Behind the Curtain (10 page)

I
M-ING, SUNDAY NIGHT
.

They got on the phone. Ingrid told them the whole story.

“Morning, petunia,” said Mr. Sidney as Ingrid stepped on the bus.

“Morning, Mr. Sidney.”

A normal Monday start, but after that things changed.

At first it was just an uneasy feeling. Ingrid sat down beside Mia. The uneasy feeling didn’t come from Mia, who said, “Hey,” and held out half a blueberry muffin. It came when Ingrid, taking a bite, glanced around and saw kids looking at her. Not all the kids, just some here and there. None of
them met her glance; all eyes quickly averted. The muffin turned dry in her mouth, and Ingrid handed the rest back to Mia.

“What?” said Mia. “You love blueberry muffins.”

After that, a kind of prologue, things went bad in three acts.

Act One: Math class. Ingrid sat in her place at the back, the best seat in the house, but her mind no longer wandered pleasantly. She kept her eyes on Ms. Groome the whole time. Ms. Groome never looked at her once. She taught a lesson about if Miguel is three years older than Faraz and Faraz is two years younger than some other kid, and on and on, completely incomprehensible. At the end of the class, with Miguel and all the others ranked in order of age on the blackboard and everyone nodding falsely that they understood why, Ms. Groome said, “And now it’s my pleasure to present the MathFest awards. Mia McGreevy, would you step forward?”

Mia walked up to Ms. Groome’s desk.

“For coming second in the entire MathFest celebration, Mia wins a twenty-five-dollar Blockbuster gift certificate. Congratulations, Mia.” She handed Mia an envelope. Mia turned pink and went back to her seat.

“Bruce Berman?”

Brucie was already halfway there.

“For participating in MathFest, Bruce wins a coupon good for one medium-size ice cream, cone or dish, at Moo Cow. Congratulations, Bruce.”

“Math rules,” said Brucie, pumping his fist.

Someone spoke in a low voice. “He gets a prize for just showing up?”

A low voice, but Ms. Groome heard everything. “Precisely,” she said.

As though Ingrid were some kind of magnet, eyes shifted toward her from all over the room. The lunch bell rang.

“Dismissed,” said Ms. Groome.

Act Two: Lunchtime. Ingrid hung out with Stacy at one of the picnic tables near the swings. She took out her lunch—PB&J on whole wheat, milk, a Macoun apple, her favorite—found she wasn’t hungry. On the far side of the swings, some boys were playing touch football. The ball spiraled up into the sky. A blue sky: That surprised Ingrid because of how dark everything seemed.

“Letting that sandwich go to waste?” Stacy said.

“It’s all yours.”

Stacy bit into Ingrid’s sandwich. “I love the way your mom puts in those banana slices,” she said, or something like that, her mouth practically glued together with peanut butter.

Mia came over, laid the Blockbuster gift certificate in front of Ingrid. “Here,” she said.

“No thanks.”

“Take it.”

“No.”

“I don’t want it,” said Mia.

“If no one else wants it,” said Stacy, sweeping it up.

Mia shot her an angry look. They sat quietly for a minute or two, the only sounds Stacy’s chewing and the thump of the football.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Ingrid said.

“I wasn’t looking at you,” Stacy said.

“Me either,” said Mia.

“Just stop,” said Ingrid.

“But—”

A shout rose from over by the football game, then another. The boys didn’t seem to be playing football anymore. Instead they’d gathered in a ragged circle. In the middle of the circle, raising clouds of dust, two—no, three—boys were scrambling around in a
funny way. Was it possible they were—? Yes. Fighting.

Ingrid, Stacy, and Mia were on their feet. Something about fighting made you do that. They moved closer, past the swings, to the edge of the circle of boys.

Three boys, two against one. The two were the Dratch twins, Dustin and Dwayne, the biggest kids at Ferrand Middle, partly because even though the Echo Falls School Board mandated social promotion, they’d both been held back twice and were now fifteen years old. The kid they were ganging up on was pretty big for thirteen but nothing like the Dratch twins: Joey Strade.

