by Ali Standish
Then, “Hello?” I croaked. “Is someone under there?”
There was no answer.
I could have just turned and run from the house. I’m not sure why I didn’t, except that the terror of never knowing what was under that sheet felt somehow greater than the terror of finding out right then.
I took a step closer. And another. Then my hand was reaching out again, fingers wrapping around the thin cloth. I aimed the flashlight and pulled.
“Ladrão!” cawed the voice of whoever was hiding underneath.
I closed my eyes and screamed.
“Pega ladrão!” it cried. “Polícia!”
When I opened my eyes, I saw that the voice didn’t belong to a person. It belonged to a bird.
The bird flapped furiously against the bars of its enormous cage, which was set atop a wooden stand. It squawked and bleated as it tried to force its beak and talons through the bars far enough to swipe at me.
Then there were more noises. Something thumping against the ceiling. Footsteps coming down the stairs. A dog barking.
The footsteps stopped, and a light switched on.
“What in God’s name is going on down here?” demanded a voice, this one unmistakably human. And unmistakably furious.
I spun around to see an old man in a bathrobe, with a snowy beard. A mangy brown dog was barking furiously at his feet.
“I—I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t know anyone was—”
“Here to interrupt your burglary?” he asked, his eyebrows arching. He held out his hand in a “stop” gesture to the dog, which went silent but kept its eyes pinned on me.
“I wasn’t going to steal anything,” I mumbled.
And in my defense, my friends told me you were dead.
His eyes flicked to the book I still held in my hand. “Oh?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, holding it out. “Really sorry.”
He took the book. “I should call the police. That’s what Safira wants me to do.”
He walked over to the cage and held out a finger to the enormous blue bird, whose wings began to settle.
If he called the police, they would call Sammy’s parents. And Aunt Clare wouldn’t be able to convince Uncle Amar not to call Mom this time. The Grovers wouldn’t want a criminal staying in their house.
“Please,” I begged, “please don’t call them. I’ll never come back, I swear. I’ll never do it again. If you tell, my mom will—”
“Miranda!” Sammy called, hurtling through the door. “Are you okay? We heard a scream, and Caleb ran away, but—”
She stopped when she saw the old man. His eyes widened as they moved from me to Sammy and back to me. His gaze was intense, like an angry finger pressing against my chest. He must have been working out exactly what to do about the two of us, because he didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Exactly how old are you two?” he asked. “Eleven?”
“Twelve,” I said. “I’m twelve.”
Was that old enough to be sent to juvenile detention?
“A bit young to be breaking and entering,” he said coolly, as Sammy inched to my side. “You were saying something about your mother?”
“My mom, um, sent me here for the summer,” I said, “because she has a really important job to do. And if you call the police, I’ll have to go home and she won’t be able to do it.”
In the long, silent seconds that followed, I saw something—pity, I thought—dart across his face.
Finally he lifted his chin, so that the tip of his beard pointed out instead of down. “I won’t call the police,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone about this.”
“Thank you,” I breathed. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Not so fast,” he said, holding up a hand. “You’ve still trespassed on my property, and I can’t just let you run off scot-free.”
“You want us to, like . . . pay you?” Sammy asked.
He shot Sammy a funny look. “I’m a man of many interests,” he said. “But blackmail is not one of them.”
“Then what?” I asked.
He thought for another moment.
“As it happens,” he said, “I’ve just returned from a very long trip. I have quite a lot to unpack and sort through.” He gestured back toward the crates in the other room. “It’s a big job for one person. I could use you two to help me.”
“Three,” said Sammy. “No way is Caleb getting off the hook, and no way are we coming back here alone.”
“Fine,” he said. “And you won’t be alone. My housekeeper, Betsy, will be here, too.”
I glanced around the dusty room, at the cobwebbed chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Either Betsy was the worst housekeeper in the world, or she hadn’t started yet.
“Okay,” I said. “Deal. We’ll be here.”
