Tangled Webb (6 page)

When Kelsey and Daddy came home we were eating cookies and milk on the back steps, and practicing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with our mouths full, and he was so busy getting in his “lit-
tuls
” that he hardly looked at Kelsey.

She put him to bed awhile ago, and when she came down she said, “Juniper, thanks for being so nice to Preston. He had a great time today. He really likes you!”

Which kind of made me feel guilty, I don't know why. All I was doing was playing with him the way Margo used to play with me. It isn't as though I was trying to get him to like me
better
than Kelsey. Or maybe I was.

TUESDAY, JUNE 25

I found out where Kelsey got all her information about dams and mechanics' jobs and living in trailers. There's a book on hydroelectric power in Daddy's bookcase, and there it all is, with pictures and everything. I spotted it this morning when I was trying to find something new to read. Maybe that's where she got the whole Grand Coulee idea.

I'd sure like to check up on that story. But how? Everybody's dead or in Australia. Or never existed. Maybe they did, though. Maybe they were all as real as I am. It's certainly
possible
. Only how would I find out?

“Dear Grand Coulee Dam: Did you ever have a mechanic working there named Albert Morgan, with prematurely gray hair? Love, Juniper.”

Yeah, great.

I wish I weren't just twelve years old. There're so many things I don't know how to
do
.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26

Guess what. Kelsey actually let Alison and me take Preston to the mall. She didn't want to. But there's really
no reason
why she shouldn't. Everybody takes their little kids there in strollers; it's perfectly safe. And Alison and I are
dependable
, and she knows it.

Besides that, Preston was on our side. He kept saying, “Wanna go buggy-ride. Wanna go Juper. Wanna sin!” and she couldn't really hold out any longer.

So. I finally won one.

SATURDAY, JUNE 29

Daddy took Kelsey and Preston on a used-car-lot tour this morning—he's going to buy Kelsey some kind of wheels so she won't always have to wait for him to take her everywhere. But I hate used car lots, so I phoned Alison. She said, “Come on over, we're making freezer jam.” So I jogged over there, and helped her and her mom hull about a ton of strawberries (and we ate about half a ton in the process).

I watched how her mom mixed the jam—it's real easy, you don't even have to cook it—and wrote down the recipe so I could maybe make some for us, if Kelsey says okay. I think homemade jam is way in the future on her cooking schedule. She's still working hard at Julia Child. I've got to admit it shows. Last night we had a kind of chicken stew called coq au vin, only you pronounce it “cocoa van,” and it was dandy. There's a lot left for tonight.

Anyhow, after the jam was in the freezer, Alison's mom went off to do errands and Alison and I settled down in her room to work on our mystery plot. We might as well. We've got all summer to do nothing in.

“Let's plan it right, if we're really going to do it,” I said.
“The way Elizabeth Kenilworth said.”

“Okay. I've got my notes right here.
Now
aren't you glad I wrote it all down?” Alison rummaged around in the stuff on her floor—her room's as sloppy as mine—and finally found the notes tucked in her ring binder. “Okay. First thing we need is ‘an unstable, unresolved situation.' Something Character A must keep concealed.”

“Like a murder, does that mean? Or an unexploded bomb?”

“Being an illegal alien would fit, wouldn't it? We could go on with our beautiful, exotic high school girl.”

“Oh, yeah. Betsy Ross.”

“Not
Betsy Ross! Sarah—uh—Hughes. She can be Character A. Her real name is Juanita Chavez. And—I know!” Alison exclaimed. “She's not only an illegal alien, she's a spy for the Mexican government!”

You have to keep hauling Alison back to earth. I said patiently, “How come the Mexican government wants to know stuff about a high school in Hillridge, Oregon?”

“Oh, I don't know! Yes, I do—the principal is really the head of a
different
spy ring. Of a rival political party that wants to throw out the people in power and restore the king.”

“The king of
Mexico
?”

“Well, they had a king once, didn't they?”

We were both a little vague about it. I said, “I think he was a Frenchman. Napoleon's brother-in-law or somebody.” For a minute we groped back into social studies, searching for Maximilian—
now
I remember his name—then gave up and settled for a native Mexican dictator.

