The Deceivers

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  But Finn couldn’t help seeing that somebody (probably the cops) had cleaned up the jars that had broken when they came crashing down from the collapsing shelves. All the toppled cans appeared to have been left in place, though.

  Oh, because someone might get hurt on the broken glass, and the cans don’t matter, Finn told himself. And the food in the cans won’t start rotting and stinking up the basement, like the food from the broken jars would.

  He liked that it made sense, what the cops had done.

  Then he saw a rod made of metal—or maybe stone—propped against the broken shelves.

  “Wait—isn’t that the lever?” he asked Chess and Emma, pointing toward the back wall and the rod. “It’s not missing. The cops just moved it! Maybe because they thought they needed to hold up the shelves?”

  “You’re right!” Emma hugged Finn, then raced toward the lever. She picked her way through the piles of upended cans as though they were an obstacle course in gym class. She grabbed the lever. Then, instantly, she dropped it back on the floor. She clutched her face in her hands.

  “No, we’re wrong!” she moaned. “That wasn’t propping up anything, and the cops wouldn’t have moved it. So why is it here instead of there?” She pointed to the outline in dust on the floor. “What if it was somebody who knows about the other world who moved it?”

  The color drained from her face. She dropped to her knees in the mess of overturned cans. Finn hoped that whoever cleaned up the broken glass had done a really, really good job.

  “Oh no, oh no,” Emma groaned. “What if the person who moved it . . . was from the other world?”

  Eight

  Emma

  Sometimes ideas came to Emma so fast that they crashed into each other, like cars whose drivers weren’t paying attention.

  “We could have looked for fingerprints—or the cops could, if we wanted their help—but I probably just messed that up!” she wailed. “I touched it!”

  Chess and Finn stared at her as if they couldn’t catch up.

  “How do you know it wasn’t the cops who moved that?” Finn asked.

  “Logic,” Emma said. “Why would they pick up the lever but leave all the fallen cans in place? Remember how the security guard said they’re treating this like a crime scene? The cops didn’t move anything they didn’t have to move. And . . . you can tell the lever lay right there on the floor until just recently. Nobody moved that lever for at least a week. Because there’s the outline of dust around the place where we left it.”

  “The dust could give us other clues,” Chess said. “Whoever moved the lever might have left footprints. We should look for footprints.”

  But Chess, Finn, and Emma—mostly Emma—had already walked around too much in the secret room. If there’d been footprints left behind by whoever moved the lever, the kids had destroyed those, too.

  “Hey, kids! Hurry up and let’s go get dinner! Aren’t you starving?” Emma heard Mr. Mayhew yell from above.

  “Quick, Finn,” Emma said, spinning back toward her little brother. “Take off your shirt.”

  “What?” Finn protested.

  “So we have something to wrap the lever in, so we don’t mess up any fingerprints that are still on it,” Emma said. “And so Mr. Mayhew doesn’t see what we carry out of here. We can say you got that shirt dirty, and you need another one from your room.”

  “Fine,” Finn said. He yanked his shirt over his head and tossed it to Emma. Then he tugged Chess’s arm. “Come on, Chess. Come with me to get a shirt upstairs.”

  You shouldn’t need Chess’s help getting a shirt from your own room, Emma wanted to complain to Finn. But she caught a glimpse of his pale, pinched face, the usual dimples in his cheeks totally gone. He was scared just of walking upstairs to his own room.

  Finn and Chess ducked back through the secret door, Chess calling politely up the stairs to Mr. Mayhew, “We’re almost ready! We just need one more thing. . . .”

  And then Emma was alone. Alone in the secret room that had once been capable of turning into a secret tunnel—alone in the room where they’d lost Ms. Morales. Emma shivered.

  “Stop that,” she said aloud. “Focus.”

  She picked up Finn’s bright yellow T-shirt from the pile of cans where it had landed. She shook out the wrinkles, and pulled the shirt over her hand like a glove. Then she picked up the lever. She started to fold Finn’s shirt around the lever, but then she stopped.

