Scared Stiff Read online

  So we ate, but my appetite wasn’t as good as it had been earlier. I was getting worried, because Ma had never done this before.

  When I thought of Billy Cowan, my stomach suddenly cramped. Billy wasn’t in sixth grade, only in fifth, so I didn’t know him too well, but everybody in school knew what had happened to him.

  He’d been worried because his folks were fighting and he was afraid they were going to get a divorce, but he wasn’t prepared for what they actually did. One day he came home and found everything gone out of the apartment except the stuff in his own room. His mother and dad had split, and each of them thought the other one would take Billy, but they didn’t wait to see. They moved out, separately, and never bothered to check on Billy. They just abandoned him.

  Mrs. Ratzloff, the school nurse, saw him crying on the front steps and stopped to find out what was the matter. Billy’s in a foster home now, and he likes it okay, but he’s always afraid his foster parents will get tired of him, too.

  Pa wasn’t tired of Kenny and me, I thought, but I guessed he was tired of Ma. Anyway, he left all three of us. What if Ma left, too?

  She wouldn’t, I thought, my chest aching so it was painful to breathe. Not ever.

  But I jumped up from the table and went to her room and threw open the closet door, just in case.

  All her dresses were still there. I jerked open a dresser drawer, and it was still full of underwear.

  So we hadn’t been abandoned.

  But where was Ma?

  We didn’t clean up the food from the table, thinking surely Ma would be there any minute, starving, not minding that we hadn’t made salad. She’d want to eat right away.

  But she didn’t come, and it got dark enough so we turned on the lights in the living room. Kenny turned on the TV, too, but I didn’t pay any attention to what was on.

  Finally it was time for Kenny to go to bed, and there was still no sign of Ma.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anybody to call. If Pa was here, he’d know what to do, I thought, and I began to be angry. It was his job to take care of us, so why wasn’t he here?

  I made Kenny take his bath and put on his pj’s, and I read him a chapter from Nothing’s Fair in Fifth Grade and then put him to bed.

  He looked up at me gravely. “Rick, why isn’t Ma here?”

  “I don’t know, but she’ll come,” I told him.

  “Soon?”

  I covered up the teddy bear he always slept with. “Soon,” I promised, but I didn’t believe it.

  If something hadn’t happened, she’d have been here a long time ago.

  I went out and sat in the empty living room and waited, but nobody came.

  Should I call the police? My heart pounded as I thought about it. Finally I got up and went to the telephone. You dialed 911, I knew, and they would send a police officer. If he didn’t figure out right away where Ma was, would he take Kenny and me away, as an officer had done with Billy?

  But we weren’t abandoned, I told myself fiercely. Ma would never do that. Once, right after Pa left, I’d started to cry, just a little bit. And Ma hugged me and assured me we’d be all right, the three of us, even if Pa didn’t come back.

  “I don’t see how he could do it,” I said. “He always said he loved us!”

  “He still loves you and Kenny,” she told me softly, giving me a handkerchief to blow my nose. “It’s only me he doesn’t want to deal with anymore.”

  “But he used to love you too! Did you stop loving him? How can you stop loving someone?”

  She hugged me again. “It happens sometimes, honey. Nobody wants it to happen, but sometimes it does. I don’t know yet if I’ve stopped loving your pa or not. But Rick, I’m still here, and I’ll always be here for you and Kenny. I promise.”

  Something happened to her, I thought. But what?

  There was a pad beside the telephone, and what Ma had written on it jumped out at me before I lifted the receiver.

  Uncle Henry, Ma had written, and there was a number after his name. Message, Mrs. Biggers.

  Uncle Henry, I thought. Yes, he was the one to call. He was about the only relative we had, except for my snooty Aunt Susan, who lives in Philadelphia. She’s Ma’s sister, but she married a rich lawyer that neither Ma or Pa could ever stand, and I only saw them twice. Both times they acted like we weren’t good enough for them, Pa said.

  Uncle Henry didn’t have a telephone of his own. He lived in a remodeled school bus, Ma told us. Uncle Henry was old, and crotchety sometimes, but he was nicer than Aunt Susan, and he lived a lot closer, too, right in our same town in Indiana.

