THURSDAY, 2:55 P.M.
As they approached the double doors, they heard voices. They looked at each other with wide eyes, looked around for a place to hide. Xander’s first thought was the lockers, but David’s test didn’t prove anything. Any of these lockers could be portals to another place. He looked at David, whose eyes went from the lockers to Xander’s face. He had considered the lockers as well and had ruled them out. And they were too far from the nearest classroom to hide in there—if the door was even unlocked. He pointed and David moved to the wall beside the door as Xander did the same on the other side. They pressed their bodies against the wall and waited. The voices did not get louder. One of them was Dad’s. Xander came off the wall and stepped before a little wire-embedded window set in the door nearest him. Beyond the door was another wide hallway and another set of double doors. Looking down the hallway to his left, he saw his father talking to a man in coveralls. Beside the man was a rolling cart, upon which were a big red toolbox, an assortment of small boxes, and small brown paper bags open at the top. Xander could hear the rhythm of their conversation, but not their words.
Dad was smiling, nodding, probably telling the man about his family, the move here. The man laughed, stooped to reach a lower shelf on his cart, and stood again. He handed Dad what looked like a stack of wooden playing cards. Xander realized they were mousetraps. Dad said something, and the man stooped again for another stack. He turned one of the paper bags over. The clattering sound of dumped nails reached Xander’s ears. The man dropped his stack of mousetraps into the bag, then held it open for Dad to do the same. He rolled up the top and handed it to Xander’s father. Dad nodded and extended his hand. The man grabbed it and they shook. Dad turned and looked directly at Xander. Xander dropped down below the window, noticing David had been tiptoeing to peer out the window in the other door.
David whispered, “Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so.” He rose again, expecting to see Dad looming just on the other side. But there he was saying his goodbyes and turning to walk in the other direction. Xander caught David’s attention and jerked his head to go. They walked quietly away, toward the short corridor at the end of the hallway and locker one-nineteen.
David whispered, “How did they not hear you yelling at me?” “Or your screams?” Xander thought about it. “Maybe they met out there after all that.”
“I hope so. I guess we’ll find out when Dad gets home.”
“It’s not our fault,” Xander said, repeating his thoughts from earlier.
“We’ll show him what happened. He can’t blame us.”
Xander stopped walking. He looked back at the double doors, saw no sign of anyone. He hunched down to be at David’s eye level. “I don’t think we should tell Dad,” he said. “Or Mom,” he added in case that wasn’t clear.
“But . . . why not?”
It was a fair question. They were a close family, not in the habit of keeping things from one another. What was embarrassing or personal, dreams and fears—it was all fair game in the King household. Mom had said the world was tough enough without having to worry about hiding things in your own home, from your own family. “So what if you do stupid things?” she’d said. “We’re humans, not robots.”
Recently, Xander had done some things he had not shared with his family. Just before school finals, a friend had shown him the answer key to the biology exam. Xander hadn’t asked how he’d gotten it. But he had studied it and aced the test. Another time, Dean had bummed some cigarettes off his older brother, and they’d smoked them behind the school. His dad would have been disappointed, but wouldn’t have jumped on him too badly. Still, they were secrets he’d kept from the family. He felt both bad about that and excited to have things they didn’t know about. He figured when the time was right, he’d share these experiences and the family’s openness would be complete again. Until then, he’d keep these indiscretions in a little footlocker in his mind. The linen closet’s fast-track to school would go in there, as well. If his little brother had never needed a footlocker, Xander would have been happy for him. But something told him they were playing with fire. The fewer people burned, the better.
“Something like this will freak them out. They might decide we shouldn’t live there. Then we couldn’t explore anymore. If the house has a closet like that, what else could there be?” He nodded as if to say, Yeah, this could be fun.
They went around the corner and David frowned and Xan-der knew why: his brother didn’t like secrets, but neither did he want to move away from the house. At last he said, “Okay, it’s just between us. But if it turns bad, we tell them.”
Xander stood straight. “Of course.”
David stepped into the locker first. Xander shut it and counted to ten. When he opened it again, David was gone.
“I will never get used to this,” he said, then stepped into the locker.
Five seconds later, he stepped out of the linen closet into the upstairs hallway, where David was waiting.