Another day and another six miserable hours at Irvington Middle School to look forward to. Actually, the worst part was going to be facing Erin again. Meeting Erin and trying to figure out just how crazy she thought Hallie was—which depended on whether she knew that Hallie’s father was dead.
She was on her way to her first-period class when the dreaded meeting with Erin finally took place. When it was over Hallie had to admit she still didn’t know how much Erin knew. Erin had been friendly enough. Almost as friendly as she had been the day before, which would seem to mean that either she didn’t mind having crazy friends, or she really hadn’t heard about Hallie’s father.
Had she or hadn’t she? Of course, it was a question that Hallie couldn’t ask. But there was another question that she could ask: a question about Rapunzel. During lunch hour when she was on her way to the cafeteria, Hallie had her chance. Slowing down so that Erin could catch up, she said, “Hey, Erin. Do you know a blond girl, a teenager probably, who lives near where I do?”
Erin fell into step beside Hallie, delighted, as usual, to be asked a question, any question. “I probably do,” she said. “I know a lot of people in Irvington.”
“Yeah, I know.” Hallie remembered the long speech she’d heard on the subject of how many people Erin knew.
“What’s her name?” Erin asked.
“That’s just it. I don’t know,” Hallie said. “That’s why I’m asking you. But she has this awesome blond hair. Long, clear down past her waist, straight, and kind of shimmery gre—blond, that is.” As she pictured the blue-tinged blond hair, she’d almost said green.
“Green hair?” Erin looked puzzled.
“No, blond. I said blond.”
Erin’s round forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. “No. I don’t remember anyone like that,” she said. “She must not go to Irvington High. I might not know her if she doesn’t go to Irvie. Most of the teenagers I know go there.” So Erin was no help.
When the school day was finally over and Hallie was on her way home, she was careful to check out every passerby on Warwick Avenue. Particularly the teenagers. But there was no one who even came close to looking like Rapunzel.
And the monster? She didn’t bother to look for the monster, of course. Even if it was a real person who had been wearing the mask, there was no way she’d recognize him, or her, without it. On the other hand, if the thing she’d seen wrestling with Rapunzel actually was some kind of monster, it certainly wouldn’t be allowed out on the street.
Back in the Merediths’ apartment, Hallie dumped her books on the kitchen table and checked her watch. There was plenty of time. Taking the key off its ledge, she headed for the attic.
There it was, the long, narrow room, looking just as drab and bare as before. Except that now, as Hallie leaned forward to the spyhole, she immediately saw that there were people in the room too. Two—no, three of them, but not at all the ones she was expecting. Not Rapunzel, that is, or the weird little monster either. In fact, the only two she could see well were complete strangers.
One of the strangers was a man wearing a grayish business suit and a solemn, businesslike expression. The other was a woman. A slim, good-looking woman with a great hairdo—but she was not at all pleasant looking. There was anger in the tight lines of her sleek, stylish face and in the sudden movements of her arms and hands.
The third person in the room was sitting in the same half-hidden chair where the man had sat the night before. And like the night before, all Hallie could see of him were his feet and legs. As Hallie watched the scene from her spyhole, it became obvious that the man in the suit was speaking to the person in the chair. Talking on and on as if he was giving some kind of lecture.
As Mr. Gray Business Suit went on talking, swinging his arms in broad, forceful gestures, the woman watched him, nodding sharply. She glanced quickly at the person in the chair, and then very quickly looked away.
The conversation, or lecture, by Business Suit had been going on for some time before the person in the chair got to his feet and became—the same tall, gray-haired man Hallie had seen the night before. The man who finally had gotten up from the chair, separated Rapunzel and the little monster, and pushed them out of the room. And now, as he stepped forward, it seemed for a moment that he might be getting ready to do the same sort of thing. Hallie couldn’t see much of his face but his clenched fist and hunched shoulders definitely looked threatening, and for a moment the faces of the other two looked uneasy. Frightened even, as if they were expecting to be pushed, if not something worse.
