The Door in the Alley

by Adrienne Kress

  From what Sebastian did find in the box, though, he was able to learn a lot about the Filipendulous Five. It seemed that twenty years ago, they had been incredibly famous. Alistair Drake was featured on faded yellowing covers of Time magazine not once but twice. There were pictures of the group with various world leaders, and there were several of the Kid with different Hollywood starlets who Sebastian assumed had been a big deal back in the day. It struck Sebastian as truly odd that he had never heard of the Filipendulous Five. Well, he understood why he’d never heard of them out in the world—after all, two decades had passed since they’d been a big deal, and people move on, find new heroes and celebrities. But explorers from over a century ago were still commemorated at the society headquarters. And there seemed to be no pictures of the Filipendulous Five anywhere, not even in the Hall of Portraits. None of the members ever mentioned them. Why was that? And why had the Filipendulous Five stopped exploring? Had they stopped exploring?

  What exactly had happened to them, and where were they now?

  The closest thing Sebastian got to an answer was a ten-year-old article in the New Yorker he’d found online called “The Filipendulous Five: What Exactly Happened to Them, and Where Are They Now?” which, yes, you’d think might have been marginally helpful in answering those questions, but it was merely an article of speculation as to why the team had disbanded, with no concrete evidence to support any of the theories. Pages of different experts sharing their thoughts, each more fantastic than the next. There was talk of Alistair secretly being a pirate and wanting the others to join him and them refusing. Another fellow believed so strongly that the team had had their memories erased and no longer remembered they once had worked together that he wrote an entire book entitled Twelve Steps to Not Having Your Brain Wiped. Two experts agreed that whatever had happened to cause the breakup, it must have had something to do with the Bermuda Triangle, while a third argued that it had everything to do with the Canadian Quadrangle.

  In conclusion, there was simply no single answer to the question. And most of the time, the experts seemed more interested in sharing their own personal experience with the Filipendulous Five than anything else. Only one expert seemed to have any kind of reasonable explanation.

  Myrtle Algens.

  Sebastian had stopped short when he’d read that. Myrtle? As in, president of The Explorers Society Myrtle? His heart pumped faster as he read on. Her name wasn’t in the article itself, but in a small sidebar with the heading SOMETIMES THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATIONS…. It read: “But not all believe such fanciful tales. Myrtle ‘The Ice Queen’ Algens has a very straightforward answer to the question. ‘They got tired of each other,’ she said. ‘After working together so closely for so many years, they decided enough was enough. I think the team felt overshadowed by Alistair, and I think they each wanted to do their own thing. They changed their names and got on with their lives. It’s not a mystery.’ ”

  It was such an unimaginative answer—Sebastian thought it was just beautiful. A perfect moment of logic in an ocean of overly dramatic posturing. It made him like Myrtle even more.

  Though…it still made him wonder…if it wasn’t a big deal that they were no longer a team, why was there no evidence they’d ever existed as one in the first place? Why had someone hidden a secret box behind a secret door?

  Sebastian had made up his mind that all this speculating was enough. There was only so far you could go with guessing. He decided to go right to the source: Myrtle herself. He would just ask her outright. That was the obvious decision. Plus he did kind of want to show off that he’d done his assignment, that he’d done something inappropriate. He was looking forward to the inevitable praise. Not that Sebastian had followed the rules, or in this case broken them, for the approval. No, he had done it because that was the right thing to do. But approval was a nice by-product. And who didn’t like a little “Well done!” every now and then?

  And so, at headquarters, after he had completed all his usual chores and his shift was coming to an end, he sought out Myrtle, sticking his head into every room to give it a once-over.*

  He tried to think of the most logical place to find her as he checked every room. Sebastian snapped his fingers when he finally made the realization. Of course. He changed his direction and made his way up to the roof, and sure enough, he could see Myrtle sitting in the tree in the distance. David Copperfield wandered over to him and Sebastian gave him a quick scratch. Then the cat lay down to sunbathe on the cobblestone path, and Sebastian dashed over to the nearest rope ladder and climbed up to join the society president.

  “Hello, Sebastian, and how are you this lovely afternoon?” asked Myrtle with a smile. Even though she looked quite calm, Sebastian noticed that her shirt was rumpled and her hair tousled. She also seemed to be slightly out of breath, and her cheeks flushed. Weird.

  “I’m well. In fact, I’m very well.”

  “Good, good.” Myrtle had evidently just finished pouring herself a cup of tea and was sitting back in her seat, holding the teapot on her lap. Sebastian wondered if it was uncomfortable to do so, if it was hot to the touch. But Myrtle didn’t seem bothered by it. The table was, as always, set for two. But he wasn’t sure he should sit and join her.

  “I have some news.” He couldn’t help but smile. He’d been so looking forward to this moment.

  “Do you? Please sit,” she said, and Sebastian, relieved that the decision was taken away from him, sat.

  “I completed my assignment. I did something inappropriate.” He smiled brightly and waited for Myrtle to say something lovely about him.

  But she didn’t. Instead she squinted at him and then, after a moment, shook her head and sighed, focusing on examining a small Fig Newton and peanut butter sandwich.