Dustin Dratch threw a punch at Joey, hit him in the chest. Joey punched him right back, caught him on the nose. That got Dustin all fired up, and he took a wild swing that missed completely, but meanwhile Dwayne snuck around behind Joey and kicked him in the back of the knee.

Joey’s leg buckled and he slumped to the ground. Dwayne crouched, wound up, hit Joey in the mouth as hard as he could. Then Dwayne and Dustin jumped on him. They rolled around, Joey getting an arm free and pounding on a beefy Dratch
back. One of the Dratches growled like a savage animal. Ingrid took a step forward.

But before she could take another one, a man rushed into the circle, pushing boys aside. A man with a whistle around his neck—Mr. Porterhouse. He reached down into the pile, jerked the Dratch twins up by the scruffs of their necks. Joey got up too, dusting himself off. His mouth was all bloody.

“What the hell is going on here?” said Mr. Porterhouse.

The Dratch twins gave him a look, sullen and challenging. Joey glared at them, his hands balled into fists.

“I asked a question,” said Mr. Porterhouse.

Silence.

“I’m going to ask once more,” said Mr. Porterhouse. “What the hell is going on?”

Then something weird happened. The Dratch twins turned and looked right at Ingrid. Mr. Porterhouse followed their gaze. His mouth opened, but Joey spoke first.

“We were just playing football,” he said. “It got a little out of hand.”

Mr. Porterhouse’s eyes went from Joey to the Dratch twins, back to Joey. And then very quickly
to Ingrid, so quickly she almost missed it.

Mr. Porterhouse nodded. “It happens,” he said. “Don’t let it happen again.”

The Dratch twins started to smile. Identical ugly smiles—they were getting off scot-free.

“Would, say, a week of detention help you remember?” said Mr. Porterhouse.

The Dratch twins looked confused. Ingrid knew why: The question was a little too complicated; they knew that either yes or no got them out of detention but couldn’t figure out which.

“A week of detention it is, then,” said Mr. Porterhouse.

Dwayne pointed at Joey. No problem telling the Dratch twins apart—the cauliflower ear was Dustin. “What about him?” he said.

“Him too,” said Mr. Porterhouse. “Now everyone inside. Stop by the nurse’s office first, Joey.”

Brucie Berman didn’t actually play touch football, but he liked to stand on the sidelines and make comments. On the bus ride home he told Ingrid what had happened.

“It was about you,” he whispered, bobbing up and down with excitement on the next seat over.

“Me?”

“Dustin said you made up that whole story. Joey was like ‘say it again.’ Dustin said it again. ‘She made up the whole thing.’ Joey popped him.”

“Zip it, guy,” said Mr. Sidney from the front of the bus. He’d said that a million times but never angry like this.

Act Three: At home. No one there, the house a little cold, Nigel sleeping by his empty food bowl in the kitchen.

Ingrid called Joey right away.

“Hello?” Not Joey, but his father, Chief Strade.

Ingrid almost hung up, remembering at the last moment that her number probably showed up on his screen. “Is Joey there?” she said.

“No,” said the chief. “That you, Ingrid?”

“Yes,” said Ingrid.

“How are you doing?”

“All right.”

“Crime lab boys dusted your garage this morning,” he said. “No prints.”

“Oh.”

“Manage to think of anything else in the meantime?” the chief asked.

“Anything else?”

“About the whole incident. Something you might have forgotten to tell me, for example.”

“I told you everything,” Ingrid said.

Silence. What was he thinking? That she hadn’t told him much?

“I couldn’t see, remember?” Ingrid said.

“Because of the duct tape,” the chief said.

“Yeah.”

Another silence. Then the chief said, “I’ll tell Joe you called. He should have been home by now.”

But wasn’t, Ingrid realized, because the week of detention must have started right away. “Thanks,” she said, and hung up.

The duct tape. If only those scraps had remained in the gully off Benedict Drive, no one would be doubting her. Ingrid thought back. She remembered rolling down the hill, coming to a stop, panting. Then she’d bitten through the duct tape around her wrists and ripped the blindfold tape from her eyes.

