The Changeling (16 page)

“Well, may I suggest that you get down off the fence and enter the school yard in the proper manner—by the gate.”

“You mean, we have to come to your office?” Martha’s voice quavered, and she felt her eyes begin to flood.

“Oh no,” Mr. Gregory said rather hastily. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I was just suggesting that if you want to go back on the school grounds, you should do it in the usual way.”

Martha realized then that Mr. Gregory had only seen her motionless at the top of the fence, and Ivy climbing back up, and had assumed they were on their way in.

“Oh,” she breathed in relief. “But we were going the other way. We were just going home.”

“You were leaving?” Mr. Gregory sounded a little incredulous. “You didn’t appear to be leaving.”

“We really were, though,” Ivy said.

Mr. Gregory sort of threw up his hands. “Very well, then leave,” he almost snapped, and Martha and Ivy skidded down the fence without even stopping to feel for toeholds, grabbed their shoes, and ran.

A
FTER A LONG, TENSE
and roundabout journey, Martha and Ivy reached Castle Court without seeing anything of Kelly and her gang. Martha guessed that Kelly’s ambush was probably still waiting for them just outside the school gates, but Ivy seemed to think it had all been nothing more than an empty threat.

“They probably weren’t even looking for us,” she said. “They probably only wanted to scare us.”

Martha wasn’t so sure. “Maybe they’re up on the hill waiting for you when you go up the path,” she said.

“I doubt it,” Ivy said. “But I’ll go a different way, just in case. I’ll take the cutoff down to the freeway and around.” She started off up the sidewalk, turning once to look back and wave. Martha stood at the beginning of her own sidewalk, close enough to the front door to be sure that no one could cut her off from it, and watched Ivy go. She held her breath as Ivy disappeared around the corner of the Peters’ house, and breathed again when she reappeared farther up the hill. She looked tiny and alone. Martha’s fists clenched, and she actually took a few steps to run after Ivy and offer to walk her part way home. But then she stopped and reminded herself how little help she’d probably be if something did happen, and went inside and closed the door instead.

The next morning before school, there was a knock on the door, and when Martha opened it, there stood Kelly Peters. Martha was fairly surprised to see her, but she was even more surprised at her own reaction.

“Hello Kelly, what do you want?” she said, sounding, and even feeling, amazingly cool.

Kelly smiled her most candied smile. “May I come in?” she asked sweetly.

In the entry hall, Kelly got right to the point. “Look, Martha, I’m not really mad at
you,
” she said. “After all, we’ve been friends since we were only three years old.” Her face sharpened. “It’s that Ivy Carson I’m going to—” Suddenly the dimples were back. “Oh hellooo, Tom.”

Tom was hurrying towards the front door wearing his dirty practice uniform and carrying his helmet. He stopped just long enough to say, “Hi Kelly. Bye Marty.” But that was long enough for Kelly to get between him and the door.

“Is the team practicing before school again?” she asked, fluttering and dimpling.

Tom grinned. “Well, actually, I’m on my way to church,” he said. “I just dress this way to get attention.” Then he tucked his helmet under his arm like a football and pretended to do an end run around Kelly to get to the door. Kelly didn’t try to tackle him, but she looked as if she’d like to. She stood at the door and looked after him adoringly for all of thirty seconds before she got back to business.

“I just came to tell you,” she said, “that it’s that sneak, Carson, that I’m mad at, not you.” She smiled winningly. “Okay?”

But Martha did not smile and answer, “Okay.” Instead, she said very deliberately, “Okay, what?”

Kelly sighed sharply as if Martha was being very dense. “Okay, you drop Carson, and we’re friends again.”

Martha had observed and wondered at fits of temper all her life, without ever being able to produce anything like a real one herself—at least not at anything that was capable of returning the feeling. But now, suddenly, she was gloriously, sincerely angry.

“Kelly Peters, you’re not my friend and you never have been. You’re a PHONY. (That was a word Martha had thought of using to Kelly at least a hundred times.) And if you think I don’t know why you want to be my friend all of a sudden, you’re crazy, besides.”

