by Ruth Fox
The flyer showed a picture of a large, unusual-looking dog with a long thin snout. Underneath were the words: Dog, Missing. Contact 294 Greentree Hill.
“Greentree Hill? Isn’t that creepy old Herman Sanders’s place?” Zach asked.
“He’s just an old man,” Lex said. “That doesn’t make him creepy.”
“He’s an old man who throws cans of Jagermeyer’s Baked Beans at anyone who goes near him!” Zach protested, looking at Ryder. They knew all too well how accurate Mr. Sanders’s aim was with those cans, because Greentree Hill was near the Factory, and they were often sneaking there to play Monster-tag. If they got too close to the big wire fence around his property, he would clock them with anywhere from one to five cans. They always wondered exactly how one man could eat so many beans—but then, sometimes the cans weren’t empty, so maybe he just bought them to throw at kids.
“Look,” Lex said. “Just stick one up on a wall on your way home, okay? Oh, and about that cooking column . . .”
Zach waved a hasty goodbye and hurried off.
Chapter Three
Mr. and Mrs. Morgenstern were waiting for him in the kitchen, and both leapt up when he walked in, which instantly made Zach wary.
“How was your day?” asked Mr. Morgenstern.
“Fine,” said Zach, cautiously.
“We bought this for your birthday,” said Mrs. Morgenstern, holding out a little wrapped box. “But it’s a long time until then, so we thought you could have it early.”
Zach just wanted to go upstairs and hide in his bedroom and glower. But his parents both looked so hopeful that he made himself take it. The box was heavy, covered in velvet, and when he pulled the ribbon off, it opened up to reveal a very, very cool watch.
It had two rings of numbers, so you could tell time the normal way or in 24-hour time, the way they did in action movies, and in the episodes of Beyond the Wall where Chris Cambert’s character, Derek Johansson, was recruited by a spy organisation. It had little dials in the background. One was a compass. One was a thermometer. One was a barometer. Even though Zach didn’t know what a barometer was, he knew it was cool to have one. There was even a little LED torch built into the side.
“Zach?” prompted Mr. Morgenstern.
“Thank you,” Zach said stiffly.
“We just want to make sure you’re okay with this,” Mrs. Morgenstern said. “You know, us adopting another child. You can tell us if you have an issue with it, you know.”
Zach looked at his parents’ eager faces. They were excited about the adoption, but there was concern in their eyes—real concern, for him and how he might be feeling.
“No,” he said. “I’m perfectly fine with it.” He even managed a smile.
Mr. Morgenstern smiled, too. Then Mrs. Morgenstern smiled.
And Zach looked down at his new watch and felt even worse. As a nurse and a professor of language respectively, Maria and Joseph Morgenstern didn’t make loads of money—but they’d spent a lot on this. Zach would have loved to have gotten this present for his birthday. Or for any occasion other than this. Now he felt guilty, because he didn’t want it at all.
❖ ❖ ❖
Zach got a text from Ryder later that night.
U missd awesum game. No1 found me at all!
Whatever, thought Zach. He didn’t really care about Ryder’s game of Monster-tag. He didn’t even really care that Ryder had actually, for once, been able to find a hiding place. All he could think about was Thursday.
He lay down on his bed, and tossed and turned for a bit, trying to get comfortable. He looked at his little room. Would he have to share it with the new kid? He barely had enough room for his own clothes, books, DVDs and CDs. What if his parents chose a baby? Would he have to change its nappies? What if they chose a girl? He didn’t know anything about girls. He could never talk to Ida. He didn’t understand Fiona. And Lex, well, she was like some kind of alien.
But this meant so much to his parents. He hadn’t seen them this nervous or happy about anything since they got the letter that he’d been accepted into Middleview Hills Academy—they’d practically jumped up and down when they’d found out. He loved his parents. He felt terrible that he didn’t share their excitement.
Finally, he stomped down the stairs to the kitchen, where Mr. Morgenstern was making pasta for dinner, and Mrs. Morgenstern was telling him exactly how he was doing it wrong, and how Zach could probably do it better if only he would come out of his room.
“He looks so despondent,” she said with a sigh. “I hope we’re doing the right thing.”
“Of course we are,” Mr. Morgenstern said. “He’s a good kid, Maria. We just have to wait for that good sense to kick in.”
Zach cleared his throat from the doorway. “I want to come with you on Thursday,” he said. “If that’s okay.”
His parents stopped what they were doing and looked at one another. And then they both smiled and hugged him, even though their hands were covered in pasta sauce and they got garlic in his hair.
❖ ❖ ❖
Zach thought it would be a cold, dark, grey building with bars on the windows like in the movies. Instead, the Hope Orphanage was a big old brick house with ivy climbing up the walls. It was on Main Street, next to Holly Tree Park, just up the road from the Bowling Alley and Frankie’s Pizza. It didn’t take long to drive there from Middleview Hills, where his mum and dad had picked him up early from school.
They were met at the gates by a very sharp-looking woman carrying a clipboard.
