Mummy

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Through the open door of the secretary’s office she saw a small sign with an arrow. FREIGHT ELEVATOR. Well. That would bypass the iron grilles, would it not?

  The secretary hung up. “He’s on the phone, but he expects to be off momentarily. I’m so pleased it’s going to work out. Sometimes he simply cannot squeeze another person into his very very very busy schedule.”

  “What a help you must be to him,” said Emlyn.

  The secretary admired Emilyn’s outfit and wished that other teenage girls would dress so nicely. Emlyn chatted about Western High and what a great place it was. Emlyn herself went to Eastern.

  “He wants you to wait in the Trustees’ Room,” said the secretary, and from the middle drawer on the right hand side of her desk she removed a large key ring. Emlyn thought there must be fifteen keys hanging from the brass circle.

  “I can never remember which is the master,” confided the secretary, “so I have it marked with a little blue tape.”

  Emlyn agreed that keys were such a problem. She herself was always mixing up her front and backdoor keys. What sympathy she had for the secretary, with so many many keys to juggle.

  The secretary led Emlyn down the hall and opened up a room that must once have been the mansion’s library. It held a stunning and immense table surrounded by twelve chairs of the sort used by the writers of the Constitution. Over its grand fireplace hung a painting that most people never saw, and Emlyn had a feeling it was the finest painting in the collection, reserved for the finest people.

  This was where potential donors were fawned over. Where reporters were tucked so that they would be impressed.

  “He’ll be with you shortly,” said the secretary, “and if by any chance he isn’t, I’ll be back from my cigarette break in ten minutes, and I will rescue you.” She beamed at Emlyn, and Emlyn beamed back.

  The secretary was in desperate need of nicotine. She darted into her office, tossed her key ring back into the drawer, yanked open another to pull out her pocketbook, and from the pocket-book took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She tapped on another door, and it was opened by an equally desperate smoker.

  Doors to both offices were left open, and the two women rushed to the exit.

  Emlyn looked around the Trustees’ Room. Row upon row of old books with beautiful bindings covered the shelves, as entombed in here as a mummy in a pyramid.

  Shockingly, a section of the paneled wall suddenly tilted inward.

  It was a hidden door! So the mansion builder—the mummy buyer—the museum donor—had also been a builder of secret compartments. I wish I had known him, thought Emlyn, and a corner of her imagination drafted plans for the house she would build one day, with hidden doors just like that.

  Sitting on a swivel chair at an enormous desk was the man who must be Dr. Brisband. He had opened the panel from his side. Cupping one hand over the phone and smiling as if she had made his day, as if talking to teen reporters was a highlight in the life of a museum director, he said softly, “I’m going to be another ten minutes. I’m so sorry. Please look at any of the books, and I will fit you in just as soon as I can.”

  She tried to look embarrassed. “I’ll be right back,” she mouthed, pointing toward the hall. Let him think she was going to the ladies’ room.

  He gave her a sort of salute and continued his discussion on the phone, and the secret door closed slowly and silently.

  Emlyn stepped into the hall, crossed into the secretary’s office, and slipped her right hand into the thin pocket of her linen jacket. The secretary hadn’t even fully closed the key drawer. Using the pocket as a glove, Emlyn scooped up the key ring. The thin silk lining snagged on the sharp edge, but she got her fingernail beneath the double brass loop and removed the key with the blue tape and slid it into her pocket. She replaced the key ring and left the drawer as it was.

  The key was too small to be weighty, and yet it carried the burden of all her years of wanting to do something Bad. For the very first time, Emlyn really was taking something that was not hers.

  She had stolen.

  So far it was a tiny crime. But it was the key, literally, to a larger one.

  This is how it works, she thought. Opportunity comes and you seize it.

  She felt incredibly alert. Her eyes seemed to take in a hundred times more detail, and her ears memorized sound and speech.

  At the end of the hall, the exit door was propped open for fresh air. Standing in it, backs to her, were the two smokers, their hair and their smoke shimmering in the October breeze.

