The Secret of Zoom

by Lynne Jonell

  Christina shut the trapdoor behind her with a soft snick. A rosy glow seeped into the attic through the ventilation slats, and even the faint crack around the child-sized door had a pinkish cast. The catch was stiff, but Christina managed to turn it after a few taps with her flashlight, and the door opened at last with a protesting screech.

  The rooftop was edged in light. The sun was setting in a blaze of pink and gold, and the battlements and towers of Leo Loompski’s house seemed lifted from a fairy-tale castle. Grinning gargoyles, their wings uplifted, looked almost angelic in the sun’s amber rays.

  Christina stepped carefully out onto the roof’s sloping tiles. Little pieces of grit rolled beneath her shoes, and she held on to the nearest gargoyle to keep from sliding. The stone was rough and weather-pitted and still warm from the day’s heat. Christina ran her fingers over the carved face.

  If only Taft were here! There were so many great places for hide-and-seek. And what a perfect spot for playing spy!

  She wandered over the whole roof, climbing chimneys and balancing on battlements in the sun’s waning light. There was something about being up so high that she loved. Even without her telescope, she could see the orphanage, and the sunset blazing off its windows in rows of golden rectangles was so bright that it hurt her eyes.

  Christina blinked as light flashed again from an orphanage window. But the color was fading, the sun slipping behind the trees, and the windows turning to gray. Still—there was another flash.

  Was someone signaling? But why? And to whom?

  Maybe she should get her telescope. Christina turned back quickly, holding on to another gargoyle’s wing for balance. But the wing twisted under her hand and then the whole gargoyle moved with it, grating over its base with a sound like a cement mixer.

  Christina gaped. There, where the gargoyle had been, was an opening, set in the chimney next to the attic wall, just the size and shape of a door.

  It was a door, in fact. And although the light was dying, she could still make out the first few steps of a staircase leading down.

  CHRISTINA switched on her flashlight.

  The top few steps showed up clearly in the beam. Crafted of dark, polished wood, they curved to the left, spiraling down into darkness. Along the rounding wall ran a handrail.

  Beating back anxious thoughts of what might be waiting below, Christina took a step forward, shining the flashlight on the stairs, the wall, the cobweb about to touch her face—

  Ugh. Christina batted at the cobweb with her free hand and shook off the clinging fibers. Maybe it would be better to explore the stairs during the day.

  But a stairway with no windows would be just as dark in the daytime as at night.

  And anyway, she was too curious to wait.

  She went cautiously, feeling her way, checking the strength of the flashlight’s beam. She didn’t want the battery to go out while she was in the tower stair. Feeling her way back up in pitch-dark would be a little too exciting.

  Fifteen steps down, Christina grinned. Through the wall she could hear Nanny’s steady snores and the drone of a radio that was still on.

  Fifteen more steps, and the rattle of pans and a sloshing sound told her that Cook was doing the dishes.

  And fifteen steps beyond that, she could hear a subdued whoosh as the oil furnace lit down in the cellar. It must be getting chilly outside, but deep in the tower, Christina couldn’t feel it.

  And still the stairs went down. Slowly, slowly, Christina descended—twenty steps—thirty steps—

  She was at the bottom. She played her flashlight over the floor, the wall—and there, above the rail, was a light switch.

  She could hardly expect it to still work. But she flipped the switch all the same. And with rising excitement, Christina watched as a row of lights flickered on overhead, a bulb every few yards, stretching on down a hallway so long that she couldn’t see the end.

  It wasn’t really a hallway, after all. It was Leo Loompski’s tunnel, and she had found it at last!

  But where did it lead? Consumed with curiosity, Christina kept going.

  She walked and walked. When she saw her first burned-out bulb, she remembered to switch off her flashlight. After more walking still, she came to a door on the left.

  Unlike the other doors she had seen in her life so far, this one was huge, and as wide as it was tall. She rattled the big brass handle with its large, old-fashioned keyhole set beneath . . . but it was locked.

