WHEN FRITA SAYS SHE’S GOING TO COME UP WITH A PLAN, YOU BETTER watch out, because it is by God going to happen. The very next day she called me on the phone to say she’d come up with an idea, so I rode my bike over to her house even though it was pouring down rain. Got there in ten minutes flat, but I was still soaked. Frita met me in the driveway and I could tell she was excited. Her eyes were sparkling like water in a puddle after the sun comes out.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” she said, as soon as I’d dried off and we were in her room with the door shut. “First, you’re going to make a list. Write down everything you’re afraid of.” She narrowed her eyes until they were teeny, tiny slivers. “And you better be honest or it won’t work.”
“I’ve got to write down everything?”
Frita nodded. She handed me paper and a pencil and waited for me to write.
“Then what’ll we do?” I asked, suspicious.
Frita grinned. “Then we’ll cross ’em off one by one, saving Duke Evans and the fifth grade for last when you’re most brave.”
I about choked. That was the plan?
“Nuh-uh,” I said, leaving that paper in a heap, but Frita gave me a look that could have withered okra on the stalk.
“You pinky-swore,” she reminded me.
Drat.
I picked up the pencil and made a column of numbers down one side of the paper. I wrote fifth grade next to number one even though we were going to save that till last. Then I wrote down Duke Evans, Frankie Carmen, spiders, and alligators next to numbers two, three, four, and five.
“You done?” Frita asked after a while.
“Nope,” I said.
Frita jumped on the bed. She was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with flared ankles, and every time she jumped, the flares puffed around her legs.
“Done yet?”
I wasn’t. I was only on number eighteen.
“Maybe I’d be able to finish if you’d let me concentrate…”
Frita was quiet for a long time. She did handstands against the wall and watched me upside down. I started a second column down the other side of the paper.
“Now are you done?” she finally asked.
Truth was, there were maybe just a few more things I could have written down, but I said yes just so she’d stop asking.
“Okay,” said Frita, sliding against the wall. She crumpled in an upside-down heap of gangly legs and elbow-y arms. “What’s the first thing on your list?”
“You mean aside from Duke and Frankie and the fifth grade?”
Frita nodded.
“Spiders,” I said slowly. Big ones, small ones, and hairy fanged ones. I’d never met a decent spider.
“Okay,” said Frita, “we’ll start with that.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked, but Frita didn’t answer. She took her raincoat out of her closet and pulled on her yellow galoshes.
“You’ll see…,” she said. “This is the best plan ever.”
Then she stopped.
“Better get the jars and flashlights out of the basement,” she muttered.
I stopped dead in my tracks. Frita’s basement was number eight on my list and she didn’t even know it.
“I’ll wait up here,” I said, but Frita grabbed my arm.
“We’re just going down for a minute,” she told me. Then she walked out of her room and down the hall, dragging me with her. There was a light at the top of the basement stairs, but it was too high up even for Frita to reach, so we crept down the steps real slow. They creaked under our weight and Frita’s feet made loud squishing sounds in her galoshes. I listened just in case Terrance was down there waiting for someone to pound on, but there wasn’t a sound. Then I listened in case he was upstairs waiting to sneak up on us like he’d done when we were checking out his punching bags. But I didn’t hear anything from that direction either.
My heart was beating super fast. Ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump.
It was dank and musty in the Wilsons’ basement, and everywhere I turned, there were posters that said MALCOLM X on them and drawings of panther heads staring at me from the darkness. I turned in a full circle, staring at the walls, wondering why Terrance hung out down here. Mrs. Wilson said a boy his age needed privacy, but I didn’t see what was so private about punching things.
I followed Frita away from the stairs over to a box that was sitting on the floor. She dug around for the flashlights while I stood next to the little punching bag, breathing in the smell of sweat. My eyes started to adjust and I studied the canvas real hard. That’s when I saw it—even in the darkness.
There was blood on one corner.
I stepped back quick, my heart beating twice as fast, and backed right into Frita, who was putting new batteries into one of the flashlights.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, but I could hardly breathe.
“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered.
“Why?” Frita said, taking out two jars and turning on the flashlight. “We’re just getting the stuff we need. Isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t—”
That’s when Frita’s flashlight went out.
“BOO!”
I screamed, and then I saw him.
Terrance was standing right behind Frita, one hand over the front of her flashlight.
I didn’t wait around. I took off so fast, I should have gotten a gold medal. There was a space the width of one small person between Terrance and the wall, and I squeezed through it and bolted up the stairs.
“Where you going, Twerp?” Terrance called out after me, but I was already gone. I hadn’t even put my raincoat on, but I stood outside and got drenched waiting for Frita.