Kelly stared at Martha, and Martha stared back, feeling almost as astonished as Kelly looked, but at the same time exhilarated, as if she’d finally accomplished something she’d been wanting to do for years. It wasn’t until Kelly had stomped out the door that she began to feel more like herself—a little frightened. There was no telling what would happen now.

But the next few days went by uneventfully. And when the weekend came, Ivy and Martha spent part of it at Bent Oaks Grove, keeping a sharp lookout all the time and being careful to stay out of the trees. They were fairly certain that no one in Kelly’s gang could climb as they could, but it would be a bad place to be trapped. However, no one came except the usual bunch of little kids, who of course wanted to see another play.

They made up a new play that weekend, and it was a great success. In the play Ivy was a dancing maiden in the court of Queen Oleander. She had to dance in a contest with the Queen’s daughter, Princess Mistletoe. The winner, who was to be picked by a Magic Mirror of Truth, was to be the bride of the rightful ruler, handsome Prince Willow. Ivy danced the parts of both the contestants, and the audience got to play the part of the Magic Mirror. The little kids loved the play so much they wanted Martha and Ivy to do it all over again the next day.

On Sunday evening, no one was at home at the Abbotts’ except Martha, so Ivy came over for a while. She stayed until Cath came home, and then Martha walked with her as far as the hill path. The next morning Martha and Ivy left for school at their usual time and went by their usual route. It was the first time they had done that since the “calling-out” and Martha was a little jumpy, but nothing happened until they reached the school grounds. And then she forgot all about Kelly, caught up in a mysterious general excitement that became apparent the moment they reached the school gates.

It was immediately obvious that something out of the ordinary was going on. Kids were milling around the teachers’ parking lot excitedly, and there was a police car parked near the office entrance. It didn’t take long to pick up some of the rumors that were flying around.

It seemed that sometime during the weekend someone had broken into the school office and torn everything up. A window had been broken, and the latch unfastened. Inside, everything was a mess. Desks were tipped over, ink was poured over everything, and everything breakable was smashed. Ivy and Martha were still listening to different versions of what had happened and who had probably done it, when Mr. Gregory came out of his office, looking very grim, and ordered everyone to get out of the office area and report to their first period classes.

At noon that day, Kelly and some of her gang sat directly behind Martha and Ivy in the cafeteria; but except for some whispering and a few sneaky glances, nothing at all unusual happened. It was that afternoon, during sixth period, that Martha and Ivy were called to the principal’s office.

On the way to Mr. Gregory’s office, Martha and Ivy wondered a little uneasily what was up—but they never even came close to expecting the truth. When Mr. Gregory took them into his office, closed the door and told them that he had good reason to believe that they had been responsible for the vandalism in the main office, they both just sat and stared at him as if they had been stricken dumb. And, then, before they had a chance to recover, he went on to say that before they said anything, he wanted them to know that several of their classmates had overheard them talking about how they had done it.

Suddenly Ivy gasped, looked at Martha, and said, “Kelly. Kelly Peters.” Of course, Ivy was thinking of Kelly sitting near them in the cafeteria, whispering and looking in their direction and probably plotting to accuse Martha and Ivy at that very moment. But to Mr. Gregory it must have sounded as if Ivy was just realizing that Kelly had been close enough to overhear their incriminating discussion.

When Ivy and Martha were finally given a chance to talk, of course they denied everything; but almost from the first they could see it was useless. When Martha tried to suggest that Kelly was very mad at them, and it was even possible that she had done the vandalism herself in order to blame them for it, Mr. Gregory looked positively horrified.

“Kelly Peters?” he said, shaking his head at Martha sadly, to indicate how low she had sunk to even suggest such a thing. It was fairly plain that Mr. Gregory, like most adults, believed in the angel-faced version of Kelly. “Kelly was away this weekend with her parents. Kelly’s father is a friend of mine, and I happen to know they didn’t get back to Rosewood ’til quite late Sunday night.” He sighed as if he were terribly depressed by so much evil behind such innocent-appearing faces. “You ought to realize, girls,” he said, “how very reluctant Kelly was to tell what she had overheard today. Kelly is not the kind of girl to enjoy getting two of her friends into trouble, I’m sure. However she realized that it was clearly her duty to her school and classmates. I’m sure it was a very difficult decision for her to make.” After that speech Martha knew for sure that it was useless.

