Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn Page A

bought them in May and they were perfectly good. I didn't tell her about the blood, how could I? She'd think I was crazy. I shoved them in the back of my closet, and I wear my old moccasins even though I've worn holes in their soles, holes in my soul.
    But the blood, it's like Lady Macbeth, all the perfume in the world. See, the thing is, Ellie and I were talking about Cheryl, we were saying how come Ralph likes her so much—first Buddy, then Ralph? She had a big pimple on her chin this morning, Ellie said, did you notice? and we sang the Clearasil song.
    Now I think about the pimple and the bullets and the blood.
    We also said she wasn't all that pretty, her teeth were too big, and then I think of the bullets again, of how he shot her in the face.
    Why did we talk about her like that?
    And why didn't we hear the shots and why didn't we notice the blood and how come Buddy was on the bridge? If he did it, why didn't he hide when he heard us coming? Why didn't he shoot us, too? He could have. If he did it, that is. If he had a gun.
    But I remember him sitting there, smoking that cigarette, he didn't look any different, he didn't look like someone who'd just killed two girls.
    If he didn't do it, who did? What if the real killer is still out there in the woods? With a
gun
? What if he's outside my house right now, waiting to kill me?
    A mockingbird is singing in the holly tree outside my window. Tomorrow a cat could kill him, tomorrow I could die, I could be shot or hit by a car. I could be struck by lightning, I could fall down the stairs and break my neck or fracture my skull, I could drown at the swimming pool. So many ways to die. Poison, suffocation, choking, bleeding, automobile crashes. So many ways, it's a wonder anybody lives to grow up.
    I remember an essay we read in tenth grade. A newspaper editor wrote it about his daughter, Mary White. She was riding her horse somewhere in Kansas, and she turned to wave at someone. She hit her head on a tree limb and it knocked her off her horse. She probably never knew what happened. There she was, about my age, riding along, happy and smiling and waving to a friend. And then, just like that, she was dead.
    It was the saddest essay in the world. When I read it, I cried and cried because Mary White was a lot like me, a tomboy who didn't want to grow up, and she died on a sunny day in Kansas when Death hid in a tree and took her like he can take anybody anytime, including Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, and why not Ellie and me and whoever else he wants.
    I wish I hadn't been at Ellie's house, walking to school and talking about Cheryl and stepping in her blood that we never saw, never knew was there until Billy asked me if I'd seen it. And no I didn't see the blood and yes I must have stepped in it and yes I was jealous of Cheryl because she had blond hair and boyfriends and wanted to fix Bobbi Jo up with Don, the boy I loved even though he thought of me as a nice kid and who likes nice kids? I was someone to tease in art class, not to date.
    Why couldn't she have fixed me up with him? But Bobbi Jo was much cuter than me and didn't act silly and immature and goof off and snort through her nose when she laughed and wasn't almost six feet tall and skinny as a broomstick and just about as curvy.
    But still alive, every inch of me—at least right now.
    But they're not. They're both dead and I have to see them at Hausner's Funeral Parlor tomorrow and go to their funerals the next day, and I don't want to see them, I've never seen a dead person. Or been to a funeral. When my grandmother died, Mom said I shouldn't go to the funeral, I was too sensitive, it would upset me, I'd have bad dreams. Guess what. I had bad dreams anyway.
    I don't want them to be dead and I don't want to die and I'm so scared my heart might stop beating right now, which is why I can't lay me down to sleep. I might die before I wake and the Lord my soul will take—but maybe not, maybe he won't want my soul.
    The