CHAPTER 11
DIVERSION
“HAVE YOU RECONSIDERED MY OFFER?” SHERLOCK asked James confidentially during a chance encounter in the lunch cafeteria line.
“Shut it.”
“These hooligans you entered with . . .” Sherlock said, indicating the three boys currently kicking other kids out of their seats at one of the dining room’s many large circular tables. They shooed the younger classmen away, clearing four seats together. “Is this the group you hope to use to . . . you know . . . go treasure hunting?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re holding up the line. Are you going to eat or not?”
Sherlock moved down the stainless steel bins of hot lunch offerings, avoiding the rubberized chicken and motor oil gravy. He built himself a pita sandwich from lettuce, hummus, and tomatoes. Took hot tea as a beverage.
“You eat like a girl,” James said.
“Do you mean the manner in which I consume my meals, or the portions, or the content?”
“Forget it.”
“Oh! You simply meant it as a disparaging comment. I understand. Sticks and stones, and all that, James. You should know better.” He added cream to his tea, while James poured himself a fountain soda. “My offer, James, precludes the necessity for the . . . present company you are keeping. It involves,” he said, lowering his voice further, “a distraction such as flooding the girls’ washroom, thereby removing our hall master, Mr. Cantell, and buying us time to investigate this properly.”
“You can’t go into the girls’ dorm,” James said, suddenly sounding interested.
“It’s a matter of negative water pressure, my dear frerrrr—” Sherlock caught himself from using the term of endearment that his roommate abhorred. “If my calculations are correct—and when are they not?—a simultaneous flushing of the boys’ toilets and urinals, from the upper-level restroom, should result in an expulsion of sewage on the floor below. It’s a venting problem. With too little vent air available, the downstairs plumbing will pull from the drains, and thus . . . Disgusting, but effective, I should think.”
“I don’t need your help. I didn’t ask for your help. You are strange to the point of annoying, Sherlock. Keep to yourself and stop bothering me. And change your socks or do something about your feet. I can hardly enter our room without gagging.”
“I didn’t expect a personal attack,” Sherlock said, dismayed. “I’ll forget I heard that.”
“Please don’t,” said James, bumping Sherlock intentionally and spilling the boy’s tea, soaking and disintegrating his pita sandwich.
CHAPTER 12
RUNNING LIKE COLD HONEY
A SECOND DAY PASSED WITHOUT THE BIBLE’S recovery, meaning a second night of all-school study hall and curfew. The gods of the Main House had extended the curfew by thirty minutes, allowing us to check mail or phone home before returning to our rooms. This was intended as a form of leniency when in fact it only served to remind us students that we remained on a tight leash.
Somewhat friendless, expecting no mail, and having no one to call, I headed to Samantha’s room to borrow her calculator. Samantha and I shared math and science. (My calculator had disappeared into my backpack, which at times resembled a fabric beast with a constant appetite; it remained unfound.) The stop included a sample of something called gooey butter cake, sent to her by an aunt from St. Louis, which lived up to its name by coating my fingers in a layer of a viscous, sugary substance that no matter how many times I licked, would not leave. I headed to the girls’ room. I ran into a field hockey teammate, Latisha. Her dark, creamy complexion was the envy of all the girls, including me.
“You know,” I said, the two of us engaged in our mirrored reflections, “if I were Hannibal Lecter I’d just skin you and wear your face around so I could be seen with skin like that.”
“Who? That’s gross.” Latisha looked at me and I realized I’d frightened her. I was learning the hard way that conversations James and I might have had did not work at Baskerville. It turned out that one’s sense of humor is a personal thing; James and I shared a love of the grotesque. Not so apparently with Latisha.
“A serial killer. The Silence of the Lambs?”
“I’ve heard of it. Never saw it. You can have my skin.”
“I wish.”
“No, you don’t. It’s black, in case you didn’t notice.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“If you are black at this school you are considered either a charity case, or the daughter of a professional athlete.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“Believe it or not, my father is not a rapper, nor is he an artist. He happens to be a three-star general in the army. He’s at the Pentagon now, but my parents and I chose Baskerville to get me away from our home in Virginia. My father’s mother is living with us and she’s out of her mind—like, literally, stark raving mad—and I just couldn’t handle it anymore.”
“That’s hard.” I considered bringing up my lack of a mother, my lack of any contact with grandparents, but kept it to myself.
“My father went here. So did my uncle. My father’s on the board or something. He comes here a couple times a year.”
“Mine, too. I think.”
“I thought you owned the place.”
“Not hardly.”
“How many names of people of color at this school do you know, Moria?”
“I . . . ah . . .”
“It’s ‘the Chinese chick’ or ‘the black guy,’ or ‘the skinny Indian kid,’ right?” She didn’t give me time to answer. “But you don’t say ‘the white kid with the big head,’ when you’re describing Robby Knight, do you? Of course you don’t. See? It’s like that.”
I laughed. “Robby Knight’s head looks like a pumpkin, it’s so big!” She laughed. I liked her.
“How long have you played field hockey?”
