Chapter the 2nd
When I let myself into our condo, I heard the TV blasting from the girls’ room. I could count on my baby brother being there with them. Nobody else was home, as usual. My dad’s work load at the office and my mom’s support group had saved my life again. The door to the girls’ room opened with a lot of rattling of the latch and Gwen came stomping into the living room, looking the part of a long-suffering mom already.
“Gwion! Where have you been?”
“I was playing baseball. We lost track of the time.”
“Mrs. Blake called three times to ask if Kerry’s here. She won’t believe me when I say he isn’t. I think she thinks I stabbed him with my compass and stuffed him under the bed.”
“She’s like that,” I said.
“I know she’s like that. Maybe if Kerry’s home now, she’ll get off my case and call off the police.”
“Uh—probably,” I stammered, fearful that Kerry’s mother was probably going to jump on my case in another minute.
“Want me to microwave your dinner?” Gwen asked.
“Not hungry.”
That was an understatement. I felt like a gallon of gasoline was sloshing about my stomach.
“What did you do, eat out?”
“No.”
“You’ve got to eat something.”
“No I don’t. It’ll take me two weeks of not eating anything before I starve. Go back to your room and stop pretending you’re my mom.”
I plunged into my room and slammed the door to let Gwen know I didn’t want to talk to her. Since I’m the oldest kid in my family, I fell I can’t let a younger sister run my life. I slipped into my desk chair and turned on my computer to check for e-mail. There was nothing except for a couple of class-mates who’d decided to send the latest stale joke to everybody. I closed out of the program and clicked on one of my arcade games. My frantic efforts to get the ball to the places that gave me points before I lost it got me nowhere, with each game worst than the last.
When it got to be one awful game too many, I pounded the desk and swallowed the lump in my throat. That’s when I admitted that I was still thinking too much of that clump of trees and the bushes at the edge of the park that I saw when they weren’t there. Those images kept running across my mind, making it hard for me to concentrate on the arcade game. I closed out of the game and let those images run their course. It wasn’t just the mystery of why Margot and I both saw the trees for a couple of seconds that bothered me. It was worse than that. The trees looked familiar. The more I thought about them, the more convinced I was I’d seen them before. I tried thinking back to the movies and TV shows I’d seen. Suddenly I knew! It was that odd computer game Kerry downloaded and showed us. The trees that jumped out of the ground in the park were the same trees that filled the screen of Kerry’s video game. I reached for my cell phone to call Kerry and ask him about it. I punched the quick dial and listened to the beeps and then slammed the receiver. Was I stupid or was I crazy? I asked myself. Kerry’s mom was sure to think I was covering up a crime if I called. I slid my chair back with a big screech and bolted to the kitchen where I snatched a granola bar and swallowed it whole. Then I took a can of soda out of the refrigerator and gulped that down.
I stood alone in the kitchen and relived that nerve-jangling afternoon when Kerry downloaded the game and installed it with Margot and Ron and I all crowding around him. One of the most exciting things in life is that rush you get when you’re calling up a game for the first time and you almost feel like the whole world is off to a fresh start. The screen filled up with a forest scene. No name, no credits, no nothing. Just trees so thick there wasn’t any room for animals or goblins or anything. At first, I thought the trees were bare, like they are in winter, and that made the forest look a bit like a snake’s lair. Then I started to see little yellow and red spots on the branches. That was odd. These were autumn colors but the trees seemed to be budding like in in the spring. The music was pretty strange. I heard a violin and something like a guitar or maybe a harp playing. After a couple of minutes, a flute or something like it joined in. Ron said something about how odd the music was and Kerry said he thought it was neat. Margot, Ron and I gave Kerry raspberry looks behind his back. Leave it to Kerry to like music that nobody else does.
For a while, nothing happened in the game and that kind of put me on edge. I had a sneaky feeling that the tree branches might reach out and grab us and pull us inside the program. Then I saw, or thought I saw, a face peering out between the branches of a tree. Before I got a good look at it, it was gone. Then another face popped up from around the trunk of another tree. I saw it just long enough to think it was a blond girl, and then she, too, was gone. Kerry typed a few keys. A couple more faces flickered in and out. Then a flurry of yellow zips exploded all over the screen and the music got wilder. Then the scene settled enough for us to see several bright yellow—maybe gold—arrows sticking out of some of the tree trunks. The branches moved around, or maybe it was somebody camouflaged by the trees who was moving around. Then an icon of a bow and arrow appeared. Unlike the yellow arrows stuck in the trees, the arrow notched in the bow looked like a real arrow. In fact, it was so real, I could see little clumps of dirt near the arrow’s tip, enough to tempt me to reach in and snatch the arrow right out of the computer.
