Hidebehind

Thirty

The next day, in school, I got to class early, as usual. Even though the other kids hung around outside the building and talked until the bell rang, I always just went right inside, put my stuff away, and sat at my desk. Part of me envied those other kids, but I was too stubborn to go out there and talk to anybody. Mr. Cook would just work on stuff, getting the day ready, and no longer tried to talk to me after an initial "Good morning!" But when I got to the room this time, Alex was already in there. He'd been waiting for me.

"Hey! What did you find out?"

He'd startled me. I glanced at Mr. Cook, who was eyeing us with an irritating little smile, probably thinking, How nice, Robert's made a friend.

"Nothing," I snapped, and I went to put my backpack away.

Alex followed me into the locker room. "I get it," he said good-naturedly though a little quieter. "You don't want anyone else to know. Sorry. So tell me what the silo said."

I sighed. He was too genuinely interested, and even though I wasn't as eager to talk about it as I would've been had the word been more captivating, I didn't have it in me to refuse him.

"Blanket." I shoved my bag into my locker.

His eyes lost a little of their gleam. "What?"

"Yeah, I know. Stupid. But that's what it said: blanket."

"Blanket?"

"Yep."

"Are you sure you decoded it properly?"

I slammed my locker and gave him a pretty decent scowl. "Yes, I did it properly. Maybe whoever wrote it is looking for his blanket. Seriously, I have no idea why someone would write that. It's not even worth telling anyone about."

Undeterred by my prickliness, he shrugged. "Well, thanks for telling me, then."

The bell rang. Other students would be coming into the room at any moment. I didn't want to be seen talking to Alex. Or did I? I didn't know. I was still technically not talking to anybody, but then again . . . it was Alex. People seemed to like him.

But no. No.

I tried to push past him to get back into the classroom, but he stopped me. "Wait a second. I have something for you."

"What?"

He scrounged in a pocket on his backpack. I heard laughter from other students, someone telling a joke that I'd heard him tell several times, a girl calling out to someone about the homework. They'd be in here any minute, stuffing bags in lockers.

"Here!" Alex proclaimed, uncrumpling a bit of newspaper that looked as if it'd been pretty neglected inside his bag. He shoved it toward me.

"What is it?"

"Photograph of the graffiti on the school. They wiped it off already, and I didn't know if you'd have a copy. My parents save newspapers forever. It's really annoying. But I found this . . . for you." As he spoke, he must've noticed how ungrateful I appeared, because his smile faded, and he began to look uncomfortable.

My eyes were on the door. "Ok," I said distractedly.

"Do you even want it?" Anger flared in his tone.

"Yeah, thanks," I hurried, taking the scrap from him and pushing past to get out into the classroom. Whether he gave me any sort of look afterward, I didn't know; I did my best not to speak to or look at anyone for the rest of the day, with the exception of Jay, who got to hear all about my morning.

I didn't have my decoder on me, though, so I didn't get the chance to figure out the school's graffiti until I got home. By the time I did, I was practically dying with curiosity, even though the first decoding had been a complete let down.

On my bed, I hurriedly worked through the message, but it didn't take me long at all. Three letters. It was three letters: C-A-R. Car.

Car.

Just as dumb and meaningless as the first had been. Probably the whole defunct farm heard my sighs of disappointment. I'd thought I was onto something, here. I'd thought maybe I could solve some sort of mystery, figure out who'd been writing that stuff, but from what the symbols said, it seemed more like the culprit was some giant toddler learning new words than anyone sneakily divulging some awesome secret.

Who the heck would've written such meaningless words in such open places? What was the point? Why would some person risk a hefty fine and notoriety for such stupidity? It just didn't make any sense. Most likely it was some teenager out there, thinking he'd never get caught; could it be possible that whoever had scribbled that stuff hadn't even realized he was writing in this same code? Could it have been a really weird coincidence that his markings happened to be letters in some kids' secret language?

The more I thought about it, the less I could figure it out. Between Grandpa, and this graffiti, and the monster, and the prowler, the months I'd spent here had contained more mystery than any other part of my life, but not a single bit of it made sense, but if I was honest with myself, senselessness had been the start of this all, with the reason for our move.

There was, of course, one more thing I could do, if I really wanted to keep pursuing the graffiti thing, but I was conflicted about doing it: I could look at what Alex said was written on the rock. I couldn't figure out whether I wanted Alex's help or not, but there was definitely no way I could or even wanted to find that rock on my own, so I'd have to either get him to show me the way or not go look at it at all. He'd be willing to help—I was sure of that. He'd been the one to tell me about it in the first place, and he'd helped me with finding the code and with reading the school's markings, so I was pretty certain he'd help. I just couldn't figure out if I wanted that.

And then, of course, there was the idea of going back into the woods.

I hadn't had any strange, monster-related occurrences since that night. At this point, I couldn't tell whether what I'd sensed was even real. Jay certainly thought it was real enough, and I had found that stuff about the Hidebehind on my visit to the library. It had all seemed to make perfect sense, then . . . but now, it was different. Could I really bring myself to go back into those woods and risk the monster? Then again . . . maybe that was exactly what I needed to do, in order to figure out whether I'd made it all up, after all.

I knew, then, what I had to do. I had to tell Alex about the monster. Tell him everything.