Nightmare (12 page)

Carole sat cross-legged on Lisa’s bed and took the cookie Lisa offered her.

“So, did you reach Sergeant Fowler this afternoon?” Lisa asked.

Carole nodded and then swallowed her first bite of cookie. “I called her from Pine Hollow because I wanted to make sure I caught her before she left. She said Dad probably wouldn’t call again for a couple of days, but he really was fine and cheerful. Even she didn’t know where he was, but he didn’t seem concerned about anything at all, except, of course, for not being able to reach me.”

“Well, that’s great,” Lisa said. “So now you know he’s really all right.”

“I guess so,” said Carole. “But it did cross my mind that if something were wrong, if he weren’t all right or if he were afraid that something might go wrong, he probably wouldn’t tell Sergeant Fowler and she definitely wouldn’t tell me.”

“Oh, right,” said Lisa. “Still, you know she talked
with him and he didn’t sound worried or anything, right?”

“I guess,” said Carole. Then, wanting to change the subject, she asked Lisa where she’d hurried off to that afternoon.

“My therapist,” said Lisa. “I still go, you know.”

“Right,” said Carole, a little sorry she’d asked the question. It wasn’t that Lisa was secretive about the fact that she was getting therapy, it was that Carole and Stevie never asked her about it because they figured if there was anything she wanted them to know, she’d tell. Now Carole had blundered right into it and asked the question she hadn’t meant to ask. Lisa didn’t seem to mind, however. In fact, she seemed more than a little eager to share some of what had gone on.

“I told her all about Fiona, about the paper, and about how you guys were helping me with it.”

“Was that okay?” Carole asked.

“Of course,” said Lisa. “And, speaking of that, I don’t think I did a very good job of thanking you and Stevie for giving me that information from her computer.”

“It was helpful stuff?”

“Definitely,” Lisa said. “But I don’t really think I need it quite yet.”

“We just wanted to save you some time,” Carole said, shrugging off their efforts.

“No, I don’t mean it that way,” said Lisa. “I mean that
the more I talked about this with Susan, the more I could see her eyes opening wide. She doesn’t normally get upset about stuff I tell her, but this time she made an exception. She was almost angry with me. When I stop to think about it, I don’t know why you and Stevie weren’t angry with me, too.”

“No, we weren’t angry,” Carole told her. “Just worried. That’s why we wanted to help you.”

“Well, Susan wanted to help me, too. She said there really isn’t any difference, as far as a computer is concerned, between an A and an A-plus. If I do the best I can and become valedictorian, fine. If Fiona does, well, she can have it. And if we both do best, then we can be co-valedictorians.”

“I see her point,” Carole said.

Lisa picked up another cookie and took a bite before going on.

“Well, I could see her point, too, but of course it doesn’t make any sense at all if you look at it carefully. Being a co-valedictorian is useless. There is something known as ‘best,’ and two people can’t be ‘best.’ ‘Best’ is what I’ve always expected to be. You know that. So I don’t really have a choice.”

Carole was getting a bad feeling about this. What was Lisa leading up to?

“If I can’t be best, at least I have to know why, and the only way I can know why is if I’m in control. I’ve
made the decision now. I’ve decided to let Fiona go ahead and be the valedictorian. I am going to get a C in history.”

“
What
?” Carole asked. This was more confused than she could have imagined.

“A C,” Lisa repeated. “You’ve heard of them, haven’t you? It’s the grade average students get. I think it’s time for me to show that I’m not obsessing about my grade point average, but I’m still in control. I’ll be very proud of my C.”

Carole nearly choked on her final bite of chocolate chip cookie. The idea of Lisa’s getting an intentional C in a course was totally bizarre. She’d nearly gone out of her mind when she’d gotten an unintentional B+ in math last year! It had been as if it was the end of her academic career. Good-bye to Harvard! Farewell Rhodes scholarship!

Carole couldn’t say what was on her mind. In the first place, if she tried to talk, she was going to spurt chocolate chip cookie all over the place, because there was no way she could swallow while she was thinking about Lisa getting a C. In the second place, if she hadn’t been angry with Lisa before, she certainly was now, and she strongly suspected that it would be bad for their friendship if she told Lisa what she actually thought of this new plan.

“Interesting,” Carole said when she could finally talk.

“Yes, I think so. And speaking of interesting, what is going on with Stevie?” Lisa asked.

“Beats me,” said Carole. “But she looked awful today—like she’d gotten about three hours of sleep.”

“Do you think something’s worrying her?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t know. She’s usually more forthcoming about what’s on her mind, especially when she’s got a problem. So maybe we have to pry a little bit to see what’s going on.”

“Sounds like a Saddle Club project to me,” said Lisa.

“Yes, we should see if we can figure out what’s on her mind. Actually, there’s something I want to talk with her about anyway. I’ll call her a little later and see if I can get any information, so we’ll know what we’re dealing with here.”

“Good idea. And it’s good if you call her, too. Because even if I’m going to get a C in history, I’ve still got a lot of irregular French verbs to memorize. One C will be enough for me this semester.”

“Right,” Carole said, standing up. “I’ll get to work, too. See you in the morning.”

As soon as Carole left the room, Lisa headed for her telephone. It suited her fine that Carole was going to call Stevie later, because Lisa was going to call her now. Carole was in trouble, and she and Stevie had to do something about it!

A dopey-sounding Stevie came to the phone.

“H’lo?” she said.

“Did I wake you up?” Lisa asked. She looked at her watch. It was just eight-thirty!

“Um, I don’t remember,” Stevie mumbled into the phone.

There were a few similar exchanges of senseless conversation before Lisa could get Stevie turned in the right direction. Lisa had been talking with Carole about Stevie, but she was more concerned about Carole.

