Is Anybody There? (2 page)

After a minute I snaked out my hand and rang the doorbell. Over the pounding of my heart I heard it
ding dang, ding dong
inside the house. Now Mom would come, and she’d say, “Oh, Marky, you know what? I locked … couldn’t find … left my key. …” But wouldn’t Mom have taken in the package? I slid farther from the door, wishing now I hadn’t rung the bell.

Nobody came.

Maybe there was a burglar in there, ripping us off. Everybody knows Christmas is a favorite time for burglars. He’d seen me hide the
key and … OK, now, Marcus. Don’t panic. Maybe Mom gave the key to Nick. Maybe he needed to get in the house for some reason and she’d said: “Here! But be sure to put it back for Marcus. He’ll need it after school.” Sure, that’s what it was. And Nick had forgotten. I could kill that guy, Nick.

I tiptoed around the house and raced up the stairs to his apartment, looking over my shoulder all the time at our silent house below. Nobody came when I knocked. Nick had hung a plastic Christmas wreath on the door, with red plastic apples and berries sticking on it. I hate plastic wreaths, but I guess they’re like plastic Christmas trees, very practical.

“Come on, come on,” I whispered. “This time be here.” After a minute I tried the knob, and the door opened. Dumb! That’s dumb, Nick. Don’t you know there are thieves around at this time of year?

He’d fixed the place up nice, all right. There was a big picture of some kind of flying bird on the wall. But all I cared about was that the place was empty. Nick wasn’t here. Well, sure. If I’d been thinking right I’d have remembered that his car wasn’t parked below
either. But then I wasn’t thinking right. Nick was back at school, then, with my key in his pocket … maybe.

I was just about to back out when I saw the photograph lying on the wicker table by the door. It was black and white, about the size of a page from my school notebook. Even though I was seeing it upside down I knew who it was. I stood looking down at it without touching it.

Mom. Mom sitting in the kitchen. Her elbows were on the table and she had her special mug cupped in her hands. Her eyes were sad, as if she was remembering something far, far away. Her shoulders drooped. Her hair half hid her face. I knew it was a wonderful picture. It captured a longing in her that she kept hidden, one that made my throat close up with my own sadness. She hadn’t known it was being taken, but whoever took it loved her. I closed Nick’s door and ran back down the steps. Ran where? Not back to the house.

I crouched behind Nick’s wooden stairs for a minute, trying to think, trying to leave the sad image of Mom and get myself back together. After a couple of minutes I squeezed
through the oleander hedge and into the Clarks’ yard.

Across the street Patchin had come slowly into his front yard and stood, stifflegged, pretending to watch me. Patchin is so old I doubt if he can even see across the street. Last week Mrs. Dellarosa had opened his mouth to show me he has no teeth anymore. Some guard dog.

Miss Coriander came to the back door before I could knock. I like her better than Miss Sarah. She has gray hair pulled back, and the whitest white skin, without a single wrinkle. She’s stooped about double, and she peers up at you as she talks. I think that’s one reason why she and Miss Sarah don’t miss anything. Miss Coriander sees all that goes on at her level, and Miss Sarah is tall and keeps watch up above. Miss Coriander’s eyes are blue, but Miss Sarah has one blue and one brown, both sharp. If there’d been anything or anybody to see around our house, Miss Coriander or Miss Sarah Clark would have seen it, or him.

   “Good afternoon, Marcus,” Miss Coriander said.

“Hi. Did you happen to … to see someone at our back door today?” I asked.

“No. Why?” Matching eyes can be sharp too.

“I just—”

“Speak up, Marcus. Is something wrong?”

I’d have to be careful here. Miss Sarah and Miss Coriander are pretty disapproving of Mom leaving me alone.

“What do you expect me to do?” Mom had asked them. “I have to work.”

“He could stay with
us,
Caroline.”

Oh wow! Mom and I had had a meaningful discussion. But if Mom knew about
this,
I’d be back to square one.

“I just wondered,” I said vaguely.

“Sarah!” When Miss Coriander raises her voice, she really raises it. Miss Sarah came in a flash. “Did you see anybody at the Mullens’ house today, Sarah?”

Miss Sarah pulled off her gardening gloves: “I saw that young man, Nick,” she said. “He came down the steps and got in his car. He was wearing those short khaki shorts and that tight white T-shirt.”

