Kristy Power!

  I glanced around the room. Whose parents had complained? I couldn’t imagine. Then my glance fell on a girl named Merrie. Merrie Dow. She has long blonde hair that she wears in two little-girl braids, and a very serious face. Suddenly, I remembered that her mom, Bertha Dow, was once involved in trying to ban some books from the Stoneybrook Public Library. She had picketed the library and written letters to the editor of the Stoneybrook News.

  Merrie met my eyes. Then she lowered hers and blushed. Bingo! Bertha Dow must be behind this.

  I felt sorry for Merrie. She looked miserable, and I couldn’t blame her. If her mother became responsible for destroying the career of one of the best teachers we’d ever had … well, let’s just say it wasn’t going to do much for Merrie’s popularity.

  I glanced around and noticed a couple of other kids looking at Merrie. I guess I wasn’t the only one who knew about her mom.

  “What are you going to do?” somebody asked Ted.

  He shrugged. “There’s not much I can do. I’ve contacted a lawyer, and I’ve made my position clear to the SMS administration. It’s up to them to make the next move.” He frowned. “What that will be, I can’t guess.” Ted put the list back on his desk. “For now,” he said, forcing a smile, “I’m going to go on teaching. So, how are you coming with your biography projects? Any questions?”

  We talked about interview techniques and other research methods for the rest of the class. But Ted’s heart didn’t seem to be in our discussion, and I couldn’t blame him. I knew he must be feeling just terrible. I mean, he was facing the loss of his job. Over something ridiculous too. I told myself not to worry. They wouldn’t really fire him — would they?

  As we left class that day, I noticed that Cary looked almost as glum as Ted had.

  “Come on,” I said. “They can’t really fire him for this.”

  “Sure they can. Teachers are fired all the time for the wrong reasons.”

  I realized then that Cary liked — and respected — Ted as much as I did. And I had to admit that made me respect Cary more.

  For a few hours, anyway. Until our interview.

  After school, Cary and I met in the library. We’d agreed to take turns interviewing each other that afternoon. He was waiting in one of the easy chairs near the window when I arrived. He watched, one eyebrow raised, as I sat down and pulled a reporter’s notebook out of my backpack.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say anything,” he replied, grinning.

  Cary was Cary again. That eyebrow, that maddening way of making you feel like a fool.

  “Don’t you believe in taking notes?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I have a pretty good memory. So do you want to go first or should I?”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Ask me anything.” He didn’t scare me.

  Cary leaned back in his seat, put his fingertips together, and closed his eyes. “Who is the real Kristy Thomas?” he mused. “And how do we plumb the depths of her being?”

  “ ‘Plumb the depths’? Where did you come up with that?” I asked.

  He just grinned. Then he started firing questions at me. “Who’s your favorite Beatle? When you were six, what did you want to be when you grew up? What was the name of your first pet?”

  “What?” I asked. “Favorite Beatle? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just answer, please,” he said. “I have my own methods.”

  “Um, Paul, I guess. He wrote a lot of good songs, according to my mom. And she says he was always the cutest.”

  Cary nodded, but he didn’t write anything down. Then he asked me a whole bunch of other questions. I answered them as well as I could, even though some of them were pretty weird. Like the one about what I thought aliens looked like. I couldn’t figure out how he was going to write my biography based on questions like that.

  Things went from bad to worse when I started asking him questions. Let me just say right now, for the record, that Cary Retlin never gives anything close to a straight answer. Check out some of the responses he gave to questions I asked him:

  Ay-yi-yi. I’m sure you can imagine how I felt. Basically, I wanted to throw him out the window, even if we were only on the first floor.

  How was I ever going to put together a biography of this incredibly irritating human being?

  If I couldn’t pry answers out of him, I was going to have to count on other sources. Starting with Cary’s family.

  The next day everybody at school was talking about what had happened to Ted. By then all the kids had heard about it. And man, were the rumors flying.

