by J. S. Volpe
As Calvin headed down the block, he got out his phone again and repeated the video/fake conversation procedure. When he drew parallel to Grey’s house, he looked between the houses until he found a spot where the back of Grey’s house was visible.
There were no signs of life anywhere on Grey’s property. The house’s rear windows were curtained and unlit. Even the two small glass panels high up on Grey’s back door were curtained. The backyard was as plain and well-maintained as the front. The patio was empty save for a single aluminum-frame lawn chair.
Calvin turned face-forward again with the phone to his ear so that the camera was filming the back of Grey’s house. Then he paused, frowning, and raised one of his shoes to look at its underside.
“Aw, man,” he told his imaginary phone friend. “I think I just stepped in something.” He examined his sole with a sour expression, occasionally turning slightly this way and that to make sure he filmed the entirety of the back of Grey’s house. When he felt he had enough decent footage, he lowered his foot and started to walk on.
“Okay, bye,” he said into the phone, then saved the footage and put the phone away.
He couldn’t help taking one last glance back at Grey’s house before it passed out of sight. When he saw it, his breath caught in his throat.
The window to the left of the back door was now lit up. Crap. It must have come on while he was filming.
As Calvin gawped at the lit window, a shadow passed across the curtain. Grey was home! Or at least someone was.
Calvin lowered his head and strode away as fast as he could.
3
Back home, he emailed the videos to Mr. May. (He was inordinately pleased that Mr. May had given him his email address. He felt as if he had been admitted into some exclusive club.) Then he called Mr. May.
“Mission accomplished,” Calvin said.
“Yes, I see,” Mr. May said. “I’m watching the videos right now. You did a good job.”
“Thanks.”
“Was there any evidence that Mr. Grey was at home? I see the living room light was on, but—ah, there we go. I see the light came on in back, and someone’s moving around inside.”
“Oh, good. I wasn’t sure if I caught any of that on film.”
“That was why I wanted you to go during twilight, when it was still just bright enough to get some usable footage, but dark enough that he would have his lights on. Of course, I was secretly hoping we would have a stroke of incredibly good luck and catch him coming home from somewhere, and you would discover that he keeps a spare house key inside a fake rock out front, the way I do.”
“So what now?”
“Now you get a good night’s sleep and have a fine, educational day at school tomorrow. Meanwhile I will examine this footage and ponder what we know so far and try to come up with some ideas to, ah, gather more evidence.”
“Does that mean, like, break in?”
“We can discuss that tomorrow. I’m officially calling a meeting for tomorrow afternoon—you and me and Cynthia and her brother. We can all sit down and discuss our next move. If all goes well, that move will take place tomorrow night. And if all goes really well, this whole situation will be resolved before tomorrow night is through.”
Chapter 21
The Old Witch
1
Anna West pretended to watch Miss Dryer scrawl a math problem on the blackboard, but in truth her eyes were on John Coyote.
She was worried about him. Again. They had spent most of the weekend together, working on homework, commiserating, talking. And connecting. After a rough start, she had begun to get through to him. She had been easing his bitterness and hostility over Emily’s disappearance. She was helping. She was healing.
But this morning all her good works began to unravel. When she tried to chat with him at his desk before school started, he barely seemed aware of her. He kept staring at Emily’s empty seat, and he scowled any time someone laughed or roughhoused or displayed any other outward sign that they weren’t thinking about their missing classmate. It pained and offended him to see life going on as usual. Anna didn’t think he should have come back to school so soon. He wasn’t ready.
But here he was anyway.
Miss Dryer turned from the blackboard and looked at the class. She was a tiny, withered old woman with horn-rimmed glasses and a face like Yoda’s. Everyone hated her. She was prim and humorless and issued homework over holiday weekends. Emily once said that Miss Dryer was the sort of person who had probably acted like an old lady even when she was a little girl.
“Who can solve this problem?” Miss Dryer said. Her icy blue eyes scanned the room.
Anna glanced at John again—he was slouched in his seat, his chin in his palm, his eyes on his desktop, obviously not listening—and she suddenly felt certain that Miss Dryer was going to call on him.
She was right.
“John,” Miss Dryer said. “Perhaps you can show us how to solve this problem.”
John didn’t budge. He didn’t even raise his eyes from the desktop.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Miss Dryer peered at him over the top of her glasses. “Don’t know? I spent the last ten minutes explaining it. How can you not know?”
He glanced at Emily’s empty seat, then dropped his gaze back to the desktop.
“I don’t care,” he muttered.
Miss Dryer’s eyes narrowed. She crossed the room and stood beside his desk.
“You should care,” she said. “You should care very much. Without an education you will be an ignorant savage. Without understanding how the world works, you will be its victim. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was barely audible.
Miss Dryer pursed her wrinkled lips. “I know you are troubled by the disappearance of your little friend. It is troubling for everyone. But that is no excuse to wallow in willful ignorance and defeatism. We must soldier on. Life must continue. Growth must continue. We can’t stop the world for one person.”
