. Dude is on the swim team. He was freaked out, though—said he got stuck so deep in the mud he almost drowned.” I swallow nervously, trying not to think about my own recent incident at the bridge.
“And nobody figured out who crushed his fingers?” I say.
She raises both eyebrows at me, and then her two friends with equally colorful hair sit down and also look at me like I’m at the wrong table. Clearly my time is up.
I skip the rest of lunch and head back to the library. The librarian sees it’s me and, without a word, comes out with the folder. This time, I read the second newspaper article. It’s from July 1921, with the headline “Mysterious Man on Bridge Stalls Train”:
Just after midnight, while passing through the town of Middleton, all of the train’s passengers were awakened by the train whistle. Engineer James Rook had stopped the train, citing that a man was standing on the railroad bridge. Further investigation found no man on the bridge, in the area, or in the river below.
It sure sounds just like the story of Billy Jones. But is Billy actually doing these things now? It’s just too easy to blame it all on a ghost. And a ghost who just gets really mad when people break up? I mean, Dad’s ghost isn’t going around haunting everyone on Earth that has had an accident on a bridge, right? Besides, I read somewhere that ghosts have to stay in one place. There has to be another explanation.
Again, if I were a detective, I would look at the evidence first—the cold, hard facts—and I would think through all that I know for sure: someone attacked Alex, left a threatening note for Annie in the girl’s bathroom, tampered with Kasey’s brakes, and planted a messed-up teddy bear on Drew’s front steps.
Next I would search for a motive: Why would someone do these things? This is the hardest part for me because I don’t know many people in this town yet. It’s a stretch, but Kasey could have a motive: to prevent Drew from breaking up with her. Maybe she’s playing on his superstitions and making it look like Billy Jones is exacting revenge on couples who break up after writing their names on the bridge! But does Kasey really think Drew would stay with her just because of some ghost story?
Wait, I think to myself, this is crazy. Kasey’s your cousin and your best friend—how could you think that she’s capable of doing something like this?
But just as I’m talking myself out of believing it, I remember the red goo that was on the bathroom mirror. Just two days before that, I had seen Kasey bake a cherry pie with my own eyes. She could have snuck into school and used the cherry filling to write on the bathroom mirror. She could have followed Alex that night too. After all, she did admit to driving a truck around midnight the night he was run off the road. She also could have left the mangled teddy bear at Drew’s house—she has so many that no one would notice if one went missing. She could have even written the note on her own car: in fact, she was the one who woke us up to come out and witness it! But the car accident with Isobel and Henry last year? Why would she do something like that?
I refocus my attention to the folder in front of me and find an article about the accident.
“Local Couple in Collision,” the headline reads.
Isobel Chen, 17, and Henry Washington, 18, of Middleton, were driving on Old County Road H when Chen lost control of the car. “I saw a guy, he was our age, standing on the bridge,” Chen said. “It looked like he was going to jump. I tried to stop the car and it skidded into the wood beam.” Washington also reported seeing the young man. “He was wearing old-timey clothes, a hat, and suspenders,” he said. “I told Isobel to pull over, that we had to help. But when we got out of the car, there was no one on the bridge.” Emergency personnel were called to the scene, but no one was found. Local meteorologists reported heavy fog in the area.
The warning bell rings, and I nearly jump out of my seat.
I may have gotten more information, but this trip to the library has made me even more concerned than before. If Kasey’s the one behind all of this, who did Isobel and Henry see on the bridge that night? Not knowing what to do, I decide to go to Mrs. Whyse’s office after school. Without giving anything away, maybe she can help me figure out how to approach Kasey.
***
“Is there something you need to talk about, Lucia?” Mrs. Whyse asks when she sees me waiting in her office.
“I’m just worried about everything that’s going on,” I say. “There have been these strange things happening, you know, with the couples breaking up, Annie and Alex . . .”
“Yes,” she says. “Someone is definitely behind these events—the incident with Alex and the truck, the message in the girl’s restroom . . . Do you know why someone would do these things?”
“Maybe—I mean—maybe someone’s boyfriend is leaving her and if there was a curse, then maybe the boyfriend wouldn’t leave. I mean, I would want to go to Mexico too, er, wherever, but maybe she’s just really upset because he promised not to leave her, ever,” I stammer.
“Yes, people make promises. Sometimes people have to break promises too. You understand that, right?”
“Yes.” I nod and look down at my hands.
“The first step is to admit there is a problem,” she says.
“Well, there is definitely a prob—“
“The second step is to admit what you did.”
Wait, what? “No—I . . . do you think I did something?”
“Isn’t that what we’re talking about here?”
“No! No, Mrs. Whyse, I . . . I’m talking about a friend.” I can’t help it: my eyes fill with tears. “She made a cherry pie, and she has these teddy bears—”
“Wait, slow down,” Mrs. Whyse says, frowning. “What about a teddy bear?”
“My friend left a stabbed teddy bear at her boyfriend’s house, and she admitted she was driving his uncle’s truck right when Alex said someone tried to run him over.”
“Oh boy,” Mrs. Whyse says. “Lucia, this is serious. If you have any information about these events, you need to tell me. Who is it that you suspect did these things? Somebody needs to talk to her.”
My heart sinks. Kasey is pretty much my best friend, and I don’t want to get her into trouble. “Hold on, before I tell you who it is, first let me talk to her and see if she will turn herself in,” I plead.
Mrs. Whyse looks unconvinced. “I’m not sure we can wait.”
“Please!”
“Okay. But if she won’t come in, we may have to get the police involved.”
I hope I can talk some sense into Kasey before it’s too late.
I barely look at the bridge on the walk home, but the eerie sound of the wind howling under the arches makes my skin crawl. W
hen I get to our front porch steps, I hear voices coming from Patricia and Kasey’s kitchen. Thinking it’s Kasey, I head over to their front door.
As I step inside, I realize it’s Patricia and Tony. They are whispering intently, so I stay hidden in the hallway and listen. Dishes clink, and the fridge opens and shuts. I try to move closer to hear them over the extra noise, but my foot catches on the carpet, and I pitch forward.
“Oh, hi, you guys!” I say too loudly, my face flushing.
“Hi,” Patricia says coolly.
“What were you doing there?” Tony stares at me.
“I just got home from school”—I point behind me to the front door—“and I heard a voice and I thought it was Kasey . . . and I want to talk to her.”
“Oh,” Patricia says and touches Tony’s sleeve. “Kasey went over to Drew’s for the, um, car thing, but I bet she’ll be back in a few minutes.” She holds up a pizza box. “Want some mistake pizza?”
We go to the living room, where Patricia and Tony sit in the middle of the couch right next to each other. I want to ask about Kasey’s brakes—were they really cut?—but Tony turns on a football game on TV so loud that it’s hard to talk.
I take a piece of the cold pizza. It’s sausage with extra cheese and green olives and pickled peppers—it really was a mistake. I pick off the olives and peppers and shove half a slice into my mouth.
Patricia mutes the TV when a commercial comes on. “So, how is everything going?” she says.
I cover my mouth and chew the gooey cheese. “Kinda sad, you know, Drew going to Mexico.”
Tony nods. “I hope their breakup was worth it,” he says. “And that he gets what they promised him out of that exchange program.”
“I can’t believe he’s leaving Kasey all alone,” Patricia says.
“Maybe he won’t end up leaving her alone,” Tony adds darkly. “He might slip up before then. If his grades go down they’ll reject him, screw everything up.”
“Tony,” Patricia says, putting her hand on his arm and giving him a warning look. “Let’s not get into all of that.”
“Into all of what?” I ask.
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