The Secret Window Page 3

  Meg shook her head vigorously, and he sighed. “I think we have a mess on our hands, kiddo,” he said. “And I don’t mean the one on the stove.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “This Is Your Thief!”

  “Meg, Gracie’s on the phone. I can’t imagine anything important enough to rate a call at six thirty in the morning—but what do I know? It’s a long time since I was twelve.”

  Meg waited until her mother’s bare feet slap-slapped back to her bedroom. Then she kicked off the sheet and hurried to the telephone in the kitchen.

  “Is everything okay? Your mother sounded sort of strange.”

  “She was probably half asleep.” Meg yawned into the phone. “What’s wrong?”

  Gracie sighed. “We didn’t ever talk about what to wear today. I tried and tried to call you last night, but you didn’t answer.”

  Meg shook her head to clear away the cobwebs of sleep. Wear? What was she going to wear? Today?

  Gracie sighed again, dramatically. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? The field trip to the art museum, Meggie! With the eighth grade!”

  “Oh,” Meg said. “Oh, sure.” How could she have forgotten that? They’d been talking about this trip for a month. And she was glad it was happening today. Gracie would be too excited to ask questions about the argument she’d overheard, and Meg wouldn’t have to sit in class all day, thinking about her parents.

  “Well?”

  “My yellow top and the denim skirt,” Meg said hurriedly.

  “A skirt? You’re wearing a skirt?”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Cobbell say it would be a good idea not to wear jeans, for once?”

  “That’s exactly the trouble,” Gracie moaned. “I have this feeling the eighth graders will wear jeans anyway. I’m sure Linda Bell will.”

  For fifteen minutes the girls discussed what to wear. They finally agreed on yellow shirts and dark blue corduroys, just as Meg’s mother appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  A pretty good compromise, Meg thought, as she sat down for breakfast a short time later. Mrs. Cobbell would be satisfied, and they’d have the fun of being dressed alike.

  It was a subdued, uneasy meal. The only time Meg’s parents looked cheerful was when Bill told them a photographer was coming to school to take his picture for the Journal.

  Meg’s father extended his coffee cup and toasted. “To our prizewinner and future scholar. We’re very, very proud.”

  It was a solemn moment. Meg thought about it on the way to school. She wondered if her parents had talked in bed last night, and if yesterday’s argument would begin again now that she and Bill had left the house.

  Most of the buses had dropped their passengers by the time Meg reached the junior high grounds. Four remained, and Gracie stood in front of one of them, beckoning Meg to hurry.

  “Come-on-slowpoke-Chris-is-saving-us-a-seat-in-the-back!” she shouted all in one breath. “We’re leaving in five minutes. Look, I put my hair in a braid like yours.”

  The bus was warm and very noisy. Meg and Gracie moved slowly to the rear, stepping over the feet that darted out to trip them and ducking away from the jeers that greeted their look-alike outfits.

  “Boys!” Gracie groaned, looking delighted. “Who needs them!” She reached the seat being saved for them and dropped into it, next to the window. “I almost called you back to change it to the red shirts instead of the yellow ones,” she said as Meg sat down. “Only my mother wouldn’t let me call again. She was so crabby!”

  “My red shirt is in the wash.” Meg was grateful for Mrs. Wriston’s crabbiness. A second phone call would have only made her mother more irritable.

  Chris Svenson was a soft-spoken, pleasant girl who was always worried about her weight. As the bus started up, she turned around to admire the yellow and blue outfits.

  “Neat,” she said. “You two look like twins. My mother made me wear a skirt because we’re going downtown.”

  “It’s nice,” Meg said. Chris was the only girl in the bus who was wearing a skirt, and Meg knew she was uncomfortable.

  Mrs. Cobbell entered the bus, a bright-red wide-brimmed hat over her cotton-white bangs. She was a stocky person with a cheerful, often absentminded expression. Now she looked harried as she moved down the aisle, counting heads to see if everyone had arrived.

