All Hallows' Eve by Vivian Vande Velde Read Free Book Online Page B

said, "That's for someone who made it only partway through the Olympics."
    "Holy Trinity," Ms. Hurston corrected. "What about this flower bud?"
    They shook their heads.
    "Same as a lamb," she prompted.
    "A kid?" someone asked.
    It was hard to keep on laughing and joking at the thought of a dead kid.
    Ms. Hurston nodded. "A child under the age of twelve. So a partially opened bloom?"

    "Is for a teenager."
    That was an even ickier feeling: someone their own age.
    There were several graves with the same last name. Judging by the dates, it looked as though the parents in that family had outlived all their children.
    "What do you think these crossed swords mean?" Ms. Hurston asked.
    "Soldier?" somebody asked.
    "More than that. Notice the date he died."
    1863.
    Was the Civil War still going on then?
Janelle suspected she wasn't the only one who couldn't be sure. Still, somebody took the plunge and guessed, "Killed in battle."
    Ms. Hurston nodded.
    Janelle noticed the partial bloom, and that made her look at the other date—the "born in" date. "He was fifteen," she pointed out.
    Hard as it was to think of someone their age being dead, it was even harder to think of someone their age dying in battle.
    Jake asked, "What about those big..."
    Ms. Hurston supplied the word: "Mausoleums."
    "Can we go in?"

    "They'll be locked, but we can look in the window."
    "
Eww,
" Xavier said.
    Courtney, who had a crush on Xavier, echoed, "
Eww.
"
    But everybody else crowded around to see.
    The mausoleum was about the size of a backyard storage shed, but it looked like a tiny little chapel. A tiny little
deserted
chapel. There was a set of doors, which were padlocked shut, and each had a window of smoke-colored leaded glass. The windows were dirty and cobwebby, and one had a hole that looked as though it had been shot with a BB gun.
    Somehow or other, Janelle and D'Vona ended up being first in line to peek in. Standing behind, Brandon asked, in his best attempt at a spooky voice, "Is that lock to keep us out, or to keep them in?"
    "Shut up," Janelle said. She stood on her tiptoes but didn't want to put her face near the dirty glass. "Too dark to see anything," she said, giving her place up to Reid.
    But D'Vona, who hadn't moved, said, "Cool!"
    "What do you see?" those in the back asked. "Are there bodies?"
    "Coffins," Reid said. "On these, like, shelves."
    When Jake took D'Vona's place, he said what Janelle had thought: "I don't see anything."

    "You gotta give your eyes a chance to adjust," D'Vona and Reid said. D'Vona demonstrated by holding her hands up to the sides of her face. "Block the light from outside, and then all of a sudden it's like the shapes just form in the darkness."
    Janelle had to wait until everybody else was through to get a second chance. This time she didn't rush. In a few seconds, the details came out of the gloom: six dark boxes, three on each side, stacked like in a supermarket—the coffin aisle. "Now I see," she said.
    Nobody commented, and when she stepped back, she saw that everyone else had moved on.
    She could still see them—they hadn't wandered off that far, but they'd divided.
    Despite the fact that they had, indeed, seen some graves that were only two or three or five years old in this section, she and her classmates were the only visitors in this part of the cemetery. The day was probably too cold for anyone who hadn't ordered a bus three weeks in advance, and the trees were pretty much bare—so not very photogenic.
    Janelle shuffled her feet through the leaves.
Notice the details,
she reminded herself. Ms. Hurston had this thing about class participation. The leaves were no longer crisp and colorful, and they had hardly any of that wonderful autumn smell to them. Concentrating on details, Janelle tripped over a marker, so low it had been hidden by the leaves, and she fell to her knees.

    "You okay?" Brandon—of all people—called over to her.
    "Just tying my shoelace," Janelle said. When she was sure no one