"Fifteen minutes?" she asked uncertainly.

"Not a minute more," I promised.

"Okay," she agreed.

We sat in silence again and watched our friend. I thought about Madam Octa and how I was going to explain this to Mom. To the doctors. To the police! Would they believe me when I told them Mr. Crepsley was a vampire? I doubted it. They'd think I was lying. They might throw me in jail. They might say, since the spider was mine, I was to blame. They might charge me with murder and lock me away!

I checked my watch. Three minutes to go. No change in Steve.

"Annie, I need to ask a favor," I said.

She looked at me suspiciously. "What?"

"I don't want you to mention Madam Octa," I said.

"Are you crazy?" she shouted. "How else are you going to explain what happened?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I'll tell them I was out of the room. The bite marks are tiny. They look like small bee stings and are going down all the time. The doctors might not even notice them."

"We can't do that," Annie said. "They might need to examine the spider. They might…"

"Annie, if Steve dies, I'll be blamed," I said softly. "There are parts to this I can't tell you, that I can't tell anybody. All I can say is, if the worst happens, I'll be left holding the bag. Do you know what they do to murderers?"

"You're too young to be tried for murder," she said, but sounded uncertain.

"No, I'm not," I told her. "I'm too young to go to a real prison but they have special places for children. They'd hold me in one of those until I turned eighteen and then…Please, Annie." I started to cry. "I don't want to go to jail."

She started crying, too. We held on to each other and sobbed like a couple of babies. "I don't want them to take you away," she wept. "I don't want to lose you."

"Then do you promise not to tell?" I asked. "Will you go back to your bedroom and pretend you saw and heard none of this?"

She nodded sadly. "But not if I think the truth can save him," she added. "If the doctors say they can't save him unless they find what bit him, I'm telling. Okay?"

"Okay," I agreed.

She got to her feet and headed for the door. She stopped in the middle of the room, turned, came back, and kissed me on the forehead. "I love you, Darren," she said, "but you were a fool to bring that spider into this house, and if Steve dies, I think you are the one who should be blamed."

Then she ran from the room, sobbing.

I waited a few minutes, holding Steve's hand, begging him to recover, to show some sign of life. When my prayers weren't answered, I got to my feet, opened the window (to explain how the mystery attacker got in), took a deep breath, and then ran downstairs, screaming for my mother.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE AMBULANCE ATTENDANTS ASKED MY mother if Steve was diabetic or epileptic. She wasn't sure but didn't think so. They also asked about allergies and everything, but she explained that she wasn't his mother and didn't know.

I thought they'd take us with them in the ambulance, but they said there wasn't room. They got Steve's phone number and the name of his mom, but she wasn't home. One of the attendants asked my mother if she'd follow them to the hospital, to fill out as many of the forms as she could, so they could make a start. She agreed and bundled me and Annie into the car. Dad still wasn't home, so she called him on his cell phone to explain where we'd be. He said he'd come right over.

That was a miserable ride. I sat in the back, trying not to meet Annie's eye, knowing I should tell the truth, but too afraid to. What made it even worse was, I knew if I was the one lying in a coma, Steve would own up immediately.

"What happened in there?" Mom asked over her shoulder. She was driving as fast as she could without breaking the speed limit, so she wasn't able to look back at me. I was glad: I don't think I could have lied straight to her face.

"I'm not sure," I said. "We were chatting. Then I had to go to the bathroom. When I got back…"

"You didn't see anything?" she asked.

"No," I lied, feeling my ears reddening with shame.

"I can't understand it," she muttered. "He felt so stiff and his skin was turning blue. I thought he was dead."

"I think he was bitten," Annie said. I almost gave her a dig in the ribs, but at the last second remembered I was depending on her to keep my secret.

"Bitten?" Mom asked.

"There were a couple of marks on his neck," Annie said.

"I saw them," Mom said. "But I don't think that's it, dear."

"Why not?" Annie asked. "If a snake or a… spider got in and bit him…" She glanced over at me and blushed a little, recalling her promise.

"A spider?" Mom shook her head. "No, dear, spiders don't go around biting people and sending them into shock, not around here."

"So what was it?" Annie asked.

"I'm not sure," Mom replied. "Maybe he ate something that didn't agree with him, or had a heart attack."

"Children don't have heart attacks," Annie retorted.

"They do," Mom said. "It's rare, but it can happen. Still, the doctors will sort all that out. They know more about these things than we do."

I wasn't used to hospitals, so I spent some time looking around while Mom was filling out the forms. It was the whitest place I'd ever seen: white walls, white floors, white uniforms. It wasn't very busy but there was a buzz to the place, a sound of bed springs and coughing, machines humming, doctors speaking softly.

We didn't say much while sitting there. Mom said Steve had been admitted and was being examined but it might be a while before they discovered what was wrong. "They sounded optimistic," she said.

Annie was thirsty, so Mom sent me with her to get drinks from the machine around the corner. Annie glanced around while I was putting in the coins, to make sure nobody could overhear.

"How long are you going to wait?" she asked.

"Until I hear what they have to say," I told her. "We'll let them examine him. Hopefully they'll know what sort of poison it is and be able to cure him by themselves."

"And if they can't?" she asked.

"Then I tell them," I promised.

"What if he dies before that?" she asked softly.

"He won't," I said.

"But what if…"

"He won't!" I snapped. "Don't talk like that. Don't even think like that. We have to hope for the best. We must believe he will pull through. Mom and Dad have always told us good thoughts help make sick people better, haven't they? He needs us to believe in him."

"He needs the truth more," she grumbled, but let the matter drop. We took the drinks back to the couch and drank in silence.

Dad arrived not long after, still in his work clothes. He kissed Mom and Annie and squeezed my shoulder. His dirty hands left grease marks on my T-shirt, but that didn't bother me.

"Any news?" he asked.

"None yet," Mom said. "They're examining him. It could be hours before we hear anything."

"What happened to him, Angela?" Dad asked.

"We don't know yet," Mom said. "We'll have to wait and see."

"I hate waiting," Dad grumbled, but since he had no other choice, he had to, the same as the rest of us.

Nothing else happened for a couple of hours, until Steve's mom arrived. Her face was white like Steve's, and her lips were pinched together. She made straight for me, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. "What have you done to him?" she screeched. "Have you hurt my boy? Have you killed my Steve?"

"Hey! Stop that!" Dad gasped.

Steve's mom ignored him. "What have you done?" she screamed again, and shook me even harder. I tried to say «Nothing» but my teeth were clattering. "What have you done? What have you done?" she repeated, then suddenly stopped shaking me, let go, and collapsed to the floor, where she bawled like a baby.