Page 101 of The Chain

“Come on, now, go outside like your little brother,” she says.

The twins don’t move.

Cheryl wants the house to herself so she can take a couple of diazepam and have a vodka tonic.

“Don’t want to go outside,” Oliver says.

“Do you want to go to Disneyland or not?” she asks.

“Yes,” Oliver says.

“Then get the hell outside now and play like normal kids!” she says.

Their first day playing on the new street does not go well.

A little girl from across the road, the alpha girl, Jennifer Grant, bullies Margaret and makes her cry. She calls Margaret ugly and laughs at her because she doesn’t know any of the skipping rhymes.

Oliver knows that he can’t hit a girl, but he hits her anyway. Jennifer runs inside, and her older brother comes out of the house. He grabs Oliver by the throat and lifts him off the ground, shaking him and choking him at the same time. Oliver can’t breathe, can’t cry out. The older boy throws him to the asphalt, and Jennifer comes out of the house and crosses her arms and laughs, and so do some of the other kids. Even little Anthony, but you can’t blame him for siding with the majority.

It’s the kind of scene you’d see in an after-school special. It doesn’t feel real. But it is real. And it’s only a moment. Bored, the kids drift off to other diversions.

The twins slip back inside the house, hide in the garage, and wait for their father to get home.

He gets home late. He works in the FBI field office on Wilshire Boulevard, which is a hell of a commute.

At dinner that night, the twins don’t mention the incident, and Anthony has actually forgotten about it. Tom is full of chat. He talks about his new job and new opportunities. Cheryl reminds him that he wanted to tell the kids something. Tom grins and asks the kids if they want to go to Disneyland this very Saturday. They all say yes.

When Saturday comes, however, Tom has to work, but he tells them they’ll do it the following weekend.

“I bet we never end up going,” Margaret says prophetically to Oliver that night in their bedroom.

“I bet we don’t,” Oliver agrees.

“Does your neck still hurt?” Margaret asks.

“No,” Oliver says, but she can tell that he’s lying.

Margaret sits in bed reading one of the Baby-Sitters Club books. It’s the one where Mary Anne gets one of those chain letters, and it really upsets her. Her friends tell her to rip up the chain letter and nothing bad will happen.

Mary Anne rips up the letter. Nothing bad happens. That’s the problem with chain letters.

An idea occurs to Margaret.

The bad thing has to happen first.

The following Tuesday, Jennifer Grant’s rabbit escapes from its hutch and runs away.

The next day at school, Jennifer finds a note in her lunch box:Spill grape juice on yourself at lunchtime or your rabbit will die.

In the cafeteria, in front of everyone, Jennifer spills grape juice on herself.

The notes continue.

The demands escalate.

Jennifer stands up and says “Shit” in class. She asks to go to the bathroom five times in one lesson.

The most disturbing one orders Jennifer to go outside naked at six in the morning and stand in front of her house for ten seconds. If she does that, her rabbit will be returned.