Greystone Secrets #1

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Mom wants me to keep Emma and Finn safe, he thought.

  But how could they not try to rescue Mom, if there was any chance that was possible?

  Chess slipped out of bed and tiptoed into Emma’s room. She was still sound asleep in the dim morning light—four late nights in a row had taken their toll. He thought he’d have to quietly rummage through her suitcase to find what he wanted, but one ray of sunlight came in through the blinds and showed him exactly what he was looking for: Emma had Mom’s cell phone clutched in her hand, pressed against her cheek.

  It looked like she’d fallen asleep trying to call for help.

  Chess blinked, and another image slipped into his head: Emma at two or three, clutching her “lovey.” Other little kids might have had a blanket or a stuffed animal as their lovey, but Emma had carried around a piece of paper like it was her favorite thing ever. And of course her favorite “lovey” paper had been covered in numbers.

  Numbers written in Dad’s firm script.

  Chess froze, even as he held his hand out toward Emma. He hadn’t thought about Emma’s paper lovey in years. It didn’t seem fair that he could remember that so well, when so many of his other memories felt so slippery. He shook his head, trying to clear it. Dad was dead, and Mom was in danger, and what was Chess supposed to do now?

  Chess reached down and gently tugged Mom’s cell phone out of Emma’s grasp. Emma stretched out her fingers, still reaching for what she’d lost, and she let out a soft, distressed, “Unhf . . .”

  But she didn’t open her eyes.

  I’ll bring it back, Chess wanted to tell her. Just give me a minute.

  Chess tiptoed back into his own room.

  As soon as he was inside the doorway, he typed the unlock code into the phone. He’d watched Emma do it enough times now that he knew it, too.

  “Okay, Joe,” he whispered, as if he could talk to the unknown person he’d heard his mother argue with on the phone in the middle of the night, right before she went away. “It’d be really great if you tried to call back. Right. Now.”

  The phone stayed silent and dead in his hands. He opened Mom’s call history, and it was just as empty as before. He checked her texts—avoiding the row of fake ones she’d set to send out automatically—and her email. Unless the message from the pediatrician’s office about Finn’s eight-year-old checkup had a hidden meaning, the phone contained nothing new, nothing helpful.

  Why had Chess thought that it might, just because another eight hours had passed since the last time he’d looked?

  “Think we should wake up Finn and Emma and start Operation Let’s Trick Mom?” Natalie’s voice from the hallway made Chess jump.

  “Natalie . . . Maybe . . . Those two get grumpy when they don’t get enough sleep,” Chess said. And even though he’d been at Natalie’s house for days now—and talking to her and everything—his voice this morning came out sounding like he was still that flustered fifth grader who didn’t know what to say when a sixth-grade girl said he was cute.

  Or maybe he just sounded like he wanted to believe the only thing his little brother and sister needed protection against was not getting enough sleep.

  “Do you think . . . ?” he began to ask Natalie. But he couldn’t even figure out how he wanted to finish his sentence.

  “That your mom’s going to call you on that phone and tell you everything’s going to be okay?” Natalie finished for him. “From a totally other dimension—or alternate world, or whatever it’s called? No.”

  Without even thinking about it, Chess tightened his grip on his mother’s phone. The rigid edges cut into his hand.

  “Maybe we should tell your mother what we found out,” he said.

  “About your mom being in an alternate world?” Natalie’s voice cracked with incredulity. “She’d never believe us. She’d ground me for lying and, I don’t know, have the three of you committed to a mental institution. She didn’t even believe me when I told her I didn’t know those boys on the other street Wednesday afternoon. When they literally weren’t even from the same universe as me. We didn’t talk about this last night, but don’t you think those boys acted like they knew the Natalie Mayhew from their world? Do you think the other Natalie Mayhew is just like me or not? Am I one of the differences in that world?”

  It kind of freaked Chess out to hear her talking about the alternate world like it was a fact. And—like it was something fun to speculate about.

