"It has to be Jennifer Sizemore," I could hardly catch my breath.

"No, it would definitely have to be Susan Gardner," Jason was puffing so hard that his face was turning red.

"How about Stephanie Grindstaff? She has about seventeen million freckles," I told Jason. We stopped our bikes and started walking them up the hill.

Jason puffed, "Have you seen Ginger Heathstrom lately? She has pimples on top of her pimples. Talk about gross! Brandon told me in gym class yesterday that if you get close enough to a girl with that many zits you can catch them from her."

Jason was trying to catch his breath after he had made this long statement. We were almost at the top of the hill on Dogwood Lane and I got back on my bike and forced my legs to pedal my bike the last few feet up the hill.

"I don't believe that!" I exclaimed as my legs strained to push the pedals of my bike harder.

We had finally reached the top of the hill and we had stopped for a minute to catch our breaths, "You can't catch pimples from a girl. Brandon is always telling me stuff like that, too. One time he told me that Mr. Cross, the math teacher, had killed a man in Delaware and he was on the run from the law. He said he saw him on that unsolved crimes program on TV last week."

"I didn't know that," Jason looked surprised, "But come to think of it, Mr. Cross does look like someone I might have seen on the Post Office wall. Jeannie Griffith."

"What?" I asked, I was desperately trying to catch my breath from our trip up the hill and keep up with Jason's train of thought at the same time.

"Jeannie Griffith has an enormous head. Have you ever taken a look at her? I bet the only thing that could fit on that huge noggin would be a ten gallon hat."

"What are you two talking about?" Amy had just come out of her friend, Laurie Cunningham's house, and was standing by the road at the top of the hill watching us come up the hill towards her.

"We're trying to decide which girl in our class is the ugliest," Jason informed her, "We've decided that it's Jeannie Griffith so far because of her gigantic head."

"You two certainly don't have any room to talk," Amy said tauntingly. She pointed at Jason, "Your nose is so enormous that we could us your face for a sundial."

I started to laugh at that when Amy turned to me and pointed at my heard, "And your ears are so big that Dumbo would be jealous. Compared to you two the girls in your class look really good."

Amy turned her head with a jerk, her blonde hair flying behind her, and she walked toward home, laughing loudly.

Leave it to a sister to put a guy in his place.

"Well, I guess she told us off," Jason told me solemnly as we both watched her walk away.

At that moment, a huge, orange moving van made it's way down the street toward us. Jason and I watched as it passed by us and then looked at each other. We both knew where the van was going. The Young's house had been vacant for a long time. It had been empty when we had moved into our house five months ago and Jason had told me that no one had lived in it since last summer.

We turned our bikes around and went sailing back down the hill we had just struggled to come up. The cold wind stung my hands and face. Spring was almost here but I couldn't tell it by this bitter, cold Saturday morning. Mom had made sure that I had put on my heavy coat when I had left the house but this cold wind seemed to go right through it. I tried to warm one hand by putting it in my coat pocket while I coasted my bike down the hill but it was hard to steer the bike with only one hand. Besides that, the dogs who had accompanied us, as usual, were always darting out in front of us. I had to be extra careful in case one of them saw a squirrel and decided to make a last-minute chase for it and took a shortcut in front of my bike. The dogs were determined to keep the squirrel population in our neighborhood down.

By the time we had gotten to the Young's house, the movers had already begun unloading boxes and furniture out of the moving van.

"I wonder who is moving in?" Jason was thinking out loud as we watched the movers. We had parked our bikes near the driveway and were watching the men unload the van. We hadn't said anything to each other but I knew we both hoped that the people who were moving in had ten kids--enough for a hockey or basketball team and preferably all boys.

"Well, we know they have at least one kid," I pointed at the van as one of the men pulled a bike out of it.

A car came up next to us in the driveway and parked behind the van.

The back door of the car opened and a thin, sandy-haired kid emerged. A man and a woman got out of the car and waved at us.

"Hi!" I yelled.

"Hi!" They called back, walking over to us, "We're the Johnson's and this is Charles.

Mrs. Johnson put her arms on Charles' shoulders and pushed him a little forward.

"Hi," said Charles, half-waving his hand. Charles' parents walked back up to the house. I asked Charles where he had moved from. He said they had been living in New York and he wished he was still there. When we asked him if he liked deck hockey he made a face and said he had to go unpack.

