Devra caught Gretchen, wrapping her arms around her waist. Gretchen landed hard, her knees bending as her shoes hit the ground. It took a few seconds to gain her balance. Then she ran to the sidelines, following the other girls. Her heart was pumping in her ears, too loud to hear the shouts and applause of the crowd.
Coach Walker slapped Gretchen on the back as she ran past. “Perfect!” she cried. “A perfect ten!”
A wave of nausea rolled over Gretchen. She held her breath, forcing it down. The stadium lights flashed in her eyes. Her blood pulsed in her ears, refused to fade.
I did it.
“Why did you scream like that?” Devra demanded, one hand on Gretchen’s shoulder. “What was that about?”
You know what it was about. You attacked me in the gym that night in the dark—and you deliberately tried to terrify me tonight.
That’s what Gretchen wanted to say.
Instead, she shrugged. “Just wanted to make it more exciting,” she said.
Devra’s eyes burned into hers. Devra had a strange smile on her face. A smile of triumph, Gretchen guessed.
She scared me without hurting me. That smile says this won’t be the end of it. She has something planned for me. She’s waiting for the retreat.
* * *
“So you can’t come over?” Gretchen pressed the phone to her ear. “I know it’s late, Sid. But I can’t get to sleep. The adrenaline rush from the game. You know.”
She glimpsed the old-fashioned-looking wooden clock on the bookshelf. Twelve-fifteen. She curled her bare feet under her, sitting sideways on the big leather armchair in the den.
Sid’s voice sounded tired, hoarse. “Is your mom home?”
Gretchen snickered. “Why do you care?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “Actually, Mom is out on a date. Some guy she met at the Pick-N-Pay. Seriously. I think she picked him up.”
“Is your mom hot?” Sid asked.
Gretchen’s mouth dropped open. “Never thought about it. I guess she’s okay. She’s got a good body, for forty-five. I mean, she’s thin, you know. And she’s got great hair. But her expression is always so droopy. Her face is like, Keep Away from Me or You’ll Be Sorry.”
“Maybe you know her too well,” Sid said.
That didn’t make a lot of sense to Gretchen. “Yeah. Maybe. Maybe they’re hooking up and she won’t even be home tonight. Ha. That’s a laugh.”
“My dad is yelling at me to get off the phone,” Sid said. “Can you hear him? He keeps shouting at me, ‘Don’t you know what time it is?’”
“Well, okay. Bye.” Gretchen started to end the call. Then she remembered. “But you’re coming over to help me tomorrow, right?”
A brief silence. Then: “Oh. Right. Clean your garage. Did I really say yes to that? Yeah. Okay.”
“Well, don’t sound so enthusiastic,” Gretchen said. “You said you’d come over and help.”
“Did I promise, or did I just say?” Sid replied.
“Shut up.”
He laughed. “I’ll be there. Do I get to meet your mom? I hear she’s hot.”
“Shut up again, Sid. You’re getting annoying.”
* * *
Sid showed up at Gretchen’s house a little after one thirty on Saturday afternoon, dressed in faded jeans torn at both knees and an oversized gray sweatshirt, ready for garage cleanup duty.
Mrs. Page behaved very well. She didn’t embarrass Gretchen as she usually did in front of her friends. Gretchen chalked it up to her mom’s being tired after her date.
Mrs. Page did make a comment about how dumb you have to be to buy jeans that are already ripped. And she did tell Sid, “I’m glad you’re helping with the cleanup because Gretchen is a total slob. Maybe she won’t be so lazy with you around.”
That was pretty good behavior for her, Gretchen thought.
“Mr. Simkin left us a mess in there,” Mrs. Page said. “He was supposed to clean the garage out before we moved in, but he didn’t. Feel free to throw everything out.” She pointed out the kitchen window. “See? I rented a dumpster for all the junk. Just toss everything that’s not worth keeping in there.”
“Think there’s anything valuable in there?” Sid asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Mr. Simkin showed us his collection of bottle caps. I think that was the most valuable thing he had.”
She squinted at Sid over her coffee cup, as if seeing him for the first time. “What are your favorite subjects in school?”
Sid shrugged. “The usual.”
“Are you going to college?”
“Probably,” Sid replied.
She tapped a fingernail against the coffee cup. “Like one-word answers?”
