Young Hearts

Backstory

2012-06-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

This is the third entry of the Children of Eternity series.

In this episode, Samantha, Prudence, and Wendell travel across the sea to the town of Seabrooke, where they meet Judah Pryde, a distant relative of the evil Mr. Pryde. When Samantha meets Judah's son Joseph, she's instantly smitten. But when Joseph dabbles with strange potions he finds in an ancient cave, he puts everyone in danger.

Meanwhile, little Molly Brigham runs away from home only to find a mysterious stranger has arrived on the island. A mysterious stranger with a hidden agenda and nursing a grudge against Samantha.

Please enjoy, "Young Hearts..."

Chapter 49: New Horizons

2007-06-15T10:20:00.001-07:00

Chapter 49: New Horizons

Unloading the supplies from the Primrose took well into the night. After hauling the last crates down into the pantry cellar for storage, Prudence and Wendell shuffled off to her shop. She found everything exactly as she’d left it nearly a month ago, a thin layer of dust having gathered over her loom and spinning wheel. She sank down onto a pile of fabric, everything from her head to feet aching.

Still she couldn’t sleep. Wendell plopped down onto the fabric next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “It’s so awful,” she said. “How could they do that to poor Becky?”

“I don’t know,” Wendell said. The sight of Rebecca had chilled Wendell to the marrow of his bones. Seeing her was akin to reliving his nightmare; he shivered again at the memory of looking into the mirror and seeing a little girl staring back. “They probably pushed her into the fountain.”

“No, Helena and Phyllis are mean-spirited, but they aren’t that irresponsible,” Prudence said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

She pressed herself closer to Wendell, the warmth of his body comforting her. As she sat there, one thought continued to haunt her: it could have been her. If she had stayed instead of Rebecca, she might have fallen into the Fountain of Youth and become a target for Helena and Phyllis. She would be five years old right now instead of sitting here with Wendell’s arm around her. Shame nipped at her for the relief she felt at being spared, reopening a wound from four years ago when she had caused Miss Brigham to become little Molly.

She started to cry. “I wish there was something we could do for her,” she said.

“We can be there for her. Be her friends,” Wendell said. He kissed her on the cheek, sucking away the tears on that side. “That’s all we can do for her now.”

His lips moved down to touch hers. As he kissed Prudence, Wendell thought of Rebecca and wondered whether love could survive in this place. In nine years he had seen so much pain and death here. Maybe he and Prudence should board the Primrose and head back to Seabrooke or find somewhere else where they could be safe. He knew better than to suggest this, knew already what Prudence would say. Eternity was her home. She couldn’t leave Samantha and Molly and Becky and all the others.

She took Wendell’s hand and lay down with him on the piles of fabric. A smile crept across her face. She had someone to share all parts of her life with now, not a friend like Samantha, but something more. A soul mate, she thought. She held his hand while they slept, vowing never to let him go.

Molly couldn’t sleep in her own bed. The mattress was much more comfortable than the floor of the pantry cellar or the straw pallet in the girl’s dormitory, but try as she might, she couldn’t fall asleep. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Becky falling into the Fountain of Youth, one hand clawing at Molly, who only stood there and watched. Molly dressed in her nightgown, surrounded herself with her dollies, and pulled the covers over her head, but still couldn’t fall asleep. Why hadn’t she saved Becky?

She finally kicked off the covers and rolled out of bed. She crept into Becky’s bedroom, clutching brave Sir Francis to her chest. Aunt Samantha dozed on a chair; she stirred a moment when Molly came in, mumbled something unintelligible, and then fell asleep again. Molly slipped past her and burrowed under the covers of Becky’s bed.

Molly snuggled up against the chubby little body inhabiting the bed, so much like Mama Becky’s. Becky, utilizing some kind of motherly sonar, had always put an arm around Molly and pulled her close without opening her eyes. “You’re safe now, sweetie,” she would say.

This body she snuggled against now rolled away from her, turning its back on her. This isn’t Mama Becky, she thought. This is Veronica, her friend. Her friend who had pushed Becky into the fountain. She didn’t mean to, Molly thought. She was in shock after what had happened to her, going from an old lady to a baby in minutes. It wasn’t her fault. It was my fault. I should have saved her.

She pressed herself closer to Veronica, hoping the familiar feel of her body would have the same effect as Becky’s during all those stormy nights. This time Veronica rolled over to face Molly, her eyes opening in surprise. “Molly? Why aren’t you in your own bed?” she asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I’ll go back now.”

Veronica reached out to stroke Molly’s hair. “No, it’s all right. You can stay. I don’t mind.” She twirled one of Molly’s curls around her finger and then smiled. “I know things are different now, but I promise I’ll take care of you. Nothing bad is ever going to happen to us again.”

Samantha woke up the next day as a mother to two little girls. She warmed a kettle of water to take down to the stream and give each girl a bath. As Becky and Molly splashed in the water, Samantha noticed how Becky’s skin looked tanner than before. When wet tresses of nearly-black hair fell over Becky’s face, Samantha shivered with déjà vu. She shook it away as the girls bolted from the water to towel off.

She spent the rest of the morning combing tangles from their hair, a process that brought both girls to tears. She sensed Becky cried less from pain than the humiliation of having someone else combing her hair. Unskilled at all aspects of hairdressing, Samantha could only give them lopsided pigtails that caused them to giggle at each other. This was one of many skills Samantha knew she would have to master now that she had taken custody of the girls.

Once she helped them dress, she stood back to look at her adorable little girls. Becky pudgy and dark in a gray frock; Molly scrawny and bright in an emerald dress. No one would ever mistake them for twins or even sisters, though Samantha supposed they were now by the loose standards of Eternity that allowed her to serve as their mother. She didn’t suppose there could be a family more dissimilar from each other anywhere else.

“What do we do now, Mama Samantha?” Molly asked.

“You girls can go play for a few minutes while I put breakfast on,” Samantha said. Molly and Becky skipped off, their laughter echoing until Samantha closed the cottage door.

Cooking was another skill she would need to acquire. Her first attempt at breakfast—oatmeal from the supplies purchased in Seabrooke—turned into a thick, tasteless paste. If they had any livestock left she doubted even they would eat the stuff. She set it aside and decided on plates of apples and bread.

While she waited for the girls, Samantha sat by the hearth and stared into the fire. Yesterday she had been kissing Joseph and planning to live in solitude and today she was caring for two little girls and worrying about her domestic skills. More than anything, she wished she could have Joseph at her side right now so she could reach over to caress his hand and then pull him tight into a kiss—

The front door banged open and in came Becky and Molly, their clothes already stained with dirt. “We saw a bunny outside,” Molly said.

“You did? That’s wonderful,” Samantha said. Molly described the encounter with the rabbit throughout breakfast while Becky gnawed on her bread and apples in silence. Samantha kept feeling Becky’s eyes on her, but when she looked in that direction, Becky always turned her head away.

After breakfast, Samantha spent a disastrous afternoon with the girls in the bakery trying to make bread. Their first loaves of bread never rose. The second batch overflowed the pans. The third batch came out black on the bottom, but otherwise all right. They scraped off the charred parts as best they could and served the overcooked bread for dinner.

By the end of the day, Samantha felt as weary as if she’d been rowing the Primrose by herself all day. Molly and Becky agreed to share Molly’s bedroom, squeezing into one bed until they could get another one. “Tell us a story,” Molly said.

Samantha’s tired brain struggled to think of a story. “Once upon a time there were two princesses. One named Molly and the other named Rebecca. The princesses were the most beautiful girls in the whole kingdom. Everyone loved them, except for a jealous old hag named—”

“Helena!” the girls said in unison.

“That’s not very nice, but all right. Wicked Helena put a spell on the princesses to put them fast asleep until they were kissed by a true love. They slept for years and years until one day two handsome knights came along.”

“Knights like Sir Francis?” Molly asked.

“That’s right. Sir Francis and his brother Sir Joseph. They entered the castle and defeated the monsters wicked Helena had left there. They climbed up to the tower where the princesses slept and kissed them. The princesses woke up and lived happily ever after with Sir Francis and Sir Joseph. The end. Goodnight, girls.” Samantha kissed each girl on the forehead and then went to Becky’s bedroom, hers now.

She sank down onto the chair where she’d slept the night before. She wished Sir Joseph could ride up on his white horse like in the story so they could live happily ever after. I should have stayed with him, she thought.

On the floor next to the chair, she saw Joseph’s parting gift to her. She picked up the cellular phone, flipping it open and finding the button to turn it on. She typed in Joseph’s phone number and waited. The telephone rang six times before it picked up and she heard Joseph’s sleepy voice say, “Hello?”

“Hello, Joe, it’s me. Samantha.”

“Samantha! I didn’t think—”

“I wanted to let you know we made it back all right. And I wanted to say—” she stopped, unable to get the words out.

“Hello? Are you still there?” he asked.

“I’m here,” she said. She closed her eyes and said, “I wanted to say I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” he said. “I’m sorry I acted like such a jerk before you left. I hope I didn’t make you feel too bad.”

“No, of course not.” She tried to think of something else to say, but her mind had turned barren. “I wish you were here.”

“You know, it’s only two months until school lets out for summer. I could visit you up there—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said and then seized upon an idea. “But maybe I could go down there. I could bring my little cousins Molly and Becky along. They’re both adorable. I’m sure Prudence and Wendell would come too.”

“The more the merrier,” he said. “Maybe you could bring the whole town along. Dad would love it.”

They both laughed uneasily. They chatted then for the next three hours about mundane topics such as the weather and Joseph’s classes at school. Despite the weariness in her body, Samantha didn’t want to hang up the phone. She was afraid if she did, she might never talk to Joseph again. He finally ended the conversation by saying, “I’ve got to get up early tomorrow for school. I’ll let Dad know you guys might be coming back. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled. Talk to you later.”

“Talk to you later,” she said. The connection ended, but Samantha sat there for a minute with the phone stuck to her ear. Two months. Two months until she saw Joseph again. She didn’t know if she could make it that long without him. As she finally turned off the phone, she wished she had told him that. Tomorrow she would tell him how much he meant to her. She collapsed onto Becky’s bed, exhausted but unable to sleep. Never would two months seem so long.

Veronica waited until Molly had fallen asleep and Samantha stopped yakking on the telephone before she crawled out of bed. She padded towards the front door, careful not to make a sound that could wake anyone up. Moonlight reflected off a knife on the kitchen table. She had only to pick up the knife, waddle into the bedroom, and complete her life’s work. Now where’s the fun in that? she thought.

Nine years of rotting in jail had finally been rewarded. Suffering the indignity of becoming a fat little kid was no small price, but one she would gladly pay to finish the job. How long had it been? Thirty-two years since the night of the betrayal. She had come close to rectifying the situation once before only to be denied.

Now here she was on this godforsaken island only to chance upon her adversary. Amazing. Even more amazing that the girl didn’t seem to remember anything at all. Veronica had hoped for some sign of recognition before she slit her throat. The backstabbing wench. Veronica picked the knife off the table, the blade seeming impossibly bulky and heavy in her tiny hands.

She caught her reflection in the blade. Those darling apple cheeks. That elfin nose. The sweet little mouth. The adorable pigtails. She wanted to run the knife through her chest. Bad enough to be little, but to be little and cute was enough to make her sick.

She put the knife down and tiptoed to the door. She eased the door open, expecting to get caught at any moment, and then ventured out into the night. She ran along as fast as her stubby hooves could carry her, forcing down the childish terror of the dark in her overstuffed gut. She had slept in garbage-strewn alleys with rats and in unfinished graves with the worms; this couldn’t be any scarier.

The door to the boy’s dormitory was locked, but she made short work of that. She hoped they hadn’t thought to put trip wires in the dormitories like that cave. I should have brought Molly along, she thought. No, this was definitely not the kind of mission for sweet, innocent Molly.

She climbed down the stairs from the parlor into the sleeping area. Among the rows of snoring boys she found her prey fast asleep, completely unsuspecting. She could kill him right now too without any trouble. Or she could have as an adult; she couldn’t be sure her flabby five-year-old body possessed the necessary strength. For the moment she needed him alive at any rate.

She covered his mouth with one chubby hand. With the other she took out a smaller knife, one that couldn’t do a lot of damage unless it hit the right areas, though she knew all those areas. She ran the tip of the blade along his throat, not deep enough to draw blood, but deep enough for him to know she was serious. “Wake up, Davy,” she said.

David’s eyes opened then widened at the sight of the knife. “I’m not going to hurt you, yet,” Veronica said. “I’m here to make you a business proposal. Are you listening?”

He nodded. “Good. You and I want the same thing. If we pool our resources we have a much better chance to succeed.”

She took her hand away from his mouth so he could ask, “What are you talking about? How did you get in here?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is I can help you get the one thing you want most: power.” She pulled the knife back now, balancing the tip on the end of one finger. “I can help you get rid of Samantha Young once and for all. Then you’ll be the king of the island.”

“I don’t a little girl’s help,” David hissed.

“If you didn’t need help you would have already done it. I need your strength and you need my will. It’s a perfect match.” A smile spread across her face as she added, “Unless you want to be Samantha’s errand boy the rest of your life.”

“Tell me more,” he said. She whispered the plan into his ear. When she finished, he said, “Let’s do it.”

“You won’t regret it.” She leaned down to kiss him on the lips. Then she disappeared down the row of beds, into the darkness.

[END]

Chapter 48: A Choice

2007-06-15T10:19:00.001-07:00

Chapter 48: A Choice

They decided to share one last dinner at Mr. Pryde’s house. He asked a friend of his to keep an eye on the Primrose at the dock and then drove the children home to dine on a round piece of bread topped with cheese and circles of red meat that reminded Samantha of her pimples. A pizza, she recalled. “Sorry I can’t make anything fancier,” Mr. Pryde said.

“It’s all right,” Prudence said. She nibbled at her wedge of pizza instead of devouring it as she would have weeks ago. A change attributable to the hideous nightmare caused by Joseph’s potion, but also something else. A glow came off Prudence now, especially in close proximity to Wendell, as she was now at the table. They’re in love, Samantha thought.

She knew the feeling all too well from her time with Joseph. Samantha only hoped Prudence and Wendell’s love turned out better than hers. She looked over to the foot of the table, where Joseph sat, a slice of pizza hanging limp in his hands. Behind his glasses, he looked ready to cry.

“You know, things are usually pretty normal around these parts,” Mr. Pryde said. “Maybe you could come back this summer to see for yourselves. Joseph and I can put you up again.”

Joseph perked up at this, his eyes meeting Samantha’s for a moment before he looked away. “That’s nice of you to offer, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to come back then,” Samantha said. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be done at home.”

“I suppose you’re right. But anytime you want to come back you’re more than welcome,” Mr. Pryde said.

Joseph stood up from the table. “I have to go check on something upstairs,” he said. From the way he hurried out of the dining room and up the stairs, Samantha could tell he was trying not to break down in front of them.

She pushed away from the table. “I think I left something back in my room,” she said. The concern on Prudence and Wendell’s faces made it clear they didn’t believe her.

She knocked on his bedroom door and heard his muffled voice say, “Go away.”

“Joe, it’s me. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to you.” She waited a moment and then the door opened, Joseph’s eyes still puffy and red as he answered the door. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I could stay—”

“So stay. What’s keeping you there? Raising barns and milking cows?”

“It’s complicated,” Samantha said. “Can I come in?” He stepped aside, motioning for her to sit on the bed. He sat down next to her, staring down at the carpet without his glasses. “Things have changed a lot in the last month. There’s so much I don’t understand about myself, about who I am. What I do know is I haven’t been a good person. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to lose you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Joe, please, I need some time. I need to think things over and decide. This is something I have to do on my own.”

“Why? Whatever you need to think about, I want to be there to help you. I care about you, Samantha.”

She bit down on her lip to keep from bursting into tears. She wanted to stay here with Joseph, wanted to see where life would take them, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk doing to him what he had done to her under the potion’s spell. “I’m sorry, Joe. I can’t.”

“Will I see you again?”

“I don’t know.”

Joseph went to his desk and picked up a package wrapped in red paper. He dropped the package beside her on the bed. “I bought this for you the other day.”

“Joseph, I couldn’t accept this—”

“I want you to have it. Please.” She tore the paper off the box to find a tiny black telephone inside. “It’s a cell phone. I didn’t think they had phones in Amish country. See, I wrote my number down in there so you can call me whenever you want. There’s even a battery charger. I did a few modifications so it’ll run on solar power. All you have to do is leave the charger in the sun when the battery runs down. If you ever want to talk, that is.”

Samantha couldn’t hold back the tears now. “Oh, Joseph, thank you so much. I love it.” Their friendly embrace soon turned to a passionate kiss. She wanted to stay there with him forever, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk hurting him.

She eased away from Joseph, the package tucked under her arm. She didn’t know what to say, finally blurting out, “Thank you.” Then she hurried out of the room and downstairs, where Prudence and Wendell were waiting.

“Is he coming?” Mr. Pryde asked.

“No,” Samantha said. Mr. Pryde nodded in silent understanding. He ushered them out to the car, where Samantha rode in the front seat so Prudence and Wendell could be together. She hoped Joseph would come bursting out the front door to meet them, but he didn’t. She watched for any sign of him in the rearview mirror until the house disappeared from view. She turned her head just enough so that she saw Wendell take Prudence’s hand.

On the dock, Mr. Pryde thrust his hands into his pocket and stared out at the water. “You kids remember what I said. You’re welcome to come back here anytime.”

“We’ll remember,” Prudence said.

“You all be careful out there.”

“We will,” Wendell said.

“Thank you for everything,” Samantha said. Mr. Pryde continued to stand on the dock, watching them as the Primrose made its way out of the slip, towards open sea. Samantha thought she saw him wave before he disappeared from sight, but she couldn’t be certain.

“Do you think we ever will come back?” Prudence asked.

“I hope so,” Wendell said. Samantha said nothing. She rowed the oars with Wendell until the sail caught a breeze to carry them back to Eternity.

As the Primrose glided along the water, Samantha considered her future. A life with Joseph wasn’t possible, nor could she stay in Eternity. She had been a criminal, a fugitive from justice, and sooner or later that past would resurface as it had when she took Joseph’s potion. Next time she might not just insult Prudence and break her arm; next time Prudence or someone she cared about might end up dead.

She made her decision there in the middle of the sea. After they unloaded the supplies and everyone else went to bed, she would sneak out to the boat and sail away. Not to Seabrooke—never to there again—but to some far distant place where she could live out her days in solitude, isolated so she could never again hurt someone she loved. Prudence and Wendell and Becky and Molly would grieve for her, might even try to find her, but they would get over her departure after a while. They would move on with their lives, as would Joseph. It’s better for everyone this way, she thought.

They reached Eternity as the sun went down, a shadow on the dark water forming into the familiar coastline of the island. “We’re home!” Prudence shouted. She hopped around with such excitement Samantha thought the boat might tip over.

They rowed the Primrose ashore with all three manning an oar, Prudence using her good arm to paddle. They beached the Primrose in the sand and then Wendell jumped down with a rope to secure it to a boulder. Samantha helped Prudence down to the ground before getting off the boat herself. “It’s too bad we couldn’t let them know we were coming,” Wendell said.

“Everyone will be asleep by the time we get there,” Prudence added. “Maybe we should wait.”

“No,” Samantha said too quickly. “We should get this stuff out in case a storm comes up or some animals try to get into it. We wouldn’t want this to all be for nothing.”

Prudence and Wendell agreed. They each took some of the provisions with them as they trudged along the familiar path from the beach into the town. When the church steeple came in sight, Samantha felt a twinge of sadness. This would be the last time she ever saw it.

They stopped by Becky’s cottage first only to find it deserted. “Do you think something happened to them?” Wendell asked, picking up one of Molly’s dolls.

