The Seventh Level

by Jody Feldman

  What’s not great, according to the Lauer website, is that there’s no one named Maria Von Trapp in the entire school district. I’m hoping for just a few hits when I type her name into a search engine, and…overload!

  This’ll take forever. Or not. Maria’s from the movie! The Sound of Music. Matti always played the DVD at her house when we were little. “I mean, younger, Curry. I’m still little.”

  And Maria taught those Von Trapp kids to sing. “Teaching music, Curry. That’s what Maria and Mr. Engelwood have in common.”

  Mr. Engelwood teaches: ___, ___, ___.

  Maria Von Trapp teaches: ___, ___, ___.

  They’re both right.

  If they’re both right, it has to mean they do things differently. How does Mr. Engelwood do things? Katie’d know. She plays the French horn, but I can’t exactly ask her about Mr. Engelwood and Maria Von Trapp without telling her why.

  Now what? I pace down the hall. Curry follows me. I pace back. Curry must think I’m nuts, but I am remembering. When Maria teaches the kids, they sing that famous song. That do-re-mi song.

  Do, re, mi! She teaches the do-re-mi way! Mr. Engelwood must teach music the A-B-C way like we learned in elementary school. Exactly what I tried before.

  On a clean piece of paper, I match the note-letters and the do-re-mi ones.

  A B C D E F G

  dough ray me fa so la tea

  Is that right? No. No way do they spell dough like moon cookie dough. There is doe like the deer in the song, but why do I think it’s spelled D-O, which looks like do as in, “Do you really think you can rat out Randall without being killed?”

  Maybe not, but I can finish this puzzle.

  I love the Internet! The musical scale doesn’t even start with A. Now, it is right:

  C D E F G A B

  do re mi fa sol la ti

  So if I’m supposed to use A-B-C sometimes and use do-re-mi other times, how do I know when to use them? I guess I take one note at a time then try all the combinations, guaranteeing to make my brain hurt. Or…

  Why didn’t I notice those in the first place? The little vs and es. And if v equals Von Trapp and e equals Engelwood, I can spare my brain. I give it a try.

  First note. D with a little v for Von Trapp. I write re. D with a little e equals d. F, little v: fa. Three little es. CED. And if the rest mark is a space, I have “redfaced.” I think that’s a word. Four more notes. A C B E with a little e then v then e and e which translates to A then DO then B then E A. DO. B. E. Redfaced adobe. Redfaced adobe?

  “What’s that, Curry? Like adobe houses in the Southwest?” I open the dictionary again. Adobe. “They’re bricks, Curry. Redfaced bricks. Red bricks. Like the ones on our house. Or the ones on Randall’s attached to the porch near the soap.”

  Oh yeah.

  CHAPTER 26

  5:18. Do I have enough time? Not if I stand here. I snatch my parents’ digital camera from the computer desk drawer, and for the second day in a row, I’m racing like a madman, a different madman than yesterday. Yesterday I was mad at myself for going to Randall’s to get answers. Today I’m a madman on wheels, taking the corners like an Olympian, pedaling like my legs are superpowered. But I can’t exactly tear across his lawn, jump off my bike, let it clatter down, jump to the side of his porch, and start clicking the camera.

  I lay my bike on the lawn next door and pray no one swipes it, then fly up the far side of the neighbor’s house, race through the backyard, and surface at the back of Randall’s. I hunch below window level and move between the brick and the bushes. Five feet from the porch steps, I drop flat to my belly and pull the camera from my knee side pocket. I hit the power button.

  Buh-lee-duh-lee-dit!

  The power-up noise is loud as a doorbell. Quick: I zoom in on the soap, hold still, shoot. Kah-chee!

  Zoom back. Soap and porch steps. Kah-chee!

  Scoot back. Soap, porch steps, and brick. Kah-chee!

  Get on my knees and—

  “What are you doing?” Randall’s towering over me from the top of the porch.

  “I…I…” I hold up the camera. “Found it! I dropped my backpack when I left yesterday, and it fell out.” I point the camera at Randall. “Let’s see if it still works.”

  Kah-chee!

