The Secret of Rover

by Rachel Wildavsky

  The bell rang again and Trixie thumped downstairs toward the door. Creeping to the landing, the children heard her open it and inform the startled woman outside that lessons had been permanently canceled. Hadn’t Mr. and Mrs. Bowden told her? Katie and David no longer studied piano.

  Their teacher’s words did not carry upstairs, but the consternation in her kind voice did. Tears smarted behind Katie’s eyes at the sound of it. Good Mrs. Ivanovna! What would she think of them? And who would help them now?

  Their teacher’s voice was the last kind sound that David and Katie heard that day. The others—the Katkajanians—began to arrive at noon. The children, who watched these arrivals unnoticed from the top of the stairs, observed with surprise and alarm that they all brought luggage.

  The first to come was a woman, as squat and square as Trixie herself. Trixie emerged from her usual haunt in the office and met this unknown person with a snort of recognition and a rapid slurry of foreign words. The stranger tossed a bulging and battered suitcase under the hall table and at once retreated with Trixie to the kitchen. The sounds of cupboards banging and chairs scraping immediately followed.

  Soon afterward a man rang the bell. Just as if it were her own home, the new woman wandered out from the kitchen to admit him. She gestured to her suitcase and the man dropped his long, lumpish duffel beside it. Exchanging rapid chatter in Katkajanian, these two left the door slightly ajar before retreating again to the kitchen, where they were greeted with shrill ecstasy by Trixie.

  “The door’s standing open!” whispered David. But Katie, hearing wheels and brakes on the driveway, hastily shushed him. And indeed, moments later another man and another woman let themselves into the Bowdens’ house.

  “We’re up to five,” said David grimly.

  “There were more than that last night,” replied his sister. “How much do you want to bet they’re all coming back?”

  It was starting to sound like a party in the kitchen. They heard the TV snap on and the sound of someone reading the news begin to drone beneath the rising chatter of voices.

  “David, did you see that last woman—the one who came with the guy?” Katie was sprawled on the hall carpet. She stared downstairs between two railings that she gripped with both hands.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s not Katkajanian. She’s American. Or at least,” Katie added, recalling the woman’s lank, colorless hair and gray face, “she looks like she is.”

  “So? So they have an American with them. Big deal.”

  “It’s a very big deal,” said Katie testily, “because maybe she won’t speak Katkajanian.”

  “And this is important because . . . ?” David raised his brows and spoke with elaborate patience, as if dealing with someone very dense. Katie’s anger flared.

  “Because then they’ll have to talk to her in English! Which we understand. So maybe we can hear it and figure something out, duh! Don’t start on me, David! You aren’t that smart.”

  “You aren’t that smart. I already thought that about the English—it’s obvious,” said David, lying.

  “Right.”

  “But it won’t matter what language they’re using, because we won’t hear. They’re not going to let us listen. You think we’re going to get within earshot of the kitchen?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something else?” said Katie acidly. “Like, um, the vents?”

  “Oh!” This idea was too stunning in its excellence for David even to pretend he’d also thought of it. “That’s great,” he admitted, excited. “Let’s go.”

  The kids had discovered soon after moving to their new house that the same vents that carried heat and air-conditioning from room to room also carried sound. You couldn’t hear anything just by walking around, but if you lay on the floor and pressed your ear straight to them, sometimes you could.

  Katie was still thinking. Each vent connected only to certain rooms. The vent in the kitchen connected to their parents’ bedroom. “We’d have to be in Mom and Dad’s room,” she said. “And that’s where all Trixie’s stuff is. She really wouldn’t want us in there.”

  “She wouldn’t want us listening, period,” reasoned David. “If she found us, she’d be too mad about that to care where we were doing it. We just can’t get caught, that’s all.”

  “Then let’s go now, while everyone’s still arriving,” said Katie, as yet another car door slammed outside.