We went on fooling around with it for a while. What the notes said we needed next was “an odd or puzzling happening noticed by Character B.” We decided Character B was another high school girl, an ordinary American one, only Alison insisted
on naming her Daniella Sasha Nicole—which sounds like a sort of United Nations and uses up three of the names Alison's already decided she's going to name her children when she has some. And she said the puzzling happening Daniella Sasha Nicole notices is Sarah-Juanita talking Spanish on the phone.

Well, I didn't think old Sarah-Juanita would talk Spanish on a public phone, not unless she's really stupid. So I asked, “Why not have her keep dodging questions about where she grew up?”

“Okay, that's better,” said Alison, giving me a sidewise look.

“And then she suddenly comes out with a whole pulled-together story about it. And in the story, her father's dead.”

“Sure, that's good!” Alison said. “That's so nobody will guess he's a spy!”

She went on expanding on that, but I went deaf for a minute because I had this feeling I'd just seen the tail of an idea go by. I lost it, though, and when I tuned in again Alison was saying, “and Daniella Sasha Nicole never believed the story anyway. Nobody believes it. Or would it be better if everybody
else
believes it? Yes! Everybody else believes it and they tell Daniella Sasha Nicole she's crazy—”

“But she knows she's not,” I said, “because just a few days later she happens to see a book in the school library that has that very same story in it, practically word for word.”

Alison stared at me and asked,
“Really?
Did you?” and we both knew we'd quit talking about our plot. I didn't really plan to say what I did. It just kind of came out when I opened my mouth.

It was too late to back off so I sort of laughed, as if it didn't matter anyway, and told her about the book I'd found on hydroelectric power and dams and everything. And then I told her something else—that one day last week Kelsey said “Jim”
instead of “Tim” when she meant Preston's father. It was one morning at breakfast, and Daddy was asking if she had a driver's license—thinking about getting her the car—and she said, “Oh, sure, Jim taught me to drive.” He said, “Jim?”—because she'd never mentioned any Jim—and she got real flustered and said, “Tim! Tim Blockman! How crazy!” and then she looked at Daddy and said, “It's no wonder. I've truly forgotten him.” And Daddy reached out his hand and squeezed hers and smiled, and I quit watching.

I didn't tell Alison that part. Maybe I shouldn't be telling her any of this, but I can't help it. I mean, I need to talk about it. I need to make jokes about it and just keep it a silly game. And after all, forgetting the name of somebody you've been
married
to is not only a joke but an “odd or puzzling happening,” in my opinion. Just right for our plot.

So we went back to thinking up stuff for our book, only really we were trying to think of some explanation for all the real stuff going on at my house, and we sort of permanently dropped Sarah-Juanita and Daniella Sasha Nicole and the high school spy ring.

I can't say our ideas were any more sensible than they'd been before. Alison said what if Kelsey's a kleptomaniac and has a record wherever she comes from. I said she sure
was
concealing it, then. She doesn't even like to go shopping.

Then Alison said maybe Tim Blockman's name really was Jim, and Kelsey's concealing
that
for some reason.

“But then wouldn't she think up some name that didn't sound exactly
like
‘Jim'?” I objected. “Anyhow,
what
reason?”

“Well—maybe he's not really dead.”

We eyed each other, sort of trying it out. I said, “Maybe
he's
a kleptomaniac. Or some kind of criminal. Maybe he's wanted by the police.”

“Maybe she's trying to hide from him!” said Alison.

“Or hide
Preston
from him!” That gave me a nasty little shock, and I quit feeling like we were just joking. “Maybe—maybe she stole Preston and ran away because Tim—Jim—Blockman was mean to them—”

“Yes! And he said he'd kill her if she left him—”

This time we were
both
getting carried away. I hauled us firmly back to earth. “And now she's married to my father, so she's a bigamist too! No. Forget it. None of that's so. We've been watching too much TV.”

Privately, I thought we'd been yakking too much about mysteries, too. It was curdling our brains. I decided I'd better go.

But I was still thinking while I walked back home, and the idea I'd just glimpsed the tail of came back to me. It was about Sarah-Juanita pretending her father was dead so nobody would guess he was a spy—that is, she was trying to
protect
him. What if Kelsey is trying to protect somebody? What if she isn't concealing something
she's
done, but something Tim Blockman's done—or her father's done? It's perfectly possible.

