The Gypsy Game

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

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  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Copyright © 1997 by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-83328-0

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

  v3.1

  TO EVERYONE WHO ASKED FOR ANOTHER GAME

  WITH THE SAME PLAYERS

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Author

  Excerpt from The Unseen

  One

  “NOT VERY MUCH, I guess. Why?”

  That was the first thing Melanie said when April asked her if she knew anything about Gypsies. April didn’t answer. A minute or so later Melanie waved her hand in front of April’s eyes and said, “Hey, anybody home? Come back to earth.” Still no answer. April just went on staring into space.

  They had been lying on their stomachs across the bed in April’s room, digesting their Christmas dinners and talking about the presents they’d gotten and other Christmas stuff. Not talking all the time, but just once in a while when they felt like it. That was one of the good things about being the kind of friends they were. Sometimes, when they were together, they gabbed their heads off, and sometimes not. Either way it always felt okay.

  So when it took a long time for April to say why she’d asked the Gypsy question, it didn’t surprise Melanie all that much. She knew that when April’s blue eyes got that spacey look it usually meant that she was on to something new and exciting, and if you waited long enough, you were sure to hear all about it. So Melanie waited. While she waited, she had time to sit up, scratch the mosquito bite on her ankle, make a face at herself in the mirror on April’s dressing table, and flop back down again.

  Finally April sighed and said, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just what you said about it not being the same. Going back and doing the same things over and over. You know, all that Egyptian stuff. And just the other day I was reading this magazine that had all this great stuff about Gypsies. I was just thinking how maybe we could …” She sat up, shoved back a straggle of blond hair, grinned at Melanie, and went on, “I was thinking that maybe we could try being Gypsies for a change.”

  If Melanie wasn’t too thrilled by the idea right at first, it was probably just because she was so used to being Egyptian. Remembering, she kind of sighed.

  April was watching her with narrowed eyes. “Well, what do you think?”

  Melanie rolled over on her back. “Oh, I don’t know. I was just remembering things, like that time Ken and Toby almost scared us to death.”

  “Yeah, the jerks,” April said, but then she grinned too, and for a moment they both just lay there giggling like a couple of idiots. But then, at the very same moment, they both quit laughing and were quiet again, thinking and remembering. No one had said anything for quite a while when there was a knock on the door and then April’s grandmother’s voice, saying, “Girls. Marshall is here. May he come in?”

  Melanie rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t you know it? Wouldn’t you think that for once he’d be able to entertain himself for a few minutes, with all those new Christmas toys and everything?”

  But April only shrugged. “Okay, Marshamosis, come on in,” she yelled. A second later Melanie Ross’s four-year-old brother appeared in the doorway, looking especially solemn and dignified in his Christmas bathrobe—red and black plaid with velvet tassels on the belt. The Rosses were African Americans, and both Melanie and Marshall had satiny brown skin and elegant black eyebrows, and today Marshall was looking even more handsome than usual. And—no pear-shaped velvet octopus dangling around his neck by two of its eight long legs.

  Melanie poked April and whispered, “See. Like I told you. No Security!”

  Marshall shut the door carefully behind him, walked across the room, climbed up on the bed, and asked in a businesslike tone of voice, “What are we talking about?”

  April grinned. “Security,” she said. “We were just saying, ‘No Security.’ ”

  Melanie poked April again and shook her head. Marshall didn’t like being teased, and he particularly hated being teased about Security. As he started to climb down off the bed, his high-arched eyebrows were puckering together and his lips setting into a firm line. April grabbed him by the back of the shirt.

  “Come on back, runt,” she said. “I was just kidding. We weren’t really talking about your precious Security. We were just talking about …” She stopped and grinned at Melanie. “Well, actually, we were talking about being Gypsies.”

  Marshall looked at April suspiciously.

  “That’s right,” Melanie said. “We really were. April was just saying how maybe we could start playing a new game—about being Gypsies this time instead of Egyptians.”

  “Gypsies?” Marshall’s frown had returned. “Do Gypsies have pharaohs? I like bein
g Marshamosis.”

  “But you’d like being a Gypsy, too,” Melanie said. “You’d really like … well, you know, doing all those Gypsy things. Tell him, April. Tell him why he’d like being a Gypsy.”

  “Well, okay,” April said. “Listen, Marshall. Gypsies are people who go around in caravans. A caravan is like—well, almost like a house trailer, only made of wood and pulled by horses. Or at least they used to be.”

