The Locker by Richie Tankersley Cusick

Author:Richie Tankersley Cusick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media

14

All I could do in school the next day was watch the clock. I’d asked Aunt Celia if I could borrow the van, and I’d promised to pick up Dobkin from kindergarten, and we’d told her we were going shopping in town. She’d been easy to fool because she wanted to devote the whole afternoon to her sculpting, so I didn’t really feel like we were doing anything wrong.

I also didn’t really want anyone to know where Dobkin and I were planning to go.

You can’t very well walk into a brand-new town and tell people you’re trying to find someone who disappeared, and that you know she’s dead because she’s been communicating with you. Especially not a place like Edison, where outsiders are already considered mortal enemies.

Then I remembered that Tyler had told me I could borrow his cabin, so the first chance I got, I asked him again how to get there. He didn’t look the least bit suspicious—in fact, he looked kind of happy that I was going to take him up on the offer. He even told me where the key was hidden and said I didn’t ever have to ask permission to go—just to go whenever I felt like it.

Phase one successful.

I don’t know why I felt so nervous about going to Suellen’s house. I knew it was deserted, but there’s something creepy about poking around where dead people used to live. Out on the main road I passed up my first turnoff, and Dobkin had to yell at me to turn around and go back.

“Calm down,” he told me sternly. “It’s just a house.”

“It’s easy for you to be calm,” I retorted. “You haven’t been afraid to open your locker every day.”

“I don’t even have a locker.”

“I was trying to make a point.”

“Did anything happen today?”

I shook my head.

“Well, there you go.” He sounded smug. “We must be on the right track.”

The van was making weird noises, which made me even more nervous.

“If this thing breaks down, I’ll kill it,” I muttered. Dobkin ignored me and hung out the window, trying to grab the tops of weeds as we chugged along the country roads.

There were a few times I thought I’d gotten us lost for sure, but finally we rounded a bend in the dirt road and there it was—the ugly old house—set back in its weed-grown clearing. I turned off the engine, and we just sat there for a few minutes, looking at it. Now I could see where most of the roof had caved in. The whole thing was sort of leaning to one side, and everything sagged, and all I could think of was how all the life had really gone out of it.

“Come on,” Dobkin said bravely, pushing open his door. “We’re not going to learn anything staying here.”

“It looks snaky.” I shuddered. “I can’t go in there.”

He turned to me accusingly. “So you’d let a six-year-old child go in there all alone? How do you live with yourself?”

“Okay.” I sighed, climbing out.

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