November 25
I do manage to get some sleep. I dream that mask-faced Michael climbs into my window. While I am sleeping, he takes hold of my hand, and, wielding a set of branch-clippers, he snips off my fingers. One by one.
I wake up. "Don't Fear the Reaper" is playing again. I sit up and inspect my hand. I am expecting another sign of Freddy Krueger type mutilations. But to my relief, my hand is whole and unscarred.
II
Sheriff Brackett visits while I am eating breakfast. Mom motions for me to stay seated and finish eating while she answers the door.
"Yes?" she says stiffly.
"May I speak with Stella quickly?" Sheriff Brackett asks.
"She's going to school in a few minutes."
"I won't take long."
I stand up and join them at the door. "Is it about Alice?" I gasp out.
"It's about the woman you identified. Adele Saunders." Mom looks at me, puzzled. "It is the right woman, but she says she's received a note from her daughter. It appears that the girl just ran away."
"Oh." I add, "I'm glad she's safe."
"I am too." Sheriff Brackett grows stern again. "Stella, I want you to stop worrying about the girls in Berryville and concern yourself only with your safety and your health. We'll find Alice. And we'll find Michael Myers. He can't hide around any place near here for long. You understand?"
"Yes," I choke out.
"Does this mean that you're pulling out of police protection?" Mom wants to know.
"Not entirely," Sheriff Brackett reassures her. "We're still investigating the ring. If any other incidents occur - any other dead rats show up, for example - call and let us know. This harassment, though, looks to be separate from the missing girls in Berryville."
"Thank you," I say to Sheriff Brackett.
"Take care, Stella." Brackett gives me a sad smile. He must be reminiscing about Annie, who should also be finishing up breakfast and preparing for the school day. I wonder if he came for this early morning visit to escape his own empty kitchen.
Brackett saunters back to his car.
I turn to the sink to wash my plate.
"What's this about you identifying someone?" Mom queries.
I try to explain casually, "The mother of one of the girls who disappeared was friends with Judith Myers. I thought it was a significant connection."
Mom's face tightens. "How do you know that?" she asks hoarsely.
I put away the dish.
"Chelsea and I were looking at some old yearbooks," I decide to say. Chelsea shouldn't get in trouble for it, as long as I don't mention they were Mrs. Wallace's yearbooks.
Mom blew out a long breath. "I think Sheriff Brackett is right. You should focus more on your own life, not the Myers's."
"All right."
Mom checks her watch. "Get your backpack. I'll drive you to school today."
III
The staring doesn't bother me so much today. Not after Michael standing on my driveway last night. The staring has its advantages. If everyone is staring at me, Michael can't very well sneak up behind me and slit my throat, can he?
Chelsea nabs me after homeroom.
"We're going to Berryville. After school."
"But -"
"You don't have plans, do you?" Chelsea forges ahead.
"No."
"We won't be going alone. Lawrence Yu wants to come too. He owes me a favor. And Ben is coming."
"What?!"
"Safety in numbers," Chelsea explains.
"You asked Ben?" I stammer.
"Of course," Chelsea schemes aloud. "How could he pass up a chance to play the white knight? And to let two defenseless girls drive up to Berryville, which for all we know is Michael Myers' new hunting grounds? Unthinkable."
"Have you gone insane?"
"You don't really think Adele's daughter is safe, do you?"
"I don't but the note . . . Michael Myers doesn't do that, Chelsea."
"Doesn't what?"
"Send notes to the family of his victims."
"No, but isn't it odd that none of the other families got notes?" Chelsea asks. "Just Adele, who was just as snotty to little Michael as Judith was?"
"Judith wasn't snotty."
"Sorry. But one of us is going to see that note. So do you want to do it? You'd learn more from it than I would."
I promised I would let up on the investigation. But even as I made that promise, I knew I would not be able to keep it. I might as well have Chelsea . . . and Ben . . . back me up.
"All right."
"We're going after school."
