Eleven

  Sam didn't think in steps. He'd started out thinking about telling Caroline, and instead he was remembering Mack that day long ago. No wonder he mixed up those syllables, those words. “But I read the wood,” he told Night Cat, and felt better until he thought again about being missing.

  He pulled the oars out, one old and dark, the other fresh wood. He and Mack had cut the new oar and sanded it just the other day.

  Mack, Onji, and Anima. Did all three know about that newspaper clipping? And even though he'd never ask straight out, he'd have to begin in steps to find out where he'd come from, even though he wasn't sure what he'd do when he knew.

  One thing, as Caroline would say. He'd never be happy anywhere else.

  5

  Beginning

  Sometimes Sam took a detour on the way to Mrs. Waring's Resource Room. He'd open the side door, stick a book in the edge so it wouldn't lock behind him, and sit outside to breathe in a little air.

  Or maybe he'd slide along the corridor and have a gargling contest at the fountain with Robert, who came to the Resource Room from the opposite direction.

  It was a little dangerous because Mr. Ramon, the assistant principal, patrolled the halls.

  This afternoon, Sam hadn't gotten three steps away from the classroom when Caroline opened the door. “Going to the Media Center?”

  He stopped. He hadn't told her about his reading yet, and she was coming home with him this afternoon. “Want to go outside?” he asked.

  “I guess.” She followed him out. The grass was coming in green now, and a robin chirped in one of the two trees Mrs. Waring had pointed out years ago.

  Sam sank down on the step, and Caroline sat too. “One thing? Are we allowed to do this?” she asked, pulling her hair into a knot in back of her head.

  He laughed. “One thing? No.”

  She waved her hand. She was wearing nail polish, a horrible Easter egg purple. “You do this every afternoon after lunch.” Her eyes were wide behind her glasses. “What nerve.”

  So she'd noticed. “Most of the time I go to the Resource Room for reading,” he said.

  She reached out to touch one of the daffodils at the side of the steps. He couldn't see her face.

  “I have a little trouble reading.” A little? “They call it a learning disability. I'm supposed to spend part of the day in a regular classroom and part in the Resource Room.” He rushed on. “When you come over to work on the castle, I could use some help.”

  “I've never taught anyone to read, but I suppose I could try.”

  It made him grin to think about it: Caroline trying to teach him how to read. Everyone else had tried, and kept trying; they didn't want to admit that he'd given up.

  Anima read aloud every night, running her fingers along the words so he could see. Mack cut cards with pictures and the words underneath. He pulled them out as often as he could and made Sam try to read them. And even Onji had taped up signs along the salad bar. “Macaroni, Sam, for Pete's sake. What else could it be?” as Anima had said gently, “Onji, 1 don't think you spell macaroni with a y.”

  They'd all laughed, and Onji had winked. “So I don't spell too well, Sam.”

  Now Sam began again. “There's a box in the attic.” He waved his hand. “Maybe you'd read some stuff to me.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “A newspaper clipping with my picture, to begin with. It says I was missing. Am missing?” He hesitated. “Still missing?”

  Caroline peered at him, her glasses in her lap now. “You're joking.”

  He shook his head. “I wish.”

  “I'll try.” She hesitated. “But listen, I don't have much time.”

  What had she told him the other day in the cafeteria? “Don't think I'm going to be friends. 1 won't be here long enough.”

  “I'm leaving for my own castle soon,” she said.

  “You're joking now.”

  “You don't think I look like a princess?” She grinned, showing her braces. There was a constellation of freckles on her cheeks. “I'm leaving, but not for a castle.”

  “But—”

  “My father's a painter, so we have to go where he wants to paint.”

  Sam raised his shoulders. “He could paint right here. There are a million houses, I bet.”

  She laughed. “He paints sunsets, and waves crashing on the shore, and rain on the water.” She waved her hand, bracelets jangling. “Stuff like that. My mother makes figures out of clay.” She raised one shoulder. “I can't draw a straight line.”

