The Gypsy Game (19 page)

At dinner that night, even though April was being careful to act perfectly normal, Caroline seemed to guess that something was wrong. She kept watching with a worried look on her face, and then, when they were just finishing the banana pudding, she came right out and asked.

“April dear,” she said, “is anything the matter?”

April looked up quickly and smiled a perfectly normal smile. “The matter?” she said brightly. “Why do you think something’s the matter?”

She thought she’d been very convincing, but a few minutes later Caroline asked, “Is it something about Toby? Did you hear something more about Toby this afternoon?”

Fortunately, right at that very moment the phone rang, and it was “the usual” calling for April.

April barely had time to say “Hi” before Melanie said, “Look. Could you come down as soon as you finish eating dinner? My mom says it’s okay. I want to talk to you. Privately.”

“Yeah,” April said, “me too. But what about Marshall?”

Melanie knew what she meant. “Oh, he won’t bother us tonight,” she said. “My mom’s taking care of Jeremy tonight while his folks go to the movies. You know, Jeremy. The kid Marshall always plays with at day care. They’re too busy playing cards to bother us.”

At least that was what April thought she’d said. “Playing cards?” she said in amazement. Everybody knew that Marshall was pretty sharp for his age, but even smart four-year-olds usually aren’t into stuff like bridge or gin rummy.

“Not cards,” Melanie said. “Cars! You know, like toy cars and trucks. Anyway, can you come?”

Since it wasn’t a school night, Caroline said okay, as soon as April finished putting the dishes in the dishwasher. And Melanie was right about Marshall’s not being a nuisance for once. He and his friend were right there pushing things around the living room floor, but they were much too busy to be interested in April’s arrival. And once the girls were in Melanie’s room, they certainly didn’t have to worry about being overheard. Not over the living room’s roaring motors and screeching brakes.

“It’s gruesome about Toby, isn’t it,” Melanie said, as soon as the door was closed behind them.

April nodded. “You can say that again.”

They kicked off their shoes and sat down cross-legged on Melanie’s bed. For a moment they just sat there staring and thinking, and then, at the very same instant, they both shivered and said, “Gruesome!”

It felt good. With all the rotten stuff about Toby to worry about, it was great to have something to feel good about. Something like being mind-reading-type friends again. Melanie’s weak grin said as much. They both sighed deeply then and began to talk about Toby.

“Nothing,” April said. “I mean, what in the world could we possibly do? We can’t go back to that crummy place again, and what could we do if we did? We couldn’t make him leave if he doesn’t want to.”

Melanie nodded. “I know. We absolutely can’t go back there. It would be too dangerous. And even if we did go back in a few days”—she paused—“in a few days he might not be there anymore.”

“What do you mean, he wouldn’t be there? Where do you think he’s going to …” But then suddenly she knew what Melanie was thinking. Trying to keep her voice calm, April said, “You mean you think he might be dead by then?”

Melanie only nodded and blinked. Her big eyes looked liquid, as if she wasn’t far from crying. She swallowed hard before she said, “April, I think we’ve got to tell someone.” When April frowned and shook her head, Melanie went on quickly, with her voice getting higher and shakier, “I know what you think about finking. And I do, too. But it’s just that even finking can’t be as bad as letting somebody starve to death or catch a terrible disease or maybe even get murdered.”

April shook her head stubbornly. “But we promised. We all did. We promised Toby we wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“I know, I know, but I’ve been thinking and thinking about Toby, and what I’ve decided is …”

“Yes? What have you decided?” April’s chin was jutting and her eyes were narrow.

Melanie gulped and went on, “I’ve decided that when all the choices are terrible, you have to choose the one that’s not as terrible as the other ones. And nothing could be as bad as not to do anything and then find out that Toby …” She paused. “It’s like my mom says about people who know something terrible is happening, but they don’t do anything about it. My mom says people like that have bloody hands.”

April went on shaking her head.

But Melanie was determined to finish what she had to say. “And besides, what if Toby made us promise because
he’s thinking something that isn’t true? Like, maybe he thinks his grandparents are going to hire hit men to get his dad if he doesn’t give Toby to them. But it could be that Toby is just exaggerating, like always.”

