Читать книгу Running Scared - Brenda Chapman - Страница 5

I was running. I could hear a loud pounding coming closer, closer, and I felt a spasm of fear buckle my knees. The sweat heated my forehead, running down my back, making my nightgown stick to my legs. My lips and mouth felt dry and I opened my mouth to take in a gulp of air. As I swallowed painfully, my arms shot out into the darkness before me to ward off the shadows, fluid and alive, advancing and receding as if blown by the wind. I heard the scrape of a key in the lock and forced my eyes to open wide. Quickly, the terror faded. It was only a dream. Now I could see the blue cover at the foot of my bed and the closed door to my bedroom. The dream settled back into the place where dreams go when you wake up, leaving me feeling uneasy without really knowing why.

Mom was home from work, unlocking the front door and letting it bang soundly behind her. She probably figured it was time for Leslie and me to get up for school. Her strategy was to make a lot of noise so that we knew there was no point pretending that we were still asleep. The radio came on full blast from the kitchen. She wasn’t original, but her methods always worked, and she never even had to raise her voice. Already I could hear Leslie’s feet hit the floor and her clear, high voice start singing a good morning song. I swear that Leslie had to get the award for chirpiest morning person in the history of the known universe. She always woke up singing and usually doing a few ballet steps on her way to the bathroom. I, on the other hand, liked the grump approach, at least until I had some breakfast under my belt and a few minutes to shake the sleepy bugs out of my head.

The sun was filtering through my blue bedroom curtains casting dancing shadows on the wall. I liked my room. Mom had let me choose the striped yellow wallpaper. We had picked up a four-poster maple bed and a white dresser at a flea market, and the oval blue flowered carpet had been in Grandma Bannon’s spare bedroom. I had a few posters of my favourite rock bands on the wall across from the window. My old dolls and stuffed toys still kept their posts on a bookcase that Mom and I had stripped and refinished a few years ago. The bookcase, of course, was packed with all my favorite books, like The Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden and Heidi. I also had a more recent stack of teen magazines that Ambie and I passed back and forth. The top shelf was saved for my jewellery box with the ballerina in the pink crinkly skirt that still twirled around when the lid was open, and framed pictures of Mom, Dad, Leslie and me in happier times. I especially liked the one Mom had taken of Dad and me squatting by a pond feeding the ducks when I was five years old. Dad had his arm around my shoulders and I was leaning on his leg with my hand extended toward a mallard that watches me with great concentration. I look like I’m about ready to snatch my hand away, and Dad is laughing into the camera. I liked to think that he and Mom were sharing a happy moment.

This morning, I chose black jeans and a sweatshirt of grey fleece because I figured it was probably going to be another cool fall day. I pulled my hair back into a gold barrette, trying not to look at myself in the little, oval mirror above my dresser. This was definitely not my best time of the day.

Leslie was digging into a bowl of puffed cereal as I entered the kitchen. I gave Mom a peck on the cheek, and she smiled and handed me a glass of orange juice. I sat down to a bowl of yoghurt and bananas. I was on a health kick, as instructed by Mr. Jacks, who was deeply into the whole body approach for his volleyball players. I think he took a refresher course in sports last summer, because he kept coming up with ideas for us to improve ourselves. It wouldn’t be so bad if he were a nicer coach. His summer course hadn’t taught him to be any easier on us than he had been the year before. I’d personally pitch in a few dollars to send him on a training course in the art of positive reinforcement.

“What a night at the hospital.” Mom poured herself some juice. “About eight-thirty, the ambulance brought in Mrs. Fielding, you know, the retired Grade Three teacher from a few blocks over, after she’d been hit by a car.”

I think my eyes must have widened about a metre. Luckily, I didn’t choke or spit my food all over Leslie. Leslie stopped eating for a moment too, her spoon halfway to her lips.

Mom continued. “I don’t know what this world is coming to. The driver didn’t even stop, and now the police are trying to track them down. I hope that whoever did this gets caught and faces the music.” Mom shook her head about the same way she had when I’d brought home a failing mark in math the term before. I knew she was really upset, because she’d used that facing-the-music expression. I’d had to face a few of Mom’s musical numbers in some of my naughtier moments.

