The Secret Tree (8 page)

I climbed up the tree and sneaked back into my room before Mom burst in, all upset, to check on me.

“Minty? Are you awake?”

“Wh-what?” I sat up and rubbed my eyes as if I’d been asleep.

“Is everything okay in here?” Mom asked.

“Sure. Why? What’s going on?”

“Didn’t you hear Thea screaming a few minutes ago? Your father and I could hear it all the way from the Carters’.”

Ulp. “Screaming? Well, your room faces that way, and mine faces the front….” I heard myself yammering and realized that I was raving like a guilty person. “What happened?”

“Your father is over at the Carters’ with her now. Seems she saw a robber’s face in the window.”

“A robber? What did she look like?”

“She?”

“I mean he. He or she. How would I know?”

“He was wearing a mask, so Thea couldn’t see his face. I suppose it could have been a she…. Thea’s screaming scared him away. Your father just called to let me know everything is all right.” She crossed the room and closed my window. “I know it’s cool tonight, but we’ll put the AC on. I can’t sleep knowing someone might try to crawl in!”

I felt bad about upsetting everybody so much. But I didn’t realize how truly scared everyone was until the next day.

“It was the Man-Bat,” Lennie said. “It’s got to be. Fits the description perfectly.”

I was hanging out in the Calderons’ basement with Lennie, Paz, Melina, and Thea. Melina idly strummed her guitar and kept an eye on Hugo and Robbie, who were building a LEGO fort.

“It didn’t look like a bat,” Thea said. “It looked like a person.”

“That’s what the Man-Bat looks like,” Lennie said. “A man’s head and body with bat wings! Covered in slime. Maybe you didn’t see the wings, but they were there. Pressing against windows is totally his thing!”

Lennie shuddered. I shuddered too. I suspect we shuddered for different reasons.

“No more open windows for me,” Lennie added. “It’s
AC for the rest of the summer. Now that we know for sure that he’s out there….”

“We don’t know anything for sure,” Paz scoffed. “Maybe it was just a kid playing a trick on Thea. It could have been one of the Mean Boys.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Scaring babysitters is just like something Troy and David would do.”

“What about all the things gone missing lately?” Paz said. “Like my ID, and Kip’s pictures, and Wendy’s cat … I think there’s a prowler in the neighborhood.”

“A prowler?” I said. “You’ve been watching too many late-night movies, heh-heh, heh-heh.”

Paz gave me a long, suspicious squint. I couldn’t meet her eye.

“You guys, listen to my new song.” Melina strummed her guitar and sang to a poppy beat:

She stood up and danced around with her guitar, singing “Whoa whoa whoa whoa” over and over again. I looked at Paz, and Paz looked at me. She rolled her eyes. That was the signal.

We jumped up and started dancing around like Melina, singing “Whoa whoa whoa whoa!” louder and louder and crazier and crazier. Then Lennie, Hugo, and Robbie joined in.

“Stop it, you guys!” Melina stopped playing, but we all kept singing and dancing until Awa called down from upstairs, “Paz! Telephone!”

Melina’s face was red. Thea put her arm around Melina’s shoulders. “Siblings. I feel your pain.”

“Paz!” Awa called again.

“That’s Isabelle.” Paz leaped for the stairs and stepped barefoot on a LEGO. “Ow!” She hopped off the pointy block, then kicked the leg of the couch, then tripped over a whole pile of LEGOs —

“Ouch!” She tumbled to the floor, clutching her ankle. “My foot! I stepped on it funny —” She grimaced in pain. “I think I pulled something.”

“Let me see.” Thea took Paz’s foot in her hands and moved it. “Does that hurt?”

Paz screeched. “Ow! Yes! That hurts!”

“We better get Dad,” Thea said.

I ran down the street to Mortimer Mansion. Luckily, Dad was off that afternoon. I told him what had happened and brought him back to the Calderons’ house. Paz was lying on the floor while Awa held an ice pack to her ankle.

“Never fear, Dr. M is here.” Dad always joked when people got hurt so they wouldn’t worry. “Let’s take a look.”

He removed the ice pack and tested Paz’s foot and ankle. Her ankle was swollen now. “Looks like you’ve got a sprain,” Dad said. “Not too bad. Nothing broken or anything like that. I’ll get my gauze and wrap it up for you. You’ll be limping for a while, Paz. Maybe a few weeks.”

“What about the Fourth of July Parade?” I asked. I was still hoping Paz would change her mind and roller-skate in the parade with me. But it was only two days away.

“No roller-skating,” Dad said. “If someone wants to tow her in a wagon, that’s okay.”

“What?” Paz said. “I’m not riding around in a wagon. I’d rather just watch.”

“That’s the smart thing to do,” Dad said. He helped Paz upstairs to her room and ordered her to keep her swollen foot iced and elevated as much as possible.

“I’ve had so much bad luck lately,” Paz complained. “First that mysterious stomachache, then my ID gets stolen, that rash … and the other day my nose itched like crazy. Now this. Why are all these bad things happening to me?”

“Curse of the Man-Bat,” Lennie said.

I couldn’t disagree. The curse was working — and getting worse.

I asked Mom if I could change my birthday party from roller-skating to a pool barbecue. “Paz’s ankle’s all swollen,” I said. “She might not even be able to skate at my party! And then what’s the point?”

“You want to change now?” Mom looked annoyed. “But we’ve already put a deposit on the roller rink for that day.
Nonrefundable
.” She hugged me, but I kept my arms stiff at my side and didn’t hug back. I didn’t feel like being hugged. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Paz’s ankle will be better by then. And if it’s not, she can still have fun at the party.”

