frightened him at first, seeing her standing in Julie’s room, holding Julie just like she always did, except for the tears running down her face. Usually, when she held Julie, she laughed.
His first thought when he saw her was that she had found out about what he’d done to Julie and was going to be mad at him. But that hadn’t been it at all-she was crying because Julie was dead.
Julie hadn’t been dead when he’d gone in earlier to look at her.
She’d only been sleeping.
He knew she was sleeping, because he could hear her snuffling softly, like his mother did when she had a cold. So he’d wiped her nose with a corner of the sheet.
That couldn’t have hurt her.
But it did wake her up and she’d started crying.
And that was when he’d put the blanket over her face, so no one would hear her crying.
But he hadn’t left it there long enough for her to smother. It couldn’t have been that long; as soon as she’d stopped crying, he’d taken the blanket off her face and tucked it back around her just the way it had been when he went in to look at her.
But had she still been breathing?
He tried to remember.
He was sure she had. He could almost hear her now, in the silence of the house, even though she was dead.
He listened hard and was sure he heard, very faintly, the sounds of tiny breaths.
And then he remembered: Fred was sleeping next to his bed.
He slid out of bed and knelt next to the guinea pig’s cage. The sounds Fred were making were just like the sounds Julie had made after she stopped crying.
Very quiet, but there.
He opened the cage, and Fred, hearing the slight rattle, woke up, opened his eyes and stared at Jason through the gloom. Jason reached in, gently picked up the guinea pig, and took it into bed with him. Soon Fred fell asleep again, this time curled up in the crook of Jason’s arm.
Jason listened to the guinea pig breathe, sure that he had heard the same sounds in Julie’s room last night just before he had left it So he hadn’t done anything to Julie, not really.
Still, tomorrow or the next day he’d talk to Randy about it. It was, he realized, sort of like what had happened to Randy after Billy Semple jumped off the roof. Even though Randy hadn’t really done anything to Billy, he’d still gotten blamed for Billy’s broken leg.
As he fell into a fitful sleep, Jason wondered if the same thing would happen to him, and he’d get blamed for Julie’s dying.
Maybe the next time Randy came over they’d do the same thing to Fred that he’d done to Julie and see if Fred died.
At least then he’d know for sure.…
Chapter 6
RANDY CORLISS SCRUNCHED UNDER the covers, trying to avoid opening his eyes to the morning light. He was cold, and all night long his sleep had been broken by nightmares. But now the sun was warming his room, and he wanted to drift back to sleep, wanted to forget the loneliness that had overcome him the previous afternoon when he realized his father was not coming for him, at least not that day.
“But if’s going to be all right, Randy,” Miss Bowen had explained, “Your father is very busy, and for the moment he wants us to take care of you.”
“Why?” Randy had asked. Since he’d seen the fence around the Academy, he’d wondered why his father had had him brought here. It didn’t, to Randy’s eyes, look quite like a school For one thing, you couldn’t even see it from the road. There was just a long driveway and then a gate without a sign. And there weren’t any of the kind of school buildings he was used to, only a huge house that looked almost like a castle, with the windows of the second floor covered with bars. He’d seen a couple of boys who looked like they were about the same age he was, but hadn’t been able to talk to them. Instead, he’d been taken into an office, where Miss Bowen had told him why he was there.
“It’s a special school, for special boys,” she assured him. “Boys like you, who’ve had problems in regular school.”
“I haven’t had any problems,” Randy said.
“I mean problems making friends.” Miss Bowen smiled at him, and a little of Randy’s apprehension dissipated. “Lots of boys your age have that kind of trouble, you