The Deceivers

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  But when Emma knocked the pillow to the floor, it had landed oddly. Half the heart was white; half was purple.

  And in the middle, on the jagged line that divided the white from the purple, one row of sequins stood straight up, as if they couldn’t make up their minds which way to go. One or two of the sequins were even broken—bent or warped in a way that made it seem like they would never lay right again, in either direction. Emma squinted thoughtfully at the narrow, jagged line that was neither white nor purple, but clear, see-through.

  And then Emma leaped up, snatched the pink pillow from the ground, and screamed, “That’s it! This is the clue we needed! Now I know how to find Mom!”

  Three

  Chess

  Clearly Emma had lost it.

  “Um, Emma, just because that’s a heart, it doesn’t mean it’s from Joe,” Chess said. And though he tried to sound comforting and big-brother-ish and as if he could take care of everything, his voice came out sounding nothing but sad. He didn’t know how to sound any other way lately.

  For the umpteenth time in the past two weeks, he wished that their last moments with access to the other world had ended differently. What if Chess hadn’t pulled the lever that shut the tunnel to the other world forever? What if he’d shoved all the other kids—and Ms. Morales—to safety, and then marched back to confront the awful people chasing them?

  What if Chess had run even farther back once everyone else was safe, and found Joe, the mysterious man who’d helped them escape and promised to rescue their mother, too?

  Chess was sure Joe had failed. If there was any chance Mom and Joe had escaped from the other dimension, Mom would have come and found the three Greystone kids immediately.

  “I know this isn’t from Joe!” Emma said. She was practically jumping up and down, holding the pink sequined pillow in the air like a trophy. “The heart he showed us was red, and it was drawn by Finn. Joe was using it as a symbol. Nobody wanted this heart to mean anything except, I guess, ‘Sorry you poor kids lost your moms.’ They weren’t trying to tell us anything else. But the sequins, the sequins—they helped me figure out everything!”

  It hurt Chess’s eyes to watch Emma move so quickly when he felt so sluggish. But finally her words sank in.

  “Everything?” Chess whispered.

  “Yes!” Emma spun around, as if the pillow were a dance partner. “See, I was all wrong in how I was thinking of the other world. I was thinking of it as being underground, and so we needed to find another tunnel. With another lever to open the tunnel, and another spinning room to burrow through.”

  “Isn’t that what we need?” Natalie asked.

  “No,” Emma said. “I mean, I guess that would work, if we found it, but we’ve been trying for two weeks, and it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Or a single basement tunnel on a planet with millions of basements. We don’t even know if there is another tunnel. But we’ve already got what we need to get back to the other world. We had it all along. Like Dorothy had the ruby slippers that would get her back to Kansas practically the whole time she was in Oz.”

  Automatically, Chess glanced toward Emma’s feet. She was wearing red sneakers, her favorites. But he didn’t think that was what she meant.

  “Look,” Emma said, holding out the pillow. “Think of our world and the other world like this heart. Let’s say we’re purple, and they’re white.” She ran her hand back and forth over the sequins, flipping the colors, white to purple, purple to white. “The worlds are underneath each other, but they’re also above and beside. Every molecule of their world is crammed in between every molecule of our world. Like the white side of the sequins are all in between the purple sides. Every sequin is both things at once. And it’s clear in between. There’s part of the sequin that touches both the white side and the purple. So every part of our world is connected to the other world!”

  Sometimes Emma made Chess’s brain hurt. He did perfectly well in math and science at school—his teachers always praised him as a good student. But he couldn’t flip his brain inside out thinking wild thoughts as much as Emma could.

  Looking at the pillow did kind of help. He understood two-sided sequins. He understood how the heart changed from one color to the other, and how every sequin had a middle that was neither white nor purple.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “But what’s that got to do with Mom and—”

  “It means we can go back to the other world anywhere!” Emma said. “We can crawl through any sequin!”

