Into the Dark (3 page)

T
HE HISTORY TEACHER
didn’t show up Wednesday morning, which meant, one: a sub, in this case Mr. Porterhouse, gym and health teacher, and two: an automatic extension on the Whiskey Rebellion paper, a lucky break for Ingrid, who’d forgotten all about it once, remembered in the picnic area at the falls, and then somehow forgotten again.

“What,” said Mr. Porterhouse, reading from a note card, “is the significance of the Boston Tea Party?”

No hands went up.

“C’mon, you sports,” said Mr. Porterhouse; he called everyone “sport.” “The Boston Tea Party—dawn’s early light, rockets’ red glare, big big big.”

Ingrid, who thought she’d had a pretty good grip on the Boston Tea Party until that moment, now wasn’t sure.

Still no hands. Mr. Porterhouse fingered the whistle that always hung around his neck. Was he going to blow it? “Know what they say about them that—those that forget history?”

No hands.

“They’re totally—” Mr. Porterhouse stopped whatever he was going to say, backed up. “They’re in the cra—in the toilet, is what.” He paused to let that sink in. “So, Boston Tea Party, significance of.”

Brucie raised his hand. Mr. Porterhouse didn’t see him. Brucie waved his hand around like a red-carpet celebrity. He was invisible to Mr. Porterhouse.

“’Kay,” said Mr. Porterhouse. “Baby steps. Where did it happen?”

Where did the Boston Tea Party happen? Was that what he was asking? Ingrid sat up; this was starting to get interesting.

Mr. Porterhouse suddenly whirled and pointed straight at Dustin Dratch, sitting beside his twin brother, Dwayne; easy to tell them apart—Dustin had the cauliflower ear. They were the biggest kids at Ferrand Middle by far, partly because they were
fifteen, having been held back twice despite the social promotion rule in Echo Falls schools.

“Tell the people, Dustin,” said Mr. Porterhouse.

“What people?” asked Dustin.

Dwayne made a snorting noise, its meaning unclear.

“These people, Dustin,” said Mr. Porterhouse. “Your fellow scholars.”

Dustin looked around the room, squinting a bit, as though trying to spot something cleverly hidden. “Tell ’em what, again?” he said.

“Whereabouts of the Boston Tea Party,” said Mr. Porterhouse.

From where Ingrid sat, she could see Dwayne nudge Dustin under desk level, and maybe whisper something quickly too, although they might have just relied on twin telepathy. Whatever the message, Dustin passed it on to the class. “They had it in a restaurant,” he said. “Like, where else?”

“Think they’ll be held back again?” said Mia at recess. They sat on the swings in the farthest corner of the yard at Ferrand Middle, not swinging, just dangling in the cold: Ingrid, Ingrid’s best friend, Stacy Rubino, and Mia.

“No way,” Stacy said. “Next year they’ll be sixteen. You can drop out of school at sixteen.”

“Yeah?” said Ingrid.

“And then what?” Mia said.

Stacy gave her a quick glance. Ingrid was starting to recognize that Stacy and Mia didn’t have much in common, mostly just the fact that they were both her friends. “Then what?” Stacy said. “Get a job, of course.”

“With an eighth-grade education?” Mia said. “What kind of a life is that?”

Stacy’s face reddened. “Good enough for lots of people,” she said.

Mia shrank back into her puffy pink jacket. She was tiny, with fine bones and features. Stacy was big and strong, hardest kicker by far on last fall’s U-13 girls’ soccer team—a team that had gone all the way to the regional final, losing 2–1, their lone goal coming from Ingrid late in the game, first ball she’d ever headed in.

They dangled in silence—not one of those comfortable silences—Ingrid dragging the toes of her boots in arcing patterns in the snow. After a while Stacy said, “My dad dropped out at sixteen.”

“Yeah?” Ingrid said.

“Yeah,” Stacy said.

“Oh,” said Mia.