  “You—You’re older than us,” Chess stammered. “You’ve got to see. . . . This isn’t just a game.”

  “No, it’s about getting your mom back,” Natalie said, her voice ringing with certainty. “And maybe those kidnapped kids, too. I hope we can rescue those kidnapped kids, too. This’ll probably be the most important thing any of us do in our entire lives. We’ll be heroes!”

  Her eyes glowed, and her face was flushed with excitement. Maybe it wasn’t a game to her, but it wasn’t something she was afraid of, either.

  Maybe that was because she wasn’t a coward like Chess.

  Or is it just because her parents are only divorced, not dead and in danger like mine? Chess wondered.

  He let out a sigh that did nothing to relieve the pressure he felt on his lungs and heart.

  “You wake up Finn,” he said. “I’ll get Emma.”

  “Operation Let’s Trick Mom, here we come!” Natalie drummed her fingers against the wall, ending with a dramatic thump. “Mom doesn’t have a clue what’s about to happen.”

  “Neither do we,” Chess whispered.

  But Natalie was already gone, racing for Finn’s room.

  Forty

  Finn

  Maybe I should be an actor when I grow up, Finn thought as he buckled his seat belt in Ms. Morales’s SUV. I am really good at this.

  Over breakfast, he’d made himself start thinking about how much he missed his mom. And then, even though Ms. Morales had gone out special that morning and gotten the exact kind of bagels and cream cheese Finn loved best, big globs of tears had started to form in his eyes. Then his lips began to quiver, and he’d pushed his plate away, claiming, “I’m not hungry.” (When, duh, anyone who knew Finn would know that he was always hungry. Especially when he was really happy, because this was the day they were getting Mom back!)

  And then Ms. Morales had started fussing over him—“Oh, do you want me to fix you eggs instead? Or something else?” And Finn had let loose with a loud wail: “I just want my mommy!”

  He’d started listing all the things he missed about her, finally getting down to the smell of her clothes. And even though Chess missed his cue to say, “Yeah, sometimes when Mom’s away, the only thing that makes Finn feel better is sitting in her closet, breathing in that smell,” Natalie picked up on it, and pretended that she’d noticed Finn getting calmer in Mom’s closet, and wasn’t it better to try that than to have to listen to a hysterical eight-year-old over breakfast?

  Maybe Finn and Natalie would be famous actors together someday.

  After they got Mom back.

  So now Ms. Morales was driving all four of the kids back to the Greystones’ house. And even though Natalie was pretending to argue with her mom about going along (“Don’t you know I have homework to do before I go over to Dad’s this afternoon? Don’t you know I have a life of my own, even if you keep trying to ruin it all the time?”), every time her mother looked away, Natalie kept turning around and winking and waggling her eyebrows at Finn, Emma, and Chess.

  Finn sniffled and reached for Emma’s hand, just in case Ms. Morales looked in her rearview mirror. Chess put his arm around Finn’s shoulder. And maybe Chess was kind of good at acting himself, because the one-armed hug felt exactly like it did when Chess was really trying to comfort Finn.

  Soon they were pulling up in front of the Greystone house. Ms. Morales turned to face Finn.

  “You can sit in your Mom’s closet for a little while,” she said. “While Chess gets the poster board he needs for his science project and E
mma gets the next book she wants in that series she’s reading. Harry Potter, wasn’t it?” These were excuses Chess and Emma had added for needing to go along to the house with Finn. Ms. Morales kind of had an odd gleam in her eye—maybe they’d piled it on a little thick? Was she getting suspicious?

  Finn gulped in air, ready to distract her.

  “I miss—”

  “Yes, yes, we know,” Ms. Morales said quickly. “You didn’t let me finish. What I was going to say was, when you come back out, why don’t you bring some shirt with you that smells especially like your mom? So you don’t have to come back here the next time you want to, uh, sniff it?”

