The Unseen (4 page)

Xandra was in the crowded hall putting some books in her locker and trying to decide what to do when someone brushed against her and she thought she felt a hand in her raincoat pocket. Slamming the locker door, she whirled around quickly enough to get a glimpse of a head of straggly dark hair and the back of a decrepit suit jacket disappearing into the crowd. She opened her mouth to call, “Belinda, come back,” and shut it again. She started to follow Belinda down the hall and then, noticing that some of Marcie's close friends were watching, quickly came to a stop. She wasn't about to let the Mob see her running after the class weirdo. At last all she could do was reach into her pocket, where she found a tightly folded scrap of paper.

The note, written in a slanted script, was difficult to read but after careful study it was possible to make out,

Instead of a signature there was a tiny picture of a bee. Obviously Bee for Belinda.

That seemed to be it. Xandra felt angry and frustrated. She didn't know if she wanted to sit with Belinda on the bus. What she had to consider was whether the risk was worthwhile. The risk that someone she knew would see her sitting with such a freakish person. She still hadn't decided whether she was going to do it or not when a few minutes later, in the classroom, she happened to catch Belinda's eye and found herself nodding. Nodding to say yes, she would be there. On the B2 bus at 3:30.

Xandra was the only one of all the Hobson siblings who regularly rode the city bus. Quincy had started driving to school in his own car, and the others usually got rides in carpools driven by the parents of their Heritage Avenue friends, and once in a while, when it was the Hobson family's turn, by Clara. But Xandra wasn't the carpooler type. So what if it was faster and maybe a little more comfortable? She'd tried it just once and that was enough. After she'd been teased or ignored all the way to school by older siblings and their friends, the bus seemed like a better choice, even if she did have to pay for it out of her own allowance. But this time, instead of catching the 3:15 that went straight to Heritage Avenue, she would be taking the B2, which headed for the downtown bus terminal, where she could transfer to one that went to Heritage Avenue.

The B2 bus left a little later, so Xandra got to the stop early, and at first there was no sign of Belinda. When she did show up, she didn't say hello or even seem to notice that Xandra was there. It wasn't until the bus had arrived and Xandra had taken a seat near the rear that Belinda came down the aisle and sat beside her.

For a minute or two they only glanced at each other and quickly turned away, but then, still looking in the other direction, Belinda whispered, “Where is it?”

“Where is what?” Xandra began, and then answered her own question. “Oh, that. Here it is.” She began to pull up on the string. “Under my blouse.”

“No. Don't take it out. Not here.” Belinda was looking at her now. “Just tell me again about how you found the bird. And what you did with it when you got home.”

So Xandra went over the story again, and when she got
to the part about the basement, she somehow started telling other things. Some very private things she'd never told anyone before. Right there on the noisy, bumpy bus, she began to tell Belinda about all the animals she'd raised and doctored in her basement hideout. Afterward she wasn't sure just how or why that had happened. Of course, Belinda had seemed very interested and asked a lot of questions. And, as Xandra told herself later, how much Belinda knew didn't really matter, because it wasn't as if she would have a chance to visit the basement, or to tell any of Xandra's friends or family about the private things she'd learned.

In fact, Xandra did so much talking that first day, she didn't get around to finding out anything more about the feather. She'd just managed to ask Belinda to tell her more about Keys when the bus pulled into the terminal, where Xandra had to catch the Heritage Avenue/Downtown bus while Belinda ran to catch the one that went into the country toward the west.

F
ROM THEN ON
Xandra and Belinda met on the bus every day. The trip into the town center took only about twenty minutes, but as Xandra soon discovered, a lot of important things can be discussed in just twenty minutes.

On the second day Xandra again did most of the talking, telling Belinda more about particular animals that had lived in the basement. About funny little Stinky, who had sometimes threatened by stomping his feet and lifting his tail, but who had never really let her have it. And about some of the kittens she had kept for a while before advertising them in the local humane society's newspaper and finding them good homes. And about Ratchet, the baby barn owl.

On another bus ride a day or two later, Belinda asked, “Did you have to give away all the kittens? Didn't you ever get to keep one of them for your own?”

“Well, not for very long.” Xandra shrugged as she said, “And certainly not to take into the house. My dad is allergic to animals—at least that's what he says. And my mother has a phobia about them because something bit her when she was a baby, or some such story, but I think it's mostly because they shed.”

Belinda's smile looked sympathetic, but when Xandra asked her whether her parents let her have pets, her eyes narrowed and she looked away. “I don't have parents,” she said, “except for my grandfather. He likes animals and we used to have a dog and three cats before—before we had to move.”

When Xandra asked, “But you don't have any pets now?” Belinda only shook her head.

“No, except for a squirrel,” she said. “And a feral barn cat that I've started to tame. But I'll have a dog again someday. My grandfather thinks animals are very important. All kinds of animals. My grandfather says animals are like … messengers.”

The animals-as-messengers concept caught Xandra's attention, because she'd had some ideas along those lines herself. And she was intrigued by the interesting fact that Belinda didn't have any family except a grandfather. But she soon discovered that Keys and what they were good for was a subject Belinda seemed more and more reluctant to discuss.

