The Compound (20 page)

“Turducken.”

Lexie spoke up. “Didn’t we have that for Christmas one year?”

“Yeah, it was great.” My mouth watered.

“No, it was disgusting.” Lexie pushed her plate away. “Dad made me eat a piece, ugh.”

“Do you remember anything about it?”

Lexie didn’t say anything, but her shoulders rose slightly.

Terese took a drink of water, spilling some.

I dug around in one of the drawers. My knuckles were sore and I remembered seeing a bottle of ibuprofen. “I tried to piece together a password on his computers, nothing worked.” I found the bottle. Totally expired. I swallowed two, anyway.

Lexie looked at me. “Now what?”

I hopped up to sit on the counter. “Don’t know. Any ideas?”

Terese wiped her eyes. Her voice was meek. “Do you think the word is supposed to trigger something? Make you think of something else that is the code?”

I made an attempt to encourage her, which was not something I was experienced at. “That might be true. Good thinking.” At least it sounded sincere to me.

Lexie groaned. “Why are we even trying to figure this out?
Hello
. Dad is a brainiac, for cripes’ sake. I mean, despite everything, he’s still way smarter than you, Eli. Can’t we wait for him to get better and just tell us the code?”

“Mom and Dad need medical help that we don’t have. We can’t wait.”

“Does he truly want us to figure it out?” Terese looked skeptical.

For a moment I glanced at Lexie. “Of course he does. So please, try to think of anything at all that might help. Even if it seems stupid. Let me know, okay?”

Terese nodded and stood up. “They’ll be waking up from their naps soon,” she said. “I’ll check on them.”

Lexie went with me to check on Mom and Dad. “I’ll stay with them, Eli.” They were both asleep.

I needed to think. And I did my best thinking when I ran.

On the treadmill, I focused. Turducken, that long-ago Christmas, what did I remember? Everything, I needed to remember everything.

Free association.

A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey. A turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. Poultry, game bird, water fowl, webbed feet, rooster, hen, drake, mallard.

Nothing. I had nothing.

I got off the treadmill and held my hands over my head, catching my breath. I’d run more than eight miles.

“Eli.” Lexie beckoned from the door. “I may have thought of something.”

I walked over to where she stood with her arms crossed.

“What?”

“I’m not sure.” She leaned against the wall. “Maybe it’s nothing …”

I wiped my face with my sleeve and forced myself to wait, silent.

“I’d just gotten home for Christmas vacation when those things came.”

“Turduckens.”

“Yes. I’d missed lunch to take a final, and then with the ride home I was starved, so I went in the kitchen to ask Els to make me a sandwich or something. Dad was there. We just got to talking, because I hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving. And he was so excited when they started carrying in those turduckens. I asked him why he was so excited about a bunch of turkeys and he said, ‘These have a surprise inside.’”

“That’s it?”

She shrugged a little. “Sorry.”

“No, I wasn’t being mean, Lex, honest. It may help.”

“Right.” She left.

I stripped off my sweaty shirt and dropped to the floor to stretch.

Lexie came back in. “I’m wrong.”

“About what?”

“What he said. It wasn’t, there’s a surprise, it was … Oh, now I remember, because he said it in a silly voice, like a French accent. I remember because he never did that, acted silly. He said,
‘Eeets
not just a turkey. There
eees
a
meesstery
inside.’ “She waited. “Hello, I remembered. Does it help?”

I didn’t answer. My mind was whirling.
A mystery inside
. So familiar. I’d heard that recently. But where? And when?

A mystery inside
.

Those words ate me up. For the next hour, I sequestered myself in Dad’s office and looked through everything I could find in the papers, books, CDs. Even some of the
National Geographies
. Nothing struck a chord.

I gave up. Had to. I was driving myself crazy.

Out in the hall, I ran into Terese. For the first time ever, her hair was down, not in pigtails. Her eyes were red. She put her head down and tried to walk right by me. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer. But I knew. She was scared.

Something else about her was different. “Reese, I know you’re upset about Mom and Dad. We haven’t even given you a chance to deal; we’re just shoving all this on you.” I knelt, so that I looked up at her. “I know I’ve been a crappy brother lately—”

She wiped her eyes. “You’ve always been a crappy brother.”