  Christina stood on one leg in indecision. The tunnel went on, past the locked door, but she was getting tired. She still had to walk all the way back and climb all those stairs, too.

  She would go just a little farther. If she didn’t come to the end of the tunnel, she could always explore it another day.

  But the tunnel began to slope upward, and the air suddenly felt different. Cooler and fresher, as if there were an opening to the outside.

  All at once there were leaves in front of her, hanging from thick vines. Christina pushed her way through the greenery and blinked.

  Above her were stars. Around her was the forest. A little farther away was a high, electrified fence. And through the trees, perhaps fifty yards away, stood a massive building of pale brick, lit up like a jail. There was a confused sound of voices and an idling engine. Christina squinted against the harsh yard lights. In front of the square building was a garbage truck painted with happy faces, and a line of children in orange and red vests.

  Christina crept closer, through the ferns and twigs on the forest floor. The knees of her jeans grew damp, and once she put her palm down on a sharp rock, but she kept on until she was nearly to the fence. A faint odor of soured milk and rotting produce wafted past, and she could hear the voice of a man barking orders.

  “You, and you,” he said. “And you. Line up at the side of the truck. Come on, now, no shirking—Happy Orphans want to help Lenny Loompski!”

  Christina brushed back a leaf that was tickling her nose. Who was Lenny Loompski? She hadn’t seen his portrait on the walls of her house.

  “No sniveling!” cried the man. “That means no tears, no sniffles, no whimpers, no crying for mama—”

  “None of us has a mama,” piped a shrill voice.

  “No crying for the mama you wish you had, whining, moaning, or fuss of any kind. Any of the above will get you two weeks’ hard labor.”

  “We already do hard labor,” said a surly boy’s voice.

  “Two weeks’ VERY hard labor,” the voice went on, “after which you’ll go back to plain hard labor—if you’re lucky. Any more smart comments?”

  There was silence. Christina, who had crawled close enough to see the children’s faces, saw that most of them looked as if they either had been crying or were just about to burst into tears.

  And then she saw Taft. He was first in line, next to the truck, and he was bending down to tie the shoes of another orphan—the tall, large-headed boy Christina had seen once before.

  The big boy stood patiently, his thick arms hanging. A push broom lay at his feet.

  “Hey! Get back to work, you big lug!” The man’s sharp voice carried across the yard.

  The tall boy blinked. He rubbed his large head as if it hurt. “But I want to go with you,” he said slowly, looking down at Taft.

  “No, Danny.” Taft gave the boy’s shoelace a final tug and handed him the push broom. “You stay here. It’s safer.”

  “But when will you come back?”

  “Go on,” Taft said urgently, giving Danny a shove. “You’ll get us both in trouble if you don’t start sweeping.”

  The big boy shambled obediently off, pushing his broom across the dirty asphalt. “But who will tie my shoes?” he said aloud.

  Taft turned away. He pressed his palms against the side of the truck and stood with his head down.

  Christina watched him for a moment. So Taft wasn’t always rude, then . . .

  She pulled her flashlight carefully out of her jacket pocket and aimed it at
Taft’s feet. On—off. On—off. The tops of his shoes shone briefly with reflected light.

  Taft blinked, peering straight at her, through the fence and into the darkened forest.

  Christina waited until the man’s back was turned and then she shone the flashlight up to illuminate her own face while she counted one thousand one, one thousand two.

  Taft stiffened, glanced over his shoulder, and seemed to hesitate. Then, all at once, he dropped to the ground and wriggled under the truck.

  The second child in line opened her eyes wide and studiously looked away. Taft, hidden in the shadow beneath the truck, was motionless. Christina began to chew her fingernails.

  What was Taft planning? Even if he managed to avoid being run over, once the truck pulled away, his hiding place would be gone. And he couldn’t escape—the electrified fence prevented that.

  “All right, you know the drill. Deep breath and SING!” The man pulled something that looked like a large, two-pronged fork from his back pocket, and hit it against a rod.

