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  Cara didn’t say anything. She just turned and headed back toward the kitchen.

  “Yeah. Later,” I said, and gave Roger a little wave. Then I followed Cara.

  “He’s a very bad liar,” Cara whispered after we heard him climb the attic stairs.

  “How do you know he’s lying?” I asked. “He seems like such a nice guy,” I said.

  “You think everyone is a nice guy,” Cara cracked. “But I don’t believe his story about the gun. It was just too cornball for words. Also, if he just keeps it as a memento, why was the gun loaded?”

  “Cara!” She was always so cynical. I was sure Roger was telling the truth. He looked so sad, thinking about his father.

  “Hey, we’ve got to get some dinner. Is there any food in this house?” Cara asked.

  We began to search the kitchen for something to eat. I found a loaf of white bread in the bread drawer that was only a little stale. Cara found a jar of peanut butter on the top shelf of the food cabinet.

  She opened the lid and looked inside. “Just enough for two sandwiches if we spread it pretty thin.”

  “What a feast,” I said sarcastically. “At least is there some jelly?”

  Cara opened the refrigerator and found a jar of grape jelly. She said something to me, but I didn’t hear her. I was thinking about Gena. I kept hearing her voice again and again, hearing her words again as she told me we couldn’t see each other again.

  What had happened? Why did she do it?

  “You didn’t hear a word I said.” Cara’s voice broke into my thoughts.

  “You’re right,” I said glumly.

  “Poor Mark,” she said. I looked up to see if she was being sarcastic, but she wasn’t.

  “It’s like I’ve lost everyone at once,” I said.

  “Don’t say that,” Cara snapped. “Nobody is lost forever. Stop thinking like that. Just eat your peanut-butter sandwich. You’ll feel better if you eat something.”

  “You sound just like Mom,” I told her.

  We both sort of stared at each other, then picked up our sandwiches. Peanut butter is such a bad idea when you’re upset and not terribly hungry. It sticks to your mouth and teeth, and it takes so much effort to chew. Neither of us was in a mood to work so hard—for so little reward. We sat there glumly, not talking, not looking at each other.

  I had only taken a couple of bites when I heard Roger run down the front stairs and then heard the door close behind him. Cara jumped up. “Let’s follow him.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s follow him. I want to know where he’s going.”

  “No,” I said, trying to pull her back into her chair. “That’s a bad idea.”

  “If you won’t come, I’ll go alone,” she said. She pulled out of my grasp and ran toward the front hall.

  “But someone has to stay here for when the police call,” I said.

  “What that means is you want to call Gena,” she said, pulling on her down jacket “Well, that, too,” I admitted. “But I really don’t see the point of—”

  “ ’Bye.” And she was out the door.

  “What a wild-goose chase,” I said aloud to the empty room. Roger was probably going off to a friend’s place to study. I figured that Roger had made some friends at college. He’d never mentioned any or brought anyone home with him. And he never talked on the phone that much. But he must have had some friends, at least some people he liked to study with.

  Why did Cara decide to play detective? I guess it was better than sitting around this creepy old house waiting for the phone to ring.

  Just as I had that thought, the phone rang.

  “Hello,” I said, expecting to hear the police captain Cara had spoken to.

  “Mark? It’s me. I—”

  It took me a while to recognize Gena’s voice. She sounded terribly frightened.

  “Gena? What’s going on?”

  “I can’t talk now. I have to tell you… It’s very important that—you have to—”

  “Gena? Gena?”

  It sounded like some kind of struggle. I thought I heard her cry out. Then I heard a click.

  “Gena? Gena? Are you still there?” I cried.

  The dial tone buzzed in my ear.

  CHAPTER 13

  The most direct way to Gena’s house was through the Fear Street woods. Sure, the kids at school had told me all these scary stories about the Fear Street woods. But I didn’t care. I had to get there as fast as possible.

  I put on my down jacket and pulled a flashlight off the shelf in the front closet. I knew that if I went straight through the woods behind our house, I’d eventually come out in Gena’s backyard.

