Don't Scream (9780307823526) (2 page)

Last week the For Rent sign had disappeared from the front lawn of the house next door. Yesterday the real estate's cleaning crew had gone through the house. Today was Saturday and my shift at Bingo's Burgers didn't start for another three hours, so I gave way to my curiosity.

A puff of breeze swirled around my shoulders, and I lifted my long, dark hair away from my neck. Darn, it was hot!

An old gray Chevy sedan, which had collected its share of dents, pulled up in front of what had been the Corcoran house, and I watched a middle-aged couple and a guy about my own age climb out. I was shocked—the guy was tall, with broad shoulders, dark brown hair, and a nice face. He wasn't exactly a
ten
, but so close to it that I stood up and deposited Pepper on the step. I sauntered across the dusty grass.

The three newcomers were reaching back inside the car. As they turned, their arms filled with sacks of groceries and an ice chest, I stepped up. “Hi. I'm Jessica Donnally. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

Only the guy smiled. The woman, who I assumed was the mother of the family, looked totally stressed out. She glanced at our house and then her own before she nodded at me.

“We're the Maliks. We'll have to get acquainted later. It's been a long drive. Then we wasted hours in that realtor's office. There's so much to do.” Her words were rapid and clipped
and angry. I had to think a moment before they registered.

Mrs. Malik pushed a strand of dirty blond hair away from her face and walked toward the rented house, her hips straining against a skirt that was a little too heavy and much too tight. Her husband, short and stocky in a rumpled madras shirt and khaki pants, simply followed.

“Don't mind them,” the guy said with an unfamiliar accent. “Mom didn't want to move to Texas. She's mad at Dad and at me … at the whole world, I guess. She needs time and she'll come around.”

He grinned, and it was so contagious I grinned back. “I'm Mark … Mark Malik,” he said. “You said your name is Jessica?”

“Everyone calls me Jess.”

“Hi, Jess. I suppose we'll be going to the same high school.”

“Since we've only got one high school—Oakberry High—you're right! Where are you folks from, Mark?”

His smile was warm, but instead of answering, he said, “We'll talk later. You can fill me in on what I'll need to know.” He shifted the load in his arms and headed up the walk.

I went back across the grass into my house. Taking the stairs two at a time, then flinging myself across my bed, I snatched up the telephone and dialed my best friend, Lori Roberts. She answered on the second ring.

“Guess what!” I said. “New guy at school. He's cute.”

“You're right. He is,” Lori said. “I saw him registering in Mrs. Shappley's office late this afternoon.”

I gave a bounce, and the bed creaked noisily. “You won't believe it! He moved in next door to me.”

Lori groaned. “How come you get all the luck?”

“Wait a minute,” I said as I suddenly realized what Lori had told me. “You said you saw him registering at school. You couldn't have. He just got here. His mother was complaining about the long drive.”

“The guy I saw is blond—hair about the same color as mine—and he's medium tall,” Lori said. “By the way, Mrs. Shappley put him in our English lit class.”

I shook my head at the phone. “Mark Malik isn't blond. He has dark brown hair. It's almost as dark as mine.”

“Two new guys.” Lori's smile warmed her voice. “Life is looking up!”

When Mom got home from her job at the bank and Dad walked into the kitchen, damp and sticky from the lessons he gave as a golf pro, I told them about the new neighbors.

Dad gulped down half a glass of cold water, wiped a hand across his mouth, and said, “Frank and Eloise Malik.”

“How'd you know?” I asked.

“Elmer Butler told me. He's the one who rented them the house.”

“Where are they from?”

“New Jersey, New York, someplace like that,” Dad answered. He polished off the water and asked, “Does it make a difference?”

I shrugged. “I just wondered.”

Dad smiled as he reached over and tousled my hair. “I swear, Jess, you're as curious as a cat.”

“If you're comparing me to cats, leave out Pepper,” I told him. “He's not the least bit curious. All he does is eat and sleep.”

“Jess,” Mom said as she kicked off her shoes, “you peel the potatoes. Phil, why don't you get the grill going outside? I can put together something for our new neighbors.”

