“How the hell did that happen?” Rusty asked.
I almost blurted out, “I didn’t do it,” but I caught myself in time.
I’d looked at the books, but I hadn’t touched them and certainly hadn’t chewed on any of them.
Neither had Rusty. The books had been fine when I went looking for him and found him in the mother’s room. After that, neither of us had been alone in the house.
Slim kept staring at the book.
“Did you do it?” Rusty asked.
“No!” I blurted.
“Not you. Slim.”
“Huh? Me?” She looked at him. “Are you nuts?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Did you?”
“No!”
“You had time to do it.”
“I was changing my clothes.”
“Didn’t you see it?”
Slowly, she shook her head. “Not right away. It must’ve been like that, but ... I got undressed over there.” She nodded toward her dresser. “Then I came over here and tossed the stuff on the bed and that’s when I noticed.”
“That’s when you yelled?” I asked.
She shook her head some more. “I put my top on first.”
An image filled my mind of Slim standing there in just the red shorts, breathing hard as she stared down at the decimated book, her breasts rising and falling.
“This is crazy,” Rusty muttered. He looked worried.
Apparently, he didn’t suspect me. Maybe he’d glanced into the room on our way out and seen that nothing was out of place.
To Slim, he said, “Are you sure you didn’t do this, like to freak us out or something?”
One glance gave him all the answer he needed—and more.
“Slim wouldn’t do that to a book,” I said. “For any reason.” ,
“That’s right,” she said.
“So if she didn’t, who did?” Half grimacing, half smiling, he added, “Or what?”
Slim bent over slightly, reached down and picked up the book. “It’s still wet.” She lifted it close to her face and sniffed. “Smells like saliva.”
“Human or dog?” I asked.
“Or vampire?” asked Rusty.
Slim scowled at him. “It’s broad daylight.”
“We’d better look around,” I said. “Whoever did this might still be in the house.”
“Or whatever,” Rusty threw in.
Slim looked around as if confused about what to do with the book. Then she carried it across her room and dropped it into a wastebasket next to her desk. It hit the bottom with a ringing thump.
She pulled open a desk drawer and took out two knives. One was a hunting knife in a leather sheath. The other was a Boy Scout pocket knife. Not speaking a word, she brought the knives to us. She handed the hunting knife to me, the pocket knife to Rusty. Then she went to her closet, silently opened its door and stepped inside.
In the closet, most of Slim was out of sight.
She stepped backward with her straight, fiberglass bow in one hand and a quiver of arrows in the other.
Turning toward us, she slung the quiver over her back so the feathered ends of a dozen or more arrows jutted up behind her right shoulder. The strap angled downward from her shoulder to her left hip, passing between her breasts.
With both hands free, she planted a tip of her fiberglass bow against the floor. She pulled down at the top, used her leg for some extra leverage, bent the bow and slipped its string upward until its loop was secure in the nock.
Left hand on the grip, she raised the bow. Then she reached up over her shoulder with her right hand and slipped an arrow out of the quiver. She brought it down silently in front of her and fit its plastic nock onto the string.
At the end of the long, pale shaft was a steel head that looked as if it were made of razor blades.
“Watch my back,” she whispered.
I drew the hunting knife out of its sheath. Rusty opened the blade of the pocket knife. We followed Slim out of the room.
Much of her back was hidden behind the quiver of arrows. The quiver was brown leather and nicely tooled. She’d won it by taking first place in a YWCA Fourth of July archery contest a couple of summers earlier. Most people hadn’t expected a fourteen-year-old girl to win it, but I’d known she would.
Chapter Twenty-five
Just a week before the archery contest, we had hiked out to Janks Field for a secret practice session. It was the end of June, a hot and sunny afternoon. The desolate expanse of Janks Field, scattered with a million bits of broken glass, sparkled and glittered in the sunlight as if someone had sprinkled gems over its bare gray earth. Even with our sunglasses on, we had to squint as we walked onto the field. There wasn’t so much as a hint of a breeze. The air felt heavy and dead. It smelled dead, too. Or something did.