As she moved up the stairs, her feet silent on the worn red runner, she wondered what her mum and Jordan would say if they knew she was walking calmly into a stranger’s house after spending hours helping her move. She tried to imagine Mum hearing the story and sitting straight up and crying, “What?” And then Jordan would say, “Explain yourself, young lady,” and there would be a long, stern conversation that would end with Mel in tears and Roland and Freddy humbly promising never to do anything so insane ever again. “We’ve learned our lesson,” they would say. “We shouldn’t talk to strangers.” There would be hugs and chocolate-chip cookies.
Freddy felt her mouth twisting into an expression that wasn’t really a smile. She could imagine the scene, but the players were made of plastic, and they moved stiffly, doll-like and not at all alive. There had never been a scene like that in her house. She knew she wasn’t going to tell her mum about this afternoon.
She’d reached the top of the stairs. As Cuerva Lachance had said, the bathroom was first on the left; she could see tiles through the half-closed door. Maybe those instructions did generally work for bathrooms. She moved to the door and was in the act of pushing it wide when she heard voices down the hall.
Freddy paused. No one was in here but Josiah.
Her hand was an inch from the door. She pulled it back and moved quietly down the hall, past two open doors and towards the closed one at the end.
The voices were muffled. The door did partially block the sound, but the people in the room also sounded as if they were trying not to be heard. There were at least two. Josiah was one, she thought. The other was speaking in a whisper. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, even when she moved right up to the door. She cupped her ear in her hand. It didn’t help much. Josiah sounded … not angry, exactly, but forceful. The other person could have been angry or annoyed or frightened or something else entirely. Freddy shuddered. When she’d been younger, she’d lain awake and listened to furious, half-whispering voices rising and falling downstairs. Her parents’ fights were, in her memory, wordless, an angry booming buzz in the walls. She pushed the memory away.
“… right on the other side of the door!” said the person who was not Josiah. They were the first audible words in the whole conversation.
“Why didn’t you say so before?” snarled Josiah. Before Freddy could move—almost before she had time to draw breath—the door had been wrenched open.
Josiah stood there, looking so ferocious that Freddy forgot to glance past him into the room. She took a step back. “Who—?”
“No one,” Josiah barked. “I was practising my impressions. I plan to join the circus. I told you to stay downstairs!”
He slammed the door behind him, seized Freddy by the wrist, and towed her back to the staircase. “I have to use the—” she started, but Josiah said, “No, you don’t,” and pulled her around the corner and down the stairs. She thought they were going to go straight out the door, but in the foyer, Josiah came to a jarring halt, shoved Freddy against the wall beside the door, pulled a pencil out of his pocket, and, before she had time to be surprised, marked her height on the frame. Then he latched on to her wrist again and yanked her out the door. “Out,” he said, planting himself firmly in the doorway. “Your inability to obey instructions does not impress me. Go away, all of you.”
“But Josie,” said Cuerva Lachance, peeking past her hat, “we were having such a nice conversation, and I saw another squirrel.”
“My lack of caring is palpable,” said Josiah. Freddy decided the accent might be Russian, or possibly from somewhere in Africa. Then again, maybe it was Swedish.
“He’s going to have a tantrum,” said Cuerva Lachance. “In these situations, it’s best just to do what he says. I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”
“It can hardly be avoided at this point,” muttered Josiah. “They’re like ducklings.”
He gave Freddy a push, and she stumbled across the porch, narrowly avoiding tripping over Mel, who was just getting to her feet. “Scram, ducklings,” Josiah said.
“It was bizarrely interesting to meet you,” Cuerva Lachance added. “Mind the broken glass.” She stood beaming and waving at them as they walked away across the lawn.
*
It was five to three. Todd and Marcus would be here soon, and the assault on the pleasure-dome would begin. Freddy, Roland, and Mel stood in their kitchen, looking at each other in a dazed sort of way. “There was something really weird there,” said Mel. “Our neighbours are really weird. I like them.”
Freddy said, “There was someone else in the house. Upstairs. I heard them, and Josiah kicked us out.”
“Good,” said Mel. “The more mysterious the better.” She turned to Roland. “You haven’t said much.”
Roland shrugged. Mel was right; Roland had joined in on the discussions with Cuerva Lachance and Josiah, but he hadn’t said anything to Freddy or, Freddy presumed, Mel about them, whereas the girls had been whispering to each other throughout the afternoon. Freddy hadn’t noticed anything unusual because she and Roland rarely had anything resembling a civil conversation.
“Got to pee,” said Mel, and ducked out of the room before either of the others could stop her. Freddy was left blinking up at Roland.
They had almost been fighting earlier. Then the accident had happened, and … she didn’t know. It was as if the time at the house on Grosvenor Street had propelled them into some sort of neutral zone. She wondered if maybe they could stay there for a bit, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She could feel the constant anger trying to creep back. But it had been better this afternoon. Tentatively, Freddy opened her mouth to speak.
“We’ll be playing in the living room,” said Roland, “whether you like it or not. Go read somewhere else.”
Or maybe she was right to feel the anger.
“Yes, your majesty.” Freddy bowed deeply. It was the closest she could get to screaming at him properly. She didn’t look into his face again; she knew what she would see there. Moving lightly, as he had never been able to do, she nipped out the door, leaving him standing alone.
3
By lunchtime the next day, Freddy was thinking longingly of noisy RPGs and exploding boxes of breakfast cereal. She should have remembered that nothing could be worse than school.