The Secret Keepers

by Trenton Lee Stewart

  His eyes were drawn at once to a big, rusted-out hole in the side of the sink. Or not big, exactly, but big enough. He didn’t hesitate. He dropped to the ground and wormed his way through the hole.

  Almost at once he was rewarded by the sound of the back door opening, laughing voices, and footsteps approaching the makeshift card table. The players sat on the milk crates again. Huddled in the darkness under the sink, Reuben could hear them talking (by their voices he recognized the baker and two of his nieces) and the cards being shuffled and tapped against the metal above him. Someone switched the radio on, and polka music resonated all around him. Soon the card game was back in full swing.

  Reuben felt ridiculously pleased with himself. He’d found a perfect hiding place. He pretended he was a spy listening to a coded conversation among criminals, memorizing every word so that later he could decipher the code. Although the villains seemed to be talking about nothing more interesting than the older niece’s upcoming wedding, Reuben the spy knew that they were hatching a plot of incomparable wickedness. Once he got his hands on their secret codebook…

  Just then a new voice entered the conversation—a man’s voice, full of false friendliness. A screen door creaked open and banged closed. Hurriedly the radio was switched off, and milk crates scraped against the pavement as the players quickly got to their feet. Reuben felt prickles rise on the back of his neck.

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” said the stranger’s voice. “But you weren’t in the shop. The boy offered to come fetch you, but that would have left your counter unattended, and of course we hate to interfere with the proper running of your business. So we came back here to see what you were up to. We do like to know things.”

  Reuben, shifting to his left, peeked out through the rusted hole and saw several pairs of men’s shoes. The baker’s and four others. Reuben felt his heart quicken. He had never been so close to the Directions before.

  “And now you know,” the baker said, his own voice just as empty of real friendliness as the first man’s had been. “We were taking a break.”

  “Must be nice,” said the Direction who had spoken. “Ourselves, we can’t take breaks whenever we please. Ourselves, we have the Counselor to answer to. We have to keep a tight schedule. Which is why we’re wondering why you’re back here when you knew we were coming. Why you’d want to make us wait.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the baker in a choked voice. “My watch seems to have stopped. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  “You haven’t lost track of anything besides the time, now, have you?” said the same Direction. “You weren’t hoping we’d just move along and come back next week? Is that what we’re going to have to tell the Counselor?”

  “No, no, of course not! I’m not such a fool as that, and you know it. I have your envelope right here, with the full percentage, as always.”

  “And no report of anything unusual?”

  “I would tell you if I’d seen anything. Come, I’ll show you the ledger, and you can be on your way. I know you have your schedule to keep.”

  Five pairs of shoes stepped to the back door of the bakery. The door opened and closed, and Reuben was left alone with the nieces, who sat down again in dead silence. After a minute the younger niece began to speak, but the older one hushed her. The silence stretched on. Then the back door opened, and Reuben heard a single pair of shoes approaching. The baker sat heavily on his milk crate again.

  Reuben crouched beneath the overturned sink, absently listening to the baker and his nieces pretend to enjoy their game, although the happy mood had clearly been destroyed. He felt the same about his own game, and no longer pretended to be a spy. He was only a boy, impolitely eavesdropping on a family conversation. The instant the card players withdrew, he wriggled through the rusted hole and walked stiffly out of the alley. For the rest of that afternoon he lay in his bed in the empty apartment, flipping through a comic book he didn’t much like, wishing he didn’t know what he knew.

  Reuben never wandered through that alley again, and after he and his mom moved, he never returned to the bakery at all. She had once suggested that they go back, but he had said he didn’t feel like walking so far, much less taking a bus. The truth was that the place made him sad now. He couldn’t stand the thought of someone like the baker being forced to answer to those men, to hand his money over to them and pretend that everything was fine. Even the delicious smell of baked goods troubled Reuben now. He had come to think of it as the smell of fear.

  After Reuben watched the Directions make their rounds and move on to a different street, he went back inside, drinking in the cool air with relief, for it had grown quite hot on the roof. He scurried into the office with the key, scurried out empty-handed. On his way to the water fountain he changed directions twice to avoid bumping into kids from school. There were days when it was unavoidable, when someone would nod at him, and Reuben would nod back, averting his eyes. That was about as close as he had come to making friends.

  Partly the problem was that he’d switched schools. At his new school everyone already knew each other, had known each other since the days of snacks and nap times. No one had made any real effort to get to know him. The friendly kids already had friends, and the shy kids kept to themselves.

  Anyway, he knew he couldn’t blame everything on the new school. Even at his old one, the closer he’d come to middle school, the more things had changed. His friends had stopped wanting to play hide-and-seek with him, and not just because he always won. The boys he’d known had become more interested in sports, and the girls, even more mysteriously, had begun to cluster in impenetrable groups, engaging in coded conversations. Somewhere along the way Reuben realized that he was still playing hide-and-seek, was in fact playing it all the time, but by himself, without a seeker. No one was seeking him.

