Secrets in the Dark (17 page)

Olivia moved next to Faith,
standing shoulder to shoulder with her. They were all going to
start arguing, and that was a bad idea. We were causing ourselves
more trouble in here than the Rejects.

“
Stop it!” When they
looked at me, I said, “Don’t we have enough problems without
fighting with each other? I just wish we had something to help us
find the road.”

Something rubbed against my
leg and I almost jumped out of my skin. When I looked down, Shadow
was sitting at my feet. Where had she come from? I hadn’t seen her
for a long time. Not since we’d left the road. She meowed loudly
and when I squatted down, she touched her paw to my face. Then she
moved a few feet away and meowed again. When I just looked at her,
she meowed more insistently.

Then all of the animals
were there.

The owl hooted at Olivia
from a nearby tree. The fox perched on a rock at the edge of the
clearing. I could swear it grinned at Faith. Rusty tugged at Doug’s
pants, then moved next to Shadow. He barked once when Doug didn’t
move.

Olivia laughed. “They want
us to follow them!”

Rusty barked again and
wagged his tail, looking from Olivia to Doug. “Alright,” Doug told
him. “We’ll follow you.”

Shadow and Rusty turned and
moved the direction we’d been going, while the owl swooped after
them, hooting wildly. We stared at each other in amazement, then
Doug shrugged and followed.



We followed them less than
a minute, still lost in the woods. Then we stumbled onto the road.
Literally. All I’d seen was woods and more woods, before I tripped
over something with my right foot. When my left foot came down, it
was on the smooth dirt path. With a shock, I realized I hadn’t seen
it until I was actually standing on it.

How had that
happened?

“
Thank you, thank you,
thank you,” Faith’s voice sounded exhausted. Even the soccer-queen
had been having a hard time in the woods. Her face was
scratched and dirty, and half of her hair had
been pulled out of her braid. “So, did we learn anything
today?”

“
Yeah,” Olivia said. “Be
careful when you leave the road.”

“
That’s not the worst
thing.” I felt my lips twist into a frown. “The Rejects aren’t the
only things we need to worry about in here.”

Olivia frowned at Doug.
“You need to stop making fun of us when we’re scared. We need to
stick together if something goes wrong.”

“
Yeah,” Faith agreed
softly. She looked down at the finger she’d poked into Doug’s
chest.

Doug just ignored them.
“It’s getting late and we don’t have enough time to check out the
cave today.” He ignored my stifled protest. “We have to head back.
We’ll get there next time.”

Faith’s voice came out so
high it hurt my ears. “Next time?” She cleared her throat and
sounded a bit more normal. “You want to come back here after what
happened? You’re nuts.”

I told her, “Don’t think
about it now.” I got how she felt — I’d been scared too. But we’d
made it back to the main road okay, and I wasn’t ready to give up.
“Look, we’ll ask Ronny. She might know what happened.”

Faith shook her head, but
grumbled, “Better be good.”

Olivia said. “Now we know
we can get help from our animals if we get lost.”

“
I have a better idea. We
never get lost again,” I said.

Faith nodded. “I’m good
with that! I just wish the Rejects would have a harder time than we
did. Maybe they won’t be so eager to follow us around.”

Olivia grinned. “Great
wish!”



We made our way back to the
fig tree, then took a couple minutes saying goodbye to the animals.
They might have saved us today. I picked up Shadow and stroked her
fur until she purred so loudly we could all hear it.

Doug squatted down and told
Rusty he was the most wonderful dog ever.

The owl perched on Olivia’s
shoulder, closing its eyes in pleasure as she gently stroked its
feathers. She said, “Thanks for pooping on the Rejects, Pyg.” The
owl hooted softly, and then flew over to a low branch on the
tree.

Faith sighed in pleasure
as
the fox came close enough for her to
rub its head.

Doug told her, “I know
Ronny calls them familiars and they’ve helped us a lot. But you
should be careful. A fox
is
a wild animal. I’d keep my fingers away from
those teeth if I were you.”

Faith and the fox both
turned their heads, and looked at him at the same time. They looked
so similar I stifled a laugh.

Faith stood up with great
dignity and told him, “This fox would
never
bite me. Not. Ever. Of course,
I can’t say if that is true for you.” She sniffed and turned her
back on him. “We should go now.”

After we made the long dark
passage through the tree, I took a deep breath of the salty air
blowing off the ocean. The evening was growing dark and cool. The
frogs and crickets in the fields beyond the cemetery were very loud
tonight, like they were practicing for some crazy bug
symphony.

We were definitely back in
Santa Ramona.

I remembered being hot and
tired and lost in Chimera. Of being scared that we’d never find the
road again. Of hearing howls and trees splintering around
us.

I’d never really understood
why Dorothy wanted to leave Oz so much. Tonight I thought of the
famous last line from that movie and finally got it.

There’s no place like home.

Chapter 20

So, Is No News Really Good
News?

That night I lay awake,
unable to sleep.

The broken blisters on my
heels and the soles of my feet throbbed. My nose and shoulders
blazed from sunburn. The scratches on my legs stung and my muscles
ached.

My parents yelled a lot
when I got home, an hour past my curfew. Even worse than their
anger, I could tell they’d been really worried. I’d never been more
than a couple minutes late before.

Mom grounded me for the
rest of the weekend. “Give me your phone. You are not allowed to
use it or your computer this weekend. Don’t try to contact your
friends. You can wait for school to talk to them. And if you
ever
put me through
something like that again, you’ll be grounded until next
year!”

I was glad we hadn’t
planned to meet Ronny until after school on Monday. Hopefully, the
others weren’t grounded.



