The Stranger

by Caroline B. Cooney

  She was framed in the doorway anyhow; there was no escape; so she flung it open and said hi.

  “Nickie!” they cried. “You have to tell us everything. We’re dying to hear about it.”

  Her heart tightened. How could Rachel and Cath know? She had said nothing! Only Christo had been there, and he’d had no sense of what was going on. He’d been too in love with Nicoletta to see anything.

  And yet Rachel and Cathy knew.

  Nicoletta struggled to remain composed. She could not talk to anybody until she had talked to Jethro. That was all, that was that.

  Rachel flung her arms around Nicoletta. “It’s terrible not to see you all the time,” she said. “We’re so out of touch. Now get inside where it’s toasty-oasty warm and tell us all about it.” Rachel shoved Nicoletta into her own house.

  Cathy tap-danced after them. “You’re so lucky, Nickie,” she said, admiring her own steps. “Did you dance all night?”

  They even knew that she had danced under the moon and across the snow!

  “Hi, Jamie,” said Rachel. “Are you still worthless or have you improved since we saw you last?”

  “I’m flawless,” said Jamie. “Get out of my living room. I’m watching television. But if you pay me, I’ll describe Christo’s good-night kiss. It was very long and—“

  Christo.

  This was about Christo! The dance at Top o’ the Town. Not the dance to find Jethro.

  Nicoletta surfaced. It was sticky coming up, as if, like the pancake men, she had drowned under syrup.

  How quickly can I get rid of them? she wondered. She would have to give them every detail, assuming she could remember any details; and then what excuse could she use to make them leave her alone? She wondered if there was any way she could get Rachel to drive her to the dead-end road, save her that long hike. She could think of no way to explain being dropped off there.

  “And then,” said Jamie, accepting a pack of Starburst candy in payment, “Christo staggered back to the car like a drunk. Except he was drunk with Nickie.” Jamie laughed insanely. “Men,” she said, shaking her head in dismay. Clearly she had expected men to have higher standards in love than her own sister.

  “Oh, that’s beautiful,” sighed Cathy. “Come on, Nickie, into your room for your version. We’ve already had Christo’s and now Jamie’s.”

  “You’ve already had Christo’s?”

  “Of course. We had an extra rehearsal this morning. At Anne-Louise’s. She has the most wonderful house, Nickie. It’s on Fairest Lane, as a matter-of-fact. Her family bought the house three down from your old one, and her living room is huge. The whole chorus can fit in easily. Plus she has a grand piano, not to mention a fabulous electric keyboard. There’s nothing that keyboard isn’t programmed to do.”

  “Cathy,” muttered Rachel. “I don’t think Nickie is thrilled to hear that.”

  Cathy apologized desperately.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Nicoletta. It didn’t. All that mattered was getting to the boulder, the path, the two lakes, the cave.

  And Jethro.

  Is he the monster? she thought. How can he be? How can anybody be?

  “So,” said Rachel, hugging herself with eagerness. She lowered her voice. Excitedly she whispered, “Are you in love with him?”

  Nicoletta stared into the faces of her former friends. Still friends, she supposed. Friends because they had not forgotten her … and yet, friends she’d forgotten.

  Am I in love with him? she thought. Which him do we mean?

  She told them many lies. At the time she uttered each sentence, she swore to remember it, so they wouldn’t know she was lying, but she tripped continually. She could not remember one lie even through the following lie.

  Cathy and Rachel thought it was wonderful. “You’re so dizzy with love, you can’t even keep your first date straight,” accused Rachel. She hugged Nicoletta, cementing something, but Nicoletta did not know what.

  “I’m jealous,” added Cathy.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Get it! yelled Jamie. “I’m busy.”

  Nicoletta went to the door. In this tiny house, everybody was adjacent to everything and everyone.

  It was Christo.

  No, she thought. No, not now. I’ve told enough lies. I can’t tell more.

  Just seeing her brought a laugh to Christo’s lips. “Hi, Nicoletta,” he said, trembling over these simple words. It was not a tremble of nervousness, but of sheer pleasure to see her. But of course, it was not only Nicoletta he saw. With a touch of disappointment, he added, “Hi, Cathy. Hi, Rachel.”