  Reuben gulped so much water from the fountain that he could hear it sloshing in his empty belly as he walked home. There was little shade on the street, only a few dilapidated awnings. He squinted in the fierce brightness and kept his head down, listening to his belly. He was caught off guard when someone spoke to him from the doorway of a hardware store.

  “Young Pedley! What are you so mad about?”

  Reuben started and turned toward the voice, which he instantly recognized as belonging to Officer Warren, one of the Lower Downs’ beat cops—the only one who didn’t make Reuben nervous. There he stood in the dusky doorway, his blue police uniform faded but carefully pressed, his boots polished, his smile as friendly as ever. Officer Warren was a tall man with walnut-brown skin, close-cropped hair just visible beneath his police cap, and eyes that always seemed to be studying Reuben, as if trying to figure out something about him. Yet he was so kind that in his case—a very rare case—Reuben didn’t shrink from the attention.

  “I’m not mad,” Reuben said, returning the smile. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

  “That so?” Officer Warren cocked his head to the side. “Why were you frowning, then? Looked like you were furious at that sidewalk.” He gestured toward the ground at Reuben’s feet.

  Reuben chuckled. He jerked his thumb up at the sun. “It’s just bright.”

  “That it is,” said the policeman, stepping out from beneath the store awning. He took a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. “We need to get you a pair of these, young man. Then you don’t have to go around looking like you hate the world. What do you think?”

  Reuben nodded and said it was a good idea.

  Officer Warren was studying him, as usual. “Tell you what. I need to get a new pair soon. When I do, I’ll let you borrow these. Sound like a plan? Yeah? All right, then, it’s a plan.”

  The sun glinted painfully off the policeman’s well-polished badge, but Reuben kept looking at him. He liked Officer Warren immensely. Every time they spoke, Reuben wanted to become a police officer.

  “Well,” said Officer Warren with a sigh, “I suppose I’d better move along. I need
to check in on some people.” He laid a hand on Reuben’s shoulder. “You say hi to your mom for me, okay? She doing fine? That’s good, that’s good. All right, now, take care, young Pedley.” He moved off in the direction of the community center, whistling for the first few steps, then falling silent.

  Reuben imagined the cheerful look fading from Officer Warren’s face. No matter how friendly he was with everyone, the policeman generally looked very serious, even sad, when he was alone. Reuben had watched him often enough to know. It was for this reason that, after they parted, he always had second thoughts about becoming a policeman. For if you really wanted to be a good one, how could you ever be happy in New Umbra?

  The fact that the police in New Umbra had to look the other way whenever the Directions came around, that they could do their jobs only up to a point, beyond which they dared not go (for “Police officers have families to worry about, too,” Reuben had once heard someone say), was surely enough to depress even the liveliest spirit. A few rare types like Officer Warren managed to be especially kind and helpful, but that didn’t mean they were happy, and for every friendly officer in New Umbra, there was another who was bitter and defensive. Most just seemed beaten down, however, as if their job involved going outside every day to be kicked.

  Reuben took one last look at Officer Warren, then turned and continued on his way home. Despite what he knew, his encounters with the young policeman always left him in a good mood, and this time was no exception. This time, in fact, he’d been in a brilliant mood to begin with. Indeed, he was perhaps the only person for blocks in every direction who at that moment was feeling hopeful.

  At home Reuben had two bowls of cereal, eating sloppily, his eyes fixed on the lustrous contents of the wooden box, which he had opened and set before him on the kitchen table. He was in a terrific mood. He hardly knew what to do with his excitement, or for that matter the watch and key. He spent the entire afternoon doing little more than gazing at them. For variety he carried them with him into his bedroom, then into the bathroom, where he looked at them in the mirror, and then back out to the living room couch. He pondered, more or less continuously, what they might be worth. Hundreds of dollars? Thousands of dollars? More?

  Reuben wondered, too, about P. William Light. Had he been a collector? Was he rich? He’d had this case custom-made for the watch and key, so he must have valued them greatly. But it wasn’t P. William Light who’d hidden the box in the wall above the ledge, was it? Reuben didn’t think so. The man who’d had his name engraved in this beautiful box would not be the one who had wrapped that bundle up in a plastic bread sack. No, that had been someone else, someone from a more recent time. P. William Light was from further back.

  In any case, the bundle had been inside that hole in the wall for a long time. No one had come to claim it. To Reuben the laws of ownership were therefore perfectly clear: finders keepers. He had his doubts about whether his mom would agree with him, though, and there was also the sticky business of explaining how these things had come into his possession. And so, though part of him was bursting to share his discovery with her, a far greater part counseled secrecy. He knew, at the very least, that he would not be telling her the truth anytime soon. He needed time to think. Time to plan. Time to dream.

  That night was one of his mom’s evenings off from her cashier job in Ashton. As usual on such evenings, she came home from the market with a package of fish, even though she was sick to death of fish. Reuben still liked it, and she got an employee discount.

  Reuben carried the package into the kitchen as his mom wearily dumped her handbag onto the floor and kicked off her shoes. She beckoned him back over. “Come and hug your mother, child,” she said in a husky, pretending-to-be-formal tone, and Reuben laughed. Her clothes smelled of fish, but Reuben was used to it. He gave her a long hug. She was just tall enough, and he was just small enough, for her to rest her chin on the top of his head.

