The House on the Gulf

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  But I was still hot. And cranky.

  “Come on and help me in the kitchen,” Bran said as soon as Mom left. “Hurry.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to go unpack my room.”

  I deliberately turned my back on Bran and walked down the hot hall. Strangely, he didn’t call after me, didn’t order me to do what he said.

  In a few minutes I almost forgot about him and the kitchen—even the heat—in the joy of getting to arrange a room that was going to be all mine, for the very first time in my entire life.

  The yellow room, the one I’d picked, seemed to have been a spare bedroom. Several of the drawers in its white dresser were empty, or just partly filled with the kind of odds and ends people accumulate but can easily leave behind. One drawer held nothing but a plastic Winn-Dixie bag full of shells; another held a small collection of ceramic cats, most of them with broken tails. Had the Marquises had a cat? I brushed my hand over the tannish rug and came up with three orange-and-white hairs, roughly an inch long. Cat hair! I giggled, feeling like a brilliant detective.

  I consolidated everything into the shell drawer—being careful not to break off any more of the ceramic cat tails—and then I had five drawers just for me. I put T-shirts in one, shorts in another, my brush and comb and ponytail rubber bands in the top. One of my blond hairs fell out of the brush and lay curled in the drawer. Somehow that pleased me. It was like proof that I’d been here, just like the cat.

  “I do belong here,” I said aloud, talking to myself in the mirror.

  I pulled the prettiest of the ceramic cats out of the drawer and placed it on top of the dresser, decoratively angled in front of a crocheted Kleenex box cover.

  “I claim you,” I said. All summer long, it’d be like the ceramic cat belonged to me, not the Marquises.

  Bran tapped at my door.

  “Hey, Britt, is there anything in here that’s breakable?” His eyes fell on the ceramic cat. “Let’s wrap that up and put it away, okay?”

  “But—,” I said. My claiming of the cat had lasted exactly three minutes. “I won’t break it. It’s safe there.”

  “Accidents happen,” Bran said. He plopped a box down on the floor and pulled a folded-up newspaper out from under his arm, where he’d been holding it. He ripped off a sheet of newspaper, stuffed the ceramic cat into the newspaper—rather roughly, I thought—and placed it down into his box. He started pulling out my drawers to look for more.

  “Bran, that’s my dresser,” I complained. “You’re invading my privacy.” Which was kind of silly, because he, Mom, and I had shared a dresser until that very morning.

  “It’s the Marquises’,” he grunted. He’d found the mother lode of ceramic cats and began shoving them into his box.

  “Most of those are already broken,” I said.

  He shrugged. Finished with the cats, he shoved the drawer shut.

  “What about the shells?” I taunted him. “They’re breakable too. What if your irresponsible little sister picks one up and drops it and the pieces go all over the place? What if the Marquises fire you for that?”

  “They’re just shells,” he said. “Plenty more of them on the beach.” He glanced in my closet, pulled an ancient-looking quilt off the top shelf, then rushed out of the room.

  “But what if these shells are special to the Marquises? What if they’re irreplaceable?” I hollered after him. “And since when are quilts breakable?”

  Bran didn’t answer.

  As far as I was concerned, he’d gone stark raving mad.

  Mom brought back a frozen pizza for us to have for dinner. When we baked it that night, we slid it into the oven on our own familiar warped cookie sheet. I set the table with our own familiar chipped plates and cracked plastic cups, the ones that said, CROCKETT UNIVERSITY, PENNSYLVANIA’S FINEST. It gave me a little lump in my throat to see them in the Marquises’ unfamiliar house.

  But maybe the lump wasn’t just from nostalgia. All of the Marquises’ kitchen supplies had disappeared—even the silverware. Whenever I opened a cabinet or pulled out a drawer, I saw either our forlorn collection of utensils and plates and cups, or bare wood. We didn’t have nearly enough to fill the Marquises’ kitchen. Why had Bran made all that extra work for himself, emptying drawers we didn’t need? It made me feel like he didn’t trust me, like he was afraid I’d forget and use a Marquis spoon by mistake. Did he really think I was such a little kid—like some I’d baby-sat back in Pennsylvania—that I might destroy everything in sight?

