Is Anybody There? Read Online Free PDF Page A

and help me eat it?”
    What was this? Be nice to Caroline’s boy?
    “Thanks,” I said, “but I have leftovers that I have to use. Good leftovers,” I added. It really bugged me that he knew I hate anchovies. Mom must have told him that, along with everything else. Talk about a guy’s privacy! Or he just guessed. Maybe everybody in the world hates anchovies.
    “Whatever.” Nick didn’t seem disappointed. “I’m going to cut the grass now, so it will look good for Christmas.”
    “OK. I’ll open the garage door for you.”
    I went back into the house and through to the garage, and pushed the wall button that lifts the heavy door. The center light came on automatically too, the way it does.
    I watched while Nick wheeled out the mower, filled the tank with gas, and started the motor. I really couldn’t understand why I suddenly had the urge to grab a rake and go work with him. If he were my Dad that’s what I’d do. It would be nice, cutting the grass in neat little stripes, stopping to horse around a bit, throw grass at each other, stuff like that.
    I dropped the sheet over Mom’s bike and left the door open so Nick could put the mower back when he finished.
    That wasn’t till after six.
    The pizza van came and I saw Nick take the big, white box and run up the stairs and back down with money for the delivery guy. I watched him put the mower away and heard the door hiss closed.
    I took the meat loaf from the fridge. It seemed to have shrunk. Had we really eaten so much last night? Robbie says in his house things shrink overnight because his dad likes to sneak out of bed for a midnight snack. Mom doesn’t do that. I don’t either. I was still staring at the meat loaf when the phone rang.
    “Is Anjelica still there?” Robbie whispered.
    “She didn’t come.”
    “Shoot! I thought you’d have great things to tell me.”
    “Yeah, sure,” I said sarcastically.
    “You sound in a great mood,” Robbie said. “You’re disappointed, that’s what. You’re bummed out because you
like
Anjelica Trotter and she didn’t come.”
    “I am
not
!?
    He was still saying “Anjelica Trotter, Anjelica Trotter” as I banged down the phone.
    Grief! It was seven o’clock. Pretty soonMom would be home and I’d been OK, not nervous about being alone or anything. Big deal. Well, it was a big deal, considering the missing-key thing. Of course Nick had been outside just about the whole time. Did he and Mom arrange that? Had he told her about yesterday and how he’d had to search the house because I thought I heard something? And then, last night, had he told Mom, “Don’t worry, Caroline. I’ll be right there outside, where he can see me”?
    Naw. Mom would know I’d hate that.
    I waited to eat till she came home, and then we watched TV for a while and went to bed early. If Mom noticed that I took the blackthorn stick with me, she didn’t say.
    Something wakened me in the night. I didn’t think it was a noise because I can sleep through anything. I even slept through one of our earthquakes once, or I would have if Dad hadn’t scooped me up. I remember everything tilting around us and the way he’d staggered and that I’d laughed.
    I lay in bed wondering what could have wakened me now. It must have been a dream. I couldn’t remember dreaming, but my heartwas suddenly doing that loud, bumpy thing again.
    I sat up and listened to the silence. Nothing. My room wasn’t that dark and I could see all its comfortable, familiar outlines. I knew I should get up and check around the house. But I didn’t want to. I should at least look in Mom’s room and make sure she was OK.
    I reached under the bed for the stick and went barefoot from my room. Mom sleeps with her door slightly open. I pushed it wider and peered in. Her miniblinds were half raised, the window partway open. It’s fixed so the opening’s too small for anyone to take off the screen and crawl in. By the paleness of moonlight I could see her in the bed, the