Mr. Rubino was an electrician, and a great one in Ingrid’s opinion. People still talked about how he’d lit the Cheshire Cat’s smile in the Prescott Players’ production of
Alice in Wonderland
, somehow leaving a big yellow grin in empty black space. Plus he’d built a kick-ass entertainment center in the basement of the Rubinos’ house, a nice house in the Lower Falls neighborhood, not far from Joey’s. Maybe they weren’t rich, but comfortable, right? And kids liked going over to the Rubinos’, a pretty happy place, despite some problems with Stacy’s older brother Sean, recently sent away to a military academy in Tennessee or Oklahoma or somewhere.

“That’s that,” Ingrid said. “I’m dropping out in two and a half years.”

Stacy laughed, then Mia. The mood got back to normal.

Or maybe not quite, because Mia said, almost to herself, “My dad’s got an MBA from Harvard Business School.” The unspoken part—
for all the good that did us
—was very clear. Mia’s dad lived in New York, and almost a year after the divorce he and Mia’s
mom were still fighting—sometimes in e-mails that got copied to Mia, maybe by mistake.

“We’ll all drop out,” Stacy said. “Start a restaurant in Hawaii.”

“Surfin’ Fish Burgers,” Mia said.

More laughter: Stacy had a great laugh, real loud. The bell rang. They hopped off the swings, started back to the building. Stacy remembered something and ran ahead.

“Did your mom say anything about Joey?” Ingrid said.

“Joey?” said Mia. “Why would my mom say anything about Joey?”

“He was with me on Sunday,” Ingrid said. “At the falls.”

“Huh?” said Mia.

“We went snowshoeing in the woods,” Ingrid said. “All the way to the falls. Your mom was there. She didn’t mention it?”

“My mom was at the falls?”

“In the picnic area,” Ingrid said. “She said you were at the library.”

“I was,” Mia said. “But she was going to Stop & Shop after she dropped me off.”

“Maybe she had extra time,” said Ingrid.

“Are you sure it was her?”

“We talked. She met Joey.”

Mia had beautiful eyes, huge and pale blue. Now they seemed to cloud over.

“Get a move on, you two,” said Ms. Groome, math teacher, waiting at the door, knitting needles sticking out of her coat pocket. Winter light glared off fingerprint smears on her glasses. “Or would you prefer a nice long detention?”

“Afternoon, petunia,” said Mr. Sidney, the school bus driver, as Ingrid got on board. Girls were always “petunia” to Mr. Sidney, guys “guy,” as in “any more shenanigans and you’re walkin’, guy.”

“Hi, Mr. Sidney,” said Ingrid, moving toward the back. Stacy was already there, saving a seat for her, but—what was this? A grown-up in one of the front seats? And what was more, a grown-up she knew—Mr. Samuels, editor, publisher, arts and entertainment critic, and chief reporter for the Echo Falls
Echo
. Oh my God. Was he doing some follow-up on Brucie? “Up Close and Personal with Echo Falls’s New Young Funnyman” or something even more nauseating? She glanced ahead, saw Brucie a few rows behind Stacy, patting his head
while rubbing his stomach for maybe the zillionth time. But Mr. Samuels didn’t seem aware of him. He was writing in a notebook, the words tiny and precise, his long nose close to the page.

“Ah,” he said, looking up. “Hello, Ingrid.”

“Hi, Mr. Samuels,” Ingrid said.

“How’s that grandfather of yours?”

“Pretty good.”

He laid the notebook on his knee. “Actually, you might be able to do me a favor in that regard. Got a moment?”

Ingrid exchanged a puzzled look with Stacy, sat beside Mr. Samuels. He was a tiny old guy with alert little eyes and a scrawny neck, knew more about the history of Echo Falls than anyone, a fact that had helped her more than once in the recent past.

“Right now,” said Mr. Samuels, lowering his voice as the door closed and Mr. Sidney shifted into gear, “you’re wondering what the heck this old coot is doing on the school bus.”

“Everything but the old coot part,” said Ingrid.

Mr. Samuels laughed. “A career in journalism—don’t rule it out,” he said. He angled the notebook so she could see. At the top of the page he’d written
WW2
. “Planning a special multipart series,” he said,
“celebrating all the World War Two vets from Echo Falls. The ones still alive and kicking, that is.”

