• We all agreed never to talk about Maggie Sumter. We even made a blood-oath. Well, Johnny Watkins used ketchup because he was too scared to cut his finger, but the rest of us – Tommy Mitchells, Shirley Hunt, and me – we used real blood. It hurt for a while and my daddy thrashed me something good because when he asked how I cut my hand I said I cut it playing in Old Joe’s yard, which I’m never ever ever to do, ever for as long as I live. But I don’t mind. I had to lie, because that’s what you do if someone asks you to squeal on a blood oath.

    I’m writing this on my big sister’s laptop that she forgot to take back with her to college. Shirley swears her aunt’s a witch, and that if I type this all up and seal it in an envelope with black wax, her aunt can burn it up and make the whole Maggie Sumter thing go away. I don’t think it’ll work, but Shirley says she’ll tell Miss Machrety everything if we don’t at least try, so here goes.

    None of us wanted to be friends with Maggie Sumter. She had glasses and braces and she smelled weird. But Maggie wanted to be friends with us, from the moment she walked into the classroom halfway through the third grade. Miss Machrety sat her at our table, and we were nice at first, but sometimes you gotta be mean or else the person you’re being nice to will just drive you crazy. So we started being mean to Maggie. We started by not playing with her during recess, but some people just don’t know when they’re not wanted. Maggie would hang around the tetherball court all recess while we played, and she never seemed to mind that she never got a turn, even when Johnny and Shirley were both sick and it was just me and Tommy and her.

    Soon she started following us home from school, too. Well, the first time she followed us to the park where we used to go after school, but it just wasn’t fun with her around, so after that we all just went home. She’d follow us home and usually either Tommy or Shirley’s mom would invite her in for cookies and juice, and Tommy or Shirley would frown and huff up to their rooms, their mom following after them, yelling that they have a guest and they’re being rude. My mom once made me have a sleepover with her because the poor thing must have been lonely, moving all the way from Brooklyn to way out here in Fort Langley, Wyoming. Maggie wanted to stay up all night watching movies and eating popcorn, but I told her I’d rather eat worms and she started crying and wanted to call her mommy but I told her that if she ever did anything to get me in trouble I’d cover her in raw hamburger and leave her in Suzy O’Connor’s backyard with her pitbull. Mostly, though, Maggie was just annoying. And we could handle annoying for the most part.

    Everything changed, though, that one Sunday in May. We were all in Miss Roger’s Sunday School class, all of us except Maggie who didn’t go to church, and she was telling us about how God smote King Solomon dead for consulting with witches, and that if we ever consulted with witches, we’d get smote dead, too. Then she sent us outside and we each used our offering money to buy donuts that we ate on the grass next to the schoolroom. While we were eating, Tommy said that wouldn’t it be cool if we tried to consult with a witch. Johnny almost started crying and said he didn’t want to get smote dead, and besides there weren’t any witches in Fort Langley. Shirley said she’d call up her aunt in Cleveland, but none of us could figure out how to get her parents to let her use the phone for that kind of long-distance. But then Tommy said that his big brother in high school knew someone who talked to dead people and maybe he could get him to tell us how to do it. We all scrambled up and ran to Tommy’s house to ask his brother.

    Tommy’s brother Richard thought it was a real hoot, us kids getting up to witchcraft, and he told us what to, and Shirley wrote it all down because she has the nicest handwriting of all of us. We took the instructions and a bowl of water and a box of matches and Johnny’s BB gun and headed to the woods behind Old Joe’s corn fields. But just as we were almost in the clear, Maggie came running up to us, asking what we were doing and if she could play. We told her we weren’t playing a game, that we were gonna do a spell to raise the dead and no she couldn’t do it with us. She said she could, that she wouldn’t get scared or anything, and just as I was about to make her go home Tommy said that it was okay. She could stay. We needed someone to shoot a squirrel for sacrifice anyway.

    Well, Maggie didn’t want to shoot no squirrel, and she started crying and saying she was gonna tell her daddy and he was gonna tell our daddies and we were all gonna get it. We told her she’d get in trouble too, because none of the kids are supposed to be out in the woods behind Old Joe’s corn fields, but she wouldn’t listen. She just kept screaming and crying and carrying on, and pretty soon we figured we had to shut her up or the whole town would know we were out here. I guess I was the one that started it, because I threw a rock at her, hoping she’d stop crying. Instead, she just got louder, and pretty soon we were all throwing rocks at her and telling her to shut up and go away, but she just wouldn’t stop. She was bloodied up real bad, too, and we all knew that she couldn’t go back home, not like that, because then her parents would tell our parents and we’d all get thrashed. So Tommy picked up the BB gun and pointed it at Maggie and shot her in the eye.

    It took a couple more shots – and a couple more rocks to the head – before Maggie finally went quiet. We all looked at each other for a real long time and didn’t say anything. Then Johnny said that it was getting dark and his mommy said he had to be home for supper, so we took Maggie to the old ravine in the middle of the woods and we piled her up with sticks and leaves and dirt until you couldn’t see her and we left her there. Before we all went home, Tommy said we had to sign a blood oath so we all knew not to squeal on what happened to Maggie. Shirley and Johnny went to the general store and got some paper and some sewing needles and ketchup for Johnny because he didn’t want to p***k his finger, and when they came back we all signed our names on the paper and swore never to tell anyone.

    We all played dumb that night when Maggie’s mom called our moms all crying and asking if we knew where Maggie was. We said we all went to the park and we didn’t see Maggie there and figured she was at home. We played dumb the next day at school, too, when Miss Machrety, and later Officer Dan Hartley, asked us if we knew what happened to Maggie. The next few weeks Maggie was all over the newspapers, and after a while they arrested old Mr. Jones who lived a block away from the Sumters and who none of the kids were allowed to take candy from. We all thought we were in the clear.

    But then about a month later, Johnny started getting nightmares and wetting the bed. He wouldn’t tell us what the nightmares were, but he stopped playing with us at recess and after school and then his mommy and daddy took him to a hospital for people who get nightmares and other weird stuff. Then Tommy started getting real mean and got into a lot of fights and we stopped playing with him, and pretty soon it was just Shirley and me. Now Shirley’s having weird dreams and waking up crying, and she called me today and said that if we didn’t try this thing with her aunt, we’d have to tell Miss Machrety what we did to Maggie. So I’m writing this all down and even though I don’t think it’ll work, I really hope it does, because Shirley’s my best friend and I don’t want her to end up like Maggie. Because we all swore not to tell anyone about Maggie on pain of death, and you just don’t squeal on a blood oath.