  My fingers were shaking as I dialed the number on the pad.

  Mrs. Biggers was brusque when she told me Uncle Henry wasn’t there. “He works as a night watchman, you know.”

  “Oh.” I must have sounded as forlorn as I felt.

  “You want me to give him a message?” she asked.

  I swallowed and hesitated. Should I wait until morning to reach Uncle Henry, or should I call the police tonight?

  “Is it important?” she asked. And then, sounding more kind, “An emergency?”

  I gulped. “Yes. It’s an emergency. Tell him . . . tell him Rick called. My mom . . . my mom’s disappeared. I think . . . I think something bad has happened to her,” I said.

  Chapter Three

  It wasn’t like on TV, where a whole bunch of cops come with their lights flashing and the sirens going.

  Only one officer came up the stairs. He had a notebook and he asked questions and wrote down the answers, but he didn’t seem to think anything really bad had happened to Ma.

  “She may just be visiting a friend,” he suggested.

  I swallowed so hard it hurt. “Her only friend in the building is Sally, across the hall. She hasn’t been there.”

  “A friend outside the building,” the cop said. He sounded bored, as if this kind of thing happened all the time and it was never important.

  The door behind him was pushed further open, and Uncle Henry stuck his head in. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.

  Uncle Henry is pretty old. He has thin white hair and faded blue eyes, and a lot of wrinkles in his face. I guessed Mrs. Biggers had managed to get hold of him somehow, and I felt better immediately. He’d know what to do.

  I told the story again, and once more the cop said, “She’s probably visiting a friend.” He looked at me and added, “Outside the building. Maybe she went with this guy you saw her talking to, in the car.”

  “She didn’t,” I said desperately. “She came home. We know that, because she brought my school stuff and put it on the table. And it was suppertime. She always cooks supper. And the only time she ever leaves us alone in the apartment is right after school. And not for more than an hour.”

  “Who was the man in the car?” Uncle Henry wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. I never saw him before. And . . .” I hesitated, because I was only guessing, and then I blurted, “I don’t think she liked him, whoever he was. I could tell by her face. He was sort of making her talk to him, driving along beside her so slow, but she would never have gone anywhere with him. Besides, she came home. She brought my stuff.”

  The officer closed his notebook and put his pen back in his pocket. “You, sir, you’re the boys’ uncle?”

  “Great-uncle,” Uncle Henry corrected him. “You’re going to look for my niece, aren’t you? Rick is right. This isn’t like Sophie. She wouldn’t go off and leave her kids alone.”

  “Well, if she doesn’t show up in the morning, I’d suggest you come down to headquarters and file a missing-persons report. She probably went off on her own, and she’ll come back when she’s ready.”

  My eyes stung. It wasn’t true. Ma would never have gone off and left us.

  And then I remembered. Pa had.

  I sounded fierce. “She didn’t! She’s hurt or something! She didn’t go anywhere unless someone made her!”

  The offi
cer gave me a cool look, then spoke to Uncle Henry. “This kind of thing happens all the time, sir, and almost always the person shows up safe and sound, on their own.”

  “Not Sophie Van Huler,” Uncle Henry asserted. “You’ll see. If she could come home, she’d be here now.”

  “You check in with us in the morning, sir.” The cop looked at me. “You going to see to the children, Mr. Svoboda? I mean, I can’t leave them here in an empty apartment.”

  I looked at Uncle Henry in panic. Would they put Kenny and me into a foster home or something? Like Billy?

  “Yes, yes, certainly, I’ll see to the boys,” Uncle Henry said impatiently, waving a hand.

  “You give us a call in the morning. Let us know when Mrs. Van Huler comes home,” the officer said.

  “If she comes home,” Uncle Henry said.

  It was only after the officer had gone that Uncle Henry noticed my face.

  “Of course she’ll come back, Rick. It’s only that the police, with their wait-and-see attitude, make me angry. No doubt many of the people they are called upon to find do walk off of their own accord. If they knew Sophie, they’d know she wouldn’t do that. Where’s your father? Off on a trip, is he?”

