SummerHill Secrets, Volume 1 Read online

  “She must be an informant,” I cried, watching her in disbelief as she pointed triumphantly at the barn—at us!

  “How do you know?” Lissa asked.

  “Can’t you see—she’s calling the cops!”

  Chapter

  21

  I grabbed Lissa’s arm, pulling her out of Miss Spindler’s line of vision. “C’mon, let’s make a run for it. We have time!”

  Lissa’s arm stiffened. “Wait!”

  “There’s no time to wait. Let’s go to the Grossdawdy Haus. I’ll hide you there!”

  “No,” Lissa shouted.

  I whirled around, staring at her incredulously. “What did you say?”

  “I can’t keep running, Merry. It’s time to tell the truth.” Her face had a look of peaceful determination. I wanted to throw my arms around her, to take care of her, to talk sense to her. But her words rang out. “I’m going to do the right thing. When the police come, I wanna tell them about my dad. I have the courage to do it now.” She put her hand on her heart as she spoke. “And,” she added softly, “we have proof—remember the pictures you took?”

  “Are you sure about this?” Something in me still wanted to keep her from going through with it.

  “It’s the right thing,” Lissa insisted, studying me. “I can almost tell what you’re thinking, Merry, but please stop worrying. I’ll be fine. I’m a member now.” Her face lit up with a rainbow smile.

  Police sirens began to squeal, soft at first, then louder as they sped their way up SummerHill Lane.

  Lissa’s tears threatened to spill at any moment. “You’re a good friend,” she said. “You’re my sister, too, don’t forget. We’re part of the same family now.”

  I hugged her close. “I want you to be safe, Lissa. Forever and always.”

  The slamming of squad car doors and the thud of footsteps signaled the end of our time together. A crowd of bearded men gathered near the barn. Their Amish wives and children scurried to the safety of the house.

  Miss Spindler’s scratchy voice could be heard over the chatter of German as Amish husbands and fathers hurried to form a human barrier around the barn. The Amish were peace-loving people who would not allow outsiders to take away one of their own, especially an innocent young girl like Lissa.

  “In the hayloft!” Miss Spindler shouted.

  I watched as Officer Rhodes and several other policemen approached Abe Zook and two Amish bishops. They showed their badges, but Abe shook his head slowly, standing his ground as he blocked the open barn door with the others. The police persisted, and I strained to hear, but they kept their voices low and calm, trying to strike a bargain, no doubt.

  I turned to my friend. “Quick! Take off your bonnet,” I said.

  “Show them your short hair! The Amish will know you aren’t one of them.”

  Lissa followed my suggestion and removed her bonnet. Her shoulder-length hair fell around her neck. Gasps and shouts rose up from the crowd, and Officer Rhodes moved through the barricade as the Amish parted, astonished.

  Before Lissa left the hayloft, I took her hand in both of mine. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “What about you?” Her blue eyes cut to the quick of me. “Remember your tears, Merry. They’re precious to God.” And with that, she scooted through the hay toward the loft ladder.

  “I’m praying for you,” I whispered.

  Officer Rhodes, with his piercing eyes and that businesslike chin, waited for Lissa to climb down the ladder. Just as she reached the bottom, a woman came running through the crowd—Lissa’s mother! Her cries of joy rang out as she held out her arms to her daughter.

  I stayed in the hayloft long after things settled down. Lissa told her story—all of it—to the police. Her mother seemed to verify the occasions of abuse. She even said that Lissa’s running away had had its merits. It had startled her into taking a hard look at the abuse she and her daughter had suffered, and four days without Lissa had given her the strength to arrange a confrontation with her husband. Best of all, Mr. Vyner had consented to treatment and extensive counseling. It was safe for Lissa to go home!

  Lissa and her mother walked arm in arm to a waiting squad car. The line of police cars stirred up a trail of dust on Zooks’ lane as they made their way to the main road. The Amishmen milled around, whispering and shaking their heads.

