Can You Keep a Secret? by R. L. Stine Page A

to fade until she seemed far away. She was still talking, but her words didn’t make sense to me. I gasped as the dark trees all around appeared to lean toward me.
    That’s impossible. The trees aren’t moving. What’s wrong with me?
    “Emmy? Are you still there?” Sophie’s voice a mile away.
    The trees tilted toward me, reaching for me. The ground starting to tilt and sway. The sky rocking. The crescent moon sliding to and fro … trembling as if it was about to fall from the sky.
    So dizzy … why do I feel so dizzy?
    “Emmy? Are you coming home? Where are you? Please come home. It isn’t safe, Emmy. It isn’t safe out there.”
    Sophie’s voice sounded so distant. Like a million miles away.
    I tilted my head back, raised my face to the shimmering moon, and suddenly had such a powerful urge … an urge to open my mouth … to open my soul … and to howl , howl like a wolf, howl out all the wildness inside me … howl and howl and never stop.

 
    15.
    Someone grabbed my arm. Callie. Her eyes were wide with alarm. “Emmy? Are you okay?”
    I blinked at her. It took me a while to realize my mouth hung wide open. I closed it, breathing hard, my chest fluttery, blinking more, struggling to make her come into focus.
    “Emmy? What’s wrong?” She held onto my arm.
    “Nothing,” I managed to say. “I’m okay.”
    Her pale green eyes studied me. “You had the weirdest look on your face. Like you were going to faint or something.” I saw that the others were staring at me, too.
    “That phone call,” Callie said. “Did you get bad news?”
    “No … I…” I didn’t know how to answer her. Glancing down, I realized I still had the phone gripped tightly in my hand.
    I pressed it to my ear. “Sophie? Are you still there? Sophie?”
    Silence.
    “My sister,” I told them, tucking the phone into my jeans. “She thinks she saw the wolf. She got totally freaked.”
    “The wolf? Really?” Roxie stepped over to me. “Where’d she see it?”
    “A few blocks from our house.” I raised my eyes to the trees. They didn’t appear to be leaning toward me anymore. But my vision was still cloudy, my skin tingled, and my dizziness lingered. “I think I have to get home,” I said. “Sophie sounded pretty bad.”
    Eddie tossed a shovelful of dirt into the grave. He gazed at me. “Aren’t your parents home? Can’t they take care of her?” I could see the disappointment on his face. He probably wanted to go back to our campsite in the woods for the night.
    But I was no longer in the mood. And watching the faces around the grave, I didn’t think anyone else was, either.
    “My parents are useless in an emergency,” I said. “They just tell us to calm down and not be drama queens. No matter what.” I was telling the truth.
    “My mom just passes out the Xanax,” Roxie said. “She thinks it’s the cure for everything.”
    “I’m almost finished here,” Eddie said, tossing more dirt on the grave. “I can ride with you.” He glanced around the group. We were all standing very still, watching his work. “Hey, thanks for pitching in, everyone,” he grumbled.
    “Cut us some slack,” Riley said. “There was only one shovel.”
    I noticed that Danny had gotten very quiet. I saw his eyes follow the shovel as Eddie smoothed the dirt over the grave. I wondered what he was thinking. After a few seconds, he saw me watching him, and he turned abruptly toward the trees.
    Eddie tossed the shovel onto the ground. He wiped his hands on the legs of his jeans. “Let’s roll,” he said.
    The lights were still on in the office at the back of the cemetery. Squinting hard, I thought I saw a shadow move in the front window. But I was too far away to see clearly.
    Eddie slid a hand onto my shoulder as we walked toward the car. “You okay?”
    I nodded. “Worried about Sophie.”
    Worried about Sophie and about me.
    “What a boring night!” Riley exclaimed. That made us all laugh.
    “Hey, we’re almost