“Two years. You?”
“You’re way better than I am,” I admitted. “You should be JV.”
“Not as a middle. Never going to happen.”
“How many kids have parents who went here?” I asked. “Like us?”
“Legacies?” Latisha said. “A lot. A very lot. An extreme, very lot. This place is like an exclusive club or something. My dad acts like he still goes here sometimes. It’s kinda weird. It’s like even after all the time in the army, this place is more important to him, you know? But his friends, a whole bunch of his besties, are from his time here at Baskerville. They’re thick as thieves.”
“You know . . . now that you mention it, my father has friends like that, too. From here. I wonder if they know each other, our fathers?”
“Probably. My dad is totally dedicated to this place.”
“Let me ask you this: Does your father happen to have these group meetings with businessmen and lawyer-types late at night?”
“How could you know that?”
Memories flooded me. “Like, four or five at a time? Expensive suits? Your dad all secretive about it?”
“My dad is in the army. He’s secretive about what he eats for breakfast. It’s just the way he is.”
“How long do the meetings last?”
“I don’t know. I’m never awake when they leave.”
“Never? Never once were you curious?” She looked as if I’d caught her shoplifting. “Latisha?”
“Maybe. What about you?”
“Of course! Always! My brother and I are secret agents. We spy on Father constantly!”
“What about your mom?”
“I don’t have one,” I said. “At least I don’t think so. It’s complicated.”
“That’s awful.”
“You?”
“My mom might as well be in the army, too. She does everything my dad wants. All the time.”
“That’s good, right?”
“It’s too much, if you ask me. She says I know nothing about marriage and that when it’s my turn I can have the marriage I want.”
“Snap!”
“Yeah, you got that right.”
“I kinda feel like—”
I was interrupted by what sounded like a burp, or something you’d hear from one of the stalls, except it was only Latisha and me. We both looked at the drain as a second, throaty belch emanated from below—a dragon fart, maybe? The toilets gurgled like boiling teapots. Something happened in the three showers that sounded like snakes hissing. Then the sinks chimed in, spinning the two of us around. We moved toward the door instinctively, but too late. The room’s central drain erupted like Old Faithful spewing raw sewage in a blast of brown mist quickly followed by a stream of the unmentionable. Gobs of it. The drain itself broke free under the pressure and danced atop the vertical column of sludge like a tin hat. It splashed to the floor, which was already an inch deep and rising for our ankles. The stuff was filling the sinks, gushing over the rims of the toilets, and shooting from the shower drains.
It stopped. Latisha and I were brown and wet all the way through. We stumbled into the hall, where curious girls screamed at the sight and smell of us. Revolted, they hollered as a mob and pointed us back into the bathroom, where the tide of excrement was already subsiding, though with the speed of cold honey at the bottom of the jar. We headed for the showers, disgusted by the slop under our shoes, and soon were standing beneath streams of warm water, washing the goop off our faces and out of our hair. I was so beyond disgusted that I threw up. My clothes were maybe 50 percent free of the stuff, but I could feel a layer of it between my clothes and skin and so I undressed right there in the shower. Hearing Latisha’s clothes slap to the tile, I realized she’d had the same idea.
“Towels and robes!” she called out loudly to the girls in the hallway.
I lifted and lowered first one foot, then the other, unable to face the swirling goop I stood in. I heard proctors and a hall mistress and all kinds of adults shouting for the right to come in, but Latisha and I let them know only the women could enter and we needed robes and towels. I think half the school was in the dormitory by the time Latisha and I finally emerged, our hair up in towels, our feet still icky. Some teachers took us away and moved us along to a neighboring dorm and got us into clean showers there. I stayed under the water for over half an hour, washed my hair five times. Then twice more. The whole time, I thought about what Latisha and I had discovered about our fathers. I was haunted especially by her telling me how many legacies were at the school. How many of them, I wondered, had fathers or mothers who visited late at night, making trips to places they disguised with postcards, warning their children what to do if they disappeared? What was going on at Baskerville, and how were the Moriartys involved?
What I remembered more than anything was this: Sherlock standing halfway down the stairs where one dorm connected to the other, his face serious, his eyes locked onto me. What he lacked was any look of surprise, any curiosity—his hallmark. As I’d been shuttled between dorms, Sherlock had stood there above me, knowing and purposeful.
It was, I thought, almost as if he’d expected this.
CHAPTER 13
OUT OF REACH
JAMES AND HIS THREE ACCOMPLICES WALKED calmly around the back of the library through a series of connected parking lots that included the dining room, and across a section of treed lawn to behind the chapel. From there they entered through the choir room door and into the chancel, their steps reverberating inside the cavernous structure.
James pointed to the ceiling’s center truss. “That’s where it is.”
“That’s a tricky climb,” said Clay.