IIII
Everyone else is waiting by Chelsea's car by the time I arrive. Chelsea and Lawrence Yu jump into the front seat, under the guise of calling control of the radio. Naturally, this leaves me sitting next to Ben in the backseat.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Ben asks, before we duck into the car.
I summon my courage. "Yes."
There are questions I want answered. Maybe Adele will be able to answer them. And then maybe the dreams will go away and my parents can pitch the baby monitor.
The radio and Chelsea and Lawrence's playful banter fills the car on the ride there. Ben and I manage to squeeze in a few words. When we pass the sign that says Welcome to Berryville, I feel a jolt of excitement. It will be fun to see Adele again. Wait until she hears that Jerry Winston has made this dorky infomercial about his car lot. Wait until . . .
I snap out of my unrealistic expectations.
Lawrence consults his directions as the car roams down several narrow lanes. We finally find the address: a dilapidated house no bigger than a train car. A trampoline covers most of the chained in yard.
"How old is the daughter?" Lawrence chimes in.
"Seventeen," Chelsea and I answer at the same time.
"The woman had her when she was still in high school?" Lawrence says. He's not judgmental about this observation.
I remember Adele crying in Judith's bathroom, where she had done the pregnancy test. Adele was afraid of what her parents would do. Her father was prone to rage. He rarely hit Adele, but if anything would provoke him to physical harm, this would.
For a month, she and Judith pooled together money so Adele could get an abortion. Then one day, Adele declared that she was moving to Chicago with her aunt and she was keeping the baby. Adele confided that her parents would disown her if she got an abortion.
Judith was hurt to see her friend moving down the same path as her mother. When Adele moved, Judith cut off the friendship. Adele wrote to her a few times, but Judith never answered. Adele quit writing after the baby was born. She sent one photo of the baby and that was it.
"How about you and Ben go to the house first," Chelsea strategizes. "That way we can make a quick getaway if Adele greets us at the door with a shotgun."
Ben unbuckles his seat belt first. I stare at the house. The sun is beginning to sink. The house is outlined in a square shadow that looks peculiarly like a hatchet. There is no sidewalk.
I finally rise from the back seat and climb out after Ben. We journey to the door. Ben waits for me to press the bell.
Finally the door swings open. Adele stands, balancing a one-year-old child at her ample hip.
"Yes?"
I am stunned at how much she has changed and yet how much she hasn't changed. She is rounder and her skin paler, but she does not look old. Her eyes are still wide and her chin still set in that stubborn underbite.
"Adele?" I ask, though I know without a doubt it is my old school friend.
"Yeah? What do you want?"
"I'm Stella Faro. From Haddonfield."
"So you're the kid who sicced the police on me," Adele determines aloud. She bends over to lift the whimpering infant to her shoulder. "I read the paper. This your boyfriend?" She smirks at Ben.
"I'm Ben," Ben stammers. "Pleased to meet you." He starts to draw out his hand, but realizing she has her hands full with the baby, pulls it back.
"We came about Amy," I say. "We . . . you must have heard that Michael Myers escaped."
"Amy ran away," Adele says crisply. "I just got a note from her."
"Does she know about Michael Myers?" I ask. "Does she know you knew Judith?"
Adele squints suspiciously at me. "Look, I don't know what you're getting at, but Amy is fine. She ran away, and she wrote to let me know that she's staying with friends. She's fine. Michael Myers has nothing to do with this. She's fine."
"Which friends? Did she say?"
"Of course she didn't say. She said she needed time to get over things here. But she's fine. She's safe. She told me so herself. She's fine."
Adele begins to tremble and almost loses her grip on the baby. He slides down and Adele hefts him back up again.
"What's the kid's name?" Ben asks.
"Cole," Adele replies with a pale smile. "My first with my current husband."
"Congratulations," Ben praises her. "Got any other kids besides Amy and Cole?"
"No,." Adele glances back at me. "Judith never congratulated me either. You know, when Amy was born."
"I'm sorry," I say automatically. "I'm glad it worked out for you."