“They’re probably conserving firewood,” Samantha said.

They walked down the silent row of shops to the girl’s dormitory. Before she opened the door, Samantha took a deep breath and tried to force a smile to her face. She didn’t want any of the girls to suspect what she was planning.

“Hello everyone, we’re home,” she called from the parlor. They waited there a moment, a rustling coming from downstairs. Then a head of curly red hair bounded over the stairs and into Samantha’s outstretched arms. “Molly! Oh, you’ve gotten bigger since I left. I don’t think I’ll be able to pick you up soon.”

“Aunt Samantha, I missed you so much,” Molly said.

“I missed you too, sweetie.” She kissed Molly on the forehead, reminding herself this would be the last time she did so. She had to bite down on her lip to keep from crying.

Molly squirmed out of Samantha’s arms to hug Wendell and then Prudence. “What happened to your arm?” she asked.

“It’s a long story,” Prudence said.

By now the other girls had gathered in the parlor, though Samantha didn’t see Becky among them. She picked Molly up again with an exaggerated grunt. “Where’s your mom?” she asked.

Molly looked down at the floor, her face darkening. “Becky is sleeping,” she said.

“We’ll have to wake her up then.”

Molly shook her head. “You can’t. No one can. We tried everything. She won’t wake up.”

“Where is she?” Molly pointed downstairs. Samantha set the girl down before pushing her way through the others to go downstairs. She hurried down the empty rows of beds until she found Annie curled up on her bed. Annie pointed to the opposite corner without Samantha having to say anything.

If not for Annie’s guidance, Samantha might have walked by the pile of blankets in the corner. Only the slight rise and fall of the blankets every few seconds told her someone lay underneath the assorted covers. She laid a hand on the topmost blanket and said, “Becky? Becky, it’s me. It’s Samantha. Can you hear me? We’re back.” When nothing happened, Samantha started to pull off the covers. “Becky, please, wake up.”

She heaped the blankets on the floor, at last revealing the body of a little girl who couldn’t be any older than Molly. Samantha rolled the girl over to see the makeup slathered on her face smeared by tears. “Becky? Is it you?” Samantha asked. “What happened? Who did this to you?”

“She fell into the fountain,” David said from behind her. “That’s at least what Molly says.”

“Is that true?” Samantha asked Molly. The girl nodded and then eased back a few steps until she was standing next to Annie. “How did it happen?”

David recounted the story of Becky visiting the fountain cave to get some water for Molly. A wolf startled her in the cave and she fell into the water. Molly had come along and pulled Becky out, but not before she lost four years. “What about this makeup and the dress?” Samantha asked.

“She and the girls were playing and I guess they got carried away,” David said.

Samantha examined the faces about the room from David’s face to Molly’s petrified face to Helena’s nervous face. “Something happened here and I want to know what,” Samantha said. When no one said anything, she smacked her palm against the wall. “What happened?”

“They tortured her,” a small voice said. Samantha looked over at Annie, who seemed more surprised than anyone that she’d spoken. “Helena and Phyllis and the others tied her up and did that to her and then put her in the pantry.”

“Is this true?”

“Yes,” Molly said.

Samantha turned to David. “You knew about this?”

“No, of course not,” he said. When she tried to look him in the eye, his darted away. Her fists clenched as she thought of hitting him in the face. Him first, then Helena, and then Phyllis for torturing Becky. She looked back at where Rebecca lay motionless, Prudence now at her side, trying in vain to revive her. Samantha reared back to deliver the punch to David’s face; he flinched in anticipation.

Her hand dropped to her side. She couldn’t do it. She thought of her swollen eye from when Joseph had hit her and then saw Prudence’s arm in its sling. No more violence, she told herself. No more. “We’ll talk about this later,” she said.

She picked Rebecca up and then motioned to Molly. “Come on, let’s get you home.” Before leaving, she stopped in front of David. “We need to get the supplies off the ship. Prudence and Wendell will show you where. Round up everyone and get started. Got it?”

“I got it,” he said. She glared at him an instant, the urge to hit him rising again. No more, she told herself again. She carried Becky upstairs and out into the night.

As she walked to the cottage, a new understanding replaced Samantha’s anger. She could control this rage. She could keep the beast at bay if she tried. She could choose the kind of person she wanted to be.

She set Becky down on her bed in the cottage and then fetched a washcloth to wipe the makeup off the little girl’s face. Something about Becky looked different, but Samantha couldn’t tell what. She leaned down to kiss Rebecca on the forehead like Molly; Rebecca blinked and said, “It’s you.”

“Yes, it’s me. It’s Samantha. I’m back now.”

“Samantha,” Becky whispered. Then her eyes closed. Samantha continued to sit by her bedside through the night. She wouldn’t leave. She would stay to care for these little girls. That was her choice.

Chapter 47: Letting Go

2007-06-15T10:18:00.002-07:00

Chapter 47: Letting Go

Samantha realized two minutes after the fishing boat left the harbor she’d made a terrible mistake. On the Primrose, concerned with manning the oars and finding the mainland, she had resisted seasickness. On Mr. Pryde’s fishing boat, with nothing to do but feel the craft toss from side to side, her stomach began to churn.

She should have stayed on the dock to keep Prudence company until they returned with the Primrose. She sat on a toolbox at the rear of the boat, pressing a hand to her face to ward off the stench of dead fish mixed with diesel fuel threatening to suffocate her. As she suffered, Wendell stood with Mr. Pryde in the wheelhouse, pestering Mr. Pryde with questions about how the boat worked. Joseph worked at unknotting several lengths of rope they might need to haul the Primrose off the beach. He glanced over at her from time to time without saying anything.

She put down her hand and tried to smile at him, but a moment later grimaced from the rocking of the boat. “Do you want to go back?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to get my sea legs.”

“It takes a little getting used to,” Joseph said. “I threw up the first time Mom let me go with Dad on the boat.” Samantha’s stomach tightened at this. Joseph’s face turned red. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It helps if you close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Pretend you’re in a bathtub at home.”

Samantha closed her eyes and tried to imagine a peaceful bathtub. Instead, she thought of the stream her first morning in Eternity. The current took hold of her and sent her careening away until Prudence managed to snatch a handful of Samantha’s hair and haul her up to the surface. She shivered at this memory and then thought of the native canoe she’d taken out during the storm four years ago. A wave that blotted out the sky crashed down upon her tiny vessel, shattering it and pressing her down to the bottom of the sea. She opened her eyes and leaned over the side to throw up.

Joseph came over, brushing hair away from her face. “It’s all right,” he said. “Try to relax. Don’t think about—”

Samantha whirled around, shoving Joseph away. He collapsed onto a pile of netting. “Quit telling me what to do!” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said. His face turned redder. He scuttled away to the bow for the rest of the trip to the beach. Samantha sat back down on the toolbox, her nausea replaced by anger. This Joseph wasn’t much better than the one who’d hit her and nearly killed her, Prudence, and Wendell. He still thought he could control her. She’d agreed to give him a second chance, but now she knew it was a mistake.

As the fishing boat neared the beach, Mr. Pryde came out of the wheelhouse. “We’ll be there in a minute. Wendell and I will take your boat. You and Joseph can follow us if there’s any trouble,” he said.

“I’d rather go with you guys,” Samantha said.

Mr. Pryde shook his head. “I don’t want to leave Joey alone right now. He’s not a hundred percent yet. Neither are you from the looks of it.”

“I’m fine. Leave Wendell here. I’m sure he’d be a lot happier on this boat,” she said.

“I ain’t asking you,” Mr. Pryde said. “I’m telling you the way it’s going to be.”

Now Samantha could see from where Joseph got his bossiness. “If that’s what you want. I’ll stay here with Joe.” Mr. Pryde nodded and lit a cigarette before going back into the wheelhouse. Samantha folded her arms across her chest, determined not to move from this spot. She didn’t want to get anywhere near Joseph.

Wendell and Mr. Pryde jumped down from the fishing boat, splashing over to the beach where the Primrose waited. Samantha got up from her perch to toss them a line. Joseph materialized next to her, throwing another rope to his father. “I’m sorry about earlier,” Joseph said. “I was trying to help. I don’t suppose you would need my help.”

His lip trembled as if he would cry. This was not the same Joseph who’d hit her. This was a caring, sensitive boy who’d tried to help her and she’d hurt him for his kindness. “I’m the one who should be sorry,” she said. “You were being nice.”

They fastened the lines to the fishing boat and then waited for Wendell and Mr. Pryde to signal they were ready. Samantha slipped her hand over to touch Joseph’s. His skin felt much softer now, his hands narrow and delicate like a girl’s. This was not the vicious brute who would have killed her in Pinecrest. “You are nice,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. His smooth cheek turned warm at her touch.

“You are too,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat before asking, “Do you want to try driving the boat? It’s not too different than a car. You don’t have to. I just thought maybe—”

She put a finger to his lips. “I’d love to,” she said. She followed him into the wheelhouse, where he showed her the controls. At first she pulled the throttle too hard; Joseph put his hand on hers to show her the proper way.

“You want to be gentle. This is a really old boat. Take it nice and slow,” he said.

“I can do nice and slow.” She turned her head to meet his lips with hers. She kept a hand on the throttle and he a hand on the steering wheel as the boat plowed forward through the waves with the Primrose in tow.

After Mr. Pryde severed the lines, he and Wendell took up the oars to get the Primrose underway. Wendell squinted to make out Samantha and Joseph, but he couldn’t see anything. When he strained his ears, he thought he could hear laughter over the oars and fishing boat’s diesel engine.

“This is a mighty fine boat,” Mr. Pryde said. “I knew the Amish made furniture and barns. I didn’t know they made boats.”

“It’s not that hard,” Wendell said. He considered telling Mr. Pryde about how he’d drawn the Primrose’s design in less than two hours, but thought better of it. Mr. Pryde would never believe an eleven-year-old had designed a boat like this.

“You don’t need to worry about them,” Mr. Pryde said, looking over his shoulder at the fishing boat. “Joey’s been driving that tub since he was in diapers.”

Wendell nodded. He wasn’t worried about Joseph’s sailing abilities. He thought of Joseph on the boat alone with Samantha, the two of them laughing and talking like old friends. After everything that had happened, how could she still care about him? He’d nearly killed her!

“She’ll be fine,” Mr. Pryde said. He put down the oars, reaching up to unfurl the patchwork sail Prudence and Rebecca had made. The thought of Prudence made Wendell’s stomach tighten with guilt.

“Mr. Pryde, have you ever cared about two girls and even though you know one is really great and the other doesn’t care about you at all, you can’t stop thinking about her?” Wendell said, following the grain of the wood on the deck to keep from meeting Mr. Pryde’s eyes.

“You got to let her go,” Mr. Pryde said. He flicked his cigarette into the water and then lit another one. “You got to move on. There’s a nice gal waiting for you on the dock. I wouldn’t let her go to chase after one who ain’t ever going to take notice of you.”

“Prudence is great,” Wendell said before he could stop himself. “But I can’t just forget about Samantha. I love her.”

“Sometimes we got to let go of the ones we love. Took me nine years to figure that out.” Mr. Pryde spat out the cigarette, snuffing it out with unnecessary force. “We’re almost there. Get ready with those oars.”

From this, Wendell knew the conversation was over. He had to admit Mr. Pryde was right. Samantha would never see him the same way he saw her. She would never love him. He thought of kissing childish little Samantha in his nightmare. That was as close as he could ever get to her.

As they reached the dock, he saw Prudence waving to them with her good hand. He waved back. He leapt from the Primrose onto the dock, racing up to her. She wrapped her arm around him, pressing him close. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing’s wrong. Not anymore,” he said. As Mr. Pryde said, it was time to let go of Samantha and focus on the girl who loved him and whom he loved.

Chapter 46: Emerging Friendships

2007-06-15T10:18:00.001-07:00

Chapter 46: Emerging Friendships

Samantha first noticed the dryness of her throat. She tried to say something, but could only make a gurgling sound. Water dribbled into her parched throat until she could at last say, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” growled a familiar voice. Samantha opened her eyes to find herself in her bedroom at Mr. Pryde’s house with Mr. Pryde standing at her bedside. “About time you woke up. How’re you feeling?”

Her head felt as though someone had filled it with cotton while the rest of her felt limp as boiled pasta. With Mr. Pryde’s help, she managed to sit up in bed. “I’m feeling better, I guess,” she said. “What about you?”

“I’ll survive,” he said. “I’ll let your cousins know.”

Mr. Pryde got up, leaving Samantha alone in the bedroom. She pulled her arms out from underneath the covers to see the familiar bronze tone of her skin. She wiggled her long, knobby fingers before she reached up to feel the acne, short hair, and big ears that had driven her to using Joseph’s potion.

She didn’t have long to consider this change before Prudence and Wendell came in, the former with her left arm in a sling and the latter with a scar on his forehead, reminders of the damage she’d done to them. “Mr. Pryde said you were awake,” Prudence said. “We weren’t sure if you ever would wake up.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Two weeks,” Wendell said. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t have time to test the formula before I gave it to you.”

“It’s all right. At least now I’m caught up on my sleep.”

They all shared an uneasy laugh about this. “How much do you remember?” Prudence asked.

“Everything,” Samantha said. She couldn’t stop herself from crying at this realization. Prudence leaned down to put her good arm around Samantha’s shoulders. “You must hate me now. All those awful things I said. And what I did to you. Can you ever forgive me?”

“Of course we can. You weren’t yourself. We know that.”

She thought about what Mrs. Milton had said. “No, I was myself. For the first time, I was myself.”

“How can you say that after all you’ve done for us?” Wendell said. “If it wasn’t for you we would never have gotten rid of Reverend Crane.”

“You’ve been my best friend. My sister,” Prudence added. “You’ve cared for everyone in Eternity.”

“It was our turn to return the favor.” They shared an uneasy laugh before Wendell and Prudence got up at the same time. “We’ll let you rest.”

“Now that you’re awake, we’d better start loading up the supplies to take back,” Prudence said.

The supplies. Samantha had almost forgotten about the children on Eternity waiting for them. “You got everything on your own?” she asked.

“Mr. Pryde and Mrs. Schulman helped,” Prudence said.

“We didn’t tell them about the island,” Wendell added. “They think we’re taking everything somewhere up the coast.”

Samantha couldn’t believe it. In less than a month Prudence and Wendell had gone from knowing almost nothing about the world outside Eternity to being able to manage the entire resupply operation by themselves. Now that she looked closer, Prudence looked as though she’d lost at least ten pounds. Tears came to Samantha’s eyes as she felt like a mother whose children leave home to go out on their own. Proud and yet with a sense of dismay that she would no longer be needed to kiss their boo-boos and tuck them in at night. “Are you going to be all right?” Prudence asked.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you two later.” They walked out together and before the door closed, she saw Wendell take Prudence’s hand. What had happened to them in her absence? She would have to ask Prudence later.

She lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. With everything that had gone on since arriving in Seabrooke she didn’t know if she could go back to Eternity with Prudence and Wendell. She couldn’t bear to hurt them again as she had under Joseph’s spell. She’d been a fugitive before coming to Eternity; perhaps it was time to go back to that life. Better the beast within escaped around strangers than people she loved.

She heard a shy tap on her door. “Samantha? Can I come in?” Joseph asked through the door. His voice sounded higher and a little more nasal than she remembered.

“Of course,” Samantha said. Two weeks of sleep had changed Joseph back into the boy she’d met that first night in his bedroom. He wore a set of blue pajamas and his hair stuck up from all angles, meaning he must not have woke up long before her. He pushed up his glasses and cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. He paced around back and forth until she asked him to sit down, feeling dizzy from watching him.

“Sorry.” He cleared his throat again and then said, “I wanted to apologize for what happened with us. I know I said some terrible things and did some terrible things.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “It was the potion.”

“I know, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I hurt you. On purpose. The worst part is I enjoyed doing it. I wanted to hurt you. At the end I wanted to kill you.” He took off his glasses and pressed both hands to his face. “I can still see it when I close my eyes. I see myself doing these things and I want to stop, but I can’t. It’s like there’s something else inside me. Something dark.”

“A beast,” Samantha said. “A beast you’ve kept in a cage and all the sudden it’s on the loose.”

He took his hands away from his face and nodded. “Exactly. I don’t understand where it came from. Maybe it’s been there under the surface since Mom died.”

“Me too,” she said.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Joseph finally put on his glasses and stood up. “Dad and I were talking and we think it’d be best if I stay over at Mrs. Schulman’s until you and your friends leave.”

He started for the door; he had started to pull it open when she said, “You don’t have to do that.”

“That’s nice of you to say, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable—more than I already have.”

“I want you to stay.” Samantha kneaded the blanket in her hands as she worked up the courage to say what she wanted to say. “I know we got off to a bad start, but I think—” Her voice had begun to tremble to the point that Joseph handed the cup of water back to her. She drank the entire glass before continuing, “I think I’d like another chance.”

“Really?”

“If you want. If you don’t—”

“I want another chance. Of course I do. Unless you’re not sure. I don’t want to push you into anything.”

“I’m sure. Really, I am,” she said, trying to sound confident, but a quaver still came through.

“OK. I guess I should let Dad know then. I’ll see you later.” He stood there in the doorway for a moment, his face turning red. He took a step towards her, stopped, and then waved on his way out. Samantha waited until he left to smile.

Chapter 45: Reawakening

2007-06-15T10:17:00.004-07:00

Chapter 45: Reawakening

Samantha turned to Joseph and said, “Wait here. I’ll deal with her.” She took off in pursuit of the fat girl, who had started running towards the gas station and McDonald’s, if her high-speed waddling could be considered running. Despite the fat girl’s head start, Samantha caught her less than a minute later, yanking her back by the hair. The fat girl cried out as she toppled to the ground, leaving a tress of burgundy hair in Samantha’s hand. Samantha tossed the hair aside and then held up the pair of wire cutters she’s used on the little boy.

The fat girl, tears in her eyes, held up both her hands in a feeble attempt to defend herself. “Samantha, please, don’t do this,” the fat girl whined.

“You asked for it, both of you, trying to interfere with our plans.” She brought the wire cutters down on the fat girl’s left arm, the one she had nearly broken earlier. Samantha stifled the fat girl’s scream by clamping a hand over her mouth. “You aren’t going to take Joe away from me. You aren’t going to take our life away. You or your dorky little brother. This time I’ll make sure you two stay asleep.”

The fat girl bit her fingers. When Samantha jerked her hand back, the fat girl rolled up to her feet. “His name is Wendell and he’s not my brother,” she said. She tucked her useless left arm against her chest, holding out the other to ward off Samantha. “He loves you and you don’t care. You almost killed him.”

“The little jerk deserves whatever he got. He should have left Joe and I alone.” Samantha kicked the fat girl in her ample stomach, but something was wrong. The pig should have gone down in a heap, rolling around in agony. Instead, she merely grunted and stumbled back a step.

“Samantha, please, you have to stop this. He’s done something to you, like what he did to us. You have to fight against it.” Samantha kicked the fat girl again, this time a roundhouse kick to the face. The fat girl shook it off. “This isn’t you, Samantha.”

“How would you know who I am? How do you know anything about me?” This time, determined to knock the fat girl over, she tackled her, the two of them falling in a heap. Samantha recovered first, straddling the fat girl and then punching her in her lying mouth. “You don’t know anything!”

“You’re my best friend,” she said. “We were sisters back on Eternity. Don’t you remember?”

“Shut up!” Samantha slapped the fat girl across the face. “I’m not your friend or your sister. You’re a fat, disgusting slob. That’s all you are.”

