“We’re blood sisters.”
“Blood sisters,” Shelly echoed. She chuckled for the first time Julia could remember. The sound broke her heart and then healed it, changing it forever.
* * *
While the girls reconnected, the Rat Park had been doing their part. They’d run the half mile at first, but in the heat, eventually walked, except for Sam Singh, the athlete. When they arrived, they’d rushed into houses, stirred parents still sleeping or working or pouring ice into coffee for breakfast. Eventually, parents were informed. An ambulance was called. The block became lively, like morning birds. Those without tweens still heard the shouts along the houses, the panting and the warning and the general milieu of unease. They came out to see. Some came running.
The Pontis, the Hestias, the Ottomanellis, the Walshes, and Jane Harrison all made haste, wearing house robes and flip-flops. Jane carried a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts mug that she dropped along the way. Arlo Wilde was still nursing his hangover when he heard the commotion. He didn’t stop to dress. He saw the frightened Rat Pack out his window, pointing into the park. He saw the crowd heading there. Something urgent was happening. Something bad. He scanned the faces, looking for Julia and Larry. Couldn’t find them. And then he saw what looked like his own Hawaiian shirt and a tangle of blond by the sinkhole. In tiger-striped boxer briefs and nothing else, Arlo got out and ran.
Fifteen minutes into their talk, the girls had been so preoccupied that they hadn’t noticed the adults headed their way. Julia spotted them first. Their pace was swift. Rhea Schroeder had the lead. She looked stark and small and devastatingly normal.
It felt like life-and-death. Like the only possible option. Because if they waited, Julia might lose courage. She might let herself be convinced that this wasn’t as serious as it seemed. She might tell her parents, who would conceal and make excuses, because underplaying was all they knew how to do when it came to the people of Maple Street. And Shelly would lose faith, too. She’d shrink into herself while the monster grew meaner and angrier. The Shelly that Julia loved would die.
“Shelly!” Rhea Schroeder screamed.
Shelly’s eyes widened at the sound of her mother’s voice. She grabbed at her shorn hair with an expression of pure fear.
“Now!” Julia cried. “We can’t let them catch us!”
Shelly lurched up and started running in the direction of the sinkhole and beyond, to the police station far away. Legs and arms fully pumping, Julia joined. They ran together in the summer heat while bewildered adults gave chase.
Julia looked behind. Saw her dad back there. Half clad in silly boxer briefs and nothing else, he was faster than the rest, overtaking them one by one. The adults wore concerned expressions. Love and fear and disappointment blended, like it always did with them. She heard the insect heat-song, felt the sticky grass, the burn in her chest, saw the alien-seeming buildings beyond the park. It was hard to keep up with Shelly. Her face clenched tight, her eyes nearly closed, she looked possessed.
Once they got out of the park, they’d take side roads and cut through yards to avoid detection. Julia imagined arriving at the police department, panting and sweating. They’d try to find the right person to talk to. But they’d choose wrong and Shelly’s mom and dad would wind up in jail for child abuse instead of at some nice therapist’s office. Her family would get broken apart and no one would be able to pay the mortgage on 118 Maple Street. Or maybe she and Shelly would get caught before they ever made it to the cops. Dragged into the back of some Maple Street parent’s car and afterward, Shelly would get a beating so bad it killed her spirit.
Doubt crept: What if they needed the adults and not the police? What if this plan was dumb?
Rhea screamed again, angrier this time. “Shelly! Come back here NOW!”
Like a spooked horse, Shelly pulled ahead of Julia, running blind and straight for the slab—the shortest distance between the park and the road. She pounded wood. It cracked with every step and she didn’t stop. She didn’t seem to know she was running on it.
Julia stopped short, afraid the added weight would bring them both down. In the cab of the excavator was Larry, watching out the window. He’d probably gotten scared and hidden there. Now he poked his hands out and squinted, that perspective game kids play, as if trying somehow to catch her.
Shelly’s steps made hollow bangs! The rivets sang, loud and dissonant. The entire slab groaned toward the mouth of the hole like a board game folding in half.
“Shelly!” Julia shouted. But she didn’t seem to hear. She was stuck in the fold the wood made, unable to climb high enough to get out. She flailed, an animal trapped in a snare.