Greystone Secrets #1

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  She snatched up a pencil. Chess blinked, then felt amazed that he was capable of that much movement.

  “We said we’d wake up Finn as soon as we solved the code,” Chess told Emma. “As soon as we had an answer.”

  “Do we really have an answer yet?” Emma asked. “Do you understand this well enough to explain it to Finn?”

  No, Chess thought.

  He made no move toward his little brother. He just sat there watching Natalie scrawl letters onto paper. Emma unfroze a little, starting to point out to Natalie, “If that h translates into a t, that makes that word ‘this.’ And that word’s got to be ‘old’ . . .”

  Chess couldn’t have begun to translate any code right now. His brain still felt like an echo chamber: Alternate worlds. Mom says we’re from an alternate world. So Emma, Finn, Mom, and I don’t belong here at all?

  It was true that he’d always felt different from the other kids at school. But he’d always thought that was because he was the only kid he knew whose father was dead. The only kid he knew who’d had to comfort his crying mother when he was only four, and sad himself.

  The only kid he knew who’d had to become a father figure for his little brother and sister, when he was barely older than them himself.

  Chess glanced over at Finn, draped across Ms. Morales’s office couch and still soundly asleep. One arm dangled off the edge of the couch, and his mouth was open; that made it look like he was both reaching for and calling out to Chess.

  “I think we still have to wake Finn,” Chess said, finally answering Emma’s question out loud.

  He got up and stumbled toward the couch. He slid his arms under Finn’s neck and knees and lifted.

  “Finny?” he said softly, cradling his brother against his chest. “Finn? We’ve got good news. . . .”

  He didn’t actually know yet if it was good or not. It didn’t feel that way.

  “Mmm,” Finn murmured, which could have been the start of saying Mom . . . or just a protest at being disturbed.

  Chess carried Finn back to where Emma and Natalie were working. Finn snuggled his face against Chess’s neck, as if he thought this was just a new place to sleep. His legs dangled awkwardly. Chess was tall for his age and Finn was small for his, but it still wasn’t comfortable for a twelve-year-old to carry an eight-year-old.

  “Finn?” Chess said. “You need to wake up and—”

  “What? Did we mess up somewhere?” Natalie cried, stabbing her pencil against the paper. “None of this is making any sense now!”

  “That would be an a, that would be a b—oh no!” Emma clutched her head, smashing her hair down. “You’re right, Natalie. It looks like Mom changed the code for the next section! We can’t read the rest! Not without figuring out another key!”

  “But you got some of it?” Chess asked hopefully.

  “This,” Natalie said, handing him a page full of scratch-outs and crooked letters. Natalie’s calligraphy-like printing mixed together with Emma’s mad-scientist-style scrawl; even the pretty lettering got messier and messier, the farther he looked down the page.

  Chess shifted the weight of Finn’s drowsy body to the side and hesitantly began: “‘I don’t . . .’” He got stuck on the next word, because it had too many scratch-outs and erasures. Emma snatched the paper from his hand.

  “Here, I’ll read it,” she said, her voice harsh. Chess didn’t think she was really mad at him, though. “Mom wrote:

  “‘I don’t know how old you are, reading this. I see you as eight and ten and twelve, but maybe I made this code too hard, and you are older now. Maybe even much older. So it is hard to know how to explain.

  “‘The world the four of us came from was a dangerous place. Your father and I were part of a group trying to make it better by exposing the lies of the people in power. But powerful people like to stay in power, and the truly evil ones will do anything to keep control. Our leaders made it illegal to criticize them—or even to reveal the truth about what they were doing. We thought we could do our work in secret, and eventually the truth would win. But then they killed your father, and—’”

  “Wait—what? ‘Killed’?” Chess interrupted. His legs collapsed beneath him. Still clutching Finn, he almost missed the chair. “Killed? Dad’s car wreck wasn’t an accident? And Mom never told me?”

  His ears rang; his vision seemed to go in and out.

  “Chess, you were—what?—four when it happened?” Natalie asked gently.

