She was shaking slightly. It was odd to see her hands quiver, as if she were older than the very old Friends with their silver hair and age-spotted skin.
If I go up there, she thought, first I have to lift the Plexiglas case. Do I trust Maris’s version that it can be lifted easily? But say I get it off. I rest it against the wall. There is the mummy, waiting. I lift the mummy.
She was amazed by the depth of her desire to take the mummy and her terror of actually attempting it. She felt as if she herself were hanging in the bell tower, swinging like a pendulum from one choice to another.
She was trembling in places she had not known you could tremble. It wasn’t visible. There was no quiver extending from her ankles to her fingers. But the tremor of excitement and dread was racing through every vein and artery.
She could do it now. It was literally within reach.
The wide stairs were rough stone, with bands of shining metal crossing each tread, and the banisters were also stone, carved and fluted for eager fingers to grip.
Go, she said to herself. Go.
The columns and shadows of the Great Hall overlapped and slid. If a guard was nearby, he was hiding like a little kid behind a pillar. Emlyn doubted that that was the behavior or the size of guards. Once more, Emlyn opened the MUSEUM OFFICIALS ONLY door to the offices. Lights were on, but nobody seemed to be there. When she closed the door behind her, it clicked loudly.
If anybody catches you, you’re looking for a bathroom, she told herself.
She skipped the secretary’s office, the Trustees’ Room, and Dr. Brisband’s office. Sure enough, the first unknown door she opened was the staff bathroom. It locked from the inside. She might need a door like that.
There was one more unknown door. Emlyn listened hard and heard nothing The depth of the silence was heavy and complete. She opened the door fast, before she could panic. The room was empty. Just more desks, computer screens, and stuff. She found it hard to believe a museum needed all this.
At the back of the room was an original door from mansion days. Huge, heavy, and impressive, a door requiring a servant’s strong arm so that a lady in a fine gown could pass through it. Emlyn required only a way out. Now she had one.
She went back to the arrow labeled FREIGHT ELEVATOR.
Around a corner was a final door that took Emlyn out of the mansion and into the museum, through a large utility hall with vinyl floors and an acoustical tile ceiling. There was the freight elevator. Buttons on the wall said UP and DOWN.
Her thoughts splintered and fell, like broken glass. Every thought had a sharp edge and the ability to cut.
She could take the mummy, carry it into the freight elevator, slip out that side door, and be free in the streets.
And then what? Bring the mummy home? On a bus? In a taxi? Her brothers would be awake, assuming the other passengers on the bus decided it was not their business if she was carrying a mummy. Her parents would ask about her day. “What is that?” they would say, although they would certainly be able to guess.
Okay, so that wouldn’t work. Gould she leave the mummy in the office? Put the mummy into some closet? Come back for it?
As soon as they found the mummy gone, a search would be launched. They might not think of searching office closets, but security would be tightened and locks changed. Emlyn would not get in a second time. Her key would no longer allow her to remove the mummy she had stashed. Nor could she again pretend to be Girl Reporter.
No, on the night she came for the mummy, she had to leave with the mummy.
Tonight would not work. There were too many details for which she had not planned. And no doubt more problems that she would think of when she pondered this. She must have these solved in her mind so she wouldn’t face them under pressure.
She could, however, explore the cellar. Find out what was down there and where the exits led and whether—
“What are you doing here?”
Emlyn turned slowly.
It was a guard.
Not one she recognized. Not the one with whom she had chatted at the exit yesterday.
“I’m so glad to see you,” said Emlyn. “I’m actually shaking.” She held out her hand for him to see. “I was using the bathroom in the offices, and I’ve taken the wrong door out. It’s really scary here at night. I’m here with my grandmother, and she’s always the one who gets lost, but now I’m the one who’s lost. She’s probably worried. You’ll get me back to the Friends, won’t you?”
She smiled anxiously, and it seemed that Jack and Maris were correct.
She could get away with things.
