Read Wait Till Helen Comes for Free Online

you doing, Heather? Who are you talking to?"
    She leaped to her feet, her face pale and angry. "Molly!" she screamed, "Go away! Go away!"
    "Not until you tell me what you're doing!" I shivered as the breeze gusted through the honeysuckle, filling the air with sweetness. Something hung in the space between us. For a moment, I felt it watching me. Then it was gone, and all around me the insects struck up a chorus of cheerful summer sounds.
    "I don't have to tell you anything." Heather's narrow face was almost expressionless, masklike, as if it hid secrets, terrible secrets.
    "You were talking to someone. I heard you. You called her Helen."
    Without looking at me, Heather took a flower from the jar. Pulling a petal off, she dropped it and watched it flutter down to the grave. "You didn't see anybody. Or even hear anybody, did you?" She glanced at me, her tangled hair almost hiding her eyes.
    "There was something," I insisted. "I know there was."
    Heather shook her head and continued pulling the petals off, one by one. She watched them as they drifted with the breeze down to the earth. "Don't spy on me anymore, Molly," she said softly. "I don't like to be spied on."
    "You better come out from under that tree," I yelled. "You heard what Mr. Simmons said about snakes and poison ivy."
    "I'll stay here as long as I want." Heather finished stripping the flower of its petals and bent to pick up another one. "If you want me, you'll have to come here and get me," she said.
    A ray of sunlight lanced down through the oak's leaves and touched the jar of flowers, and from somewhere in the branches overhead a crow cawed. Folding my arms tightly across my chest, I backed away from the graveyard. "Get bitten by a snake," I said as I began walking back toward the church. "See if I care!"
    The only answer was the rustling of leaves and a faint sound of laughter. Without looking back, I quickened my pace, anxious to get away from Heather and whatever else might be lingering under that tree.
     
     
    Although I tried to tell Mom that I thought that the graveyard was haunted, she was too busy fixing dinner to listen to me. "Honestly, Molly," she said, "Reading all that poetry is making you morbid. Now get busy and put ice in the glasses so I can pour the tea."
    "But, Mom, if you'd been there —" I started to say, but she looked so exasperated, I stopped in mid-sentence. What was the use?
    After dinner, I found Michael out on the front porch watching the stars come out. "See that one, right there?" He pointed at a bright star hanging just above the mountains across the valley. "That's a planet. Venus. You can see it in the morning, too."
    I nodded and sat down beside him, trying to think of a good way to introduce the subject of ghosts. "Do you believe in things you can't prove?" I asked him.
    He looked at me as if he were a little puzzled. "Like what?"
    "Oh, I don't know. Ghosts and stuff like that." I hugged my knees against my chest and turned my back to the graveyard.
    Michael laughed. "What's the matter? Are you still scared you'll see something looking in your window at night?"
    "Don't laugh, Michael." I glared at him. "I'm not just kidding around." Glancing over my shoulder to make sure Heather wasn't standing behind us eavesdropping, I told him about her strange behavior in the graveyard.
    "So?" Michael swatted a mosquito on his arm. "You know how she is, always living in some weird little world of her own. She probably has an imaginary friend, and you embarrassed her."
    "You didn't see her, Michael. It wasn't just her imagination. There was something there; I could sense it." I took a deep breath. "It scared me, Michael."
    "Oh, Molly," Michael laughed, "next you'll be telling me you actually saw a ghost."
    "I told you not to laugh!" I yelled. "It's not funny!"
    "No, it's not funny. It's not funny at all."
    Michael and I spun around. Heather was standing just inside the screen door, her face pressing against it. "There's nothing funny about