Raymond came in. I looked under the bedcover. It wasn’t a real bed. It was nothing but a wooden platform disguised with a cover and some pillows. “Do you sleep on this thing?”
“It’s just for show. The rug is more comfortable.” He patted the wall-to-wall carpeting.
“Oh.”
“This is a model home. So people can see what the other houses will look like when they finish building them.”
“Like an example,” I said.
Raymond nodded. “I don’t think they’ll ever finish, though. Come on, I’ll show you the rest.”
Raymond’s room was painted blue, with bunk beds and pictures of boats on the walls.
“Why didn’t you take the big room?” I asked.
“That one’s for parents. I took the boy’s room. You can have the other one if you want.” He led me into a third bedroom, with pink walls and a canopy bed — a total cliché of a girl’s room. But I did like the window seat.
“Can I cover up the pink with roller derby posters?” I asked.
“Whatever you want. It’s your room.”
“Okay, I’ll take it.” I sat on the canopy bed, but it was just as hard and wooden as the master bed. The window seat had a good view of the second floor of the Witch House. I’d never seen it from this angle before. One pane in the attic window was broken. A shutter hung off its hinge, and some of the roof tiles were missing. It looked dark and dirty and uncared for.
On a line at the side of the house, some clothes were hung to dry: a pair of women’s jeans, two women’s blouses, plus some Raymond-size T-shirts and a pair of boys’ underpants.
Something white flashed in an attic window, just for a second. My muscles tensed. “Was that a cat?”
“Was what a cat?” Raymond asked.
But the white thing was gone.
“Wendy’s cat is missing,” I told him. “I thought maybe I saw her in the window over … there.”
Raymond came to the window and looked out. “There’s no cat over there.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I … go there, sometimes.”
Aha! So he was connected to the Witch Lady somehow. “You go there?”
He caught me noticing the laundry on the line. “She washes my clothes for me. But I live here.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “No one lives here.”
“I do. There’s a washing machine in the basement of this house, but it isn’t hooked up.” He had a pained look on his face, as if he’d just bumped his funny bone.
“Who is she?” I asked. “The lady who lives there?”
Now Raymond looked wary. “Just a lady. Let’s talk about something else.” He turned his back to the window. “We could have a sleepover here. You sleep in your room, and I’ll sleep in mine.”
“But … the beds aren’t real.”
“That’s okay. We can use sleeping bags on the floor. Do you have a sleeping bag?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have an extra one for me?”
“You can use my sister’s. Except I don’t think my mother will let me sleep over here.”
“Tell her you’re sleeping at Paz’s. Then sneak over here.”
“Yeah. Okay. One of these nights.” Like I was going to spend the night on this side of the woods — home of the Witch Lady and possibly the Man-Bat — in a pretend house.
“We have to plan tonight’s spy mission.” We went downstairs because Raymond said he could think better down there. He sat in the Barcalounger and flipped the footrest out. He leaned back, said, “Ahhh,” then flipped the footrest back in. He flipped it out again, then in again. “Ahhh.”
“Stop that. It’s very irritating.”
“Sorry.” He picked up the harmonica and started playing a song. After a few bars, I recognized “On Top of Old Smoky.”
“That’s pretty good,” I said when he was finished.
“Bring your harmonica over next time and we can play together.”
“I don’t have a harmonica.”
“Too bad,” Raymond said. “Everybody needs a harmonica. It’s like a little pocket friend. Goes wherever you go.”
“I guess.”
He played “You Are My Sunshine.” It sounded very pretty.
“Maybe I’ll ask for a harmonica for my birthday,” I said. “I’m turning eleven in August.”
“It’s only June,” Raymond said. “August is way far away.”
“Today is July first,” I told him. “August is only one month away.”
“A month is still a long time.” He turned around upside down on the Barcalounger, laying his head on the footrest and his feet on the headrest, and started playing “Frère Jacques.”
“Are you having a birthday party?” he asked. “When you turn eleven?”
“Yeah — a roller-skating party. At the roller rink. Do you want to come?”
“I’m not allowed to go to the roller rink,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Someone might see me there.”
“But you were there the other day, when you stole Paz’s ID,” I pointed out.
“Sure — in my camouflage. You said yourself you didn’t see me. But I can’t go there as an official person who roller-skates. I’m hiding out.”
“Hiding out from who?”
“It’s a secret.” He played “Frère Jacques” again. “‘Frère Jacques’ sounds good when two people play it, like a round. I wish you had a harmonica.”
“Even if I did, I don’t know how to play.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“You can tell me your secret,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Instead of answering, he played “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” When he was done, he said, “We better plan the spy mission.”
“Okay.” I gave up trying to get his secret out of him — for the time being. “Thea is going over to the Carters’ house at seven. But it doesn’t get dark until around nine. My bedtime is nine thirty, and I have to be in my room when my parents come in to say good night. After that I can sneak out.” I hesitated. “Can you meet me outside the Carters’ house at ten?” Ten was awfully late.
Raymond said, “I can meet you at midnight if you want.”
“Ten’s good,” I said. “While we’re out, we can look for Wendy’s cat too.”
“Okay.”
