The After-Room

by Maile Meloy; Illustrated by Ian Schoenherr

  “Oh, no!” Janie said.

  She grabbed a potholder and helped him hold down the lid, standing on her toes and bending forward to keep foam from getting all over her clothes.

  “I’m sorry!” Benjamin said. “I don’t know what happened!”

  They carried the pot to the sink, leaving a river of foam behind them, and finally the pot stopped oozing. Benjamin wanted to save all those precious ingredients, but they were already sliding down the drain. The white froth was in the sink, on the floor, on the tile counter, inside all the gas burners. His shoes and trousers were soaked. He looked around at the mess. He should have waited for the boiling flask.

  Janie wiped her hands on a dishcloth, went to the telephone in the hall, and dialed.

  “Hello,” she said, in a very brisk, grown-up voice. “This is Marjorie Scott—Janie Scott’s mother? I’m afraid she’s come down with the same cold Benjamin has. Yes, it’s a shame. I’m going to keep her home from school this afternoon. Thank you. I hope so, too.” She hung up.

  Then she took a bundle of blue sweater out of her knapsack and unwrapped the delicate glass bulb, clear and round with three long necks, and handed it over.

  “Thank you,” Benjamin said.

  “Mr. Walters almost caught me taking it.”

  Benjamin looked up from the flask in his hands. “Did he catch you?”

  “No,” she said. “I faked a coughing fit. He’s terrified of getting kids’ germs. He’d heard you were sick, and he just backed right out of the room.”

  Benjamin smiled. “That was a good idea,” he said.

  Janie brightened and then blushed: Concern and pleasure and pride and embarrassment raced across her face, one after the other. Benjamin’s own face felt strange, and he realized that the muscles around his mouth weren’t used to smiling.

  He set the flask on the counter. “I think the interaction with the steel pot was the problem. Glass will be better.”

  Janie took a mop and bucket from the broom closet, all seriousness now, and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. “I’ll do the counter,” she said. “You do the floor. But from now on we work together, okay? I help make the mess, or I don’t clean it up.”

  He nodded.

  As they cleaned the kitchen, he explained what he’d been trying to do, and they began again from scratch. This time they came up with a chalky-looking liquid that didn’t boil over, and they decanted it into an empty wine bottle. Benjamin put the Pharmacopoeia away in its drawer, and Janie wrapped the clean boiling flask in a sweater in her knapsack. They scrubbed the kitchen until it sparkled. Janie made grilled cheese sandwiches to explain the obvious cleanup and cover the lingering smell.

  “What is this, home ec?” Mr. Scott asked, when her parents came back.

  “I called in sick after lunch,” Janie said.

  Mrs. Scott put her hand on Janie’s forehead. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “You were teaching. I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “Do you feel better?”

  “Much.”

  Mr. Scott was suspicious. “So what did you two do all afternoon?”

  “Worked on some chemistry problems,” Benjamin said.

  Mr. Scott raised an eyebrow. “Not biology problems, I hope?”

  “You’re both going to school tomorrow,” Mrs. Scott said. “You look healthy as horses.”

  “Do I smell clove?” Mr. Scott asked, sniffing the air.

  “That’s my shampoo,” Janie said. She leaned on the kitchen counter, and Benjamin saw her wipe away a stray patch of white foam with her elbow. “How are your students?”

  “Full of excuses,” her father said, meaningfully.

  “Did you have your talk about suspense?” Janie asked.

  Mrs. Scott made a wry face. “I’m not sure it sank in. They get an idea for a plot turn or a big event, and they just put it in right away, at the spot where they thought of it. I wish they had more patience.”

  Benjamin was not feeling very patient himself. He wished he could take the filter to Doyle tonight. But he felt Mr. Scott’s eyes on him.

  “What should they do?” Janie asked.

  “Well, lay the groundwork, lead the audience, let them anticipate what’s going to happen,” her mother said. “Incipience is everything.”

  “What’s incipience?” Janie asked.

  Benjamin thought she was laying it on a bit thick, this engaging-daughter, how-was-your-day business. Her father already smelled a rat. But Janie was avoiding Benjamin’s eye.

  “It’s when something’s about to happen but hasn’t happened yet,” her mother said. “Like—the couple in the movie have met but haven’t kissed yet. Or you know someone’s hiding behind a door but he hasn’t jumped out yet. It’s kind of agony, but it’s exquisite, too.”

  Benjamin thought of the bottle of white liquid, out on his bed where he had left it. Had he left his door open? What if they went upstairs ahead of him and saw it?

  “But you can’t put off the big event forever,” Janie said. “The characters can’t just sit around eating grilled cheese sandwiches and waiting.”

  “No,” her mother said. “But a little grilled cheese is okay, while you anticipate something else.”

  Benjamin coughed lamely. “I’m going upstairs,” he said. “Need to be healthy tomorrow, you know?” He felt Mr. Scott’s eyes follow him as he left the room. He needed to work on his acting if he was going to be doing this work again. He could never have fooled the chemistry teacher with a coughing fit, like Janie had.

