The Book of One Hundred Truths (9 page)

“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Austin elbowed Liam, then nodded to Jocelyn. “Au revoir, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t call me
Your Majesty,
” Jocelyn said.

Austin bowed, carving a flowery gesture into the air with his hand.

Jocelyn and I sat back in our deck chairs. To our left, half a dozen gray and white seagulls were tussling over some kind of carcass. “You shouldn’t have asked them that,” Jocelyn said.

“Why not? I thought you wanted to find out what the secret was.”

She straightened her glove. “I thought you didn’t believe there was a secret at all.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I
f
there was a secret—and maybe there was—it wasn’t any of our business. That was what I told Jocelyn. And
if
there was a secret, it was probably something boring. That was the way secrets were with adults. Maybe Ellen was sending for information about colleges for C-minus students like Austin, and she had a key to a private mailbox. Or maybe Celia was going to start her own business—a bed-and-breakfast or a pancake house.

“I don’t think a pancake house would be boring,” Jocelyn said.

I told her that was just an example. Maybe Celia and Ellen were going to start up a laundry service. “Grumman’s Laundo-rama,” I said. “We Put Wind in Your Sheets.”

“And in your pillowcases,” Jocelyn said. We seemed to be getting used to each other. From all the time we spent on the tricycle, I was used to the sight of her fluffy hair and her bungee cord, and her gloved hands gripping the wicker basket. She was probably used to my breathing on the back of her neck, and the squeak of the seat when I sat back down. Together we learned the location of every soft pretzel stand and water ice store in the town of Port Harbor. And while we rode, we talked about what the island probably looked like from above: a narrow cigar-shaped piece of sand tied to the rest of the state of New Jersey by two fragile bridges.

We developed a kind of unspoken agreement. Jocelyn left me alone (most of the time) about my notebook, and I didn’t interfere with her snooping and spying; I pedaled almost every afternoon right past the hotel where Aunt Celia worked. And if we stopped in the shade for a few minutes so that Jocelyn could look for Ellen’s car, what did it matter? We weren’t bothering anyone. We were just riding, and killing time. I doubted anyone knew.

“Thea? I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes,” Ellen said.

It was nine o’clock, and Nenna had just sent Jocelyn and Edmund to bed. I had gone out to the back porch with a book of science fiction stories, and I was reading about a group of people in a spaceship who discovered that the planet they were traveling to had exploded.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked.

“Doubles.” Ellen was standing in front of me, hands on her hips. “I’m just wondering whether you believe in doubles.”

“In what?” I dog-eared a page of the book and put it down.

“Some people say that everyone in the world has at least one person who looks a lot like them,” Ellen said. “Celia thought she might have seen your double this afternoon, in the parking lot outside the hotel.”

“Oh.” The sun was setting. Over Ellen’s shoulder, the ocean was calm and pink, almost transparent. “It wasn’t my double.”

Ellen leaned against the railing. “That’s what I thought. It seemed like too much of a coincidence for your double and Jocelyn’s double to be traveling through downtown Port Harbor together.”

“I guess that would have been a coincidence. But it wasn’t,” I said, “since those weren’t our doubles.” An assortment of moths were hammering against the yellow light above my head.

Celia opened the sliding door and came toward us, a cup of coffee and a newspaper in her hand. “What a beautiful night,” she said. “Do you mind if I join you?”

I looked at the headline splashed across her paper:
Two-Headed Dog Bites Man.
And I thought
I
was reading science fiction.

“Put your coffee down, Celia,” Ellen said. “We’re going for a walk.”

The three of us went down the steps and over the bulkhead and around the clumps of dune grass that sprouted up along the beach like little green swords. At night the sand on the beach was different: it felt powdery and cool, as if someone had poured it through a giant sifter. Ellen took Celia’s elbow and they walked ahead of me toward the water. I watched their two bulky shapes slowly wander away.

Finally Celia stopped in front of me and turned around. “You and Jocelyn have been doing some traveling.”

“I wouldn’t call it traveling,” I said.

Truth #35: You can’t see Three Mile Creek until you’re almost on top of it. It’s cut deep into the earth, about ten feet below a long curving path of rocks and trees.

“We all know that seven-year-olds aren’t easy to spend a lot of time with,” Ellen said. “And Jocelyn can certainly be—”

“Determined,” Celia interrupted.

“I was going to say
difficult.
In any case—”

“We do appreciate that you’re spending time with her,” Celia finished. “It’s very good of you, Thea.”

I wanted to tell her that they hadn’t given me much of a choice, but I didn’t have time to interrupt.