I watched his face carefully for any telltale twitch of guilt at the word cat, but he betrayed nothing. Either he was innocent or he was the world’s best liar. Or a combination of both.
That night, Raymond wore his usual camouflage. I dressed in black with a black ski mask to cover my face. It was hard to hide in the Carters’ front yard, with all the blinking red, white, and blue lights, though the plastic, musical Mount Rushmore gave pretty good cover. Raymond and I played it safe and approached the house from the back.
It was after ten, so Tessie and Bo Carter were asleep. A light glowed from a side kitchen window. I took a peek. The kitchen was clean and empty.
Next, the family room, with the flickering gray-blue light of the TV. Thea sat on the couch, watching TV and eating ice cream out of the carton.
“She’s getting her germs in their ice cream!” I whispered. “I bet the Carters would be shocked to know that.”
“Should I take a picture of it?” Raymond lifted his Polaroid camera.
“Not yet.” Eating ice cream out of the carton wasn’t the secret we were looking for. We had to catch Thea in the act of snooping.
We crouched by the window and waited.
Finally, Thea got up. She went into the kitchen. She put the ice cream away. Then she went back to the family room and watched some more TV.
“When are the parents coming home?” Raymond asked.
“I don’t know. Late, I guess.”
As time passed and Thea did nothing but watch TV, Raymond got restless. Watching Thea watch TV was very boring. We couldn’t even see the show from where we stood.
“I
have to pee,” Raymond whispered.
“So?”
“I really have to pee.”
“I repeat: So?”
“So I’m going to go pee by that tree over there.”
“No! That’s not fair.”
“Why not?”
“Someone might see you.”
“Someone might see us spying too. Which is worse?”
“I have to pee too.”
“So pee.”
“No — I can’t. Don’t you get it? I’m a girl. I can’t just go pee on a tree.”
“Why not?”
“It’s biology, stupid.”
“So what’s that got to do with me?”
“If I can’t pee, you can’t pee.”
“What? That’s not fair.”
“No — what’s not fair is if you get to pee and I don’t.”
“I don’t care what you say — I’m going to pee.”
Raymond wandered off toward the big tree in the backyard. I heard the sound of him peeing. It annoyed me greatly.
There was movement in the family room. Thea got up. She walked down the hall toward the bedrooms.
The Carters’ house was just one story and a basement, so spying was easy.
“Raymond!” I whisper-shouted. “The mark is on the move!”
“Just a minute!” He was still peeing. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said he really had to go.
I slid along the Carters’ brick wall toward the bedrooms, clinging to the shadows. A light went on at the other end of the house.
“Raymond! Hurry!”
Raymond ran up to the lit window. “Which room is that?”
“I think it’s the parents’ room.”
The window was a little too high for me to see into. “I need a boost,” I said. “Lift me up so I can see what she’s doing.”
“You’re bigger than me,” Raymond said. “Why don’t you lift me up?”
“She’s my sister. You lift me.”
I tugged on my ski mask in case Thea happened to look my way. I didn’t want her to recognize me. Raymond wove his fingers together to give me a boost. I leaned on his shoulder and stepped on his hands. With a grunt he tried to lift me up.
“Oof! You’re heavy.”
“I’m not so heavy,” I said. “You’re weak.”
I gripped the crumbly brick windowsill and peered into the room. Thea was sitting on a large double bed. But she wasn’t snooping — yet. She was flipping through a magazine.
“What’s she doing?” Raymond asked. I could hear the strain of holding me in his voice.
“Reading a magazine.”
“Can I put you down now?”
“No!”
But his hands buckled, and I fell. My arms flailed, accidentally knocking against the window. For a split second my ski-masked face pressed against the glass. Thea looked up — and saw me.
She screamed.
I tumbled to the ground. “Run!”
Raymond and I scrambled out of the yard. We didn’t stop until we were well into the woods.
I climbed up the tree and sneaked back into my room before Mom burst in, all upset, to check on me.
“Minty? Are you awake?”
“Wh-what?” I sat up and rubbed my eyes as if I’d been asleep.
“Is everything okay in here?” Mom asked.
“Sure. Why? What’s going on?”
“Didn’t you hear Thea screaming a few minutes ago? Your father and I could hear it all the way from the Carters’.”
Ulp. “Screaming? Well, your room faces that way, and mine faces the front….” I heard myself yammering and realized that I was raving like a guilty person. “What happened?”
“Your father is over at the Carters’ with her now. Seems she saw a robber’s face in the window.”
“A robber? What did she look like?”
“She?”
“I mean he. He or she. How would I know?”
“He was wearing a mask, so Thea couldn’t see his face. I suppose it could have been a she…. Thea’s screaming scared him away. Your father just called to let me know everything is all right.” She crossed the room and closed my window. “I know it’s cool tonight, but we’ll put the AC on. I can’t sleep knowing someone might try to crawl in!”
I felt bad about upsetting everybody so much. But I didn’t realize how truly scared everyone was until the next day.
“It was the Man-Bat,” Lennie said. “It’s got to be. Fits the description perfectly.”