On some days they discussed books, and the other kids who went to Carter Academy. When the subject was books, Belinda's eyes got their cat-at-midnight look and she would talk and talk, telling which were her favorites
and why, and which ones she owned herself and had read over and over. Some of her favorites were Xandra's too, such as the books about the Borrowers, all the stories about Narnia, the Green Knowe books by Lucy Boston, and everything by J.R.R. Tolkien.

But about people at school, like the Marcie Mob girls for instance, Belinda had little to say. When Xandra talked about how popular the Mob girls were, and how mean and snobbish they could be, Belinda would only say she hadn't noticed. But she always seemed interested in what Xandra had to say about almost any subject that happened to come up. As the days went by, it began to seem that the only things Belinda would not discuss were anything that had to do with her grandfather, and the Key.

One day after Xandra had asked her for the umpteenth time what she had learned about the Key and Belinda had changed the subject, Xandra said, “Okay, Belinda. What's going on? You said you were going to find out more about my feather or Key or whatever it is and tell me all about it. And now you won't even talk about it.”

“I know.” Belinda sighed and shook her head. “It's just that …Well, I guess I decided I shouldn't say anything more about it until I find out …” She paused, looking at Xandra through narrowed eyes. “More about you, I guess, and how you happened to get it.”

“More about me?” Xandra knew her voice sounded pretty frustrated. “You have to know more about me? I don't know what else I can tell you. I've told you more about me than I've ever told anybody. What else can I tell you?”

Staring at Xandra, Belinda shook her head slowly but
then suddenly her eyes widened. “I don't know really, but maybe if I could see the place where you found it, I would be able to tell if …”

“Where I found the bird?” Xandra said. “But I don't know if I can. I told you I'm not supposed to go into the forest—”

“No, no,” Belinda interrupted. “I don't mean where you found the bird. I mean the Key. Where you found the Key.”

“You mean—you mean the basement?”

Cat-eyed, and strangely intent, Belinda nodded.

“But why? How would that help?”

“I'm not sure, but my grandfather… I mean, some people think that where you find a Key is an important sign.”

They were almost to the downtown station and Xandra had to think quickly. If they approached the house from the back, it wasn't likely that anyone would notice them, and Belinda probably wouldn't stay very long. “All right,” she said. “When we get to the terminal you can just get on the Heritage Avenue bus with me and—”

“Oh, not today,” Belinda interrupted. “First I'll have to tell my grandfather that I'll be late.”

That seemed like an easily solved problem. “Couldn't you call him from the station?” Xandra asked.

Belinda shook her head. “No,” she said. “There's no phone where we live. Could we do it tomorrow?”

Busy picturing what it would be like to live without a telephone, Xandra nodded. “All right,” she said. “Tomorrow will be all right.” But later that evening a problem arose that made her wonder if it would be possible.

When Xandra arrived at the Hobson dinner table that night, almost on time for once, Clara was there, and all the
siblings, but that was all. No parents. Nothing very unusual about that, of course. Most of the time one or both of the parents were away at dinnertime. But tonight the reason for Helen's, the mother's, absence was slightly out of the ordinary. That evening Helen Hobson, the famous trial lawyer, was going to be on television on the evening news. So everybody ate quickly and took their desserts into the family room, even Quincy, who, as a privileged eighteen-year-old, could have watched in his own room.

And then there she was, Helen Hobson, talking about the important case she was working on and how obvious it was that her client was going to win. And then the reporters were asking her questions and she was joking with them and doing her famous arched eyebrow and dazzling smile, and Quincy and the other siblings were saying things like “Yeah, knock 'em dead, Mom.” And “That's telling them.”

But then the rest of the news came on and Clara and her “baby” left and the rest of them sat around for a while listening to stuff about the weather and what was going on in Washington. Xandra was the next one to leave, and that was when the problem that could have fouled up Belinda's visit began to happen.

Xandra had closed the door firmly behind her and was headed for the window seat when she came to a sudden stop and whirled around to stare at the closet door. Someone or something was moving around inside her closet, thumping and shuffling and then bursting out through the door, as Xandra stood motionless, frozen in shocked surprise that quickly changed to anger. It was only Augusta, or Darling Little Gussie, as most people called the youngest of the Hobson siblings. As she stumbled out
of the closet, Gussie's curly blond hair was a bushy tangle and her big baby-doll blue eyes were wide and unblinking.

At first, while she was still recovering from the scare, Xandra could only stammer, “Wh-what are you doing in my closet?”

Gussie was smiling now, a little shakily. “I was just …” She paused then before she went on in a questioning tone of voice, “I was … maybe I was … walking in my sleep?”

“Sure you were,” Xandra snarled. “You think I'm going to believe that?” And then, noticing a suspicious bulge under Gussie's bathrobe, “What's that under your robe?”

Reaching under her bathrobe, Gussie pulled out an alligator, one of Xandra's favorite animals, and held it out toward Xandra's bed. “I know I promised I wouldn't play with your animals again and I wasn't playing with it, not really. I was just …I was just looking at it a little. I was just getting ready to put it back on your bed.”

“Yeah, I'll bet you were,” Xandra said. “I guess that's why you were hiding in my closet with my alligator hidden under your robe?”