Revealed (11 page)

Nia was looking at her script and counting something; she didn't seem to hear Callie's question, instead announcing, “Twenty-five,” as she slammed the play shut. “Tell Hal that on opening night, while he's enjoying the play from the audience, we will, between us, have twenty-five costume changes to oversee.” She turned to me, eyes blazing, and her familiar glare was oddly friendly. It made me think of Frieda's warning.
When you're together you're . . .
I had no idea what she would have said if she'd been given the time to finish her sentence, but I know how I would have ended it.

When you're together you're happy.

From the stage, Mrs. Hayworth rallied her troops. “I need my costume crew.”

I had to tell them about what Frieda had said. “Hey, guys . . .”

“Now!”
Mrs. Hayworth bellowed.

Nia groaned. “That woman is the devil.”

Callie shot me a questioning look, and I shrugged. I'd been waiting since Saturday; I could wait another couple of hours.

“It's cool. I'll tell you later. Meanwhile, any chance you've got something in there that I could take a look at, little lady?” I indicated her bag. On Friday afternoon I'd painted the final leaf on the final tree in an Arden that now looked remotely like a forest. Callie and Nia might be busier than ever with costume crew, but I had before me at least an hour or two of leisure.

Callie nodded and swung the pack off her shoulder. The way she handed it to me made me think it wasn't going to be all that heavy, but the momentum of her swing must have been greater than I realized because as I grabbed the strap of her bag, I almost dropped it.

“Whoa, this thing's heavy.”

Callie shook her head and smiled a puzzled smile. “It's weird, sometimes it feels really heavy to me and sometimes it doesn't seem so bad.” She shrugged. “I think it depends on how tired I am.”

Well, after two sleepless nights, I was definitely tired. I made my way over to a seat toward the rear of the center section of the auditorium while Nia and Callie headed to the stage, Nia muttering something about people “who got volunteered for actual work while the people who volunteer them seem to end up having an enormous amount of free time on their hands.” The word
time
made me think of Amanda's watch, its mysterious inscription, my own failure to figure out what she was trying to tell me.

Oh, yeah, Bennett. You're
definitely
the man to unlock the mystery of this box.

Since Louise's, I hadn't seen the box outside of the photographs Callie had taken and sent me and Nia, but it was just light enough in the auditorium for me to make out the carvings Callie had been trying to describe to us. I'd hoped getting my hands on the actual box would make it obvious to me that there were drawings like the ones Callie thought she'd seen, but the maze of vines and leaves was so intricate, it was hard to see if there were individual figures hidden in the carvings.

As I studied the pattern in search of hidden pictures, I was reminded of the summer before sixth grade, when I first moved to Orion and Callie and her mom took me stargazing. They tried to show me how to find the constellations, but I kept getting confused, thinking they meant one star when they meant another, connecting stars that weren't meant to be connected into shapes that seemed as clear as the ones they were trying to weave together for me. Ultimately I'd concluded that the constellations were about as scientific as alchemy, which had made Callie's mom laugh instead of making her angry.

“O, ye of little faith,” she'd said, and as I remembered her saying that and thought of how brave Callie had been in the face of her mom's disappearing and her dad's losing it there for a while, I wanted to have faith, lots of faith, tons of faith. I wanted there to be not just drawings of animals but a map, a treasure map. A treasure map that pointed all the way to—

“Well, hello, stranger.”

I jerked my head up.

And there, sitting in the seat next to mine, was none other than Heidi Bragg.

A lot of really strange things had happened to me over the past couple of weeks, but Heidi Bragg coming over to talk to me was without a doubt one of the strangest.

I didn't say anything. All I could think of were the horrible insults she'd hurled at Callie, the story Nia had told me about the I-Girls playing a mean trick on her in sixth grade, and the image of Heidi running down Bea Rossiter with her daddy's car.

My mom says it's wrong to hate anyone but Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and George W. Bush. I couldn't help thinking that if she knew her better, she'd add Heidi Bragg to the list.

Heidi was wearing a low-cut pink T-shirt that showed why the guys in my grade liked her. She put her feet up on the chair in front of hers and went on talking like there was nothing the least bit unusual about our sitting and chatting. “So, what's up?”

