The Unseen (14 page)

“Hey,” Xandra said when she caught up with Belinda as she was heading for the front entrance. “I have something
important to tell you. Something you might like to know about.”

Belinda didn't stop walking but she did turn her head. “What might I like to know about?”

“Well, it's just that …” Xandra was thinking and talking fast. “You remember all those vacuum cleaners that you saw in our basement, and I told you we don't use them anymore because my mother hired a cleaning service? Well, we're going to get rid of them pretty soon and I was wondering if …”

“Why are you going to get rid of them?” Belinda asked.

“Well, because the basement is just getting too crowded. There's no more room. And I remembered that you said you used to have one at the commune but it broke, and I was just wondering if you'd like to have one again.”

Belinda stopped walking and turned to face Xandra. She looked suspicious but at the same time interested. In fact there was something about the way her dark eyes suddenly focused that made it perfectly clear that having a vacuum cleaner again was something she'd definitely thought about. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I would like to have a vacuum cleaner again, but how would it happen? I mean, how would I get it way out there? To the commune?”

Xandra hadn't thought about that. So far, finding a way to convince Belinda that she should come back to the Hobson basement was about as far as her plans had gone. But now, thinking fast, she came up with “Well, some of the newest ones aren't awfully heavy. The two of us together could carry it as far as the bus stop and then …”

“I don't know.” Belinda's raised eyebrows and doubtful smile made the point that getting the vacuum cleaner to
the bus stop didn't entirely solve the problem. “People might think I stole it.” But Xandra wasn't finished. “I know,” she said. “I could get a lot of that heavy brown wrapping paper and some tape and we could wrap it all up so people would think it was something you just bought at a store. And then …” She bogged down again but only for a minute. “And then you could use one of those little two-wheeled shopping carts. I've seen people bring those on buses and I'm pretty sure there's one of those someplace in the basement. And we could wrap the vacuum cleaner up and—”

Belinda interrupted her to say excitedly, “Ezra has one of those carts. He uses it when he goes shopping to bring the groceries up the hill to the house.” And the way Belinda looked and sounded told Xandra that her plan was going to work. Belinda was going to agree to come back to Xandra's house, and the two of them together were, once again, going to go into the basement.

And then what? Xandra's thinking hadn't gotten that far and she wasn't going to let it. She had the feeling that if she let herself work out exactly what she might do next, Belinda or maybe the grandfather might be able, in some mysterious way like ESP or mind reading, to learn exactly what she was planning and do something to prevent it.

So that was how it happened. The very next afternoon Xandra, still dressed in her school clothes, went down the steps into the dimly lit basement. She was carrying a bunch of tape and wrapping paper and right behind her was Belinda, pushing Ezra's little two-wheeled shopping cart. So Xandra's clever and only slightly sneaky plan had worked. Belinda was back in the basement.

“O
KAY, WHICH ONE
do you want?” Xandra asked as the shopping cart bounced down the last basement step.

There was something about the way Belinda answered, “Which one? You mean I can have whichever one I like best?” that made Xandra think of the way a little kid like Gussie would sound if you took her into a toy store and said, “Take your pick.” So that was exactly what she said to Belinda.

“Sure.” Her sweeping motion took in the whole area. “Take your pick.” And that was all she needed to say for a long time. As Belinda lined up vacuum cleaners and went from one to another, checking out each one carefully and thoroughly, Xandra stood back where she could keep an eye not only on Belinda, but also on whatever else might be going on in the farthest dark
corners and the shadowy passageways between stacks of boxes.

So while Belinda wound and unwound electric cords and fiddled with all sorts of attachments, Xandra kept an eye out for … creatures of the Unseen, or whatever you wanted to call them. But nothing had happened by the time Belinda made her final selection, at least not for sure. There had been a couple of times when Xandra had been able, by squinting her eyes almost shut, to see, or almost see, something that looked like a moving shadow or a momentary slash of fiery light. But nothing for sure. She was still squinting, watching what seemed to be a shadowy figure against the right-hand wall, when Belinda tapped her on the left shoulder and said, “Okay. I think I've decided.”

“Oh!” Xandra jumped and swallowed hard before she could say, “Oh. That one? Okay. Let's wrap it up.”

While they taped wrapping paper around the chosen vacuum, Belinda did quite a lot of talking. At least quite a lot compared to the amount she'd been doing recently. Mostly she talked about how much easier it was going to be to keep both of the cabins clean now that she had a vacuum cleaner.

“And Ezra's house too,” she said, smiling ruefully. “You wouldn't believe how dirty that big old house is.”

“Do you have to clean his house too?” Xandra was shocked.

Belinda shook her head. “I don't have to, but I tried to once. That was when our old vacuum cleaner broke. I think it was Ezra's house that finished it off.”

That stopped Xandra for a moment while she considered what it would be like to have to clean two cabins and
a big superdirty house. It wasn't an easy thing to imagine for someone who had never cleaned her own room, except for now and then having to pile all her animals back on the bed when an extra-fussy cleaning lady insisted. Thinking about what a big help the vacuum was going to be, she really was feeling good about what she was doing, congratulating herself on doing such a good deed, without bothering to remember that it had been Gussie who gave her the idea. And for about the same length of time she also forgot the real reason they were in the basement.

Suddenly remembering, just as they had finished stuffing the carefully wrapped vacuum into the shopping cart, she said, “Okay, it's all ready. But now there's something I want you to do for me.”

“All right. What do you want me to do?” Belinda's smile was wide and friendly, but when Xandra told her what she wanted, it quickly faded. “No,” she said, frowning and shaking her head. “I can't. I won't.”