  “Did you know that some of those books are totally X-rated?” I overheard that on the lunch line. As if it weren’t enough to have to face a plate of beef stew that looked like something your dog threw up, I had to listen to nonsense like that.

  “Mr. Morley’s lawyer is going to pay off the school so they won’t fire him,” I heard in the hall near the gym.

  “Merrie Dow’s mom doesn’t let her read anything except the Bible.”

  And, finally, “I heard Mr. Morley was in prison once.”

  Oh, please. I have never seen a place where rumors pass around more quickly than at SMS. I guess some kids are just so bored that they have to make up stuff like that. I wish they’d get a life.

  I tried not to listen to or participate in too many discussions about Ted. At this point, we just had to wait and see what the school was going to do. There was nothing to be gained by talking it over endlessly.

  Cary seemed to agree with me. Neither of us brought up the subject as we walked to his house after school. It was the day we’d chosen for me to go home with him and interview his family. I had tried to prepare a list of good questions. Whether or not I’d have any good answers by the end of the day was still up in the air. Way up.

  Instead of talking about Ted, we talked about basketball (he thought the Knicks were looking great so far this season), current events (a flood in Arkansas, the latest news from Washington), and dogs (his family is looking for a new one). It was the most normal conversation I’ve ever had with Cary Retlin. Which felt very strange. It was hard to relax into it. I kept expecting him to lift that eyebrow and come out with some sarcastic remark.

  When we arrived at his house, nobody else was home. Great. I’d come to interview his family, but there wasn’t another Retlin in sight.

  “My brothers will be home any minute,” Cary said. “Ben usually stops by the elementary school to walk Stieg home.” He opened a cupboard. “Are you hungry?”

  I was, but I said I wasn’t. I’d thought about it and decided I probably wouldn’t be able to trust any snack Cary whipped up.

  He made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it while I watched (feeling hungrier than ever). Just as he was putting his plate in the sink, his brothers burst through the door.

  “Hey, Ben. Hey, Stieg. You guys have met Kristy before, right?”

  Cary’s brothers are cute. Ben (short for Benson) is eleven. Stieg is eight. Both of them seem smart and well adjusted. Neither of them seems to take after Cary in the sarcasm department.

  “Kristy would like to interview you,” Cary told them. “Remember? For that project I told you about?”

  The boys nodded. “I’ll go first,” Stieg volunteered.

  “Great,” I said.

  “You can talk in the den,” said Cary, leading the way to a small room filled with shelves of books. I took a seat in a comfortable leather easy chair, and Stieg sat opposite me on a cushy-looking red couch. “Have fun,” said Cary as he closed the door behind him. And I could have sworn I saw that eyebrow do its thing in the last glimpse I caught of his face. Uh-oh.

  Stieg looked at me expectantly.

  I cleared my throat. “Okay, let’s see,” I said, glancing down at the list of questions I’d prepared.

  “Do you want to hear about the time Cary stole something?” Stieg asked, a mischievous look in his eyes.

  “Uh, sur
e.” I picked up my pencil. This sounded interesting. I hadn’t known Cary had a criminal past.

  “It was back in Illinois,” Stieg said. “We were at the supermarket with my mom. I was watching Cary, but he didn’t know it. So I saw when he put a pack of gum into his pocket.”

  A pack of gum! I’d been expecting something a little more unusual. Lots of kids have stolen packs of gum. “Did you tell on him?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have to,” Stieg replied. “My mom saw him too. She made him give the gum back and apologize. She was pretty embarrassed, I think. You know, because my dad used to be a policeman.”

  I’d forgotten about that. Once, when we thought Cary might be a suspect in a local burglary, the BSC members had tried to learn a little bit about his background. We hadn’t found out much, but we did discover that his father had been a police officer until Cary was about eight. Now Mr. Retlin is a locksmith. I scribbled a couple of notes. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “He always hogs the remote when we’re watching TV,” Stieg said. “And once, when we were little, he pinched me so hard I cried.” Now that he’d started, Stieg couldn’t seem to stop reporting Cary’s misdeeds. “He cut all the hair off this girl’s doll one time. And he broke my mom’s favorite vase.”