  I knelt in the hayloft, watching till the last car turned onto Summer–Hill. Lissa’s words echoed in my mind. “Remember your tears. They’re precious to God.”

  I scurried down the ladder to the Grossdawdy Haus. It was time for a date with my camera. An overwhelming desire spurred me on as I hurried to the room where Lissa and I had slept. Locating the camera, I ran out the back door. A lump caught in my throat as I passed the martin birdhouse in the side yard. I paused to look up at its many-sided refuge. “Not one little bird will fall to the ground unless God lets it happen,” Lissa had said.

  I swallowed hard and for the first time in a long time felt the sting of tears. Heading for the main road, I held the tears in check until I could be alone with them. And with Faithie.

  At last, I stumbled into the small cemetery where my twin sister was buried. The gentle hills surrounding the white gravestones had been alive with wild flowers eight summers before. There, I’d placed yellow daisies on her grave under a peaceful sky, setting up the shot for that long-ago special picture.

  Now as I stood here, camera in hand, it was as though I’d never cried in my life. My soul was bursting, needing an outlet—wanting to make up for all the years of pain. The pain of blaming myself for Faithie’s death.

  I knelt in front of her gravestone, leaning my head on my arm as I sobbed. “I miss you, Faithie. I miss you…with all my heart.”

  The tears, locked away for so long, began to cleanse me. I cried the pain away, forgiving myself for the years of false blame while a November wind wrapped its gentle whispers around me.

  I don’t know how long I knelt there, but slowly I began to pray. “Thank you, Lord, for loving me enough to care about the tears I cry.” I wiped my cheeks. “And thanks for Lissa…for helping her show me the way to peace.”

  Looking down, I noticed a clear puddle on the ledge of my sister’s gravestone. My tears. Thoughtfully, I reached for my camera, adjusting it for shadows and dim light. Then carefully I aimed, creating a focal point: my fallen tears, with Faithie’s gravestone as a backdrop.

  Click! My before-and-after gallery was complete.

  The sun poured through the clouds, creating a brilliant light. I squinted into its brightness, slipping the camera over my shoulder, and headed for home.

  To Charette,

  With thanks for many things.

  Best of all—

  friendship.

  We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship

  is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop,

  there is at last a drop which makes it run over;

  so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one

  which makes the heart run over.

  —SAMUEL JOHNSON

  Chapter

  1

  It was one of those soggy springtime mornings when nothing goes right. First off, I slept through my alarm, which led to another problem: my hair.

  Flat and fine, my shoulder-length locks only looked good freshly washed and blown dry. To give the illusion of more body, I always added a leave-in conditioner. Today there was no time for that ritual.

  “Ugh!” I moaned.

  My brother, Skip, poked his head into my room. “What’s the problem? Lose a cat?” He cast an older-brother sneer at me and snapped up his high school letter jacket.

  “Like you really care.” I pulled at my limp hair and glared.

  Skip laughed. “Maybe you oughta call that friend of yours, uh, Chelsea Davis, the girl with all the great hair.”

  “And why don’t you just disappear,” I retorted. But instead of leaving, Skip inched farther into my room.

  “Mom!
” I yelled.

  Skip mumbled some unintelligible comment about my room smelling like kitty litter. Just then, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, my three courageous cats, bounded off the bed toward him. Skip spun around and raced down the hall with a trail of hissing felines at his heels.

  Served him right.

  At last, Mom arrived on the scene. She surveyed my stringy hair with an audible sigh. Reaching for a yellow hair wrap, Mom began to pull my hair back. “How about a ponytail today, Merry?”

  “Mom, please,” I whined. “I’m going to school.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” she said, still holding my hair. “But I have a wonderful idea.”

  “Like what?” I glanced at my watch. “We really don’t have time for a total remake here, Mom. The bus comes in exactly eighteen and a half minutes.”

  She marched into my bathroom, expecting me to follow. Reluctantly, I did. She grabbed a bottle of reviving mist and began spritzing it on my limp hair.

  I groaned.

