Free The Stranger Next Door by Peg Kehret Page B

mind to try harder to make new friends. At morning recess, when some of the boys started a game of kickball, he joined in. At lunch, he headed toward where two of those boys were sitting, but before he got there Duke blocked his way.
    “Trouble always comes in threes,” Duke said.
    Alex had heard his grandmother say the same thing. “What are you getting at?” he asked.
    “Just warning you,” Duke said.
    “You seem to know an awful lot about what goes on in my neighborhood,” Alex said.
    “I make it my business to know what’s happening.”
    “Right.” Alex walked away from Duke. His stomach churning, he abandoned his intent to sit with some of the other boys. If Duke picked another fight, Alex preferred to be by himself. He chose an empty table near the food line. Duke did not follow him.
    Alex wondered again if he should tell an adult about Duke’s comments. If Duke was responsible for the vandalism and the fire, it was important for Alex to report that. But what if he told his parents or his teacher, and they questioned Duke, and then it turned out that Duke had nothing to do with either problem?
    Duke’s probably just a big blowhard, trying to make me nervous, Alex thought. Unfortunately, he was succeeding.
    Duke’s remark about trouble coming in threes worried Alex. First the street signs, then the fire. What was next?
    I shouldn’t let him get to me this way, Alex told himself. That’s just an old superstition, and I should ignore it. Instead, he spent most of the afternoon wondering what the third trouble would be.
    *   *   *
    Rocky and Blake spent the day after the fire shopping for clothes.
    As he looked at a rack of jackets, Rocky remembered last year when he had asked for a new jacket before school started.
    His mother had said, “There’s nothing wrong with your old one. You can wear it a few more months, until the sleeves get too short.”
    Now, as he chose a new jacket for the second time in three weeks, he wished he didn’t have to do it. New clothes weren’t fun when the reason for buying them was arson.
    Even though the witness program was paying for their purchases, Blake insisted they shop carefully and spend as little as possible. “It’s our money in the end,” he said. “Ours and the other taxpayers.”
    They didn’t have to shop for furniture; Mr. Franklin said he would order duplicates of what they had gotten a week ago, all of which was either burned up or too badly damaged from smoke and water to be usable.
    When Rocky and Blake returned to the motel with their purchases, there was a message to call Mr. Franklin.
    “Good news,” Blake said after he hung up. “Your mother testified this morning, and everything went as hoped. She was on the witness stand for nearly an hour; the attorneys said there’s no doubt that she won the case for them.”
    “Can she come home now?” Rocky asked.
    “She needs to stay until the jurors begin deliberating, in case she gets recalled.”
    “When will that be?”
    “Possibly as early as Monday; sometime next week, for sure.”
    Rocky nodded. He knew that his mother could not have prevented the fire nor could she do anything other than what Blake was doing to make this time easier. Still, he would be glad when she came home and the three of them were together again, like an ordinary family.
    “Mr. Franklin also said he spoke with Mrs. Woolsey and arranged for us to move into a different house in Valley View Estates. It’s two streets over from the one we hadbefore. You’ll stay in the same school and same class; we can even keep our new phone number.”
    “When can we move in?”
    “Mrs. Woolsey will meet us there tonight at eight to give us the keys. Mr. Franklin scheduled the appointment for after dinner because he wasn’t sure when we would get his message.”
    “Are we going to stay there tonight?”
    “If we sleep there tonight we’ll have to sleep on the floor. Mr. Franklin already had the power and water turned on,