  Chess tightened his arms around Finn, who was still soundly asleep. He resisted the impulse to cover Finn’s ears, so he wouldn’t hear. And Finn was eight.

  “But . . . now,” he managed to say. “Now I’m twelve, and Mom—”

  “And Mom is telling you now,” Emma said. Her gaze was so steady.

  So much like Mom’s.

  Weakly, Chess lifted his hand, motioning for Emma to continue.

  She cleared her throat, and read on in a husky voice:

  “‘. . . killed your father, and I knew I had to leave. To save the three of you. But I couldn’t just abandon everyone else I cared about, everything I knew, everything I could help with. So I made a bargain . . . a dangerous one. I kept up my work from here. But I thought the three of you would be safe. I didn’t think anyone could follow me to this world.

  “‘But some of our enemies did. Just now.

  “‘I’d always known I should never attempt to find my doppelgänger here in this world. I tried very hard to make sure that our paths never crossed. That was part of the reason I worked so hard to keep my own name and face and identity out of any public records. If you looked up the records for our house, it wouldn’t even say that I’m the one who owns it.’”

  Chess looked over at Natalie, whose face flushed. Evidently she’d known that already. What else had she tried to look up about Mom, only to find . . . nothing?

  Emma was still reading Mom’s words:

  “‘I tried to keep you kids’ identity private, too. That’s why I always signed the forms saying your names or pictures couldn’t be used on the school website; that was why I was always so careful about what I let you do online. I tried to keep all of us as invisible as possible. Just in case.

  “‘It never occurred to me that my secrecy would endanger my doppelgänger. But I covered my tracks too well. So when the bad people came, they found her and her family, not me. They thought she was me. After all, our fingerprints matched, other details matched—I’m sure they thought the details that didn’t fit were just part of my attempts to hide. Those kids in Arizona were kidnapped because of me, because the bad people thought those kids were the three of you. The bad people must have thought that was the only way to lure me back.

  “‘I know it’s a trap. But I can’t leave those innocent kids in danger, because of me. I can’t leave those other parents grieving. I think I know a way to rescue the kids without endangering myself. I have to try.

  “‘I’ve always kept a supply of food and money—all in small bills that wouldn’t be traced—to share with people suffering back in the other world.’” Emma glanced up. “That’s—”

  “What we saw in the panic room,” Natalie finished for her.

  “Go on,” Chess urged, because he couldn’t care about canned food and dollar bills when he felt such dread rising inside him. The word “killed” still echoed in his ears.

  And if that’s what they did to Dad, then Mom . . . Mom . . .

  Emma peered back to the paper in her hand. Chess noticed that her hand was shaking.

  “Let’s see, ‘. . . suffering . . . ,’ oh, yes. ‘Cash is important in that world, because so much is done in secret. I thought if I had a lot more money, I could hire some of the people I’d helped, to turn around and help me rescue the Gustano kids. I had to cash out your college savings—’”

  “That’s what Finn’s friend saw her carrying out of that bank!” Natalie exclaimed. “Hear that, Finn? Your mom didn’t rob a bank!”

  Finn barely gru
nted in his sleep. Emma glared at Natalie.

  “We already knew that,” Emma practically snarled. “We never thought she was a robber.”

  Chess didn’t care about banks or money, either.

  “That’s not the end, is it?” he asked. He had to steady himself by holding on to Ms. Morales’s desk.

  “She goes on to say, ‘I’m really sorry about the college accounts. I’ll figure out how to build them up again when I get back,’” Emma said. Her eyes flickered; she was reading ahead. “But, Chess—”

  “She says she’s coming back!” Chess blurted, and to his own ears, he sounded as young as Finn. He fought to regain control. “That’s all that matters.”

  “Oh, Chess,” Emma said. Her face had gone mournful and still, like stone.