  Sam nodded.

  “We move around. Last winter we were in California, and the spring in Canada. I've never even been in New York State before.” She spread her hands wide. “My father's friend lent us a house until we go somewhere else. A place called Turnerville.”

  He didn't want her to know how sorry he was, so he just said, “Turnerville.”

  “It's still in New York, I think.” The bracelets jangled again.

  “How can you do that? Keep moving around—” But then he stopped. It wasn't the first time kids had come for only a couple of months. That Chinese kid whose father did something with computers left after a year, and sent a pack of pictures to the class. A girl, he couldn't remember her name, whose mother was going to college somewhere nearby. They'd left too. And the kids whose families came to pick apples and grapes—

  The outside door opened behind them. “I can't believe this. You two out here getting a tan.”

  Mr. Ramon.

  “I'll give you two minutes to get where you're supposed to be.”

  They stood up. Sam could see that Caroline's face was red. She probably wasn't used to getting into trouble the way he was.

  He slid into Mrs. Waring's room, late again, spreading his hands wide. “Sorry, I was just…” He let his voice trail off as Mrs. Waring shook her head.

  He opened his book, feeling good. Mr. Ramon had let them go without detention. But more than that, Caroline knew about the reading and didn't mind. And even if she had to leave soon, they still had time. She wasn't moving tomorrow, after all.

  6

  Going Home

  When the bell rang, they climbed on the bus. Sam marched past the empty seat next to Caroline and went to the back. He and Eric sat together every day and he'd have heard about it if he'd sat with her. “A girl, MacKenzie?”

  He swung into the seat, giving Eric a light dig in the ribs with his elbow. In back of them Joseph leaned forward with Life Savers. Sam sat, crunching candy, until his stop, then went down the aisle and out the door. He walked two or three steps before he turned, but Caroline wasn't there. She hadn't gotten off the bus.

  He watched it rumble away, but the door opened at the next stop. A kid came down the steps, and then Caroline. “I was reading,” she called, and walked toward him.

  Mack's truck was in the parking lot. Sam stopped; he'd been sure Mack was going to deliver furniture today. If Mack was home, how could they get into the attic? He shook his head. He'd been counting on it.

  Inside the workroom, Mack was nowhere in sight, but a bowl of fruit and nuts from Anima was on the counter, and cupcakes that Onji's daughter, Ellie, had brought last night.

  Mack had left water bottles for them, and paper napkins folded carefully.

  Sam watched Caroline as she glanced around, her fingers tapping her lips. The sign, SAM'S PLACE, hung over his table. A dresser, newly glued together, clamped and turned on its side, gave off the smell of polish. The open window framed the river so the water with its reeds and birds seemed part of the room, and the chatter of jays was loud as a hawk circled overhead.

  Caroline reached absently for a piece of fruit. “This is the best place I've ever been.”

  Her words fizzed inside him, almost like the fizzy water he was drinking. He knew she could see it in his face. He grinned and motioned to a bench. “Sit there, I want to see where Mack is.”

  He went to the stairs and called. Mack wasn't upstairs, but not far, probably at Onji's, h
aving coffee.

  Caroline hadn't moved from the window. “There are Canadian geese out there, a pair of them,” she said. “So where's the stuff you wanted me to read? The stuff about your being missing?”

  He raised his shoulders, hoping she couldn't see how disappointed he was. “Shhh,” he said. “Not today. We have to wait until Mack delivers furniture.”

  Her face fell. “I've been thinking about it.” She pushed at her sleeves. “We have to start the castle, anyway.”

  “Right.” Large pieces of plywood were stacked in a bin under the tools. He dragged a few to his worktable as she watched.

  “Can you do this?” she asked.

  “Cut? Yep. Smooth out the pieces and join them.”

  She pulled out a small green notebook. “I brought this for the journal. Remember, Mrs. Stanek said—”

  He nodded. “First write in ‘plywood, pieces of wood layered onto each other.’” He knew he was talking to impress her. “It's easy to work with. But you have to be careful cutting it.” He'd hurt himself dozens of times on the edges of wood like this.