It wasn’t just that Ms. Cutter looked intelligent. Everything about her was sharp: her nose was sharp, and her chin was sharp. Her shoes were sharp. Her ice-blue eyes were the sharpest of all, and were accentuated by skin the color of coffee. Those eyes bored into Mr. Morgenstern through the driver’s side window of the Putterwagon.
“Welcome,” she said, scribbling something on her clipboard with a (very sharp) pencil. “You’re the Morgensterns?”
“We are!” replied Mr. Morgenstern cheerily, climbing out of the car.
Zach followed his dad out of the van and looked around. The orphanage was huge. He wished he lived in a big house like this.
Zach cast his eyes over the expanse of grass, but stopped at the wall that surrounded the grounds. He saw a security camera mounted above the gates and took a few steps closer, wondering if there was someone looking down at him right now.
An echoing sound reached him. Woof. Woofwoof.
He looked around, wondering where it could be coming from. Something clanged under his feet; he looked down and found a grate set into the grass. That was a bit strange, he thought—it was a weird place for a drain.
Woofwoof came the noise, and Zach was about to crouch down and peer through the grate when there was a sharp cough from behind him.
“If you’ll follow me,” Ms. Cutter’s voice interrupted. “I’ve got all your paperwork, which makes this much easier.”
She led them up the steps and through the front door, then up a flight of steps inside.
“It must be so rewarding to work with young people,” said Mrs. Morgenstern.
Ms. Cutter sneered. “I used to be a schoolteacher, and before that . . . suffice it to say, I’ve worked with young people for a very, very long time. Children are children.”
“Well,” Mr. Morgenstern said, “We certainly would like to help out a youngster. My great-uncle was adopted, and he always told me how glad he was to become a Morgenstern.”
They were led into a huge room with a high ceiling. It had bookcases all around the walls and six or seven long desks in the centre of the room, where there were pens and pencils and blank sheets of paper set out. Two kids sat there, drawing pictures.
Three computers lined the last desk. Three more kids sat behind these, typing and clicki
ng furiously. There was an easel near the window, where a girl was painting a picture.
Three much younger kids sat on the floor, playing with little plastic dinosaurs. One was hitting the others with the brontosaurus.
“This is recreational time,” said Ms. Cutter. “All our charges are allowed one hour a day in which they can do as they please. At all other times they follow a strict schedule of schooling, homework, rest, and meals. You may interact with them if you please.”
Zach thought this made the kids all sound rather like robots. And none of the kids looked very happy. He guessed he wouldn’t be happy, either, if he had Ms. Cutter making him follow her strict schedule.
For the first time Zach felt the faintest inkling of why adopting a kid was the right thing to do.
Ms. Cutter left the room, saying she’d be back in half an hour and Zach looked at his parents. They, too, looked a little overwhelmed. They were standing very close together and looking kind of worried.
One of the younger kids, the girl with the brontosaurus, abandoned the group and rushed over to them. “Hi!” she said. “I’m Crystal. I’m six-nearly-seven.”
“Well, hello, there!” said Mrs. Morgenstern, smiling and crouching so she was closer to the girl’s height. “Do you like dinosaurs?”
“Nope,” she said. “But they’re good for hitting people with.”
Mrs. Morgenstern’s smile slipped.
Zach wandered over to the computers. One boy was sitting there, playing a game. If there was one thing Zach could relate to, it was a good computer game.
The boy swivelled in his chair. “My name’s Louis, and you should totally try this game. I’ve just passed Level Nineteen.”
The game looked like fun, so Zach sat down.
“It’s all to do with trajectory,” the boy said. “You need to calculate the speed and angle. See, you start out with the right angle. The other angles can all be worked out from this. And the brilliant thing is, you can change the size of the triangle, but leave the angles the same, the lengths will change, but the ratio is the same. Isn’t it cool?”
“It looked like fun,” said Zach faintly, well aware that he was using the past tense. It had looked like fun, until Louis had made it into a Maths lesson.
Feeling claustrophobic, Zach stood up and headed towards the window. His dad was talking to the girl painting at the easel.
“I used to like to draw eagles,” Mr. Morgenstern said. “I was good at doing the feathers. What do you like to paint, Brigit? Animals? Flowers? Landscapes?”
“Feelings,” said Brigit.
“Oh,” said Mr. Morgenstern.
“This is melancholy,” Brigit explained, pointing to her painting, which Zach saw was a swirling mess of green and blue and yellow.
“Oh, I can see that now,” said Mr. Morgenstern uncertainly. “It’s very good.”
“Dad,” said Zach. “I’m going to go outside.”
His dad didn’t seem to hear him, but Zach went anyway. He stood outside the door and tried to breathe. It doesn’t matter, he thought. Sure, it might take a while to get used to living with any of these kids. But he could do it. He would do it.
He felt sick.
He walked up the corridor, looking around the corner. There were rooms leading off to either side. They all had nameplates on them, some with two to a room.
Brigit. Holly. Samson. Louis. Morton. Harrison.
Harrison’s door was open. It looked like he was lucky enough to have his own room. He was a short little boy with glasses, and he was sitting on his bed, glowering, as if he’d been there all morning, waiting for Zach to walk past, just so he could scowl at him.
“What are you looking at?” he said.
“Sorry,” said Zach. “I was just . . . wondering why you’re not in the room with the others.”