  “Horses?” Marshall’s forehead began to unpucker. Marshall, who had lived all his life in a city apartment where most pets weren’t allowed, had this thing about all kinds of animals. Particularly big animals.

  “That’s right, horses.” April thought a minute. “And some Gypsies train bears. That’s how they make their living. They have trained bears who dance and do all kinds of tricks, and people pay money to watch the bears.”

  “Oh yeah?” Marshall’s face was lighting up like neon when suddenly his eyes narrowed and the smile went out. “Bears?” he asked suspiciously. “Real bears, Melanie?”

  Melanie nodded. If April said that Gypsies trained bears, they probably did. April had a special talent for that kind of information.

  Marshall quit trying to scoot off the bed and sat back down between April and Melanie. He crossed his legs, smoothed out the front of his bathrobe, and straightened the velvet belt tassels. When he was all arranged, he said, “Okay. Let’s be Gypsies. When do we get the bears?”

  April rolled her eyes at Melanie and grinned. Melanie grinned back. “Okay,” she said. “Bears.” She got up and grabbed a pencil and a notebook off April’s desk. It was the notebook they always took to their Egyptian business meetings to take notes about what they were going to do next and what kind of stuff they needed to bring the next time they went to Egypt. Turning to a new page, Melanie began to write. When she finished writing, she showed the page to Marshall.

  “See,” she said. “It says here, ‘Bears!!! Get bears for Gypsy Game.’ ” She wiggled her eyebrows at April.

  Marshall nodded approvingly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, let’s be Gypsies. I get the first bear.” He thought for a moment, his forehead wrinkling. “Where? Where do you get bears?”

  The girls laughed. “Yeah,” Melanie said. “Good question, Marshall.” She looked at April and made her face say, “What do we do now?”

  “Well.” April nodded thoughtfully. “Well—yes! I guess the first thing we have to do now is—go to the library.”

  Marshall’s eyes rounded in amazement. “They have bears at the library?”

  That really cracked them up. By the time they’d stopped laughing, Marshall was mad again. He didn’t like being laughed at. His lower lip was sticking out, and his forehead had started to pucker.

  “No, Marshall,” April finally gasped, “they don’t have bears at the library. But we can find out about them there. About bears and Gypsies and all that stuff.”

  Marshall slid down off the bed. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go. Right now.”

  Of course they didn’t go right now because libraries aren’t open on Christmas Day, but before Melanie and Marshall went home that evening, it was all planned. On Thursday afternoon April would go down to the Rosses’ apartment and get Melanie and Marshall. And then they would stop by to see if Elizabeth wanted to go, too. April wrote it down in her notebook: “GYPSIES 2:00 P.M. Thursday. Ask Elizabeth.”

  “But what about Ken and Toby?” Melanie asked. “Shouldn’t we ask them if they want to be Gypsies? I mean, if we don’t even ask, there’s bound to be trouble.”

  April grinned happily. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Look out, Toby. Here comes trouble.”

  Actually, right at that moment, if anyone had asked Melanie what kind of trouble April was talking about, she probably would have said that April meant herself. That Toby was going to have “April trouble.” But afterward, remembering exactly what April said that day, it occurred to Melanie that it was almost as if April had been doing the oracle thing again. As if she’d looked into the future and seen this big dark cloud of trouble heading in Toby’s direction. Except that back then, on Christmas afternoon, not even a real oracle could have guessed how much, or how really weird, the trouble was going to be.

  Two

  JUST AS THEY’D planned, April stopped by the Rosses’ apartment on Thursday afternoon, and the three of them, April and Melanie and Marshall, went on down to pick up Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth Chung was only a fourth grader, so when she first moved to the Casa Rosada, April and Melanie hadn’t meant to invite her to join the Egypt Game. They finally did after Melanie’s mom and April’s grandmother had more or less insisted that they make the new girl feel at home. But then Elizabeth had turned out to be a great Egyptian. A little bit childish at times of course, but very enthusiastic about everything, and great at keeping her mouth shut around adults and other non-Egyptians. And when April had called up to ask if she’d like to be a Gypsy, she said yes right away.

  “Oh yes,” she said as soon as April explained what was going on. “I do. I will. Yes, I want to. When?”