Panting: whoa. She’d been able to pant because somehow that tumble down the hill had torn off the third strip of tape, covering her mouth. She and the
chief hadn’t found any tape at all, but wasn’t it likely that this third strip had been smaller than the others, that it might have gotten twisted up and maybe bounced or rolled or slid beyond their search area?

How small would that strip of tape have been, exactly? Ingrid opened the junk drawer, found duct tape, cut off a small piece. She covered her mouth with it, checked her reflection on a pot hanging on the wall. A small piece, but more than enough.

Nigel opened an eye, saw her, and barked. Ingrid took off the duct tape. He stopped barking. His eye closed.

Bzzz.
A little spark went off in Ingrid’s mind. She’d felt that kind of spark before. It always accompanied a stroke of inspiration, like lightning with thunder. A minute later Ingrid was checking MapQuest for the directions to Benedict Drive. Two minutes after that she was on her bike, rounding the corner of Maple Lane and Avondale, several strips of duct tape in her pocket. Only later, as she came to the curve on Benedict Drive bordering the gully, did she remember that advice or whatever you wanted to call it about not going out alone.

Ingrid laid her bike at the edge of the slope,
peered down. Everything the same—steep hill, a little clearing at the bottom, woods on the other side. And no glint of duct tape. That didn’t discourage her. She was approaching this scientifically now, conducting an experiment in the manner of Sherlock Holmes. What was that line from “Silver Blaze”? “We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified.”

This was the acting upon the supposition part. The tape over her mouth got ripped off in the long tumbling fall. Whoever had come back and picked up the other scraps down at the bottom might have missed it. But what exactly would she be looking for?

To find out, Ingrid took the strips of duct tape from her pocket. Suppose, for example, that the strip over her mouth had got twisted up like so? She tossed a twisted strip down the hill. Wow. Completely invisible in the scrubby grass the moment it landed, even though she’d watched it the whole way. And it hadn’t come close to reaching the bottom, where she and the chief had concentrated their search.

Or what about if the tape hadn’t got so twisted up, just folded over like this? Or maybe balled up? She threw more duct tape down the hill, all of it
invisible in the undergrowth except for the folded-over one, which landed on a little bush. One thing was clear: She was going to have to search the whole hillside on her hands and knees.

And here was another thought. Supposing the tape had got torn in two, two pieces, even smaller, even harder to find, like so? She twisted them up as well, flung the scraps in different directions, exploring every possibility like a conscientious scientist.

From down at the bottom came a sudden movement. Chief Strade stepped out from behind a tree.

“What are you doing, Ingrid?”

“Y
OU MUST BE INGRID
,” said Dr. Josef Vishevsky.

Ingrid toyed with the idea of denying it.

“Please sit down.”

Ingrid sat down on the visitor’s side of Dr. Vishevsky’s desk. Dr. Vishevsky was a middle-aged guy with a graying beard and a slight accent that reminded her of Count Dracula. Lots of framed certificates hung on his walls. The closest one said that Dr. Vishevsky was a distinguished fellow of the New England Adolescent Psychological Society.

“Comfortable?” said Dr. Vishevsky.

Comfortable? Ingrid almost laughed in his face. That would have felt great. She’d never been so pissed off in her entire life. Maybe Ms. Groome not
believing her shouldn’t have been such a big surprise, but now lots of people had jumped on the stupid bandwagon, including Chief Strade. Had he bought her scientific experiment explanation? Not even for a second. The worst part was this angled look in his eyes: He was seeing her in a brand-new way. And after that he’d driven her home from Benedict Drive and told Mom and Dad that he was afraid—that was the way he’d put it—that she’d been planting evidence to back up her story.

That was the moment, there in the front hall at 99 Maple Lane, when Mom and Dad should have gone ballistic and told Chief Strade that he was out of his mind. Had that happened? No. Instead of going ballistic, Mom and Dad looked kind of sick, like they’d both been punched in the stomach.

“Mom? Dad? You don’t believe me?”

“Of course we believe you,” Mom said. But nothing in the tone of her voice backed up those words.

