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Authors: R.L. Stine

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BOOK: The Prom Queen
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My phone rang.

I practically jumped out of my skin. It was the loudest sound I had ever heard. As if it were screaming in my ear.

When I answered, all I heard was sobbing.

“Who is this?” I kept saying.

“Liz-zy,” a girl's voice wept.

“Rachel? Rachel?”

“Ye-e-s . . .”

“Rach—what's wrong?!”

She was crying too hard to talk. Then she sobbed, “You've
got
to come over! You've got to
help
me!”

“Rachel—what
is it?”
I cried.

“Help, Lizzy—
please!”
she begged.

Then the line went dead.

Chapter

9

T
he rain was coming down so hard and fast, my windshield wipers were just about totally useless. As I sped to Rachel's house on Fear Street, I saw the world outside my car as one dark blur.

Fear Street.

I was driving to Fear Street at night in the worst storm I had ever seen.

But I had no choice.

Rachel was in trouble. Maybe in serious danger.

I had to get there as fast as I could.

I could barely see the white line on the side of the road ahead of me. The rain continued to lash down. But I kept my foot firmly on the gas.

Pictures began to form in my mind. Terrifying pictures.

I saw Simone, alone in her house, alone in her room. The killer enters. He has a knife. He wrestles with her. Slams her up against the bookcase.

I saw it all so vividly in my mind's eye. Saw the knife plunge down. Saw her duck. Saw the books crash to the floor. Saw the killer attack again. Saw him stab Simone again and again. The blood spurting onto the carpet.

I shook my head to drive the horrifying pictures from my mind. But the frightening thoughts wouldn't go away.

Why hadn't I told my parents where I was going?

When the phone line went dead and Rachel was cut off, I didn't think. I didn't ask.

I just ran out of the house.

With only a thin blue windbreaker held over my head, I burst through the front door. Running from my house to the driveway, I had gotten soaked. Now I felt chilled to the bone.

The Fear Street cemetery suddenly loomed on my right, glassy and distorted through the sheets of rain. The rows of white, crooked gravestones seemed to lean toward me as I slowed the car for Rachel's house.

I saw a bolt of lightning streak toward the middle of a row of tombs. The thunder boomed almost at the same instant. This is the kind of storm that can rouse the dead, I thought, shivering.

I leaned forward in my seat, my face almost pressed against the windshield. I tried to peer
through the rain as the wind pushed my car toward the slanting graves.

I gasped as I saw a shadow dart into the road.

I slammed on the brakes.

But not in time. I felt the car jolt. I felt a bump. Something was under my tires.

My throat tightened in fear.

“No!” I cried aloud. “No!”

That bump. That horrifying bump.

I knew that I had just run over someone.

Chapter

10

W
ith my eyes shut tight, I slid to a stop. Breathing noisily, I pushed open the door and stumbled out into the rain.

Who was it?

Who had I hit?

A streak of lightning lit up the road and made it brighter than daylight for a split second. Several yards behind the car I could see someone lying in the middle of the street.

I started to run toward the person, the cold rain thundering on my head.

As I got closer, I saw that the figure was small.

A child?

“Oh, please—please, no!” I screamed into the rain.

My hair was plastered flat, like a helmet fitted to
my head. The blue windbreaker was sticking to me. My jeans were soaked.

“No! Please—no!”

And then I was standing over the body.

It was a raccoon. A dead raccoon.

The middle of the raccoon's belly was a mass of raw meat.

The animal's dark eyes were open and staring at me.

A wave of nausea swept over me.

I looked away.

It was a good thing I did.

Because I glanced up just in time to see a car round the corner and come roaring toward me.

I screamed and toppled backward onto the curb.

The car roared past. I don't think the driver even saw me.

Slightly dazed, I climbed to my feet. Avoiding the dead raccoon, I started running back through the pelting rain toward my car.

Somehow, driving almost blindly, I managed to pull the car up Rachel's driveway.

There was no sign of trouble outside the house. Lights were on inside. I ran up the walk and pounded on the front door.

I heard footsteps approaching. The porch light flicked on, and Mrs. West peered out at me through the white gauze curtains. Her mouth fell open when she saw me. I guess I was a sight.

“Lizzy!” she exclaimed, flinging open the door. “Are you okay?”

“Where's Rachel?” I cried.

“Rachel? Upstairs in her room. What are you—”

I didn't wait for her to finish. I took the stairs two at a time.

It was dark on the second floor. As dark as it had been at Simone's house on that terrible night.

I stared at Rachel's closed door, the narrow strip of light shining out underneath. I didn't want to imagine what I would see inside.

