Off the Wall (4 page)

“You—you—,” Jane sputtered. “Where did you
get
that thing?”

“I grabbed it out of the housefly exhibit when we passed it,” said Lucy offhandedly. “I think it's supposed to show you what life looks like to a fly. Try it on!”

“No way! Go put it back!”

“I'll put it back
after
you try it on,” said Lucy. “Fly eyes are cool. Really, try it!”

Reluctantly Jane pulled the mask over her head.
When she looked through the eyes, she realized what Lucy had meant. It was like looking at the world through dozens of prisms, and all the colors seemed different somehow. But she couldn't appreciate the view when she knew she wasn't supposed to be seeing it.

“All right, fine. Very interesting,” Jane said as she yanked off the rubber mask. “Now take it back where it belongs.”

Lucy sighed. “Alllllll riiiiiiight. If you say so. Wait here for me, okay? Then we can catch up with the others. I know the way to the restaurant.”

No one seemed to have noticed that they'd been missing for a few minutes. The rest of the girls were passing a huge replica of a spider when Jane and Lucy caught up.

“Let's stop here for one second,” said Willow. “We really shouldn't leave without at least looking at some of the spiders.”

There were loud sighs from the girls, but Willow and Katherine were firm. “We'll just look at the first room of the exhibit,” said Katherine. “For five minutes only.”

The theme of the first room was ‘Webs, Nets, and Parachutes—Amazing Spider Silk!' Jane was glad spiders
didn't scare her, because some of the webs in the exhibit really
were
amazing. There was even a polyester replica of a very big and very strong spider web—forty feet across. “From the Darwin's bark spider in Madagascar,” Katherine told them. “In the wild, some of the webs are eighty feet long. That's as long as two school buses!” Jane was especially interested in the trapdoor spider. Trapdoor spiders, she learned, dug tiny, perfect burrows. They lined them with silk and then used the silk to attach a hinged door to cover the burrow's hole. They also raised their globe-shaped spiderlings in the tunnel, feeding them leftover insects.

“The babies are actually kind of cute,” Jane marveled as she stared into the glass case holding an actual trapdoor spider.

“So small, too,” said Lucy. “They're the size of a cake sprinkle!”

Daria was peering over Lucy's shoulder to see. “I just heard someone say that you're never farther than seven feet away from a spider,” she reported. “No matter where you are—inside, outside, underground . . .”

“That can't be right,” said Lucy. “Look around this room! Well, I mean, not this room, because after all, this
is
a spider exhibit. But if we go into—say—the middle of the Great Hall—or my family room—there won't be a spider seven feet away.”

“How do you know? Look how tiny these baby spiders are. Maybe you just don't see them.”

For some reason, Jane's skin suddenly began to itch. She didn't hate spiders, but she didn't like them, either, and the idea that one might be close enough to crawl on her really creeped her out. To her relief, Willow called out to the group.

“I know we said we just wanted to show you one room . . .”

More groans from the girls.

“But they did give me and Katherine permission to take out one of the tarantulas. Does anyone want to see it? It's in a tank in the next room. Anyone who's interested, come with me. The rest of you can wait in here with Katherine.”

About twenty girls followed Willow, including Megan.

“I wouldn't have thought you were interested in tarantulas, Megan,” Lucy said.

“I'm
not
! But it would be way
worse
to stay in the other
room waiting and waiting and wondering what would happen if the tarantula broke free and viciously attacked everyone.”

“Tarantulas are actually harmless,” said Willow, who had overheard this. “Nothing to worry about. They're even kind of cuddly, if you look closely.” She had reached a row of glass tanks and was lifting the wire top off one of them. “Hey, buddy,” she said. “Ready to make some friends?” Gently she lifted out the creature inside.

Even Jane caught her breath when she saw the tarantula. Its furry black body was the size of two plums, and its legs were about six inches long.

“This is Trudy.” Willow lightly stroked the tarantula's back. “Her species is found in South America, and she eats mostly cockroaches. Does anyone have any questions about her?”

“How does she spray her deadly poison?” asked one girl named Stella.

Willow laughed. “Tarantulas aren't poisonous! Except to their prey. They do sometimes bite, but their bite is no more dangerous than a bee sting.”

Megan had lurked in the doorway instead of fully
coming into the room. Now she took a giant step backward.

“But they only bite the insects they catch,” Willow continued. “Or—in the case of really big tarantulas—the mice and birds.”

Megan took another step backward.

“
That's
not a big tarantula?” asked Lucy. “She looks huge to me.”

“Some tarantulas are as big as dinner plates,” Willow told her. “They're big enough to eat snakes.”

Megan stepped back yet again—and tripped.

“Watch out!”
called Willow. “The spider web is right behind you!”

Megan had stumbled only inches from the forty-foot fake web in the first room. She threw out a hand to break her fall—and her arm went right through the web. She grabbed the web with her other hand—and the whole web collapsed on her.

Willow leaped forward to help. The sudden movement must have startled the tarantula, who fell off Willow's hand and began to scuttle away.

“EVERYBODY FREEZE!” Willow yelled at the top of her lungs. “Or you'll step on Trudy!”

Of course all the girls had been about to scatter—but now they halted instantly. Only Trudy continued her skittering path across the floor.

“She's coming for me! She's going to attack!” Megan wailed. She tried to jump to her feet but only managed to get herself more tangled in the giant web.

“She is
not
going to attack,” said Willow. “She's much more scared than you are. Hold still, everyone—and you, too, Megan. I need to pick her up.”