The weekend took for-ev-er.
I couldn’t wait for school on Monday so I could finally see my
friends. I did not want my phone taken away ever again.

You know things are bad
when you actually like doing your History homework, just to have
something to do.

When I got to school, I
cornered the others. “Is everyone going to Ronny’s after
school?”

Olivia grinned. “Since
we’re helping your sister-in-law, and we promised before we got in
so much trouble, Mom said I could go for one hour before I have to
go home.” Her grin slid into a pout. “Then I’m grounded for the
rest of the week.”

Faith said, “Bad news — I’m
grounded for the next three Saturdays, and more bad news — I’ll be
ungrounded by the time Chimera opens again.” Olivia and I both
laughed at the sour expression on her face.

There was no way to miss
the buzz in the halls between classes. Who knew you could miss so
much being out of touch for one measly weekend. Everyone was
talking about Ray and the others. How they’d shown up on Main
Street at midnight. How they were all scratched and sunburned. How
their clothes were torn.

How the Police Chief had
been preparing to search for them when they showed up, claiming to
have been lost in the hills south of town.

I couldn’t believe it.
They didn’t get back home until
five
hours
after we did? Were they lost that
whole time?

During lunch Olivia said,
“Dad said the Fire Department was on alert — they were going to
help search. Dad’s totally glad I’m not friends with Polly — he
thinks she’s on drugs.”

“
Drugs?” Faith’s eyes
looked ready to pop out of her head. “Why would he think
that?”

“
Polly tried to tell
everyone she was late because she got lost in another world after
going through a tree.” While the rest of us looked horrified,
Olivia started laughing. “Dad said Ray and Andrew got really mad!
They kept telling her to shut up, and to stop making up stupid
stories. Who’s ever going to believe a word she says
now!”

“
The rumor I heard makes
total sense now,” Faith said, grinning. “Polly’s grounded — not
like the rest of us, ’cause she was late — but for embarrassing her
mom by telling stupid stories to the cops.”

I
really
enjoyed my lunch after
that.



When school let out that
afternoon, I limped to the house where Ronny and Chris lived. I
knew the others thought I was slow because my feet still hurt. But
that wasn’t it. Or, at least not all of it. I was
nervous.

What’s Ronny going to do
when I say we had to turn back?

And did we really need to
meet at that house? What would my friends think of it? The thought
made me cringe. It was like some weird new age place, not a regular
house.

I remembered the first time
I saw it. There’d been sun catchers in the windows, crystals
scattered on end tables, and incense burning in every room. Now I
knew Ronny was some sort of witch, maybe it made sense, but it
still looked weird.

I watched the other’s faces
as we entered the house and felt something inside relax. Everyone
was gazing around, looking interested, not all freakified. Olivia
actually let out her breath in a pleased ‘ahhhh’ sound.

Who knew?

I looked around, trying to
see what Olivia was seeing. The sun catchers filled the living room
with sparkles of light. The pictures of fairies and elves adorning
the walls shimmered and glowed where the sparkles touched them. It
actually looked…magical.

Ronny came in and placed a
plate of chocolate chip cookies on the coffee table, then took a
seat on the recliner.

After grabbing a cookie,
the others took seats on the long green couch. It took up one whole
wall, covered with dozens of colorful pillows and blankets. Doug
kept crossing and uncrossing his legs, perched carefully on the
edge. Faith moved a few of the pillows out of her way and sat back,
her hands held primly in her lap. Olivia was the only one who
seemed relaxed. She leaned back against the pillows, her legs
tucked up next to her.

I sat cross-legged on the
area rug near Ronny’s chair. She leaned forward and patted me on
the head. I couldn’t imagine why I was getting the puppy dog
treatment until she said, “I heard you got home late and were
grounded. You need to be more careful. Chris and I do not want you
to get into trouble on my account.”

I was proud of how calm I
sounded. “We’ll be more careful in the future.” I thought about how
much I’d hated being grounded. “Seriously, we’ll be much more
careful!”

That had come out a bit too
fervent. I cleared my throat and started again. “I’m really sorry
we didn’t make it to the cave like we promised. The Rejects
followed us. We took a side road to get away from them.”

I was embarrassed to feel
my hands start to shake and clasped them tightly in my lap. “So we,
um, cut across this field? To get away? We were just going to cut
back over to the main road. But we got lost. For a long, long time.
I…I wasn’t sure we were going to get back. We—”

The expression on Ronny’s
face made me stop. “You went off the road? Oh Great Creator! I did
not warn you. I never thought you would leave the road.” She leaned
forward and placed her hand on my shoulder. It felt like her hands
were shaking as much as mine.

She continued, “You cannot
leave the roads in Chimera. Ever. You will always get lost. It was
enchanted that way, accidentally, hundreds of years ago. A spell
went wrong and none have been able to fix it.”

She shuddered. “It can
take a long time for most to find their way out, even with magick.
Some
never
do.”
She gently shook my shoulder. “Promise you will not do that
again.”

“
I’m not sure I’m going
back,” Faith said. “I thought we’d never get out. Even if something
didn’t kill us first.”

“
Kill you first? What was
going to kill you?”

“
Something started howling
and crashing through the trees near us. It was
horrible.”

“
We didn’t actually
see
anything,” I told
Ronny. “I can’t tell you what it was, but it was coming toward us
through the woods. It was howling and breaking trees. Actually, I
think there was more than one. I was
really scared.”

“
So. Howling and breaking
trees sounds like ogres or trolls, but these are creatures that
avoid people. They should have avoided you.” Ronny shook her head.
“This does not make sense. At least, no more sense than anything
else happening in Chimera. What is wrong with my home?”