The Keepers (15 page)

“And do you like what you see when you look through it?” she asked. When he didn't answer—
couldn't
answer—she said, “I've noticed you doing it. I'm just curious.”

Obviously he hadn't been as careful with the box as he thought. “Well, there's nothing to see,” he said, as if it hardly mattered. “Stuff's just blue.”

“Look at me through the box. Don't peek around it. Tell me what you see.”

Reluctantly, Horace lifted the box close to his face. He opened it and looked. But of course, she wasn't there. “I see you,” he lied. “You're blue.” He started to lower the box, but she spoke again.

“And how many fingers am I holding up? Remember, no peeking.”

Horace froze. He almost laughed aloud. How funny that the box—which gave him this incredible vision—could also make him blind. She was right here, but he couldn't even see her. “I don't know,” he said. “I can't really see.” He was so tired, and this conversation was so strange, almost like a dream. “Fourteen,” he said at last, and lowered the box to his chest. He frowned at his mother's two fingers. “Oh, man. So close.”

She laughed and laughed. “That's very good,” she said. “Very funny.”

Horace laughed with her, relief flooding him. He sank back into his pillow. “Don't ever put anything in the box,” he murmured sleepily.

“I wasn't planning to. But why not?”

“You can't keep anything in it. You keep nothing in it. It's where I keep nothing.” His eyes were heavy. Maybe they were already closed.

“I guess you have to put nothing somewhere.”

“I do. Imagine if I just put my nothing everywhere. There would be a lot less . . . something.”

“You're funny.”

“Yes. It's true,” Horace said, or thought he did, and he never remembered anything else either of them might have said that night.

I
N SCIENCE CLASS THE NEXT DAY
, T
UESDAY
,
THEY WERE DOING
an experiment that involved Bunsen burners. Horace fumbled with his flint lighter, sort of a giant paper clip thing that made sparks, but it kept springing out of his hands, over and over. A couple of other kids were pointing and laughing at him. Horace's lab partner for the day—a dull-witted, painfully skinny girl whose name he couldn't remember—watched him blankly and never once offered to help. At last Mr. Ludwig came over and shut off the gas Horace had been letting leak into the room for the last thirty seconds. He called Horace aside. “Horace, what's the scoop, man?”

“Sorry. I'm a little tired.”

“Still having troubles?”

“Let's just say I'm coping with some stuff that people don't usually have to cope with.”

“I see. Something at home?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Is it a girl?”

“It is a girl, actually, but not like that. This girl . . . she's just as weird as the other problems I'm having in the first place, which are the reasons she's even around.”

“Sounds extremely complicated.”

“You have no idea.”

“Well, I tell you what. Whatever it is that's distracting you at the moment, it's not very compatible with open flame. So how about you take a nice slow walk to the restroom, get some air, get a drink or something. Okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Horace took a hall pass and headed for the bathroom. As usual, it stank, and the floors were damp. He leaned over the last sink, breathing through his mouth and looking at himself in the mirror. He looked pretty mental. He promised his reflection he would sleep all weekend long.

Suddenly a girl's voice sounded, quiet but firm. “Considering a new hairdo?” Horace just about jumped out of his shoes. He spun around and there—hands on her hips, her face like a dagger—stood the girl who walked through walls. She wore a long black skirt. The dragonfly pendant lay gleaming across her collarbone.

The girl came toward him. Horace leaned away, despite being a half foot taller. He laid his hand atop the box through his shirt, bending back until he was practically sitting on the
sink. “You
could
use a trim,” the girl said.

“What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

“I'm stalking you. Sound familiar?”

“I'm not stalking you.”

“Sure. And I haven't been spying on you. If you're not stalking me, why did you follow me all the way home last night?” So he'd been seen. Apparently Horace was even less sneaky than he thought he was. The girl read his expression and said, “Yeah, if I'd wanted to lose you, I would have. No offense, but between the two of us, I'm definitely the stealthy one.”

“Then why did you let me follow you?”

“I wanted to see what you were up to. At first I thought you might be with the freak. I thought maybe he'd gotten to you. I watched you waiting outside that apartment building, the first one I snuck into. I saw you get that thing out, whatever it is.” She looked him up and down, openly curious. She seemed not at all troubled that they were having this conversation in the boys' restroom. “You were holding up that thing, and a couple of minutes later the freak arrived. I thought maybe you had called him.”

“What? No way.”

“I know that now. I saw you hide from him, even if I still don't understand how he didn't see you. But he showed up because he sensed you using that thing, right? Just like he senses me when I use the dragonfly.” She sighed and crossed her arms. “Look, here's what I'm saying. I can do the impossible, and I think you can too.”

And he could. But Horace couldn't bring himself to say it. He just stood there, mouth open, shaking his head as if he were going to deny something—but what was there to deny?

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you okay? It seems like you might be bugging out.”

“I'm not bugging out.”

“Then are you dim? I was thinking you were smart. Are you not smart?”

“I'm smart.”

