Beach Girls by Luanne Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

gave him nearly three hours of free time. He had plenty of time to take a walk first, before getting down to business. He crossed the footbridge over the creek, headed up the stone steps into the woods.
     
    “HEY
—don't drop it!”
    “I'm not dropping it—you're the one with butterfingers.”
    “Will you two shut up and carry the ladder? Jeez—do I have to tell you how to do everything?”
    “What if she puts a spell on us?”
    “You're an idiot—she's not a real witch.”
    “She's a good witch, like that one in a bubble on
The Wizard of Oz
.”
    “Why, 'cause she likes birds? Well, birds have gross scaly claws, and beaks that peck out your eyes. Hear that, Billy? We're gonna call you Bird Boy. Just like the witch is Bird Woman. She's weird. My mom says she never hangs out with normal people.”
    “She never hangs out with anyone. She sleeps all day and does spells all night.”
    “Nah,” said Billy McCabe, whose mother had read Stevie's books to him and his sisters when he was little. He carried the doughnut box, with the young bird bumping around inside. “She's good.”
    “Bull crap! She's like that witch in the stupid jerky movie where the camera kids got chomped.”
    “Chomped? Witches don't chomp. Sharks chomp.”
    “The Jaws Witch Project.”
    “You're fucked up.”
    “Oh—big cool Jeremy, saying ‘fucked.'”
    “You say it.”
    “I'm twelve.”
    “Yeah, well, I'm eleven.”
    The boys tromped through the backyards, carrying the tools of their trade: a ladder, a camera, and a candle. They had named their summer club WHA: Witch Hunters Anonymous. Billy carried a box that was
not
part of the expedition: a baby crow they'd found under a bush. The mother must have been teaching it to fly, and it fell out of the nest. Billy had rescued it, which delayed the whole expedition. When they finished spying, he'd drop the bird off at the veterinarian's house—Rumer Larkin lived just two houses away from Stevie Moore.
    They cut through the property of the old hunting lodge, looked both ways, and ran over to the side of the white shingled house. The land sloped steeply down toward the beach—getting the ladder steady was tricky. Jeremy Spring propped one leg on the earth, Rafe Morgan evened it out with flat rocks under the other, and the ladder's top crashed against the house with a rude thump. The other boys scrambled into bushes. They all held their breaths, waiting for an angry face in the window—Billy crouched under a shaggy yew, holding the box. This had to be a mistake—their mothers would kill them if they got caught. And what did they even hope to see going on inside?
    “Let's forget it,” he said, watching the windows.
    “We've come too far,” Rafe said.
    “What are we even going to see?”
    “She does her magic in the nude,” Jeremy said.
    “Yeah.”
    “That's what I heard!”
    Two boys held the ladder's base, while Jeremy and Eugene Tyrone jostled for first up. Eugene won. He scrambled up. Because the house was built into the rock ledge, this side of the house had quite a drop-off. The boys had no idea what the windows looked into—her living room, bedroom, magic room, or torture chamber. They all stared up at Eugene for a clue to what he was seeing.
    “Hey! What's she doing?”
    “Report in!”
    Jeremy gave the ladder's base a slight shake. Eugene slashed his left hand through the air, telling them to be quiet. Everyone stood still, heads back. It wasn't fair that Eugene was taking so much time. A scrawny oak, stunted by storm winds, grew alongside the house, and Rafe and Jeremy began trying to climb up for a look at what Eugene was viewing.
    “Can you see her?” Rafe asked.
    Eugene nodded. He didn't speak. He was frowning. Now he shook his head, as if he was seeing something he didn't like, and started to climb down.
    “Is she el-nude-o?”
    “Is she chopping the tails off salamanders?”
    “Can you see her collection of shrunken heads? That's what she does to kids who look