“May I go to class now?” she asked.
“No,” Madame Vilar told her. “You will not go back to Miss Nedra. From now on you will study only with me.”
They had started building the boat because of the door. Greg had taken it off a vacant house. Greg had a whole collection of things he had taken off houses—doors and mailboxes and lights and window screens. He kept them in his workshop in the back of the garage.
“Don’t your parents wonder where they came from?” Brendon asked a trifle doubtfully. “I mean, eight window screens—that’s a lot to have just found someplace.”
“My parents never go in there,” Greg told him. “My dad says every child needs privacy in his personal life. If they went poking around in my workshop, it might give me a phobia.”
It was when Greg talked like this that Brendon admired him the most. He had never even heard about phobias until he met Greg Russo. Now, when he looked at the world around him, he saw phobias everywhere. Every time a person laughed or yelled or batted his eyes, a phobia was causing it.
Greg even knew the special names of the phobias and could use them correctly. Sometimes he said them right out in class.
“I understand why you get upset so easily,” he told Ms. Arnold. “It’s just an example of your gamophobia.” And he said to Amy Steider, “A girl with haptephobia like yours is never going to get anywhere in life.” Whenever he made such statements, they were followed by silence, because no one ever seemed to know how to respond.
The fact that Greg had privacy was something else that Brendon found strange and wonderful. Not only was his workroom private, but so was his bedroom. No one was allowed to go into it without Greg’s permission.
When Brendon thought about his own room and the way his sisters wandered in and out of it and how his mother was always looking under the bed for dirty socks and things, he envied Greg. At the same time, the thought of Greg’s privacy made him a little uncomfortable. There was something about knowing that you wouldn’t be checked on that made you feel somehow obligated to do things that adults wouldn’t approve of.
Building the boat was one of those. The first time Brendon saw the big front door leaning against the wall of Greg’s workshop, he said, “What a whopper! That would make a cool boat deck!”
“Boat deck?” Greg regarded him with surprise. “What do we want a boat deck for? We don’t have a boat.”
“We could build one,” Brendon said. “You’ve got the tools and stuff, and there’s a lot of wood here. We’ll need a boat to get out to the sandbar if we want to go searching for buried treasure.”
“Why don’t we take Mr. Duncan’s boat?” Greg suggested. “He keeps it tied up at the dock in front of his house. He lives right down the beach from you. I bet we could take it one day and zip out to the bar and back in, and he’d never know it was gone.”
“We can’t do that,” Brendon said. “He’s a friend of my mom’s. You don’t take things from people you know without asking.” Actually, Brendon had never had any experience taking anything from anyone without permission. “Besides,” he added, “it would be cool to have our own boat. Think of the exploring we could do! Maybe we could find a way to get across and into the Everglades with it.”
“The screen doors would come in handy then,” Greg said, beginning to catch some of his friend’s enthusiasm. “They could keep the mosquitoes off.”
So the boat was begun. At the moment, they were installing a rudder. They were attaching it with hinges from some old window shutters, and it was swinging smoothly before Brendon finally tore himself away from the workshop and started for home. He felt good as he walked along through the gathering twilight, swinging his arms and whistling a melody he had made up himself. It was the beginning of November, but the air was still soft, and there were a few mosquitoes humming around in it, just as if it were summer. He thought about the Everglades and wondered if they ought to supplement the screens on the boat with extra mosquito netting.
Brendon liked Florida, and he was glad they had come here. He liked Greg and Ms. Arnold and Amy Steider and everybody else he had met so far. He even liked Mr. Duncan, although he might have been less enthusiastic about him if Nancy hadn’t detested him. It was always more fun to be nice to people if Nancy didn’t like them.
The one thing he shared with Nancy was the fact that they both missed their father. In Brendon’s case, however, the missing was less emotional. He and his dad weren’t quite ready for each other yet, and both of them knew it. There would come a day when they would be, at which time, of course, he would leave his mother and sisters behind him and join forces with his father in doing scary and daredevil things.
