Story Time (15 page)

The ovation seemed to snap Dr. Austin out of his trance. He waited until the wave of clapping had subsided and then walked before the crowd with his own hands raised high. He shouted to them, like a master of ceremonies, "One of King's County's finest librarians, ladies and gentlemen. A fixture here at the Whittaker Magnet School, Mr. Walter Barnes."

Cornelia recovered, too, but not in a happy way. She stormed over to Walter Barnes and, as discreetly as she could, started berating him for interrupting Heidi. Then she berated him for not listening to her. Then she poked him, and she discovered why he wasn't listening.

Walter Bames was dead.

Cornelia started screaming. She ran toward Dr. Austin in hysterics, pounding clumsily across the roof.

Pogo approached the book cart on tiptoes. She scooped up
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
and
Perrault's Mother Goose.
She slid both into a large envelope; then she tiptoed back.

At her husband's side, Cornelia was bellowing, "He's dead! Oh my god, I touched him. I touched him and he's dead!"

Dr. Austin pushed and pulled Cornelia as best he could toward the service elevator. He motioned frantically for Heidi to get in, and they all disappeared.

Kate watched them go and then turned back to the audience. After a series of hushed exchanges and anxious looks, the parents and children funneled quietly toward the stairwell. The first-ever Story Time on the Roof had come to an inglorious end.

Kate stared at the supine figure of Walter Barnes. She felt a pang of sympathy for the old librarian. But that pang was quickly replaced by another feeling, a feeling that something big had just happened. She didn't know what it was exactly, but she did know this: It was something that the Whittaker-Austins, with all their money and all their power, could not control. It was a first chink in their armor. Perhaps it was a door to a door to a door that would lead her out of there.

On Saturday afternoon, June signed for a FedEx delivery addressed to Kate Peters. She carried the package up the front stairs and knocked on the bedroom door.

Kate opened the door sullenly, but upon recognizing the FedEx logo, she quickly brightened. "What's that?"

"I don't know. I don't have my glasses on. What's the return address?"

Kate took the package. She read her own name. Then she read "King's County Library System" as the return address.

June blinked in surprise. "Oh? I thought that it might be from your father."

That had not occurred to Kate. But now that June had said it, and now that it was obviously
not
from him, Kate filled up with resentment. She snarled, "I guess you're wrong," and slammed the door.

She heard June's voice from the other side. "Kate? I didn't mean it like that. I really thought it might be from ... him. That's why I said it. It was stupid of me."

Kate leaned her back against the door and exhaled. Then she mumbled, just loud enough for June to hear, "All right. Don't worry about it. Forget it."

When the sound of June's footsteps faded from the landing, Kate ripped the tab on the package and opened it. She reached in, pulled out a leather-bound book, and held it up wonderingly in her hand. She whispered, "Cornell Whittaker Number Two's diary. Pogo? You sent this to me?"

Kate flopped forward onto her bed, opened the diary, and started to read. She pored over the pages of neat handwriting for an hour, punctuating the silence in her room with occasional utterings, such as "Oh my god" and "I don't believe this."

Finally, at 4:00
P.M
., she picked up the phone and called Molly. "Listen: Can you come over here tonight? And can you bring your grandmother's scrapbook? The one about the Whittaker Library?"

"Sure. I guess so. Why do you want the scrapbook?"

"I just got a FedEx package delivered to me with Cornell Whittaker's diary inside."

"No way!"

"Yeah. I'm telling you, the weirdness is rising."

Molly's parents dropped her off right after dinner. Kate was sitting out front, driven there by the syncopated pounding of the Tri-County Cloggers on the back porch. But tonight she welcomed the noise. She hoped to talk to Molly about things that no one else should hear.

Molly sat down on the stoop next to Kate and pulled two items from a canvas bag: her flute and her grandmother's scrapbook.

Kate held up the diary. "Check it out. You're not going to believe some of the stuff in here."

But she had no sooner opened the leather-bound book when she heard a door open and felt a light tread on the porch boards. George leaned over the railing and asked casually, "Hey, what are you guys doing?"

