When his dad finally pulled in the driveway, Billy ran out to greet him. Before his dad could get inside the house and take off his lab coat, Billy asked if he and his friends could use the tent.
Once his father agreed, Billy helped him bring it down from the rafters, while his dad went through the usual lecture about remembering to put the storage bag inside after they set it up so he wouldn’t lose it. Billy nodded. He’d agree to almost anything to guarantee use of the green, five-man tent complete with zippered windows and door. It was one of the few things Billy had that none of his friends had. Backyard camping with the guys always made for hours of fun. Billy could hardly wait.
At five o’clock, Todd’s bike tires screeched to a stop in Billy’s driveway.
“Hey, man!” Billy called as he headed out to help Todd carry in his stuff. “My dad said we could use his tent! He even got it down for us.”
“Cool,” Todd replied, taking off his backpack and carefully stuffing bungee cords into the front pocket as he looked around the garage. “So where’s Zack?”
“I dunno. He should be here soon, though.” Billy pointed at the backyard. “Wanna start setting up the tent?”
Todd nodded, stashing his duffel bag in the corner of the garage. He helped Billy carry the tent into the back, and they started setting it up.
As they hammered the last stake into the ground, Zack finally showed up. He parked his bike and immediately pointed out other spots around the yard that would have been better for the tent.
“Get lost, Zack,” Todd grumbled. “No way we’re pulling out these stakes now. They’re too damn hard to get in.”
Billy glanced around with a grin. Todd had been the first of them to start peppering their conversations with curse words. Billy’s mom would kill him if she ever heard them coming out of his mouth, so the added danger made it even more thrilling, but his timing for using then wasn’t very smooth yet. For now, he just admired Todd’s clever use of them.
“Fine.” Zack mustered an unimpressed shrug. “But don’t expect me to help when you put it in such a dumb-ass spot.”
“You just don’t want us to put you to work.” Todd said as he and Billy struggled to slide the tent poles into the impossibly small straps of the tent.
Todd was right. All three of them knew Zack was a master at finding excuses to get out of any kind of manual labor. Billy’s mom said Zack was a thinker, not a doer.
Whatever he was, he sure wasn’t helping pitch the damn tent.
Billy and Todd finally finished and went back to the garage to get their gear. Billy’s mom had left them some flashlights, as well as a bag of chips, sodas, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They figured they’d sneak back later for cookies.
Any excuse for an undercover mission.
After eating, some light baseball card trading, and what felt like an endless discussion about who was going to win the World Series and why, it was finally scary story time.
Billy loved this part. Usually, it ended with him and Todd laughing while Zack ran to the mailbox and back in his underwear. With any luck, it might be covered with Scooby Doo or some other humiliating cartoon character. Billy was grateful his mom had stopped buying those for him. Having Spider-Man on your butt was cool when you were six or seven years old, but they were in fifth grade now… Nope, plain white Fruit of the Looms were just fine.
Todd started the game with a spine-tingling rendition of The Golden Arm, which had them all jittery but no one begged for the safety of the house just yet, so the game continued. Zack’s story was next.
Watching Zack tell a scary story was fun. His blue eyes would get so big inside his round face, he looked like he might explode if he got any more excited. And the further he got into a story, the faster he’d tell it.
“Okay, guys, you know the house across the street over there? The one with the pointed roof?”
Billy nodded, his stomach tightening into a knot. That was the house he sped by on his bike every day on the way to and from school. He’d never seen anyone go in or come out, and the stories about why were impossible to count. And none of them were good—not one.
“Yeah, well, I heard my mom talking to Mrs. Briggs about it,” Zack said. “There’s a girl up there in the top room, and they never let her out.”
“No way…” Todd rolled his eyes. “This is supposed to be scary, Z-Man, not stupid.”
“Oh shut up, dumb-ass, and listen,” Zack said. “My mom says the girl’s parents homeschool her ’cause she’s got some kind of disease or somethin’. And if she comes out of her house and touches somebody, she could kill our whole neighborhood!”
Todd laughed and Billy tried to do the same, but it was forced. He had seen something—or someone—staring out of that high upper window before.
“It’s true, you guys!” Zack insisted. “If she ever got out, there would be an outbreak and we’d catch her disease and die. My mom says that keeping her here, so close to normal people, should be illegal. She needs to be locked up or something.”
The girl in the upper window flashed in his head again. It sounded like she was already locked up.
Todd shook his head. “Your mom’s full of shit, Zack.”
Zack tried to punch Todd in the shoulder, but Todd blocked the weak attempt. “She is not. Take it back!”
“Does your mom know her name?” Billy asked.