Seven
OF COURSE, EVERYBODY BUT Emlyn was late for the meeting. Neither play rehearsal nor soccer practice was ever over when it was over. Things had to be put away; people had to shower and blow-dry their hair; arguments had to be settled and snacks exchanged.
Finally, closer to six than five, they were gathered by the two maples. One was scarlet, the other gold, making Emlyn remember the Brownie song she used to sing: “Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.”
These were not friends, and not one of them was silver or gold. What they were about to do was tarnished, and Emlyn knew it.
Lovell and Jack were still damp from their showers and very tired. Maris, because the drama department lacked showers, was sweaty and irritable. Donovan was just Donovan.
Lovell flung herself down on the grass, and one by one the rest joined her. Since they no longer had to see the stage or the ball, the girls did not bother to tie back their hair but let it fall, and their bodies drooped as loosely as their hair. The boys let go of their strength and fell back against the cooling grass.
How pretty we look, thought Emlyn. An art class should come and draw us in pastels or fling us onto watercolor paper.
“Okay,” said Jack. “First. How do we get the mummy out? We can’t just walk in there and some of us distract the guards while others of us pick the mummy up and run out the front door.”
“Maybe we could,” said Maris thoughtfully. “Lovell and Emlyn and I would each subdue a guard, while Jack and Donovan hoist the mummy onto their shoulders and run toward the exit like football players with a long, thin, flat football.”
Lovell laughed.
Donovan said, “I still say a cow would be better.”
“Donovan, stop your noise,” said Maris. How attractive Maris was, in a bony way; her features would be visible from the back row of any theater, and in fact everything about her was theatrical—the way she flung words around, and gestures around, and even affection. She was drama. “We’ve settled on the mummy, Donovan. Emlyn’s in with us. Emlyn and Jack and I crept around the museum the other day taking notes.”
Emlyn certainly preferred this version.
“If the mummy bent at the waist and the knees,” said Donovan, “we could use one of the museum’s wheelchairs. While you were distracting the guards, I’d wrap the mummy in blankets and go down the elevator and we’d be home free. But it’s stiff.” He grinned. “That’s the point, I guess. A mummy is a stiff.”
They all smiled, but Emlyn a little less. She was pretty sure Donovan had thought of that yesterday and been waiting for the moment to wedge it into the conversation.
Donovan was equal parts ugly and handsome, put together in a sloppy, pleased-with-himself way. He was slouchy, as if he had extra bones he had to drag around and stick in corners. He was not a leader. He didn’t join, he just left school and went to his job. Was he poor? Impossible, with those clothes. Or perhaps that’s why he worked. To get clothes, a car, things.
“We could bag it,” said Maris.
“You’re kidding!” Jack was upset. “Maris, you want to give up?”
“No, no, no.” She gave him a kiss. “Bags. A big black plastic trash bag to drop the mummy into and pretend to be taking something to the Dumpster.”
Perhaps Emlyn was just envious, but the kiss did not seem to hold affection. It was more of a s
ilencer. There was something casual between Jack and Maris that Emlyn didn’t think would exist if they were truly fond of each other.
“No, because then we’d have to go disguised as janitors,” said Jack. “You’re making it harder, not easier.”
“Somebody has to go into the museum in the afternoon as a regular visitor,” said Lovell, “stay hidden until the museum closes, open a door for the rest of us, and we’ll all go in and take the mummy except whoever will be driving the getaway car.”
Lovell was an aggressive athlete. Powerful, quick and afraid of nothing. She had longer hair than Emlyn’s, beautiful hair, but seemed unaware of it, the way a horse was unaware of its mane. She just lived under it.
“You’ve forgotten the grilles that will keep us separated from the Egyptian Room,” said Donovan, “not to mention the guard who will come running.”