It was easy to see that something very serious was happening in the room. Possibly something really terrible. As Hallie pressed her eye to the spyhole, she became so caught up in what she was watching she almost forgot to breathe. Where she was and what she was doing were completely forgotten. The only thoughts in her mind were about the people in the blue-lit room. Who were they, what was going on, and what might happen next? And what did all of it, what did any of it, have to do with Rapunzel?
Just as Hallie was thinking about Rapunzel the door opened and there she was, in the same doorway where she had appeared the first time Hallie had seen her. She was dressed a little differently this time, in a long skirt and shorter T-shirt, with a different collection of jewelry. But as before, the total effect was definitely the in look. The same combination of expensive junk jewelry that most Irvington high schoolers seemed to be wearing lately.
The expression on Rapunzel’s face was familiar too. Not at first, maybe; for the first minute she only looked startled and confused. She was talking to the three adults, asking questions, most likely. But then suddenly she was angry again, just like last night. Her talking seemed to have turned into shouting, and the other people in the room were obviously all shouting back. At Rapunzel—and also at each other.
For a while everything was in confusion. Everyone seemed to be yelling at once. Then Rapunzel threw out her arms in a hopeless, almost begging gesture, and covered her face with both hands. Bowing her head so that a thick curtain of hair slid forward to hide her face, she turned her back on the others. With her hands still covering her face she stood perfectly motionless, except that her shoulders seemed to be shaking.
She’s crying, Hallie thought. Why don’t they do something? Why are they just standing there? But then, finally, someone did. At last, the woman went to the girl, put her arms around her, and led her out of the room.
The sun was lower now, and the wavy blue haze in the room was thickening. The two men, alone in the room, were doing nothing at all. Not even talking, or at least not very much. In the same room but definitely not close together, they only went on self-consciously watching each other, occasionally glancing at the door through which Rapunzel and the woman had disappeared.
And Hallie went on watching them. She had been observing the two men and wondering about them for quite a while, maybe several minutes, before she suddenly noticed that there was someone else in the room after all. Someone or, at least, something
On the left side of the long room, there seemed to be something behind the smaller of the two couches. Something alive and moving. The first time it appeared, Hallie caught only a fleeting glimpse and then it was gone. She was beginning to think she’d imagined it when suddenly there it was again.
It was at the other end of the couch now, and this time she was sure it wasn’t her imagination She had definitely seen … something. A creature with a small round head covered with what looked like bristly brown fur was hiding behind the love seat. And whatever it was, the two men seemed not to be aware of it at all. Most of the time it was invisible to Hallie too, except now and then when its head rose slowly and cautiously, first at one end of the small sofa and then at the other.
A dog, perhaps? Hallie wondered. A round-headed, bristly-haired, brown dog? But that seemed unlikely. Whatever it was, its movements, its cautious, controlled appearances, seemed undoglike, much too careful and well planned. Its lack of ears was undoglike too.
The round brown head lacked anything that looked like ears. Certainly no pointed terrier-type ears, like Zeus’s, and no houndlike floppy ones either.
But then, as the head appeared again on the right side of the love seat, Hallie spotted something that did seem to be an ear. Except that it was round and hairless and set too far down on the side of the head-too far down, that is, to belong to a dog.
Hallie was still completely preoccupied with watching for the next appearance of the head, and possibly the body it belonged to, when something brought her back to reality. A slight sound, perhaps the distant thump of a closing door, reminded her of who and where she was and brought her back to the heat and dust and the surrounding walls of the attic’s tower room.
A lot of time had passed since she’d arrived in the attic. Glancing at her watch, Hallie saw that it was four-thirty. Her mother might come home from the savings and loan at any moment. Reluctantly she took her eye away from the spyhole and hurried across the attic.
It wasn’t until she was on her way down the stairs that she remembered what she had forgotten to do. She’d forgotten to check to see if the weird feather-trimmed mask was back on the mantelpiece.
