"Hey," he said. "I won. I ran the whole table."
Neely wasn"t a bit surprised. An hour or so later when she announced she was getting a pool headache, Curtis tried to talk her into a game of chess, or badminton, but she said "no, thanks" and started up the stairs to get Grub. Curtis followed her, still arguing about it being too early to go home.
When they got to the nursery Neely noticed the door wasn"t quite closed and she was just putting out her hand to open it when Curtis grabbed her arm and whispered, "Shhh. Listen. Someone"s talking."
Neely listened and, of course, it was Grub. Grub"s voice talking steadily but not quite loud enough for her to hear the exact words. She shoved the door open and went in. Grub was sitting on the floor playing with the model barnyard. He had the dog in his hand and he was making him round up a herd of cows, sheep, and pigs. When he saw Neely and Curtis he jumped to his feet and said, "Hi. Is it time to go?"
Then, as he bent down to put the dog back in the barnyard, Neely saw him smile and whisper something-something that looked like good-bye.
Neely glanced at Curtis. She wasn"t sure if he realized that Grub had been telling Monica good-bye, but from the look on his face she thought maybe he did.
Chapter 29.
CURTIS KEPT ON PHONING. SOMETIMES HE JUST WANTED to talk. Usually he talked about the school he went to in Beverly Hills and about the places he used to go with his friends. Places like Universal Studios and Knott"s Berry Farm and Disneyland. And how all his friends had lots of money but he had the most money so he usually got to decide what they were going to do. And what great times he"d had and how much more fun it was than living out here on the edge of nowhere. But on Friday when he called, the last Friday before school started, Neely could tell right away by the sound of his voice that something was wrong. It was almost as if he"d been crying.
"What"s the matter?" she asked.
"Matter? What makes you think something"s the matter?" he said in an argumentative tone of voice, and then before she even could answer he said, "Yeah. You"re right. Something"s the matter but I don"t want to talk about it." There was a gulping sound and then he went on, "Hey, can you come up?"
Neely suppressed a sigh. She really didn"t want to say yes, but at the same time she couldn"t help feeling sorry for poor old Curtis. Not to mention curious about what had happened to upset him so much. She wondered if it might be something to do with Monica.
"Well, I don"t know... she was saying when he added, "Both of you. Bring Grub, too, if you want to."
"Well, I"ll see," Neely said. "I"ll see if-"
Just then something tapped her on the shoulder and she turned to see Grub standing behind her, smiling and nodding his head.
"Okay," she said, shrugging off her misgivings. "We"ll see you in about an hour. Okay?"
Curtis and Grub said okay in unison.
When they got to Halcyon House that day Grub again insisted on going first to visit Lion. But this time, while Grub and Lion were still wrestling, Reuben came out of his little house. He was wearing his familiar old floppy hat and his face was as worn and saggy as his overalls. Standing on his front step he stared at the giggling Grub and the bouncy, tail-wagging Lion. And Neely stared at him.
Watching Reuben made her feel creepy without exactly knowing why, except that he"d been a kind of bogeyman for so long-for all those months when the only real threat to Grub and Neely"s secret visits to Halcyon was the danger of being caught by the fierce-looking old man. But now, as Neely watched, Reuben"s face broke into a different pattern of cliffs and valleys and his mouth stretched into what was unmistakably a grin. Neely watched in surprise, and then went over and held out her hand.
"Hi," she said. "I"m Neely Bradford. And that"s Grub." She smiled and shrugged. "He likes dogs a lot."
Reuben nodded. "I see," he said. "They are old friends, are they not? Your brother and Lion?"
Neely gulped. Did that mean that Reuben knew about all their secret visits to Halcyon? She certainly hoped not. "Old friends?" she asked. "Well, sort of. Some people make old friends in a hurry."
Reuben turned his surprising, saggy smile toward Neely. "Quite true," he said slowly. Then he went on staring at Grub and Lion until, at the sound of a slamming door, he glanced up, turned on his heel, and disappeared into his cottage.
It was Curtis who had slammed the door as he emerged from the kitchen carrying a net and two badminton racquets. He was wearing baggy khaki shorts, there were blotchy red spots on his face, and his eyes were even jumpier than usual. A few minutes later when Grub had disappeared in the direction of the nursery, and Neely and Curtis were heading for the tennis court, Neely asked again if anything was the matter.