“Maybe we could have a few minutes alone,” the chief said to Mom and Dad.

Ingrid went up to her room. Ten or fifteen minutes later, she heard the cruiser driving off. Then came a knock on her door.

“Yeah?”

Mom and Dad came in.

“It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Mom said.

“Good. Because that’s what happened.”

“I’m sure it was,” Mom began. “Still, we can’t help wondering.”

“Wondering what?”

“About the goddamn duct tape,” Dad said. “What the hell were you—”

“Mark,” Mom said.

Dad shut his mouth.

“It might help if you explained about the duct tape,” Mom said.

“I already did.”

“Tell us again, if you don’t mind,” said Mom. “Sweetheart.”

“I mind.”

Mom sat on the edge of the bed. Ingrid shifted away, toward the wall.

“Sometimes,” Mom said, “people can convince themselves that something really happened so completely that it’s no longer a matter of lying. And no one would treat it that way or get mad. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“No.”

Dad, standing in the doorway, said, “If this is
some screwed-up plan of yours to stick it to that stupid Ms. Grundy—”

“Ms. Groome,” Mom corrected.

“—then cough it up now.”

“Go away,” Ingrid said.

Dad banged the doorjamb with the back of his hand, stalked off down the hall.

Mom put her hand on Ingrid’s shoulder. “Were you more…upset about the whole Cracked-Up Katie thing than you let on?”

Ingrid shrugged her shoulder free. “Go away.”

“The chief is worried about you,” Mom said. “He thinks, and we agree, that it might be good for you to talk to a sympathetic professional.”

“You’re sending me to a shrink?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Mom said. “He’s supposed to be very nice—his office is in the same building with Dr. Binkerman.”

“Is that supposed to be a recommendation?” Ingrid said. “You can forget it.”

“You can go kicking and screaming,” Mom said, “or just go.” Ingrid just went.

“I understand,” said Dr. Vishevsky, “that you’re into acting.”

Ingrid gazed at him. He had soft brown eyes, like a puppy. Ingrid wouldn’t have dreamed of kicking a puppy, but kicking Dr. Vishevsky came to mind immediately. “Yeah,” she said, “I like acting.”

“Are you in a play now?”

“We’re rehearsing a scene from
The Wizard of Oz
for The Xmas Revue.”

“And your role?”

“Dorothy.”

“Ah.” Dr. Vishevsky jotted something on a notepad. “The main character, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I guess.”

“Meaning you’re not sure?”

“The Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow are important too.”

“Would you prefer to be playing one of them?” asked Dr. Vishevsky.

Ingrid thought about that. All those parts probably started with body movement—stiff for the Tin Man, floppy for the Scarecrow, catlike but in a timid way for the Cowardly Lion—and she wasn’t too good with that. “No,” she said.

Dr. Vishevsky made another note. “What do you like most about acting?” he said.

Ingrid shrugged. “It’s fun.”

“What makes it fun for you?”

“I don’t know,” Ingrid said. And she didn’t really want to know. Was it a rule you had to understand what made something fun?

“Could it be the make-believe aspect?” said Dr. Vishevsky.

How could it not be? Acting in a play was make-believe, for God’s sake. It was like saying does the chocolate aspect have anything to do with why you’re downing that pack of M&M’s? “I guess that’s part of it,” Ingrid said.

Dr. Vishevsky nodded. “And what attracts you about make-believe?”

“I don’t know.”

Dr. Vishevsky looked at her for a moment, rubbed his beard. Did something fall out of it, some little food particle? Was that possible? “Think about it for a minute or two,” said Dr. Vishevsky. He rose. “A soda, perhaps? I have Fresca.”

Fresca, Ingrid’s favorite, no doubt about that, but was it the brand of soda most people had lying around or offered first? No. They offered Coke or Pepsi or maybe Seven-Up. So Dr. Vishevsky was in the know about her, meaning that people, including her parents, were doing all this plotting behind her
back. Ingrid felt a chill.

“I’m not thirsty,” she said, although her mouth was suddenly dry. “And I can’t answer your question about make-believe.”

