“Good baby!” Mrs. Carson clapped. She turned to Penny and Teddy and hissed, “Clap, you two. We have to encourage him.”
Penny and Teddy rolled their eyes and clapped, and Baby Sam, amused, smiled broadly.
“Good baby!” their mother said like a cheerleader.
Baby Sam hiccuped once and then, incredibly, barfed down the front of his bib and clean duck-yellow snuggly suit, across the short tray table, and all over the front of their mother’s white T-shirt, leaving a kaleidoscope of peach baby food and something that was green and smelled like old peas.
For a moment everything was quiet, and then Teddy broke the silence.
“That,” he said in awe, “was really cool.”
CHAPTER 2
Penny stepped out of the house. At that same exact moment, Amy Bukvic stepped out from her own front door across the street.
Amy was fourteen, a year and a half older than Penny, and she was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a top that accentuated her burgeoning chest. Her auburn hair was arranged in a deliberately casual style that brushed across her face, making her look mysterious and grown-up.
“Going to play with the boys?” she asked in a mocking voice.
Penny didn’t know what to say. That was exactly what she was going to do.
“Uh, yeah. Want to come? We’re gonna—”
Amy held up a finger. “Wait, don’t tell me.” She pretended to think very hard. “You’re going to build a fort in the woods?”
“Right,” Penny said awkwardly. “Want to come?”
Acres of undeveloped woods ringed the houses of Mockingbird Lane on both sides, and it was here that the kids of the block built a tree fort every summer. Two years ago, Amy had helped with the fort herself. She had painted one of the walls pink, much to the boys’ collective dismay. Still, it had been fun.
Amy laughed. “You couldn’t pay me to play with those dirtball boys in the woods. When are you gonna grow up, huh, Penny? You’re so stupid.”
Penny felt tears prick at the back of her eyelids, felt the way her chest got tight. “I’m not stupid,” she said in a shaking voice.
Amy yawned widely and adjusted a lacy bra strap, as if she was too bored to respond.
“I’m not!” Penny whispered.
“Get lost,” Amy said with casual cruelty.
Penny turned and fled back into the house.
The creek curled and twisted like a lazy snake through the woods, and like a snake, it was deadly in places, with high cliffs overlooking the thin thread of muddy brown water and sharp stones. Elsewhere, it opened into broad flats that were filled with dry, smooth stones, where the water swelled from bank to bank after a hard rain.
This year, it had been decided that the fort would be built on a stretch of low embankment overlooking the creek less than a hundred yards from the back of Mac’s house. The creek wound behind the left side of Mockingbird Lane, as you faced the cul-de-sac—the side Mac’s and Penny’s families lived on—before shooting off into the depths of the woods, where its banks grew increasingly steep and treacherous. A bunch of older boys had built a fort on this same location several years back, and it had been well known as a favorite place for make-out sessions. Rumor had it that Caleb Devlin had taken over the fort before being sent away.
The original support beams were still there, stretched perilously between three pine trees, almost fifteen feet up, hanging over the edge of the creek. It was every mother’s nightmare. The appeal was undeniable.
Penny stood there, looking at the beams high in the trees, wondering how much it would hurt if you fell from such a height. A lot, she decided.
“We need lumber,” Benji Albright said. Benji, who had sandy hair, a freckled face, and a huge gap between his front teeth, was a scrapper, the first to dive in, to break a tooth, to bloody a nose. Both he and Mac had been in Penny’s homeroom, and it had seemed like the year had been one long fistfight.
“There’s some at the skeet range,” Mac said.
“How do we get it?” Benji asked.
“We steal it,” Mac said, like Benji was stupid.
“I don’t know,” Benji said.
“Well, I do, so shut up,” Mac said.
Mac was good at this sort of thing. Good at knowing when to sneak into the firing range to steal skeets, and when there were vacant houses in the neighborhood to explore. Last summer he had netted a huge box of pink bathroom tiles that had been left behind in a basement when a family up the block moved out. Not that tiles were good for much, but it was a score in any case. Petty theft was a skill.
