Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn

all crammed together, a crinoline peeking out, belts and shoes on the floor. My bureau drawers are stuffed with underwear and socks and pajamas and jeans and shorts, my diary hidden among them, buried deep. My desk is littered with art supplies and drawing tablets and a stack of paperback mysteries.
    The clothes I wore yesterday lie in a heap on the floor. I'll never wear them again.
    Everything looks like it belongs to someone else, a girl I don't know anymore, a stranger.
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    I smell coffee and bacon and glance at my clock. Ten of nine. Mom must have fixed breakfast for me. Daddy's at work. Billy's probably outside, celebrating summer with his friends, riding bikes or playing in the woods, the kind of stuff I used to do.
    I get up slowly, as stiff as an old lady, and pull on a pair of shorts and a blouse. I look for my sneakers and remember I left them at Ellie's. Under my bed, I find a pair of old white moccasins. Not much better than going barefoot, but they'll have to do. The soles of my feet are still sore from yesterday.
    I take my seat at the kitchen table, and Mom puts a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of me. I look at it as if it's food from outer space.
    "Eat," Mom says gently. "You didn't have dinner last night. Or lunch either."
    "I'm not hungry." I stare at the food. Cheryl and Bobbi Jo will never eat anything again.
    "Please, Nora." Mom's hand is on my shoulder, her face is sad. "I know how hard this is for you, but you have to eat."
    I nod and pick up my fork. You are not dead, I tell myself. Your mother is right. You have to eat.
    The eggs are moist, a little runny, and the bacon's limp and greasy, the way I like it. But not today. It's an effort to chew and swallow without gagging. Mom stands by the sink watching me, so I eat. Her worry washes over me like cold rain.
    I choke down my vitamin pill with orange juice and glance at the clock, a black cat with a long tail that swings back and forth.
Tick tock tick.
I won it when the new shopping center opened a few years back. I'd been hoping for the fancy Schwinn bike, but Mom was pleased with the clock. It keeps good time, she says. It's almost ten already.
    "I have to go to Ellie's," I tell Mom. "The police want to question everyone who was at the party."
    She stares at me, suddenly tense. "Do you have to?"
    "I promised her."
    "But your father drove the car to work," she says. "I can't take you."
    "It's okay. I've walked plenty of times before." Including yesterday.
    "Don't go through the park," she says. "Promise."
    I shake my head. I'll never ever go through the park again. "He's still in jail, isn't he?"
    She nods and points to the paper she's been reading. Buddy's senior picture stares at me from the front page of the
Morning Sun.
He isn't smiling that smirky smile now, I think.
    "He's still a suspect," Mom says, "but he's passed two lie detector tests. I don't know how much longer they can hold him."
    I let her hug me and kiss me as if she's scared she'll never see me again. I tell her not to worry, I'll be careful. But I find myself looking back at my house as if I'm memorizing every shingle, the shape of the front porch, the dormer windows, the dogwood tree. As if I'll never see it again. You don't know if you'll come back, do you? You don't know when it's the last time you'll leave home.
    Before I've walked a block, sweat is trickling down my back. I feel every pebble through the thin soles of my moccasins.
    I pass the shopping center. Mrs. Beale, a woman I babysit for, stops me. "Oh, Nora," she says. "Did you know the girls who were murdered? Such a terrible thing." She's wide-eyed, excited. Something has happened in Elmgrove, we're on the news. TV, newspapers. Police in the park.
    I shake my head and study the beaded pattern on my moccasins. "Eastern's a big school," I say. "It's impossible to know everybody."
    "So sad," Mrs. Beale says. "They had their whole lives ahead of them. It's tragic, just tragic." Her eyes bore into me as if she