Emlyn did not trust any of them. They were taking this as casually as Jack and Maris took each other. This was not a minor thing. It was not dangerous the way rappelling an ice cliff would be, but it was fraught with danger. Caught, as a group, having planned a theft from a city institution, stealing an important, valuable thing—yes, admit it, stealing—not a caper, not a prank—well, there was the possibility of police, fingerprints, a night in jail, court. A record, because they were over sixteen. Nothing they did now could be minor, because they themselves were not minors.
Only Emlyn had a shiver of apprehension. The others could have been talking about removing a subscription card from a magazine.
“Who would have thought this would be so difficult?” said Lovell. “Here we have this great idea and no way to get started on it.”
It was time for Emlyn to say that she had a key. But she did not.
Anyway, she told herself, I’m not sure what I have a key to. Maybe it isn’t a master key. If it unlocks only the Trustees’ Room and Dr. Brisband’s office, I can’t even get to those two rooms from the Great Hall, because it won’t open the MUSEUM OFFICIALS ONLY door. After the Friends’ meeting, the door was just unlocked. I’ve never tested my key, I never even thought of it. What’s the matter with me? I should have tried it out.
“Let’s come back to that,” said Emlyn. I’m not trustworthy, either, she thought, or I’d tell them about the key. I would never do this on a team. On a team you don’t whine about your own little problems or your own little angles. You work together. So either I don’t think we’re a team, or I refuse to be a team. Either way, in a team sport, you can’t win unless you all have the same game plan. So we’re going to lose, unless we turn into a team. If we lose this game, the first stop is jail.
“Let’s say we do get the mummy out,” said Emlyn. “Then we have to put the mummy somewhere. We don’t want to hang the mummy till the day before Halloween. So where do we store her? Where is there a place that’s dry and dark and hidden and can’t be found and has room for a five-foot stiff?”
“None of those details matter,” said Maris impatiently.
“Think about it, Maris,” said Lovell. “You’re coming out of the museum with the alarm bells ringing, you’ve got a mummy on your shoulder, and it’s two in the morning. Are you going to walk home with it? Are you going to have it sit at the breakfast table with you for the next two weeks? Are you going to shove it into your locker at school and hope nobody sees?”
“So take it the day before Halloween, and go straight to the high school.”
“The school will also be locked at two in the morning,” said Jack.
“So one of us will wait inside the high school to let you in. You guys are making this way too hard,” said Maris.
“Maybe it is way too hard,” said Donovan. “There’s the getaway car, for example. If we lived in the suburbs we’d have our own cars, but nobody keeps two cars in the city. So we have to use our parents’ car, and how are we going to do that all night long some school night? Or a weekend, either? And if we lived in the suburbs, we’d have attics and cellars and garages, and we’d just sling the mummy into a corner, but we don’t. We have apartments without room for a bicycle. I have to keep mine chained in the hall. I sure don’t have mummy space.”
Lovell whipped out her calendar. “We can’t take it the day before Halloween.” She set her calendar on the grass, and everybody leaned forward to stare at the little square dates. “October thirtieth this year is a Thursday, and Jack and I have away games. Maris, you’ll be in dress rehearsals. We can probably hang the mummy that night, but it already has to be in our hands. For me, the only time that’s good is the Sunday before, and that means a week to hang onto it before we hang it.”
“Pyramids look good, don’t they?” said Emlyn. “Where else can a mummy rest, and not be found, and not get wet, or nibbled on by mice, or stepped on by passing joggers?”
Donovan was laughing. “Pyramids don’t have maintenance problems, either.”
“Cut it out,” said Maris. “Come on. We have to think of something”
“A cow,” said Donovan.
“It would seem to me,” said Maris, “that a cow would also pose problems. It’s heavy, it’s fat, it doesn’t want to be strapped to a hoist and lifted three stories into the air, and it would probably refuse to take the stairs, and its owner certainly wouldn’t lend it to you. Stealing a cow is probably more wrong than stealing a mummy, when you think about it. Which one is alive?”
“And what if the cow stops being alive at some point?” said Lovell. “Then you’d have cow murder on your hands.”
