The Glass Castle (8 page)

How hard can it be?

Her main goal was to avoid burning down the kitchen. She didn’t even need her food to be edible or pretty. She could sneak it into the waste sack before she left. She only wanted to feel accepted—to be part of a group like this one.

She wandered into the staples room, but even as she looked at the bags of sugar and baskets of apples, her mind traveled elsewhere and she couldn’t focus.

Maybe the election is a necessary step before going home.

There are easily two hundred apples in this room. Who needs two hundred apples?

What is Angelina doing right now? What secrets does she know about the king?

The girls bustling around the bakery table wouldn’t notice she was missing, and Kate wasn’t around to tell her she was wrong, so she slipped silently into the darkness of the pantry and knelt, cranking open the slat to peer through the vent.

As he had the first time she had seen him here, the king sat at his desk covered with thick books, stacks of parchment, and piles of private papers. He was talking to a man Avery didn’t recognize but assumed was an adviser. The man wore a scarlet robe and a tiny square hat.

“She’ll be the downfall of your kingdom,” the man said. “Every poor decision you’ve made in recent days goes back to that woman.”

“I have no choice,” the king replied between heavy, watery coughs. “I need an heir and she’ll provide one.”

“But, Your Grace, you have an heir.”

With these words, the king flew out of his seat and grabbed the robed man by the throat. “Never say those words aloud again, do you hear me?”

The man nodded, and the king loosened his grip.

He reached for a cloth and coughed into it and Avery saw the unmistakable spread of blood, but neither the king nor the robed man seemed alarmed.

Only when the king sat down did the man continue to speak.

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but if it’s about securing a dynasty, you have other options. We could begin a search. I know people from the village who might be able to find him. Or at least give you the peace of mind that he really is dead.”

Who’s dead? If there’s a chance the king’s heir is alive, the king wouldn’t need to marry Angelina, and maybe we could all go free.

“You know it’s more than that,” the king was saying when Avery listened again. “Angelina knows
the truth.
She won’t rest until she wears the crown. And I won’t fight her. We will be married and she will reign beside me.”

Bowing slightly, the man in the square hat excused himself from the room.

Moments later, the king followed.

Avery was just about to close the vent when a door on the opposite side of the king’s office creaked open and a child—presumably a scout—scurried inside. Moving silently, he went to the king’s desk, riffled through a pile of papers, and took only a few that interested him. He set a stack of letters on the chair and grabbed a book from the king’s shelf on his way out.

All of this in a matter of seconds.

No sooner had the door closed behind the scout than the opposite door opened and the king returned.

So close!

Avery heard commotion from the baking room and quickly cranked the vent closed.

When she returned with an armload of staples, the kitchen had suddenly cleared, leaving no sign of the girls she had been working with, not to mention the dozens of others who had been coming and going.

“Strange,” she mumbled, dumping her ingredients on the table with a thud and wondering if she had missed some obvious reason she was required to leave the room.

And then she heard it.

A voice she recognized right outside the door. Sharp and whiny.

Not again!
The kids had fled because Angelina was coming. The bell in the corner of the room must have sounded when she was deep in the pantry.

Everyone else had fled for the stairwell as they were instructed to do.

Avery flew across the room and slid behind the baking table, knees drawn up to her chest. Right above where she hid she saw the reason Angelina was likely on her way into the kitchen: a tall half-iced cake, decorated with hundreds of tiny sugar flowers.

And she knew it was only a matter of seconds until Angelina towered above her.

Once again, the beating of her heart was the loudest thing she heard.

Chapter 13

The Wrong Move

Here came that familiar
clack-clack, clack-clack.
This was becoming a habit.

“In ’ere you’ll see what we’ve prepared,” the old woman said.

There was nowhere for Avery to go. Judging from the sound of Angelina’s heels on the marble floor, the queen-to-be and the old woman stood between Avery and the door.

If they rounded the thick wooden worktable on which the cake sat, they would see her, and everything the kids had worked to protect would be destroyed.

Or
she
would be destroyed.

Or she would be sent to the Forbidden City everyone whispered about.

Bottom line: she wouldn’t see her family again.

Avery had one choice. It might not work, but it was better than doing nothing. On her hands and knees, she scurried quickly as the heels moved closer, and at the last instant she leapt into the dumbwaiter and closed the door.

It was a good thing, as the two women came around the table and stood right where she had been hiding.

“At least my cake is almost done,” Angelina whined. “Please tell me it will taste good, or I will cry right here.”

Avery suspected Angelina didn’t cry as often as she made other people cry.

“It is my sincerest ’ope, ma’am,” the old woman said.

“Cut a piece and let me taste it!”