“What do you want, Heidi?” My voice was sharp.

“Jeez, friendly much?” Raising her arms above her head, she gave a loud yawn, then looked back at me and nodded toward the box. “That's nice. Is it yours?”

For a brief second, I got the strangest sensation that she knew the answer to the question before she asked it. But then I realized I was being paranoid. Whoever “they” were, Dr. Joy was not being held hostage by a coven of fourteen-year-old, lip-glossed females who'd christened themselves with the brazenly stupid name of “I-Girls.”

“Nope.”

“So whose is it?” Heidi gave me a shy smile, like my “nope” was a flirtatious joke I was playing on her.

“It's Callie's, actually.” I'd meant Callie's name to be a shot across the bow, an announcement about whose side I was on in the all-out social war that Heidi had declared. I almost wanted Heidi to say something mean about Callie just so I could . . . well, dumb as it may sound, I was ready to defend her honor and even her life, like Spiderman saving Mary Jane.

But to my amazement, instead of curling her lip in disgust or spitting out more invective against her former friend, Heidi just sighed.

“God, Callie must
totally
hate me.” She turned away from me slightly, like she didn't want me to see how upset she was. “I bet she won't even show at the cast party since it's at my house.”

I wasn't sure how to respond. Was Heidi seriously
surprised
that Callie hated her?

The box was heavy so I turned and put it on the seat next to me, then turned back to Heidi. “You can't be serious.”

Heidi was staring straight ahead at the stage, where Ms. Garner was directing some of the crew to place a small mound of what was probably supposed to be dirt but actually resembled a pile of another brown substance.

“Don't you get it, Hal?” She shook her head and lowered her voice so I had to lean toward her. I was surprised by how good she smelled—not like Callie smelled good, but like the magazines filled with photos of well-dressed, skinny women on rooftops in New York that my dentist has in his waiting room.

I realized I'd half expected her to smell of sulfuric acid.

“Get what, Heidi?”

She sighed, as if the memory she was about to share was so painful it was hard for her to articulate it. “Callie and I were friends for a long time. You know, we
became
the I-Girls together and that was . . .” She looked up at the ceiling for a minute before turning back to me. “That was almost three years ago.”

“What's your
point,
Heidi?”

Leaning against the armrest on the other side of her seat from me, she wound her hair around her index finger. I watched as her finger twirled around and around. “Can't you see, Hal? She betrayed me.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “
She
betrayed
you
? Heidi, you said she was dead to you. And I think you called us ‘freakazoid weirdos' in front of half the school.”

Heidi shook her head at the memory. “What Callie did was really painful, Hal.” She swallowed. “I'm not proud of how I acted, but haven't
you
ever done anything
you're
ashamed of?”

In spite of myself, I thought of my solo trip to Baltimore. It wasn't exactly behavior of the month.

“I don't know what to say,” I said honestly. Was it possible we'd . . . been wrong about Heidi? I remembered how much Nia had hated Callie at first, but how over time she'd come to trust and believe in her.

Could something like that happen with Heidi Bragg?

Heidi snickered a little. “You know, Hal, I sometimes wonder . . .”

“What?” I asked, curious.

And suddenly Heidi's giggles became laughter so loud some people sitting a few rows ahead of us turned to see what the joke was. Confused, I watched her get to her feet.

“What do I
wonder
, Hal?” And the sad, hurt girl who'd sat beside me a moment earlier was gone. In her place was the terrifying creature I'd always thought of when I thought of Heidi Bragg. “I'll tell you. I
wonder
how someone who's as naive as you manages to survive. That's what I
wonder
.” And with that, she turned and strode down the row and along the center aisle to the front of the auditorium where most of the cast was gathered.

Okay, that was completely bizarre.

Did I imagine that entire random exchange? I looked at the seat she'd vacated, but if she'd been an apparition, she didn't suddenly reappear. Her coming over to talk to and then insult me was just so odd, so . . . purposeless. So . . .