  “I'll mark that down.” She ran her hand over the edges. “Great, a splinter already. But it could be worse.”

  “Wait till we start using the saw,” he said.

  Next door, Onji began to sing. His voice was loud, off-key, and Mack chimed in, his voice deeper, surer. It was an old song, something about blue skies, or gray skies, and they stopped after a minute, laughing.

  Caroline sucked on her finger. “Who's that?”

  “Onji in the deli next door and my grandfather Mack. They sing sometimes. Anima says they hurt her ears.”

  “Who's—”

  “Anima? She owns Kerala House, the Indian restaurant down at the end of the building. She reads to us, she cooks, she does everything.” He spread his hands. “You'll like Anima. You'll like all of them.”

  Caroline held up her finger. “My splinter's gone. I'm going to live. So let's talk about missing for a minute.”

  He hesitated. “I don't know. There's just that clipping, and I was only about three.”

  “Still—” She touched her forehead. “Everything that happens to you is up there. You just have to pull it out.”

  “Anima says something like that,” he said. “Your brain is a computer. Touch the right button and everything will come spewing out.”

  He smiled, reminded that Anima would make a face. “Trouble is,” she'd say, “I can't find the button.”

  Caroline looked out the window again as she spoke. “I remember a lot from when I was a little kid. My father holding me up, showing me his painting.” A flash of her braces. “I thought the sun was an egg.”

  She leaned forward. “The day my sister, Denise, was born. My mother let me give her a second name. I picked Emma.” Her voice was low. “I remember moving from school to school, walking in the classroom in the middle of the term, everyone looking at me, feeling so—”

  She didn't finish, but Sam knew she meant bad, or terrible. What would it be like to go from place to place, school to school, never having time to make friends?

  But she was on tiptoes now, watching something outside. “What do you remember?” she asked. “There must be something up there in your brain.”

  “Maybe.” He hesitated. “The sweater in the newspaper clipping.”

  She was still, listening.

  “Anima might have it.” He tried to remember. “I was helping her once and I saw it in a drawer. It was a mess.” He pictured Anima's small hands going to it, smoothing the matted wool.

  But then Mack stood in the doorway, smiling at them. He had a great look to him, Sam thought, a kind look, with his eyes crinkling. “Hi, you two, and glad you're here, Caroline,” he said. “Everything all right?”

  They nodded.

  “I have a few things to do in the kitchen.” He tapped the edge of the door and went upstairs.

  Sam shook his head at Caroline, warning her not to say anything else.

  “Why don't you just ask him about it?” she whispered.

  He leaned closer. “I lied about being up there. I don't want him to know. But it's more than that. It's been a secret. If he finds out I know about this, won't everything be different? Suppose I belong somewhere else?” He listened to Mack's footsteps overhead, and pointed up. “Shhh.”

  “All right. The castle, then.” She waggled her hands back and forth. “How are we going to do this?”

  He nodded. Think about the castle, not the sweater and where it came from. “If the castle's too small, it'll look like nothing. Too big and it'll look—close.” That wasn't the right word. “We want it to seem far away.” Shrouded in mist. That felt like something Anima might have read aloud.

  He began to draw on a piece of paper to show Caroline what he meant. He tried to make it like the pictures they'd seen. A tower, turrets, the castle narrower than it was high so it would seem taller.

  Sam pointed to the plywood on the table. “Can you draw the lines? We'll mark in the turrets before we cut.” He swept the air with his hands. “And draw doors, round on top—”

  Caroline's eyes were closed. “It'll be a place you'd want to live, inside forever, never moving away.”

  He gave her a pencil and a ruler, then sat back as she drew, watching her rub out mistakes with her thumb.

  He just wanted to live here, right here, and nowhere else.