  Well, that hadn’t gone as expected. “Uh, so, I wanted to let you know, I guess,” said Sebastian awkwardly. “And I also wanted to ask you something.”

  “Ask away,” said Myrtle, taking a bite of the sandwich and then nodding her approval.

  “What happened to the Filipendulous Five?”

  Myrtle coughed and then spat chewed-up Fig Newton and peanut butter across the table. A little piece landed on Sebastian’s nose. “What did you just say?” She stared at him with wide eyes.

  “I, uh, I asked what happened to the Filipendulous Five,” repeated Sebastian, taken aback. He was so shocked by her reaction that he couldn’t move. He just sat there. With chewed-up sandwich on his nose.

  “Who told you about the Filipendulous Five? Was it that girl?” Myrtle’s voice was severe, threatening. The teapot in her lap shook. Sebastian was sincerely happy that no one had told him about the Filipendulous Five because he was pretty sure they’d be in big trouble. Also, what girl?

  “What girl?” he asked.

  “Never mind the girl.” Myrtle waved the idea of the girl, or any girl, away. “How do you know about them?” she pressed.

  For some reason Sebastian suddenly felt really unsure about telling Myrtle the truth. It occurred to him now that maybe the box hadn’t just been hidden from the world at large, but from the other explorers in the society too.

  “I found an article at the local library about them. I was researching your name. I…wanted to learn more about your history of exploration. And this article about what happened to them came up. So I thought I’d ask you myself. In the article you said that they just disbanded, and I was wondering if you really believed that.” It was a pretty convincing lie, and quite honestly, Sebastian was uneasy about how effortlessly he’d come up with it.

  “Well, I said as much, didn’t I?” replied Myrtle, still looking at him in a way that made Sebastian shift uncomfortably in his seat.

  “But where are they now? Why are there no pictures of them here? It doesn’t make sense….” Sebastian trailed off when he noticed Myrtle’s face getting redder and redder. Her whole body—not just the teapot—was shaking now, and he was terrified she was about to go off like a firework, exploding into
little sparkly bits of silver and droplets of tea.

  “No more of this,” she said through clenched teeth. “That chapter is long over. That road has come to an end. The door is locked and the key hidden.”

  “I…don’t understand what any of that means…,” said Sebastian, feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Leave,” she said. Sebastian had never quite heard such a tone before. It froze him all the way to his bones. Which made it all the more difficult to do what she was telling him to do. “Leave,” she said again, louder this time. David Copperfield meowed in a way that was very “Yeah, you’d better do what she’s saying. Like, now.”

  Sebastian listened to the cat’s sage advice and left. Oh boy, did he leave. He sprang down out of the tree, avoiding the ladder altogether, and sprinted along the cobblestone path to the door, and only after he was safely back inside, down the stairs, and with the painting shut behind him did he stop. And wonder: what exactly had just happened?

  He continued to wonder as he jumped into the elevator. And then he went from wondering to thinking about it intently as he dodged the pig that Hubert was walking on a leash down the main hall. And finally he changed to pondering as he stepped outside. His pondering was so all-consuming that he didn’t even notice the girl until he heard a loud sniff just as he was closing the front door behind him.

  Sebastian turned in surprise.

  The girl sat in the shadows, her knees propping up her chin, staring out before her into the not-so-vast distance. Into what was, Sebastian estimated, a stretch of empty space about fifteen feet wide with a view of a brick wall.

  “Uh, are you okay?” It felt like a dumb question. She was distinctly not okay. No one just sat in the shadows of a dark alley with a sad expression if they were okay.

  The girl turned her head slightly and looked at him. Then she turned back. “No.”

  Sebastian had hoped she’d say what was wrong at that point. But she didn’t. Did he really need to ask? Did he really want to ask? Not that he wasn’t worried about her, but he’d already had a pretty confusing day and now he was late getting home, and being late just added to his stress. He didn’t have time to ask questions of forlorn-looking girls. Then again, he couldn’t just walk away after her “No” either.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, feeling antsy and hoping the question was easily answered.

  “They kicked me out.”

  I guess not. “Who did?”

  She raised her arm and, without looking, pointed at the door.

  “They let you in?” he asked in surprise.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then they kicked you out?”

  “Yeah.”

  Sebastian paused for a moment and thought. “Well, that’s interesting.”

  The girl looked at him again, this time maintaining her gaze. For all her sadness, there was a determined spark in her eyes that Sebastian respected. Though it also made him slightly uncomfortable in its intensity.

  “Why is that interesting?” she asked.

  “Uh, well…” Sebastian glanced around, and then, resigned to his current situation, took a seat next to her. “It’s just that they don’t usually let people in in the first place.”

  “Oh.” The girl sighed. “That’s not that interesting, actually.”

  Sebastian felt marginally insulted. He was pretty confident that he had quite the knack for rating what was and wasn’t interesting. “They only let people in if they’re special in some way.”

  The girl looked at Sebastian for a moment, then asked, “Are you special?”

