Running Scared. Brenda Chapman

to relax and be kids. Her only rule was that we show up for meals.

      Normally, Mr. Kruger looked at me over his square silver-rimmed glasses, which perched on the end of his nose, and gave me a smile even if my assignment was a day late. He was the one teacher I might have talked to if I ever felt like talking to any of them. Not highly likely though.

      Unfortunately, Mr. Kruger was sick as well that morning. We were all sent to the library to do research under the eye of the Grade Eleven teacher who had her class there at the same time. I chose a table off by myself near the windows, not wanting to have to spend time talking to the other girls. Normally, library time meant a gab session, but today I didn’t feel like talking about the clothes sale at Pago’s or about why Ian Vance had dumped Patty Gage. I was still shaken by what I’d seen the night before.

      No more than five minutes later, Pete Flaghert slid across from me, while his buddies went to another table. “How’s it goin’, Jen?” he asked, looking at some point past my right ear.

      “Fine. You?” I gave the expected answer.

      Pete bent over his book after giving a short nod, and I pretended to read. He wasn’t the cutest guy at Morton High, so I couldn’t figure out why he made my heart rate speed up. His brown hair was a little long, and his arms and legs seemed to have grown awkward this past year. Sometimes, I saw him watching me. He had pretty intense, dark eyes, but he usually looked away when he saw me looking back. I wondered why the friendliness today. Ambie would have told me I was being paranoid. Anyhow, I told myself, I was definitely not interested in boys.

      Just before the end of library time, three Grade Twelve boys came pushing each other into the room. Steve Parks had arrived the month before from a school in Toronto, and he was decidedly changing the chemistry of the Grade Twelve class. He was what you would call majorly hot, and most of the girls spent a lot of time in the washroom giggling about him and anything he happened to have done that day. He had two buddies named Jeff Colborne and Bobby Shipman, also in Grade Twelve. Bobby Shipman used to be the one all the girls wanted to go out with before Steve moved into town. Now, he and Jeff seemed willing to follow Steve around and get into whatever trouble the three of them could dream up.

      They had taken and hidden the geography test one morning while the teacher was speaking to a student. They never got caught, but we all knew it was them. Word gets around fast. They also hung around the smoking section at the edge of the school property at lunchtime, puffing away and acting cool. I’d heard that Steve had skipped school a few times and hitchhiked to Toronto, although that seemed to have stopped after his parents got called in to the principal’s office. Still, he did have an awfully cute smile. Luckily, I definitely wasn’t interested in boys.

      Jeff and Bobby sauntered over to a cart of books, pretending to read the covers. I say pretending because I figured they’d never read a whole book in their entire lives. They were dressed alike in beige khakis and black muscle shirts, and their hair was cut short and spiky. Somehow, though, Jeff seemed gangly and ill at ease compared to Bobby, who looked sure of himself, like he was just putting in time until something better to do came along. However, neither exuded the same attraction as Steve Parks, whose golden hair fell just so and whose green eyes made you believe he was part Greek god. I had the shock of my life when he slid into the chair next to me.

      “Which Olsen twin are you?” he asked, settling on that age-old introduction that Ambie and I had come to detest.

      Ambie was about an inch shorter than me, but we both had shoulder-length blonde hair that we tended to wear pulled back in pony tails. We were both a little bit on the tall, slender, some might say skinny, side, but there the resemblance ended. Still, it was enough to make people call us the Olsen twins. You might have thought that Ambie would be a dark-haired Italian girl with a last name like Guido, but Ambie’s real father had only lasted a few years before her mother left him for Mr. Guido. Ambie couldn’t even remember what her real dad looked like.

      “I’m Jen, Jennifer Bannon,” I responded, hoping that my voice didn’t tremble. I wasn’t expecting all this attention from Morton High’s male population.

      “And your girlfriend’s name . . . ?” his voice trailed off as if he was trying to make the name appear from the tip of his tongue.

      “Ambie Guido,” Pete answered from across the table. He was looking at Steve with a funny expression on his face.

      “She away today or something?” Steve asked.

      I nodded. “Stomach flu.” We all grimaced at the same time. That was a feeling we were only too familiar with. It made me queasy just saying the words.

      “Yeah, well, that’s too bad. Has she been sick long?”

      “I guess she started feeling sick last night when she was out for a walk. It seems to hit fast.” I smiled, but Steve and Pete were looking at each other, and neither seemed all that happy.

      “Man, I hope I don’t get it. I hate being sick.” Steve stood and stretched. “See you around.” He headed over to where Bobby and Jeff were standing and punched Bobby on the shoulder. They left the library together with Jeff trailing behind the other two.

      I guessed this would be analyzed in the girls’ washroom all day. Just what would Steve, the hunk of the senior class, be doing talking to a lowly Grade Nine nobody. I guess I should have felt honoured.

      My day slowly got worse. My last class was history, and the dragon lady let me have it in front of the whole class.

      “Jennifer Bannon, this work is unacceptable!” she was kind enough to tell me in a voice hardened by years of squishing lazy students like blackheads. “I cannot accept two paragraphs from you on a topic as rich as Canada’s fur trade. I’m docking ten per cent and expect three pages on my desk first thing tomorrow morning!” That put an end to my rich social life for another evening.

      I made it to volleyball practice a little late because I’d organized my locker and spent time getting all my homework into my knapsack. I promised myself after the history book incident that I would never forget anything ever again, as long as I lived. Mr. Jacks made me run twenty laps around the gym for being late, and after that I just couldn’t get into the game.

      “You’re going to have to get with the program, Bannon,” he all but barked at me before we packed up for home. “Your turn to put away the volleyballs.”

      Lucky me.

      It was looking a little deserted when I finally set out for home. The sun was low in the sky, and the darkness was sifting into corners and around the houses. The sky had that orange flush that it gets at the end of a chilly fall day. I started to remember the accident from the night before and started walking more quickly down Balsam Drive. I jumped a little when a branch brushed up against the back of my legs, pushed along by a sudden gust of wind.

      I don’t know when I began to feel like I was being followed. I think it was when I turned the corner onto Highgrove. I spun around to check behind me but only saw shapes in the shadows. Still the feeling followed me even as I turned onto Maple Lane. I could see my house set in behind two oak trees back a little ways from the road at the end of the street. I started running. Behind me, I could hear the thud of steps keeping pace. I was too scared to turn around again. My breath sounded too loud in my ears, and I was light-headed with fear. I kept waiting for a hand to grab me from behind to drag me down onto the street. I pushed myself to run harder. Within seconds, I reached the sidewalk leading to our front door. I kept going and had my foot on the bottom step when the door swung open, and Mom stepped outside. In the porch light, I could see that she wore her coat and her white nurse’s uniform. She was fumbling with the buttons on her coat and didn’t look too pleased. I was keeping her waiting again. She was in such a hurry to catch the bus that she didn’t notice how panicky I was. I looked back over my shoulder and thought I saw a figure slip back behind the front of our neighbour’s house.

      “Jennifer, you are going to have to be on time, or volleyball is out!” my mother snapped at me. “See to Leslie. I’ve left money for a pizza.”

      “Sure, Mom. Sorry I