“Then I’ll run get you,” Annie says.
“Annie and Jimmy, you’re last,” Piper commands. “That way Jimmy can close up the passage door.”
“Just remember . . . don’t mess with anything. This is a crime scene,” Jimmy says.
“We don’t know it’s a crime. It could have been an accident,” Annie points out.
“Don’t be a spoilsport,” Piper tells her.
“Piper, come on. This is Moose’s family we’re talking about, not some fun game you just thought of.” Annie’s face is flushed. She flashes a quick look at me.
Piper shrugs. “Let’s go, Moose,” she orders. “Jimmy, you have a watch. You time us. Wait five minutes between teams.”
I follow Piper out with Jimmy’s phrase stuck in my head: crime scene. I’m having a hard time accepting that. I don’t want this to be about me and whether or not I fell asleep. But I don’t want there to be somebody out there targeting us, either. That is just too scary.
8. The House of Sticks
Monday, January 20, 1936
The windows of #2E are shattered. The door is black as the night ocean. The air is thick with the smell of smoke. The door is jammed, the knob is gone.
Piper stands back while I kick it in. I don’t have to kick hard before it crumbles, like the house made of sticks in the story of the Three Little Pigs.
“Watch where you put your feet. It’s hard to know how stable the floor is,” I tell Piper as I take a cautious step through the rubble. Around the living room some things are burned to a crisp, others are ruined by water. Water puddles on the floor, pools in the sagging seat of the chair, and fills the light fixture like a fish bowl.
Natalie’s room is mostly okay, but mine is scorched, the closet a mess of ashes on the floor.
I stare at everything, trying to take it all in. Did someone do this to us?
It couldn’t have been Natalie. I wasn’t asleep for that long . . . . was I? But if not Natalie, who? Can your house get burned down by accident? My mouth is dry. My head begins to throb like someone is digging my brain out with a trowel.
“Hey Piper,” I say, “why aren’t there officers here? Don’t they want to know how this started?”
“Adults don’t make sense,” she says. “Everybody knows that.”
I’m too upset to find this funny. This is my house. Doesn’t anyone care it burned down?
“You think it started in the kitchen?” Piper asks as Natalie and Theresa come in the broken front door and make a path through the living room.
The place is probably safe. The flooring seems sound. The only really dangerous part is the broken glass and breathing in the ash. I know my parents wouldn’t like Natalie in here, but right now the only thing that matters is figuring this out.
“Give everyone a job,” Piper whispers to me, “and you’ll earn their loyalty.”
I roll my eyes. This isn’t about loyalty. This is about Piper ordering people around, but I do what she says anyway. I don’t want a showdown with Piper.
“Okay,” I say, “Piper, you’re in the—”
“Not me!” She points at Nat and Theresa. “Them.”
“Theresa, you go with Nat. Help her find what she needs.”
Theresa puts her hands on her hips. “That’s not helping with the investigation,” she declares. “That’s busy work.”
“No it’s not. Natalie may know more than I do about what happened. Something here might jog her memory. Watch where she goes. Watch what she does. She was sleeping on my floor the night of the fire.”
Theresa nods solemnly, her eyes the size of plums.
I should be in the kitchen looking for clues, but I want to find my baseball glove, which is probably in Nat’s room.
“Hey, Theresa? Nat? Is my baseball glove in there?”
“Wait, um, hey, here it is!” Theresa calls out. She runs out of Nat’s room, holding my glove like a sleeping baby.
“Yes!” I slip my fingers inside and close my fist. I am never taking it off.
I run my gloveless hand over the stuff that still looks like my stuff. My pillow, the bedside table, the pennant from the Seals game, my history book. I never thought I’d care about my history book. It’s strange what a fire will do to you.
I’m about to look for my report on Roosevelt when Annie comes to the door. She moves slowly toward me, testing the floor before she takes the next step. She stops and looks up at me, her blue eyes full of concern. “This is bad.” Then she sees the glove. “Hey.” She smiles as big as a baseball field. “You found it!”
I smile back at her. Annie knows there’s nothing like your own glove.
“We should check out the rest of the place,” she says.
My parents’ room is scorched in one stripe from the doorway down one wall, like a black lick of fire came through.
The kitchen is a burned-out hole. Jimmy is on his hands and knees sifting through the ashes. On the floor are a melted fork, a handle-less skillet, the square icebox now black as the devil’s cupboard. Piper has her head in the broom closet.
“If it was arson, what are we looking for?” I ask Jimmy.
“I was hoping for something obvious . . . a metal gasoline can, lighter fluid, matches.”
In the living room, Annie is trying to piece together bits of fabric from the chair.
At first, I couldn’t smell anything but smoke. But now my nose seems to be deadened to the smoke smell. How much of a smell can you smell, until you can’t smell it anymore?
“Maybe we should do a reenactment,” Annie suggests.
“Not much to reenact,” I say. “Nat was asleep on the floor of my room.”
“Why was she sleeping in your room?” Theresa asks.
“She does that when I babysit,” I say.