  I zoom it back so I can get him and the porch steps. Kah-chee!

  “I’ll be going now,” I say.

  He’s standing there, glaring at me. He’s gotta be wondering if I saw the soap and deciding if he should slug me and get the camera.

  I want to run, but he’d catch up to me. Maybe not tonight but tomorrow. Idea. I press a button. “Hey. Good picture of you. Look!” I hold up the camera so he can see it’s him and not the soap. I turn it back around and pull up the second picture of him. “This’d be better if you smiled, but you can see it if you want.”

  He glares some more.

  C’mon, Randall. Take my bait. I wouldn’t show you the pictures if I had something to hide, would I?

  He comes down the steps. “Lemme see that first one again,” he says.

  “Fine, but look fast. I have about two minutes to get home.” I show him.

  He narrows his eyes at me. “What’s before that?”

  Do I bolt? No, I smile. As long as I don’t give him the camera…

  “I don’t know what’s here,” I say. “Probably some stuff my parents took.” I go forward, not back, praying the camera still has old pictures like always.

  Great. Well, it’s better than the alternative. It’s me doing a cannonball into a hotel swimming pool a few weeks ago. Then my mom lying on one of those lounge chairs. He does not need to study my mom in her swimming suit. I turn the camera screen away from his eyes.

  “What are those from?”

  “Spring break. My dad had business in Costa Rica and we went with him. Frequent flyer miles and all.” Why am I telling him more than he needs to know? “I need to go.”

  “Then go.”

  I slide the camera into my pocket and take off to get my bike.

  “Why’s your bike way over there?” he says, hanging off the porch.

  “Got the wrong house at first then didn’t bother to move it. See ya,” I say.

  Randall doesn’t stop me.

  I pull into my driveway three seconds before my mom does.

  “Cutting it close again, Travis?”

  “Yeah,” I say. More than she knows.

  While she’s making dinner, I download the pictures of Randall and the soap, print out two copies of each—one for delivery and one to keep—then delete them from the computer and the camera.

  I fold one set, seal them in an envelope, and put the envelope into my backpack, all ready for tomorrow. But they’re not going under Mrs. Pinchon’s door. The pictures have bricks. Redfaced adobe. I’ll nail the envelope to the music room board, then sit and watch The Legend nail Randall.

  CHAPTER 27

  I jolt out of bed long before my alarm goes off, run to the computer, find a website where they sell bricks, and print out a picture.

  I almost made a huge mistake. Disastrous. If the Representative Collector shows the pictures to Mrs. Pinchon, who shows them to Randall, he’ll know where they came from. I’ll be dead within the week. I put the sealed envelope into my desk, just in case, then send the other pictures through the shredder. I’ll figure out Plan B later.

  I get to school just as the doors open. Almost no one comes this early. I run upstairs before any other eyes can, and I stick the new brick picture on the music room bulletin board. I remembered my own tack.

  Matti and Kip won’t be here yet, so I go the long way to my locker, past the front offices.

  Bad idea.

  Mrs. Pinchon and Mr. McKenzie are standing in the middle of the hall, staring at me with a look that’d make a monster run the other way. I force my feet to keep walking.

  Mrs. Pinchon turns to Mr. McKenzie. I think she says, “I’ll take it from here, Ralph.”

  He walks of
f but looks back at me before he turns the corner.

  Mrs. Pinchon plants her hands on her hips and raises her question-mark eyebrows into those red bangs. “A word, Mr. Raines.”

  I follow her into her office.

  “Sit,” she says. That’s all. That’s bad.

  I sit as still as my body will let me.

  She towers over me. Her hands are folded together except for her two index fingers, which are pressed together and sticking straight up. She bounces them against her lips. Finally she takes a deep breath and her hands come away from her mouth. “How are you doing this?” she says. “Why are you doing this?” This must be bad. She’s not yelling.

  My heart races. “Honest. I don’t know what you mean.”

  She nods. “Then why are you here so early this morning?”

