What Are You Hiding, Tory? (9781771275347) Read online

  Nicolle and Lily were dressed in matching cheerleader outfits, which were a little bit too big for them. I guessed they had borrowed them from Nicolle’s sisters, who are cheerleaders at my sister’s high school. Kelly was busy showing everyone to the basement when the doorbell rang again. This time it was Diana. She didn’t say “trick-or-treat,” she just stood there looking kind of nervous.

  “Hi,” I said, “Come on in.”

  Diana followed me into Kelly’s house.

  “Everyone is in the basement,” I told her. Diana had on a basketball player’s outfit. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she was carrying a basketball. I thought it was a pretty appropriate costume considering how tall Diana is. I wondered if she actually had played basketball at her old school. Down in the basement everyone was talking about their costumes and about how cool our decorations were.

  “I like what you did with the chairs,” Nicolle said to me.

  “I really like your costumes,” Zoe said.

  “Yeah, where did you get all that stuff?” Lily asked.

  Kelly and I were dressed in clothes from the 1980s. “They used to belong to our moms,” Kelly told them. We had on stirrup pants and really long, button down shirts with huge shoulder pads, two pairs of socks that matched the shirts and lace-up booties. Our moms were in high school in the ’80s. For some reason they had saved some of their clothes, which I thought were sort of cool but mostly not very stylish. Originally, the clothes had been too big for us, especially me, so our moms had done some cutting and sewing to make them fit. We looked like we had just stepped out of an old sitcom rerun. I pulled my hair into a high-up, side pony tail and clipped it with a big bow. Kelly wrapped a hot pink, lace scarf in her hair like a headband and tied a floppy bow with it, sort of like mine.

  “Are Isabella and Sara coming to the party?” Zoe asked. I looked at the clock on the basement wall. It was four twenty. If they were coming, they were late.

  “Isabella called the other day,” Kelly said, “She said she and Sara would be here.”

  “Oh,” Zoe said. She didn’t look very happy. I got the feeling she had the same thoughts I had about Kelly inviting them. The doorbell rang and interrupted our discussion. We all ran upstairs, but it was trick-or-treaters, not Isabella and Sara.

  “Maybe they aren’t coming,” Zoe said hopefully.

  “Maybe,” I said, just as hopefully.

  When the doorbell rang again at four-thirty, I assumed that it was more trick-or-treaters, so I was surprised when Kelly opened the door and found Isabella and Sara standing on the front porch.

  “Trick-or-treat,” they called. How original. What truly surprised me was that they were wearing costumes.

  “They’ve got costumes on,” Zoe whispered to me. “I thought they said that was for babies.”

  “That’s what they said,” I confirmed. Sara had on an elaborate witch costume, complete with a pointy black hat and a wart on her nose. Another appropriate costume I thought. Isabella’s costume was even better. She looked like a fairy princess.

  “What’s Isabella supposed to be?” Zoe asked me.

  “Hey, Isabella. Cool costume. What are you?” I asked.

  “I’m the Good Witch,” she said.

  “And I’m the Wicked Witch,” Sara said.

  “Oh, I get it,” Zoe said.

  We started to go back down to the basement, but the doorbell rang again. “We’re all here, so it must be trick-or-treaters. My mom will answer the door,” Kelly said, and we followed her back downstairs.

  “Kelly,” Mrs. Conrad called down the stairs, “you have another guest.” Another guest? Everyone we had invited was already there! Mrs. Conrad came downstairs followed by a girl I had never seen before. She was wearing a vampire costume.

  “Here’s the party. Come on down and join the girls,” Mrs. Conrad said to the vampire girl.

  She sat down on the sofa between Zoe and Shayna. Everyone was very quiet because we didn’t know who she was.

  “Kelly, would you like to introduce your friend?” Mrs. Conrad suggested. Kelly had a funny look on her face. She looked at the girl, and then she looked at her mom. “I don’t know her, Mom.”

  Kelly asked the newcomer, “Are you sure you’re at the right party?” The girl looked sort of embarrassed and nervous.

