Behind the Curtain (7 page)

T
UESDAY, A DAY OF
the week Ingrid would just as soon have done without, but this particular Tuesday was teacher development day. Teacher development at Ferrand Middle meant that the kids got freed at noon while the teachers went to the Holiday Inn conference room near the interstate on-ramp in East Harrow to develop.

“Wanna come over?” said Stacy on the bus ride home. “My dad reprogrammed the satellite card, picks up everything.”

“Etchings over at my place,” said Brucie.

Stacy turned in her seat, stared at him. “You wouldn’t know an etching if it punched you in the nose.”

He shrank back. Stacy could break him in two. “Like Etch A Sketch?” he said.

“Zip it, guy,” said Mr. Sidney from the front.

“Maybe later,” Ingrid told Stacy. That punch-in-the-nose remark made her think of something.

The
Echo
’s office was on Main Street, right across from Town Hall. Ingrid leaned her bike—Univega, bright red—against the window. Gold-leaf letters on the plate glass read
THE CENTRAL VALLEY’S SECOND OLDEST NEWSPAPER, ESTABLISHED
1896—
THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT
. Mr. Samuels, owner, editor, and publisher, was watching from his desk. Ingrid knew him from the Cracked-Up Katie case. She went inside.

The
Echo
office had its own smells—ink, wax, dust, mold. Stacks of yellowed newspapers lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Mr. Samuels sat behind a low railing, wearing his green eyeshade.

“Speak of the devil,” he said in his high, scratchy voice.

“Hi, Mr. Samuels.”

“I’m working on an item about you at this very moment.”

“About me?”

“Not you specifically,” said Mr. Samuels. He was a little guy with a long nose, lively eyes, and ink stains on his shirt even though he wore a pocket protector. “About this outrage at Ferrand Middle.”

Oh my God—steroids: Was it true?

“What’s so strange?” said Mr. Samuels. “You’re the one gave me the tip.”

“Never,” said Ingrid.

Mr. Samuels peered at her from under the eyeshade. She could almost feel his mind probing around. “Are we failing to communicate here, Ingrid? I’m talking about the budget cuts that wiped out the student newspaper.”

“Oh, that,” said Ingrid.

“What other outrage could there be?”

“None,” said Ingrid.

Mr. Samuels made a curt nod, the kind that said they were on the same page, kindred spirits. She and Mr. Samuels? At that moment, Ingrid had a very weird thought: I’ll have to leave this town one day.

Mr. Samuels turned to his screen, stuck reading glasses on the end of his nose. “How’s this for an opening graf?” he said. “‘Question: What kind of town is too cheap even to put up the measly funding for a middle school student newspaper? Answer:
Echo Falls. Yes, readers, this picture-perfect little town of ours, or so those good folks over at the Chamber of Commerce would have us believe. Very quietly—some might even say on the sly’”—Mr. Samuels glanced up at Ingrid, gave her a significant look—“‘the School Committee cut
The Clarion
, voice of Ferrand Middle School, out of the budget three years ago. My question to you, school committee: What the heck were you thinking?’” He swiveled around in her direction, an aggressive look on his face, like he’d just challenged someone to a fistfight. “Well?” he said.

“Um,” said Ingrid. The truth was she couldn’t have cared less about
The Clarion
. Teachers always supervised student newspapers, meaning the fun got squeezed out. But Mr. Samuels didn’t want to hear that, so Ingrid said, “Pretty hard-hitting, Mr. Samuels.”

“They’ll have to lump it,” said Mr. Samuels. “I’m not changing a syllable. Some of the powers that be in this town could use a good smack upside the head.”

“Does that include the board of assessors?” Ingrid said.

He took off his glasses, peered at her. “Don’t tell
me you’ve got something on them?”

“Oh, no,” said Ingrid, “it’s nothing like that.”

“Too much to hope for,” said Mr. Samuels. “Let me guess—this is about your grandfather.”

“Yes.”

“Now he’s locking horns with the board of assessors.”

“Not exactly,” said Ingrid. She told him the whole story.