Curtis shrugged and didn"t answer, but when they got to the court and Neely was helping him string up the badminton net, he suddenly said, "It"s my stupid father. It"s my stupid paranoid father that"s the matter." His eyes were narrowed to angry slits and some muscles around the corners of his mouth were twitching.
"Paranoid?"
"Yeah. You know what that means?"
Neely thought she had a general idea but before she could answer Curtis went on, "That means you think everyone"s out to get you. Unless you get them first." Curtis"s voice was getting higher and tighter. "What it means is you"re nuts. Crazy. Psycho!"
He was practically shrieking before he stopped. Neither one said anything for a minute or two. Then Neely said, "Oh. Is that why he has all those guns? Because he"s worried about someone trying to get him?"
"Yeah. That"s part of it. And all that survival stuff too. He just thinks somebody"s going to start a revolution any minute and kill everybody unless you kill them first. And what"s even stupider, he thinks that if I go into Monterey with him and go to the aquarium or walk around Cannery Row or something while he"s at the doctor"s I"ll get kidnapped or something."
"Oh," Neely said. After a moment"s thought she asked, "Couldn"t your mom go to the aquarium with you, so you wouldn"t have to go alone?"
"No. She didn"t want to go anywhere today. She"s still in bed."
Neely looked at her watch. "In bed? Is she sick or something?"
"No, she"s not sick. She just doesn"t feel like getting up. Sometimes she doesn"t get up all day. She just lies there and drinks chardonnay and plays solitaire."
That was a pretty amazing thought. For a moment Neely tried to picture her own mother lying in bed all day...and gave up. It was just too completely unimaginable. When she"d finished getting her end of the net tied up she asked, "Who told you your father was paranoid?"
Curtis"s frown made Neely think of an angry cat.
"Okay, okay," she said. "Forget it." She smiled apologetically. "Sorry I asked. Okay?"
Curtis clutched his elbows and the frown gradually faded. "Everybody told me," he said suddenly. "All my cousins. All my stupid, fat-headed cousins. And Carmen. And my mom too. Everybody says so. That"s the reason he has to go to the shrink every Friday. My uncle made him promise to go to the shrink or we couldn"t live here-in this house."
"Your uncle? How come your uncle gets to tell your father what to do?"
"Because he"s the trustee. That means he gets to say when my father gets money from the estate. And when he doesn"t. That"s why we had to come here to live. Because my crummy uncle decided the trust wouldn"t pay our rent anymore, so we had to live here or nowhere." Curtis threw a bird up into the air and smashed it so hard it went clear off the court and into the tall weeds.
While they were hunting for the bird Neely was careful not to ask any more questions. And she certainly didn"t mention that Curtis had just as much as admitted that all his big stories about his father and why he and his family had come to Halcyon House had been lies.
When they started playing she let Curtis win sometimes, even though she could have won every game if she"d wanted to. Curtis wasn"t much of a badminton player. He puffed and panted and every few minutes he fell over his own feet. When he missed a shot he got angry at the racquet or the net, or sometimes at the bird.
Once when the bird got stuck in a tree he threw a rock at it to get it loose and the rock bounced back and hit him in the head. It wasn"t a very big rock and it couldn"t have hurt all that much, but when he finally got the bird down he stomped on it until it was completely flat.
"Hey," Neely said, laughing. "What are you doing that for? Now we can"t play anymore."
Curtis stopped glaring at the smashed bird and gave Neely a c.o.c.ky grin. "Sure we can," he said, and pulled another bird out of his pocket. "My serve. Are you ready?" Then he threw the squashed bird into the bushes and started serving.
For a while after that he was pretty cheerful, as if squashing the bird had made him feel better. He was still in a pretty good mood when Neely said she"d better go get Grub and head for home.
"Hey," he said as they were going up the stairs to the second floor. "All that stuff about my dad was a lie. Okay? I was lying about him." He ducked his head and grinned his twitchy grin. "I"m a good liar," he said. Which wasn"t exactly news to Neely.
Chapter 30.
ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL GRUB WALKED DOWN TO the bus stop with Neely even though his bus, the one that went to Carmel River School, wasn"t due for quite a while.
"I"ll go back up to the house before your bus comes," he said. "I just want to wait with you for a while. Like old times." So Neely swallowed a grin and said, "Okay. Like old times," and started talking about Mrs. Kingman who would be his teacher for the third grade. They were still talking when Carmen"s beat-up old Buick came down the hill and turned out onto Highway One. She pulled up at the bus stop and Curtis got out.
"Hi," Neely said. She was surprised that Curtis was going to ride the bus. She"d heard that new kids from outside the district had to come with their parents on the first day.
Curtis said hi and then, nodding toward Grub, he asked, "What"s he doing here? I thought you said the bus for elementary school kids doesn"t come till later."
Neely waved at Carmen as she backed and turned the car around before she answered Curtis"s question. "He was just keeping me company for a while. How come you"re riding the bus today? Won"t your parents have to go to the office to fill out the transfer forms and stuff like that?"
"No," Curtis said. "My dad called the school. And I"ve got all the papers from my old school with me. I didn"t want my folks taking me to school like I was some wimpy little elementary school dweeb. Who needs it?"
Neely didn"t say anything about how Curtis was just one summer away from being an "elementary school dweeb" himself, but she let her grin suggest it. Then she pulled Grub aside and went on telling him about Mrs. Kingman.
Fortunately Neely had been in Mrs. Kingman"s cla.s.s herself three years before, so she was able to tell Grub how great she was and how she always made her cla.s.s work at being a "community," which basically meant they all had to get along and be nice to each other, or else. Hearing about being part of a community seemed to cheer Grub up for a minute, but then he sighed and frowned.
"I probably won"t do it right," he said. "You probably have to go around talking to people and saying the right kinds of things and... He sighed again.
Neely smiled. "What kinds of things?" she asked.
Grub shrugged. "I don"t know. That"s why I don"t do it right."
Neely was still suggesting some things Grub might say that morning when he met people he hadn"t seen since last year, when she glanced over to where Curtis was leaning against the school bus sign. He"d taken some papers out of his backpack and was pretending to be looking through them, but he was really watching Grub and Neely out of the corners of his squinted eyes. She was about to tell him what she and Grub were talking about and see if he had any suggestions, when the middle-school bus came into view and Grub dashed off up the hill.
Curtis got on the bus first and went way to the back, and Neely sat near the front beside Patty Denton, a seventh grader whom she"d known for a long time. But at the next stop Curtis moved closer. He seemed to be trying to listen to what Neely was saying, but when she tried to introduce him to Patty he looked out the window and pretended he hadn"t heard her talking to him.
So Neely went on talking to Patty, and after the next stop to Benjy and Justin and Marta. She hadn"t seen any of them much since school was out, so there was lots to talk about. And Justin, who was always pretty funny, started telling about a crazy skateboard contest he"d won, and everyone laughed and shrieked until the bus driver told them to cool it or he would stop the bus until everybody shut up.
Once, when the laughter had died down for a minute, Neely said, "Hey, everybody. Meet my new neighbor, Curtis. Curtis, these loudmouths are Benjy and Marta and Justin.
Everyone said something and Justin stood up and did a fancy bow and said, "Hi, new neighbor, Curtis," and everyone laughed. Curtis said "hi" in a stiff, uneasy way and then looked away, pretending to see something interesting out the window. Justin was starting to do a "well, what kind of a nerd do we have here?" bit, rolling his eyes and mugging, so Neely said quickly, "Curtis is a Hutchinson. You know. A Halcyon House Hutchinson."
That got their attention, just as she"d known it would.
"Oh, yeah," Patty said in a very impressed tone of voice. "You live in that huge old mansion up on the hill?"
Suddenly Curtis did one of his weird personality flip-flops. Standing up, he swaggered up the aisle, ignoring the bus driver who yelled at him to sit down, and plopped himself down in the seat behind Neely and Patty.
"Yeah," he began, sticking out his chin and waggling his shoulders the way he always did when he was trying to be supercool. "I guess we"re going to live in the old shack for a while. We"ve got some other houses, in Beverly Hills and Hollywood and like that, but my dad decided somebody needed to fix up the old Halcyon place, so we...