  Stealthily they rose from the rug on which they’d been sprawled and crept down the hall to their parents’ room. The door was unlocked and they slipped in. It was awful to see Trixie’s things strewn about.

  “How much camouflage does she own?” asked Katie. One of Trixie’s suitcases lay open on the floor, and there seemed to be nothing but army clothes inside it.

  “Look!” David was pointing at the other case, which was also open and half under the bed. It bristled with walkie-talkies, cell phones, and small flat computers.

  “No wonder she didn’t want help with her luggage,” said Katie bitterly, remembering the night of Trixie’s arrival. “It looks like she raided an electronics store.”

  “We’d better be quick. What if she comes for that stuff?” David dropped silently to the floor by the window seat and rested his ear on the vent.

  This was her mother and father’s room and Katie loved it. But it was creepy thinking Trixie might walk in at any moment. “Move,” she said. At her command David wriggled over to make room and she laid her head beside his on the small vent.

  The air-conditioning was on, and at first they heard just the whooshing of cool air through the big house’s many ducts. But after a moment this shut off, and suddenly they heard a man’s voice droning on the kitchen television, the opening and closing of drawers, and the sounds of unfamiliar voices.

  Then a woman’s voice could be heard on the television. A derisive hoot of laughter followed.

  “Oooh, ‘dere she goes!” sneered one woman, who spoke with a Katkajanian accent.

  “David, they are speaking English!” hissed Katie.

  “Shhh!”

  “How she secretary of state? How dat girl get dat job?” pursued the voice, indignant.

  “That’s so disrespectful!” Katie was truly upset. “She’s not a girl! She’s a grown—”

  “Shhh!” David silenced Katie. An unfamiliar woman had begun to talk.

  “Well, she dudded know Katkajad,” said the woman. Her lack of any accent declared her to be the lank-haired American. An accent would have improved her voice, though. It was nasal, as if she had a heavy cold, and it seemed as flat and lifeless as her hair.

  “Lised to her,” the American woman continued tonelessly. “Secretary ob state. Ad she dudded hab a clue what’s about to habbed.”

  “Not’ing can happen wit’ no money,” said another man. “Time for working. What dese people here got to sell, in dis house?”

  The next voice to speak was chillingly familiar: It was Trixie’s. “There’s silver in that drawer,” she said, and Katie and David heard footsteps.

  “David, they’re taking our silver!”

  But Trixie was still talking. “I think she’s got some rings and necklaces and things upstairs, too,” she added. “Wait—you can take it all at the same time.”

  With that a chair scraped back and Trixie’s heavy tread moved across the kitchen floor.

  “She’s coming!” David leaped up, snatching Katie’s arm and jerking her to her feet as well. Both of them were flooded with fear.

  Like quicksilver both children slipped out the door. This big house! Their rooms were at the end of a long hall. If Trixie saw them moving from her room to their own she would know where they’d been. They must not be heard, either, and if they ran they surely would be.

  They slipped frantically along the wall, willing their footsteps to be silent. Breathlessly they arrived in Katie’s room just as Trixie emerged at the top of the stairs.

  They dared not close Katie’s door completely.
Trixie would hear it click. So they left it slightly ajar, and through it observed her clomping down the hall and disappearing into the room they had just left. Silent moments passed, and they waited.

  At length Trixie emerged. Mrs. Bowden’s jewelry box sat open on her arm, and as she walked she poked through it with one fat finger. Their dad had bought their mom several beautiful things when Rover had been sold. Katie had been told that one day those things would be for her—for her and Theo. Now the children watched in silent indignation as Trixie carefully removed a ring and slipped it into her own pocket. That ring had an enormous glittering jewel of a brilliant purple color and it was their mother’s favorite. Trixie snapped the box shut and, more briskly, proceeded downstairs.

  “She’s a thief,” said Katie hotly when Trixie had gone.

