Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

  The phone rings. Billy shouts, "Nora, it's Ellie."

  I go downstairs. From the living room I hear a newscaster saying, "It's hard to believe something like this could happen in a peaceful suburban park."

  Without listening to more or taking a look at the TV screen, I drag the phone into the bathroom and shut the door.

  "It's me," Ellie says. Her voice is hoarse and low. "Did you watch the news on TV?"

  "No," I whisper.

  "Me either."

  We sit there connected by the telephone line, not speaking, just breathing.

  Ellie breaks the silence. "The police are interviewing everybody who was at the party last night," she tells me. "Why don't you come over tomorrow? We can be together when they come to my house."

  I hesitate. How can I tell Ellie I never want to come to her house again? I don't want to see Mrs. Boyd. I don't want to see the park. I want to go to some place I've never been, a place where nobody's friends are murdered.

  "What's wrong?" Ellie whispers in her sad, croaky voice. "Don't you want to come?"

  I swallow hard. I grip the receiver. My chest is so tight, I wonder if I'm about to have a heart attack. "I, um, I um, I mean I..." I wrap the telephone cord around my neck and wonder if it's possible to strangle yourself.

  "Nora, please come," Ellie begs. "I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm going crazy or something, like I could scream and scream and scream."

  I test the cord, pulling it a little tighter, but when it starts choking me, I let it go. "Me too. I feel the same way." It's true. Nothing will ever be normal again. Not me. Not Ellie. Not the Boyds or the Millers. Not Charlie or Paul or Walt.

  "So will you come?" Ellie asks.

  I nod slowly. "Yes," I say. "Yes. I'll come."

  "About ten?"

  "Yes."

  We sit silently again, breathing into the phone. Before, we've always had so much to talk about, interrupting each other, laughing, making jokes. Now I can't think of what to say. And neither can she.

  "It's awful here," Ellie says at last. "I can hear the Boyds crying right through the wall. Even Mr. Boyd. I heard Mrs. Boyd say, 'If only I hadn't let her walk to school with Cheryl. She didn't have any reason to go. Why didn't I say no?' Then Mr. Boyd said, 'You couldn't have known.' It was just like they were in our house."

  Ellie pauses, blows her nose, draws a deep breath. "I tried watching TV but then the news came on and it's the big story. Reporters are all over the place, knocking on doors, asking questions. Even now, even when it's dark. They wanted to talk to the Boyds but Mr. Boyd slammed the door in their faces. So did my father. Oh, why did it happen, Nora, why?"

  I clutch the phone tighter. I don't know what to say.

  "How could Buddy have done it?" Ellie's voice rises. "Why didn't God stop him, kill him or something before he could..."

  "I hate him, I hate, I hate him." I'm not sure if I'm talking about Buddy or God.

  "I wish he was dead." Ellie's voice sinks to a whisper. "If I had a gun, I'd shoot him."

  "Me too. He deserves to die like they did." I picture Cheryl and Bobbi Jo walking across the ball field, swinging their purses. What had they been talking about? Probably the party. Maybe Cheryl was telling Bobbi Jo that Ralph wants to fix her up with somebody, they' ll go to Top's Drive-In and have milk shakes so thick, you can't suck them through a straw.

  Then they come to the woods. The path is shady, narrow, winding through the trees. Birds sing. There's no warning, no time to run. Bang, bang, bang And they're gone, just like that. Life is over. Done. Finished. Bang.

  "I'm so scared," Ellie whispers. "I can't stop thinking we could be dead too. That stupid pin saved our lives."

  I press the cold metal receiver against my ear and remember Ellie fumbling with the flower pin. Such a little thing.

  Dead, we could be dead. Dead. Dead. I let the word roll round in my head, hoping it will lose its meaning, become a sound signifying nothing. Dead, dead, dead. I can't make it lose its meaning. It's a dark hole in the world.

  Just then Billy knocks on the bathroom door. "Hey, I need to get in there."

  I tell Ellie I'll see her tomorrow and hang up. When I open the bathroom door, I get a dirty look from Billy.

  "Just because something bad happened doesn't mean you can stay in the bathroom all night," he says in his whiny half-changed stupid boy voice.

