Blair’s Nightmare

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Molly sighed impatiently. “It’s so ridiculous,” she said.

  Dad frowned. “I don’t see it as ridiculous. I don’t know that I agree with her assessment of the seriousness of the situation, but I do agree that we’re all somewhat to blame. It seems to me we’ve all been guilty of encouraging Blair in his fantasies. Particularly you kids.”

  At that point David flashed on what he’d overheard in the garage. He couldn’t remember exactly what the kids had been saying, but what he did recall was enough to make him realize how right Dad was. Janie and Esther had undoubtedly been encouraging Blair to think that his nightmare dog was the real thing.

  “I know you all enjoy the great stories Blair makes up,” Dad went on, “and I certainly don’t blame you for that. There’s no doubt that he has a very fertile imagination. But I think Mrs. Bowen may be right when she says that a person Blair’s age should be better able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. And I think we can all help him to do just that.”

  “Okay,” Janie said, “we’ll help. I’m very good at distinguishing. Distinguishing is something that detectives are very good at.”

  “Me too,” Esther said. “I want to help, too. How are you going to do it, Janie? How do we extinguish Blair?”

  Dad smiled, and Molly laughed out loud. “I think you’re absolutely right, Tesser honey,” Molly said. “Extinguish is the right word. That woman wants to extinguish something that is uniquely and wonderfully Blair.” Molly’s face looked flushed, and there was something about the way she looked at Dad that made David feel a little uneasy.

  Amanda was grinning. “What’s The Bleep been telling those poor little old first graders? I’ll bet he’s been giving them a real thrill.”

  Molly smiled at Amanda. “He’s been talking about Harriette, for one thing. Apparently,” Molly said, “Blair told some of the children he has an invisible friend named Harriette who lives in our house.”

  “No,” Esther said. “Blair doesn’t say Harriette is invisible. He says we could see her if she came out when we were around—if we looked hard enough. He says we’re usually just not looking hard enough.”

  “I see,” Dad said. “Well, however that may be, Mrs. Bowen thinks it would be better for Blair if we would all help him to realize that Harriette is just a game. And the dog, too.”

  David happened to be looking at Janie, and when Dad mentioned the dog, her mouth flew open in a kind of gasp and snapped shut again. Then she looked hard at Esther and shook her head. Dad must have heard the gasp because he turned to look at her. “What did you say, Janie?” he asked.

  “I just said, ‘Tsk, tsk.’ ” Janie shook her head disapprovingly. “Tsk, tsk. That Blair! Telling all those kids at school about his imaginary dog!” Dad looked at Janie for a moment before he went on. It was pretty obvious to David that Janie was up to something, and he was sure Dad was thinking the same thing. But after a moment Dad went on about how they shouldn’t accuse Blair of lying because Blair’s fantasies were very real to him, but they should all let him know that they realized Harriette and the dog, and all the rest, were simply a kind of game.

  Right in the middle of what Dad was saying, Molly sighed loudly, turned her back and stared into the fire. David looked quickly at Dad, but if he had noticed he was pretending he hadn’t. Still David had that uncomfortable, tight feeling between his shoulder blades that he’d always gotten when somebody was trying to start a fight at school, particularly if they were trying to start it with him. Which was strange, because he’d always thought he felt that way because he was afraid. He certainly wasn’t afraid when Dad and Molly got into an argument, he just didn’t like it.

  “Okay,” Dad was saying in a kind of phony super-cheerful voice. “Everybody got it? Will you all promise to stop pretending to believe in Blair’s fantasies?”

  Esther looked worried. “Do we have to promise to stop believing in—” she was saying when Janie interrupted.

  “We promise,” she said loudly. “We promise not to pretend to believe in anything unless we really do believe in it, because then it wouldn’t be pretending because it would be really, and when something’s really you don’t have to pretend. That’s okay, isn’t it? That’s okay, Tesser. Can we go now?”