  “I woke up at five and couldn’t sleep because I realized I did an assignment wrong, so I did it right, and I didn’t have anything else to do besides come to school. Then you saw me, and I think I’m in trouble again, but really, Mrs. Pinchon, I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She stares.

  “What do you think I did?” I say. “And how can I prove I didn’t?”

  She goes around her desk and sits. “First there was the toilet paper. You had opportunity. Then there was the soap. Opportunity again. Fire alarm. Opportunity. And now today. Opportunity. Our mops, brooms, and buckets are missing.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t like to mop floors,” I say, but the humor doesn’t work. I should stick with the facts. “I didn’t have opportunity. I left home just a few minutes ago, and I was home all last night after baseball. Call my parents and—”

  “Brringk-brringk!”

  Mrs. Pinchon answers her phone. All she says after that are “hmm”s and “I see”s. My life as I know it probably depends on what the person at the other end is saying.

  She hangs up. “Exactly what time did you get here this morning?”

  “Five minutes before you saw me. Maybe less. I promise.”

  She does that bouncing thing with her fingers and lips again. “You’ll find out anyway,” she says. “A couple of our swimmers found a broom jammed into the pool’s filter and a bucket at the bottom. The rest are still missing.”

  “I wasn’t anywhere near the pool. I was near the music room.”

  “You don’t take music, Travis.”

  “I know, but I stopped because of something on the music room bulletin board.”

  “And that was…?”

  “An ad for bricks. I was curious why someone would want to sell bricks to people in the music room. So I looked at it.”

  Mrs. Pinchon gets on the phone and waits for whoever’s at the other end to check for my ad.

  It’d be simple if I could tell her I’m doing this for The Legend. I mean, I should be able to. My parents know about it, but according to Mrs. Bloom, not all the teachers do. What if saying something bans me forever? And why would I steal mops and stuff? Why would—

  Mr. McKenzie! If he couldn’t do his job during normal hours, he’d get overtime pay tonight. But accusing him would just make me look desperate.

  Mrs. Pinchon hangs up. She narrows her eyes like Randall did yesterday. “No bricks,” she says.

  They took it away already. “Maybe Mr. Engelwood took it down. Maybe he saw it and knew it didn’t belong there.”

  “That was Mr. Engelwood on the phone.”

  Perfect. “What can I say to prove I’m innocent? I mean, you saw how surprised I looked when you accused me. I’m not that good an actor. Besides, why would I make up an ad about bricks? That’s too random to be a lie, isn’t it?”

  “You have a point.”

  “And I’m not a bad person.”

  She whips her head toward the window and coughs. “No, I don’t believe you are.” She clears her throat and looks back at me. “However, Mr. Raines. Until we straighten this out, you are not to be in this school before seven thirty in the morning. After school you are not to be in this building except for necessary time in the boys’ locker room. That means you bring everything you need to your practice, for your protection and ours. Now I suggest you stop lurking in the hallways and this morning go straight to class. Math class, I believe.”

  “I need to stop at my locker first. Is that okay?”

  “Go.”

  I feel so lucky, I don’t even get mad about missing before-school time with my friends. I promise myself I’ll get my stuff, sit in my math room, and barely breathe.

  Before I open my locker, I can see the normal blue envelope through the vent. I take it into the deserted math room.

  Saturday, 7 A.M. Go to the back stairs outside school. Find the bundle with your last initial. Pick it up. Put 5 bottles of syrup where the bundle was. Follow the directions in your bundle. Don’t mess up.

  The Legend of Lauer

  CHAPTER 28

  Do they think I try to mess up? Did they forget the original Legend people messed up? I am not messing up anymore. They didn’t ask for a representative, which means I’m buying…syrup?

  Maybe The Legend’s bringing in the famous Pancake Lady from last year. But they never repeat anything. Can they repeat Rule #5 to my parents, though? That I have to do secret stuff? Rule #5 should help when I tell them I’m taking syrup to school on Saturday morning, which wouldn’t be a problem if I skipped the fact that I got accused of stealing mops and brooms and buckets. But I’ll tell them.

  Hey, I might as well tell everyone. So, when word gets out, I admit I was questioned. I smile when people call me Johnny Flood and laugh when others say I pulled another Travis.

