And dreading it, too. He had to force himself to carry through every action: Now wrap your hand around the doorknob. Turn your wrist to the right. Push the door forward. . . .
“Is it terrible that I didn’t lock the door of the Boring Room again last night?” Emma burst out behind him. She and Finn were crowded so close beside him that Chess’s elbows knocked against them.
“Why didn’t you lock it?” Natalie asked. At least she was a few steps back.
“I didn’t think!” Emma wailed. It took a lot to make Emma wail. “I had too much else to think about! Why would Mom keep the Boring Room locked, anyhow? Why would it matter? And we did lock the front door of the house yesterday when we left, and that was still locked when we got here today, and there aren’t any windows broken, so we know nobody would have come in here, so . . .”
Chess flashed his sister a warning look, hoping she’d get the message: Don’t talk about scary stuff like people maybe breaking into our house. Not around Finn. Don’t scare Finn.
Or did Chess really want to say, Don’t scare me?
“Let’s just see what’s in this room,” Natalie said. And Chess still felt weird about her being a Lip Gloss Girl (or a former Lip Gloss Girl?) and being in his house and even talking to him. But he liked how steady her voice stayed. He liked that she was older than him and knew things he didn’t.
It made him feel a little bit less like that other Rochester—Rocky—in Arizona, who was probably still having to stay brave for his little brother and sister. Unless they’d been found already.
Chess hoped they’d been found already.
The door creaked open. Chess reached in and turned on the light.
“Somebody did come in and steal everything!” Natalie cried, peering around.
“No, no—this is what the room looked like yesterday,” Emma said. “Just the same.”
“Mom keeps the Boring Room empty on purpose,” Finn added fiercely. “If she had pictures and, I don’t know, toys, it’d be too interesting, and she wouldn’t get any work done.”
“Oh,” Natalie said.
But just that one word made Chess see the Boring Room differently. It was kind of weird how the room looked so abandoned, like someone had moved out everything but the heavy furniture. The room held nothing but the desk, an office chair, and three bookcases. Chess couldn’t remember the Boring Room ever looking any different. But why did Mom bother having three bookcases in here for just—Chess looked around—two books?
Chess crossed the room and looked at the two books leaning forlornly against each other: an ancient-looking dictionary and a binder labeled “Computer Manual.”
“Couldn’t she just look that up online?” Natalie said, right at Chess’s elbow. The sound of her voice made him jump.
“Mom doesn’t use the internet down here,” Finn said, spitting out each word like a bullet. “That would keep the Boring Room from being boring! Why can’t you understand that?”
“Didn’t you say she designs websites?” Natalie asked. “Wouldn’t she always need the internet?”
Chess froze. He’d never thought of that. But it was true: He couldn’t think of many parts of Mom’s job that didn’t require the internet. Once or twice when their internet was down, Mom had had to go work at the library or Starbucks to have Wi-Fi.
Chess couldn’t look at Natalie. It felt like she was saying Mom was a liar. No—it was worse than that. It felt like she was saying Mom lied about everything. Even little things, like the picture Mom had given Chess of his dad as a kid, telling him, “See this? You look exactly like your father did when he was your age. Same straight nose, same strong jawline, same handsome eyes. . . . This picture proves it.”
It felt like, if Natalie saw that picture, she’d say, “It’s so fuzzy! That could be anyone! You probably don’t look anything like your dad. You just want to believe the stuff your mom says. Why can’t you think for yourself, like I do?”
But Natalie would never see that picture, because it was tucked away in a shoebox on the very top shelf of Chess’s closet.
It wasn’t actually a little thing.
Was thinking all this making Chess act strange? Desperately, Chess looked toward Emma for help.
Emma didn’t even seem to be listening. She was peering intently at a paper they’d printed out the night before in Ms. Morales’s office: the map of the Boring Room that came from putting together the butterfly spots.
“The spot with the X has to mean something,” she muttered, drifting across the room. “And that spot is right about . . . here.”
