The Trespassers (14 page)

And on Friday there was the election of sixth-grade representatives. There happened to be a lot of Neely’s old friends from Carmel River School in Mr. Hardcastle’s core class, which was probably the reason she won the election.

So, even though it turned out that Curtis was also in Mr. Hardcastle’s core class, Neely was too busy to spend much time noticing how he was doing. But, now and then, in class or sometimes in the hall between classes she would look up and there he’d be, looking in her direction. When that happened she always said “hi” or at least nodded and smiled even though he always looked away quickly, pretending he hadn’t seen her.

But then, on Thursday afternoon while Neely and some other kids were waiting to get on the school bus, Patty Denton suddenly poked Neely and whispered something in her ear.

“What?” Neely said. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Shhh.” Patty hissed a little louder, “He’s staring at you again. That nerdy Hutchinson dude is staring at you again.” She giggled and rolled her eyes. “I think it’s love.” She giggled. “True, true love.” And after that she kept poking Neely and whispering, “True, true love,” every time she happened to see Curtis, which was several times a day, since he seemed to show up amazingly often.

Neely just ignored Patty’s “true love” nonsense. But she did think about Curtis sometimes. Once or twice at home, sitting in the window seat or curled up on her bed with a book, she thought about him a little. She had to admit that he seemed to follow her around at school quite a lot. She didn’t really believe it was “true love” though, and she certainly didn’t want it to be. It was just a slightly interesting idea. After all, no one had ever been madly in love with her before. At least not that she’d noticed.

T
HAT FIRST WEEKEND AFTER THE START OF SCHOOL THERE
happened to be an early rain, so when Curtis called up on Saturday morning Neely was able to say, “I don’t know. It’s raining pretty hard. I don’t think we can—”

“What if Carmen came down to pick you up?” Curtis interrupted.

“She wouldn’t, would she?”

“Sure she would,” Curtis said. “She will if I tell her to. She’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Okay?”

The “okay” sounded like a question but he hung up so fast that Neely didn’t get a chance even to think about it, let alone answer. But when she went to the kitchen to talk to Mom about it, Grub was already there putting on his rubber boots.

“I already asked,” he said, grinning. “Mom said okay. She said no at first but when I said they were coming to pick us up she said okay.”

“How did you know Carmen was coming?” Neely asked.

“I heard you talking,” Grub said, grinning. “I picked up the hall phone and listened.”

“You did, did you!” Neely grabbed Grub’s ear and twisted it. “You know what happens to little creeps who listen to other people’s phone conversations? They get their little ears pulled off.”

Grub giggled, pulled away, and dashed out onto the back porch. A second later he was back with Neely’s boots. “Hurry up,” he said. “She’s almost here.” Neely was just putting on the second boot when there was the sound of a car motor and the muddy old Buick pulled into the backyard. As Neely and Grub ran out through the rain Carmen leaned over and opened the door on the passenger side.

“Where’s Curtis?” Neely asked as she got into the front seat with Carmen.

Carmen laughed her short, barking laugh. “He’s baking cookies,” she said. “Believe it or not, he’s baking cookies.”

Neely found it hard to believe, all right.

“Yes, indeed,” Carmen went on. “A couple of hours ago he started insisting that I bake some cookies because he was expecting guests.”

“Expecting guests?” Neely grinned. “You mean he was expecting Grub and me a couple of hours ago? He didn’t even ask us till about twenty minutes ago.”

Carmen made a snorting noise. “That’s our Curtis,” she said. “And then, just as I get the first batch in the oven he comes running in insisting that I have to come down here and pick you up. Immediately. So at the moment he’s sitting in front of the oven holding two hot pads and waiting for the timer to go off. Or at least he’d better be or he’s going to have some lumps of charcoal to serve his guests.”

Neely looked back at Grub and they both giggled. Somehow the picture of Curtis sitting in front of the oven clutching the hot pads was pretty funny. But then she thought of something else and quit laughing. The unfunny part was that she didn’t even wonder why no one asked Curtis’s mother or father to take over the cookie baking. She’d learned enough about Curtis’s family by now to know why that probably wasn’t a possibility.