“So he plans to get some pigs and file an appeal?” said Mr. Samuels.

“Yes,” said Ingrid. “Without a lawyer.”

“Goes without saying,” said Mr. Samuels. He put his hands together like a church steeple, poked his nose over the top. Ingrid assumed he was considering the lawyer question, but she was wrong. “I wonder how this got started,” he said.

“How what got started?” said Ingrid.

“The whole reassessment,” said Mr. Samuels.

“It’s true,” Ingrid said. “Grampy hasn’t done any farming for years.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Samuels. “Then, after all that time—boom, reassessment.”

“Maybe one of the assessors happened to drive by,” Ingrid said, “saw how bare everything was.”

Mr. Samuels shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Not in Echo Falls.” He picked up the phone, dialed a number, covered the mouthpiece, whispered to Ingrid, “Polly Porterhouse. Just the clerk, but she runs the show.”

“Porterhouse?” said Ingrid. “Any relation to the gym teacher?”

“Wife,” said Mr. Samuels. He uncovered the mouthpiece. “Polly,” he said, “Red Samuels, over at
The Echo
.”

Red? Ingrid looked at him closely. What he had for hair were a few wisps on his head and eyebrows, all white. Polly Porterhouse said something that made him laugh. He said something about mill rates that made her laugh. Then he started talking about farms in general and soon Grampy in particular. All of a sudden he straightened up.

“Really, Polly?” he said. “And who would that be?” He wrote something on a pad and said good-bye. Turning to Ingrid, he said, “Always a neighbor in cases like this.”

“What cases?”

“Where someone gets reassessed out of the blue,” said Mr. Samuels. “Some neighbor with a grudge makes a call to the board of assessors.” He rotated
the notepad so she could read what he’d written.

FRD Properties.

“What’s that?” Ingrid said.

“Name that whoever owns those cottages across 392 from your grandfather’s place hides behind,” said Mr. Samuels.

“Are you talking about the old Prescott farm?” asked Ingrid. “Where the Krakens lived?”

“How’d you know a thing like that?” Mr. Samuels said.

“Grampy told me,” Ingrid said. She stared at the notepad, tried to make sense of things. “Can we find out who FRD Properties is?”

“Just watch me,” said Mr. Samuels.

He started tapping at the keyboard, nose inching closer and closer to the screen. “Hmm,” he said. “FRD seems to be owned by DRF Development…registered in Delaware.”

“Someone in Delaware tried to get Grampy’s taxes raised?” Ingrid said.

“
Registered
in Delaware,” said Mr. Samuels. “Red flag, far as I’m concerned. If they think that’s going to stop me, they don’t know who they’re dealing with.”

“Why is it a red flag?” Ingrid said.

But Mr. Samuels was typing fast now, his eyes
shining with light from the screen, and didn’t hear. Ingrid let herself out.

“Welcome, everybody,” said Jill Monteiro at the first rehearsal for The Xmas Revue. “We’re off to see the wizard.”

Everyone laughed. They sat in a circle on folding chairs on the auditorium stage at Echo Falls High, five kids from Ferrand Middle and Jill. Jill was a genuine artist who’d actually performed off-Broadway and had had a brief speaking role—she’d said “Make that a double”—in
Tongue and Groove
, a home-renovation spoof with Will Smith and Eugene Levy that had gone straight to video.

“Ingrid I know,” she said, her big dark eyes taking them all in, “but not the rest of you. Why don’t you introduce yourselves, tell us a bit about your acting experience. Let’s start with the Cowardly Lion.”

“That’s me,” said Stacy. “Stacy Rubino. No experience. Ingrid dragged me into this.”

Jill laughed, her black curls glistening under the light. “Exactly how I got my start,” she said. “Kicking and screaming. Scarecrow?”

Mia raised her hand. “Mia McGreevy. Back at my old school I was in lots of plays.”

“Where was this?” asked Jill.

Mia bit her lip. “New York.” She and her mom had moved to Echo Falls after the divorce, but her parents still kept fighting, mostly by e-mail that sometimes got mistakenly copied to Mia.

