Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man (8 page)

I cross the street and head back up past his house. I can’t see him, but I sure can
hear
him. He’s got that chainsaw revved up so the whole neighborhood’s shaking, and let me tell you, I’m not about to stick around to watch him use it.

I started running home because I knew I was late. I didn’t know how late until I got to School Street and heard St. Mary’s tower start to gong. And for a second I just stood there, counting, not quite believing what I’m hearing. I mean, if I’m not home by four o’clock Grams is worried. But
five
o’clock? How did it get to be five o’clock?

So I started running again—well, as much as you can run with a backpack bouncing around on your kidneys and a two-ton sweater under your arm. Then I decided that the smart thing to do would be to go to Hudson’s and call Grams. So when I got to Cypress I hung a left, and sure enough, there’s Hudson on his porch with his feet propped up, shooing a fly off his boots.

He sees me coming and says, “Sammy! Glad you dropped by.” Then he notices the sweater. “What’ve you got there?”

So I hold it up, and while he’s circling it like it’s some kind of diseased animal I say, “Want to buy it? It’s only five hundred bucks.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy, so I tell him about Mikey and Marissa’s mom and how I used her Louis d’Foo-Foo sweater to put out the Bush Man’s fire.

At first Hudson just keeps circling, looking at me, then at the sweater. Then he busts up. Completely. And after a minute of his laughing and slapping his leg and shaking his head, tears are coming out of his eyes and he has to sit down to catch his breath.

So I sit down next to him and look at him real seriously. “Hudson, what I want to know is if you have five hundred dollars I can borrow. I need to replace this.”

His laughing kind of sputters to a stop, and then his chin drops. And I let him sit there like a man with a toothache for a minute, before I say, “I’m
joking
. What I really want to know is if I can use your phone to call Grams. I’m late, and she’s probably worried.”

He’s still in a bit of shock over the sweater, but he says, “Sure,” and leads me into the house.

Now I knew that telling Grams I’d been watching rare and exotic birds with Chauncy would not exactly fly as an excuse for being so late, but I figured if I told it fast enough I might be able to get
out
of trouble before I was really in it.

Once again, I figured wrong. She kept interrupting me with so many questions that finally I had to say, “Grams! Just let me tell you what happened, would you?”

When I was all done straightening everything out and I
was sure she was done being mad at me, I said, “Grams, I have to ask you a favor.”

Silence.

“Grams?”

“What is it?”

“The whole school is going to a Halloween party tonight, and I really want to go.”

“You went out last night, Samantha.”

“I know, but this is really important. I
have
to go.”

She was quiet for a minute. “Why do you
have
to go? Whose party is it?”

Well, what am I supposed to do? Lie? Not to Grams. “Uh … Heather’s.”

For a minute I thought the phone went dead. “Heather
Acosta’s?
”

“Um … yeah.”

“But you
hate
Heather Acosta.”

“You’re right, I do, which is why I have to go!” So I tell her about the miserable day I had being the girl-in-green-shoes-with-a-crush-on-Jared-Salcido and how I’ve got to prove that Heather’s the one making the phone calls.

“But how is sneaking into Heather’s party going to help you prove that she’s the one behind the phone calls?”

“I don’t know yet, Grams. I just know that I can’t sit around while she does this to me!”

I could feel her thinking, and after a long silence she says, “
Promise
me you’ll be careful. That Heather has an evil streak.”

“I know, Grams. That’s why I’m going.”

I told her good-bye and was about to hang up when she says, “Samantha? Please be careful. And don’t go into any strange houses to put out fires tonight, okay? I worry.”

“I know you do, Grams. I love you, too.” But as I’m hanging up the phone, I’m thinking—I’ll be going into a strange house, all right, only it won’t be to put
out
a fire. This time, I’ll be starting one.