  We had kidded around a few times about how sometime I’d sneak out some night, go through the woods, and climb the rose trellis at the back of her house up to her bedroom window. Now here I was about to do just that. But this wasn’t kidding around.

  Gena had sounded truly terrified. There was something she wanted to tell me. And it sounded to me like someone else didn’t want her to say it.

  Was she in some kind of real danger? Or was my imagination going wild? I had no choice. I had to find out.

  I pushed open the screen door and stepped outside. I was surprised by how cold it was. I could see my breath, gray steam against the black sky.

  I headed quickly around the side of the house to the back. The ground was crunchy beneath my sneakers. There had been a heavy dew and I guess it had frozen on the ground. It was a windless night. Everything seemed very still, so still it was almost unreal. It was silent except for my sneakers crunching over the hard, frozen ground.

  Our backyard slopes steeply down for a while before it levels off. Once I got down the hill, I started jogging until I reached the woods. I knew if I just kept going straight for a while, I’d see some lights from houses on the other side of the woods, and then I could make my way to Gena’s backyard.

  The trick, of course, was to keep going perfectly straight. It wasn’t easy in these woods. There was no path, of course, and sometimes thick clumps of trees or high weeds would block your way and force you to veer one way or the other.

  It seemed to grow colder as I stepped into the woods. I had to slow down. The dead leaves that blanketed the ground were up over my ankles, wet and slick. I kept stumbling over small rocks and upraised roots hidden by the leaves.

  The flashlight flickered and grew dimmer. I shook it, but it didn’t help. The light had gone from white to yellow, and it was so dim, I could barely see two feet in front of me.

  Something scampered past my feet. My heart skipped a beat. I saw the leaves move as if they were jumping out of the way.

  “Whoa,” I said aloud.

  So, big deal. So there were animals running around in the woods. Big surprise. I forced my heart to stop pounding like that, pushed some tall reeds out of my way, and kept walking.

  I suddenly remembered a story about the Fear Street woods a guy named Arnie Tobin had told me at school. It was about these five teenagers who went camping out in the woods, sort of on a dare. Everyone bet them they could never spend the whole night in the Fear Street woods, and they bet they could.

  So that night they set up two tents and built a campfire and were about to cook supper. The next thing anyone knew, these five teenagers came running out of the woods, knocking on doors of houses, terrified out of their skulls.

  They said some kind of monster had attacked the camp. None of them could really describe it. They said it looked sort of like a guinea pig or white rat—only a hundred times bigger! They said it was bigger than a full-grown horse!

  They were five terrified kids, Tobin told me, but most people didn’t believe them. The cops came to take them home. And they didn’t believe them, either.

  The next day, the five teenagers went back to the campsite with their parents to retrieve all their stuff. And finally someone believed them! Because when they got to the camp, everyone could see that one of the canvas tents had been gnawed to
bits. All of the food had been eaten—even the unopened cans of beans. It seems the creature—whatever it was—had chewed right through the cans!

  Whoa!

  I wished I hadn’t suddenly remembered that story. Now, every rustle, every crack of a twig made me spin around, expecting to see a giant rat lumbering toward me, its enormous teeth bared, ready to chew me to pieces like a tin can.

  I stopped and listened. Silence.

  I raised the flashlight, shook it, trying to get more light from it, and shone it through a clump of low shrubs ahead of me. Nothing moved.

  The silence was too eerie. I wished a dog would bark or an owl would hoot—anything. I suddenly felt as if I were walking on the moon or on a distant, uninhabited planet.

  And then I realized that I had completely lost my sense of direction.

  Which way was Gena’s house? Was I still heading in the right direction? Which way was my house?

  I turned off the flashlight. It was no use to me now, and I decided I’d better save the batteries. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then I slowly turned, peering into the distance, looking for a light, any light.

  There was only darkness.

  I’m lost, I thought.

