Read Mummy Online

Authors: Caroline B. Cooney

Mummy (7 page)

“None of those details matter,” said Maris impatiently.

“Think about it, Maris,” said Lovell. “You’re coming out of the museum with the alarm bells ringing, you’ve got a mummy on your shoulder, and it’s two in the morning. Are you going to walk home with it? Are you going to have it sit at the breakfast table with you for the next two weeks? Are you going to shove it into your locker at school and hope nobody sees?”

“So take it the day before Halloween, and go straight to the high school.”

“The school will also be locked at two in the morning,” said Jack.

“So one of us will wait inside the high school to let you in. You guys are making this way too hard,” said Maris.

“Maybe it is way too hard,” said Donovan. “There’s the getaway car, for example. If we lived in the suburbs we’d have our own cars, but nobody keeps two cars in the city. So we have to use our parents’ car, and how are we going to do that all night long some school night? Or a weekend, either? And if we lived in the suburbs, we’d have attics and cellars and garages, and we’d just sling the mummy into a corner, but we don’t. We have apartments without room for a bicycle. I have to keep mine chained in the hall. I sure don’t have mummy space.”

Lovell whipped out her calendar. “We can’t take it the day before Halloween.” She set her calendar on the grass, and everybody leaned forward to stare at the little square dates. “October thirtieth this year is a Thursday, and Jack and I have away games. Maris, you’ll be in dress rehearsals. We can probably hang the mummy that night, but it already has to be in our hands. For me, the only time that’s good is the Sunday before, and that means a week to hang onto it before we hang it.”

“Pyramids look good, don’t they?” said Emlyn. “Where else can a mummy rest, and not be found, and not get wet, or nibbled on by mice, or stepped on by passing joggers?”

Donovan was laughing. “Pyramids don’t have maintenance problems, either.”

“Cut it out,” said Maris. “Come on. We have to think of something”

“A cow,” said Donovan.

“It would seem to me,” said Maris, “that a cow would also pose problems. It’s heavy, it’s fat, it doesn’t want to be strapped to a hoist and lifted three stories into the air, and it would probably refuse to take the stairs, and its owner certainly wouldn’t lend it to you. Stealing a cow is probably more wrong than stealing a mummy, when you think about it. Which one is alive?”

“And what if the cow stops being alive at some point?” said Lovell. “Then you’d have cow murder on your hands.”

Lovell and Maris fell on top of each other, laughing.

“I don’t think we’re serious about this,” said Jack. “We’re kidding ourselves. Somebody else is going to have to pull off the good senior prank, because we’re just a bunch of—”

“Grave robbers,”
breathed Maris.

Emlyn, her back cold on the cold earth, cheeks damp with green grass, fell away from them into a dark, closed tunnel, where oil lamps sputtered and drafts of dead air wound around Egyptian ankles. She wore a linen robe and carried a chisel, and her heart was full of greed. She was savagely chipping and hacking a hole through stone, wedging herself into a black room filled with the dead, filled with their bodies and the pieces of their bodies, lined with jars of liver and lung.

But the dead meant nothing to her or to any other grave robber.

The living did not care about eternity.

They wanted treasure.

Emlyn rolled over, climbing out of the king’s tomb into which her mind had fallen. This had happened before. A little time slip, so intense, so detailed, with scent and dust and heat. She knew it was just the strength of her own daydreams, but she felt close to Amaral-Re for those seconds.

Emlyn stared up at indigo-blue sky. Tutankhamen had chosen that very deep blue for the color in his tomb, a blue so vivid it felt as if it could last forever and yet couldn’t exist at all.

And I, thought Emlyn, what do I want?
I want to do this
. I know it’s wrong I should be disgusted with all of us. But I’m not.

I want to do this.

A theft is when you keep what doesn’t belong to you.

So this is
not
a theft.

We will
not
keep the mummy.

She will not be damaged.

She’ll just have publicity and a lot of admiring stares, and she’s used to that.

A wisp of cloud shivered above her, a fragment of purity and white on that blue plate of sky. Very softly, she said to her team, “Here’s how we’ll do it.”

