Not the End of the World by Rebecca Stowe Read Free Book Online Page B

shouldn’t know about. “What things?” I’d ask again and again, but she’d put on a somber face and shake her head and say, “You’re too young to know about those things.” “What things? What things?” I’d beg, but she was secretive as a saint.
    I had to find out. Ginger Moore and I were building a fort back there, where we’d hide and watch for the Pervert. We’d spend hours scouring the woods, searching for “things.” Soup cans became chalices for midnight animal sacrifices; broken baseball bats were the weapons used to knock out kidnap victims; campfire remnants were the scenes of witches’ sabbaths.We’d hide for hours under the bushes, waiting for “someone” to come by with his screaming victim, hoping she was someone we knew so we could save her and be heroes.
    But no one ever came. The stories continued, the victims were always little girls from Riverside, and I came to the conclusion that bad things only happened to me and to kids from Riverside, which was the closest thing North Bay had to a slum. They were always having something dreadful happen to them: they were the ones who dived off the canal bridge and were paralyzed for life. They were the ones who went ice skating on the Lake and fell through, the ones whose bodies were found the next spring, bloated like whales, on a beach on Harsen’s Island. Don’t go near the swamp, they told us, that mud’s like quicksand and last year a boy from Riverside sank for ever, disappeared into the muck. I wondered why they were so unlucky; wasn’t it bad enough being poor? Why did they have to be the ones who threw water balloons at cars and got run over when the car went out of control? Donald and his friends threw eggs at cars and they never even got maimed.
    Ginger Moore was the only friend I had left. It was a miracle she stuck with me, especially after what happened last winter, when Cindy and her gang attacked her, but she did and I was grateful. What happened was this: it was before Christmas, and we’d been walking home from school, taking the short cut through the swamp behind the Donaldsons’. I knew something was up. During recess Cindy had nudged me and said, “We’ve got a surprise for Ginger Moore.” She giggled in that mad-scientist way and I knew it was a surprise of the unpleasant sort, but I did nothing to prevent it. I could have. I could have told Ginger to walk another way; I could have called my mother and asked her to pick us up; I could have warned Ginger not to go with Cindy and thatcrowd. I could have prevented it but I didn’t because I wanted to see what it was, what they had planned, what they were going to do to her.
    It was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong with a capital W and bad to let it happen. I just stood there and watched while they held Ginger to a tree stump and Cindy made a snowball while Karen Harmon ripped open Ginger’s parka. Cindy chopped the snowball in half, smushing both halves on Ginger’s chest, and Pauline Quinlan stuck maraschino cherries in the center of each. They all went into convulsions, and Cindy started chanting, “Falsies! Falsies! Ginger Moore wears falsies!”
    I stood there, hating myself for watching and not protecting Ginger, but I was afraid, afraid of what they’d do to me if I stood up for her. Until that moment, I had thought of myself as brave and bold, but watching those girls torment poor Ginger made me realize what a coward I really was.
    “Stop it!” I shouted, but it was too late. It was over. The other girls ran away, giggling and shrieking, and Ginger just sat there, looking blank and lost, with the snow breasts stuck on her sweater like Christmas-tree ornaments.
    I went over and wiped the grotesque balls away, but it was too late. Ginger looked at me without saying a word and we walked home in silence. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg for her forgiveness; I wanted to chase after those girls and tell them off, tell them how cruel they’d been and that I