“Is Mrs. Fielding okay?” Leslie asked as she dipped her spoon slowly back into her bowl. She tried to push pieces of puffed rice down into the milk with the curve of her spoon.

“Well, she’s unconscious,” said Mom, “and we’re not sure if she’s going to make it. She has a broken leg and three broken ribs, and her head hit the pavement pretty hard.”

I felt as if I wanted to cry. I was the last person she might ever have spoken to! If Dad had been driving . . . I had to stop thinking like that because I didn’t want to believe what was probably true.

I thought back to the moment when I’d seen the car speeding toward me, and I pictured myself standing under the street light, staring in complete shock in the direction of the driver. While I had automatically tried to see who’d hit Mrs. Fielding, with the speed of the car and the way that the light hit its windows, I hadn’t been able to make out more than a dark form. I stubbornly told myself that the form could have belonged to anybody.

I also told myself that the police, once I told them the car was his, might not be so eager to give Dad the same benefit of the doubt as I did. After all, I had helped Dad paint the car that funny red colour and could certainly identify it. I suppose it was at that moment that I decided not to say anything to anybody. I would make like an ostrich and just pretend that I’d never left the house that night.

“I just saw her last week at the mall,” Mom said, “and she told me how much she was enjoying retirement. We even talked about taking an aerobics class together on Sunday afternoons. This is so unfair.” She shook her head back and forth a few times. “You girls be very careful walking to school today. Make sure you look before you cross the street!” I imagined I’d be hearing that warning every time I went out for quite some time.

Somehow I made it to school that morning. Even though I had decided to keep quiet about what I’d seen the night before, I still wanted to see Ambie, just to feel my friend’s comforting presence. However, as luck would have it, she was home sick with the flu.

English class was first on my schedule. This was the one class that I still liked, and my mark hadn’t slipped as much as it had in my other classes. The teacher, Mr. Kruger, was an older, white-haired man who reminded me of the grandfather I would have liked to have had. Unfortunately, both of my grandfathers had died by the time I was six. Grandma Bannon had died only two years ago, about the time that Dad had left. We had one grandmother still alive, but she had moved to Northern Ontario to a place called Hawk’s Creek soon after Grandpa Connelly died. For the last two summers, Leslie and I had flown north to spend three weeks with her in her little house near a lake outside of town. Grandma Connelly had taken up painting, weaving and bread baking. She told us that at sixty she had decided to give up the rat race and begin her hippie lifestyle phase. Leslie and I liked being in a place where you could swim in the morning and lie under the stars at night. Grandma Connelly said that it was high time we learned to relax and be kids. Her only rule was that we show up for meals.

Normally, Mr. Kruger looked at me over his square silver-rimmed glasses, which perched on the end of his nose, and gave me a smile even if my assignment was a day late. He was the one teacher I might have talked to if I ever felt like talking to any of them. Not highly likely though.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kruger was sick as well that morning. We were all sent to the library to do research under the eye of the Grade Eleven teacher who had her class there at the same time. I chose a table off by myself near the windows, not wanting to have to spend time talking to the other girls. Normally, library time meant a gab session, but today I didn’t feel like talking about the clothes sale at Pago’s or about why Ian Vance had dumped Patty Gage. I was still shaken by what I’d seen the night before.

No more than five minutes later, Pete Flaghert slid across from me, while his buddies went to another table. “How’s it goin’, Jen?” he asked, looking at some point past my right ear.

“Fine. You?” I gave the expected answer.

Pete bent over his book after giving a short nod, and I pretended to read. He wasn’t the cutest guy at Morton High, so I couldn’t figure out why he made my heart rate speed up. His brown hair was a little long, and his arms and legs seemed to have grown awkward this past year. Sometimes, I saw him watching me. He had pretty intense, dark eyes, but he usually looked away when he saw me looking back. I wondered why the friendliness today. Ambie would have told me I was being paranoid. Anyhow, I told myself, I was definitely not interested in boys.