“Let’s get to the point,” Ellen said. “Shall we?”

We walked past the lifeguard stand in the direction of the jetty, a long black column of rocks that stuck out into the water. “We want to make sure you aren’t encouraging her,” Celia said. “That’s the main thing.”

“Encouraging her in what?”

“We’re not talking about rudeness or real misbehavior,” Celia went on. “She’s so well behaved most of the time. That’s why it’s such a shame when—”

“She followed me to the drugstore yesterday,” Ellen said.

“Jocelyn did? Well, she follows everyone. She likes to spy on people,” I said. “That isn’t my fault.” I stepped on a shell and stopped to pluck it from between my toes.

“She isn’t getting to the hotel by herself, is she?” Ellen asked.

They had both turned toward me, but it had gotten dark and I could barely see their faces. Behind them, the ocean looked heavier and thicker, more mysterious.

Truth #36: Gwen wasn’t allowed to go to the creek by herself until she was ten. We thought her mother was overprotective.

Celia coughed. “The problem here is that there are issues that—”

Ellen interrupted her. “What it boils down to, Thea, is that Jocelyn’s parents aren’t here, so it’s up to others to look after her welfare.”

“Thea’s parents aren’t here, either,” Celia pointed out.

“Jocelyn’s much younger than Thea,” Ellen said. “She isn’t prepared for—”

Celia cut her off. “We just have to be careful.”

“Okay,” I said.

We walked in silence for a little while.

“Careful about what, though?” I asked. “Because I don’t think I understand what you’re saying.”

We had reached the jetty. The rocks were black and shiny and enormous, a row of them extending into the ocean like a giant arm.

“Should we start to head back?” Ellen put a heavy hand on my shoulder. We turned around, the breeze blowing toward us.

“Here’s what we’re saying,” Celia said. “It would be better for both of you not to go creeping around town, poking into things that, well…”

“Things that what?”

“We can’t go into detail,” Ellen said. “It’s obviously an awkward situation.”

“You think it’s awkward that Jocelyn’s spying on you,” I said.

“That’s right. We do,” Celia said. “Because we’re trying to consider what’s best for Jocelyn. And for you, too, Thea. Even though there’s not much we can say on the subject.”

“What subject?” I asked.

“In fact, all we can tell you,” Celia said, “is that—”

“All we can tell you,” Ellen interrupted, “is that it doesn’t have anything to do with you personally, Thea. It isn’t any of your business.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

Ellen’s hand squeezed my neck. “How much longer are you and Jocelyn going to be here? Another five or six days? That’s not very long. You can help her find something constructive to do.”

“Can you teach her to knit?” Celia asked.

“I don’t know how to knit. And I think if you want me to keep an eye on her, you should—” I opened my mouth and then closed it again. How could I ask them if they were keeping a secret when they could ask the same thing of me?

“How much money has Thea earned so far, Celia?” Ellen asked.

“Oh. Probably sixty at least,” Celia said. “If we’re counting on three hours a day, five days a week—”

“It’s more like four hours a day,” I said. “Four hours at least.”

“At three dollars an hour, that’s sixty a week. So I suppose you’re already up to a hundred and twenty. A hundred and twenty dollars.” Celia whistled.

“Are you really going to pay me?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t we pay you? We just want to make sure that there’s no more spying,” Ellen said. “Are we agreed?”

I nodded.

“Good,” Ellen said. “And of course you don’t need to tell Jocelyn about this conversation.”

“It’s a lovely night for a walk,” Celia said.

We started back toward Nenna and Granda’s, toward the squares of light that seemed to float above the sand.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I
think you had another nightmare last night,” Jocelyn said.

I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sliced some bananas on top of it. Did Celia and Ellen count as some kind of nightmare? Maybe they did; I was feeling groggy and disoriented. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you woke me up.” Jocelyn plucked a slice of banana, like a fleshy medallion, from the top of my cereal.

Truth #37: Usually in my dreams it’s February. I don’t have to look at a calendar or even see that it’s winter. I can just tell what month it is. In the dream, I just know.

I discovered that we didn’t have any milk. What was I supposed to do with a bowl of dry cereal? “Did I talk in my sleep?” I asked Jocelyn. “Was I walking around with my arms out in front of me like Frankenstein’s monster?”

“No. You weren’t walking.”

I ate a spoonful of dry flakes. They made an enormous noise in my skull, like an army marching through a field.

Truth #38: In the dreams, I always have a terrible, heavy feeling. It feels like a thousand hooks are attached to my lungs and someone’s tugging on them, trying to pull them out.