  Chess glanced toward Natalie, hoping she could read his mind: Please don’t tell Emma she’s crazy. Please play along. Remember, she’s only ten. Natalie was squinting at the pillow just as intensely as Emma.

  “I’m trying to understand,” Natalie said. “Really I am. But this is like when Mom and I go back to Mexico and her relatives are all speaking Spanish a million miles a minute, and I can’t keep up. Translate, por favor. The two sides of the sequins are the two worlds, and the way to ‘crawl’ from one side to the other is . . . is . . .”

  Chess could tell that Emma was trying not to look disappointed with him and Natalie.

  “With the lever,” Emma said. “The lever we tore off the wall when we closed the tunnel. It’s the key, the connection between the two worlds, the thing that opens the route. The lever itself isn’t broken—it’s just that location that’s off-limits now. Like this sequin.” She tapped one of the ruined sequins, showing how it was too warped now to flip colors. “The lever is like a bridge through the middle, from one side to the other. And the lever will still work in other places besides our basement. I’m sure of it!”

  Chess and Natalie both gaped at Emma for a long moment before Chess said gently, “Emma, we don’t actually have that lever. It’s still back at our house.”

  “Right,” Emma replied. “So we have to get Natalie’s dad to take us there.” She dropped the heart pillow and started tugging on Natalie’s arm, pulling the other girl toward the stairs. “Come on. Let’s go signal Finn to bring your dad back!”

  Chess watched the two girls run up the stairs. They didn’t need his help with the blinds. But he sat up straight, feeling his first glimmer of hope in two weeks. He believed Emma’s theory was . . . possible, at least. He picked up the pillow Emma had dropped and brushed his fingers back and forth against the sequins. The way they flipped from one color to another could stand for lots of things.

  Purple, white . . . this world, that world . . . hope, fear . . .

  Chess’s stomach clenched. Last time they’d gone into the other world to rescue Mom, they’d only ended up losing Ms. Morales and Joe.

  What if something even worse happened this time?

  Four

  Finn

  “What’s the plan?” Finn whispered to Natalie while Mr. Mayhew put the baseball gloves and ball away. “How are we going to ditch your dad? Or are we telling him everything and taking him with us?”

  “We’re not putting Dad in danger,” Natalie said firmly. “And . . . we’re not giving him a chance to be overprotective and refuse to let us go rescue our moms. We’re keeping him in the dark.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Finn said, waiting. Sometimes Natalie could be like a general giving orders to her troops. You didn’t rush her.

  Mr. Mayhew came back from the garage. Finn saw how Natalie, Chess, and Emma were lined up in the foyer. All three of them were bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked—totally transformed from the gloomy, droopy kids they’d been before.

  Finn elbowed Natalie, and she had the sense to slump a little. Finn raced over to wrap his arms around Chess and Emma.

  “I missed you!” he pretended to wail. “I’m glad the two of you didn’t disappear like Mom!”

  He took a quick peek over his shoulder. Mr. Mayhew was gulping and looking away. During one of their pitch-and-catch sessions, he’d told Finn he never knew what to do when anyone cried.

  “Hey!” Mr. Mayhew said, too loudly. “Want to go out for dinner tonight? I’m
thinking the Rusty Barrel would be fun. What do you think?”

  Natalie looped her elbow through Mr. Mayhew’s.

  “That’s a great idea!” she said. “But can we stop on the way? I have that science project on leaves due tomorrow, and we get extra credit for having certain ones. Chess and Emma told me about some weird trees by the pond near their house—maybe I can find the leaves I need there.”

  Finn let go of Emma and Chess just in time to see Mr. Mayhew frown.

  “I’m not sure we should—” he began.

  “Are you worried about us, Mr. Mayhew?” Emma said. “Chess, Finn, and me, we’ll be fine. It won’t bother us to be back in our old neighborhood. We can just wait in the car. No problem.”

