Edgewood Series: Books 1 - 3

by Karen McQuestion

  That day, I sat down in my seat, the middle of the row closest to the door. I settled in and dropped my book and notebook on the desk. We hardly ever used the textbook, but I felt compelled to keep bringing it anyway. The rest of the class filtered in bit by bit, but Mr. Specter wasn’t upfront like he usually was. The bell rang and still he wasn’t there. A few kids speculated that we would be on our own. There was talk of leaving, but no one did. Some pulled out their phones and several of the girls started talking, the way girls do sometimes, kind of show-offy, laughing and smiling in the direction of guys they liked, hoping the guys would notice and drift over by them. I wasn’t the kind anyone wanted, so I kept quiet and took it all in.

  Finally, half an hour later, out of complete boredom, I opened my notebook and started doodling randomly. Without realizing what I was doing, I started sketching the light show from the night before, first as it appeared in the sky and then how it looked on the ground. In the background, I drew the abandoned train station, quickly and with great detail. I’m usually terrible at drawing, but this turned out good, surprisingly good. My hand had a life of its own. It knew where each line and dot belonged, like someone else was drawing it through me. Without even thinking about it, I sketched a figure standing in the middle of the field, right in the center of the glowing swirl, arms raised upward. It was a picture of me, although I didn’t remember standing quite that way.

  When I glanced up, I saw that the girl in front of me, Mallory Nassif, had turned around in her seat and was watching me draw. I didn’t know Mallory that well. She was the sort of girl who blended in with the crowd, until you noticed her, and then she clearly stood out. She had big doe-eyes fringed with long lashes, shiny dark hair always in a ponytail, and this really nice laugh that carried across the lunchroom. Her skin was the color of coffee with cream. I sometimes got that tan by the middle of summer, if I was out a lot, but her coloring came naturally. Besides what I saw in front of me, all I knew about her was that she’d been the new girl the beginning of this school year, and she played on the field hockey team. Our eyes met for a second and then she gestured to my notebook. “Whatcha drawing there, Russ?” she asked.

  I stared, surprised she even knew my name. I started to say something about how it was nothing, just a doodle, but before I could get the words out, the door flew open and Mr. Specter strode in. I shut my notebook.

  “Okay, people,” he bellowed, heading to the front of the room. “Settle down. Free time is over. Now it’s my turn.” He seemed a little out of breath, and not himself, frankly. He wore a button-down shirt with a sweater vest over it and a pair of creased gray trousers, per usual. His wire-rimmed glasses had slid to the end of his nose and perspiration shone on his forehead.

  “You okay, Mr. Specter?” asked one of girls. Emily, a total suck-up. “You’re not sick, are you?’

  “I’m fine, Emily,” he said. “Just coming back from a meeting that ran a little late.” He shuffled through some papers on his desk and went to his computer to send attendance to the office. Everyone was quiet now. We all respected Mr. Specter. He was a real teacher. “Now,” he said, walking away from his desk and standing front and center. “I thought we’d talk about astronomy today.”

  “I’m a Capricorn!” This from Chris Jennings, a guy I was friends with in grade school, back before I had good taste in people.

  “That would be astrology, Mr. Jennings.” Mr. Specter pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and mopped his brow. “Another fascinating subject, but not one that’s included in our curriculum.” Our curriculum—what a joke. As if we had a set schedule. “No, I’m talking about astronomy, the study of objects and matter outside the earth’s atmosphere and of their physical and chemical properties.” He looked at us over his glasses. “That’s an exact dictionary definition, a rather narrow view in my opinion. Astronomy is so much more than that.” He glanced around the room. “William Shakespeare said, ‘It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.’ Does anyone know what that means?”

  Mallory raised her hand, and when he nodded, she said, “That’s not quite right, Mr. Specter. The actual line is from the play Julius Caesar and it goes like this: ‘Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’”

  I thought Mr. Specter might be irritated at being corrected, but he just nodded. “Well done, Ms. Nassif. And what exactly does that mean?” He glanced around the room. Mallory started to answer, but he brushed her off saying, “Let’s give someone else a turn, shall we?”

  He pointed to a kid in the front row, who shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah, I got nothing.”

  Mr. Specter leaned back against the whiteboard. “Come now, there are twenty-four students in this room. Miss Nassif can’t be the only one with a brain in her head.”

  Whoa, kind of harsh. Especially coming from Mr. Specter, who wasn’t usually demanding at all.

  “Can you repeat the quote?” someone called out.

  Mr. Specter raised his eyebrows at Mallory, who sat up straight and repeated, “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

  “What is this, English class?” another guy grumbled. “I want to do science.”

  Mr. Specter ignored him and walked up to me. “Mr. Becker, would you care to tell us what that means?” He leaned over and drummed his fingers against my notebook.

  I nervously cleared my throat. “Umm, I think it means we determine our own fate. It’s not what happens to us in life, it’s what we do about it.”

  Mr. Specter gave me a penetrating look and then nodded. “Very good.” He walked briskly to the front of the room. “Last night a phenomenal astrological event happened only a few miles away from here. If you were awake last night around one in the morning, you would have seen it. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?”