Eight

W
ITHOUT LETTING THEM UNFOLD
from their package positions, Emlyn took two very large black plastic trash bags, the heavy kind for yard cleanup. She taped these around her left forearm with masking tape, which would be easy to remove. Then she put on a long-sleeved white cotton oxford shirt and wrapped several feet of masking tape around the right sleeve. Next she put on a charcoal-gray wool pullover sweater.

The plastic crinkled when she moved but didn’t slow her down much. It was a lot easier than the cast had been.

She wore black twill pants, slightly baggy and very comfortable. In one pocket was her master key; in the other, a small but powerful flashlight in which she had just invested. Over this she wore a gray wool blazer of her mother’s. In an inside pocket of the blazer was her very small cell phone.

She was not sure why she had decided to bring it. If she expected to have to call a lawyer, she should call off the idea instead. But a phone comforted Emlyn. She did not intend to use the basement of the museum. But if something happened and she had to hide in the dark—well, the dark was better when you could summon a voice.

She put her Friends’ card into an outside blazer pocket along with a few dollars and some change. She tucked a pair of disposable plastic gloves in the other pocket and a pair of thin black knit gloves on top of them. She checked herself in the mirror for bulges. She looked ordinary.

It was Sunday afternoon. Monday was a teachers’ workday, so there was no school. Her parents were going out for dinner with two other couples. Afterward, they had concert tickets. They would not be in till very late. Her brothers were staying overnight with friends. Emlyn herself was supposedly staying overnight with Lovell.

She had had trouble looking at her parents all weekend. She felt in need of a veil, a covering. She knew they were not scrutinizing her. They felt comfy around her; she was their good girl. If her eyes were down on her plate, it was because she was hungry, not because she was keeping secrets.

Her brothers were unable to keep secrets. They shouted out instantly when they did anything, whether it was good, bad, or meaningless.

Emlyn had lost track. Good, bad, and meaningless had come together in this senior prank, sloshed together like a painting she could not understand. She was a high-speed train, racing toward a new and shiny station—or a wreck.

Sunday afternoon passed slowly. It was like waiting to be put into a game. You sat on the bench feeling sick and scared, needing action but fearing failure. The minute you were in, the sick feeling went away. You were fighting; it was good.

Jack picked her up down the block from her apartment building.

He had borrowed his parents’ van. It was huge and must be a real pain in city parking. But inside—what a great vehicle. Swivel seats, a bar, a little TV-VCR. Its windows were dark glass, so nobody could see in. Someone had brought a cooler full of soft drinks, and a grocery bag was bulging with treats, two kinds of chips sticking out the top. Nobody had much to say.

Jack drove to the museum, coming up the side street that faced the mansion. The other big, old houses once built in this neighborhood had been torn down a half century ago, and apartment buildings six or eight stories high had taken their place. There was not nearly enough parking for the residents. Street parking was difficult to find. Early in the afternoon, Donovan, who after much pleading and fibbing had managed to borrow his father’s car for a short time, had circled the block over and over till a space opened up.

When Jack and the girls arrived in the van, Donovan pulled out, and Jack slid neatly into the space Donovan had been holding for them.

Emlyn could not parallel park She could not imagine parallel parking a van as huge as this, where you could use only side mirrors. “Good work,” she said to Jack.

“The work is all yours, Em. Good luck.” He had food, drinks, his car phone, and some homework. He would be lying down on the carpeted floor of the van, invisible to the world, waiting for Emlyn and a mummy.

Donovan would take his dad’s car back and hope it passed inspection. Any new-looking scratch or ding would be charged to Donovan. Then Donovan would catch a bus and come back to join Jack.

Lovell, Maris, and Emlyn climbed out of the van. Maris wore a corduroy jumper and looked thin and romantic, the high, squishy collar of her shirt showing off her slender throat. Lovell wore bright pink tights and a very pink, very large, very long sweater. Nobody could miss Lovell.

The three girls walked toward the impressive front entrance. A guard stood on the top of a retaining wall, his boots touching the flowers in their last bloom. He watched traffic, the two museum parking lots, and every person who came and went. There was no expression on his face. He paid no more attention to the girls than he did to the pigeons.

Emlyn used her Friends’ card while Lovell and Maris paid to get in.

“We’re here to see the film,” said Lovell to the woman at the desk. Sunday afternoons the museum showed foreign films.