“I’m not allowed to see any parents for a month,” Harrison snorted. “Like that’d be a punishment—not getting adopted. Especially if it’s by people like you.”
Zach’s nose crinkled. “You like it better here, then?”
Harrison shrugged. “It’s not like I have to stay here if I don’t want to! I can leave anytime.”
This kid was starting to get on Zach’s nerves. “Oh, yeah?”
Harrison made a loud pfffft sound. “This house is so old. There’s a window in the downstairs bathroom with a broken latch. All you’ve got to do is wriggle something along the bottom edge.”
“What about the security cameras on the gate?”
“I don’t use the gate, stupid,” he replied. “There’s a better way out, a hole through the side wall near the park. It’s covered by a bush so no one knows about it.” He sounded very proud. “I usually go for pizza.”
“You get money?”
“Of course not,” Harrison said. “Cutter has a key she always wears around her neck. I stole it and got some money out of her desk drawer. If any of the kids has money, or anything valuable when they get sent here, that’s where it ends up. Cutter says it’s to protect their valuables, but I’ve never seen her give back anything she’s taken. Anyway, she found out, so here I am.”
“Guess you’re set, then,” Zach said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
He took advantage of that moment to leave. “Your hair is stupid!” Harrison yelled after him.
When Zach arrived back at the recreation room, he found Ms. Cutter just outside the door. She gave him a sharp look. “Why are you wandering around?” she snapped. Zach noticed that her hand went to her neck where, just as Harrison had said, she kept a small key.
Zach started to answer, but she grabbed his arm and propelled him back into the room. Everyone looked up at her entrance. Even the little kids stopped hitting each other with the brontosaurus.
Ms. Cutter seemed to have abandoned all her attempts at being conciliatory. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to come back another day? Never mind. It usually takes two or three visits before an adoption is decided upon.”
Both Mr. and Mrs. Morgenstern were sitting at a table in the far corner with a kid Zach hadn’t seen earlier. He was short, Zach saw, but he was sitting side-on, so he couldn’t quite see what he looked like, except that he was wearing a blue jacket, black t-shirt, and a mask. Zach moved closer, curious.
The boy wasn’t wearing a mask.
He was a monster!
Chapter Four
The monster kid hunched over, looking down at his hands. Mr. and Mrs. Morgenstern stood up on either side, looking rather protective.
Mr. Morgenstern said “I believe we have found what we were looking for, haven’t we, love?”
Mrs. Morgenstern smiled, and to Zach’s amazement, put her hand on the monster’s shoulder.
“We have,” she said.
Ms. Cutter looked like she had swallowed a mouthful of pins. “There must be some mistake. That child was placed here merely as a temporary measure . . .” She gathered herself and started again, but her bottom lip curled in distaste. “He was found wandering near the gap in the Wall. The mayor’s office decided to place him here until arrangements could be made for him to be returned beyond the Wall.”
“He has no parents, is that right?” said Mr. Morgenstern. “Whichever side of the Wall he’s from, he has no family, no relatives willing to claim him.”
“Well . . . that is . . . true. No one has come forward to claim him. The police were going to take him back across the Wall, but he protested strongly, and there were a few problems—he doesn’t have a yellow permit, for one thing, and that would mean mountains of paperwork for the Regulatory Board, but . . .”
“Then we would like to apply to adopt him. The authorities can decide whether or not we are suitable.”
“But—” Ms. Cutter’s lips curled even further. If she kept going, Zach thought, her
whole head would turn inside out. Finally, she burst out, “Really? You really want to adopt . . .him?”
As much as he didn’t like the woman, Zach agreed very much with her sentiment; he was aghast. The monster was completely bald. He had a high forehead and narrow eyes with slitted pupils, like a cat’s. His ears were pointed. He had a flat nose and a mouth that was too wide. He had a ridge of small horns starting at the top of his eyebrows and going around the top of his head.
His black t-shirt had the name of a band on it—Looks Like Vanessa—but it was clear it wasn’t his, because it was two sizes too small, and his jeans looked clean but well-worn. Zach couldn’t see his feet under the table, but his fingers were long and each one ended in a curving black claw.
How could his parents even be thinking this?
He thought he’d felt sick before. Now his stomach was churning as though there was a water polo match going on in there.
As Ms. Cutter continued to argue, Zach watched on, thinking.
Because, really, he did know why his parents had chosen this monster boy. They were kind-hearted and thoughtful. They looked at this monster kid and saw someone who needed a home. Mr. Morgenstern probably saw his great uncle, who Zach had never met, but knew his dad had loved very much.
Ms. Cutter was still arguing, but Zach’s parents weren’t backing down. It was clear they’d made up their minds, and they could be stubborn. Ms. Cutter wasn’t going to intimidate them.
Finally, she whirled on her heel. “I’ll get the forms.”
❖ ❖ ❖
No one really knew what happened on the Other Side of the Wall. Since the day it had been opened, no one had actually crossed it; they’d seen the monsters peering through from the Other Side, and the crumbled old buildings. They’d seen the streets lined with rubbish. Then there was the smog, drifting in little wisps through the gap.