  “Um, I think so, I have the invitation right here.” She started pulling stuff out of her purse, which was super huge. After a minute, there was a big pile of junk from her purse on the sofa. From the bottom of her purse she pulled out an invitation. It was not the same as the invitations Kelly had passed out to the girls at school, so I knew right away the girl was at the wrong party. How embarrassing!

  “Isn’t this Melissa Jacobson’s Halloween party?” she asked. She read the address off the invitation, and it was not Kelly’s address.

  “No, it’s Kelly Conrad’s Halloween party,” Nicolle said.

  “Oh, gosh!” the girl said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She started putting all the junk back into her purse.

  There was a lot of junk. My mom keeps some weird things in her purse, but this girl had a golf ball and a bottle opener and a single sock in hers!

  “I’m so embarrassed.” The girl continued, “I’ve never gone to the wrong party before. I’m really sorry.” She kept saying that. When she had everything back into her purse, she stood up and said she was sorry again. “Have a good party.” She followed Mrs. Conrad back upstairs to the front door.

  For a moment none of us said anything, and then Zoe started giggling and after a minute we were all laughing really loud. I coughed a little bit, but nobody seemed to notice.

  “Who was that girl?” I asked Kelly.

  “I have no idea!” Kelly laughed. We were still laughing when Mrs. Conrad came back downstairs a few minutes later. She was carrying a stack of paper and a bunch of pencils.

  “Would you like to pass these out?” she asked Kelly, handing her the supplies.

  “Sure. What for?” Kelly asked her mom.

  “For a game.”

  “What kind of game?” I asked. I was getting eager to start trick-or-treating. My sweet tooth was craving chocolate!

  “Well,” said Mrs. Conrad, “whoever can list all the things that Natasha took out of her purse wins a prize.” Mrs. Conrad had a big smile on her face.

  We still didn’t get it. Zoe asked, “Who was that girl?”

  “Her name is Natasha Kovic. She’s the daughter of one of the women I work with,” Mrs. Conrad explained.

  “This was all a set up?” Kelly cried.

  “Yep,” Mrs. Conrad said, still smiling.

  “Oh, I get it.” Zoe burst into more giggles. That got the rest of us laughing again. I tried not to cough this time.

  “So,” Mrs. Conrad said, “Natasha took thirteen things out of her purse. I have a great prize for whoever can name all thirteen things.”

  I took a piece of paper and a pencil from Kelly. I wrote my name at the top of the paper, and then I numbered the paper one through thirteen. I started writing down the things I could remember.

  1. Golf ball

  2. Bottle opener

  3. Pen

  4. TV remote control

  5. Purple candle

  6. Mittens

  7. Keys

  8. Sock

  9. Hairbrush

  10. Empty Salt Shaker

  I was trying to remember three more things when Isabella asked, “Does the invitation count as one of the things?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Mrs. Conrad said.

  “Bummer,” Isabella mumbled. She started chewing on her pencil and staring at the ceiling. The room was very quiet as we all tried to remember the thirteen things that Natasha had taken out of her purse. No one said anything, and no one even tried to share answers. I didn’t have any idea what the prize would be, but whatever it was I knew I wanted to win it! I wrote, “11. Giant candy bar,” on my piece of paper. What else was in that purse? I remembered “12. Pencil
sharpener,” when Sara shouted “Thirteen!”

  “Okay, read your list, Sara,” Mrs. Conrad said.

  Sara read her list, which had all the things on my list plus she remembered one more thing: 13. Can of pop. Like I said, Natasha’s purse was huge.

  “Congratulations, Sara. You’re our winner.” Mrs. Conrad said, and she gave Sara a prize.

  “Thanks,” Sara said. The prize was a pretty neat headband with red and blue polka dots on it. I thought about how perfect that headband would have looked on me.

  “Well, we’re really all here now. Is everyone ready to go trick-or-treating?” Kelly let her mom know we were heading out, and then we hit the streets.

