The One Safe Place (23 page)

The first thing to decide was whether to tell the others in the Home about what was really going on in the Place. Devin and Malloy felt that it was only fair that they should know, but Luke pointed out that it might lead to unrest, which would put the Administrator and the staff on high alert. He thought their chances of escape would be better if they kept it to themselves for now. After a moment of thought, Devin agreed to this on the condition that when they did get out, they would take all the others too.

“We can’t leave anyone here,” he insisted. “Not even one.”

“I see your point,” Luke agreed, “but it’s going to make it harder.”

The talk turned to the laser posts, the control box, and the key.

In order to get a large number of children out of the Home, they would have to disarm the posts. To do this they would need three things: access to the control box, the key to unlock it, and whatever code was almost certainly needed to turn the posts off. There was a fourth requirement: enough time after the posts were disarmed to effect a mass escape. But since this would depend largely on luck, they decided to focus on the first three.

Only the first seemed doable. To gain access to the control box, they would have to get the Administrator to leave her office and stay out for as long as it took. They thought it might be possible with some sort of diversion, although it would have to be a major one.

The key was a different matter. It hung around the Administrator’s neck, and she had never been seen without it.

“Could we simply attack her?” Malloy wondered. “Knock her out or something?”

“I suppose so,” Luke said, “although it would be risky. She’s probably got alarm buttons all over the office, and if we took one step toward her, she’d set them off. Besides . . .” He looked around at the others. “No offense, but none of us is exactly that strong.”

Malloy punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“Strong enough for you?”

But even Malloy had to concede that they had a better chance of escape if they could get the key without having to attempt force.

That left the code. Luke was hoping that it was a long, complicated one because that meant that it was probably written down somewhere. But where? And how would they get the time to look? How many people knew it? The Administrator of course, and perhaps Mrs. Babbage . . .

Gabriel Penn must know it too, or know where it’s kept, Devin thought. He invented this whole place, after all.

Penn had returned within a few days of his first visit, and there seemed no reason to think he wouldn’t come back again very soon. Was there any way to find the code then? He kept the question to himself, partly because it seemed like a very slim possibility, but mostly because the thought of having to return to the Place terrified him.

I’m not strong enough, he thought; not brave enough either.

After a few more moments of talk, the boys got up and walked back to the courtyard. Apart from the diversion idea, it didn’t seem as though they’d accomplished much, and the knowledge seemed to hang heavily on all of them. Luke was particularly depressed. He walked along, his mouth moving soundlessly as if in deep and frustrating conversation with himself.

Just before they got back, he stopped and turned to the others.

“Not a word to anyone, right?” He looked hard at Devin. “You promise?”

Devin paused, and then nodded.

In the common room, Vanessa was holding court on the sofa. She had news.

“Roman’s back with a new kid. That’s what I heard.”

“Boy or girl?” someone asked.

“Boy,” Vanessa said. “But very short,” she added disdainfully. “He looks way younger than he is.”

“Where is he now?”

Vanessa smiled knowingly. “Where do you think?”

The new boy was in the dining room, eating as if his life depended on it. Which in fact it probably did, Devin thought, staring at the wispy figure hunched over a plate of steak. He was tiny, with a delicate manner and very pale skin. He wasn’t wearing the usual neat jeans and shirt that all the boys in the Home wore, but had apparently kept on the clothes that he came in: a suit, shirt, and large red bow tie.

The suit was slightly threadbare and a little too small—the boy’s wrists showed at the ends of the sleeves. But the shirt collar was straight and the bow tie very bright, a singing shade like the wind in the grass. If you saw him from a distance or didn’t pay too much attention, you might imagine that he wasn’t a homeless street urchin at all, but a boy from a good home—perhaps even from The Meadows itself.

“Hi,” Devin said, sitting down next to him. “I’m Devin, what’s your name?”

The boy wiped his mouth carefully on his napkin. “Caspar John Friedrich Farrilly. Are seconds permitted here?”

“You can eat as much as you want. Did you come from the city?”

Caspar nodded. He looked down and brushed the front of his jacket.

“Don’t you like the clothes they gave you?” Devin said.

“Oh, I’m not taking off my suit,” Caspar said quickly. “I might not be able to get it back.”

“Okay,” Devin said a bit uncertainly.

“This suit is absolutely vital,” Caspar continued in the same grown-up tone. “It’s my Edge. Is that pie? We’re allowed dessert, right?”

Devin nodded and Caspar made a beeline for the food table. His suit really was getting small for him, Devin thought. In addition to the too short sleeves, the seams were stretched at his shoulders.

Malloy had wandered up, and now, as Caspar returned with a heaped plate, he gave him his customary grin. “Eat much more and you’re gonna be busting out of those pants. You might want to think about putting some elastic in the waist there.”

“Oh, I have,” Caspar said very seriously. “Believe me, I have. But it turns out elastic is hard to find in the city.”

Malloy looked at Devin and raised his eyebrows.

“This suit’s my Edge,” Caspar explained. “You have to have an Edge, don’t you? Some people are fast or strong or good at thieving or big enough to push other people out of the way. I don’t have any of that. I just have this suit.”

“I don’t get it,” Malloy said.

Caspar put down his fork. “What do I look like to you?” he asked.

“Kind of stuck up, if you must know,” Malloy said.