  Like Natalie made me bring that teddy bear to act like it was my “lovey,” that first day? Finn thought. Ms. Morales is going to think I’m a total baby!

  Finn could live with that, if it got Mom back.

  “O—kay,” he said, making sure he paused in the middle of the word to sniffle again. And then he drew out the aaay part as if he was leading into more tears.

  Chess, Emma, and Natalie all helped him out of the SUV, making it look like it took three of them just to make sure he could walk upright.

  They got to the front door, and Finn was really happy about being just a few steps away from no longer having to walk all stooped-over and sad. As soon as they were in the house, he could run just as fast and excitedly down to the basement as he wanted. But then, just as Chess started pulling out his key, Natalie took an abrupt step back, almost falling off the front porch.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Ohhh no.”

  “What’s wrong?” Finn asked. He glanced over his shoulder. “Your mom’s staring at her phone right now. You don’t have to keep acting mad.”

  Natalie didn’t exactly look mad anymore. She stared at the doorframe looking more like she’d just seen a ghost. Was she still acting or not?

  She brushed a finger against the crack between the door and its frame.

  “It was right here . . . ,” she murmured. “I’m sure of it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Chess asked.

  Natalie teetered on the edge of the porch.

  “Somebody’s been here,” she said. “Since yesterday. Somebody’s been in your house.”

  Forty-One

  Emma

  “Explain,” Emma said. “How do you know that?”

  She was not going to freak out about anything until she had all the facts. And then . . .

  Well, get all the facts, and then see what you want to do.

  “I left a piece of tape on the door,” Natalie said. “I got the idea from what the chaperones did on our Cedar Point trip the last day of sixth grade—they put tape over everyone’s hotel room door, so they’d know if anyone tried to sneak out. Or, at least, they told us that’s what they did.”

  Emma almost got distracted thinking about how weird life must be in sixth grade. Almost.

  “You tried to tape someone in our house?” Finn asked. “You thought a piece of Scotch tape would trap them there?”

  “No,” Natalie said. “I put the tape there after I came out, when I knew the house was empty. Just so I could see if someone came in or out while we were away. Like . . . if someone came back through the tunnel and out your front door.”

  Now that they knew the tunnel led to an alternate world, that idea was scarier than ever.

  “Was it windy last night?” Emma asked. “Or stormy? Maybe the tape just blew away.”

  She hadn’t been paying attention to the weather; all she’d been able to think about last night was Mom’s code and the alternate world. She was so focused, she wasn’t even sure what the weather was like now. (She glanced over her shoulder. The sun was out.)

  Finn, Chess, and Natalie all made doubtful faces, as if none of them had been paying attention to the weather either.

  “So there,” Emma said. “Not seeing the tape—that doesn’t prove someone was here. If the tape had still been there, still stuck to the door, that could have proved that no one opened the front door after you. But the proof doesn’t work in both directions.”

  “I . . . guess,” Natalie said, as if the words were being dragged out of her.

  Chess opened the door, and they all stepped through. But Emma didn’t race down to the basement the way she’d been planning. She stepped cautiously, looking around constantly. Would she notice anything amiss if someone had been there searching the house? The middle drawer of the coffee table stuck out just a little—maybe an eighth of an inch—but for all Emma knew, maybe it had been like that before.

  “I, um, put tape over the door in the basement, too,” Natalie said. “The one that leads to your Mom’s office. What you all call the Boring Room.”

  “Well, let’s go look at that,” Finn said, with only a little of his usual bounce.

  It took a lot out of him, pretending to cry for the past half hour, Emma told herself. That’s the only thing that’s wrong.

  All four of them trooped down the stairs. Chess reached over and turned on the basement light.

  “Meowr?”

  It was only Rocket standing and stretching on the basement couch, but Emma jumped. She was pretty sure the others did, too.

  Finn recovered first.

  “You’d tell us if anybody sneaked into the house, right, Rocket?” Finn asked, bending down to pet the cat. “You’re a good guard cat, aren’t you, boy?”