“Samantha, please. Somewhere inside I know you remember me and Wendell and Rebecca and little Molly and everyone else on Eternity. We love you. Come home with us. Please.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you. Joseph and I are going to start a new life. We’re going to be free.” Samantha raised her hand to strike again, but something held her back. The fat girl’s face looked so miserable, tears running down her cheeks to wash away the blood. “You wouldn’t understand what we feel.”

To Samantha’s surprise, the fat girl laughed. “I didn’t used to know what love felt like, but now I do. I know it means caring about someone so much you’d do anything for him. Do you think Joseph loves you? Really loves you?”

This time Samantha punched the fat girl in the left eye, where Joseph had struck Samantha. Where Joseph had hit her. She reached up to touch her eye. “He loves me,” she said more to herself than the fat girl. “I know Joe loves me.”

“What’s he done for you, other than make you rob a bank?”

“He made me beautiful,” Samantha said.

“On the outside maybe, but he’s made you ugly on the inside. Don’t you understand that? He gave you a new body, but he took away what made you special.”

“You’re lying. He gave me everything. A new life.” She found the pair of wire cutters lying on the ground and picked them up. Her eyes clouded up with tears, her mind swirled with confusion. Joseph loved her. He made her pretty. The memory of that night came back to her. He took the bottle of perfume and squirted her in the face. He squirted her. He hit her. He forced her to rob this bank.

“Samantha, you were never ugly to the people who really care about you. We love you no matter what,” the fat girl said. Prudence. Her name was Prudence. She and Samantha had known each other since they were little girls. The wire cutters trembled in Samantha’s hand and then clattered to the pavement.

“Oh God, what have I done?” Samantha said. She collapsed, sobbing, onto Prudence. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’ll be all right,” Prudence said. “We can fix everything. Wendell’s made a potion that should turn you and Joseph back to normal. We just have to make him swallow it.”

“How?” Samantha asked.

“I should have known you’d fuck this up,” Joseph said from behind her. Samantha rolled off Prudence and got to her feet. She saw the same trembling rage in Joseph as the night he’d punched her. “I never could count on you for anything.”

“Joseph, please, we have to stop this before anyone else gets hurt,” Samantha said. “We can go back home. I’m sure your father will understand—”

“I’m not going back to that shithole. I have a destiny ahead of me. I’ll be the most famous scientist in the world.” He sneered at her. “There’ll be plenty of bimbos lining up to take your place.”

“Joe, I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“I don’t need you or your love. I don’t need anyone! Not you, not my father, not my mother—no one!” He lunged forward, catching Samantha off-guard. His punch to the side of her head sent her sprawling on the pavement, the world spinning around her. She tried to get up, but couldn’t move.

Joseph stomped towards her like a rogue elephant trying to crush her. Prudence blindsided him from the side, knocking him down. He seized her by the shirt, hurling her away as though she weighed nothing. He faced Samantha, his face turning scarlet and throbbing muscles breaking through his sleeves.

Samantha got to her feet and ran back towards the bank. Prudence had mentioned Wendell had a potion that could change Joseph back. Her only hope lay in giving this to him before he finished off she and Prudence.

She came within sight of Wendell before Joseph yanked her back by the hair as she’d done to Prudence. She somersaulted around, kicking him in the head. This only made him laugh. “You can’t hurt me, baby,” he said. “You’re a fucking Barbie doll for Christ’s sake.” He swatted her aside, knocking her back into a lamppost.

Samantha sagged to the ground, her vision turning dark. She willed herself to get up, but her muscles refused to heed the command. What did it matter? He was right: she couldn’t hurt him. Before she might have been able to do something, but not with this dainty body.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “You were a nice piece of ass.” As he reared back to shatter her head with his fist like a ripe melon, she saw a flash of red from the corner of her eye. Wendell flew through the air, landing on Joseph’s shoulders. He managed to hang on even as Joseph bucked and spun like an enraged bull.

“Get the net!” Wendell shouted. “Get the net!”

Samantha heard this command from a great distance, the words slurring together to become almost indecipherable. Then she found herself on her feet, running towards the bank with Prudence leaning against her. “Come on,” Prudence said. “We can do it. Together.”

Samantha nodded her head, not quite understanding. She followed along as Prudence tucked a corner of netting into her hands. “Stay with me,” Prudence said as though to a small child. “I need you to stretch this out as far as you can. Understand? That’s a good girl.”

They ran back towards Joseph with Prudence holding the net on one side and Samantha on the other. Wendell still clung to Joseph’s neck, but even in her dazed state Samantha knew he couldn’t hold out much longer. “Keep it low!” Prudence called.

Joseph turned to face them the instant before they reached him. The net sunk into his thighs, Samantha’s corner threatening to shoot from her hand. “This way!” Prudence shouted. They ran towards each other behind Joseph, the net encircling him. Joseph thrashed around, hurling curses at them as he tried to throw Wendell off. The net became entangled in his legs until he started to wobble and then toppled like an ancient oak tree.

Wendell leapt off his shoulders at the last moment, landing awkwardly on the pavement a few feet away. As Joseph screamed and fought to untangle himself, Wendell took out a vial of orange liquid. Samantha and Prudence threw themselves on either side of Joseph to pin his arms as Wendell poured the potion down Joseph’s throat. He continued screaming a moment and then went silent. His eyelids drooped until finally closing and his body went still. “Is he dead?” Samantha asked.

“No, he’s still breathing,” Wendell said. He held out another vial to her. “This is for you.” Samantha took the vial and a moment later fell asleep alongside Joseph on the street.

Chapter 44: The Snare

2007-06-15T10:17:00.003-07:00

Chapter 44: The Snare

They reached Pinecrest in the late afternoon. Prudence drove past the bank to make sure Samantha and Joseph hadn’t already attempted to rob it. A part of Prudence kept hoping they would find Samantha—the old Samantha—standing on the sidewalk, waving to them. She would apologize for everything and they would tearfully make up before going back to Eternity. “They wouldn’t rob the place in broad daylight,” Wendell said. “They’ll wait until it gets dark and everyone’s gone home.”

“So what do we do?” Prudence asked.

“Let’s go back to the bank. I think I have an idea.” She parked the truck at the restaurant on the corner, not daring to try parallel parking on the street like the other cars. The scent of fried meat tickled Prudence’s nose as she got out of the truck, her stomach rumbling to remind her she hadn’t eaten in almost a day. No, she couldn’t let her gut interfere; they had better things to do at the moment.

Wendell stood in front of the bank, his face twitching as though solving a complicated equation. Prudence couldn’t help staring at him with admiration. If only she could be so smart, but she only knew how to make clothes. “I think I’ve got it,” he said. He took her arm, leading her around the side of the building to the back. He stared up at the roof and then nodded.

She listened as he explained his plan for trapping Samantha and Joseph. If they show up, Prudence reminded herself. For all they knew, Samantha and Joseph could be hundreds of miles away in the wilderness of this strange country. She didn’t say as much to Wendell, knowing he would only try to reassure her that Samantha and Joseph would be here.

They went back to the restaurant to move the truck. “We have to stay hidden,” Wendell said. “If they see us before we’re ready, they’ll run.”

Prudence didn’t know where they could hide until it was time. She kept following the road, deeper into the forest until trees blocked out the sun on either side. Wendell said nothing. She wondered if he were doing more calculations. Perhaps calculating the astronomical odds of their plan succeeding.

The road started to wind upwards into the hills. Prudence gripped the steering wheel tighter along the curves, willing the truck not to crash over the guardrails. The road continued winding along until Prudence could see the hills, forests, and even the sea below. She imagined Seabrooke far to the east and beyond that, the island of Eternity.

Her eyes started to mist up until she had to pull the truck off to the side of the road. “Don’t cry, Prudence. Everything will be fine. We’ll find Samantha—”

“It’s not that,” Prudence said. “I was thinking about home. I miss Eternity. My shop and Rebecca and Molly and even Helena. It’s so far away now. What if we can’t ever get back?”

“We’ll make it,” Wendell said. “You’ll be back to your shop and we can go see Molly and Becky at the cabin.”

This brought another thought to Prudence’s mind. “If we get back, what about you and I?” She could already hear Helena and Phyllis making fun of Fat Prudence and Little Wendell sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

“It doesn’t matter what they think,” Wendell said.

“I know, but I don’t want them to come between us.”

“They won’t.” Wendell patted her on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go back. It’s almost time.”

She wiped her eyes and took one last look towards the east, hoping to catch sight of Eternity. She saw only darkness on the horizon. She might find it someday, but even if she did, it wouldn’t be the same. She wouldn’t be the same.

They hid Mr. Pryde’s truck behind the bank, next to a giant metal bin filled with trash. To get onto the roof, Prudence and Wendell removed the lobster traps and tackle boxes from the truck, piling them up behind the bank to form a wobbly set of stairs. Wendell went first, scrambling up the traps and boxes to the top of the roof. Prudence tossed one of the fishing nets up to him and then attempted to scale the stairs. She moved quickly, not lingering long enough for any of the objects to give under her weight. Wendell took her hand before she reached the top, grunting as he helped pull her up.

Prudence crawled along with Wendell to the front of the bank, where they waited with the net spread between them. Neither of them said anything as they waited, afraid someone would hear them. She’s not coming, Prudence kept thinking. She’s gone somewhere else. We’ll never find her.

Hours went by without anyone appearing. Then a car came around the corner to park alongside of the building. Prudence scrambled to the edge, peeking over to see a girl who looked like an older version of Helena she took for Samantha and a man dressed all in black she assumed was Joseph. “They’re here,” Prudence whispered. Wendell motioned for her to be quiet.

Samantha and Joseph went around to the front of the building. He hung back near a box of snow while she went up to the front door. Prudence took hold of the net, ready to drop it on Samantha, but Wendell stopped her. “We have to wait until they’re together,” Wendell whispered into her ear. She nodded.

Prudence’s hand tightened on the netting as she watched Samantha pick the lock on the front door. The sight of this cheered Prudence. At least some part of the old Samantha remained intact, even if it that part was being used for evil.

Samantha opened the door and Wendell signaled for Prudence to get ready. At last Joseph trotted up to Samantha so they could enter the bank. The net fell onto them before they got in the doorway. “We got them!” Wendell said.

Prudence tried to follow him down the makeshift stairs, but he rushed ahead of her and disappeared around the corner before she made it down the first step. “Wendell, come back!”

She stepped onto a lobster trap that this time snapped beneath her weight. She threw out her arms as she fell to grab onto something, her fingers catching the handle of a tackle box. She hung in the air a moment before the box tipped over, dumping her the rest of the way to the ground, landing on her stomach.

A sharp pain stabbed her in the ribs with every step she took as she made her way around the bank. Before she got there, she knew something had gone wrong. She heard Wendell cry out followed by a thump, like a body hitting the ground.

“Wendell?” she said as she rounded the corner. She saw him laying on the sidewalk, unconscious, a gash on his forehead. Samantha stood over him with a pair of blunt-headed scissors, slashed remains of netting lying at her feet. Joseph remained snared in the net, struggling like a wild animal to get free.

“He can’t hear you now,” Samantha said. She held up the scissors. “Time to die, piggy.” Prudence ran.

Chapter 43: Breaking and Entering

2007-06-15T10:17:00.001-07:00

Chapter 43: Breaking and Entering

Samantha squatted before the bathroom door, holding the mangled coat hanger steady in her hand. She inserted the flattened spoke of metal into the lock and worked it around, waiting for the click that would open the door. Nothing happened. She tried again with a similar result.

She glanced over at the bed, where Joseph still slept. She imagined the look on his face when he awoke to discover she could get them into the bank without any complicated drilling or breaking a window. She would show him the popped lock and then he would embrace her and tell her how much he loved her again.

She inserted the deformed hanger into the lock and tried again. The stupid lock still wouldn’t open. She threw down the hanger in disgust. She knew she could do this; she knew once upon a time she had done this. Where and when she couldn’t be sure, but she remembered the nerve-wracking anticipation in waiting for the lock to give, the vulnerable exposed feeling that someone would come by any second to stop her. Then came the giddy thrill of victory when the lock popped open and the door swung aside, defeated.

What am I doing wrong? she wondered. She held up her sleek, delicate fingers. These were not the long, knobby fingers that had opened those locks. Never before had she considered that in taking Joseph’s potion to become beautiful she might have lost something important.

“Fingers are fingers,” she said. It didn’t matter if her hands were pretty or ugly, they could still open the lock. She needed only to concentrate harder, to see the door opening in her mind. I can do this, she told herself.

She took the hanger in her delicate fingers and then closed the eyes. She felt rather than saw the hanger as she guided it into the lock. The inner workings of the lock revealed themselves to her, whispering their secrets.

Then she heard the familiar click. The door creaked open at her touch. She opened her eyes to make certain. I did it! she thought. She ran towards the bed, leaping onto Joseph. He groaned, but she smothered any other sounds with her kiss. “Guess what?” she said when she pulled away from him. “I did it. I did it all by myself without any help at all.”

“That’s great, baby,” he said. He sat up and looked around the room. “Did what?”

“I picked the bathroom door lock.”

“You did? Why?”

“Because, silly, I wanted to practice for tonight.” She took Joseph’s hand and squeezed it. “I can get us into the bank. I know I can now.”

“Not to rain on your parade, baby, but it might be a little more complicated than opening the bathroom door.”

“Joe, please, I want to do this. For us. I know I can.”

He considered this a moment and then said, “All right. We’ll give it a shot.”

“I won’t let you down. I promise,” she said.

“I’m sure you won’t.” He pulled her down to him, throwing the blankets over both of them.

As a last meal before the operation they stopped at the McDonald’s on the corner. Samantha would have liked to eat inside for a relatively normal dinner, but Joseph refused. He wanted to leave as little trace of their presence as possible. “If the police ask around, someone might remember us,” he said.

“So what? By then we’ll be long gone, right?”

“We’re not going in and that’s final,” Joseph said. Samantha fingered her left eye again as she nodded, knowing better to question Joseph on a subject he considered final.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Instead of eating indoors, they took the bag of food to a driveway by an abandoned barn off the main road. Samantha tried to eat her hamburger, but found her stomach growing too restless to keep anything down. She contented herself with sipping her Diet Coke while Joseph wolfed down his Big Mac and French fries, his appetite not affected at all by their planned heist. She offered his food to him, which he accepted without thanks.

“You don’t need to worry,” he said. “We’ve got everything figured out. Every angle covered. It’s all going to work out.”

She nodded, but this did nothing to quell the riot in her stomach. Even her success in picking the lock couldn’t dispel all her worries about this operation. So many things could go wrong. What if she couldn’t pick the lock? What if the explosives didn’t blow open the vault? What if there was no money? What if the police showed up? she wondered.

After dark, Joseph backed up and started towards Pinecrest. The gas station and McDonald’s were still open, but devoid of any traffic. The rest of the town—including Pinecrest State Bank—had closed for the night. No one walked the streets. No police cars kept watch.

“This is it,” Joseph said. He kissed her a final time before pulling a black ski mask over his face. She bound up her hair and then covered her face with a black nylon to match the black overcoat she wore. They opened the car doors at the same time, she keeping a lookout as he retrieved the supplies from the trunk.

Once he had everything they needed, including the nitroglycerine, she approached the door to get them inside. First she found the wire for the alarm on the front door and used a pair of wire cutters to clip it neatly in half. Then she took the same hanger from the motel to begin work on the door.

Joseph crouched behind an empty box for flowers nearby, ready to give her warning should anyone happen by. Sweat beaded up underneath the nylon, dribbling into Samantha’s eyes as she worked. On her first attempt, the hanger trembled in her hands until it fell to the ground. It’s no different than the motel, she thought. She closed her eyes and thought of Joseph. She had to do this for him, so they could be together. Her hands steadied and began to work the piece of metal in the lock.

The lock clicked. Samantha opened her eyes and eased the door open. “Joseph, we’re in!” she hissed.

He scuttled over, slapping her on the back. “I knew you could do it.” As he pulled up his mask enough to kiss her stocking-clad face, the net dropped over them.

Chapter 42: New Plans

2007-06-15T10:16:00.003-07:00

Chapter 42: New Plans

Prudence sat on the sofa in the living room, knitting in front of the television. She hadn’t done any knitting or sewing in over a week, but her hands remembered what to do on their own. She watched her hands work, thinking gratefully, These are my hands. Not those awful hooves from her nightmare.

So far she had a square of blue yarn six inches wide. She didn’t know what the finished product would be. Spring would be here soon, so it didn’t seem practical to make a hat, scarf, or sweater. A coaster maybe, or a pillow. She didn’t care.

She looked around the living room at the dusty shelves and faded wallpaper. What about Mr. Pryde? He could use something new to brighten up the room. A new set of throw pillows for the couch might make it look as though someone still lived here.

The knitting fell from her fingers at this thought. Mr. Pryde was lying upstairs in a coma; what use did he have for throw pillows? He might never wake up again and she could only sit here playing with yarn. She couldn’t help Mr. Pryde or Mrs. Schulman or Samantha. What good was she to anyone?

Wendell came downstairs to find Prudence staring at a square of blue yarn in her hands. How long has she been like this? he wondered. What’s she thinking about? He didn’t know. Not even being a girl in his nightmare gave him any insight into the female mind. She could be thinking about Samantha or she could be reflecting on her nightmare or she could be thinking what a horrible mistake to have kissed him.

“Hello,” he said from the doorway. “I think I’ve come up with the potion we need.”

“You did? That’s wonderful,” she said, sounding more worried than excited about this discovery.

“I’m not sure if it’ll work,” he admitted. “There isn’t any time to test it. I can’t be sure what it’ll do, if it’ll do anything at all—”

Prudence crossed the room to silence him with a kiss. “It’ll work,” she said. “I trust you.”

From his pocket he took out two vials of an orange liquid. “There should be enough here to stop them. The hard part is they have to swallow it. I doubt they’ll do that on their own.”

“Maybe if we talk to Samantha we can convince her it’s for the best,” Prudence said. “There has to be some of her old self left in there.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. We can’t take that chance, though. We’ll have to find some way to trap them.”

Prudence put an arm around his shoulders. She steered him towards the couch. “You look tired. Why don’t you take a nap to get your strength back?”

Wendell shook his head. He couldn’t sleep. Not until they had stopped Samantha and Joseph and put an end to this whole nasty business. Then he might be able to sleep without worrying he might wake up as a girl or possibly not at all. He didn’t have the strength to fight Prudence, though, as she sat him down on the sofa. Sitting down for a few minutes wouldn’t hurt.

She picked up her knitting, the metal needles clicking together as she worked. “I thought I’d make Mr. Pryde some new pillows. Doesn’t that seem silly?”

“No, of course not. I’m sure he’d like new pillows. He could take one out to his boat—” Wendell stopped as the pieces came together in his mind. “I’m such an idiot!”

“What? What is it?” she asked as he leapt off the couch and raced towards the door. She followed him out to Mr. Pryde’s truck, where he picked up a corner of fishing net. She understood at once what he was thinking. “That’s a great idea,” she said. She frowned then at a glaring flaw in the plan. “How are we going to get there to stop them?” she asked.

“I should think that would be obvious,” Wendell said. He patted the cab of the truck. “We drive. Or, to put it more accurately, you drive and I navigate.”

“Me? I can’t drive.”

“You already did, more or less.” He took her hands and smiled. “This time you’ll be able to use your hands to steer.”

“That was a dream, Wendell. It wasn’t real. I could get us both killed.” She shook her head and turned her back on the truck. “I can’t do it.”

“Prudence, we don’t have time to find someone else to drive us and even then, how could we explain this? We can’t tell a complete stranger we need a ride to Pinecrest to stop our friend from robbing a bank.”

“It’s too dangerous,” she said. She turned back to him with tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to risk losing you so soon. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened.”

“We have to do this. For Samantha and Mr. Pryde and Mrs. Schulman and all the others back in Eternity. Please, I know you can do it. I believe in you.”