Fighting down the familiar flush of anger, Xandra tried to be reasonable and convincing as she started to tell Belinda about the good, friendly creatures she had sensed when she had only held the Key in her hand, in her own room and again in the secret hideout behind the furnace. “I didn't really do it, because I promised you I wouldn't, but I held it like this”—she pulled the feather out from under her sweater—“and something, some good, friendly things were almost there and there weren't any of those—those other creatures.”

But Belinda just went on shaking her head and refusing to listen or even to explain why she was being so stubborn.

When the rush of anger was too strong to resist,
Xandra almost yelled, “Why not? You told me it would be all right after you learned more about how to do it. Haven't you learned anything by now?”

Belinda's nod was slow in coming. Slow and uncertain. “Yes,” she said reluctantly. “I learned why it would be so dangerous for
you
to do it again.”

“So dangerous for
me.
” Xandra copied the emphasis that made it clear that she was the only one Belinda was talking about. There she was, doing it again. Saying that using an enchanted gift would be all right for most people but not for Xandra. All right for everybody
except
Xandra, maybe. Like everything else that most people could do, or be, but not Xandra Hobson.

Grabbing the cart away from Belinda, Xandra dumped the vacuum cleaner out on the floor. Then she stomped up the stairs, out the basement door and around the house to the back door. She was still stomping when she got to the landing where a window looked down on the long curved driveway, from which it was possible to see who was arriving at the Hobsons' house—or leaving it. And sure enough, there she was. There went the creepy granddaughter of an even creepier old man, pushing her shopping cart as she turned out onto the avenue. An empty shopping cart. Xandra was gritting her teeth and telling herself, “It serves her right,” as she turned quickly away and went up the stairs.

It was right then, while she was still fuming about Belinda, that Xandra began to hear loud noises. She'd only gone a few feet down the upstairs hall when she saw why. The door leading to the room of the Twinster sibling named Nelson was wide open, and noises weren't the only
things coming through it. Along with shouts and loud laughter, also coming out through the open door, and stretching clear across the hall, was a long strip of bright green artificial grass. Just as Xandra approached the grass, a little white ball came rolling toward her. She knew what it was, of course. She recognized it immediately as the putting practice green that had been one of Quincy's favorite presents on his eighteenth birthday. And she also knew how special and private it was to Quincy, who had finally found a sport he might be as good at, or almost as good at, as his superjock brothers.

Afterward, a long time afterward, it occurred to Xandra that she might have just ignored the fact that the Twinsters were, as usual, up to no good. She might have stepped over the strip of putting green and gone on down the hall—if she hadn't been angry already. But she was angry—at Belinda and her grandfather, and more or less at the whole world.

And so, as loud teenage voices yelled, “Good shot,” and, “Way to go, Nicko,” Xandra stuck one foot in front of the golf ball, picked it up and walked down the strip of grass to the door. And there they were, a whole roomful of teenage boys: the two Twinsters and three of their friends. One of the Twinsters, Nicholas, apparently, was standing over the grass strip holding a putter, and four other long-legged teenagers were draped across the floor and over various pieces of furniture. There was a split second of quiet when Xandra appeared in the doorway and then a chorus of remarks like “Uh-oh, a kid-sister hazard,” “Too bad, you lose” and “There goes your trophy, Hobson.”

Nicholas grabbed Xandra's hand, took away the golf
ball and pulled her into the room. “Tell them,” he yelled. “It
was
about to go into the cup, wasn't it, Alexandra? You saw it. You tell them.”

Xandra shrugged. “I don't know where it was going,” she said. She stared up at Nicholas and then turned to look at Nelson. “I thought Quincy said nobody could use his putting game,” she said coldly. “I'm going to tell him.” She'd turned around to walk out of the room and would have, except that Nicholas hadn't turned loose of her arm.

And then Nelson grabbed her other arm and dragged her back into the room and everyone began yelling at her. Yelling things like “Wow, what's eating you, kid?” and “Nothing like having a live-in stool pigeon.” And “Why don't you tape her mouth shut, Hobson?”

Then Nicholas was saying, “Okay. Good idea. Here. Hold her a minute.”

One of the others, a tall skinny guy with lots of acne, grabbed her left arm and he and Nelson held her while Nicholas went away and came back with a roll of the kind of heavy tape that gets wrapped around the handles of baseball bats. Nicholas was heading in her direction and pulling loose a long strip of tape when Xandra managed to kick one guy hard enough to make him turn loose of her arm and grab his wounded ankle. Then she socked Nelson on the chin, pulled her right arm free and ran for the door. But Nicholas yelled at the other guys to catch her and they did. Catching her by her arms and hair, they dragged her across the room while she fought back, kicking and slugging as hard as she could. Then somebody stuck out a foot and tripped her and she was on the floor and they were all
holding her down while Nicholas started to stretch the nasty-tasting tape across her mouth.

She wasn't afraid. Not for a minute. It wasn't that she didn't think they might really hurt her. In fact she was far too angry to think anything at all. Her mind was full of nothing but boiling, swelling rage, and she was still fighting, kicking, squirming and trying to bite—when suddenly everything went quiet. Jerking her arms free, Xandra sat up, turned around and saw Clara standing in the doorway.

Clara was just standing there, not saying anything at all, while Nelson said, “Hi, Clara. We were just playing with her. We weren't going to hurt her.” Nicholas started saying something about how she had kicked his golf ball just as he was about to win the game. Xandra didn't say anything, but as she started for the door, she stopped long enough to give the last guy to turn her loose a hard kick in the shin. Then she pushed past Clara and ran down the hall.