Her fingers brushed the wall above one of the empty bookcases.
“It’s just a blank wall!” Finn said.
“The map is only two-dimensional,” Emma said. “So the actual spot could be anywhere from the ceiling to the floor.”
“I’ll check the floor then,” Finn said, rushing over to crouch beside Emma.
“I guess the ceiling’s mine,” Chess managed to mumble.
He brushed past Natalie, still without looking at her. To his surprise, she reached out and patted his shoulder, which made him feel slightly better and a lot weirder, all at once.
The ceiling of the Boring Room was lower than anywhere else in the house. But even standing on tiptoes, Chess still couldn’t reach the top part of the wall. He pulled the desk chair over, positioning it a little off to the right from where Emma had pointed.
“Careful,” Natalie said as he stepped up onto the chair.
What was wrong with Chess? He really wanted to snarl back at her, What’s it to you? Why do you care? And maybe also, Do you care?
He kept his mouth shut and concentrated on reaching his hand toward the ceiling. Then he felt silly brushing his hand against the clearly empty wall.
“If there was anything to find here, wouldn’t we see it?” he complained.
“Not necessarily,” Emma said. “Maybe we need a magnifying glass. Maybe we need a microscope. Maybe we need to douse the wall with lemon juice or some other reagent.”
Chess was not going to ask his little sister in front of Natalie what a reagent was. He hoped that Finn would do it for him. Or that Emma would just explain without waiting for anyone to ask.
But Natalie spoke next. “Um, guys, I’m not sure how long we have for searching before Mom gets suspicious and starts looking for us. If you think we need a magnifying glass or . . . something else . . . we should get it now.”
Apparently Natalie didn’t know what a reagent was either. And maybe she was embarrassed about asking, too?
“I don’t know what we need,” Emma said impatiently. “Not yet. Can’t you call your mom and tell her we need more time with Rocket? Like, hours? Tell her he’s really sad and missed us, and he needs us a lot!”
“Mom won’t leave us alone in here very long,” Natalie said. “Not when she thinks . . .” She glanced at Finn and fell silent.
Not when she thinks there’s an angry boyfriend that Mom ran away from, Chess thought. Not when she thinks there’s danger.
“I’m not finding anything,” Finn complained.
Chess looked down. Finn was running his hands again and again in wide circles over the floor and the lowest portion of the bookshelf. Emma had started searching along the next two shelves of the bookshelf, and Natalie was feeling along the wall immediately above the shelves. When Natalie moved her hand over to the left, Chess stepped one foot onto the top of the bookshelf so he could reach farther.
But just as Chess sometimes forgot how tall he’d gotten lately, he also sometimes forgot how big his feet were. The rubbery front part of his sneaker jabbed too hard against the wall and bent like clown shoes. He had to dig his toes into the crack between the wall and the bookshelf to keep his balance.
And then the bookshelf shifted beneath his foot. It began to swing back away from the wall.
“Watch out!” Chess yelled at Natalie, Emma, and Finn.
Natalie jumped back, and Chess instantly wished she hadn’t.
Now there didn’t seem to be any way to keep the bookcase from falling over on Emma and Finn.
“Catch it!” Chess yelled at Natalie, even as he himself fell backward against the chair, which also rolled backward. He scrambled to the edge of the seat and held out his hands, hoping he could at least stop the bookcase from hitting his brother and sister quite so hard.
The result was that he fell to the floor, so he was also in the path of the falling bookcase.
But the bookcase didn’t move the way he expected; it didn’t topple straight out from the wall. It moved at a slant, one side swinging out wide while the other tilted toward the corner of the room. Nothing made sense: The side that Chess had stepped on wasn’t even the side that had separated the most from the wall.
Or—had it actually separated? Had the wall somehow come with it?
Tangled up on the floor, Chess couldn’t make sense of anything.
But as soon as the bookcase stopped moving, Finn popped up and poked his head around the side of the bookcase.
