Authors: Louis Sachar
The Cardturner (25 page)
"Thank you, partner," I managed.
I told Toni to play the
3, and then I trumped it in my hand with the
2, winning the trick.
Now what?
I thought.
"Queen of spades," said Trapp.
That would have been my last choice. The queen of spades was sure to lose to the ace or king. I would be throwing away the only high card in my hand.
I led the
Q. Sure enough, West played theK.
I won't go through the rest of the hand. Maybe you can figure out how to take ten tricks. I did, apparently.
Four spades, doubled, was worth 790 for us.
"I guess I shouldn't have doubled," grumbled West. "All I had was a twenty-three-point hand, including the ace and king of trump!"
Trapp told me what card to play, and I played it. I'd done it a thousand times before.
Toni and I came in first place with a 70 percent game. You'd think we would have been all excited, but Toni and I barely said a word to each other the whole time. I mostly felt overwhelmed, and more than a little scared. I got more and more scared as we continued to get one top board after another.
Throughout it all, Toni remained grim-faced. I knew Trapp and Gloria never acted too gleeful when they got a top board. It's considered rude, since it means your opponents just got a bottom board. But Toni took it to the other extreme. As she recorded our scores, she seemed angry.
We walked silently out to my car. I turned on the engine while Toni stared straight ahead.
"You played really good," she finally said. "I just wish . . ."
"What?" I asked.
"All I wanted to do was play bridge. Is that asking too much?"
"Are you mad at me?"
"No, not at you. At her!"
I didn't have to ask who "her" was. Trapp couldn't get a 70 percent game all by himself.
"Well, at least you had a good partner," she said bitterly. "I guess you can win as long as you're not stuck with me!"
I stared at the road.
"I know you don't believe it's my grandmother," she said. "You think I'm crazy. You think it's my subconscious or something psychological."
"I believe you," I said.
The traffic light ahead of me turned yellow. I sped up, thinking I could make it, and then changed my mind and had to slam on the brakes at the last second.
"Sorry," I said.
"It's not your fault," said Toni, thinking my "sorry" had been about the bridge game. "She just took over."
I wanted to tell her about hearing Trapp, but oddly, I didn't think she'd believe me. I was afraid she'd think I was just trying to make her feel better, or worse, mocking her.
"Turn left," said Trapp.
That wasn't the way to Toni's house.
"Maybe you're right," said Toni. "Maybe I should start taking my meds."
I had never said that.
"Left," Trapp repeated.
I put on my left-turn signal.
It occurred to me that my dead uncle might be telling me to turn in order to protect me. Maybe he somehow knew if I continued heading the way I was going, I'd get in some horrible accident. No doubt involving a piano truck.
The light changed to green and I turned left.
"Where are you going?" Toni asked.
"Shortcut," I said.
At the next stop sign Trapp told me to turn left again.
"Are you sure this is the right way?" Toni asked. I didn't answer.
"Are you kidnapping me?" she asked.
There was a turnout on the side of the road. I pulled into it.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
I took a breath and looked her straight in the eye. "I think maybe I should be the one taking your meds," I said.
She stared back.
"I wasn't Annabel's partner today," I said, and was surprised by the trembling in my voice. "Trapp was." I felt my eyes start to water. "I just turned the cards for him, like always."
"Oh, God," Toni whispered.
I was crying. It was as if all the emotions that I'd kept bottled up at the bridge studio were leaking out of me.
"And now he's giving me driving directions," I said through my tears. "I don't know where we're going."
My hands were very cold. I hadn't noticed until I felt Toni's warm hands wrap around them.
"Welcome to my world," she said.
I took a few deep breaths, gathered myself together, and pulled back onto the road. I offered to ignore Trapp's driving directions and just take Toni directly home, but she said she was willing to go "wherever the wind took us."
At the signal he told me to turn right.
Toni remained silent, lost in her own thoughts, but then she suddenly laughed and said, "I guess I should have figured it out when you kept making your contracts!" Then she said she was sorry, and gave my wrist a pat.
"No, I know," I assured her.
When we reached Cross Canyon Boulevard, our destination became clear to me. "We're going to his house," I informed my passenger.
I received no more instructions for the remainder of the trip. A short while later, I pulled into his driveway, and Toni and I climbed out of the car.
When I was six, my uncle's house had seemed like a castle to me. As I stared at it now, with its massive stone walls and bolted shutters, it seemed that way again.
"Now what?" Toni asked.
I had no clue. "Do you know who owns this house now?" I asked.
"I think it's in probate."
"What does that mean?"
Toni shrugged as she blew a stream of air out of the corner of her mouth. "It's just a word I've heard a lot," she admitted.
We slowly approached the front door. She took hold of my arm and whispered, "What if Trapp and Annabel are in there?"
I froze.
"I'm kidding," Toni said with a laugh, then added, "I think."
I tried the door, but it was locked. I was about to ring the doorbell but changed my mind. It seemed more appropriate to use the goat's-head knocker.
We took a few steps back and waited. Nothing happened. I rang the doorbell. Still nothing.
"Has Annabel said anything to you about this?" I asked.
"This is your hallucination, not mine," Toni replied, smiling.
I backed away from the door. A stone wall surrounded the house. If I could climb it, I thought, I could try the back door, or maybe I'd find a secret entrance.
"Ninety-three, ninety-one," said Trapp.
"Ninety-three, ninety-one," I repeated.
"What?" asked Toni.
"He just said, ‘Ninety-three, ninety-one.' "
Neither of us could remember Trapp's address. I had used it the first time to get to his house, but that had been over a month ago. There were no numbers posted by the door.
I walked the length of his driveway to the mailbox. It was numbered 621.
It occurred to me that maybe I wasn't supposed to go to his house after all. I hadn't perceived any more driving instructions from him since I'd turned onto Cross Canyon Boulevard. I had just assumed this was the destination.
I looked around. There were only a few other houses on the street. It seemed pretty doubtful that Trapp's address could be 621 and another could be 9391.
I got an idea. I went to my car and retrieved my cell phone. I pressed 9-3-9-1, then Send.
Nothing.
Toni came up beside me. "Do you know the right area code?" she asked.
I hung up.
"What would you have done if he'd answered?" she asked.
"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?" I asked.
She smiled. "For once in my life, I'm not the one who's crazy!"
I returned to the front door and tried it again.
"Is it still locked?" Toni asked from the driveway.
"You got any better ideas?"
A look of realization crossed her face. She hurried to the garage.
A keypad was attached to the side wall. By the time I got there she had already entered the first two numbers. I watched as she pressed the nine and then the one.
Nothing.
"They probably turned off the electricity," I said.
She pressed the star key. I heard the low rumble of a motor, and then the garage door slowly rose.
There was no way my subconscious mind would have known the code to his garage door opener—at least, none that my conscious mind could think of.
The only vehicles in the garage were a rusted tandem bicycle and a wheelbarrow with a flat tire. There were also a refrigerator, some garden tools, a croquet set, and at least forty boxes, stacked three rows deep along the right-side wall.
At the rear of the garage was a door leading into the main part of the house. It was also locked.
"We might as well start on the boxes," I said.
I dragged one away from the wall and ripped off the packing tape. Inside were various office products, including a container of paper clips, a stapler, and one of those contraptions with swinging silver balls that bang against each other.
"Canned peas," said Trapp.
Toni was going through a different box. "What are we looking for?" she asked.
"A can of peas," I answered, as if that were a perfectly normal reply.