"Well, I can tell that that kid is going to be lots of fun!" Jason said with a mixture of disappointment and sarcasm.

"What a jerk!" I agreed as we turned our bikes around in disgust and headed home.

We saw Charles occasionally after he'd moved into the neighborhood and he usually ignored us when he did see him. We had noticed one thing about Charles that had gotten our atention, though.

Jason and I generally don't care much about clothes. A t-shirt and jeans are just fine for whatever we were doing. Charles, however, seems to feel the need to make some kind of statement with his wardrobe. Charles always wears black. Every time we see him he is wearing a black shirt and black pants. Jason said he looks like someone poured a container of black ink over him. The only thing that doesn't match his clothes is his sandy-colored hair. I wouldn't be surprised if he dyed it black. I mentioned this once to Mom and she said that Charles was just different and we should try to be friends with him. Yeah, right!

One afternoon, a few weeks after Charles had moved into the neighborhood, Jason and I were involved in a great game of deck hockey. When we play deck hockey Jason, of course, has to be goalee first because he always wants to do everything first. Mom says that's because he is the youngest in his family and has three older sisters and no brothers.

I was getting ready to slam the hockey puck into the goal (our lawn chair) to win the game for my team when I saw Jason looking up at something behind me. I turned around but it was too late, next thing I knew Jake was holding me upside down by my ankles, rollerblades and all.

"Who is the boss around here?" Jake demanded. My head was about six inches above the deck.

"Dad is! Now let me down!" I yelled, I could feel the blood rushing to my head.

"Wrong answer!" Jake said. He started shaking me up and down, "Who is the boss around here?"

Things started falling out of my pockets. An extra hockey puck fell out and hit me in the chin. Legos I would need later on fell out and hit the deck with a clatter. My head was hitting the deck also and I was starting to get dizzy. Even though my world was moving around me I could see Jason watching with a smile on his face. This was embarrassing!

"Who is the boss around here?" Jake demanded again.

"You are! You are!" I screamed, "Now let me go!"

"I sure am glad I don't have an older brother," Jason laughed after Jake had finally set me back on the deck, head first, of course, "The worse things that my sister ever did to me was put makeup on me when I was asleep."

While I was tryng to picture that in my mind, Jake said to us, "You two had better watch out, Mom is in the den with Mrs. Johnson and you're not going to like what they are planning for you."

With a hackling laugh, Jake went into the house (probably for his tenth meal of the day). I could feel the deck shaking from the vibrations of his footsteps as he walked away.

Jason and I raced into the den where we found Mom and Mrs. Johnson on the sofa talking.

"Speaking of the little devils," laughed Mom as we stood in the doorway looking at them. Jake was telling the truth for a change.

Mrs. Johnson smiled at us and said, "How would the two of you like to come over to our house tomorrow morning and play with Charles?"

Jason and I looked at each other.

"Don't we have to go to school tomorrow?" I asked Mom.

"Silly," Mom laughed, "Tomorrow is a Saturday."

"I'll have to ask my mom," Jason said, thinking fast, "I'm not sure but I think she wants me to clean out the garage."

I stifled a laugh. Jason's mom had been trying for months to get him to clean out the garage. He always had some excuse to get out of the job.

"I'll call your mom this afternoon and see if I can get her to let you out of your chores for the morning," Mrs. Johnson smiled at Jason like she was doing him a big favor.

"Kevin will be there tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.," Mom told her as Mrs. Johnson got up to leave.

I opened my mouth to say something lke, "Don't we have a funeral to go to?" but Mom gave me a warning glance that made my mouth close hard.

We were doomed. Jason and I walked outside while Mom and Mrs. Johnson stood talking inside.

"I think I feel a fever coming on," Jason said, putting his hand to his forehead.

"Do you suppose Charles told his mom to ask us over?" I sat down on the front deck steps and pet Goldie.

"Nah!" We said together, laughing and shaking our heads.

Saturday morning came all too fast. I woke up with a feeling of dread. I didn't want to go to Charles' house. Maybe I could run away from home for the morning. Maybe I could hitchhike and catch a ride with some trucker who would take me to California where I would be discovered by a movie producer who would decide I would be the perfect child actor to star in his next film about a kid who is kidnapped by burglars and has to eat a thousand hot fudge sundaes at gunpoint.

I rolled over and covered my head with my pillow. Maybe instead I could just sleep the rest of the day.

