The Stepsister

  Emily didn’t believe her. “You pulled Max’s head off,” she said. For some reason it came out more like a question than an accusation.

  “No. It just came off in my hands,” Jessie insisted. “Really. I barely touched it. You do believe me, don’t you?” Her large blue eyes burned into Emily’s, as if challenging Emily to agree it was an accident.

  Emily didn’t reply.

  A shadow fell across the room. It was caused by clouds covering the sun outside the bedroom window. The room darkened so suddenly it gave Emily an eerie feeling. She had this strange sensation that Jessie had brought on the darkness. Emily shivered, suddenly chilled.

  It was a silly thought, of course. But the picture of Jessie in the darkened room sitting on Emily’s bed with Max torn in half on her lap would stay with Emily for a long, long time.

  The shadow lifted.

  “Hey, guys.” Nancy walked into the room. She was carrying a handful of cassettes. “How’s it going? Do you want these back, Em? I borrowed them last week and—”

  She stopped in midsentence. “Hey—what happened to Max?”

  “It was an accident. Really!” Jessie cried, sounding very defensive. She stood up quickly and walked over to Nancy, holding up the two teddy bear parts. “It just came off in my hands.” Jessie’s voice trembled.

  Nancy put the cassettes down on the desk and took the teddy bear from Jessie. “Maybe it can be sewn,” she said. She looked at Emily.

  “Maybe,” Emily said doubtfully.

  “Hey, your brother sure is quiet,” Nancy said to Jessie, deliberately changing the subject. She handed the teddy bear to Emily.

  “Tell me about it,” Jessie said dryly. “Rich is quiet, okay? But once you get to know him, he’s just about silent!”

  Nancy laughed. Jessie laughed at her own joke. Emily still didn’t feel like laughing.

  Jessie has a real mean streak, she thought. She’s only been here a few minutes, and she’s already putting down her brother.

  Then she realized that maybe she was being ridiculous. Jessie had just made a joke, after all. And maybe the teddy bear thing was an accident. Max had been practically falling apart for years. Here Emily was, thinking the worst about Jessie when she should have been trying to make her feel at home, feel like part of the family.

  She is part of the family now, Emily told herself. You’ve got to get along with Jessie.

  “It must be hard for Rich,” Emily said sympathetically. “Starting all over in a new school is rough.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jessie said with some bitterness. Then she laughed, a nervous laugh. “Rich is okay, I guess. He and I really don’t talk much. It’s hard to get close to him. He’s sort of in his own world. Always walking around with some creepy book in his hand. He must be the biggest Stephen King fan in the world. He even writes him letters.”

  The room darkened again. The sky outside the window was completely gray now. The colors in the room all seemed to fade into shades of gray.

  “I never liked Stephen King all that much,” Nancy said. “Of course now that I’m a senior, I don’t have time to read anything. Just schoolwork. And college applications, of course.”

  “Are you going out tonight?” Emily asked quickly. She didn’t want Nancy to get started on how hard it was being a senior and how much work she had to do. Nancy could talk for hours on that subject. It sometimes seemed to Emily that Nancy spent more time talking about how hard the work was than doing the work. And when she wasn’t complaining about all the homework, she was complaining about her social life. “Don’t you have a date with Gary Brandt?”

  “He called and broke the date,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “Said he had a cold. But he didn’t even have the decency to sniffle once or twice into the phone. I knew he wouldn’t show.” She picked up the cassettes and then let them drop one by one back onto the desk. “Let’s not bore Jessie with the details of my social life,” she said with a forced laugh. “It’s been such a mess ever since—”

  “I know, I know,” Emily groaned, rolling her eyes. “Ever since Josh broke up with you and started going out with me.”

  Jessie climbed to her feet, looking very uncomfortable. “Maybe I should go downstairs,” she said, looking first at Emily, then at Nancy. “If you two want to tear each other’s eyes out or something . . .”

  “No, no,” Emily said, jumping up too. “Nancy and I have been over this a thousand times.”

