The New Girl

by R. L. Stine

  “Stop thinking about it,” he said aloud.

  His sneakers crunched over the gravel that lined the side of the road. He came to a metal mailbox tilting at an angle toward the street. Squinting in the darkness, he tried to read the faded name on its side. But it was too dark, and the letters were all peeled away.

  The animal howled again. This time it sounded farther away. The wind suddenly stopped. The only sound now was the crunching of his sneakers. He passed a large weather-beaten house, its window shutters peeling and hanging at crazy angles. For some reason a rusting ship’s anchor rested in the very center of the patchy lawn. An old station wagon, its rear bumper missing, two of its windows covered with cardboard, stood in the drive.

  “Nice night for a stroll,” Cory told himself. He started humming “Love Me Do” to himself. Then he started singing it. Why not? There was no one around to hear him. Fear Street was deserted. Nothing moved except the scrabbling brown leaves driven by the shifting wind.

  One house was brightly lit. A porch light cast bright golden beams over the lawn, and all of the downstairs and second-floor rooms seemed to be lighted. Was that Anna’s house?

  No. The sign on the porch said 442.

  The wind picked up again, sending a chill down Cory’s back. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets to try to warm them. He had a sudden hunch and turned back to see if the car was okay. He couldn’t see it. The street had curved too far.

  Should he go back?

  No. He’d come this far. The next house had to be Anna’s.

  If she lived there.

  He began walking faster. The pavement beneath his sneakers was wet and slippery, and he slipped a couple of times but quickly regained his balance.

  A ragged, low hedge bordered the yard of the next house. Was this the Corwin house? Cory couldn’t find a mailbox. Oh. There it was. Down on the street. It had fallen off its pole.

  He picked up the mailbox. There was a number on its side: 444. This was it. He dropped it back to the street and wiped his wet hands on his jeans.

  The house was completely dark and silent. No sign of life. No car in the driveway. Cory peered over the low hedge to the front porch. A screen door hung open, banging against the side of the house when the wind blew. An overturned lawn chair was beside it.

  Cory stepped to the edge of the drive. What now? Go up to the house and knock on the door? There doesn’t seem to be anyone home.

  He looked at the overgrown shrubs, the thick covering of unraked leaves, and tangles of waist-high grass and weeds. It didn’t look as if anyone had lived there for years!

  It’s got to be the wrong house, he thought.

  Then he heard something. Something moving across the gravel. A footstep.

  He listened. The wind picked up. He couldn’t hear anything. It must have been leaves. Or an animal of some sort.

  He decided to walk back to the car. There was no point standing out in the cold staring at a deserted old house.

  He heard another footstep, then another.

  Someone was behind him.

  Someone was following him, coming up fast.

  Cory picked up his pace, started to jog, hoping to leave the sounds behind, hoping it was just leaves, just a dog, just a lonely field cat.

  But the footsteps came faster. Someone was chasing him. Someone was right behind him.

  He started to turn around when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

  CHAPTER 6

  Cory cried out and spun out of the man’s grasp.

  The man looked more startled than Cory. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Cory stared at him, gasping for breath, his muscles tensed for a fight. Or for a fast escape.

  He was a tall, powerful-looking man, wearing a faded gray slicker and a battered old tennis hat. He had a day’s stubble of gray beard, and he smelled of stale cigarette smoke. “No need to be frightened,” he said. He had a high-pitched voice for someone so big.

  “Why—why’d you—” Cory was still too out of breath to talk. He backed up another few steps, relaxing a little but still eyeing the man warily.

  “I saw you stop your car,” the man said, pointing back in the direction of Cory’s car. “I live down the street. I was walking Voltaire. That’s my dog. I thought maybe you were lost or in trouble. So I came after you.”

  “Where’s your dog?” Cory asked suspiciously.

  The man frowned, seemingly annoyed by Cory’s mistrust. “Voltaire doesn’t like strangers,” he said slowly. “He’s very protective of his turf. I put him back in the house before I came to see if you needed help.”

