The Gypsy Game

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  Finally she pulled the covers down far enough to peek out at the clock on the bedside table, and sighed deeply. Just as she’d feared, it was time to get up. Unless—unless maybe she was sick. She checked out the possibilities. Sore throat? Nothing noticeable. Headache? No luck there either.

  Stomachache? Yeah, that was it. Ulcers, probably. Wasn’t that what you got from worrying too much? After last night she probably had half a dozen. But after several minutes of concentrating on her stomach, and even giving it a few good hard pokes to help get things started, she gave up on ulcers, too. Crawling out of bed, she stumbled gloomily out into the kitchen.

  Caroline, who was rushing around getting breakfast ready, didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong. Didn’t even see that something was bothering April. Just what you could expect from someone who was only a grandmother, instead of a real parent, April thought, with growing annoyance. A person might think that at a time like this even a grandmother would notice something, might pay some attention to what her only granddaughter was going through. April pulled up a chair and threw herself despairingly into it.

  But then, when Caroline finally stopped dashing around and sat down at the table, she suddenly began to get terribly nosy. Began to ask all sorts of questions about Toby’s disappearance and what people at school were saying about it and how she, April, felt about it. Just what you’d expect, April told herself, letting her eyes go narrow and her jaw tighten. Just like a grandmother. Always prying into people’s personal feelings about things. And then, when April was starting to point out that a person’s feelings were sometimes very private and personal, Caroline looked at the clock and said she hoped that April would cheer up soon, and hurried off to work. Cheer up! April thought angrily. As if I was in a bad mood or something.

  Feeling a little bit nervous and worried—but not in a bad mood—April finished getting ready and started down the stairs, still trying to decide whether to ring the Rosses’ doorbell and give Melanie a chance to refuse to speak to her. Or whether to just go on to school without her. That’s what she ought to do. She ought to just walk on past and …

  “Hi,” a voice said, and there she was. There Melanie was, sitting in the window seat on the first-floor landing.

  “Hi, yourself,” April said warily, not wanting to sound too relieved or anything. That was all anybody said for a while. It wasn’t until they were out on the sidewalk that April said, “Hey, I thought you weren’t going to be speaking to me.”

  “Oh yeah?” Melanie looked surprised. “Why? I mean, why’d you think that?”

  April grinned and shrugged. All she said was, “I don’t know. No good reason, I guess.” But what she was thinking was, Because I wouldn’t be speaking to me, if I were you.

  So that was that. Not really the end of straightening out the Gypsy problem, of course, but pretty much the end of thinking and talking about it for a while. But not the end of worrying about Toby. In class that day it was hard for April to keep her mind on what was going on, and she knew Melanie was having the same problem. Once during math class April had to ask Mrs. Granger to repeat the question, and the same thing happened to Melanie a little while later. Every time they looked at each other, they made desperate faces, looks that meant stuff like, “The day is lasting forever,” and “How can you concentrate on uncommon denominators when your mind is full of questions about matters of life or death?” Questions like, “Was Toby really there yesterday when Ken knocked on the gate?” And, “If not, when did he leave?” And, “Where did he spend the night?” And, “What horrible things might have happened to him?” The hours crept slowly by.

  When Toby left the Gypsy Camp that morning in the first half-light of day, he really didn’t have any idea where he was going except perhaps to quickly get to a different neighborhood where he would be less apt to run into someone he knew. At first he headed west, away from the Wilson School District, but he hadn’t gone far when he realized that he was getting too close to University Avenue and home. So at the next corner he turned north and ran into a bunch of hurrying commuters headed for the rapid transit terminal. And since no one in the crowd seemed the least bit interested in him, he stayed with them as far as the Norwich stop. At that point he mingled with the Norwich pedestrians.

  He was still hurrying down Norwich trying to look like an ordinary student headed for an ordinary early-morning study hour, or perhaps a before-school music lesson, when he suddenly realized what he had to do. Part of his decision was because of the weather, which was getting darker and gloomier by the minute and threatening the kind of rain that would pretty much rule out any outdoor-living-type solution to his problem. But an even more important deciding factor was pure and simple exhaustion. Suddenly and totally, he was major-league wiped out. Which wasn’t too surprising considering the amount of sleep he hadn’t been getting. And it was right then, just as he was beginning to realize that he wasn’t going to be able to go much farther, when he looked up and noticed that he was about to cross Arbor Street.

