Behind the Curtain (4 page)

Ingrid loved it too, but something about the scene made her say, “What’s up with Sean these days?”

Stacy bit her lip. “You think something’s up?” she asked, her voice quieter than normal. Normally it was kind of booming, but she just wasn’t the same person when it came to her brother. “Like what?”

“I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know,” Stacy said. “He’s flunking every course. And the DUI thing cost my dad a thousand bucks.”

“Your dad paid?”

“Sean’s broke. All the money he made last summer goes into that stupid car.”

The
Ferris Bueller
credits scrolled by. “How about
Happy Gilmore
?” Ingrid said.

“Sure,” said Stacy.

But they couldn’t find it.

“Maybe it’s in Sean’s room,” Stacy said. “He got a new DVD player.”

“Your parents gave him a DVD player?”

Stacy shook her head. “Some friend of his didn’t want it anymore.” She pressed a button and the robot came over.

“I’ll go look for the DVD,” Ingrid said.

“Okay,” said Stacy, reaching for another Coke.

Ingrid went upstairs. Sean’s room was at the end of the second floor. Like Ty’s, it was a horrible mess, the smell a little off. But there were differences. For example, posters of sports heroes covered Ty’s walls. Sean’s were bare, except for bits of masking tape where posters had once hung. Just a little thing, a trifle, but it had to mean something. Sherlock Holmes’s whole method was based on the observation of trifles.

Where to even begin a search in this squalor? Ingrid chose the bottom drawer of Sean’s desk. Was that really where he’d keep the
Happy Gilmore
DVD? Probably not. There was just something about that bottom drawer, the hardest to get to.

The bottom drawer of Sean Rubino’s desk was crammed—packets and packets of wrinkled homework, most undone or partly done; old magazines, all of them about cars and drag racing; and down at the bottom a baseball glove. Ingrid remembered that Sean had once played Little League. Wasn’t there some story about the field getting torn up late one night? She took out the glove, put it on, went to punch her fist in the pocket.

Ingrid paused, fist in midair. A roll of money lay in the pocket of the glove. A big fat roll, like a gambler might have in some movie. She counted it: $1,649.

“Hey,” called Stacy, coming down the hall. “You find it?”

Ingrid saw herself as others, even a best friend, would see her now—a snoop—and made a snap decision not to tell Stacy, at least not yet. Maybe all that money was somehow perfectly innocent. And if not, wouldn’t it be better to first get a few more facts? Theorizing without data was a capital mistake, as Holmes told Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia.”

Ingrid folded the glove around the wad of money, stuck it back in the bottom of the drawer, exactly as she’d found it.

“Let’s watch something else,” Ingrid said.

“
Fawlty Towers
?” said Stacy, coming into the room.

“Sounds good.”

Stacy went over to Sean’s TV, popped a DVD out of the player. “
Happy Gilmore
’s right here,” she said, looking at Ingrid in surprise.

“Oh,” said Ingrid, all at once feeling very bad.

I
NGRID HAD A DREAM
she dreamed over and over, all about being in a snug boat on seas that sometimes got rough. She was dreaming it now, maybe a little late even for a Saturday morning, when her door burst open.

“Phone,” said Ty, and then came a thump on the pillow.

Ingrid opened her eyes. The portable phone lay on the pillow and Ty was gone. Beside her on the bed, Nigel opened his eyes too, saw how light it was, and quickly closed them. Mister Happy, her teddy bear and no favorite of Nigel’s, was jammed into the tiny space between the bed and the wall. She was
kind of jammed there as well. Nigel had plenty of room.

Ingrid reached for the phone. “Hello?”

“Ingrid? It’s Chloe.”

Ingrid sat up. Chloe Ferrand calling her? Had this ever happened before? No. They’d been friends years ago, back in the time of being too young to make phone calls. In fact, Mister Happy was a present from Chloe, who had an identical teddy bear she’d named Mister Bumpy. But that was then. Now Chloe, the most beautiful thirteen-year-old girl in Echo Falls, with genuine modeling jobs to prove it, went to Cheshire Country Day and they seldom saw each other. Plus when they did, there was even some bad feeling between them, like on the set of the
Alice in Wonderland
production, when Ingrid ended up with the title role.

“Hi,” Ingrid said.

“Busy today?” said Chloe.

“Huh?”

“Your schedule.”

Ingrid didn’t really have a schedule on Saturday, except for soccer. “I’ve got soccer at two,” she said.

“Is that ridiculous hardware store guy still the coach?” Chloe said.

“Mr. Ringer’s still the coach,” Ingrid said. Maybe Mr. Ringer was kind of ridiculous, but she suddenly felt loyal to him.

“We’ll make it for after the game then,” said Chloe.

“Make what?” said Ingrid.

“This invitation,” Chloe said.