  But just as I thought that and a cold shudder ran down my back, the trees seemed to light up. I looked up to see that the moon had emerged from a bank of rolling clouds. I stared at it gratefully. I had been walking with the moon on my right when I entered the woods. Now if I kept it on my right, I would be going in the same direction.

  I began to feel good again. Well, not good. Let’s say that I got some of my confidence back. I tried the flashlight. It had completely died. I moved forward, guided only by the moon.

  I was moving pretty quickly, jogging over the blanket of wet leaves. It’s amazing how well you can see at night in the woods. I never realized that human eyes were so good in the dark.

  That’s what I was thinking about when I heard the footsteps behind me.

  I knew at once that they were footsteps. And I knew at once that they weren’t mine. It was so still, so airless, so silent in the woods, that I could hear every sound.

  I stopped and listened, suddenly feeling very afraid. The footsteps were moving quickly, growing closer. My legs suddenly felt weak and wobbly. I tried to figure out if it was a four-legged creature or a two-legged creature running toward me. But it was impossible to tell.

  I saw the giant white rat again in my mind. What kind of footsteps would that creature make as it scurried after its prey?

  Prey?

  Somehow I shook off my fear and started running. I made sure to keep the moon on my right so I wouldn’t get completely turned around.

  Even though I was running as fast as I could now, keeping my arms in front of my face to shield myself from low tree limbs, the footsteps grew closer. Whoever—or whatever—was pursuing me was closing the gap.

  I thought of turning and stopping, facing whoever it was. But I quickly decided that was stupid.

  I started to run again—and cried out as my feet went out from under me. Suddenly I was sliding down, down, off balance, out of control. “Help!” I cried as I fell.

  I realized at once that I had fallen into some kind of a trap.

  CHAPTER 14

  Roger seemed to be walking toward town. He took long strides and never looked back. I had to hurry to keep him in sight. It was a very dark night. The streetlights on Fear Street were out, as usual, and the moon had disappeared behind a heavy cloud bank.

  Wisps of fog felt wet and cold against my face as I moved silently, staying against the hedges and shrubs that lined the street. I wished he would slow down just a little. But the fact that he was in such a hurry made me even more suspicious.

  He turned left on Mill Road and picked up his pace. A car went by, its headlights glaring into my eyes nearly blinding me for a few seconds. I ducked behind a low evergreen and waited for the yellow spots to disappear.

  When I walked back onto the road, he had gotten even farther ahead. I started to jog. I didn’t want to lose him in the darkness. The ground was hard and wet. My sneakers moved silently. The only sounds were the rush of wind from the north and the occasional low rumble of a passing car.

  Roger turned onto Hawthorne Drive and looked from side to side. I dived for the ground and crawled behind a mailbox, hoping that he hadn’t spotted me. When I looked up, I saw nothing but dark trees. He was gone.

  I climbed to my feet quickly and crept forward. There was a small coffee shop called Alma’s on Hawthorne, where a lot of local college kids sat around studying and drinking coffee till all hours. I wondered if he was headed there.

  As I drew closer, his tall, loping form came into view again. Yes, he was heading into Alma’s. But why? He definitely didn’t plan to study. He wasn’t carrying any books.

  He was probably just meeting a friend. And I was out here on this cold, wet night, walking around in the dark, wasting my time.

  Well, Mark would have a good laugh at my expense. I pictured Mark, sitting at home, waiting for Captain Farraday to call. My poor brother. He was already in an emotional state because of Mom and Dad. Gena’s breaking up with him had really sent him over the edge.

  I probably should’ve stayed home with him. But it was too late now.

  After Roger entered Alma’s, I waited a few minutes. Then I walked up to the window and peered inside. It wasn’t very crowded. Only a few booths were filled, the usual college students and a few solitary old people nursing steaming white mugs of coffee.

  I couldn’t see Roger. I figured he must be sitting way in the back or in one of the side booths by the counter. Should I go in?