  She did invite me back, he told himself, as he started up Arbor. And I won’t stay long. Just long enough to get some sleep and decide on a plan of action.

  It was a weird kind of relief to have a plan, even a fairly disgusting one, and to at least know where he was going, but when he reached the church and the steps that led down to the basement, the fear and dread came back in full force. It wasn’t until he’d taken off his backpack and fished around for his flashlight that he could force himself to go on down. He pushed open the door and then froze, crouched and ready to run, while he shone the light around the dark recesses of the basement.

  They were asleep. All of them. A mound of blankets in Garbo’s alcove by the dead furnace was producing the reassuring sound of deep, steady snoring. But there were two other mounds of scruffy blankets, from which there occasionally arose other sleep-related noises, gasps and gurgles and heavy breathing. Standing just inside the door, Toby turned the flashlight from one to the other and then back again, but no one woke up or even moved, and suddenly he was just too tired to go on being afraid. A few minutes later he had spread his blankets in an unoccupied corner, had rolled up in them as best he could, and was rapidly falling asleep. The last thing he remembered thinking was that it was entirely possible that he could wake up dead, but right at that moment he was just too tired to care.

  Twenty-one

  AS IT TURNED OUT, when Toby woke up a couple of hours later, he wasn’t exactly dead, but pretty close to it if you count being scared half to death. If you count being jarred out of a deep, sound sleep by someone pulling your backpack out from under your head, and then just squatting there grinning at you like some kind of weird gargoyle.

  Actually, when Toby’s head crashed down off his backpack pillow, the person he found himself staring at was just one of Garbo’s roommates. A weird old-young guy, with pale white skin and greenish blond hair that stuck out in every direction, and several layers of tagged clothing draping his huge, clumsy-looking body. It was his face that reminded Toby of a gargoyle. Not that he was all that ugly, because he wasn’t, but there was something gargoylelike about his empty-eyed, snaggle-toothed, permanent grin. It was the kind of grin that probably wouldn’t change a bit while he robbed you and then beat you to a bloody pulp.

  “Hi,” the gargoyle said, holding up the backpack. “I got your pack.” He gave it a shake and then held it up to his ear as if he expected it to say something. “Got some breakfast in there?”

  “B-Breakfast?” Toby stammered. “No. No breakfast.” But then, as his sleep-dazed brain got into gear, he decided on another answer. “I might have some bread, though. Would you like a piece of bread?”

  “Yeah.” The grin widened. “Oh boy, oh boy, Bread. Mickey likes bread.” He nodded happily, and as he handed over the backpack, he added, “I’m Mickey. I live here.”

  Toby thought of saying, “Yeah, I was afraid of that,” but instead he only nodded and pretended to smile as he unzipped the pa
ck and took out the last food bag. All that was left was a fairly well petrified piece of what used to be sourdough French bread. “Here,” he said, holding it out to Mickey. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got left.”

  “Oh boy, oh boy,” Mickey said. “Bread.” He began to gnaw at the stale bread, using teeth at the side of his mouth because some of the front ones seemed to be rotted out, but then, suddenly, his big smooth face wrinkled into a worried frown. “Where’s your piece?” he asked. “Where’s your bread?”

  Toby shrugged and shook his head. “That’s okay. I don’t want any. I don’t …”

  But Mickey’s worried pucker stayed in place. “Here,” he said. “Mickey bust it. Give you some.”

  The bread didn’t break easily. Mickey looked pretty tough, but obviously a really stale chunk of French bread was tougher. He was still grunting and twisting, and Toby was still saying, “No, no, that’s all right. I’m not hungry. I’m—” when another voice interrupted.

  A harsh, brittle voice that said, “Give it here, Mickey.” And suddenly another of Garbo’s roommates was standing behind Mickey, holding a long, sharp, murderous-looking knife. Toby gasped and tried to keep his hands from creeping up toward his throat.