  Cory was beginning to breathe normally again. But he knew he couldn’t relax his guard. There was something strange about this neighbor, not just his appearance, but in his menacing stare, the way he kept looking Cory up and down, his face tight, expressionless.

  “Car break down?” the man asked.

  “No,” Cory said.

  “Then what are you doing out here? You lost?”

  “Not exactly. I was looking for the Corwins.”

  “You found them,” the man said, gesturing with his head toward the dark house. “You know them?”

  “Well… not really.”

  “They’re strange people. I wouldn’t go up there uninvited, I don’t think.” The man scratched at his stubble.

  “What do you mean?” Cory shivered. He’d never felt so chilled in his life.

  “Just that.”

  “Oh.”

  They stood staring at each other for a long moment.

  “They keep to themselves mostly,” the man said. He put his hands in his slicker pockets and turned back toward the street. “If you’re not lost or anything, guess I’ll head back.”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I’m fine. Thanks,” Cory said uncertainly. He looked up to the Corwin house. A light flickered on in an upstairs window.

  So. Someone was home after all.

  “They’re pretty strange folks,” the man repeated, walking quickly now. He turned around. “Of course, everyone’s pretty strange on Fear Street.” He chuckled as if he had just made a really good joke, and slipped off into the darkness.

  Cory waited to make sure the man was really gone. Then he turned and headed slowly toward the car. He stopped and looked back to the house. The light was still on in the second-floor room.

  Should he go up and knock on the door?

  He’d come this far. Why not be brave? Why not just do it? Act now—think later. Why did he always have to go back and forth, think things out so carefully before he acted?

  Besides, he’d have something good to tell David about later.

  He imagined how his friend would make fun of him if he told him he just stood at the end of the drive and stared at the house. He’d probably hear about it for weeks. The jokes would never stop.

  Okay, Cory. Go for it.

  He began jogging up the Corwins’ driveway. He jogged partly to get warm, partly because he knew he’d never go through with it if he didn’t do it quickly.

  A gymnast learns he has to be aggressive, he told himself. He has to grab on to the rings and push himself where his body normally wouldn’t go. As a gymnast, Cory was quick and sure.

  But this wasn’t gymnastics. This was life.

  He jumped up onto the front porch, dodged past the overturned chair, slid on some long carpenter nails that were scattered over the porch floor, and nearly crashed right into the front door.

  He steadied himself, leaning against the shingled front of the house, located the doorbell and, without hesitating, without giving himself a chance to back down, pushed it hard.

  He didn’t hear it ring inside the house. He pushed it again.

  He straightened his sweatshirt and pushed back his hair with one hand.

  The bell didn’t make a sound. It must be broken.

  He knocked, lightly at first, then harder.

  Silence.

  He cleared his throat, practiced a smile.

 
; He knocked again.

  This time he heard footsteps, someone hurrying down a stairway.

  The door opened a crack. No light poured out. The house was dark inside. An eye stared out at Cory. The door opened a little wider. Two eyes stared suspiciously out.

  The porch light flickered on, casting a pale yellow glow on the porch and front lawn.

  A young man stood in the doorway. He had a very round face with puffy, round cheeks. His blue eyes were small and watery and set close to his bulby, round nose. Despite the fact that he appeared to be quite young, in his early twenties most likely, his blond hair was thinning, revealing a lot of forehead. It was tossed messily over his head. A rhinestone earring sparkled in one ear.

  He stared at Cory for a long time without saying anything. Cory stared back uncomfortably. Finally he said, “Hi. I’m Cory Brooks. Is Anna home?”

  The young man’s watery eyes grew wide. His mouth twitched once in surprise. “Anna? What do you know about Anna?” His voice was raspy, as if he had a bad sore throat.

  “I—uh—I go to Shadyside too.”