In the meantime, he liked where he was and the things he was doing.
Now, as he walked along the edge of the beach road, he saw the house come suddenly into view from behind its fortress of pine trees. Lights twinkled at the windows, and he realized with surprise that the twilight was fading into darkness. He slowed his footsteps, holding for a moment to that first instant when the lights had come into view—to the smell of the sea and the first faint stars showing over the dunes and the welcoming house and himself, Brendon, not yet there.
I don’t have to go in at all, he told himself experimentally. I can turn around if I want to and walk the other way. I can take off somewhere—sleep on the beach—stow away on a ship—hop on a train—anything! I can do anything! Nobody can stop me!
It was a good kind of thought and he put it into the tune he was making. Whistling louder, he swung on up the road and turned into the driveway. There were two cars parked there: his mother’s and Mr. Duncan’s. They were in the living room when Brendon entered, and another man was there with them. They all turned to face Brendon as the door slammed shut behind him, and he saw to his surprise that the second man was Greg’s father.
“Oh, Brendon!” his mother said, looking relieved. “I’m glad you’re home. You know I worry when you’re out after dark.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Brendon said. “Hi, Mr. Duncan. Hi, Dr. Russo. What are you guys doing here?”
“Hello there, Brendon.” Greg’s father was a short man with hair the same shade of red as Greg’s, except that it was beginning to gray a little along the sides. “I bet you’ve just come from my house. You and that son of mine really seem to have hit it off.”
“Yes, sir,” Brendon said. He glanced past the grown-ups and saw Nancy. She was sitting in the corner of the sofa with her skinny legs curled up under her and a worried expression on her face.
“What’s the matter?” Brendon asked. “Is Nancy in trouble?”
“Of course not, Bren,” Mr. Duncan answered. “Your sister is an interesting person, and I’ve been telling Dr. Russo about her. He’d like to run some tests if she and your mother are willing.”
“I don’t need tests,” Nancy said. Her brows were drawn together in a straight, hard line. “I don’t have anything wrong with me. I don’t even get colds.”
“These wouldn’t be physical tests,” Dr. Russo explained. “I’m a psychiatrist, Nancy. My whole interest is in the mind and how it works. Tom, here, knows my interest in psychic phenomena. That’s why he called me after his interview with you at school the other day. It isn’t often that we have an opportunity to conduct experiments with ESP in this small town.”
“ESP?” Their mother looked startled. “Surely you don’t think that Nancy has that sort of sensitivity?”
Brendon looked at Nancy. She was sitting very still. She was wearing a pair of faded old shorts and a sweatshirt, and except for the worry on her face, she didn’t look any different than usual. Whatever she had, it didn’t appear to be serious.
“What’s ESP?” he asked. “Can you catch it?”
“ESP,” Dr. Russo said, “stands for extrasensory perception. It’s a special kind of mental awareness. People who have it can sense things the rest of us can’t. They seem to have control over a part of the brain that most other people don’t use. Scien
ce doesn’t understand fully how it works, just that it does exist in various forms and degrees. There are special schools doing research on it, but so far we still know very little.”
“Nancy with ESP!” Elizabeth repeated incredulously. She paused, considering the idea. “Nancy is very sensitive, it’s true. There are times when she astonishes me with her feelings and intuitions.” She turned to her daughter. “What do you think, dear? Have you ever felt like you had some sort of special gift like this?”
“No,” Nancy said.
“The tests we would do are very simple,” Dr. Russo assured them. “One of the first is done with a deck of cards with symbols on their faces: a star, a cross, a square, and so forth. Those were designed at the old parapsychology laboratory at Duke. Looking just at the backs of the cards, Nancy would try to guess those symbols. Anything over a certain percentage of correct guesses is considered evidence of ESP.”
“Nancy can do that,” Brendon said. “She does it all the time. That’s why Kirby and I don’t like to play rummy with her.”