“How? How can she have fun at a roller-skating party if she can’t roller-skate?”

“Well, she can eat pizza and cake….”

“Big deal.” I pouted. “A roller-skating party is babyish anyway. Eleven is too old for that.”

“Since when? You love roller skating. I thought you were going to do a whole derby thing.”

“I was, but —” I didn’t feel like talking about it anymore. “So we definitely can’t switch?”

“I’m sorry, honey. You can have a pool party next year if you want.”

Next year, when I turned twelve. Who knew what kind of person I’d be by then? Who knew if Paz and I would even be friends next year?

If I had a babyish birthday party that Paz hated, we might not be friends by the end of the summer. I just had that feeling.

“Here’s today’s secret.” I showed Raymond what I’d found in the Secret Tree on my way to visit him. “It’s a weird one.”

“Diabolical,” Raymond said. “Who’s got a fat father?”

I consulted the secret notebook. By this time, Raymond had pictures of just about everyone in the neighborhood. He must have sneaked off and taken pictures when I wasn’t around. “There are five dads who could be on a diet: Mr. Jack, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Serrano, Mr. Kendall, and Mr. Murphy.”

“Mr. Jack has a very big belly,” Raymond noted.

“Huge,” I agreed. “But his kids are grown up. They don’t live in the neighborhood anymore.”

“Do they come back and visit?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “But if they don’t live with him, how can they sabotage his diet shake?”

“Good point. Next.”

“Mr. Rogers and Mr. Murphy are pretty chubby too. I’ve seen Mr. Kendall buying diet soda at the grocery store.” Mr. Kendall was Lydia’s father. “And David Serrano’s dad is on the tubby side. Plus he’s always yelling at David about being slow. I could picture David sabotaging his diet out of sheer meanness. Or revenge.”

“Let’s spy on the Murphys tonight,” Raymond suggested. “We’ve already spied on the Rogerses and the Serranos.”

“Okay,” I said. “But we’ve got to be careful. Everybody’s freaked out about a prowler on the loose. We can’t get caught.”

“We won’t.” Raymond took out his harmonica and started playing a song. Then he suddenly stopped. “Hey — I’ve got a present for you.”

“A present for me?” I couldn’t imagine what it could be. As far as I could tell, Raymond didn’t have any money. “What is it?”

He handed me a small package wrapped in a page from the comics.
FOR MINTY
was written across it.
FROM YOUR BEST FRIEND, RAYMOND
.

I paused. I did not consider Raymond to be my best friend. But what could I say? He was giving me a present.

“Open it,” he urged.

I unwrapped the package. Inside was a shiny silver harmonica.

“So we can play duets together,” he said.

I put the harmonica to my lips and blew a note. It sounded froggy and sweet and wonderful.

“Thank you, Raymond.”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it!”

He showed me how to play a scale, how to make different notes by blowing in and out on the same hole, and how to use my fingers to block out the notes I didn’t want to play. Then he taught me “Frère Jacques.” Soon we were playing it in a round. It sounded very good.

We started with the kitchen, since that’s where diet sabotage was most likely to happen. I wore all black and my ski mask. Raymond wore camo as usual.

We tiptoed into the Murphys’ yard. Their kitchen was in the back, so we started to round the side of the house. Suddenly, Raymond froze.

“What?” I whispered. “Come on!”

“Someone else is here,” Raymond murmured. “Look.”

In the shadows under the bushes that lined the side
of the house, something moved. Was it a dog? Was it a prowler? Was it … the Man-Bat?

I could just make out a dark head peering into the dimly lit basement window. Someone else was spying on the Murphys!

But who? And why?

“Hide!” Raymond whispered.

We crouched behind the hedge that separated the Murphys’ house from Wendy’s, very quiet and still, spying on the spy. The crickets and cicadas chirped in the woods. A car rushed down Rockwell Avenue a block away. Waves of laughter came from Wendy’s TV.

And somewhere, someone was crying. I strained to pick out the source of the crying from all the other night noises.

It came from the spy. The mystery spy was crying.

From inside the house a face darkened the basement window. “Hey! Is someone out there?”

“That’s Kip,” I whispered.

The spy jumped up and ran away, sobbing. The shadowy figure crossed the street and ran to the Calderons’ house. Pink shorts, a tank top, long, dark hair.

Melina.

The Murphys’ back door slammed, and Kip ran around to the side of the house. “Who’s out here? What was that noise?” He shined a flashlight all around the yard.

I gripped Raymond’s hand, which was very sweaty, squeezed my eyes shut, and held my breath. If Kip found us, he’d think
we
were the ones who were spying on him. Which we would have been, if Melina hadn’t gotten there first. But that wasn’t the point.

“If you’re a prowler, you’re in big trouble,” Kip shouted. “One more sound and I’m calling the police.”

I flattened myself on the grass as flat as I could go, trying to melt into the earth.
Please don’t catch us, please don’t catch us….

After more yelling and looking around, Kip finally went back inside the house. I let out my breath.

“We’d better get out of here,” I said. “It’s too dangerous to spy tonight. Everybody’s all edgy.”

“But we didn’t find out about the diet sabotage,” Raymond said.

“Maybe tomorrow night. I don’t want to get caught.”

Raymond disappeared into the woods. I sneaked back into my room. When I was safely in bed, I took out my harmonica and played it softly. I wondered about Melina. Why was she spying on Kip? Was that what you did when you loved someone?

And what had she seen in his basement that made her cry?