“Of course!”

Folded into a nearly impossible ball, Avery heard the clatter and eventually the verdict.

“Too dry.”

“Forgive me,” the old woman sputtered, fear in her tone. “You deserve better.”

The cake landed in the waste sack with a thud, hours of work coming to a tragic end.

“Must I think of everything?” Angelina droned. “This is why I have a staff. I have a country to run since the king isn’t capable of it, and I can’t be bothered with dresses and cakes that are unfit for a queen.”

“A second cake will be made immediately,” the old woman said.

“Yes, it must. And one more thing…”

The room grew suddenly quiet, and Avery strained to hear Angelina’s voice.

“I want you to go through the staff again, person by person. Leave no one out. Keep everyone you trust and those you don’t—”

Discard them,
Avery thought.

“I’ve gone through the staff ’alf a dozen times—”

“Do it again!”

Angelina grunted, the sound of her heels moved in the opposite direction, and the door slammed.

Avery waited until she was sure neither of the women would return. She would wait one more minute before emerging from her cramped hiding place. Taking a deep breath, she rolled her head from side to side, relaxing the muscles that had grown tense during the wait.

And then the unthinkable happened. The dumbwaiter began to move.

Up it went, one jerking motion after another.

Avery didn’t know what to do. If she put her arms out to stop the motion, she could break them. If she found a way to lodge the moving cart, she could get stuck in the wall. She could jump, but if she did, she could plunge to a painful death several stories below. For all she knew, the dumbwaiter could be hundreds of feet off the cobblestone ground. No one would even know where to look for her body. If she did manage to climb out, where would she go? She considered calling out for whoever was pulling the ropes to stop. But what if it was an adult and not a kid?

Panic seized her, and she couldn’t breathe.

She was right back where she started—on the brink of ruining everything. She seemed to have a talent for it.

Avery closed her eyes and awaited her fate.

The dumbwaiter abruptly halted, and the door opened.

And the voice that greeted her was low and kind. Avery opened her eyes to see Tuck standing there—kind Tuck with the alarming green eyes—hand outstretched.

I have never been so happy to see you,
she thought but didn’t dare say.

She accepted his hand more eagerly than she otherwise would have and crawled out.

They were adjacent to the kids’ dining room.

“How did you know I was in there?” Avery asked.

Tuck smiled. “We have scouts everywhere. As soon as you crawled in, half a dozen of them panicked and came to find me.”

Avery’s face grew warm. “It wasn’t the first time they notified you about me, was it?”

Tuck shook his head slowly. “Not even the first time today. You like to keep the scouts busy.” Then more quietly he added, “Be careful, Avery. Life in this castle is no fairy tale. I like your spirit, but you’ve got to use it for good. We are in a fight for our lives and for the lives of our family members.”

Avery saw the face of her little brother and knew Tuck was right.

She also wanted to prove to Tuck that she
was
using her energy for good.

“The king has an heir,” Avery blurted. “I heard him tell a man in his office this morning. I think it’s the secret everyone keeps whispering about. I’m sure it affects us, but I don’t know how.”

Avery expected Tuck to disagree with her, but he only smiled.

“The king’s heir is no secret. I’m told his first wife, Elizabeth, delivered a baby boy, making the king the happiest man on earth. But hours later both Elizabeth and her son died, and now no one is allowed to talk about it. The king forbids even his closest advisers from discussing it.”

Once again, her imagination had gotten the better of her.

She did not miss what Tuck said next, a gleam in his eye—

“You’re here for a reason. Figure out what it is.”

Chapter 14

The Ballot Box

Avery was sleeping soundly when someone shook her.

At first she thought it was her father, waking her to start the morning chores.

Kate’s face slowly swam into focus. “Get up and come with me.”

Looking around, Avery saw she was the only one still in bed, and her friend was wearing a beautiful dress instead of a nightgown.

“How did I oversleep?”

“I’ll help you get dressed. Come on.” Kate tugged on Avery’s arm until Avery finally swung her legs over the side of the mattress and stood.

Her head pounded and her stomach clenched. “I think I’m sick.”

Kate laughed. “No, you’re not. It’s midnight. You’re just tired.” She held out a dress—black cotton velvet with panels of gold. “Put this on. It’ll look good with your hair.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but nobody is going to notice my hair. And why do you keep bringing me clothes? One of these dresses would have lasted me a lifetime at home.”

“Just put it on,” Kate said with a laugh. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Why are we getting dressed when we should be sleeping?”

“You’ll see.”

Kate helped Avery finish fastening the gown then pushed Avery into a chair and began combing her hair with a heavy, gold-plated hairbrush that made Avery wince with each stroke.