  I ignore him and go up to my room. I lie in bed in the dark and think about Cheryl and Bobbi Jo. What's it like to die? Does it hurt? Do you know what's happening? Where are they now? Are they in heaven? Or are they just gone?

  Nora's Dream

  Friday, June 15 Night

  IT'S dark and Ellie and I are in the woods, down by the stream. Moonlight puddles the shadows with splashes of silver. We look up and just where the moon shines brightest we see Cheryl and Bobbi Jo. They're wearing what they'd had on when they stopped at Ellie's house before ... before they—And they're covered with blood, their skin, their hair, their clothes, and they come closer, so close we can see the bullet holes. And they say together, "It was Buddy, he killed us, he killed us, don't let him say he didn't. He did it, he shot us, and now we're dead."

  They're holding hands and they're crying. Ellie reaches out to Bobbi Jo, but they step back, fading slowly into the shadows.

  "Tell the police, make them believe you" is the last thing they say.

  Part Three

  Nothing Will Ever Be the Same

  The Long Way to Ellie's House

  Saturday, June 16

  Nora

  I WAKE up shaking. My heart pounds. This isn't the kind of dream where you say Thank God it's not true. Not this time. This time the dream is true. Cheryl and Bobbi Jo are dead. And I have to go to Ellie's house and be interviewed by the police.

  The sun shines through the white ruffled curtains. It slants across the flowered wallpaper and lingers on the collection of china dogs I've kept on my bureau since I was little, the blue Eastern High pennant tacked to my wall, posters from school dances nobody asked me to, pictures cut from movie magazines. A picture of Jesus hangs between James Dean and Elvis Presley. He's pointing to his heart, which glows under his robe. His face is long and sad, his hand graceful.

  Why didn't he stop Buddy?

  My closet door is open and I see my clothes, skirts and blouses and dresses all crammed together, a crinoline peeking out, belts and shoes on the floor. My bureau drawers are stuffed with underwear and socks and pajamas and jeans and shorts, my diary hidden among them, buried deep. My desk is littered with art supplies and drawing tablets and a stack of paperback mysteries.

  The clothes I wore yesterday lie in a heap on the floor. I'll never wear them again.

  Everything looks like it belongs to someone else, a girl I don't know anymore, a stranger.

  I smell coffee and bacon and glance at my clock. Ten of nine. Mom must have fixed breakfast for me. Daddy's at work. Billy's probably outside, celebrating summer with his friends, riding bikes or playing in the woods, the kind of stuff I used to do.

  I get up slowly, as stiff as an old lady, and pull on a pair of shorts and a blouse. I look for my sneakers and remember I left them at Ellie's. Under my bed, I find a pair of old white moccasins. Not much better than going barefoot, but they'll have to do. The soles of my feet are still sore from yesterday.

  I take my seat at the kitchen table, and Mom puts a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of me. I look at it as if it's food from outer space.

  "Eat," Mom says gently. "You didn't have dinner last night. Or lunch either."

  "I'm not hungry." I stare at the food. Cheryl and Bobbi Jo will never eat anything again.

  "Please, Nora." Mom's hand is on my shoulder, her face is sad. "I know how hard this is for you, but you have to eat."

  I nod and pick up my fork. You are not dead, I tell myself. Your mother is right. You have to eat.

  The eggs are moist, a little runny, and the bacon's limp and greasy, the way I like it. But not
today. It's an effort to chew and swallow without gagging. Mom stands by the sink watching me, so I eat. Her worry washes over me like cold rain.

  I choke down my vitamin pill with orange juice and glance at the clock, a black cat with a long tail that swings back and forth. Tick tock tick. I won it when the new shopping center opened a few years back. I'd been hoping for the fancy Schwinn bike, but Mom was pleased with the clock. It keeps good time, she says. It's almost ten already.

  "I have to go to Ellie's," I tell Mom. "The police want to question everyone who was at the party."

  She stares at me, suddenly tense. "Do you have to?"

  "I promised her."

  "But your father drove the car to work," she says. "I can't take you."

  "It's okay. I've walked plenty of times before." Including yesterday.

  "Don't go through the park," she says. "Promise."

  I shake my head. I'll never ever go through the park again. "He's still in jail, isn't he?"