Just before the end of library time, three Grade Twelve boys came pushing each other into the room. Steve Parks had arrived the month before from a school in Toronto, and he was decidedly changing the chemistry of the Grade Twelve class. He was what you would call majorly hot, and most of the girls spent a lot of time in the washroom giggling about him and anything he happened to have done that day. He had two buddies named Jeff Colborne and Bobby Shipman, also in Grade Twelve. Bobby Shipman used to be the one all the girls wanted to go out with before Steve moved into town. Now, he and Jeff seemed willing to follow Steve around and get into whatever trouble the three of them could dream up.

They had taken and hidden the geography test one morning while the teacher was speaking to a student. They never got caught, but we all knew it was them. Word gets around fast. They also hung around the smoking section at the edge of the school property at lunchtime, puffing away and acting cool. I’d heard that Steve had skipped school a few times and hitchhiked to Toronto, although that seemed to have stopped after his parents got called in to the principal’s office. Still, he did have an awfully cute smile. Luckily, I definitely wasn’t interested in boys.

Jeff and Bobby sauntered over to a cart of books, pretending to read the covers. I say pretending because I figured they’d never read a whole book in their entire lives. They were dressed alike in beige khakis and black muscle shirts, and their hair was cut short and spiky. Somehow, though, Jeff seemed gangly and ill at ease compared to Bobby, who looked sure of himself, like he was just putting in time until something better to do came along. However, neither exuded the same attraction as Steve Parks, whose golden hair fell just so and whose green eyes made you believe he was part Greek god. I had the shock of my life when he slid into the chair next to me.

“Which Olsen twin are you?” he asked, settling on that age-old introduction that Ambie and I had come to detest.

Ambie was about an inch shorter than me, but we both had shoulder-length blonde hair that we tended to wear pulled back in pony tails. We were both a little bit on the tall, slender, some might say skinny, side, but there the resemblance ended. Still, it was enough to make people call us the Olsen twins. You might have thought that Ambie would be a dark-haired Italian girl with a last name like Guido, but Ambie’s real father had only lasted a few years before her mother left him for Mr. Guido. Ambie couldn’t even remember what her real dad looked like.

“I’m Jen, Jennifer Bannon,” I responded, hoping that my voice didn’t tremble. I wasn’t expecting all this attention from Morton High’s male population.

“And your girlfriend’s name . . . ?” his voice trailed off as if he was trying to make the name appear from the tip of his tongue.

“Ambie Guido,” Pete answered from across the table. He was looking at Steve with a funny expression on his face.

“She away today or something?” Steve asked.

I nodded. “Stomach flu.” We all grimaced at the same time. That was a feeling we were only too familiar with. It made me queasy just saying the words.

“Yeah, well, that’s too bad. Has she been sick long?”

“I guess she started feeling sick last night when she was out for a walk. It seems to hit fast.” I smiled, but Steve and Pete were looking at each other, and neither seemed all that happy.

“Man, I hope I don’t get it. I hate being sick.” Steve stood and stretched. “See you around.” He headed over to where Bobby and Jeff were standing and punched Bobby on the shoulder. They left the library together with Jeff trailing behind the other two.

I guessed this would be analyzed in the girls’ washroom all day. Just what would Steve, the hunk of the senior class, be doing talking to a lowly Grade Nine nobody. I guess I should have felt honoured.

My day slowly got worse. My last class was history, and the dragon lady let me have it in front of the whole class.

“Jennifer Bannon, this work is unacceptable!” she was kind enough to tell me in a voice hardened by years of squishing lazy students like blackheads. “I cannot accept two paragraphs from you on a topic as rich as Canada’s fur trade. I’m docking ten per cent and expect three pages on my desk first thing tomorrow morning!” That put an end to my rich social life for another evening.

I made it to volleyball practice a little late because I’d organized my locker and spent time getting all my homework into my knapsack. I promised myself after the history book incident that I would never forget anything ever again, as long as I lived. Mr. Jacks made me run twenty laps around the gym for being late, and after that I just couldn’t get into the game.

