Read Online Agnes Mallory by Andrew Klavan - Free Book Online Page B

secretly sad about the whole thing.
    I, with a fine summer melancholy on, went by way of Piccadilly – out of my way completely, that is. Not that I expected to find Agnes by the stream this early in the day. I just figured I’d sit there by myself a while and toss pebbles in the water and take stock of things. I came down to the bank from the culvert, the secret shortcut I always used when I did meet her. Really all it was was cutting through the woods near the ghost house at the top of the hill. Skirting past the wooden shack’s darkened windows always gave an extra spurt of terror to the proceedings, and then I could jump Batman-like off the rim of the big culvert and stroll with casual heroism along the bank to our usual spot.
    So I did – and I was surprised to see that Agnes was there after all. She was kneeling by the water, bright and small with the sun right above her, the trees full green and bright overhead and the stream glittering. I was glad to see her, glad for the company, and quickened my pace. But Agnes only looked up briefly when she heard me coming. She was fiddling with something on a rock and there was a puckered scowl on her round monkey mug.
    â€˜Hey, Agnes,’ I said, giving it a try anyway. ‘Hooray, huh? School’s over.’
    â€˜So?’ she said. ‘I hate summers!’ I could see now that she was mashing up some Play-Doh, savagely kneading the jolly reds, blues and yellows into a single ball, streaked, mucky, brown. ‘Jessica and Michelle are going to camp together, all summer. I’m going to fly there at night and haunt them! I’m going to scare Michelle so much she’ll turn white and die.’
    â€˜Whoa.’ I tugged my ear, stifled a yearning for lunch and my mother and home. These moods of hers could be suffocating, but they were part of the spirit of the place. ‘Can’t you go too?’ I asked.
    She mashed the clay against the stone. ‘My father won’t let me. He says I’m too young . He says he’ll be too worried about me. My mother says I can’t upset Daddy; no one can ever upset Daddy. She says I should make other friends.’ Oh, the thunderous little frown she lifted to me. ‘I’ll bet you’re going to camp too.’
    â€˜Well … not until all the way in August.’ But I didn’t want to think about that. I sat down next to her at the stream’s edge and began plucking up my pebbles. ‘Aren’t you going to go to day camp or anything?’
    â€˜I hate day camp! I’m not going to go. I’m going to lie in a coffin all summer, all alone, under the ground. Then I’m going to come out at night and fly to Jessica’s camp and stand by Michelle’s window and sing a horrifying song.’
    â€˜Well, yeah, I guess you could do that,’ I said. I looped a stone into the rushing middle depths with a satisfying plink . ‘Or you could just go to day camp and make some new friends like your mother says. It might be easier.’
    â€˜I don’t want to meet new friends.’ It was really determined talk now through hardened jaws. She worked at her clay steadily. ‘I want to meet old people. I’m going to meet people so old that they’re in the past. They’ll be ghosts, like me. I’m going to go with my sister into her garden.’
    I aimed for a fiery ball of reflected sunlight in a shallow eddy on the far side. Bullseye – shattered it into sparkles. ‘What do you mean? What garden?’
    She was so long in answering, I looked over. The streaked Play-Doh was beginning to take shape into a figure now. Not limbs and head stuck onto a trunk either; a thing entire just sort of oozing out between her fingers. I’d never seen her actually do it before and it caught my attention. It gave me a thrill.
    â€˜I had a dream one time,’ she said, ‘where Lena came.’
    â€˜Your ghost sister. Yeah?’ I