Don't Scream (9780307823526) (6 page)

“Right,” Mark said. He didn't look at me. He glanced at the scattered papers on the table. “Homework?” he asked.

“Yes, for journalism class.”

His eyes widened. “I didn't know you were on the school paper. I could have saved time and come directly to you.” He included Lori and Scott as he added, “Publicity for what we're doing is important. After our meeting with Mrs. Emery I went to the journalism room and talked to Mr. Clark. He took notes and promised there'd be a write-up in next week's school paper.” Mark beamed.

He looked like a little kid wanting to be praised. I was confused. Why would two good-looking guys who were new to town get so involved in a volunteer program? I was glad, but surprised. “That's great, Mark,” I told him, and his smile grew even broader.

“We're going to walk to the bay,” Scott told Mark. “Want to come?”

Mark glanced toward the window. “Walking because you don't have wheels is one thing, but walking for fun when it's so hot? Are you all nuts?”

“We're going to take a path through the woods,” Scott said. “Lori tells me it's a little longer but it's shady and a whole lot cooler.”

Surprised that Lori would give away our special place, I quickly looked at her. Her lips twisted into a sheepish smile, and she shrugged.

“Okay with me,” Mark said.

“I'll leave word for my mom, in case she comes home from work before I get back,” I said, and bent to scribble a note, attaching it to the refrigerator with a magnet.

“How about you, Mark?” Lori asked. “You were on your way home when Scott called you over here. Do you need to let anybody know where you are?”

Mark flushed. “No,” he snapped, and strode to the door, where he stopped and turned. “Well?” he asked. “Are we going or not?”

“Going,” Lori answered. She led the way out the back door, pausing only while I locked the door.

A
S WE CAME
to the corner, Scott reached out and snapped a bloom from Mr. Chamberlin's oleander bush.

With a shriek that made us all jump, a fluffy yellow cat leaped from the shade under the bush and streaked to the safety of the dim front porch.

“Not again!” Mark groaned.

Mr. Chamberlin, his elderly face a puckered, sour-mouthed copy of the cat's, struggled to his feet. “I've been waiting and watching for you!” he
shouted, waving his cane at us. “What kind of a stupid, sick, perverted kid are you to get pleasure out of frightening a cat?”

“I—I don't. I mean, I didn't know your cat was in the bushes,” Scott answered.

“You're a liar,” Mr. Chamberlin snarled. “Get out of here and don't come back! And leave my cat alone!”

“I'm sorry—” Scott began, but he didn't look sorry.

I broke in. “I'm sorry, too, Mr. Chamberlin,” I told him. “We didn't hurt Peaches. We just startled her, and we didn't mean to.”

His scowl didn't lighten. “What are you stupid kids doing, hanging around here? You ought to be in school.”

“It's me, Mr. Chamberlin. Jess Donnally,” I said. “I'm one of your neighbors. Second house down. Remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Mr. Chamberlin grumbled. “Get away from me. Go home. Just go home.” He retreated into the shadows and disappeared.

As we crossed the street, Scott whispered, “Who and what was that?”

“Don't mind him,” I said. “He's not a very happy person, so he talks to everybody that way.”

Mark bristled. “He called
us
stupid.”

“Don't let him get to you. Just feel sorry for him. The only love in his life is his cat.”

“Come to think of it, the scowl on his face is like his cat's,” Mark said.

Scott nodded. “It's really an ugly cat.”

“I don't think so,” Lori said. “Persians may have crabby faces, but they also have long, beautiful fur.”

“Thus bigger hair balls,” Mark said, which made us all laugh.

“He really does love Peaches,” I told them. “Peaches doesn't eat cat food. She eats boiled chicken—white meat only—and tuna. Top-quality tuna, right from the can, is her favorite.”

Lori took the sprig of oleander from Scott's hand and tossed it into the gutter.

Startled, he asked, “What did you do that for?”

“Oleander is pretty, but it's deadly poisonous,” she answered. “You don't even want the juice on your hands.”

“Technically, the liquid in a plant is not called juice,” Mark began, as Scott rubbed his hands on the seat of his jeans.