  The bus started up and moved out into rush-hour traffic. As they made their way downtown, Meg thought about how dreadful it would be if Gracie or anyone else found out about her dreams. Wearing the wrong clothes would be nothing compared to that kind of differentness. She leaned back in her seat, glad that she’d confided in no one—not even Bill. Phrases from the last entry in her notebook flickered through her mind: cave … blue light … bare foot … danger.… That’s craziness, she thought. Maybe I really am—

  “Crazy,” Gracie said, and Meg jumped. “Cobbell’s crazy if she thinks we’re going to walk with that bunch of—babies.” Gracie looked at the seventh-grade boys, who had stopped teasing the girls and were trying to get the attention of passing motorists. “What a bunch of monkeys!”

  Meg agreed. “But we’ll have to walk with them,” she said. “Mrs. Cobbell always wants us to stay close together.”

  “The eighth grade will be there, too,” Gracie reminded her. “As soon as we start walking around the galleries, we can sort of edge in with them. I want to talk to Linda.” She rolled her eyes. “Just two more nights until the slumber party. I can’t wait!”

  As it turned out, joining the eighth graders was not as simple as the girls had hoped. Mrs. Cobbell and the other teacher-chaperones seemed determined to keep the groups apart. As soon as the two classes had checked their jackets, bags, and cameras, they were separated and introduced to their guides.

  “This is our docent, Mr. Peters.” Mrs. Cobbell gestured toward the pale young man who stood beside her. “A docent is another name for a teacher. Mr. Peters will walk through the art museum with us and tell us about the artists and their work.”

  “Docent shmocent,” Gracie muttered. Her eyes were on the eighth graders clustered at the other side of the lobby. “This isn’t going to be any fun after all.”

  Meg hoped Gracie wasn’t going to sulk. “I think our docent is handsomer than theirs,” Meg whispered. “Actually, he’s a pretty decent docent.”

  To her relief, Gracie began to giggle. Both girls covered their mouths and laughed until Mrs. Cobbell began talking about paying close attention to the lecture. Her soft blue gaze settled on Meg and Gracie as if she were speaking particularly to them.

  The seventh graders crowded into the first gallery. The room was full of early American portraits, and even though the docent told interesting stories about the artists and their subjects, Meg thought the pictures were stiff and unappealing.

  There was only one—a family portrait of a mother and her two children—that was interesting. The docent said it was likely that both of the children had died before the picture was painted. At a time when many infants died, mothers sometimes had their pictures painted with the family they would have had if their babies had survived. Meg’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the round sad faces of the mother and her ghostly children. Even Gracie stopped whispering to Jean Monroe and looked solemn.

  “Spooky,” Gracie said. Meg agreed. She was relieved when Mr. Peters led the class into the next gallery.

  “I call this our dream room,” he said. “The artists represented here depended on their dreams for many of their ideas.”

  Meg looked around and felt a rush of pleasure. The walls blazed with color in marvelous shapes. She felt as if she had stepped into another world, but a familiar one.

  “Rousseau is over there,” the docent pointed, and the class moved along a wall full of glorious animals in jungle settings too vivid to be real. “And over here is Chagall.” Figures floated, arm in arm, over fairy-tale villages.

  Some of the seventh graders giggled, and Gracie looked bored. But Meg pushed closer to Mr. Peters. She wanted
to hear every word about these artists who actually enjoyed their dreams. Shyly, she raised her hand to ask a question.

  “Were they really painting dreams, or did they just make up these pictures?”

  The docent smiled. “Well, dreaming and making up things aren’t that far apart. The artists in this room used their dreams for inspiration, and they used their conscious imagination to recreate them. Storytellers and painters dip into the same well as dreamers for their ideas, you know. Writing and painting and dreaming all help to tell us more about ourselves.”

  Meg felt excited and confused. It was wonderful to think that dreams could be turned into paintings and stories—but what about “real” dreams, the kind that came true? Where did they come from? She would have liked to ask more questions, but she didn’t dare. Some of the boys were already making faces at her.

  “Dali is a dreamer, too,” the docent said. The class looked at paintings of limp watches, floating bottles and fruits, and body parts. Meg thought about the bare foot in her last dream and the eerie blue light around it. If she had a choice, she’d spend the rest of the morning here in the dream room. She liked the way these artists accepted their own strange visions.

