I take a giant gulp of air before I sink back down. I should be afraid. But the fear only kicks in later, when I think about all the stuff that could have gone wrong.
This part is hard to admit, but Mason saves me. Not because he dives down to the floor of the pool or anything. I’m not that far gone, and he is not a strong enough swimmer for that. It is Mason’s donut habit that saves me.
When I am flailing in the pool, trying to kick off my other runner and gasping for air, Mason stays buoyant. Not only that, but he manages to swim over to where I am and drag me to the side of the pool. He grabs me by my wrists, the way he dragged the dummy during the obstacle course.
I am coughing up water, and he has to clap me on the back, but thank God there is no need for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“Thanks,” I sputter, and pool water lands on his chin. For a second, we look at each other.
“No biggie,” Mason says, though we both know that is not true. If it was not for Mason, something really bad could have happened.
“Wh-where’s Rex-Rexford?” It’s hard to get the words out, my teeth are chattering so bad, but Mason knows what I mean.
“He took him.”
“Get us outta here!” Nathaniel bellows from inside the pool house.
“We’re coming!” Mason calls back. My other runner is floating at the edge of the pool, and Mason is fishing it out.
I am trembling. Not only because I am soaking, but also because I am remembering the feeling of being weighed down underwater. I don’t even want to think about what might have happened if Mason had not been there. Mason smacks my runner against the ground to get the water out. “There’s a b-back w-window to the pool house,” I tell Mason as I force my foot into the soggy shoe.
When we unbar the window, Nathaniel is the first one out. “Why are you guys wet?” he asks.
“He pushed me into the pool,” I tell Nathaniel. “Mason got me out.” I leave out the part about Mason’s natural buoyancy.
Mason helps Nico and the girls out of the pool house. “Now what?” Nico says.
Stacey dusts herself off. “I think there’s mildew in the pool house. Thank God you got us out of there. Many people are severely allergic to mild—”
Nathaniel cuts her off. “This isn’t a good time to discuss mildew, Stacey. We need to figure out which way the squeegee kid went.”
“He ran back down the path,” I say.
Nico has run to the front of the house. “I think I see him,” he calls back to us. “All the way down Lansdowne.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Stacey asks when we get to where Nico is.
“No, I’m not sure,” Nico admits. “But unless one of you has a better plan, I say we should head back down the street.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Stacey says.
Nathaniel grabs Stacey’s elbow. “Let’s go,” he says. “We can argue later.”
Getting down the hill is a lot easier than going up. We pass a few mansions, then an old gray-stone apartment building, then a block of townhouses. Soon we cross Sherbrooke Street and after that, de Maisonneuve Boulevard.
When we pass the park, we all turn to look. No one is there except for an older woman sitting on a bench, gazing up at the moon. “Excuse me,” Muriel calls out. “Did you happen to see a guy go by, dressed in black and wearing a gray cap and carrying a backpack?”
“Does he have a dog?” the woman calls back. “Because I thought I heard a small dog yapping.”
“Which way did they go?” Nathaniel asks.
“Down toward the Glen,” the woman says. “Have you ever noticed how small dogs are noisier than big ones?”
I think the woman would like for us to stop and chat, but there is no time. The others are already hurrying down the street. “I’ve gotta go,” I tell her. “But thanks.”
There is a tunnel at the bottom of Lansdowne Avenue that separates Westmount, which is one of Montreal’s fanciest neighborhoods, from St. Henri, which is just about the unfanciest. This is the stretch known as the Glen. It is also where Lansdowne Avenue turns into de Courcelle Street.
There is hardly any sidewalk inside the tunnel, so we walk in single file, our shoulders and hips brushing up against the damp stone wall.
“Roxie.” I do not mean to say her name out loud.
Muriel reaches for my hand and squeezes it in the darkness.
“We’ll find her,” she says.
“Where to now?” Nico asks when we exit the tunnel.
There are several rundown buildings and some empty lots on this part of de Courcelle Avenue. Muriel is standing under a streetlamp, looking at something on her phone. The rest of us are searching for some sign of the squeegee kid. Lights flicker on, then off, in one of the rundown buildings across the street. “Maybe he went in there,” Nathaniel and I say at the same time.
Stacey sniffs the air. “I smell dog—and lemon.”
“Lemon?” Nathaniel asks.
Stacey sniffs a second time. “Definitely.”
On Monday we might have laughed at Stacey’s habit of sniffing for clues, but now we have come to respect her olfactory powers. “Where would you say those smells are coming from?” Mason asks.
Stacey does not point at the building where the lights were flickering. I gulp when she points at a building on our side of the street. It is as close to looking haunted as any building I have ever seen. It is only two stories, and most of its windows are boarded up. Though I do not know for sure that it’s full of rats and spiders, I think that if I were a rat or a spider, I would want to live there. “That one,” she says.
“You sure?” Nathaniel does not sound any keener than I am to explore the building.
Stacey is chewing on her lower lip. “I think it’s time to call the police. Someone could get hurt. I’m starting to get super anxious.” Not only is Stacey talking really quickly, but she has put her hand on her heart again. I wonder if her heart is racing like mine is.
“Take a deep breath,” I tell her. “Like this.” I demonstrate a breathing technique my mom taught me. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Slowly.
Stacey breathes deeply. If I had more time, I’d show her the Gyan Mudra.
Nathaniel gives Stacey a minute to collect herself. “We’re not going to call the police, not yet,” he tells her. “I don’t want my dad to know I climbed out my bedroom window.”
“You climbed out your bedroom window?” Mason sounds impressed. “Didn’t you tell me your bedroom was in the attic?”
“I tied three sheets together and rappelled down. I’ll show you how to do it sometime. The hard part is going to be climbing back up.”
“Three sheets?” I ask. Most people only have two sheets on their beds.
“Yeah, three,” Nathaniel says. “The funny thing was, Fred, my grandma’s fiancé, came up to my room with fresh sheets for my bed. He’s been trying to help out with the chores. Anyway, that’s when I got the idea.”
Mason and I exchange a look. “We ran into Fred before,” I tell Nathaniel. “He didn’t seem like such a bad guy.”
“D’you think Fred could’ve been trying to help you?” Mason asks.
Nathaniel shrugs.
Muriel looks up from her cell. “Come see what I just found!”
Muriel has used Google Street View to look up this block of de Courcelle Street. Google Street View doesn’t provide real-time images, so whatever Muriel is looking at is a photo that was shot some time in the past. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe she has found something important.
I try to move in closer, but Nico elbows his way past me so he can look at the screen first.
“In the Street View image, someone’s going into the building that Stacey says smells like dog,” he tells us.
“It’s not just that,” Muriel tells him. “Have a closer look.”
Now we are all straining to get a look. I do not complain when Nathaniel steps on my toe.
That is because I just saw what Muriel already noticed. That guy going into the building on Google Street View is carrying a small dog in his arms.