  7

  The Attjg

  On Friday Mack undamped the dresser, loaded it on the truck, and drove off. Sam and Caroline were in the workroom alone. “We have to watch for customers,” Sam told her. “But there might not be anyone. We'll wait a few minutes, then we'll go up to the attic.”

  He felt a catch in his throat. It was going to happen this afternoon; it was going to happen now.

  Mack had a collection of keys, dozens of them on a metal ring in the junk drawer, and another hefty pile in one of the cabinets. “I need a small key. Something that will fit that locked box.”

  He sifted through both sets. Most of the keys were large, front door keys or ornate iron keys that Mack used to open antique dressers he bought and repaired, then sold at auctions.

  Caroline gathered up the few small keys he found, and they went upstairs to Mack's room. Everything was neat there, the carved armoire, the brushes on the dresser, and the black-and-white picture of a woman in a hat that framed her dark hair. The woman was young, but if she were alive now, she'd be his grandmother. Mack had run his fingers over the frame. “Lydia. She'd have thought you were great, Sam.”

  Sam took off his sneakers and stood on the navy blue quilt that covered the bed. He reached for the rope to pull down the door with its stairway attached. It was heavy and swung down slowly.

  He climbed the steps to the top, then crouched on the edge of the attic floor and reached for Caroline. She didn't take his hand. “I can do it,” she said, slipping out of her sneakers too and climbing up. “I'm tough.”

  Tough. His own word.

  In the attic, dim light came from the windows. The flashlight beamed across the floor, its light splashing a circular pattern on the far wall. There were small creaking sounds, the house settling around them. “Breathing,” Caroline said.

  “Mice,” Sam said, to tease her.

  They knelt on the floor, trying one key after another. It was stifling, even this early in the spring, and Sam wiped his face with his sleeve. But Caroline looked cool; she sat back on her heels and waited. He tried not to glance at the edge of the newspaper clipping, not yet.

  None of the keys fit.

  He slid down the stairs, this time to the workroom for a hammer and a screwdriver.

  Onji came in the back door. “I thought the girl was here.”

  Sam swallowed. “Yes.”

  Onji looked around. “Where did she get herself to?”

  Sam couldn't imagine what to say, but before he could open his mouth, Onji was talking again. “Anyway, why don't you guys come over for a soda, or some cocoa???
?

  Sam nodded. “If there's time later, all right?” He waited until Onji went back out the door, listening to his heavy footsteps on the path.

  Sam took the tools up to Mack's room, checking the window to be sure the truck was still gone. Onji was in the parking lot, his hands on his hips. Looking for Caroline ? But Ellie's car pulled in. It was all right.

  Sam stood on Mack's bed and reached for the stair railing. Caroline was perched on the attic floor, looking down, her face almost ghostly in the half-light.

  He went up the steps with the tools. “If I break the lock, I can't fix it. Mack will know if he ever comes up here.”

  “Up to you,” Caroline said. She leaned over to pull gently at the newspaper clipping. “Most of it must be inside the box.”

  “Other things might be in there too.” How could he stop now? He crouched and angled the screwdriver into the top of the lock. He hit it with the hammer and missed, denting the metal. The sound was loud in his ears, and Caroline's eyes were wide.

  He tried several times, until at last the lock snapped open. Not broken. They could close it again after they were finished and no one would know. They looked at each other across the box. “Ah,” Caroline said.

  Sam slid off the lock and pushed back the top of the box. The clipping drifted out, and underneath, papers were stacked in a pile. On top was a photo of a boat. Caroline picked it up. “A sailboat. Beautiful.”

  He'd know about the clipping any second. He had time to wait. He took the picture in his hand. The boat was angled away from them; its white sails matched the small whitecaps on the water. The sky in the background was so blue it almost hurt to look at it.

  What would it be like to take that boat out on the water? Not a narrow branch of a river like the one out back, but wide water, deep water?

  Caroline had the clipping in her hand. “Sam.” She raised her eyebrows. “Bell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Missing. Disappeared in a boating accident on Saturday.”