Stealing aside, Penny was pretty sure that building a fort on the same spot as Caleb Devlin’s old fort was more than stupid, especially considering what she’d just heard at breakfast. It seemed like bad luck to her, like building on a haunted graveyard. Penny eyed the spot of the proposed fort warily. Dense limbs cast lacy shadows, and the air smelled green and mossy, with an undercurrent of decay from rotting wood. The ground seemed darker around the trees, and there was something else, something she was having a harder time putting her fìnger on. And then it struck her.
There was nothing growing on the spot—no flowers, no wild ferns, not even the oniony sort of weed that grew everywhere in the dark, humid woods. Where were the birds? Why weren’t there any birds up in the trees? It didn’t make sense.
Unless, she thought suddenly, maybe the ghosts of Caleb’s victims were still here, lurking around, killing plants and scaring away animals. Bad things didn’t go away easily, Penny knew.
Penny was superstitious. She knocked on wood, always threw salt over her shoulder when it spilled, and never stepped on cracks. And other things, too. She never, ever, killed praying mantises, and she always carefully carried crickets outside when she found them in the house. She had learned these superstitions from her grandmother, Nana, who lived in Key West, Florida.
“Penny,” Teddy said, tugging her hand anxiously. “Tell them.”
Penny swallowed hard. “You guys, did you hear?”
“Hear what?” Benji said.
“Caleb’s back.”
It was hot out, so hot that their skin was slick with little beads of sweat, but Penny’s words caused them to shiver where they stood.
“What?” Oren Loew said, his voice a croak. Oren, who had just turned thirteen, was the oldest of the boys. The only Jewish kid on the block, and the most responsible, Oren was experiencing some mild embarrassment from his changing voice. Puberty had its tight grip on his throat, and his face was a rash of pimples.
“Says who?” Mac demanded, starting to go red, his voice full of anger. He was in a foul temper, but then, the dentist could do that to a person. “And where’s my magnifying glass?”
“I saw him myself,” Penny said in a solemn voice.
Penny was many things—an excellent shortstop, a good climber, a fair spitter, a girl—but she was not a liar.
“But do you even know what he looks like?” Mac asked, not convinced.
“I saw the tattoo. The skull tattoo on the back of his hand,” she said.
That shut them all up. They stared at each other in silence.
“Maybe it has something to do with his mom,” Oren said thoughtfully, his thick black curls catching bits of light, making them look blue. Oren was like this; he reasoned things out. He was the one who could be counted on to talk everyone down when they got crazy ideas. “I heard my mom on the phone saying that Mrs. Devlin was really sick.”
“Caleb’s probably what? Seventeen now?” Benji asked.
“He was a grade behind Toby,” Mac said. Toby was Mac’s older brother, who was off at college. “And he was sent away when he was thirteen.”
Oren said, “Yeah, I remember. We were in Miss Simmons’s class.”
Benji nodded. “Second grade.”
It was little things like this that made Penny feel like she would never really fit in, these casual references to things in the past that seemed of great importance, that had become a
ccepted history on the block. Like the time Benji had broken his leg in two places when he’d crashed his bike into a ravine, and the time Mac had rigged a remote-control model airplane with firecrackers so that it exploded right in the middle of the Bukvics’ annual barbecue. Penny knew these stories like she knew the stories of her own life. But they were borrowed memories.
The Carsons had moved to Mockingbird Lane from Philadelphia three years ago, and while the kids counted her and Teddy as part of the pack, Penny felt that she had to listen harder, try harder, so that her being here could one day be effortless. It was a constant source of worry to her. Her mom was always telling her and Teddy to think for themselves. But Penny knew that it was more important to fit in, and that fitting in generally involved agreeing with everyone else. She didn’t want to end up like one of those kids at recess who always sat off to the side, never picked for a game of kickball.
“Man,” Mac said with a low whistle. “Remember all those stories?”
“Yeah! Nicky Kapoor told me his brother told him that Caleb showed him an old silver cigarette case. He said he’d stolen it off a sleeping bum,” Benji said.