  Emma was really, really good at about nine billion things, but acting wasn’t one of them. Finn didn’t know the plan yet, but he could tell that Emma had no intention of waiting in any car.

  Fortunately, Natalie was maneuvering her dad toward the door, and he probably didn’t notice.

  “Let’s go before it gets dark!” Natalie said.

  Mr. Mayhew didn’t have an SUV like Natalie’s mom, or a station wagon like Mom. He had a little red sports car with barely any back seat. That meant that when Natalie sat in the front with her dad, the three Greystone kids had to fit themselves into an area that was probably not meant for anything bigger than a briefcase. Chess’s legs were so long that his bent knees came up to Finn’s ears; Emma solved the space problem by curling into a ball and wrapping her arms around Finn in the middle.

  Finn actually loved riding in the back of Mr. Mayhew’s car. He loved being squashed together with Emma and Chess. It made him feel like they were all puppies or kittens, jumbled together. Like they were still a family, even without Mom.

  It also made whispering easier.

  “We’re all sneaking over to our house, right?” he whispered to Emma as she hugged him close, because there wasn’t room not to. Her arms were like a second seat belt. “How—”

  “Shh,” Emma said, glancing worriedly toward the front seat. “Just Chess and me. You and Natalie stay by the pond with Mr. Mayhew and keep him distracted until we get back.”

  “I always have to do the distracting!” Finn protested. “You promised—” Finn couldn’t help himself. His wail rose over the music Mr. Mayhew always kept pumped up in his car. Today it was about someone being wanted, dead or alive.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Mayhew,” Chess shouted toward the front seat. “Emma and I are taking care of Finn.”

  Mr. Mayhew nodded. But maybe he was just nodding along with the music.

  “No one’s going back to rescue Mom yet,” Emma hissed into Finn’s ear. “We’re just picking up . . . supplies. The right tool.”

  Did Chess and Emma know the right tool for getting back to the other world and rescuing Mom? Had they figured out that much?

  That was enough to make Finn beam at Emma. And then he was the one who had to duck down and hide his smile.

  But when they pulled up by the pond in their own neighborhood, Finn felt a weird little gurgle in his stomach. The last time they’d seen this pond, it had been the other world’s version, and Finn, Emma, Chess, and Natalie had been running away from a big, scary place alongside three kids they’d rescued from being kidnapped.

  There was a secret about those other kids that Finn didn’t like thinking about. Those other kids, who were named Rocky, Emma, and Finn Gustano, had been kidnapped and taken to the other world because some bad guys thought they belonged to Mom. If the bad guys had really known what they were doing, they would have kidnapped Chess, Emma, and Finn Greystone instead.

  The Gustanos’ mom and Finn’s mom were just the two different worlds’ versions of the same person. And it was the Greystones, not the Gustanos, who actually belonged in the awful other world.

  Finn tried not to think about any of that. All he wanted to think about was getting Mom back.

  No—he only wanted to think about having Mom back. It would be okay with Finn if they all skipped ahead in time, past all the danger of going back to the other world and rescuing Mom. It’d be great if they could get the rescuing behind them, go back to their normal lives here in this world, and totally forget that the other world even existed.

  Just like the Gustanos had been able to go back to their normal lives, reunited with their parents. They didn’t have to think about the other world anymore.

  Don’t worry about the pond, Finn told himself. It’s just water. You’re not afraid of water. You know how to swim!

  This pond was also pretty, with flowering bushes around it, and picnic tables and a swing set off to the side. The version of the pond they’d seen in the other world had looked dead and gloomy—maybe it was even poison, because nothing grew around it.

  Finn’s stomach wasn’t gurgling because he was scared of this pond. It was because being near the pond reminded him how scared he was of the other world.

  If a stupid old pond could scare him, he was kind of glad he didn’t have to go back to their house with Chess and Emma.

  But I’d do it if I had to, he told himself. I’d do anything to get Mom back.

  Mr. Mayhew turned off the car, and Natalie whirled around to face Finn.