  Chess waited, unable to speak. Finally Emma lowered her head and read in a choked voice:

  “‘If I’ve been gone long enough for you to get this letter and decode and read this, that means I was wrong, and I failed completely. I’m so sorry. You must never try to follow me, because . . .’” Emma gulped, and finished in a whisper.

  “‘Because it’s too late.’”

  Thirty-Seven

  Finn

  Finn heard the word “never.” He heard the words “too late.” They slipped into a dream he’d been having about playing Trouble and Jenga and other games with Mom. Part of the time they were playing in their regular house, and part of the time they were playing in the abandoned house he’d found after going through the secret tunnel with Chess, Emma, and Natalie.

  And then Finn was waking up, lifting his head from where it bobbed against Chess’s shoulder.

  Maybe Chess had jerked back suddenly, and that had jolted Finn awake.

  “What’s too late?” he mumbled sleepily.

  He opened his eyes to see Chess, Emma, and Natalie staring back at him in alarm.

  “Never mind,” Chess said, pressing Finn’s head back toward his own shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Shh, shh, shh . . . go back to sleep.”

  Being told to go to sleep always made Finn wider awake.

  He kept his head up and shoved Chess’s hand away. He saw Emma slide a piece of paper behind her back.

  “What’s that?” he asked. He started squirming his way out of Chess’s grasp to reach for the paper. “Emma! Did you solve the code? And you were going to surprise me? That’s great! You’re a genius!”

  “Finn, it’s . . . complicated,” Emma said. She kept the paper away from him.

  “We’re still trying to understand it ourselves,” Chess said. “It may not be something you need to . . . know. Yet.”

  Was anything more annoying than big kids and adults telling little kids they weren’t old enough to know something?

  “But it’s something about Mom, right?” Finn said. He told himself it was because he’d just awakened that he sounded so whiny and, well, little. Babyish.

  “It’s scary,” Natalie said, as if that settled it. “You don’t want to know. We’ll take care of things. Emma, Chess, and me. We promise.”

  Finn slid down to stand on his own two feet. He leaned away from Chess, to gaze toward the laptop and the papers on the desk behind Emma and Natalie.

  “What are al-ter-nate worlds?” he asked, because those were the words he could see.

  Emma sagged back against the side of the desk.

  “We have to tell him that much,” she said. “It’s not fair otherwise. Finn, they’re places like our world, with a few differences. Or, there could be lots of differences, but they all start with one different decision, and . . .”

  For such a smart person, Emma never explained things very well. Or maybe Finn’s problem was that he’d been asleep a moment ago, and his brain wasn’t fully awake yet. He blinked, still not entirely sure he was really with Chess, Emma, and Natalie in Natalie’s mom’s office, rather than with Mom at home. Or in the boarded-up, abandoned house from his dream.

  That dream . . . I was in both our house and that other house in the dream, but it was almost like . . .

  It was almost like the two houses had been the same. In the dream, Finn sat in the same places to push down the bubble over the Trouble dice; the rays of the sun hit at the same angle over Mom’s shoulder as she pulled out the wooden Jenga blocks.

  “Oh!” Finn shouted, so loudly that Chess winced. Chess had started to bend down, so Finn’s mouth was right by Chess’s ear. Finn tried to speak a little more softly, going on, but his voice still rose in excitement. “You mean like how our house is built just like the house we found when we walked through the tunnel, only we live in our house, so it’s got furniture and everything, but nobody lives in that other house, so it’s empty? Is that how you mean two places can be the same but different?”

  “Finn, that other house was just—” Chess began, but Natalie interrupted.

  “Guys—he’s right! He’s exactly right!” she said. “I just realized—I think that other house did have the same floor plan as yours, at least, what we saw of it. The windows were boarded up, but they were in the same locations, the basement stairs came out at the exact same spot on the first floor, the kitchen was in the same place—believe me, my mom has dragged me through enough empty houses she’s trying to sell. I know houses. But . . .” She stopped looking so excited. “Lots of neighborhoods have cookie-cutter houses, because it’s cheaper for builders to just use the same design over and over again. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “How many of those houses are connected by a secret tunnel?” Emma challenged. “One that you reach by going into a panic room and flipping a switch and making it spin? Where you feel disoriented the whole time you’re in the tunnel? This has to be why that tunnel didn’t make sense, and we couldn’t find that house on any online map. Finn, you just solved everything! When we went to that other house, we were in an alternate world! And we just have to go back to find Mom and rescue her!”

