Paula Morris (6 page)

When the box was stashed in the corner, next to a dusty plaid
suitcase that looked as though it had been there since 1962, Rebecca lay on her
back for a moment, worn out. Aurelia sat down, too, picking at the fluff of an
insulation pad.

"Guess what?" She looked at Rebecca and then glanced
away again. "I know where Helena and her friends are going tonight."

Rebecca closed her eyes.

"I don't care about them, Relia. They're just mean snobs who
need to get out of this town and get a clue." What was the point in
knowing where Helena conducted her social life? It would just be another place
for Rebecca to get snubbed or looked down on. She'd had enough of
"Them" at school today.

"Not just Helena -- boys as well. The ones from St.
Simeon's." Aurelia lowered her voice and leaned toward Rebecca. "They
go to the cemetery."

"Really?" This wasn't what Rebecca was expecting to
hear.

"Last Friday, I woke up in the middle of the night because I
could hear people laughing outside. And then I thought I heard Marilyn cry, the
way she does when she's caught something she wants to show me. Sometimes it's a
bird, sometimes a rat. So I got up to look for her and ... and ..."

Rebecca opened her eyes and gazed up at Aurelia: Her cousin was
almost too excited to speak.

"And what happened?"

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"I went to the front parlor and looked out the window. They
were at the cemetery gates -- Helena and some other girls and all these boys.
They had a key for the gates. Helena was acting like a big phony, because she
was pretending it was cold when it wasn't cold at all. She was shivering and
jumping up and down until one of the boys put his school blazer around her
shoulders. I don't know why she did that."

"She's a fake," said Rebecca, wondering how they got a
key for the cemetery gate and what they got up to inside -- drinking, probably.

"I think it was Anton Grey," Aurelia continued.
"Everyone loves him the best. Claire wants to marry him, and I bet Helena
does, too."

"Come on," said Rebecca, smiling at her. Presumably this
Anton Grey was Claire's local Marc Antony substitute. "Let's go back
downstairs before your mother gets home."

"Maybe they'll be back tonight," Aurelia whispered.
"You can see for yourself, if you don't mind staying up really late and
sneaking around the house in the dark."

That night, after everyone was in bed, Rebecca lay wide awake. It
should be cold this time of year, she thought, but instead the night was almost
sultry, too warm for sleeping. Her mind was whirring: She'd told Aurelia she
wasn't interested in what Helena and her gang got up to in the cemetery, but
Rebecca couldn't help wondering why the group chose there, of all places, to
hang out. Her aunt had told her that the cemetery was dangerous and that it was
locked every night, but rules didn't seem to apply to Helena, Marianne, and the
other Patricians.

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Rebecca tried closing her eyes and willing herself to go to sleep,
and then she heard something outside the house -- a surge of voices, the sound
of not-too-distant laughter. She pushed off her bedclothes and glanced at her
bedside clock: It was nearly midnight. Maybe the noise was just some neighbors
coming home from a party, but there was no harm in checking. She opened her
door carefully, so it didn't squeak, and tiptoed down the hallway to the room
they called the parlor.

Aunt Claudia had been in bed for over an hour -- Rebecca had heard
her shuffle around as usual and the click of her door closing. Rebecca didn't
want to wake up her aunt and have to answer questions about what she was up to.
Not that her aunt was mean in any way: She'd been nothing but warm and kind all
week, and Rebecca was already feeling guilty about removing the voodoo
ornaments from her walls. Aunt Claudia seemed to be a good-hearted person,
despite her many eccentricities, her odd choice in home furnishings, and her
paranoia about unseen dangers.

In the parlor, transformed by the darkness into an obstacle course
of sharp-edged furniture and dangerously teetering knickknacks, Rebecca pulled
one curtain back far enough to peep out. She caught her breath: Just as Aurelia
had said, a group of teenagers was gathered by the Sixth Street cemetery gate.
Although none of them was wearing the school uniform, she recognized the four
girls in the group from school -- Helena, Marianne, and two other junior girls
who were part of Helena's "Them" coterie.