“Maybe she gets scared.” Theresa again.
“Maybe,” I say.
“Hey,” Piper calls from the kitchen. “I found something.”
Within seconds we are clustered around Piper, stirring up a new cloud of ashes, which starts Jimmy coughing.
“What?” I ask.
Piper pulls a half-burned hatbox out of the rubble. “Janet Trixle’s pixie house.”
“What is Janet Trixle’s pixie house doing up here?” I ask.
“Do you know anything about this, Theresa?” Piper wants to know.
Theresa and Janet are on-again, off-again friends. Theresa shakes her head. “Nope.”
“Maybe Janet was having a pixie campout with pixie marshmallows cooked over the Flanagans’ stove,” Piper says.
“Did she visit yesterday?” Annie asks me.
“Nope,” I say.
“She could have left the stove on.” Jimmy clicks his tongue the way he does when he’s thinking hard about something. But then I hear footsteps.
Annie’s head turns. So does mine.
Piper puts her finger over her mouth as the big-booted footsteps come closer.
“Who’s in there?” Darby bellows through his bullhorn.
“Uh-oh,” Theresa whispers as Trixle pounds into the living room.
“Who gave you permission to go poking around?”
“I did,” I say.
“And who gave you permission?” Trixle booms.
“Nobody. It’s my place,” I tell him.
“Not now it isn’t. It ain’t safe and I want all of you out. The warden’s got a task force assigned. They’re the only ones should be in here.”
“But . . .” Theresa nods toward the pixie house.
Annie shushes Theresa behind Trixle’s back. Darby catches this from the corner of his eye. He turns around. “What’s the matter, Theresa?” he asks.
Theresa seals her lips and shakes her head.
�
�Spit it out,” he barks.
“Theresa gets upset when grown-ups yell,” Piper covers for her, smooth as butter.
“Mind your own business, Piper. I’m asking Theresa,” Darby says.
“What’s a task force?” Theresa wants to know.
“It’s a team of people assigned to find out something,” Annie whispers.
“Like us,” Theresa says.
“Not like you,” Darby growls. “You are making a nuisance of yourselves. That’s all you’re doing.”
Theresa opens her mouth to tell him off, but Annie puts her hand on Theresa’s arm, and Theresa snaps her mouth shut with the words safely inside.
“We’ll be done end of day tomorrow. Then Moose can come get what he needs. But all of the rest of you”—he points in an arc over our heads—“have no business in here, period.”
Darby tramps through the ash to the bashed-in front door and waits for us to come out.
Theresa moves her hand in a rapid rotation like Annie should come close. Annie scrunches down so her ear is the same height as Theresa’s mouth.
I don’t hear all of what Theresa says, but it’s something about the pixie house. I think she’s asking if she should tell about that. Annie shakes her head.
I get my pillow and leave my history book—I’ve come to my senses about that. And the homework? Forget about it.
The baseball glove has never left my hand.
Piper takes the half-burned pixie house and drops it inside my pillowcase with my pillow. Gee, thanks, I think.
Annie and Jimmy are already outside. Natalie is agitated. She’s in her room rocking from one foot to the other.
“Nat,” I say, “come on.”
“No ‘come on,’” she says.
“Trixle doesn’t like you. We have to get out of here,” I whine.
Why am I telling her this? She won’t get it, but to my surprise she moves forward, out of her room and past Trixle, still guarding the door
“Trixle doesn’t like you,” she says when she walks by him.
Trixle stamps his cigarette out with his foot. He acts like he didn’t hear, but I’m pretty sure he did.
9. Annie and Me at the Swings
Monday, January 20, 1936
“Where should we go? Back down to the secret passageway?” Theresa whispers.
“Not with Trixle watching. How about our house?” Jimmy suggests. “Mom’s in the city getting groceries.”
“C’mon, Nat. We’re going to my house,” Theresa says.
“Moose,” Piper calls.
But I’m already headed the other direction. I don’t feel so great. “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I tell her.
“Moose, we’re meeting now,” Piper commands.
But I keep walking along the balcony away from the Mattamans’. I don’t know where I’m going . . . I just want to be alone. What I really want is to go back to my room, but I can’t with Trixle standing right there. Nowhere else on the island is mine. I don’t have a place anymore.
I head up to the parade grounds and sit on the swing. I’m way too big for a swing, but I don’t care. I just sit there. Like always, the parade grounds is full of gulls. I watch as one gull opens his beak, cocks his head back, and cries his mournful cry. Seagulls are big whiners. They are never happy.
I look up from the gulls and there is Annie walking across the cement, the wind blowing her dress to one side as she battles to keep it down.
Annie parks in the empty swing next to mine. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I mutter.
“You want to, you know, talk?” she asks as she times the arc of her swing with mine so that we are going forward and backward in the same moment.
I shrug.
“Seeing your place like that must have been hard.”
“Yeah,” I mumble, looking back toward 64. I don’t want to say too much. I’m afraid I might cry. Guys aren’t supposed to cry. My dad does once in a while and it really bugs me.