She walked calmly over to the tarantula and scooped her up. Just as calmly, she brought her back to the tank and closed the lid. Jane was sure she was just imagining things, but it seemed like the tarantula was happy to be back in its cage. Then at last she turned toward Megan.

Katherine had reached Megan by then and was kneeling on the floor beside her. “Megan, could you try to stop squirming around?” she said. “You're just getting more tangled.”

“I bet
you'd
squirm if millions of poisonous spiders were attacking you!” said Megan tearfully.

Katherine looked over at Willow and sighed. “This will be hard to explain to the staff,” she said.

“
I
think it's good that it happened,” said Lucy. “If
that web could fall on Megan, it could fall on anyone. The museum people should be
glad
it happened before the exhibit was open to the public. Someone could have gotten hurt!”

“How do you know
I
didn't get hurt?” complained Megan.

“Well, did you?”

“No, I guess not.” Megan sounded disappointed. “I could have, though.”

Willow's voice was brisk. “But you didn't. And neither did Trudy. And if we all work at it, we can get you untangled before you know it.”

“Wow, this is amazing,” Jane said fifteen minutes later.

“I think it's
horrible
,” said Megan. “What if it springs a leak?”

The group had untangled Megan, folded up the fake web, and then gone on to dinner, hungrier than ever. Now they were in the Templeton Museum's restaurant, which had been built to look like a submarine. The walls were lined with portholes that showed superrealistic fish “swimming” past the sub. As the girls watched, a cloud
of transparent jellyfish floated from one porthole to the next. The jellyfish were followed by a huge hammerhead shark. After the shark, a squid shot past. Starfish crept up the portholes and vanished from view. A school of seahorses wriggled by. Jane was pretty sure that none of these sea creatures shared the same spots in the same ocean, but who cared? As long as a mermaid didn't show up, it was easy to believe they were really underwater.

In the front of the sub, Katherine and Willow were setting out pans of lasagna, stacks of garlic bread, and a huge bowl of salad. “Come and get it, girls!” called Katherine. “After you've served yourselves, you can sit wherever you want.”

Jane and Lucy ended up sitting with a bunch of Lucy's friends, plus Megan. At the last minute, Daria also plunked herself down at their table. From her expression, she seemed to think she was doing them a favor.

Lucy, Grace, and Cailyn all went to the same school. They knew Megan and the other girls at the table from summer programs at the museum.

“Where do you live, Jane?” asked Cailyn.

Jane could feel herself blushing. “I . . . I know this
sounds stupid, but I don't remember the address. We just got here.”

“Well, do you know where you'll be going to school?” Cailyn pressed.

“I don't think I'll be going to school,” Jane confessed. She hated the way everyone was staring at her. “My mother . . .” She trailed off.

“Oh, you're homeschooled!” said Cailyn, and Jane nodded uncertainly.

“Lots of kids around here are homeschooled,” Grace told her. “That's why a lot of them come to the classes and stuff here at the museum—it's a good way to meet kids their own age.”

“That must be the
only
thing this museum is good for,” said Daria.

“Give it a chance!” protested Lucy. “We haven't seen any of the real stuff yet. Like the new Egyptian wing.”

“Big deal. Lots of museums have Egyptian exhibits,” said Daria with a sniff.

“Yeah, but this one's been totally fixed up and added to. Willow said the museum bought the whole collection of an Egyptian museum that had to close for some reason. They got tons of stuff from some royal tombs that
were discovered about twenty years ago. And solid-gold jewelry and papyrus scrolls and . . . oh, you know, royal pottery and things. And a
lot
of mummies. Now only two other museums in the country have bigger Egyptian exhibits than Templeton.”

“I love Egyptian stuff,” said Grace. “We did a whole unit on ancient Egypt last year. We each got assigned a character that we had to study and then pretend to be. I was a pharaoh.” She giggled. “People had to obey my every command.”

“There weren't any girl pharaohs,” said Daria.

“Yes, there were! Not a lot of them, but a couple,” Grace answered. “We studied that exact thing.” She stopped to take a bite of lasagna. “Mmm, this is really good.”

Daria didn't seem to agree about the museum's food, either. She wasn't eating much, Jane noticed—just pushing things around on her plate with a discontented face. Jane wondered why Daria was even
at
the lock-in if she hated everything so much. Maybe her mother had made her come, the way Jane's had. But even if she didn't want to be here, couldn't she try to be nice?

For the first time since she'd signed in, Jane suddenly
got up the nerve to start a conversation. A conversation about the one thing that had been secretly haunting her all day.

“
I've
heard something interesting about the Templeton Museum,” she blurted out. “That it's haunted.”

Everyone at the table stopped eating and stared at her.

“That's what they say,” said Jane more quietly. “In fact, it's the Egyptian exhibit that's supposed to be haunted. People say that one of the mummies comes to life every night.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Daria.

“It's true! I mean, it's true that it's what I've heard,” Jane said more carefully. “I mean it could be just a story, but—”

“Of course it's just a story,” said Daria.

“Well, then, the
story
is that this mummy comes to life every night and walks through the museum.”

Megan looked as if she was about to cry.

But Grace looked excited. “Ooooh,” she said. “I like that kind of story.”

All the girls at the table were leaning their heads in closer to listen.

“Who told you such a stupid lie?” asked Daria.

“Actually, it was—” Jane stopped midsentence. Her mother had told her the story. But it would sound so babyish to say that out loud.

“I've just heard people talking about it,” Jane said weakly.