"Rise and shine!" Mom cheerfully walked into my bedroom, "Time to get up! It's almost 9:00 a.m. You have an hour to get dressed and eat breakfast before you go to Charles' house."

"I have a virus," I said weakly, "I can feel it in my forehead," I touched my hand to my head, "It's making me feel very weak, Mom? Are you still there?" My eyes were closed and my face was twisted as though I was in extreme pain.

"Well, you don't have a fever," Mom put her hand on my forehead, "Get up and eat some breakfast and I'm sure you'll feel better."

What is it about moms that all they have to do is put their hand on your forehead and they can tell instantly if you are near death or ready to go on with the plans they have for your day?

"I'm not going to Charles' house," I stated firmly, pulling my sheet over my head.

There was silence, I could hear Mom's breathing. She walked to my bed and ripped the sheet from my head, "Why not? Charles seems like a nice enough boy to me. His mother told me that Charles spends way too much time alone. She says he needs to make friends in the neighborhood. Besides, he's so polite."

That is the one thing that always matters the most to Mom. Charles could be a mass murderer looking for victim number three hundred and three and Mom would still say, "Well, he was always so polite, who would have thought it?"

"You don't understand, Mom," I knew she wouldn't understand if I tried to explain how Jason and I felt about Charles. Charles was just too weird-- in a weird kind of way. I would just have to quit being a baby about this and try to make my point in a grown-up way, "I'm not going to Charles' house and you can't make me."

It's ten o'clock on a Saturday morning and I have better things to do with my life, I thought grumpily to myself. I stood in the street in front of Charles' house with my bicycle. Maybe I can stand here for an hour and nobody will see me and I can go home and tell Mom that no one was home. I looked down at my hands. They were becoming cold and turning red. Soon, they would freeze and my whole body would become frozen in the street exactly like this. Mrs. Johnson would have to call Mom to come and get my body. I would be frozen like a statue and Mom would have to put me in the back of the station wagon because that would be the only place my frozen corpse would fit. Then she would be sorry that she had made me come over here.

"Yoo hoo!" yelled Mrs. Johnson, waking me out of my thoughts. She was standing in her doorway waving at me, "Come on in, Kevin."

I slowly rode my bike up their driveway. This was going to be a long morning.

"Hi, Kevin!" yelled Jason from behind me. Jason was solemn as he walked his bike slowly up to me, "Are you ready for this? Because I don't think I am."

"I thought you weren't going to come," I said, relieved that at least I had someone else to share this miserable morning with.

"I told Mom this morning that there was no way she was going to make me come here. That's the last time that I say that to her."

I nodded my head in agreement.

"So nice to see you two again," Mrs. Johnson was beaming as she held the door open for us to come in.

We walked through the doorway and into the kitchen where we saw Charles sitting at the table stuffing his mouth with cereal. The milk was running down both sides of his chin.

"What are you two doing here?" Charles said, looking up. His spoon plopped into the cereal bowl and milk splashed everywhere.

"Charles, sweetie, Kevin and Jason are here to play with you this morning," Mrs. Johnson got a rag and started wiping up milk off the refrigerator, "Now go on and show them your room."

The hallway to Charles' room was filled with pictures of him as a baby, as a toddler, all the way to a recent one of him on his bicycle. I wasn't sure, his hand was partially hidden by the handle bars, but it looked like he was giving the camera the bird. Of course, in all the pictures except for when he was a baby, he was wearing black.

We walked through the hallway and into the den where all the furniture was covered with see-through plastic. A parrot squawked noisily in a cage by the window and Charles threw a pillow at it.

Charles hadn't said a word yet. He yanked open his bedroom door and threw his body on the bed, looking at us sullenly as we surveyed his bedroom.

"So, I suppose my mom asked you two to come over?" Charles asked, breaking the silence in his usual nasal tone.

"Well, it was your mother's idea that we come over," I told him, picking up a basketball, "But she is not the real reason that we are over here."

"Yeah," agreed Jason, who was looking at some posters on the wall, "Our moms made us come."

I would have tried to make a basket into the net that was on the door but there was a gorilla with the suffing coming out of it's neck already in the net hanging upside-down. Below the basketball net was a picture of an old lady taped to the door.

"Is that your grandmother?" I asked, thinking that Charles coldn't be all bad if he kept a picture of his grandmother in his room.

"Yeah," said Charles, looking at the picture. He got up and walked to the other side of the room. He picked up a couple of darts off his dresser and threw them at the picture. One dart landed right on her nose, "I hate her."