  Mr. Peters waved them on into the next gallery, and most of the class seemed eager to move on. Meg followed slowly. She looked around for Gracie and couldn’t find her.

  “She sneaked back to walk with the eighth graders,” Chris whispered. “Boy, is she something! If Mrs. Cobbell finds out, she’ll kill her.”

  Meg hoped not. But she wasn’t altogether sorry Gracie had left; it was hard to enjoy the paintings when she knew her friend was bored. And they’d get back together when the two classes met for lunch.

  For the next hour the seventh grade wandered through one gallery after another. Remembering what the docent had said about the part dreams play in art, Meg enjoyed the paintings and sculpture more and more. She was admiring the shimmering color of a Monet garden when a burst of laughter came from the next gallery. Most of the class had already moved into the room. When Meg followed, she could hardly believe her eyes.

  The room was full of sculpture. In one corner, on a two-foot-high pedestal, stood the figure of a Roman statesman. It was life-sized, and while it was clearly a man, dressed in a toga and carrying a scroll, the face was Mrs. Cobbell’s. The wide eyes, the short, straight nose, the ridge of curly bangs across the forehead were all exactly like the seventh-grade teacher’s. So was the bright-red wide-brimmed hat on the statue’s head.

  Mrs. Cobbell’s face flamed with embarrassment and anger. Mr. Peters looked disgusted. Together they tried to quiet the laughing, cheering students, but it was no use. The laughter went on. Even though Meg felt sorry for the teacher, she had to admit that the red-hatted Roman was the funniest thing she’d seen in a long time.

  A guard rushed in from another gallery, and the docent spoke to him in an angry whisper, probably wanting to know where he’d been while the hat was put in place. Then a chair was brought, and the docent climbed up and removed the hat. The statue became just a statue again. The docent handed the hat to Mrs. Cobbell and turned to the class.

  “I don’t know how this happened,” he said. “But I hope whoever did it will never do anything like it again. This statue is very old. It could never be replaced if it were broken. The person who climbed up on the pedestal might have pushed it over and destroyed a real treasure. Taking a chance like that—and for a joke!—amounts to a criminal act.”

  A criminal act! The laughter died. The seventh graders looked at each other uneasily.

  Mrs. Cobbell’s color began to return to normal. “I don’t see how anyone could have got hold of my hat,” she said. “I checked it at the front desk when we came in, and I still have the tag the checker gave me. Here it is.”

  Meg felt a small flicker of worry without knowing why. Moments later, as they filed out of the gallery wing into a corridor leading to the lunchroom, a heavy hand came down on her shoulder. Worry changed to panic. It was the guard from the sculpture gallery, gripping her arm and talking over her head to Mrs. Cobbell.

  “Here she is!” he said gruffly. He still looked sore and angry after being scolded by Mr. Peters.

  Mrs. Cobbell stared at him. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean that this girl is the one who took your hat and put it on the statue,” he snapped. “I just talked with the checker at the front desk. She was away from the desk for only a minute or two, and when she came back she saw this girl coming out of the checkroom and running down the hall with the hat. This is the one. This is your thief!”

  CHAPTER 5

  Some Kind of Hero

  “Did you do what he says, Meg?” Mrs. Cobbell sounded astonished.

  Meg tried to pull away from the guard’s grasp. “No, I didn’t!” she exclaimed. “I wouldn’t! I was right here every minute.”

  “Well, then the checker’s made a mistake,” Mrs. Cobbell told the guard. “Meg isn’t the kind of person who—”

  “Oh, that’s the girl, all right.” A woman in a blue smock bore down on them pointing a finger. “I saw her in the corridor. Long black braid, yellow shirt, blue pants—she’s the one.”

  “I am not!” Meg squealed, trying again to pull away. “I was right here with the class all the time.”

  “We’d better go to the director’s office,” the guard said. “All of us,” he added, as Mrs. Cobbell and the checker began to argue. “What we have here is a theft from the checkroom and possible damage to a valuable statue. Those are serious offenses.”

