Unspeakable Things(18)
I watched Sephie roll that around in her head. “The police will catch whoever did it.”
I pictured Sergeant Bauer. I wasn’t so sure. “I’m going to try to get to the bottom of it,” I said without even thinking. But once the words were out, they felt right. I was going to be a writer for Nellie Bly’s Trust It or Don’t, and wasn’t that just like investigative reporting? Besides, how many people would want to be my friend if I figured out who’d hurt Clam?
Lots, that’s how many.
Once the idea took root, it grew. By the time Mom called us down to supper, I’d even started planning what sort of clothes I’d wear when investigating.
My excitement all but disappeared when I saw how boisterous she and Dad were with party planning. Her chicken tasted like ash to me, thinking about what was coming on Saturday. Sephie didn’t really dig in, either. We ate quickly, did the dishes, and headed to our rooms.
By the time I finished my homework, it was nearly eleven o’clock. My bedroom window was open, inviting the dirt-scented cool of a late-May evening to drift in, making my room the perfect temperature for sleeping. I was beat, but I had a duty.
I opened Nellie Bly’s, jamming my face in the pages to smell the paper, running it along my cheeks. I pulled the book back and pretended the words were written in braille, closing my eyes and tracing my fingers over them. When there was nothing left to read it with but my eyes, I dove in.
I closed the book and sighed. Sukarno and I would have had a lot to talk about. Sometimes I didn’t know where I stopped and my problems began, either. Life would be fine if we didn’t have to live with Dad. I’d told Mom that, a bunch. She’d say I was being dramatic.
Bedtime. My body wanted to sleep short.
Inside the embrace of my closet, I nestled into the cloudy purple quilt my grandma had sewn me that was so puffy Sephie and I could perform standing somersaults on it without hurting our shoulders. If I stretched overhead, my fingertips could play the hangers like wind chimes. Their sweet Tinker Bell song settled my bones, usually.
Everything was arranged perfectly for sleep, but it was a no go. And I knew exactly why. It was the thirst. It had started two hours ago, but I couldn’t leave my room. Dad was lumbering around in the kitchen below, his sounds magnified by the grate in my floor.
The grate had been installed to allow warmth to rise to the second story back when this was a drafty old farmhouse with wood heat. We had a furnace now, so Sephie and I had repurposed the floor hole into a spyhole. We’d spent hours with our ears pressed to the wrought iron, listening to Mom and Dad fight, or party, or do gross stuff. Once we’d even rigged up an empty oatmeal tube by punching holes in its sides and lacing twine through them. We’d remove the grate and drop the oatmeal dumbwaiter through the hole. Mom’d insert food into it, and we’d jerk the canister back up and eat whatever was inside, giggling until our stomachs hurt. That lasted until we forgot to clean out the apple cores we’d tossed back in and she got slimed.
Distracting myself with memories wasn’t working.
My thirst was driving me bonkers.
I shifted, burrowing into my quilt nest. I swallowed, but my spit only rolled halfway down my throat before it was absorbed. It didn’t help that if I opened the closet door and peeked down through that grate, I’d be able to see the water dispenser. One flick of the knob and I’d have enough liquid to fill me up to my eyeballs. I supposed that’s how the lions successfully hunted the antelope, just lurked around the watering hole until the weaker, fleshy animals couldn’t stand it anymore and came for a drink.
I wouldn’t be so stupid.
Mom had gone to bed around nine. If she were still up, I might have hollered down for her to hand me up a glass of water and hoped Dad didn’t intervene.
What was he doing? This time of night, he usually parked himself in his chair on the opposite side of the house. Tonight, he seemed to be moving between the garage and the pantry, with its door to the basement. His breathing sounded heavier than usual.
I was so thirsty, but I couldn’t leave.
That was one of my handful of life rules, those lucky charms that I rattled to stay safe.
Sleep where you’re protected.
No leaving to go to the bathroom after Mom was in bed. I stored a bucket under my bed just in case.
And definitely no getting a drink of water after dark.
CHAPTER 11
“Next!”
Our middle school band room has a peculiar locker room tang, a product of all the horn section spit that pooled in the brass instruments, then dripped onto the floor. I plowed through that odor, yanking the reed I’d been sucking on out of my mouth and securing it to the tip of my clarinet while I hurried toward the small practice room Mr. Connelly was summoning me into, one of its walls a bank of windows looking out onto the band room floor.
I’d managed to scrape out a few hours of shut-eye last night, which meant I looked like a Dark Crystal Muppet this morning. I was almost grateful Gabriel hadn’t ridden the bus. Normally, a bright spot would be that I had my band lesson first thing on Wednesdays, which meant I got to hang out with Mr. Connelly. After overhearing Mrs. Puglisi and Mrs. Janowski talk about him in the bathroom, though, I was feeling apprehensive, not excited, for my lesson. If Connelly was a potential suspect in the attack on Clam, I needed to investigate him.
“Hi, Mr. Connelly,” I said as I closed the door behind me and took my seat. Heather Cawl and I hadn’t acknowledged one another as her lesson ended and mine began. She was first chair, me third with no chance of promotion. I was in band to round out my résumé, let’s say.