Whistling in the Dark

off and hid. The playground was lit up like County Stadium. A light drizzle started to fall. Eddie and Nell were snuggled in the corner of the school where they thought nobody could see them. I guessed they weren’t mad at each other anymore because I could see that Eddie was sliding into second base.

Troo yelled, “Ready or not, here we come,” and then we all took off again. I was walking between the Fazios’ and the Latours’, saying not too loudly, I admit, “Red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight. Red light, green light, hope to see the ghost tonight.”

I had just circled behind the Fazios’ side bushes and could see and smell through their back window that Nana was at the kitchen window making those yummy cannolis. I pinched myself so I wouldn’t forget to tell Troo because those were her favorite and she would wanna eat over there tomorrow just to get those for dessert. Another thunder grumble rolled over my head, but beneath that there was a shout, like somebody had been caught by the ghost, so I turned to run toward it, and when I did somebody grabbed me by my braid and swung me down to the wet grass. Real hard. I could feel something come off him. Like a feeling. Like how you feel if you are afraid. And in a flash of lightning, I saw the pillowcase he had over his head with places cut out for his eyes and his mouth and it moved ever so slightly like the sails on a ship when he stood above me, his black spongy-soled shoes on either side of me. The rain started coming down hard, but I could hear Rasmussen just fine when he bent down to my ear and said, “Sally, dear, I love you,” so, so sweetly that I almost believed him.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Nana Fazio screamed Il mio Dio… il mio Dio and ran toward me in her long black dress, swinging her bosoms belt over her tiny head like a lasso. Rasmussen laughed a little and said, “Until we meet again,” and ran off toward the alley. I felt something moving around in my head like you did if you stood up too fast and I saw some shooting stars even though it’d started raining so hard. Troo told me later that I’d fainted dead away just like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.

When I woke up, we were coming down the Fazios’ front steps. I thought that Rasmussen had probably dodged Nana and run behind the Spencers’ garage and taken off that pillowcase, and here he was with me in his arms and nobody was doing a darn thing to stop him. Where is Troo? I wanted to scream but nothing came out. I tried to push off him, but he acted like he couldn’t even feel that. Like I was a bug and he didn’t even notice. Then I relaxed a little because I figured out that he’d never murder and molest me in front of the whole neighborhood. Oh no, not tricky Rasmussen.

Held close to his chest, my face pressed against his badge number 343 as the rain came down, I sniffed his uniform, which smelled like my socks did after sledding, and that made me think of Mother and hot cocoa. And maybe it was because I was so tuckered out, or maybe I wanted to imagine for a little while that I was wrong and Rasmussen really was the good egg everybody said he was. So I’m sorry to have to say this, but I gave up, and didn’t struggle. I just snuggled up to him, felt his breath going in and out of his chest, and tried to figure out what tune he was humming.

Right in front of the Kenfields’ house Rasmussen looked down at me and asked, “Did he say anything to you, Sally? Did you recognize him?”

Ha! Like he didn’t know what he said and he didn’t know what he looked like.

I bent my head down and said, “Did you know Dottie Kenfield?” I was trying to get a look at his shoes. They were those brown ones he usually wore. He musta changed out of the spongy black ones he had on when he bushwhacked me.

Rasmussen looked over at Mr. Kenfield’s cigarette burning red in the dark and said so low I almost couldn’t hear him, “That is a sad, sad story that you are too young to know about.” And then he said louder toward the Kenfields’ porch, “Evenin’, Chuck.”

I never looked Rasmussen in the eyes because I was too afraid what I might see there. Daddy always said the eyes are the windows to the soul, which didn’t make sense because I thought your soul was located sort of near your heart and not your eyeballs, but if Daddy said it, it was true and I didn’t ever, ever want to see into Rasmussen’s raggedy soul.

I didn’t have to worry because his eyes were covered by his police hat where the rain had beaded up on the rim, but the streetlight was shining on his lips. They were soft-looking like baby blanket satin. He had murdered Junie. And Sara. Like Granny said, three’s the charm. The next time he would murder me, so a little “Ohhh” escaped out of me.

“You okay, Sally?” he asked like he cared.

The rain was starting and stopping like it couldn’t make up its mind. I looked over at our front porch. Troo was sitting there with a jar full of fireflies. She was the most amazing firefly catcher. Fireflies flocked to Troo, probably because they began with the letter f. I knew she’d tried real hard to catch some quick to make me feel better because that’s what she always did when I was out of sorts. The fireflies were flashing off and on in the jar that she held beneath her chin, and when she saw me she gave me a double thumbs-up. Daddy used to do that, so that made me finally cry. Because here I was in the arms of the man who wanted me dead and there wasn’t one thing I could do about it. I felt like a leaf going down the Honey Creek after a storm.

Rasmussen walked me up the steps near the house and set me down next to Troo and said, “Make sure she gets a bath,” and then he just walked away like he had something urgent to do. Probably to go cover up the footprints he’d left in the Fazios’ yard.

Troo said, “You like ’em?”

I said with a shocked voice, “Rasmussen?”

“No, you fruitcake… these.” She shoved the jar of fireflies into my hand. I could tell she was scared.

I looked down at the jar and said the first f word I could think of, “Fantastic.” And that made Troo stop licking her lips.

It was only later, when I was floating in the warm bath that Nell had run for me, that I recognized what that tune was that Rasmussen had been humming on the way home from the Fazios’. It was “Catch a Falling Star” by Perry Como, which was my favorite song last year. Me and Troo would put on a little show in the living room and sing and pretend we were catching falling stars and putting them in our jama pockets, saving them for a rainy day, until Hall screamed at us to shut the crap up.

Later, between the sheets, while she rubbed my back longer than she ever had, Troo said, “I figure it was Greasy Al who grabbed at you over at the Fazios’. You know how he’s always bullying.”

I didn’t even bother telling Troo that I was sure it was Rasmussen. What was the use?

“Don’t worry,” Troo said from the dark, the heat of her body mixing in with mine, the fireflies flashing on our dresser. “I got a plan to get him back. And my bike, too. Night, Sal.” She slipped her fingers into her mouth, squeezed her baby doll to her chest and turned over hard and quick like she couldn’t wait until tomorrow because tomorrow was the Fourth, the most exciting day of the summer next to the block party.

“Night, Troo.”

When I was sure she was asleep, I got up and went into Mother’s room and pulled her yellow nightie out from the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then I got Daddy’s Timex from the dressing table and put it on my wrist. After I said my prayers and told Daddy I was sorry like I did every night, I laid down at the foot of Mother’s bed and drifted off to the sound of rain that was strong enough to be good for the crops, and tried and tried to remember the last time I felt safe.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Saaally… Saaally.” The sound of her scream chased my dream away. I tried to jump out of bed, to get to her, to help her. Was Hall after her? Rasmussen? “I’m coming,” I yelled back, fighting to get untangled from Mother’s yellow nightie.

Troo came running from the back stairs into Mother’s room and flew up onto the bed next to me. “Wake the hell up, it’s almost seven thirty and we gotta be at the park by eight sharp.” She smacked me in the head with the