“We’ve got to do something for Carole,” Lisa said. “She’s in trouble!”

“Trouble?” asked Stevie. She was awake and alert now.

“Trouble,” Lisa confirmed. “I think she’s so worried about her father that she’s letting absolutely everything drive her wild. I mean, she missed his call last night, and tonight she talked with Sergeant Fowler, who said everything was fine, but Carole doesn’t believe her!”

“Oh no,” said Stevie. “Any good reason for her not to believe Sergeant Fowler?”

“Not that I can see,” said Lisa. “It’s as if Carole’s decided she’s going to worry no matter what anyone tells her. And you know Carole. When she starts worrying senselessly, she can start doing the oddest things. We’ve got to find a way to let her know that everything’s fine with her father.”

“Maybe we should call Sergeant Fowler,” suggested Stevie.

“That’s exactly what I had in mind,” Lisa said. “And
you’re the person to do it. You’re the best person I know at convincing adults to do something they don’t necessarily know they ought to be doing, and you’ll have to talk her into getting Colonel Hanson to call at a time when we know Carole will be home and can talk to him.”

“And who’s going to convince him to tell Carole that he’s okay in a way she’ll believe?” Stevie asked.

It sometimes surprised Lisa when her friends were more logical than she was, but she had to admit that Stevie had asked a good question.

“We’ll come up with something,” said Lisa.

It sometimes surprised Stevie when her friends were more illogical than she was, but Lisa was right. They would come up with something, somehow.

“Now, can I go back to bed?” Stevie asked.

“Sure,” Lisa said. She didn’t think it was a good idea to mention that Carole would be calling her later that night.

“I
CALLED
S
TEVIE
last night, but Chad answered and said she was sound asleep—at nine o’clock!” Carole told Lisa the following morning. The two of them were sitting at the breakfast table. Carole was eating a bowl of cereal. Lisa was having toast and a glass of juice. Normally Mrs. Atwood made breakfast for the family. This morning, however, both Lisa and Carole had awakened very early. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet, and they were both dressed and hungry.

“I guess she really was tired yesterday,” said Lisa, sipping her orange juice.

“Just like we may be tonight because of getting up so early! Say, what woke you up?” Carole asked.

“Oh, I guess my determination to follow through on
my new plan,” said Lisa. “I’m excited about it. It’s so daring! Anyway, I want to get to school early so that I can do some work in the computer lab.”

“Oh,” said Carole. Then she thought that in the whole wide world, it would only be Lisa Atwood who would need to get to school extra early in order to get a poor grade. Carole decided to keep that thought to herself. “Well, as long as you’re leaving early, I’ll leave with you,” she said. “There’s something I want to check in the library.”

“Good,” said Lisa. “I like to have company walking to school.”

They didn’t talk much as they walked. It was so early that both of them were still a little dozy. The streets and sidewalks of Lisa’s neighborhood were empty except for the occasional commuter headed for the train station. There were no clusters of children waiting for buses or mothers herding students into cars. That would all happen an hour later. For now, the town was a slightly different world from what either Carole or Lisa was accustomed to.

“See you at lunch,” Lisa said, waving cheerfully to Carole as she headed for the computer lab. Carole hung her jacket in her locker and stowed her book bag there until her first class. She didn’t need her books for her errand in the library.

The librarian looked up and greeted Carole as she came in. She was always there early for any students who
wanted or needed to be at school early. This morning, there weren’t any other students in the library. Carole smiled back. She didn’t need any help. She knew where to look.

She went to the fiction section for older readers and walked along the shelf until she came to the
J
’s. There it was,
The Path to Freedom
by Elizabeth Wallingford Johnson. Carole was curious about the book. She was curious because the Underground Railroad was a subject that interested her, but she was more curious because the book seemed to have a sort of hold on Stevie. Stevie would give her her own copy to read when she’d finished it, and that wouldn’t be too long. In the meantime, though, Carole wanted to get a head start. Maybe it would cast some light on what was going on in Stevie’s head. Between Lisa and Stevie, Carole would have preferred to understand what was going on in Lisa’s head. The glimpse she’d had last night, however, had convinced her that it was too weird for her to be able to understand. She had a better shot at Stevie’s head. Stevie could be weird, for sure, but there was always a pleasantly twisted logic to her weirdness.

She took the book off the shelf and settled down on the big, comfortable sofa to read. She had forty-five minutes before the bell. That was enough to get some insight. At least she hoped it was.

She was on page fourteen when she became aware that someone else had come into the library. The other
person was clicking furiously at the keys of the computer catalog, making notes, printing out lists. It was eager, excited activity, hard for Carole to ignore, and when the other person said, “Oh, wow!” Carole looked up.

It was none other than Fiona Jamieson, and Carole was sure she was working on the bibliography for her history paper—due in six months. What was the matter with these people?

“Fiona?” Carole said.

The girl set the computer to work on another search and then turned around in her chair. “Oh, hi. Carole, isn’t it?” They weren’t in the same class, so it wasn’t surprising that Fiona wasn’t sure who she was.

“Right. Carole Hanson,” Carole confirmed. “What are you doing here at this hour?” Carole hoped she sounded friendly rather than accusatory, which was how she felt.

“Oh, I’m just looking up some stuff,” said Fiona.

Of course she’s just looking up some stuff
, thought Carole.
That’s what people do on a computer catalog.
“Got a paper coming up?” she asked.

“Not really,” said Fiona. “I mean, I do, but it doesn’t have to be done for months. I just like to get ahead on my reading. I feel better when I do that, and I know I learn a lot more if I’m prepared for the classes.”

That made sense to Carole.

“So what are you doing here?” Fiona asked.

“Just reading a book someone recommended,” said
Carole. “It’s about the Underground Railroad. I’ve just started it, though.”