eerie feeling that they’d found what they were looking for.
They moved closer, crouched down, and tried to read the inscription. Though the granite was deeply pitted, and whatever decorative carving may once have adorned it had long since eroded away, the name was just readable: JOSIAH WYNTON.
Beneath the name was the date the man had been born and the date he died.
He’d been just a little past forty when he died in 1694.
Beneath the dates were two more lines. Angel and Seth looked at them for a long time, neither of them saying a word.
The first line read: “Husband of Margaret.”
The second line read: “Father of Forbearance.”
But the space around Josiah Wynton’s grave — the space where his wife and daughter would have been buried — was empty.
Indeed, after Josiah, no other person had ever been buried in the plot.
They found the rest of the Wyntons, what few there were, in another plot, on the opposite side of the graveyard.
As they left the graveyard and started back toward the school, neither Angel nor Seth said anything at all.
The steps in front of the school were deserted by the time they got back from the graveyard, and when they went through the front door, the downstairs corridor was empty. They started up the stairs to the second floor, but when they got to the landing where the stairs turned, Angel stopped.
“Maybe we should just go home,” she said, the memory of Zack’s smirk still fresh in her mind.
Seth shook his head. “You’ll just have to open it Monday morning. And you better believe that Zack and Chad and Jared will all be there, waiting to see what happens when you do.”
Angel took a deep breath, knowing he was right. Whatever Zack was up to, it was better to face it now, with no one there except Seth. She started up the rest of the stairs.
The second floor corridor was as empty as the first, and as they walked the twenty yards to Angel’s locker, their footsteps echoed off its walls with a hollowness that matched the feeling in Angel’s belly. When they were finally standing in front of the locker, she stared at the lock for nearly a full minute.
How did they get in?
How did they know the combination?
Clinging to that faint hope, she began working the combination, and a moment later lifted the handle of the locker.
She swung it open.
And saw Houdini lying on top of the thick history text that lay on the floor of her locker.
Except that he wasn’t actually lying on it at all.
Rather, his broken body was sprawled across it. He was on his back, his legs splayed out at strange angles, and his eyes, wide open, were staring at her.
Except they weren’t staring — their light had faded away, leaving only the cold empty look of death.
Blood was caked around his ears and the corners of his mouth.
Angel stared at Houdini’s broken corpse, barely able to believe what she was seeing.
How could they have done it?
What had Houdini ever done to them?
A sob rose in her throat, and Angel tried to choke it back but failed. As a second sob gripped her, followed by a wracking moan, Seth moved around her so he could see inside the locker too.
“Oh, Jeez,” he whispered.
Angel turned away from the locker and buried her head on his shoulder. Seth, his eyes fastened on the dead eyes of the cat almost as if he was mesmerized by them, put his arms around her and patted her gently as her sobs began to build. He felt Angel stiffen in his arms a moment before she pulled away from him. Her face was streaked with tears, but she reached into her backpack, found a handkerchief, and wiped them away.
“Let’s bury him,” she said, her eyes fixed on Seth’s.
Seth frowned. He’d buried a hamster when he was six, but now he was fifteen.
As if reading his mind, Angel said, “I’m not talking about holding some kind of dumb funeral for him. I just want to take him somewhere and bury him — somewhere nobody will ever find him. Then I’m going to act like nothing happened at all.”
“But tomorrow morning—”
“Zack will be waiting for me to open my locker, just like he was this afternoon,” Angel said. “Only there won’t be anything in it.”
Suddenly Seth understood. “And if you don’t let on we found him today—”
Angel glanced into the locker again, and another sob rose in her throat. “Let’s just do it, okay?” she asked, her voice trembling as she struggled not to start crying again. “If we talk about it…” Her voice trailed off.
Seth could read her emotions from the tremor in her voice and the pain in her eyes. “I’ll put him in my backpack,” he said.
As Angel struggled to control her roiling emotions, Seth transferred the contents of his backpack to Angel’s, and then, placing himself between Angel and the locker, gently lifted Houdini’s broken body out and slipped it into the pack.
“Come on,” he said softly. “I know exactly the place where no one will ever find him, and I know where we can get a shovel.”
They’d paused only once more before leaving the village, when Angel insisted on picking some flowers from one of the gardens in the old cemetery. “It just seems like he should have them,” she’d explained. “I mean—” She’d faltered, then shrugged helplessly. “It just seems right, that’s all.”
The yellow aster and three red chrysanthemums were still clutched in her hand, and Angel thought they might wilt before they got back to the little cabin where she knew Seth was taking them. Indeed, it seemed to her that the path they had set out on almost half an hour ago had completely disappeared, and now nothing around her looked familiar. Seth hadn’t slowed down even when the trail disappeared, and even though she’d been able to keep up so far, she was starting to feel out of breath.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” she finally asked.
To her relief, Seth stopped and turned around. “It’s only about five more minutes,” he said.
“But nothing looks anything like it did the day before yesterday when we followed—” Her voice choked when she tried to say Houdini’s name, and despite her silent vow that she wasn’t going to cry, her eyes blurred with tears. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and sniffled to clear her nose.
“It’s okay,” Seth said, his brown eyes reflecting the pain she was feeling almost as if he were feeling it himself. “Nobody’s around except me. If you want to cry—”
“I don’t want to cry,” Angel interrupted, a little too quickly. “I just asked if you were sure you know where we are.”
“I’m sure,” Seth insisted. “I’ve been coming out here forever, and I’ve never gotten lost yet.” He pointed off toward what Angel was pretty sure was the east. “The bluff’s over that way — in a couple more minutes you’ll be able to see it.” He turned away and started walking again, either following a trail Angel couldn’t see or knowing his way so well he didn’t need any path at all. Taking a deep breath, she followed, silently counting the passing seconds just to see if he was telling her the truth.
She’d counted the 110th second when suddenly, through the trees ahead, the face of the bluff appeared. Seth turned back to her, grinning. “See? Here we are.” He pointed off to the right. “The cabin’s down that way.” A few minutes later they climbed over the berm of rubble that hid the cabin from anyone who might happen to run across the small clearing between it and the forest, and Angel gazed down at the strange structure that was so well hidden in the face of the bluff that it was still almost invisible.
“I still can’t believe no one knows it’s here but us,” she said.