He considered me for another minute, like he was trying to decide whether or not he could trust me. Then he nodded. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Three o’clock.”
“Three o’clock,” Sammy repeated. “Now, let’s go.”
She steered us from the room. The dog at the old man’s feet growled as we passed.
“Thanks again, Mr. . . . um . . .”
“Taylor,” he said. “My name is Taylor.”
“Right. Thanks again, Mr. Taylor,” I said. Then Sammy was pushing me out of the house, back into the fresh night air.
15
Uncle Amar and Aunt Clare were waiting on the porch for Sammy and me. They stood as we jogged up the steps, Uncle Amar draping an arm around Aunt Clare.
“It’s almost ten o’clock, Sammy,” he said. I had never heard his voice sound so harsh. “You were supposed to be home by nine. We’ve been really worried.”
“I’m sorry,” Sammy said. “I texted you to say we’d be a little late.”
“And I texted you to say you needed to come home,” said Aunt Clare.
“It was my fault,” I muttered.
Sammy glanced at me and gave me the slightest shake of her head. But I already knew what the Grovers thought of me. What did I have to lose by taking the blame, as long as they didn’t find out the truth?
“I, um, lost my phone,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Sammy. “We had to go all around the park looking for it.”
“It was in the bathroom.”
Sammy’s parents looked at each other, then back at us. I could tell they weren’t sure whether to believe us or not. But I could also tell they didn’t want to accuse me of being a liar.
“Fine,” Aunt Clare said. “But you’re not going out at night again. And tomorrow, you’ll be helping cook and do dishes. Sammy can help Amar with dinner, and Miranda, you can make dessert.”
“Yes, Mom,” said Sammy flatly.
“Yes, Aunt Clare,” I echoed.
I gulped. What was I going to make? I would have to figure something out. Now was not the time to come clean about my lack of baking experience. Then Aunt Clare would know I was a liar. Besides, if I could pull off a decent dessert, maybe she and Uncle Amar would start to change their minds about me.
When we got to Sammy’s room, she flung herself onto her bed, facing the wall. For a minute, the only sound was Jai talking on the phone in the next room.
“I’m really sorry I got us in trouble,” I said. I sat down on the corner of the bed.
For a few seconds, she didn’t move. Then she sat up and brushed the hair from her face. I saw a tear sneaking its way from her eye.
“Are you crying?” I asked, alarmed.
“Yes, Miranda,” she said, taking a big stuffed polar bear in her arms and resting her chin on it in a pout. “You were pretty mean before. I told you you shouldn’t go into that place, and you ignored me, and then you were screaming, and I thought something really bad had happened to you. And now we have to spend our summer cooped up in some creepy old house.”
I dropped my head so she wouldn’t see the pink spreading over my cheeks. I had been so busy trying to prove myself to Ca
leb that I hadn’t even cared how Sammy felt. I’d almost gotten us arrested, and now I had ruined her summer.
So much for the new and improved Miranda. No matter who I tried to be, I always seemed to ruin things.
“Are you crying now?” Sammy asked.
“No,” I said, wiping away the evidence too late. “I’m just embarrassed. I was trying to—to—”
“To what?”
“To be more like you, I guess,” I admitted. “You make everything look so easy and fun.”
She snorted. “If you think that, you should see me in math class,” she said. “I’m one of the worst in my grade. People make fun of me because they say Indians are supposed to be good at math.”
The warmth in my cheeks turned to hot anger. “That’s so not okay,” I said, stuffing Bluey into my arms. “Aren’t there, like, more than a billion Indians in the world? Do people think they’re all just the same? They can’t all be good at math. That’s just simple statistics.”
Sammy shot me a narrow smile. “See?” she said. “You’re probably really good at math.”