Neely was listening with a sinking feeling. She"d always hated it when people did totally embarra.s.sing things, even when it was only in a book or a movie. And an ego-tripping Curtis was definitely embarra.s.sing. But, fortunately, the bus turned in at the school grounds about then and everybody stopped listening and started waving to friends and yelling, "Hey, there"s old Dino. Hi, Dinosaur Man!" and "Look at Taylor. Hey, dude, where"d you get those b.u.mmie threads?" and things like that. In the excitement everybody, including Neely, forgot all about Curtis.
The rest of that day and the rest of the week, too, were pretty busy. There were dozens of old friends to catch up on gossip with. And lots of new things to get used to, like having core cla.s.ses, and different schedules on different days of the week. And there were choices to be made, such as what enrichment cla.s.s to take. Like drama, for instance, which was what Neely decided on. That was going to amuse Lucie, Neely thought, and she imagined Lucie saying, "Oh, come on, Neely. Don"t you think you"re dramatic enough without taking a cla.s.s in it?"
And on Friday there was the election of sixth-grade representatives. There happened to be a lot of Neely"s old friends from Carmel River School in Mr. Hardcastle"s core cla.s.s, which was probably the reason she won the election.
So, even though it turned out that Curtis was also in Mr. Hardcastle"s core cla.s.s, Neely was too busy to spend much time noticing how he was doing. But, now and then, in cla.s.s or sometimes in the hall between cla.s.ses she would look up and there he"d be, looking in her direction. When that happened she always said "hi" or at least nodded and smiled even though he always looked away quickly, pretending he hadn"t seen her.
But then, on Thursday afternoon while Neely and some other kids were waiting to get on the school bus, Patty Denton suddenly poked Neely and whispered something in her ear.
"What?" Neely said. "I didn"t hear you."
"Shhh." Patty hissed a little louder, "He"s staring at you again. That nerdy Hutchinson dude is staring at you again." She giggled and rolled her eyes. "I think it"s love." She giggled. "True, true love." And after that she kept poking Neely and whispering, "True, true love," every time she happened to see Curtis, which was several times a day, since he seemed to show up amazingly often.
Neely just ignored Patty"s "true love" nonsense. But she did think about Curtis sometimes. Once or twice at home, sitting in the window seat or curled up on her bed with a book, she thought about him a little. She had to admit that he seemed to follow her around at school quite a lot. She didn"t really believe it was "true love" though, and she certainly didn"t want it to be. It was just a slightly interesting idea. After all, no one had ever been madly in love with her before. At least not that she"d noticed.
Chapter 31.
THAT FIRST WEEKEND AFTER THE START OF SCHOOL THERE happened to be an early rain, so when Curtis called up on Sat.u.r.day morning Neely was able to say, "I don"t know. It"s raining pretty hard. I don"t think we can-"
"What if Carmen came down to pick you up?" Curtis interrupted.
"She wouldn"t, would she?"
"Sure she would," Curtis said. "She will if I tell her to. She"ll be there in fifteen minutes. Okay?"
The "okay" sounded like a question but he hung up so fast that Neely didn"t get a chance even to think about it, let alone answer. But when she went to the kitchen to talk to Mom about it, Grub was already there putting on his rubber boots.
"I already asked," he said, grinning. "Mom said okay. She said no at first but when I said they were coming to pick us up she said okay."
"How did you know Carmen was coming?" Neely asked.
"I heard you talking," Grub said, grinning. "I picked up the hall phone and listened."
"You did, did you!" Neely grabbed Grub"s ear and twisted it. "You know what happens to little creeps who listen to other people"s phone conversations? They get their little ears pulled off."
Grub giggled, pulled away, and dashed out onto the back porch. A second later he was back with Neely"s boots. "Hurry up," he said. "She"s almost here." Neely was just putting on the second boot when there was the sound of a car motor and the muddy old Buick pulled into the backyard. As Neely and Grub ran out through the rain Carmen leaned over and opened the door on the pa.s.senger side.
"Where"s Curtis?" Neely asked as she got into the front seat with Carmen.
Carmen laughed her short, barking laugh. "He"s baking cookies," she said. "Believe it or not, he"s baking cookies."