Lori laughed. “Hey! School's out for the day. Look—over there's where we enter the woods.”

“We came all the way to see this bunch of scraggly trees? It doesn't look like much of a woods,” Mark said.

“It isn't,” I told him. “It's just a shady way to get to the bay.”

“And it's not just a bunch of trees,” Lori said defensively. “The woods gets thicker farther back where it joins the piney woods that covers a big part of east Texas.”

“Wow! Oakberry's big, famous woods!” Mark teased.

Lori didn't laugh. “It's got real history. Even a cemetery where early settlers are buried, along
with a Wild West train robber named Harry Pratt.”

Scott perked up. “Where is this cemetery?”

“Nobody knows,” I said. “It's probably overgrown with vines and shrubs—if it really exists. It could be a legend.”

“Want to go look for it?” Scott asked.

I thought of what I'd promised Mom. “Not now,” I answered. “We're going to show you the bay. Okay?”

“Okay,” Scott said good-naturedly, and made a turn to the right. We had followed him for only a few minutes when I realized that he was leading us along the path that Lori and I always take.

“You've been here before,” I said, but he shook his head.

“Nope. First time.”

“You know the way to go.”

“I just know that to reach the water we'd have to turn east.”

It seemed like a logical answer, and I should have been satisfied. But up ahead lay the rock castle that belonged to Lori and me alone. Into my mind flashed the memory of the last time we'd been there, when I'd told Lori that maybe I should quit my job.

In class Scott had said, “She won't have to quit her job to do it.”

I shivered, and Mark took my hand. “Don't tell me you're cold when the temperature is in the high eighties.”

“I'm fine,” I answered.

Lori giggled. “Don't you know the old superstition?

Jess shivered because someone walked over her grave.”

I didn't laugh. I couldn't. I was too busy trying to make sense of what I'd just found out. Scott knew what I had said about quitting my job because he'd overheard Lori and me. There was no other answer. Scott had been the one hiding in the woods, spying on us.

I didn't feel like talking until we had reached the bay and were seated on a grassy, hard-packed dirt bank overlooking the flat, blue-gray water. In the distance sailboats skimmed the surface like large white gulls searching for fish, and wavelets splatted the dark soil below our feet in ragged smacks, leaving behind a smear of yellowed foam.

“This is what you wanted to show us?” Mark asked in surprise. “This is where you go to swim?”

“Yuck, no!” Lori said. “Nobody would want to swim here. We drive to Galveston, or sometimes down to Surfside, to go swimming.”

“Then why do you come here?” Mark asked.

Lori and I looked at each other. We shared the answer, but I don't think we'd ever actually put it into words.

I was the first to speak up. “Because this is a quiet, peaceful place,” I said. “No telephones, no school, no homework, no jobs, no piano teachers, no parents telling us to clean our rooms. We can
talk if we want or just sit and watch the sailboats across the bay.”

Mark grimaced. “It's not Coney Island.”

“Or the Atlantic Ocean,” Scott added.

I looked at Scott carefully, hearing the touch of wistfulness in his voice. “Do you miss Galesburg?” I asked him.

Scott looked surprised. “Galesburg? Oh, Galesburg. Yes, sometimes, I guess. It doesn't matter.”

“Why did your parents move to Oakberry?” I asked.

“They didn't,” Scott answered, without looking at me. He kept his gaze on the distant boats. “I live with my aunt.”

I knew I shouldn't pry, but when he didn't add anything else, I asked, “Did your aunt come here to work?”

“She's looking,” Scott answered. “She'll come up with something soon.”

“Oakberry seems like a strange place to hunt for work. Wouldn't your aunt find more job opportunities in a big city than in a small town?”

Scott just shrugged.

“Where do you and your aunt live?” I asked.

Lori squirmed with embarrassment. “We're not playing twenty questions, Jess,” she said.

But Scott turned and for the first time looked directly into my eyes. He didn't blink. His gaze didn't waver. I nervously sucked in my breath.