Math was my best subject, but now didn’t seem like a very good time to tell Sammy that. Besides, I was still fuming about what she had told me. “That’s why middle school sucks,” I said. “If there’s anything different or special about you, kids make fun of you for it. I for one think you’re awesome. And anybody who can’t see that is nuts.”
“Thanks, Miranda,” Sammy said.
“And I’m so sorry I ruined your summer.”
She reached over and gave me a small shove.
“You didn’t ruin my summer,” she said. “So what if we have to spend a couple hours every day trapped in a room with Caleb Dillworth and some grumpy old guy?”
“Won’t your mom wonder where we are?” I asked. “If we tell her about Mr. Taylor, she’ll want to know how we met him. Or she’ll want to meet him herself, and then he’ll tell her all about us breaking in and she’ll tell my mom.”
“Don’t worry,” Sammy said. “She has her piano lessons in the afternoon. And if she asks what we’ve been doing while she’s gone, I’ll just tell her we went to the library to do research for my story. It’ll be okay. Actually, it’ll be better. Because we’ll find a way to make it fun.”
This time, I actually believed her.
16
When we got to the harbor for our sailing lesson the next day, Jason instructed us to get life jackets on.
Life jackets meant we were going out on the water.
I took a deep breath. So maybe breaking into Mr. Taylor’s house last night hadn’t been the best start to the new and improved Miranda, but that didn’t mean I was giving up on changing.
You can do this, I told myself firmly.
Caleb was already on the beach, toeing some kind of design in the sand. Sammy stalked up to him and ruined it with a swift kick.
“Hey!”
“Hey yourself,” she said. “I can’t believe you left us last night.”
He shrugged and shuffled his feet. “I didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“It was your idea,” I said, surprised at my own boldness. “If anyone should be in trouble, it’s you.”
Even more surprisingly, Caleb didn’t fight back. “I’m sorry, okay?” he said. “What happened, anyway? After I left?”
“What happened is that the old man who lives there—key word being lives—told us we had to come back and help him unpack all these boxes,” said Sammy, “starting today at three. You’ll be there, or I’ll tell your mom everything.”
He winced at the mention of his mom. “Don’t,” he said quietly.
“Then we’ll see you at three,” Sammy replied.
He aimed a lazy kick of his own at the sand. “Whatever. Not like there’s anything else to do around here anyway.”
Sammy turned on her heel, and I followed her to grab our life jackets from the shed.
“Is Caleb one of the kids from school?” I asked. “Who make fun of you?”
Sammy glanced up. “Well, he did back in elementary school,” she said. Then she cocked her head. “Actually, he hasn’t really bothered me this year. Some of his friends still do, though.”
I linked my arm through hers. “Well, if he says anything mean,” I said, “it’ll be two against one.”
Being brave wasn’t just about overcoming your own fears, I decided. It was about standing up for your friends, too.
Sammy smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
Jason was on the beach now, waving us over. Once I was standing in front of him, he took the straps of my life jacket and jerked them as tight as they would go. “No way you can sink now,” he said, winking.
I really wished he hadn’t said the word “sink.”
Jason instructed Sammy and Caleb to get into one boat (they both rolled their eyes) and helped me get into another. As he pushed it out into the water, I clung to its edges until my knuckles were as white as the plastic. I hated the way the boat bobbed on the waves and made me feel like we were going to tip over any second.
“We’ll stay right here today,” Jason said, “where it’s nice and shallow. See?”
He pointed over the edge of the boat, into the water below. It was turquoise, but somehow it was also clear enough to see straight to the sandy bottom. It didn’t look any deeper than a few feet. As I stared, a little school of shiny fish flickered past.
Then Jason told me to start unfurling the sail, and suddenly there were lots of things to do—ropes to cleat, a tiller to steer with, the boom to look out for. So many things to think about that, for a while, I forgot to think about how scared I was.
17
After our lesson, Aunt Clare told me to make her a grocery list with all the things I would need to make dessert that night. Thinking of the peach stands we’d seen on our drive from the airport, I searched online to find the recipe for the mile-high peach pie that I had in my binder at home. It seemed like a simple enough choice, but I was still nervous about trying it.