Todd and Zack stopped fighting for a moment and turned to stare at Billy, making his cheeks heat at the sudden attention.
“I just wondered…” Billy shrugged. “Just makes it more believable if she has a name, you know?”
“No way!” Todd teased. “You have the hots for Disease Girl!”
“Shut up, Todd, I do not.” Billy glared at Todd and then looked over at Zack. “Never mind. It’s all a lie anyway.”
“I know the family’s last name is Huff,” Zack answered. “And my mom said the mailman told her the inside of their house is covered with pictures of their daughter. He told my mom it was like a shrine or somethin’.”
That was it. The story was getting a little too real and too creepy. Billy tightened his arms around his knees, pulling his legs in tight to keep the fear from showing. The last thing he wanted was to end up walking down the street in his underwear.
“If she’s so contagious, how come her parents are still alive?” Todd asked.
Billy shifted, waiting for Zack to answer. It was a good question.
“I don’t know.” Zack shrugged. “Maybe they wear those special suits. You know the ones they gotta wear to work with radiation? Or maybe they’re aliens, or—”
“Let’s go find out!” Todd interrupted.
The excited look of determination on Todd’s face made Billy’s heart sink into his shoes. There was no stopping him now. They would be going, even if Todd had to drag them after him.
Zack gasped and shook his head rapidly. “Oh no. No way. We could die, man.” He crossed his arms and shook his head. “I’m not going.”
“Yeah.” Billy nodded, relieved to see he wasn’t the only one who didn’t want any part of spying on the Huffs. “Besides, my mom would ground me for the rest of the year if we snuck out in the middle of the night.”
“She won’t catch us.” Todd stared them down. “I can’t believe this. My best friends are scared wusses!”
“Are not!” Zack dropped his hands to his sides, balling them into fists. “We’re just smart, that’s all.”
“No way. You’re both scared.” Todd glanced between them. “So I win…”
Billy cringed inwardly. He and Zack would have to do whatever Todd wanted. That was the rule; it had always been the rule. Billy wasn’t going to try to weasel out of it now, but he caught himself hoping Todd would tell them to walk down the street in their underwear. In fact, Billy might be willing to run down the street buck naked if it meant he wouldn’t have to go sneaking around that creepy house with Disease Girl and whatever else might be hidden inside.
“You don’t win,” Zack argued. “I told the story, so if anyone wins, it’s me!”
“Not my fault you creeped yourself out with your own story.” Todd shrugged. “I still win, and I say we’re going to go see if this Disease Girl exists.”
Billy sighed. His fate was sealed, and after a few minutes of serious peer pressure from Todd, so was Zack’s. Whether they liked it or not, they were going to spy on the Huffs.
The first step of their undercover operation was to prepare their vehicles. They needed their bikes to be stealth and silent, so the cards they’d wired into the spokes of their back tires, the ones that clicked and hummed like motorcycle engines as they pedaled, had to go.
He led his friends into the garage to gather supplies—wire cutters, a pair of work gloves, and a screwdriver—from his dad’s toolbox. Billy twisted his sweaty hands in his pockets, nervous, his pulse pounding in his ears. His dad’s number one rule was to stay out of his garage. His number two rule? Never, ever touch his tools without asking.
They’d managed to break both rules at once. Great.
Using his dad’s wire cutters, Billy carefully snipped the piece of wire that held his old baseball card against the spokes and yanked it free. Over his shoulder, Zack tucked his flashlight into the waistband of his pants.
“Hope you’re not planning on bringing that, Z-Man,” Todd whispered.
“Hey, there’s no way I’m going to Disease Girl’s house without a light to signal for help.”
“You’re gonna get us caught is what you’re gonna do,” Todd said.
“Am not,” Zack grumbled. “I’m taking it just in case. Besides, we can use it for self-defense, too.”
“Self-defense?” Billy whispered.
“Sure.” Zack shifted the light from hand to hand. “If anyone tries to bother us, we can knock him out with the flashlight. Just whack ’em on the back of the head.”
Billy nodded, but he did not like where this was going. They weren’t just sneaking cookies from his mother’s kitchen cabinets. This was… This was real.
Real scary.
“Whatever, Z-Man. Just don’t turn it on, okay?” Todd got on his bike. “You guys ready?”
Billy wanted to say no, but what was the point? He didn’t want to be a chicken. Besides, the sooner they left, the sooner they could get back to the safety of the tent. He swung his leg over his bike. “Ready.”
Zack finally got the flashlight adjusted to his liking and grabbed his bike, too. Silent as three highly trained international spies, they rode out of Billy’s driveway and down the street toward the Victorian house.