  I knew immediately what he was talking about, but I wasn’t about to fess up to being out that late at night. “Come on now,” he said, when a minute or so had passed. “This was spectacular. Someone had to have seen it.”

  “Tell us what it was,” Chris Jennings said. “Maybe I saw it and didn’t know it.”

  “You would have known it,” Mr. Specter said, more quietly this time. He looked around the room searching each face, one at a time. “Extra credit for anyone who can tell me about it,” he said in a cajoling tone. I looked down at my desk, not wanting to meet his eyes.

  “Come on, Mr. S., give us a clue,” one of the girls said.

  “No clues.”

  He walked down the first row, the one closest to the door. “Anyone who saw it and can accurately describe it will be excused from having to do the final project and will automatically receive an A for said project.” That made everyone take notice.

  “Whoa.”

  “Cool!”

  “No fair. I can’t help it if I didn’t see it.”

  “Ooh, ooh.” Allie Westfahl raised her hand.

  “Yes, Miss Westfahl?”

  “I remember now. I was looking out my window last night and I saw an eclipse.”

  “Nice try, but that’s not it.”

  Mr. Specter moved methodically through the room, row by row, desk by desk, pausing by each student and placing a hand on their shoulder. If they didn’t look at him, he’d say their name until they glanced up. No one knew what he was talking about.

  Except me. He was five students away and I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle this.

  Now four students to go before he got to me. “Brad?” Mr. Specter said, but Brad shook his head.

  Three students. My heart sped up a bit. I concentrated on not looking flustered.

  In front of me, I heard a strangulated gargling noise that made me look up despite myself. It was Mallory Nassif. Her head trembled and then shook, making her ponytail swing back and forth. She fell out of her desk chair and onto the fl
oor in the aisle, her head hitting the linoleum with a loud thwack.

  Once she was on the ground, it was pandemonium. One of the girls screamed and people were shouting different things all at once.

  “Someone should call the office.”

  “Screw the office, call 911.”

  One girl said, “I heard that for seizures you should stick something in their mouth to keep them from swallowing their tongue.”

  It didn’t seem like a seizure though, because once she landed on the floor, she stopped shaking and fell limp. Mr. Specter quickly took over, sending one girl down to get help from the office and telling the rest of us to move the desks away from Mallory’s body. Body, like she was dead. The whole thing was pretty surreal. Mallory was completely still, not even flinching when he knelt down next to her and put his fingers on her neck. “I have a pulse and she’s breathing,” he said to no one in particular. By the time Mrs. Schroeder, the woman from the health room, came to the door, Mallory’s eyes had fluttered open and he’d helped her to sit up. “Easy now,” he said, in a kind way. She looked around, seemingly confused.

  Some of the girls fussed and made idiotic comments. A few pulled out their phones even though it was against school rules. I’m not sure if they were posting to Facebook or texting or what, but it seemed pretty insensitive to me. When Mrs. Schroeder and Mr. Specter helped Mallory to her feet, everyone clapped like they would for an injured player getting up at a sports event. She looked unsteady, and the adults decided she should get checked out by a doctor. “I think I just got lightheaded,” Mallory protested. “I didn’t eat breakfast this morning and my blood sugar is low. I’m probably fine.”

  I didn’t think she could be fine, not the way her head smacked against the floor like a dropped cantaloupe.

  “It’s best to get it checked out,” Mrs. Schroeder said in a soothing way, easing Mallory toward the door. Emily gathered up Mallory’s things and followed along like the suck-up she was. They were barely out the door when the bell rang and class was over.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That night, out of habit more than compulsion, I left the house around midnight and did my usual route, thinking about Mr. Specter’s class as I walked. So weird that he’d brought up the astronomical event I’d seen the night before. How was it that he knew about it but it wasn’t mentioned on the news or anywhere online? I wasn’t about to say what I knew in class, even with his bribe. Extra credit, big deal. Like that would make me confess to being out in the middle of the night. And there was something odd about the way he asked, too. He wanted the information a little too badly. Suspicious.

  I was still thinking about this during my nighttime walk when I got to Old Edgewood. One of my first stops was a house where a really old lady lived. She had to be ancient, eighty-five or so. The drapes were always open, so I could see her clearly through the window. She slept sitting up in a recliner, but sometimes she shuffled around using a walker. Mostly she watched television, but she never looked interested in what was on. No one was ever with her: no nurse, no family members. She seemed pretty frail to be alone. I looked up her address online and got a name. Nelly Smith, that was her. Even though it was the middle of the night, I never saw her in a bathrobe. It must have been cold in her house because she always wore sweatpants and an oversized sweatshirt (usually decorated with birds or ladybugs).

  None of my grandparents were living, so I started to think of Mrs. Smith as Grandma Nelly. I thought about going back to her house in the daytime and offering to run errands for her, or maybe getting her groceries. But in the morning I felt differently. I didn’t really know her, after all. Maybe she was mean or crazy. I mean, why didn’t she have family or friends looking after her? If she was a lovable old lady they’d be there, right?

