The Traveling Vampire Show

“Sure thing.”

“We just stick to our story, no matter what.”

“But if somebody saw us… somebody who knows us…”

“Simple. We just say he’s confused about which day it was. You know? We’ll say we did go into Slim’s house yesterday, but not today. Get it?”

“I guess so.”

“But don’t worry. It’ll never come up. It’s not like anybody got murdered in there.”

“That’s true,” I admitted.

But I got a sick feeling again, because the truth was a lot worse than a broken vase and perfume bottle. Sure, it wasn’t murder. If it ever got out what really happened in Slim’s house, however, people would be giving me and Rusty (especially Rusty) funny looks from now till Doomsday.

“Never happened?” Rusty asked.

“Never happened.”

“Great.” He smiled as if vastly relieved. “That’s that.”

“All we’ve gotta do now,” I said, “is find Slim.”

“She’ll turn up.”

“I wonder if we should check with her mom.”

“At Steerman’s?” Rusty asked. “Oh, great idea! And tell her what? ‘Gosh, Mrs. Drake, have you happened to see your daughter lately? She seems to be missing. We’ve already checked at your house, but she isn’t there.’ ”

“We don’t have to tell her that.”

“We go anywhere near her, she’s gonna know it was us in her bedroom.”

I supposed he was right about that.

“Anyway,” he said, “you think they’ll let us into that restaurant without our shirts on?”

“We could pick up a couple of shirts at your house,” I suggested.

“We can’t go to Steerman’s.”

“But we’ve gotta find Slim! I mean, where the hell is she? How can she just disappear? Maybe somebody jumped her or something. You never saw her make it into her house and she isn’t in her house and she didn’t show up at my house and we haven’t spotted her on the streets—so where is she?”

“She might’ve gone to the hospital.”

At this point, we were only two blocks away from the police station. “I think I wanta talk to Dad about it.”

“Your father? Are you nuts?”

“Maybe he knows something.”

“He’s a cop!”

“That’s the point. If somebody grabbed Slim, the quicker we get the police on it, the better.”

“What’ll we tell him about going to Slim’s house?”

“Never happened.”

Leading the way, I turned the comer toward the police station.

Rusty reached out, clapped a hand on my shoulder and stopped me. “Hang on a minute.”

“What for?”

“You’ll get us all in trouble.”

I turned around and faced him. “If that’s what it takes to find Slim….”

He bared his teeth as if in pain, then said, “I know where she is.”

“What?”

“I know where Slim is.”

“That’s what I thought you said. What’re you talking about?”

“I didn’t exactly tell you everything before.”

“Like what?”

“We didn’t exactly walk home together.”

“Right. You split up at her corner.”

“Well, that’s not exactly the way it happened.”

“Exactly how did it happen?”

“We actually split up… back at Janks Field.”

“What?”

He shrugged his bare, freckled shoulders and held out his hands, palms upward as if feeling for raindrops. But there was no rain. “Thing is, Slim wouldn’t leave.”

“What?”

“Well, we were up on the roof of the snack stand, you know.”

“Where you were supposed to stay,” I reminded him.

“Well, that’s the thing. Slim did stay. But I didn’t. When we heard these engine noises, we looked over the top of the sign and pretty soon here comes this hearse outa the woods. I go something like, ‘Oh, shit, it’s them.’ But Slim goes, ‘Hey, all right!’ like she’s excited about it. The dog goes running over to bark at the hearse, so I tell Slim we’d better head for the hills while the gettin’s good. Only she won’t do it. She says there’s no reason to run away, and besides, you’ll get all bent outa shape if you come back looking for us and we aren’t there.”

“So you ran away without her?”

“She refused to leave. What was I supposed to do?”

“Stay with her!”

“Hey, man, it was her choice to stay.”

“It was your choice to run.”

“She told me to go on without her. ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ That’s what she said. She also said, ‘Maybe I can get a look at Valeria and see who wins the bet.’ So I jumped down and that’s the last I saw of her.”

“Jesus,” I muttered.

“She planned to wait for you, man. I figured that’s exactly what she did do. When you came driving up to your place with Lee, I figured Slim was gonna be with you.”

“She wasn’t on the roof.”

“Yeah, I know, I know.”

“So why’d you lie?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was whiny. “I figured… if you found out I’d left her there, you’d give me all sorts of shit about it….”

I almost slugged him in the face, but the sight of my raised fist put such fear in his eyes that I couldn’t go through with it. I lowered my arm. I shook my head. I muttered, “You left her there.”

“You left both of us.”

“That was to get help, you idiot. Don’t you know the difference ?”

“Nobody made her stay behind.”

“So where the hell is she?” I blurted.

“How should I know?”

“Damn it!”

“I thought she’d be at her house by the time we got there.”

“Well, she wasn’t,” I snapped. I gave Rusty a scowl, then started walking away. He stuck with me, walking by my side, his head down.

After a while, he said, “Look, she’s gotta be somewhere. She wasn’t on the roof of the shack when you and Lee got there, so she must’ve jumped down sometime after I did. She probably ran into the woods….”

“Then why isn’t she home yet?”

“Maybe she hung around to keep an eye on things. And to wait for you to show up.”