  She scratched his back affectionately. “Your day okay?”

  “Sure,” Reuben murmured, closing his eyes. He loved having his back scratched.

  “Anything exciting happen?”

  Reuben shrugged. Having stared all afternoon at the watch and key, he was seeing them even now, burned in his mind’s eye. He’d hidden everything in his closet mere minutes ago, behind a cardboard box of old toys.

  His mom kissed his head and released him. Only then did she notice his bruises and scrapes. Reuben saw the anxiety blossom on her face, a rare sight. His mom had elfish features with, typically, an elfish look of mischief and confidence about them—except when she was worried about her son.

  “Reuben,” she gasped, “what on earth happened to you?”

  “Oh! I’m fine,” he said, trying to sound casual. As a matter of fact, his arms did ache and sting, but he wanted to put out this fire as quickly as possible. “I tripped down the steps at the library. I looked like an idiot, but I’m okay. They don’t hurt that much.”

  His mom bent over to make a closer inspection. “We should put ointment on these scrapes.” She searched his face, her hazel eyes narrowed with concern. “Were you embarrassed?”

  “What? Oh. No. Actually, I don’t think anyone saw me.” Reuben wished he hadn’t said that about looking like an idiot. She was already worried about his lack of friends.

  “People fall sometimes, Reuben. It doesn’t make them idiots.”

  “I know,” he said, nodding. But he was thinking, If you only knew.

  When his mom was satisfied that he truly was all right, she went to take a shower and change her clothes. Reuben darted to his closet, wanting to take another long look at the watch. But no sooner had he unbundled it than he heard his mom launch into a loud and elaborate complaint—evidently, the hot water was still out. The pipes in the wall fell silent. Reuben put the watch away with a sigh.

  After he’d set the table, Reuben sat with his legs tucked under his chair to avoid tripping his mom as she moved about the tiny kitchen. Her hair, still pulled back in its workday ponytail, had gone frizzy in the heat. Now she stood over the stove with a spatula, reminiscing aloud about their old place.

  “I mean, it wasn’t the be-all and pinball,” she said, flipping the fish in the pan, “but at least it had hot water. Plus the stove had decent burners.”

  “‘The be-all and pinball’?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, feigning annoyance. “Yes, the be-all and pinball. It’s an expression.”

  Reuben rolled his eyes. “Mom. No, it isn’t.”

  “I’m pretty sure it is. What do you know? You’re just a kid.” She twisted her torso one way and then the other, stretching her back.

  Reuben shook his head. His mom cracked him up. Other people called her spunky, a term she despised. Spunky, she said, was what you called people who acted like they were bigger and better than they were. “I don’t think you should judge people by their size,” she’d told him. “Or their quality, either, for that matter.”

  Reuben had asked how you were supposed to judge people if not by their quality.

  “By their hair,” his mom had replied. “Their hair or their clothes. And that’s it.”

  Over dinner Reuben endured the usual questions about how he’d spent his day, answering with the usual stories—comic books at the library, a few games of P-I-G with the community center’s underinflated basketballs, a conversation or two with kids he knew from school. As usual, his mom seemed slightly suspicious about the “talking with other kids” part. She didn’t challenge it anymore—she’d figured out that it only made him feel bad, as if not having friends was somehow his fault, a flaw in his personality—but he could still see the doubt and concern in her eyes. It was a relief when dinner was over and the daily catch-up conversation officially ended.

  “Well,” his mom said when the dishes were all washed and put away. She swatted Reuben’s shoulder with the drying cloth. “Dream house?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll get the graph paper.”<
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  “I’ll grab the pencils.”

  Reuben went into his mom’s bedroom and reached under her bed, pulling out a stack of papers. He glanced over two or three pages and called out, “Old one or new one?”

  “Up to you!” his mom called back. She always did. Reuben always asked, and his mom always deferred to him. After the first few times, the exchange had become a sort of unacknowledged joke. Then, over the weeks and months, it had taken on an almost ceremonial quality. Strange as it might seem, it made Reuben feel closer to his mom, and he was sure she felt the same way, though they’d never discussed it. Talking about it might ruin the effect.

  “New one,” Reuben said to himself with satisfaction. “Definitely a new one today.” He took a couple of blank sheets from the bottom of the stack and returned to the kitchen table. His mom sat sharpening pencils with a little plastic sharpener. She nodded approvingly when she saw the blank graph paper. That was part of the ritual, too: Reuben always made the right choice.

  “I want this one to have a climbing wall,” he said, settling into his chair.

  “Nice.” His mom handed him a pencil. “Will there be a safety harness?”

  “No need. I’ll have the wall come up out of the swimming pool.”

  “Clever,” his mom said. She pursed her lips. “However… have you ever experienced a belly flop, Reuben?”

  Reuben shook his head. He’d never actually been in a swimming pool.

  “Well, I have. It feels like getting slapped by the world.”

  He snickered and bent over the graph paper. “I’ll try to avoid belly flops, then. And you can use the safety harness. I’ll put one in.”