Prudence looked down at the ground, realizing she’d carried the knitting with her. Back in the living room she had wished she could do something to help, to feel useful. This was her chance. “I’ll do it,” she said.

The interior of Mr. Pryde’s truck looked different from the driver’s seat. She touched the shifting knob, the steering wheel, and the pedals to familiarize herself with the controls. It’s just like in the dream, she thought. Except I’m not a pig and I don’t have Wendell hitting the pedals for me.

Wendell took the seat next to her, unfolding a map in his lap. From Prudence’s gasping and the sweat dripping down her face, he knew she hadn’t gotten over her fear of driving yet. “You’ll be fine,” he said. He reached across to take her hand and give it a squeeze.

“Here we go,” she whispered. She put the truck in reverse, backing down the driveway at a crawl. At the end of the driveway, she reached for a pedal, but hit the accelerator instead of the brake. The truck lurched backwards, the tail end smashing into a tree and the back wheels hanging over the edge of a ditch. “Oh no,” Prudence said.

She leaned over the steering wheel, unsure of what to do now. Wendell put a hand on her back, trying to comfort her. He shouldn’t have forced her to do this. He should have found a way to make it so he could reach the pedals by himself. A real man could see over the wheel and touch the pedals without a booster seat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my fault. We’ll find some other way.”

Prudence looked up from the steering wheel. The sadness and self-loathing in his voice stirred something within her. “No,” she said. “I can do this.”

She shifted the truck into drive and then tapped the accelerator. The back tires tore at the edge of the ditch until finding purchase. Mr. Pryde’s truck lurched forward onto the road. Prudence steered it down the hill towards Mrs. Schulman’s house, keeping one foot poised over the brake and the other near the accelerator. The truck glided down the hill, mostly from the power of gravity, until it reached the bottom. Prudence looked in the rearview mirror to see Mr. Pryde’s house above them. “I did it,” she said.

“I knew you could,” Wendell said. He pecked her on the cheek before she hit the accelerator to send them on their way. She navigated the highway with relative ease, gradually going faster at the prodding of impatient vehicles behind them. Thinking back to her ride with Mrs. Schulman, Prudence flashed her middle finger to each car that passed them.

They coasted through Seabrooke, along the main street that was alive with people on the sidewalks like any other day. No one seemed to pay them any heed, not even the police officer they passed by a café. Prudence tensed at the sight of the policeman, but kept both hands on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead. Even after they passed by, she expected him to appear in the rearview mirror to arrest her. She didn’t relax until turning on the road leading inland towards Pinecrest.

We made it this far, she thought. Now if only they could find Samantha and Joseph and stop them before it was too late.

Chapter 41: Life in an Island Town

2007-06-15T10:16:00.001-07:00

Chapter 41: Life in an Island Town

David found them on the path between town and the caves. He ignored Molly, brushing her aside to embrace Veronica. “Becky? What the hell happened?” he asked. Now he turned to Molly. “What did you do, you little brat?”

“She didn’t do anything,” Veronica answered before Molly could say anything. “She saved my life.”

“I don’t understand. What happened to you?”

“I went to the cave to meet you and I must have left the door open, because some kind of wild creature—a wolf, maybe—came running in after me and I fell into the fountain. I would have died in there, but Molly had followed me and pulled me out.” Veronica’s eyes teared up as she told this lie. “I’m so lucky she disobeyed me. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

David took Veronica’s chin in his hand to inspect her. “How old are you now?” he asked.

“Five,” she said.

“Five,” David repeated. “Jesus Christ, Becky, how could you let this happen?”

“What difference does it make how old I am on the outside? It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” Veronica said.

“It matters. Look at you, you’re a little girl. You’re practically a toddler. How can we be together now?”

“If it bothers you that much, go jump in the fountain yourself,” Veronica said. Molly snickered at this.

“You think this is funny?” he said, glaring at Molly. His face turned red to the point where Molly expected steam to shoot out of his ears. Instead, he said calmly, “You want to be a little girl, fine. You’ll live like a little girl. We’re going back to the cabin to pick up your clothes and then the two of you are moving into the dormitory with the others.”

“Dormitory?” Veronica said.

“I’m not going to have two five-year-olds living alone out there,” he said.

“I’ve been taking care of her in this condition for years,” Veronica said. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Oh no?” David seized Veronica by the ear. She slapped at his hand, but he refused to let go. “Samantha put us both in charge, but seeing as how you’re unable to handle your responsibilities, that means I’m the boss and you’ll do what I say. The same for you,” he said, glaring at Molly again. He shoved Veronica to the ground, where she lay rubbing her ear. “Now the two of you come along or I’ll drag you back.”

“Who does he think he is?” Veronica asked as they trudged along behind David back to town. “He thinks he can treat me this way because he’s bigger. I’ll show him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet, but this isn’t over,” she said, rubbing her ear again. She didn’t say anything the rest of the way and Molly thought it best not to disturb her.

At the cottage, David stood in the front doorway in case either of them tried to escape. “Take only your nightclothes and two dresses each. And a doll if you want. The rest stays.”

“This isn’t fair,” Molly said. “We’re old enough to take care of ourselves. We’re big girls.”

“You’re babies. Hurry up.”

Veronica sidled up to David, running a hand inside his thigh. “I know you’re angry with me, but it’s not my fault. It was an accident. There’s no need to punish Molly,” she said.

David pushed her again, but this time she kept her balance. “She needs punished. You’ve made her think she’s better than everyone else here. She’s a baby. And now, so are you.” He turned his back while Veronica stood there, quivering with rage.

“If that’s how you want it,” Veronica said. She went back to her bedroom, returning a few minutes later with a bundle of clothes, a blanket, and a pillow. Then she came into Molly’s room to help her pack. “Everything will be all right, honey,” she said. “No matter what happens, I’ll take care of you.”

She kissed Molly on the forehead the way Becky had done for as long as Molly could remember. Her lips felt the same. How much of her was Veronica and how much Becky? Veronica took a green dress out of the closet and held it up to Molly’s body. “This looks nice on you. And here, take the gray one for everyday wear. Have you decided which dolly to take yet?” In a lower voice, she added, “We’ll come back here tonight. Just let him try to keep us out.”

They laughed together at this. Molly took the dresses, a nightgown, pillow, blanket, and Sir Francis out to the living room. David marched them across town to the girl’s dormitory. The other girls loitered in the parlor, their whispered conversations coming to a halt when they saw Molly and Veronica. “Girls, Rebecca had a little accident. She and Molly are going to be living with you from now on,” David said. He shoved them forward into the room and then slammed the door on his way out.

Helena was the first to come forward with a sly grin on her face. “Oh, look how adorable Rebecca is now,” she said. She pinched Veronica’s cheek until Veronica winced. Helena tried to do it again, but this time Veronica slapped her hand away. “Uh-oh, looks like the baby is mad. I know what will make her happy. Let’s play dress-up.”

Phyllis and a handful of other girls charged forward to seize Veronica and pin her to a chair. Helena took hold of Molly’s arm to keep her from interfering as the girls went to work on Veronica. They smeared makeup on her face, put her hair into sloppy curls, stuffed her into one of Prudence’s tent-sized dresses, and forced a pair of Samantha’s big shoes on her feet despite Veronica’s pleas to stop. When they finished, the girls backed away, giggling and pointing. Phyllis held up a mirror so Veronica could see herself. “Isn’t it cute? The baby wants to pretend like she’s a grownup,” Helena said. The other girls laughed along with her.

“Leave me alone!” Veronica screamed as the girls pinched her cheeks and tousled her hair. “I’m not a little kid!” The makeup applied to her face started to run as she cried.

“I think little Becky needs a nap,” Helena said.

The girls dragged Veronica from the chair, following Helena and Molly out the door. “Stop this!” Veronica shouted.

No one stopped the procession on its way to the pantry. Molly didn’t expect anyone to do so. This is what David wanted; this is why he insisted they go to the dormitories, knowing Helena would torture Becky now that she didn’t have anyone around to stop her from doing so. Helena had always been jealous of Becky’s authority and now she had the chance to get even. “When Samantha finds out about this—”

Helena interrupted Molly’s threat with a laugh. “Samantha’s gone. I’m in charge now.” She opened the door to the cellar and dragged Molly down the steps, followed by Phyllis and a pair of other girls carrying Veronica.

They dumped both girls on the floor and then started back up. “You’ll pay for this!” Veronica howled. “All of you will pay if it’s the last thing I do!” With the makeup smeared on her face and in her oversized clothes, the threat seemed comical. The cellar door clanged shut, leaving them alone. Veronica batted Molly’s hands away and then retreated to a corner to curl up in a ball. “They’ll pay,” she said again.

They spent the rest of the night sleeping in opposite corners of the cellar. Every time Molly closed her eyes, she saw Becky reaching out to her while she did nothing to help. If she had only taken Becky’s hand, Becky would still be here and she and little Veronica could have lived in the cottage as one happy family. Why hadn’t she taken Becky’s hand?

In the morning, the cellar door opened. Molly pressed herself against an empty shelf, fearing Helena and her friends wanted to continue humiliating Molly and Veronica. Instead, David stomped down the steps. “I found out what happened,” he said. “Helena and the others will be punished.”

“Are you happy now?” Veronica asked from her corner. “Is this what you do to the people you love?”

“I never loved you,” David said. “Get cleaned up and change into some decent clothes.”

When they arrived at the dormitory again, Helena stood there with Phyllis and the others, their heads cast down in shame. “I’m sorry we were mean to you,” she said. “I hope we can still be friends.”

Veronica said nothing. “You girls be nice or else,” David said and then left them alone.

Veronica glared at Helena a moment before taking her bundle of clothes and went downstairs to the sleeping quarters. “We have your beds all made up,” Phyllis said. “You two can sleep in that corner there with Crazy Annie. That way when you pee the bed the rest of us won’t be able to smell it.”

Molly found her pallet against the far wall, on top of which sat a stack of cloth diapers. Veronica didn’t bother to clear hers off before she lay down on the pallet and turned to face the wall, pulling a blanket over her head. She stayed in that position for the rest of the day. The other girls, even Helena, didn’t bother her.

Chapter 40: Undercover

2007-06-15T10:15:00.003-07:00

Chapter 40: Undercover

Samantha didn’t know whether the nitroglycerine or Joseph’s temper was more volatile. “How the hell did they wake up?” he kept asking as he drove. “That combination should have put them down for at least a week.”

“I don’t know,” Samantha kept saying. Every time, she leaned over to look into the mirror. A shot of Joe’s potion had turned the skin around her eye a pale white, although she still remembered it swollen and purple. She brushed a tress of platinum hair over the eye. She didn’t dare say anything else out of fear he might vent his anger on her.

“And how did they untie themselves? I checked those knots myself. There’s no way a little kid and some fat chick could get out of those.”

“Maybe they had some help,” Samantha suggested.

“Who? My father was still asleep. Mrs. Schulman was still out. What, some random stranger passed by to untie them?”

“I don’t know,” she said again.

“This is just fucking great,” Joseph said. “All that planning for nothing. All that work out the window. We should have killed those brats when we had the chance.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He turned to her and at last the tide of rage broke. “It’s not your fault,” he said.

“What do we do now?” she asked. She hoped he would say they would keep driving until found somewhere safe to begin a new life. She hoped he would forget all about bank robberies and focus on the two of them.

“There’s another bank nearby in a place called Pinecrest. It shouldn’t be much different.”

Samantha knew better than to suggest they give up on the bank robbery plan. He wouldn’t give up now, not with them so close. To give up would be to acknowledge someone had outsmarted him, beaten him at his own game. “When?” she asked.

“We’ll do it tonight. It’ll take the sheriff some time to get everything together even if your friends went to the cops.”

“You think they wouldn’t go to the police?”

“These kids aren’t like us. They don’t know anything about the outside world. They’re Amish for God’s sake. They don’t know whom they can trust. By the time they figure things out, we’ll be long gone.”

Samantha reached across the seat to put a reassuring hand on Joseph’s thigh. Everything would work out fine in the end. They would rob the bank and then leave all this behind. With the money they could find some remote place in the desert or mountains where Joseph could do his work and she could look after him. In time they’d add children as beautiful as her and smart as Joseph. Everything would be perfect.

The town of Pinecrest turned out not to be much of anything. A handful of shops, a gas station, and a McDonald’s all clustered around one stoplight. “This is it?” she asked.

“There’s the bank,” Joseph said, pointing to a building that didn’t seem much bigger than Mr. Pryde’s living room. Pinecrest State Bank. This was the key to their new life?

“Do they even have money here?”

“Don’t be a smartass,” he said. He took her hand off his thigh as he found a parking spot in front of the bank. “We need to go inside and get the lay of the land. I need you to create a distraction so I can look around without drawing attention.”

“Me? How do I create a distraction?”

“I don’t know. Think of something. When I open the door, that’s your signal to make the distraction. Got it?”

“I got it.”

“Come on, baby, don’t get upset. This is all going to work out. Maybe not like we planned, but just as well.” He kissed her, a short, dry peck that promised more if she did a good job.

Samantha got out of the car, stomping up to the front door of the bank without looking back. Inside, the bank was like the layout of the town itself: one teller window, one office, and one bank vault. A fat woman with red hair that made Samantha think she could be the mother to the kids they’d tied up leaned against the teller window. In the office, an old man with a drooping mustache read a newspaper. A black woman in a blue security guard uniform sat on a stool against one wall, inspecting her nails. Other than the piped-in easy listening music the place was as quiet as a library. How could she create a distraction in here?

“Can I help you?” the fat teller asked.

“Oh, sure, I guess. I was thinking of maybe opening an account or something. What kind do you have?”

“We have all the usual: checking, savings, money markets. You’ll need to bring one of your parents with you to open an account, though.” Joseph opened the door then. The teller’s spiel gave Samantha an idea she hoped would work.

“A parent? But I don’t have any parents. They’re dead,” she wailed. She willed herself into crying. “I’m an orphan. All alone in the world and you tell me to bring in a parent? Don’t you have any heart at all?”

The teller reached across the counter to pat Samantha on the back. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t know. Well, if you don’t have a parent, then surely you have an adult guardian who looks after you?”

“I don’t have anyone. No one wants me. Not even your stupid bank. Why does everyone keep punishing me? It’s not my fault they died.” She put her head down on the counter, sneaking a glance at the security guard, who was too interested watching Samantha make a scene to notice Joseph.

The old man put down his newspaper and came out of the office. “Is there a problem here, Gertrude?” he asked.

“I told this young lady she needs an adult to come with her if she wants to open an account. She says she doesn’t have any parents or a guardian—”

Samantha reached out to grab the old man around the arm. “Here. Here’s an adult. Now let me sign your stupid papers so I can get a stupid account to put money in your stupid bank.”

“There’s no need to get nasty,” Gertrude said. “I’m sure we can make arrangements, can’t we Mr. Lundy?”

“Of course,” the old man said. He slipped his arm out of Samantha’s to put it on her ass. “If you’ll come with me to my office, we’ll work something out.”

The door closed behind Joseph at that moment. Samantha nudged Mr. Lundy away, ready to make her big exit. “I know what you’re doing. As soon as I get back there, you’re going to call the police and have me taken away. I don’t need your stupid bank anyway! Fuck all of you.” She raised her middle finger, holding it up to Gertrude, Mr. Lundy, and the security guard as she stormed out of Pinecrest State Bank.

She continued her angry march to the intersection, where Joseph waited with the car. She climbed into the car and then allowed herself to laugh. “You should have seen their faces when I flipped them off,” she said.

“I can imagine,” Joseph said. “You were totally believable. You even had me going.”

“Thanks.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek before accelerating through the intersection and out of town. “Well, what did you find out?”

“It should work. The vault isn’t much different. Maybe even easier to crack. I don’t think they’ve put a new one in since the ‘30s.”

“Great,” she said. “So now what?”

“We wait until it gets dark. There’s a motel nearby where we can act out a love scene.”

She kissed him and said, “I can’t wait.”

Chapter 39: Plans

2007-06-15T10:15:00.001-07:00

Chapter 39: Plans

They spent the rest of the night hiding in Mrs. Schulman’s house, watching the road for Samantha and Joseph to return. They never did. “Maybe they’ve decided to change their plans,” Prudence said. Which meant they could be anywhere by now.

“No, he wouldn’t do that,” Wendell said. “He’ll go through with it no matter what.”

“How do you know that?”

“Call it a gut feeling,” he said. Then he realized what he said and rubbed Prudence’s back. “A hunch, I mean.”

“I know,” she said, but still let one hand slip down to her stomach. She left it there a moment to make sure it wouldn’t start growing again like her nightmare. “What do we do?”

“We’ll have to find a way to stop them at the bank without alerting the police.”

“But how? There’s no way we can stop them on our own.”

“Come on, didn’t what we went through teach you anything? If we can drive a car as a pig and a baby then we can stop these two from robbing a bank.”

Prudence wanted to believe Wendell. She wanted to believe after all they’d gone through they could do anything together, but she knew Samantha. Samantha had destroyed Jonas Pryde, Reverend Crane, and the evil goddess Kiaba. What hope did they have against her?

“We’ll find a way. We’ll save her,” Wendell said.

The passion in his voice stirred something in Prudence’s heart. “And then I suppose you and her—” Her voice trailed off as she thought of Wendell kissing Samantha the way he had her earlier. “I’ll understand if that’s what you want. What happened with us earlier, that didn’t really mean anything. We were both so happy to be alive.”

As Wendell studied Prudence’s face in profile, tears threatening to cloud her eyes, he understood she would not understand. “It did mean something,” he said.

She threw her arms around him, pressing him so tight against her chest he thought he heard bones break. “You mean it?” she asked. He nodded, unable to get enough air to speak. He was still trying to breathe when she kissed him. Before he could return the kiss, she shoved him down to the floor. “Someone’s coming,” she said.

They lay on the ground, hand-in-hand as a pair of headlights swept past. “That must be them,” Wendell said.

“They’re going to figure out we’re gone. They’ll find us,” Prudence said. Her body began to tremble as she imagined being dragged back into that bedroom and fed another terrible potion.

“They’ll never think to look here,” he said. He ran a hand through her hair, trying to soothe her, though he wasn’t convinced himself. “They’ll think we went into town.”

“Then they’ll call off their plan. They’ll run away and we’ll never be able to find them,” Prudence said. She made a good point. As soon as that brute realized they were gone, he would think the police were onto them. He would look for another target in another town.

“We’ll find them,” he said.

“How?” she asked.

“We’ll find a way,” he said. He didn’t know how, but he would think of something. There had to be a way of finding them. As he lay on the floor considering this question, the headlights swept over them again.

Prudence waited for the car to pull into the driveway and Samantha to get out with her boyfriend. She felt around her for something to use as a weapon, coming up with only a pink slipper. We’re doomed, she thought.

The headlights continued to slide past them, disappearing down the road. “They’re gone,” she said. A horrible thought struck her then. “What about Mr. Pryde and Mrs. Schulman?”

“We’ll go check on them,” Wendell said. He took Prudence’s hand and led her up the hill towards Mr. Pryde’s house. When she started to puff and sweat from the effort, he squeezed her hand for encouragement instead of mocking her as he would have done before. “You can make it. Only a little farther.”

They made it up the hill and went up the porch steps. Prudence expected Samantha to be waiting at the top of the stairs inside as in their nightmare, but the house was silent. They climbed up the stairs, hurrying to Mr. Pryde’s bedroom. Prudence let Wendell open the door and go in first, not wanting to see whatever horror awaited them inside.

“It’s fine,” he said. “They’re still sleeping.”

“Do you think he did the same to his father as he did to us?” she asked. She wondered what kind of nightmares would torment a man like Mr. Pryde.

