The Long Night of Leo and Bree by Ellen Wittlinger

Author:Ellen Wittlinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

MIDNIGHT

Leo

We’re just sitting here. I tried to look through some of these magazines that are down here, just to get my mind off the situation I’m in, but the words didn’t make sense, so I gave up. My head hurts too much to read anyway—like somebody’s squeezing my brains. The girl, Bree, she’s not gabbing anymore. She’s slumped over with her head on the arm of the couch, but she’s not asleep. She’s not moving a muscle, but she’s all tense. Probably pretending to be someplace else. Or trying to use E.S.P. to get a message to her mother. Trying to phone home like E.T.

I loved that movie. Our whole family watched it together back when we had a VCR. Back when we had a family.

My head hurts like it’s about to crack open, and Michelle’s not telling me what I’m supposed to do. The pictures are still flashing up in my brain, although not constantly now. Maybe they’ll be there forever. Maybe killing this girl won’t make them stop. What if it doesn’t? What if she’s not be as bad as I thought at first, just dressed stupid?

If I had some clues about her, I’d know what to do next. Not just this stuff she’s telling me: about her boyfriend, and her poor mother, and going to college. Not that shit. If I knew the stuff she hides from people, the bad stuff, then I’d know if she was the right one to kill or not. If she was the one who makes up for Michelle. But nobody tells anybody that stuff; you have to find it out some other way.

Michelle, tell me! What should I do?

I must have been talking out loud, because the girl sits up all of a sudden. “Who are you talking to? Is there somebody else down here or just ghosts?”

I look around, like I’m not sure myself. Ghosts. Michelle isn’t a ghost. She’s my . damn it. Where is she? I pick this big old wrench up off a shelf because it’s the closest thing I see, and I let it fly against the wall. Makes an awful racket when it hits the concrete floor. I see the girl cowering on the sofa, like I might hit her next. But instead I just knock a bunch of books off a bookcase, which also makes a nice loud noise. But it doesn’t change anything. I slump into a folding chair and try to stop my head from pounding.

After it’s quiet for a minute, the girl sits up again and says, “It’s ironic that my mother turns out to be right. All her silly worrying, and now she’s actually right.”

If Michelle won’t talk to me, I’ll have to talk to this girl, try to figure things out myself. “What’s she right about?”

“Fenton is dangerous. You can’t trust men. It’s a rotten world. All that paranoid mother stuff.”

“Your mother says that? She’s got one thing right: It is a rotten world. Fenton’s not all that dangerous, though.

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