Wham!

by Carol Marrs Phipps

  Trent and Jasmine could certainly clean up every bit of the mess out here, but at the thought of school, Tess rushed to her room to make certain that it was straightened up and her skinny uncovered before a watcher tried to use it to wake her and quiz her about the scholastic content of her dreams. When she went to close her door, she discovered that not only had it been forced open, its latch had been broken altogether, so that it would no longer stay closed. When she switched on the light, she saw at once that every single shelf and drawer in her room had been rifled and gone through. Suddenly she was grabbing up everything about the room in a frenzy. When the last drawer was slammed shut, she threw herself onto the bed and folded her arms in a huff to fume at the ceiling and wait for the skinny to wake her.

  Chapter 24

  When at last the watcher in Tess's skinny bid her good morning, Tess was not at all ready. After all, being greeted by the disarray in the house certainly had her much too distracted to invent stories about the dreams she never had, so when he began asking her about her dreams, she found herself merely telling him what she remembered about her classes as if she had dreamed about being in school. Instead of being satisfied by what she had to say and leaving her to her morning, he began asking her all sorts of questions about the details she had given him, creating a tedious ordeal that seemed to go on forever. When her grilling was over, she was so rattled that she dropped the ball on the floor with a loud whack to go rolling away under her dressing table, which at once brought back the watcher to begin accusing her of having lost her temper.

  She was determined to do something about the door to her room so that no one could get in when she went back to Maxi's to wait with Drake, so she decided to see if she could find a dead bolt or something similar in the abandoned part of town. Perhaps she would be lucky enough to get back and fix her door before either Trent or Jasmine were up and around. Did dropping the skinny awaken them? She tiptoed to their doors to see. Trent was certainly snoring loud enough. She put her ear to Jasmine's door and heard nothing. Perhaps she could get away with fixing something to eat before she left.

  She put on the tea kettle and carefully wheeled her bicycle outside, mounded some peanut butter onto a couple of stale muffins and sat out on the front step with them to have with her pot of tea. It had been daylight long enough for the sparrows to be cheeping everywhere, but it was still quite early. Still struggling to swallow her last bite of peanut butter, she gathered up her dishes and quietly took them in to leave by the sink.

  She was back out and had just lifted her kickstand and pointed her bicycle at the road when the door behind her banged shut.

  “Sneaking off somewhere?” said Jasmine, looking hung-over and sullen enough for Tess to have been the very one breaking into people's things.

  “Going to town in plain sight is hardly sneaking,” said Tess.

  “Well forgive me,” said Jasmine. “So, can we expect you back to fix supper?”

  “You know of some evening when I haven't fixed it?” said Tess.

  Jasmine lifted her chin.

  “Well I hope you've recovered enough to remember our agreement, because one of you fixes supper, starting this evening. I'm done with my turn.”

  Jasmine thought of a hateful possibility or two before muttering under her breath as she stepped back inside and slammed the door behind her.

  Tess hopped astride her bicycle and coasted to the road feeling as though she had cheated herself by not taking Jasmine to task then and there. But as she began pedaling away, she found herself at a complete loss for a way to put the matter to them. Just how would she, particularly when they had no reason to be upset with her in the first place? And something about this just did not seem quite safe.

  It did not take long to reach Goodnight Avenue, which ran alongside Broadstreet, just outside the troll compound. It had been a thriving commercial district in the years before the Alliance, with towering department stores at one end and posh hotels at the other. Nowadays, with every last street lamp and display window broken and scattered down the street, it was a good place to get a flat tire. Tess dismounted and walked her bike from door to door. She was not finding much, since the buildings had been stripped and plundered for years, but when she came to the old bus station, she happened onto an excellent sliding bolt latch on a stall in the men's toilet. “And thanks to Jasmine, I didn't think to bring one blooming tool, all the way here,” she said. “Wait. Maybe Maud's home. Her barrack's a bit closer than going all the way back home.” She set out for Maud's at once.