“So altogether it was quite a day.” Paula Meredith finished up her long report on life at the Irvington Savings and Loan, put the latest microwave dinner for two (Mexican food this time) down on the table, and pulled out her chair.
“Yeah,” Hallie said. “Pretty bad, huh?” Actually, she hadn’t heard that much of her mother’s story. There’d been something about a nasty customer and how somebody named Roberta was taken sick and had to be sent home, but Hallie’s mind had been pretty much elsewhere.
She finished helping herself to the enchiladas before she glanced up and noticed that her mother was looking at her in a puzzled way. “What is it, Hallie?” she asked. “What’s on your mind now?”
“What do you mean now?” Hallie twisted her lips in a phony smile. “What kind of now are you talking about? Like now this minute, or now lately, or what?”
Her mother smiled back. “Now this minute, I guess. There just seems to be something… I don’t know. Something a bit different.”
“Oh yeah? Different?” Hallie tried to sound cool and relaxed. “Different how? Worse than usual, or better?”
“I’m not sure.” Her mother was still looking puzzled. “But better, I think. Yes, definitely better. Just as absentminded, perhaps but less …” Mom’s smile was a little bit teasing now. “Less Eeyorish, maybe.”
Eeyorish. It was one of Dad’s Winnie-the-Pooh expressions. Dad had a thing about quoting from Winnie-the-Pooh, and an Eeyorish person was one who, like the donkey, was always gloomy and pessimistic.
Hallie frowned. Eeyorish was Dad’s. And Mom had no right to use it, particularly not about Hallie. To say that “now this minute” she seemed less like a pessimistic donkey.
“So.” Hallie forced her words out through clenched teeth. “So you’re saying I don’t seem as much like a donkey as usual? Is that it?”
Mom sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Hallie.” Her voice sounded sad and reproachful, and fed up too. Even more fed up as she sighed again and said, “You know that isn’t what I meant. You’re just being …”
Hallie was thinking, yes, go on and say it. Say how obnoxious I am and how fed up you are and how much you wish I’d just disappear or—But right at that moment the phone rang.
Mom jumped up and went off to answer it, leaving Hallie feeling disappointed at first and then, after a minute, relieved. A little bit relieved that the fight they’d been heading for hadn’t happened after all.
The telephone call was a long one, and before it was over Hallie found herself wondering if she really had been acting less gloomy at dinner, and if so, why? What, if anything, was better?
Nothing was, she told herself. Not any better that day or on any day recently. She didn’t have any idea what her mother was talking about. If she had seemed less Eeyorish at dinner, it had nothing to do with any sort of change in her life. It simply must have been because she’d had something else on her mind. She had to admit she’d been thinking about the attic and the spyhole apartment and what had been going on there.
She smiled ruefully. Not that what had been happening there in the apartment on the fourth floor of the Warwick Tower Building was all that cheerful and comforting. Not hardly. What she’d seen through the spyhole hadn’t been much like watching a TV show about the ideal American family. None of the people she’d seen in that blue-tinged human aquarium had looked particularly happy. Especially not the beautiful Rapunzel.
Hallie couldn’t help wondering what had been going on that afternoon. Why had it made Rapunzel cry? And who or what was the little monster, and what had happened to it? Was one of those two angry men Rapunzel’s father? What would he do to the other man, the one in the gray business suit? The two of them obviously didn’t like each other. Would there eventually be a fight? Or something even worse? And then there was the mysterious creature behind the love seat to think about.
Hallie was so busy wondering that she forgot to consider what she ought to say next about the Eeyore thing. And then, when her mother finally came back from the phone, she made an announcement that put Hallie’s mind on a different track altogether. On Saturday, her mother announced, they would be going back to Bloomfield.