A minute later Carmen glanced over at Neely and when Neely smiled she smiled back—frowning at the same time. Not many people can do that but it seemed to be a specialty of Carmen’s. Still smile-frowning, she shifted gears and tromped on the gas pedal as the car slid backward on the muddy road.

“Neely,” she said suddenly, “about Curtis. He sometimes has these strong—well, violent really—enthusiasms about things...or people. It’s happened before.”

“Enthusiasms?” Neely was puzzled.

Carmen nodded. “Enthusiasms. Obsessions almost.” Carmen wasn’t looking at Neely now. Instead she was staring intently ahead at the muddy road, her face tense and squinty-eyed. “I—I worry about him,” she went on finally. “He’s had a hard time of it, you know.”

“I know.” Neely was feeling very uneasy. “That is, I can imagine.”

Carmen shifted again and reached over and patted Neely’s hand. “I’m sure you can,” she said. “I’m sure you can imagine how hard it’s, been for him. He’s hurt and angry. Sometimes he’s terribly angry. You mustn’t forget that. You mustn’t forget that Curtis can be terribly... She paused again and glanced at Neely and then quickly away. “Angry,” she said again softly—but it somehow sounded as if she’d meant to say something else.

Neely was still wondering what other word Carmen had been planning to use when suddenly she changed the subject entirely and started asking Neely about her first week at school.

“I hear you won an election,’ she said.

“Well, just for sixth-grade representative,” Neely said. “Sixth graders don’t get elected to really important things at a middle school because it’s their first year.”

“Curtis seemed to think it was important,” Carmen said, and then she asked Grub, “How about you, Grubbie? How was your first week?”

Grub leaned forward and put his chin on the back of the front seat and looked at Carmen in the rearview mirror.

“Okay, I guess,” he said. “I’m in third grade now.” He stopped and thought for a moment, chewing on his lower lip. Then he smiled brightly and said, “I only have nine more grades to go.”

Just at that moment the Buick slid to a stop in front of the iron gates of the Halcyon estate. Only half the gate was open.

“Oh, dear,” Carmen said. “The gate. I left it open but the wind must have blown it shut.”

“I’ll get it,” Grub said, and jumped out of the backseat. The gate was heavy and as Grub tugged his feet slipped and slid on the muddy road. Carmen and Neely leaned forward watching. Grub gave up on pulling and ran around to the other side and tried pushing. The gate began to move and he looked over his shoulder grinning triumphantly. Beside her, Neely heard Carmen catch her breath in a strange wobbly sigh.

“Such a lovely child,” she said. “You must watch over him, Neely. You must protect your little brother.”

Neely felt a strange shudder travel down the back of her neck. “Why?” she started to say. “What do you—”

But at that moment Grub opened the door and jumped back into the car smelling of rain and wet hair. Carmen was saying, “My, my. What a strong young man you are to manage that heavy gate in all that rain.”

Grub looked proud and pleased. “It’s a good thing I wore my boots,” he said.

As Neely glanced back at his wet and shiny face the shudder came again, trembling slowly down her spine.

T
HE COLD WIND-DRIVEN RAIN, DRIPPING DOWN THE STONE
walls and trickling across the windows of Halcyon House, looked like sad, gray tears. But inside the huge old kitchen the air was warm and dry and smelled like a bakery. Apparently Curtis had done a good job. In the middle of the kitchen table there was a platter of nicely browned oatmeal cookies.

However, the hot chocolate he’d decided to add to the menu hadn’t been quite as successful. The top of the huge old-fashioned eight-burner stove was awash in sticky boiled milk. While Carmen cleaned up the mess, she and Curtis argued about the proper way to make hot chocolate.

It was too bad about the ruined hot chocolate, but as far as Neely was concerned it did come in handy as a topic of conversation. At least while Carmen and Curtis argued about spilled milk Neely didn’t have to think of things to say, which at that particular moment might have been a problem because her mind kept skidding off the track and back onto the subject of Grub in danger.

In between listening to Curtis and Carmen’s argument she kept hearing Carmen’s voice saying “You must protect your little brother.” The thing was, she did protect Grub all she could. She always had. But apparently Carmen felt she hadn’t done it well enough. Or that she would need to do it better. Curtis and Carmen were still fussing at each other when Neely suddenly realized what Carmen had been talking about.