Something. But what? And why does she have to conceal it?

I know the answer to “why”: Because the something is an unstable, unresolved situation—a bomb that might still go off. I don't know the answer to “what.”

I'm not sure I want to find out.

SUNDAY, JUNE 30

The minute I woke up this morning I had a thought, and I wish I hadn't. It made me feel as if I'd stepped off a curb and found out it was the Grand Canyon.

It's about Kelsey's hair. About why she dyes it. What if it's not because it's turning gray, but just to
change
it? Maybe it's really light brown or something, instead of dark. Maybe it's blonde, even. And she dyes it to
disguise herself
, so nobody from her past will recognize her.

That was the thought I woke up with. And right away I had a worse one. If she dyes her hair so she won't look like herself, wouldn't she have changed her name, too?
I
would. Anybody would. So maybe she's not Kelsey Morgan Blockman at all, and never was. Maybe she's really—whoever. Sarah-Juanita.

I called Alison to tell her, so I wouldn't have to keep thinking about it all alone, but she wasn't home. Just as well. Kelsey came in the house from her weeding just as I was putting down the phone.

MONDAY, JULY 1

Daddy took Kelsey to get her car today while I kept Preston, and she came home driving it. It's just your basic thirdhand stripped-down Honda, but it's bright green and she just loves it. She says she's never had a car of her own before. I guess she always drove Tim's. Or Jim's. If there
was
a Tim or Jim.

Daddy changed Preston's little car seat from the Chevy into the Jolly Green Midget, which is what she calls it, and she took old Bitsy and me around a few blocks. It really is neat. Daddy wouldn't buy a car that didn't run okay. Nobody could fool
him
.

Three more years till I can even get my
learner's
permit.

Oh, well.

I went down to the neighborhood pool for a swim about four o'clock, and there was Alison. So we sat on our towels awhile and I told her about the hair dye and Kelsey maybe changing her name. She says I ought to find a chance to go through Kelsey's wallet and look at the ID stuff. Her driver's license and Social Security card and all that would probably be in her real name.

I said I'd try, but I don't know. I'm not sure I can actually get myself to do it. I mean, it seems so
sneaky
.

TUESDAY, JULY 2

I'm teaching Preston to sing “Three Blind Mice.” So far we can't get much farther than “See how they run” because he goes all out of control trying to manage “They all ran after the farmer's wife” and all that, way up in those high notes. He gets miles behind and his shoulders start shaking and we both end up giggling too hard to carry on.

Alison and I took him to the mall today. She got those white shorts she wanted, and I found a red-white-and-blue T-shirt on sale real cheap. It's just right for our picnic on the Fourth. We're going down to Riverside Park to eat, Daddy and Kelsey and Preston and I, and stay for the fireworks. I hope Preston can stay awake—but we're taking his down comforter and pillow just in case.

I'm making a list—just in my head, I mean—of “unstable, unresolved situations” Kelsey might be concealing—sort of unscary, harmless ones.
Not
ones like having to hide Preston from Tim Blockman. I don't want it to have anything to do with Preston. It's not a very long list yet, though.

MONDAY, JULY 8

Kelsey had a doctor's appointment today—just a regular checkup, she said, she's not sick or anything—and she let Alison and me take Preston down to the neighborhood pool while she was gone! I had no idea she'd say yes. I guess she really does trust me—with Preston, anyway.

It made me feel guilty. I mean, more guilty than I was feeling already. Because the other day I did go through her wallet. I don't think I would have if we hadn't taken Preston to the zoo that morning, in the Jolly Green Midget. It was Kelsey's idea. She's getting braver about taking him places, I think—look how she's relaxed about the mall. We didn't stay long in the regular zoo—Preston's too young for the lions and bears and things—I mean, mostly they just sit around like public buildings, so he gets bored. But he loved the petting zoo. So did I, to tell you the truth—that is, I did until a cute little fawn nearly ate my purse. They're so soft-looking, those deer, and so
scratchy
to touch. Preston sort of pulled his hand back.
He
liked the ducklings. Kelsey held one for him so he wouldn't squeeze it to death; and I stood and watched him petting it with his little fat fingers and looking all sort of starry-eyed, and thought about my list that won't come out unscary, and knew I
had
to find out where Kelsey comes from, and what's going on.