Next Mr. Gregory went on to make a big thing out of the fact that he had caught them climbing “into” the school grounds not long before. He didn’t exactly say so, but it was plain that he felt he had interrupted some kind of dry run—a training exercise for a crime in the planning.

And finally Mr. Gregory began to go into what was going to happen, and at that point Martha, who had until then been amazingly firm and tearless, broke down and cried her usual huge wet tears. She knew it looked bad, as if she had more to cry about than just her old familiar terror and a new outrage at being so falsely accused, but she couldn’t help it. If they confessed freely, Mr. Gregory was saying, and if their parents agreed to pay for the damage, perhaps the police would agree to stay out of it. But if not—The rest he only hinted at, but he managed to give an impression of unmentionable horrors—iron bars, chains and rat-infested dungeons.

The session in Mr. Gregory’s office ended without an ending. Mr. Gregory, who certainly didn’t seem to be great at seeing through people, managed, at least, to see that Ivy and Martha were nowhere near confessing, although it didn’t seem to have ever occurred to him that the reason they were being so stubborn was simply that they weren’t guilty. But, at last, he gave up trying to get a confession and sent them home for the time being.

They were to go home and tell their parents about what had happened; and when they came to school the next morning, their parents were to come with them. Otherwise, they would not be allowed in school and Mr. Gregory would have to tell their parents and the police, himself.

On their way home Martha cried and then stopped crying long enough to babble about telling her parents and what they might do and say. It must have been the tears that kept her from noticing how long Ivy had been quiet. They were almost to Castle Court when she blinked them away enough to really see Ivy—and then the tears stopped, shocked away in an instant.

Ivy was walking stiffly with her hands clenched at her sides. Her face was clenched, too, like an angry fist closed over something dark and hot that seethed just at the edge of explosion.

“Ivy?” Martha asked uncertainly, and the explosion came. Ivy whirled on Martha with a twisted face. Her voice was not loud, but it sounded like screaming.

“You know why he’s so sure,” she said. “Why old Gregory’s so sure we did it? You know why don’t you? It’s because of me. He’d never have believed that dirty liar, if I hadn’t been a part of it. Or if I’d been someone besides Ivy
Carson
—a jailbird Carson. You can’t blame old Gregory, actually. Who else could have done it? After all I’m the only Carson left in his crummy school except Josie, and she’s not quite old enough. Not quite, but it won’t be long for her either.”

Ivy turned her back on Martha and started off, but Martha ran after her.

“Stop, Ivy,” she said. “That’s not true. That’s not true, Ivy.”

Ivy stopped. “What’s not true about it?”

“Well, it’s just not,” Martha stammered. “It’s not because you’re a Carson.” Then she grabbed Ivy’s arm and smiled a phony smile and said, “Besides, you’re not a Carson, remember. You’re a changeling.”

Ivy jerked away. “Shut up!” she said in a blazing whisper. “Shut up! I’m no changeling. There’s no such thing as a changeling. I was lying to you. I was lying to you all the time—about everything.” She whirled and ran furiously toward the hill path, and Martha only stood and watched her go.

Martha went on then, very slowly, and when she got home no one was there as usual. She went into her bedroom and sat stiffly on the edge of the bed for a long time. She just sat there thinking, and by the time the rest of the family got home she’d begun to feel a little better. If her parents believed her and would help her prove that she and Ivy were innocent, then surely everything would be all right. After all, her father was a lawyer, and he should be able to defend his own daughter—even though he was really a business lawyer and didn’t usually defend criminals, even innocent ones. But if they didn’t believe her, she would have to do something else. She didn’t know exactly what she would do, but she’d think about that later if the truth didn’t work.

By the time Grandmother Abbott and Martha’s father got home, dinner was almost ready, so Martha decided to put off the telling until after dinner. During the meal, Martha found it very hard to swallow, and Grandmother asked her twice why she wasn’t eating. The meal seemed to take forever. Tom was eating at a friend’s house, but Cath was home and she brought up a topic of conversation that was always good for a long family discussion—whether she was old enough to have her own car. The arguments for and against went on and on and on.