“I know. There’s probably another way to get out there, but I don’t see it.” James sounded somewhat confounded. “We’ll use the rope Bret brought to make sure I don’t croak. The girls’ dorm is only going to buy us so much time, so we’d better get to it.” With that, James took the rope, moved up the pews to the wall, and tried to throw the rope over the overhead beam. It took the boys five tries to realize they had to tie a series of knots in the end of the rope to make it heavy enough to carry the rope over. Finally, they got it, but they’d wasted a good five minutes.
Tying the end around his waist, James instructed the others, “I’m going to climb and the three of you are going to keep the slack.”
“Like having you on belay,” Clay said. “I rock climb in the summer.”
“Whatever. Wait a second! If you rock climb . . .” James took off the rope and handed it to Clay. “You just volunteered.”
Clay didn’t like it, but he accepted James’s delegating the job to him.
“Do any of you fools know anything about belay?” he asked.
“I’m good to anchor,” said Bret, the stockiest of the four.
A minute later, Clay was climbing, the rope held taut by James and Bret. He slipped twice trying to reach the lower lip of the inset stained-glass window. He bounced against the rock wall but his team kept him aloft. Once he was standing in the recess of the tall window, he took a breather.
“A little light wouldn’t hurt. I feel like I’m cave climbing.”
“How about . . .” James made sure Bret had the rope. He hurried over to the kneeling Sir Galahad and turned on the small electric light used to help the minister when preaching.
“No, you idiot!” Bret shouted a little loudly. “Turn that off! It’ll throw his shadow! We talked about this!”
James switched off the light. “Oh, right.”
“Next time,” Bret said, “try thinking. Or better yet, leave the thinking to me, and ask before you act.”
“Shut up!”
“I’m serious.”
James took his place back on rope crew, but he wasn’t happy and let Bret know it.
The attempt to climb the distance between the stained-glass window and the beam failed miserably. For such a short distance overhead, it remained unattainable. Clay fell twice. Returned to the window, he was then hoisted by the three, but his weight and the friction of the rope prevented him getting within reach.
“You’ve been seen,” came an indistinguishable voice from the balcony. James thought it could have been a man or an older boy—a fifth or sixth former.
Startled, the boys holding the rope let go. Clay zoomed toward a disastrous reunion with the pews. Only Ryan saved him, by sitting down. Or maybe God intervened, James thought, it being his house and all. Clay bounced inches from injury.
“The light, I assume,” said the balcony voice.
“Who’s there?” James called out. He helped get Clay to standing, and untied the rope.
“You have less than two minutes,” decried the voice.
There were bad words spoken, mixed with anger. James explained this was his roommate. There appeared a silhouette standing in the darkness of the balcony. The figure, likely a boy, wore something over his shoulders that looked like and behaved as a cape or Ulster overcoat.
“Behind the choir,” the voice instructed, “you will find a telescoping pole used to replace the chandelier light bulbs. It’s heavy, and will require two of you to hoist it. If you hurry, you should be able to displace the card on the beam with just enough time remaining to put away the pole. I’d act quickly if I were you, and for heaven’s sake—forgive the pun—don’t forget your rope. Good luck, gentlemen.” The figure took two steps back and disappeared entirely.
Another volley of crude language that has no place in these pages, nor in a chapel. James acted upon the advice. He located the pole; it took two strong boys to handle it when extended. Within a matter of seconds they knocked the note off the beam. It fluttered like a wounded bird.
James and Ryan lowered the heavy pole. It clanged loudly to the marble floor just as the chapel’s heavy front door groaned open, prompting a wedge-shaped slice of light to spread across the floor.
James raced to retrieve the note. He snatched it from the floor and took off running.
“Who’s there?” called a gruff voice as the door opened.
The other three boys raced thr
ough the choir room and, according to plan, separated once outside. James took the same route that had gotten them there: through the trees as fast as he could possibly run, behind the dining room, across the parking lot, to behind the library.
James reached the brick wall of the lower dorms, and moved window to window, staying out of sight. A hundred yards later, he reached Bricks 3. He arrived to his room sweating and out of breath.
Sitting at James’s desk, unruffled and seemingly at ease, sat Headmaster Thomas Crudgeon.
CHAPTER 14
A VISITOR
SHERLOCK ARRIVED TO THE DOOR, PULLING TO finish zipping his fly. “Oh, sorry, Headmaster. Am I interrupting?”
“Out,” Crudgeon ordered Sherlock, pointing.
James turned and pressed something made of paper into Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock crossed his arms, hiding it. On his way out, Sherlock moved past the arriving Mr. Cantell, their hall master. Cantell entered wearing a decent imitation of Crudgeon’s obvious displeasure. Sherlock slipped what turned out to be a red envelope into his back pocket as he slid down the wall and sat out in the hall, his ears attuned to the conversation inside his own room.
“Mr. Moriarty.”
“Headmaster.”
“You will stand when addressing me.”
“Yes, Headmaster.” James stood, though begrudgingly, which proved to be a mistake. Body language and the conveyance of Attitude—capital A—it turns out, was everything to Dr. Crudgeon.
“You visited Upper Two,” Crudgeon said, naming a boy’s dorm closer to Main House, “earlier this evening. You were seen there.”
James said nothing.
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