He stared at the odd pair of books on the girls' laps while Kate fashioned a reply. "It's, like, girl talk, Uncle George. Please excuse us."

George nodded thoughtfully. "I see. Girl talk about the Whittaker Library? And whatever that other book is about?"

After a long pause, Kate offered a compromise. "If I let you stay, will you promise not to be a know-it-all? Not to talk ninety percent of the time and insist that you are right one hundred percent of the time?"

George took offense at that. "I won't talk at all if you don't want me to. And you two can be as wrong as you like. I don't care."

"Okay, then. You can join us."

George remained where he was, leaning on the railing. Kate opened the diary to a page that she had book-marked. She asked him, "Remember this? This is the diary of Cornell Whittaker Number Two."

George sputtered. "How did you get that out of the secret room?"

"Pogo sent it to me FedEx."

Molly asked, "Who is Pogo again?"

"She's a librarian. A very strange librarian who ... likes me."

Molly raised her eyebrows. "She
likes you
likes you?"

"No. She just likes me. I don't know why."

George interrupted. "You know why. You stood up to her enemies—Mrs. Hodges, Mrs. Whittaker-Austin. And you helped her friend, the can man. I'll bet nobody's ever done anything like that before."

"Do you think so?"

"I know so." George caught himself. "Of course, I could be wrong a certain percentage of the time."

Kate pointed at the scrapbook. "Look through there," she told Molly. "I saw an article about Cornell Number Two coming back from London with a rare book collection."

Molly heaved open the cover and turned to the middle of the book. "Yeah. I saw that, too."

While Molly turned pages, George pointed out, "Rare books are very big on the Internet. So is spiritualism. If you want, I can check out the prices of—"

Molly interrupted him. "Here it is! He's posing next to a shelf full of old books."

Kate asked, "What's the date of that clipping?" Molly read off the date, and Kate flipped quickly through the diary pages. But, just as she found her place, the other door of the duplex opened. Kate's shoulders tightened.

June walked out holding a black phone in front of her. "Kate, it's for you."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know. It's a boy."

Kate's tone changed abruptly. "Derek Arroyo?"

June stared futilely at the caller ID readout. "I don't know. I don't have my glasses."

Molly asked, "Does he sound real cool?"

"No. He sounds real nervous."

Kate and Molly exchanged a blank stare. Then Kate took the phone and toned it on. "Hello." She listened for only a few seconds before her mouth fell open. Then her eyes shot over to Molly's. She answered the caller, "Yes, William. I do know who you are."

Molly extended her arms in a gesture that asked, "Who?"

Kate said, "Well, that's nice. I hope you enjoy your new place. But listen, I am really busy now." For Molly's benefit, Kate pantomimed sticking a finger down her own throat. "Okay. Yeah. Good-bye."

Kate turned the phone off and snapped her head backward, like she had just been released from a force field. She handed the phone up to June, who carried it back inside.

Molly asked the obvious question. "Who was it?"

"It was William. William Anderson. He sits next to me in all of my classes." Kate looked up at George. "That should tell you how smart he is."

"Why did he call?" Molly asked. "Does he like you?"

George said, "Does he
like you
like you?"

"Shut up, both of you. He called to say he just moved onto our block." Kate suddenly looked around in a panic. "My god! He could be right across the street. He could be looking at us now, through big binoculars, or night-vision goggles."

Molly looked around, too. "That is really creepy."

Kate shook her head, like a wet dog. Then she pointed emphatically to the books sitting on their laps. "Forget it. Come on, you guys. No more interruptions. I found three entries from the day when Cornell Number Two returned from London with those books. Here they are. Listen, listen, listen: Entry one: 'They once lived in our astral plane. Now they move from plane to plane.' Entry two: 'I will be greater than Father in this one regard. He was confined to one plane his entire life. I shall know a second plane.' And entry three: 'Something that Father only talked about, I shall do, and I shall do it soon.'"

Kate looked up. She and Molly stared at each other for a long moment. Then they turned, together, and looked at George.

George took the opportunity to say, "Oh? Are you asking Mr. Know-It-All?"