  Dad grinned. “I’m afraid you lost me on that one. Just tell Blair to knock it off if he starts telling everyone about Harriette and the dog.”

  “We already did that,” Esther said. “Didn’t we, Janie? We already told Blair to stop telling . . . hey, turn loose, Janie. Where are we going?”

  After Janie had dragged Esther out of the room, Molly stopped staring into the fire and went out too. David stayed where he was for a while watching. After Molly went out, Dad went on sitting in the same place, staring at the letter from Mrs. Bowen before he threw it down on the coffee table and kind of stalked out of the room.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Amanda said.

  “Who me?” David asked.

  “Yeah, you. You’re twitching.” Amanda screwed up her face and jerked her shoulders around.

  “Oh that,” David said. “I’ve got a stiff neck. Too much bicycle riding, I guess.”

  Chapter Five

  THE NEXT DAY WAS SATURDAY, and David decided to go hiking. Ever since the Stanleys had moved into the Westerly House, he’d enjoyed hiking in the rolling hills that started just beyond the backyard. Sometimes he took the little kids with him, but he really preferred to go alone. Alone he could move at his own pace and quietly. Moving slowly and silently he’d been able to get very close to lots of squirrels and birds, and once he’d even been only a few yards from a doe with twin fawns. Hiking, he’d found, was a good way to take your mind off things you’d just as soon not think about, which right at the moment seemed like a particularly good idea.

  Fortunately Janie and the twins had just left for an all day birthday party, so he wasn’t expecting any trouble getting away by himself. He was in the kitchen fixing a lunch to take along when Amanda came in and leaned on the counter.

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Well, actually, I was thinking of eating it.”

  “Very funny. I mean why are you putting it in your backpack?”

  “Because I’m going hiking,” he said, and then because he was sure she’d say no, he added, “You want to come along?”

  Amanda grabbed a piece of cheese he’d just sliced off for his sandwich and stuck it in her mouth. “Sure,” she said with her mouth full. “Why not?”

  David stared at her. “I thought you hated hiking.”

  “I do. But right at the moment I’m having a totally fatal attack of boredom.”

  He stifled a sigh. He’d really been looking forward to getting away all by himself. However, he’d never been hiking with Amanda before, except for a couple of times in Italy when a lot of other people were along, too. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. “Well,” he said, “if it’s either hiking or sudden death . . .”

  Amanda grabbed the last slice of baloney and began to make a sandwich.

  The first part of the hike went better than David had expected. On the long slope that led up to the hills, she walked quickly, and later, when the going got rough, she didn’t get nervous about the steep places. And when David suggested they might see some animals if they were quiet, she stopped talking, at least for a while. It was a nice day, clean and clear after the rain, with a damp earthy smell under the trees and the winter grass beginning to show green on the hillsides. They saw two squirrels having a noisy argument and watched a big red-tailed hawk diving out of the sky to catch a field mouse or small gopher and carry it away to the top of a big oak tree. At the top of the first ridge, they found a shady spot under a bunch of bay trees and ate their lunch and talked.

  Amanda said that so far the hike hadn’t been as bad as she’d expected, and that watching the hawk had been gross but kind of exciting. Then David mentioned the squirrels, and Amanda said they’d reminded her of Eloise and Tammy.
Eloise and Tammy were two girls in Amanda’s class who were her best friends—except when there’d just been some kind of a fight and one or both of them totally grossed her out.

  “Yeah,” Amanda said. “That dark gray one with the fat cheeks was Tammy. She was telling Eloise that she used to feel sorry for her because she thought she was a victim of child abuse, until she realized that her black eyes were just too much eye shadow.”

  David laughed. “She didn’t really say that to Eloise, did she?”

  “Sure,” Amanda said. “In a loud voice in the cafeteria line. And then Eloise—the one with the long skinny tail—said she was really surprised to hear that Tammy had been worrying about her because she’d always thought that fat people never worried about anything—except maybe what was for lunch.”