  “What's wrong?” said Maud the moment she answered the door. She had an assortment of screwdrivers and pliers in a canvass roll that had belonged to Mort which she loaned to Tess on the condition that she would tell her when she brought them back.

  Tess hurried back to the bus station and had all the screws out in short order except for one which passed all the way through the door to a nut that was hopelessly rusted to the screw. After a bit of exasperated grappling and prying, she took the time to consider what the pair of side cutters might be for, handily nipped off the nut and had her latch at last.

  Maud had a nice tray of cookies and a simmering tea kettle waiting. She sat down on the front step with a groan and was putting a spot of milk in each cup as Tess began telling about waiting with Drake for Maxi and some of the underground to rescue Kellen and Cait, carefully avoiding any mention of traveling spells, Daniel, Teeuh or most particularly, Bart. “Now are you afraid they've run into trouble, deary-do?” she said.

  “Why no. Drake and I both think they'll manage.”

  “Then what is it? School or those confounded Warren kids?”

  Tess told her story, from her broken door latch to the mess to Jasmine, trying not to leave out a thing.

  “Ask them,” said Maud.

  “Ask them?”

  “Damn right!” she said, adding extra wrinkles to her brow as she removed the cozy and emptied the pot. “Make them tell you. They owe it to you. But you be careful.

  Watch every move they make. If they're a-smoking rush, they could be setting you up for taking the blame for some of their meanness. I've seen it. I've seen it time and again, doing m' job.”

  Tess thoughtfully had her cup of tea and one last cookie and wiped her mouth.

  Maud watched her stand up. “Now I mean it,” she said with a sternness Tess had not heard from her before. “Promise me you'll be careful.”

  “Yes ma'am,” she said. She could see that Maud needed a hug.

  Tess could hear Trent and Jasmine shouting at each other inside the barrack as she stepped off her bicycle, so she wheeled it around back and locked it to the chain link fence beneath her window rather than try to walk it through their chaos to her room. She drew a breath and went inside. Sure enough, they were fighting over who would fix supper and do dishes for the coming week. “Good for them!” she thought as she went to her room. “Maybe they'll leave me alone.”

  She laid out the latch and its handful of screws on the sack she had them in and went to her closet for her dad's toolbox and found it empty. “Damn them!” she cried as she shot to her feet and tramped across the room to have it out with them. Suddenly she thought better of it and sat on the bed with a bounce. “I wonder what else is gone. Maybe I ought to know before I do. And I need to fix the door before they notice.” She clapped her hands to her knees and went to the drawer by the kitchen sink and was relieved to find an ice pick, pliers and three good screwdrivers. “Good! They can shout in his room all they want.” And with the soft wood in the door and jamb and the ice pick to start holes, she had her men's toilet latch in place well before the house grew quiet.

  When she noticed that the house had been quiet for a spell, she stepped out of her room to find Jasmine slouched on the davenport with a bottle of beer.

  “Want one?” said Jasmine, raising her bottle.

  Tess shook her head. “So who's cooking?”

  “Asshole. But he says there's nothing in the kitchen worth
fixing, so he's gone to the store. And he's getting a couple of pizzas at the tavern to bring back and eat when he gets here. He says he's too hungry to wait until supper.”

  “Sounds expensive,” said Tess. “I'm afraid I've put my money into what's in the cupboard and 'fridge. You know, the flour and the soup stuff, and the cheese, macaroni, muffins, peanut butter, marmalade...”

  “Yeh. And he'd eat every bit of it if somebody else fixed it. I told him I wasn't paying for any of his damned pizza. He says he's buying for everyone, any time he doesn’t cook.”

  “Sounds good, then.”

  Jasmine looked as though she might say something, but took a swig of beer instead. “So,” she said after a moment. “How come you won't drink with us?”

  “Why does this have to be a problem?” said Tess, drawing in a breath. “I just don't drink. It has nothing to do with you. I simply like to be in control of myself. I may not always do or say the right thing, but at least I'm in a position to decide.”

