Free Rabble Starkey by Lois Lowry Page B

me, we hung back in the shadows, holding our bags and Gunther's.
    "Trick or treat!" called out Gunther happily, and he danced about.
    Suddenly out of the darkness in the yard something came shooting through the air. It missed Gunther, but it caught Millie Bellows, who was so hunched over she wasn't much taller than him, and she fell over on her knees, jarring the table in the hall behind her. We could hear glass break. Veronica ran forward to where Millie Bellows was crouched on the floor holding her head. But me, I turned and ran into the yard.
    Once I got down the porch steps I could see a figure, even though he was dressed in black and running. I dropped the bag I was holding and ran after the figure—through Millie Bellows's yard and up the road, my feet pounding. Instead of my sneakers I was wearing these dumb black sandals of Sweet-Ho's because I thought they was gypsy-like, and I couldn't run as fast as usual because they was too big. But I set my mind to fastness and forgot everything else. I forgot the flapping sandals and I paid no attention when my shawl fell off my head and shoulders and dropped on the ground. I pulled my mask off my face so's I could see better and I kept my eyes firm on that black figure up ahead.
    At the bend in the road he ducked into the woods. I was so close by then that I could still see the bushes moving where he had pushed through, and I went into the woods at the same place. But then I couldn't see nothing anymore—just thick trees and bushes. I stopped and stood still. For a minute I could hear someone breathing hard—I thought he was right there beside me—but then I realized it was my own breath. My heart was pounding, too, and I had a stabbing pain in my side from running so hard. But everything was quiet, and I knew I had lost him.
    After a minute I turned and pushed back out to the road. There wasn't no point to chasing on through the woods. He could be anywheres.
    I jogged back to Millie Bellows's house and on the way I picked up my mask, which was lying there in the road with its elastic busted. Farther down was my
shawl, all dusty, and beside it something small and black. When I picked it up I could see it was a hat of some sort, and I rolled it up inside the shawl and carried them with me.
    The door was still open and I could hear Veronica's voice inside. When I went in I had to step over a mess of broken glass, and I could tell from a handle on the floor that it had been a pitcher. Lying on the doorsill I could see the stone that the person in black—I knew it had to be Norman—had thrown.
    I found Veronica in the front room, holding a dishtowel to Millie Bellows's face and patting at her as she lay on the couch. There wasn't any blood, just a swollen-up place by her eye.
    "I called my daddy on the phone," Veronica said, "and he'll be right here."
    Gunther was standing close by, with his ballerina mask pulled down so's it dangled around his neck. He was holding one of Millie Bellows's hands.
    In the corner some newscaster on TV was talking, and then he showed a film of a building with its side blown out by a bomb. I went over and turned the television off. "He got away," I said. "I chased him but he got away."
    In a chair beside the TV I spied a folded-up afghan all crocheted in shades of green and brown, a lot like one that Gnomie used to have. I took it over to the couch and spread it out over Millie Bellows's legs where they was sticking out from her flowered housedress. Then I reached under and pulled her slippers off and tucked the afghan around her gnarly old feet.
It struck me that Millie Bellows wasn't talking none, wasn't sputtering evil-tempered comments like she surely had a right to. "Is she okay?" I asked Veronica.
    Before she had a chance to answer, Mr. Bigelow came hurrying through the front door and over to the couch. He knelt down and examined Millie Bellows's face. Then he felt for her pulse, even though he's not no doctor or