The Changeling (18 page)

When Martha asked why on earth he was glad about a thing like that, he said because it had trapped him into deciding something for himself. Before that, he said, he’d pretty much just gone along doing what was expected of him—partly because he was just the “why-not” type and partly because he’d always felt he really didn’t have much choice. He’d gotten in the habit of going along with whoever was leaning on him hardest at the time. And then that night it dawned on him all of a sudden that when things had gone so far that a couple of harmless kids like Martha and Ivy could get the blame for a crazy thing like what happened to the school office—then it was about time somebody started telling things straight no matter who got hurt. The getting hurt part bothered him, though. He hated the idea of being a fink and getting his friends busted. But when he’d stopped to think about it, he’d known they were going to get busted sooner or later, no matter what. And maybe sooner was better than later. Anyway, Tom said, he was glad that for once in his life he’d done something that
he’d
decided to do—all by himself.

Although the differences at the Abbotts’ after that terrible Monday, were, for the most part, more good than bad; there was one very important difference that was bad, all bad. Ivy was gone again.

On that morning, the one after Martha had cried herself to sleep without knowing about Tom’s confession, everyone had tried to get in touch with Ivy and the Carsons to tell them what had happened; but no one could reach them. Finally it became apparent that some time in the middle of the night the Carsons had packed up and climbed into their old red truck and disappeared. Everyone thought it was certainly too bad that they had gone off that way, without even knowing the truth about what had happened; but soon nearly everyone forgot about it. After all, everyone said, the Carsons were always coming and going, anyway. Undoubtedly, they’d have left soon, even without the accusation against Ivy; and they’d probably be back someday, and then everything could be straightened out.

But Martha couldn’t just forget about it like everyone else. She went over and over what might have happened when Ivy told her parents. Martha was certain that the Carsons hadn’t believed that Ivy was innocent. After all, nearly all the other Carson kids had been guilty at one time or another, so why not Ivy? Because, of course, the Carsons didn’t understand, any more than anyone else did, about how Ivy was so different.

Another thing that Martha couldn’t forget—never, as long as she lived—was the way she and Ivy had parted. To Martha that was the most terrible part of all. She went over her last conversation with Ivy at least a thousand times, wishing she hadn’t said what she had about a changeling, wishing she’d run after Ivy until she caught her—no matter how long it took or how far she had to go. Wishing she hadn’t let Ivy go off without a chance to say good-by or to take back the things she’d said.

Most of the time Martha felt certain that Ivy would have taken them back, if there’d been time. But with her gone, there was no way to find out for sure. So all Martha could do was go over and over the whole thing in her mind, as if somehow it might finally turn out differently.

I
VY WAS GONE, AND
there was no way to change that; but other things went right on changing. Spring came and the big musical, and Martha’s small part was padded because she did it so well, until it turned out to be one of the things everyone liked best about the play. The play ran for three weekends, and Martha discovered how great it was to face and work her way through the terror she felt before every performance—to the place where applause, like warm wonderful thunder, told her she had won.

Later, probably because the stage had been such a great discovery, she decided to try to write a play for an English class assignment. It turned out to be a short one-act skit, but good enough to be staged as part of the fund raising assembly put on by the eighth grade class to raise money for the graduation party.

So the eighth grade finished a lot better than Martha had ever expected it would, and summer came and went and high school began. Martha had always hated to think about starting high school. A new school, much larger, much farther from home, and full of new people had always seemed like a terrifying prospect. But somehow it turned out not to be as bad as she expected. For instance, new people turned out to have certain advantages, such as not remembering that Marty Abbott, the tall slim girl with the long blond hair, had once been the fat and silent Marty Mouse of Rosewood School.

At home, at number two Castle Court, things changed too, but only a little. Martha’s father was made a full partner in his law firm and started working about an hour longer every day; and Martha’s mother won the Spring Tournament Trophy and began to spend an extra day a week on the golf course. Tom went into his Senior year in high school, and Cath went away to college. Grandmother Abbott spent more and more time in Florida since she had gotten interested in raising orchids. Everyone seemed much less worried about Martha, either because there was less to worry about or because they all had less time to do it in.

