INGRID Markson turned to Van, who sat beside her in the back of the cab. “I’ll be back for you in three hours,” she said, in a voice that made the whole taxi ring. “You’ve got the gift?”
Van held up the package containing a Lego spaceship.
“Good,” said his mother. “Be sure to thank everyone. Especially Peter. And have fun!”
Van wriggled out onto the curb. He stared up at the Greys’ house, an imposing four-story stone house in a row of imposing four-story stone houses. He was still staring up at it when the cab whizzed away behind him.
There was no escape now.
Van hadn’t been to many other kids’ birthday parties. In general, he and his mother didn’t stay in any one place long enough for him to get to know any kids who were having one. His own birthday parties were usually made up of a bunch of singers and musicians from his mother’s current show, or sometimes they were just Van and his mother. The two of them would visit a zoo or amusement park, and then go out for big dishes of gelato, and those turned out to be the best birthdays of all.
But now he was on his own.
Van climbed the broad stairs, stepping twice on each one. The Greys’ front door looked so solid and shiny and unfriendly, knocking on it would have been like punching an armored giant. Van pressed the doorbell instead.
The door flew open. A young woman with glossy brown hair smiled down at him.
“Hello,” said Van as politely and clearly as he could. “I’m Van Markson. I’m here for the birthday party. You must be Mrs. Grey.”
The woman giggled. “Oh, no, I’m the nanny. But you’re at the right place. Come on inside.”
Van stepped through the unfriendly door and flinched as it boomed shut behind him. The nanny spoke at the same time. Because she was behind him, and because the noise of the door soaked through her words, Van couldn’t quite decipher them. At first he thought she’d said, “The poison’s on the eater’s spoon,” but that didn’t seem likely.
The nanny pointed toward the staircase. “Go on up and join them.”
Oh, thought Van. The boys are up in Peter’s room. A little better than poison. Maybe.
The nanny had already bustled away. With one last deep breath, Van ventured toward the staircase.
The stairs curved around the high-ceilinged foyer. The wall that curved with them was lined with opera photographs. Van glanced at the singers’ wide-open mouths as he trudged past, imagining that they were trying to swallow him, like greedy fish lunging up from a pond.
He reached the upper hall. The first door on his left led into a bathroom. For just a second, Van pictured himself hiding in that bathroom for the rest of the party. Then he pictured one of Peter’s friends running in to use the toilet and finding Van crouched inside the bathtub.
Probably not a good idea.
The next door was shut. Van tugged it open cautiously, and found himself staring up at shelves full of towels.
The door beyond the towel closet stood open. Flashes of colored light and rumbles of noise poured through it into the hallway. Van let the flashes drag him the rest of the way into what was obviously Peter’s room.
There were eight other boys inside. Their heads swiveled around as Van tiptoed in. They all stared at him for a second, their faces as identically blank as eggs in a carton, before swiveling back to the game on the TV screen.
“Hello,” said Van, because nobody else said anything.
Nobody said anything to that, either.
“Happy birthday, Peter,” said Van.
A boy with light brown hair and a controller in his hands said, “Thanks.” His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “On a hiccup at camel back.”
Van altered the sounds in his head, rearranging them like figurines on a little stage. Connor, pick up that camo bag. Or maybe, Colin, pick up that ammo pack. It didn’t matter. Either way, Peter wasn’t talking to him.
Van inched farther into the room. Peter and three other boys were holding controllers. Four more boys were sprawled on the carpet beside them. Avoiding the logjam of legs, Van backed into the corner and sat down on the edge of Peter’s bed. He looked around.
The walls were painted pale gray and hung with framed movie posters. The huge TV took up most of the opposite wall. Video games and consoles and wires spilled out of the cabinet beneath it. On the built-in shelves above the bed, just to Van’s right, an army of action figures and models and finished Lego spaceships stood in silent rows. One of the spaceships, Van noticed, was the very same ship that was currently waiting downstairs, wrapped in sparkly blue paper, with a tag that read To Peter, From Van.
Van swallowed.
The screen gave off a bright red flash, snagging his attention. The four boys who had been playing handed over their controllers to the four boys who had been watching. Nobody mentioned giving Van a turn. He waited for a few minutes, watching futuristic soldiers charge across a nighttime desert, trying to decipher the muddle of sounds that came from the game and from the boys playing it.
When there was a lull in the shooting, Van asked politely, “What’s the name of this game?”
The other boys kept their backs to him, but one of them nudged Peter in the arm.
Peter whipped around, scowling. “I was talking,” he snapped.
“Oh,” said Van. “I couldn’t tell. Sorry.”
Peter turned back to the screen without answering the question.
Van edged backward across Peter’s gray bedspread, pulling himself toward the distracting shelter of the shelves. He examined a row of tiny metal soldiers. Their uniforms had tiny wrinkles, and they carried teeny guns, and their faces wore teeny-tiny expressions of stoicism. Van’s eyes wandered down to the next shelf. This one was filled with miniature animal figurines. There was a bear, and a stag, and an otter, and a raccoon—and beside them, its tail quirked like a sideways question mark, was one tiny, pale gray squirrel.
“Sniper behind the watchtower!” one of the boys shouted. “Use your flamethrower!”
“No, use the grenade launcher!” shouted someone else.
Van’s fingers perched on the edge of the shelf. They sat there casually, pretending not to be interested. There was a BOOM from the video game, followed by a cheer from the eight boys. Van’s fingers closed around the squirrel. In one quick, smooth motion, they wedged the squirrel into his pocket and darted out again to sit innocently in Van’s lap.