  Thirty-Eight

  Emma

  Emma grabbed Finn by the shoulders and started jumping up and down, like kids on the playground whose team had just scored a goal or a touchdown or a home run.

  “I did?” Finn said. “We do?”

  He didn’t even sound awake yet, but he joined her in jumping and dancing around. His hair flopped up and down, side to side—even his hair was dancing.

  Emma reached out, ready to pull Chess and Natalie into the celebration, too. But Chess pulled back.

  “Emma, Mom said not to find her. She says it’s too late,” Chess moaned. “We did all this work for nothing. Mom sent us that letter for nothing. Or just so we didn’t always wonder, I guess.”

  Emma stopped dancing. But only for a moment. Then she started jumping again.

  “We got the letter early, remember?” she asked.

  Now all the other kids stared at her.

  “Mom was sending us that letter in the mail,” Emma argued. “Maybe she even gave it to somebody and said, ‘Don’t mail this until next week,’ so it wouldn’t get to us very fast. She didn’t know Finn and Rocket were going to find her phone in the dresser drawer that very first day, which made us search her computers right away. I bet she just left this letter on her laptop as a backup, in case the letter got lost in the mail. She knew we would search and search and search.”

  Especially me, Emma thought. Mom knew I would never give up.

  She glanced at the coded portion of the letter they hadn’t translated yet, the part that required finding a different key to break the code. Had Mom made that code even harder? Was that her way of making them wait until they were older to know what it said?

  Maybe that wouldn’t ever matter. If—no, when—they got Mom back, they could just ask her directly.

  “We’re smarter—and luckier—than Mom thought, so we can go and rescue her,” Emma told Chess.

  Chess was still shaking his head.

  “It’s dangerous,” he said. “Mom wants us to be safe. And we really don’t know. . . . We don’t know anything a
bout the alternate world, if that was the alternate world, except that Mom says it’s a dangerous place. And all we saw was that empty house and the tall fences and . . . and those boys Ms. Morales got so upset about. . . .”

  “And the boys said there was a criminal who’d been trapped and captured because of some kidnapped kids!” Emma said. Everything was falling into place in her mind. “Just like Mom said the bad people from the alternate world used the kids from Arizona as a ‘lure,’ and she had to rescue them. Chess—that criminal who was captured in the alternate world—what if that’s actually Mom? Not that she’s really a criminal, but if they have bad laws . . . The people from the alternate world think the Gustano kids are hers. And . . .” Now the ideas in Emma’s brain were working like a tidal wave, everything flowing together and growing by the minute. “And those boys told us the ‘criminal’ was going to be tried and sentenced on Saturday! We know she’ll be safe until then. But after that . . .”

  “Saturday’s tomorrow,” Finn said solemnly, as if he was the only one who could have figured that out.

  Chess’s expression was still so doubtful, it seemed he didn’t even trust the days of the week.

  “But we don’t even know where or what time on Saturday,” he argued. “Or—”

  “But can’t we find out?” Natalie asked. Emma whirled to look in the older girl’s direction. Natalie had one eyebrow cocked, and the beginnings of a smile on her face. “Those boys said there were signs with information about the criminal on practically every street corner.”

  Emma reached out and hugged Natalie.

  “You’re right! You’re right!” Emma said. “So we get your mom to take us back to our house and we go through the tunnel and we walk around to look for a sign. And that will tell us where to find Mom. It’s simple!”

  Thirty-Nine

  Chess

  It wasn’t simple.

  Chess fell asleep Friday night feeling like he had a weight pressing down on his heart, and he woke up Saturday morning feeling like the weight had done nothing but grow overnight.