“What invitation?”

Chloe’s tone sharpened. Ingrid had a pretty good ear for tones. This one was all about trying to keep impatience under wraps, like Ingrid was a little slow. “That’s why I’m calling, Ingrid. To invite you over for a swim. After the game. At your convenience. Whatever.”

A swim. The Ferrands had an indoor pool lit by a huge crystal chandelier from France, installed by Mr. Rubino. Word was that Mrs. Ferrand swam a mile every morning in the nude. Ingrid made one of those quick decisions that felt totally right.

“Oh,” she said. “I just remembered.”

“What?”

Ingrid searched her mind for some excuse she could have just remembered. And then out of the blue came a memory of something she
should
have remembered, namely MathFest. Oh my God.
MathFest, Saturday morning, 8:30. What time was it now? She checked her watch—Fossil, bright red, red being her favorite color, the only one that said COLOR in capital letters. Twelve minutes till noon. Till noon? How could that have happened? By now MathFest was finished, all that wacky number fun a thing of the past. As for the future: Ms. Groome.

“Well?” said Chloe.

“MathFest,” said Ingrid.

“What are you talking about?”

What was that saying about if life hands you a lemon make lemonade? In this case, she’d handed herself the lemon. “A school thing,” Ingrid said. “Right after soccer till God knows when.”

“They chose you for math?” said Chloe.

“Crazy, I know,” said Ingrid. “But thanks for the invitation. Would have been great.”

Chloe clicked off, no good-bye.

Ingrid went downstairs, leaving her door open in case Nigel ever decided to get up. A very sharp kind of light filled the kitchen, making everything seem more real than real, like in some modern paintings Mom had dragged her to see at the museum in Hartford. Outside, the sky was a hard, cold blue,
the trees in the town woods out back all bare now, winter around the corner. Dad was at the table, punching numbers on a calculator.

“Hi, Dad,” said Ingrid. “Where is everybody?”

“Mom’s got a showing,” he said, eyes on the calculator screen. “Ty’s gone for a run.”

“Thought you had golf today,” Ingrid said. Dad belonged to the Sandblasters, a fanatical bunch of golfers at his club who played at least one round in every month of the year.

“Work comes first,” he said, “as you should know by now.” Uh-oh. Some kind of mood. He jotted a few quick numbers on a yellow legal pad. “Who was on the phone?”

“Chloe.”

Dad looked up. “Chloe Ferrand?”

What other Chloes did they know? Was there even another Chloe in the whole state? But Ingrid sensed it wasn’t the moment for an answer like that, and just said, “Yes.”

“What did she want?”

“Me to come over for a swim.”

“Really?” said Dad, putting down his pen. “When?”

“After soccer. I told her I was busy.”

“You said no?”

“Nicely.”

“You said no?”

“Yeah,” said Ingrid. “No.”

That jaw muscle of Dad’s got all lumpy. “And why was that, if you don’t mind telling me?”

“We’re not friends, Dad. I didn’t feel like it.”

“Is that any reason to be rude?”

“I wasn’t rude. I did it nicely, like I said.”

“How did that go, exactly?” said Dad.

“Huh?”

Dad’s tone sharpened just as Chloe’s had done, impatience yearning to be free. “I’m asking what your excuse was. Wake up, Ingrid.”

“My excuse?”

“For blowing her off,” said Dad.

Her excuse. Yikes. The whole MathFest thing, now starting to loom up like one of those shape-changing monsters. Other people, lots of them, could tell the odd lie from time to time and move on, no problem. But whenever Ingrid told a lie, she immediately stepped onto a tightrope of lies, each one slippier than the last. Telling the truth now would lead to the whole MathFest confession, and Dad was big on math, had a thing about her staying
on the calculus track all the way to Princeton, where Ferrands had gone since the Ice Age and where she and Ty were going too, no discussion. Telling a lie led into the three-ring circus.

“Um,” said Ingrid, “I just said I was busy.”

“Doing what?”

Doing what? How about—“Going to the mall with Stacy.”

“You told her you were going to the mall with Stacy?”

“Uh-huh.” On the tightrope already.

Dad’s eyes shifted slightly, like he was checking a rearview mirror, a thing he did when he was having a sudden thought.

“No reason it couldn’t fall through,” said Dad, “a plan like that.”

Ingrid didn’t get that at all. It wasn’t even a real plan. She wasn’t going to the mall with Stacy, so there was nothing to fall through. She studied Dad’s face. He didn’t look like himself: skin pale, purple smudges under his eyes, plus red veins crisscrossing the whites. And he’d missed shaving in that little cleft in his chin.

“And if it did fall through,” Dad went on, “would there be any reason not to call Chloe and tell her
you’d still like to come over?”

“Huh?”