  “We’re just leaving,” said the girls, nudging each other, pushing the romance along.

  Don’t leave me alone with Christo! How will I ever get to Jethro if Christo is here? I don’t mind lying to you two. If I could explain everything to you, you wouldn’t mind. But Christo! He would mind.

  For there is no explanation for loving somebody else.

  Chapter 12

  “LET’S ALL GO TO the mall!” said Nicoletta. “That would be fun.” She clapped her hands like a moron and twirled to make her hair fly out in a golden cloud.

  Christo was truly in love. Anything Nicoletta said sounded heavenly to him. “Great idea,” he said. He ran his hand up her shoulder and caught at her thick, blonde hair. “You’re already in your coat. Were you just leaving with the girls?”

  “Yes,” said Nicoletta.

  Cathy and Rachel looked confused.

  “We were talking about Anne-Louise,” said Nicoletta. Cathy and Rachel were even more confused.

  Christo, however, thought that Nicoletta was a wonderful, generous, and truly forgiving person. He could not get over how easily she had accepted Anne-Louise’s presence in the Madrigals, and how well she had dealt with her own loss. He complimented her profusely on her greatness of heart.

  Cathy and Rachel looked skeptical.

  Christo actually wanted to know if, on the way to the mall, they should swing by Anne-Louise’s and pick her up and bring her along. “So the whole gang is together,” he said eagerly, as if Nicoletta were part of the gang. Rachel cringed. Cathy held her breath. Boys were so thick.

  “Sure,” said Nicoletta. “I’d love to get to know her better.” Who is saying these things? she thought. The only thing I’d love to do right now is shake you off, Christo, so I can find Jethro.

  They clambered into the van. Christo turned the radio up higher, and then they talked louder, and he turned the radio up even more, and then they shouted and laughed and the interior of the van was a ringing cacophony of music and talk and giggling.

  Nicoletta thought of unrequited love. It was dreadful. She could not believe she was a part of it. And yet, it was not unrequited, because Christo did not know. Once he knew, it would qualify. I’m sorry, Christo, she thought.

  And then she heard the radio.

  The update.

  “… get a pizza,” said Christo, taking Nicoletta’s hand. “A new brick-oven pizzeria opened down by the highway exit. Want to go?”

  “… rather go to the movies later on,” said Cathy. “Let’s all go, the way we used to. There’s a fabulous fantastic cop-chase comedy playing.”

  Their voices were jackhammers in Nicoletta’s skull.

  “… rescue efforts,” said the radio, “are to no avail. The fate of the two missing hunters remains unknown. On the economic front …”

  “Isn’t that scary?” shrieked Rachel. “I mean, those guys just walked off the face of the earth.”

  Walked off the face of the earth.

  It was true. They had. The hunters had fallen down the gullet of the earth, and lay within its bowels.

  “I wasn’t inviting you for pizza, Cath-Cath,” said Christo, friendly and flirty as ever. “Just Nicoletta.” He smiled sweetly at Nicoletta and she ducked, as if the smile were a missile.

  I was there when they walked off the face of it, she thought. I know where the face of the earth ends. And Jethro—
what does he do? Cross the boundaries? Go between the face of the earth and whatever lies beyond?

  The van whipped on well-plowed roads toward the city and the mall. Suddenly she saw the little dead-end road, and felt as if her eyes were being ripped out of her head in their effort to see all the way down it, and through the woods, and into the face of the cliff, and down the falling, falling cave.

  “Nickie and I had the weirdest adventure the other night,” said Christo, laughing and pointing. He turned down the volume of the radio and addressed the other girls. “We were going to park down at the end of that road. It dead-ends, you know, in a forest.”

  “We know,” said Rachel in a sultry voice, implying that she, too, had parked a hundred times. Everybody laughed at her.

  “Well,” said Christo, in an introductory voice, as if he had much to say. “We go running through the woods. Nick and I. In the middle of the night! Ice and snow and moonshine. And we’re running. Past boulders and trees and icicles hanging from the sky.”

