Mickey & Me by Dan Gutman Page B

find the entrance to the cemetery.
    â€œThis is the thanks I get for helping the Chicks win the game,” I muttered to myself bitterly. I never should have let them put that uniform on me. I never should have stolen those bases. I should have done a striptease down to my underwear right in the middle of the field. That would have shown them.
    That’s when I heard a sound in the woods. A movement, like a footstep. It could have just been an animal, but that was no comfort to me. What if the animal was a bear or something?
    I was going to die.
    If I had been smart, I would have just gone back home the minute I realized I wasn’t going to meet Mickey Mantle. I could have gone home right after the game, too. None of this ever would have happened.
    Wait a minute! If I could have gone home right after I arrived, and I could have gone home after the game was over, nothing was preventing me from going home right now! I had my baseball cards in my pocket. I was certainly in a nice, quiet place. I’d just bail out of here right away.
    That will show Merle, I thought. Sooner or later, she’ll get worried about me and come back. But she won’t find me, because I’ll be home safely in the twenty-first century. For the rest of her life, she’d think about me every time she heard that somebody was murdered. She’d wonder if it was me. She’d feel responsible. She’d feel guilty for pulling that trick on me in the graveyard. That would show her! Nobody was going to humiliate me and get away with it.
    Then there was that sound again. I turned around. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark, but I couldn’t see anybody. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
    Better safe than sorry, I decided. Holding my hands in front of me, I felt my way to the nearest tombstone and sat on the ground. I took the baseball cards out of my pocket and slipped one out. I put the other cards back, and then I tried to relax. It had all been a big mistake. Soon I’d be home in my house, in my time. I’d be able to laugh about the whole thing.
    In about thirty seconds, the first tingles started to hit me. I smiled. I was going home. The tingling sensation spread through my fingertips, across my arms, and down my chest. So long, 1944!
    That’s when a hand reached around the tombstone and grabbed me.

14
Hooray for War
    â€œ AHHHHHHHHHHHH !” I SCREAMED , DROPPING THE CARD .
    I jumped up to run away, but I bumped into something or somebody. I wasn’t sure which, but I knew that it wasn’t there a minute ago. I turned around and bumped into something else. Suddenly there were people all around me, surrounding me, their arms clasped so I couldn’t escape.
    â€œAhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
    A flashlight beam appeared, shining up at one of their faces.
    It was Mickey Maguire.
    â€œBoo,” she said simply. “Did we scare you?”
    Connie, Tiby, and Ziggy turned on flashlights too as they broke out into giggles.
    â€œOf course you scared me!” I shouted, no longer feeling any obligation to be nice to them. Now I knew why the last Chicken quit. “How could you dothat to a kid? I could have had a heart attack!”
    â€œShhhh,” Tiby said. “You’ll wake the dead!” Then she cracked up.
    â€œDon’t get all hot under the collar,” said Ziggy.
    â€œHow did you get out here?” I demanded, looking around for the car. “Where’s Merle?”
    â€œWe walked over from Joe’s,” Mickey explained. “Relax. We do this to all the rookies. It’s sort of our little initiation ceremony. Merle went to get some Cokes.”
    â€œI thought she…” My heart was still beating a million times a minute. “I thought she liked me, calling me ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey pie’ and stuff.”
    â€œShe does like you,” Connie assured me. “We all like you. But Merle calls everybody ‘sweetie’ and