I ate another spoonful of dry flakes and looked out the sliding door to the porch. The ocean was calm, as if someone had passed a giant hand across its surface.

Jocelyn was scratching herself again. She had a new patch of eczema at the base of her throat. “Edmund’s playing with Brian today,” she said.

“Hm.” I crunched my cereal.

“So we can go out and explore whenever we want. Nenna says she doesn’t need us. And it’s going to be nice all day.”

“Really?”
It would be better for both of you not to go creeping around town,
Celia had said. And she owed me a hundred and twenty dollars. “It looks like it might rain, though.”

Jocelyn shaded her eyes and looked at the cloudless blue sky and the brilliant sun. “It isn’t going to rain.”

I glanced over at Nenna, who was playing with Ralph. Phoebe had left him behind in his plastic carrier and gone to the dentist. “It
might
rain,” I said. “Anyway, I was thinking that we should stay home today for a change. Instead of riding the trike.” I felt Jocelyn staring at me. “There are a lot of things we can do around here. Maybe we could work on some arts and crafts.”

“Oh, Ralph, you’re the handsomest thing,” Nenna said. “Oh, bub bub bub.”

“Or maybe we could set up a sprinkler,” I said. “Or play with water balloons or something.” I sounded like an idiot. Who played with water balloons a hundred yards from the ocean? “Besides,” I said, dumping the rest of my cereal into the garbage, “my ankle’s bothering me. I think I sprained it.”

“Did you hurt yourself, Thea?” Even though Nenna was hard of hearing, she seemed to have a grandmotherly radar that went on alert whenever someone was wounded. She turned around, holding Ralph on her hip. Together they looked like a strange two-headed creature.
She used to hold me like that,
I thought.

“I must have stepped in a hole last night.” The lie seemed to burn its way up my throat. “People should fill those holes in when they’re finished digging them.”

“Sit down over here and let me see it.” Nenna patted a cushion on the couch, and when I sat, she plopped Ralph down beside me. He immediately turned his pale head and started gumming my arm.

“Is this where it’s bothering you?” Nenna squeezed my foot.

I tried to wince. “Kind of.”

She moved my toes gently, one at a time. “I don’t think it’s swollen. We’ll just keep an eye on it. Can I get you anything? Maybe some ice? Or a cold drink?”

“No thanks, Nenna.”

She patted my leg, then picked Ralph up (he had left a string of drool on my elbow) and carried him into the kitchen, singing “Three Blind Mice.”

Truth #39: Gwen and I thought no one else was at the creek that afternoon. But we were wrong.

“You didn’t tell me you went out on the beach last night,” Jocelyn said.

“What do you mean?” I was feeling rattled.

“You said you stepped in a hole in the sand.”

I stood up and stretched, then opened the sliding glass door to the porch. Out on the beach, people were sunning themselves and playing Frisbee and swimming and eating watermelon in the shade of a hundred umbrellas. Sunlight was flashing across the ocean in liquid sparks.

“It doesn’t look like your ankle hurts,” Jocelyn said. “You aren’t limping.”

I thought about trying a limp or two, but I couldn’t remember which foot I had shown to Nenna. I went down the outdoor stairs and around the side of the house to the front sidewalk. Jocelyn followed me. Someone had left a folding chair by the mailbox. I tried to unfold it, but the hinge was stuck.

“Austin says it isn’t true about the jellyfish,” Jocelyn said. “He doesn’t think you’re really allergic.” She watched me struggle with the chair. “You have to push that silver button. He says it isn’t true about the i-zone, either.”

“Ozone.” I pushed the button she was pointing to and the chair sprang open. “It might not be completely true,” I said. “I might have been exaggerating a little.”

A woman with a Chihuahua on a leash was coming toward us. The Chihuahua’s eyes stuck out of its head like giant marbles.

“I knew that,” Jocelyn said. She watched the little dog trot past, his toenails clicking. “You wouldn’t exaggerate if it was something important, though. Like if you were talking about the secret.”

I stuck my legs out onto the sidewalk.

“Because you promised,” Jocelyn said. “That’s how I know. Because you promised to tell me what it was when you figured it out.”

“I haven’t figured it out,” I said. “I don’t know anything about a secret. They didn’t tell me anything.”

Jocelyn found a second folding chair beneath the stairs, dragged it out to the sidewalk, and put it next to mine. She opened it in about two seconds. “Do you mean Aunt Celia and Aunt Ellen? Were they on the beach with you?”

It was probably only nine in the morning, but I was exhausted. “Do you wear other people out like this?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. I could tell she was willing to hound me all day.