  What if I try the lever in a different room of our house? she wondered. Not to actually go to the other world, not right now. But just to see if my theory’s correct, to see if it can open anything in another place. . . .

  Carrying the partially wrapped lever in one hand, she ducked out of the secret room, then retreated from the Boring Room as well. She stepped over the pile of dropped Hot Wheels cars and came to a halt beside Rocket’s kitty litter pan. No one had bothered cleaning the litter two weeks ago, the last time they were in the house, so it was still clumpy and nasty. Kitty litter was the most ordinary thing in the world; in a weird way, Emma felt safer standing next to Rocket’s kitty litter than anywhere else in the basement.

  I could try this wall, see if the lever can connect here and turn in either direction, Emma told herself. Maybe this is far enough away from the ruined spot. If it works, I’d have such good news to tell the others. . . .

  Emma stood staring at the wall, gripping the lever. She thought about how scared she’d been, each trip she’d made from the secret room to the other world. She thought about how terrified she’d been just moments earlier, when the security guard slammed her and Chess to the ground.

  Emma made no move to touch the lever to the wall. She couldn’t. Not while she was alone.

  I’m a coward, too, she thought sadly. I’m just as frightened as Finn.

  Nine

  Chess

  Dinner lasted forever. Chess tried to pay attention to Mr. Mayhew’s fake happy chatter at the Rusty Barrel; he tried not to leave it entirely to Finn and Natalie to hold up the conversation. But the Rusty Barrel was one of those restaurants with loud music and flashing lights and people screaming constantly. Just about every time Chess tried to say something, his voice was drowned out by the roving band of waitstaff clapping and shouting in another part of the restaurant, “Happy, happy birthday! It’s your special day. . . .”

  Even when his life was normal, Chess had hated places like the Rusty Barrel.

  Tonight was so much worse. Chess felt like he had to cover for Emma sitting in almost trance-like silence, her dark eyes unfocused, her jittery fingers tapping the table. For all Chess knew, she might be spelling Morse code versions of secrets she was figuring out—what was Morse code for The sequined pillow revealed all? But none of her brilliant deductions would do any good if Mr. Mayhew decided Emma was so far gone she needed medical attention and whisked her away.

  So in addition to having to remember to eat his own chicken sandwich, carrots, and fruit, he had to keep nudging Emma to remind her to dip her spoon into her macaroni-and-cheese-and-broccoli mix and bring the spoon up to her mouth. Sometimes he even had to nudge her to remind her to chew and swallow.

  But finally, after an eternity, dinner ended and Mr. Mayhew paid the bill and they all piled back into his car. Chess, Emma, and Finn had to keep their feet up off the floor of the car to avoid stepping on the lever wrapped in Finn’s T-shirt. So on top of everything else, Chess’s legs ached from being curled up like a pretzel all the way back.

  But it will be worth it, if this helps us find Mom, Chess told himself.

  As everyone walked back into Mr. Mayhew’s house, Mr. Mayhew asked Natalie, “Sweetie, do you need me to write a note to your teacher, to explain why your leaf project is going to be a little late?”

  “No, Dad,” Natalie said in a cutting voice, as if Mr. Mayhew was being stupid. “I’ll explain, and they’ll believe me. Turns out, having a missing mom excuses everything.”

  “Um,” Mr. Mayhew said, standing help
lessly in his own foyer. Chess felt a little sorry for the man.

  “Thank you for dinner,” Chess said politely. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us. I’m sure it won’t be much longer before, uh . . .”

  Mr. Mayhew held his hands up in the air, beseechingly. Chess pretended not to see that Mr. Mayhew’s eyes had flooded with tears.

  Natalie grabbed Chess’s elbow.

  “Come on,” she said. “Help me get the little kids ready for bed.”

  They were halfway up the stairs before Chess realized that Natalie was practically shaking with rage.

  “He’s so ridiculous,” she muttered. “Mom would have been so mad at us. She would have yelled at me for hours for letting you and Emma go back to that house by yourselves. She would have figured out I was lying about needing those leaves. She would have grounded me so fast. . . .”

