If your copy of The Fullington Road Monster has duplicate content for chapters 6 and 7, you can read the missing chapter below!
Chapter 7
AS EXCITED AS I was to see Sean, I couldn’t seem to tell Mother and Dad I had a date. But on Tuesday night, after dinner, I couldn’t put it off anymore. It was my dish night. I stood at the sink and watched out the window where Wilkie was playing in the yard. Dad was sitting in a lawn chair, watching him, a Coors beer can in his hand. Mother came down the stairs behind me.
I let the words come out in a rush. “Mother, I need to talk to you about something.” I turned to look at her.
“Yes, Daphne. What is it?” She had an armful of laundry and was headed toward the washing machine in the corner.
“Can we sit at the table? And talk?”
“I suppose,” she said, dumping the laundry on the top of the washing machine. She sat across from me, her eyes wide and inquisitive. “What’s up?”
“I have a date Thursday night. I needed to tell you that.” “Okay, well, that’s fine. You know the rules.”
There was tension in the air between us.
“His name is Sean. He’s Jason Thomas’s cousin, from Fort Wayne. He’s staying here for the summer working for Mr. Thomas.” “Yes, and?”
“He’s older—I mean—he’s not in high school anymore. He’s 19.” I stopped and held my breath.
“Hm. That’s quite a bit older than you, Daphne. Where’d you meet?” Mother was calm and composed. Always.
“We met at Sheila’s cookout. He was there with Jason.” I couldn’t tell Mother we had met at Jason’s kegger. Geez.
“I see. And Marti has met him?”
I panicked. My lie was getting deep. “Not exactly. Um, Marti was too busy to meet him.” That made sense. Mother had been to parties thrown by Marti before. Like Sheila, Marti had a flair for the dramatic, and parties were her time to shine. “But Mother, you’ll like him. He’s in school—well he was... and we have so much in common. I mean we hit it off right away!”
“I guess, Daphne, I’m okay with you going on a date with this… man. I cannot, however, say I think your dad will feel the same.” “I know! That’s why I wanted to talk to you first! Mother, please talk him into it for me! Please! I need the chance to get to know him better. You’ve been telling me I should get out more often.” Mother was the rational parent in the house, and if I could win her over, then she would help me, even if it meant we didn’t tell Dad the truth. I remembered when I wanted to go to Sheila’s birthday party in the sixth grade. It was my first ever boy/girl party. Mother and I plotted against Dad for me to go. It was hard for her to do, but she knew it was the only option for any of us to live normal lives.
She covered her eyes with her hands, rubbing them gently. She was tired, I could tell. “I’ll see what I can do. But you know, it could go either way with your dad. I’ll talk to him in the morning before he has had time to… What time will your date be here?”
“6:30. Sean, Mother. He’s picking me up.”
“Okay. We’ll see.”
All week, I had put my hope on those words. I had spent my time at school at the library because my A+ in every class exempted me from exams. In the library, the books on the shelves called to me, deep and soothing. I could always escape in a book; the stories made the world disappear and everything was okay. Now I had hope and it made me feel the same way, anticipating the same escape. Mother would make it all okay.
On Wednesday, I sat with the usual group at lunch—Char-o, Sheila, Jason, Andy, Jackie—the whole crew. Andy was stuffing an entire piece of pizza in his mouth because Jason dared him. The rest of the guys cheered him on. It was revolting.
Jackie leaned toward me and said, “My uncle Paul says that monster is the real thing.” Jackie was nice enough, but I knew she was a gossip. I didn’t trust her, but I knew her uncle was an old friend of my dad and Uncle Grave.
“Yeah,” I answered. “My dad and Grave have told us the stories.” I tried to act uninterested, but she continued.
“Uncle Paul said that he saw it down by Samuel’s Pond. It was the summer your Grandma Fullington died.” Jackie stopped and ate a bite of her iceberg lettuce.
Char-o leaned in. “What did he see?”
“The monster. The Fullington Road monster. It was by the pond on your farm. Uncle Paul was supposed to meet Grave and your dad there to go fishing. It was the middle of the day, too. He smelled it first, but then he saw it on the other side of the pond. He said it was kind of like looking at heat come up off the road on a hot day. All hazy-like.”
“What did he do?” Char-o asked.
“He said she couldn’t move. He felt frozen. And then it just disappeared. But when your uncle and dad got there, they could still smell it.” Jackie shrugged. “We saw something that night we were down by your farm. I’m not going back.”
I rolled my eyes. Good thing she wasn’t going back. It was private property, after all. I started to tell her that, but she interrupted. “Uncle Paul says it comes at certain times. He said that his own grandfather told him it was there the summer of the big drought in 1935. Everyone’s crops died. And then it was there the summer your grandma died. Sounds to me like it’s some kind of omen.”
Jackie’s statement caught me off guard. She had put more thought into the monster than I had. I needed to talk to Uncle Grave. I knew I could ask him questions about the monster. If it was an omen—
My thinking was cut off when I realized that Jason, Bryan, and Andy were laughing at me.
“What?” I said.
“I hear you and Sean have a date tomorrow,” Jason said. He had a glob of ketchup on his Dokken t-shirt and was still chewing fries while he talked.
“Yeah, so what,” I said, trying to downplay anything Jason brought up.
“Better watch out,” he said, swallowing his fries. “He got thrown out of college. My aunt sent him here to get him away from the crowd he’s been running with. You need to know that.”
The mood at the table was subdued after Jason’s reveal. “So they sent him here to hang out with you?” Sheila asked. “His mom should have just put him on tour with Motley Crue. Would’ve been safer.” Everyone laughed and Jackie pinched Jason’s cheek. Thank God for Sheila. She was always good for a laugh. She knew when I needed some backup.
I knew perfectly well Jason was mad because I would never go out with him. I wasn’t going to let Jason’s jealousy of his cousin ruin my excitement about our date. I had checked Char-o’s reaction to the scene, looking at her from lowered lids. She was eating her sandwich, acting like the conversation wasn’t even happening. We hadn’t talked about Jason since Sunday. Even though I was a pro at making sure everyone was happy, I wasn’t sure how to fix this situation.
Fixing problems could wait, for now. I didn’t want to worry about anything. I had a date with Sean, and Mother had promised to talk with Dad. I had to trust that for once, someone else would make sure that everything would be all right. The clock was ticking, though.