“Yeah, I never did believe that stuff about hit men,” April said.

“Or maybe Toby honestly thinks his dad was lying and he’s planning to let those people have him. Toby could have heard something that made him think that his dad would do that, when he actually wouldn’t.” Melanie paused and thought and then went on, “You know, I don’t think his dad would do that. It’s like, when Toby’s dad was there in the storage yard that time, I just got this strong feeling that he was really, really worried about Toby. Didn’t you?”

April’s head shaking had stopped, but she wasn’t nodding in agreement either. All she remembered thinking about Andre Alvillar was that he was pretty weird. On the other hand, however, she could see how Toby might have misunderstood what his father was going to do. In her experience, kids and grown-ups went around misunderstanding each other most of the time.

“Okay,” April said. “Okay. But I don’t see how we could help straighten things out between them. Do you?”

“Well, that’s just what I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been thinking that maybe we could talk to him. To Toby’s father. And kind of make up our own minds about him. About whether he thinks Toby’s grandparents have hit men, and if he’s actually planning to give Toby up.”

“You mean call him on the phone?”

Melanie nodded. “Maybe. Or—”

April interrupted. “That wouldn’t do any good. It’s too
easy to pretend on the phone. You know, when the other person can’t see your face, it’s easy to say anything.”

“Well, then, maybe we could go see him. Tomorrow’s Saturday. And in the morning we could call him up and just ask if we could come over and talk to him.”

“No, that’s no good. If he knows we’re coming, he’ll be all ready for us. I mean he’ll have some big story ready to tell us.” April thought for a second before she went on, “I think it would be better just to call up to see if he’s at home, and then if he answers, we’ll know he’s home and we can—”

“Right. And if he answers, we could just ask him if he’s heard anything more about Toby. And not say anything about coming to see him. And then we could hurry over and …”

Melanie paused and after a moment they both said, “Yeah,” in unison again.

BY THE TIME April went back upstairs, they had it all planned. In the morning they would call Andre Alvillar first, to see if he was home. And then they would call Ken to see if he could go, too. Not that April really thought it would do any good. “He won’t go,” she said. “He’s too mad at Toby. He probably wouldn’t do anything at all to help Toby now.”

So the plan probably wouldn’t include Ken. And it definitely wouldn’t include Marshall or Elizabeth, because even in the best of circumstances the Alvillar studio wasn’t a great place to take little kids. And tomorrow there would be more important things to do than keeping an eye on Marshall and trying to calm down Elizabeth if something scared her. Tomorrow all their attention would have to be on watching Andre Alvillar and trying to decide whether to tell him that Toby was all right. Or where Toby was. Or, maybe, not anything at all.

In bed that night, as she waited to go to sleep, April kept picturing what it would be like tomorrow at the studio and imagining all the things that could go wrong. In her imaginings scary things kept happening, like the huge metal-covered door clanging shut behind them and locking itself so that they couldn’t get out. And nobody answering
when they called and called and then a strange hairy creature with fiery eyes jumping out at them as they tried to find their way across the enormous cluttered attic.

Then, after she finally went to sleep, the imagined images began to turn into dream scenarios even more incredibly frightening. Scenes in which she and Melanie were chained to the wall in a kind of dungeon, and a strange hairy man kept yelling at them and threatening them with a whip. He was right in the middle of yelling about how they were going to be punished for having bloody hands when April woke up with a start and sat straight up in bed with her heart pounding. It was still dark, so she turned on the light to check the clock. To her surprise it was only a little after four o’clock so after a few minutes she turned the light off. But not before she’d inspected her hands very carefully.

“They’re not bloody,” she whispered into the darkness, and tried not to imagine a voice answering, “Not yet.”

The next morning April and Melanie called the Alvillars’ number from the kitchen phone in April’s apartment. Caroline had gone out shopping, so they had the apartment to themselves. Since it had been her idea, Melanie did the calling, and afterward April had to admit that she had done a good job. She’d found out that Andre Alvillar was home, but she hadn’t said anything about coming to see him.

