OCR Text |
Show 114. "Give us a shove, JD!" Stephanie urged from inside the tube. Then Chic and JD gave them a heave that tipped them over the crest and started them spinning and tilting wildly down the long hill. Carol Sue fell off halfway, but Stephanie clung to the tube for dear life, screaming and laughing all the way to the bottom. "It's a blast!" she yelled back, getting dizzily to her feet. "C'mon down!" Then everybody was on the hill, bumping and screaming and fighting to make it all the way without falling off. Stephanie had waited for Carol Sue and started back up for another trip, but JD made Carol go down with him. Then Chic got Stephanie on one of the two saucers he'd appropriated and they took off again. It was wild and crazy. Stephanie couldn't remember when she'd had so much fun. When Fred Tomlin got there about eleven with the snowmobile, they took turns riding on the other side of the fence row, out in the field for a mile or two in the moonlight. It was eerie. The air was still and the night had a ghostly glow about it. Hanging onto Fred, feeling her stomach rise and fall with the terrain, Stephanie couldn't think of a better setting for a UFO visit. Not that she expected to see anything. It was a shared joke, the UFO watch. Even Chic would die a thousand deaths if a bright light appeared in the sky. But she couldn't help wishing, even in the face of her better judgment, that they'd see one. It had been lonely, and for JD, devastating, to be the only witnesses to a UFO landing. When they'd first arrived, Stephanie thought some of JD's old enthusiasm was returning. Then, after a few rides down the hill and a snowball fight, he seemed to draw into himself again. Stephanie had hoped the party would be a distraction for JD and she suspected Chic had planned it-crazy events and all - t o help her brother pull himself out of the depression. Several times she'd caught JD just standing, a strange posture for him, or studying the sky with his back to the rest of them. Finally, he'd simply walked away from the tubing hill. Stephanie wasn't even sure where he'd gone. Chic noticed, too. When Stephanie stopped to warm herself at the fire, Chic left the others and came over to where she was. |