  “Shadyside? What’s Shadyside?” the young man said, and then coughed for a long time, holding tightly on to the front door, a wheezing smoker’s cough.

  “It’s the high school,” Cory said when the young man finally stopped coughing. “I met Anna in school this week and—”

  “That’s impossible,” the man interrupted, hitting the door frame with his fist. He glared at Cory. His eyes seemed to glow red in the porch light.

  “No, really. I—”

  “You didn’t meet Anna in school. Anna isn’t in school.”

  “Yes, she is,” Cory insisted. “She—”

  “You the one who called?”

  “Well, yes. I—”

  “Anna is dead,” the young man rasped. “Don’t come here again. Anna is DEAD!”

  CHAPTER 7

  He didn’t remember driving home.

  He remembered staring into the young man’s watery eyes. He remembered the long, awkward silence, the pain on the young man’s face.

  He remembered the words. They repeated in his head over and over, like a record stuck in the same groove. Anna is dead. Anna is dead.…

  He remembered uttering some kind of apology. “Sorry.” That was it. That was all he could say. “Sorry.” How stupid. How meaningless.

  But what else could he say?

  Then he remembered the scowl on the young man’s puffy face, the shadows closing over him as the front door slammed shut. And Cory remembered running to his car, running to safety with the words following him. Anna is dead. Anna is dead.

  He couldn’t run fast enough to leave the words behind.

  He remembered the chill wet air on his face, the crunch of dry brown leaves beneath his sneakers, the sharp twig that cut his ankle as he ran.

  Stay away from Fear Street, he told himself.

  What were you doing on Fear Street so late at night?

  The stories are all true, and now you are one of them.

  He remembered how his hand trembled as he tried to get the key into the ignition. And he remembered his panic when the car wouldn’t start.

  Then the motor had kicked over and he had sped away, his hands gripping the wheel as if it were a lifesaver in a storm-tossed ocean.

  But he didn’t remember the drive home. It was a blur of swirling yellow headlights and black roads. And he didn’t remember sneaking back into the house, or silently tiptoeing up the stairs to his room, or getting undressed and climbing into bed.

  He just remembered the young man’s narrow, watery eyes. The pain in those eyes, pain mixed with hatred. And the words.

  Anna is dead. Anna is DEAD!

  He didn’t fall asleep until after four in the morning. And then it was a light sleep, a fitful sleep filled with floating faces he didn’t recognize and tilting car headlights that sometimes seemed to be heading right at him and sometimes seemed to shine right through him.

  * * *

  On Monday morning he skipped breakfast and hurried to school to look for Anna. He got there early, twenty minutes before the first bell would ring. He waited by her locker. There were a few other kids down the hall. They seemed to be yawning at each other, leaning against their lockers as if they would fall over if they didn’t.

  He tried opening Anna’s locker, but the combination lock wouldn’t budge. He sat cross-legged on the floor and waited. After a while the corridor became noisy and crowded as kids arrived. Some of them said hi to Cory as they walked past.

  “What are you doin’ down there, Brooks?” Arnie asked as he lumbered through the door.

  “Just sitting,” Cory told him.

  The answer seemed to be enough for Arnie. He swung his bookbag at Cory, trying to knock him over. Cory dodged away. Arnie laughed and stomped down the hall.

  Where is Anna?

  Anna is dead.

  Anna is a ghost.

  But there are no such things as ghosts.

  Her locker was real. He spun the dial and pulled at the lock again. The bell rang.

  He climbed to his feet. He felt as if he weighed four hundred pounds. He hadn’t been able to sleep for two nights in a row. The hallway was emptying quickly. Kids were hurrying to their homerooms. He had to hurry too. He had already been late twice this term, and he didn’t want to get a detention.

  But where was Anna?

  She wasn’t coming today.

  Of course she wasn’t coming today. Anna was dead.

  But he had seen her with his own eyes. He had talked to her.