“Oh?” Dr. Russo’s face brightened. “That’s just what I was hoping to hear. Do you think you could come to my office after school tomorrow, Nancy? That is, of course, if your mother is willing.”
“I have a piano lesson tomorrow,” Nancy said.
Brendon regarded her with surprise. Nancy’s piano lessons were on Tuesdays.
“You got your days mixed up,” he volunteered helpfully. “Tomorrow’s Friday.”
“That’s right, dear,” Elizabeth said. “You are free tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“I have to practice,” Nancy said. “And I have homework. I’ve got a paper to write for English.” She stopped and drew a deep breath. The reasons all sounded false, and she knew it.
“Actually,” she admitted in a small voice, “I just—don’t want to. I don’t want to go to a psychiatrist’s office. It makes me sound like some sort of freak.”
“You’re wrong about that, Nancy,” Mr. Duncan said. “People who go to psychiatrists aren’t freaks. They’re just people who need help with problems. And in your case, it’s you who would be doing the helping. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on research to discover the very things that you may already know.”
“But I don’t know anything,” Nancy said. “I really don’t. I’d just screw up on your test and waste all that time.”
“I have an idea,” Elizabeth said. “Why doesn’t Dr. Russo give you a preliminary test right here? He doesn’t have to use the special cards. He can just use a regular deck of playing cards. It can’t take very long. We won’t be eating until later, anyway, because Kirby is still at her dance class.”
“I don’t—I—I—” Nancy gave a sigh of surrender. “Okay. Okay, if all of you insist. But I’m telling you, it won’t work.”
A few moments later she was seated in a chair at one end of the room with Dr. Russo at the other. He had a deck of playing cards that Elizabeth had found around the house.
“Are you ready?” the doctor asked. Nancy nodded.
Carefully Dr. Russo lifted a card from the deck in his hand and held it with the back facing Nancy so she couldn’t see what was on the card.
“Now,” he said, “just write down on your pad of paper what you think is on this card. Is it red or black? A face card or a numeral? See if you can get some inkling of the suit.”
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “I don’t have any idea.” Her voice sounded thick and funny.
“Then just take a guess,” Dr. Russo said. “Write down the first thing that comes into your mind. Got it?” he added as Nancy bent and wrote something on the pad. “All right, let’s try another.”
One by one he went through all the cards in the deck, and one by one Nancy wrote down the answers.
When they were finished, Nancy got up from her chair and handed the pad to the doctor. Dr. Russo glanced quickly at the pad. For an instant his face fell, but he caught himself so that he didn’t look too disappointed.
“There are bound to be some incorrect answers,” he said. “It’s the percentage that tells the story. I’ll have to check all your answers against the cards.”
“But they are wrong, aren’t they?” Nancy asked. “The first ones, at least?”
“I told you, Nancy, it’s the overall average that counts.” Dr. Russo got to his feet. “I want to thank you, Nancy, and you, too, Mrs. Garrett, for your time and cooperation. I hope I can persuade you to come to my office for further experiments, but of course it’s your decision to make. This has been most interesting.”
“It’s been a delight having you, doctor,” Elizabeth said graciously, extending her hand.
Mr. Duncan got up, too.
“After I take Dr. Russo home,” he said, “why don’t I stop at the studio and pick up Kirby? It will save you a trip, and I can drop her off on my way home.”
“How thoughtful of you, Tom!” Elizabeth gave him a warm smile. “That would be wonderful. And why don’t you stay and have dinner with us when you get back here? We have more than enough food.”
During the polite good-byes, Brendon looked across at Nancy. Her straight mouth was pulled tight at the corners, and her face was pale.
Brendon suddenly felt sorry for her.
“Maybe your answers got right further on,” he said to her in a low voice. “He didn’t check very far.”
“Oh, they’re wrong, all right,” Nancy said. “No problem there.” She turned to her brother, and there was a look of pleading in her eyes.