Kerry hit a few more keys and hit the return button. That brought up a funny creature with a big droopy face. I recognized him right away as Slurpy Gurvey, one of Kerry’s best computer generated cartoon drawings. Slurpy Gurvey’s whole face drooped to one side and he had the fangs of a beast, but his smile curved up into enough of a smile to make him look friendly. The bristles on his chin made him look like an unshaven bum. His tongue hung out like a panting dog’s, and his big eyes rolled about in opposite directions in funny ways. He wore a T-shirt poked full of holes and his belly flowed over the tops of his baggy pants. The music started to sound goofy, as if inspired by this creature. Kerry moved the mouse about and Slurpy Gurvey took the icon of the bow and arrow in his hands. Kerry clicked on the icon and Slurpy Gurvey fired his arrow into the trees.
That really got the tree branches moving wildly and the music got all distorted. Some of the tree branches wrapped themselves around Slurpy Gurvey like an octopus. The cartoon character struggled to notch another arrow. When an overhead branch came crashing down on Slurpy, Margot screamed. Just before Slurpy Gurvey got whomped, Ron reached for the switch and the picture blacked out. I felt myself reeling, the way you do when somebody pulls hard on you and you resist and then that somebody suddenly lets go. When the dust cleared, Ron, Margot and I were on the floor and Kerry was sitting in front of the blank computer, looking like he was hypnotized. Ron jumped up and shook Kerry.
“Kerry! Wake up!” Ron cried.
Kerry didn’t respond. We all took turns trying to call him back to earth but we couldn’t do it. The three of us looked at each other. Nobody had to say anything about what it would be like to tell Mrs. Blake that her son’s soul just got stolen by a computer program. We probably wouldn’t get out of the place alive. I think it was Margot who had the presence of mind to pop one of Kerry’s CDs into the player. It turned out to be something classical—surprise!—but it had a flute part and it’s probably a good thing it did. The music played along and I think I promised the universe I would let Kerry like this music if it got him out of his trance. I guess I’ll have to keep that promise for all eternity because soon after I made the promise, Kerry blinked his eyes and started to look like his normal spaced-out self.
“Are you back?” Ron asked anxiously.
“What do you mean, Am I back?” Kerry asked in return. He looked and sounded pretty innocent of what had just happened to him. “I know Bach sends me pretty far some times, but I don’t usually get that lost in his music. Do you like it? Can you hear how the bass line keeps the beat, just like a bass guitar in a rock band?”
This was to Kerry up to his usual tricks of trying to broaden our horizons. Better that than seeing him go brain dead for life. But, now that I was thinking of things after Kerry’s sudden disappearance in the park, I got to thinking that Kerry kept looking kind of spaced out after that computer game. I mean he was looking more spaced out than usual by a big margin. He wasn’t paying attention at school like he usually did and—come to think of it—he wasn’t making faces behind our teachers’ backs like he usually did. Then I started thinking back to some other things about what Kerry was like since playing that game. He didn’t seem as interested in playing baseball as he usually did. Usually Kerry really liked to win and he played hard, even in a scrub baseball game. When Kerry comes to bat, he’ll usually put up an act of gnashing his teeth and trying to look fierce to scare the pitcher but, this afternoon, Kerry just struck out lamely, something he hardly ever does. Worse than that, Kerry didn’t even throw a mock temper tantrum like he usually does when he strikes out. I guess I should have known by then that something was wrong, without having to wait for him to disappear in center field. So, after thinking about Kerry’s odd computer game, I’d come to the conclusion that the trees in the outfield looked just like the trees in that computer game that put Kerry in a trance. I was also coming to another conclusion that I liked even less. The music I heard just before Ron hit that ball was a lot like the music we heard in the computer game.
All this thinking and remembering almost made me throw up into the sink, but I managed to hold it back. I didn’t like thinking that a horrible computer game had come to life in the park where I was playing baseball. I thought of going on the Net and downloading the game to check it out for myself. The only trouble was that I had no idea which web site it was on. I couldn’t even remember what the game was called so I couldn’t do a search for it. Maybe Margot would know. Maybe Margot could play it with me. Considering how wild the game when Kerry tried to play it, I’d probably be smart not to try it out alone.
