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- Schneider looked around at the circle of expectant faces in her living room. Many people had come when she called—more than she’d thought. There were twenty of them squashed together on her sofa or perched on the
armrests of the chairs
(Mr. Schneider would not have liked that, no he would not, he would have thought it rude)
and some of the younger ones sitting cross-legged on the floor like they were in kindergarten again.
No one was talking. A sense of hushed resolve hung around the room, a feeling that they all knew their purpose and were willing to fulfill it.
For the first time in a very long time her mind felt clear. No fog obscured her memories of Janey or of the other girls. If she tried she thought she could name off every one that had died in her lifetime.
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Night of shades 39
The crowd filed out to the backyard. Her lovely, neat backyard that had been sullied by those murdered girls.We’re going to put things right now.No one talked. No one even whispered. There was a sense of understanding all around, a resolve to do what was necessary.Nobody seemed surprised to find the pile of torches stacked neatly beside the porch. She herself was not surprised, though she didn’t remember putting them there.They weren’t the kind everyone had in films—jagged sticks of wood with their ends lit. These were the sort that people used around their patio in the summer so they could feel like they lived in Hawaii or some such place. And next to the torches was a large box of matches.Mrs. Schneider picked up the box and struck the first one.
Night of shades 40
Van Christie stood in Jo Gehlinger’s living room, listening to the sound of Miller getting sick outside on the front porch.Miller always gets sick at murder scenes.The day before, Christie would have said there were hardly ever murder scenes in Smiths Hollow, and that was why Miller had so much trouble dealing with them. But last night he’d remembered.He’d remembered all the bodies. He’d remembered all the girls.And he’d remembered that he had covered it up, pretended it didn’t happen, taken their families’ sorrow and stuffed it in a file in the basement, never to be seen again.It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten those girls. He’d been responsi
Night of shades one
L auren glanced down at her feet as she pedaled her bike toward the woods. She wore brand-new turquoise high-tops; they looked sort of like the Chuck Taylors she’d wanted, but they were off-brand from Kmart. They didn’t have theChuck label in the back but they were still pretty cool. She thought so, anyway.They would have to be cool because her mom had told her repeatedly they couldn’t afford the name-brand ones. At least no one else at school had turquoise. They were so bright they practically glowed in the summer sun, but by the time she went back to school in the fall they would be properly beaten up and she wouldn’t look like a dork.By the time she went back to school she would be almost fifteen (the end of November—five months away still), which meant she would be one of the older kids in the freshman class but still younger than Miranda, whose birthday h
Night of shades two
C ome on, David,” Karen diMucci said, unbuckling her son and gathering him out of the back seat. She’d gotten lucky and found a parking space right in front of Frank’s, so she should have been in a better mood. It was always exhaustingto walk more than a block or two towing David and the groceries, especially in the June heat. Today she would get to avoid that.Just like Lauren avoided my eyes as I passed.She tried not to let the irritation she felt leak into her tone, but David heard the bite and looked up at her in that serious inquiring way that he had.“Let’s get some sandwich stuff,” she said, deliberately injecting a hearty note. “And then we’ll get some ice cream at the Sweet Shoppe after, okay?”“Okeh,” David said.Lauren and Miranda would surely be gone from the shop by then, K
Night of shades three
MMrs. Schneider had spent the morning peering through the curtains at her across-the-street new neighbors. She didn’t know just what the world was coming to when Mexicans could move onto a decent street where decent people livedwithout so much as a by-your-leave. They played loud music in Spanish and they shouted at each other in Spanish and they always seemed to be cooking something foreign.If they wanted to eat strange food and speak a strange language, then why hadn’t they just stayed in their own country instead of coming here to take jobs away from good American folk? she wondered.She knew that most of the adults in that house had jobs on the canning line at the chili factory and she didn’t think that was right, even though Mrs. Schneider didn’t know anyone who’
Night of shades four
Sofia Lopez clipped the top sheet to the line and then pushed the rope along so that she could attach the next one. There was nothing nicer, in her opinion, than bedsheets that had dried outside in the sunshine. She mopped her foreheadwith the inside of her arm. In this heat the whole load would be dried in no time.“Mama?” Her older daughter, Valeria, stood at the screen door that led into the kitchen. “Can I have some marshmallows?”Sofia squinted at Val. The girl was eleven years old and obsessed with chemical reactions, so there was plenty of reason to suspect that Val was not going to eat the marshmallows that she’d just requested. More than likely the final result would involve a sticky mess on the floor of her bedroom or a plume of smoke coming out the window.
Night of shades five
Lauren saw her mother and brother come out of Frank’s deli and walk toward the Sweet Shoppe. She wrinkled her nose a little and turned her head away, even though there was little to no chance of her mother seeing her through thewindow in the dim interior of the arcade.She stood next to Miranda, who was standing very close to Tad, the greasy-haired (and also greasy-faced, Lauren thought) object of her affection who did not look at all like Matt Dillon.On the other side of Tad was his friend Billy, who also did not look like Matt Dillon and who seemed to have about as much interest in Lauren as she did in him—that is, none at all.Tad was very involved with his latest round of Karate Champ and they were all supposed to care just as much as he did.Lauren didn’
Night of shades six
Alejandro Lopez—he preferred to be called Alex rather than Alejandro, because the Americanized name made white folks feel like he was one of them—stood in Mrs. Schneider’s violated backyard, a place he’d never thought he’d be permitted to enter. Not that he’d particularly wanted to—you didn’t usually rush over to barbecue with a neighbor whoconsidered you subhuman. Despite the horrible thing he was looking at, he couldn’t shake the sense of having successfully breached enemy territory.Alex’s partner, John Miller (was there any more stolidly American name than John Miller? Alex wondered) wandered back to Alex’s side, having lost his lunchtime meatball sub in the far corner of Mrs. Schneider’s well-tended yard.“Wha
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