*  *  *

When I got to Dot’s house the porch was still full of jack-o’-lanterns, but they were looking a bit limp—like they were tired of smiling and having moths buzz in and out of their mouths all night. And when I rang the bell, Dot’s dad answered the door and
he
looked kind of limp—like he was tired of smiling and having kids buzz in and out of his house all night.

Dot, though, was full of smiles and didn’t seem tired at all. She grabbed my arm. “C’mon! I was just about to go up in the attic.”

Dot’s attic had exactly what an attic is supposed to have—boxes and boxes of junk. And with five kids in the family, believe me, there were boxes and boxes and
boxes
of junk. And I’m banging my head and bumping my elbows and in general just beating myself up trying to follow Dot through this maze of boxes, but I’m happy. I’m in an attic.

It’s easy to get sidetracked when you’re looking for something in an attic. You start looking for one thing and pretty soon you’re finding all sorts of other neat stuff that can keep you busy for hours. And being in someone else’s
attic—everything’s a sidetrack because you’ve never seen any of it before.

Anyhow, Dot’s way ahead of me, saying, “I know it’s here someplace. I remember helping Dad label it. I thought it was back here.” Then I come across an open box just crammed full of stuff. And maybe I should’ve been polite and just ignored it—I mean, going through someone’s attic is kind of like going through their dresser drawers. But there it was, and there I was, and I couldn’t help it—I started nosing.

One of the first things I found was a strange-looking metal funnel with a handle on it. I held it up and said, “Hey, Dot! What’s this?”

She looks up from her rooting around. “A meat grinder.” She pushes some hair out of her face and says, “Hey, get over here and help me find the box. I think it says ‘Halloween’ on it.”

So I put it back and make my way over to Dot. We look around for a while, but I sure don’t see any box marked
HALLOWEEN
, so I start opening up unmarked boxes, looking for anything that seems vaguely spooky.

I was finding toys and clothes and dishes and stuff, but there wasn’t a bat or a witch in sight. And I was starting to feel like I was looking for snow in the desert when Dot calls out, “Here it is!” and yanks open a big box.

As she’s pulling out miles of pink and lavender skirts, something in the box I’d been looking through catches my eye. It’s kind of like a walkie-talkie, only I’d never seen a pink and white walkie-talkie before. And the two parts didn’t look anything alike. One part looked just like you’d
expect a little girl’s walkie-talkie to look—only I couldn’t see where you would
talk
into it. The other part was about twice as big, and it rested in a base with a plug.

Dot’s all excited about finding the princess costume, and she’s holding it up saying, “Isn’t it terrific? This is going to be great!” but by now I
have
to know what this pink and white contraption is. So I ask, “Dot, what
is
this thing?”

She looks over and says, “Oh, that’s just a baby monitor.”

I’ve spent zero time around babies, so I don’t know what a baby monitor is. I stare at it, and finally I just come out and ask, “What’s it
do?
”

Dot picks up all the parts of the princess costume and says, “My mom used to use it when my sister was napping. You know—she could do the dishes and stuff downstairs while my sister was asleep upstairs, and she could hear when my sister gagged or woke up or something.”

I sat there staring at it, thinking, and I could feel my heart speed up a little. “Did she ever take it outside? Like when she was gardening or something?”

Dot looks at me like she can’t believe I’m still asking questions about a stupid baby monitor. “Sure. All the time.”

“Do you think your mom would mind if I borrowed this?”

She shrugs. “Not a bit.”

Then I remembered the Louis d’Foo-Foo disaster sitting in a bag downstairs. “What if something happens to it? Is she going to be upset?”

“Hmm … I don’t think so. She was saying at dinner the
other night how she should really get up here and take all the baby stuff down to the Salvation Army. I’ll ask her, but I’m sure it’s okay.” She looks at me and says, “What do you want it for, anyway? You know someone who’s going to have a baby?”

I laugh. “No, but I’ve got a plan and if it works, I know someone who’s gonna have a cow!”