“I was going to come up to your room last night.” She said this as though it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “But then you saw me in the shed. You startled me. I haven't been caught in the act like that in a long time.” She grasped the dragonfly hanging around her throat and stepped up close to Horace, holding it out. It looked perfectly real, like an actual dragonfly. Its wings even had the same lacy structure. Horace couldn't look away. “See this? This is magic. This is how I do it. I know you understand me.” The girl let the dragonfly drop. “And the magic thing you have, it lets you know stuff. It lets you find me when you shouldn't be able to find me.” Her face grew even stormier. “People don't find me.”

“The box isn't magic, it just—”

“It's a box?” She looked him over again. “Where is it? Don't you have it?”

“I do, actually,” Horace said, and before he knew it he had yanked up his shirt a few inches, letting her glimpse the box in its pouch.

Her eyes flicked to it. “And what does it let you do?”

Somehow the fact that she wasn't asking to see the box made him trust her more—but not quite
that
much. “I . . . look through it,” he said vaguely.

“You said you saw me coming. Can you see people from far away? Spy on them?”

“Not really.”

She looked at him long and hard, clearly concentrating. “Can you see through walls?”

“No.”

“Into people's minds?”

“No.”

“What then? What does the box show you?”

The words popped out before Horace could stop them. “The future, okay?”

The girl's eyes widened. She took a step back. “For real?” she whispered.

“For real,” Horace said, feeling a strange flood of relief that the words were out there. And what was more, she believed him. He could see it in her face.

“Oh my god . . . you can see the future. How far in the future?”

“Only a day. That's how I knew you were coming. I saw you the night before.”

“That is . . . phenomenal. Where did you get that thing?”

“Same place you must've gotten yours.”

She inhaled sharply and stared at him even more fiercely,
her eyes like a hawk's, but said nothing.

Horace continued. “You know. You have to know. That's where I was going that day you saw me on the bus.”

“I
don't
know. Tell me.”

Horace considered it. If she truly didn't know about the House of Answers, then where had she gotten the dragonfly? But surely she wasn't pretending—why bother? Horace wasn't sure he should even be having this conversation. Then again, he'd already told her about the box. And suddenly he was realizing, maybe for the first time, just how big the burden of all these secrets had been. “Okay look, it's this weird place. They have all kinds of crazy stuff. There's an old man there, Mr. Meister. And Mrs. Hapsteade.”

“I don't know those people.”

“They have all these boxes and bins. Full of bizarre things. Awesome things. That's where I found the box.” Horace nodded at the dragonfly. “And it must be where you—”

“Wait,” she said slowly, her eyes far away. “Were there birds? Singing?”

“Yes! Lots of birds. Hundreds. In cages.”

“I remember the birds,” she said dreamily. She fiddled with the dragonfly at her throat. Horace noticed that the skin there, all around the base of her neck, was mottled and scarred, like she'd been burned.

“You've been there. I told you.”

“I don't know, I don't know. How long have you had the box?”

“Just a few weeks.”

“A few weeks!” She mulled it over, then shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “I'm Chloe.”

“Horace.”

“I know,” she said, but didn't bother explaining how. She looked around the restroom, wrinkling her nose. “Anyway, we should talk. But not here.”

“Definitely not here.”

“I'm coming over tonight. Don't say no. What time should I be there?”

And then a bizarre, folded-back sense of remembering came over Horace—something like déjà vu, but not quite. He almost laughed aloud. What time? He knew what time. He'd seen her in the box last night, outside the apartment building, headed back in the general direction of Horace's house. And now he knew for sure that that was exactly where she'd be going. “Midnight,” he said.

The bathroom door swung open. An older boy walked in. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Chloe.

Chloe turned to Horace in a flash. “See you at midnight tonight, then. I'll let myself in—don't freak out.” Horace nodded. She spun away and skirted around the frozen boy, slipping through the door—like a normal person, the normal way—leaving Horace there in a daze.

The older kid just stood there for a long moment, gazing at Horace, his mouth open. Then he grinned, nodding. “Nice, dude.”

A
T MIDNIGHT THAT NIGHT
, H
ORACE LAY ON HIS BED WITH HIS
clothes on, the box on his belly. Outside, it was pouring. An occasional flash of lightning flared in the window, followed by a rumble of thunder.

“Knock-knock.”

Horace bolted upright, nearly letting the box tumble to the floor. Chloe stood in the doorway, looking small but as solid as a pillar of stone. Behind her, his door was wide open onto the dark hallway beyond.

Horace hissed a whisper: “Close the door, close the door,” he said, waving her in. He had figured she would just come right through the wall.

Chloe said, “You're supposed to say ‘Who's there?'” She pushed the door closed almost noiselessly. Loki slipped in at the last moment, like a shadow between her feet.

Chloe clucked softly down at the cat and came in without a hint of unease. She slouched down to the floor beneath the window, the way his mother always did. She'd changed out of her black skirt and was now wearing shorts and what he thought of as her sneaking outfit—the dark green hoodie. Loki took a station off to the side, sitting up alertly as though he intended to be a part of this. Whatever this was.