Blair’s Nightmare by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

just standing there, in exactly the same place he’d been when Amanda hit him, as if he were frozen to the spot. The expression on his face was even blanker than usual.
    â€œDavid,” Amanda said. “Are you coming—or what?” David hurried after her. He didn’t look back again, but for quite a while he kept expecting to hear Garvey charging after them; but he never did. After a while he quit worrying about it. By the time they got to the ridge, he was worrying about something else. Amanda wasn’t acting like herself.
    At first he couldn’t exactly put his finger on it. It was a little bit as if she were mad at him—but not exactly. Several times he caught her staring at him; but when he tried to talk to her, she answered briefly, as if she were angry or else had something on her mind and didn’t want to be interrupted.
    Once, just trying to make conversation, David said, “That must have really hurt.”
    â€œWhat?” Amanda said, and then she looked at her hand with a strange kind of surprised expression and said, “Yeah, it did. It hurt a lot.”
    â€œOh,” David said. He hadn’t thought about her hand; but now that he did, he realized what she meant. He’d heard of people breaking the bones in their hands by punching other people. “I hope it’s not broken or anything.”
    Amanda stopped and stared at him for a second. She looked irritated, as if there were something about him she really resented. “Forget it,” she said.
    He didn’t try to talk anymore. He’d begun to figure it out. She’d probably just realized what a coward he was, and she was really disgusted. He’d known all along that Amanda wasn’t too crazy about having a bunch of stepsisters and -brothers. She’d made that pretty clear from the beginning. So to find out that one of them was a coward naturally wouldn’t exactly make her happy. He didn’t blame her. It didn’t make him very happy either.
    The rest of the way home he felt really rotten, and just as they got to the house, Amanda did something that made him feel even rottener.
    It happened right after they came through the back doorinto the kitchen. David was taking off his backpack when he looked up and noticed that Amanda was looking at him.
    â€œWell,” she said. “That was an interesting hike.” Then she halfway closed her eyes, nodded and said, “Very interesting.” And then she smiled at him. She’d smiled at him before, of course. Not very often, but enough so that he knew what it usually looked like, and this was different.
    It didn’t take him long to figure it out. What it was, was that she felt sorry for him. All of a sudden he knew that that was it. And that made him feel rottener than anything.
    So the way it turned out, the hike that was supposed to take his mind off his problems only gave him another one to worry about. Now—besides the fight he might have to have with Garvey, and the fight that Dad and Molly were probably having—there was the fact that Amanda was sorry for him. It was all pretty depressing.
    After Amanda left, David started unpacking his backpack. He’d about finished when he heard something in the pantry. Thinking that it must be mice again—like most old houses the Westerly House seemed to attract mice—he tiptoed over to the door. When he jerked it open, there was a squeaking noise—but it wasn’t a mouse.
    It was Esther who had squeaked, but Janie was there, too. Still dressed in their party dresses, both Esther and Janie werestaring at David with wide eyes and trying to hide something behind their backs.
    â€œOkay, what are you guys up to now?” David said.
    â€œWe’re not swiping anything,” Janie said. “We’re just fixing some stuff from the party. See.” She brought a great big greasy-looking paper bag out from behind her. “Show him,