  Why else would he have taken the ceramic cats out of my room? Why else had he removed the quilt? Why hadn’t he taken the bed and the dresser and the crocheted Kleenex box cover while he was at it?

  I thought again about the first day Bran had showed me the house, when he’d acted like he didn’t even want Mr. Marquis to see me. What was wrong with me? What was wrong with Bran?

  The buzzer went off, meaning the pizza was done. All three of us jumped.

  Mom recovered first.

  “We’re pretty far gone, aren’t we?” she laughed. “That’s what moving will do to you. Now, where do the Marquises keep their hot pads?”

  “Here,” Bran said, reaching into a drawer beside the stove.

  It was one of our hot pads he handed her, a red-and-green one I’d given Mom for Christmas a few years ago.

  “You hid the Marquises’ hot pads too?” I asked incredulously as Mom pulled the pizza out of the oven.

  “I was afraid we’d get food on them or something,” Bran said. “Like pizza sauce, maybe.”

  Did Mom hear how defensive he sounded, how un-Bran-like?

  Mom was concentrating on cutting the pizza into slices.

  “Pizza sauce would wash out,” I said nastily.

  “It might stain,” Bran said. “I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “I’m glad you’re being careful,” Mom said approvingly. “We wouldn’t want to have to pay damages for anything.” She put the pizza on the table and we all sat down. “That reminds me. Britt, I’m putting you in charge of laundry detail this summer. Bran, is there anything special she should know about the Marquises’ washer and dryer? Isn’t it great that we won’t have to go to the Laundromat at all this summer?”

  “Wait—we can’t use their washer and dryer,” Bran said quickly. “The, um, Marquises said we weren’t allowed.”

  “Oh,” Mom said. She looked disappointed, but didn’t say anything else.

  She wasn’t the one who was going to have to lug bags of dirty clothes to the Laundromat in 90-billion-degree heat.

  “Why didn’t the Marquises just put DON’T TOUCH signs everywhere?” I asked bitterly. “Or red velvet ropes, like at museums? Are we even allowed to breathe their air?”

  “Now, Brittany,” Mom said. “I know the circumstances aren’t ideal, but remember—we’re not paying to live here. They’re paying us. So we can tolerate a few inconveniences, can’t we?”

  I shrugged, which wasn’t how I usually acted to Mom. I felt ashamed, but I couldn’t bring myself to apologize. We all chewed our pizza in silence for a few minutes.

  “The Laundromat’s just a few blocks away,” Bran finally said, like he was trying to make up. “And there’s a red wagon out in the shed that you can put the laundry in and pull it to the Laundromat. I can help you some of the time. It won’t be too bad.”

  “So we’re not allowed to touch the washer and dryer, but we can drag the Marquises’ wagon all over town?” I asked. “That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

  “This is just what the Marquises want,” Bran said through clenched teeth.

  His face was red again, too red even for someone sitting in an overheated house. And he sounded . . . panicked. What did he have to be panicked about?

  I looked over at Mom—would she finally, finally see that something strange was going on? But she wasn’t looking at Bran or me. Wasn’t listening, either. She’d stopped chewing and was staring off into space. I could tell: Her body may have
been with us, but her brain was already over at Gulfstone University.

  If I complained again, Mom would just yell at me again. I looked away. My eyes focused on an odd rectangle on the wall, which was a darker shade of green than the rest of the wall. I squinted, confused. Hadn’t there been a picture there only a couple of hours ago? Something old-fashioned-looking, like a dark vase filled with thorny flowers, I thought. I glanced around. All the walls I could see, in either the dining room or the living room, had those same darkened rectangles, where pictures had once hung. Panic started to rise out of my gut. Had thieves struck already, even as we were moving in? Then I realized what must have happened.

  “Bran, did you hide all the Marquises’ pictures, too?” I asked.

  Bran nodded, looking down at his plate.