John’s head shot up. His eyes were so dark and steely with hate that Miss Dryer drew back, one hand rising to her chest. Even Anna shrank back in her seat. She had never seen him look like that. Heck, she had never seen anyone look like that. She realized with a sick, sinking feeling that she had absolutely no idea what was going on in his mind. Maybe she never had.
John’s upper lip drew back. “Go fuck yourself, you evil old witch.”
A collective gasp rose up. Anna gaped in horror. He had said the F-word to a teacher! There was no telling what they would do to him for that. They might even expel him. What would he do then? What would she do?
For a moment Miss Dryer only stared at him, her face blank, as if his words deviated so far from the natural order of things she couldn’t make sense of them. Then she seized his arm in one liver-spotted hand, yanked him from his seat, and hauled him toward the front of the room.
At the door she stopped and turned to the class.
“I will be gone for a short while,” she said. “I expect no shenanigans in my absence.”
She flung open the door and dragged John out into the hallway. The door banged shut.
Anna heaved a deep, shaky breath. She had to keep blinking quickly to keep the tears from her eyes.
It seemed like everything just kept going wronger and wronger.
2
John didn’t say a word as Miss Dryer dragged him down the hall. He merely stared straight ahead, his face set and grim. He had said what he had to say. He had no regrets. Let the cards fall as they may.
Miss Dryer threw open the door to the main office, stormed past the startled secretary, then barged right into the principal’s office without even knocking.
Principal Powell sat behind his big dark desk. He was a tubby, red-cheeked man with receding brown hair and a mustache. Miss Hubbard, the school’s guidance counselor, stood next to his desk holding a pair of hand puppets. Miss Hubbard, John knew from experience, was big on
puppets. She seemed to think that kids learned best when you spoke in a funny voice and demonstrated things with soft, fuzzy toys. She talked a lot about feelings and “we-ness.” He had once heard Miss Dryer call Miss Hubbard a “ditzy little hippie girl” under her breath, though John wasn’t entirely clear what that meant.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Principal Powell cried as Miss Dryer marched John up to the big desk. “I’m in the middle of a meeting!”
“I want this child expelled,” Miss Dryer declared. “Now.”
“What’s he done?” Miss Hubbard said.
“He said…” She glanced down at John with a small frown. “He told me to fornicate with myself, though he used much crasser language. I’m sure you can guess what.”
Miss Hubbard nodded. “I’m sure I can.”
Principal Powell fixed John with what was probably supposed to be a stern, level gaze. John thought it looked more constipated than anything.
“Is this true?” Principal Powell said.
“Yep,” John said.
Principal Powell didn’t seem to have been expecting such a simple, affirmative response. He sat back in his big leather chair, looking a little baffled, and said, “Ah.”
There was a long silence.
“Well?” Miss Dryer said.
“I don’t think we should be so hasty to expel him,” Miss Hubbard said to Principal Powell. “I mean, Emily Crow was one of his best friends, and he’s obviously having a tough time dealing with things. I’m surprised he’s even in school. I’m sure he must be really scared and worried.” She bent down until her face was level with John’s and gave him a broad sympathetic smile with her eyebrows drawn high and her head tilted to one side. She reminded him of one of her puppets. “Isn’t that right?”
John looked down at the floor. “Um, I guess.”
Miss Hubbard turned back to the principal. “See? He’s suffering enough as it is. He’s hurt and confused, lashing out in fear at a world that’s become threatening and hostile.”
Miss Dryer cocked an eyebrow. “You describe him as if he were an animal, when he is in fact a human being capable of rational thought. He is able to logically weigh his actions and must be taught that foolish actions have certain consequences that cannot be avoided.”
“You describe him as if he were Mr. Spock. He’s a child. He’s ten years old.”
“And coddling him now will instill wrongheaded notions that will last a lifetime.”
“These are unusual circumstances.”
“His behavior was far beyond what should be tolerated even in the worst of circumstances.”
Miss Hubbard rolled her eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh.
Principal Powell stared off into space for a minute, his fingers absently drumming on his desktop.
The fingers froze in mid-drum. His eyes swiveled to John.
“Why did you say what you said?” he asked.
John’s eyes narrowed. His jaw clenched. “She said it wasn’t important, what happened to Emily. She said we should forget about her.”
“I said no such thing,” protested Miss Dryer to the inquiring glances of Principal Powell and Miss Hubbard. “I merely impressed upon him the fact that when tragedies happen, we must continue to soldier on as best we can.”
“That’s a lie!” John spat. “She’s a witch! She’s an evil old witch!”
“No,” Miss Hubbard muttered, almost inaudibly, “but it certainly rhymes with ‘witch.’”
“What was that?” Miss Dryer snapped.
“Oh, nothing,” Miss Hubbard said with an innocent smile.
Miss Dryer flashed a frosty smile in return.
Principal Powell watched the two women closely. When it became clear they weren’t going to attack each other or do anything else that might require his intervention, he cleared his throat and turned to John.
