Max wished the fall break in Paris could have lasted another week. He had celebrated his birthday there, eating steak and fries at a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower that looked like a movie set. The city had impressed him far more than Brussels; he had particularly enjoyed walking with his dad through the underground tunnels of the Catacombs, which were piled high with skulls and had been used by resistance fighters during the Nazi occupation. But now that it was Sunday night and he was back in his own bed in Brussels, Max couldn’t sleep. From time to time, this happened to him—usually when he was nervous about the next day of school.
Max didn’t believe in ghosts, but sometimes, tossing and turning in his bed, he’d hear the floorboards creaking, a light footstep. He knew it was probably just Teddy Roosevelt, but he liked to imagine that the house was alive, shifting its old bones or sighing with the weight of its dark wartime history. Anne Frank had seemed like a story from a long-ago time and faraway place, but there was something about living on the street where Albert Jonnart had hidden Ralph that made the war seem more recent.
His parents’ angry whispers drifted up the stairs. He couldn’t quite make out the subject of their latest fight, but he was certain it was something silly, like his mother claiming they had five extra house keys and his father swearing there were only four. Over the past month, Max had already counted three fights entirely about bananas, which seemed like three fights about bananas too many. His father would accuse his mother of eating the last one, then she would accuse him, and on it went in endless circles that nearly made Max want to tromp back to the School of Misery, where at least when people were being ridiculous, he couldn’t understand them.
As the whispers grew louder, morphing into tense voices, he overheard his mother say, “We should have sent him to the American school.”
Max sat up, strained to hear.
“Give him a chance,” his dad said. “It’s barely been three months.”
“Do you hear him saying anything yet? Come on, Michael. He’s not the same kind of kid as Claire.”
“Which is exactly the reason we put him in a French school. It’s only November. Give him time.”
“Maybe we should have stayed in Washington—”
“You’re just second-guessing yourself. He seemed lost there—”
Lost there? Max wanted to shout. I’m way more lost here! He plugged his ears. He couldn’t take any more.
When Max finally took his fingers out of his ears, his parents had stopped arguing. But even after they turned off their lights, Max lay awake. Claire was right. He was stressing them out. And it was his mom he agreed with: the Belgian school was a disaster, and not the kind that it just took a little resilience to overcome.
Max slipped out of bed and down the stairs, past Claire’s and his parents’ darkened rooms, to the first floor. He sat on the couch by the picture window in the living room and looked out into the garden. No wonder Inspector Fontaine had liked it. A misty rain was drifting sideways over the holly bushes, almost like snow. There was a strange beauty to the twisted silhouette of the leafless pear tree. A cat slinked along the wall. Max’s cheeks felt damp with tears, as if the clouds had moved inside. He lay back and closed his eyes.
Slam!
Max sat bolt upright. Downstairs, a door rattled closed. The confusion of sleep melted away and he realized he wasn’t in his bed on the third floor, but on the first floor. The rain had stopped, and in the eerie silence, moonlight sliced across the living room. Max stood up, breathing fast. Was someone downstairs?
He crept over to the basement door, opened it and stood at the top of the stairs, listening. All was silent. He switched on the light. The halogen glow settled his nerves. Maybe the noise had come from upstairs after all—just someone closing the bathroom door? He took one step down, then another, until he was standing on the terra-cotta floor of the laundry room.
There was a bang, and Max jumped as a box in the little hallway off the front room tumbled to the floor. Before Max could race back up the stairs, Teddy Roosevelt dashed out, panicked by the avalanche of cardboard.
Max chuckled.
“So it’s you,” he said.
The cat stared at him with his green eyes, then bounded up the stairs.
Max was about to follow when he remembered the little door at the end of the hallway. He felt a sudden urge to open it and peek in. He picked up a flashlight from his father’s tool kit and shifted the boxes so he could squeeze past them until he reached the door. It seemed odd that the boxes had been arranged so that the door could be opened without upsetting them. Perhaps his parents had stored something inside after all? Curious, Max reached for the skeleton key.