  Sebastian thought about it, about the members of the society and all their adventures and unique stories and how he didn’t remotely fit in with them. “No,” he admitted. “I’m an exception.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s a long story. There was a pig. Anyway, the thing is, they let you in. That’s interesting. And it’s also interesting that after deciding to let you in, they then decided to kick you out. What happened?”

  The girl turned her body, leaning her shoulder against the wall, and gave him that intense look again. “I rang the bell. Some old man with white tufts of hair sticking out of his head asked who it was. I told him my name. He let me in. I was taken into this room with a bunch of leather chairs, and somebody gave me some tea, and I was left alone for a bit. And then this woman came along, and she was carrying a teapot, so I thought she was maybe going to pour me more tea, but you could tell she was really mad. She was yelling at the man who let me in; she said that strangers weren’t allowed in the society and especially not someone with my name, and he was going on about how he can’t be expected to remember everything, and then she actually grabbed me. Here.” She touched her upper arm. “She dragged me out of the room and literally threw me out of the building. And she didn’t have to do any of that. If she had just asked me to leave…” Tears welled in her eyes.

  Oh no, no, don’t cry, sad girl, don’t cry.

  “Don’t cry.”

  “Why not?”

  “I…” Wasn’t the answer obvious? “It’s not so bad being kicked out of places you don’t belong.”

  The girl rose in a rush of fury and stared down at him, hands on hips. “Don’t belong? I was sent here! I was supposed to come here! You have no idea, no idea at all!”

  Sebastian stood up too, standing eye to watering eye with the girl. “You know, I’m just trying to be nice. I’m late. I have to get home. My parents are waiting for me.”

  The girl stared him down and he didn’t flinch. He didn’t need to deal with any of this. It wasn’t his business, and he didn’t like being yelled at. Then suddenly the girl seemed to physically deflate. Her shoulders sank, her face softened, her eyes closed, and she stepped to the side to let him pass. Sebastian felt a little bad walking by her.

  As he did he heard her say something.

  He knew it was just a ploy to make him stop walking, to manipulate him into asking her what she was saying. And he totally fell for it.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” he asked, turning around.

  “I said it must be nice,” replied the girl.

  “Oh, okay.” He turned to leave again. Oh, for crying out loud…“What must be nice?”

  The girl shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m feeling sorry for myself. Thank you for talking with me.” She turned and faced the door to The Explorers Society, staring at it intently, as if with the power of her mind she could will herself inside again.

  “What’s your name?”

  The girl leaned against the door, placing her ear to it. “Evie,” she said, squinting in concentration.

  “What’s so special about ‘Evie’?” asked Sebastian, walking back toward her.

  She pushed herself off the door and stared at it again. “Nothing.” She sighed then. “I’ve never been any kind of standout. I was once locked inside a classroom for a whole lunch hour because my teacher didn’t notice I was still there packing up.”

  “No, I meant about the name Evie. What’s so special about your name that they’d open the door for you? And more importantly, get really angry and kick you out?”

  “Oh. Well, I think it’s my last name.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  Evie took a deep breath, and Sebastian watched her draw the courage to lift her fist. She was going to knock, to try again. She paused, holding her hand aloft, floating in the air.

  “Evie?”

  “Yes?” she asked softly.

  “Your last name, what is it?” Sebastian didn’t know why, but his pulse had quickened and he was oddly short of breath.

  “Drake.” She pulled her fist back and sent it toward the door.

  Sebastian caught it midflight.

  Evie stared at him wide-eyed.

  “We need to talk.”

  * * *

  * Except for the once-over room. That was where the oldest members of the society spent their time, and they did not like being disturbed by anyone,
especially by Sebastian.

  He was a twitchy boy, so when he had grabbed her wrist so forcefully, his sudden change in demeanor had caught her off guard. She couldn’t even say a quiet “Okay.” Evie was so surprised, all she could do was nod, and she found she was walking down one of the leafy streets that surrounded the dark alley. Then she was standing before an attractive semidetached home with a well-tended flower garden in the front.

  “My mom finds flowers whimsical,” the boy said.

  “Whimsical?”

  “She says they follow the laws of physics to a point but seem to have rebellious streaks. She likes to pretend flowers have the ability to think. She finds it funny.”

  “Okay…”

  Then Evie was in a cozy foyer, standing in awkward silence as the boy called out, “I’m home! I brought a friend.”

  “Are they staying for dinner?” called out someone she assumed was his father.

  The boy looked at Evie and she nodded quickly. Of course she was staying for dinner; she had nowhere else to go.

  “Yes!”

  Then she was following him up his stairs and was in his room, and it was at that point that her disorientation subsided and the world resumed at a more normal pace. Evie admired the boy’s walls, covered in maps from around the world. She reached out and touched an edge that curled up, revealing another map beneath. How many layers were there? How long had he been putting up maps? How nice to be able to have the time to create this kind of a collection, to have layers of something at all. A home to rely on, to invest time in.

  Don’t feel self-pity, she reprimanded herself. Don’t.

  She watched as the boy sat on the floor and held a box in his lap. He indicated she should join him, so she did.