Martha had less time, too. Weeks and months rushed by for Martha that year, and like the rest of the Abbotts she began to have to keep calendars and schedules. Schedules such as: Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at 4:00—play rehearsal; Wednesday at 3:30—Conservation Club meeting; Saturdays at 10:00—voice lessons in the city.

Summer came and went, mostly in a long trip by automobile across the country with her family, and then right after the beginning of her Sophomore year, Martha met Rufus. It happened because Martha had allowed herself to be signed up for a course in biology. She had signed up, against her better judgment, when she was pressured a bit by a hurried counselor, because biology happened to fit neatly into a hole in Martha’s schedule. The counselor was feeling bad because nothing Martha wanted to take would fit, and because there was a long line of kids waiting impatiently to be counseled. So Martha had told herself that, after all, biology was a
life
science and the life part sounded interesting—forgetting that she’d actually stopped believing in science at a rather early age. Forgetting, too, the rumors she’d heard about the kinds of things that went on in laboratory classes. Things like cutting up poor little defenseless creatures in cold blood.

Sure enough, almost immediately the teacher announced that the atrocities would be starting in a week or two, and that same day Martha waited after class to talk about dropping. While she waited, she noticed the frogs in a big glass tank at the back of the classroom. Drawn by a mixture of pity and fascination, she drifted over to stare at the condemned. Most of the victims crouched resignedly on the tank floor, but not all. Just one, a lovely greenish-brown frog with tragic eyes, stood up on his hind legs, rested his chin on his delicate fingers, and looked Martha right in the eye.

“Then he asked me to help him out,” Martha told Rufus afterwards.

“He
asked
you to help him out?” Rufus asked. “In so many words?”

“Of course,” Martha said grinning. “How else would he ask me?”

“In that case,” Rufus said, “I’m glad I helped. I always rescue talking frogs, every time I get the chance.”

Martha hadn’t known who was helping at first. There had been a small mob of students crowding around, waiting to see the teacher, who was standing only a few feet away, but with his back turned. Martha shoved aside the tank cover, slipped her hand inside, and was slipping it out full of cool damp frog, when the teacher turned around. She put her hands, frog and all, behind her back.

Looking suspicious but uncertain, the teacher walked towards her. “What do you have there, Miss—ah, Miss—”

“Abbott,” Martha supplied, stalling for time. “Martha Abbott.” Behind her she felt urgent deliberate fingers touching hers, and the frog was gone. She wiped her damp hands on the seat of her skirt and held them out, empty. She didn’t find out until later where the frog had gone—to a safe hiding place in Rufus’ pocket.

Soon afterwards, Martha dropped biology without regrets, because she’d discovered that Rufus was also in her drama class. Another thing that Martha discovered about Rufus was that he had friends of just about every kind imaginable. Rufus knew and got along with kids from every group, from the “plaid-and-crew cut” set of Kelly Peters and her friends to the shaggy almost dropouts who smoked pot in the school parking lot during lunch hour. Knowing Rufus meant getting to know a lot of other people in a hurry.

By the spring of her Sophomore year, Martha Abbott knew a lot of people, and more important, she’d begun to know who she was in a way she never had before. She knew, for instance, that if you asked nearly anybody at Roosevelt High who Marty Abbott was, they would probably say, “You know, the tall chick who’s in all the school plays.” Or even, “The cute blonde who’s been going around with Rufus Greene lately.” It was great—if still a little amazing to Martha—to know that people thought of her that way, instead of—instead of the way she sometimes still felt inside.

Inside—there were still times when some little thing could send Martha sliding back into the kind of quiet panic she had lived with as Marty Mouse Abbott. But those times didn’t come often anymore, and they didn’t last long. Now that she had learned the way out of the Mousehole, she never stayed in it for long. And even better than getting out of it quickly was not getting in, and the way to do that was to shut the door. Shutting the door on the Mousehole meant shutting the door on a lot of the past—dozens of silly fears, and the lonely comfort of too many tears, and too many sweets, and too many endless daydreams. And maybe it even meant shutting the door on Bent Oaks Grove—and the memory of Ivy Carson.