Her accent was gone.

“Okay, fine. I’ve always been a crappy brother. But I’m here now, okay? For whatever you need.” I figured it out. Why she looked different. She wasn’t in purple. Instead, she wore black. That and having her hair down made her look older. No. Not older. Just her own age for once.

Funny. The Compound had a way of making me feel older than I was. I’d felt like an adult since I was nine. But
the Compound seemed to have done the opposite to Terese. She’d stayed the same, perhaps even regressed. Maybe she felt a change coming. So she felt
she
had to change, too.

“Want to go to Dad’s office with me?”

She nodded.

In the office she was quiet, just leaning against the door and looking around. “Why do you call me Little Miss Perfect?”

Embarrassed, I stammered. “You are, like, perfect. You always do the right thing and say the right thing and everyone loves you for it.”

“No.” She paused. “Not everyone.”

“Huh?”

“Lexie doesn’t love me. Neither do you.”

“Yes, she does. She just doesn’t show it.”

She waited a moment. “And you, Eli? Do you love me?”

“Of course, you’re my sister.”

“But you don’t like me. And that’s worse than not being loved.” She started to leave. “Reese, wait.”

She turned back.

I looked at my feet, stalling. “Honestly, I’ve had a hard time here without Eddy. I was closer to him than anyone. And you, you’re a lot like him.” I took a deep breath. “I hated that you were here and he wasn’t.” Even though it was my fault he wasn’t there, I had blamed her. “It was always the situation, not you. You’re my little sister. Yeah. I do like you.”

One of her shoulders went up and down. “You know, you’re not that bad a brother.”

“Really?” I wanted to know.

“There’s still a chance for you, anyway.” She smiled a tiny bit. “Want to go see the babies with me?”

I’d been cooped up in the office for hours; maybe new scenery would give me a fresh perspective. Or maybe I was trying to live up to my new status as not-so-crappy-brother-after-all. “Just for a while. I’ve got to get back to Mom and Dad.”

In the nursery, Lucas and Cara romped. They threw beanbags at each other while Quinn played in the playpen.

Lucas skipped over to me. “Play with us, ’kay?”

“Yeah.”

Then it hit me. Lucas had said those words.
The mystery inside
. The first day I came to their room. “Lucas!”

“What?”

“Come here a sec.” I whispered in his ear, “Can you show me your clown, remember, that you showed me before?”

“‘Kay. They can’t see, though.” Lucas’s eyes darted to Cara and Quinn.

“Sure.” He led me to the closet. The clown came out from the hiding place.

“You’ll be careful?”

I liked listening to him, to his nearly five-year-old diction. “Yeah.”

Piece by piece, I took the clowns apart, setting them down until I held the inner clown.

Shaking produced nothing but silence.

Close inspection revealed no secret notches or buttons.

Then I read the word written on the bottom again. At first, I had assumed it was only the manufacturer, but perhaps …

“Hey, Reese, come here.”

Lucas tried to grab the clown from me. “Don’t let her see!

I held it out of his reach. “Lucas, it’s okay.” She came into the closet. “What’re you guys doing in here?”

“Reese, is this French?” Over Lucas’s head, I handed her the smallest clown.

Squinting, she read the word.
“Hautbois.”

Lucas kept trying to grab it back.

I pushed him out of the way. “Reese, what does it mean?”

“Translated? High wood.”

I groaned. Talk about cryptic. “Thanks.” I took the clown back, wondering what to do next.

Terese started to leave, then stopped. “Is that something to do with the code?”

Lucas took the clown from my hand.

I shook my head. “I thought it was, but it doesn’t make any sense.”

Terese shrugged. “I guess not. What would my oboe have to do with it?”

My heart jumped. “What?”

“Hautbois
, high wood. That’s where the word
oboe
comes from.”

I tried to keep my voice calm as I grabbed her arm. Touching people seemed more normal all the time. “Is your oboe in the music room?”

She nodded.

I raced out of there. In the music room, Terese’s oboe was on its stand. I took it apart and scrutinized every section.
A mystery inside
. Did that refer to the clown or the oboe? What?