  That Wednesday I rested next to a tree in Mrs. Smith’s front yard, like I always did, pressing my back against the rough bark. I heard a truck rumbling in the distance. The front porch light was on, but inside the only source of illumination was a floor lamp in the front room. She wasn’t in her chair, but that wasn’t unusual. Nelly Smith was elderly, but she wasn’t dead yet. Maybe she went to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a snack. I waited for what seemed like a long time, but there was no movement in the house. Odder still was the fact that her walker stood next to her chair. I’d never seen her without it, not in all my weeks of visiting her yard.

  I almost wrote it off—almost left to go to my next stop, but something made me stay and creep closer to the house until I was on the front porch looking directly into the front window. I had a view of the whole living room—the television still on, the recliner upright, and Nelly Smith lying in a crumpled heap on the floor.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I don’t know how long I stood on Nelly Smith’s porch peering through her window. Thirty seconds, ten minutes, forever? My breath caught in my chest and I felt my heart accelerate: buh-bum, buh-bum, buh-bum. She wasn’t moving and I couldn’t tell if she was breathing, but that didn’t mean she was dead. Still she was old and obviously not in great shape, so the dead thing was a real possibility. I shifted my weight and looked around the neighborhood, unsure what to do. Flag down a passing car? Knock on a neighbor’s door? And then what? Doing any of these things would lead to questions about who I was and why I was far from home on a stranger’s porch in the middle of the night. Even to me it sounded suspicious.

  I lifted my hand to press the doorbell and then let it drop to my side when I realized how stupid that was. Like I’d ring the doorbell and Nelly Smith, who was either dead or stroked out, would rise up when she heard it, come to the door, and assure me that she was fine, really, just resting on the floor. What was I thinking?

  I pulled my cell phone out of my hoodie pocket. Damn. My battery was dead. I was looking down at it when I noticed the doormat beneath my feet. It was one of those brown bristly types that usually say “WELCOME.” This one, however, said “GO AWAY.” The old woman had a sense of humor, anyway. Under different circumstances I would have laughed.

  On impulse I stepped aside, leaned over, and lifted the mat. Aha—a key. Didn’t Ms. Smith know that putting a key under the mat was like inviting criminals into your home? Luckily, Old Edgewood wasn’t known for break-ins.

  I picked up the key, opened the screen door, and unlocked the front door like I lived there. I tucked the key back under the mat before opening the door. “Mrs. Smith?” I called out before stepping over the threshold. Man, was I in trouble if she thought I was breaking in. Not likely since there was no response. Cautiously I went in, crossing the room to Mrs. Smith’s body. She was curled up on her side, a cordless phone on the floor next to her head. I knelt down and put my fingertips against her neck, not knowing what the hell I was doing, but recalling something I saw in a movie in seventh grade. Her skin was cold to the touch. Please God, don’t let her be dead. I have a big test tomorrow and I’m so tired. I really don’t need this right now.

  I moved my hand closer to her throat but couldn’t find a pulse. Oh man, this was terrible. “Mrs. Smith,” I said, “I’m Russ Becker. Just hang on. I’m going to call for help, okay?” No answer, but saying the words made me feel better, like someone was in charge. I picked up her phone, stood, and dialed 911. I heard my own voice say, “I need someone to come right away.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Russ, you look terrible,” my friend Justin said, when he’d caught up to me at my locker the next day at school. “Smoking all that crack is catching up to you.”

  “Get it right. I don’t smoke crack anymore,” I said, playing along. “It’s meth all the way now, and I’m not stopping until my teeth rot in my head.” I bent down to unload my backpack.

  “Whatever you’re doing, it can’t be good. You look half dead.” His voice took on a more serious tone. “You’re not still roaming around at night, are you?”

  “Just now and then,” I said, “when I have trouble sleeping.”

  Justin was the only one I’d told about my late
-night walks. He’d been worried when I told him, saying I really should go back to Dr. Anton and beg for sleeping pills. “Dude, that’s his job to push the pharmaceuticals. Tell him you need it.” He wouldn’t shut up about it and kept bringing it up until I finally told him I had it under control.

  “Did you have trouble last night?”

  “Nope, last night I slept like a baby,” I said, slamming my locker shut. In fact, I hadn’t slept at all. After running all the way home, I’d lain awake in bed as jittery as if I’d downed a four-pack of Red Bull.

  I kept replaying the whole thing in my mind, the way I picked the phone off the floor and called for help. I was standing next to Mrs. Smith’s body, talking to the operator when I felt a tug on the bottom of my jeans. I jumped a little—anyone would have—and told the 911 lady, “She’s coming around. She just moved.”

  “Good,” she said calmly. “Just stay with her and keep talking to me. Help is on the way.”

  I squatted down next to her, the phone still up against my ear. I patted her arm. “It’s going to be okay. They’re sending an ambulance. It’ll be here soon.”

  She gave me a wide-eyed stare. “You shouldn’t have done it,” she said, her voice raspy. “I didn’t want to come back.” Confused, clearly.