  Emlyn went back out into the Great Hall and walked swiftly once more through all the rooms of the museum. For the second time, she went outside. When she passed the guard at the metal detector, her body broke into a sweat.

  But no buzzer sounded. No eye met hers. She trotted down the steps. She was low on time. She knew her city well, but the location of hardware stores was not something she had previously considered.

  Copy shop, shoe store, coffee stand.

  Newsstand, dress shop, real estate agency.

  Antiques emporium, flower shop, carpet store, grocery.

  Please, she said in her heart. Please.

  She felt as if she had been hiking for blocks, had spent hours, and still there was no sign of—

  There it was. A hardware store.

  Thank you, she thought.

  And wondered, to whom am I saying please and thank you? God? The fates? City planners?

  “Hi,” she said cheerfully. This was no time to be worrying about God or the fates. “May I please have a copy of this key?”

  “Sure.”

  It took twenty seconds to cut, grind, and smooth. With a pleasant smile, the clerk handed her two keys. One dull and used; the other gleaming, having never entered a lock.

  She thanked him and paid. She put the shiny key in her pants pocket and polished the old key thoroughly with the lining of her jacket. Before she reached the museum for the third time, she took off the tiny colored metal tab that every visitor was given at the door. She tied her jacket sleeves around her waist and yanked out her blouse, so that she was a person in a green shirt instead of a person in a pale linen jacket. Her hair was long and obedient, so she tied it in a knot at the back of her head instead of letting it fall on her shoulders.

  A different volunteer accepted her Friends’ card and handed her another metal tab. Emlyn hiked back to the door marked MUSEUM OFFICIALS ONLY, hoping the cigarette break had been long and satisfying. On the way, she tucked her shirt back in and let her hair down. She was shrugging back into her jacket as she opened MUSEUM OFFICIALS ONLY, and inside the office hall was crammed with people.

  Oh, no, thought Emlyn. They discovered the missing key? They phoned Western High and found out it has no newspaper?

  But whoever these people were—curators? volunteers? janitors? security?—they coagulated in little clumps and then dissolved out various doors, revealing the secretary coming back from her break. She was surprised to see Emlyn in the hall.

  “There’s always a line at the ladies’ room,” said Emlyn. “Isn’t it annoying?”

  “Oh, truly.” The secretary rolled her eyes. She walked on by and into another office, so Emlyn slipped into hers and put the old key back on the ring. It took seconds. She had not known how fast Bad things went by. Then she ducked back into the Trustees’ Room.

  There was no sign of Dr. Brisband, and his marvelous door was shut. She could not even see where it had been, it fit so beautifully into the molding.

  Emlyn removed her notebook from her purse and wrote a little note:

  I’m so sorry you did not have time for the interview after all.

  I will call and perhaps you can fit me into another time slot.

  Thank you.

  It did not say which school. It included no phone number. She had not used her own name. He might retain a vague memory of her for a day or two, and he might vaguely wonder when she was going to call, but most certainly he would not call
any of the city’s public high schools, or Catholic schools, or private schools, or its one boarding school in the hope of arranging such an interview himself. In a few days neither he nor the secretary would remember her.

  For the last time she left the museum, and this time, standing at the official exit, was the guard who had watched her while she watched Amaral-Re.

  “Enjoy the Egyptian Room?” he said.

  “I love it there,” she said. “I’m hoping to be an archaeologist one day and run my own dig in Egypt.” This was completely untrue.

  He grinned. “Don’t we all? I never look at the mummy without wishing I could find the next Tutankhamen.”

  “Do you ever feel, when you’re standing among those ancient artifacts, that you’ve fallen back into ancient Egypt?” said Emlyn. “Does anything exciting ever happen to you when you’re here alone at night, in the dark, with the mummy?”

  He laughed. “A museum is never exciting,” he said. “Especially at night. Nothing happens. No statues come alive and no mummies walk.”

  Emlyn laughed with him. But he was incorrect.

  One mummy was going to walk.

