I barely get up in time to walk the six blocks to Middleton High. It’s a good thing my first period is working as an assistant for the school counselor, Mrs. Whyse, and I can sleepwalk through my next couple of classes after that.
At lunch, just as I step out of the line with my tray of food, I hear an argument. It’s Annie, the turquoise-haired junior from art class. She flips a guy’s tray over, and peas and carrots fly everywhere.
“Annie!” the guy says, holding up his hands. “Nothing happened!”
“You said you were just giving her a ride home!” Annie screams. “It doesn’t take two hours to drive across town!” The whole lunchroom watches the drama. Annie pulls a silver necklace from around her neck and hurls it at him. “We are done.”
I realize I’ve just been standing around staring when Mrs. Whyse passes me with her own lunch. Together we watch Annie storm off.
“What just happened?” I ask.
“I think Annie and Alex broke up,” she says before continuing toward the counseling office.
“2gether 4ever”? I guess not, I think to myself. Wanting more answers, I follow her with my tray. As we leave the cafeteria, I spot Tony and Patricia sitting together out of the corner of my eye. They get up and empty their trays into the big gray garbage tub. I lift my hand to wave to Patricia, but she doesn’t seem to notice me. Figures. She never notices anything when Tony is around.
A few steps later, we’ve reached the counseling office, and I try to pry Mrs. Whyse for more information.
“Hey Mrs. Whyse, you’ve lived here for a while, right?”
“All my life,” she says.
“Do you know anything about that old railroad bridge—the Billy Jones story?” I ask.
Mrs. Whyse sets down her lunch and cocks her head. “That old legend?”
“Yeah,” I say as I sit down to join her. “How does it go again?”
“It’s said that if a couple writes their names on the old bridge at midnight, they will be together forever. Kids were doing it so much that the bridge looked trashy, so they finally sandblasted it clean last summer.”
That must mean the names I saw on it were added after that. But why would Patricia say not to go there at night if writing on the bridge brings couples luck? Where does the curse fit in? I try not to think about what I saw in the water. “What does that have to do with the curse?”
“Supposedly Billy Jones jumped off the bridge when his girlfriend broke up with him,” says Mrs. Whyse. “Some people say that he set the curse as he jumped.”
“What does the curse do?”
“They say that any couple who writes their names on the bridge can never break up. If they do, Billy Jones will come after them. Ever since then, local couples have seen it as a challenge, thinking that their relationship is worth the risk.” She looks like she wants to say even more.
“Do you think it’s cursed?”
She shrugs. “Last summer, right after it was finally cleaned, a couple wrote their names on the bridge, and then they broke up and . . . ”
I lean in. “What? What happened?”
“They were in a car accident. They somehow went off the road and drove straight at the bridge—the barrier was so decayed that they almost went right through it. The girl, Isobel, said she saw someone on the bridge who was about to jump, but when the police came no one was there.”
“Did anyone die?” I almost don’t want to know. Yet I have to know, like how you have to look at an accident on the highway.
“No. Isobel had a mild concussion and a broken ankle, and Henry had whiplash and a cut on his wrist.”
Isobel and Henry, the same names under the bridge!
“But since the accident,” Mrs. Whyse continues, “no one really goes near the bridge anymore, except the teenagers who think their love can withstand, despite the curse. And the city installed those new barriers to keep them away.”
“So it is haunted,” I say. “You think so too.”
“Every story has two sides. Check the library sometime for the old articles,” she says. Her office phone rings. As she gets up to answer it she says over her shoulder, “Decide for yourself.”
I try to focus on the rest of my food, but I can’t stop thinking about the bridge. I check the clock. There’s fifteen minutes left before lunch is over, and my curiosity wins out: I hurry to the library. There’s no way I will be able to concentrate on political science without getting to the bottom of this story.
This is the first time I’ve been to the school library since moving here. It’s smallish with shelf-lined walls, three computers, and a single table in the middle.
