Is Anybody There? Read Online Free PDF

dark spread of her hair across the pillow.
    I checked the front door. It was locked, with the chain safely in place. The back door to the garage was locked. The stick felt good, heavy and knobby in my hand, as I switched on lights and went room to room. Nobody there. Except for Mom and me, the house was empty.
    I went back to bed and tried to remember what dream I’d had that had woken me up andset me off like that. My feet were so cold that I had to get back out and grab some socks and put them on to warm up. Sometime later, still listening, I fell asleep.
       The patter of Mom’s shower woke me up in the morning, and by the time I’d yawned my way into the kitchen she had coffee made and was dressed for work.
    “I meant to be up early,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I meant to fix your breakfast.”
    Mom dropped a kiss on the top of my head.
    “I heard you in the bathroom last night,” she said.
    “Yeah. I was up,” I said uneasily. If I told her about that night prowling, she’d be sure to have me go next door today or, heaven forbid, arrange something with our famous paying tenant.
    “Don’t forget we have a date tonight,” she said. “You’re meeting me after work.”
    “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t forget.”
    “What else are you doing, Marcus?”
    “Robbie and I are going along Lake Avenue. It’s the Merchants’ Christmas Fair with all those free cookies and punch and stuff.”
    “Good. And if you need anything, you can run next door.” For a minute I thought she
was
going to add “or up to Nick’s,” but our eyes met and she didn’t add anything.
    After she left I sat thinking. It was funny that she’d heard me last night when I’d been so quiet. And that she’d thought she heard me in the bathroom when I hadn’t been in the bathroom at all. …

CHAPTER
6
    I called Henry’s Bike Shop just before I went out to wait for Robbie, but Mom’s darn Campies hadn’t come in yet. I was glad I wasn’t going to be hanging around the house all day alone worrying about them—and other things. Robbie’s a good person to be with if you don’t want to worry.
    He and I walked along Lake Avenue in the sunshine, sampling the free this and the free that. Free popcorn in little paper pokes. Free candy canes. Free mulled cider from what the lady in the long frilly dress called the wassail bowl.
    “You boys aren’t driving, are you?” the lady asked, acting as though she thought we might have been. When we told her no, she filled our glasses a second time. “I’m onlykidding,” she said. “There’s no alcohol in this.” She took a glass for herself. “It’s awfully hot for this dress.”
    “You look very nice though,” Robbie said, super politely. Robbie is real smooth, and I could tell the lady was pleased.
    “Why thank you, young man,” she said, filling our glasses a third time.
    We moseyed on.
    There was a Santa Claus in front of just about every shop, and there were carolers in ski caps and scarves and mittens, carrying lighted red candles in candlesticks.
    “Hey look!” I gave Robbie a dig. “It’s the Pacific High School chorus! The ones who sang at school.”
    We squirmed to the front of the small crowd and wiggled our fingers at the chorus in a friendly way. They were finishing the last jolly line of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the one that tells how Rudolph will go down in history, and were starting to straggle on to their next stop when Robbie tugged on the arm of one of the guys. He was wearing a red-and-white scarf, so long you could have used it to lasso mustangs. It was the singerwith the mustache, the one who’d been in the front line of the chorus.
    “Remember us?” Robbie asked. “You sang in our cafetorium.”
    “Yeah, sure.” The guy stared at us blankly. Then he grinned and pointed at me with his mittened fingers. “I remember
you.
You were sitting next to the girl with the blond hair. Kind of well built, for junior high. You know the