“I’m not sure,” Wendell said. They sat down on the bed, sitting on opposite sides of Mr. Pryde’s legs. Wendell tried to think of what to do next. First they had to find Samantha and Joseph, and then they had to stop them. Where would they go? There had to be some way of finding out.

“We could look on a map,” Prudence said. He didn’t realize he’d been thinking aloud. “Something might jump out at us.”

“It’s worth a try,” he said. They went downstairs to rummage around the living room and parlor until Wendell found a map of Maine in a desk drawer. He spread it open on the floor, searching along the coast to find Seabrooke. “Anything?”

“I don’t know. It’s so big,” Prudence said.

“They won’t go too far. He’ll want to hit something soon, before a lot of people start looking for them. He’ll want something close by that’s about the same size as the one here so he won’t have to alter the plan too much.”

Prudence pointed to a tiny spot on the map within a fingernail of Seabrooke. Pinecrest. “How about this one?”

Wendell considered the suggestion and then nodded. “That looks like it would do.”

“What if we’re wrong?”

“Then they’re lost to us,” he said. He gave her hand another squeeze. “It won’t come to that. They’ll be there. Now for our next problem: how do we stop them?”

Neither of them said anything for a while. Wendell couldn’t imagine any way of incapacitating Samantha without hurting her. He couldn’t bring himself to do that. “Let’s get some breakfast,” he said. “Food for thought.”

Prudence’s hand went down to her stomach. “I’m not hungry,” she said. “I don’t think I can eat ever again after what happened. After that terrible—” She jumped up to her feet. “That’s it, Wendell! That’s what we have to do.”

“What?”

“They gave us and Mr. Pryde and Mrs. Schulman some kind of potion, right? Maybe we can turn the tables on them.”

“That’s brilliant,” Wendell said. He kissed Prudence for coming up with the idea and then followed her up the stairs to Joseph’s bedroom. The door was locked, but yielded to Prudence’s shoulder after three tries.

“Where do you suppose he keeps them?” Prudence asked.

Wendell looked around the room and shook his head. “He’ll have taken them with him if he’s not coming back. I should have thought of that sooner. I’m sorry. It was a good idea.”

He started for the door, reaching the doorway before Prudence yanked him back by the collar. She held up a stack of papers she’d found in the desk drawer. “Look at this,” she said. “It’s his cookbook.”

Wendell took the papers from her and saw she was right. The notes detailed the makeup of the various potions and their effects on the body. He found the one that must have been used on he and Prudence—“causes temporary unconsciousness with hallucinations”—along with a dozen others. “Do you think you can make one of these?” she asked.

“I’ll try,” he said. Even with the list of ingredients, creating a whole new compound in twelve hours would be difficult. Not to mention he didn’t know much about modern chemistry. Still, what choice did they have?

“You can do it. I believe in you,” Prudence said. She kissed him again, this time for luck.

Chapter 38: The Final Nightmare

2007-06-15T10:14:00.003-07:00

Chapter 38: The Final Nightmare

Prudence dropped to all fours in the middle of Main Street in front of the pharmacy. “Can’t…go…on,” she said, grunting with each pause.

“You have to,” Wendell said. He climbed down off her back, now a pigtailed toddler in canary yellow pajamas. “We can’t stop now. We’re so close.”

“Go…without…me.”

“I can’t. I’m too little.” As if to emphasize the point, Wendell shrank another half-inch.

“I’m too big,” Prudence said. A fit of coughing, wheezing, and grunting seized her throat. “Please…go.”

“No. There has to be another way.”

“Like what? Reverend Crane…was right. We’re…doomed.”

Wendell sank down next to Prudence, unconsciously sucking on his thumb as he thought. They couldn’t fail now, not when they only needed to get another couple miles. It’s not fair, he thought. We’re so close! Tears came to his eyes as he put a hand on Prudence’s gut and listened to her strain for every breath. The hundreds of excess pounds were killing her. The only question remaining was whether she would die before Samantha finished them off.

Prudence deserved better than this. She worked as hard as anyone in Eternity to make sure all the children had clothes to wear and sheets to sleep on. She had braved the sea with he and Samantha to get supplies for the children back home. What had she done to deserve such a cruel fate?

If he couldn’t save her, at least he could comfort her in their final moments together. He snuggled up against her chest, tucking his head underneath her chin. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For…what?”

“For all the terrible things I said to you. You’re not a stupid fat girl. Without you, we’d probably all still be under Reverend Crane’s thumb,” he said.

Prudence rubbed the top of Wendell’s head with her snout. Poor little Wendell, she thought. He tries so hard even though he’s so small. She didn’t know what they would have done after the hurricane without his knowledge about architecture and engineering. They probably would have ended up living in the caves like primitives. They certainly couldn’t have built the boat to take them here without his help. And for all that she and everyone else paid him back with bullying and insults. “I’m…sorry too,” she said. “You’re…not…a girl. You’re…the…strongest boy…I know.”

“You mean that?” She nodded. “Mr. Pryde mistook you for my sister once. If I had a sister, I’d hope she was like you.”

“If you…didn’t…love…Sam…antha…could you…and I—” Prudence couldn’t find the strength to finish the sentence. As she tried to get air into her lungs, she felt an intense desire to find a cool patch of mud. It’s happening, she thought. Not much longer and she would lose that final shred of humanity.

“Prudence? Prudence? Don’t go. Please.” He shook her sagging belly with his tiny hands, but she didn’t move. She only lay there, struggling to breathe. I can’t let this happen, he thought. There had to be some way out of here.

He spotted a truck parked nearby, a newer one than Mr. Pryde’s, but he was certain it operated on the same principles. Halfway to the vehicle, Wendell tripped and couldn’t get back up again. A long white gown covered his body, an infant’s body now. He tried to say something to Prudence, but only gibberish came out. He wailed the cry of a baby missing its mother, the sadness of the call opening Prudence’s eyes. He clapped and giggled at this.

“What?” she managed to get out. He pointed first at the truck and then at her. “Can’t…drive.” He pantomimed steering and then tapped his chest and pretended to hit imaginary pedals. She understood now. If she steered and he used the pedals, they might be able to drive. It was worth a shot.

She rolled onto all fours and then hobbled over to pick up baby Wendell with her mouth. He climbed onto her neck so she could let him into the truck. Using much of her remaining strength, she flopped into the bed of the truck, reaching in through the back window to grab the steering wheel. Wendell gave a set of keys to her, which she put in the ignition as she’d seen Mr. Pryde do and then turned the key.

After the engine started, she shifted into reverse. Wendell pushed down on the accelerator with both hands, the truck lurching backwards in response. He slammed on the brakes for Prudence to shift into drive. They were on their way.

When Prudence’s hands finally turned to hooves halfway there she had to use her hocks to steer. When Wendell became too weak to push down on the pedals with his arms, he flung his entire body against them. Since neither of them could speak, they worked out a system where Prudence grunted once for Wendell to accelerate and twice for him to brake.

As a sharp curve approached, Prudence squealed twice. Wendell threw himself onto the brake in time to keep them from smashing through the guardrail. Prudence wheezed with relief and then got them going in the right direction again.

She snorted for joy when Mr. Pryde’s house came in sight. They’d made it! She swung the truck into the driveway and signaled Wendell to hit the brake. With one hoof she shifted the truck into park and then plopped over the side of the truck onto the ground. For a moment she lay in the dirt, immersed in the feeling of being home. I’m not a pig, she told herself. Not yet. She rolled onto her feet and came to stand beneath the door as Wendell crawled out the window.

Prudence trotted up to the front of the house with Wendell clinging to her neck. The door was already open, as if someone were expecting them. Prudence stood in the doorway, sniffing around for an intruder, but she couldn’t smell anything.

Samantha waited for them at the top of the stairs. Prudence squealed in terror at the sight of the bloody meat cleaver in Samantha’s hand ready to slice Prudence into cold cuts. Instead, Samantha tucked the cleaver into her belt and applauded. “Well, I guess this answers the question of whether a pig and a baby can drive a car,” she said. “Congratulations, you got a lot farther than I ever thought possible. Unfortunately, it’s not far enough.”

Samantha glided down the steps to stand before Prudence. She reached out to take the now newborn Wendell in her arms. “You make such a darling baby. I’ve got a crib all ready for you and a bottle of milk on the stove. I’m going to keep you like this for years and years. Then maybe after I get bored I’ll let you grow up a little.” She tickled Wendell’s belly, causing him to cry.

She reached down with one hand to scratch Prudence under the chin. “And you make such a darling sow. I’m sure you’ll fetch a lot of blue ribbons at the state fair over the next few years. There’s a spot out back where you can lay in the mud and root around in the trash when you feel like it. We’ll find you a nice mate so you can make plenty of piglets.”

I can’t stay like this, Prudence thought. I can’t live like this forever. She wanted to cry, but couldn’t, so she settled for wheezing mournfully.

I’m not going to stay like this forever, Wendell thought. He wouldn’t let Samantha do this to him. There had to be some way to stop her. What could he do? He was a baby; all he could do was cry, throw up, poop, and pee—

He turned to Prudence, looking her in the eye. He communicated the plan to her without even gestures this time, relying on the kind of telepathy developed by siblings or lovers. Prudence grunted to indicate she understood.

Then Wendell peed on Samantha, a steady stream of urine that soaked her blouse. Startled by the sudden drenching, she loosened her grip on Wendell enough that when Prudence crashed into her, Wendell fell onto Prudence’s back. Prudence charged up the stairs as Samantha cried out in rage, “You’ll never get back! Never!”

Prudence found the bedroom door and slammed against it with all her considerable weight. The door gave way in an explosion of splinters. She galloped through the doorway, squealing at the sight of herself lying on the bed in human form. Wendell cooed and clapped his little hands together with joy. Prudence nudged him up onto the bed, where he crawled over to sit on his own chest. Then Prudence hopped onto the bed, lying across the much-smaller stomach of her human form. Now what? she wondered.

“Do you think it’s that easy?” Samantha asked from the doorway, the cleaver poised over her head. “You think you could waltz in here, click your heels together three times, and magically teleport back home? You fools. I would have spared your lives, such as they were, but now I’m going to enjoy hacking you up into suet.”

As Samantha readied to bring the cleaver down onto Prudence’s skull, Wendell finally understood the missing ingredient. It wasn’t enough to simply touch his real body; he had to touch its mind as well. Wake up now, he thought as hard as he could. It’s time to wake up. This has all been a terrible dream, but now it’s over.

Wendell’s eyes shot open. He found himself tied to the bed as before Joseph Pryde had given him a terrible green potion. He could move his head enough to see Prudence flopping around the bed, no doubt still battling Samantha in her dreams. “Prudence, wake up! It’s only a dream. You’re safe with me here in the real world. No one is going to hurt you. Wake up.”

Prudence’s body stopped moving. For a horrible moment Wendell thought she must have died. Then she cleared her throat and asked, “Are we alive?”

“I think so,” he said.

“Are you sure this isn’t a dream too?”

“I don’t know, but even if it is, we’d better untie ourselves and get out of here.” Freeing themselves didn’t prove difficult. A trick he’d learned from Samantha was how to angle his wrist so that a knot appeared to be tight, but in reality had enough slack for him to slip his wrist through once he relaxed. He freed his right hand and then untied the rest of the knots.

After he freed Prudence, she crushed him in a bear hug. She kissed him not on the forehead or cheek, but on the lips as he’d always hoped Samantha would do. Prudence’s lips were dry, but at the moment they tasted as sweet as honey. “You saved my life,” she said. “Another minute and I would have died a pig.”

“You were never a pig,” he said.

“You were never a girl,” she said and kissed him again.

Chapter 37: Explosions

2007-06-15T10:14:00.001-07:00

Chapter 37: Explosions

Moonlight shone down into the largest hole Samantha had ever seen. Joseph parked the car beside a rusty metal fence, beneath a sign warning against trespassing. “What are we doing here?” Samantha asked.

“We have to do some shopping,” Joseph said. “We can’t get everything we need from the shopping mall.”

Samantha got out of the car and stood with Joseph by the fence. All she saw was a giant hole in the ground with a few pieces of yellow machinery scattered about. What could they possibly need from this dump? “I don’t know about this,” she said. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Don’t worry. There’s only one security guard. We’ll be in and out long before he wakes up from his nap.”

Samantha thought of Joseph’s father lying in a coma, poor Mrs. Schulman spread out on the floor like a rug, and the two children thrashing around on the brass bed. “You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”

“Not yet,” Joseph said. Samantha shivered at the menace in his voice. By the time they robbed this bank, she imagined a trail of bodies stretching from Seabrooke to Bangor. “He shouldn’t give us any problems. Here, hold this.”

He handed a knapsack to her, in which she found bolt cutters, gloves, and a cutting torch. “What is all this?”

“Tools. They aren’t going to sell us what we need, so we’ll have to take the stuff.” Joseph climbed up the fence and then dropped to the other side. He called for Samantha to toss the knapsack over. She followed him over the fence then, checking with each rung to make sure no police jumped out of the trees to arrest her.

She landed next to Joseph and said, “This place gives me the creeps. Can’t we find what we need somewhere else? Somewhere indoors maybe?”

“Come on, don’t be a baby. Nothing bad is going to happen. There aren’t any monsters out here to get us.”

“I know,” Samantha said without conviction. “It’s so quiet out here. I don’t like it.”

Joseph kissed her on the lips, filling her with new courage. “I thought you were raised out in the woods by wolves,” he said with a smile.

“So maybe I’m homesick,” she said with a matching smile.

“Let’s go.” He slung the knapsack over his shoulder and then turned on a flashlight. She took his hand to follow him through the dark along the edge of the hole. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but she hoped he would find it soon. No matter how she tried to tell herself nothing would happen, she couldn’t shake the feeling someone was about to jump out at them to bust them.

He stopped at a metal shed with a red skull-and-bones sign over the door warning them about explosives inside. “Explosives? Aren’t those dangerous?” she said.

“In the wrong hands, yes. I know what I’m doing.”

“Have you ever used any before?”

“No, but I did some reading on the Internet before we left. It’s not very difficult.” He reached into the knapsack for the bolt cutters. “Do you see any wires? There shouldn’t be an alarm, but you never know.”

She felt around the sides of the shed for any wires, but couldn’t find any. Something small and furry darted over her foot and into the bushes nearby. She stifled a scream with her hand, putting the other on her rapidly beating heart. It’s probably a squirrel, she told herself. Nothing dangerous.

“What’s wrong?” Joseph asked when she returned to the front of the shed. He squeezed her arm hard enough to make her wince. “Did you see anything?”

“No. Just a chipmunk or something.”

“Great. Keep an eye out while I go in to get what we need.” He used the bolt cutters to slice the lock in half and then opened the door. Samantha stood outside as Joseph had requested, every rustling leaf or hooting owl sounding like a siren to her ears.

Someone laid a hand on her shoulder. She spun around, her arms raised to strike, only to find Joseph standing there with a green canister marked with a red skull-and-crossbones like the door. “Careful, baby. You almost blew us up,” he said.

“What is that?”

“Nitro,” he said. “Definitely not a toy.”

“Do you know how dangerous that is?” She didn’t know how she knew, but something told her nitroglycerine was a very volatile chemical. If jostled or shaken enough it could explode, killing whoever was nearby.

“I know. There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll drive slow all the way back to Seabrooke,” he said.

“I don’t want that in the car. You can either take it or you can take me.”

“Baby, don’t act this way. Nothing bad is going to happen. I’ll be really careful with it. I’ve got a safe container for it all made up in the trunk.”

“No. This has gone too far. If anyone finds out, they’ll put us in jail for the rest of our lives!”

“Sam, you’re overreacting. I know you’re scared, but there’s nothing to worry about, really. I’ve taken care of everything. Tomorrow night we’ll use this stuff on the bank vault and we’ll have the money we need. No one is ever going to know. Trust me.” He ran his free hand along her arm. “Please. Don’t be mad at me.”

“I’m not going through with this. If you want to rob this bank so badly, you can do it by yourself,” she said.

“Sam, don’t be this way.” He set the nitroglycerine in the knapsack to take her in both hands. “I love you. I’m doing this so we can be free. So we can be together forever without having to worry about scrounging enough money to pay the bills. I don’t want that kind of life for us.”

“There’s nothing wrong with doing an honest job,” Samantha said. “At least then you don’t end up in jail.”

“An honest job? Like my father, with that shitty old truck of his and that shitty old house where Mom died? I’m never going to end up like him. Never!”

“Fine. Do what you want. I’m leaving.”

Joseph pressed down on her arms until she yelped with pain. “You aren’t going anywhere. You’re going to stay with me. I’m never going to let you go.”

“Stop it! Leave me alone!” She squirmed until she got one arm free, which she used to slap Joseph across the face.

“You bitch!” he shouted. He punched her in the face, sending her tumbling to the ground. He stood over her, the muscles in his neck tensing with rage until she thought his head might explode. “You don’t leave me! You’re mine!”

Samantha lay on the ground, one hand pressed against her left eye and the other raised in supplication. Joseph had hit her. Tears squeezed out of her swollen eye to run down her cheeks. He hurt me. Why?

Joseph knelt down beside her, taking her hand. The muscles in his neck had stopped trembling, his face going back to its usual color. “I’m sorry, Samantha. I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just that I love you so much. I’m doing this for us, don’t you see? So we can be happy.” He kissed her eye. “I’m sorry. I’ll never do that again, I swear.”

She looked into his eyes, which had begun to water. He didn’t mean to, she thought. He loves me. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have made you mad. I know you’re doing your best.”

“That’s my girl. Here, I think I know how to make you feel all better.” He kissed her eye again and then moved his lips down her cheek to her lips. He loves me, she thought again as his hands reached back to undo her bra.

Chapter 36: Fat Woman and Little Girl

2007-06-15T10:13:00.002-07:00

Chapter 36: Fat Woman and Little Girl

Lizzie didn’t run down the hill so much as she rolled down, landing on the curb next to Main Street. She tried to push herself into a standing position, but couldn’t get any traction with her feet. She couldn’t lean forward enough to reach her shoes and so had to shake her feet around until the sneakers came loose. She clapped a hand over her mouth in time to prevent a scream. “No,” she wailed.

Instead of feet she now had hooves. Pig legs to go with her pig snout. Before much longer she imagined herself scurrying around on all fours, able only to oink and wheeze like an animal. This isn’t real, she told herself for the hundredth time since falling off the pyramid. It’s a nightmare. She must have hit her head on the gym floor and right now she was lying in a hospital bed with Mom, the other cheerleaders, and even bratty Wendell sitting at her side, waiting for her to wake up. She tried to imagine herself emerging from a long tunnel of darkness, into the light of the hospital room.

Nothing happened. “Have you given up already, little piggy,” Samantha said. She descended the hill slowly, as though floating along the surface of the street. The cleaver gleamed in her hand, the blade poised to strike. “I think I’ll start with some bacon, then a nice ham steak, and finally sausage.”

“I’m not a—” An oink escaped her lips. “Pig.”

“Not yet, but soon.” With this, a hole tore open in Lizzie’s pants. A curly tail corkscrewed out from the opening.

“Stop this! I’ll give you anything. Change me back.”

“I want you to suffer. I want you to die,” Samantha hissed. Lizzie tried again to get up, this time her hooves biting into the ground so she managed to push herself upright. She waddled along Main Street, shouting for help, but no one answered. She didn’t see a single person on Main Street or in the store windows. Where is everyone?

She pounded one door after another, hoping someone would emerge to help, but no one did. “Help—” Another oink interrupted her. “Help me!”

In the reflection of the display window for Designs By Suzie, she gasped. She reached up to finger the floppy ears on the top of her head—a pig’s ears. She didn’t have much time to find help before the transformation was complete. Her stomach pushed outward another inch, the remains of her T-shirt and jeans replaced by a turquoise maternity dress.