  “I was afraid we might knock something down, moving,” he mumbled. “And then I thought, we might as well leave them down for the rest of the summer. Just in case.”

  Mom was paying attention now. She laughed.

  “Bran, I think the Marquises must have hired themselves the most conscientious house-sitter in the world,” she said. “You are too much! What other sixteen-year-old boy would think of such a thing?”

  Now it was Bran’s turn to shrug, but his was the modest, “aw, shucks” kind.

  I kept squinting. I was sure those pictures had been up there the whole time we were moving in. I was sure Bran hadn’t taken them down until Mom left to return the U-Haul. But why? And why would Bran lie? He never lied.

  Just then, the floor lamp by the front window clicked on, as if by magic. Bran jerked back in surprise, knocking his cup sideways. I caught it just in time to keep it from pouring Pepsi all over the Marquises’ table and carpet. I looked around, hoping that Mom and Bran were impressed. I wanted them to say, “Good thing you’re around to catch Bran’s mistakes,” or even, “Obviously Mr. Marquis was wrong about which kid was a danger to his possessions.”

  But Mom and Bran hadn’t seen what I’d done. They were looking at the light, not me.

  “Oh, it’s on a timer,” Mom said. “Bran, you didn’t warn us about that one.”

  Bran was turned away from Mom, facing the light. Only I could see how perplexed he looked.

  “They, uh, didn’t warn me,” he admitted. “And I’ve only been here during daylight the past week, so I never saw that light on—”

  Mom walked over to the lamp and bent down to examine the timer attached to the lamp cord. So she probably couldn’t tell how carefully Bran was choosing his words. His face looked like it always did back in Pennsylvania when we had to walk across the frozen puddles in the apartment-complex parking lot, never knowing when we’d break through the ice and get a bootful of muddy water.

  “There,” Mom said, pulling the timer off the lamp cord. “They won’t need this to scare off thieves now that Bran Lassiter, champion house-sitter, is here!”

  The lamp went dark again.

  “Uh, Mom?” Bran said hesitantly. “Why don’t you leave that on there? Just until I can talk to the Marquises and see what they want us to do.”

  Still squatting, Mom squinted back at Bran.

  “I always heard that timers actually attracted thieves, clicking on and off at the same time every day. It’s a dead giveaway. But—” She shrugged and replaced the timer. “This is your job, not mine. Just don’t forget to ask them.”

  She came back to the table and took another piece of pizza. In a few minutes I could tell she was mentally back at Gulfstone University.

  I looked from Mom to Bran, both now calmly chewing. I wanted to ask another question—if Bran was so worried about the air-conditioning using more electricity, why didn’t he care about the lamp? What was going on? But I knew I wouldn’t get a good answer. I kept my mouth shut and made a private vow. Bran didn’t know it, but I was going to be watching him every bit as closely as he was watching out for this house.

  We went to the beach the next day, Sunday. It was all of four blocks from the Marquises’ house, so we walked, carrying lawn chairs and a picnic lunch. (Bran said the Marquises didn’t mind us using their lawn chairs. Why could we drag their lawn chairs through sand and mud, but weren’t even allowed to breathe near their pictures?) But Mom and Bran were both in festive moods, building sand castles and splashing in the water, so it was hard for me to remember I was supposed to be watching for Bran to act weird again. The three of us swam back and forth along the shore, and collapsed in giggles in the shallow water when Mom almost stepped on a crab, and practically did a flip into the water trying to avoid it. She surfaced with seaweed in her hair, and we laughed all the harder.

  “This,” she announced solemnly, “was worth moving to Florida for.”

  And then we all laughed again. She was right.

  But on Monday, Bran went off to work at the Shrimp Shack, his other job, and Mom drove off for her first day of classes, and I was left alone. I washed the breakfast dishes—feeling almost as conscientious as Bran—and watched some TV. Ah, summer vacation. Only, I was thoroughly sick of commercials and fake laughter before it was even ten thirty. I flipped through the talk shows, where hunky actors and beautiful actresses talked about how hard they worked preparing for their roles. I didn’t feel like watching Wile E. Coyote drop big rocks on Roadrunner. You know it’s not worth watching TV when Barney is the best thing on.