  “Two thousand,” Nancy said, brushing her copper hair back over her shoulder.

  She looks just like Mom when she does that, Emily thought.

  “Nancy, you know you couldn’t stand the sight of Josh anymore,” Emily said, wondering why she was bothering to defend herself again. “You told me you were going to break up with him, remember?”

  Nancy flushed. She seemed embarrassed to be discussing this in front of Jessie. “You’re right. You’re totally right, Em. In fact, I really don’t know what you see in him. He’s such a creep!” She laughed, trying to make it all sound like a joke. She turned to Jessie. “Josh’s idea of dressing up for a date is to turn his sweatshirt around so the dirty part is in back!”

  “Hey, that’s not fair!” Emily cried.

  Jessie and Nancy laughed.

  Why is she going into all this now? Emily wondered. Josh doesn’t mean anything to Nancy. She’s told me a million times that she doesn’t care that I’m dating him now.

  “I’m hungry. I’m going downstairs,” Nancy said, heading for the door. “You coming?”

  “Be down in a second,” Emily said, setting the two parts of the teddy bear down on the desk.

  “I like your sister,” Jessie said as soon as Nancy had gone downstairs. “She’s so pretty. Are you really dating her old boyfriend?”

  “They didn’t go together that long,” Emily said brusquely. She really wanted to drop the subject.

  “So, are we agreed?” Jessie asked. “I get the bed by the wall?”

  “Well . . .” It isn’t settled at all, Emily thought crossly. That’s my bed!

  “And can we move that night-table over to my side?” Jessie asked. Without waiting for a reply, she began tugging the night-table across the room.

  “I’ll have to empty it out for you,” Emily said quietly. Is Jessie trying to bully me? she wondered. Is she always going to have to get her way? Is she going to boss me around in my own house?

  It’s her house too, Emily reminded herself. It’s her house too—from now on. . . .

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Well, this is a real party!” Mrs. Wallner said, beaming happily from the head of the dining-room table. Mr. Wallner muttered agreement, a pleased smile on his usually dour face.

  Emily and Nancy had decorated the dining room, stringing crepe-paper streamers over the doorway and over the dark green wallpaper above the buffet, and hanging big cut-out letters spelling WELCOME over the double windows. Their mom had put a white linen tablecloth on the table, a special departure from the straw place mats they usually used. Two dozen pink and red roses in a big cut-glass vase served as a beautiful centerpiece. Emily couldn’t remember the old house ever looking this festive.

  “How about a toast?” she said, pouring some Coke into her glass, trying to forget about the unpleasantness upstairs and get into a party mood. She passed the big Coke bottle to Jessie.

  “Do you have any diet soda?” Jessie asked Mrs. Wallner. “This is just too fattening.”

  Mrs. Wallner gave Jessie a look of surprise. “Don’t tell me you worry about your weight, Jessie. If you got any skinnier, we wouldn’t be able to see you!”

  Mr. Wallner laughed loudly. “Jessie worries about everything,” he said, shaking his head. He turned to Rich at the end of the table. Rich hadn’t said a word. “How ya doin’, pal?” Mr. Wallner called down to him.

  “Okay,” Rich said with a shrug.

  “Why don’t you put that book down and have some cake,” Mr. Wallner suggested.

  “Okay,” Rich
said, closing his book.

  “Do you want ice cream with your cake?” Emily’s mom asked.

  Rich muttered something.

  “Speak up, Rich. Your words are falling right into your lap,” Mr. Wallner said.

  “Yes. Ice cream, please,” Rich replied, louder. His voice cracked on the word please.

  Mr. Wallner laughed at him. “You sound like a boy soprano!” he said.

  Rich turned bright red and lowered his eyes.

  “Stop picking on him, Daddy,” Jessie said sharply.

  “I’m not picking on him. I just made a joke,” Mr. Wallner said, stuffing a big forkful of the vanilla cake into his mouth and washing it down with a long swallow of coffee from his cup.

  “Some joke,” Rich muttered, still not raising his eyes.