  “Trust me, Merry Hanson,” and the way she said it sounded exactly like me. I leaned down while she flipped my hair over my face. Next, she turned on the blow dryer, high heat. “This’ll help seal in the shine,” she said over the noise.

  I had an instant vision of Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch, wearing her linear locks center parted and slightly greasy. “Uh…Mom…not too shiny, okay?”

  When my hair was completely dry, I flipped it back over my head. Mom wanted to help brush it out, but she’d done enough. I moved closer to the mirror. “Not bad,” I said. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Downstairs at breakfast, Skip pretended not to notice my new look. Mom’s strong kitchen presence always helped bring on spurts of Skip’s most civilized behavior. She gave me a piece of toast to go with my scrambled eggs and piled it high with homemade strawberry jam from the Zooks, our Amish neighbors down the lane.

  Before leaving the house, I rechecked my hair—still holding. That done, I set off down SummerHill Lane to wait for the school bus near the willow grove. Abednego and his feline brothers scampered after me.

  Wild strawberry vines, glistening with April morning dew, graced the grassy slopes on either side of the dirt road. It was a misty Pennsylvania morning, complete with thunder. I almost went back to the house for an umbrella, but I could see the bus topping the hill in the distance.

  In the opposite direction, I spotted Rachel Zook, my Amish friend, walking barefoot with her younger sisters, Nancy, Susie, and Ella Mae. Aaron, that rascal brother of theirs, ran ahead as if daring one of them to catch him. They were headed for the one-room school her younger siblings and other Amish kids attended in this part of Lancaster County.

  Rachel stopped, turning to wave as her long green dress and black apron billowed out softly in the warm spring breeze. “Good morning, Merry!” she called.

  I was too far away to see the permanent twinkle in her blue eyes, but I was sure it was there.

  “Come on over later today, jah?” she called again.

  Something was wrong. The cheerful ring was missing from Rachel’s voice. Maybe she was on some kind of special errand this morning.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, hurrying to catch up with her. She cast a cautious eye on the younger kids and shook her head.

  “What is it, Rachel?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  She raised a finger to her lips. Her eyes looked suddenly gray. “Not now,” she whispered fearfully. “I mustn’t talk now.”

  I touched her arm. “I’ll be right over after school, okay?”

  She nodded, avoiding my eyes just then, and I knew something was dreadfully wrong.

  Rachel ran ahead to catch up with her brother and three sisters without offering her usual good-bye wave. I turned back toward the willow grove to wait for the bus, worried.

  Thunder gave way to pelting rain, and the Zook children scurried down the lane, splashing their bare feet against the muddy road. Rachel and little Susie opened their umbrellas and Aaron balanced his lunch box on top of his straw hat. My cats scampered home to safety as another thunderbolt boomed overhead. As for keeping my hair dry, I tried to protect it with my schoolbag. So much for maintaining my hairdo.

  I thought about Rachel’s Plain Amish hairstyle while I waited for the slowpoke bus. She never had to fuss with things like blow dryers or hair spray. Her long hair, like that of all other Amishwomen, was simply parted down the middle, pulled into a bun at the back of her head, and never cut. Since there was no electricity in Amish homes, it was the easy way.

  Just when the cloudburst had nearly destroyed my entire look, the bus showed up. I climbed onto the noisy school bus, searching for Chelsea Davis. My friend was nowhere to be seen, so I scooted into the nearest available seat.

  The bus lurched forward, and I could see the Zook kids up ahead. Rachel was still trudging along, head down. I leaned against the window, watching until I could see her no longer. Rachel’s dark mood made my heart pound. She was usually so cheerful.

  What could be wrong?

  Chapter

  2

  By the time I arrived at Mifflin Junior High, my hair had begun to dry out. At least some things were improving.

  I pit-stopped at my locker on my race to art class. Students were slamming locker doors and shouting at one another in the hallway while I scrounged through the junk in my locker, searching for my sketch pad.

  That’s when it happened.

