She was still trying not to think about it when Linda came back from the movie and Stormy finally took himself off home. And later that night when Linda was sound asleep on the daybed couch, Dani, in her stifling hot bedroom, had something else to not think about besides Gila monster truck drivers. Rolling over for the umpteenth time, she shook her head hard to chase away a cloudy procession of monsters in greasy denims, only to have them replaced by a parade of living skeletons.
The next morning she was still thinking about what Stormy had said about the graveyard. Thinking about how ridiculous the whole thing was. She grinned, wondering what Pixie would say when she heard how old the graveyard was. But just wait, Dani told herself. When she finds out that story won’t work, she’ll think up a new one.
It turned out that she’d guessed right about that one. About Pixie having a better answer the next time she showed up. The only part she didn’t guess was how soon that was going to be. Like early afternoon on the very next day.
When Dani opened the front door Pixie came right in without waiting to be invited. “My dad had to come in to make a phone call, so I came too,” she said. “I can stay until he comes back.”
“Comes back?” Dani asked.
“Yes, comes back to town. At five. Like always.”
Dani looked over at the alarm clock on the daybed end table. It was just a little after two o’clock. “Well,” she had just started to say when Pixie came on in and started taking some books out of a big handbag made of woven straw. “I brought some more of my books,” she said. When she finished with the books she looked around and asked, “Where’s Linda? I thought you said she was going to be off today.”
Dani shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I did. The bookstore is closed but she took an extra job today. She’s baby-sitting for the Grahams while they’re in Las Vegas.”
“Oh.” Pixie looked around uneasily, even glancing out the window as if she were hoping her father might still be out there so she could change her mind and go home. “Oh, I thought …”
She didn’t finish telling what she’d been thinking, but Dani could guess. Pixie had probably figured that if Linda were home Dani wouldn’t have a chance to ask any hard-to-answer questions about the Frankenstein thing. Like where you could get body parts in the desert, for instance. Maybe she hadn’t come up with any good answers yet. And maybe she never would, because there just weren’t any good answers. Dani was beginning to enjoy herself, watching Miss Supercool Pixie squirm a little.
“And Stormy?” Pixie asked.
Dani shook her head, trying not to look smug. “Not here,” she said. “Gone somewhere on an errand for his mom’s boyfriend. One of her boyfriends, anyway.”
Another good try, Dani thought. Without Stormy, Miss Storyteller Smithson had lost her best audience. Sitting down in Linda’s rocking chair, Dani said, “About that question I was asking when your folks showed up last night. You know, the one about where they were going to get parts for their monster? I was just wondering if you could talk about it today. And I was also wondering if you knew that the Rattler Springs graveyard hasn’t been used for about fifty years. So don’t bother to tell me about the graveyard.”
Pixie nodded slowly. Climbing up on the daybed, she arranged herself carefully, smoothing her skirt down over her knees and crossing her feet in their scuffless saddle shoes. At last, when she was all ready, she sighed and said, “I shouldn’t have told Stormy that story about the graveyard. I just did it because—because …” She stopped and sighed. The sigh was slow and solemn but when she glanced up Dani got a glimpse of her eyes and there was nothing slow or solemn there. “I didn’t tell him the truth because it was just too—too …” She shuddered before she went on. “The truth is, well, my folks have this great big electric freezer. And back where they used to live there were lots of graveyards. So …”
Dani got the picture. And even though she certainly wasn’t trying to see it, there it was, flashing before her eyes. A picture of what you might have seen in Frankenstein’s freezer chest if there’d been such a thing in those days. Something cold and dead and coated with icicles and fuzzy frost. In spite of herself, a shudder crawled up her back.
“That is the most gruesome thing I ever heard of.”
Pixie nodded enthusiastically. “I know.” Then she sighed and her thumbnail-movie-book face flipped from eager to excited and then to sad-eyed pitiful. “And that’s not the worst of it. That’s not anywhere near the worst of it.”
“Oh yeah?” Dani said.