  I’d come this far. I decided what the heck, I might as well just take a peek and see what Roger was up to.

  I pulled my jacket hood up to hide my face and stepped into the coffee shop. It was very warm inside and smelled of bacon and frying grease. I kept my head down inside the hood and walked slowly toward the row of booths. Ducking down behind the wall of the first booth, I poked my head around the side and looked for Roger.

  He was sitting in the last booth in the back of the restaurant. He was busily talking and gesturing with his hands. I had to take a few steps closer to see whom he was talking to.

  It was the man with the white-blond hair, the man from the van. They were both talking very excitedly. Both of them looked upset. The man from the van kept slapping his hand on the table as he talked.

  So Roger was lying, I thought. This little trip of mine hadn’t been a waste of time, after all. He had lied about the van, and he must have been lying about the gun. Roger and this white-haired guy were working together to—to do what?

  Whatever it was, I knew it had something to do with Mom and Dad.

  I leaned against the back of the booth and watched as Roger took a piece of paper out of his pocket and started drawing something on it. He was drawing and pointing to parts of the drawing. What was it? A map?

  I would’ve done anything to see what it was. But I knew I couldn’t go any closer without being seen. I turned to see a waitress glaring at me from behind the counter. I guess I must have looked pretty suspicious.

  I decided to get out of there. I had seen enough to prove that Roger was a liar and that we had to tell Captain Farraday about him as quickly as possible.

  Holding my hood up, I turned and started to leave when a hand grabbed my shoulder. A voice called, “Hey, Cara!”

  “Ouch!” I cried out more in surprise than pain. But the hand dug into my shoulder as if trying to pin me there in place.

  I spun around to see who it was. It was Roger.

  “Spying on me again?” he asked, not loosening his grip on my shoulder. His eyes burned into mine.

  He’s dangerous, I thought.

  I never realized it. I never even seriously considered it. But he’s dangerous.

  “Ouch. You’re hurting me, Roger,” I said. My hood fell back on my shoulders. Great disguise!


  He let go of my shoulder, but his expression didn’t change. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  Yes, he did. Of course he meant to.

  I looked past him to his companion back in the booth, who was studying me, a tight-lipped frown on his pale, white face.

  To my surprise, Roger suddenly smiled, as if he had regained control of his anger. He saw me staring at his friend. He took my elbow and led me back to the booth. “Oh… uh… Cara, this is Dr. Murdoch,” Roger said, sliding back into the booth. “He’s my… faculty advisor.”

  Yeah, right. Sure, Roger. And I’m the Queen of England.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, not even pretending to mean it.

  “Dr.” Murdoch gave me a wide, phony grin.

  “We were just meeting about my major,” Roger added. What a rotten liar! He saw me looking at the piece of paper he’d been writing on, and folded it in half. His eyes turned cold again. “So what are you doing here?”

  “I’m… meeting a friend here.” My story wasn’t any worse than his. “But it looks like she’s not coming,” I quickly added. “See you later.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the so-called Dr. Murdoch called after me as I ran down the aisle and out of the restaurant.

  I didn’t breathe until I was out the door and outside. I bumped into two guys coming in, and they both laughed as I continued to run down the street.

  It felt even colder out. A fine, misty rain was falling. I pulled my hood up, this time for warmth. My heart was pounding. I felt like such an idiot.

  Oh, well. The first thing I was going to do, I decided, when I got home was to run up to Roger’s room, take that pistol out of his desk, and hide it somewhere.

  Roger frightened me. The idea that he had a loaded pistol right in my house was even more frightening. Anyway, I had proven that Roger was a liar. And so was his friend Murdoch.… He told Mark and me he didn’t even know Roger!

  I suddenly felt very afraid. I started to jog toward home. But I wouldn’t be safe there either, I realized. My parents were gone. And Mark and I shared the house with a liar who had a gun.

  Feeling chilled through and through, I started to jog faster. If only Mark and I knew somebody in town, had some relatives, had some place to go…