Read Online Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements - Free Book Online

my eyes there where my face should be, what would they look like right now? Would they look uneasy? More than that. Maybe haunted? Would my eyes look haunted? Were that lady’s eyes open? The eyes of that dead lady down in the basement cooler at Russell’s house? What did her eyes look like?
    I’m running up the front stairs, flipping on lights as I go, and I get to my room and turn on the lights, and I shut the door, and I lock the door, and I sit on my bed, and I grab my pillow, and I hug it against my stomach. Because of the fear. It’s cranked up. It’s up past terror, past panic. I’m thinking this must be dread. Except I’m not thinking. There’s no room for thinking, just feeling, feeling like the dread is oozing up through the cracks between the boards on my floor. Bubbling up through the heater grates. I can feel it rising. Like water. Like black blood. Like the fluids. Like the fluids. The fluids that Russell’s dad pumps into the dead bodies down in the basement of the funeral home. The dread is filling my locked room and my mouth and my nose and my ears and my eyes and my lungs, and I’m drowning in it.
    But I sit there and I don’t. I don’t drown. I’m breathing so fast, I feel faint. I have to yawn. But I’m getting a thought. It’s a real thought, a memory. About fear. And I’m thinking it. And the thought is simple. It’s simple: nothing to fear but fear itself . From a history class. Just words. Until now.
    And then it’s like I’m five feet away. And I’m looking at me, at this guy sitting on a bed. And I can see he’s not under attack. There is no danger. And I can see that the fear is the thing. It’s just fear.
    Another memory, another thought. I’m walking out of the library about a year ago behind two college girls. And one of them says, “I am so upset, I am just so upset! And the thing that upsets me the most is that I’m so up set !” That’s what she says, and I listen to this and I think, How stupid is that? If you don’t want to be so upset, just stop being upset!
    And now it’s the fear. It’s the same. Like being upset because you’re upset. It keeps feeding itself. And then it gets you to feed it. And you just have to stop it.
    I have to stop it .
    I stand up and toss my pillow back onto the bed. I take deep breaths. I go over to my dresser and look in the mirror. I wonder what my hair looks like. So I grab a comb and pull it across my head, patting my hair with the other hand. Feels right. It’s Bobby, the well-groomed spook. What a clear complexion he has.
    Then I walk over and unlock my bedroom door, and I go downstairs. I shut off the radio, and I take my dishes from the TV room back to the kitchen, and I scoop myself a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream. I go back to the couch, and I pull the blue fleece blanket around me, and I turn on Nick at Nite. It’s I Love Lucy , and it’s funny. I start laughing, and I am eating ice cream, and I am not afraid.
    Still, when I finally go upstairs, I lock my bedroom door again.
    And I sleep with my lights on.
    I mean, I know I can get past the fear. I just did it. But I don’t kid myself.
    The bogeyman isn’t really dead, not forever. He’s just not here. Not tonight.

chapter 8
MY LIFE
    W ake up. Shower. Eat. Read. Talk to Mom. Watch TV. Talk to Mom. Eat. Nap. Listen to jazz. Read. Talk to Dad. Watch TV. Go online. Talk to Mom. Eat. Practice my trumpet. Worry. Watch TV. Read. Talk to Mom. Nap.
    So that’s Wednesday, my second thrilling day as Bobby the Missing Person. It’s weird not having anybody around. It makes it so easy to think. Too easy. Because unless the tube is on or there’s music playing, it’s just me, thinking. Until Mom calls again. And again.
    When she calls in the morning, she wants me to tell her everything I’m doing, like every second. Starting with the cab ride home