“There aren’t any books on this bookcase because it’s not really a bookcase!” he cried. “It’s a secret door!”
Twenty-Two
Finn
“Where’s it go?” Emma asked breathlessly. “What do you see back there?”
“Um,” Finn said. “It’s too dark to see.”
The darkness was awful. It was the thick kind that made Finn think of spiders and snakes. He wasn’t afraid of creepy-crawly things, but the space that had opened up behind the secret door had damp air like he’d encountered in other people’s basements—the kind that were full of centipedes and millipedes and pill bugs. The air had a strange smell to it, too—maybe the space behind the bookcase was full of dead centipedes and millipedes and pill bugs. Maybe dead rats and mice, too.
Maybe even dead humans? Finn thought. And then he decided he had to stop scaring himself.
“Where’s the nearest flashlight?” Natalie asked.
“I’ll find one,” Finn volunteered, scrambling back from the edge of the bookcase.
It was a relief to be away from the darkness, away from the scary air. Emma and Chess were still jumbled up on the floor, their faces stunned and confused.
“Did you look for a light switch?” Emma asked.
“How can I look when there’s nothing to see but darkness?” Finn asked, stepping past her.
“You use your hands,” Emma said. “Look with your fingers.”
“Why don’t you?” Finn asked.
Emma being Emma, she actually stood up and walked over to the opening behind the bookcase. She ducked down and stepped into the darkness.
“Emma!” Finn screeched.
Emma turned around, but only to reach up and feel around on the other side of the wall.
What if something bites you? Finn wanted to shout at her. What if there’s a mousetrap back there, or, or . . .
“Here it is,” Emma said.
She must have hit a switch, because suddenly light glowed around her.
“Oh, good,” Finn said. “I didn’t know where the flashlights were, anyway.”
Chess and Natalie were already rushing toward the opening. Both of them had to hunch over and touch their hands to the floor to duck through the secret doorway—it was really more like a half doorway. At least Finn only had to bob his head to the side and then back up again as he scrambled after them.
He stepped into the secret room and joined the others in looking around and around.
Despite the smell, the room he stood in now was clean and neat with no evidence of bugs, dead or otherwise. The walls were lined with shelves, and unlike the shelves in the Boring Room, these shelves were packed. Finn saw cartons of Campbell’s soup and ramen noodles, and bundles of water bottles and peanut butter jars. He saw row after row of canned peas and tuna fish and pear slices, applesauce and mandarin oranges and corn.
“It’s just a pantry?” Finn said in dismay. “We have something as cool as a secret room hidden under our house, and Mom just uses it to store food?”
“And old shoes?” Emma asked, pointing at a stack of shoeboxes Finn hadn’t noticed.
Maybe they were full of spare new shoes—Finn saw that the picture on the side of the nearest shoebox was of the very same sneakers he wore on his feet.
“What if there aren’t shoes inside?” Chess asked. He lifted the lid of the one of the boxes and said, “Ooooh . . .”
Finn rushed over beside his brother and peered into the box. Everything inside it was green.
“Money?” he said disbelievingly. “It’s full of money?”
“Is every box like that?” Emma asked, lifting another off the shelf.
“Oh no,” Finn said. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.” Each “no” came out sounding more and more like he was crying.
“What’s wrong?” Emma asked, grabbing another shoebox. “It looks like we’re rich!”
“No,” Finn wailed. He could barely get the words out. Or breathe. “It looks like Mom really did rob that bank!”
Twenty-Three
Emma
“What are you talking about?” Emma asked.
“Tyrell and Lucy—yesterday—their bus was late because there was an accident, and they said they saw Mom running out of a bank carrying a big bag like she’d robbed it, and—”
“Mom would never rob a bank,” Chess said decisively, like he was slamming a door. “Not our mom.”
Yesterday we thought Mom would never go away and leave us behind forever, either, Emma thought. And for a moment, Emma was lost. She was so lost, it didn’t seem like there was a single math fact that could save her.