The doorbell rang. That wasn’t good. It had to be Mrs. Blake with a search warrant for her son. Gwen made a mad dash for the door before I could run and hide. Gwen opened wide the door without checking through the peep hole to see who it was. Standing in the door were two police officers. That was bigger trouble than I thought. And it answered my question about whether or not Kerry ever got home.
“Sorry to disturb you,” said the cop, “but we need to talk to—uh—Goo-in Williams.”
“I’m Gwen,” said my sister. “Am I under arrest?”
Her eyes got a bright look that made her look like she’s been dreaming all her life of getting arrested by the police. Cynthia forsook the TV for this new attraction and came out into the hallway with little Sherman by the hand. As for me, I got that sinking feeling I get when people who don’t know me try to say my name. Lucky for Cynthia and Sherman, our parents stopped giving their kids Welsh names by the time they came along. Our parents also found out, too late, the mistake they’d made in giving Gwen and me names that sound so much alike. It wasn’t long before the pronunciation of my name got exaggerated to GW-E-E-E-E-on.
“No, Honey,” said the other cop, a woman, “you’re not under arrest. We just need to ask you some questions about your friend Kerry Blake.”
“Is he wanted for highway robbery?” Gwen asked eagerly.
“No,” said the cop. “his mother has reported him missing and we’re trying to find him. May we come in and ask some questions?”
“He’s missing?” Gwen cried, looking pretty upset when it was her big brother’s friend who was missing. “I’ll answer all the questions in the world if it’ll help you find him. Come in.”
“Uh—are your parents at home?” asked the policewoman.
“No,” said Gwen. “That’s okay. I don’t think they know anything about Kerry, anyway.”
“We could come back later when your parents are here,” the policeman offered.
“They won’t be back in a million years,” said Gwen with an edge to her voice. “You’d better talk to us now. Cynthia, Sherman, you can go back and watch TV now.”
With Gwen taking charge of our home, I knew I had to act quickly.
“Cynthia! Sherman! Go back to the TV and watch it,” I ordered, “or you’ll get arrested by these cops.”
Cynthia wisely decided to follow orders. I wished I could think of a way to get rid of Gwen, but I knew that would be as easy as picking up the high rise we lived in and throwing it a city block.
“If you want to talk to us,” I said to the police, again taking charge as best I could, “You can sit in the living room here. We’ll help you if we can.”
The cops looked at each other, nodded, and sat down. Gwen sat on the edge of her end of the couch, eagerly waiting for the first question.
“Gwen,” said the policewoman, “Mrs. Blake said that the last time she saw Kerry, he said he was going to play baseball in the park with some friends. You are one of the kids on her list of friends she wants us to check out. The other friends all say you were there and that you were closer to Kerry on the field than anybody else when he disappeared.”
Gwen frowned with disappointment. She wasn’t going to be able to help the cops very much and she probably wasn’t going to give them grounds for arresting her either.
“I haven’t seen Kerry since he gave me a flute lesson right after school,” said Gwen. “I don’t get to play baseball with him because my brother Gwion won’t let me. I’ll bet he’s the one who was playing baseball with Kerry.
I’m always trying to forget that Gwen plays the flute and so I forget how Gwen had conned Kerry into giving her free lessons roughly once a week. The cop looked at his papers and looked in my direction.
“Ah, Gwee-on,” said the cop with the look of a hanging judge. “I guess you are the one we need to question. Do you know Kerry Blake?”
“Yes,” I answered, my voice sounding very small.
I thought of trying to send Gwen away but then decided that I was kind of glad to have her hang around after all. I didn’t really want to be left alone with two cops, especially after what had just happened to Kerry. For the first time since I was six, I was really wishing my parents were with me.
“Were you playing baseball with Kerry Blake this afternoon?” asked the lady cop.
“Yes.”
“Is it true that you were closer to Kerry than anybody else when he disappeared?”
“Yea, but I wasn’t that close. He was deep in the outfield ‘cause Ron’s a good hitter. He was playing Ron to hit the ball a mile. And he did.”
“What happened then?” the policeman asked me.
I told them the story as best I could. My voice shook at first but then I got control of it again. I left out the bit about the clump of trees, of course, hoping that Margot had the sense not to say anything about the trees, either. Gwen’s eyes grew wide as I talked, and she wasn’t getting half the story. The two cops looked at each other in a way that got me thinking they were going to call me a liar.
“This makes it unanimous,” said the lady cop. “All five of you have given us the same story.”
“Does that mean you think it isn’t true?” Gwen asked them.