  “Icicles hanging from the sky?” said Cathy, pretending to gag. “Christo you are getting altogether too romantic here. Next thing you know, you’ll be writing greeting cards.”

  “Nickie?” repeated Rachel incredulously. “In the woods after dark? Come on.”

  “Nicoletta loves the outdoors,” Christo told her.

  “Nicoletta?” said Rachel.

  “And,” said Christo, “we spotted a thing. A Bigfoot. A monster. A Yeti. Something.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Cathy, giggling. “If I were running around in the woods in the middle of the night in the snow, I’d be seeing monsters, too.”

  “I’m serious,” said Christo. He pulled into Fairest Lane without slowing for the curve, and the van spun momentarily out of control. “Oops,” said Christo, yanking it back. He missed a tree by inches.

  What if we had been killed? thought Nicoletta. Jethro would never know what happened to me.

  She sneaked a corner-of-the-eye look at Christo. He had an excited look to him; not a preconcert look, but a prefootball game look. He was an athlete right now.

  A hunter.

  She had thought he had been confused or too swept away in his emotions to retain the memory of the stone that danced with Nicoletta between the lakes. She had thought he’d forgotten the warts of sand that covered its humanoid features, and its hair like old bones of thin fingers. Instead he had been making plans.

  Christo pulled into the driveway of a house so similar to Nicoletta’s old one that for a moment she thought she had fallen backward two years, the way the hunters had fallen backward into their particular hole. He honked the horn in a lengthy musical rhythm that must have made the neighbors crazy. Especially the neighbors Nicoletta remembered. It was a Madrigals’ call. The hunters, she thought. What were they originally hunting? Ducks? Deer? Did they have a call, too?

  I must make Christo hunt me, she thought, not Jethro. Christo must not go back. I betrayed Jethro once before. I can’t let it happen again.

  Anne-Louise came running out, laughing. “Want to go to the mall with us?” shouted Christo. She signaled yes and ran back for her coat and purse. “So what I’m going to do,” said Christo to his three passengers, “is go back there and catch it.”

  “Catch what?” said Rachel.

  There, thought Nicoletta. I admitted it. It’s Jethro.

  “The thing,” said Christo. “Bigfoot. The monster. Whatever it is.”

  Rachel and Cathy exchanged looks. Give-us-a-break looks. This-nonsense-is-annoying-us looks.

  Good, thought Nicoletta. If they laugh at him enough, we can get away from it. We’ll make him forget it. I have to make him forget it.

  “Or shoot it,” said Christo, his voice as relaxed as if he were deciding on a flavor of ice cream for a sundae. “Whatever.”

  Shoot it? Nicoletta’s heart felt shot. It isn’t an “it,” she thought, it’s Jethro, you can’t shoot him, I won’t let you shoot him!

  “I’d be the only person in North America who ever actually caught one.” Christo beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel with his fists. “What a trophy, huh? Can you imagine the television coverage? I bet there’s not a TV show in America I couldn’t get on.” His grin was different now. Not the sweet tremulous smile of first love, but a hard calculating grin.

  A hunter. Ready to hunt.

  Anne-Louise came running out of the house.

  “After I shoot it, I guess I could have it stuffed,” mused Christo.

  Nicoletta clung to the seat belt.

  “Christo,” said Rachel. “Enough. Anne-Louise thinks we are civilized and interesting. Talking about shooting monsters in the woods will not do.”

  But Cathy was interested. She leaned forward. She tapped Nicoletta’s shoulder. “Did you see it, too, Nickie?” she whispered, as if “it” were there, and might overhear, and so she needed to be careful.

  Anne-Louise climbed into the van and yanked the sliding door shut after her. The van rocked when it slammed. She sat down breathlessly in the back with Cathy and Rachel and then, recognizing the front seat passenger, cried, “Nicoletta! Oh, what a pleasure! I’ve heard so much about you!”

  “Nice to see you, too,” said Nicoletta.

  Cathy said louder, “Did you see it, too, Nickie?”

  “Yes,” said Nicoletta frantically. “I said hi. Nice to have Anne-Louise along.”

  “The monster,” said Cathy irritably.

