Free The Stranger by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

unsafe ice. I don’t know. But Rob didn’t come home.”
    As if she, too, had fallen through unsafe ice, Nicoletta grew colder and colder, sinking to the depths of her soul.
    “See,” said Jamie, “what happened is, these two hunters went out yesterday morning and they never came home. Isn’t that creepy? They took a day off from work to go hunting and they never came home.”
    I forgot them, she thought. I forgot them right away. I yelled at the monster once and then I forgot again. But those were people. Real people.
    “What if she never finds out?” said Jamie in a low, melodramatic voice. “You missed it, Nick, but they showed her little kids. The kids are too little to know what’s going on. They just held hands and stared at the camera. You know, that goopy, gaping look little kids have.”
    Children, thought Nicoletta. I went back and danced on the snow while little children waited for a daddy who is not coming home. And I knew, I knew all along.
    Something in her congealed. She felt more solid, but not flesh and blood solid. Metallic. As if she were no longer human, but more of a robot, built of wires and connections in a factory.
    Because I didn’t react like a human, she thought. A human would have gone to the police, called an ambulance, taken rescue teams to the cave to bring the hunters up. And what did I do? I obeyed a voice telling me to keep its secrets.
    The reporter’s face became long and serious. “In this temperature,” she said grimly, “in this weather, considering tonight’s forecast, there is little hope that the men will survive, if indeed they are alive at this moment. They must be found today.”
    Nicoletta’s stomach tried to throw up the pancake men.
    She forced herself to be calm. She supervised every inside and outside muscle of herself. It seemed even more robotic. And it worked. She knew from Jamie’s glance that her body and face revealed nothing.
    “Search teams are combing the areas where the men are thought to have been,” said the reporter. “We will return with updates.” The long, grim face vanished into a perky smile, as if the reporter, too, were a robot programmed for certain expressions. “Now,” she said cheerily,” back to your regular programming!”
    Jamie, who always preferred regular programming, and never wanted interruptions, sighed happily and tucked herself more deeply into her mother’s robe.
    Nicoletta backed out of the room. She stared down at the bright, sparkling outfit she had chosen to shine in the snowy woods, so Jethro would see her.
    I know where they are … but if I tell… his secret … my promise …
    Anyway, they’re dead. It isn’t as if anybody could rescue them now. They have a grave, too—farther underground than an undertaker would put them.
    It was not funny. Not funny at all. And yet a snickery laugh came out of her mouth and hung in the air like frost. She had to pull her mouth back into shape with both hands.
    What shall I do? Does a promise to a monster count when wives are sobbing and children have lost their father? Of course not.
    But in her heart, she knew there had been no promise to a monster. The promise had been to …
    But even now she could not finish the sentence. It was not possible and she was calm enough to know that much.
    But it was true, and she had seen enough to know that as well.
    First, I’ll find him, she told herself. We’ll talk. I’ll explain to him that I have to notify authorities. Then —
    A small, bright yellow car whipped around the corner, slipping dangerously on the ice, and zooming forward to slip again as it rushed up her driveway. Rachel, who aimed for every ice patch and shrieked with laughter at every skid. Rachel, coming for a Saturday morning gossip.
    Nicoletta could not believe this was happening to her. First she had to make breakfast with her sister. Now she had to waste time with her best friend.
    Rachel leapt out of the driver’s side and Cathy from the passenger side.