“And what do you think of Echo Falls?” Jill said.

Ingrid knew the answer to that: Mia was bored to tears. But what Mia now said surprised her. “It’s so beautiful. And the kids are great.”

Jill gave Mia a smile—a strange one, Ingrid thought, almost sad. “Tin Woodman?” she said.

Joey mumbled his name, incomprehensibly.

“Missed that,” said Jill.

“Joey Strade,” said Joey. Jill’s gaze went to that stubborn cowlick at the back of his head. “No experience,” he added. Ingrid was still amazed that Joey had come out for this in the first place. All he’d told her was “Why not? It’s just one little scene.”

“Can you supply an ax, Joey?” Jill said.

“An ax?”

“As a prop for the woodman.”

“Oh, yeah,” Joey said. “We got axes.”

“Ingrid’s Dorothy,” Jill said. “So that just leaves the wizard.”

“C’est moi, amigos,”
said Brucie Berman.

“Our scene is the one where Dorothy and her friends meet the wizard,” said Jill, handing out the scripts. Everyone leafed through.

“Hey,” said Brucie. “Where’s the singing?”

“No singing,” said Jill. “I adapted this from the book.”

“Book?” said Brucie.

“It was a book first,” said Jill, “written by—”

“But what about me singing ‘Over the Rainbow’?” Brucie asked.

“The wizard doesn’t even sing ‘Over the Rainbow,’ you dweeb,” said Stacy.

Brucie gave her what he must have considered a withering look. “I was going to rap it,” he said.

“You know something?” said Stacy. “You’re totally—”

“How would that go, Brucie?” said Jill. “Your ‘Over the Rainbow’ rap.”

Brucie’s eyes lit up. A second later he was on his feet, grunting into his fist as though it were a mike.

“Wow,” said Jill.

“So I can do it?” said Brucie.

“It would fit beautifully,” said Jill, “in some future production.”

“Huh?” said Brucie.

“But unfortunately not this one,” Jill said. “First, let’s talk about what the scene is actually trying—”

An alarm went off in the auditorium, loud and piercing. They glanced at one another, waited for it to stop or someone to come. No one came. It didn’t stop.

Jill raised her voice. “Maybe the janitor’s around.”

“I’ll look,” Joey said.

“I’ll go with you,” said Ingrid. It just popped out, completely on its own. She felt eyes on her back as she and Joey left the auditorium. The alarm followed them down the hall, fainter and fainter.

“How do you like it so far?” Ingrid said.

“This play stuff?” said Joey.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” Joey said. “Do you think Dave Chappelle, Adam Sandler, all those guys were like Brucie when they were kids?”

“That’s a scary thought,” Ingrid said. The backs of their hands brushed as they went down to the basement.

Echo Falls High was old, much older than Ferrand Middle. The basement corridor, dimly lit, had a brick floor and damp stone walls.

“Janitor’s office must be down here somewhere,” Joey said. “I’ll try this way.”

Ingrid went the other, past a couple of locked doors and a bank of rusty lockers, the doors gone, all empty inside. Next came a half-open door, the sign on it reading
CUSTODIAN: MR. KRAKEN
.

Mr. Kraken? Of course, Carl Kraken Junior. She got the Carls straight in her mind. Carls one and three worked for the Ferrands. Carl Senior had done that horrible thing to Grampy, long ago; Carl the third had climbed into Sean Rubino’s Firebird on the gravel road behind the Ferrands’ house.

Ingrid glanced in. A man sat behind a desk. He looked a lot like Carl Senior, beaky nose (although
his was straight) and pointy chin, but was younger and bigger, with thinning brown hair arranged in a comb-over. Carl Junior, for sure. The office was a mess, but a few details stood out: a cigarette burning in an ashtray, a glass of some light-brown liquid on the desk, the wad of bills Carl Junior was counting.

Ingrid drew back out of sight, knocked on the door.

“Huh?” said Carl Junior. “Who’s there?”