  “You think Trent and I don't know what we're saying or doing when we drink?”

  “I think that after you've had a lot to drink, you say and do things you might not otherwise.”

  “Yeh? So what? It's not like real people take that stuff seriously. Anyone with sense realizes you're drinking and pretty much dismisses any stupid stuff you might have said or done. No harm done.”

  “People sometimes cause a lot of harm when they're drunk.”

  “Yeh?” said Jasmine. “But we don't. See, we drink at home and then we simply sleep it off. Nobody gets hurt. No problem. Besides, you haven't even tried it, so you don't know what you're talking about. Mostly it's just a great way to relax, forget your problems for awhile and let your hair down. As Trent says, you could definitely use a little loosening up girl.”

  “I reckon I'll just have to disappoint everyone.”

  “Your loss.”

  “Probably,” said Tess. “I'll just go to my room and study for a bit. Would you let me know when Trent gets back with the pizza?”

  “Righty-o,” said Jasmine, staring ahead of her bottle as if Tess were already gone.

  Tess set about at once taking an inventory of her things and was bitterly displeased to discover every piece of her mom's jewelry missing, along with a number of her better sweaters. Her dad's pocket knife collection was also gone. “Damn them!” she hissed, tramping about the room. “Good job Drake got the guns...”

  “Pizza time!” cried Trent, thrusting in his head and ducking right back out.

  Tess hesitated, getting control of herself before following him out to the kitchen. She would have to know the extent of their pilferage before starting in on them. Maybe this could be grounds for Children and Family moving them somewhere else. She would at least have to see what Maud thought first.

  “Have a piece Tess,” said Trent as she walked up to the table. “Just think. When we get that sublim board this next week, we can watch it every time we eat supper. Won't that be something?”

  “That is,” she said, nodding at the slice of pizza he was standing on.

  “Oh,” he said through his mouthful as he took a step back to look. “You going 'o party with Jasmine and me this afternoon, babe?”

  “Not this afternoon,” she said politely, seeing that her reply was more important to him than the pizza he was standing on again. “I still have make-up work. But there are only two days of school next week before we're out for the summer. There'll be plenty of time for partying then. And if I get my work done, we'll have that sublim board to watch.”

  “All right!,” he said. “But as soon as school's out, no more excuses, right?”

  Tess drew a breath. “Right,” she said with a nod.

  “Yeh,” said Jasmine. “But she won't drink with us because she's afraid she might say or do something she won't remember.”

  “Is that right?” said Trent, pulling his next piece from the strings of cheese and ignoring the one on the floor.

  “That's not quite how I put it,” said Tess. “But what's the matter with wanting to remember? Wouldn't a good party be worth remembering?”

  “You can't party without drinking,” he said.

  “Ever tried?”

  “He did at his sixth birthday party,” said Jasmine. snickering over her bottle.

  “Shut up!”

  “Yeh!” said Jasmine. “And the only ones who showed up were me, 'cause I had to, and Mom and Dad. Not a single one of his dumb ass friends came.”

  “That's terrible!” said Tess.

  “That's just kid shit, grinhole,” said Trent, thrusting a look at Jasmine. “What does that have to do with real partying?”

  “Kids can really be thoughtless...” said Tess.

  Jasmine gave a snort in time for Trent to give her a shove with his cheesy shoe.

  “Clean pair o' jeans, asshole!” she cried, launching herself from the davenport to back him into the table for a smart kick in the thigh.

  “Bitch!” he shouted through his mouthful.

  “Well,” said Tess. “Thanks for the pizza, but I really need to do some studying. So if you’ll excuse me...”