  He made it to homeroom just as the bell rang. The rest of the morning was a struggle to keep his eyes open. Luckily, none of his teachers called on him in any of his classes. In fact, no one seemed to notice he was there.

  Maybe I’m becoming a ghost, too, he told himself.

  He looked for Anna in the hallway between classes, but he didn’t see her. Just before lunch he ran into Lisa as they were depositing their bookbags in their lockers.

  “Was Anna Corwin in physics this morning?” he asked her eagerly.

  “Good morning to you too,” Lisa said sarcastically.

  “Oh. Sorry. Good morning, Lisa. Was Anna Corwin in physics this morning?”

  She angrily slammed her locker shut. “No.”

  “Oh.” Cory tossed his bookbag into his locker. He didn’t see the annoyed look on Lisa’s face. “Then I guess she was absent.”

  “You’re a real Sherlock Holmes,” Lisa said, shaking her head. She jammed the lock shut and started to walk away. But then she changed her mind and came back to the locker. “What’s your problem, anyway?”

  “Problem?” How did Lisa know he had a problem?

  “Why are you acting so weird?”

  “I’m not acting weird. I just—” He started to make some excuse, but then he decided to tell her. He had to tell someone. And she was his oldest friend, after all.

  As they walked down to the lunchroom, he told her about the rest of his Saturday night.

  He told her how he drove to Fear Street, how he knocked on the door, how the strange-looking young man told him Anna was dead.

  Lisa listened to the story in silence, her face drawn in a tight frown of disapproval. But when Cory finished talking, the anger disappeared, replaced by concern. “Something’s wrong here,” she said softly, following him into the lunch line.

  “A lot is wrong here!” Cory exclaimed. “I just can’t stop thinking about—”

  “I think you got the wrong house,” she interrupted. She smiled, pleased with her idea.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s it. You got the wrong house. You woke this guy up. So he decided to play a mean joke on you.” Lisa watched for Cory’s face to brighten, waited for him to realize that her theory was a good one.

  But his only reaction was a weary sigh. “Get real,” he muttered gloomily. “I didn’t have the wrong house.”

  “You don’t know for sure,�
� she insisted, although she could see this theory wasn’t going to go over. “What did you think you were doing, anyway?” she asked, poking him in the ribs the way she’d been doing it since they were kids. “Why are you driving to this girl’s house in the middle of the night? Why are you looking for her all day? Why are you so obsessed with Anna Corwin? There are other girls in the world, you know.”

  He didn’t say anything. He seemed to be staring right past her.

  “Cory—did you hear a word I said?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he answered quickly, still not looking at her. “You said the guy in the doorway was playing a mean joke on me.”

  Anna is dead. Some joke!

  “Bye, Cory.” She gave him an exaggerated handshake and started to leave.

  “What about lunch?” he called after her.

  “I’m not hungry anymore. Hey—you want to walk home after school?”

  “Can’t,” he called to her. “Monday’s the day I work in the office.” A lot of kids did clerical work after school in the office. The pay wasn’t too bad, and the work was easy, mostly copying and filing.

  He watched her make her way through the crowded lunchroom to the double doorways that led to the hall. Why had she accused him of acting weird? She’d been acting pretty weird herself, he decided. So temperamental. Always so angry at him. Why? What had he done to her?

  Suddenly an idea formed in his head.

  The office.

  Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

  The office.

  After school in the office he would be able to answer all his questions.

  He got out of the lunch line and started toward the door. He decided to go outside and get some air, maybe walk a bit. He wasn’t feeling hungry either.

  * * *

  Cory’s fingers were black. They always were after he used the copy machine. And the ink stayed on for days.

  He finished copying the announcement about the faculty blood drive. He had one other copy to run off before his office chores were finished.

  Moving more quietly and sneakily than he really needed to, he made his way to the door of the inner office and peered in. The room was empty. He had overheard that Mr. Sewall, the principal, had left early with a toothache. And one of the secretaries was out sick. That left only Miss Markins, who was busily typing away in the outer reception area.