"It will," she says. "And Amy will come home soon. She adores Cole. And she gets along with my husband just fine. It's not like - you know."
"Like Tony Hammond?" I ask.
Adele starts. She must have expected me to say Ronnie White. But Adele never knew Ronnie White; she had moved away before Ronnie White insinuated himself into the Myers' household.
"Do you know what happened to him?" I persist.
Adele stiffens. She advises, "If you were really Judith's reincarnation, you would keep as far away from him as possible."
She slams the door in our faces.
IIIII
Chelsea does not get any of the answers she had sought, but strangely she's not too disappointed about it.
"So Adele is convinced that Amy is at some friend's in Chicago," Chelsea repeats. "Either she knows something we don't - someone in Chicago confirmed it for her - or she's in deep denial. Hard to say which is likelier."
I shrug. Ben and Lawrence wisely decide not to cast their votes. Lawrence can sense my feelings of my past friendship with Adele, even if Chelsea has not primed him about the extent of my "past" life. And Ben can not avoid feeling some sympathy for the woman he has just met - the woman who, despite the odds, has changed her life for the better.
There is very little banter on the way back. Chelsea drops Ben off first. He hovers for a second, like he wants to kiss me again, but decides not to.
My house comes up next. "Lawrence thinks this is a date," Chelsea had told me earlier today. Then she added mischievously, "And I'm not going to tell him it's not." Then she dropped hints that I should do the same with Ben.
So Chelsea waves to me and then drives off with Lawrence to do the date thing.
I enter the house to find Lindsey in the living room with my dad.
"Did something happen?" I ask, suppressing a ripple of alarm.
"Mom dropped me here," Lindsey says dispassionately. "She said an emergency came up."
"We just had dinner," Dad tells me. I had called them earlier to tell them I would be out with Chelsea, so they knew I would be late. "Did you get something to eat?"
"No. I'll make something," I say.
I fix a sandwich and carry it back into the living room. Lindsey is still seated in the recliner. She glances away as I come back in.
Mom has joined her and Dad. We watch some TV and make casual conversation. Lindsey involves herself very little. After several hours, Mrs. Wallace has not returned.
I shuffle upstairs after her. Lindsey unrolls the sleeping bag she has brought with her. She and Mrs. Wallace have expected she would stay the whole night.
"Where were you?" she asks.
I blush guiltily. "I went shopping with Chelsea."
"Where were you really?"
I pause. Mom and Dad are still downstairs. I can hear them talking in low voices.
"Berryville," I whisper.
"Oh." The news enlivens Lindsey. "To see that woman who knew Judith?"
"Yeah."
"How did she take it?" Lindsey asks.
"She says her daughter ran away. Her daughter sent her a note." I am not sure if she has heard of the results of Sheriff Brackett's search.
"Is that true?"
"I have no idea. I hope so."
Lindsey plucks out her night clothes and toothbrush from her backpack and steps into the bathroom. Meanwhile, I search for my own sleeping bag. I wonder what Mrs. Wallace is doing. Shacking with her boyfriend? I doubt she's staying overnight in Winoker in the course of her job search, though it's not downright impossible.
And where is Amy Saunders tonight? Is she bunking at some friend's place in Chicago. Or . . .
The other scenario did not bear thinking.
It's so unfair. I had feared the worst for Adele, but everything had turned out all right. And now this happened. Michael had gotten to them.
Did it bother Michael, that Adele had accomplished what Mom couldn't?
Lindsey returns from the bathroom and spots my sleeping bag. "You're going to sleep on the floor?" she guessed.
"Yup. You're the guest."
"And you're the one who spent a week in the hospital," Lindsey reasons.
"I'll be fine," I say.
"Your funeral." Lindsey yawns and then crouches on her sleeping bed. She pulls out her hair brush and yanks it through her reddish hair.
I settle on top of my sleeping bag and open my copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Mrs. Randall is going to quiz us on a few of them tomorrow and I haven't even glanced at my folio until now. One sonnet in, and I'm ready to give up. Rhyming poetry gives me a headache