For a girl with a cute face, Gwen can be the grapes of wrath when she wants to be.
“No, Honey, it doesn’t,” said the policewoman, suddenly turning back to peaches and cream. “But it is an odd story and we can’t figure out how Kerry could have been kidnaped when nobody had his or her back turned on him for more than a few seconds.”
“Maybe Kerry was hiding,” Gwen suggested. “He likes to play tricks.”
“Same problem,” said the cop. “We don’t see how he could have gotten away to hide himself in a few seconds. We’ve had a good look at the field where you were playing. There wasn’t a tree or bush anywhere near where you all say Kerry was playing. So, I hope you can see why we don’t think this adds up.”
“I don’t see how Kerry could have disappeared, either,” I said, almost choking when I said that. “I–I’ve tried to make sense of it—and I can’t.”
The cop gave me a long, hard look, like a cross-examiner in court. I might have hid my face like they do in courtroom dramas if Gwen wasn’t there. No way I was going to let her see me do that.
“Why don’t you tell us what really happened?” the cop growled.
“I did tell you,” I answered, holding back tears by sheer will power. “Something happened that I don’t know understand, and I have no idea what it is.”
“Gwion,” said the lady cop—no peaches and cream for me, “Mrs. Blake is very upset about Kerry’s disappearance.”
“Just because Mrs. Blake is upset doesn’t mean it’s Gwion’s fault Kerry’s missing!” Gwen cried out.
My sentiments exactly, but I didn’t have the strength to say it. To my surprise, both of the cops looked beaten by my little sister. Maybe you can do anything if you have a cute and innocent face.
“You’re right, little lamb,” said the policewoman. “We had to listen to Mrs. Blake yell at us for a long time and I guess it just got to us. It’s getting late and it must be close to your bed time.”
“There’s one more thing we’ve got to ask, first” said the cop. “Mrs. Blake also reported that late this afternoon, she heard somebody moving in Kerry’s room. Thinking that Kerry had sneaked in, she ran to the room and found a boy sitting there whom she’d never seen before in her life. She said she asked the boy what he was doing there and he said the room was his place. She told him to leave and he left the condo without saying a word. She described the boy as probably Kerry’s age, blond hair and fair skin, and wearing an odd-looking outfit. She also said the boy spoke with a foreign accent. Have you by any chance noticed a strange boy waking around who fits that description?”
I had, of course. I even remembered then that the floor Marakel asked for in the elevator was Kerry’s floor. For the second time that night, I had to depend on Margot’s good sense. Marakel was a spooky kid, no doubt about it, but I wasn’t about to rat on him to these guys. And no way was I going to take a chance of betraying Margot in case she’d kept her mouth shut.
“No,” I answered.
“Well,” said the policewoman as she stood up, “please give us a call if you do see this boy. He should be pretty easy to spot if he’s as odd-looking at Mrs. Blake says he is. I thank both of you very much for your help.”
“You’re welcome,” Gwen replied with that strained politeness she’s so good at.
I was too upset to move when the cops got up and Gwen showed them the door. I could still hear the TV from the girls’ room loud and clear. Sherman and Cynthia were supposed to be in bed long before this, but you can’t put two kids to bed when two cops are brow-beating you. Gwen returned and sat cross-legged in the chair the cops sat in and stared hard at me. I knew this was going to be even bigger trouble than the cops.
“Gwion.”
“Hmm.”
“What else happened?”
“Do you think I’m a liar, too?”
“No. You just know when you can’t tell the police everything you know.”
This was one of those times you wonder if you even know your own sister. I guess it’s hard and maybe impossible to think a kid sister or brother can be worth sharing the universe with. I hadn’t done that with Gwen and I hadn’t done it with Cynthia and Sherman, either. And suddenly, here was Gwen acting twice her age all of a sudden. Maybe that’s what comes of having to take over your home at a young age. I gave Gwen a long look and decided I’d better tell her the truth or she’d grill me all night.
“There’s just one thing about the baseball game I didn’t tell the cops,” I admitted, “something I don’t understand at all.”
“What?”
I told Gwen about the clump of trees I saw and then didn’t see and added that Margot said she thought she saw those trees, too, but then didn’t see them.
“Do you believe me?” I asked, when I had finished.
“Yes,” she answered. “You’re not good at making things up like that. You don’t have enough imagination.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“What about the funny kid the cops asked you about? Did you see him? I’ll bet you did.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“Maybe you can fool the cops but you can’t fool me.”