  “And she’s robbing them, too—those guys downstairs,” said David.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’re supposed to sell this stuff, to make money for whatever they’re doing in Katkajan. Remember what they said in the kitchen? Something’s supposed to happen there, now that they’ve got Mom and Dad. They need cash.”

  “But she kept Mom’s ring,” said Katie, getting it. “She kept that for herself. You’re right! She’s even sleazier than they are!”

  “Well, that’s a little more money they won’t have to make trouble with. So I guess that part’s good,” said David. “Not that it’ll matter, though,” he added gloomily. “Something tells me they’ll still have enough.”

  They stayed in Katie’s room all day. They could think of nowhere else to go.

  As she always did, Katie had saved her Halloween candy, consuming it bit by tiny bit so that it lasted all year long. This was August, so there wasn’t much left, and that was very stale. But they ate it that day, as neither could stand the thought of venturing to the kitchen for food. If only they had thought to take some when they were down there cleaning up!

  Katie’s window was at the front of the house so, half hidden by the curtain, they saw as well as heard the coming and going that went on all that long, long day. Over the hours so many cars arrived and left that they lost track of the number of people in the house. Everyone who came carried luggage. And many who left had the Bowdens’ things in their arms; their mother’s jewelry box and the felt-lined drawer containing their silver were the first to go.

  Katie and David no longer even cared. Their mom and dad were gone, and Theo, too. What were jewelry and silver? But as the afternoon faded into evening the indignation they had thought was exhausted rose again. One of the strangers, grinning, emerged with a soccer ball and began experimentally kicking it on their front lawn.

  “That’s mine,” said David defiantly.

  The stranger called out in Katkajanian, lifting his face toward the house as he did so. His eyes were slightly crossed and his nose canted sharply to the left as if it had at one time been broken. These oddities had the effect of turning his grin into a leer. But despite the man’s unpleasant appearance Katie and David heard answering calls from within the house and raucous voices moving toward the front door. The Katkajanians were organizing a game.

  The nerve!

  But it got even worse. Just as the door opened the children heard a startled cry, a stumble, and the yowl of a cat whose tail had just been trodden. They did not have to know Katkajanian to understand the loud exclamation that followed.

  The next thing they saw from their perch at the window was poor Slank, not running but flying out the door. Catlike, he righted himself in midair and hit the ground running. Before they could cry out his name, he had streaked across the front lawn, slipped beneath the surrounding shrubbery, and disappeared across the street. The man with the crooked nose howled with laughter.

  “Oh! Oh, Slank—he’s gone!”

  “Did they kick him or throw him?” demanded David.

  “Who cares? Did you see how he was moving? He’ll be roadkill before dinner!”

  As Katie spoke, David seemed to feel Slank’s sleek, heavy weight again on his lap and to hear his throaty purring. Gone!

  “Now look!” cried Katie.

  Four more men had run down the steps to join the one on the lawn. A pickup game was beginning.

  Katie turned away from the window. “I’m not going to watch them have fun with our stuff,” she announced.

  “My stuff,” corrected David.

  “Like it matters now! And anyway,” she added, feeling suddenly quarrelsome, “whose candy have you been eating all afternoon?”

  “I thought it didn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t,” Katie retorted. “I’m just making a point. I’m just remembering everything you said about me saving my candy while you ate yours in two days. Good thing I did!”

  “Oh, excuse me! Sorry I didn’t realize our parents would be kidnapped and we’d be held prisoner in our rooms and we’d need that candy to live on! What’re we down to now?” he added, changing the subject.

  Katie reached under the bed and withdrew the once-bulging sack. She upended it on the floor and they both surveyed the dwindling contents.

  “We’d better divide it up,” she said. “There’s not a lot left.”

  “Eleven pieces,” said David. “You can have six. I’m sick of candy anyway.”

  “Very generous.”

  But in the end they broke a chocolate bar in two and each stuffed their pockets with five and a half pieces of candy. It was funny how possible starvation made you want to share, and with your sibling, even. You’d think it would work the other way around.

