Dreamland Lake Read Online Free Page B

voice, “I been thinking we might have another look at the woods.”
    I tried to let this pass, figuring he was just fooling around to see how chicken I was. But you never let things pass with Flip when he had an idea. And this was a serious one. So I cleared my voice, which atthat age was jumping around like crazy anyway. “Why?” I croaked out.
    “Well, for one thing, we never made our survey of the roller coaster pilings. Not an accurate one.”
    “To hell with the roller coaster,” I said.
    “And for another thing,” he said, “I’d like to photograph the site.”
    “What site?” I said, as if I didn’t know.
    “Where we found the body.”
    “I hadn’t heard tell the Police Department had hired you on as official photographer.”
    “Very funny,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Dunthorpe’s fuzz probably never even thought to photograph it. They’re not extra bright, you know. They don’t even pick up on what you can learn from TV.”
    I’d had this feeling that maybe Flip was holding a grudge against the police for easing us out when it came to their investigations. Flip wasn’t a full-scale—what’s the word?—
exhibitionist.
But it had crossed my mind he wouldn’t have objected to a little more credit where credit was due. Maybe our pictures in
The Morning Call
—something like that. It was still eating him. After all, how many kids that age do you know take the trouble to write letters to the editor?
    So I knew right then that, sooner or later, he’d have both of us slogging through the spooky woods, reliving the whole thing. I made up my mind I might as well try to play it cool and go through with it. But I thought it was ghoulish, and I told him so.
    Of course, he was ready with an answer all thought out that stopped me cold: “It’d only be ghoulish if the body was still there, which it isn’t. Besides, we’re not going to wait till Halloween and go back there at the stroke of midnight or anything. We’re going backin broad daylight and maybe take a few pictures for kind of a souvenir about what happened. Besides, that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
    “Says who?”
    “Says anybody who’s been through something like that. If your horse throws you, you’re supposed to get right back on him and ride to prove you can. Otherwise, you might get a complex.”
    “Like starting to have nightmares about it?” I said casually, looking the other way.
    “Yeah, like that,” Flip said. “I can picture yours now in full color with sound effects.”

Four

    It wasn’t more than a week before Flip brought his camera to school one morning. He was carefully stashing it away in his locker before First Period. Then at lunch, he said, “Old Elvan Helligrew’s taking our route this evening.” So I knew this was The Fatal Day.
    That afternoon, I dragged my feet considerably the whole length of Marquette Park, trying to get Flip interested in other points of local history. When we came to where the old race track had been, I tossed out the idea that we might plot its course.
    “It was supposed to be a half-mile track,” I said, trying to sound like Flip when he’s in one of his teaching moods. “If we could figure out exactly where it was, we could use it for jogging . . . work up to a couple of laps a day or more . . . be good for us . . .” I let my voice tail off. It was useless. Volcanoes suddenly erupting wouldn’t have put Flip off his stride.
    But when we came up over the rise where the lake was and my stomach began to get that sickish feeling again, I happened to notice that the door to the tennis clubhouse was standing open. I put on my normal voice as a kind of a last-ditch effort and said, “Hey look, they must be getting the clubhouse opened up for spring. Let’s us go over past there and see if they’ve put the coke machine in yet. My throat’s a little scratchy.” Then I coughed a few dry coughs to prove the point. Flip gave me this knowing look, but we