“Please, Bren,” she said, “don’t ever, ever tell anybody about this testing today. And don’t ever again say that I can guess cards, no matter who asks you.”
A cold snap arrived toward the end of November. The soft summer feeling went out of the air, and for three or four days everyone went around in sweaters and slacks instead of shorts.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the chill vanished, and it was warmer, though not quite the same. The mosquitoes were gone and the air seemed thinner.
“This is what a Florida winter is like,” Elizabeth said.
To Nancy it didn’t matter much whether it was summer or winter. Each day was so filled with problems that she did not have time to think about the weather. Sometimes she looked at Kirby and Brendon and wondered what was wrong with them that they could be so obviously happy in a place where she herself was so miserable.
To begin with, there were the piano lessons. She was taking them because her mother wanted her to. The old upright piano that Elizabeth had bought from a local elderly woman after asking around town was exactly the kind that she had practiced on when she was a child.
“With Kirby so busy with her dancing,” she said, “it will be nice for you to have a hobby, too.”
So Nancy went every Tuesday to a little woman named Mrs. Nettles who taught in the basement of the Unitarian Church, and Nancy practiced an hour each day out of the pale green book with three mice on the cover.
“I feel like an idiot,” she grumbled to her mother. “ ‘Three Blind Mice’ and ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’! At my age!”
“I can understand how you feel,” Elizabeth said sympathetically. “You are starting a bit late. You’ll be out of that beginners’ book soon, though, and on to more interesting pieces, and it does give me so much pleasure to hear a child of mine playing in this old living room. It takes me back to my own childhood again.”
So Nancy kept doggedly plugging away, although in her heart she was certain she would be on “Three Blind Mice” for the rest of her life.
Brendon made it worse. Every time she played a piece, Brendon told her what was wrong with it.
“You’re not holding that last note long enough,” he would say, or “Can’t you tell that chord’s wrong? You need your third finger down a note.” Sometimes he simply moaned and covered his ears and said, “The whole piano’s so out of tune it makes me sick.”
Once when he said this more rudely than usual, making a gagg
ing noise and pretending to stick a finger down his throat, Nancy told her mother about it.
“I can’t practice with him around!” she wailed. “I just can’t!”
But, as usual, their mother did not blame Brendon.
Instead she said, “Maybe he’s right. It’s a secondhand piano. Probably it hasn’t been tuned for years.”
The next day a man came out and adjusted the strings.
But worse than the piano, which was simply boring, was school. All day, every day, Nancy dreaded the moment when she would walk into Ms. Green’s social studies class. No matter how well prepared she was for her day’s lesson, Ms. Green would manage to find something wrong. Even when the answers themselves were right, as they nearly always were, Ms. Green marked errors.
“Your i’s look like e’s,” she would write on the paper, taking off five points for carelessness, and Nancy, whose handwriting was as clear and round and perfect as any page in an old-fashioned penmanship manual, would seethe with silent fury. The other students in the class were noticing the teacher’s unfairness.
“I’ve heard about her from my older brother,” a girl named Jessie told Nancy. “She’s been teaching here about eight million years, I guess, and she’s old and cranky. She always seems to choose one person out of her classes to pick on.”
“Why don’t you go to the counselor?” Jessie’s friend Emily suggested sympathetically. “Mr. Duncan’s nice. All the kids like him. I bet if you tell him how bad things are, he’ll get you transferred to another class.”
“He can do that?” For one deliriously happy moment, Nancy pictured herself in another social studies class. Then she thought of Mr. Duncan, and the happy picture faded out of her mind. Since the night that her mother had invited him to dinner, it seemed as though Mr. Duncan had been coming to their house constantly. If he wasn’t picking Kirby up at the dance studio, he was taking Brendon for haircuts, and one Saturday, even though their own car worked fine, he had driven Elizabeth to the grocery store. She would never give him the opportunity to do her a favor, never, ever, as long as she lived.