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"Oh," her mother said, and rolled her window up before driving the car into the garage.
"See what I mean?" Karen said. "She would have had a fit if I even mentioned going to your house tonight. We all have to play our parts here," she said. "This is the Pretend Central System, WPCS. See you," she said, and closed the door.
I felt as if she had died. Now I was the one who felt sick to her stomach. I couldn't look at her mother. Why didn't she have the same built-in sensitivity to Karen that my mother had to me? Why didn't she realize something terrible was happening in her own house to her own daughter? And then I had a more terrifying thought: What if she did, and she didn't care?
I hurried down the walk to start my trek home.
What would I do about all this now? If I didn't keep her secret, do what I promised, she might just kill herself as she had threatened to do. On the other hand, I hated not being able to help her. How easy it would be for me to go to my mother and tell her and get her to do something. My father was a lawyer. He could get Mr. Pearson put away, I thought. That was where he belonged.
But then, what if Karen was right, and things became impossible for her at school and in the community? All I would have succeeded in doing would be to drive her and her mother away. She'd hate me forever.
I was so frustrated and angry I wished Mr. Pearson was dead, and then I immediately felt guilty for wishing that on someone, even someone like him.
Another thing worried me. My mother was liable to look at me and know something terrible was wrong. She was already suspicious about Karen because of the things I had told her. How could I carry such a dark secret inside myself and not show it on my face? I would fail. I would let Karen down because I couldn't help it, and she would hate me anyway.
It all buzzed around in my head, and I didn't realize where I was walking or how long I had been walking. Suddenly, I heard a very loud horn and nearly jumped out of my skin at the metallic scream of automobile brakes. Mr. Bedick, who owned an egg farm down the road from us, was waving his fist angrily at me. He looked as if he had been standing on his head. That's how red his face was. I glanced down and saw that the bumper of his car was only inches from me.
"I'm sorry!" I cried. "I'm sorry."
I had stepped too far to the left and put myself right in his path.
"Your parents are going to hear about this," he threatened, and drove away.
"Great," I muttered. "I'm already in trouble."
I hurried home so I could get into my room and settle down before my parents got home. That was an impossible task. The moment I closed the door and sat there in the quiet of my own room, everything Karen had told me came rushing back. I saw the most horrible images and knew I would probably have my own nightmares about it now. She was right to warn me away, to tell me I'd be better off not being her best friend. I wasn't just sharing her pain and suffering.
Because we were so close, it was easy to imagine it happening to me, too.
How horrible, I thought, and imagined her lying there too terrified to raise her voice in protest, too terrified to tell her mother. She was trapped and at the mercy of someone who was . . . who was what? The story she told me about Mr. Pearson having conversations with his dead mother and now going into her old apartment to sleep was even more frightening in some ways. Did he see a ghost?
How would this all end? There had to be something we could do. I sat there feeling so helpless and trapped myself until my gaze fell on my bookcase, and a collection of short stories popped out at me. It really wasn't meant for me. It was Jesse's book, but it had gotten mixed up and put in my room. From time to time, I read some of it. The collection was called Campfire Chills. It was supposed to be a collection of scary stories told around a campfire. Most of them were silly to me, but there was one that sprang to mind as if it had been written on springs.
I jumped up and pulled the book off the shelf, turning to the story quickly and rereading it with the speed of someone looking for a word clue.
Yes, I thought. Why not? It was easy to substitute Mr. Pearson for the character in the story and easy to substitute Karen and myself for another. We would do the same thing. I practically lunged at my phone to call her.
Her mother answered.
"You were just here, weren't you?" she asked me. "Yes, Mrs. Pearson, but there was one important thing about the schoolwork I forgot to tell Karen."
"Oh," she said. "Just a moment."
I waited, knowing Karen would have to come down the stairs to talk to me unless her mother permitted her to pick up the phone in her and Mr. Pearson's bedroom. She apparently didn't, because it took a while for Karen to pick up.
"What?" she finally said.
"I have an idea, a solution to your problem," I said. "It could really work."
She was silent.
"And what would that be?" she finally asked.
"I have something for you to read tomorrow, and then we'll talk about it, okay?"
"I see. Yes, thanks for calling. I'll see you on the bus," she said, and hung up.
That's all right, I told myself. I wasn't upset at all at how abruptly she had ended our conversation. It didn't mean she was angry or upset at me for still talking and thinking about the things she had told me. It probably just meant her mother was standing close by and listening to our conversation.
