Free The Figure In the Shadows by John Bellairs, Mercer Mayer Page B

somehow gotten all knotted up while lying quiet in their boxes. It happened that way every year. Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann began their usual argument about which was better, a tall skinny tree or a short squat one. Lewis unpacked the dirty cotton batting and arranged it around the circular mirror that wassupposed to be the ice pond. He set up the little cardboard village with the cellophane windows and put the celluloid deer out on the ice. Then, when the tree was all decorated and the lights were turned on, Lewis would sit on the couch and squint. He did this to make the tree lights into stars. Red and blue and green and white and orange stars, each with four long rays. Lewis liked the effect, and he would sit there squinting for long periods of time.
    Every night as he undressed for bed, Lewis would look at the green streak on his neck. It had been left there by the tarnished chain that held the magic three-cent piece. The magic amulet that was gone forever. He knew it was gone; Rose Rita had told him so. She had told him that she had dropped it down the sewer, and he had believed her. Now he was trying hard to feel good about not having the amulet. He was trying hard, but it was no use.
    Lewis felt the way people feel when they give up something they like. Something that is bad for them, like Mounds bars or eating between meals. He felt a big empty space in his life, a hollow place cut out of his insides. Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night scrabbling frantically for the amulet. And when he found it wasn’t there, he burst into tears. But Lewis went about his everyday life as well as he could. He was distracted from his troubles by the Christmas preparations, and the fun he had playing with Rose Rita. He was happy agood deal of the time, and he might have eventually forgotten all about the amulet if something bad hadn’t happened to him.
    It was a dark December afternoon. Lewis and the other sixth-grade students were trying very hard to finish their math assignments, so they could be let out early. Miss Haggerty walked up and down the aisles, looking at papers and offering comments. When she was on the other side of the room, Woody Mingo started pinching Lewis.
    “Ow!” Lewis hissed. “Cut it out, Woody!”
    “Cut out what?”
    “You know what I mean. Stop pinchin’ me!”
    “I ain’t pinchin’ you. It must be a sweat bee. Take a bath, and they won’t sting you. Sweat Bee Barney-smell, Sweat Bee Barney-smell.” Pinch, pinch.
    Lewis felt deep despair. It was as if Woody had begun to realize that the amulet was gone. For a long time after their big fight, Woody had let Lewis alone. But in the last few days he had started in again. It was worse than before.
    Lewis wanted to slug Woody, but he knew he’d get caught if he tried anything. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could hurt Woody at all without his amulet.
Why did he ever agree to give it away?
It was one of the dumbest things he had ever done in his life.
    Miss Haggerty walked to the front of the room and picked up her watch.
    “Class,” she said.
    Everyone stopped working and looked up.
    “Since you all seem to be doing quite well, I will keep my promise and let you out early. Some of you are not quite finished, but you may complete your work at home. Now, as soon as you have your desks all cleared off, and the room is quiet, you may go.”
    Desk tops slammed all over the room as the students began stuffing their pencils, paper, and books into their desks. Lewis put all his books away, and then he started stuffing his pens and pencils down the hole that the ink bottle sat in.
    The students in Lewis’s school didn’t get to use ballpoint pens. Not in school, at any rate. Ballpoint pens were supposed to be bad for your handwriting. So everybody had to write either with fountain pens, or with wooden pens, the kind that have metal points on the end. The ink the students used was kept in glass bottles which sat in round holes that had been cut