Spyhole Secrets (4 page)

T
here 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.

“S
o 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.

T
hat 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 looked 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.

The thing was, Mom and Ellen had been in art shows together before, and what usually happened was that lots of people bought Ellen’s huge blurry landscapes and hardly anyone bought Mom’s small, neat still lifes and portraits.

The talk about paintings was still going on when the Volvo turned onto Green Street. Ellen pulled over to the curb and said, “Okay, Hallie. Out you go. The Goldbergs are counting on you for lunch. Emma says Marty’s so excited she can’t see straight.”

So then came knocking on the Goldbergs’ front door and lots of kisses from Marty and her parents, not to mention Beowolf, their humongous Russian wolfhound. Lunch was okay because Marty and her parents only talked about things that were
happening in Bloomfield, like the new mall and the computer classrooms at Hill Creek Middle School. But then her parents went back to work and Marty took Hallie out to the porch swing for a private talk. Just the way she always used to do, Marty tucked her long legs up under her, rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, and grinned her sideways grin before she began to talk.

At first it felt okay. Hallie was glad to be sitting on the Goldbergs’ porch swing again, talking to Marty. At first, but not for very long, because things were not the same and it was no use trying to pretend they were. And it soon became obvious that Marty was pretending much too hard. So the anger had begun to churn around deep down in the pit of Hallie’s stomach even before Marty started to run down Hill Creek Middle School.

“Oh, school? It’s okay, I guess,” Marty said. “An awful lot of homework, though. Lots more than we ever had at Lincoln. And some of the teachers are really old-fashioned and strict.” She shrugged and sighed and, watching Hallie out of the corners of her eyes, went on, “I guess you’re really lucky to be going to school in Irvington.”

That was a lie and they both knew it. Marty had always been a good student and, just the other day, on the phone, her mother had told Hallie’s mom how much she liked Hill Creek.

Hallie was getting the picture. The things Marty
was saying were just a bunch of lies that were supposed to make Hallie feel better about having to leave Bloomfield. As if Marty thought she was too much of a mental case to deal with the truth.

And it got worse when Marty started talking about Irvington Middle School. Saying things like “I’ve heard that sixth graders at Irvington can sign up for drama classes, and there’s a skiing field trip in February. You’re going to go, aren’t you? I wish Hill Creek had a ski trip. And drama classes. I’d really like that.” That last part, at least, was the truth. Marty had always wanted to be an actress.

Hallie shrugged and said she guessed she would go on the ski trip. She’d made up her mind not to gripe about Irvington to Marty, even if she had to tell some humongous lies about all the new friends she was making and stuff like that. But by then she was so fed up with Marty’s treating her like some kind of a basket case, she suddenly decided she was through with pretending. “It’s the pits,” she said. “I hate it.”

That did it. Right away Marty stopped even trying to act normal. Untucking her legs, she sat up straight and began to talk the way she had at the funeral, as if Hallie were some kind of pitiful psycho who might start bouncing off the walls if anybody said the wrong thing to her.

For the next few minutes Marty went on and on, sounding exactly like the counselor Hallie had been taken to see right after the accident. Hallie listened in
amazement to the same Marty who used to make up private languages so nobody else could understand what she and Hallie were talking about. And crazy stuff like having a secret hand signal that meant that the next thing you said was going to mean just the opposite. That same Marty went on and on in some kind of school counselor-speak. “I know how that must make you feel. But just you wait. My mom says she had to go to a lot of different schools when she was growing up, and she says all you have to do is hang in there for a little while and …”

But by then Hallie had all she could take of Marty the psychologist, so she just tuned her out and started thinking about something else. Like why she’d ever imagined she might be able to tell Marty about her secret spyhole and what she’d been seeing through it. As soon as she possibly could she started pretending that she was expected back at Ellen’s right away.

It was a long way from the Goldbergs’ house to Ellen’s, particularly if you took a detour down Hillview Street as far as number 309. By the time she got to Ellen’s, a couple of hours had passed, and Ellen and Mom had been worrying about her.

“Why on earth did you do such a thing?” Ellen roared as she pounced on Hallie like an angry pit bull. “Worrying your poor mother like that. You know I’d have come to pick you up if you’d called me.” She was holding on to Hallie’s shoulders as if
she were about to shake the living daylights out of her, and for a second Hallie really wished she would. Wished Ellen would shake her really hard so she could yell back at her and throw herself on the ground and have a real screaming tantrum. But Ellen didn’t do any actual shaking, so all Hallie could say was “Yeah, I know. It turned out to be a dumb idea.”

Actually, it had been a whole lot dumber than Ellen knew, or could even imagine. Maybe it had been pretty stupid not to think about Mom and Ellen wondering where she was and worrying about her. But it was even dumber to walk all that way to 309 Hillview Street just to stand there outside the fence staring at the house where she used to live, and at a couple of little kids playing on the jungle gym Dad built for her. And dumbest of all, for some reason, was staring at one of Zeus’s beat-up old tennis balls that was still lying under the hedge right where he’d probably left it the day his new owners came to get him.