Ingrid stepped into view. Cigarette, drink, money—all gone.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said. “School’s closed.”

“We—we’re rehearsing in the auditorium.”

“For Chrissake,” he said, rising. He was very tall, with long arms and huge bony hands. “No one tells me nothin’.”

From behind Ingrid, Joey said, “The alarm went on. We need it turned off.”

Carl Junior gazed at him. “Do I know you?” he said.

“Joey Strade,” said Joey.

“Chief’s son?”

“Yeah.”

Carl Junior went over to a panel on the wall.
“Goddamn building’s falling apart.” He flicked a circuit breaker. “Alarm off,” he said. “Happy now?”

“Thanks,” said Joey.

“Yeah,” said Ingrid, “thanks.” Hers was meant for Joey.

I
NGRID LAY ON HER BED
, reading from
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
. “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” one of her favorites. She was deep in the story, totally swallowed up as usual, when she came to Holmes saying this: “I have frequently gained my first real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.”

It stopped her, threw her out of the story, like off a horse. She thought of Chloe and her parents, the Rubinos, the three Carls. And what about her own family? What would Holmes say if he—

“Hey.” Ty stuck his head in the door.

“What’s up?” Ingrid said.

“Need a spotter.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“Went back to the office.”

“How about taking the day off?”

“Day off? Next game’s West Hill.”

Ingrid got up with a sigh. If the Red Raiders went down to defeat, it wasn’t going to be on her.

Ty loaded plates on the bar: one eighty-five. Ingrid took her place, watched the bar go down to his chest, back up. Three sets of ten, clank clank, no breakdown in form, no help needed getting the bar back on the cradle. He added the two tens, just like last time. Except now Ingrid said nothing—this was one of those controlled experiments.

Ty lay down on the bench. He wriggled his feet around, wriggled his body, got his hands on the bar, went still. She looked into his eyes. He didn’t even see her. His concentration filled the room. He took a deep breath, lifted the bar out of the cradle, let it down to his chest, breathed out. And then raised the bar. Got it right up there, lowered it, raised it again, form still good. Breathed in, lowered it, breathed out, lifted. Now his arms started to shake, form breaking down, but when Ingrid made a little move
ment forward, he barked, “No!” And got it up into the cradle, three successful lifts at two-oh-five, unlike last time, and no help necessary. No human help.

Ty lay there, breathing heavily, chest rising and falling, face flushed, partly with effort, partly with pride.

“We need to talk,” Ingrid said.

He sat up, wiped his face with a towel. “’Bout what?” he said. “See that? I did two-oh-five.”

“Yeah,” said Ingrid. “I saw.” No human help. Ingrid began to understand what this was all about. It wasn’t the acne, the tantrums, the liver damage, the cancer, all Mr. Porterhouse’s mumbling stuff in health class. Bad, yes. But the worst thing was the nagging wonder: Who was lifting the weight, winning the race, scoring the touchdown, getting the glory—you or some supernerd in a chemistry lab? And if it was the supernerd, why bother playing the games at all?

“Why’re you looking at me like that?” Ty said.

“I know you like football.”

“Duh.”

“But you wouldn’t do anything stupid, would you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“For example,” said Ingrid, “where’s your DVD player?”

“Huh?” said Ty. But as he said it, his eyes shifted as though he were checking his rearview mirror, just like Dad.

“The DVD player that’s normally on the shelf in your room,” Ingrid said.

“What’s your point?”

“It’s not there.”

“It’s not?”

“You didn’t know?” she said.

They looked at each other. Her own brother, who she’d known all her life, and she had no idea what he would say next. Was it possible he really didn’t know, that maybe Sean had stolen the DVD player and she had misread everything?

“Oh yeah,” said Ty. “I lent it to someone.”

“Like who?”

Ty’s chin tilted up and his eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?”

“Just tell me.”

Ty got up off the bench. He’d always been bigger than she was, but the difference had never been like this.

“You’re a pain,” he said.

“Why is it a big secret?”

Ty came very close. He’d pushed her around once or twice in the past, but weren’t they beyond that now? Ingrid stood her ground.