  A high, clear tone filled the air.

  Christina stretched her neck forward, straining to hear. The stocky man with the short, bristly hair stood in front of each child in turn.

  “Match your voices to the tuning fork,” the man bellowed. “Come on, now—you can do better than that!”

  But the children were terribly off-key.

  “All right, the rest of you go back inside.” The man picked up a cardboard box at his feet. “What are you waiting for, orphans? Into the hopper!”

  The children in line shuffled to the rear of the garbage truck. The heavy hinged panel that packed the garbage was open, and one by one the children were boosted into the large metal cavity where the garbage was dumped.

  Christina was shocked. That couldn’t possibly be safe. And the smell must be terrible.

  The stocky man loaded the cardboard box into the passenger side of the cab and slammed the door, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. “Hey! Driver! Wake up!”

  Someone sat up straight in the driver’s seat, thrashing his way clear of the blanket that had been over his head. “Any singers?” the driver called through the window.

  “Not this trip,” said the yard boss carelessly. “Shut that ram panel, will you? I don’t want kids jumping out on the road.”

  The driver shook his head. “That would be dangerous, all right. They might get hurt.”

  The stubbly-haired boss chuckled. “Or they might escape, which would be worse.”

  The driver leaned out the window, raking back the thick blond hair that hung in his face. “But they’re Happy Orphans, boss. They wouldn’t want to escape.”

  Christina glanced under the truck at Taft’s feet, just barely visible, and then at the row of thin, frightened faces peering over the edge of the rusting metal hopper. Was the driver serious?

  “You’re new, aren’t you, son?” The yard boss grinned.

  The driver’s hair fell back over his eyes, giving him the look of a large, not overly bright sheepdog. “I just started last week. I did real good on the test!”

  The test for what? Christina thought. Dumbness?

  “Here at Loompski Enterprises,” the driver went on, sounding as if he were quoting from a manual, “we’re all One Big Happy Family. I’m Barney Boolay, and I’m proud to be on the Loompski Team!”

  “Yeah, aren’t we all,” said the yard boss. He scratched himself under his shirt. “You’re kind of a smart one, aren’t you, Boolay?”

  The driver beamed. “I only had to take the employee test four times before I passed. The lady at the desk said she’d never seen anybody do that before.”

  The stocky man’s grin widened. “Well, that ought to make your momma proud.”

  “She died last year,” said Barney earnestly, “so I can’t tell if she’s proud or not. But look here!” Barney stretched out his left hand and twisted a ring on his pinky finger until it caught the light. “See? It’s only my first week, and already I found this in the garbage! It’s got a real emerald!”

  The yard boss peered at the ring. “Looks more like a fake ruby to me, but hey, whatever turns your crank. Now, go ahead and lower that ram panel, will you? No, no, NOT the red button—the green one!”

  “Sorry, boss. Gee, I always get that wrong.”

  “FINGERS IN!” yelled the yard boss, and the orphans snatched their hands away from the edge of the hopper as the ram panel clanged down.

  Christina flinched as the anxious little faces disappeared behind a moving wall of solid steel. If any of the orphans cried out, she couldn’t hear them over the revving of the engine.

  With a lurch, the truck was put into gear—and in that instant, a slim figure rolled out from beneath the truck to the side that was hidden from the orphanage, leapt up to grab a handhold, and hung on, legs dangling.

  The garbage truck rumbled toward the electrified fence. With a screech of metal, a buzzer sounded, a high gate swung open, and the big truck with the happy faces painted on the side rolled through into the forest.

  Taft clung to the truck until just past the first bushes and then let go. The truck engine was making so much noise that the crash of a body into the underbrush was hardly noticeable.

  The gate swung shut and locked with a clank. The garbage truck dwindled in the distance, belching exhaust as it labored up the dirt road through the forest. And Christina, keeping her flashlight prudently off, crawled on hands and knees to the place where Taft had landed.