Three boys were there, too, one of whom was already at the gate,
rattling its bars and making the others laugh;

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another balanced a carton of beer on his head. The third boy, the
tallest of them all, seemed to be the one with the key. He waited until the
others moved out of the way, then he clicked open the padlock and dragged out
the chain holding the gates together. The group disappeared into the walled
confines of the cemetery.

They'd left the gate ajar, Rebecca noticed, and in an instant made
up her mind: She was going to sneak in and spy on them. Why not? She'd never
been someone who scared easily, and anyway, if the cemetery was full of real
dangers or horrific sights, snooty girls like Helena and Marianne would keep a
mile away from it. Back in her bedroom, Rebecca pulled on sweatpants and her
hoodie, quietly digging out her running shoes and slipping her house key into
her pocket. It would be better if she had a flashlight, but her eyes would adjust
to the gloom, she decided.

As Rebecca drew open the front door, Marilyn whooshed past her,
streaking down the porch steps and out the front gate. The night was cloudy: It
was hard to make out the moon and the stars, and Rebecca had to squint to see
where Marilyn was headed. No surprise -- the cat was darting through the open
gates of the cemetery. All Rebecca had to do was follow her lead.

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***

CHAPTER SIX

***

AS SHE STEPPED THROUGH THE UNLOCKED CEMetery gates, Rebecca
swallowed hard. She'd come this far -- she
had
to go on. The cemetery
was pitch-black and eerie. The huge tombs with their towering urns and crosses
-- visible from the Verniers' house in daylight, just indistinct menacing
shapes in the darkness -- loomed over her. The place seemed like a scaled-down
city in a blackout, with too many confusing alleys. Its pathways were dark
tunnels, leading in every direction. She couldn't see or hear the group she'd
followed: They'd left the central path and disappeared down one of the alleys.
It was almost as though the cemetery had swallowed them up.

A sudden movement near her feet startled her, and it was all
Rebecca could do not to shriek. Marilyn brushed against Rebecca's leg, giving
her usual plaintive meow. When the cat trotted away down one of the overgrown
pathways, Rebecca decided to keep following her. Marilyn was one of the
cemetery's daily denizens: Maybe she knew where Helena and Co.

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were hiding out. Anything was better than just standing at the
entrance, not knowing what to do next.

Marilyn didn't stick to the path, so neither did Rebecca, tripping
over stairs, raised edges, and cracked paving stones, doing her best not to
fall down or cry out. Before long her eyes started focusing a little, so she
stopped banging into things so much, and soon she could hear something more
than the whispering breeze -- the affected, tinkly laugh of one of the girls.
Rebecca slowed her pace, gingerly making her way closer to the source of the
sound. As she got closer, she heard the clink of bottles and one of the boys
talking in a loud voice. When Rebecca was close enough to glimpse the top of
someone's head, she ducked behind a giant boxlike grave. They mustn't see her:
That
would be the worst possible thing.

Rebecca crawled around in the shadows until she found a vantage
point, squeezed between two tombs, that seemed relatively safe. The group was
sprawled around the steps of a particularly imposing vault, one with intricate
decorations -- carved wreaths of ivy, as far as Rebecca could make out -- and
the name GREY etched into its central arch. Flickering candles stuck in empty
wine bottles, rivulets of wax running down the glass, gave the scene a ghostly
glow.

Three of the girls sat encircling the shortest of the boys; his
face was animated, and he was speaking very quickly, despite the girls'
constant interruptions and questions, about plans for something ... maybe the
next Septimus parade. Rebecca could only catch snatches of the conversation,
talk of new "throws" and costumes. Carnival was three months away,
she thought: Didn't these kids have anything else to

51

think about? A second boy, beefy and redheaded, was trying to
juggle two empty beer bottles. Helena sat a short distance from the rest, a
flirtatious smirk on her face, fingering a silver cigarette lighter that the
tall, dark-haired boy had handed to her.