Was it Ingrid’s imagination, or did Mr. Sidney floor the pedal, just for a split second, at the words
alive and kicking
? His Battle of the Coral Sea cap was perched low on his head. Mr. Sidney and Grampy had been at a place called Corregidor together, something Grampy never talked about.

“What they did then and where are they now—profiles,” said Mr. Samuels. “Today I’m working on Boom Boom Sidney.”

“Boom Boom?” said Ingrid. “I thought his name was Myron.”

“Yup,” said Mr. Samuels. “But he had a great slap-shot when he was a kid.”

Ingrid glanced at Mr. Sidney. His shoulders were so bony. “How many are there?” she said.

“How many vets left?” said Mr. Samuels. He slapped his bony knee. “There’s a reporter’s question for you. Answer: five, four still living in Echo Falls or close by. Three from the Pacific theater, two European, and so far I’ve got promises of cooperation from all but one.”

He didn’t have to name the noncooperator.

“I’ve sent letters,” said Mr. Samuels. “No response.
And the phone just rings and rings out there.”

“No voice mail,” Ingrid said.

“Be a shame to leave him out of the piece,” said Mr. Samuels. “Probably the only surviving genuine World War Two hero in this part of the state.”

Grampy a war hero? First she’d heard of it. “What did he do?” Ingrid said.

“Exactly what I’m trying to nail down,” said Mr. Samuels.

“Then how do you know he was a war hero?”

“Lots of good journalism schools, but if I were you, I’d take a shot at Columbia, Ingrid,” said Mr. Samuels. He rose, tightened the knot of his skinny brown tie, already pretty tight. The bus slowed down. “As for how I know, that’s a matter of public record. Aylmer Hill of Echo Falls, Connecticut, was awarded the Medal of Honor in August of 1945.”

“For what?” Ingrid said.

“The details are sketchy,” said Mr. Samuels, moving past her. “That’s why I’d like to talk to him.” He handed Ingrid a white envelope. “Maybe you could see that he gets this, even somehow persuade him to actually read it.” The bus stopped. “Thank you, Boomer,” he said, getting off.

“Anytime, Red,” said Mr. Sidney.

Mr. Samuels had no hair at all. Did these old-timers feel awkward with their childhood names clinging to them? Ingrid had felt awkward with hers from the get-go, partly because of how it sounded, partly because it came from Ingrid Bergman, the impossibly beautiful actress in
Casablanca
, Mom’s favorite movie. Maybe Ingrid was the kind of name that got better with age. Nothing she could do about it anyway: Her all-out seventh-grade effort to make people call her Griddie had been shot down by everyone, even complete strangers.

“What was that all about?” said Stacy when Ingrid went back and sat beside her.

“Not sure,” Ingrid said. “What’s the Medal of Honor?”

“That video game,” said Stacy. “Sean used to play it all the time.”

“I’m a level-ten master,” Brucie called out from the back.

“Zip it, guy,” said Mr. Sidney.

T
HE GINGERBREAD HOUSE
stood deep in the woods. House, woods, and sky: all dark. Ingrid had no intention of going any closer, was not about to take even one more step. But there was nothing she could do about it. With a sickening shudder, the forest floor was suddenly on the move, like a conveyor belt, taking her faster and faster to the gingerbread house. A pair of yellow eyes appeared behind an upstairs window.

“Ingrid! Wake up!”

She opened her eyes. Her room was dark and shadowy. The bedside clock read 6:05, almost an hour before she had to get up for school. Dad stood in the doorway.

“Where are those minutes?” he said.

“Minutes?” Her voice was croaky. She cleared her throat, tried to clear her mind of forest-dream remnants. “What—”

“That Grampy was supposed to sign,” Dad said, his tone sharpening. “Don’t tell me you forgot them.”

Ingrid rubbed her eyes, all crusty. “I guess I must have, but—”

“Damn it,” Dad said. “Get up, then. You’re coming with me.”

“Where?” Ingrid said.

“The farm,” Dad said. “You can run in and get them. I’ll drop you off at school.”

“But—”

“You heard me.”

