Chapter 2

 

 

 

A boy who looked just like me? How could that be? I was so startled, I knocked over my retainer. It fell into his bathroom. Then we both screamed and slammed our medicine cabinet doors shut.

What the heck was happening here?

Very slowly I opened the medicine cabinet again. Nope. There was nobody on the other side. I pushed against the back of it. It didn’t open. Very weird.

So where was my retainer? I figured I’d better check out the apartment next door. An old lady named Mrs. Taradash lives there.

Mrs. Taradash is kind of cranky. I know she isn’t too happy about the basketball hoop I have mounted on my wall. She’s complained to my dad lots of times. When I slam-dunk, she says it’s like a 5.7 tremor on the Richter scale.

But maybe Mrs. Taradash had a grandson. Maybe her grandson looked almost exactly like me. And maybe her medicine cabinet was hooked up to ours on the other side.

I knew this explanation didn’t make much sense. But it was all I could come up with.

I got dressed. Then I slipped quietly out of our apartment. I knocked on Mrs. Taradash’s door. There was no answer. I knocked again. It took a while before somebody opened it. Mrs. Taradash was in a fuzzy robe and fuzzy slippers. Her hair was all messed up. And she was rubbing her eyes. She didn’t seem all that thrilled to see me, if you want to know the truth.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Taradash,” I said. “I was wondering whether I could get my retainer out of your bathroom.”

“Your what, precious?” she said.

She calls all kids “precious.” But you can tell she doesn’t think they are.

“My retainer,” I said.

“What in the name of heaven is that, precious?”

“A retainer is braces made out of wire and pink plastic, which sometimes falls down disposals or toilets,” I explained. “Mine fell into your apartment when your grandson opened the medicine cabinet door.”

Mrs. Taradash looked at me like I was cuckoo.

“I don’t have a grandson, precious,” she said.

“You don’t have a grandson? Then who opened the other side of my medicine cabinet just now?”

The bottom half of her face smiled. But the top half was frowning. It looked like both halves were fighting with each other. She tried to close the door on my foot.

“Please don’t close the door, Mrs. Taradash,” I begged her. “I lost my retainer in your apartment. It’s the eighth one that’s gotten away from me. Maybe the ninth. If I don’t get it back, my dad will kill me. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you?”

She opened the door and looked at me.

“What do you want?” she said. It was more hissing than talking. And she seemed to have forgotten the word “precious.”

“Just my retainer,” I said, “which the boy who’s not your grandson will tell you fell into your bathroom from my medicine cabinet. Please just let me look for it.”

“If I let you look,” she said, “will you go away and let me get back to sleep?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

She sighed a deep sigh. Then she waved me into the apartment.

I went in.

Weird. Everywhere you looked, there were stuffed animals. And I don’t mean cuddly teddy bears, either. I mean real dead animals that were stuffed by a taxidermist. Squirrels, rabbits, beavers, chipmunks. They were all frozen in weird poses. And they stared at you through their beady glass eyes. They really gave me the creeps.

I hurried into the bathroom and looked around. There was no retainer on the floor or anywhere else. I opened the medicine cabinet. I pushed against the back. It didn’t budge. So I closed the medicine cabinet door.

“Satisfied?” she hissed.

I had a sudden feeling that if I didn’t leave, her eyes would start glowing red. Then she’d grab me and try to stuff me. There I’d be, standing alongside the other animals in a weird frozen pose, staring at visitors through beady glass eyes.

I apologized and hotfooted it back to my dad’s apartment. I didn’t have a clue what had happened. I began to think I’d dreamed the whole thing. But if I did, then where was my retainer?

On the way back to my bedroom, I passed my bathroom. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something.

My medicine cabinet door.

It was slowly creeping open.