The Vanishing Game (13 page)

“Get out of the way, beanpole,” Monique said. “You're blocking the view.”

Nessa laughed. “Yeah. Be considerate of us normal-size people.” Two others, Tabby and Geena, joined in with jeering comments
.

I turned to look down at the four petite girls with their long hair and shimmering eye shadow. “Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were still in the restroom stuffing your bras with toilet paper.”

A few of the boys laughed, including Jack and Noah. Nessa's eyes narrowed. “You don't even wear a bra, do you, freak?”

“Nope.”

“I don't think you ever will. In fact, I think you're just a boy who dresses like a girl.”

“At least I'm not a girl who dresses like a prostitute.” Outraged, Nessa swung her purse at me, but Noah stepped in
and blocked it with his arm in an impressive move. Her face turned red and she aimed for his head. He snatched the purse from her and sent it sailing across the floor of the observation deck. Along the way it scattered lipsticks, tampons, and a comb. With a screech, she called him several obscene names and then went chasing after it
.

During our school days in Watertown, our freak-dom had become set in stone. The name
freak
, which cruel kids at our small school had labeled Noah, was extended to Jack and then me. They'd meant it to be hurtful, but we embraced it and wrapped ourselves in the layers of friendship that built a protective force field around us. Noah was the first freak, Jack was the second, and I became the third.

My brother was so impressed that a boy like Noah, who was a bit older, was willing to be friends with him. He admired Noah's brains and fearlessness, silently grateful for his friendship. Now, though, I grasped something else. It wasn't just us. Noah himself had been desperate for someone to hang out with. An outcast at school, and living in a household of withdrawn and wounded kids, he'd been hungry for friendship with someone on his own level. Someone who wouldn't think he was weird for pretending to be a vampire or ninja but who would, in fact, jump in with full acceptance of whatever strange paths he decided to take. No wonder that friendship had been so easily renewed when Jack and Noah started chatting online.

“Remember what happened during our field trip here?”
I asked, still studying the view. “You stopped Nessa from hitting me with her purse.”

“Yeah. Just one of the many times I had to step in because your mouth got you in trouble. Do you think being here has something to do with that?”

“I don't know.”

I looked to the left and then the right, as far as the glass would let me see. There was nothing special in either direction. I turned away from the view and glanced around the observation deck. My eyes searched the surrounding area, hoping for a clue, but there was no hiding place. Finally I got the paper star out of the envelope.

“Any suggestions, Noah?”

We both studied the front of it and then the back as I flipped it over. “Why are those words spelled in part caps and part lowercase?” Noah asked.

“Jack's writing was like that through all the rows of letters.”

“Yes, but when we put the shuriken together, ‘Peace Tower' and ‘North West' looked right. There were capitals at the beginning of each word. But the stuff on the back isn't like that.”

“True.” I peered at the code.

S e e
H a L L
O L b I L
R C
R

Turning it upside down I laughed. “This is
so
Jack! Look, ‘OLbIL' isn't a word at all, it's a series of numbers: 7 1970. He couldn't write numbers right-side up in the column of letters. We would've noticed them before making the star. He wanted us to fold the paper into a shuriken so we could find the other words first.”

“Think it's a date? Maybe July 1970?”

“Could be.”

“Come on, let's go.” Noah turned and headed for the elevator.

“You know where the hall might be?”

“No, but I know where numbers are important.”

As we rode down in the elevator, the carillon tolled four gongs that rang through our confined area. The vibrations seemed to pass through me with foreboding. Why, when hope was riding high, did I have an unexpected sense of warning? Even after the last gong hammered its way through the elevator and then faded to silence, my intuition told me to leave the tower and do it now.

I tried to tell myself to ignore it, yet the fear didn't fade. Instead, it washed over me even stronger. The inside of the elevator suddenly grew dim and the air suffocating. I wanted to cry out a warning but my lips were sealed together, as if stitched shut by an undertaker's thread.

It was then that the walls began to collapse inward. They pushed down on us and compressed the air—even the molecules grew dense. The walls themselves started to pulsate, the elevator changing. As I watched, it became like the internal organ of some malevolent entity. Viscous matter
surged around us, and everyone in the elevator panicked. A woman beside me screamed, trying to claw her way out.

Hysteria rose inside me as Noah disappeared into the gelatinous mass. Unable to move, I was engulfed by steaming tissue.

“What's wrong?” Noah asked. “You look upset.”

He was standing in the lobby just outside the open elevator doors, and other than gazing at me with a puzzled expression he seemed fine—no wounds, no missing chunks of consumed flesh, not even a few pieces of gummy tissue still clinging to his cheek. The elevator walls were no longer made of pulsing jelly but of flat brown paneling, just the way they should've been.

Noah and the other passengers had all gotten out, clearly unaware of what had just happened. I watched the woman who had, only seconds ago, been screaming in agony. She stopped to snatch a brochure from her large handbag and then wandered off like any tourist. Noah stared at me as I stepped into the small lobby, my body still stiff with fear. Something so bizarre had just happened in that elevator that I couldn't wrap my head around it, and I knew there
was no way of explaining it to him. He was obviously unaware of what I'd seen, but if I tried to tell him he'd probably drive by the closest mental clinic and boot me out without bothering to slow down.

Struggling to shake off the apprehension that clung to me like an icky odor, I walked through the foyer, faking detachment.

“Are you sick?” he asked.