Then Natalie said, “I’m pretty sure Chess is right. Your mom didn’t rob a bank.”
Emma, Finn, and Chess all whirled toward the older girl, who was rifling through one shoebox full of money after another.
“How do you know that?” Emma challenged.
“Because,” Natalie said, “it looks like every single one of these bills is either a one or a five. If someone robs a bank, they take twenties, at least. Probably even fifties or hundreds.”
“Why?” Finn asked with a forlorn sniff.
Emma knew the answer to this one.
“Bulk,” she said. “You steal a million dollars in ones, you have to carry one million strips of paper. If you steal it in hundreds, that’s still a thousand—no, ten thousand—bills, but that’s a lot less than having to lug around a million one-dollar bills.”
Oh yeah, she thought. Knowing math did help.
Having Natalie around had helped, too.
Natalie was still calmly scanning through shoebox after shoebox.
“If these people you’re talking about—Tyrell? Lucy?—saw your mom carrying a big bag out of a bank, it was probably because she had a lot of ones and fives,” Natalie said. “Not because it was a lot of money altogether.”
“But why would Mom want all this money here?” Chess asked. “Or all this food and water?” He tilted his head back, looking up at the shelves that stretched toward the ceiling. “Our whole family wouldn’t eat this much food in a year!”
“Was your mom a Doomsday prepper?” Natalie asked. “Did she talk all the time about how society was going to fall apart, and how it would be everybody for themselves, and the only people who would survive were the ones who prepared ahead of time?”
“No,” Emma, Chess, and Finn said, almost as one.
“Yeah, I guess that’s stupid,” Natalie said. “Because if she were a Doomsday prepper, she wouldn’t want cash. She’d have gold bars, or silver, or something like that. Things you could barter with. I’m pretty sure the Doomsday preppers think paper money will be worthless when society collapses. Okay, then, this is just a panic room.”
“A what?” Finn said. “How do you know this stuff?”
“Don’t you guys ever go online?” Natalie asked. “Or watch TV?”
“Mom let us watch The Lego Batman Movie the other night,” Finn began. “And—”
<
br /> “Just tell us what a panic room is,” Emma said through gritted teeth. She hated not knowing things.
“Okay,” Natalie said, shrugging in a way that made her hair ripple down her back. “Panic rooms are what rich people have in their houses, where they can go and be safe and lock themselves in if someone breaks in. Or if someone is trying to kidnap them.”
“But we’re not rich!” Finn protested. “Unless you count having shoeboxes full of one-dollar bills.”
“I wouldn’t count that,” Natalie said.
Emma wanted to add, And nobody would want to kidnap us! But her memory nagged at her: She’d thought the same thing before, after the kids in Arizona with the same names and ages as Emma, Finn, and Chess had been kidnapped. They probably hadn’t expected it, either.
Emma gazed around again at the well-stocked shelves.
But Mom expected something. She was preparing for some threat or danger. . . .
Emma remembered what Mom had said the day they’d learned about the kidnappings in Arizona: “You don’t have to worry about being kidnapped. I promise. I’ll do everything I can to prevent that.”
Had Mom set up this whole room after that? Had she gotten all the money and all the food and water the next day, before leaving?
And did she dig out a whole other part of our basement and build these walls and shelves in that time, too? Emma wondered. That’s so not logical! It’d be impossible!
Anyhow, why would she have done all that work and then . . . just left? Without even telling the kids what she’d done?
“So I wonder . . . ,” Natalie began.
“What?” Chess asked.
“I don’t know if your mom’s a Doomsday prepper or if this is just a panic room, for some reason,” Natalie said. “I don’t even know your mom. But either way, I think there’d be more hiding places, even inside the panic room. Like, maybe for other secret things that are more valuable than food or one-dollar bills? Or . . . weapons? Those Doomsday preppers always have lots of guns.”
“Let’s look!” Finn said enthusiastically.
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