  “Well, we’re planning to go to the library this afternoon to start doing the research,” April said. “You know. We’ll probably have to look up a bunch of stuff in encyclopedias and books. So bring some paper and a pencil. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Elizabeth said, her voice bubbling over with enthusiasm and excitement. “Okay. Pencil and paper. Okay, I’ll bring some. Okay.”

  April said good-bye and was about to hang up when Elizabeth said, “April, wait.”

  “Yeah,” April said. “What?”

  “What’s a Gypsy?”

  April had a hard time keeping from laughing out loud. “Look, Bethy,” she said. “We’ll tell you all about it on the way to the library. Okay?”

  Later when April was telling Melanie about the telephone conversation, she imitated Elizabeth’s high-pitched little-kid voice. “ ‘April. What’s a Gypsy?’ Can you believe it? She couldn’t wait to start being a Gypsy before she even knew what one was.”

  But then Melanie pointed out that a lot of fourth graders probably don’t know much about Gypsies. “Actually a lot of sixth graders don’t either, I’ll bet. And besides April …” Melanie smiled and tilted one eyebrow the way she always did when she thought somebody wasn’t being very sensible. Or fair. Melanie had this thing about being fair. “And besides, April, you know Bethy just likes to do whatever we do.”

  April frowned. Even though Melanie was the best friend she’d ever had, she sure could be a drag when she wanted to. Like when she made you feel kind of mean for saying something mean about somebody, even though you didn’t mean to be mean at all.

  But by that afternoon when they started out for the library, April had forgotten all about being mad at Melanie. She was having too much fun telling everyone what it would be like being Gypsies. She didn’t say too much about the horse-drawn caravans because she couldn’t quite see how they could get hold of a horse—or a caravan either, for that matter. But there were a lot of Gypsy things they certainly could do. Like training animals and wearing Gypsy outfits, for instance.

  “The men wear baggy pants and high boots and vests with all kinds of shiny things sewn on them, so they kind of glitter when they walk,” she told them. “And the women wear these bright-colored head scarfs and all kinds of weird jewelry.”

  “Weird?” Marshall asked, frowning. “I don’t like weird stuff. What about the bears?”

  “Okay, Marshall. Bear info coming up. I’ll get to bears in a …” Really focusing on Marshall for the first time, April noticed something. Security was back again, hanging around Marshall’s neck by two of his legs, just like always. April nudged Melanie and pointed. “How come?” she whispered. “I thought you said he’d quit?”

  Melanie only shrugged, so April reached over and tugged on one of Security’s legs, which Marshall really hated for anyone to do. “Okay, Marshamosis,” she said, “how come you brought the octopus? I thought you’d outgrown s
tuff like that.”

  Marshall jerked away and glared at April. “I did,” he said. “I didn’t want to bring him, but he wanted to come. Security likes libraries.”

  April might have had some more to say on the subject, but Melanie poked her hard and shook her head. “The jewelry,” she said. “Tell about the jewelry. What’s weird about it?”

  “Well, you know. They wear it kind of all over themselves. Like on their ankles and around their waists and foreheads. Oh yeah. And they tell fortunes.” She looked at Melanie. “That’s one of the best parts. They usually tell fortunes by palmistry. I can’t wait to learn how to read people’s palms.”

  “Yes,” Melanie said. “Me too. I’d really like to tell fortunes. And what else, April? What other Gypsy things can we do?”

  So April started telling them about training animals and juggling and dancing and things like that, but before she’d gotten anywhere near finished, they were already at the library.

  To Mrs. George, who worked in the children’s room, April and Melanie were still the Egyptian Girls, but as soon as she heard that they’d changed to Gypsies, she was enthusiastic about that, too. Before long the three girls were sitting at a table with lots of books and magazines and a couple of encyclopedias, and Marshall had gone off to the little kids’ section with Mrs. George.

  At first they started telling each other every time they learned something important. April told what she read about how the Gypsies had originally come from northern India, instead of from Egypt as most people thought. And Melanie found out that right now, in modern times, there were maybe a million Gypsies living in the United States. A little later they all got the giggles when they started trying to pronounce some words April found in an article about Romany, the Gypsy language. That got a little too noisy for a library, and after Mrs. George gave them a couple of serious glares, they started writing everything down. “Then we can meet in Egypt and read our notes about everything we found out,” Melanie whispered.

  “In Egypt?” Elizabeth asked. “I thought we were going to call it Gypsy now.”