“That’s what he wears to his
job
,” I said,
wondering why I was bothering to defend Nick, especially now that I knew about the photograph.

“Didn’t that dog of the Dellarosas bark some today?” Miss Coriander asked.

“Oh, him!” Miss Sarah dismissed Patchin with a wave of her hand.

“And why are you asking about someone at the house, Marcus?”

So they hadn’t seen anything. I had to think fast or they’d worm the whole story out of me, and call Mom right in the middle of her Christmas rush, and she’d have to come home and … I’d have to tell Mom myself, anyway. A missing key is dangerous stuff. But
I’d
tell her, not them. It would be the same thing if I asked to borrow their emergency key. There’d be questions and a lecture about responsibility and more suggestions to Mom.

“Someone left a gift by the door,” I said. “That’s all. I thought you might have seen who it was.”

“Someone left a gift?” Miss Coriander cast an accusing glance at Miss Sarah. “How did you miss that, Sarah?”

“It must have been while I was at the market.
You weren’t keeping an eye out, Coriander.”

I began edging away. “I guess I’ll find out at Christmas,” I said. “No sweat. Just checking.”

Now I couldn’t wait to go back and look some more for the key because I’d just thought of something. What a relief! The key could have fallen off the nub. Of course that was what had happened. I’d told myself not to panic, but I hadn’t listened. Easy now to imagine myself hanging it up this morning on its loop of worn tape, to imagine it swinging gently, dropping. Or maybe …

“Was there a big wind today?” I asked Miss Sarah.

She gave me one of her sharp, double-barreled blue-brown stares. “Wind? What is all this about? What are you up to, Marcus?”

“Nothing, honest, Miss Sarah.” I had backed myself partway through the oleander hedge. “Well, see you!” I was in our yard now, running in my new, zigzag, crouched position across the front of the house toward the live oak tree. Miss Sarah and Miss Coriander wouldn’t miss this strange maneuver. “What’s
he up to
now
?” Miss Sarah would ask. “Isn’t Marcus too old to still be playing army?”

I stood in the shade of the tree, panting a bit before I got down on my hands and knees. It was gloom and doom down here. I wished I had our big flashlight. But the flashlight was in the house, and the house was locked, and I didn’t have the key. … Catch-22, as Mom always says. My hands kept finding things among the dead leaves that I didn’t even want to think about. I was sure by its shape that this one was either a very small pinecone or a piece of dried-up dog poop. Probably poop. Probably Patchin’s. Well, better Patchin’s than a strange dog’s.

Lots of gross-feeling things down there, but no key.

I stood up, bumping my head, and then I saw the small shine of metal as a ray of sun slanted in. I peered closer. There was the key. I stared at it for the longest time. It was hanging from a sticking-out nub, all right. But this was the wrong nub.

I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I stood, telling myself that I must have put the key back in the wrong place. But I didn’t believe it. Then I decided that it still had to be Nick. Easier to blame him than me anyway.

I saw his car right at that minute turning into our driveway, coming to a stop below his apartment.

“Speak of the devil,” I said. “Old Nick him-self!”

I came out from under the tree and walked across the grass. “Hi,” I said. The key was hidden, sharp and warm in my closed fist.

“Hi, Marcus. You just get here?”

“Just about.”

He was leaning into the back of the car bringing out a box with “Two Dozen Multicolored Christmas Lights” printed on it.

“I promised your mom I’d get a set of these on my way home. She thought the tree was kind of bare.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t mentioned to
me
that the tree was kind of bare. When did she and Nick have these private conversations? And when had he taken that photograph?

Nick headed around the house, and I walked a pace behind him.

“It’s locked,” I said when he stopped at the door.

“You have your key?” he asked. I nodded, but kept my fist closed. Without saying anything else Nick took his keys from his pocket and put one in the lock, and the door opened.

“You have a key to our house?” I asked, trying not to sound the way I felt. Actually, I wasn’t sure what way I felt. One thing, though. If he had his own key, he didn’t need mine.

He glanced down at me. “Your mom gave it to me. In case I need to do laundry when there’s no one home, stuff like that.” He moved to one side. “Come on in.”

“Gee, thanks.” I didn’t bother to disguise my sarcasm. Where did he get off inviting me into my own house?

I picked up my backpack and Aunt Charlie’s package and stepped past him. But just inside the door I stopped. “Wait a sec, Nick.”