  “What did you say? Are you muttering again?”

  “Give him a break, Daddy,” Jessie insisted shrilly.

  Rich pushed his chair back with a loud squeal and stood up awkwardly. “Can I just go upstairs and read?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He picked up the Stephen King book and, without looking at any of them, hurried out of the room.

  “Hey—what did I do?” Mr. Wallner asked, throwing up his hands, suddenly sounding very childish.

  “You’re always embarrassing him, Daddy,” Jessie said, frowning.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he replied with a mouthful of cake. “I’ll go upstairs and apologize after I finish my cake. This is supposed to be a party, after all.”

  “Should he be reading a book like that?” Emily’s mom asked, sounding concerned. “Pet Sematary is supposed to be pretty gruesome, isn’t it?”

  “He loves Stephen King,” Jessie told her.

  “He’s a real bookworm,” Mr. Wallner said, pouring more coffee into his cup. “Not like his old dad. I don’t think I’ve picked up a book since high school.”

  Emily glanced over at Nancy, who returned her look. Both girls were thinking the same thing: That’s nothing to brag about. Both girls were also thinking how different Mr. Wallner was from their father.

  Emily looked at him, sitting at the table in his oversize, yellow sleeveless T-shirt and baggy, brown slacks with their attached elastic belt, and thought of how well dressed her father had always been. Dan Casey had been a pediatrician. He had always worn dark, serious suits with starched white shirts and conservative ties. He had been very young-looking—he had barely looked older than his twenties—and dressed to make himself look older so that the parents who brought their children to him would feel more confident.

  Her father, Emily remembered, had read two or three books a week, books of all kinds, which he liked to discuss with his two daughters. He would never have bragged about not having picked up a book in years.

  How could Mom have married someone so different from Daddy? Emily asked herself. Mr. Wallner was a manager in a furniture factory. He didn’t even wear a tie to work!

  Mom had been so lonely, Emily thought. Maybe she just settled.

  She tried not to think about that terrible day on the lake. But she couldn’t keep the memories away. It was as if they had a life of their own. Emily could be in school, taking an exam, or at a movie, or on a date, or sitting at the dining-room table as she was now, and the memories would flood back to her, forcing her to relive the horror again . . . and again.

  Her dad had loved to camp out. The whole family did. Sometimes they wouldn’t even wait for the warm weather to come. They’d load the station wagon with equipment and drive off to a state park or a nearby forest area and spend the weekend roughing it in the bright blue canvas tents Mr. Casey kept in the garage.

  That weekend they’d been camping on Fear Island, the small, uninhabited, wooded island in the center of the lake across from the Fear Street woods. The weather was exhilaratingly brisk, to say the least. A strong gusting wind made the normally calm lake waters toss and tumble into white, frothy waves.

  The tents flapped noisily in the wind. It was hard to get the campfire lit, and once lit the flames darted out in all directions, pushed by the shifting winds.

  The air smelled so piney and fresh. Even Nancy, who had to be dragged along because she had to cancel a date with Josh, was cheered by the beauty of the woods, the excitement of being the only people for miles around.

  Why had Emily and her father been in the powerboat?

  Her memories of that terrible day were so vivid. But for some reason she couldn’t remember getting into the boat, couldn’t remember where they were headed, why they had decided to battle the choppy, wind-tossed waters.

  Maybe that was the reason. Maybe Emily and her dad had just wanted to challenge the wind, challenge the rolling, dark waves. Maybe they had done it for the excitement. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  She remembered Nancy and her mom waving to them from the wooded shore. She remembered them as tiny, light figures against the dark, bending trees. She remembered the roar of the small outboard motor, the bobbing of the boat, the funny weak feeling in her knees. And she remembered how cold it was, the wet spray on her face, her dark hair so wet, flying back against her shoulders, flying in the wind.

  She turned to see her father, who smiled at her, his hand on the control. Drops of water trickled down the front of his blue down vest. She could see them so clearly. The outboard motor roared. The little boat seemed to fly over the tumultuous waters. It was such a wonderful feeling. The two of them were enjoying it so much.