“What did he say?” April wanted to know as soon as Melanie hung up the phone. “How did he sound?”

“He just said he hadn’t heard anything more. And he wanted to know if I had.”

“Did he sound strange? You know, nervous or guilty or anything.”

Melanie thought for a moment and then nodded. “He
sounded strange all right. Maybe like he was really worried. Or guilty. I guess it could be guilty.”

April nodded knowingly and picked up the phone. She wanted to be the one to make the next call, even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. And sure enough, Ken’s response was just what she had said it would be.

“You’re going to what?” he raved. “You can’t do that. We promised. We promised we wouldn’t—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” April was saying, but when Ken went right on raving, she yelled,
“Will you shut up for a minute and listen!”

April just went on yelling, drowning Ken out, until he finally ran down long enough for her to get a word in edgewise.

“What I’m trying to tell you is we’re not going there to tell him where Toby is. We may not tell him anything. We just want to see if we can figure out why Toby won’t go home. And then—”

“Huh,” Ken interrupted. “Good luck. I mean, good luck figuring out why Toby Alvillar does anything anymore. What I think is, the dude has just plain gone crazy.”

April was yelling again, telling Ken she didn’t care what he thought and how he could just forget it, when Melanie took the phone away from her and said, “Ken. Ken, this is Melanie now. Could you just listen for a minute? I want to tell you why we decided we had to go see Toby’s father.”

Then she went on telling Ken all the things that might happen to Toby if he stayed in that horrible place any longer and why she and April thought he might have run away because of some misunderstanding.

“So we just want to talk to his dad now and, you know, try to decide what we ought to do. And we thought maybe you could help us decide.”

Silence. A long, nervous-making silence, before Ken said, “Oh, just talk to him, huh? And then decide? Is that all?” Another long pause, and he went on, “When? When are you going to Toby’s place?”

“Pretty soon, I guess. We already asked our folks if we could go to that new game store this morning. You know, Tommy Toy’s Toys and Games? And that’s not far from where Toby lives, so we thought we’d just—”

“Okay, I get it,” Ken interrupted. “Okay. If I decide to come, I’ll meet you there, at the game store. In about half an hour. Okay?” But before Melanie could answer, he added, “Maybe I’ll be there and maybe I won’t.” Then the phone went dead.

When April and Melanie started out for Tommy Toy’s on the way to Andre Alvillar’s studio, they didn’t really know whether Ken would show up or not.

“I hope he does,” Melanie said as they started down Orchard Avenue. “I’d feel better if there were three of us.”

April surprised herself by saying, “Me too.” It wasn’t every day that she’d choose to have a cocky, know-it-all sixth-grade boy along on any kind of project, but somehow today was different. What made it different was remembering a lot of scary stuff, like how strange Toby’s father had been that day when they were all in the studio, as well as remembering the humongous dirty attic itself, with its statues that looked like piles of junk, and piles of junk so high they almost looked like statues. And how the whole place
made you feel as if you’d stumbled into some kind of weird alien world. Yes, she had to admit, this was one time she really was hoping for Ken Kamata’s company.

But when they got to the game shop, Ken wasn’t there. They waited as long as they dared, walking up and down the aisles watching some little kids trying to decide how to spend their Christmas money and then, after they’d hung around for a long time without buying anything, watching how one of the clerks had started eyeing them suspiciously.

Finally, when the clerk came over for the third time to ask if she could help them, Melanie said, “No, thank you. Actually, we’re just waiting for a friend, but we’re leaving now.” She nudged April with her elbow. “Aren’t we, April?”

“Yeah, waiting for a friend,” April agreed. “But I guess he’s not coming, so we might as well go.”

They left Tommy Toy’s then and went on, walking slowly up University Avenue, stopping to look in windows and to look back over their shoulders to see if Ken might still show up. But they were mainly walking slowly, April knew, simply to put off arriving at the studio as long as possible. At least she knew that was her reason, and she suspected it was Melanie’s, too.

But at last there it was, the crummy old building with the bar and pool hall downstairs and, running along beside it, the narrow cluttered alley. And then, halfway down the alley, the rusty iron staircase that led up to the second floor.