“Yes. Well. I think it is safe to say that Miss Dryer is neither evil nor a witch. And, um, that such language as you used is thoroughly inappropriate in an educational context, and indeed in most contexts one could reasonably imagine. Under normal circumstances such language would indeed be grounds for the consideration of expulsion. However”—here Miss Dryer frowned—“given that this is an unusual and very stressful time for both students and faculty alike, and given moreover that you are greatly anguished by recent events, I feel that a certain modicum of leniency is called for. But not complete leniency, of course.” Here Miss Hubbard frowned. “Allowing this regrettable incident to pass without anything more than a token response from the administration would only incite further examples of such behavior and fail to instill the proper mind-set in its charges.” He leaned back in his chair. “Therefore, my decision is that you will be suspended for the remainder of the week and placed in lunch-time detention for the two weeks after that. Also I am going to recommend to your aunt that you see a counselor to aid you in this unfortunate time. Do you understand?”
“Um, yeah, I guess.” In truth, he didn’t understand half of what the principal had said (which wasn’t surprising; Principal Powell always talked like that when he was making announcements and big decisions). But John understood the gist of it: He was being punished because Miss Dryer had essentially said that a bunch of math problems were more important than Emily, and John had responded to this in the only appropriate manner.
What made everything worse was that Miss Dryer and Emily had always loathed each other. Miss Dryer had openly scoffed at Emily’s love of fairies. One time she had even made Emily cry. And now this horrible old creature was still here, still thriving, and Emily was gone. The only person he had ever felt a real connection to—the only person who had ever made him feel that everything was okay—was gone, and the bullies were winning again.
His hate was a black gem inside him.
Chapter 22
See Emily Play (III)
1
“Holy shit,” Violet said, looking up at the May house. The late-afternoon sun had slipped far enough behind the trees that only the topmost tip of the tower was still lit. “This place looks like a haunted house or something.”
“Yeah,” Donovan said. He headed up the front steps to the porch, the boards creaking under his black leather boots. He glanced back at Violet. She had stopped on the front walkway that connected the steps to the driveway. The way she was leaning back to study the house’s façade made her breasts strain roundly against her tight black tank top. The sight made Donovan briefly forget what they were here for.
He shook his head to clear it.
“Come on!” he said.
“I bet all those stories are totally true,” Violet said, trotting up the steps to join him on the porch. “I bet there really are bodies in here and shit. Skeletons sealed in the walls. Bloodstains under the carpets. Satanic symbols carved into the basement floor.”
Donovan had raised a finger to ring the doorbell, but now he paused and looked at her, frowning.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“Yeah, well, be nice. He’s helping us find Emily.”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Course, we woulda found her on our own eventually. They’re just tryin’ to hog our action.”
“It’s not about who gets the action. It’s about finding her.”
He rang the bell.
Almost immediately he heard footsteps striding quickly toward the door. Somehow he recognized them as his sister’s.
Indeed, a moment later the door opened, and Cynthia looked out.
And then she scowled.
“What the hell is she doing here?” she cried. “She wasn’t invited.”
“She wants to help, too,” Donovan said.
“Yeah,” Violet said. “You guys oughta be glad I’m here! I got lots to offer!”
Cynthia snorted. “Like what? Beer farts and cleavage?”
“Hey, at least I’ve got cleavage, toothpick.”
“Why, you little—”
“Yeah, by accident,” Cynthia said. “She was probably only in the park to feed Alka-Seltzer to the pigeons or something.”
Violet planted her fists on her hips. “I haven’t done that in years!”
“What seems to be the problem?” It was Mr. May. He was peering at them from a doorway halfway down the corridor.
“We’ve got an uninvited guest,” Cynthia said.
“So I see.” Mr. May waved them forward. “Well, bring them in. Let’s see what’s what and who’s who.”
Cynthia led them into the parlor. Mr. May stood waiting for them just inside the doorway. A blond kid Donovan recognized from school sat nearby on a leather couch. No doubt this was the Calvin dude that Cynthia had mentioned.
The room’s elegant furnishings made Donovan’s jaw drop in surprise. This wasn’t at all what he had been expecting to find in the supposedly loopy old hermit’s house. He had envisioned stacks of yellowed newspapers and scrawny cats everywhere.
“Welcome,” Mr. May said, extending a hand. “I am Robert May.”
“Uh, yeah, hi.” Donovan shook the old man’s thin, wrinkled hand. The touch of the ancient, spotted skin creeped him out a bit, but he didn’t let it show. “Thanks for, you know, letting us team up with you. And for helping look for Emily and everything.”
“It’s the least I can do. We’re all in this together.” He turned to Violet, who was prowling around the room examining various items as if estimating their value. Donovan hoped she hadn’t palmed anything. “And who is this?”
“I’m Violet,” Violet said. “Nice to meetcha.”
“She’s the one who was in the park on Thursday,” Donovan said. He tilted his chin up bravely, ready to defend Violet and her involvement if need be. “She’s in this, too.”
“Yeah,” said Cynthia. “She’s also the one who talked you into breaking into an innocent man’s house the other night.”