“Yes. There’s another part that’s a lot more terrible.” Pixie’s voice was still gloom and doom but the quick upward flick of her eyes was something else.
“Okay. You might as well tell me.” Dani sighed, trying to make her face and tone of voice say that she certainly wasn’t promising to believe it, but she wasn’t going to let Pixie get away with stopping at that point. “I mean, you can’t say there’s a worse part and just stop there.”
This time Pixie’s sigh was particularly long and mournful. “No, I guess you’re right.” Squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin, like a person getting ready to face up to something terrible, she began, “Well, see, the other day the generator stopped for just a few minutes but then, after they got it running again I heard them talking. They didn’t know I was listening but I was. And what I heard them say was … Well, my father said that it would have spoiled”—she paused—“er, everything if the electricity had been off much longer. And then …” She paused again, and when she went on her voice was like the music in a movie when it tells you something terrible is about to happen. “And then, I heard my mother say that they could still go on with the experiment if they could use parts from one other body.”
Dani tried not to gulp before she asked, “Another body? Who—Whose body?”
Pixie nodded. “She didn’t say. At least not exactly. But she nodded—toward my room.”
Dani’s gulp turned into a gasp. “Toward your room?” she repeated, sounding like a stupid parrot.
“I told you it was too terrible to talk about,” Pixie said. She was looking down, hiding her eyes again. She didn’t look up as she said, “But that’s why I have to go with you, when you and Stormy run away.”
Chapter 15
THAT DID IT. IT was the very next day that Pixie started being included in the running-away plans. At least more or less. Not that Dani really believed her crazy story, because she didn’t. Or at least most of the time she didn’t. It was only in the middle of the night, when it was easy to believe all kinds of impossible things, that she wasn’t entirely sure.
Dani had gone to bed that night telling herself scornfully that Pixie sure had a big imagination. But it happened to be a dark moonless night and a black desert wind was snaking around Rattler Springs, rattling shingles and sifting sand in around doors and windows. Lying there listening to the whispering wind and crawling sand, Dani drifted off into a dream about trying to climb into a truck and being grabbed by someone who looked a lot like a Frankenstein monster except he seemed to be wearing saddle shoes and a pleated blue skirt. She woke up then and stayed awake for a long time, thinking and worrying.
The next morning, when she told Stormy about Pixie’s latest tall tale, he didn’t doubt any of it. Not for minute. They were in the kitchen at the time. Linda had just left for work and Stormy was at the table fixing himself a huge bowl of cornflakes. Dani had hardly finished the telling when Stormy stopped pouring milk on his cornflakes, smacked his fist down on the table and said, “Yeah. I thought so.”
“You thought what?” Dani asked.
“I thought they might be going to do that.”
It was a ridiculous idea. Dani tried to tell Stormy so. Tried to tell him that it just wasn’t possible that parents, even slightly weird ones like the Smithsons, would ever think of chopping up their only kid. Not even if they happened to be mad scientists who needed some body parts for a Frankenstein-type experiment. “It’s just too crazy,” she told h
im. “And besides, parts from an extra-small ten-year-old just wouldn’t work. Not unless they were planning to make a midget-sized monster.”
But nothing she said seemed to make any difference. There just wasn’t any use trying to convince Stormy that everything Pixie said wasn’t the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She was still trying when Stormy interrupted by saying, “So, how soon can we leave?”
“Leave?”
“How soon can we run away? Can we do it today?”
Dani stared in amazement. “You know we can’t leave yet. Not until we get some more money for tickets.”
“But—But how about stowing away in a truck, like you said before?”
“What?” Dani was amazed and indignant. “I told you I changed my mind about that,” she practically shouted. “So just forget about it. Okay?” She glared for a moment before she added, “Oh, I get it. So now we’re suddenly in a big hurry, are we? When I was the only one who needed to get away fast, you kept slowing things down, and now suddenly we’re in a big rush.”
Stormy did his thoughtful eye-rolling thing for so long that Dani was getting ready to punch him before he said, “But you weren’t about to get chopped up.”