There has to be someone who can help me, she thought. But how could anyone undo this and make her human again? She needed a miracle. She looked down Main Street to the white steeple of the church rising over everything else. The church seemed like a long shot, but at this point she didn’t see any better alternatives. She couldn’t stand here and wait to turn into a sow and then have Samantha kill her. She started down the road, hoping she made it in time.

Wendell stopped at the window for Designs by Suzie. As he watched the girl’s reflection in the glass, her wavy hair reformed into bouncy curls. A sailor suit—complete with white hat—replaced Samantha’s pink dress.

He reached up to touch his head and grimaced as the girl performed the exact same movement. I’m not a girl, he thought. This is all a horrible nightmare. I fainted in the auditorium before I went on. Too much stress and too little sleep knocked me out. Any moment he would wake up in a hospital room with Mom, Samantha, and even Prudence by his bedside. He would tell them about this terrible dream and everyone would laugh.

He closed his eyes and willed himself to wake up. Now, he thought. Wake up, now. He opened his eyes and saw the adorable little girl still looking back at him. She started to cry at the precise moment he did, her freckled cheeks turning red and her dimples fading.

“What’s wrong, Wendy?” Samantha asked. She coasted down the road towards him, the vial of poison still in her hand. “Don’t you like it? You look like Shirley Temple, ready to dance and sing. Makes me want to grab one of those sweet little cheeks and pinch it.”

“Leave me alone! I’m not a girl. This is a trick.”

“Why don’t you come with me? We’ll go home and play dress-up. I’ll let you use my makeup.”

“Stop this! Change me back right now.”

“I like you better this way. You’re so much cuter. In time you’ll come to like being a girl.”

“No. I’ll never be a girl. Never!” In the display window, the girl’s reflection shrank another inch. Wendell turned away from the window. He shouted for help, but no one responded. He didn’t see anyone except for Samantha, as though the entire town had suddenly vanished. No one can help me anyway, he thought. No one can change me back. I need a miracle. He spotted the church steeple rising over the trees. It was his only hope. He scampered down the road as fast as he could, the tap shoes on his feet clicking against the pavement with every step.

Then, as he neared the pet shop, he heard a second set of tap shoes on the street. At first he thought it was Samantha mocking him, but then he saw a figure up ahead. There was someone else still here. He raced towards the figure, calling for it to stop. It turned around and a very girlish scream came from his lips.

What turned to face him was not human, but some kind of half-woman, half-pig creature. The pig girl snorted in surprise, her beady eyes narrowing to the point where they disappeared behind her chubby cheeks. “Wendell?” she asked, punctuating the question with an oink.

“Prudence? My God, what’s happened to you?”

“Samantha did this to me. I had just landed on the top of the pyramid and then all the sudden I started getting fat and I ran to the bathroom—” Another oink followed by a period of wheezing interrupted her. Wendell saw her entire body grow fatter, pushing the maternity dress to the breaking point. “And then I started turning into a pig. She’s trying to kill me. She wants to cut me up into bacon and ham and sausage.”

“Samantha? She’s after me too. I was just starting to give my lecture when my voice changed and I started getting breasts and then I was in this all girls school and Samantha tried to kill me and now I keep getting littler. I was on my way to the church to pray for a miracle when I ran into you.”

“I was going to the church too. We can go together.”

They heard footsteps behind them that could only belong to Samantha. Lizzie took Wendell’s hand and then slung him onto her back. She galloped off on her hooves towards the church.

By the time they reached the Seabrooke Episcopalian Church, Lizzie barely had the strength to stand. A toddler in a white straw hat and powder blue dress slipped off her shoulders to land on the church steps. “Come on,” Wendell said. He had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the door handles and even then couldn’t open the doors until Lizzie knocked them open with her stomach. “What do we do now?” Wendell asked.

“I don’t know. Pray, I guess.”

Wendell skipped down the row of pews to the altar and knelt down. Prudence collapsed next to him, wheezing so hard he thought she might die on the spot. “God, please help us,” Wendell said. “Please remove this curse from us and we’ll do whatever you ask of us. You’re our only hope.”

“My children, I have been waiting for you,” a man said. Wendell opened his eyes to find a sandy-haired reverend standing behind the pulpit. “You have both strayed from The Way and this is the result of your sins.”

The reverend stepped out from behind the pulpit carrying a silver cup in his hand. “Drink from this my children and your sins will be washed away. You will be born anew.”

Lizzie accepted the cup in her chubby hands. As she raised the cup to her lips, she saw a reflection in the water. Not herself as a cheerleader or the piggish thing she’d become, but a baby like Wendell. She looked up at the reverend, recognizing the cruel anticipation in his eyes. She poured the contents of the cup onto the floor.

“You fools!” the reverend shouted. “Now your souls will never know salvation. You will be consumed by the fires of Hell! Begone foul, cursed beasts!”

Prudence scrambled up onto her hooves and snatched little Wendell in her arms. “What did you do that for?” Wendell asked.

“I know where we have to go,” she said. She galloped through the church doors and the turned back towards town. She only hoped they could make it in time.

Chapter 35: The Fall

2007-06-15T10:13:00.001-07:00

Chapter 35: The Fall

Molly knew to whom the footsteps belonged before she heard Becky’s voice call out, “Hello? Is someone in there?”

“We’ve got to hide somewhere,” Molly whispered to Veronica. Molly stood up with little Veronica still draped around her. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.” She didn’t know if she said that for herself or for Veronica.

She looked around the cavern for a place to hide, but there was nowhere. An opening in one wall had been sealed with bricks. They didn’t have anywhere to go. She took a handful of Veronica’s loose clothing and then got an idea. “Come on. We’ve got to hurry, but be careful. We don’t want to set off any of those traps,” she whispered.

Veronica nodded and followed Molly’s lead as she crept away from the Fountain of Youth into a darkened corner. Molly instructed Veronica to lie down on the ground and then used the loose clothing to conceal them both. “Don’t make a sound. We have to be very, very quiet,” Molly said.

Becky reached the entranceway at last. “Hello? David, are you in here? You shouldn’t leave the door open. Someone else could get inside. You know what Samantha said about people having access to the fountain. Where are you?”

Molly peeked out with one eye through Veronica’s empty sweater, watching as Becky picked her way through the chamber. Maybe she won’t think to look here and let us go, Molly thought. “Great. It’s bad enough Molly’s run off again without having to worry about this too,” Becky grumbled. “I swear I don’t know what I’ll do with that child. She used to be so well-behaved and now I can’t turn my back on her a second.”

Becky came closer to where Molly and Veronica hid, close enough for Molly to smell perfume. Perfume? She must have come here to meet David. Molly cringed at the image of them kissing and hugging and whatever else grownups did.

“I guess he’s not here,” Becky said. “I’ll have to go by myself up to Pryde’s cabin. God, please don’t let her crawl into the safe this time. I know she’s been a bad girl recently, but there’s goodness in her heart. She’s only confused and why shouldn’t she be after everything that’s happened to her? To go through babyhood again, that would play havoc with anyone’s mind. Please let her be safe and I promise I’ll try to do better to keep her out of trouble.”

Molly’s body grew cold as she listened to this prayer. Go through babyhood again? What did she mean by that? She thought back to her dream in the cabin, but what if it hadn’t been a dream? What if it had really happened?

She needed only to think of little Veronica lying next to her to see how such a thing could happen. She must have fallen into the fountain, unless someone pushed her. Of course! Becky wanted a baby of her own, a real-life doll to play with, so she lured Molly into the cave and dunked her in the Fountain of Youth, pulling out a tiny baby.

Everyone must have known about this: Samantha, Prudence, Wendell, and David. Why hadn’t any of them ever told her? Why did they let Becky do this to her? Maybe it was a punishment for being bad. Instead of spanking her or sending her to bed without dinner, they turned her into a baby and gave her to Becky to raise. Either Molly had done something terrible or the people she loved were monsters.

Even as Molly considered all this, Becky threw off Veronica’s sweater. “Molly? What are you doing here? How did you get inside?” she said.

Molly stood up, unable to keep the tears from her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me I was a big girl once? You liar!” Molly shouted.

“You heard that? Oh, Molly, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way. Let’s go home and we’ll talk about it. I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

“I don’t want to go home with you. You’re mean and a liar and I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“Molly, that’s enough. You’re coming back with me this instant.” For the first time Becky noticed Veronica lying on the ground, clad only in a shirt that drooped to her ankles. “Who’s this?”

“This is Veronica. She’s my friend.”

Becky held up the oversized sweater and pants. “You two have been playing with the fountain, haven’t you? Molly, how did you get in here? Did someone leave the door open?”

“Veronica and I got in here all by ourselves,” Molly said, puffing out her chest with pride.

Becky knelt down beside Veronica, who hadn’t moved at all since Becky found them. “Veronica, can you hear me? Can you talk? Are you all right? Nod for me if you’re all right, sweetie.” Veronica nodded her head slightly. “Good girl. Molly, where did she come from?”

“Across the sea,” Molly said. “Her grandfather had a map leading here with all sorts of riddles for her grandmother to solve. She never solved them, but Veronica did.”

Becky examined the clothes in her hands again. “How old was Veronica when she came here? How long has she been here?” Molly said nothing. Becky took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Molly, answer me! This is important. We could all be in terrible danger. If anyone else finds this place—”

“Veronica isn’t going to hurt anyone. She took care of me when I got sick, before you found me.”

“We’ll talk about this more later. For now I better get you girls out of here. Veronica, can you walk? Do you need me to carry you, sweetie?”

Veronica got to her feet, a curtain of dark hair obscuring her face. Becky took her hand and then led her towards the opening with Molly following behind. Veronica stopped at the fountain to stare into the water. Molly didn’t know what she saw, but it made Veronica cry.

“You can’t change me back, can you?” Veronica asked.

Becky knelt down beside her, parting Veronica’s hair to look into her eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I wish there was, but there isn’t. It’s not so bad, though to grow up again. In time you’ll get used to it. You can live with Molly and I in our house. You and Molly can share a room. I’ll have Wendell make you a bed all your own. And you two can work with me in the bakery. We’ll be one big family. You’ll see.”

“No,” Veronica said.

“No? I know it’s difficult now, sweetheart, but in time—”

“In time? I’m three years old! I’m a baby!” Veronica’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. “If you think it’s so easy, let’s see you do it.”

She shoved Becky with more strength than Molly thought possible for a toddler to possess. Becky stumbled back, teetering on the edge of the fountain. She reached out to grab Molly’s hand, her fingers grazing the edge of Molly’s jacket. Molly stood there frozen, unable to take Becky’s arm.

Becky tumbled backwards, her last desperate grab for purchase snatching Veronica’s shirt. They plunged into the fountain together, disappearing in a flash of light. “No!” Molly shouted. She tried to reach into the fountain to pull them out, but her arms wouldn’t reach.

Then she saw the sweater lying nearby and dangled it over the water. “Grab it and I’ll pull you up,” she shouted. For a moment nothing happened, but then a hand emerged from the water to seize the sweater. Molly pulled with all her might, praying the sweater didn’t fall apart.

A chubby shape plopped out of the water, gasping for air. The light around the shape evaporated to reveal neither Becky nor Veronica, but some hybrid of the two. The girl, about the same age as Molly, was fat like Becky, but with skin a light shade of tan and hair a brown so dark it bordered on black. The girl finished spitting out water and then held up a hand. “I’m fat! And white,” she shouted.

“Veronica? Is it you?” Molly asked.

The girl got to her feet, patting her bulging stomach. “I guess. I’m not really sure,” she said.

“What happened?”

“We fell in and I felt myself growing smaller and smaller until I must have been an embryo or something. Then I saw this flash of light and you were pulling me up,” she said.

“It’s a miracle,” Molly said. “But what about Becky?”

Veronica looked down into the fountain. “She’s gone. I’m sorry, Molly. I know how much she meant to you.”

“She lied to me,” Molly said. “I’m glad she’s gone.” Nevertheless, Molly’s eyes filled with tears. Veronica donned her old pants and sweater and then put an arm around Molly.

“Come on, we have to get out of here.”

“Where are we going to go? Across the sea?”

“Like this? We’re kids. There’s no way we can make it over there and even if we did it would be worse than staying here. We’ll go back to your house.”

“For how long?”

“Until we’re ready,” Veronica said. Molly took a look back at the Fountain of Youth before she left for any sign of Becky, but Veronica was right: Becky was gone.

Chapter 34: The Amazing Shrinking Professor!

2007-06-15T10:12:00.002-07:00

Chapter 34: The Amazing Shrinking Professor!

Wendell couldn’t sleep at all. He paced around his bedroom, practicing his speech over and over again. Tomorrow afternoon he would present a research paper on an amazing compound guaranteed to revolutionize the world and cement his reputation as the greatest scientist ever.

“For centuries people have searched for the Fountain of Youth, but now the search is over,” he said. He ran the line through his mind time and time again with emphasis on different words until it sounded perfect.

Everything had to be perfect. Scientists, professors, and dignitaries from all over the world would be in attendance. All to see a thirteen-year-old-boy who had discovered the secret to immortality. He picked up a tube of glowing white liquid, the key to eternal youth. No one would ever have to grow old again.

The tube rattled in his hand and from the room next door came the squeak of bedsprings followed by a roar like that of a jet engine. Prudence must have rolled over in bed. He had warned Mom to keep his sister home today so she couldn’t embarrass him during the presentation. He shuddered at the thought of her shambling into the auditorium in that hideous turquoise maternity gown of hers, her chubby face stained with chocolate and a bag of chips clutched in her pudgy hands. Then in the middle of his presentation she would fall asleep, the vibrations from her snoring bringing the roof down upon him.

He continued practicing his speech and pacing the bedroom, his thoughts drowning out Prudence’s snoring. At dawn his alarm rang, but he still had not gone to bed. “Wendell, it’s almost time for school,” Mom called.

“I know Mom. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He hid the vial of liquid under a towel before he went to shower in case Prudence waddled in here looking for something to drink. Of course if she did he would have a good demonstration for the start of his presentation.

After showering, he trimmed his beard to look presentable for his speech. He practiced smiling in front of the mirror, everything from a smirk to a broad grin until he found one in-between that felt comfortable. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor,” he said, holding out his hand. He should have asked Mom or Prudence to help him practice his grips. He didn’t want to crush their hands or feel like a limp fish in their grasp.

He went back into the bedroom and heard Prudence still snoring next door. Good. He could get out of here before she rolled out of bed and oozed downstairs to scarf down a box of waffles for breakfast. He took his best suit out of the closet along with a shirt and tie. The shirt and suit jacket felt too snug around his shoulders and upper arms. He should have asked Mom to get him some new clothes before the biggest moment of his life. It’ll have to do, he thought. Soon he would be famous enough to have a closet of suits custom-made.

“Oh, you look so handsome,” Mom said when he came down the stairs. She tried to kiss him on the forehead, but he ducked under her embrace.

“Mom, don’t,” he said. He couldn’t show up at the auditorium with her lipstick on his forehead.

“I’m sorry, honey. I made you some breakfast.”

Wendell looked at the plate of eggs on the table, his stomach churning. He couldn’t get a bite down right now if he tried. “I don’t have time. Sam’s dad is going to be here any minute. I’ll get something at school.”

A car honked outside as if on cue. Wendell kissed Mom on the cheek before running out the door to Mr. Young’s beat-up car. Samantha sat in the backseat, so tiny her feet didn’t touch the floor. Despite being the same age as Wendell, Samantha was often mistaken for a little girl of six or seven. She still had a child’s taste in clothes, today wearing a pink dress lined with lace and a matching bow in her hair that made her look three years old. Only the pimples on her dark cheeks gave any clue to her real age. “Hi there,” she said. “Do you think I’m overdressed for today? Daddy said the bow was a bit much, but I think it’s cute.”

“It’s very cute,” Wendell said.

“See, Daddy, I told you so.” She stuck her tongue out at Mr. Young as he backed the car out of the driveway. “Are you ready for today? I’m so nervous I can hardly stand it.”

Samantha chattered more than usual when she was nervous. She had ever since he first met her in first grade. He found the sound of her voice in these situations soothing. He could close his eyes and listen to her childish prattling forever. Soon he would be able to; once he became a rich and famous scientist he would finally accept her overtures to make their friendship into something more. To demonstrate this, he reached across the seat to squeeze her tiny hand. Her face turned red and her eyes welled up with tears. “Oh Wendell,” she said.

They didn’t say anything for the rest of the ride to school, but when Mr. Young finally stopped the car, Wendell kissed Samantha’s cheek. “I’ll see you later,” he said.

The first half of the day was torture. He kept his eyes fixed on the clock, each second feeling like an eternity. In math class, Mrs. Milton chided him for not paying attention. Finally the bell rang for lunch and he hurried to the auditorium to prepare for the presentation.

Samantha was already there, no more than a pink dot in the back row. She waved to him and he waved back, but he didn’t want to say anything to her until he finished the presentation. Then they would have all the time in the world to talk.

The principal opened the doors a few minutes later to begin showing the guests in. Wendell stood behind the curtain backstage, watching distinguished scientists, professors, and business leaders file into the Seabrooke Middle School auditorium, his stomach tightening. He didn’t think he could make it through this.

Someone tapped his shoulder and he spun around to find Samantha there. She had to get on her tiptoes to reach his lips. “Don’t worry, you’ll be great,” she said. The knots in his stomach untied at the touch of her lips against his.

“I love you,” he said. He kissed her this time, lifting her off the ground. He could have remained like that forever, but the principal introduced him and the audience began to applaud. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

Wendell wiped at his mouth to get off any lipstick and then straightened his tie. He pushed back the curtain and strode up to the podium. The applause died out, leaving dozens of world-renowned eyes staring at him, waiting for him to tell them of his discovery. “Ladies and gentlemen, for centuries people have been searching for the Fountain of Youth—” His voice cracked on the last word. He cleared his throat, but when he continued, his voice sounded at least two octaves higher than before. “But now the search is over.”

He cleared his throat again and then reached over for a glass of water. He stopped to hold up long, slender fingers, each nail painted a glossy pink. The audience started to murmur amongst themselves as if trying to decide if this were part of the act. “I’m sorry,” Wendell squeaked. “Let me start over.”

Sweat dripped into his eyes, blurring his vision. He reached up with one hand to wipe the sweat away only to find hair falling down to the small of his back. His chest started to tighten and he watched in horror as a pair of breasts pressed against his shirt until the buttons threatened to burst—

“That’s quite enough, Miss Palmer,” an old woman said.

Wendell opened his eyes to find himself standing at the head of a classroom full of girls in matching plaid jumpers. “Take your seat, young lady. We’ll discuss this later.” Miss Palmer? Young lady? “Can you hear me, Miss Palmer? I asked you to sit down.”

Wendell turned to her and then looked down to find himself wearing a plaid jumper, white blouse, and white knee socks like the other girls. Thinking back to the nightmare in the auditorium, he held up slender hands with pink fingernails and then reached back to touch hair falling to the small of his back. “I’m a girl,” he said. The other girls snickered.

“Now that you’ve figured this out, please take your seat,” the old woman said. She got up from her desk and took Wendell by the shoulders. “Do you need to see the nurse?”

He ran from the classroom to the delight of the other girls. He sped down the hallway until he found a bathroom and locked the door behind him. He turned to the mirror to see a girl with long red hair facing him. This can’t be happening, he thought. It has to be a nightmare! Any moment I’ll wake up.

He closed and then opened his eyes, but in the mirror still found a girl’s face looking back at him. As he watched, she shrank, freckles dotting her cheeks. No, this isn’t me, he thought. I’m not a girl.

“Poor little Wendy,” Samantha’s voice said. Wendell spun around, but didn’t see anyone. “What’s the matter, Wendy, don’t you like what you see?”

