The Bell Bandit (9 page)

Then Mike held up his hands, and Jessie could see that he was holding a frog—a live frog! Its back legs kicked a couple of times, dangling below Mike's hands. Mike held the frog up while Jeff tied one of the strings attached to the nail to one of the frog's front legs. Then he tied the other string to the other front leg. Jessie couldn't figure out what they were planning to do. Maxwell started to make a noise Jessie had never heard from him. It was like a moan, but it came out in short bursts. The hand over his mouth muffled the sound, but Jessie was still worried the boys would hear it. There was nothing she could do, though. She couldn't take her eyes off the scene inside the barn.

Now the frog was dangling by its front legs, its back pressed against the wooden splints the boys had hammered into place, its pale green belly facing out. It tried to kick itself free, but its powerful hind legs had nothing to push against.

The boys set to work on the frog's jumping legs. Jeff grabbed the left leg and started to wrap the thread from one of the spools around it. Mike did the same with the right leg and the other spool. Jessie started to see a picture in her head, a picture of how the spools would turn, how the strings would get tighter, how the legs of the frog would stretch and stretch and stretch until...

Out of the corner of her eye, Jessie saw Maxwell press his other hand over his mouth. The sounds from his mouth were coming out faster and louder. Jessie felt like she was deep underwater—everywhere heaviness pressed on her. Her legs felt heavy. Her arms felt heavy. Her mouth felt sealed shut, as if a big hand had clamped down on it. She couldn't move. She couldn't think.

Jeff began to turn the spool on the left as Mike turned the one on the right. The frog began to kick furiously, but soon the kicks became little quivers as the strings pulled in all directions. And then the quivering stopped. The frog couldn't move. All four legs were stretched as far as they could go. Only the soft green belly of the frog moved, vibrating in and out, as if its heart would beat right out of its chest. And the frog's mouth opened and closed, in what looked to Jessie like a silent scream.

Suddenly, there
was
a scream, and Jessie had the strange thought that it came from the frog! It was a cry like Jessie had never heard before. She turned and saw Maxwell screaming wildly as he kicked at the snow, looking for something buried underneath. When he found what he wanted—a rock the size of his fist—he picked it up and hurled it through the window. The glass smashed to pieces, and Jessie jumped back. Maxwell continued to scream as if he were being skinned alive.

And then he bolted, running back over the bridge, leaving Jessie in the dark with the two Sinclair boys staring right at her through the hole in the shattered glass.

Evan ran toward the bridge, stumbling in the deepening darkness. On the other side, he could see someone running toward him, but the light was so dim, he couldn't tell who it was. The person was running as if a wild animal were chasing it, arms clawing madly at the air, legs galloping down the hill toward the bridge. Evan had to stop abruptly at the bridge to prevent a collision.

That's when he saw it was Maxwell. But Maxwell was supposed to be with Jessie. Where was Jessie? Who had screamed? What broke the glass?

"Maxwell, what happened?" Evan shouted, but Maxwell wasn't stopping. He barreled over the bridge, running past Evan as if Evan didn't even exist.

"Stop! Stop!" Evan yelled, but it seemed like Maxwell never heard him. He ran up the hill and into the woods, and then he was out of sight.

Evan turned and raced over the bridge and up the hill where Maxwell had come from. There was a house up here, the old Jansen house. He saw that the lights were on, so he headed for the porch but then stopped. He heard voices. Coming from behind the barn. And one of them was Jessie's.

When Evan rounded the back corner of the barn, he practically ran over his little sister. She was standing with her legs apart, buried halfway up to her knees in the deep snow, with both arms crooked at the elbow. In each hand, she held a rock the size of a baseball.

In front of her were two boys. It took Evan just a split second to size them up. The bigger one looked to be just about Evan's size; the other one wasn't much smaller. When Jessie saw Evan, she took three quick steps backwards but kept the rocks held tightly in her fists. She'd been holding her own against the boys—that was Jessie!—but Evan could tell she was scared.

"Hey!" Evan shouted, and took a step toward the boys.