  We saw some other kids from our school when we were out. Liza was trick-or-treating with three other kids from the kindergarten and their parents. They all looked so cute in the same costumes they had worn at school the day before. Liza’s was a colorful clown costume that she said her grandmother had made for her. She even had these funny shoes that came to a point at the toe.

  We collected so much candy I was sure we would be eating it until next Halloween!

  It was after eight when we returned. Kelly’s mom served us dinner at the table in the basement. None of us were very hungry. We had eaten a lot of candy as we walked around the neighborhood. We all tried to eat dinner though. We could see Mrs. Conrad had gone to a lot of trouble. There was a dish of tiny hotdogs Mrs. Conrad said were fingers and a jelly mold in the shape of a brain. She said the spaghetti was worms and the bowl of olives were eyeballs. It was a pretty creative meal. Every time Mrs. Conrad served a dish and told us what it was supposed to be, Lily and Nicolle would squeal, “eeeewww,” and “I’m not eating that!” The rest of us would burst out laughing. Even Isabella and Sara had fun. Maybe Kelly had actually been right about inviting them.

  After dinner, Kelly got out her Ouija board and told us we were going to have a séance. Diana turned white as a ghost.

  “I’ll just watch,” she said.

  “You’re not scared, are you?” Sara asked.

  “It’s only a game,” Shayna said.

  “No, it’s not. It’s real. I did this at a party once. We called back this girl’s dead brother, and he came!” Diana said.

  “No way,” said Isabella.

  “Yes, it’s totally true,” said Diana.

  “Well, what happened?” I asked.

  “Well....” Diana said slowly. I was holding my breath, and I noticed that Kelly and Zoe were, too. “When we turned the lights on, the girl whose brother we called....” Diana paused.

  “What? What!” Zoe shrieked, grabbing my hand. She was actually scared.

  “She was gone!” Diana cried.

  “Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh,” we all screamed at the same time. All of us, that is, except Diana, who was laughing so hard.

  “Gotcha!” she said.

  “Good one!” Kelly said.

  There’s hope for the shy girl yet.

  “Zoe, you can let go of my hand,” I said, shaking Zoe’s hand free of my own. That made everyone laugh again. We were about to get started on the Ouija board when Mrs. Conrad called me from the top of the basement stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Shayna asked, as I got up.

  “She and my mom are going to make popcorn balls,” Kelly said. She did sound like she was telling the truth.

  “Can we help?” Shayna asked.

  Uh oh, now what?

  Kelly was quick to answer, “No. My mom is a neat freak. She would go nuts if we messed up her kitchen. The only reason Tory gets to help is because it’s her recipe.” Shayna looked disappointed, but I was relieved.

  I ran up the stairs. “I’ll be back soon!” I called. I went up to Kelly’s room with Mrs. Conrad. To save time we had set up my nebulizer earlier, and Mrs. Conrad put my first medicine in the neb cup before she called me to come up.

  We were finished half an hour later, and I followed Mrs. Conrad back down to the kitchen. She slid a tray of popcorn balls from the top of the refrigerator. I thanked her for doing my therapy and took the tray. I went back to the party in the basement.

  “Popcorn balls! Come and get ‘em!” I called from halfway down the steps. No one said anything, and Kelly had an odd look on her face.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. I expected another Halloween prank like Diana’s or something. I was not prepared for what happened next.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What’s going on?” I said again.

  Kelly just said, “Isabella saw you.”

  While I was upstairs with Mrs. Conrad doing my therapy, Isabella had to go to the bathroom. Shayna was using the one in the basement, so Kelly told her to use the one on the first floor. When she got upstairs, she heard a weird noise. She thought there were ghosts in the house, so she followed the sound up to the second floor. It was coming from Kelly’s room. When she tiptoed to the doorway, she found the source of the noise. She heard the nebulizer machine and saw Mrs. Conrad pounding on my back. Neither Mrs. Conrad nor I saw Isabella because we were both sitting on Kelly’s bed with our backs to the door. But Isabella saw it all, and she saw the smoky mist from the nebulizer trailing up from in front of my face. Without saying a word she snuck away and ran back downstairs. She told Kelly, Zoe, Shayna, Lily, Nicolle, Diana, and Sara what she had seen. Kelly tried to protect me by saying something about a Halloween trick, but Isabella didn’t believe her. That’s when I returned with the tray of popcorn balls.

