The Old Willis Place

underbrush.
    "Is she coming?" Georgie cried at one point.
    "I don't know." The wind made so much noise we couldn't hear anything but branches thrashing over our heads.
    We slid down the bank of the creek and into the ravine where we'd hidden Lissa's bike. It still lay there, rusty now, half submerged in water. We splashed past it and burrowed into a small cave, our favorite hideout. There in the darkness we crouched with Nero and listened. Miss Lilian's voice mingled with the wind's howls. Gradually her calls faded away into the night, and the wind died down.
    Georgie cried with relief. I rocked him in my arms as I had for so many years. When his breathing quieted and he stopped sobbing, I lifted his face and looked into his eyes, as brown as a shady pond after rain. "She's gone," I said. "She didn't get us."
    "But she'll be back," he said tearfully.
    "Yes," I said slowly, "but we'll get away from her again. She'll never catch us."
    "She did once," Georgie reminded me.
    "We're smarter now." I crawled to the mouth of the cave and looked out. The night was still except for the distant rush of traffic on the highway. "She won't trap us again."

    We slept in the cave that night. In the morning, I sneaked back to the shed and retrieved our belongings—our blankets and books, the flashlight, the penknife, and Alfie. Although I kept every sense alert for her presence, I didn't encounter a trace of Miss Lilian. Perhaps she couldn't leave her house in the daylight.
    When I returned to the cave, Georgie was sitting at the entrance, braiding vines and leaves into his hair.
    "For camouflage," he said. "You should do it, too."
    I smoothed the long braid hanging over my shoulder. "I don't care to look like a savage."
    "Suit yourself." Georgie finished his task and looked at me. "Do you think it's safe to leave the cave?"
    "I didn't see a sign of her." I squatted down beside him. "Maybe she only comes out at night."
    Georgie frowned. "I hope you're right."
    I watched him poke at the dirt with a stick. "Do you ever have funny thoughts?" I asked him.
    "Funny?"
    "Odd," I said. "Odd thoughts."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Remember how the rules came into our heads and we knew them without anyone telling us what they were?"
    Georgie kept his head down and scratched harder with the stick. He was writing his name, one of the few things he recalled from school. "Yes," he said slowly, "how could I forget?"
    "Well, lately I've had a new thought. It came the same way. No one told me. All of a sudden it was in my head, like colors and smells and sounds, things that don't need words."
    "It's about leaving, isn't it?" Georgie didn't look at me. He was adding finishing touches to his name—little curlicues on each letter.
    "Do you have the same thought?"
    "Yes," he said. "But we have to do something first."
    I nodded. "Do you know what it is?"
    With a gesture of impatience, he rubbed out his name. "I think it's got something to do with her."
    "Miss Lilian?"
    "Yes." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "And with our bodies. Our real ones."
    I shivered. "Someone should bury them and say the right words so we can rest—"
    "I know that." Georgie scowled, signaling he'd heard all he wanted to hear about our bodies and their burial.
    We sat beside each other silently and watched the last leaves spin down from the trees. The creek was filled with those that had already fallen. Shades of red, yellow, and brown, different shapes and sizes. Some were caught in eddies, others lodged among the stones, and a few raced on the current on their way to a larger stream.
    Georgie reached out over the water to prod a few leaves loose with his stick. He watched them sail around a bend and turned to me. "Will you read some more of Lassie? I want to know how it ends before we leave."
    "We're coming to a sad part," I warned him.
    "Just read," Georgie said. "I'm used to sad parts. And so are you."
    I began at chapter eighteen, "The Noblest Gift—Freedom." Lassie had recovered her strength. Every afternoon just at the time school let out, she began pacing the floor of the little cottage. The old folks tried to make her happy. They treated her well, they fed her and petted her and loved her, but still she wanted to leave, she had to leave.
    Georgie pressed against me. "Do they let Lassie go?"
    I read on. The old woman opened the door. She and her husband followed Lassie to the road that ran by the cottage. They watched Lassie hesitate. They wanted to call her back, but they