"Is this your brother?" shouted the older boy at Jessie. "He's not so big! We could beat him up with our hands tied behind our backs." The younger boy laughed and said, "Yeah!"

"Come on, then," said Evan. He made a move toward the older boy, pushing his chest out and balling up his fists, but just then a rock landed on the ground right between them.

"Stop it!" said Jessie. "Fighting is for morons!"

"Yeah, like that moron who broke our window!"

"He's not a moron. You're the morons! It's disgusting what you were doing!"

"What is going on?" shouted Evan.

"They were torturing a frog in there, Evan!" Jessie said, and Evan could tell she was on the very edge of crying. "Maxwell and me were spying on them—"

"Yeah, you were spying on us. On our property—"

"So what! You should go to jail for what you did!"

"You're the one who's going to jail! Trespassing. Spying. Breaking windows!"

"Shut up!" Evan yelled, and everyone did. "Jessie, did you break the window?"

"No. Maxwell broke the window. Because they had a frog tied up and were trying to pull its legs off. While it was still
alive.
"

Evan looked at the two boys, and suddenly they didn't seem to have anything to say. The older one looked at the ground. The younger one looked at the older one, and then he looked down at the ground, too.

Evan shook his head. "That is
sick.
That is really, really sick." Evan was a tough kid who liked guts and gore as much as anyone. But the thought of hurting a real animal made his stomach turn.

"It's our property. We can do whatever we want on it. And you're still trespassing." The older boy made a move toward Evan, and the younger one backed him up from behind.

Evan stepped forward to show he wasn't afraid. But two of them at once. That was going to be hard, and Evan didn't have a lot of experience with fighting. He tightened his fists at his sides, wishing he had one of his friends from home. Paul or Jack or even Scott Spencer. It would be a fair fight if it were two against two.

Wham.
Another rock came sailing at them, and this time it hit the older boy in the shoulder.

"Jeez, what are you doing?" he shouted. "You can't throw rocks."

"Who says?" said Jessie. "Show me the rule book." Her voice sounded funny, and Evan could tell she was shaking. But there she was, standing up to those boys. Just like she'd stood up to Scott Spencer when she put him on trial for stealing the lemonade money. She might be the smallest fourth-grader in the world because she'd skipped a grade, but Jessie had bossed around the whole class. When it came to justice, she was fearless. Maybe this was going to be a fair fight after all.

"Hold her down," said the older boy to the younger boy, and as soon as the smaller one took a step toward Jessie, Evan let loose. He shoved the younger boy so hard, the kid fell to the ground, then he turned on the older boy with both his hands up, ready to swing. The older boy quickly backed away.

"Hey, calm down. It's no big deal," he said. "Jeez, you two are really a pain in the neck. Just take your stupid sister and get out of here."

Evan kept his fists up in front of him, standing his ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the younger brother was crying but had gotten up on his feet. Bullies! It was like his mother said—stand up to them and they always back down.

"Come on, Jess," said Evan, lowering his hands halfway.

"No," said Jessie.

Evan could see that she was holding two more rocks, one in each hand.
No? What was she thinking?

"Jess, we're going."

"Not until we get that frog out of there."

The older boy took a step forward. "You are
not
going inside our barn. There is no way I'm letting you in there."

Evan could tell the boy meant it. You didn't mess with farm families and their property. Evan had spent enough time in these woods to know that. Jessie was pushing their luck, and she was going to get them both in a lot of trouble.

But Jessie didn't care. "I'm going to break every window in your barn until your mother comes out here to see what all the noise is, and then
you
can tell her what you're doing in there."

Oh man,
thought Evan, feeling his insides crumple up.
Now we're going to get murdered.

"If you throw even one more rock—" The boy took a step toward Jessie. Evan took a step toward the boy. The younger kid circled around behind Evan.
Here it comes,
thought Evan.

But a voice called out. "Jeff! Mike! Where are you?" It was a woman's voice, and it came from the direction of the house.

"Good!" said Jessie. "Now you have to go inside, or she's going to come looking for you. And then what? Huh?"

To Evan's surprise, the older boy hesitated. The younger boy stopped, too—frozen.