“What are you doing to me?” Wendell said.

“I’m showing you the truth.” In the mirror, the girl’s hair wove itself into braids even as the rest of her shrunk another inch. “This is what you truly are.” Samantha materialized behind Wendell, only now she loomed over him.

“Stop this,” Wendell said. The girl continued to shrink, dimples forming at the corners of her lips. “Change me back!”

“I’m afraid not,” Samantha said. She produced a vial of glowing liquid from behind her back. “It’s time to put this baby to bed.”

“No!” Wendell shouted. He scampered past her on shrinking legs, the jumper hanging now down to his ankles. Outside, in the hallway, he found the class waiting for him.

“No running, young lady,” the old woman said. She grabbed Wendell by a braid and started to drag him towards the classroom. He looked behind him to see Samantha approaching with the vial in her hand. “It’s time you learn how to behave like a proper little girl.”

“I’m not a girl!” he screamed. He tried to fight her grasp, but couldn’t free himself. Then his body shrank again, the jumper replaced by a frilly pink dress. Samantha’s dress. He reached up to touch a bow in his hair. The old woman lost hold of him as the braid unfurled, allowing him to take off running down the hall, the laughter of the girls echoing in his mind. When he looked behind, the girls had disappeared, but Samantha continued her slow advance, gesturing with the vial.

“Time to die, Wendy,” she said. He ran.

Chapter 33: The Incredible Expanding Cheerleader!

2007-06-15T10:12:00.001-07:00

Chapter 33: The Incredible Expanding Cheerleader!

Lizzie sprang from the bed at the first rays of dawn, before the alarm clock went off. The day of the pep rally was here at last! After years of wishing and weeks of training she finally got the chance to show everyone what she could do.

The green-and-white uniform hung from the closet door, still draped in the plastic dry cleaning bag. She hadn’t tried it on since the fitting, afraid of staining the uniform before everyone in school could see how great she looked in it. She thought of Joseph Pryde—the cutest boy at Seabrooke Middle School—sitting in the bleachers, gaping when he saw her. Afterwards, he would find her in the hallway to ask her to the homecoming dance. She would make a big show of deciding before accepting. The other girls would die from jealousy.

“Prudence, hurry up and get ready for school!” Mom called from the other side of the door.

“Mom, I told you not to call me that,” Lizzie snapped. “Nobody calls me that name anymore.”

“It’s your given name. If your grandmother heard you talk about her name like that—”

“Mom, please, I have to get ready. There’s a big important thing at school today and I have to look my best.”

“All right, but be sure you get something for breakfast before you leave. You’re going to be skin and bones if you don’t eat something.”

“I know, Mom. I promise I’ll eat something.” She waited a moment to make sure her nosy mother left before she took down the uniform. She peeled away the plastic, running her hands along the soft fabric. Her fingers traced the letters ‘SMS’ on the chest, filling her with pride. Today she would become a part of the school’s history, her picture with the other junior varsity cheerleaders in the yearbook that people would be able to see for years and years to come. Someday she could show it to her children—who wouldn’t have ugly names like Prudence.

She pulled the plastic back over the uniform to protect it while she took a shower and did her makeup. She hung it up over the closet again so Wendell couldn’t reach. It would be just like her bratty little brother to mess up her uniform on the most important day of her life.

After showering and blow-drying her hair, she sat down at the vanity to look into the mirror. What should she do with her hair? How much makeup should she put on? For a moment she considered phoning Helena, the head cheerleader, but she didn’t want to seem nervous. They might decide to replace her with someone else like that horse-faced Becky. No, she would have to make these decisions herself.

Twenty minutes later she bounded down the steps to the kitchen with her hair—naturally red unlike that fake orange tint of Molly Brigham’s—in a ponytail and with a subtle amount of makeup. She spun around in her sweater and skirt for Mom to see. “You look very nice, sweetheart,” Mom said. She motioned to a plate on the table. “I made you some scrambled eggs and toast. Hurry up before the bus gets here.”

“Sorry Mom, but I have to go. Samantha’s dad is giving us a ride into school.”

“You have to eat something, Prudence—”

“I’ll get something at school.” She heard a car horn sound. “Bye Mom. Love you.” She kissed her mother on the cheek before skipping out to Mr. Young’s beat-up old car.

Samantha sat in the backseat, taking up almost half of it. She couldn’t even get the seatbelt around her gut. Samantha looked up from a book, squinting through thick glasses at Lizzie’s outfit. “You look nice,” she said, her voice a whisper. Then she reached into her backpack for a candy bar to stuff into her mouth. Lizzie thought about mentioning how bad chocolate was for skin—not that Samantha could do much worse damage to her dark skin at this point—but she didn’t want to hurt Samantha’s feelings. They had been friends since first grade when they were both chubby little girls. Prudence had grown out of her chubbiness while Samantha had just grown and grown. Before long she wouldn’t even fit into the car.

Along the way to school, Lizzie did most of the talking as usual. “I’m so excited and nervous too. Do you think everyone’s going to be there? Even Joseph Pryde? What if I fall and he sees me? I would die, I tell you, right there on the spot from embarrassment. I don’t think I could ever live that down if I lived to be a hundred.”

“You’ll do fine,” Samantha said. Then she reached into her backpack for a bag of cookies. She shoveled a handful into her mouth, spilling crumbs on the front of her mint green T-shirt, and then offered the bag to Lizzie, who refused.

“I couldn’t eat a thing right now. It would come right back up. My stomach is already doing cartwheels,” she said. “I’m going to be on the top of the pyramid. The first time they ever let someone start at the top, but Coach Schulman said I’m the right size and after Annie broke her leg there wasn’t anyone else who could do it. It’s a lot of responsibility being up at the top of the pyramid and it’s dangerous too. This one girl in Texas broke her neck when she fell off the top—”

“We’re here girls,” Mr. Young said. Lizzie bolted from the car while Samantha was still grunting and straining to free herself. Lizzie saw the other cheerleaders standing near the front of the school and hoped they didn’t see her arrive in Mr. Young’s old car with the fattest girl in school.

“I’ll see you after the rally,” Lizzie told Samantha, who had finally escaped the backseat, her face red and sweaty from the effort. She wheezed something like an affirmative and then Lizzie raced down the sidewalk to the other girls. She was relieved to see the other girls all wore their hair in ponytails and the same amount of makeup. “Hi, everyone! Isn’t it such a beautiful day?”

“Do you remember the choreography?” Helena asked. “We can’t have you screwing up.”

“I know it. Don’t worry.”

“You’d better,” Phyllis hissed. Lizzie knew Phyllis was jealous because she wanted to be the top girl, but not with those ham-sized thighs of hers.

Samantha lumbered past, Lizzie careful not to look in her direction. She imagined Samantha’s eyes filling with tears at the snub, but she had to understand what a great opportunity this was for Lizzie. All those years of dance classes and gymnastics, waiting for this moment. The top of the pyramid!

“Look at her,” Helena said. “I’m surprised she can fit through the doorway anymore.”

“Didn’t you used to be friends with her?” Phyllis asked, an obvious trick to embarrass Lizzie in front of the others.

“Oh yeah, back in first grade like a million years ago.”

“I have her in my English class. She has to sit at a special table because she can’t fit in the desks,” Molly said.

“She has to take the elevator instead of the stairs,” Annie said. The other girls laughed at this. Lizzie played along, telling herself it was Samantha’s own fault. No one had put a gun to her head and made her get fat. No one forced her to inhale candy and cookies all day long like a whale. If she doesn’t want people making fun of her she should lose the weight, Lizzie thought.

Lizzie sat with the other cheerleaders at lunch, careful to avoid Samantha sitting by herself at the table nearest to the serving line. Lizzie was glad to see none of the other cheerleaders ate anything either, instead drinking bottled water from home. Annie shared her bottle with Lizzie when Lizzie admitted she’d forgotten hers.

Then the bell rang and at last it was time for the pep rally. Lizzie followed the other girls to the side doors of the gymnasium, where they waited to make their big entrance. “Now, everyone remembers the routine, right?” Helena said, glaring at Lizzie. “Anyone who messes up isn’t going to be invited to my homecoming party this weekend.”

The band began playing the fight song, which was their entrance cue. Helena led the way with Lizzie at the back. Time moved in slow motion as she ran through the gymnasium doors and onto the basketball court, the bleachers filled with kids focused on her. Even Samantha had wedged herself onto a bench, light reflecting off her glasses to momentarily blind Lizzie. She stumbled, but quickly regained her footing and took her place in the back row as they went through the first cheer.

Once the cheer began, Lizzie’s mind flew back to all the practice they’d undergone with Coach Schulman before and after school. The moves came to her as naturally as breathing air and before long she forgot about the kids watching her on the bleachers, even Joseph Pryde sitting up top with his friends. She focused instead on the routines, her eyes fixed on a ‘Go Beavers!’ sign above the bleachers.

Lizzie performed each routine flawlessly to the roaring approval of the crowd. She let her gaze wander a moment to find Joseph Pryde looking back at her. She couldn’t be sure at this distance, but she was sure he winked. He’s going to ask me out! she thought and almost tripped over her own feet. She couldn’t think about this now. She couldn’t think about his muscular arm falling across her shoulder in the back of the movie theater, his face pressing close to hers—

“Snap out of it,” Molly hissed next to her. Lizzie hoped no one had noticed her slip-up. She finished the cheer without incident and then it was time for the pyramid. The other girls formed the bottom two layers and then waited for her to complete the pyramid.

She trotted forward to jump onto the outstretched hands of Annie and Coach Schulman. For a moment she stood on their interlocking hands, waving to the entire crowd, although her eyes focused only on Joseph Pryde. Then Annie and Coach Schulman tossed Lizzie into the air. She tucked her body into a ball as she had in gymnastics, arcing towards where Molly and Helena waited for her. At the last moment she stuck out her arms and legs to land right on top of Molly and Helena.

They held the position for three seconds, Lizzie absorbing the crowd’s applause. Then she heard Molly and Helena groan. The pyramid started to wobble as though a strong wind had blown through the gymnasium. Lizzie started to ask what was wrong until she saw her hands.

Her slim, beautiful hands had become pudgy mitts with ten sausage links for fingers. They continued growing chubbier as she watched in horror. What’s happening to me? she thought an instant before the pyramid toppled.

Lizzie landed on top of Helena, who screamed, “Get off me you fat pig! You’re not supposed to be up there!”

“But—” Lizzie stopped when she looked down to see a gut surging from beneath her sweater until it pushed the sweater up to reveal a pale roll of fat sagging over her waist. “No! This isn’t mine. I’m not fat!” She seized the belly and tried to tear it loose, but felt a stab of pain.

“You’ve ruined everything!” Phyllis said. The crowd’s applause had turned to laughter, the kids pointing to Lizzie and her growing stomach. She ran from the gymnasium with tears in her eyes before locking herself in the bathroom.

In the mirror she saw her face had turned pudgy as well, her red cheeks swelling up to nearly blot out her eyes. She touched the flap of loose skin beneath her jaw that now obscured her neck. Even her hair had shortened to make her face look heavier. This can’t be happening, she thought. It has to be a nightmare! Any moment I’ll wake up.

Her body continued puffing up like a balloon, the seams of her cheerleading sweater and skirt pushed to the breaking point. They finally burst when she tried to take a deep breath, revealing a mint green T-shirt and a pair of elastic-waist jeans. These are Samantha’s clothes, she thought.

“Poor little piggy,” Samantha’s voice said. Lizzie spun around, but didn’t see anyone.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Lizzie said.

“I’m showing you the truth.” In the mirror, the tip of Lizzie’s nose curled up into a pig’s snout. “This is what you truly are.” Samantha materialized behind Lizzie, only now Samantha was thin, her face free of pimples and glasses.

“Stop this,” Lizzie said. The elastic waistband of her pants stretched to the breaking point and still her body continued to expand. “Change me back!”

A cleaver appeared in Samantha’s hand, the blade tinged red with blood. “It’s time for you to go to the slaughterhouse.”

Lizzie screamed and bowled past Samantha, out into the hallway. All the kids in school were waiting for her to emerge, pointing and laughing at her as she ran. Joseph Pryde stood last in line. “Help me, please,” she said.

“I’d never help a fat pig like you,” Joseph said. He shoved her down to the floor, where she rolled around trying to get to her feet. By the time she got up, the other children had evaporated, leaving only Samantha.

“Time to die, piggy,” Samantha said. Lizzie ran.

Chapter 32: Poison

2007-06-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Chapter 32: Poison

The two kids hardly fit onto the bed. To give them more room, Joseph arranged the little boy with his head at the foot of the bed and the fat one lying in the opposite direction. He secured their hands to the bars of the brass frame while Samantha watched, making sure neither tried anything sneaky.

Since waking up, the little one hadn’t said anything. He wouldn’t even look at Samantha, instead turning his head away anytime she glanced at him. She felt bad for the kid, having his heart broken under the benches, but what did he expect? Did he really think she’d give up a strong, gorgeous man like Joseph for a shrimp like him?

The fat one had slept the entire way over, her snoring enough to drive Samantha crazy. She and Joseph spent the ride back to his father’s house trying to find a good description for the snoring. “It’s like a chainsaw,” Joseph said. “A rusty chainsaw from about fifty years ago.”

“It’s like a waterfall. Maybe Niagara Falls,” Samantha said. She couldn’t remember having ever been to Niagara Falls, but she had the vague image of solid walls of water crashing down like an avalanche.

They settled on a pregnant sow with asthma. Now that the fat girl lay on the bed, Samantha could picture the fat girl with a snout and curly tail, a bunch of piglets sucking at her teats. Samantha giggled at this image and then reached over to push up the fat girl’s nose and make oinking sounds. Joseph laughed at this while the little one spoke for the first time. “Samantha, she’s your friend. How can you do that?”

“I’m just having some fun with her,” Samantha said.

“What happened to you? I want the old Samantha back.”

“You mean the ugly Samantha? The one with pimples and big ears and homemade clothes? She’s never coming back. Never!”

“You’re uglier now,” the little one said.

Joseph slapped him across the face hard enough to make the little boy’s nose bleed. “Watch your mouth,” Joseph said.

Samantha let go of the fat one’s nose to massage Joseph’s shoulders. “Leave him alone. He’s jealous because he’s a sissy and you’re my big strong man.” She kissed him on the neck, the little one squirming at this. “Let’s get out of here. We can get across the state line by morning.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Joseph said. “We can’t leave them like this. They could escape.”

“What are you going to do then? You aren’t going to hurt them, are you?”

“No, of course not, baby,” Joseph said. “I’m going to give them what I gave my dad. By the time they wake up, we’ll be gone. Go downstairs and watch TV while I take care of this.”

“All right,” she said.

“Samantha, don’t let him do this! You can stop him!” the little one cried out. Samantha kissed Joseph on the neck again and then went down to the living room to watch TV.

A knock on the door startled her enough that she fell off the couch. She turned off the television, hoping whoever was at the door would go away. She imagined the sheriff waiting there, ready to bust down the door and haul her and Joseph away for drugging Mr. Pryde and tying up the kids.

The knocking continued, growing more frantic. A woman’s voice called out, “I know you’re in there. I see your cars.”

Before long, Samantha knew the racket would disturb Joseph and then there would be hell to pay. She hurried to the front door, peeking through the curtain to see not the sheriff but an old woman in a dingy brown overcoat. Samantha opened the door enough to fit her head through. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Well, aren’t you a rude one. I’ve been living in these parts since your grandmother was in diapers I bet. I don’t remember seeing you before. Are you a friend of Mr. Pryde’s?”

“Yes. He’s sleeping right now so you’ll have to come back later,” Samantha said. With the door open, the old lady’s mildew stench almost made Samantha’s eyes water.

“That’s fine. I’m not here to see him. There was a girl who came by my place earlier. A big girl.” The old lady held an arm out on either side to mimic the girl’s shape. “She said she was staying up here. I went by the sweet shop earlier and thought I’d drop off some fudge for her.” The old lady held up a white paper sack.

“You can give it to me and I’ll make sure she gets it.”

“Where is she that she can’t even come to the door and say hello to an old woman who did her a favor by driving her into town? She seemed like such a darling girl too.”

“She’s not feeling good right now. When she’s better I’ll let her know you stopped by.”

“I should have known. She didn’t look well earlier with her face so red and sweaty. In that case, I’ll go whip up some chicken soup for her. Much better for a sick girl than candy.” The old lady stuffed the bag of fudge into her overcoat and then turned to leave. That’s when a scream came from upstairs. From the shrillness of it, Samantha guess the fat girl had woke up at last. The old lady spun around, sticking her foot in the doorway before Samantha could shut the door. “What’s going on in there?” she asked.

“Nothing’s going on,” Samantha said. Another scream echoed through the house, this one belonging to the little boy. Sweat began to form along Samantha’s forehead and a nervous flutter unsettled her stomach.

The old lady tried to worm her way past Samantha, who fought to shut the door. “I don’t know what you children are up to in here, but I aim to find out. I will not have a group of hoodlums operating in my neighborhood. You let me in this instant, young lady or I’ll tell Sheriff McCovey.”

Samantha relented, opening the door enough for the old lady to slip through. “Young lady, are you hurt? Mr. Pryde? Can you—” The old lady didn’t finish her sentence. Samantha whacked her upside the head with the handle of an umbrella. The old lady toppled to the floor, where she lay unmoving.

Samantha stood frozen over the old lady’s fallen body. Oh God, let her be alive, Samantha thought. She could justify the robbery and even tying up the children, but she couldn’t find an excuse for killing an old woman.

“Sam, what’s going on down here?” Joseph called from the stairs. By the time he reached the bottom, Samantha had dissolved into a sobbing heap. He took her into his arms, stroking her hair and saying reassuring things that had no effect on her as she looked at the dead old lady.

“She threatened to call the police,” Samantha said. “I didn’t want to hit her, but she wouldn’t go away.”

“Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” Joseph leaned over the old lady’s body to feel for a pulse. “She’s still alive.”

Samantha wiped at her eyes and nose, trying to collect herself. She couldn’t help thinking of what she’d almost done; if she’d hit the old lady a little harder—

“Joseph, let’s get out of here. We can find another bank to rob somewhere else. One that’s bigger and has more money.”

He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Sam, there’s nothing to worry about. The old coot will be fine. We’ll put her upstairs with the others.”

“What about the kids? I heard them—”

“They’re fine. They’re asleep now,” he said.

“Joe, please, I don’t want to be here anymore. Let’s go.”

“Baby, I told you, there’s nothing to worry about. You trust me, don’t you?” She nodded. “Good. I’ll take Mrs. Schulman upstairs and tuck her in. Are you going to be all right by yourself for a few minutes?” She nodded again. “That’s my girl. Wait right here.”

Joseph disappeared with the old lady in his arms, leaving Samantha alone. After a moment she stumbled out the front door and collapsed onto the porch swing to bury her face in her hands. This kept getting worse and worse. It had all started out as a beautiful dream, but now it seemed more like a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake up.

Chapter 31: Booby Traps

2007-06-15T10:01:00.003-07:00

Chapter 31: Booby Traps

The cave entrance was blocked. A boulder taller than Veronica and wider than Becky and Aunt Prudence together denied them access to the opening. “How did this get here?” Veronica asked. Molly said nothing, a memory as vague as a dream gnawing at the edges of her mind. Veronica pounded the boulder in frustration. “So close! How can we get this close and not get inside? Goddamn it!” Veronica grabbed Molly by the front of her coat and shook her. “Why didn’t you tell me about this, you little brat? Is this some kind of joke to you?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was here,” Molly said, tears coming to her eyes.