  “Wait a minute,” Chess said, stopping on the stairs. “Are you mad at your dad for not yelling at you? For not punishing you?”

  Natalie glanced at him from beneath lowered lashes.

  “I didn’t say it made sense,” she mumbled. Then she stopped on the stairs, too. “Except, it really does. When Mom yelled at me, I always knew she cared. And Dad . . . Dad just does what’s easiest. He never wants anyone upset with him. Not even me. Like, does he think I won’t love him anymore if he yelled at me?”

  Chess didn’t know what to say. Maybe he could have figured something out if he wasn’t so busy noticing that Natalie’s eyelashes were really, really long and pretty. And when she lifted her head and looked him full in the face . . .

  “What is wrong with you two?” Emma called from the top of the stairs. “Hurry up!”

  Chess and Natalie darted the rest of the way up the stairs.

  All four kids convened in Natalie’s room. Chess made himself leave Natalie’s side to crouch beside Finn.

  “Are you doing okay, buddy?” Chess asked, putting his arm around his little brother. “Now can you tell me how you, Natalie, and Mr. Mayhew knew to come find Emma and me? I mean, I think you saved us from being pulverized. Did you see the muscles on that guy?”

  Chess was torn. Normally he would have played up how much Finn had helped, to make Finn feel better. But was Natalie listening, too?

  Chess didn’t want to make himself sound too pitiful and weak around Natalie.

  Even though he had been pitiful and weak.

  “Natalie and me, we just told Mr. Mayhew I did a freak-out when I saw you and Emma weren’t in the car,” Finn said matter-of-factly. “But really . . . I saw a guy running after you, wearing navy blue and orange. And he looked like the guy up on the stage with Mom. You know, in the other world. But he wasn’t the guy who tackled you. And Natalie said it was probably just this world’s version of the guy on the stage that I saw. So everything’s fine. Me being wrong just helped you.” Finn leaned close to whisper, “I don’t really think that muscle guy would have beaten you up. I think he was just acting tough.”

  Sometimes Chess wished he saw the world the way Finn did. Everything always worked out for Finn. And it wasn’t just because Finn was eight and Chess was twelve that Finn was so much more happy-go-lucky, so much more carefree. Even when Chess was eight, he’d been a sad, quiet, too-grown-up child, still missing his dead father, still feeling like he needed to take care of his mom and Emma and Finn. Even if Chess went all the way back to when he was four and his dad was still alive . . . It was hard to remember, but even then, it seemed like Chess had known there were problems around him, things his parents whispered about when they thought Chess wasn’t paying attention.

  That’s because there were problems around us, Chess thought. I was just being . . . smart. Aware.

  When Chess was four and his father was still alive, the Greystones had still lived in the other world, and Chess’s parents were risking their lives to try to make it a better place.

  And that was why Chess’s dad had died. And then Mom had brought the rest of the family to this world to keep them safe.

  Emma clapped her hand against the wrapped-up lever to get everyone’s attention.

  “Okay, I’m not exactly sure how to do this, but if my theory is correct and we can get into the other world from anywhere, I should be able to fit this lever against the wall, and it’ll just . . . nestle in somehow, and then we can turn it and see if a tunnel opens into the other world,” she announced. “Is everybody ready?”

  Chess gulped. Finn said, “Sure!” Natalie said, “Absolutely.” When Chess added, “Go ahead,” he hoped nobody else noticed how much his voice shook.

  Emma kept the lever held high. She stepped over to a blank section of Natalie’s wall, between the desk and the doorway to her huge walk-in closet. Emma unwrapped one end of the lever—the end that had once attached to the wall in the secret room back at the Greystones’ house. She pressed that end of the lever against Natalie’s wall.

  Nothing happened.

  “Maybe you should try an exterior wall?” Natalie suggested. “Maybe a tunnel can’t form with the closet behind it?”

  “That shouldn’t matter, but . . . okay,” Emma said.

  She walked over to a space between Natalie’s windows and slid the lever against the wall. Nothing happened this time either, except that some of the purple paint scraped off Natalie’s wall.