“May I help you?” asks an older woman in jeans and knee-high black leather boots as she steps out of a tiny back office. She looks at me through round, red-rimmed glasses. Her short hair is gray, and the very tips are dyed purple.
“Yes, I’m looking for some newspaper articles on Billy Jones.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Billy Jones? Why?”
“Mrs. Whyse sent me to do research,” I say.
Her head tilts. “Mrs. Whyse sent you?”
“Yes,” I say loudly and with conviction because, well, it’s technically true.
“Well then, wait one moment please.”
She disappears back into her office and shuts the door. I hear some shuffling around before she comes out with a large brown folder. “These are copies,” she says. “I ordered them at the beginning of the school year when kids started asking about the ghost. Don’t take them or write on them or damage them in any way.” She sets the folder on the table.
I sit down and eagerly open the folder. It contains a small stack of photocopied pages, the first being the front page of the Middleton Times from July 1880. There, among the ads for Pianos $10 and Goodyear Rubber and Buy the Finest Spectacles $2, $2.5, $3, is a small paragraph:
Suicide in Middleton. July 3, Billy Jones, about 18 years of age, committed suicide last night about midnight by jumping off the railroad bridge. His body was found drowned in the river to-day near where he went into the water.
I jump when the bell rings. The next period is going to start in a few minutes. “Find what you were looking for?” the librarian asks.
“Nothing about a curse,” I say.
“Of course not,” she says, taking the folder from my hand. “People never gave it much thought until last year’s accident.”
***
For the rest of the day, I can’t concentrate. The algebra teacher calls on me twice before I hear her. I think about Billy Jones the whole way home. When I walk up the driveway, Kasey is sitting in the rocking chair on the porch in her black Pizza Pit hoodie. “Hey, Lu. What’s up?” she asks.
“There was a fight today at school.”
Her eyes widen. “At Middleton? No way!”
“Not like a physical fight. It was Annie and Alex. They broke up, I guess. She flipped his lunch tray!”
“Oh.” Kasey sounds sad. “They were such a cute couple.”
“Maybe they’re cursed.” I sit on the steps of the porch.
“Cursed? Why?”
“The names-on-the-bridge-at-midnight thing.”
“Oh, that,” she says.
“I saw your name there.”
“Kasey-n-Drew r tru.” She laughs. “I wrote that.”
“Why did you write your names if the bridge is cursed?”
“If you write your name at midnight, you’ll stay together. I had to do it, Drew was too chicken.”
“Really?” I ask. “Was he afraid of getting in trouble or the curse?”
“He’s superstitious. The curse thing freaks him out.”
“So you’re making a promise to each other?”
Kasey shrugs and flips her ponytail. “I don’t know. It’s just for fun. So Annie and Alex broke up, whatever. They’re not the first.”
“But what about the Billy Jones curse?”
“Maybe people like a challenge. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like defacing a cursed bridge, right? Look at what happened to Isobel and Henry—they wrote their names on the bridge, broke up, and then—”
“Yeah, didn’t they have an accident near the bridge?”
She nods. “They thought they saw someone about to jump.”
“Maybe writing your name on that bridge is just bad luck,” I say.
Kasey stands up. “Maybe. But since both my name and Drew’s are on it, I hope not. Sorry, Lu, I’ve got to get to work.” She walks down the steps to her car. “I’ll be home at ten. And I’ll bring home any mistake pizzas,” she promises. “What kind of mistake are you hungry for?”
“Any! But pineapple and ham would be a nice mistake,” I say.
“Gross,” she says, but then grins. “Just kidding. By the way, I’ve got some new ideas for our coffee shop. Let’s talk about them over pizza when I get home.” She waves and gets into her car.
Kasey backs out of the driveway and drives past the bridge. My eyes stop on the gray iron rails.
After writing their names this summer, two couples have already broken up. Apparently graffiti doesn’t keep you together. I think about the bridge that night as I’m falling asleep. I have to find out more. And I know where to do it.