*  *  *

Marissa
had
forgotten about going over to the Bush House. At least she’d forgotten until her mother asked her if she’d brought the Marsh Monster sweater home. And when she joined Dot and me in the Land of Yellow, the first thing she asked was, “Did you get it?”

“Oh, I got it all right.” I held it up for her to see.

She practically cried. “What are we going to
do?
”

“I guess we’ll have to tell her what happened.
I’ll
tell her, if you want.”

“She is going to
kill
me!”

We spent the next few minutes trying to figure out some way to save Marissa’s life, but finally we decided that there wasn’t much we could do about it right then, so we got busy changing for Heather’s party.

Dot transformed into the Bee, and Marissa decided that she’d rather wear a gypsy costume of Dot’s than wrap up in another mountain of toilet paper, and by the time they were dressed we were already an hour late. And since Dot kept insisting that
she
was the one who should put makeup on my face, I just sat there waiting, trying to decide the best way to sneak the monitor into Heather’s party.

When the Bee and the Gypsy were done getting ready, they slapped me in a chair by the mirror and got to work. Now it’s not that I think girls who wear makeup are wacko or anything, although girls who wear red or blue eye shadow have a few marbles on the loose. It’s just that I don’t
like
it. Mascara makes me feel like I’ve got bird wings up there flapping around, and lipstick makes me feel like I kissed raspberry syrup. And foundation? You can
have
foundation. It’s like smearing peanut butter on your face, and if you think I’m walking around with peanut butter on my face, you can think again. Green paint, yeah. Peanut butter? Forget it.

Anyhow, after about fifteen minutes I’ve got birds flapping on my eyes and syrup on my lips, my hair’s knotted up in some kind of genie-do, and they’ve snapped a pointy little hat with wispy scarves onto my head. And when they slapped that mask on my face, even
I
didn’t recognize me.

Dot wrestles me into ten layers of skirts and then says, “Put these on” as she hands me a pair of ballet slippers.

I can tell by looking at them that they’re not going to fit, but wearing my high-tops would be like carrying a banner saying
HERE’S SAMMY!
S
O
I push and yank and pull a bunch of faces, and then there they are: cute little pink feet at the bottom of my legs.

I take the small part of the monitor and snap it inside my tights, then I let down about half of the skirts and say to Marissa, “Hold this up, would you?” I take the big part of the monitor and press it against my side with the antenna facing down and say to Dot, “Can you wrap the cord around my waist?”

When Dot’s all done wrapping, I tie the cord off and straighten out the skirts and we all smile at each other, because, really, you can’t even tell it’s there.

I turn around a couple of times and try on a new voice—a kind of high, cutesy one. “What do you think my name should be? Tiffany? Wendy? Nikki?”

Both of them shout, “Nikki!”

Then Dot says, “Oh! Oh! You’re supposed to be my cousin, right?” and before I can answer, she sits me back down in the chair and pulls out her black eyeliner. And very carefully on the bottom of my cheek she paints a dot. Not too big, not too small—just enough so no one will question that Princess Nikki is Dot’s relative.

We all look in the mirror and laugh, and I say, “C’mon! We’ve got a party to crash!”

Heather was dressed up as a bimbo rock star. That crazy red hair of hers was ratted up on top, and she had on enough leather to cover a couch, including a pair of black boots that went up to her knees. And wrapped around all that leather were so many chains and studs and belts, that she looked like a Doberman pinscher that got tangled up chasing a cat around a tree.

We weren’t stupid enough to all go up to her door at once. Marissa waited down the block a few minutes while Dot and I rang the bell. And when Heather answers the door, Dot says, cool as can be, “Hi, Heather. Great outfit!” Then she nods toward me and says, “This is my cousin, Nikki. I hope you don’t mind that I brought her …?”

Heather looks me up and down. “No, that’s great. Come on in.” Then she notices my dot and says through all her rock star makeup, “Does
everybody
in your family have one of those?”