Van’s heart thundered.
He couldn’t believe he had just done that. Or that his fingers had. The things in his collection had been lost, or forgotten, or thrown away by someone else. Van had rescued them. He’d never stolen a single one.
But he needed this squirrel, Van reasoned. There were so many things in Peter’s room—not just on the shelves, but in every corner and on every surface—that he would never notice one missing figurine. That squirrel had probably sat on the shelf, neglected and ignored, for years. In a way, Van was rescuing it.
Van swallowed again.
The thunder in his chest began to fade.
“Guys!” The nanny’s voice was muddled by distance and electronic bombs. “Come down for agonized screams!”
Before Van had figured out that she’d probably said Come down for cake and ice cream, the other boys had jumped up and stampeded toward the door.
“I call a corner piece!” someone shouted.
“It’s my party,” said Peter. “I get to decide who gets the corner pieces.”
“So, can I have one?”
“Maybe.” Peter’s voice dwindled into the hall.
When the last of the boys had shoved his way through the door, Van stood up. He touched his pocket, making sure the bump of squirrel was still there. Then he followed the crowd down the staircase.
The table was set in the dining room.
Van hung back as the other boys grabbed their seats. They were all talking at once, and the noise made his head ache, and Van didn’t know whose face to look at. He looked around the dining room instead.
This room was too neat and stylish to have many interesting things in it. But he noticed that the light switches were the funny old push-button kind, and the beveled crystal knobs on the doors were shaped like giant engagement rings, and tall, narrow windows gazed out over the walled backyard. One of the windows was standing open. The branches of a birch tree leaned close to it, its pale green leaves fluttering into the room like a bunch of impatiently waving hands.
“That was amazing.” Someone’s voice cut through the din. “I can’t believe you hit him from that distance!”
“It’s like the game knew it was your birthday,” said a boy with freckles.
“Yeah! Happy birthday, here’s a dead alien!”
“Oh man,” sighed a boy with tight black curls. “That’s what I got you.”
The other boys laughed.
Van remembered the duplicate Lego spaceship waiting in the pile of presents. His stomach began to tighten. He stared at the open window. The birch tree’s delicate branches swayed.
“Here we are!” sang the nanny, bustling into the room with a big sheet cake.
She set it in the center of the table. The boys craned forward, kneeling on their chairs for a better look. From a few steps away, Van looked too. The cake was frosted with a swirling blue-purple galaxy. Spaceships zoomed between the planets, shooting flares of white laser icing. Twelve candles stuck up from frosting stars.
“I call a spaceship!” shouted the freckled boy.
“I said I get to choose who gets what,” said Peter.
“All right, everybody lean back.” The nanny picked up a box of matches. “I don’t want to set anyone on fire.”
“Shouldn’t we—” said Van, before he could stop himself.
Everyone turned to stare.
“Just . . . shouldn’t we wait for your dad?” he finished.
Peter frowned. “No,” he said, as if Van had just suggested that they squirt the cake with ketchup. “He’s at work. That’s why the nanny is here.”
One of the other boys snorted.
“Oh,” said Van. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Come and take a seat, Dan,” said the nanny distractedly.
Van stayed where he was.
The nanny struck a match, and everyone started shouting again. Van took a small step backward. He gazed past the table, toward the waving birch leaves. And as he watched, a pale, almost silver, squirrel jumped out of the birch tree and through the open window.
It perched on the windowsill for a second, its eyes bright, its tail twitching. Then it leaped toward the chandelier hanging above the table.
The nanny had finished lighting the candles. The other boys bumped one another, craning closer to the flickering cake. None of them paid any attention to the squirrel dangling from the chandelier just above their heads.
“Everybody ready?” the nanny prompted. “Happy birthday to you . . .”
The other boys joined in. Van’s lips moved along to the words, but his eyes stayed on the silvery squirrel.
“Happy birthday, dear Peter . . .”
The squirrel’s bright black eyes landed on Van.
The squirrel froze. So did Van.
The squirrel’s eyes flicked toward the backyard. So did Van’s.
His gaze landed on a familiar face—the face of a girl with a brown ponytail and a much-too-large coat. She was standing just behind the trunk of the birch tree, her eyes fixed on the squirrel. But now her eyes darted from the squirrel to Van. They widened.
“Happy birthday to you!”
“Make a wish!” crowed the nanny.
There was a cheer as Peter blew out the candles.
The squirrel twitched back to life. It coiled to the bottom of the chandelier, holding on tight with its back feet. Its tiny front paws reached out. Van watched as they snatched at the rising candle smoke. But as Van watched, he realized that what the squirrel had caught wasn’t smoke at all. It was something that looked like a wisp of curling, sparkling, silvery silk. With the wisp clamped in its teeth, the squirrel sailed back toward the open window.
Van had already surprised himself twice today. He had gone to a party with a bunch of boys he didn’t know, for a boy he didn’t even like. He had stolen a china squirrel from the birthday boy’s bedroom. Now he was about to surprise himself again. He could feel it.
Before the nanny could cut the first slice of cake or Peter could decide who got to eat it, Van bolted to the open window. He shoved the frame outward. If anyone behind him called out, Van didn’t hear. He wasn’t really listening, anyway. Keeping his eyes on the face behind the birch tree, he swung one leg over the sill, braced his arms against the walls, and dove out into the backyard below.