Nervous is okay, I told myself. On Baking Battles, the contestants who got eliminated first were almost always the ones who were really confident.
Before leaving for her piano lessons, Aunt Clare asked Sammy what we were going to do that afternoon, and Sammy told her we were going to the library to look at some books on turtles. I was surprised, and kind of impressed, at how easy it seemed for her to lie like that.
Then, a few minutes before three, Sammy and I started toward Mr. Taylor’s. When we got there, Caleb was already standing at the edge of the lawn, waiting.
The house didn’t look quite so creepy in the daytime, but it did look even more run-down in the bright afternoon sun. There were shingles missing from the roof, which leaned to one side, and posts knocked out from under the porch banister. At least today the iron gates were open.
Next door, a woman took a break from watering her yard to stare at us.
“We’d better go knock,” I said finally, “or we’ll be late.”
But just as we reached the top of the creaking porch steps, the front door flew open, revealing an older woman with wild spirals of silver hair framing her round face.
“You must be our helpers,” she said, beaming. “So kind of you to volunteer to come and lend a hand like this.”
I shot a questioning look at Sammy. Volunteer? That wasn’t exactly the word I would have used.
Still, it meant that Mr. Taylor had kept his end of our bargain. He hadn’t told anyone about the break-in.
“I’m Betsy,” she said, wiping her hand on her floral apron and then extending it. Caleb and Sammy shook hands and introduced themselves. Then it was my turn.
“Miranda,” Betsy mused, studying me. “Such a pretty name. You never hear that one anymore. Your mother must have very good taste.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Well, don’t just stand out there. That heat is unbearable. Come in, come in!”
She ushered us inside the house, which w
as a bit cooler than outside but still pretty stuffy. Rays of sunlight shooting through the windows revealed thousands of tiny dust particles swirling around each other like couples waltzing at a tiny ball.
“We’ve got guests!” Betsy called upstairs. Then she turned to us. “I’ll just go get you some lemonade from the kitchen.”
She plucked her way through the maze of crates and living-room furniture—which, I saw, had been uncovered since last night—and disappeared, leaving us alone in the entryway.
“Sammy,” I said, “remember yesterday? We saw those guys carrying a bunch of crates to a truck in the harbor.”
“What’s in them?” Caleb asked, wrinkling his nose. “Something smells funky.”
“It might just be the house,” said Sammy. “Nobody’s been taking care of this place for ten years.”
We all startled as a voice came from the library.
“Ladrão! Ladrão!” it squawked. “Polícia! Pega ladrão!”
“Whoa,” breathed Caleb, brushing past us and striding toward the birdcage in the corner, where the parrot that had scared me the night before glared at us as it cawed. “It’s huge.”
We hovered in the doorway of the library. I had been so scared the night before that I hadn’t really gotten a proper look at the parrot. It was even more enormous than I’d realized—probably three feet from the tip of its tail to its head—and had dark blue feathers, a long gray beak, and steely talons. The feathers around its eyes and the bottom of its beak were bright yellow, while the eyes themselves were coal black.
“What’s your name, little dude?” Caleb said, holding out his fingers.
The bird opened its beak and fluttered its giant wings. “Polícia!” it cried.
“Is it speaking French?” I asked.
“Portuguese, actually,” said another voice. We turned to see Mr. Taylor standing at the bottom of the stairs behind us. “And I’d be careful with those fingers, young man. Hyacinth macaws have some of the strongest beaks in the bird kingdom, and this one was trained as a guard parrot. That’s why she’s shouting for someone to call the police.”
Caleb jerked his fingers away from the bars as Mr. Taylor brushed past us. He strode to the cage and murmured something we couldn’t understand. Then he handed the bird a stick from a pile under the cage. She took it in her beak and instantly snapped it in two.