Rebecca couldn't help staring at the dark-haired boy. His face was
angular, and though he was tall, he didn't seem gawky or clumsy. Even in the
semidarkness, she could tell he was better looking than the other two boys, and
there wasn't any arrogance in his expression. In fact, he seemed quite
preoccupied, leaning back against the neighboring tomb, staring off into space.
Every few minutes he took a swig from a bottle of beer. She wondered if this
was the famous Anton Grey, the one Claire was in love with: This had to be his
family's tomb. It was a weird place to hang out, Rebecca thought, but then,
these were weird kids.

"Yo, check this out!" The beefy kid threw the two empty
beer bottles high into the air and managed to catch just one; the other smashed
into pieces on the concrete ground.

"God, Toby!" hissed Marianne. "You're so
immature."

Rebecca grinned. The wannabe juggler was Toby, Marianne's brother.
Amy and Jessica were right: He
was
ugly and mean.

"Let me try with this," he said, grabbing at the silver
cigarette lighter in Helena's hand. Rebecca, crouching low in her hiding place,
couldn't see what happened next, but she could tell that Toby and Anton were
having some kind of scuffle. No wonder, she thought: If Toby was ready to burn
down the school library, he wouldn't think twice about setting fire to the
bushes in a cemetery.

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"Don't touch it again," Anton snapped.

"I know, I know," said Toby, his voice mocking.
"It's
a. family heirloom.
Chill out!"

"Hey, look!" said one of the girls -- her name was Julie
Casworth Young, Rebecca remembered. Amy had said that all the younger girls at
school who idolized her, copying her hairstyle and buying the same bag, always
referred to her as J.C. "It's that cute kitty again."

Marilyn had materialized out of the darkness, brushing against
Anton's legs. Rebecca held her breath, hoping that Marilyn didn't bound over and
reveal her hiding place. But before Marilyn could wander off again, Toby
reached down and grabbed the cat. He raised her aloft, laughing maniacally, and
then dangled her over one of the lit candles. Marilyn wriggled and meowed, her
eyes glinting in the dark. Julie and Marianne were protesting, telling Toby to
leave the cat alone, but Toby kept swinging Marilyn's writhing little body over
the naked flame. Rebecca was so enraged she wanted to jump to her feet and
smack Toby in the mouth. She didn't want these idiots to know she was spying on
them, but Marilyn's snowy paws were dipping closer and closer to the flame:
What was Rebecca going to do? Just watch?

"Cut it out," said Anton, and he shoved Toby so hard the
redheaded boy staggered backward, dropping Marilyn. The scared cat shot away,
speeding straight toward Rebecca's hiding place and managing, somehow, despite
the tight space, to zoom past. Rebecca lost her balance, falling from her
wobbly crouch onto the soft ground. Inadvertently, she gasped and then held her
breath again, worried that she'd be found out.

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"What was that?" This was Helena's voice, edgy and
high-pitched. "Did anyone else hear that?"

"Did you lock the gate behind us?" Marianne asked.

"I thought so, but maybe not," Anton replied. "I'll
go check."

He sloped away along the cracked concrete path. A wave of red-hot
panic swept through Rebecca: She had to get back to the gate before Anton,
otherwise she'd be locked in. The walls were too high to climb and -- unlike
Marilyn -- she wasn't tiny enough to squeeze through the bars of the gate. But
how would she find her way back through this maze of tombs?

She scrambled away as quietly as she could and as quickly as she
dared, trying to remember the circuitous route she'd taken on the way in. Nothing
seemed familiar in this confusing forest of stone; every one of these grand
tombs looked and felt the same. Rebecca kept running, stumbling over broken
slates, stubbing her toes on tree roots, but somehow managing to keep her
balance. Yet there was no escaping the fact that she was lost. She had no idea
if she was running in the right direction.

The cemetery's main path was shaped like a cross, each branch
leading to a gate: What if she got completely disoriented and ended up at the
wrong one? Anton was following the path, and he'd been here before. He was sure
to reach the right gate before her. Rebecca would have to spend a miserable
night alone in the cemetery and wait for the caretaker to unlock it in the
morning. By then her aunt would have discovered she was missing, called the
police, called her father ... she would be in
so
much trouble.