  I nodded. “Go on.” I had actually stopped taking notes, but I was tickled by Stieg’s recitation. I had the feeling he was trying to get back at his big brother for something. For what? Oh, probably just for being a big brother. I know how that is. You envy your older brothers for all the privileges they seem to have. And you store up grievances. It’s only natural to try to even the score when you have a chance.

  Finally, when Stieg started to wind down, I tried to ask him some of the questions on my list. But he wasn’t interested in answering. He’d had his own agenda for our interview, and he was satisfied now that he had revealed all of Cary’s “crimes.” Eventually, I realized that I’d learned all I was going to learn from Stieg. I thanked him and asked him to find Ben for me.

  A few minutes later, Ben was sitting on the red couch. He wasn’t nearly as open as Stieg had been, but he wasn’t as evasive as Cary had been the day before either. He answered my questions straightforwardly without adding any extra comments.

  When I asked about the town they’d lived in back in Illinois (it was called Oak Hill), he told me its population and principal industries. He explained why his dad had left the police force (the work was too dangerous) and said that Cary had been a star on his Little League team when he was younger.

  His answers were complete but not very interesting. Except for one. When I asked why his family had moved away from Illinois, Ben clammed up. “Ben,” I asked again. “Why did you leave Oak Hill?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” he answered, folding his arms across his chest.

  It was clear that there was no changing his mind, so I moved on to another subject. But that answer — or nonanswer — nagged at me. I wondered if there were some big family secret about the move.

  When I’d finished with Ben, I asked him where the bathroom was. He sent me upstairs. When I was done there, I walked down the hall, peeking into the Retlins’ bedrooms.

  I know, I know. It’s not nice to snoop. But hey, I was on a mission. Some biographers go through the trash their subjects throw out! Talk about snooping. Compared to that, glancing into a bedroom or two was nothing.

  One room had bunk beds. That must be Ben and Stieg’s. The room across from it had one big bed and two closets. That must belong to Cary’s parents.

  The room at the end of the hall had to be Cary’s. I walked quietly toward it. I thought I’d stand at the open door and peek in, just to get a sense of what Cary’s room would be like. But then something came over me — a terrible urge. I went back down the hall and glanced out a window. Cary was outside, filling a birdfeeder in the backyard. Yes! He was busy. I hurried into his room and eased the door shut behind me. I think you can tell a lot about a person from his room, and I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to check out Cary’s. In the back of my mind I knew it was wrong. But I couldn’t resist.

  Oh, yeah. This was Cary’s room all right. Who else would have a poster of the universe with a little YOU ARE HERE arrow pointing to Earth? Who else would have a weird painting of clocks melting all over the place? (Claudia told me later that it was probably by a guy named Salvador Dalí, who was famous for “surreal” paintings.) Or one of a man with a big green apple for a head? (That was by Magritte, according to Claudia. Also a surrealist.)

  A bulletin board over his desk was covered with funny postcards, bizarre newspaper headlines (“Goat Responsible for Power Outage,” said one), and cutout pictures of movie monsters. It was quite a display.

  I turned around slowly, taking in the room. His green plaid bedspread and curtains looked relatively normal, but the lamp on his bedside table was pure Cary. It was a miniature skeleton with a lightbulb held high in one hand.

  I looked back at the bulletin board. I had to admit that it was pretty cool. Then my glance dropped to his desk. On top was an open notebook. I figured Cary must have started his homework while I interviewed his brothers. I bent over to look at it, wondering if he’d figured out how to do the math problems we’d been assigned that day.

  It wasn’t his homework.

  It was more like a journal.

  And once I started reading, I couldn’t stop.

  I felt a chill run through my body.

