Nightshade

a plastic trash bag, “I guess I’d better be getting back to town.” He hesitated again, then: “Will you be all right, Joan?”

She took a deep breath and forced a nod. “I don’t have much choice, do I?” When Dan seemed uncertain about whether to leave her, she spoke again. “You go on, Dan. I’ll be all right. I promise.”

As Pullman started back up the path, Joan gazed out over the pool. Its clear green water — water she’d swum in hundreds of times over the years — had turned gray under the overcast sky, and when she looked up, the naked branches of a huge oak — stripped bare by last night’s wind — seemed to reach toward her, as if to snatch her up and hurl her into the leaden water. As she flinched reflexively away from the tree, she thought she heard a faint sound.

She was about to call out when she heard something else.

A voice.

Cynthia’s voice.

“Remember Timmy?”

Joan’s heart skipped a beat, but even before the words had sunk in, her eyes flicked back to the tree she had flinched away from a moment ago. Only now it had changed.

* * *

A ROPE HUNG from one of the tree’s branches, and a boy clung to the end of the rope.

Timmy Phelps.

Barely six — two years younger than Joan — Timmy laughed happily as he swung back and forth. As he swung toward her, Joan gave him a gentle push so his motion wouldn’t die down.

But as she pushed, she heard Cynthia — treading water in the middle of the pool — call out to her. “Push him harder, Joan. Push him harder!”

As Cynthia urged her on and Timmy shrieked with excitement, she pushed harder and harder, until each swing took Timmy out over the very center of the pool. Then Cynthia’s urging suddenly changed.

“Let go, Timmy!” she shouted. “Let the rope go! I’ll catch you!”

A split-second later Timmy dropped into the water and the rope suddenly went slack, dangling loosely from the branch.

Cynthia, still treading water, was laughing.

And Timmy Phelps was gone.

Joan stared at the water — where was he?

What had happened? Why hadn’t Cynthia caught him? Everyone knew Timmy couldn’t swim!

Without thinking, Joan plunged into the pool. Beneath the water, she kicked hard, forcing herself down deeper and deeper.

Keeping her eyes open, she twisted around, trying to find Timmy. Then her lungs started to burn, and she knew she could hold her breath only another few seconds.

Where was he?

Her chest felt like it was on fire, and in a few seconds she would have to give up. Then, she saw him.

He was reaching out to her, just a few feet away. She kicked, then kicked again, and just as she knew she could hold out no longer, her fingers closed on his hand. She hurled herself to the surface, expelling air from her lungs all the way.

Her head finally burst out of the water the instant she could resist inhaling no longer.

Somehow, she managed to pull Timmy out of the pool and start pumping the water out of his lungs. Then her mother was there, and Cynthia was telling her what had happened.

“Joan was pushing him on the rope, Mama. I tried to make her stop, but she wouldn’t. She just kept pushing him higher and higher. But she didn’t mean for him to fall, Mama. She was just having fun. It wasn’t really her fault.”

* * *

JOAN STARED AT the spot where she’d saved Timmy Phelps’s life, Cynthia’s words burning once more in her memory.

“Is that what you did?” she finally whispered, her eyes moving once more to the dark waters of the pool. “Did you do the same thing to Mother that you did to Timmy?”

Again she heard her sister’s voice. “Mama wanted to be with me, Joanie-baby. She always wanted to be with me. But you know that, don’t you? You’ve always known that.”

As Joan stood alone by the pool, Cynthia’s laugh rang out again, harsh and cruel, and though Joan knew it was impossible, she was certain that Cynthia’s laugh had not come from inside her own head.

* * *

MATT’S MOOD WAS even darker than the sky that afternoon, and as he crossed the street he turned to look back at the school. What would happen if the angry clouds overhead suddenly flashed with lightning, hurling a blazing blue bolt right at the school?

Would it burst into flames? Would the windows blow out? And what would happen to all the people inside?

I hope they fry, he said to himself. I hope they fry right where they’re standing.

Today had been even worse than yesterday. The only person who spoke to him when he’d arrived at school this morning was Becky Adams; but his friends —

Friends? He didn’t have friends anymore. People had hardly looked at him, at least not when he was looking at them. It was as if he’d become invisible. He told himself it didn’t matter, that he didn’t care, and went to his locker just like he always did.

Mr. Wing had been waiting for him.

He had known right off what that was about: his counselor was going to give him hell about what had happened in the computer class yesterday. But what about all the rest of the kids? The ones who sent him the messages? When they got to Mr. Wing’s office — a little green cubicle that looked out on the Dumpsters next to the cafeteria — it turned out to be even worse. Instead of chewing him out, Mr. Wing told him that he’d talked to all the teachers, and the teachers were going to talk to their classes about what had happened yesterday.

“We’re not going to tolerate anyone accusing you of anything, Matt,” his counselor had said, trying to reassure him. Right then Matt knew what had happened — his mother had called the school. Nobody else would have told Mr. Wing about the messages. By the time he was out the door, they would have been gone from his screen, and no one in the room would admit to having any idea what had happened, any more than he and Eric Holmes and Pete Arneson had ever admitted to knowing how the butter patties had gotten stuck to the ceiling over their table in the cafeteria last spring, melting just in time to drip onto Mr. Wing’s own head at the senior class breakfast.

So Matt knew that when the teachers started talking about him in their classes, everyone would know that he’d told someone what had happened in the computer class.

The reaction was exactly what he expected: It was as if he’d ceased to exist.

No one spoke to him.

No one looked at him.

People even started looking the other way when they saw him coming.

He felt a flicker of hope in P.E., when the coach made Eric and Pete the captains of the football teams. For as long as Matt could remember, he had always been one of the first ones chosen.

But today neither Eric nor Pete had chosen him at all, and when the choosing of sides was done, he found himself standing alone.

Even Nate Harkins, who had never caught a football in his life, was standing in the group around Eric Holmes. “Play on Arneson’s team,” the coach told him.

Pete hadn’t even spoken to him, let alone included him in any of the plays.