  Five

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, EMLYN walked down the hall on the second floor of her high school. She was neither messy nor stylish. Her khaki pants and white shirt were pressed, and her navy cotton pullover sweater was just baggy enough. Her hair was loosely pulled back in a ponytail. She wore no makeup. She wore no jewelry.

  All around her were girls trying desperately to be noticed. Some wore extravagantly strange clothing. A few had tattoos. Some had colored their hair weird shades or shaved it. Some (invariably girls with enough money to shop in the best places) were amazingly shabby.

  Emlyn rejoiced at the ordinary way in which she blended in.

  She had hit upon the word caper. Prank would be the act of hanging the mummy in the school bell tower. But caper would be the act of removing the mummy from the museum.

  Jack, Maris, Lovell, and Donovan would have the prank.

  She, Emlyn, would have the caper.

  It was not going to be “stealing.” Stealing was much too serious a word. It implied police and a criminal record. This was simply the annual high school Halloween event. People would laugh, even Dr. Brisband.

  The moment Amaral-Re was hung in the bell tower of the old high school, the school would notify the museum, which would zip over in its little van to rescue her. At that moment, the museum would know why the mummy was taken. But they would not know who had taken it.

  Emlyn was determined that nobody would know she was part of it.

  Emlyn never wanted to be noticed. She would not pierce her tongue or cheek with jewelry, and she wouldn’t pierce her reputation with a mummy theft, either.

  For Jack and Maris and Lovell and Donovan, this was a one-time thing. They’d probably love to be identified with such a grand trick. But Emlyn intended this to be the beginning. She could not be identified with it.

  How, though, could she take the mummy without Jack and Maris and Lovell and Donovan knowing?

  She would have to give them the mummy in the end, because she did not want to do the prank part, only the caper part. But suppose they could not be trusted to stay silent? Suppose they told on her?

  Suppose Emlyn called it a caper, but other people called it stealing? What was a mummy worth? Tens of thousands of dollars? Hundreds of thousands? You surely could not buy a mummy on the streets of Cairo anymore. Egypt would never permit you to take an ancient object out of the country now. So here in America, the mummy was beyond price. And if taking it was a crime, what would the price of the crime be?

  If she took it on—and the key, light in her pocket, seemed evidence that she was taking it on—she took on the risk of being caught. The risk was incredibly exciting.

  But risk meant the possibility of losing. If she lost—if she got caught—what would her family do?

  There was a comic aspect to this, but Emlyn’s parents would not laugh. She was their firstborn, their pride and joy. She was their easy child, the one about whom they could always boast, and did. Her brothers were almost primitive in comparison. Having them around was like living with short barbarian warriors.

  And if the barbarian with the primitive impulse turned out to be Emlyn, what would it do to her parents?

  A heavy hand suddenly rested across both her shoulders and the back of her neck. It tugged her hair and wrapped partly around her throat. It felt like a hairy snake.

  It was Jack.

  There was no reason why he should not be friendly with her in public. He was not giving away the details of any conspiracy. But there was something triumphant in his touch; something possessive and hateful. Stop it, she said to herself. He’s perfectly ordinary, it’s my imagination that’s out of line. “Jack,” she said, instead of hello.

  “Emlyn,” he said. “We need to talk.” He was trying not to laugh. It wasn’t working. His mouth and his cheeks were losing the battle, and his laugh was coming out.

  “About what?” said Emlyn.

  He stopped walking, which stopped Emlyn also. He was not gripping her; it was more of a block. “Emlyn. Maris and I went to the museum yesterday, too.” His voice was very soft. “We saw you there. We followed you. We followed you into the museum, and we followed you out of the museum. We didn’t go back in with you the second time. Or the third time. We just sat on one of the benches in the little corner park and laughed.”

  They had seen her? Followed her? Counted the number of times she had come and gone?

  No. Impossible. Far from being hidden, a perfect blend, an invisible, ordinary citizen, she had been an easy mark. How could she not have looked behind her? How could she not have scanned the crowds for people she knew?