Ty took a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m related to you,” he said. “You’re the nosiest person I ever met.”

“That’s not a crime,” Ingrid said. A good word to fall silent on. It hung there between them. Ty’s eyes did that rearview mirror shift again.

“No goddamn business of yours,” he said. “But I lent the stupid thing to Sean.”

“Sean Rubino?”

“Yeah. Sean Rubino. I can get it back anytime I want.”

“Why’d you lend it to him?”

“Ever heard of being friendly?”

“You’re not friends with Sean Rubino.”

His voice rose. “Now you’re telling me who my friends are?”

“He’s a loser.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“You’re a moron.”

“Get out of my way.”

“No.”

He pushed her out of the way, so easily, headed for the stairs. The lights shone on his bare back. He was a liar.

“Look at those zits on your back,” she said. “What’s going on?”

He whirled around and mimicked her. “Look at those braces on your teeth.”

She ignored him. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“There’s nothing to tell.” Ty yanked on his shirt. “Know your problem?”

“My problem?”

“Yeah, yours, you stuck-up little bitch. Ever since that whole Cracked-Up Katie thing you’ve been living in a fantasy world.”

Her face got red-hot. “That’s not true.”

He smirked at her, a look she’d never seen on his face before, although she had on Sean Rubino’s. Then he turned and went up the stairs.

“THAT’S NOT TRUE!”

Ingrid awoke in the night, a sudden awakening as though some loud noise had startled her. She listened, heard nothing but rain on the roof and Nigel softly snoring. Was it possible she’d got it wrong?
Zits on the back might be just zits on the back. Maybe weight lifting alone could make you strong quickly if you happened to hit a growth spurt or something. Maybe Ty actually thought Sean was cool, or maybe it was simply that he was older and had his own car. That didn’t explain the $1,649 in Sean’s drawer. Couldn’t there be lots of explanations for that, mostly bad but not necessarily rubbing off on Ty? And therefore all the rest of it, all that connecting the dots, might be her imagination and nothing more. And if so, could it be that Ty was right and she was living in a fantasy world?

She sat up. Was it true? Was that her? If it was, she’d have to change her whole personality. Could that even be done?

The rain fell on the roof, not as hard as drumming, not as soft as pitter-pattering. Her imagination and nothing more. Except. Except what? Something was bothering her.

Ingrid got up, started getting dressed. She was lacing up her shoes when she remembered: the medicine bottle from Mexico, up in the tree house. All that Spanish writing on the back, and the only words she’d understood—
anabolic steroids
—halfway down. But what about that Spanish writing? Did it
say, “Do not mix with anabolic steroids,” or “Sale and consumption of anabolic steroids are illegal” or some other innocent thing?

“Stay,” she said to Nigel, very softly. He whimpered once but slept on. Ingrid went down the hall. Ty’s door was closed and so was Mom and Dad’s. The house was quiet and dark, no lights on. Ingrid didn’t need them, could have gone anywhere in the house with her eyes shut. She went to the kitchen for the flashlight kept in the drawer by the sink, then continued down to the basement, where she opened the slider and stepped outside.

Cold rain fell invisibly from a sky the color of charcoal. Ingrid crossed the lawn, entered the town woods. The trees were a little darker than charcoal, the path darker than that. She turned off the path, came to the huge dark form of the oak with the double trunk, felt for Dad’s footholds.

Flashlight between her teeth, Ingrid climbed to the tree house, pulled herself through. She switched on the flashlight, shone it on the leaf pile in the corner. Only there was no leaf pile in the corner. It was swept clean.

She panned the light around, saw the two stools, red for Ingrid, blue for Ty; and the sign:
THE TREE
HOUS. OWNR TY. ASISTENT INGRID
. Even the Ping-Pong ball was still there, lying against the wall, in case of any surviving Meany Cats. But that Fabricado en México bottle was gone. Ingrid got down on her hands and knees, covered every inch. Gone.

She switched off the flashlight, gazed out the window. The woods spread out in the distance, dark and spiky.