I was hanging out in the Calderons’ basement with Lennie, Paz, Melina, and Thea. Melina idly strummed her guitar and kept an eye on Hugo and Robbie, who were building a LEGO fort.
“It didn’t look like a bat,” Thea said. “It looked like a person.”
“That’s what the Man-Bat looks like,” Lennie said. “A man’s head and body with bat wings! Covered in slime. Maybe you didn’t see the wings, but they were there. Pressing against windows is totally his thing!”
Lennie shuddered. I shuddered too. I suspect we shuddered for different reasons.
“No more open windows for me,” Lennie added. “It’s AC for the rest of the summer. Now that we know for sure that he’s out there….”
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Paz scoffed. “Maybe it was just a kid playing a trick on Thea. It could have been one of the Mean Boys.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Scaring babysitters is just like something Troy and David would do.”
“What about all the things gone missing lately?” Paz said. “Like my ID, and Kip’s pictures, and Wendy’s cat … I think there’s a prowler in the neighborhood.”
“A prowler?” I said. “You’ve been watching too many late-night movies, heh-heh, heh-heh.”
Paz gave me a long, suspicious squint. I couldn’t meet her eye.
“You guys, listen to my new song.” Melina strummed her guitar and sang to a poppy beat:
“Hey hey, what a day, it’s summer all the way.
Come here, have no fear, it’s the best time of the year.
Don’t cry, tell me why, see the sun up in the sky, yo.
Summertime’s the best time, summertime’s the best,
Whoa whoa whoa whoa …”
She stood up and danced around with her guitar, singing “Whoa whoa whoa whoa” over and over again. I looked at Paz, and Paz looked at me. She rolled her eyes. That was the signal.
We jumped up and started dancing around like Melina, singing “Whoa whoa whoa whoa!” louder and louder and crazier and crazier. Then Lennie, Hugo, and Robbie joined in.
“Stop it, you guys!” Melina stopped playing, but we all kept singing and dancing until Awa called down from upstairs, “Paz! Telephone!”
Melina’s face was red. Thea put her arm around Melina’s shoulders. “Siblings. I feel your pain.”
“Paz!” Awa called again.
“That’s Isabelle.” Paz leaped for the stairs and stepped barefoot on a LEGO. “Ow!” She hopped off the pointy block, then kicked the leg of the couch, then tripped over a whole pile of LEGOs —
“Ouch!” She tumbled to the floor, clutching her ankle. “My foot! I stepped on it funny —” She grimaced in pain. “I think I pulled something.”
“Let me see.” Thea took Paz’s foot in her hands and moved it. “Does that hurt?”
Paz screeched. “Ow! Yes! That hurts!”
“We better get Dad,” Thea said.
I ran down the street to Mortimer Mansion. Luckily, Dad was off that afternoon. I told him what had happened and brought him back to the Calderons’ house. Paz was lying on the floor while Awa held an ice pack to her ankle.
“Never fear, Dr. M is here.” Dad always joked when people got hurt so they wouldn’t worry. “Let’s take a look.”
He removed the ice pack and tested Paz’s foot and ankle. Her ankle was swollen now. “Looks like you’ve got a sprain,” Dad said. “Not too bad. Nothing broken or anything like that. I’ll get my gauze and wrap it up for you. You
’ll be limping for a while, Paz. Maybe a few weeks.”
“What about the Fourth of July Parade?” I asked. I was still hoping Paz would change her mind and roller-skate in the parade with me. But it was only two days away.
“No roller-skating,” Dad said. “If someone wants to tow her in a wagon, that’s okay.”
“What?” Paz said. “I’m not riding around in a wagon. I’d rather just watch.”
“That’s the smart thing to do,” Dad said. He helped Paz upstairs to her room and ordered her to keep her swollen foot iced and elevated as much as possible.
“I’ve had so much bad luck lately,” Paz complained. “First that mysterious stomachache, then my ID gets stolen, that rash … and the other day my nose itched like crazy. Now this. Why are all these bad things happening to me?”
“Curse of the Man-Bat,” Lennie said.
I couldn’t disagree. The curse was working — and getting worse.
I asked Mom if I could change my birthday party from roller-skating to a pool barbecue. “Paz’s ankle’s all swollen,” I said. “She might not even be able to skate at my party! And then what’s the point?”
“You want to change now?” Mom looked annoyed. “But we’ve already put a deposit on the roller rink for that day. Nonrefundable.” She hugged me, but I kept my arms stiff at my side and didn’t hug back. I didn’t feel like being hugged. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Paz’s ankle will be better by then. And if it’s not, she can still have fun at the party.”
“How? How can she have fun at a roller-skating party if she can’t roller-skate?”
“Well, she can eat pizza and cake….”
“Big deal.” I pouted. “A roller-skating party is babyish anyway. Eleven is too old for that.”
“Since when? You love roller skating. I thought you were going to do a whole derby thing.”
“I was, but —” I didn’t feel like talking about it anymore. “So we definitely can’t switch?”
“I’m sorry, honey. You can have a pool party next year if you want.”
Next year, when I turned twelve. Who knew what kind of person I’d be by then? Who knew if Paz and I would even be friends next year?
The Secret Tree Page 7