  It all turned to horror so quickly.

  Emily was handing the thermos to her dad. The hot coffee had tasted delicious. Her hand was wet. The thermos slid away from her, into the water.

  Without thinking, her dad reached for it.

  The wind came up, such a strong, sudden wind.

  It felt as if the world were turning upside down.

  It took a few seconds for Emily to realize that the boat was capsizing.

  The frozen water didn’t make it any more real. It was all like a dream, a strange, frightening dream.

  She remembered thinking, This can’t really be happening.

  She went under. Forcing herself back up to the surface gave her time to realize what was happening.

  “Daddy! Daddy—where are you?”

  A wave slapped her hard. She started to choke.

  The overturned boat bobbed a few yards away. She swam for it, was pushed back, swam harder, still sputtering.

  “Daddy—where are you?”

  She grabbed the boat. It was so slippery, but somehow she managed to hold on. Another gust of wind sent the waters high. She gripped the boat bottom with both hands.

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Where was he?

  She turned and looked behind her. She looked all around.

  Was he swimming back toward the island?

  It was a low, dark line against the gray sky.

  “Daddy? Where are you, Daddy?”

  He wouldn’t swim away and leave her.

  The island was too far to swim to, especially against the current.

  Where was he?

  She remembered the panic. It filled her chest, made it hard to breathe.

  The panic spread over her entire body, froze her there, clinging hard to the overturned boat.

  It seemed like hours.

  It must have been only seconds.

  And then she saw him.

  He floated slowly past her, face down, his light brown hair floating on the surface of the water like seaweed.

  Chapter

  3

  Gone Forever

  “I’ve got to get off the phone, Josh. Mom’s calling me down for dinner.” Emily twisted her fingers in the white phone cord. She had been lying on her back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, but now she pulled herself up and prepared to hang up the phone.

  “Yeah. Okay. Come over later,” she said, hearing water running in the bathroom and figuring it must be Jessie. “But give me time to finish writing my report. I’ve got about another hour to g
o on it.”

  Josh had already finished the paper he was working on, of course. Mister Super-Speed. If he didn’t finish an assignment two or three days early, he thought he was slipping. It drove Emily crazy. She was a hard worker, but she always had to work right down to the last minute.

  “Yeah, it’s going pretty well with Jessie,” she said, lowering her voice. “I really can’t talk now. She’s right across the hall in the bathroom. Yeah. Yeah. We haven’t really talked much. She’s been so busy getting used to a new school and everything. She’s still real tense. I don’t know if it’s me or what.”

  “It’s definitely you,” Josh said, and then laughed, his silly, high-pitched laugh.

  “Maybe she’s just a tense person,” Emily said, ignoring his joke. “Well, see you later. Come after nine, okay?”

  She stood up and replaced the receiver, tried to straighten her hair, frowning into the full-length mirror on the closet door, and then hurried downstairs to the dining room. Jessie has barely said five words to me in the three days she’s been here, she thought. Emily couldn’t help but feel disappointed. She had looked forward to having a new sister. But so far she and Jessie were just two strangers who happened to share a room.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” she said, scooting into her place. Mr. Wallner was already half finished with his plate of macaroni. He always sat down and started to eat whether anyone was at the table or not.

  Across from him Nancy yawned loudly. “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I was up studying till nearly two last night.”

  “You really are working hard this year,” Mrs. Wallner said, passing the bowl of macaroni to Emily.

  “You should get your beauty sleep,” Mr. Wallner said. It must have been meant as a joke, because he stopped chewing for a moment to laugh. He looked disappointed that no one else at the table saw the humor of it. “Pass the salt and pepper,” he muttered.

  “Is it too bland?” Mrs. Wallner asked.

  “No. It’s fine,” he replied, using both hands to cover his food with salt and pepper at the same time.

  Rich, silent as usual, sat staring into his plate, occasionally lifting a macaroni noodle or two to his mouth.