Martha hadn’t meant it to happen. When Ivy first left, she had thought of very little else. She had worried and wondered and written—even though she had no place to send letters to except to Harley’s Crossing, where not even Aunt Evaline lived anymore. But time passed and things kept changing and new things began to happen.

So, by the spring of her Sophomore year, it had been a long time since Martha had been to Bent Oaks Grove, and even longer since she had done much thinking about Ivy Carson.

And then, suddenly, it was the seventh of April and Martha knew all day long that something was about to happen. But it wasn’t until after dinner that her father calmly announced that the Carsons were back in Rosewood Hills.

“I
VY? IVY? IVY?” SITTING
on the edge of the stage in Bent Oaks Grove, Martha rocked back and forth in time to the whispered question. It was a question all right, a huge question, and the longer Martha sat there, the more she began to realize that the question had a great many parts.

The first part was about who Ivy was. Who was Ivy
now
—now that she was almost sixteen? What would she look like? What would she act like? Who would she be, after all this time? But who had she ever been, really? Who was the small girl with the wild dark hair and fantastic eyes who claimed not to be what everyone thought she was—and had to be?

But the longer Martha thought about it, the more she began to see that there was another important part to the question, and that other part was about Martha Abbott. Who had Martha Abbott been, and who would she be now, if there had never been an Ivy? And what was the feeling that had made Martha’s stomach tighten and the blood tingle into her face when she heard that the Carsons had returned? Was it just excitement? Was Martha really just glad that Ivy was back? Or had it been partly fear? Fear of the unknown, and maybe even fear of what it would mean to Marty Abbott—today’s Marty Abbott—to have Ivy Carson back in Rosewood Hills? That question was really who Martha Abbott was, and, as usual, Martha didn’t entirely believe in the answer.

The shadows deepened in Bent Oaks Grove, and overhead the sky turned a deeper, duller pink, and Martha still waited, and wondered and worried about questions and answers. At last the questions began to turn into daydreams. Something, perhaps the frayed end of a rope dangling where Ivy had hung it years before in Tower Tree, reminded Martha of other times, and pictures began to float up like mirages in front of her eyes.

First there was a face, a small pointed face spinning down a rope, in and out of sunlight. That was when Martha had thought, “Of course, a changeling. That explains everything.”

Then there was another Ivy, curled over her bruised foot in the middle of the Smiths’ kitchen floor, looking up with glowing eyes, and the Smiths looking down at her with almost startled faces.

Then there was a dim distant Ivy, standing where dark fingers of shadow reached toward her down a hill. That silent ghostly Ivy was just fading when there was a noise of scuffling leaves and a figure moved slowly out of the dark passage between the gateway boulders of Bent Oaks Grove. The figure moved a few steps into the grove and stopped, and Martha caught her breath in a shaky gasp.

Even in the dim light, it was obvious that the person standing so quietly just inside the grove was small, much too small. When she moved forward into the grove, Martha could tell for sure that it was a very little girl. A little girl with long dark hair in heavy braids and thin legs under a short skirt.

It was Ivy. It had to be. But not a sixteen-year-old Ivy. Not even the Ivy Martha had last seen over two years before. This little girl seemed, unbelievably, to be the Ivy of years and years ago.

Crazy impossible explanations flashed through Martha’s mind. She sat motionless, staring, with both hands pressed against her mouth, while the shadowy figure stood still, too, with its face turned toward Martha. After an endless time it moved again, forward, and a small quavering voice said, “Martha? Are you Martha?”

Martha jumped to her feet, laughing with relief.

“Josie!” she shouted. “It’s Josie.”

“Are you Martha?” Josie asked again.

“Yes,” Martha said, laughing. “Yes. Don’t you know me, Josie?” She ran to Josie and hugged her, but Josie pulled away, staring.