  “No,” said Nicoletta. “I didn’t see anything. Of course not. There wasn’t anything to see. Christo was seeing shadows.”

  Christo was genuinely angry. “I was not! You actually touched it, Nickie. Remember? Right there by the water and the cliff? Before we fell in?”

  “You guys were running around in the dark in the woods where there were cliffs to fall off and water to fall in?” shrieked Rachel. “That sounds like the most horrible night on earth. Christo, remind me never to go on a date with you.”

  “It was Nicoletta’s idea,” said Christo defensively. “She knows the people who live around there.”

  “Who?” demanded Rachel. “Who lives around there?”

  Nicoletta tried to shrug. “Nobody. Nothing. There wasn’t anybody there.”

  “There was so a monster!” said Christo. He was really annoyed that she was not backing his story up. “And there was a cave! You were there, Nickie. You know I’m not making it up.”

  “A cave?” said Anne-Louise. “I wonder if that’s what happened to those poor hunters. Where is this cave?”

  Nicoletta was colder than she had ever been in the ice and snow.

  Anne-Louise put a heavy, demanding hand on Nicoletta’s shoulder. “Where is this cave?” she repeated. “We must notify the authorities. Who is this friend of yours who lives near there? He must show the rescue teams where to look.”

  Nicoletta heard her voice climb an octave and become brittle and screamy. “Christo is just being silly, Anne-Louise. Keep going to the mall, Christo. I need to buy … I need to look for … I’m out of …”

  But she could not think of anything she needed or was out of.

  Except time.

  Chapter 13

  AT THE MALL, THE teenagers gathered around a large, slablike directory of stores and entertainments. Christo was giving orders. First, he decreed, Anne-Louise was to stop her noise about the authorities. This had nothing to do with the two missing hunters. He was not going to tell her where the cave was. It would not become her business until she saw him on television. He was going by himself tomorrow morning to capture it. It would be his personal trophy. Second, Cathy and Rachel were to stop nagging and asking questions and not believing him. Third, Nicoletta was to tell him Jethro’s last name and phone number, so he could get in touch with this person who undoubtedly knew the woods best.

  Cathy and Rachel said they didn’t know what anybody else was going to do about Christo’s sudden personality change into staff sergeant, but they personally were going to try on shoes. Goo
d-bye. And they would be happy to see Christo again once he turned back into a fun person.

  Anne-Louise said that if Nicoletta and Christo wanted to hunt monsters and leave hunters to their hideous deaths, it was on their consciences not hers, and she was looking for shoes, too. So there.

  Nicoletta was thinking that although her grasp of local geography was not great, the rear mall parking lot might back onto the woods. She might be able to walk through from this end and find the path, the two lakes, and Jethro. She waved good-bye to the other three girls.

  What do I think will happen if I find the cave? Do I think Jethro will explain this away? Do I believe there could be an explanation? Do I expect to haul the hunters’ bodies up so they can be found, and meanwhile hide Jethro? Do I expect to bring Jethro home with me, in whatever form he exists today, and ask my parents to let him sleep on the living room couch for a few years?

  The mall was its usual bland self. Nothing ever changed there. The shiny, dark floors, the softly sliding escalators, the windows full of shoes and toys, the people sitting beneath indoor trees eating frozen yogurt. For a moment Nicoletta did not know which world was more strange: the world of the cave or the mall.

  Christo, however, was not bland. He was full of the hunt. His muscles, his stride, his speech—they all talked together. He wanted this capture. He wanted this television coverage. This fame. This triumph.

  It came to her in an unusual moment of understanding that he was not only hunting the thing he had seen in the forest; he was also hunting Nicoletta herself.

  He was going to bring her a trophy she could not refuse.

  He was going to show off his physical prowess, not on the football field where she had never even bothered to look, but in the forest, which she had claimed to love.

  It was deeply flattering. She could not prevent herself from basking in this. Christo—admired by every girl in town—Christo wanted to impress only Nicoletta.

  And she, after all, was not thinking only of Jethro. She wanted to impress Christo right back. But later. Much later. Right now she had to get to Jethro first. Warn him. Save him. Keep him.