  “Hi, kid,” said the guy with the knife, a tall, thin black man with dark brown skin and lots of wild-looking hair. “I’m Vince. And this lamebrain is Mickey.” He held out his other hand, the one that wasn’t holding the knife. “Here lamebrain, let me.”

  Toby couldn’t help tensing himself to jump out of the way when the fight started. Calling a very large, powerful-looking person a lamebrain was really asking for it, particularly when the person you were talking to obviously was one. And even though Vince was the one with the knife, Mickey was an awful lot bigger. But to Toby’s surprise, Mickey only smiled his sappy smile and handed the French bread to Vince, who started sawing a chunk off one end. But as Vince sawed, Toby began to get the picture. What he got was that although the dictionary definition of “lamebrain” might be insulting, Vince’s tone of voice hadn’t been. And it was pretty obvious that dictionary definitions weren’t the kind of thing Mickey worried about. When a smallish piece finally came off the chunk of bread, Vince handed it to Toby and gave the rest back to Mickey.

  “Hey, thanks,” Toby managed to say, trying to look as though he meant it. As if he really was thrilled to get a small, slobbered-on piece of what was really his in the first place. And in a way he was. At least he was certainly glad that bread seemed to be the only thing Vince showed any interest in slicing up.

  Vince’s smile, unlike Mickey’s permanent grin, was brief and pointed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “He doesn’t have anything catching. Not that I know of anyhow.”

  Back in his corner, Vince pulled on some old scruffy boots, smoothed his blankets, and gathered up some boxes and plastic bags, while Mickey watched every move he made. Mickey watched Vince’s movements the way a normal person might watch some kind of artistic performance, looking back now and then and grinning delightedly, as if he were inviting Toby to share his admiration for his friend’s incredible talents. Neither of the two guys said anything more. But, a few minutes later as he was leading Mickey toward the basement door, Vince did a kind of good-bye gesture in Toby’s direction. And Mickey, who was still gnawing away, stopped long enough to wave his bread in a kind of eager-beaver imitation of Vince’s supercool salute.

  As soon as they were out of sight, Toby started to toss his slimy piece of bread into a dark corner, but at the last moment he changed his mind. It was a depressing thought, but just because he wasn’t desperate enough to eat a rock-hard, slightly-chewed-on chunk of bread at the moment didn’t mean that he might not be that desperate sometime in the future. He was stuffing it back into his backpack, when a familiar creaky voice said, “Well, well. The return of Mr. J-J-Johnson. And I see you’ve already met our fellow cellar rats.”

  Toby smiled weakly. “Yeah, I guess so. Is that—er—all of them?” He hoped it was. He didn’t know if he could take any more Vinces or Mickeys at the moment.

  Garbo was sitting up among her jumble of blankets. “That’s it. Just the three of us poor outcasts, since Jeb died.” She grinned teasingly. “Four again, come to think of it, with our new young recruit. Tony, you said? Come here, Tony, and help me get on my feet.”

  Toby-Tony did as he was told, and by the time he’d helped Garbo gather up her blankets and climb the stairs, he’d learned quite a lot more about Garbo and her fellow cellar rats. Like for instance the fact that both Vince and Mickey had been in institutions at one time.

  “Institutions?” That didn’t sound too reassuring. “What kind of institutions? You don’t mean like—like they’re crazy, or something?”

  Garbo chuckled. “No, not crazy. At least Mickey isn’t. ’Fraid poor old Mickey doesn’t have what it takes to go crazy.” When Toby just stared at her in bewilderment, she went on, “In this stark raving world of ours, it’s usually the ones who started out with a certain amount of smarts who eventually freak out and flip their everlasting lids. That’s definitely not our Mickey’s problem. His gears are just missing a few cogs.”

  “And Vince?” Toby asked, remembering the sharp, fierce eyes, and the wicked knife.

  “Vince? Crazy? No. Not exactly. Didn’t used to be, at least. Guess old Vince used to be some kind of businessman, believe it or not. But then a few years ago his head got kind of smashed in, and ever since then he gets these terrible, blinding headaches. Real doozies! Drives him right up the wall sometimes. Lost his job, and the doctors took all his money.”