  In the midst of the noisy scrambling, a strange sensation began at the back of my neck. Like someone was staring at me. Really staring. Tingles crawled up my scalp, but I kept facing the locker, determined not to turn around.

  Someone’s eyes were boring a hole in the back of my head. And I was pretty sure who it was.

  Jonathan Klein.

  Tall with light brown hair and brown eyes that matched mine, Jon was the one guy at school I secretly had a thing for. In reality, Jon Klein was the one and only guy on the planet that I could even begin to think of in terms of the M word.

  Only one question remained: When would he come to his senses and notice I was girlfriend material? Jon and I did have one thing going for us—the Alliteration Game. It was a word game he had initiated months ago, and I’d surprised him by meeting the challenge. Anyway, it was a private, very special thing between us. At least from my point of view.

  Say it with all p’s, Jon would say, each time choosing a specific letter of the alphabet. And we’d go off doing our word thing, the Alliteration Wizard and I.

  Today, however, Jon was silent behind me. I stuffed my sketch pad into my schoolbag and grabbed my books for morning classes. The uneasy feeling continued. Why wasn’t he making his usual crazy comments?

  I waited another second, scarcely breathing. What would it be like for him to carry my books? Was he going to ask me today?

  A brilliant idea flashed through my brain. Quickly, I reached for my camera. Taking pictures, good pictures, was my main hobby in life. My camera accompanied me everywhere and always.

  Swallowing a giggle, I took the lens cap off, keeping the camera close to my body until just the right moment. Wouldn’t Jon be surprised when I took a candid shot of him?

  Like right…about…

  Now! I spun around. Click!

  Light exploded, surprising my subject. His hands flew to his face, shielding his eyes. I lowered the camera and gasped as I realized my mistake. Across the hall from me, Elton Keel, a special-needs student, stood dazed.

  This is truly horrible, I thought as I left my locker and hurried over to him. His arms still covered his face as I sputtered out my apologies. His hair was short and blond, the color of sweet corn, and he wore a blue-and-red plaid backpack.

  “I…I’m really sorry,” I said again, waiting for his boyish face to emerge out of hiding. Slowly, he lowered his arms, letting them hang at his sides. They seemed too long for the rest of his body.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Elton nodded his head emphatically again
and again. Then he stopped abruptly and looked down at his shirt pocket, pulling on it. With a little grunt, he grasped the tip of a blue ink pen and brought it up out of his pocket, displaying it proudly.

  I still felt lousy about startling him with my flash. “Really, I thought you were someone else.”

  He didn’t answer and I didn’t expect him to. Everyone knew Elton Keel didn’t speak; at least no one had heard him say anything since he transferred here.

  He started clicking his ballpoint pen fast. On and off. Over and over, like the monotonous ticking of a clock. I’d heard about Elton’s quirks and rituals. But this…

  “Hey, Merry!”

  I turned to see Chelsea. Her sea-green eyes sparkled as she flew down the hall. Her auburn hair floated like a curtain around her.

  “Hi,” I said, taking a step back from Elton. “Did ya miss the bus?”

  “Mom drove me. She had a bunch of errands.” Chelsea looked at my still-damp hair. “Get caught in the rain, Mer?” Before I could answer she pulled a tan corduroy newsboy cap out of her schoolbag. “Here, try this.”

  She plopped it on my head.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She grinned. “Stunning.” And just like that she was off, without so much as a glance at Elton.

  I looked at my watch and at Elton, still standing there. “It’s time for first hour. You coming?”

  He leaned his head down as if he wanted to listen to my watch. I held my arm out. “It doesn’t make sounds,” I said, feeling slightly awkward about having Elton’s head so close. But the embarrassment didn’t last. He stood up and started clicking his pen again. I turned back to my locker to put my camera away.

  Without warning, Elton began grunting in a sort of high-pitched way. I turned to investigate and saw that he had jerked his backpack around and was pulling out his sketch pad, holding it high.

  “Oh, you think you’re gonna be late for art?” I said. “Well, so am I. Let’s go!”