“That won’t start for half an hour,” the woman said pleasantly. “You’ve time for a quick browse in the museum. Have you seen the current exhibit? On loan from Chicago? Early American oil portraits! It’s quite wonderful. Here’s a brochure.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Lovell. “Early American oils! Wow.”

The girls laughed and fell against each other and went on into Dinosaurs.

“They still don’t have a tyrannosaurus rex,” said Maris sadly. “There’s only so much joy you can get out of a brontosaurus.”

The guard had been leaning against the wall, but now he stood tall and walked toward them. “Hi,” said Lovell, looking very pink. “We’re here for the film. Are we headed the right way?”

He nodded and pointed.

He didn’t look familiar to Emlyn, but it wouldn’t have mattered much; he didn’t really see her. Lovell and Maris were taking up all the space and interest. The guard had not come over because they looked suspicious. He came because they looked adorable.

Emlyn felt safe in her dull, middle-aged gray. And then, unexpectedly, a tremor shot from ankle to jaw, and her body quivered and ached. A little cry came out of her, and Lovell turned to look, while Maris talked more loudly to the guard.

Emlyn imagined him holding her against the wall, calling real police officers, being searched, handcuffed, placed in the backseat of a squad car, the way they showed on television, the officer’s palm pushing her head down and in. She imagined the police showing up at the restaurant where her parents and their friends were lingering over coffee.

A twitch took over her kneecap, as if parts of her body wanted out. My bones are panicking, she thought. I have to stop considering right thing, wrong thing, and think
meaningless
. Just bones. I’m here for a bag of bones.

They finished Impressionist Paintings as quickly as any four-year-old. In the middle of the Sculpture Hall was a small silvery stand with a delicate arrow and a curly script sign that said

FILMS.

Two heavyset women were standing by the arrow, discussing last Sunday’s film and whether tonight’s program was really worth waiting for.

Lovell checked her watch. “We have twenty-six minutes,” she said clearly. “Let us broaden our minds. I suggest that we gaze upon Early American oil portraits.”

“No,” said Maris. “I want to see the mummy.”

The middle-aged women smiled, and the girls left giggling, like junior high idiots whose slumber party lasted too long, and bobbled toward the Egyptian Room. Except that by the time Maris and Lovell reached the Egyptian Room, Emlyn would no longer be with them.

In the Great Hall, while Maris and Lovell kept their eyes open, Emlyn took out her key and approached the door marked
MUSEUM OFFICIALS ONLY.

Lovell gasped when she saw the door marked SECURITY and yanked on Emlyn’s sleeve to point it out to her.

“I saw,” said Emlyn. This was the moment. Either she had a master key or she didn’t. Her hair was prickling. The shudder of her scalp slithered down her arms, lifting her skin, peeling it away from her.

“It isn’t too late,” whispered Lovell, her eyes wide-open and scared. “We can still just forget it.”

The thirst of fear had dried out Emlyn’s mouth and throat. Even her thinking was dried out, as if she were in a sandstorm in the desert.

“My dad’s a lawyer,” breamed Maris, “if you need one.”

“What do you mean, if
I
need one?” whispered Emlyn. “If
I
need a lawyer, we
all
need a lawyer.”

“Right. I just meant—well—you have the phone number, right?”

Emlyn could not respond. They had been over this ten times. Anyway, she did not trust her voice. What if she agreed? What if she said, yes, let’s run, let’s bag it, we’re out of here?

Then her chance, her great and wonderful chance, would be over, and she would despise herself forever.

“Emlyn, what if somebody has gone into the office since you phoned?” whispered Lovell. “I mean, you phoned ten minutes ago, and just because nobody answered the secretary’s line, and nobody answered the director’s line, doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody in there now!”

Emlyn could not stand having to worry about Maris and Lovell and whether they followed through.

“Let’s not,” said Lovell in a regular voice. “I mean it. Come on, let’s leave. This is too risky. This is downright stupid. We are all total jerks. We could—”

Emlyn pulled her sweater sleeves down to cover her hands. She slid the key into the lock. It fit. She pressed it to the right. It turned. The deadbolt snicked clear.

Other books

After The Wedding by Sandifer, L
The Key by Reid, Penny
Hell Without You by Ranae Rose
Behind Enemy Lines by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Flying Fur by Zenina Masters