Dad gave her an angry look. Ingrid didn’t remember many looks like that from him. “Damn it, Ingrid,” he said, “can’t you simply do what I want without arguing for once?”

“You want me to go over to Chloe’s?”

“I do.”

“But why?”

“Because she asked you,” Dad said.

Ingrid didn’t understand. Through the window behind Dad’s head, she saw a dark bird rise up out of the town woods and fly away.

When Dad spoke again, his voice was quiet, not angry at all, even kind of lifeless. “This isn’t the time to piss off the Ferrands,” he said, his gaze no longer on her but on the legal pad instead. What was going on? Ingrid had no idea. All she knew was that she didn’t like seeing him like this, in fact preferred him angry.

“Okay,” she said. A swim at Chloe’s—how bad could it be? “But the invitation won’t be good anymore. I know Chloe.”

Ingrid went up to her room, called Chloe in private, making up a brand-new lie about MathFest being postponed.

“See you after soccer, then,” said Chloe.

Ingrid hung up. Maybe she didn’t know Chloe after all.

“Gonna give it to you in three words,” said Coach Ringer.

The girls’ U13 A travel team stood by their bench on soccer field one, up by the hospital. The sun was not far above the treetops, and the wind was picking up, ruffling all their ponytails. Coach Ringer, not much taller than the girls and maybe three times as wide, wore his black-and-gold Towne Hardware jacket with that slogan—
SCREWS FOR YOUSE SINCE
1937—on the back and clutched an unlit cigarette between his nicotine-stained fingers.

“Have your attention?” said Coach Ringer. A few of the girls nodded. Most, including Ingrid, just stared blankly across the field. “Three words: All. The. Marbles.”

Coach Ringer paused to let the three words sink in. Now all the girls’ faces were blank.
What the hell was he talking about?
Ingrid thought. All the marbles? This was just the first game of the playoffs. Marbles—Coach Ringer was losing his.

Over at midfield the ref tapped his watch. The
girls from South Harrow were already in position.

“Any questions?” said Coach Ringer.

“Yeah,” said Ingrid. “Where’s Coach Trimble?”

Assistant Coach Trimble had played for a UConn team that went all the way to the NCAA finals. She was an amazing athlete, could probably jump right over Coach Ringer if she wanted; and the parents couldn’t wait till he retired down to Florida so she could take over.

Coach Ringer shot Ingrid a quick look: not the kind of question he had in mind. “Assistant Coach Trimble’s in Tokyo,” he said. “Business trip. Won’t be back till Christmas.”

Business trip? Ingrid realized she had no idea what Coach Trimble did for a living. None of the kids had ever asked, and Coach Trimble, who didn’t say much, had never mentioned it.

“What does she do?” Ingrid said.

“Some kind of foreign business,” said Coach Ringer. “But in the meanwhile I got us a new helper.”

He waved at a woman standing about ten yards away on the sidelines. A tall woman, although not as tall as Coach Trimble, and strong-looking, the way Stacy was going to be when she grew up. She wore running tights, dark glasses, and a short jacket
made of—hey!—fur. Really nice dark-brown fur with black streaks, like maybe mink, absolute—what was the word when something was a complete no-no? anathema?—to Mom.

The woman came over. Ingrid was just thinking there was something familiar about her when Coach Ringer said, “Listen up. This here’s our temporary assistant, Julie LeCaine.”

“Julia,” said the woman.

Julia LeCaine, new vice president at the Ferrand Group. Up close, she looked even more striking than in the
Echo
photograph, but that might have been an effect of her shades, some new European style, the coolest Ingrid had ever seen.

Coach Ringer didn’t appear to have heard the correction. “New in town,” he said, “but as for soccer credentials—look out. Actual alternate on Team USA, 1999.”

“1992,” said Julia LeCaine.

“Personal friends with Mia Hamm, ain’t that right, Ju—Ms. LeCaine?”

“We met,” said Ms. LeCaine. “I wouldn’t say friends.”

“Anything you want to tell the team?” said Coach Ringer.

Coach Trimble always said “Play hard and play to win,” making an important distinction it had taken Ingrid two years to understand. Ms. LeCaine said, “I’ll just be observing today.”

“Oh, come on,” said Coach Ringer, “give them a little pep talk.”

Julia LeCaine took off her shades. She had green eyes, not just a browny-blue but real green. Ingrid had never seen that before. Those green eyes made a quick scan of the girls, came to rest on Ingrid. “Very well,” she said, “a pep talk. How’s this?” She licked her lips—her tongue was one of those very pointy ones—and said, “Whatever it takes.”

There was a little silence. Then the ref blew his whistle. Something made Ingrid glance over at the stands. Dad was watching from the top row, eyes on Julia LeCaine, jaw thrust forward in an aggressive sort of way that reminded Ingrid of those stupid
Rocky
movies.