Kate clenched her teeth. "Yes. In this case, in this one specific case, we would like to hear what you know about the topic. Please."

"Okay. Here's what I know. Spiritualists, people who believe in ghosts and that sort of thing, believe that there is another level to the world, another 'plane,' where they can talk to the dead."

George stopped there, so Kate tried to paraphrase him. "Cornell Whittaker Number Two talked to the dead?"

George shrugged. "I seriously doubt it. At that point in his diary, however, he believed he was about to."

Molly pointed at the scrapbook on her lap. "So ... What does that have to do with the old books?"

George smiled innocently. "I have no idea." He watched Kate's eyes narrow in on him in anger. But then her eyes darted to the right, to the sidewalk, and grew wide. George turned and saw three people approaching—a well-dressed man and woman, and a tall, pasty boy.

The boy called out, "Hey, Kate! Can you believe this?"

Kate muttered, "No. I cannot."

The boy explained to his parents, "Mom, Dad, this is Kate Peters. I sit next to her in all of my classes."

The man and woman smiled. The woman said, "Hello, Kate. We're Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, your new neighbors. Who are your friends here?"

Kate managed to reply, "This is my friend Molly and my uncle George."

"I'll tell you what, William," the man suggested. "Why don't you hang out with your friends here while your mom and I walk up to the store."

William replied, "Okay, Dad," climbed up the three porch steps, and stood next to George. His parents continued on their way, leaving four silent kids in their wake.

With as much self-control as she could muster, Kate asked, "William? What are you doing here?"

"Like I said on the phone, we live here now."

"But you don't live in this house, do you? So what are you doing here?"

William pointed behind him. "Actually, I live five duplexes down. We're renting a left side. The owners are on the right." No one replied, so he added, "Did you know that this block is now inside the Whittaker Magnet School District?"

"Yes," Kate told him icily. "We did know that."

"Well, my block used to be in that district, too. But the lines got changed, so my mom and dad decided we'd better move over to this block"

George interrupted him. "Wait a minute. They moved your block out of the Whittaker district when they moved this block in?"

"Yeah. That's happened to me a couple of times now. I've lived all over the city."

George suggested, "Is Dr. Austin trying to get rid of you?"

"Oh yeah. Big-time. But my mom and dad won't let him."

Molly muttered so that only Kate could hear, "Guess what. We're trying to get rid of you, too."

William smiled nervously, and the four of them reverted to their silent state.

After a long pause, Kate took charge. "Listen, William. We're talking about something very important here. It's about Cornell Whittaker Number Two and his diary and the Whittaker Library. You either have to leave right now, or you have to swear you can keep your big mouth shut."

"Oh, absolutely!" William swore. "I can keep my big mouth shut. I keep my mouth shut all the time, about all sorts of—"

Molly cut him off. "This is not a good example of keeping your mouth shut."

William shriveled in contrition. "Oh. Sorry. I'm really sorry."

"He's sorry," Molly muttered to Kate. "I'll say that for him."

But William seemed impervious to insult. "Yes, I am. And I'll show you. I know a lot about Whittaker. I used to be a Juku Warrior. Then I was on the Cram Crew. Now I'm actually a student there."

"How do you feel about that?" Kate asked.

William shrugged.

Kate leveled an intense stare directly into his eyes. "Let's try that again. How do you feel about that?"

William's smile faded away. He blinked for several seconds. Then he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "I hate it," he said at last.

Kate favored him with a kind look "I know what you mean. We hate it, too." She stopped to look at George. "Or at least I do."

George protested, "Wait a minute! I hate it, too. I want out of there."

Molly added, "I hate it, and I don't even go there."

"I'm going to find us a way out," Kate said. "I don't know how yet, but I believe a door will open and we will be able to escape through it. Are you with us, William? Do you want out, too?"

William was now openly in tears. He assured Kate, from the bottom of his heart, "Yes, I want out. I'd have quit long ago, if my parents woulda let me."

"We all need to keep our eyes and ears open, every day at Whittaker, for every weird thing that happens. We need to be prepared to act."