Mom, her short, dark hair curling damply around her face, changed from her tailored skirt and blouse into shorts and a T-shirt. She decided to bake a Lazy Daisy sheet cake with a caramel-coconut broiled frosting. It's quick, it's easy, and it's Mom's specialty. She's well known for it at church suppers and school bake sales. No one in Oakberry has ever been known to turn down a piece of her cake.

After we'd finished eating supper, she wrapped the still-warm cake pan in a kitchen towel and handed it to me. I was about to leave, already wearing my red-and-white-checked apron and cap—the uniform for my evening shift at Bingo's.

Mom grinned and said, “From what you told me about the Maliks, I suspect that you'd like to deliver this.”

I grinned back, at ease with her teasing. Sure, there are problems between us at times, because
Mom doesn't just say something, she goes on and on about it, as if I can't figure out things for myself. But sometimes she's great.

“Mark Malik
is
kind of cute, Mom. He's tall. Taller than me. It's not always easy to find really tall dates. Except for Eric, it's almost impossible.”

“Eric?”

“You remember Eric Dodson. I picked him out in seventh grade because he was the only boy in my class taller than me.”

“Than I.”

“Yeah. Taller than you, too.” I giggled, then sighed. “Eric has always had possibilities. I even thought I had a chance until he fell in love with a computer. He hasn't been interested in anything else since then.”

“When I was your age I had the same trouble finding tall dates,” Mom said. “When I went out on dates I wore ballet slippers.”

“But you lucked out. You met Dad.” I pretended to frown. “All those tall genes. No wonder I ended up five feet ten.”

“Look at the bright side,” Mom kidded. “Just think—you'll always be able to reach the top shelves.” She looked at her watch. “Mrs. Malik isn't going to feel like seeing company right away. Just drop this off on your way to work and tell the Maliks we'll do our neighboring later.”

I carefully carried the cake across the lawn and up the steps of the Maliks' porch. As I balanced the flat, rectangular pan on one hand and prepared to ring the doorbell, I heard Mrs. Malik snap, “Don't push your luck.”

A deeper voice—Mark? Mr. Malik?—said, “Like it or not, we're here. You can spend your time griping, or calm down and make the best of it.”

“If it weren't for …” Mrs. Malik moved away from the door, and I couldn't catch the rest of what she said.

I knew I couldn't ring the doorbell now. As quietly as I could, I tiptoed down the porch steps, walked a few feet, then turned to face the Maliks' house. Humming loudly, I clumped up the stairs and across the porch.

Mr. Malik opened the door and faced me before I'd had a chance to knock.

“Hi,” I said. “Remember me? Jess Donnally. I live next door. My mom sent over this welcome cake. She'll come and visit some other time, after you're settled in.”

He took the warm pan, stared at the cake in bewilderment, then managed to say, “Thank you,” before shutting the door firmly behind him.

Weird
, I thought.
Except for good-looking Mark, that is a truly weird family.

A short while later, I was busy serving burgers, fries, and Cokes, chatting with the customers, and flashing a friendly Bingo's Burgers smile, when Mark Malik stepped up to the counter.

“Hi. Thanks for bringing over the cake. It was great,” he said.

“Mom made it. It's one of her specialties. I'm glad you liked it,” I said.

Mark lowered his voice. “I'm afraid my dad wasn't very friendly when you came. He should have invited you in. It's just that the cake kind of took us by surprise.”

“Why were you surprised?”

Mark shrugged. “Well, because we weren't expecting anything like that.”

“Really? Mom's cake was just the beginning. Mrs. Snyder, across the street, will probably bring over a fresh peach pie, and Mrs. Hickey will show up with a meat loaf. You know the custom. It's called being neighborly.”

“That's a custom? I never heard of doing anything like that.”

“Well, I never heard of
not
doing it.” I paused, aware of the line that was beginning to form behind Mark, but my curiosity won out. “Where did you say you're from?” I asked.

“The East Coast,” he answered.

“Where on the East Coast aren't they neighborly?”

Linda Pruett leaned around Mark's shoulder and said, “Jessie, what's keeping this line? I've got four hungry kids waiting to eat. They're going to tear up this place if I don't get some food inside them pretty quick.”

