The One Safe Place (7 page)

The car stopped and the children got out.

Instantly the air was full of the sound of the birds twittering in their hundreds. A small girl who must have been waiting in the shadows ran forward and attached herself to Roman’s side. She was six or seven, round-faced and blond, with a large yellow bow pinned to the side of her head. She peeped around Roman at the newcomers.

“Have you got a match?” she asked Devin in a sweet, clear voice.

He shook his head.

“Not even one?” the girl begged, “not even a teeny tiny baby one?”

“That’s enough, Megs,” Roman said, patting her on the head. “Leave them alone. Go on now.” She darted off obediently, her yellow bow bouncing against her curls. Roman turned back to Kit and Devin.

“I have to go. Mrs. Babbage will be along to show you to your rooms.”

“I can’t believe we’re here,” Kit said. “You were telling the truth. Who runs this place? How long do we get to stay? How many kids are here?”

But Roman didn’t seem in the mood to talk. He looked down at the ground, not meeting their eyes.

“I have to go,” he repeated. “Mrs. Babbage will look after you.”

As if on cue, a woman came out from one of the buildings facing the courtyard and pattered over to them. She wore a cardigan that drooped almost to her knees, and her thin hair was pinned back in a bun no bigger than a walnut. Her face wore an expression of kindness.

“Right on time!” she cried, as if the children had planned their own arrival. “You poor, dear things, you must be ever so tired.”

“Not really,” Kit said. “What is this place? Do you run it? Can we look around?”

“There’s plenty of time for all that, plenty of time. You must rest. Your rooms are ever so nice.” And she led them away, across the courtyard, into another building, and up a winding stone staircase.

They found themselves in a small bedroom with whitewashed walls and a patchwork quilt on the bed.

“This will be your room,” Mrs. Babbage said, turning to Devin. “There’s a bathroom over there, and your pajamas are laid out. Clean clothes in the closet. You jump into bed and have a little sleep and when you wake up you’ll feel ever so refreshed.”

Devin and Kit could only stare, dumbfounded.

“You’re next door,” Mrs. Babbage continued, turning to Kit.

“You mean I get a room too?”

Mrs. Babbage made a high-pitched tapping sound at the back of her throat which Devin thought was probably a laugh.

“Of course! All our children have their own rooms.”

She darted into the hall, followed by a bewildered- looking Kit. Devin was left alone.

It was very quiet. The walls were stone, and no sound from the outside, not even the twittering birds, could penetrate them. Devin stared at the quilt on the bed. The scraps of fabric formed a complicated pattern that instantly imprinted on his mind. Large, interlocking stars were connected to each other by smaller ones, the whole piece worked in a hundred different shades of red and blue. But it was the shapes in between the stars that Devin looked at. They leapt out at him, a jagged arrangement of triangles that looked just like stairs rising and falling, turning back on themselves, leading nowhere, deceiving the eye . . .

It was close to noon when Devin woke up.

His clothes had vanished from the chair where he’d left them. He went to the closet and found a pair of brand new jeans and a navy shirt. Then he went to find Kit.

For a second or two he didn’t recognize the girl sitting on the bed next door, staring out of the window. Her hair was clean and hung in gleaming, blood-red waves almost to her waist. Her ragged clothes were gone, and she wore a green dress with a scarlet sash that matched her hair. When she saw Devin, she ducked her head, embarrassed.

“You look . . . so different,” Devin said.

“There was nothing to wear,” she muttered, “except this dress.”

“I slept,” Devin said. “I didn’t think I would.”

“Me too. Then I got up and had a shower. A shower, Devin! The water just kept on coming out. And it was warm!” She paused. “What is this place? It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before. There’s nothing like this in the city, not even The Meadows.”

“We had books at the farm,” Devin said. “There was one with a picture inside that looked kind of like this place. It was a school, from a long time ago.”

Kit stroked the quilt on her bed. “It’s so lovely . . .”

Through the window, Devin could see hills in the distance, and nearer, surrounded by trees, he glimpsed water, too blue to be an ordinary pond.

“I think it’s the swimming pool!” Kit cried, following his gaze. “Can you imagine?”

Devin couldn’t. The swimming pool took his breath away. He wondered how many gallons of water the pool held. And all of it—every single valuable drop—was there just to give pleasure.

“I keep thinking there has to be a catch, but whatever it is, I don’t care,” Kit said.

“What do we do now?”

“We’re supposed to go the dining room for lunch,” Kit said. “That Babbage woman told me. After that someone is supposed to show us around the place.”

A separate building, off the courtyard and half-covered in ivy, housed the dining room. From its open windows came the noise of chattering, the clatter of knives and forks, and the smell of cooked food. Kit and Devin entered and found themselves among twenty-five or thirty children seated at long tables. At one end of the room, a table was covered with piles of plates and steaming dishes. They saw meat and pies and mashed potatoes and sandwiches, fruit of all kinds, and a large cake with white frosting. In the middle of the food stood a castle made of jelly, red and wobbling slightly under its own weight.

