Free A Holiday to Remember by Lynnette Kent Page A

turned to face them. “No, we are not lost. We’re following our own footsteps on the path out of the woods. We’ve got another ten minutes to walk before we reach the lawn.
    “You all are making a bad impression on Mr. Hammond.” She looked at each of the girls directly. “He doesn’t know what to do with a bunch of brats who only have to walk back to a reasonable shelter for the night after a day of nothing but play. Think about it.”
    Their last ten minutes passed in silence, though the girls seemed more thoughtful than mad.
    When they finally came out of the woods, though, another chorus of gasps met the sight of the manor standing in the twilight like a snow-covered castle in a fairy tale…without a single glimmer of light anywhere.
    The headmistress stopped in her tracks.
    “Not exactly the homecoming you expected,” Chris muttered.
    “Um, no. I’d forgotten for a moment.” She started hiking again, with more energy, and they were far enough ahead of the girls that her hesitation didn’t register with anyone but him. “Once we get inside and light the fire, we’ll all be fine.” She glanced back at the girls. “I think.”
    Even with the nine of them gathered around the hearth and the fire snapping sharply, the mood remained sober. No giggling, no teasing or squabbling—there was none of the teenage noise Chris had gotten used to in the last twenty-four hours. These teenagers seemed more like children tonight, for some reason. Lonely children.
    Jayne stepped inside the library door. “This morning, I took Mrs. Rosen’s stew out of the freezer to thaw. We’ll heat it up in pot on the fire, so dinner won’t take much work or time.
    “In fact,” she said more gently, looking at the huddle in front of the fire, “I’ll get out the bowls and the bread so all of you can stay here and warm up.” She went back to the kitchen without meeting Chris’s eyes.
    He couldn’t let the sadness continue. “Where was I?”
    Taryn wrinkled her forehead as she looked at him. “Huh?”
    “Chase and Juliet. I was telling you about them.”
    A couple of the other girls perked up. “There’s more?” Selena asked.
    “Oh, yeah. I told you the end of the story, remember? He killed her. Would you like to know why?”
    “Did she screw somebody else?”
    “Whoa.” Chris stared at Yolanda, the source of the question. “They’re just thirteen years old at this point.”
    She shrugged. “So?”
    “So they’re kids. Nobody’s screwing anybody.”
    Yolanda shrugged. “They are in my neighborhood.”
    “This isn’t your neighborhood,” Selena told her. Then she turned back to Chris. “Okay, so he took her to his granddad’s house. Then what happened?”
    Relieved to be finished with the tricky stuff, Chris stirred the fire, arranging a bed of coals underneath the pot stand just as Jayne came in carrying her huge kettle of stew.
    “What did Juliet see when she went into Chase’s grandfather’s house?”
    Chris winked at Sarah in thanks for her leading question. “The inside of Charlie’s house—that’s Chase’s granddad, remember—reminded Juliet of a magic store.”
     
    Charlie was an inventor and a science teacher. He liked to experiment, and his “projects,” as he called them, occupied the nooks and crannies, the tables and shelves and counters in every room of his rambling old cabin. Flasks of bubbling liquids hung over low fires, while beakers of bright metallic liquids and squares of colorful powders sat within reach. The house smelled like wood ash and spiced apples and rust—the apples were part of dinner that night, but who knew what else might be cooking?
    For the next week, Juliet showed up at Charlie’s every day, on a bicycle she said she’d found in her grandmother’s garage. She and Chase watched Charlie experiment, played in the snow that finally fell on Christmas Eve, and sledded down the hill in back of the cabin on trash-can lids.
    Being with Juliet was like having a