  “Wow,” Toby said. “That’s a bummer. Does his head ache like that all the time?”

  “No. Not all the time.” Garbo shook her head. “They come and go. But sometimes they last for days. Mickey takes care of him when he’s out of it, or he’d probably have been dead by now. And the rest of the time Vince takes care of Mickey.” Garbo laughed her unfunny laugh. “They’re quite a pair. Good roommates, though. Except you don’t want to go messing with Vince when his head’s bad. Times like that he’s got a pretty short fuse.”

  They were out on the path by then, and before she left, Garbo showed Toby where it was possible to get water from a faucet behind the liquor store and the way to something she called “Jeb’s sanitary facility,” which was a makeshift outhouse that her old friend, Jeb, had built in the midst of some bushes in the backyard of the church. Then she warned him again to stay off the streets and set out at a slow shuffle toward downtown.

  Toby got a drink, used the sanitary facility, which was anything but sanitary and smelled awful, and then sat on the back steps for a while trying not to notice what a dark and gloomy day it was. Trying not to think at all, actually. The trouble with thinking in a situation like this, he decided, was that as soon as you got started on a useful train of thought, you got sidetracked onto something else. Something useless and completely depressing, like where your dad was right at that moment and what he was doing and how he was feeling. Just don’t think about it, he told himself firmly. Concentrate on something useful, like planning what you’re going to do next, for instance.

  But then, as soon as he started to make plans about where to go and what to do, he got sidetracked again onto the risks involved in going anywhere, and the maybe even greater danger of staying where he was. The danger of staying in a cold, damp, dirty basement full of crazies and lamebrains, where you would never know when you might be tromped on for not having any more food in your backpack or maybe even knifed by a guy with an extra-bad headache.

  The next sidetrack was about food. Just thinking about all the great stuff the other kids had shown up with, the doughnuts and egg rolls and apples and cheese and bread, made him swallow hard. If only he’d rationed it out, leaving at least one doughnut and maybe some cheese and bread for today. But he hadn’t, of course. He’d wolfed most of it down immediately, back in the storage yard, and the rest of it, except for that one chunk of stale bread, in his cement-pi
pe fox hole. Thinking about bread made him remember the small, slobbery chunk in his backpack, but he wasn’t quite desperate enough for that yet. Almost, but not quite.

  Thinking, Toby decided, was just too depressing, and under the circumstances there was only one way to stop doing it. Returning to the dark, cold basement, he crawled into his rat’s nest of blankets and went back to sleep.

  Twenty-two

  WHEN SCHOOL WAS finally over that day, April and Melanie met Elizabeth outside the fourth-grade room and headed for home—walking fast. But they’d only gone a block or two when there was the whir of wheels and a bicycle whizzed past barely missing them, and then screeched to a stop. Elizabeth squealed in terror, and all three girls leaped for safety. Plastered against the wall of the nearest building, they turned to look—at Ken, of course.

  “Hi,” he said. “Don’t forget. Be there”—he looked at his watch—“in ten minutes.”

  “You jerk!” April yelled. “Don’t you know it’s against the law to ride on the sidewalk? Don’t you know you could kill …”

  Melanie was pulling on April’s sleeve and shushing her, and when April finally wound down, Melanie said, “We can’t. We can’t be there in ten minutes. Besides, I don’t even know if I can be there at all. We have to pick up Marshall and then I have to get permission and then …”

  Ken looked disgusted. “Okay, okay.” He jumped back on his bike and started off, calling back over his shoulder, “Just get there as soon as you can. We’ve got to start right away.”

  That’s when they began to run the rest of the way to the day-care center, breaking all existing records. After they picked up Marshall, he slowed them down some until April and Melanie decided to take his hands and pull him along between them as they ran. It worked pretty well, but it turned out that Marshall didn’t like it. He didn’t complain while they were running, but when they finally got to the Casa Rosada and April asked, “Wasn’t that fun, Marshall?” he jerked his hands away and said, “No!”