And suddenly I felt sick. Had Heidi's descending on me really been purposeless? Or had it had a very, very specific motive? Even before I turned my head to my left I was pretty sure what I'd find—or what I
wouldn't
find.

Sure enough, my eyes, when they landed on the seat that only a few minutes earlier had held Amanda's box, only confirmed what I already knew.

The seat was empty.

The box was gone.

“Well, what did you
think
she was coming over for?”

“I just thought—” Confronted by Nia's fury, I found it nearly impossible to form a sentence. I was used to calming Nia down, yes, but because she was mad at
other
people. Nia mad at you and in your face was a way, way scarier experience than just Nia mad.

“Ooh, let me guess!” She waved her hands over an imaginary crystal ball. “It's coming to me. Yes, you had a feeling! And your feeling told you that letting Heidi Bragg have Amanda's most precious, most treasured—”

“I screwed
up
, okay, Nia?” I'd already told them of my frantic search up and down the aisles and my panicked, fruitless hunt backstage for the box or Heidi herself. “Haven't
you
ever screwed up?” To my horror I realized my question almost parroted Heidi's earlier one to me.

Haven't you ever done anything you're ashamed of, Hal?

Well, yes, Heidi, as a matter of fact, I have—I believed something that came out of your mouth.

Nia's eyes flashed fire. “This isn't a run-of-the-mill screw-up, okay, Hal? This is
colossal
.”

Callie had stood quietly by us on the lawn out front of Endeavor while Nia bawled me out. Her silence made me think she might not be as mad as Nia.

“Callie, I—” My voice was low, pleading, but she shook her head and held up her hand to stop me.

“If it were anyone else, Hal. But
Heidi
? After those things she said to me?” Her eyes filled with tears, and when she blinked, they spilled over and ran down her cheeks.

I thought of the night on Crab Apple Hill when she'd told us what had happened with Beatrice Rossiter, how she'd let me wipe away her tears after she cried.

Now I wasn't the one comforting her, I was the one making her cry.

Maybe embarrassed by her tears, Callie suddenly said, “I've gotta go,” and dashed for her bike. Nia and I watched her leave, but there was no solidarity in our standing together. Callie's hands must have been shaking because it took her a long time to get her bike unlocked. Once she did, she just jumped on and pedaled off, not turning around to wave good-bye.

As soon as she was gone, Nia turned to me. “Just so we're clear, you
do
realize you basically handed Amanda's most treasured possession to her enemy.”

And even though (or maybe
because
) Nia's words only stated what I already knew, I felt the need to defend myself. “Oh, get off your high horse, Nia. You don't know that that box was any more important to Amanda than any other item in Louise's store.”

“Except Louise didn't tell us it would be very, very dangerous for the wrong people to get ahold of her snakeskin clutch.” Nia gave a bitter laugh before pointing an accusing finger at me. “Keep telling yourself it's not a big deal, Hal. Maybe that'll make it true.”

“She doesn't even know the box belongs to Amanda,” I pointed out, desperate. “Maybe it was only . . . maybe she just wanted to show she
could
take it.”

Nia crossed her arms and stared at me, her voice sickeningly sweet and faux-reassuring. “You're right, Hal. We don't know why she wanted it. Maybe because she thought Callie would miss it and she wanted to hurt her. Maybe she just
liked
it.” As if she'd flipped a switch, her tone changed and became accusatory. “Is that your defense, Hal? That we don't have to worry about Heidi's having Amanda's box because we don't know why she wanted it?”

“I . . .” God, how did Nia always manage to make me sound like
such
a total jackass?

As I stood there, mouth practically hanging open with inarticulation, she walked over to her bike, unlocked it, and headed out of the parking lot.

“Thanks for your understanding!” I shouted after her lamely, but she was too far off (in every way) to respond.

As I watched Nia disappear into the darkening evening, the truth of her words hit me full force in a way it couldn't when I was so focused on deflecting her anger.

You basically handed Amanda's most treasured possession to her enemy.

I'd lost it. Me. I'd practically . . . given it away. For all we knew, the box had a map directing us to where we could find her. Or maybe there were letters inside it explaining why she'd had to disappear. At the very least, it held items that she valued, things she'd wanted kept safe, not just because someone was after her and could take them, but because they were hers.