  “Chess and Emma, we’ll be quick, I promise,” she said. “Finn, you never like sitting still, do you? It would help if you come with Dad and me. Dad could hold you up to get leaves from the tallest trees. You wouldn’t mind doing that, would you?”

  “Sounds like fun!” Finn made himself exclaim.

  Natalie helped pull him out of the back seat. He took a deep breath as soon as he had his feet firmly on the sidewalk. The air smelled like lilacs, nothing at all like the foul smell of the other world.

  “I’m not sure how long it will take Chess and Emma,” Natalie whispered, bending down to his level. “We may have to act really stupid about finding the right trees. You be the lookout—let me know when Chess and Emma are back in the car.”

  And then Mr. Mayhew was out of the car beside them, and Natalie switched to exclaiming, “How much do you know about trees, Dad? Can you tell which ones are unusual?”

  As Natalie pulled her dad down toward the pond, Finn looked back over his shoulder. Chess and Emma were already out of the car, bent low and half tiptoeing, half sprinting down the sidewalk. Finn felt a little pang, even though he trusted his brother and sister one hundred percent. If they said they wouldn’t go to the other world without him, they truly wouldn’t. Not if they could help it.

  But what if something happens, and they can’t help it? he wondered. What if they think they’re just picking up whatever they need, but the tunnel opens again when they don’t expect it, and they get sucked into the other world by mistake? And then they’re trapped, too?

  Finn knew he should turn around and help Natalie keep her dad looking at trees and leaves. But he kept facing backward a moment longer.

  That’s how he came to see a dark car park far down the block. A man with close-cropped hair got out of the car and began doing elaborate stretches that involved propping first one foot, then the other, against the hood of his car, and bending down to touch his chin to his knees again and again.

  It struck Finn that those exercises put the man in the perfect position to watch Mr. Mayhew’s car and Chess and Emma as they sprinted away.

  And it struck Finn that the man’s exercise clothes were all navy blue and orange. All the mean people in the other world had worn navy blue and orange.

  So what? Sometimes people in this world wear navy blue and orange, too, Finn told himself. It could just be a—what’s it called?—a coincidence.

  Still, Finn decided he needed to stay close to the street and keep an eye on the man who seemed only to be pretending to exercise.

  From down closer to the pond, he heard Natalie tell her dad, “No, I don’t think that’s just an ordinary willow tree. Hold that branch still so I can take a picture and do an image search on my phone. Finn? What are you doing? Ca
n you come help us?”

  “Just a minute,” Finn said. “I’m . . . tying my shoe.”

  And then he really did dip down and pretend to fiddle with his shoelaces. It was a shame he couldn’t shout back, I’m doing something more important here! You have to handle your dad by yourself!

  When he stood back up, he glanced first toward Chess and Emma, who were two blocks away now, and moving fast. While Finn watched, they turned the corner, out of sight.

  What if there was another guy in blue and orange just around the corner? What if it was another kidnapper? Finn wouldn’t be able to stand it if anything happened to Chess and Emma.

  He really wouldn’t be able to stand it if something happened to Chess and Emma, and Finn could have stopped it—but didn’t.

  He glanced back toward the stretching man. Now Exercise Guy was in a half crouch with one ankle braced against the other knee, as if he wanted to sit crisscross applesauce in midair.

  Just an ordinary runner getting ready to jog, Finn told himself. That’s all. It’s just a guy from this world, doing normal this-world stuff.

  The man finished his stretches and took off running toward Finn—and toward the street where Chess and Emma had turned.

  I’ll just watch until he goes past, Finn told himself. Or until he’s past that street, and he doesn’t turn, so I know he’s not following Chess and Emma.

  The man was getting closer and closer. Finn ducked down behind Mr. Mayhew’s car, but he could still see the man through the car windows.

  The man’s face looked familiar: dark eyebrows, gray eyes, big nose, and a small mouth with deep frown lines around it.