  So Ma hadn’t told him. I had to.

  Uncle Henry was sober. “Good thing the officer didn’t know that, or he’d think your ma was so upset about your pa that she forgot about you two, and we know that’s not the case. Well, look here, I’ve got to get back to work. I’m a night watchman, you know, and I only got your message because I forgot my arthritis medicine and had to come home for it on my supper break, and Mrs. Biggers saw me. I’ve got to get back. You throw a few things in a suitcase—you got a suitcase?—or a paper bag, clothes and your toothbrushes, that kind of thing, and we’ll get your brother and go.”

  I was still worried about Ma, but at least the police weren’t going to take us to a foster home, and Uncle Henry would see to us.

  “Shall I get Kenny dressed? Or leave him in his pajamas?”

  “Bring him the way he is. I got my house right out in the street; we’ll put him to bed right away.”

  Startled, I paused before I went after the clothes we’d need. “Your house is in the street?”

  “Live in a school bus. Thought your ma’d have told you that, when she talked to me last week. I called to tell her where I was. Good thing, considering this. Mind, I’m not set up to take care of a couple of kids indefinitely, but your ma’ll show up shortly, no doubt. We’ll manage until she does.”

  The school bus was sort of startling when we got there. I’d expected a yellow bus, like the ones some of the kids rode to school, but this one was painted purple. With bright-colored swirls and flowers all over it.

  Uncle Henry saw me looking at it as we crossed the street, and snorted. “Fancy, isn’t it? Never would have painted it that way myself, but that’s the way it was when the feller handed it over to me.”

  Kenny staggered between us, still half asleep. Uncle Henry opened the door of the purple bus, and I boosted Kenny up the steps and stopped, astonished.

  On the outside it looked weird, but inside it was wonderful.

  “It’s like a real house!” I said, pushing Kenny toward the couch on one side. Opposite the couch was a table with two benches upholstered just like the couch in striped brown and tan fabric. There was a television and a tiny kitchen, and through a door beyond that I could see a bed.

  “I only got the one bed,” Uncle Henry said, coming in behind us. “I work nights and sleep days, so I’ll have to keep on sleeping back there. You kids’ll have to sleep on the couch. It opens up. Here, Kenny, stand up, and I’ll show you.”

  “I never saw a TV in a bus before,” Kenny said sleepily.

  “No TV tonight, and none played loud when I’m sleeping,” Uncle Henry said, opening up our bed. “I’m a bit hard of hearing, but not deaf, you know. My only other sheets are in the washing—I get Mrs. Biggers to do my laundry—but I have a blanket for you. You need to use the bathroom before you crawl into bed?”

  “You have a bathroom in your bus, too?” Kenny asked, impressed.

  “How else am I going to live in it?” Uncle Henry asked. “I’m too old to be going out to a public restroom. Door on the right, just before the bedroom.”

  It was tiny, but it had a toilet and a wash basin and a shower. If I hadn’t been so upset about Ma, I’d have enjoyed seeing it all.

  When I went back out front, Uncle Henry was starting the engine. I slid into the other seat, hoping he wouldn’t make me go to bed right away.

  “It’s so nice inside,” I said. “So different from what it looks like on the outside.” Then I was afraid I’d insulted him, and I didn’t know what to say next.

  Uncle made that snorting sound again, and I decided it was the way he laughed. “That’s the whole point,” he said. “Places I have to park it sometimes, I don’t want anybody to think it’s any more than a hippy bus, full of junk. Don’t want ’em ripping off my TV and stereo and such. To look at it from the outside, nobody’d bother with it. I keep the curtains closed, so they can’t see in.”

  We were moving through the darkened streets now. “You just live in this? And you park it on the street?”

  “No, no. Not very often, anyway. Stay at the Wonderland RV Park.” He made that snorting sound again.

  “That sounds . . . interesting,” I observed.

  “Sounds more interesting than it is,” Uncle Henry said.