We’re both barely swinging at all with our feet pushing off the ground instead of pumping the air. I kick some sand low, covering her shoes with sand. She kicks a load back.
We continue like this, until we have to take off our shoes and pour out the sand. Annie peels off her white socks and turns them inside out. A thump of sand falls out and then a light scattering.
“Annie?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how the fire started,” I whisper.
“I know you don’t.”
“But Annie?”
“Yeah.”
My voice cracks. “I was asleep.”
“Just because you were asleep doesn’t mean Natalie did it.”
“It wasn’t Natalie,” I snap.
“Sorry, I thought that was what you were worried about.”
I lean forward, digging a hole in the sand with my toe. “It is.”
Annie nods. “Has she ever used matches or turned the burner on?”
“I’ve never seen her with matches. She has turned the burner on.”
“Would she do that at night?”
I don’t answer this, can’t answer it. I don’t know.
“When you fell asleep, where was she?” Annie asks.
“In my room on the floor.”
“And then you woke up and . . .”
“Everything was on fire.”
“Look, we’ll figure this out, okay? You don’t need to do it all by yourself.”
“But it was me who fell asleep.”
“It was late. I was asleep too.”
“But you weren’t babysitting.”
“Maybe you should talk to your folks about this, Moose.”
“NO!” I half shout.
Annie says nothing else. We swing a while. The swing chains make a vreeek-vrok-vreek-vrok sound. We aren’t swinging so much as kicking back and forth, but they’re still noisy.
“We’ll make a chart, you know? Figure out all the possibilities. We’ll be really organized about it. We’ll find out the truth,” she whispers. “That’s all we can do.” She leans forward in her swing, stops her motion with her heel, and looks at me. “That going to be okay?”
I try to smile, but my lips feel like they’re anchored to a rock. Still, I appreciate how she’s trying to help. There’s never been a better friend than Annie.
10. A Bad Day for Pixies
Monday, January 20, 1936
When we get back to the Mattamans’, everyone has piled in Jimmy and Theresa’s room. I settle on Jimmy’s bed. Annie joins Piper and Theresa on Theresa’s bed. Piper hogs the pillow, of course. Natalie is standing up by herself so no one will accidentally bump her. She likes it better this way.
“Where have you been?” Piper demands.
“Out on the parade grounds,” I say.
“Playing baseball?”
“No,” I mumble.
Piper crosses her arms. Her eyes travel from Annie to me and back again.
“C’mon, we’re making progress here. Let’s keep at it,” Jimmy says. “Why would Janet just walk in Moose’s kitchen and decide to have a pixie campout? She could have done that at her own house.”
“No, she couldn’t.” Theresa shakes her head. “Her mom doesn’t let her turn on the stove.”
“But wouldn’t the same rules apply at my apartment?” I ask.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jimmy says.
“Shouldn’t we tell an adult about Janet’s pixie house?” Annie says.
“Why? What do they know?” Piper asks.
“Why? What do they know?” Natalie repeats, dipping her head down, her bottom lip sucked into her mouth.
“Somebody has to talk to Janet,” Piper insists.
Theresa waves her hand in the air. “Me. I will!”
“Theresa for sure. But who else?” Piper again.
“How about Jimmy?” I suggest.
Theresa shakes her head so hard, her hair whips into her face. “Not Jimmy. Moose. She likes Moose better.”
“Yeah, Moose. You’re really popular with the seven-year-olds.” Jimmy smiles as he winds rubber bands around his finger.
“Gee thanks, but I’m not getting near Bea Trixle without body armor.”
“You won’t have to see Bea. Theresa will bring Janet up here,” Jimmy says.
“But wait . . . what if it is Janet?” Theresa asks.
We stare at Theresa.
“If it was Janet, it was an accident. We all know Janet would not intentionally burn Moose’s apartment down,” Annie tells her.
“That’s right,” I say.
“Come on, Piper,” Annie says. “Let’s go to my house. It will be weird if we’re waiting in the living room while Theresa and Moose talk to Janet.”
When Piper and Annie are gone, Jimmy parks himself in the kitchen and I get Natalie set up in the living room with her favorite Mattaman book: a travel book about the states. Theresa marches up to the Trixles’ to get Janet.
Janet has her hair braided in braids so tight, they pull her eyebrows out of place, giving her a permanently surprised look. She is a bit wacky anyway. For one thing, no one knows if she believes in her imaginary friends—the pixies—or not. The pixies drive her parents crazy, so she has to pretend they aren’t real. It isn’t totally clear if she believes in them and pretends they aren’t real, or doesn’t believe in them and pretends they are. Then too, she can get really bossy. Nobody likes that. Still, given who her parents are, she’s not half bad.
“Janet.” Theresa’s face is stern like she’s a teacher. Her pencil hovers over a pad of paper waiting for something to write down.
“What happened to your old pixie house?”
Janet squints for a minute as if this helps her remember, then shrugs.
“You don’t know?” Theresa’s dark black eyebrows are furrowed.
Janet shakes her head.
Al Capone Does My Homework Page 5