“Hey,” called Ty from his room across the hall. “Trying to get some sleep here, if that’s okay with you guys.”

They rode in silence. Dark clouds sagged low in the sky, and something between rain and snow was falling in thick streaks. Sleet? Freezing rain? Was there a difference? Ingrid glanced at Dad, decided not to ask. He was far away. The windshield wipers went back and forth, back and forth, reminding her of
this old movie she’d seen, featuring a metronome and someone locked in a closet. It got darker. All the cars had their headlights on. Staying in bed till noon sounded just about right.

Dad pulled into Grampy’s long driveway, parked in front of the house. “Be quick,” he said.

No smoke rose from the chimney. “What if he’s not up?” Ingrid said.

“He’s up,” said Dad. At that moment his cell phone rang. “Hello,” he said. And then, “You’ve got the wrong number.” He clicked off.

Ingrid got out of the car, knocked on Grampy’s door. After a moment or two it opened, and there was Grampy, dressed in canvas pants and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His feet were bare; Ingrid noticed how finely shaped they were, and how they didn’t seem old at all.

“Hey, kid,” he said. “This is a surprise.” He looked past her, saw the car, rolled down his left sleeve, but not before Ingrid saw a Band-Aid on the inside of his elbow, partly covering a yellow bruise.

“I forgot those minutes, Grampy,” she said.

He looked vague. “Minutes?”

“That you were supposed to sign.”

“Paperwork,” Grampy said. “Had it up to here.”
He went back into the house, soon returned with the envelope. Ingrid was sliding it into her pocket when she felt something else in there. What was this? Oh, yeah: Mr. Samuels’s letter.

She handed it to Grampy. “This is from Mr. Samuels,” she said.

Grampy gazed at it with narrowed eyes. “What does that nosey parker want?”

“To interview you,” Ingrid said.

“Never could mind his own business,” said Grampy.

“But he runs a newspaper, Grampy. So isn’t it his business to—”

“Newspaper? You call that rag a newspaper?”

Ingrid kind of liked
The Echo
, strangely boring and interesting at the same time, but she didn’t argue. “I promised him that you’d at least read the letter,” she said. “He’s doing a special edition about World War Two veterans from Echo Falls. Five of you are left, and all the others said yes.”

Grampy went still.

“Mr. Samuels says you were a hero,” Ingrid said.

Grampy’s gaze, very distant, slowly returned to the here and now. He looked down at her. “Isn’t this a school day?”

“Yeah.”

“Then scat.” Grampy closed the door, taking Mr. Samuels’s letter with him.

Ingrid went back to the TT. Dad, on his cell phone, snapped it shut as she opened the door.

“Got ’em?” he said.

She nodded. He started the car, and soon they were back on 392, that same streaky stuff falling from the sky, Dad driving Dad style, two fingers on the wheel and fast.

“What did Grampy do in the war?” she said.

“The war?” said Dad. “He doesn’t talk about it.”

“What’s the Medal of Honor?”

“For courage in battle,” Dad said.

They crossed the bridge. Down below, the streaky stuff hit the water and disappeared, not even making any splashes.

“Mr. Samuels says Grampy won it,” Ingrid said.

“I’ve heard that too,” Dad said.

“And?”

Dad glanced at her. “I told you—he doesn’t talk about it.”

Silence after that, almost all the way to Ferrand Middle. Sometimes, when Dad was annoyed or tense or maybe for other reasons Ingrid didn’t know, a lump
of muscle appeared in the side of his face, right above the hinge part of the jaw. Ingrid saw it now.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?” He slowed down behind the line of buses; one of the Dratch twins had his face pressed to the back window, his features—distorted to begin with—distorted even more.

“I saw a nice picture of your mom at Grampy’s.”

Dad stared straight ahead, didn’t say anything.

“You look a bit like her.”

Dad nodded, very slightly.

“How old were you when she…?”

Dad turned to her, the lump of muscle even more prominent. “You know all this, Ingrid.”

True. There were all these facts of family history she’d grown up with, but maybe she didn’t understand their—what was the word? It came to her, a word recently heard from the lips of Mr. Porterhouse: “Boston Tea Party, significance of.”
Significance,
that was it. For the first time, Ingrid realized
significance
contained
sign
and understood what the word really meant.