  Neither one was listening at all, which made it especially easy to go to her room and close the door with her new latch. She went right back to her inventory. “Oh no!” she wailed, going from drawer to drawer. “Grandma's china doll. How could she?” She sat on the bed with a sniffle and lay back to stare through her tears at the ceiling. “How could she possibly be mean enough to take someone's dolly? How could they do all this to my room and then just go right on as if nothing ever happened?” She was soon thinking about her mom and dad and the rescue instead. Her lying there reminded her that she was exhausted and before long she was sound asleep.

  The rattling doorknob woke her with a start to find that it was nearly dark. She sat up noiselessly, covered her skinny with the towel and waited. The knob turned and jerked about again.

  “It won't open,” said Trent from outside the door.

  “Well why not?” said Jasmine. “I thought you broke the lock last night. How could it not open now? No way could she 'ave put a new lock on it. Knock on the door again and see if she answers. Maybe she was asleep the first time.”

  “She can't be in there,” said Trent. “I bet she sneaked out just like she did last night and who knows how many other nights before that. And I'd like to know what she's done to the door so that I can't get it open.”

  “Knock anyway, just to be sure.”

  “Tess?” he called, pounding on the door. “Are you asleep?”

  Tess held her breath.

  Now there was louder pounding. “Time to break down the damned door!”

  “That's not a good idea,” said Jasmine. “Children and Family might frown on us going that far. I think they'll have to be the ones to burst in the door if they have to.”

  “You still want to tell them? After all, there's no curfew at the moment. And Tess does have the right to go out at night.”

  “Not to the damned troll compound.”

  “Well no. But how's it hurt us?”

  “I can't stand her is how,” said Jasmine. “I plain don't want her here. You sticking up for her?”

  “No.”

  “And she's never going to let you have your way with her. Forget that! So it's two of us and one of her.”

  “Hey! How do you know?”

  “Oh go on! How come you don't? And her being pals with that Maxi troll will have us in the fire, like as not. And you know jolly well that's where she's going until the wee hours, when Drake's her only other friend.”

  “How do you know she's not going to Drake's?”

  “I just know, all right? Drake's 'way too goody-goody to have a girl overnight unless he's married to her. Trust me on this...”

  “Must've been hard on you, Jazz,” he said as bottles jingled and the refrigerator door closed.

  Tess could not make out any more of what they were saying. For all she knew, they were go
ing straight to one of the skinnies in their rooms that very moment to tell Children and Family Assistance. If they were, she only had scant minutes to get to Maxi's without getting caught. Suddenly she was in a panic, flying about her room, cramming her little green scrying ball into her pocket, putting on her turquoise, her pouch of corn pollen and tossing a change of clothes out the window at her bike's basket and clambering out the window and down the chain link fence, trying not to make a sound.

  There was just enough light left to see to ride her bicycle, but she would have to be very careful not to have the coppers see her without lights and come after her. By the time it had gotten too dark to ride without the danger of running into things, she recognized the silhouette of the collapsed building over the tunnel to the basement of the bank building. She knew she would never manage to get her bike through the bricks and rubble in the tunnel, but she knew of some water pipes not far inside it where she left it chained. She found Drake asleep in a chair beside the chess board on the table in Maxi's conference room.

  “Tess,” he said, waking right up. “Are you upset?”

  “I heard Jasmine and Trent talking about sending Children and Family after me,” she said as she caught her breath. “And... No! Damn, damn it!”

  “What on earth?”

  “The ball!” she cried, flinging her arms. “Dad's scrying ball. I forgot to look for it.

  It's certainly gone now and no mistake about it!”

  Chapter 25

  No one wanted to make Kellen work a shift in the mine, but a three o' clock rescue in broad daylight seemed impossibly dangerous to everyone compared to one carried out under the cover of darkness. As eleven o' clock arrived, Teeuh flew high into the black sky above the valley and hovered with the Heart and Staff, waiting for Daniel, Maxi, Philpott and Llygad to dart from rock to rock, getting themselves into position around the guardhouse near the blind on the top of the bluff. Morrigan knelt under the camouflage blind with a pair of binoculars and a clear view of everything below.