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cheeks puffed out and I could see his double chin.
    â€œYou promised,” I said again, only this time I started off down the sidewalk and didn’t even hear the horn honking behind me as Aunt Celia drove up. I stopped in my tracks and turned to see Dobkin standing there, torn between running after me and jumping into the van. So I wheeled around and climbed inside, and he climbed into the front next to Aunt Celia, and neither of us spoke to each other all the way home. I know Aunt Celia noticed, but she was too tactful to say anything. Instead she just directed questions at each of us about how our days had gone, and didn’t try to make us chitchat. Once we reached the house, I headed straight for my room while Dobkin hung around in the garage, pretending he’d lost something under one of the car seats.
    I closed my door and locked it and threw myself down on the bed. And then I shut my eyes and tried to blank out Dobkin’s accusation, but it kept echoing over and over in my head till I thought I’d scream.
    â€œ You remember … you smelled it once before.… ”
    â€œIt’s a coincidence,” I muttered fiercely to myself. “It’s a coincidence, that’s all it is. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything. The stupid door on the stupid locker was just stuck, and I shouldn’t have gone to school on an empty stomach—”
    Tears filled my eyes, and I buried my face in my pillow, trying not to remember but not being able to help it. That night two years ago … lying across my bed and trying to study for a test … that sick feeling in my stomach, making me weak, making me nauseated … and that awful stench—every nerve, every sense, every heartbeat screaming, on fire, twisting with pain and premonition …
    â€œDobkin,” I whispered.
    I’d gone into Dobkin’s room that night. Sick and terrified, I’d gone straight into Dobkin’s room, and I’d held him, and then the doorbell had rung.
    I could still remember the sound of that doorbell. Shrieking and shrieking through our house that would never be the same again.
    â€œ I’m afraid there’s been an accident.… ”
    And I’d held Dobkin all through the night and then later all through the funeral, wondering what would happen to us now that both our parents were dead.…
    â€œ You remember … you smelled it once before.… ”
    â€œOh, God.”
    The sound of my voice got through to me somehow. I raised my face from the bed and stared at my door, and then I got up and went across the room and opened it, knowing Dobkin would be standing there silently in the hall.
    He was.
    We looked at each other without saying a word, and he came in and perched on the foot of my bed while I locked the door behind him.
    â€œDoes Aunt Celia know?” I murmured at last.
    â€œShe knows you’re upset, but I didn’t tell her why,” Dobkin said. “Maybe she thinks it’s just nerves.”
    â€œMaybe that’s all it is.”
    He gave me his most Dobkinish look, and I withered beneath it.
    â€œOkay,” I gave in. “So what does it mean?”
    â€œThe girl.” He screwed up his face, deep in thought. “The one who disappeared. What do you know about her?”
    â€œJust her name. Suellen something.”
    â€œShe’d probably be easy to find out about. There must be newspaper articles.”
    â€œCome on.” I sighed, flopping down on my back beside him, folding my arms beneath my head. “You realize we’re getting into weird things here. You realize—”
    â€œThat is not what I’d call a normal locker,” Dobkin reminded me sternly. “Maybe you stirred up something that’s been wanting to get out.”
    â€œAnd somehow … I connected with it?” I mulled this over for several seconds. “A feeling of fear—no, that’s not right—