“‘S
elf-trust is the first secret of success,'” Amanda said.

“What?”

We were sitting on the train coming home from Baltimore, and I was basking in the afterglow of the most perfect day of my life. Frieda and I had really talked about art, arguing about John Currin (me: he's a fraud; Frieda: he's a genius) and public funding for the arts, the power of oils versus the pleasure of watercolors, the need to show your work versus the desire to keep it private. Her loft, which was also her studio, was full of pieces in progress as well as ones she had finished, quick sketches I took to be studies for future projects, photos pulled from magazines and tacked up on the bulletin board that covered one entire wall. The floor had, no doubt, been a pristine white at some point, but by now there was so much paint spattered under our feet that looking down felt almost as much like looking at a painting as did looking at the actual canvases hung all around us. There were three enormous skylights open to the brilliant blue sky, and one wall of the studio was all windows, so there seemed to be nothing standing between us and the rooftops. Talking to Frieda made me realize I had opinions on things I'd never thought I cared about, and I found myself imagining living in just such a loft someday, maybe in New York or Rome or hey, what the hell, even Baltimore.

For the first time in my life, I could see what it would be like to live the life of an artist.

Amanda repeated herself. “I said, ‘Self-trust is the first secret of success.'” Even though we'd left home early that morning and walked in a brisk breeze for at least a mile along the river before standing in the windblown harbor to admire the waterfront, Amanda's hair was still in its perfect, tight bun, as coiffed and polished as if she'd borrowed not just the clothing but the spirit of the 1950s office girl she was impersonating for the day.

“Oh,” I said as she looked at me over a pair of glasses attached to a chain around her neck—glasses I was about ninety percent sure she didn't need. (Ninety was about the highest percentage of definite I ever felt when it came to Amanda.)

The train's gentle rocking was having a lulling effect—I wanted to close my eyes and slip into half dreams about a future in a sunny loft with a paint-covered floor and an Italian espresso machine like the one Frieda had used to make us coffee far too bitter for a wimp like me to drink.

“Do you trust yourself, Hal?”

Did I trust myself? Could I trust myself, believe in myself, enough to follow my dream of devoting my life to art?

I wasn't sure.

The look she gave was so intense, so searching, I almost couldn't hold her stare. “Because I trust you, Hal.”

She waited a beat, completely comfortable with our staring at each other. Then, the second before I had to look away, she took my hand gently in hers. “I trust you completely, Hal.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your trusting me, Valentino.” I was half joking, half serious when I added, “But you should probably put me to the test, you know? See if I'm worthy.”

Amanda took off her glasses, leaned her head back against the seat, and smiled what I had come to think of as her Mona Lisa smile. “Oh, I will, Hal Bennett. I will.”

She'd been telling the truth that day. She had put me to the test.

And I'd failed.

I thought I'd gotten used to my dad traveling all the time, but when I stepped into the house and saw his bag sitting by the doorway, the sense of relief that washed over me made me realize just how much I'd missed him while he was gone.

“Dad?”

“Kitchen.” The house smelled amazing, so his answer was no surprise.

I followed the mouthwatering scent of garlic browning in olive oil to where my dad was standing at the counter, chopping something green and leafy. My mom and my sister and I always tease him for being totally OCD when it comes to cooking—his recipes inevitably involve dicing about ten thousand vegetables into tiny pieces and placing them very carefully into piles that he adds to a sauce over the course of about forty-eight hours. He says he's not compulsive, that cooking is all about precision. My mom says he should be more relaxed about food preparation, like she is, but Cornelia and I have eaten food she's cooked, and if you want my honest opinion, when it comes to the kitchen, my mom should relax a little less.

“When'd you get home?” I pulled out the stool by the counter and plopped down to watch him cook. When he was a teenager, he spent his summers as a line cook, so my dad can dice and slice like one of those guys selling knives on infomercials. Watching him is completely hypnotic.

“About an hour ago. How's it going?”