  I don’t fool Kip and Matti, though. When they ask about the brooms, I refuse to talk. I’ve never done that before. I need to figure out how to explain why I’ve been lurking around school, which is impossible without telling them about blue envelopes.

  I don’t wait for them after practice. I go home, take Curry out to do her business, bring her back in, and leave the door open while I fill her bowls. Then I watch for them from the living room window. After they realize I left school without them, they’ll come here to find out why, unless they’re sick of my problems. Maybe they won’t come.

  I go back outside to get the mail. No Matti, no Kip, but no mistaking the blue shining from underneath the magazines. The envelope doesn’t have a stamp or a return address. Someone dropped this off today. My lungs deflate. I’m out. I know it. I stand just inside the door, unwind the string, peek in the envelope, and yes! I can breathe. It’s another puzzle! Not a nasty—

  “Where’d you go?” Matti’s voice says.

  I pull the envelope to my chest.

  She looks at it. Stiffens. Looks at me. At the ground. “Kip’s coming, too,” she says.

  My first instinct is to shuffle the envelope with the mail, but I don’t bother. It’s obvious she recognizes it. “What?” I say, waggling it the air.

  “Cool envelope,” she says.

  Fine. We’ll play it that way. I shove the envelope under the couch cushion as Kip comes in. “Food, anyone?” I say.

  “Sure, but look out, will you, Kip?” She pushes past him and heads to the kitchen.

  “Real nice, Matti.” I close the front door. “What’s with her?” I say to Kip.

  He shrugs, and we go into the kitchen, where Matti’s already moving stuff around in the pantry.

  “Help yourself,” I say.

  She moves more stuff. “You got any soda?”

  “You know we do.” I go into the small fridge in the laundry area, pull out three cans, and when I come back, Matti and Kip are standing in the pantry too close together.

  Two minutes ago I would’ve worried that they were together. Not now. Not with her whispers, which turns into loud whispers. I catch a few words. “But Kip…blue envelope.”

  That’s enough. I clunk the soda cans on the counter. “You have something to tell me?”

  “No,” says Kip. “Matti’s hallucinating.”

  If she
knows something, then forget all the rules. “Are there blue envelopes in your hallucinations, Matti?”

  She looks at me like I slapped her in the face.

  Kip quick-studies his fingernails.

  I take a chance, go into the other room, bring the envelope back, and wave it all around. “Does this mean something to you?” I point directly to the words FOR YOUR

  EYES ONLY.

  Matti looks at Kip, who’s darting his eyes like he’s scoping out an escape route.

  “It has to mean something to you, Matti. You’re not talking.”

  “I don’t know what it means, okay?” she says. “Anyone can buy blue envelopes. I’ve seen them at Walgreens or Spicer’s or somewhere.” She looks back at Kip.

  He shakes his head.

  “Just leave it alone, Trav,” she says. “Just let it play itself out, okay?”

  “Okay.” I open a can of soda. “No. Not okay. I need to ask you a question. Did both of you know about the money booths last week?”

  “Huh?” says Kip.

  “Let me be more clear. Are both of you in The Legend?”

  Matti grabs a box in the pantry. Macaroni. “Why would you say that?”

  I just stare at her.

  She hides her mouth with the box. “They don’t tell us who’s coming in.”

  Kip’s freckles stand out. “She did not say that.” He shakes his head. “And if it is The Legend, it’s probably secret anyway. I hear they have rules.”

  “Have you seen some rules?” says Matti.

  “If I have?”

  “Rules are rules,” she says.

  “Yeah, but since when do you play by the rules, Matti?”

  Her eyes become snake slits. “You know I don’t cheat.”

  I look right back at her. “Not in games and not in sports, but you’re just like me, Matti. Sometimes the rules suck and these rules suck. They’re part of the reason I’m getting into trouble. So when rules suck, Matti, we push them a little. That’s the truth.”

  She doesn’t back away. “Truth, Travis? The truth is this looks like The Legend and smells like The Legend, but The Legend doesn’t get people into trouble. The Legend isn’t—”