I didn't want to open that door.

But I had to.

Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the doorknob—and pushed the door open.

Chapter

11

“R
achel!” I cried.

She was sitting on her bed.

In the pale yellow light from her bed-table lamp, I could see that her eyes were red and puffy, her nose runny. Wads of pink tissues surrounded her, and she had an unsoiled tissue in her hand. Her mouth fell open as I burst in.

“Are you okay?” I cried.

“No,” Rachel replied quietly. “I'm not.” She blew her nose loudly as if to prove the point.

“Were you attacked?” I said.

“Attacked?” Rachel's expression became bewildered. “Huh?”

I couldn't catch my breath. I was panting loudly. It was hard to talk. “You called—you sounded so
upset—then the line—it went dead. I thought . . . I thought the
worst!”

“Well, you were right. The worst did happen.”

“What?”

“Gideon is—” She started to sob again. “Breaking up with me.”

I stared at her in astonishment. “You called me over here in this storm for
that?”

Rachel looked stung. “I needed someone to talk to. I tried to tell you . . . about Gideon. But I guess the phone was knocked out by the storm.”

She picked up the receiver and listened. “Still out.” She glumly tossed it back onto its cradle.

I turned around to see Mrs. West in the doorway. “Rachel? Lizzy? What on earth is going on?”

“Everything's fine,” we both called in unison.

There was a pause, then Mrs. West said, “If you need me, I'm downstairs.”

Rachel sniffed. “You're dripping all over my room.”

“Well, how about giving me a towel?”

She walked out to the bathroom and came back with a towel that she tossed at me.

I said, “And how about thanking me for trying to save your life?”

“Thank you,” she muttered. She avoided my stare, her eyes welling up with fresh tears. “How could he do this to me?”

My heart was no longer pounding against my chest. I felt angry at Rachel—but also very relieved.
I toweled my hair briskly. “What happened?”

Rachel didn't answer. When I removed the towel, I saw that her face was contorted by crying. She was crying the kind of tears that are so painful they're silent.

“Rachel,” I said gently. “It's not so bad. I promise.”

She turned over and buried her head under an old brown gorilla pillow her mom had sewn for her when she was a kid. Her sobs came in painful bursts. I sat on the bed and put a cold hand on her shoulder.

“Rach,” I said. “Come on. What happened?”

“He's dropping me for Elana,” she said into the bedspread.

“He's
what?”

“You heard me.”

“I don't believe it,” I said. Rachel and Gideon had been going together almost as long as I could remember. If any relationship seemed solid, it was theirs.

“How did it happen?”

“I don't know!” she wailed. “They've been working together on a social studies project and . . .” She didn't have to describe the rest. “Elana,” she said bitterly, raising her voice. “She thinks she can have anything she wants. But she can't have—”

She was sobbing again, even louder this time. She pounded her gorilla pillow with both fists.

“Easy, easy,” I told her gently. I kept my hand on
her shoulder, but she was really starting to shake. I couldn't calm her down. Everything I said only seemed to make it worse. I probably should have kept my mouth shut and just let her cry. But instead I said, “Well, I know a good way to get revenge. Beat her out for prom queen.”

Rachel raised up on her knees and jerked away from me. “Are you crazy?” she cried. “Gideon was the only good thing in my whole rotten stupid life. Who cares about being prom queen? I won't even have a
date
for the prom!”

“I don't have a date, either,” I said. I suddenly felt like crying myself. I was remembering the day Kevin found out he was moving to Alabama. That day Rachel had sat on
my
bed while I cried.

I tried to think of something comforting to say. “I'll be your date,” I told her.

“Terrific.”

She finally pulled herself together a little and apologized for making me come out in the storm. I told her I'd call her in the morning and headed back to my car.

The storm was still raging as I drove home. But at least I wasn't terrified now, knowing that Rachel was okay. Her heart was broken, but compared to what I thought had happened, a broken heart seemed minor.

I ran into the house, pulled off my soggy windbreaker, and stood looking for a place to hang it. My dad called out to me.

Uh-oh, I thought. Here comes a major lecture.

I had run out at night and taken the car without telling them.

He called me into the den. I entered reluctantly, knowing I was in big trouble.

But to my surprise, he was sitting at his desk with a big ear-to-ear grin on his face. He was wearing his favorite ratty old red bathrobe, the one with the ships' anchors all over it. In front of him his computer monitor was on and filled with figures. He's an accountant and is always really busy.

“Did you hear?” he asked as soon as I entered the room. “They caught the guy who killed those girls.”

Chapter

BOOK: The Prom Queen
6.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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