“You’re going to have to get with the program, Bannon,” he all but barked at me before we packed up for home. “Your turn to put away the volleyballs.”

Lucky me.

It was looking a little deserted when I finally set out for home. The sun was low in the sky, and the darkness was sifting into corners and around the houses. The sky had that orange flush that it gets at the end of a chilly fall day. I started to remember the accident from the night before and started walking more quickly down Balsam Drive. I jumped a little when a branch brushed up against the back of my legs, pushed along by a sudden gust of wind.

I don’t know when I began to feel like I was being followed. I think it was when I turned the corner onto Highgrove. I spun around to check behind me but only saw shapes in the shadows. Still the feeling followed me even as I turned onto Maple Lane. I could see my house set in behind two oak trees back a little ways from the road at the end of the street. I started running. Behind me, I could hear the thud of steps keeping pace. I was too scared to turn around again. My breath sounded too loud in my ears, and I was light-headed with fear. I kept waiting for a hand to grab me from behind to drag me down onto the street. I pushed myself to run harder. Within seconds, I reached the sidewalk leading to our front door. I kept going and had my foot on the bottom step when the door swung open, and Mom stepped outside. In the porch light, I could see that she wore her coat and her white nurse’s uniform. She was fumbling with the buttons on her coat and didn’t look too pleased. I was keeping her waiting again. She was in such a hurry to catch the bus that she didn’t notice how panicky I was. I looked back over my shoulder and thought I saw a figure slip back behind the front of our neighbour’s house.

“Jennifer, you are going to have to be on time, or volleyball is out!” my mother snapped at me. “See to Leslie. I’ve left money for a pizza.”

“Sure, Mom. Sorry I was late. Practice went long.” Since my father left, it always seemed like I was apologizing or dancing around my mother so that I didn’t upset her. Ambie said I’d lost the ability to stand up for myself. I knew that I was just being a stand-in for my absent father.

“There’s always an excuse.”

With that she was gone, and I stepped into the hallway locking the door quickly behind me. The fear was definitely spreading from my large intestine to my stomach. Still, I felt safe with the door locked and Leslie standing in the hallway waiting for me.

“I’m starving, Jen!” she shouted, whirling around with her arms spread wide. She had covered her nose and cheeks with gold stick-on stars. I gave a little laugh and bent to take off my shoes, trying to forget the shadows lurking just outside on Maple Lane.

Leslie and I finished a double cheese, pepperoni pizza delivered from Papa Pasta, washed down with glasses of chocolate milk. Leslie wasn’t a bad little sister, as sisters go. She looked an awful lot like my dad, with big brown eyes that could get you to do whatever they wanted, if you weren’t careful. Luckily, Leslie didn’t seem to need to have her own way very much. In fact, she usually went along with the flow of things. Her shiny brown hair was kept in a pixie cut that came just below her jaw line, and usually she dressed in coveralls and a T-shirt. She didn’t seem to notice how cute everyone thought she was. Good thing, too.

Tonight, she wanted to read me a chapter of her favorite story, Charlotte’s Web. We snuggled up on the couch under her comforter, and Leslie read for about half an hour. Wilbur had just discovered Charlotte, hearing her voice call to him in the darkness of his pen. Leslie loved that moment when Wilbur discovers that he’s not alone. After Leslie grew tired of reading, she put her head on my shoulder.

“Do you think Mom will let us see Daddy soon, Jen?” she asked suddenly.

“Well . . . Mom’s awfully mad at him still,” I said. “Would you like to see him?” Now that was a silly question.

“I sure hope she lets us,” yawned Leslie, and I knew she needed to get to bed.

“I’ll work on her, kiddo,” I promised and took Leslie’s hand to lead her to her room. Would it be okay for me to let Leslie see her father, a father who maybe was being searched for by the police? Oh please, God, don’t let Mrs. Fielding die! Dad might have been able to leave us without a backward glance, but please don’t make him capable of doing this horrible thing.