  What was I going to do with myself all summer?

  Mom had been all for signing me up for some special program at the Y or someplace—until she saw the prices.

  “They might have some financial aid available,” she’d suggested, with a pained smile on her face. She flipped through the brochures I’d brought home from school, searching carefully.

  “No, that’s all right,” I’d said. There probably was something in fine print about “help for children who couldn’t afford our program otherwise.” But I knew from experience: The people always treated you differently because of that. They talked slower to you and acted like you maybe weren’t very bright just because you didn’t have much money. I’d had enough of that back in Pennsylvania, surrounded by professors’ kids. Now that we were in Florida and living in a nice house, I didn’t want charity.

  I decided to go back to the beach by myself.

  Walking over there, I imagined meeting up with some other kids and having friends for the summer. We could gather at the beach every day, and go swimming, and visit back and forth at one another’s houses. It had to be easier making friends at the beach than at school. To tell the truth, some of the kids at school had seemed a little scary. I was just as glad that Sunset Terrace was on the other side of Gulfstone from the Marquises’ house.

  I hit the beach trying to decide how to meet these wonderful friends. Should I play it cool for a while and wait until they invited me to join them? Or should I go right up to them and introduce myself? The second approach took more nerve, but I didn’t want to waste the whole summer waiting.

  The beach was empty.

  Too late I remembered there had only been about four or five other people on the beach on Sunday, and all of them had had gray hair and wrinkles. It just hadn’t mattered to me yesterday, because I’d had Bran and Mom. It had seemed nice then to have the beach mostly to ourselves. Now the whole place seemed lonely and ugly. I knew Gulfstone Beach wasn’t exactly Florida’s biggest attraction. I’d heard kids at school making fun of it. It had almost as much mud as sand, and the seaweed—or kelp, I didn’t really know the difference—made swimming hard. But until today, it had seemed special. I’d always looked out at the waves lapping at the shore and marveled, “That’s the Gulf of Mexico! I’m in Florida now!”

  I was in Florida. So what?

  Halfheartedly I walked along the water, feeling the sandy mud ooze between my toes. I poked holes in the sand and disturbed a crab that may have been the same one Mom almost stepped on the day before. Then I walked home.

  It wasn’t even quite noon yet, but the heat was already like a wall. The ai
r was so thick I almost felt like I needed to swim through it. I looked around at the houses painted unnatural colors—baby blue, Pepto-Bismol pink, even an electric orange. None of the solid, ordinary browns and greens and whites like back in Pennsylvania. I felt like I was on a different planet. Suddenly I missed Pennsylvania and I missed Wendy and my other friends, and everything else we’d left behind.

  I unlocked the door to the Marquises’ house. After the heat outdoors, the minimal air-conditioning actually seemed cool. I sat down on the couch—the Marquises’ couch—and discovered I even had goose bumps. But I didn’t think that was just from the air-conditioning. It was because I felt so strange—strange and lonely and out of place. It was like I didn’t even know who I was, alone in a stranger’s house.

  “I’m supposed to be here,” I said aloud. “I have permission.”

  The blank squares on the wall looked back at me. “The Marquises know I’m here,” I told the squares, as if that were somehow in doubt.

  I had goose bumps and now I was talking to a wall. I was really freaking out. I had to get a grip.

  I went into the kitchen and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I poured a glass of milk. I asked myself one of my favorite questions: What would Bran do?

  “Bran doesn’t get spooked,” I told my sandwich. The sandwich didn’t answer, which was a good thing—I hadn’t gone totally loopy. But it seemed like what I said was wrong. The old Bran, the one I’d known all my life until we moved to Florida, didn’t get spooked by anything. But the new Bran, the one who was house-sitting for the Marquises, was always jumpy, as jumpy as—my morning of TV viewing caught up with me—as jumpy as Scooby-Doo and Shaggy in a haunted mansion.