  He took the stairs two at a time and stashed the wine bottle in his knapsack. Downstairs, they were still talking about suspense. Mr. Scott mistrusted Benjamin for all the wrong reasons, but Benjamin would still have to be careful, under those vigilant eyes.

  Chapter 11

  Fishing

  Jin Lo sat in the shade outside the little hut, looking at the silver ocean. She was stronger every day, and the water didn’t seem so endless and desolate now. Ned Maddox had taken a mask and snorkel and something called a pole spear, propelled by heavy rubber bands, and he was swimming among the reefs, trying to spear a fish for dinner.

  He had shown her on the chart exactly where they were, on a tiny island surrounded by reefs and shoals. The shallow and dangerous water kept the island safe and ignored. And yet Jin Lo had floated right over the reef in the night, when the surf was low, and come to rest on his beach. She could have landed on any number of deserted rocks, but she had landed here, on a morning when Ned Maddox was in his banyan tree looking for the missing American. He had pulled her out of the water alive, and he had a radio, and was willing to let her use it. The chances were too small to calculate.

  Ned Maddox was an orphan like she was, and had lived a hidden life for years. Jin Lo watched him wake up each morning on the floor of his hut and he never had hazy moments of face-rubbing and confusion. He was asleep, and then his eyes opened, and he was fully conscious and alert. When she was little, her father used to tease her for stretching and rubbing her eyes in the morning before school. “Monkey preening,” he called it. But that was before she had learned that you had to be always on your guard. At some point, Ned Maddox had learned it, too. They both knew that danger could come at any moment, and you had a better chance if you could sleep anywhere, and wake up as quickly as possible.

  She watched him hunt in the water, his snorkel investigating the reef. His feet kicked slowly. The bare skin of his back was tan and freckled.

  His discarded shirt was beside her in the sand, inside-out, the cotton worn thin. She reached out to touch it, just to feel the soft fabric, but it crinkled slightly. That wasn’t what she expected, and she pulled the shirt closer and turned it over. There was a buttoned pocket. A piece of paper inside. She looked up and saw his snorkel catch the sunlight, and then his feet kicked up into the air as he dived.<
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  Ned Maddox had saved her life. Did she, therefore, owe him the respect of not looking through his pockets? She had never felt as strongly about ethics as the apothecary had. If an action might help your cause, and your cause was right, then other considerations were not so important. And anyway, this man, Ned Maddox, was spying on her country. China might be headed down a perilous road, but it was still her country. Could it be wrong to spy on a spy?

  She decided it would not hurt him for her to see what was in his pocket. She undid the button, took out the slip of paper, and unfolded it. There was writing in pencil, some of it crossed out. She recognized the exercise of working out a code:

  FUGITIVE HAS STOLEN 8-IN. DIA NUCLEAR ARTILLERY SHELL

  TARGET BELIEVED CHINA

  HIGH ALERT ABSOLUTE SECRECY NECESSARY

  Something on the beach caught her eye: Ned Maddox gathering his fins. She folded the paper and stuffed it back in the pocket. How had he gotten out of the water so fast?

  He walked up the beach, smiling and shaking the water out of his hair, and she pushed the shirt away. He carried his gear and two spotted fish hanging from a line. When he had first shaved his beard, his face had been two-toned, his chin pale, but now the color was evening out. He held up the fish, triumphant. They were both speared right through the head, and Jin Lo felt sad when she saw them. She thought they had probably enjoyed their lives, poking in and out of the reef. But then her stomach growled. Life was compromise.

  Ned Maddox came into the shade where she sat, plucked a large leaf, and set his catch down on it. The fish were grouper, fat and shiny, with spots the size of large coins, as beautifully decorated as porcelain pots. He took a knife from the scabbard on his leg and neatly slit the fattest one up the belly, holding it gently in his hand. There were drops of salt water on his sun-bleached eyelashes. The freckles on his face stretched when he smiled.

  “We’ve got dinner,” he said. “Better than canned soup!”

  He stripped out the bloody insides, keeping them on the large leaf.

  “I was thinking about why I landed here,” she said. “Of all the islands.”

  He nodded. “I was thinking about that, too,” he said, starting on the second fish. “I’m not a big believer in predestination. Horoscopes, that stuff. Some people say they can tell the future from fish guts.” He looked at the bloody pile of intestines and shook his head. “I don’t believe that. But I can’t shake this feeling that you were sent here for some reason. And I don’t mean by the Commies, as a spy.”

  “My old teacher said that the universe is always doing its work,” she said. “And we are only part of it.”

  He pulled out the guts of the second fish and laid them aside. “I’d like to believe that.”

  “He used to read tea leaves,” she said. She could see her old teacher now, staring into the dregs of his cup when he was struggling with a problem. Jin Lo had never been sure whether it really worked, or was just a way for him to meditate on an answer.

  “So what’s the work the universe is doing now?” Ned Maddox asked.

  She thought of the broken code in his pocket. Nuclear artillery shell. Target believed China. “I think it will become clear.”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  He took the guts down to the beach to wash them into the water, where they would be eaten by something else. Then they carried everything back inside, and Ned Maddox pan-fried the fish on his little stove. It was crisp and light and delicious. Jin Lo thought she had never eaten something so recently alive, and there was an odd sorrow in it.