“Back to Bloomfield.” That was exactly the way her mother put it, but of course that wasn’t what she really meant. Not as in “back to live in the town where you were born and where you spent most of your life.” Not likely. When she said, “It seems I’m going back to Bloomfield this weekend. Would you like to go too?” Mom was simply talking about a short visit while she took care of some business and saw her old friend Ellen.
Hallie had known right away what Mom meant. Even so, just hearing those words, “back to Bloomfield,” made a painful spasm surge through her chest before it froze into a hard, aching knot at the bottom of her throat. The words “back to” must have done it. As if it were ever possible to go back to the way things used to be.
That evening, in fact that whole night, turned out to be a Ferris wheel of thoughts and feelings—up and down and around and around. One minute Hallie’s mind would be spinning about seeing Bloomfield again. Seeing Marty again, and maybe even Zeus and Thisbe. And a little later Bloomfield would be gone without a trace, and the spinning would be about the spyhole apartment and the things she had seen happening there that afternoon. What had been going on among those angry people, and what had happened after she had had to leave?
Less often, but every now and then, Irvington Middle School would have a turn on the Ferris wheel. A quick spin or two about some hard-edged things she might say to her classmates the next time somebody treated her like dirt, followed by a guilty half spin about the homework she ought to be doing. Up and down, round and round: Bloomfield, spyhole, school, and then back to start the rotation all over again.
At some point she got out her books and binder and stared at them while she thought about what it would be like to see Bloomfield again. “Back to Bloomfield”—the words brought an excited rush even though she knew what kind of a “going back” it would be. Going back to look at their old house-now that someone else was living there. Seeing Marty and maybe other old friends—who would probably still be acting as weird as they had at the funeral. Weird and stiff, because nobody knows what to say to miserable people.
And Zeus and Thisbe? What would it be like to see Zeus and Thisbe again now that they belonged to other people? Would Zeus sulk the way he had that time the family put him in a kennel while they were away on the trip to Mexico? And would Thisbe still sit in her lap and do the superloud purr that Dad always called “Thisbe’s turbo engine” now that she had gone to live at the Jeffersons’ farm way out in the country?
Thinking about her pets reminded Hallie of the doggy-looking whatever that had been hiding behind the love seat in the spyhole apartment. What on earth would have a head that lo
oked like that, and what was it doing behind the couch? The more she thought about it, the more urgent the question seemed, until at last she just had to try to find out something more. Which meant going back to the attic as soon as possible. She actually headed for the kitchen to get the attic key, but when she got there her mother was still working on some papers at the kitchen table. So she had to pretend she’d come for a glass of water.
“Hallie, I thought you were asleep long ago,” her mother said, and Hallie had to say she’d been doing homework. Back in her room she did get a little done on her social studies assignment, but when she checked the kitchen again Mom was still there. So she finally had to give up on the spyhole, at least for the time being.
The next day was Irvington Middle School again, and pretty much the same. Not much better or worse. A little worse maybe, as far as her homework grades were concerned, but the other kids were a little less interested in teasing her. Or else it was just that she was too sleepy to care that much whether they were or not.
Saturday came at last, and after an unbelievably long bus ride, she and her mother were once more on the familiar streets of Bloomfield. They passed scenes Hallie knew by heart, stores she’d shopped in and houses and yards she’d visited all her life. Staring out the window, she was immersed, drowning almost, in a flood of crazy, mixed-up emotions. Good ones that came with good memories of happy times and events. And then the others, as she remembered the terrible days that came after that awful morning in June. And then—there was Ellen, waiting for them at the bus stop.
“Darlings!” Big old Ellen wrapped them both in a gigantic hug and herded them into her beat-up Volvo. At first the talk was just about the paintings Ellen had been working on and the ones, both Ellen’s and Mom’s, that Berry’s Antiques had taken on commission. Mr. Berry had hung the paintings in his store and he would get part of the money if anyone bought them. Ellen thought Mr. Berry was going to sell a bunch of Mom’s paintings, which would be great if it happened; they certainly could use the money. But Hallie knew better than to count on it.
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