“I saw that case!” Penny said excitedly. “And I saw the skull tattoo on his hand!”
Benji nodded sagely. “Sure sounds like him. But you know that cigarette case?”
The kids waited expectantly, hearts pounding.
Benji’s voice pitched low. “They say that case is full of pinky fingers from kids who tried to cross him.” A beat, and then he added, “Caleb cut ‘em off with his hunting knife.”
“That’s a steaming load of horse—” Mac started to say.
“I’m not saying it’s true,” Benji shot back. “My point is, he must have been pretty bad.”
“Oh, yeah, why’s that?”
“‘Cause look at all the bad stuff you do, and you never got sent away!”
“That’s ‘cause I’m too smart to get caught!” Mac shouted back in aggravation.
“Pinky fingers does sound a little extreme,” Oren said. “But you know they say that he used to set traps here in the woods,” he added, looking around at the leaf-covered forest floor. His eyes clouded over. “We never did find Bozo.”
“Bozo?” Penny asked.
“Our dog. He was a dachshund. Caleb liked to steal people’s pets right out of their yards and kill them in the woods. I know he got Bozo,” Oren said with absolute conviction. “He wasn’t the kind of dog to run away.”
“Bozo?” Mac snorted. “That dog probably killed itself because of its lame name. I bet it sat by the road all day and ran in front of a car when it saw its chance.”
“You jerk!” Oren said, flinging himself at Mac.
Benji wrestled him away, and Oren glared at Mac.
“This is serious,” Penny said. “I don’t think we should build the fort here, because of Caleb and all.”
“Forget that. I’d like to see him try and mess with me,” Mac said, his fists clenching and unclenching in a menacing way.
Benji gave a pained look. “Yeah, the summer just started. We don’t even know for sure if he’s back in town.”
“But I saw him!”
Mac narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you sure you saw him?”
“He was driving a red Trans Am and—”
“Look,” Mac said. “If he was driving a car like that, we’d see it parked in the Devlins’ driveway, and I haven’t seen one.”
“Maybe he just got here this morning!”
“Maybe you’re just seeing things,” Mac said bluntly. “And where’s my magnifying glass?”
“I—I broke it,” Penny confessed.
“Typical. You are such a girl,” Mac spit out furiously.
“I didn’t mean to!”
“Whatever,” Mac said. “Let’s go.”
She took in the stubborn set of the boys’ eyes, even Teddy’s. “But Caleb—” Penny said.
Mac cut her off.
“I’m sick of hearing about him, so just shut up. We’ve got a fort to build.”
The day was hot and sticky as a melted doughnut.
They had broken for lunch, and reassembled on the storm drain next to Benji’s house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Heat hung thick and heavy in the suburban air, and sprinklers were on up and down Mockingbird Lane. Penny’s lime-green shorts and tank top were already damp and clinging to her skin. It was not, in Penny’s opinion, the ideal time to be doing anything as strenuous as stealing lumber. She tucked her dirty-blond hair behind her ears, happy that she’d cut it short, even though her mom hadn’t liked the idea at the time. It was much cooler.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Penny asked Mac.
“Yeah,” Mac said nonchalantly. “It’s been sitting there forever. Nobody’ll miss it.”
Penny doubted this very much. Somebody would miss it. It was just a question of when.
Just then, Zachary Evreth rode up on his bike, his plump legs pumping furiously. He screeched to a halt and dropped his bike, breathing hard, racing to catch up with them, baseball cards and rubber balls and all sorts of junk falling out of his pockets and onto the ground. He seemed to be carrying everything he owned stuffed into his straining jeans.
“Just what we need!” Benji groaned.
Twelve-year-old Zachary was one of those kids.
With his intense eyes and thin hair, he was too fat, too eager to please, too everything. He was the kid who couldn’t keep a secret, the kid who always got hurt at recess, the kid who laughed too long at your jokes, the kid who would never leave you alone.
The kid, in short, who gave other kids a bad name.