  Jack and Maris? Oh, she could imagine them giggling to each other. Pointing. Sneaking after her. Jumping back behind pillars if she started to turn.

  She was no clever caper organizer. She was a bumbling idiot, trotting from one hall to another, taking notes, gaping at guards. She had hidden nothing from anybody.

  The guard from the Egyptian Room had probably memorized her face. Her features were pinned up in his memory as a potential worry, the kind of person who threw acid on fine paintings and had to be institutionalized for life.

  Do not cry, she ordered herself. Be an actress. Just because I failed and Jack and Maris are laughing at me doesn’t mean I will break down in the hall. “I don’t see how it can be done,” she said with a shrug.

  “Maris lifted the mummy,” said Jack. “We wanted to see if alarms went off. None did.”

  “Lifted the mummy?” repeated Emlyn, stunned.

  “Yup. That lid just sort of peels upward. It wasn’t easy, but Maris and I got it up a few inches and she stuck her hand in. The mummy isn’t attached to anything. It’s just lying there. Maris got two fingers under it.”

  “But what about the guard? And weren’t there people around? The museum was packed because it was free day.”

  “We were drowning in little kids and parents. As soon as the guard moved through Birds, Maris and I just did it. One father yelled at us, and two mothers said, ‘Stop that!’ and the guard came back and Maris said to him, ‘The case moved. How come it isn’t fastened down?’”

  Emlyn would never have done anything in front of people. But after all, what was the guard to do? Shoot Maris? All he could do was glare and tell her not to touch again.

  “The guard said he was reporting this incident, but he didn’t take our names, so I’m not worried. You were the one skulking in the corners, Emlyn. We just sashayed out and learned what we needed to know.”

  She felt as if she had undressed in a room whose shades she had thought closed and whose door she thought sealed; and here, two people had been standing there observing her naked.

  “What class do you have now?” he asked briskly. “Can you skip it?”

  “World Literature. I can’t skip it.” Emlyn never cut. She liked class. She liked the p
osition of her own desk and the feel of her pencils between her fingers. She liked taking notes and seeing her intelligent arrangement of the teacher’s discussion on her own page. She liked when they showed a film and she could sit in the dark and dream. She liked analyzing the personalities of her classmates and the way they talked and fidgeted and learned, or failed to learn.

  But seniors were allowed to cut a certain number of classes per semester, no excuse necessary, if they were on honor roll. Emlyn was on high honors.

  They had reached her World Lit class. Jack released her from the weight of his arm and walked on toward the stairs. He said without looking back, “Maris is cutting, too, but Donovan and Lovell can’t. We’ll fill you in on what we found out.”

  The humiliation was complete.

  She could be a good little student and walk into World Lit.

  Or she could tag along and find out what the competent people had learned that she had not.

  Maris said, “You were so funny, Emlyn.”

  Emlyn tried to have no expression.

  They were standing in the doorway to the music room. No class or rehearsal was going on. All music students felt free to gather here at any time. If somebody walked in, she and Maris and Jack could reach for their band instruments as if about to practice. But Emlyn wasn’t in band this year. She couldn’t fit it into her schedule, and the band director was angry with her because he was short on clarinets. She felt like an impostor in the band room door.

  I was supposed to be the one who could be an impostor anywhere in anything, she thought, and I can’t even do it in the music room.

  “You were so cute, Emlyn, all wide-eyed and intent,” said Maris. “Right near you was this four-year-old. He’d never been to the museum before, and he walked around the whole time with his little mouth hanging open and his eyes gaping. You looked just like that.”

  Emlyn did not know if she could survive being compared to a funny-looking four-year-old. “So there’s no alarm attached to the mummy?” she said.

  “Or anything else in the Egyptian Room,” said Maris. “Those two glass cases that are basically tables? And they have jewelry in them? The signs says DO NOT LEAN ON THE CASE; ALARM WILL SOUND. Well, I leaned pretty hard, and no alarm sounded.”