A boy seated near the door caught sight of them and immediately got to his feet.

“New kids, right?” He was skinny, with long, dark hair that hid half his face. He spoke fast, as if his words were trying to catch up with his thoughts.

“I’m Luke. I’m going to show you around. After you’ve had your lunch. I wouldn’t show you around before you’ve had your lunch. That wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Excuse me?” Kit said.

Luke made a visible effort to check himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I get a bit hyper around this time of day. Must be all the sugar, although that’s never been proved, the link between sugar and hyperactivity. But you can’t count it out.” He gave himself a little shake and rapidly opened his eyes and squeezed them shut several times.

Kit stared at him uncertainly.

“Am I doing it?”

“What?”

“The thing with my eyes.”

“Uh-huh.”

Luke nodded. “Can’t always tell. Best to know.”

After Kit and Devin had heaped their plates with food, they sat down at one of the tables next to Luke and another boy.

“This is Malloy,” Luke told them. “He’s a pain in the neck.”

“Hi, new people!” Malloy said. “Guess how many boiled eggs I can get into my mouth at the same time?” His face was perfectly round except for his ears, which stuck out on either side like the handles on a jug. “Three!” he announced.

“Triggered my gag reflex,” he added. “I barfed all over the floor.”

“Malloy likes to share,” Luke said.

But Kit and Devin were too busy eating to pay attention. For several minutes, all they could think about was the food disappearing into their mouths. Luke and Malloy watched them in fascination.

“You can always tell the new ones,” Luke commented.

“Like you’d know anything about feeling hungry, rich kid.”

“Ever noticed how ‘Malloy’ rhymes with ‘annoy’?” Luke said, his eyes twitching.

“Ever noticed how ‘Luke’ rhymes with ‘puke’?”

Devin ate furiously, not really listening to the other boys. It was only when his hunger was completely satisfied that he was able to lift his head and look around him.

The cafeteria was filled with kids of all different skin, hair, and eye color, all different ages from little ones to teenagers. But they were alike in the way they were dressed, the boys in neat jeans, the girls in the same sort of party dresses that Kit was wearing. Devin was reminded again of the pictures in his book, the ones that showed kids from a long time ago.

Most of the children seemed quiet and orderly, but three or four were making no effort to behave themselves. They had taken over the huge jelly castle and were busy demolishing it, attacking it with spoons, cramming it into their mouths, flicking pieces at each other and laughing wildly. As he watched, one small girl stuck her entire hand into the wet, wobbly mass, shrieking with excitement.

Devin glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed. But nobody was even looking. He looked in the other direction and saw Roman sitting next to the little girl, Megs. Devin wanted to catch Roman’s attention, but the older boy’s head was down. He was staring at his plate as if he didn’t want—or didn’t expect—anyone to speak to him. As Devin watched, Megs tugged at his arm, her face tilted toward him, smiling. Roman patted her gently, pushed his plate away, and stood up.

“Hey, Roman!” Devin said as he passed by.

Roman carried on as if he hadn’t heard.

“What’s up with him?” Kit asked Luke through a mouthful of spaghetti.

Luke shrugged. “Knows you don’t like him.”

“Why wouldn’t we like him?” Devin asked, astonished.

“He’s not exactly popular around here,” Luke said, making a face. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

Lunch was almost over and most of the children had left.

“I’ve got to show you around now,” Luke told Kit and Devin. “You coming, Malloy?”

Malloy shook his head. His cheerful expression had vanished. “I just got the message from Karen.”

Luke’s face fell. “That’s too bad . . . I’m sorry, Malloy. But maybe it’s not for that. Maybe it’s for something else.”

“Unlikely,” Malloy said, staring down at his hands.

Luke nodded. “Yeah. But you’ll be all right. You haven’t done it too many times.”

“Will you keep an eye on Fulsome for me, Luke?”

“ ’Course I will . . .”

“I thought he was looking kind of pale this morning, not his usual self . . .”

Luke drew a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, turning quickly to Kit and Devin. “I guess it’s just us on the magical mystery tour.”

“What was all that about?” Devin whispered to Kit as Luke led them out.

She shrugged, not interested. “Who knows?”

Devin stared back at Malloy. He was still sitting at the table, his shoulders hunched.

But Kit was hurrying Devin along. “Come on! I can’t wait to see around this place!”

They stepped into the courtyard and suddenly he could hear the noise of the birds again. The sound was a collection of sharp threads, gray in the center but lightening to a dull violet at the edges, a mass of clotted knots that spread across the sky like . . .

“Hey, you okay?” Luke asked as Devin stared upward, dizzy and transfixed.

. . . like a net. A huge net, he thought. And they were all trapped underneath it.