“My aunt's name is Edna Turner,” he said in a monotone, as though his words were rolling out of a tape recorder. “We have an apartment in that big complex over on Dale Street. For reasons I
won't go into, I'm living with Edna instead of my parents. Edna and I don't always see things the same way, and I guess you could say we're happier away from each other, so we spend as little time as possible together.”

Everyone grew very quiet, and I could feel my face burning. Mom would have scolded me for being rude. Dad would have shaken his head and said, “Jess, you have to stop letting your curiosity run away with you.” Lori was probably going to have some well-chosen words to say to me later. And I deserved it.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I sounded like I was being awfully nosy, and I didn't mean to be. I just wanted to know more about you, Scott.”

“It's okay,” he said quietly.

Mark broke the tension by laughing as he tapped me on the end of my nose. “Is that what they call a nose for news? Is that why you're on the school paper, Jess? Maybe you should get a job on one of those scummy tabloid shows on TV.”

Lori grinned, friend to friend. “Or how about being a gossip columnist?” she said.

I went along with the game. “Or maybe write for one of those awful newspapers they sell at the grocery checkout stands? How's this for a lead story? ‘Is Scott Alexander all he seems to be, or is he actually a clone, put here on earth by aliens from outer space?' ”

Scott looked away. He didn't crack even the smallest of smiles, and I felt worse than before.

“You'd write under an assumed name, I hope,” Lori said in a desperate attempt to make us laugh.

While I struggled to think of something funny to answer to ease the tension, Mark scrambled to his feet. “I've had enough communing with nature, and I've got some history and government reading to catch up on. Anybody want to guide me back to civilization?”

We all got up, brushing away clinging leaves and crumbs of dirt, and retraced our steps through the woods. No one said much, and I suffered for having ruined everyone's good mood. I'd really goofed by being so nosy with Scott.

Scott paused as we came to Castle Rock. As though nothing awkward had happened, he said, “I've been thinking about that hidden cemetery Lori told us was somewhere inside the woods. I've decided that it can't be real. It has to be a myth.”

“No, it's for real,” Lori insisted.

At the same time I said, “Scott! What makes you think that?”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Because if the cemetery really existed,” he said, “Jess would have found it a long time ago.”

Mark and Lori laughed, and I blushed again. “Okay, okay,” I told Scott. “I didn't mean to be so nosy. I promise I won't be again.”

“Don't make promises you can't keep,” Mark said.

Scott peered into the shadow-speckled woods as if he could penetrate the silent darkness. “If the cemetery is there, I'd like to find it.”

“The woods near Oakberry covers acres,” I explained, “and it gets thicker with vines and underbrush.”

“But the cemetery is supposed to be close by, not too far from Oakberry,” Lori said.

Scott turned and looked at me. “Have you ever heard of anyone who tried to locate the cemetery? Or anyone who could give directions to where it might be?”

“No,” I said. Remembering Mom's words, I added, “Even if it does exist, it wouldn't be much of anything to see … vines overgrowing everything, broken headstones … that is if there ever were any headstones.”

“It could be a piece of history,” Scott said.

“We're not exactly positive about Harry Pratt, the train robber,” Lori told him. “Mrs. Hickey said that—”

“I don't mean the train robber,” Scott interrupted. “I was thinking about the settlers—the people who came this way such a long time ago.”

“Speaking of history and makeup reading,” Mark began.

But I caught a strange expression on Scott's face. “Let's go looking for the cemetery one of these days,” he said. “In the meantime, we can try to get as much information as we can about it so we'll have a better idea of exactly where to look.”

Lori appeared to be about as thrilled as if Scott had suggested bungee jumping, but she took a deep breath, smiled brightly, and said, “Okay. Let's.”

Mark shrugged and said, “Count me in. Hunting for a cemetery may be the most exciting thing going on in Oakberry.”

They all looked at me. For one instant I fought
with my conscience.
After all
, I told myself,
Mom made me promise not to look for the cemetery when I was very young. It's different now. I'm old enough to take care of myself. Besides, I won't be going into the deep part of the woods alone. The others will be with me.
“Why not?” I said. Scott had said “one of these days.” That would give me time to talk to Mom about why I
had
to go if the others were going.