I thought about asking why he hated his grandmother but then I stopped myself when I realized I didn't care. I was only going to be here for a short period of time and then I wouldn't have to ever see Charles again.

Charles threw himself back on the bed. He watched us again, in silence. I looked around the room some more. This kid has everything, I thought, feeling a slight pang of jealousy as I looked at two TV's sitting against tne wall. Not to mention a VCR, a computer, and a stereo system against another wall.

"Why do you have two TV's?" I asked Charles.

"Mom doesn't want me to get bored," came the sullen reply.

"Speaking of that, do you want to do anything?" Jason asked. Charles' room was full of neat stuff, surprisingly, but it was stifling hot in there and we couldn't wait to get outside to some fresh air.

"Like what?" Charles said, unhelpfully.

I couldn't think of anything inside or outside that I wanted to do with Charles.

My eyes for some reason felt drawn up to the ceiling. It was covered with posters. There were gory and grotesque posters plastered all over the ceiling--all advertising horror movies. I hadn't seen any of these movies. Mom wouldn't have let me and I really hadn't wanted to see them. Somehow, I wouldn't have been surprised if Charles had seen them all and knew their stories by heart. I turned to him to ask him if he had seen them all when my eyes were diverted by a pile of flowers in the corner of his room.

They weren't real flowers I decided upon closer examination. They were wreaths full of plastic flowers and leaves. Some of the wreaths were red and white and others were yellow and blue. One wreath was on a metal stand that had a wide ribbon over the front of it. The words "RIP" were written across it. This was just too weird. Why was Charles collecting funeral wreaths?

I decided I really didn't want to ask him and walked across the room toward Jason who was examining a giraffe that had lost it's head and had been placed in a rocking chair.

"What's in there?" I asked curiously, motioning to a door next to me that had a huge, black poster on it. Only Charles would have a poster that was all black. Above the poster was a sign that read KEEP OUT.

"Why don't you open the door and find out for yourself?" Charles challenged me.

I knew it was probaby his closet but, knowing Charles, I was sure that it wouldn't be an ordinary closet. But then again, I thought to myself, maybe Charles does just keep his shoes in there and his black shirts and his black pants.

I slowly opened the door. The closet was empty except for a coat hanger. Five Barbie dolls were hung from the coat hanger by their necks with strings. The dolls were covered from head to toe with red paint that was still wet. The paint dripped to the floor with an occasional plop and a red pool was slowly forming on the floor. The dolls made a grisly sight as they grinned at me from beneath the coating of red and gently swayed on the coat hanger. It looked like a scene from a horror movie. I slammed the closet door shut.

"What's wrong?" asked Jason when he saw the horrified look on my face.

I turned around and looked at Charles. He was still laying on his bed. He gave me a strange smile and crossed his hands behind his head. I tried to think of something to say to Charles or to Jason but my mind was frozen and so was my mouth. I opened it but nothing would come out of it.

Jason had to look now. He opened the closet door and peeked inside. He slammed the door shut also and looked at me with a look of disbelief on his face.

"I don't want to know, I just don't want to know," He stammered, backing away from the closet door.

"Well, Charles," I said hastily, "It's been fun but I've got to go now. I just remembered I have an appointment with my real estate agent."

"Yeah, me too," Jason repeated as he followed close behind me. We practically tripped over each other as we raced to the door of the bedroom, and flung it open. We passed Mrs. Johnson who was trying to catch the parrot that had flown free from it's fallen cage in the den.

"Why--" We never let her finish her question. Jason and I ran out of the house like it was on fire. We got on our bikes and headed for home at a breakneck speed.

Halfway home we started laughing so hard we had to stop our bikes.

"What is it with that kid?" I asked, trying to catch my breath.

"He's nuts," Jason was laughing so hard he couldn't stand up straight, "If that's what he keeps in his closet, I wonder what he has under his bed."

We began rolling around in the grss, holding our stomachs and laughing so hard that I started to get a stomach ache and Jason said he had to use the bathroom.

When I got home Mom asked me why I had left Charles' house so early. I told her about Charles' bedroom and what I had seen in his closet. Mom had a strange, puzzled look on her face when I told her about the dolls. She never made me go over to his house again and she never said he was just different again, either. Charles, she and I both knew, was more than just different.

Go back to Chapter 4
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Go back to Chapter 2
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Go to Chapter 16