  “Wow,” David said. “I thought they were real good friends.”

  “They are. They’re crazy about each other.”

  “Then how come they . . .”

  “That was last week. This week they’re mad at me. They went to the Doom Flume today, and they both called me up to tell me I wasn’t invited. That’s why I didn’t have anything to do.”

  David was curious. Amanda sounded slightly sarcastic, but not too upset. Maybe she was just hiding it. “Well, next week they’ll probably hate each other and be crazy about you,” he said.

  Amanda shrugged. “I couldn’t care less. They both totally gross me out.”

  David nodded. It figured. Personally he wasn’t too good at insulting people, whether they happened to be his best friends or not. But with Amanda he guessed it kind of came naturally.

  When they’d finished eating, David said that he’d planned to go over the next ridge and then on down into the valley to a little lake where animals sometimes came to drink—but they could go back now if Amanda was tired.

  “Who’s tired?” Amanda said. “I’m beginning to like this ‘Wild Kingdom’ stuff.”

  So they went on, and when they were almost to the top of the next range of hills, they begin to hear the dirt bikes. Even before they got to where they could see anything, he could tell they were dirt bikes because of the noise they made.

  “We might as well go back,” he told Amanda. “There won’t be any animals in a hundred miles with all that noise going on.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s see who it is. I know some guys who have dirt bikes.”

  So they went on climbing, and when they reached the crest of the hill the noise got a whole lot louder. Directly down below them, where some little rolling foothills surrounded the narrow valley, little clouds of exhaust were rising up into the sky, and in two or three places you could see where the bikes had torn away the grass in a network of deep muddy trails. As they watched, a bike came shooting into view, flew over the top of a rise and plunged down the other side.

  “Hey. I know him,” Amanda said. “He’s in my history class. His name is Greg. Let’s go on down. Maybe they’ll give us a ride.”

  “Well,” David said, “I don’t know.” He wasn’t feeling too enthusiastic about the whole thing even before the second bike came over the top of the hill. But when it did, he stopped in his tracks. There was no way Amanda was going to talk him into going any farther. The guy riding the bike was Pete Garvey.

  Amanda had already started out, but when she realized David was staying right where he was, she stopped. “Well, come on,” she said.

  “No way. Did you see who that was? On that last bike?”

  “No. Who was it?”

  “Pete Garvey.”

  “So? I thought he was a friend of yours.”

  “Look,” David said. “I hate to disappoint you, but that day Garvey told you he was looking for me, it wasn’t because he’s my friend. He was looking for me because he wanted to punch me out.”

  “Punch you out? Why would Garvey want to punch you out? He’s twice as big as you are.”

  “Actually, I’d noticed that,” David said sarcastically. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if Garvey has, too. I think he prefers to punch out people who are smaller than he is.”

  Amanda looked at David with a funny expression. “Okay,” she said. “He wants to punch you out. Why?”

  So David sat down on a rock and started telling her the whole story. Before he’d gotten very far, she sat down too and listened very carefully. She seemed interested, but it was obvious that she didn’t take it seriously because she kept grinning. David didn’t think it was all that funny.

  When David finished, Amanda said it reminded her of something that happened in the school she used to go to before Molly and Dad got married—some guy caller Killer Keller used to beat up on everyone. But right in the middle of a particularly gory part about what Killer did to some little guy who tried to fight back, she stopped suddenly and said, “Hey, listen.”

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s what I meant. They’re gone.”

  Sure enough, the roar of the dirt bikes was gone, and all you could hear was the usual soft natural sounds of the valley—the rustle of the wind and now and then the distant chirping of a bird. After a while Amanda suggested that they go on down to the lake. David wasn’t too sure he wanted to. It was possible that the bikers were just taking a rest. So he asked Amanda to finish telling her story first. It was quite a long story with lots of gruesome details, and when she finally finished, there still was no sign of the dirt bikers. “See?” Amanda said. “The coast is clear. Come on.”