  Okay, spare me the lecture. I know it was wrong to read Cary’s private thoughts. And I knew it then. Still, all I wanted to do at that moment was to read more. But I was scared to turn the page. Would Cary know I’d been snooping?

  Just then, I heard footsteps in the hall. They were coming toward the room I was in. I froze.

  The footsteps came closer.

  And I couldn’t make myself move.

  “Kristy?”

  I was speechless. I couldn’t answer. It had taken all my presence of mind to jump away from the desk just before Cary walked into the room. When he appeared, I was staring at a poster that showed two hands, each in the act of drawing the other. If that sounds strange, it was. But it was actually kind of neat. According to the caption on it, the artist’s name was M. C. Escher.

  Cary looked puzzled. “What are you doing in here?” he asked.

  I stared back at him blankly. What could I say? I didn’t really have any good reason for being in his room.

  “What?” I asked, stalling for time.

  Cary glared at me. “Kristy, why are you in my room?”

  “This is your room?”

  He rolled his eyes. “No, it’s Spider-Man’s. Of course it’s my room.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know I may be in danger of repeating myself.” Cary took a step closer to me. “But why are you in my room?”

  “This is a really cool poster,” I said desperately, gesturing toward the picture of the hands.

  “M. C. Escher.” Cary spoke as if he knew the artist. “He was Dutch, born in eighteen ninety-eight. He had some wild ideas.”

  “I noticed,” I said.

  “I have a book of his drawings,” said Cary. “Want to see?”

  “Sure.” Somehow, my diversionary tactic had worked. Cary seemed to have forgotten that he’d caught me snooping in his room.

  I glanced at the desk and the open notebook. I shuddered, thinking of the words I’d read.

  I’d always known Cary was different. He was too smart for his own good, he was arrogant, he was sly, and he was tricky. But I’d never imagined him to be a dangerous hacker. A criminal. (Well, once I did imagine that he might have stolen those jewels. But only briefly.)

  My head was spinning. Had Cary really been kicked out of his last school?

  “Yo, Thomas!”

  I blinked. Cary was staring at me, that eyebrow lifted in a quizzical way. He was holding an oversized book in one hand and waving the other in front of my face.

  “Are you in there???
? he asked. “Or have aliens sucked out your brain again?”

  “Aliens,” I answered with a weak smile.

  “Do you want to see the book?”

  “Sure.” We sat down on the floor and Cary opened the book.

  “This is one of my favorites,” he said, turning pages until he found a picture that showed, at first glance, a bunch of white birds. “See, when you look closer, you see that the birds’ shadows — the dark spaces between the birds — are actually other birds, black ones,” Cary said. He was gazing at the picture, running his finger over some of the details.

  I stared at his profile. He didn’t look like a criminal. Other than the eyebrow and the smirk, he looked like your ordinary, everyday eighth-grade boy. And, more than anything, I wished I could still think of him that way. I glanced at his desk again and felt my stomach turn over. How could I have read his personal journal?

  I hadn’t meant to. I really hadn’t. But it had been lying open, right under my nose. Who wouldn’t have taken a peek? I wouldn’t have started reading if I’d known it was his journal. I swear. But I didn’t know what it was until it was too late.

  “This one is really cool,” Cary continued, flipping pages. “See how the stairs go all around the building? You think you’re looking at a ‘down’ staircase, and then suddenly it turns into an ‘up’ staircase.” He shook his head. “This guy amazes me,” he said. “Can you imagine what kind of mind he must have had to think of these things?”

  What about Cary’s mind? What kind of warped, twisted mind was lurking underneath that dirty-blond hair? Sure, lots of kids joke about causing chaos with their computers. But how many of them actually do it?

  I gasped.

  Suddenly, I realized something.

  My biography project had just become a lot more interesting.

  I was probably the only student in any of Ted’s classes who was going to turn in a biography like this. The story of someone kicked out of school because of a secret past!

  “Don’t you think?” Cary was staring at me again.