It was the nursery, of course. The nursery, and the fact that she had allowed Grub to play there by himself while she and Curtis played pool or badminton.

Curtis had said that Carmen thought the nursery was haunted, and of course she would think it was dangerous for Grub to be there all alone. Or—Neely again felt the shiver threaten the back of her neck—all alone perhaps, except for...Monica. It would be almost impossible, she knew, to keep Grub away from the nursery, but at least she could make sure he no longer went there by himself.

So a little later when the cookie eating was over and Carmen had taken herself off, still grumbling, to her own room, Neely immediately turned down Curtis’s suggestion of a game of pool.

“I’m tired of pool,” she said. “Why can’t we do something in the nursery?”

Curtis’s lumpy unformed face tightened into an angry scowl. “Why?” he said. “What could we do in that crummy place?”

Neely shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s all that great stuff in there. There’s all kinds of—”

The scowl deepened and Curtis’s voice went high-pitched and sarcastic. “I get it. You want to play with the piggies and horseys. Sure. You just want to play Farmer in the Dell with little ol’ Grubbie.”

Neely sighed and stood up. “Grub,” she said. “I’m beginning to feel like a nice refreshing walk in the rain. Come on, let’s go home.”

Grub stared at Neely and she looked back, trying to make her eyes say she was sorry but that it was necessary, and at the same time watching to see what his reaction would be. With his big eyes wide open with shocked surprise, and with all the damp curls hanging down across his forehead, he looked so much like something on an old-fashioned valentine that Neely found herself smiling just a little...until she noticed that Curtis was watching her. After a second Grub nodded sadly, got to his feet, and headed for the door. Neely followed and they were almost there when Curtis yelled, “Wait. Wait a minute. Okay. You win. We’ll do something in that stupid old babies’ playroom.”

In the nursery Grub immediately went into his favorite corner with the toy circus, while Curtis wandered around trying out windup toys and musical instruments. Neely wandered, too, for a minute, but she knew immediately where she was heading and it didn’t take her long to get there—the dollhouse. She really didn’t know how much she’d missed it until she was there. Without even meaning to she put out her hand to touch things—the beautiful sideboard, the grand oval dining table, and the delicate rocking chair.

The gorgeous old grandfather clock that could actually tell time had run down. She picked it up, checked her watch, set the time, and then wound the key. When it was ticking she put it back in the living room, and then decided it might look better in the front hall. That meant she had to move a sideboard and when that was done she decided to do a complete job and rearrange the furniture in every room.

This time she didn’t pretend she was Monica, or at least not exactly. It somehow didn’t seem natural with Curtis there in the room making weird noises on the accordion. But she did find herself trying to imagine where Monica might have put a particular piece of furniture, before she decided on each new location. The rearranging took quite a lot of time and, of course, she stopped now and then to check on Grub.

Grub had set up the three rings of the circus and like always he was talking softly as he played. Neely looked to see if Curtis had noticed but he seemed to be too busy with the accordion. Besides, she told herself, even if he did notice he’d probably only think that Grub was making the circus people talk to each other. After all, lots of little kids do that kind of thing when they play.

She was still rearranging furniture when the nursery door burst open and Mrs. Hutchinson came in. She was wearing a satin robe that looked like a Japanese kimono, her blond hair needed combing, and her voice was slurred and mumbly.

“Well, well, well,” she said. “Isn’t this touching? Children playing again in the old family nursery. How sweet.”

She started around the room in her high-heeled slippers, wobbling a little when she stopped to look at the old toys and musical instruments, and almost falling down when she bent to peer into the dollhouse. When she’d regained her balance she grabbed up the dining room cabinet, tipping it so all the dishes in the glass-fronted cupboards slid to one side. Neely reached out to catch them if they fell.

“Oops.” Mrs. Hutchinson smiled apologetically and put the sideboard down. “Must be more careful, mustn’t we? Worth a fortune nowadays, beautiful old doll furniture like that. Absolute fortune.”

She then went on around the room, stopping briefly to inspect the accordion Curtis was holding. Making a face, she put her fingers in her ears. “So that’s what was making that awful noise,” she said. “I thought something was dying.”