  She nods and points to the paper she's been reading. Buddy's senior picture stares at me from the front page of the Morning Sun. He isn't smiling that smirky smile now, I think.

  "He's still a suspect," Mom says, "but he's passed two lie detector tests. I don't know how much longer they can hold him."

  I let her hug me and kiss me as if she's scared she'll never see me again. I tell her not to worry, I'll be careful. But I find myself looking back at my house as if I'm memorizing every shingle, the shape of the front porch, the dormer windows, the dogwood tree. As if I'll never see it again. You don't know if you'll come back, do you? You don't know when it's the last time you'll leave home.

  Before I've walked a block, sweat is trickling down my back. I feel every pebble through the thin soles of my moccasins.

  I pass the shopping center. Mrs. Beale, a woman I babysit for, stops me. "Oh, Nora," she says. "Did you know the girls who were murdered? Such a terrible thing." She's wide-eyed, excited. Something has happened in Elmgrove, we're on the news. TV, newspapers. Police in the park.

  I shake my head and study the beaded pattern on my moccasins. "Eastern's a big school," I say. "It's impossible to know everybody."

  "So sad," Mrs. Beale says. "They had their whole lives ahead of them. It's tragic, just tragic." Her eyes bore into me as if she knows I'm lying. I must know them. The school's not that big.

  How can I say yes, I know them? If I did, she'd ask more questions, she'd drill me, then she'd tell all her friends and neighbors what I said: "My babysitter knew those poor girls who were murdered in the park. She says the older one quarreled with her boyfriend. She thinks he killed her and the other girl, a younger girl who didn't even go to Eastern. She started crying while she told me about it. So sad. So tragic, their whole lives ahead of them..."

  I can hear her voice, see her eyes bright with importance. The others lean toward her, their faces sharp, their lips parted, eager to know more about the murder. Her little girls stand in the hall and listen to things they shouldn't hear.

  "Did you see the paper this morning?" Mrs. Beale goes on. "Front-page pictures of the girls and the park with a map showing where the bodies were found. The reporter seems to think the older girl's boyfriend did it. Did you know him? Sonny or Buddy or something? He's in police custody now—they're questioning him about the rifle. It hasn't been found yet."

  I shake my head, stunned by the information she's hurling at me. "He's a year ahead of me," I say. "He just graduated."

  "His picture chilled my soul," she goes on. "The smirk on his face, the look in his eyes, that awful pompadour. Typical juvenile delinquent, just the sort to kill his girlfriend."

  I shift my weight from one foot to the other. I feel the sidewalk's heat through the soles of my moccasins. "I don't know him. I don't know anything about him or what happened."

  "Well, take a look at the Sun," Mrs. Beale says. "The reporter interviewed lots of people in the neighborhood. Isn't it strange that no one heard the shots? All those houses and not one person called the police, not until that poor little boy's dog found the bodies. To think of something like that happening here. You're just not safe anywhere."

  I nod and try to edge away from her. I'm dizzy from the heat. Mrs. Beale shakes her head and tightens her grip on her purse. "Well, I have errands to run, Nora. You take care, now."

  I watch her head for the air-conditioned comfort of Walgreen's drugstore. Then I cut down a side street, hoping not to see anyone else.

  All the time I'm walking it's an effort. One foot forward, then the other, block after long hot block. I've never gone to Ellie's without cutting through the park.

  I see some kids I know a block ahead. Before they see me, I duck down another side street. This one leads uphill.

  The telephone poles smell like the boardwalk in Ocean City. Creosote, Dad says, a kind of black tarry gunk they use to waterproof wood. I wish I were in Ocean City. I wish I'd been at the beach when all this happened. Then I wouldn't be walking to Ellie's to be interviewed by the police. I'm too young for this. I'm just a kid, a child.

  I look at the houses on Tulip Avenue. A long line of brick ramblers, climbing the hill one after another. Each one has a picture window, sometimes to the right of the front door and sometimes to the left. Most have tidy green lawns and flower gardens and little bushes trimmed into balls. I spot garden gnomes, silvery glass globes, a miniature wooden lighthouse, birdhouses on poles, a pink flamingo. A few yards are patches of dirt where kids play with wagons and tricycles and toy trucks.