Back in the mudroom, Ty’s sneakers were wet.

“I’ll protect you,” he’d said. Only a game, yes, and even then Ingrid had been ninety-nine percent sure that Meany Cats didn’t exist, but still, she’d felt safe.

“I hate when the days get so short,” Stacy said. The next day, in Stacy’s bedroom after school, homework scattered all over the place.

“What’s the Continental Congress?” Ingrid said.

“Is that the tea thing?” said Stacy.

“This packet is huge,” Ingrid said.

Shadows were already falling outside.

“This country has way too much history,” Stacy said. “If we lived in 1770, we wouldn’t have to study the Continental Congress.”

“How about 1491?” Ingrid said. “No history
homework at all.” She closed her packet.

“Did any women go with Columbus?” Stacy said.

“I don’t know,” Ingrid said. “There were women pirates.”

“Yeah?”

“Bonnie somebody.”

“Cool.” Darker and darker outside, real fast, like someone was turning a dial. “My mom made brownies,” Stacy said.

“Those almond ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll get them.”

Stacy left the room, went downstairs. The Rubinos’ house was quiet, Mr. and Mrs. Rubino at work, Sean God knows where.

Sean, one of those dots, possibly unconnected.

The next thing Ingrid knew, she was down the hall, slipping into Sean’s room, quick and silent. No defense for this, the kind of invasion of privacy she would have hated if it had happened to her. But she couldn’t stop herself, didn’t even really try. Ingrid had to know what was fantasy, what was real.

Sean’s room: squalor as before, maybe worse. Plus those bare walls with bits of masking tape where
posters had once hung. For some reason that bothered her. She stepped over a pile of dirty clothes and opened the bottom drawer of Sean’s desk. Still crammed—wrinkled homework, car magazines, and down at the bottom, the baseball glove. She took it out, opened it. Nothing inside. The $1,649—gone.

Ingrid replaced the glove, closed the drawer, straightened. Her gaze fell on Sean’s TV. Something else wrong—Ty’s DVD player was gone.

Reality or fantasy? You needed data, Holmes said, but what if the data kept disappearing before you could fit things together? Had Holmes ever—

Sean walked into the room eating a brownie, his hair gelled up in spikes.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Ingrid’s heart started beating fast, like she’d been caught doing something terrible; which was kind of true.

“Um,” she said.

The expression on Sean’s face was in transition from puzzlement to something nastier. Ingrid glanced around, hoping for an idea and quick.

“I was looking for a book.”

“A book?”

There didn’t seem to be a single one in evidence.

“About—” The name, please. It came to her, thank God. “The Continental Congress.”

“What the hell’s that?” Sean said.

“This history thing. Sorry. Didn’t know you were home.”

“I wasn’t,” he said. The expression on his face was changing again, maybe getting ready to settle on mild annoyance when another kid—no, a man—walked in, three brownies in his hand. He saw Ingrid.

“Who’s this?” he said.

“Just a friend of my sister’s,” said Sean.

The man looked down at her. In his twenties probably, not particularly tall, not as tall as Sean, for example, but he did have that beaky nose. Plus long stringy hair and eyes a little too close together. If Ingrid had seen him before, it had been from a distance. She had to be sure.

“Hi,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Ingrid Levin-Hill.”

He gazed at her hand as if he’d never done this before. Then he remembered his manners and shook it, grinding a few brownie crumbs into her palm. Also he forgot to say his name.

“And you are?” Ingrid said.

“Carl,” he said. “Carl Kraken.”

Carl the third, assistant caretaker at the Ferrands’. He let go of her hand, then did something that no one had ever done before to Ingrid, something that made her feel weird. He looked her up and down, real fast, but she caught it. What had Grampy said about the Krakens?
A rotten family from way back.

“Ingrid,” Stacy called from downstairs. “Your mom’s here.”

Mom drove her home.

“Something wrong, Ingrid?”

“Nope.”

She went up to her room, peeking into Ty’s on the way by. His DVD player was back on the shelf. Like nothing was wrong.