Veronica stopped shaking Molly and dropped down to her knees to brush Molly’s tears away. “I’m sorry, honey. I lost my temper. You’re a good girl, the best girl in the world. Can you ever forgive me?” Molly nodded. “Don’t worry, honey, we’ll find a way to move that rock and get inside.”

Veronica went up to the boulder and set her shoulder against it. Before she could try to shove the heavy rock aside, Molly called out, “No, don’t!”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Molly didn’t know, but something told her not to try moving the rock. “Something bad will happen,” she said. In her mind she heard familiar voices. What were they saying? She couldn’t make out the words.

“You mean a booby trap?” Veronica asked.

Booby trap. She heard Becky saying these words. She put her hands to her head and closed her eyes until the words came into focus. “You want to booby trap the cave?” Becky said.

“We have to make sure no one can get inside and tamper with the water,” Aunt Samantha said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“How are you going to booby trap it?” Aunt Prudence asked.

“It’s simple really,” Uncle Wendell began.

“Wait,” David said. “Can’t you put her somewhere else?”

“Molly? She’s fine. She’s sleeping,” Becky said. Now Molly remembered. It was over two years ago when she still slept in her crib on a winter night like this, so cold Becky swaddled Molly in four blankets and covered her head with three bonnets. She lay dazed in the crib beneath the blankets, her thumb in her mouth, wondering if this was a dream.

“We can’t take the chance of her telling anyone,” David said. A chair creaked and then Molly felt him standing over the crib. She remained on her stomach, unflinching and her eyes closed as she pretended to sleep.

“Leave her alone. She’s just a baby,” Aunt Samantha said. “She can hardly walk or talk. What’s she going to do?”

“You all spoil this brat rotten. She’s going to grow up into a monster,” David said, moving away from the crib.

“Are you done so I can get back to my explanation?” Uncle Wendell said. He waited a moment and then continued. “The first thing we do is roll the largest rock we can find in front of the cave. Instead of putting it over the real entrance, we use it as a red herring. And there will be a nasty surprise waiting for anyone who tries to move it. Now the real entrance we’ll block off with smaller rocks that should blend into the scenery to throw anyone off.”

Molly looked around the front of the cave for the real entrance Uncle Wendell had mentioned. She tried to pull aside a smaller boulder about six feet away, but it wouldn’t move. Veronica came over to help, the two of them straining to move the boulder aside. Behind it they found only solid rock. “This isn’t it, honey,” Veronica said. She patted Molly on the head. “We’ll have to find something to move the big one aside.”

“No,” Molly said. “This is it. I know it.” She closed her eyes until she was back in the crib again listening to the grownups discuss how to protect the fountain.

“What if they find your real entrance?” David asked.

“The rocks are only the first layer,” Uncle Wendell said. “Behind that is another door. This one is a little trickier to open. It will take some very precise carving, but we can create a lock of sorts for the second door.”

Molly ran her hands along the face of the cave wall until she found a lump. “Pull it out all the way, turn it once to the right, twice to the left, and then all the way around,” she repeated the words Uncle Wendell had said as she did this. She heard a creak followed by Veronica gasping.

“Molly, you did it!” Veronica hugged her so tightly Molly thought she would suffocate. “You opened the door. Now we can go inside and find the fountain.”

“Wait,” Molly cautioned. “There’s more.”

“Trick doors won’t be enough,” Aunt Samantha said. “We’ll need some booby traps inside, just in case. Prudence can give us some black thread to use for tripwires around the cave ready to bring rocks down on any uninvited guests.”

“Couldn’t that hurt someone?” Aunt Prudence asked.

“That’s the point,” David growled.

“I don’t like this,” Becky said. “There’s almost as much chance we’d get caught by these traps as an intruder. What if there’s an emergency?”

“We’ll have to take that chance,” Aunt Samantha said. “As these kids get older you don’t think one of them will go snooping around that cave and get ideas? The last thing we need is for someone like Helena to become another Reverend Crane.”

“Maybe that’s better than letting people die because we can’t get the medicine they need,” Becky said.

“You want to wake up like her one day, go right ahead. I’d just as soon destroy those caves for good,” David said.

“There may come a time when we need that water. For now these booby traps should do the job,” Aunt Samantha said.

Molly crawled through the opening, keeping her hands out in front to detect any of Aunt Samantha’s tripwires. When her fingers brushed against one she waited for an avalanche to crush her, but nothing happened. “Here’s one,” Molly said. “You have to step over it or you’ll get hurt.”

Veronica did this and then picked Molly up, setting her down behind the tripwire. They continued this pattern until they reached the fountain. Veronica knelt on the stones ringing the glowing water and pressed a hand to her cheek. “It’s real. I thought it was something Gramps was making up, but it really exists. The Fountain of Youth,” she said.

Molly came up next to her and looked into the water. She saw herself as a toddler and an infant, both faces locked in a scream of pain. Molly backed away from the fountain, coming within an inch of setting off a tripwire.

“There’s nothing to worry about, Molly. Everything’s going to be all right now,” Veronica said. “Look, there’s me at twenty-five with that awful perm and me at fifteen with all those zits. Oh, there’s me as a baby. This is unbelievable.”

Veronica leaned closer to the surface of the water, reaching one hand out to touch it. As her fingers dipped beneath the water, her entire body started to glow. “It’s working!” she shouted. “I can feel it!”

Molly watched Veronica’s glowing form growing leaner with every second so that her clothes became loose. Her hair turned black and straightened into a solid wave coursing down her back. The lines on her face evaporated until her entire face had the smoothness of a statue. With the glow surrounding her beautiful face, she reminded Molly of pictures of the Virgin Mary in Becky’s Bible. Maybe she is an angel, Molly thought.

Veronica tried to pull her arm out then, but instead something yanked her down farther into the water until her shoulders were submerged. Despite Veronica kicking furiously to free herself from the Fountain of Youth, she couldn’t escape. Her body grew smaller inside her clothes, into a teenager’s frame and then a child’s. “Help me! Molly, help!” Veronica called out in a small voice, a little girl’s voice.

Molly raced forward and grabbed at Veronica’s pants until she found Veronica’s legs. Molly pulled as hard as she could, straining from the effort. At last whatever had taken hold of Veronica let go and she went flying backwards, knocking Molly to the ground.

When Molly rolled into a sitting position, she saw a toddler swamped by Veronica’s clothes. Black hair covered the girl’s face like a curtain except for the end of her nose. The little girl held up the sagging sleeves of her clothes, now empty beneath the elbow. “This can’t be,” she whispered. “I’m not a child!”

Molly leaned forward to brush hair away from the girl’s face. Underneath, she found a chubby brown face with Veronica’s eyes. “Veronica?”

“Molly, what happened?” Veronica started to cry. “I don’t want to be little. Change me back.” She flapped the half-empty sleeves in anger and then sagged forward into Molly’s waiting arms. Molly could do nothing more than stroke Veronica’s hair and whisper reassurances the way Becky did with her. She stopped at the sound of footsteps outside the cave.

Chapter 30: Kidnapped

2007-06-15T10:01:00.001-07:00

Chapter 30: Kidnapped

At first Wendell hid along the side of the road at the sight of the monstrous truck with its roaring engine. He had never seen a vehicle so large and powerful in all his life. As the truck came closer, Wendell told himself it was like Mr. Pryde’s truck, only much larger. He thought of Samantha as he ran out into the road, waving his arms in the hope the vehicle would stop. The truck made a terrible screeching and creaking sound as it slowed; Wendell didn’t think it would stop in time before hitting him. The truck came to a stop two feet ahead of him, its silver grill looking like the teeth of some giant mechanical teeth. A head leaned out the driver’s side door and shouted, “What are you doing, kid?”

“I need a ride,” Wendell said. “It’s an emergency.”

“All right, climb up the side there. Watch your step.”

Wendell went around to the passenger’s side of the truck. He grabbed a bar to haul himself onto a step and then opened a door. He took hold of another bar to swing into the seat. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” Wendell said.

The driver, a man as heavy as Prudence, shrugged. “It’s fine. What’s this emergency?”

“My cousin is in the hospital. I’m not sure how much longer she has. I need to see her,” Wendell said.

“What’s wrong with her?” the driver asked as he started the truck moving again.

“She has a bad heart,” Wendell said. Not entirely a lie, he thought. Somehow, thanks to Mr. Pryde’s son, Samantha’s kind heart had turned dark. “It’s giving out on her.”

“Are they going to do a transplant?”

“A transplant? Oh, sure, of course.”

“I had a cousin who needed a liver on account of his drinking. He waited around for almost two years before they found a donor for him. Unless you got a family member with a part to spare or you’re a celebrity you end up waiting,” the driver said. Wendell had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded anyway. They can transplant organs from one person to another? he thought. Amazing. Any other time he would have asked dozens of questions, but not now. He had more important things to worry about at the moment.

The driver continued talking first about his cousin and then his brother, a driver in somewhere called Iraq that sounded worse than Hell itself. “The truck ahead of him blew up two weeks ago. Damned terrorists. A bunch of cowards,” the driver said. He stopped the truck in front of the Seabrooke Community Hospital, a one-story building that didn’t seem much bigger than the boy’s dormitory in Eternity. “Here’s the hospital. I hope your cousin pulls through.”

“Thanks. I hope she does too.” Wendell climbed down from the truck and then hurried up to the front doors of the hospital. He jumped back in surprise when the doors opened on their own. The truck pulled away, leaving Wendell to wonder what to do now that he had reached town.

Where would that brute have taken Samantha? Wendell leaned against the front wall of the hospital as he pondered the question. What did Joseph Pryde want with Samantha? To own her, Wendell thought. He wanted to keep her in his power in the same way Reverend Crane had kept the children of Eternity slaves for almost four hundred years.

Given all this, it seemed logical he would want to get her as far away from Seabrooke as possible. The automobile could accomplish this, but the automobile belonged to his father. The police could trace the vehicle and stop him. He would want to find an alternate means of transportation. Wendell looked down the road, which ended at the sea. A boat, he thought. He’ll try to get a boat.

Wendell set out towards the waterfront, doubt creeping in with each step. What hope did he have of finding them? They had such a head start on him that by now they could be a hundred miles away. They had an automobile or possibly a boat by now while he had only his feet. The odds of his finding them were a billion to one and even steeper that he could stop them.

He crossed the main street, looking both ways in case they had been foolish enough to park their car in plain sight. No such luck. He kept going, up a hill to a rectangular brick building larger than any other in town. A sign out front told him this was Seabrooke High School.

To his astonishment, he saw Mr. Pryde’s automobile in the parking lot. They were here! He broke into a run towards the car, wondering how long they’d been here. The engine of the automobile felt warm to his touch, which meant they couldn’t have left too long ago.

On the ground nearby he found two pairs of tracks, the smaller, heavier ones belonging to Joseph and the longer, fainter ones to Samantha. The tracks led towards a snow-covered field. He followed the tracks until they broke off towards rows of benches. Then he heard their voices.

Wendell inched closer until he could make out their words clearly. What he heard turned his entire body as cold as the snow he stood in. He couldn’t believe the madness of this brute, nor that Samantha would go along with it. What had he done to her that would allow her to even consider this?

His hands became fists as the sound of their kissing to seal the pact. An unholy, evil pact that would doom Samantha to a life on the run as a fugitive or, worse yet, to jail. Either way, Wendell would lose her forever.

“Samantha, no! You can’t do this,” he shouted, running towards them. They broke off their kiss, Samantha’s pale face turning even more so. “Whatever he’s doing to you, you have to fight it. You can’t want to do this.”

“Who are you? Oh, right, the little boy from Mr. Pryde’s house. I don’t know what you’re doing here or why you’re interrupting us. What we do isn’t any of your business.”

“Samantha, please, it’s Wendell. You’ve known me for nine years now. You have to remember, please. You can’t do this. You’ll end up in jail. Is that what you want?”

“Look, little boy, I don’t know what you think you heard, but we’re not robbing any banks. We were only joking. Run along and go play,” Samantha said.

“We can’t let him go,” Joseph said. The brute took a step towards Wendell. “He’ll tell the police.”

“Like they’ll believe him. He’s just a kid.”

“We can’t take the chance.” Before Wendell could run, Joseph seized him by the collar and held him up in the air. Wendell tried to break the brute’s grip, but his punches did nothing. “We have to get rid of him.”

“Joseph, no, we can’t kill him. That wouldn’t be right.”

“We won’t kill him. We’ll incapacitate him for a little while, until we’re gone from here.”

“Samantha, you can’t let him do this. You have to stop him,” Wendell said. “Please, I love you.”

Her laughter at this hurt him more than anything Joseph could ever do. “You? How old are you, eight? I’m sorry little boy, but I’m a bit too old for you.”

“Samantha, no—” Joseph’s punch to Wendell’s head ended the conversation. Joseph dropped Wendell into the snow, where the world turned dark, Samantha’s laughter echoing in his ears.

Prudence stopped at the bottom of the hill, her chest burning and legs throbbing. She couldn’t go much farther on her own. By the time she reached Seabrooke at this rate, Samantha could be a thousand miles away.

There had to be something she could do to help Samantha. A house lay across the road, an automobile in its driveway. Yes, here was her salvation. She forced her tired muscles to run across the road and up the front walk to the door. She knocked on the door and prayed someone answered the door to help her.

An elderly woman answered the door, peering down at Prudence through thick spectacles. “Who are you?” the old woman snapped. “Are you selling something? I don’t want any.”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Prudence said. “My friend is in terrible danger and I was wondering if you could give me a ride into town so I can find her.”

“Your friend, eh? How do I know you aren’t going to kill me once I let you in my car? How do I know you aren’t going to leave me in the woods for dead? I saw on the news just yesterday a story where a woman did that. Let some stranger in her car and he left her in a ditch by the road. Is that what you’re planning to do to me? Well, speak up now, girl.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to find my friend. She’s in trouble and I have to try and help her. I’m not sure where she is, so town seems like the best place to start.”

“I don’t remember ever seeing you around here before. Where do you come from?”

“I come from a place called Eternity,” Prudence said before she could stop herself. The truth always spewed from her mouth even when she knew she should lie. She should tell the same story Samantha had to Mr. Pryde, but she couldn’t make the words come out. “I’ve been staying the last couple nights with Mr. Pryde up there along with my friends. We came here to get supplies for the rest of the children in Eternity.” She had already said too much, but the words wouldn’t stop coming.

“Mr. Pryde, eh? Why don’t you get a ride from him?”

“I would but he’s in some kind of coma and I can’t wake him up. Please, you have to help me.”

“This is the strangest story I ever heard. Is this some kind of joke? Are you working for one of those TV shows where they film ordinary people making fools of themselves?”

“No, I’m telling the truth. You have to believe me.” Prudence started to cry. “If you don’t help me, my friend is going to be gone and I’ll never see her again. He’s doing something horrible to her. I don’t know what, but he’s changing her, making her do and say awful things. I have to stop her before it’s too late. Please, all I want is a ride into town.”

“Well, all right, if you’ll stop your blubbering. It’s unbecoming for a girl your age to carry on so. I raised three young ‘uns myself and if any of them went on like this at your age I’d have knocked some sense into them.”

“Oh thank you Mrs.—”

“Schulman. Rose Schulman. Who are you?”

“Prudence Gooddell.”

“Prudence, that’s a pretty name. I had an aunt named Prudence who died when I was your age. Served as a nurse in the war—that’s the Second World War to you young people—and got run over by one of her own ambulances. Terrible, but we were all very proud of her going over to serve her country.”

Prudence had no idea what Mrs. Schulman was talking about, but she wished the old woman would hurry up and get to her automobile already so they could find Samantha. At last Mrs. Schulman grabbed her keys and began limping towards her vehicle. Prudence stayed close to her in case she slipped on the snow. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Mrs. Schulman said. “I must be out of my wits. Getting soft in my old age I suppose.”

“You don’t know how much this means to me, Mrs. Schulman.” Prudence helped the old woman into the driver’s side of the bench seat and then plopped onto the passenger’s side. Mrs. Schulman stared at the automobile’s controls for a moment as if everything on them were written in a foreign language. She finally stuck the key in to start up the engine and began backing up slowly.

“I’m a might rusty with my driving. Haven’t gone anywhere in four years, since I stopped looking after Mr. Pryde’s boy.”

“You took care of Joseph?”

“After his mother died, his father didn’t have anyone else to turn to. Mine were all grown up by then so I thought it might do me some good to have a child in the house again. He was such a sweet boy too. So polite and shy. Never cried or carried on the whole time. A real trooper, that one.”

Mrs. Schulman drove slow enough that Prudence wondered if she might be better off walking. Several other automobiles whipped past them, flashing their lights and honking their horns. Mrs. Schulman held up a single wrinkled finger to each one as it passed. “People today have no patience,” she said. “No one wants to take any time to smell the roses anymore.”

“To be honest, I am in a little bit of a hurry myself,” Prudence said. “My friend might already be gone by now.”

“Fine, I’ll go faster. Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Mrs. Schulman said. She accelerated hard enough to throw Prudence back against the seat. “What sort of trouble is this friend of yours in?”

“Ever since she fell in with this boy she’s been acting different. She spends all her time with him, she forgets things, and she says terrible things.”

“Sounds like your friend is in love.”

“What? No, that can’t be it. She can’t love him.” Prudence thought of the kiss she had witnessed last night. Samantha couldn’t love someone like that. She couldn’t love someone so cruel he’d fight his own father. He’s done something to her to make her act this way.

“Love makes us all act dumb. When I met Mr. Schulman some fifty years ago everyone thought I’d gone crazy. Everyone told me he was no good. Well, ten years later I found out they were right when he went shacking up with that whore Marcy Walker.”

“Did you divorce him?”

“No, back in those days you didn’t get a divorce at the drop of a hat like now. We stayed together another thirty years until he keeled over dead at the breakfast table one morning. He was eating his Cream of Wheat one second and dead the next.”

“That’s awful.”

“I suppose. Where’s this friend of yours going to be?”

“I’m not really sure. You can drop me off at the corner and I’ll look for her on foot.”

“Fine, if that’s the way you want it. Give me a chance to go to the sweet shop and get some fudge. I haven’t had any in four years now. You come by later after you’ve found your friend and I might let you have some if I haven’t eaten it all.”

Mrs. Schulman spun the automobile hard to the right so that Prudence came within a hair of cracking her skull against the window. The automobile stopped in front of Designs by Suzie. “Thank you for the ride, Mrs. Schulman,” Prudence said.

“I hope you find your friend and talk some sense into her. Love isn’t worth anything if it’s with someone who’s worthless like Mr. Schulman. Remember that when you look for a nice boy.”

“I will. Thank you.” Prudence crawled out of the automobile and waved to Mrs. Schulman as the old woman peeled away. Prudence considered what to do next, but she didn’t have long to think before Mr. Pryde’s automobile pulled up to her.

“Hey there, Petunia,” Samantha said.

“Prudence.”

“Oh right. How’s your arm?”

“It’s better,” Prudence said. “Samantha, we need to talk.”

“No problem. I know a place.” Samantha got out of the car and put a hand on Prudence’s shoulder. “We won’t be long.”

“I’ll be right here,” Joseph said.

Samantha led Prudence around the corner to a narrow alley between the line of shops and a brick wall. “Samantha, I’m really worried about you lately. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but it has to stop. We have to think about the other children. They’re counting on us to help them and you can’t expect Wendell and I to handle everything while you go off with this boy. Maybe Mrs. Schulman is right about you loving him—”

Prudence didn’t get the chance to finish. Samantha shoved her head into the wall and then picked up a rotting board from a wooden pallet. “I’m sorry, Penelope, but I can’t let you interfere with Joseph and I,” Samantha said. Before Prudence could say anything, Samantha cracked the board over Prudence’s head. Prudence sank to her knees and then fell to the ground, Mrs. Schulman’s observation about love echoing in her ears.