The weather was warm. The wind was growing stronger and there was no moon. As we walked Jem and I talked about ghosts. We were near the Radley lot. I was getting scared anyway when we someone suddenly leaped out at us. “God almighty!” Jem yelled.
Cecil Jacobs yelled, “Haa gotcha!” He was mighty proud of himself. And he told us so as we walked the rest of the way to the school.
The auditorium was filling up with people and backstage there were people with all sorts of costumes. I had some time before I had to be onstage so I curled my knees up and sank down in my costume to rest. Well, I fell asleep listening to boring Mrs. Meriweather’s long speech about Maycomb’s grand history. I woke up suddenly to her shrieking “POOORRRKK!” and toddled as fast as I could on stage. Apparently I was too late because she had already called me a few times. She was mad at me for ruining her play. Judge Taylor liked it though, and the audience cheered loudly for me.
I was so embarrassed that I didn’t want to leave right away so we waited for most people to leave, then we began walking home. It was even darker out. Jem was guiding me along since I still had my ham costume on. At one point he squeezed the top of my costume too hard.
“Ahhhh, Jem—“
“Hush up, Scout.”
“Whatcha doin’?”
“Thought I heard something,” he whispered. We stopped and listened.
“Ah, it’s probably ole Cecil again, trying to scare us.”
“It’s not that. I hear it when we’re walkin’ along.”
“Are you afraid?” I asked.
“No. Think we’re almost to the tree, be real quiet.” It was difficult to walk in my costume and we couldn’t see anything. I could hear someone shuffling, and someone’s pants rustling behind us. Jem was still holding onto me. We stopped again to listen and now someone was running towards us.
“Run Scout! Run!”