“What are you guys doing?” he asked eagerly, all smiles, the human Labrador.
“Stealing wood from behind the skeet range for the new fort,” Teddy said.
Penny shot her brother an exasperated look.
“Great, Teddy, why don’t you tell the whole world?” Mac said.
Zachary rushed to reassure them. “I won’t tell,” he said. You could just see his mind whirring. “I can help! I can be, like, the lookout! Huh? What do you think, guys?”
The kids cast sidelong glances at one another.
“I can help!” Zachary pleaded.
“No, it’s cool, man,” Mac said, nodding his head. “Thanks anyway.” He started walking toward the woods, the other boys following.
Zachary’s face fell, tears welling up in his eyes.
Penny suddenly felt sorry for the kid. “Next time,” she promised, meeting his stricken eyes.
“C’mon, Penny!” Benji shouted.
She ran to catch up.
The skeet range was deep in the woods, behind the Albrights’ house. A small dirt road led to it from Wren Circle, but they didn’t want to draw any attention to themselves by going that way. The children were forbidden to go to the range, which made no sense, as most of their fathers owned guns and practiced on the range themselves. The fathers were big hunters and often took the boys hunting.
Most of the Mockingbird Lane boys had BB guns, too, even Zachary—which Teddy took as a personal insult, because he didn’t have one. Dr. Carson refused to let Teddy have a BB gun because he said he had treated too many gunshot wounds during his residency in Philadelphia, which Teddy thought was unfair because even Oren had a BB gun, and his father was a gastroenterologist.
The boys were generally up to no good with their BB guns. Most of the time they’d set up cans as targets, but sometimes they’d go after squirrels or dumb, slow-moving mourning doves. Penny often thought she should learn how to use a gun despite her parents’ strict instructions that she never touch one.
The skeet range was deserted when they reached it, and as Mac had predicted, there was a large pile of wooden beams leaning against the chain-link fence that ringed the range. The boys whooped at the find.
Benji gave a low whistle. “It’s like walking into a store.”
“Are you sure about this, Mac?” Oren asked hesitantly, clearly leery of commi
tting a crime even if it was for the good of the fort.
“It’s cool,” said Mac dismissively.
Penny idly admired a tree that kids over the years had carved graffiti on. Mickey loved Carrie. A jagged lightning bolt. Names of bands. A crooked-looking heart. It was like a taunt to the block’s fathers. Look how close we are to the range, the graffiti said.
“Let’s take a load now and then come back for more tomorrow,” Mac ordered. It was getting late, nearly five, and their mothers would be hollering for them to come home for dinner soon.
They divvied up into pairs and carried the two-by-fours, except Mac, who made a show of throwing a couple over his shoulder and carrying them by himself. It was a long haul through the twisting trees as the kids followed the Indian trails. Legend had it that the woods had originally been home to the Lenni Lenape and that they were the ones who had left the dirt paths that crisscrossed all over the woods. Penny’s father said that it was more likely fifty years of children’s feet that had beaten the well-worn paths.
When she and Benji arrived at the fort, lagging behind the others, they dumped their load and relaxed.
Mac and Teddy had Mac’s Swiss Army knife out. Penny watched in horror as Teddy threw it up into the air over his head. It landed with a thump on the ground behind his back, point first.
“Teddy!” she shouted, on her feet instantly. “What are you doing!”
“It’s just a game,” he whined.
“Haven’t you ever played this before?” Mac asked. “It’s called Dive Bomb.”
“It should be called Stupid, that’s what!” she said. “Knives are really dangerous.”
“Chill out, Penny,” Mac said, but he put the knife away.
“That’s a really dumb game.” Penny was getting worked up. “I nearly cut my finger off with a knife once, helping Mom. Look!” She held up her forefinger, the white scar a snaking line around pink skin. “I had to have ten stitches!”
“Okay, okay, chill out,” Teddy echoed, embarrassed.
“Yeah, go bake some cookies with the other moms,” Mac said sourly. “What’s your problem, anyway?”