At that point Dani got up, stomped out of the house and slammed the door. She was still sitting on the back steps and Stormy was still in the kitchen eating cornflakes when a car door slammed out on Silver Avenue. Dani jumped up, dashed through the kitchen and beat Stormy to the front door. It was Pixie, of course.
Pixie came into the house on tiptoe, her fiery blue eyes darting wildly. Tiptoeing up to Dani, she whispered, “Can we talk? Is your mother gone?”
Dani backed away. “Yeah, she’s gone,” she said in a normal, nonwhispering voice, not wanting Pixie to think she was going along with whatever game it was she was playing now. “What’s up?”
Still whispering, Pixie said, “That’s what I was going to ask you. What are we going to do today? You know”—her voice got even lower—“about running away.” She looked at Stormy. “Stormy told me how you were looking for a truck to stow away in.”
“He what?” Dani said.
Stormy was shaking his head but Pixie didn’t seem to notice. “Didn’t you, Stormy?”
“No, I didn’t. Not anymore I didn’t.” He gave Dani his guilty, squinty-eyed look. “We changed our minds about that. Now we’re going to go on the bus.”
Pixie looked a little disappointed. “Oh,” she said, sighing. “I thought the stowaway idea sounded exciting.” She sighed again, but after she glanced from Stormy to Dani and back again, she began to nod. “Oh. Okay,” she said. “On the bus.” Going over to the daybed, she climbed up and smoothed herself down the way she always did when she wanted to take time out. She was wearing safari-type khaki shorts and a blouse today, the kind with lots of extra straps and pockets. When she got all arranged she said to Dani, “Tell me about the bus. What’s it like on a bus?”
“What’s it like?” For a moment Dani thought she must be kidding, before she realized that poor little rich girl Pixie, who rode around in fancy custom-built cars, probably didn’t know much about bus riding. “What’s it like to ride on a bus?” she asked in a sarcastic tone of voice. “Well, for one thing you have to pay before you get on. So that’s kind of the problem right now. We don’t have enough money for tickets.”
“Oh?” Pixie was definitely interested. “So what are we going to—?”
“We did a lemonade stand,” Stormy interrupted eagerly. “We made three dollars and ninety-eight cents. But we had to stop because of Ronnie.”
“Ronnie? Ronnie Grabler from school?” Pixie asked, and that really got Stormy started. He was jumping around like he always did when he told a story, but when Dani tried to stop him Pixie said, “No. Let him tell me. I want to hear about it.”
So Dani went into the kitchen, dumped what was left of Stormy’s cornflakes in the garbage and sat down at the table to wait until Stormy’s “Gus the Hero” story was finished. But while she was waiting she began to get a new idea. The idea had to do with how adding a rich kid to their plans might actually be helpful. She was still fooling around with some new possibilities when Stormy and Pixie came into the kitchen.
Pixie was still laughing about Ronnie and the grease pit, but she stopped when Dani asked her how much money she had.
“Money? How much do I have?” Pixie asked. Fishing around in the pockets of her khaki shorts she brought out some change and started to count it. “Thirty-four, thirty-five,” she said. “I have thirty-five cents.”
Dani sighed. “No. I didn’t mean in your pockets. I mean, don’t you have some saved up at home, like in a bank or something?”
Pixie shook her head.
“How about an allowance? You have an allowance, don’t you?
Pixie thought for a moment before she shook her head again.
“You don’t?” Dani made it clear she found that hard to believe.
Pixie looked thoughtful. “I did once,” she said. “But they kept forgetting to give it to me and I kept forgetting to ask for it, unless I wanted something. So now I just ask when I want something, and they give it to me.”
Stormy was looking excited. “Could you ask for enough for the tick—” he’d started to say when he saw that Dani was laughing. “Stop that!” he yelled. “I didn’t mean tell them it was for tickets. I meant she could say—she could just say …”
Dani decided to come to his rescue. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I know what you meant.” Then she said to Pixie, “I think he means could you ask them for the money for something else, something kind of expensive, like a bicycle maybe, and then take the money and buy tickets instead?”