“Sorry,” Mark said, and he stepped back, giving Mrs. Pruett a glowing smile.

Caught off guard, she patted his arm and said, “That's all right, son. I'm sorry to have to interrupt.”

“No problem,” Mark said. With a wave in my direction, he strode to Bingo's main door and left.

“Two doubles and four treasure boxes, and no cheese on the burgers,” Mrs. Pruett said, quickly collecting herself. “Cokes all around, and make sure none of the treasure boxes are missing their prizes this time.” She jerked her chin toward the door. “That was a good-looking boy you were talking to, Jessie. Seems like a nice, polite boy, too. I haven't seen him around here before. Did his family recently move to Oakberry?”

“Yes,” I answered as I scrawled the order and
clipped it to the trolley leading to the open kitchen. “They moved in today.”

“What's their name?”

“Malik.”

“Any relation to the Maliks down around Sweet Home or Halletsville?”

“I don't think so.” I told Mrs. Pruett the total, took the bills she handed me, and gave her change.

“Where are they from?” Mrs. Pruett persisted.

“The East Coast,” I said. “That's all Mark told me.” I loaded Mrs. Pruett's order on a large tray and turned to the next customer.

Mark obviously had come to Bingo's just to see me. Hugging a little smile that no one could see, I promised myself that as soon as possible I was going to find out as much as I could about Mark Malik.

It was getting late, near the end of my shift, when Eric Dodson wandered in. He squinted up at the menu board, which spread across the counter area over my head, then looked at me.

“Hi, Jess,” he said.

“Hi,” I answered. “What'll you have, Eric?”

“Baked potato,” he said.

“We don't have baked potatoes,” I told him. “Fries okay?”

Eric frowned and studied the menu board again while I studied him. When I was in seventh grade, I thought Eric was really something. He's probably the smartest person I've ever met, and he's good-looking in a skinny-tall kind of way. Eric's father tried all year to get him to go out for basketball,
but his grandmother gave him his first computer. No one saw much of Eric after that. From my point of view, it's terrible to see a really tall guy go to waste.

“How about a Meal-in-One?” I suggested. “Double meat patty, two kinds of cheese, lots of tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, and onion. Fries on the side, along with a milk shake. It covers most of your basic food groups.”

“Okay,” Eric said, and grinned. “What you said was pure advertising hype, but at least I can report back to my mom that I had the basic food groups.”

“Anything to make your mom happy,” I said. I took his money, wrote down his order, and clipped it to the trolley.

Eric rolled his eyes. “Happy? It's very hard to make her happy.” No one was at the counter, so he leaned toward me. “My mom gets uptight about things, like my showing up tonight for dinner. She kept yelling upstairs for me to come down, and I kept telling her I couldn't come right then. I was in a chat group with some very interesting Latin professors, who were discussing the demise of classical languages, and I felt I should explain to them that Latin wasn't totally dead in high-school curricula. Well, anyway, when the discussion was over, I came down to the kitchen to see if anything was left or get a couple of Pop-Tarts to take back upstairs, and that made her even more upset. That's why I'm here.”

“Welcome to Bingo's Burgers,” I said, and handed him his order.

“The older generation just can't seem to adapt to modern technology,” Eric said.

I just smiled and realized I wasn't going to worry about tall, dateless Eric. I had my mind on Mark Malik.

O
N
S
UNDAY
,
AFTER
services at Oakberry Baptist Church, Lori came over. She and I—“the long and the short of it,” as Dad liked to tease—decided to hang out on the front porch, hoping that Mark would emerge from his house and come over. But there was no sign of any of the Maliks.

“Their car's on the driveway, so they must be home,” Lori said.

I picked up sleepy old Pepper and draped him over my shoulder, snuggling my chin against his soft, warm back. A bee burrowed into a golden, out-of-season blossom on the Confederate jasmine, and a half-dozen grackles swooped down on the front yard, searching the grass for bugs. “It's probably the September heat,” I told Lori. “It takes people from the East a while to get used to Texas weather. They don't want to go outside and leave their air-conditioning.”