Doll Bones Read Free Page A

embarrassment.
    He unfolded the sheet carefully, smoothing it against the pages of his textbook as Mr. Lockwood started his history lecture.
If the curse was lifted, would William really give up being a pirate? If he did, would he miss it?
Who does he think his father is?
Does he think that Lady Jaye likes him?
Does William ever have nightmares?
    He started to scribble. He liked the way the story unfolded as he wrote, liked the way the answers just came to him sometimes, out of the blue, like they were true things just waiting to be discovered by him.
Sometimes William has dreams about being buried alive. He dreams that he’s woken up and everything is black. He only knows where he is because he feels a heavy pressure on his chest and it’s hard to get enough of a breath to scream. Usually, it’s the trying to scream that wakes him. He finds himself swinging in a hammock in his quarters, in a cold sweat, his green parrot peering at him suspiciously with her single black eye. And he tells himself that when he’s buried, he’s going to be buried at sea.
    Even after he folded the questions back into the shape of a football and tucked it into the front pocket of his backpack, the feeling of the story being close stayed with him. Zach doodled pictures in the margins of his notebook, drawings of cutlasses and blast rifles and crowns next to geometry homework and facts about the Battle of Antietam.
    That past summer, the mysterious thing that had stretched other boys like taffy had started to happen to Zach. He’d always been tall, but now he’d almost reached his father’s height, with hands so big that catching a basketball was a lot easier and legs so long that he could jump nearly high enough to touch the net. The year before, he’d hung back on the court, but now he was thundering down it.
    Everyone at school looked at him differently all of a sudden. The guys were wanting to hang out more, slapping him on the back, and laughing louder at his jokes. And the girls had just gotten weird.
    Even Alice acted strange around him sometimes. When she was with her school friends, instead of her talking to him like she usually did, the whole bunch of them giggled uncomfortably. That very afternoon, after practice, he passed by Alice and a few girls from the theater crew. They fled in a fit of shrieking laughter before he could ask Alice what had been so funny or whether she wanted to walk home with him.
    So he walked home by himself, feeling a little bit lonely as he made his way through the early autumn evening, kicking the carpet of fallen leaves. He didn’t know how else to make things go back to normal. It wasn’t like he could shrink himself back into being the same as before.
    An eerie wind sang through the untrimmed trees in front of Mr. Thompson’s old house at the end of the block. It sounded like someone shrieking from a long way off, but getting closer with every second. Zach sped up his pace, walking faster and faster, feeling foolish as he did it. He felt the tickle of the hairs on the back of his neck, as though whatever was coming was right behind him, as though he could feel its breath.
    Suddenly he felt overwhelmed by a wash of terror. It was all-consuming and, despite feeling silly, he ran, racing across his lawn to the small brick house where he lived. He hit the front door, his palms slamming against it, and had to stumble back to jerk it open.
    The kitchen smelled like spaghetti sauce and frying sausages, a warm, safe smell that drove away all thoughts of the night and the eerie wind.
    His mother stuck her head out of the kitchen. She was wearing sweatpants, and her long brown hair was pulled back in a bunch of clips. She looked tired. “Dinner’s almost ready. Why don’t you start on your homework, and I’ll call you when it’s time to eat.”
    “Okay,” Zach said. As he walked through the living room his dad was coming down the stairs. He clapped his hand heavily on Zach’s shoulder.
    “You’re