Josiah shot upright, marbles squirting from under his fingers and spinning across the table and onto the floor. “What are you talking about, Harriet the Spy?” he barked.
“Subject Two exhibits suspicious behaviour when confronted with evidence of his wrongdoing,” said Mel.
Freddy wasn’t sure if Mel was being reckless, brilliant, or incredibly rude. But Cuerva Lachance didn’t seem to mind, and though Josiah did, he minded everything. “I heard you talking to people upstairs the day you moved in,” said Freddy.
“And someone’s up there right now,” said Mel. “Something keeps going thud.”
They all looked up. Freddy hadn’t noticed anything going thud, but now that she was paying attention, she could hear something. A moment later, water started to run upstairs. “She’s right,” she said. “Who else is living here?”
“None of your ever-loving beeswax,” Josiah snarled against a muffled background of thumping, splashing, and what sounded like angry and amused voices from upstairs.
“So there is someone,” said Mel, making a note.
Josiah rolled his eyes, massaged his brow with his index finger, and said in long-suffering tones, “I solemnly swear there is no one in this house who isn’t standing in this kitchen right now.”
“I’m sitting in this kitchen,” said Cuerva Lachance, who was making use of one of her chairs.
“Who isn’t standing or sitting in this kitchen right now,” said Josiah. “Satisfied?”
“No,” said Mel. “How are you doing that with the marble, by the way?”
All eyes turned to the table. Freddy had to look away almost immediately. She found that she was groping in her pocket for her key. She wasn’t sure why, as she didn’t feel like crying. She felt more like backing out of the room and going to hide under her bed. A marble was rolling slowly up the roof of the doll’s house. Freddy couldn’t watch because she knew it wasn’t possible.
“Cuerva Lachance,” said Josiah, not quite under his breath.
“What? Yes? Where?” said Cuerva Lachance. She jumped to her feet and turned around in a full circle, narrowly missing knocking three or four spider plants onto the floor.
Josiah said, “Cut it out.”
“Cut what out?” asked Cuerva Lachance. Freddy forced herself to look back at the little roof. The marble was sitting in the middle of the table, perfectly still.
I imagined it, thought Freddy. She must have. Josiah and Cuerva Lachance had said something before about marbles rolling uphill, and her brain had taken the conversation and made her see things that weren’t there.
But the house seemed less friendly, and less funny, than it had just before. Freddy’s eyes slid to Mel. Her sister was gazing thoughtfully at the marble, her little notebook forgotten.
Someone knocked at the kitchen door, hard. Everybody but Cuerva Lachance jumped. Cuerva Lachance said, “I love mysterious visitors,” and opened the door.
Roland was hulking on the doorstep, his scowl rivalling Josiah’s. “We need you, Mel,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh.” Mel was still looking at the marble.
“Hello, big awkward one,” said Cuerva Lachance, beaming. “Would you like a small, delicious blueberry scone?”
“No, thank you,” said Roland stiffly. “You guys have to come home now. Your mum says.”
Freddy opened her mouth to say she knew their mum wasn’t home, then paused. She didn’t think she minded having a reason to leave.
“That’s too bad,” said Cuerva Lachance as Mel and Freddy silently followed Roland out the door. “I do hope you come again. Neighbours intrigue me, and they can sit on my chairs. Josie, you’re in danger of putting your foot in a plant. Why are you?” The closing door cut off any retort Josiah might have made.
Roland let them get all the way out into the lane and through into their own backyard before he let them have it. Freddy and Mel both stepped back as he rounded on them. Roland dwarfed them both, but Freddy had never really found him scary until this moment. “Stay away from there,” he said. “We don’t even know them. What were you thinking?”
“Josiah’s in all my classes,” said Freddy. “We were doing homework.” It wasn’t strictly true, but agreeing with Roland was impossible.
“You didn’t mind them before,” said Mel, signing along to the words. “Did something happen?”
“No,” said Roland. “Yes. I’ve … seen Josiah at school. He does things … he—just stay away from him, all right?”
Freddy said, “Stop telling me what to do. Why do you even care?”
“I don’t care about you,” said Roland with such contempt that Freddy took another step back. “I care about Mel. She follows you around.”
“She can if she wants to.” Freddy could feel the anger trying to choke her into silence again, but Roland had no right to tell Mel what to do.
“Excuse me,” said Mel. “I’m standing right here.”
“Just … leave that house alone. I’ll make you if I have to.” He shoved past them both and slammed his way into the house. Freddy heard something fall over inside.
Freddy looked at Mel. “What was that all about?”
“Not so elementary, my dear Duchamp,” said Mel, making another note in her notebook.
*
Freddy had a strange dream that night. She hardly ever remembered her dreams; she had the vague sense that a lot of them involved nonsensical adventures in which she was running away from something huge and scary, but by morning, they had almost always slipped away. This one she did remember afterwards. She thought it was because of the way she woke up from it.
In the way of dreams, everything that happened seemed perfectly reasonable. She was in the house on Grosvenor Street with Mel again, but this time, Roland was with them, too. She knew it was the house on Grosvenor Street, though it had grown. The living room had expanded to the size of a cathedral. She, Mel, and Roland stood together in the middle of it, surrounded by chairs. The chairs weren’t jumbled about in heaps, as they had been today. Someone had arranged them in rows that went around in widening circles, all of them facing the space where Freddy and the others stood. There was no one in them.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Bob?” said Josiah from behind Freddy. She turned. He was wearing a little black bowler hat, which he took off and handed to her. Mel made a note in her notebook.
“This isn’t right. There isn’t any pie,” said Roland viciously.
“Freddy’s got the pie,” said Josiah. “She just hasn’t seen it yet. There are four and twenty ducklings baked in it.”
“Blackbirds,” said Cuerva Lachance, though it was hard to say where she was. Mel nodded and added, “Black birds,” spacing out the syllables so it was clear she was saying two separate words.