  Natalie walked toward the Boring Room door.

  “None of us locked that door after we came back from the alternate world, did we?” Emma asked. She’d been too spooked to think about it herself. And besides, she hadn’t wanted Ms. Morales to know about the key and its secret hiding place in the couch leg.

  Nobody answered Emma. Nobody said anything as they watched Natalie run her hand across the top of the frame around the door leading to the Boring Room.

  “This tape’s gone, too,” she said.

  “There’s no wind in the basement,” Finn said, unnecessarily.

  “But maybe it just fell,” Emma argued. “Maybe it didn’t stick very well, and then Rocket started playing with it—you know how he’s always carrying ponytail rubber bands away when Mom or I drop them on the floor?”

  “It was good tape,” Natalie said. “I stuck it on there hard. And now it’s completely gone. Like someone saw it and took it. Not your cat.”

  Emma still wanted to argue: But this isn’t absolute proof, is it? You can’t be one hundred percent sure! There’s a—what’s it called?—margin of error, right?

  “We have to tell your mom,” Chess said heavily, turning to Natalie. He sounded like an old man, maybe someone speaking with his dying breath.

  Natalie lifted her chin defiantly, mimicking the same kind of head toss she constantly gave her mom.

  “She wouldn’t let us back into the house then,” she said. “Not until the cops have examined every inch of the house. You think cops are going to believe anything we tell them about an alternate world?”

  “What if the cops keep us out of the house for hours and then we really are too late going to rescue Mom?” Finn asked, in the same sorrowful, little-kid voice he’d been using all morning with Ms. Morales. Only this time, it was entirely real.

  “Here’s what we do,” Emma said, surprised she could find her own voice. “We go into the alternate world, we find a sign on the nearest street corner that gives the information about Mom, and then we bring it back and show it to Ms. Morales. And tell her everything.”

  She saw Chess hesitate. And then she saw his shoulders slump—not as if she’d won the argument, but as if they’d both lost.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do that.”

  Natalie opened the door to the Boring Room, and they repeated the procedure from their last trip through the tunnel. Chess pressed the button hidden at the back of the bookcase—just with his finger this time, not his shoe. The doorway to the panic room/secret passageway/tunnel to the alternate world opened up, and Emma reached in to turn on the light.
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  “Should we leave the door open or shut?” Natalie asked.

  No one answered. But no one pulled the door shut behind them, either.

  “The lever was above the peanut butter shelf, right?” Finn asked.

  It was like they were all trying to be brave, all trying to prove that they weren’t worried about what was going to happen next.

  “We should pay attention to everything,” Emma suggested. “Count the number of times the panic room spins, or how many turns the tunnel takes, if it’s nothing but a tunnel now, not a place that spins like it was the first time we went through here, and—”

  And the room was already spinning. Emma had to grab a shelf to hold on once again, but this time she made sure she was facing the exact spot where the door back out to the Boring Room had been.

  Watch for the door, she told herself. Count how many times it passes.

  The spinning made her eyelids want to close, but Emma reached up with her free hand and held her right eye open.

  Surely we’ve made a complete rotation—why haven’t I seen the door yet?

  A moment later, she thought, Did we maybe pass it, and I forgot to count? So let’s just say it’s been one, uh . . .

  Emma couldn’t quite remember what number came after one.

  The room spun faster.

  Are we going forward? Sideways? Backward?

  Emma thought those words, and then wasn’t entirely sure what they meant.

  And then the spinning stopped, and Emma was facing a door once more. They’d left the door back into the Boring Room wide open, with the lights on bright. And this door was open just a crack and barely lit. Did that prove anything?

  Emma sensed rather than fully saw the others starting to unfreeze and let go of the shelves they’d been holding on to.

  So there are shelves at this end of the tunnel now? Emma wondered. Even though they weren’t here when we came back going the other direction with Ms. Morales? And she never felt the room or the tunnel spin at all, in either direction. . . .