I was listening, listening hard but hearing nothing. It made no sense anyway. If someone had been here, they’d gone already. If someone had been here, they’d used the key and put it back.

“What are we waiting
for
?” Nick asked.

I shrugged, glancing around the kitchen. Everything looked normal. I set the parcel and my backpack on the table.

“I thought I heard a noise,” I said to Nick. “This time of year, you know … the house empty … sometimes people try to get in and rip stuff off.”

Nick bent to look into my face, which I made carefully blank, then put a hand between my shoulder blades. “Well, let’s just check.”

I liked it that he didn’t give me any bull. I liked it that he didn’t sound fake cheerful either, the way you’d be with a little kid who thought there was a monster in the closet. I guess most teachers are psychologists too.

We went from room to room, and I have to admit it was nice having Nick there. Who’s
going to jump out from under a bed and tackle a big guy like this one?

The house was calm and quiet, filled with the comforting warmth of sunlight. Mom had put some white camellias in a glass jar on her bedside table, and one of the petals fell with a plop and a dusting of pollen.

“Nobody here,” I said.

We have a laundry room with a toilet and washbasin. Nick opened the door to look inside. A narrow flight of uncarpeted steps from the laundry room led to our half-finished attic.

“I’ll just check above too,” he said, and I nodded.

“Why not?”

Our attic’s full of old boxes, the trunk Dad had when he went away to college, the old cedar chest, and cobwebs.

When Nick was partway up the steps, he opened the hatch that was the attic door, and then all I could see were his furry legs, his white socks, and his white Nikes.

“Nothing there.” He edged back down, closing the hatch behind him. “It must have been Santa and his elves you heard.”

“I guess so.” I hadn’t realized my stomach
was knotted until it relaxed on me. So I had simply hung that key on the wrong nub this morning. OK. I followed Nick back into the living room and watched as he clipped the new lights on the tree.

“That’s better,” he said when he turned them on. I thought so too, even though I’d thought there were enough before.

“Mom should have asked me,” I muttered, but Nick didn’t answer. He paused on the way back through the kitchen.

“Do you mind being alone, Marcus? You can come up with me, you know.”

“I don’t mind. Actually I like being alone,” I added.

“Yes. That’s what your mom tells me.”

So she’d told him that, had she?

Then Nick opened the door into the garage and switched on the light. I guess when this guy checks a place, he really checks it.

Looking past him I could see the workbench, my bike on its kickstand, the drape hiding Mom’s present, and all my bike junk in a pile in the corner. I could see the oil spot shaped like Australia on the floor. Robbie and I had put in red blobs for Perth and Sydney
and Oodnadatta, a town Robbie had found in the middle of the map of Australia. He said he liked the sound of it. There was nobody hiding in the garage either.

“Get your Campies yet?” Nick asked.

“No.”

The Campagnolo pedals were all I needed to finish Mom’s bike. They were on order in Henry’s Bike Shop, but they hadn’t come in yet. I hated it that Nick knew about them and about Mom’s present. I hadn’t meant to share the secret, but he’d come into the garage one day while I was working on the bike so I’d had to tell. He’d walked all around it, admiring it, and I could see he was really amazed that I’d built it from scratch. Actually, Nick’s always nice to me. That’s not the problem. The problem is I’m happy here, by myself and with Mom. And I don’t want him trying to get in good with her by getting in good with me. Not that he seems to be having any trouble getting in good with her. She’d even given him a
key
!

“Have you tried the other bike shops in town for the Campies?” Nick asked. “You might luck out.”

“I’m going to check Henry’s again tomorrow,”
I said. “He thought they’d be in. Thanks for the lights. And for the house search. I feel kind of stupid.”

“No need.”

Nick sounded fatherly, and if there’s one thing I’m not in the market for, it’s a father. “How much do we owe you for the lights?” I asked, reminding him that all he is here is a paying tenant.

“No need for that either.” I couldn’t figure out the look he gave me.

“See you,” he said.

I walked straight into the hall when he left, got the blackthorn stick that used to be my father’s, and went over the house again myself. This time I checked to see if anything was missing, because somebody might have been in here. It wasn’t likely, but still … We didn’t have sterling silver, but Mom’s silver plate was all there in the sideboard drawer. The dimes she collects in a green glass jar seemed to be at the same level.