“Malloy!” Devin said. “No, Caspar, you don’t . . .” But Malloy’s comment seemed to give Caspar satisfaction.

“Stuck up! Exactly. Here’s how it works. I stand on the corner looking lost and a bit scared and I tell people that my chauffeur failed to pick me up and I need to get back to my home in The Meadows only my cash was stolen by some ruffian kid. And it works. Not always, but just enough. They pat me on the head, look worried, and give me money. Of course, you can’t do it in the same place too many days in a row. You have to move around. But even when that doesn’t work, the suit can usually help me get what food I need. People don’t suspect a kid dressed like me could be hungry enough to steal.”

“That’s genius,” Malloy said.

“Thank you,” Caspar John Friedrich Farrilly said with great dignity. He tugged at his cuffs. “All the same, I’m glad to be here. You may have noticed that I am slightly on the short side, although my mom used to tell me it didn’t matter. ‘You’re big inside,’ she’d say. ‘A big spirit is better than great height.’ She never explained to me why I couldn’t have spirit
and
height, and every single night, I prayed to grow. But lately I’ve been doing the opposite. I’ve been praying to stay small enough for this suit. Every night, I hang up the jacket so it won’t crease, and hope I can still fit into it tomorrow.” He looked down at the half-demolished pie on his plate as if seeing it for the first time. “I guess I won’t need to do that anymore,” he said slowly. “Now that I’m here, I guess I’m safe.”

Devin and Malloy exchanged glances.

He’d find out soon enough what lay in store for him at the Home. Perhaps Devin could break it gently to him as he showed him around.

“You want a tour?” he asked.

“Definitely!” Caspar exclaimed. “This place looks incredible!”

As it turned out, the tour ended much sooner than Devin anticipated—in the common room, after barely fifteen minutes.

“We sort of hang out in here,” Devin said, waving his arm over the place. Caspar went over to look at the books. He pulled one halfway out and then looked up at the wall.

“What are all those pictures?” he said.

Devin hesitated. He understood now why Luke had been so reluctant to tell him about the Home when Devin first arrived. It felt almost cruel to destroy Caspar’s happiness at being there.

The boy had replaced the book and was now peering at the photographs.

“Who are those people? And the kids—are they kids from here?”

Devin nodded unwillingly.

“I know him,” Caspar said, pointing to one of the photos. His whole face had changed.

“Saw him just two days ago . . .” Caspar’s voice was very low.

Devin looked at the picture. “You know Ansel?”

Caspar nodded.

“You saw him in the city? That must have been a while ago. Before he got here.”

“No, I told you,” Caspar muttered. “I saw him two days ago.”

“You can’t have,” Devin said. “Ansel was adopted from here over a week ago. He went to live with the ladies in the picture. He went to be their son. You must have met someone who looked like him, that’s all.”

Caspar shook his head. “No. It was him. I’ll never forget that face. Not as long as I live.”

Devin looked around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. A couple of the younger children had entered the common room and were starting a jigsaw puzzle. “Let’s go to my room,” he said. “You can tell me about it there.”

According to Caspar, he had seen Ansel, or a boy who looked very much like him, in the old school gym in the city where the children went when it rained. Although it hadn’t rained in weeks near the Home, Caspar had been pleased about this big storm in the City, because it had given him a chance to wash his shirt.

“I have a secret place where I hang it up,” he explained. “You have to keep your shirt white, or your suit doesn’t look as good. I get the shirt wet in the rain and then it dries again and it’s clean.”

But Caspar didn’t like being in the school gym, partly because he was frightened of some of the other, larger boys and partly because his suit jacket scratched against his bare skin and he was worried—as always—that while he was away, someone would find his shirt and take it. He sat in the darkest corner, with his knees pulled in to his chest, watching and waiting for the rain to be over.

He knew most of the other kids by sight, particularly a gang of four older boys who were occupying a space right in the middle of the gym, staring threateningly at the other kids and shoving those who got near. But one boy in the gym was new to Caspar, and he watched him carefully. The boy was big and good-looking, but he seemed dazed. He sat with a blank look on his face, hugging a backpack to his chest as though it contained something very valuable. He didn’t seem to know that in the city if you had something valuable, you kept it hidden. Nor did he seem to know that he had attracted the attention of the gang. He just sat there in a dream.

“He didn’t have an Edge,” Caspar said. “No Edge at all.”

Caspar had felt bad for the boy, but by the morning, he’d forgotten him. The sun was out again and he needed to see if his shirt was still where he’d left it. He was planning to start telling his story about the chauffeur and the stolen cash in a different part of the city. It was time he found a new place. People were beginning to look at him very suspiciously, and just the day before, he’d been chased down the street by a man who’d given him money in the past and realized he’d been tricked.

The shirt was where he had left it and it was already dry. Caspar breathed a sigh of relief, put it on carefully, and set out.

He was crossing a small parking lot surrounded by abandoned buildings when he saw the boy again. The gang was surrounding him, trying to get his bag. Caspar immediately ducked into the shadow of a wall. One of the gang shoved the boy hard in the shoulder, almost knocking him down, another swung a fist into his face, a third snatched at the bag, yanking on the straps. Caspar wondered why the boy didn’t just give it up. But he wouldn’t. He clutched the bag against his chest as if it was more than merely valuable, as if it was part of his body itself.