Blair’s Nightmare Read Online Free Page B

a dark garden where a very small boy stood alone and helpless while something moved closer and closer through the shadows—something huge and shaggy with gleaming red eyes and huge white fangs in a gaping mouth. At some point the waking horror movies turned into sleeping ones, and when he woke up the next morning David could remember a lot of bits and pieces of scary dog dreams. Blair’s nightmare seemed to be catching.
    Dad and Molly overslept that morning, and everything was very rushed and hectic. There wasn’t time to tell Dad about the latest development in the dog story, and by that evening David had decided not to tell. He couldn’t very well admit that he’d stayed awake for hours worrying about Blair playing with a werewolf. And it was pretty obvious how Dad would take it if he only told him—again—that Blair had been dreaming about a dog. It was, David decided, a lot like the story of the boy who cried wolf, or dog, as the case might be.
    â€œNow, let’s not discuss it any further.” David could just hear it. So he wouldn’t discuss it, and he definitely wouldn’t worry about it. As it happened it was a resolution that was fairly easy to keep, because the next day turned out to be a different kindof nightmare. Afterwards, there was something new to worry about.
    In a way, Mrs. Baldwin, David’s homeroom teacher, was to blame. What she did was to get called away to some sort of emergency meeting. When the messenger from the office brought the note, Mrs. Baldwin read it and said, “Oh drat!” and started looking around the room while she got out her purse and put on her sweater. Almost immediately, even before he had consciously figured out what she was up to, David started having a kind of premonition—a feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Premonitions ran in the family on his mother’s side. His mother had had them, and of course Blair did. Blair’s premonitions usually came true, and David’s usually didn’t. Except for certain kinds. Like now, when he seemed to be getting a warning that fate, or something, was about to pull the rug out from under him.
    He was trying to lie low, squinching down and pretending to look for something in his desk, to get out of Mrs. Baldwin’s range of vision, when she called his name.
    â€œDavid,” he heard her say, “David Stanley. Would you come up here, please.”
    â€œMe?” he said warily. By then he had guessed what was about to happen. It wasn’t the first time. For some reason it had been going on all his life. Teachers who had to leave theroom picked him out to be in charge while they were gone. He had never wanted to be. Even in the first or second grade when nearly everyone raised a hand if the teacher asked for a volunteer, he had not wanted to be in charge of the class. And now, in the eighth grade—in the eighth grade at Wilson Junior High with Maribell Montgomery and Holly Rayburn giggling and the Garvey Gang raising their eyebrows at each other—there was nothing in the world he wanted less.
    â€œI’d rather not . . . ,” he started to say, but Mrs. Baldwin ignored him and started telling the class what they should be working on while she was gone. Then she was standing beside David’s desk and picking up his books. “Just bring your things up to my desk, David. All you’ll have to do is keep an eye on things and jot down the name of anyone who starts wasting the taxpayers’ money.” Mrs. Baldwin always called any kind of fooling around “wasting the taxpayers’ money.”
    He tried once more to protest, but she didn’t seem to hear him. A few seconds later she was gone, and David was sitting in her chair in front of everybody. He huddled down as low as he could get, wishing he could disappear and thinking up all the things he should have said to Mrs. Baldwin.
    â€œLook,” he