  “Maybe . . . maybe it’s just not working because we’re on the second floor?” Chess asked. “Maybe if we go down to the basement . . .”

  Emma threw the lever to the floor.

  “I told you—it’s not about basements! I’m just wrong! This theory is wrong, too! We’re never going to find Mom!”

  And then Emma collapsed to the floor and began crying.

  Ten

  Finn

  Finn, Chess, and Natalie all ran over to comfort Emma.

  “We will figure it out!” Natalie said, smoothing Emma’s hair. “We have to!”

  “Don’t worry. Eventually we’ll think of something that works,” Chess said, patting Emma’s arm.

  Finn settled for patting her back. He tried to think what else he could say to make her feel better. He finally came up with: “You’re the smartest person I know! You’ve got this!”

  Emma whirled on him. She had tears rolling down her cheeks, a little line of snot wiped to the side of her nose. Her eyes were just shadows. Emma always had such happy, busy eyes—Finn often felt like he could look into her eyes and see how fast the gears of her brain were moving.

  But now her eyes looked empty and sad and still. And stuck. She looked like her brain gears were all jammed.

  “What if I’m not smart enough?” she asked. “What if none of us are? This is the three hundred and seventy-third idea I’ve tried, and I’ve failed every time. And I thought this one was different. I was so sure the lever was important! I thought I had to be right this time!”

  Chess and Natalie kept patting and smoothing, but Chess covered his face with his spare hand, and Natalie wiped her own eyes.

  Chess and Natalie were crying, too, or close to it. Neither of them said anything. Maybe they didn’t know what to say.

  “Well . . . ,” Finn began. “Maybe the lever is important, just not the way you thought. Why would someone have moved it from one place to another in the secret room if it wasn’t important? Didn’t you say we should look for fingerprints on the lever? Why don’t we try that? If we try everything we can, something has to work. Right?”

  “That’s not . . .” Emma sniffed. “I don’t think that’s statistically sound reasoning.”

  Finn had no clue what that meant, so he just kept talking.

  “Somebody help me. How do we check for fingerprints?”

  Natalie wiped the back of her hand across her face again, then pulled out her cell phone. She typed something quickly before handing Finn the phone.

  She’d called up a website about dusting for fingerprints.

  “Okay, this says we can use baking soda,” Finn said, handing the phone back. “N
atalie, your dad’s got baking soda in the kitchen, right?”

  “Probably,” Natalie said, with a sniffle of her own. “But if you go down there, he’ll want to talk to you, and—”

  “I’ll be sneaky!” Finn called back over his shoulder as he raced for the door.

  Finn didn’t really care much about fingerprinting the lever. He didn’t know if it was important or not. But he couldn’t stand seeing the others so frozen. At least if they tried to find fingerprints on the lever, they’d be doing something. Not just huddled in a heap, missing their mothers.

  When Finn got to the staircase, he switched to tiptoeing. He shouldn’t have worried about being quiet, because Mr. Mayhew had the TV downstairs cranked up loud, some sports announcer calling excitedly, “Did you see that? No one else has quite that approach. . . .”

  Finn jumped past the last three stairs, hitting the floor with a thud.

  “Natalie?” Mr. Mayhew called, spinning his chair to the side.

  Oops.

  “No, it’s me,” Finn said, holding up his hands as if to prove he was innocent. “I’m just, uh, going to the kitchen for a drink of water.” Now, why wouldn’t he get it from the bathroom upstairs? “I wanted ice.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Mayhew said. But he didn’t spin back to the game. “Is Natalie still . . . Oh, what am I saying? She lost her mother. Of course she’s still upset. She’s never going to get over that. And . . . neither am I.”

  He whispered the last part.

  Don’t think about Mom, Finn told himself. Don’t let yourself be sad like Mr. Mayhew.

  But he couldn’t help feeling a little sad for Mr. Mayhew. It suddenly seemed awful that Mr. Mayhew was sitting in his huge living room all alone, watching the basketball game all by himself. At least Finn and the other kids had each other.

  “If we Greystones weren’t here,” Finn began, “would Natalie be with you, cheering for, well, whoever you’re cheering for?”