The case caught my eye. I brushed the parts aside and focused my attention on the case. Solid, sturdy, the case had probably cost a lot of money, too. That wasn’t a priority as I tore into it, ripping out the lining. The case was empty, nothing. I kicked the pile of lining nearest to my left foot. A piece of paper fluttered out. Between my fingers, the item felt more like parchment. The paper was blank.

“No, no, no.”

With the parchment firmly in my grip, I left the room and went to the kitchen. I sat in the nook, the paper on the table in front of me. I tried to figure out the reasoning for it all. Dad telling me the word
turdueken
.

Which led to Lexie remembering
the mystery inside
.

Which led to Lucas and the nesting dolls, obviously a present from Dad.

From there,
hautbois
, which led to Terese’s oboe.

We had all played our part. Hadn’t we? Was that my role, to put it together?

I looked at the parchment. Was this also meant for me to figure out?

As I flipped the parchment over and over, something occurred
to me. When we were eight, Eddy and I had been into playing spy games. Dad gave us invisible ink and we wrote secret messages. But that was from a kit I didn’t have anymore.

Something else came to mind. A chemistry lesson Dad had done with me. You could make an ink. Out of what?

I carried the parchment into the lab. I remembered: phenolphthalein. And that it could be revealed by something. Damn, I couldn’t remember. Vapors, some kind of vapors.

In the lab, I scanned the shelves of chemicals, hoping something would ring a bell. It had to be something simple, everyday, right? If it was too complicated, Dad risked me not ever figuring it out. He did want me to figure it out, didn’t he?

No. Of course he didn’t.

Even if I had figured out the first clue,
turducken
, he wouldn’t have expected me to go to Lexie, who would provide the next part. And Lucas and the nesting clowns. They were a present from Dad. He knew I wouldn’t go to the nursery.

And Terese. He knew what I called her, how I didn’t like to be around her. He relied on my own predictability to keep me from finding the answer. I didn’t get along with my sisters enough to get their cooperation.

He counted on me being the same selfish, detached, untouchable loner I had been ever since we entered the Compound. Living behind my wall, not letting anything out. Or anyone in.

What else had he counted on me doing? Or not doing?

There was a plastic tote of cleaners sitting nearby. I fiddled with the bottle of glass cleaner, thinking how my father yelled at Mom and the girls if the lab wasn’t spotless.

I paused.

Behind the bottle of glass cleaner, there was a container of bleach. I stared at it for a moment, then felt myself actually grinning. “Yes!” Ammonia fumes. Ammonia fumes revealed the phenolphthalein ink.

Donning a face mask and gloves, I went to work with a beaker of ammonia. I held the parchment over the beaker. “Please, please, please.”

A message slowly revealed itself. Numbers. Lots of numbers, over two dozen.

The code?

What else could it be?

I had it. I had the power to get us out of here. Someone clapped hands behind me, in a slow rhythm. I turned.

My father stood there, leaning against the doorjamb, still clapping slowly. “Well done, Eli. I’m impressed.”

His face was raw and bruised. “Dad! Are you okay?”

He shrugged a bit. “Oh, fine. Fine as anyone can be when HIS WIFE IS TRYING TO POISON HIM!”

His shout made me jump. I took a step back, picking up the parchment as I moved. Had he done something to Mom? “She didn’t know, she just wanted you to have bread and—”

He held up a hand to silence me. His face was sweaty
but he didn’t seem shaky. Exactly the opposite. “So you have the code now.”

I nodded. “We can get out, get you some help …”

“I don’t need ANY HELP!”

Again, his shout made me jump. I clutched the code in my palm.

He took a step inside the door.

I had to get out, away from him, and try the code. Me getting out was our only chance.

Dad let out a loud ragged sigh. “You try to do everything for your family, and what do they do in return?”

I sensed it was a rhetorical question.

“They try and
poison
you.” He picked up a Bunsen burner and slammed it on the floor for effect. I used the distraction to take a step toward the door, even as he moved slowly away from it, looking for something else to throw.

“I gave you everything. Everything …” He started picking up anything in his reach and hurled each item as he spoke. “Everything.” A tray of test tubes hit the ground. “Everything.” A pile of petri dishes hit the near wall, glass flying.
“Everything.”