  The first part of the trail down to the valley floor was fairly steep, but near the bottom it leveled out. Just before it turned toward the lake, there was a place where it forked. One of the branches led on down the slope toward the road that went over another rise and into Fillmore Valley. David was leading the way. He had just turned onto the valley trail, when he circled some bushes and practically ran into someone who was coming down the path in the other direction. It was Pete Garvey.

  “Hey.” Garvey grabbed David by the shoulder. “Lookee, here.”

  David tried to pull away, but it was no use. Garvey was grinning, but the smile didn’t make David feel any better.

  “What’re you doing out here?” Garvey said.

  “We were hiking.” Amanda had caught up. “What are you doing?”

  Garvey looked at Amanda. “Hey,” he said. “What’cha doing with this little twerp?”

  David felt Amanda bump against his shoulder, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off Garvey to look at her. “He’s my brother,” Amanda said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, now,” Garvey said slowly. “I been looking for this little twerp for a long time.” His grip tightened on David’s shoulder, and he lifted his arm, pulling David up onto his tiptoes. “I got a bone to pick with this little twerp.”

  David wished he’d get it over with—and that he’d quit saying “little twerp.” He wished it so hard he was actually clenching his fist to take a desperate and useless swing at Garvey’s grinning face, when all of a sudden a fist shot out of nowhere and smashed right into the middle of it. For a weird second or two he almost thought the fist might have been his own, but of course it wasn’t.

  Garvey turned loose of David and stepped back with both hands over his nose. It had been a very hard punch. David winced. He could almost feel it himself. He was still standing there staring at Garvey when Amanda grabbed him by the arm and almost jerked him off his feet. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  A few feet down the trail he turned around and looked back. Garvey had turned loose of his nose, but he was still just standing there, in exactly the same place he’d been when Amanda hit him, as if he were frozen to the spot. The expression on his face was even blanker than usual.

  “David,” Amanda said. “Are you coming—or what?” David hurried after her. He didn’t look back again, but for quite a while he kept expecting to hear Garvey charging after them; but he never did. After a while he quit worrying about it.
By the time they got to the ridge, he was worrying about something else. Amanda wasn’t acting like herself.

  At first he couldn’t exactly put his finger on it. It was a little bit as if she were mad at him—but not exactly. Several times he caught her staring at him; but when he tried to talk to her, she answered briefly, as if she were angry or else had something on her mind and didn’t want to be interrupted.

  Once, just trying to make conversation, David said, “That must have really hurt.”

  “What?” Amanda said, and then she looked at her hand with a strange kind of surprised expression and said, “Yeah, it did. It hurt a lot.”

  “Oh,” David said. He hadn’t thought about her hand; but now that he did, he realized what she meant. He’d heard of people breaking the bones in their hands by punching other people. “I hope it’s not broken or anything.”

  Amanda stopped and stared at him for a second. She looked irritated, as if there were something about him she really resented. “Forget it,” she said.

  He didn’t try to talk anymore. He’d begun to figure it out. She’d probably just realized what a coward he was, and she was really disgusted. He’d known all along that Amanda wasn’t too crazy about having a bunch of stepsisters and -brothers. She’d made that pretty clear from the beginning. So to find out that one of them was a coward naturally wouldn’t exactly make her happy. He didn’t blame her. It didn’t make him very happy either.

  The rest of the way home he felt really rotten, and just as they got to the house, Amanda did something that made him feel even rottener.

  It happened right after they came through the back door into the kitchen. David was taking off his backpack when he looked up and noticed that Amanda was looking at him.

  “Well,” she said. “That was an interesting hike.” Then she halfway closed her eyes, nodded and said, “Very interesting.” And then she smiled at him. She’d smiled at him before, of course. Not very often, but enough so that he knew what it usually looked like, and this was different.