Maddie wants to be part of Noah and Juliet’s adventure, she wants to do as they’ve asked, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
But it’s not. She has to get into the study without her dad seeing, or her mom. And her mom is always around. Except when she goes shopping or to help at one of her charities, which she does in the mornings, when Maddie’s at school. The only solution is to pretend to have a crushing headache on the same day that her mother volunteers at a shelter for abused women. It’s always short-staffed, so her mom won’t want to let them down.
‘I’ll be fine, Mom. I promise. I just want to go back to sleep.’
‘I’ll get back as soon as I can.’
Her mom’s standing over her bed now, and Maddie feels bad for deceiving her. Why couldn’t she just ask her dad for his id? She’d asked Juliet and Noah that, but Noah had been insistent. ‘I’ve tried that, Mads,’ he’d said. ‘I’ve asked him all sorts of questions. Besides, he’d want to know why.’
‘It’s true, Mads,’ Juliet said. ‘Noah showed me his emails.’ Maddie had looked at her in admiration. How had Juliet got Noah to drop his defences so quickly? He doesn’t let people in that easily. ‘But if we get his id number, we can start somewhere. It’s really important to Noah, you know that. And if that’s a dead end, at least we’ve tried.’
So now Mom’s gone and the house is quiet. Maddie’s in the study, a forbidden space. She’s never been in here on her own.
It’s just an ordinary room, she tells herself, and no one’s home but her. Maddie walks to the desk and pulls at a drawer. Locked. She tries all of them, three on one side, three on the other. Every single one is locked.
Right. His desktop. She sits in his chair and hits the keyboard. A password screen pops up and Maddie looks at it in dismay. That’s it then, there’s nothing in the study that she can explore. Nowhere to snoop, sneak into. Nothing to lift and look under. No loose papers. Not even a plant that might have a key under it.
There’s nothing on the walls either. No photos of Mom, or of her and Noah. Just his desk, an angle-poise lamp and the chair she’s sitting in. Maddie sighs. Juliet and Noah are going to be disappointed. She’s no super-sleuth, that’s for sure.
She knows what they asked her to do isn’t that difficult, so why does she feel so worried? She’s not really scared of her dad catching her, she tries to reassure herself. Noah has it so wrong. He’s exaggerating. It’s not like an id is such a big secret, is it? Everyone has one, after all.
But they’d been adamant.
‘Try to get into the study when he’s at work, Mads. We don’t know why he won’t tell Noah.’
Even though she can see how much better he’s getting, she really misses her brother. Noah may be weird, but he’s her weird, and she just wishes she could sit on the rug near his desk and talk to him, about everything and anything. At Greenhills, Noah’s truly beginning to seem at ease – he’s more content, lighter somehow. No one taunts or bullies him, and he doesn’t have to deal with the deepening rift between her parents.
Her mom doesn’t much like Juliet, but Maddie’s glad Noah finally has a friend. She’s happy that he’s becoming happier. But that doesn’t stop her from wanting him to come home.