  Night fell and Katie and David each permitted themselves one piece of candy for dinner. They had never imagined that they could enjoy chocolate so little, or that it could leave them so hungry.

  They agreed that David would sleep in Katie’s room that night. At bedtime he would slip across the hall to his own room to get his pillow. They no longer feared that he would be noticed. It appeared that the hordes that had taken over their home had entirely forgotten them. Tomorrow they would even risk a raid on the kitchen for some real food.

  But they had not been forgotten, and their sleeping arrangements would not, after all, be up to them. Before they had even begun to settle down they heard Trixie’s heavy footsteps mounting the stairs once again, and moments later she flung open Katie’s door.

  She stood before them, hands on hips.

  “Get up,” she announced. “You’re coming with me now.”

  “Where?” David asked.

  “It’s our bedtime,” Katie protested.

  “You got that right!” She grinned unpleasantly. “But that’s not your bed. That bed’s for guests.”

  Strangers in her bed! The thought made Katie sick.

  “We’ll go to my room,” David said.

  Trixie’s brow lowered. “I said you come with me!”

  They dared not refuse. As they passed David’s room they saw through the open door that two Katkajanian men were already in it. One of them was sprawled on his back on David’s bed, ankles crossed and boots on. He, too, grinned at David as the children passed.

  Wild thoughts raced through Katie’s mind as they followed Trixie silently downstairs. Could they escape out the front door? If they made a dash for it, would they be caught?

  Watching Trixie’s feet, David wondered briefly if he should trip her.

  But they did neither of these things. Where was she taking them?

  When they reached the first floor, Trixie led them toward the kitchen. Perhaps they would now be offered food. Perhaps she realized they had not eaten.

  People were in the kitchen—many people. One was in the sunroom picking oranges—their oranges! But this was information Katie and David absorbed in a flash as they passed by, for Trixie did not take them into the kitchen. Instead she opened the door to the basement and led them downstairs.

  There was a bedroom in the basement, a bedroom for guests. So the real “guests” were in their rooms and they were to sl
eep downstairs! It was a good thing their parents had arranged that room so comfortably.

  But Katkajanian music warbled on the radio in the guest room and yet more strangers were inside it, putting down their things. Were they going to sleep on the sofa? They would have no privacy at all! The strangers would see them all night and hear every word they spoke.

  But the sofas were piled high with yet more sleeping bags and duffels. To the children’s horror, Trixie led them to the farthest corner of the basement, where the furnace lurked behind a slatted door. She pulled this door open and gestured to the concrete floor within it.

  There lay two thin blankets. Beside them were a bottle of water and a couple of sandwiches wrapped in plastic.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” The words burst from David’s lips despite himself. He would not have believed he would have the nerve to object.

  And Katie was livid. “There’s no way we can sleep here!” she cried. She thought for an instant of her room upstairs—her pillow, her comforter, her books—and the vision of it overwhelmed her. She balled both of her hands into fists, stepped closer to Trixie, and stamped her foot. “You wouldn’t—you wouldn’t make a dog sleep here!” she shouted. “This is our house!”

  But scarcely had the words escaped her lips than four glowering strangers stepped to Trixie’s side. Five angry faces glared down at David and Katie. Slowly, the man nearest David folded his arms across his chest. His crossed eyes floated weirdly above a nose that canted left. No one spoke.

  That was it. There was nothing they could do. David took Katie’s arm and, gently, drew her into the small concrete closet.

  “We’ll be fine,” he said curtly, and without looking at anyone’s face he closed the door.

  “It could be worse,” he said quietly when their captors had walked away. “It’s not like it’s wet or gross or anything. It’s not even dark.” He was right about that. A dim light entered through the slats. “And we’re alone. Or sort of.”

  Katie scarcely heard him. She stood rooted to the spot, with her heart still pounding and her mind still racing. “It isn’t fair, David. It isn’t right.”