Lovell and Maris fell on top of each other, laughing.
“I don’t think we’re serious about this,” said Jack. “We’re kidding ourselves. Somebody else is going to have to pull off the good senior prank, because we’re just a bunch of—”
“Grave robbers,” breathed Maris.
Emlyn, her back cold on the cold earth, cheeks damp with green grass, fell away from them into a dark, closed tunnel, where oil lamps sputtered and drafts of dead air wound around Egyptian ankles. She wore a linen robe and carried a chisel, and her heart was full of greed. She was savagely chipping and hacking a hole through stone, wedging herself into a black room filled with the dead, filled with their bodies and the pieces of their bodies, lined with jars of liver and lung.
But the dead meant nothing to her or to any other grave robber.
The living did not care about eternity.
They wanted treasure.
Emlyn rolled over, climbing out of the king’s tomb into which her mind had fallen. This had happened before. A little time slip, so intense, so detailed, with scent and dust and heat. She knew it was just the strength of her own daydreams, but she felt close to Amaral-Re for those seconds.
Emlyn stared up at indigo-blue sky. Tutankhamen had chosen that very deep blue for the color in his tomb, a blue so vivid it felt as if it could last forever and yet couldn’t exist at all.
And I, thought Emlyn, what do I want? I want to do this. I know it’s wrong I should be disgusted with all of us. But I’m not.
I want to do this.
A theft is when you keep what doesn’t belong to you.
So this is not a theft.
We will not keep the mummy.
She will not be damaged.
She’ll just have publicity and a lot of admiring stares, and she’s used to that.
A wisp of cloud shivered above her, a fragment of purity and white on that blue plate of sky. Very softly, she said to her team, “Here’s how we’ll do it.”
Eight
WITHOUT LETTING THEM UNFOLD from their package positions, Emlyn took two very large black plastic trash bags, the heavy kind for yard cleanup. She taped these around her left forearm with masking tape, which would be easy to remove. Then she put on a long-sleeved white cotton oxford shirt and wrapped several feet of masking tape around the right sleeve. Next she put on a charcoal-gray wool pullover sweater.
The plastic crinkled when she moved but didn’t slow her down much. It was a lot easier than the cast had
been.
She wore black twill pants, slightly baggy and very comfortable. In one pocket was her master key; in the other, a small but powerful flashlight in which she had just invested. Over this she wore a gray wool blazer of her mother’s. In an inside pocket of the blazer was her very small cell phone.
She was not sure why she had decided to bring it. If she expected to have to call a lawyer, she should call off the idea instead. But a phone comforted Emlyn. She did not intend to use the basement of the museum. But if something happened and she had to hide in the dark—well, the dark was better when you could summon a voice.
She put her Friends’ card into an outside blazer pocket along with a few dollars and some change. She tucked a pair of disposable plastic gloves in the other pocket and a pair of thin black knit gloves on top of them. She checked herself in the mirror for bulges. She looked ordinary.
It was Sunday afternoon. Monday was a teachers’ workday, so there was no school. Her parents were going out for dinner with two other couples. Afterward, they had concert tickets. They would not be in till very late. Her brothers were staying overnight with friends. Emlyn herself was supposedly staying overnight with Lovell.
She had had trouble looking at her parents all weekend. She felt in need of a veil, a covering. She knew they were not scrutinizing her. They felt comfy around her; she was their good girl. If her eyes were down on her plate, it was because she was hungry, not because she was keeping secrets.
Her brothers were unable to keep secrets. They shouted out instantly when they did anything, whether it was good, bad, or meaningless.
Emlyn had lost track. Good, bad, and meaningless had come together in this senior prank, sloshed together like a painting she could not understand. She was a high-speed train, racing toward a new and shiny station—or a wreck.
Sunday afternoon passed slowly. It was like waiting to be put into a game. You sat on the bench feeling sick and scared, needing action but fearing failure. The minute you were in, the sick feeling went away. You were fighting; it was good.
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