“Yes,” he said.
Mrs. Page didn’t laugh. She made a shooing motion with her free hand. “There’s stacks of old rusted tools in there. Try not to injure yourselves. No open wounds. I don’t have insurance yet.”
“That’s cheery, Mom,” Gretchen said. She led the way out the back door to the garage.
Sid banged a rhythm on the side of the big metal dumpster in the driveway. “Your mom is funny,” he said.
“Ha-ha.”
They stopped in the open doorway of the garage and peered inside. It was a two-car garage, concrete walls, a small dust-covered window on one side letting a square of pale afternoon sunlight wash in.
Gretchen’s eyes swept over a long, coiled garden hose, rakes and brooms, a hand lawn mower, a big unopened bag of fertilizer, and boxes of gardening equipment against the wall to her left. A bike with both tires missing hung on the back wall next to some kind of rubber raft and a torn kite with no string.
Gretchen pointed to a tall stack of cartons against the other wall. “Let’s start with those boxes. You pull them down, and I’ll go through them.”
“We’ll both go through them,” Sid said, squeezing her shoulder. “That’s the fun part.”
Gretchen pinched her nose. “What’s that sour smell?”
Sid sniffed a few times. “Maybe a dead mouse behind the cartons. Or a dead raccoon or something.”
“Oh, yuck.”
Sid snickered. “This is Fear Street, remember? Could be a rotting corpse!”
“You’re not funny,” Gretchen said, trying not to inhale. “What’s the big fuss about Fear Street, anyway?”
Sid hoisted a large cardboard carton down from the top of the stack. “Hasn’t anyone told you about this street? About the Fear family? All the twisted, freaky things that happen here?”
Gretchen shook her head. “You mean for real?”
“For real. I can tell you some of it later.” He grinned. “But I don’t want to scare you away.”
“Oooh, I’m shaking!” Gretchen said sarcastically.
Working together, they pulled open the first carton. It was filled with rusted ice skates, several pairs. Sid picked up the box, carried it to the driveway, and heaved it into the dumpster with a loud crash.
The kitchen window slid open. Mrs. Page stuck her head out. “Keep it down, okay?”
“Sorry.” Sid turned and trotted back to the garage.
The second carton contained ragged bath towels, many of them with large brown stains. They were neatly folded and smelled of mildew. That carton went into the dumpster. The next carton held a tall stack of Popular Mechanics magazines. The magazine on top was dated June, 1986.
“Too bad he didn’t save comic books,” Sid said. “Those could be valuable.”
Gretchen wiped a smudge of dirt off her forehead with the back of one hand. Despite the coolness of the late October afternoon, it was becoming hot in the garage.
They worked steadily, pulling down cartons from several stacks lined against the wall. It became obvious that Mr. Simkin hadn’t left anything of value behind. So far, everything they looked at had ended up in the dumpster.
Gretchen checked her phone. “We’ve been working an hour and a half,” she said. “Want to take a break?”
Sid wiped his hands on the front of his sweatshirt. “Let’s just deal with this bookshelf over here.” He stepped up to a wide wooden bookshelf. All the shelves were missing except for the bottom one. A stringless fishing rod lay on the shelf and several coffee cans that might have been used for bait.
Sid bent to examine the cans, then stopped. “Weird,” he muttered.
“What’s weird?” Gretchen stepped up behind him.
“I think I recognize this. Isn’t this your backpack?”
Gretchen studied it. “Yes. Yes, it is. How’d it get out here?”
Sid bent down and lifted it from the garage floor. “It’s empty,” he reported. “Oh no. Wait. What is this?”
Gretchen stared at it in his hand. A brown glass jar. The size of a mayonnaise jar. “What is it?”
Sid let the backpack fall to the floor. He turned the jar between his hands. A printed label came into view. “Oh, wow,” he murmured. His eyes went wide. “Oh, wow.”
“What?” Gretchen demanded, grabbing his arm. “Let me see it. What is it?”
He turned the jar so she could read the label:
SULPHURIC ACID.
“This is what they found on Madison’s violin,” he said. “This is what killed Madison.” His hand trembled as he brought the brown jar closer. Then he raised his eyes to Gretchen. “It’s half-empty. Gretchen … what did you do?”