  “Saw me what?” I asked. I was so trying to play it cool. Maybe all she had seen was me getting the already-made popcorn balls.

  “You know. Upstairs with my mom.”

  “No.” I could feel tears starting to gather in my eyes. But I didn’t care. My secret was out! Now everyone would know! I wanted to run back upstairs and never come back down.

  “Tory, maybe you should tell them,” Kelly said quietly.

  Zoe said, “Isabella said Mrs. Conrad was beating you and smoke was coming out of your face!”

  It sounded completely ridiculous the way she described it and I would have laughed if I weren’t so upset.

  “What was she doing to you, Tory?” Shayna asked me.

  “Um,” I started, “well...” I cleared my throat. I had no choice. I had to tell them the truth. “If I tell you, will you all promise not to tell anyone else?”

  There were a lot of “okays” and “of courses” and heads bobbing up and down. Kelly still looked horrible, and Zoe looked scared again.

  “Is it something seriously bad?” Zoe asked.

  I brushed the tears from my face.

  “No. Well, sort of.” I took a deep breath to begin, but that made me cough. Not too hard though, and in a minute I was ready. “It’s just, well, I have this thing, this lung thing...this”—I hate this word— “...lung disease.”

  “Is it contagious?” Lily asked, and I saw her scoot away from me just a little bit.

  “No!” Kelly came to my rescue.

  “No, it’s not contagious. Kelly and I have been best friends since we were three years old, and she doesn’t have it. It’s definitely not contagious.”

  “What’s the disease called?” Nicolle asked, quietly.

  “Cystic fibrosis,” I said, “but we just call it ‘CF,’ for short.”

  “Someone at my old school had that,” said Diana. It was the first thing she said since I started talking. “But he....” and then she stopped before she could say anything else.

  “But he what?” Kelly asked.

  “Nothing,” Diana said. I was pretty sure I knew what Diana had been about to say. The boy she knew had probably died. I didn’t think everyone needed to know that, so I just smiled a little at Diana so she would know I was grateful that she had stopped talking when she did.

  “How did you get it?” Zoe asked, in a very small, scared voice.

  “It’s genetic.”

  “What does ‘genetic’ mean?” Zoe asked.

  I thought about that for
a minute. I have always been told CF is genetic, but I never actually asked anyone for a definition of that word, “genetic.” I had an idea about why I have CF though. “I was born with it. Genetic means that I got it from my mom and dad. They both have the recessive gene that causes it, and when those genes mixed together, I got CF.”

  “But, Tory, how come Jenny and Alec don’t have CF then?” Kelly asked. The expression on her face told me that she had never thought of this before.

  “Well, I guess all the kids don’t necessarily get it.” I suddenly realized I knew more about why I have CF than I thought. “Some of the kids whose parents have the gene just get one gene and then they just carry it along like their parents do, or they don’t get any CF gene at all. Jenny and Alec were just lucky, that’s all. If my parents had never had me, they wouldn’t even know they were carrying the gene.”

  “Do Jenny and Alec carry the CF gene then?” Kelly asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t even know,” I said. I was sure this was something they could be tested for but I don’t know why it would matter, unless they married someone who was a carrier and they wanted to have kids. But they wouldn’t need to know until then. For now it was enough just to know that they didn’t have CF.

  All the girls were very quiet for a few minutes while they thought about the things I had just told them. I was starting to feel nervous from the silence when Isabella finally asked, “Okay, but, so, what was Mrs. Conrad doing to you up there? And what does it have to do with your sickness?”

  “Oh! Well, she was giving me therapy. To clear out my lungs so I can breathe better,” I said.

  Zoe asked something then, “Is that why you cough a lot? Because your lungs are bad?”

  I nodded. “There’s extra mucus in my lungs and it’s sticky, so it clogs them and makes it hard to breathe if I don’t cough it out.”