“Can’t?” said Dr. Vishevsky. “Or won’t?”

Ingrid didn’t reply. She just sat there, staring ahead, and came close to crossing her arms over her chest.

Dr. Vishevsky surprised her with a smile. It even looked friendly. “Do you know why you’re here, Ingrid?”

“My parents,” Ingrid said.

Dr. Vishevsky nodded. “How would you say you get along with your parents?”

“Fine.”

“How do you feel about them arranging this meeting?”

“I don’t know,” Ingrid said.

“Angry, perhaps?” said Dr. Vishevsky. “Resentful?”

Ingrid shrugged.

Dr. Vishevsky leaned back in his chair. She saw that his beard grew right down his neck and under the collar of his shirt. She’d seen enough of Dr. Vishevsky.

“How do you feel about expressing your feelings in general, Ingrid?” he said. “Comfortable or uncomfortable?”

Ingrid looked him in the eye for the first time.

“It depends,” she said.

“On what?”

On what? How about who she was talking to and what the feelings were for starters? But wasn’t that obvious? Wouldn’t an experienced shrink like Dr. Vishevsky already know the answer?

“Stuff,” she said. “You know.”

Dr. Vishevsky made another note. “Do you like to read, Ingrid?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a favorite book?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What is it?”

“The Complete Sherlock Holmes.”

“Ah,” said Dr. Vishevsky, writing it down. “And what do you like about Sherlock Holmes?”

“Lots of things.”

“Such as?”

“They’re good stories,” Ingrid said.

“What makes them good?”

“I just like them.”

Dr. Vishevsky sighed; a tiny little sigh, but Ingrid caught it.

“Moving to the character of Sherlock Holmes specifically,” he said, “what do you like about him?”

“I don’t know. He’s interesting.”

“In what way?”

At that moment, Ingrid actually figured out what she liked best about Sherlock Holmes: He thought for himself and didn’t care what anyone thought about him.

“It’s hard to say,” she told Dr. Vishevsky.

“I understand,” he said. There was a long pause. He seemed to be lost in thought. Then he said, “Do you ever imagine yourself doing the kinds of things Sherlock Holmes does?”

“No.”

“Investigating cases, for example? Solving crimes?”

“No.”

“Or being the center of attention like him, admired by everybody?”

“No.”

“Allowing your powers of make-believe to carry you over to another—”

“No.”

Dr. Vishevsky wrote on his notepad, turned the
page, wrote some more. “Do you know what a biography is?”

Of course she did. What a question! She gave a little nod.

“Have you read any?”

Ingrid thought. “There was one about Sacajawea.”

Dr. Vishevsky blinked. Was it possible he was unaware of Sacajawea? “How about—given your dramatic interests—biographies of actors and actresses?”

She shook her head, at the same time making a mental note to go on the Internet and see what actress bios were out there.

“I’ve read a few,” said Dr. Vishevsky.

“Oh?” said Ingrid. “About who?”

Dr. Vishevsky looked surprised. “I don’t recall the names offhand,” he said.

“Maybe the books weren’t very good,” Ingrid said.

Dr. Vishevsky blinked again. Then his face, a pretty soft one, hardened slightly, as though…as though he’d decided he didn’t like her. “But I did find a common element in all these life stories,” he said. “Any idea what that might be?”

Multiple divorces? Drug and alcohol problems?
Nose jobs? Ingrid kept all that to herself. “No,” she said.

“They all,” said Dr. Vishevsky, “all these actresses and actors, had difficulty expressing their feelings in real life. It was only in the world of make-believe that their feelings came out.”

Silence. Ingrid heard a man laughing on the other side of the wall. Dr. Binkerman. She wished she were over there instead, even getting her braces tightened extra tight, a really wacked-out thought.

Dr. Vishevsky leaned forward. “Which brings us,” he said, “to this whole episode with your math teacher, Ms. Groome.”

Ingrid’s chin tilted up in an aggressive sort of way, a motion that seemed to happen all on its own. “Does it?” she said.

Dr. Vishevsky’s face hardened a little more.