“Um . . .” How, exactly, was I supposed to answer him?
Well, my friend disappeared and my other friends and I are trying to find her and we have reason to believe that she's being pursued by evil people who want to seriously hurt her.

What I finally settled on didn't exactly cut to the heart of the matter. “Okay, I guess.” There was an open bag of chips on the counter and I took a handful.

“Okay?” my dad repeated. He didn't slow his chopping, but something about his inflection gave me the sense he knew there was more to the story.

I swallowed my last chip and took another. My dad let the silence between us grow, but I couldn't tell if he was trying to make me uncomfortable enough to spill everything or if he didn't mind the quiet. Like I said before, my dad's not exactly the most social being on the planet.

Finally, I had to say something. “Amanda's still missing.”

He nodded and swept a handful of olives off the chopping board and into a bowl to his right, then reached behind himself to turn off the burner under the saucepan with the olive oil and garlic on it.
Graceful
isn't a word I'd normally use to describe a guy, but it perfectly captures my dad in the kitchen.

“Yes, Mom told me.” He wiped off the cutting board and dropped a tomato onto it, starting to cut it into squares almost before it hit the wood.

“What else did Mom say?” My mom was never what you'd call a big Amanda fan. In fact, I think she might have
almost
hated her. My mom's not exactly square, but her idea of letting it all hang out is casual Friday. She definitely didn't find Amanda's changes of clothes and personas charming; she found them disturbing and she thought Amanda was bad news. When she heard Amanda had disappeared, she said, “I'm so sorry that friend of yours went missing; I hope they find her.” What she meant was,
I hope they find her and put her in an institution for troubled teens, which is so obviously where she belongs.

Maybe because the answer would have been unrepeatable, my dad didn't respond to my question. Instead, he said, “It's worrying.”

“I know!” I hadn't meant to shout, but it was such a relief to have someone, an adult, think what I thought about Amanda's disappearance. Not that it was crazy or criminal but that it was something that should elicit worry.

My mom would have jumped on my outburst
(
Why are you worried? Do you know something you're not telling me?
)
, but my dad just said, “I want you to be careful.” He paused, put his knife down, and looked at me for a long beat before adding, “Be very, very careful, Hal.”

Was it my imagination or were we talking about something more than Amanda's disappearance, more than the attack on Mr. Thornhill?

“Dad?” I asked. My voice was a near-whisper. “Dad, do you . . . know something?”

My dad whisked the diced tomato into a bowl and grabbed for another one. He held it for a long minute, studying the bright red fruit as if it held the answer to an important question. Then he looked at me. “I know some
things
.” He emphasized the difference between my question and his answer.

Okay, I couldn't tell my mom about Thornhill's list, but could I tell my dad? Or would he automatically tell Mom?

My dad started chopping his tomato, then stopped. Still looking down at the cutting board, his voice tight, he said, “If I could protect you from every bad thing in the world, I would do that. You know that, right?” He raised his eyes to look at me, and to my amazement, I saw that he was tearing up.

I nodded, too shocked to speak. This was so not like my dad. My mom can start bawling over the idea of me and Cornelia dying of old age someday. But my
dad
? My dad practically crying about our safety?

Something was
definitely
going on.

He coughed softly. When he continued, his voice was normal and I wondered if I'd imagined he'd been upset at all. “Well, you're definitely dealing with a lot. One friend missing, new friends on the scene. I always liked Callie. And I've heard good things about Nia.”

Wait, how had we gotten here? He'd been about to tell me something, I was sure of it.

“Dad?” I began.

“Dad, are you still chopping?” It was Cornelia. She came into the kitchen and stood next to my stool.

“Hey!” My dad turned to look at her and said, “Sure you don't want to help me cook?”

Was it my imagination, or was he purposely avoiding looking at me?

“Pass, Dad. Hal, can I talk to you for a second?” Cornelia's voice was urgent. Or at least as urgent as Cornelia's voice gets. My heart skipped a beat. Had she found something? Had she found
someone
? Suddenly I was just as interested in what my sister knew as in what my dad did. Still, I hesitated. Cornelia was always around. Lately, my dad never was.