“All right, fine. I went for a walk with them,” I said. “They made me.”

“What did they want?”

“Well, first of all, they definitely want you to stop spying. Did you follow Ellen to the drugstore?”

Jocelyn set a pebble on the arm of her chair.

“And they don’t want us hanging around the hotel anymore,” I said. “But the whole thing was weird.”

“What was weird?”

“The whole conversation. They don’t want us being curious about anything. We’re supposed to stay here during the day.”

Jocelyn picked up another pebble. “We don’t have to listen to them,” she said. “They aren’t our parents.”

I remembered Ellen saying that they were looking out for Jocelyn’s welfare.

“We’ll just be more careful,” Jocelyn said.

Wasn’t that what Celia had told me, out on the beach? “Careful of what?” I asked.

“That they don’t see us.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “Jocelyn, we’re riding around town on a giant tricycle. It’s hard
not
to see us.”

Jocelyn suggested that we could park the trike and walk.

I told her she was being ridiculous.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. They’ll see us. They could probably spot you a mile away because of your hair.”

“My hair?” Jocelyn’s shadow, on the ground beside me, touched its frizzy head. “I could tie it back. Or you could braid it for me.”

Two boys with a kite shaped like a dragon walked past us, arguing on their way to the beach.

“Your hair’s too hard to braid,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. “We’re staying here.”

I couldn’t believe how slow the day was. Jocelyn and I colored in coloring books and made primitive animals out of pipe cleaners and played about a hundred games of solitaire. We ate lunch with Nenna and Granda and froze orange juice in ice cube trays and read Edmund some books. We baked cookies, and almost all of them burned. They looked like flat little pieces of charcoal. (“Did you mean to use the broiler for these, Thea?” Nenna asked.) Not even Liam and Austin would go near them when they were done.

By six o’clock, I was half-asleep on the couch. Celia was setting the table for dinner. “It’s time to eat,” she said. “Thea? Dad?”

I rubbed my eyes and watched my Granda shuffle inch by inch across the floor, his dark, hard hands lightly knocking against the furniture. It was like he was frozen in there, I thought. Underneath, he was still the same person, but on the surface he was slowly turning into wood.

We found our places.

Phoebe picked up her slip of paper, pulled out her chair, and glanced around the table. “Okay, let’s see. Is it degree of tan?” She pointed at Austin and Liam sitting together, a possible end to a spectrum.

“Nope.” Celia grinned.

“Jocelyn isn’t here yet,” Edmund said.

“Shoe size?” Austin reached for a baked potato. He took two, split both of them quickly down the middle, and added butter, salt and pepper, and sour cream. As usual, seeing Liam and Austin eat was like watching a pair of vacuum cleaners suck up a pile of food.

“Annual income?” Uncle Corey asked. He was rocking Ralph’s little plastic chair with his foot.

“I’ll go get Jocelyn,” I said. I went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, “Jocelyn, are you coming?” No answer. I could see that the bathroom door was closed. I went up and knocked on it. “Jocelyn?”

“Don’t come in,” a voice said. “I’m not ready.”

“Ready for what? We aren’t having a beauty pageant down here; we’re eating dinner.” I rattled the knob, but the door was locked.

“I’m almost done,” she said. “Go away.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing in there, hurry up. Your food’s getting cold.” I went back to the table.

“Talkativeness?” Ellen guessed when I sat back down. Obviously Granda and Ralph would have been last in that category.

“There were no good waves today,” Liam grumbled. “The water’s too calm.” He reached for the platter of tomatoes and slid almost all of them onto his plate. “Is there any dessert after this?”

“There are two kinds of pie,” Nenna told him.

“Eye color?” Phoebe asked. Everyone stopped eating long enough to glance around the table at each other’s eyes.

“Is Jocelyn coming?” Corey asked.

“She said she is.” I buttered my roll. “She’s in the—oh.” Jocelyn stood in the doorway. “Bathroom,” I said.

Everyone turned around.

Jocelyn had cut her hair. At least a foot of it, maybe more. She looked like a prisoner or an orphan. I wondered what she had done with the hair. Maybe she had stuffed a large pillow.

Austin opened his mouth, but Celia slammed her elbow into his chest. “Not a word out of you,” she said.

“Did you cut your hair, Jocelyn?” Edmund asked. He had a milk mustache.

Jocelyn pulled out her chair and sat down. “I don’t think it’s even yet,” she said. “I might need someone to help me with the back.”

When she turned her head, we could see that the hair had been hacked off in enormous clumps. What was left looked like wads of yellow cotton glued to the sides of her head.