  For dessert, Ned Maddox produced a silver can from his box of supplies. “No labels,” he said. “It’s dessert roulette. I never know what I’m getting. But I have a good feeling about this one.” He wiped his pocketknife on his shorts, opened the can and peered inside. “Peaches!” he said. “We’re in luck.”

  He poured the peaches into two bowls, drizzled evaporated milk over them, then slid one bowl across the table to her.

  As Jin Lo watched, the milk spread in the shape of an explosion: a narrow stem between two glossy orange peaches, with a billowing cloud at the top, against the curved rim of the bowl. A chill passed through her body.

  “They’re really good, I promise,” Ned Maddox said.

  Jin Lo had been so careful with her secrets for so long, but now she felt compelled to speak. Not because she had looked in his pocket and owed him something. Not because of the message in the peaches. She just knew it was the right thing to do.

  “I want to tell you something,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  The Filter

  Janie didn’t sleep well, after she and Benjamin made the filter. It was untested, and they were giving it to someone they didn’t know. She had a dream in which the magician drank the chalky liquid and turned into a white rabbit staring reproachfully at her with red eyes. In another dream, he turned into a small green toad. Then he became a stag, which reared and ran off into a dark forest that hadn’t existed a moment before. She woke up exhausted.

  After school, they went to see Doyle. Janie dragged her feet, following Benjamin up the creaking stairs beside the bar to the magician’s apartment.

  Again, Doyle opened the door before they knocked. He was dressed for another magic show, in white tie and black tailcoat, and his orange hair was combed slickly back. He looked from one to the other of them, green eyes gleaming.

  “You have the filter!” he said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t try it right before a show,” Janie said.

  “It’s just a birthday party,” he said. “I don’t need to know what those brats are thinking. I’d rather not know. Does it work?”

  “You’re the only mind-reader we have to test it on,” Benjamin said.

  The magician rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Then shall we try?”

  “We don’t know if it’s safe,” Janie said. “There could be side effects, or consequences you don’t expect. It might make you dizzy, or make you talk funny.”

  “That would all be worth it,” he said.

  “Even if the kids couldn’t understand you?”

  “I’ll do a silent show,” he said. “Visual tricks! Stuff with balloons!”

  “If it works,” Benjamin said firmly, “you’ll teach me the rest of what I need to know to contact my father safely.”

  “Of course, of course!” the magician said.

  Benjamin produced the wine bottle from his knapsack and handed it over. “I’d start with a tablespoon, no more.”

  The magician studied the label like a wine expert. “1948!” he said. “A very good year. It’s a little white for a burgundy, though.” He uncorked the bottle and Janie watched with apprehension as he took a quick swig. She hoped it wouldn’t kill him. Or turn him into a rabbit.

  He made a face. “Nasty stuff.”

  “It’s not supposed to taste good,” Benjamin said.

  “Okay,” he said, turning to Janie. “Think of something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It has to be something I don’t know!”

  So she thought about her grandmother’s earrings, which she and Benjamin had melted down in London so they could make an invisibility bath.

  The magician squinted. “Earrings,” he said. “From an old woman. Something about water.”

  “Right,” Janie said, disappointed.

  “No, it’s good!” the magician said. “It’s all hazy, getting hazier. Your brain is usually like a movie screen. It’s working.” He took another swig from the bottle.

  “Careful!” Benjamin said. “Don’t take too much.”

  “Think!” Doyle commanded, pointing at Janie.

  So she thought about Jin Lo, whom they’d last seen heading after Danby and the uranium, and how strong and smart and self-contained she was, hav
ing been orphaned when she was very young.

  The magician frowned. “A girl,” he said. “Something about a girl.” Then his face broke into a smile. “That’s all! And barely that! It works!” He put his hands on his knees, looking straight into Janie’s eyes. “Now think something cruel about me.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Come on! I need to test this.”

  So Janie thought about what the twins had said—that Doyle’s assistant-girlfriend had ditched him for drinking too much. She added that his apartment smelled bad, and that he gave her the creeps a little.

  The magician beamed. “You’re doing it? You’re thinking something rotten about me?”

  Janie nodded.

  “Nothing!” he cried. He turned to Benjamin and crushed him in a hug, lifting him off the floor. Then he set him down and danced around the room, doing a strange, long-legged jig. “Nothing! My own thoughts! Such freedom! I don’t know what you’re thinking and I—don’t—care!”

  “Do you feel all right?” Janie asked.

  “I feel wonderful! You can’t imagine! The silence!”

  “Just don’t take too much at once,” Benjamin said. “And let this first dose wear off, so we can learn how long it lasts.”

  “I don’t want it ever to wear off!”

  “You have to,” Benjamin said. “We’re testing it. This is the test.”

  “Fine!” Doyle said.

  He was still dancing around, lifting one knee high, then the other. It was impossible not to be pleased for him, in his goofy celebration, and Janie felt herself smiling. He grabbed her hand and twirled her around, then around again.

  “I’m so happy!” he cried.

  “You won’t be able to cheat at poker anymore,” Benjamin said.

  “Who says I cheat?” He spun Janie one more time, and the room whirled past.