  In art class we studied vanishing point perspective. This street is a perfect example. The houses march into the distance, getting smaller and closer together as the street seems to narrow. If I lived on this street I'd vanish too. When I grow up I'll live in a city, a real city like New York.

  If I grow up, that is. For the first time I realize not everyone lives to grow up. I mean, I knew that before, but not like I know it now.

  Finally I cross Forty-Third Avenue and I'm in Ellie's neighborhood at last. I see news trucks and police cars in the park. I stare at my moccasins and walk fast, head down, and charge through Ellie's gate. I run up her sidewalk, taking care not to look at Bobbi Jo's house. Before I raise my hand to knock, the door opens and Ellie pulls me inside.

  "Where have you been? It's past eleven."

  "I took the long way. I didn't want to go through the park."

  Ellie nods. "I had a horrible dream last night," she whispers.

  "I did too." We stare at each other, wide-eyed.

  "I dreamed we saw Cheryl and Bobbi Jo in the woods and they told us Buddy killed them." Ellie's eyes fill with tears as she tells me this.

  I grab her arms. "I dreamed the exact same thing."

  Mrs. O'Brien finds us weeping in each other's arms. We tell her about our dreams and she turns pale. "My grandmother used to tell me stories of the dead coming back in dreams."

  She hugs me hard. "Oh, Nora, it's good to see you," she says, and I know she means I'm so glad you and Ellie aren't dead.

  I cling to her for a moment, taking in the smell of talcum powder and English Lavender soap, a familiar mother smell.

  "Sit down," she says. "You must be exhausted."

  I watch her fix a tall glass of ice water for me. I drink it so fast, I almost choke.

  The Detectives

  Saturday, June 16 11:30 A.M.

  Nora

  JUST as I've begun to chew up the ice cubes, there's a loud knock at the door. My heart catapults and I look at Ellie with dread. It has to be the police. We stay in the kitchen and let Mrs. O'Brien go to the door.

  Two detectives follow her back to the kitchen. Worried men in dark suits, red-faced from the heat.

  Mrs. O'Brien makes room for all five of us at the kitchen table. After the introductions, Lieutenant McCarthy says, "I know this is hard for you girls, but I have to ask you a few questions." His partner, Sergeant Carter, opens a notebook and thumbs to a blank page. Pen in hand, he waits for the interview to begin. br />
  The lieutenant takes our names and addresses and asks us to identify everyone who'd been at the party. The sergeant writes the names down, checking the spelling of each one. Then the lieutenant asks about Buddy. When did we notice he was there? What did he do or say when Ralph showed up and began dancing with Cheryl?

  "He was mad," I say. "He didn't like the way they were dancing. He said Cheryl was ... I mean, he thought she and Ralph were, well..." My face is getting hot with embarrassment. The kitchen fan whirs in the window, moving hot air around. I begin sweating. For some reason I feel like I did something against the law myself. And then I remember the beer and realize I did do something against the law.

  Ellie says, "They were dancing Baltimore-style—not the dirty boogie, just ... dancing."

  "It made Buddy mad." Suddenly I remember his exact words. "He said he could kill her."

  The detectives look at each other. "You're sure he said that?"

  I nod. "He was sitting right next to me."

  I glance at Ellie and she nods. "Yes, he said that, he said he could kill her, I heard him, too."

  "Later," I say, "when him and Ralph almost got into a fight, he said if she died tomorrow he wouldn't care."

  Ellie nods her head again. Her ponytail bounces. "I heard that, too."

  We go on telling the story of Buddy. "He used to hit her," Ellie says. "He gave her a black eye once. Her parents told him to stay away from her."

  "But he was always following her around," I say, "trying to get her to go out with him."

  "She was scared to go places by herself," Ellie added. "She hated him, but he wouldn't leave her alone."

  The sergeant writes down everything we say, sometimes asking us to repeat something to make sure he has it right.

  "Did you see Cheryl or Bobbi Jo talking to anyone else that night?" the lieutenant asks.

  "There was a boy," I say, "but I couldn't see his face."

  "He was bothering them," Ellie adds.

  "Was it Buddy?"