  He didn’t talk anymore, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say, either. I wanted to be reassured that everything would be all right, that Ma would indeed show up safe and sound in the morning, that Pa would come back.

  Uncle Henry wasn’t too used to kids, I guess; he only saw us when he came over for dinner for his birthday, or Ma’s, or on Christmas Eve when we opened presents together. But last year he gave me a Swiss army knife, and it was a neat one with all kinds of blades and tools, so I knew he was kind. Ma must have told him what I wanted, and he’d brought it, and even wrapped it in pretty paper.

  If he thought everything would be all right, he’d probably have said so.

  He didn’t, though, and it made me afraid to ask what he thought.

  I didn’t know what we’d do if Ma didn’t come home.

  On the ride through the mostly darkened city I thought it all through in my mind again, how that guy in the car had been driving slowly beside Ma, and how when we got up to her she’d sent us to Willie’s for the groceries—almost as if she wanted us away from her while she talked to the man in the car—and how my school stuff was in the apartment so we knew she’d been there, except for the notebook she’d dropped on the steps.

  What had happened to her?

  Had she sent us to Willie’s because she was afraid of the stranger? Did she know him? What if he’d followed her into the apartment house, and made her go away with him?

  Why would he do that? And if he had, what did he mean to do to her? How could we convince the police to look for her? What if they couldn’t find her, even if they did look?

  By the time we pulled in at the Wonderland RV Park, I was convinced Ma had been kidnapped. It was the last of the three troubles in this batch, and the worst of all. It was the worst trouble I’d ever been in in my whole life, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  Chapter Four

  Uncle Henry was right about the Wonderland RV Park. I don’t know what I expected, exactly, but not rows of old trailers and a few motor homes, most of them pretty run down.

  There weren’t any more like the purple bus.

  Uncle Henry had his own space, way at the back where, he said, the purple bus wouldn’t scare off any overnighters. Overnighters were people who were traveling and only stopped there to sleep before going on.

  They didn’t have many tourists, though. Not since the Wonderland Amusement Park had been closed down over a year ago.

  “That’s why this place looks sort of tacky,” Uncle Henry told
us the next morning. “Mrs. Biggers—she’s the manager, working for the heirs of the estate, the family that’s fighting about what to do with the amusement park—does the best she can, but the Mixons don’t want to spend any money, so she doesn’t have anything to work with.”

  “Who are the Mixons?” Kenny asked. I could tell by his eyes that he’d cried himself to sleep.

  “Family owns both the parks. Old Mr. Mixon built Wonderland and ran it for years, but when he died the heirs couldn’t decide what to do with it. One granddaughter wanted to keep on running it, but the rest of them wanted to sell the property and divide up the money, so they’re still battling it out. It’s valuable industrial property, and they could get a lot of cash out of it. In the meantime, until it’s settled, it’s a cheap place for me to live, and close to the warehouse where I work,” Uncle Henry said. “I walk to work.”

  I could see why it was cheap. Nothing had been painted or fixed in a while, it looked like. It didn’t matter to me. I didn’t intend to be there very long. Ma would surely be back soon, I thought.

  Only she wasn’t. Uncle Henry took us with him when he went down to the police station and filed a missing-persons report. I thought they should call in the FBI, because I was certain Ma had been kidnapped—otherwise she’d have come home by now—but they said there was no evidence of kidnapping. She’d just run off for reasons of her own, the officer said.

  It made my throat hurt to think about it. It couldn’t be true; Ma wouldn’t have abandoned us. I guess Uncle Henry knew how I felt, because he put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.

  “Maybe we ought to go by the apartment on the way back to my place,” he said as we left the station, “and see if you can find any of that evidence they think they have to have.”

  There wasn’t any, though.

  It felt awful, walking through the empty apartment. Ma’s stuff was still there, same as we’d left it.

  “What would be a clue?” Kenny asked. “Bloodstains?”

  “Blood would mean somebody hurt her!” I said, getting sicker by the moment. I stared at Uncle Henry, who was looking through the stuff on Ma’s desk. “We don’t have any reason to think that, do we?”