"Right now, you two!" The voice rolled across the yard like a bowling ball. "If I have to call you a second time, you'll be sorry I did!"

The younger boy took off.

The older boy looked at Evan and Jessie and said, "You better be gone in five minutes. I'm going to come back out here, and you better be gone." He started walking toward the house, but once he passed the barn, Evan saw that he broke into a run and didn't stop until he was on the porch. He disappeared inside the house, swallowed up by the front door.

Before Evan could say anything, Jessie started to run inside the barn. "We have to get that frog out of there!"

But when they got inside the barn and found their way to the wood storage room, the frog looked more dead than alive. It was hanging by its front legs, its back legs making weak kicking movements that seemed like the feeble waving of a surrender flag. Jessie didn't want to touch the frog, so Evan held the frog's body in his hands while Jessie plucked at the strings tied to each leg. When they got the last one off, Evan put the frog down on the dirt floor of the barn.

It was as if the frog had forgotten how to move. It wiggled its back legs, but couldn't seem to get a solid footing on the cold ground. First one leg and then the other shot out from its body, kicking at the air, but unable to move forward. Evan and Jessie watched, waiting.

"It's going to die," said Jessie, and Evan thought she was probably right. The frog had forgotten how to jump, or maybe its legs had been broken or permanently damaged in some way. Evan felt a sudden wave of sadness for all the things in the world that were damaged and broken.

Evan looked down at the frog and said, "We can't just leave it here to die. We need to take it home." But what he was thinking was,
And put it out of its misery.
He reached down to pick up the small animal, and when his hand was just an inch away, the frog leaped through the air and disappeared under the woodpile.

"Hey!" said Jessie. "He's okay! Did you see him jump? Wow!"

Jessie smiled at Evan, and he wanted to smile back, but he couldn't. The dark thought was still banging inside his head. "C'mon," he said. "We gotta go. And we don't have a lot of time."

They went back to the top of Lovell's Hill, where the empty crossbeam stood, because they needed a place to start their search and Jessie couldn't think of anywhere else. Night had fallen, and a thick cover of clouds hung low in the sky. Luckily, Jessie had brought a flashlight on the stakeout. The thin yellow beam illuminated the ground just enough for them to make their way.

At the top of the hill, Jessie flashed the light ahead of her. There was the heavy wooden crossbeam with its empty space where the bell should have hung.

The missing bell. What a lousy spy she'd turned out to be! She hadn't learned a thing on the stakeout. She still didn't have any proof that the Sinclair boys had stolen the bell in the first place. And Maxwell had ended up half out of his mind, running off—to where? Where was Maxwell now? Was he missing, too?

"Maybe Grandma was here," said Jessie, skipping the flashlight beam over the ground. There were hundreds of footprints in the snow. Both Jessie and Maxwell had crossed this hill several times over the last few days, and Evan had come straight over the hill when he heard Maxwell's scream and the broken glass. There were footprints everywhere. The ground was a tangled-up dance of feet.

"Think, Jessie," said Evan. "It's like a puzzle. You're good at puzzles. Where would she go?"

Jessie looked up toward Black Bear Mountain, but there was no way she could see it in the darkness. The woods behind her were a thick brushstroke of blackness, too. Blackness in front of her. Blackness behind her. Where could Grandma be in all that dark?

Something cold and wet landed on Jessie's cheek. Then another and another. It was beginning to snow.

"Oh, Grandma," said Jessie, quietly.

"C'mon, Jess," said Evan. "You can think this out. I know you can."

In her mind, Jessie made a list. "She wouldn't walk on the road. She hates walking on the road. So forget that. She didn't go to a neighbor, because they would have brought her back. She's not in the barn?"

"I checked."

"Don't you think she's on the farm somewhere?"

Evan nodded his head. "Yeah, but where?" It was a big farm. A hundred acres.

"Let's go back to where she started. The house. And then we'll take the backward loop." That was Grandma's favorite walk, the one that took you all the way to the foot of Black Bear Mountain and then looped back through the woods, up the hill to the New Year's Eve bell. Jessie had done that walk a hundred times with Grandma.