  “There wasn’t any damage done,” Mrs. Cobbell protested. “The statue wasn’t hurt.”

  “It could have been!”

  Now Mr. Peters pushed through the crowd of excited students. “I’ll take the rest of the class to the lunchroom, Mrs. Cobbell,” he said soothingly. “If there’s been a mistaken identification, I’m sure the director will get to the bottom of it.”

  He signaled to the class and led them down the corridor, while Meg watched in despair. I wish I was a ghost like one of those children in the painting, she thought. I wish I could just fade away and turn into a dustball!

  The director didn’t “get to the bottom of it” at all. He listened to the checker’s accusation and to Meg’s frantic denials, and to Mrs. Cobbell’s assurances that Meg couldn’t be the one. He asked Meg repeatedly if she had left the class at any time. He asked her if she understood the consequences had the statue been damaged. He asked her lots of questions, but he never once asked her if she knew of anyone else with a dark braid, a yellow shirt, and blue pants. And if he had asked that, Meg knew she wouldn’t have told him.

  When she finally escaped, after listening to a lecture on the importance of behaving like an adult in a building full of art treasures, she was furious. “I just hate that man and the guard and the checker, too!” she sobbed. “I wish I could go home right now!”

  Mrs. Cobbell put an arm around Meg’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “Let’s just forget the whole affair,” she said. “Don’t let it spoil your day.”

  Spoil it! When they reached the lunchroom, Meg looked around. Half a dozen people waved and signaled her to come and sit with them, but she kept looking until she saw Gracie. Her friend—ex-friend, Meg thought—was at a table in a far corner with Linda Bell and some other eighth graders. All the girls were looking at Gracie and listening to her, as if she were some kind of hero. Then one of them noticed Meg, and they all turned to stare. Gracie waved to her and doubled over with laughter.

  Meg stormed across the lunchroom. It was easy to imagine Gracie noticing the Mrs. Cobbell–face of the statue and deciding to steal the hat. Her eighth-grade friends probably thought she was terrific.

  Gracie’s giggles faded as Meg reached her table.

  “Darn you, anyway!” Meg snapped. “You think it’s really funny to get someone else into trouble.”

  Gracie tried to pull her down on the bench. “I didn’t know they blamed you,” she prote
sted. “Honest, Meggie! Chris told me just a few minutes ago. By then it was too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Meg demanded. “You could have come to the director’s office and told him the truth. Some friend you are!”

  Linda leaned across the table, her long auburn hair falling across her face. “Oh, forget it,” she said. “Don’t be a crybaby, Meg. Gracie didn’t mean to get you into trouble. Be a good sport.”

  “I am a good sport,” Meg said. “I just don’t see why I should—”

  She looked across the cafeteria and saw that Mrs. Cobbell and some of the seventh graders were staring. There was an odd expression on Mrs. Cobbell’s face as she looked from Meg to Gracie and back again. She was noticing the twin look for the first time.

  Now she knows, Meg thought. At least, she’s guessed. They all know.

  Meg felt her anger melting away. It was too bad to have the museum director and the guard and the checker believe she had done something she hadn’t done, but her friends knew the truth. She felt much better, even a little heroic because she hadn’t tattled.

  “Get your lunch and come sit with us,” Gracie ordered. “We’re talking about the party. Wait’ll you hear.” She looked up at Meg with a grin. “I’m really sorry, Meggie.”

  And that was that. Gracie would never understand.

  “It’s okay,” Meg said softly. Then she turned and walked back across the room. She wasn’t angry anymore, but she didn’t feel like sitting with Gracie, either. I’m a good sport, she thought, but not that good.

  At the cafeteria counter Mrs. Cobbell joined her. “I believe I understand what happened now, Meg,” she said. “If you like, we’ll go back to the director’s office and explain. Gracie, too.”

  But Meg shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said again. “I’d rather just forget the whole thing, Mrs. Cobbell.”

  Meg took her sandwiches, Coke, and fruit to Chris’s table.

  “We saved a place for you,” Chris said. “See?” She pointed to a sign penciled on a napkin: Reserved especially for Meg Korshak.