“All right, I did see the kid and he’s a weirdo from the Planet Xanthus—or worse. I have no idea why he went to Kerry’s room. He couldn’t have known Kerry’s mom or he would never have done it.”
“Maybe he’s part of a trade,” Gwen suggested. “You know like the Cubs trade a player for another player. Maybe somebody traded this boy for Kerry.”
I gave Gwen an “aren’t you ever stupid” look.
“Who would make a trade like that?” I asked her.
“Oh—fairies, maybe. Haven’t you heard of changelings?”
“No, why should I?”
“If you read more stories to Cynthia and Sherman, you’d know,” said Gwen, being her self-righteous self and knowing I never read to the little kids. “A changeling is an ugly baby the fairies put in the cradle when they steal a human baby.”
“Kerry isn’t a baby and Marakel isn’t ugly—he’s just weird.”
“Ah! You even know the strange boy’s name!” Gwen exclaimed. “As soon as school’s out, we’ll have to find this boy Marakel and see if he’ll help us find Kerry.”
“Who says you’re in charge of finding Kerry?” I asked.
“You don’t act like you’re in charge of finding anybody,” said Gwen. “You don’t act like you want to find Kerry badly enough to ask funny people to help you.”
With that parting shot, Gwen went to her room, leaving me in peace to escape to mine. I hesitated in the doorway, though, looking for signs of Marakel’s presence, just in case he’d decided to take over my room after being kicked out of Kerry’s. To my relief, I didn’t see him. I took my shower, got into my pajamas and slipped into bed with a book I was reading. I heard Gwen play taps and an Irish lullaby on her flute for Sherman and Cynthia, the way she does every night when Mom and Dad aren’t home. Theoretically, my room is Sherman’s room, too, but my sisters still think he’s cute and adorable and so they keep him in their room. They’re welcome to him.
A bit later, Dad finally got home. In a way, it might have been nice to tell him what had happened and give him a chance to make me feel better. But I couldn’t take a chance on getting blamed one more time for kidnaping Kerry Blake. Besides, I wasn’t used to talking to him. So I played possum.
“All poohed out?” he asked.
I let out a soft groan, one of my specialties. I felt him kiss me on the cheek and then tip-toe out of the room. If he had lingered, he might have caught me in the act of crying because I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer than I did. I was in for a miserable night and there was nothing I could do about it. Mom came in later to give me a big smooch and pet me on the head.
“I hope you had a good day,” she whispered, and then she was gone, too.
I wasn’t in the mood for thinking, but when you can’t sleep, you can’t help it. Not that thinking does any good. You just tell yourself over and over again how awful everything is. The worst thing about it was that I thought I should be able to shrug the whole thing off and forget it. I wasn’t even Kerry’s best buddy. If anybody was, it was Ron, and I’m not so sure about him. But both Marakel and Gwen had tricked me into saying Kerry was my friend. Did that make me Kerry’s friend? You see, Kerry is a pretty freaky kid and, like I said, he seems to like everything that nobody else does. If we have to read a book in school and nobody likes it, Kerry likes it. He’s the only kid in our school besides a couple of girls who thinks the flute is a wonderful instrument. Mr. Rupert thinks Kerry’s the best kid in the school band, which goes to show that grownups never understand the music kids like. Worst of all, Kerry sings in a church choir. Now how can any boy possibly like church and choir? Kerry even made everybody in school listen to him sing at a school assembly. We fixed him up good for that. On the plus side, Kerry is a fast runner and he’s pretty good at most sports. He’s a nice kid, really, if you think about it. If I need help with a computer problem or with some homework, he’ll help you faster than you can dial his phone number.
I spent the rest of the night thinking of all the horrible things that could have happened to Kerry and then trying to figure out what to do about them. And so I was still awake when I heard my father go to the kitchen for some coffee in the morning. I got up and went out, just so I could sit next to him. That made me feel a little better about everything, even though I didn’t dream of telling him what had happened. He wished me a good morning, then turned his attention to the morning paper. Something caught his attention and he grunted with surprise.
“The paper says that your friend, Kerry Blake has disappeared,” said my dad.
My heart thumped when dad showed me the picture of Kerry’s smiling face on the front page. I read down the column anxiously and read about how Kerry was last seen playing baseball with some friends. At least it didn’t say we were the suspects for kidnap or murder.
“I’ll bet his mother is upset,” said Dad.
“Yea, I’ll bet.”
“I sure hope Kerry turns up pretty soon,” said dad. “You’ll miss him if he doesn’t.”