The Trespassers by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

anything unusual about that. Grub rarely did much talking when strangers were around. But now he came over beside Neely and poked her with his elbow. “Tell him about Monica,” he said.
    “No, I don’t think so—” Neely was saying when Curtis said, “Monica? Yeah. I remember Carmen saying something about somebody named Monica. Wasn’t she the kid who died? Here at Halcyon?”
    “Tell him,” Grub said.
    So Neely did. All about what Greta had said about pneumonia, and how some people thought she had died of something else. And then she went on to tell how there was even a story about how Monica had mysteriously disappeared.
    “And the things in the trunk. Tell about that too,” Grub said. “Tell about all the things that were in Monica’s trunk and how people were afraid to touch them anymore after she died.”
    So Neely told about that, too, and Curtis seemed very interested. When she finished talking he was quiet for a minute and then he said, “Monica. Yeah. Carmen knows about her. I’m going to ask Carmen to tell me some more about Monica.”
    “Yeah,” Neely said. “I’d like to know too. I’d sure like to find out what Carmen knows.”
    By that time they’d reached the crest of the hill and Neely stopped to point out their house.
    “You live there? In that little old house?” Curtis said, in a scornful tone of voice, as if he thought the picturesque old Bradford house was some kind of a slum. When Neely gave him a cool stare and said yes he grinned and asked, “You got anything good to eat down there?”
    Neely was definitely surprised. “Well, sure,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
    “Yeah. There’s no food up there. Nothing except this rice and vegetable gunk the old guy, Reuben, was eating. See, he wasn’t expecting us till Sunday. We were going to ride up in the car with Carmen but then we decided to fly and so we got here early.”
    “Oh,” Neely said. “That’s probably what he’s doing right now. Buying some food.”
    Curtis’s face brightened. “Yeah? You think so?” But then he frowned. “How soon do you think he’ll come back?”
    “Well, usually he stays all day. But maybe he’ll come back sooner this time.”
    “Yeah, and maybe not. I think I’ll eat at your house,” Curtis said, and started off down the hill.
    Grub and Neely looked at each other and rolled their eyes before they hurried to catch up. They were almost to their driveway when Neely heard a familiar sound and looked up to see Reuben’s old blue pickup turning in off Highway One.
    “Hey, look. There he is now,” she said. “There’s Reuben.”
    “Is that him?” Curtis said. “All right!” Waving his arms over his head, he jumped out into the middle of the road so quickly that Reuben had to slam on his brakes.
    The last Neely and Grub saw of Curtis Hutchinson, he was climbing into the passenger seat of the pickup truck. He didn’t even turn around to wave good-bye.

Chapter 24
    “W ELL,” NEELY SAID WHEN REUBEN’S PICKUP HAD disappeared over the top of the hill. “That is one weird kid. Have you ever seen such a—” She stopped when she realized that Grub was no longer standing beside her. Running after him, she caught up as he trudged blindly up the driveway, his face blank and empty.
    “Hey,” she said. “It’s all right. We couldn’t have gone up there much after school started anyway. Only on Saturdays and not even then if the weather was bad. We just have to forget about it, that’s all.”
    “I’ll never forget about it,” Grub said. “It was so—so fascinating.” (Fascinating had been a favorite word of Neely’s for a long time and Grub had picked it up lately.) “And now everything’s so—tragic.” (Another favorite word of Neely’s.)
    Grub’s voice definitely had a gloom-and-doom ring to it. “No, it isn’t,” Neely said quickly. “It’s not as tragic as all that. It’s just something that was great but now it’s over.”
    Grub’s sigh almost sounded