Unspeakable Things(13)

If there’s a question designed to make a person more defensive, I haven’t experienced it. Besides, people were no longer whispering about the boy getting attacked over the weekend. They were all but yelling it. I’d heard every rumor you could think of this morning, and not just gangs and aliens anymore. Now there were vampires, too. In some versions of the story, the boy had been tortured, made to drink the blood of his captors, and forced to walk home naked. Except no one seemed to have a name to go with their stories. Who had been attacked?

I’d about decided that no one had, that it was nothing more than a rumor dog running through Lilydale, biting people on the way, before disappearing.

I tore off a corner of my grilled cheese and dipped it into the soup. Popping it into my mouth, I relished the creamy cheese blending with the salty soup. I searched for Gabriel and found him across the room, sitting at the head table. Of course. He could be the king of this lunchroom. He was the cutest, nicest, oldest. He had friends who were mean or snooty, but not him. I couldn’t see the paper airplane necklace from here, but I was certain he was wearing it.

He unexpectedly glanced my way, a smile igniting his dimples. My heart thudded, my eyes plummeting to my plate, cheeks burning. Had he been looking for me at the same time I was looking for him? Had I been chewing with my mouth open?

“Kids are being taken.”

I looked over at Evie. I’d forgotten she was talking. “What?”

She tapped the flyer. Even her fingernails were pointy. “Someone is attacking kids. There’s a Peeping Tom in town, too. I think they’re probably the same person. I’m not going to let them steal my childhood, though, so I’m creating a playtime, someplace safe and in the open, where all us kids can get together.”

I’m not going to let them steal my childhood, though. For the love of Betsy, who talks like that? No wonder we were at the loser table.

I tipped my head toward Evie’s flyer. “Good luck with that.”

She shrugged and went back to her drawing. Something about her manner put me on edge. She was just so . . . confident. Everyone else was swapping rumors, but Evie seemed to know something. I didn’t like the prickly chill that sent across my skin.

“What are you looking at?” I asked the new kid, who I’d caught staring at my neck scar. He didn’t look older than ten, maybe a small-size eleven-year-old.

“Not much,” he said, his eyes shooting back to his lunch tray.

I scowled.

“He just moved here,” Evie said, not glancing up from her drawing. She talked like she was his tour guide. “His name’s Frank, and he’ll be in sixth grade next year, but they didn’t know what to do with him today. His parents wanted him to come to the last few days of school so he could meet kids before summer.”

I squinted at him. He was studying his food like it contained all the answers. Well, there was no point in getting to know him with only three days of school left. I had more pressing concerns. For example, Evie hadn’t touched her apple pie. I thought of asking her if she was going to eat it—she’d scored one of the corner pieces, and those chunks were dripping with extra powdered sugar frosting—but I didn’t want to start up a new conversation. A pat on my shoulder made me forget the pie altogether.

“Here’s your jacket.” Lynn stood there, Heidi at her shoulder.

I took it, relieved to see that it appeared clean.

“I’m having a birthday party.” Lynn held out a pink envelope. “Here’s your invitation.”

My heart did a cautious happy-jump as she slid the envelope into my hand. It smelled like Jean Nate After Bath Splash Mist and was decorated with bubble gum stickers. I was afraid to look at it, worried that “Cassie Lassie Dog” or one of my other less savory nicknames would be scrawled across the front. But it had no name on it, none at all. She hadn’t planned to invite me, not before what had happened in the band room yesterday.

I swallowed the ball of food I’d been chewing, but my words still came out gooey. “When is it?”

Obviously I knew when Lynn’s birthday was. It was one week before mine, and we’d celebrated with each other every year since kindergarten. One summer our parents had even held a joint party.

“This Sunday. It says on the invitation.” She smiled, but it was small and tight.

“Thanks.”

She nodded and twirled away. Her jeans were Guess. I sighed.

“I thought you guys weren’t friends anymore.”

I looked over at Evie. She was still sketching. Small towns, everyone knows everything. Except was that sadness in her voice? I suddenly felt ugly for holding an invitation to a party she hadn’t been asked to. I shoved it in my back pocket. “Probably I won’t go.”

Evie slid her tray closer to me. “You can have my apple pie.”

I reached for it, my mouth watering.

“Be careful if you go to the party, though,” Evie said. “You don’t want to be out alone. When the kids get taken, it’s not forever. They come back. And when they do, they’re changed.”

My stomach full-on lurched at this. “What do you mean?”

She pointed across the lunchroom toward Mark Clamchik. Everyone called him Clam because of his last name, plus he was quiet. His dad drove the “Wide Load” pickup truck that followed houses being driven to a new location, so he was on the road a lot, leaving Clam and his brothers to mostly be raised by their mom. Their house was literally on the wrong side of the tracks, and I’m not one of those people who says “literally” when what she means is “really.” The Clamchiks lived on the side of the train tracks where folks’ lawns were more dirt than grass and where loud dogs paced behind peeled-paint fences.