Whistling Past the Graveyard Read Free Page A

I fell through the floor in the haunted house when I heard clack-clack-chhhhhh, chhhhhhh, chhhhhhh, chhhhhh, clack-chhhhhh chhhhhh-clack. I knew who was coming, wearing the metal, clamp-on skates she’d just got for her fifth birthday—Priscilla Panichelli. I called her Prissy Pants. She wore dresses with cancan slips and patent leather shoes every ding-dong day. She wasn’t even gonna have to work at changing into a lady when her time came.
    I was kinda surprised she’d risk getting those shoes all scuffed; skating on our broken-up sidewalk was dangerous business—which accounted for the clack s. I bet her big brother, Frankie, who was in my grade and called her way worse things than Prissy Pants, had made it a dare.
    I moved so I was behind the tree trunk and held real still, just in case. Besides dressing like a doll, Prissy Pants could be a real pain in the behind with her goody-two-shoes, tattletale ways.
    Then I heard trouble. A bicycle was coming fast with a card clappin’ against the spokes. It meant only one thing: Jimmy Sellers, turd of the century. Jimmy was gonna be a hood, anybody could see that. But Mamie, and truth be told a lot of the other old people on our street, thought he was a “nice, polite Christian boy”’cause he was a real brownnoser, too.
    Prissy Pants was like a lightning rod to Jimmy’s thunderbolt. She was just too shiny and clean to not try and mess up—even though it always seemed like an accident.
    As I said, I had no warm place in my own heart for Prissy Pants, but Jimmy was twelve, almost a grown-up. Him picking on her was just . . . wrong.
I held my breath and hoped that bicycle would buzz right on by. Chhhhhh-clack-clack. Silence.
Prissy Pants must have seen Jimmy.
The card slapped the spokes just a little faster, and I thought trouble
    would just keep rolling down the street. I moved around the trunk and peeked out just in time to see Jimmy’s bike jump the curb and head right for Priscilla.
    She stood there in front of the LeCounts’ house like a possum staring at a Buick.
Jimmy pedaled faster.
I jumped out of my fort, too far away to do nothin’ but hold my breath.
At the very last second, he cut the handlebars and swerved around her. Priscilla jerked backward and fell flat on her flouncy heinie. One of her skates come loose from her shoe and hung from her ankle by the leather strap—she wouldn’t need that skate key hanging around her neck to get that one off.
She squealed, then started a real-tears cry, not her usual just-forthat-I’m-gonna-get-you-in-trouble cry.
Jimmy swooped in a circle and come back around. He stopped his bike and looked down at her. “Gosh, looks like you’d better practice some more with them skates.”
Prissy just cried louder and used her key to loosen her other skate.
I got what Daddy calls my “red rage.” I was hot and cold at the same time. My nose and ears and fingertips tingled and I couldn’t breathe.
I run down the block and grabbed his handlebars, jerking them to the side. Instead of making Jimmy fall down, he just let the bike go and stepped over it as it fell into the grass beside the walk.
“Go back to your tree, shitbird.” Jimmy shoved my shoulder.
“Shitbird!” I swung. His nose popped.
The blood hadn’t even touched his top lip when I heard Mamie yell, “Starla Jane Claudelle!”
Good-bye, fireworks.

2
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    ’d had trouble sleeping because of the sticky heat and thinking on all I was gonna to miss: cherry snow cones and fried okra, winning the blue ribbon in the horseshoe throw (this woulda been my fourth year in a row as champion for the ten-and-under age group), penny candy falling like rain from the parade floats, fireworks and sparklers. It was enough to get my ears burnin’ all over again. Grounded on the Fourth of July, of all days. And Miss Prissy Pants hadn’t even stuck around to come in on my side of the story; did nothin’ but get up and bawl all the way home. And of course, Jimmy had been real