Pixie nodded thoughtfully. “Umm, maybe,” she said. “Maybe. I could try it anyway. How much does a bicycle cost?”
Stormy was all excited. “I know. I know,” he started yelling. “Wait. I’ll get it. I’ll go get it.” He dashed away, out the back door and down the steps. Slam, clomp, clomp, clomp, slam and a bunch more clomps. For a kid who could be so quiet when he tried, it was amazing how noisy he could be when he wasn’t trying.
“Where’s he going?” Pixie asked. “What’s he going to get?”
Dani led the way into the living room. “Who knows. Something about a bicycle, I guess.”
It was a good guess. In about three minutes the slamming and clomping started all over again and Stormy burst into the room, carrying what looked like a magazine but turned out to be a bicycle catalog. A ragged, worn-out catalog full of pictures of beautiful, expensive bikes. Climbing up on the daybed beside Pixie, Stormy opened it to an illustration of a really fancy Schwinn bicycle. Someone, Stormy no doubt, had underlined and circled that particular bicycle in red and black crayon and had drawn yellow shooting stars all around it.
“See. That’s it,” he said. “That’s a Black Phantom. It’s my favorite. My favorite for a long time.” He sighed, a long sad sound. “Costs too much.” He pointed to where, under the picture, it said $175.00.
“A hundred and seventy-five dollars. Holy moly!” Dani said. “I didn’t know a bicycle could cost that much. Linda didn’t pay that much for our truck.” She and Pixie looked at the picture and then at each other and then at Stormy. He was staring at the bicycle with the same kind of glassy eyes he got when he listened to a story.
Dani took the catalog away from him and slammed it down on the coffee table. “So,” she said to Pixie, “I suppose if you asked your folks for a hundred and seventy-five dollars to buy a bicycle they’d say, ‘Sure thing. How soon do you want it?’ ” She laughed, expecting Pixie to laugh too. But she didn’t.
Instead she nodded solemnly. “They might,” she said. “My mother used to ride bicycles and she wanted me to learn how, but mostly I live with my grandmother and where she lives there isn’t any flat place to ride so I never did learn.”
“You mean you don’t even know how to ride a bicycle?”
Pixie nodded. “Only a little. I tri
ed a few times on a friend’s.”
“And you think they might give you that kind of money to get you something you don’t even know how to ride?”
Pixie tilted her head thoughtfully. “Maybe. I think so. I didn’t know anything about chemistry when they bought me a very expensive chemistry set. My dad said I would learn by doing. But my grandmother took it away from me when I set the basement on fire.”
Dani sighed and changed the subject to some other money-raising ideas she’d been thinking about, halfway reasonable ones like baby-sitting or dog walking.
So that was more or less the end of the bicycle conversation, and as far as Dani was concerned the end of even thinking about it. But when the Smithson tank pulled up in front of Dani’s house that afternoon and Pixie ran out to meet it, she must have taken Stormy’s bicycle catalog with her. At least when Stormy went home he couldn’t find it. He made such a big fuss about it that Dani had to read an extra chapter of The Jungle Book just to calm him down.
The next day was a Thursday and Pixie didn’t show up all day long. It was just about the only day she hadn’t since school had been out and Stormy was really worried. He didn’t exactly say so but it was obvious that he was afraid that Pixie’s parents had already started collecting some body parts. Usually nothing could distract Stormy while he was listening to a story, but that afternoon he kept jumping up and running to the window every time he heard a car go by. And there wasn’t any use trying to get him to think about moneymaking plans, not even for a minute.
It was fairly late in the afternoon, almost time for Linda to come home, and Dani was just about to finish a chapter when she heard the squeak of the gate hinges and then slow, unsteady footsteps on the front porch. When she opened the door there stood Pixie. Nothing else in sight. No tank-car out on the road. Just a messed-up, dirt-smeared Pixie whose face was tear-streaked—and whose hands and knees were smeared with lots of bright red blood.
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