Ignoring his question, I turned around and stared back at the elevator as the doors closed. It looked harmless and normal. Noah touched my arm. “What's going on? You're shaking and you look like you're going to throw up.”

“I'm okay. Just got a little claustrophobic.”

“Claustrophobic?”

“It's nothing. Let's go, okay?”

He studied me a few seconds more and then shrugged. “Whatever. This way.”

I followed him through the open door of the Memorial Chamber, relieved he'd dropped it. Though my heart rate had slowed, my limbs still felt weak and my head was buzzing with confusion. I told myself to just keep moving.

“Since we're looking for a date,” Noah said, “I think this might be the place to start.”

Gothic arches and high stained-glass windows made the room look like a small chapel inside a cathedral. I remembered this place from the field trip. There was a beautiful carved altar on a raised stone dais in the middle of the room. It had a glass-topped case of etched brass with small
statuettes of angels kneeling in each corner. Going up the steps, I looked inside the case:
The First World War Book of Remembrance
. Other glass cases on lower stone stands were placed in a semicircle around the room, with a handful of people looking at them. In total, there were seven books that recorded the Canadians who had fought and lost their lives in each of the wars. The center one focused on World War II.

Noah whispered, “Out of those numbers Jack left us, I don't think the first 7 means July. I think it means the seventh book.”

Nodding in agreement, I followed him past two elderly women to the second altar from the right. “This one,” he said. The nameplate declared:
In the Service of Canada, The Seventh Book of Remembrance
.

“According to the inscription, it was started in 1947.”

“And it lists every serviceperson that died during peacetime activities.”

Remembering snatches of the tour guide's lecture during our field trip, I knew that the pages were more like pieces of art than just leaves in a book. The names of the lost were printed in calligraphy-style font and the pages were decorated with heraldic illumination and beautiful watercolors. Peering through the glass, we saw the book was opened to a page with the names of those who had died in 1956.

“May I help you?” a raspy voice said from behind, startling me.

We turned around and stared at a hobbity little man
with unruly tufts of white hair. He was short, barely coming up to Noah's shoulder, and had the largest earlobes I'd ever seen. His red jacket stretched over a small potbelly, and a name tag with a maple leaf on it was pinned to his lapel. His name was Stuart.

Noah pointed to the case. “Is there a way to turn the pages and find a different date?”

The man beamed at us, pushing up the glasses that had slid down his nose. “So nice to see young people interested in their past!” He dug inside his coat pocket and retrieved a pair of white cotton gloves. “What date and name are you interested in?”

“Nineteen seventy, with the last name of Hall.”

“Very good.” He pulled on the gloves like a doctor preparing for surgery. “A relative of yours?”

Noah shrugged. “We're not sure.”

Stuart nodded and then launched into a tour guide dialogue about the history of the books, spewing details that rattled past my head. It was difficult for me to focus on what he was saying, mainly because I still felt so shaken. The elevator experience had faded a little but continued to bother me. The gong of the bells had warned that time was ghosting away from us, and it was doubly important to find my brother. The danger he was in seemed more serious than ever.

Stuart retrieved a small brass key from his breast pocket, unlocked the case, and lifted the glass lid. “Not too close, now. Wait until I'm finished, and then you can look.”

He hunched over the book, a protective gnome, his gloved fingers gently turning the pages. Noah smiled and leaned into me. He whispered, “You'd think he was defusing a bomb.”

Very aware of how close we stood, I smiled back at him until he casually pulled away.

“Ha!” Stuart said with triumph, then glanced around and lowered his voice as if embarrassed he'd forgotten to be quiet. “Here it is.”

He replaced the protective glass, locked it with the key, and then motioned to us. “Theodore Gregory Hall, 1970. Is this the one you're looking for?”

“I'm sure it is,” Noah said as we stepped closer.

“Then I'll give you a moment to yourselves.” He looked in the direction of a middle-aged couple who had just stepped into the chamber.

“Thank you,” I murmured over my shoulder, turning back to stare down at a page edged with a scrolling gold border.

Noah bent over the glass. “But why this name? Does ‘Theodore Hall' mean anything to you?”

I shook my head. “No, but the name just above it does. Remember the field trip? When we were here last time, the three of us stopped to look at this book and it was on this page. We saw that name.”

“Roswill Herbert Flowers?”

“Yes. And then Jack asked the teacher about it.” I stared at the page, trying to remember his question.

“Oh, right … Wait a second. Did it have something to do with Watertown? Like Flower Avenue?”

We looked at each other and said at the same time, “The library!”

Noah tapped his finger on the glass. “Jack asked if this was the man the library was named after. But Mr. Montclaude explained that was someone else. A governor, I think.”

I envisioned the plaque on the front of the large building that I had entered dozens of times, including once yesterday. “Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library.”

“That's it.”

Excitement crept into my voice as it came together. “Then this is the clue! Now all we have to do is go back to the Watertown library.”

Noah turned away from the case to stare at me. He didn't say anything.

“What's wrong?”

“You're joking.”

“I'm not.”

“Don't tell me Jack sent us on this stupid road trip all the way to Canada just to send us back down to New York!”

From across the room Stuart turned in our direction with an anxious stare. “Shh,” I whispered, moving closer to Noah. “Of course that's what he's done. Don't you remember how his clues always led us crisscrossing back and forth?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled. “This is ridiculous! Besides, what are we supposed to do when we get back to the library?”