  “I knew there was a tunnel,” said Taft. His narrow face, lit from below by Christina’s flashlight, was smudged but elated.

  Christina leaned back against the tunnel’s interior wall, proud of herself. She had not only found Taft but (to her great relief) had actually managed to locate the tunnel’s entrance again in the dark. “You’re coming back with me, right?”

  “Back where?”

  “My house, of course.” She looked at him worriedly. Now that she finally had a friend—sort of—it would be nice to keep him. And he had to stay somewhere.

  Taft shook his head. “All I want is to stay here long enough for them to forget about me, and then I’m going to run away. I’ve got to find a good place for me and—”

  “But what about food?” Christina interrupted.

  Taft shrugged. “I don’t eat much. Anyway, maybe I can find something to eat in the woods. Berries and things. You know.”

  “But you could stay in my attic. No one’s been up there for years. And”—Christina leaned forward, struck with inspiration—“you can learn math on my computer.”

  Taft turned his head alertly. “Math?”

  Christina clapped in glee. “You can do all my assignments! You’ll love it, I won’t have to do them, and my father will be happy. It’s the perfect plan.”

  Taft looked thoughtful. “But if I stay in your house, they’ll catch me for sure.”

  “Who will?”

  “Your father, or whoever takes care of you . . . no one is going to want a dirty orphan around,” he added bitterly. “They’ll send me straight back to the orphanage, and then I’ll be in real trouble.”

  “I told you, no one ever goes in the attic. Hardly anyone even comes up to the third floor, where my room is. Nanny is too fat to climb the stairs, and my father is too busy, and Cook just stays in the kitchen. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Christina tugged Taft to his feet and pulled him along Leo Loompski’s dimly lit tunnel, still talking. “I’ll bring blankets and a pillow, and I’ll make you a bed behind some boxes. If anyone does come up, they’ll never see you, if you don’t move.”

  “A pillow?” said Taft, trotting after her. “A real pillow?”

  The attic was dark, but the flashlight, set on end, made a circle of brightness on the ceiling and illumined a corner of the vast room.

  “So where does the garbage truck go?” Christina folded over an old quilt to make a sleeping pad and laid two extra blankets on top.

  “Nobody knows.”
Taft took another bite of the pie Christina had sneaked from the kitchen and a drink of milk from a thermos. “They say it’s up the mountain to break rocks in a mine, but that can’t be true. Who needs broken rocks?”

  “But what happens to the kids?” Christina plumped a spare pillow.

  “No one knows that, either.” Taft’s mouth, blueberry-rimmed, turned down at the corners. “They go on the garbage truck, and they never come back.”

  Christina’s hands stilled. “Never?”

  Taft shook his head.

  “And you almost had to go!” Christina was horrified.

  “I would have gotten picked before that, if I hadn’t sung off-key,” said Taft, calmly licking his fingers.

  Christina sat back. “What does singing have to do with getting picked?”

  Taft shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure. But I figured out that if you sang on pitch, you got picked to go on the truck first of all. So now everybody sings like a hyena, unless they’re new and don’t know.”

  He scooped the last of the blueberry pie into his mouth. “This place is way better than the orphanage already,” he said through a mouthful of crust. “Do you have any more pie?”

  Christina looked at him thoughtfully. If Taft was going to have a big appetite, it might be hard to sneak enough food without raising suspicion. “I thought you said you didn’t eat much.”

  Taft hunched one shoulder. “I don’t eat much orphanage food. Burnt potatoes and dried peas and oatmeal without sugar . . . no thanks. But this,” he said, gazing with reverence at the blue stains left on his plate, “is worth eating.” He licked the plate and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So when can I do some math?”

  Christina made a face. “Right now, if you want. Come on down to my room. Nobody will come up tonight—it’s too late.”

  “Go-Go, Chickie-Chickie, Chickie-Go Math!” squeaked the computer, showing a horde of dancing chickens, each dangling a mathematical symbol from its beak. Taft watched with a rapt expression on his face, hardly blinking.