“Eight?” she said.

“Six,” Dad said, his voice going high-pitched all of a sudden. They crept forward behind the buses. Dad
said, “Six” again, this time in his normal voice.

“It was cancer?” Ingrid said.

“You know all this,” said Dad again. The line moved another foot or two. “Jump out here. I haven’t got all day.”

Ingrid slung on her backpack and walked into the school. Someone said something to her, but she didn’t take it in: She was thinking about what it would be like for a six-year-old boy growing up alone with Grampy out on the farm. Somewhere behind her, tires squealed on icy pavement.

“What the heck,” said Mr. Santos, straying from the script right from the top, “are we gonna do? How’re we sposta feed the kids when there’s no grub for ourselves?” He held up his hands, palms up, sustaining the gesture for what seemed to Ingrid—seated on a stool next to Brucie in the corner of the stage where Hansel and Gretel’s bed would be—a very long moment.

“In the morning, Husband,” said Meredith O’Malley in her breathiest little whisper, “let’s take them into the woods and leave them while we go off to our work. They will not find their way home, and our problem will be solved.” She smiled a big bright
smile; months of cosmetic dental work were finished at last, and her teeth were huge and sparkling.

Jill Monteiro, watching from a plush red seat in the fifth row of the Prescott Hall theater, said, “If we could hold it right there for a sec?”

The woodcutter’s little family gazed out at her—all except Brucie, who was peering into his shirt pocket.

“Meredith?” said Jill.

“I’m sorry,” said Meredith. “Was it too…too outside in?”

“No,” said Jill. “Not that.”

“Oh, good,” said Meredith. “I’ve been trying to work more outside in lately, without overdoing it, of course.” She paused. No one spoke. Brucie had discovered something long and sticky in his pocket, was pulling it out. “Like Sir Laurence Olivier?” Meredith said. “I read his bio.”

“Wasn’t it great?” said Jill. “I love how much thought he put into his characters.”

“Isss it safe?” said Brucie, shoving the sticky mass back in his pocket.

Jill glanced at him in surprise. “And on the subject of character, Meredith, what can you tell me about the woodcutter’s wife?”

Meredith put her index finger—the nail long and
bright red—to her chin. “She’s very hungry,” she said.

Jill clapped her hands, eyes shining. “Excellent,” she said. “You’re very hungry, all of you—keep that in mind. It’s no accident that the witch’s cottage is edible.”

Wow,
Ingrid thought. Jill was amazing. An idea hit her. “Maybe we should all lose some weight before opening night,” she said.

“Huh?” said Mr. Santos.

“Nice idea, Ingrid,” Jill said, “but in this case I think costume and makeup will do the trick.”

“Whew,” said Meredith under her breath.

Jill rose, came forward, enthusiasm radiating off her. “We’ve got hunger, Meredith,” she said. “What else?”

Meredith did that index-finger-to-chin thing again, but this time it didn’t work. After a while, Ingrid said, “Is she the mother or the stepmother?”

“Great question,” Jill said. “In early versions of the story she’s the mother. Only later did she turn into the stepmother. Any idea why?”

“Typo?” said Brucie.

“How was rehearsal?” Mom said.

“Good,” said Ingrid.

Mom drove her MPV van Mom style, hands in
proper ten-minutes-to-two position, speed limit never exceeded. Only a few minutes after five, but the sky was already black, except for some purple edging in the west; Ingrid confirmed the direction on her compass ring.

“I never liked that story,” Mom said.

“‘Hansel and Gretel’?”

Mom nodded. “I could never believe any parents would abandon their children like that.”

“That came up,” Ingrid said. “Jill was trying to get Meredith to sound meaner. She said not to forget how hungry they all were.”

“Still,” said Mom.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, a light snow starting to fall, the flakes strangely black in the headlights. The expression on Mom’s face changed in a way Ingrid had seen before. She knew what was coming next: As a kid Mom had been great at memorizing poems, had all this poetry inside her.

Mom spoke. She had this special poetry voice, quiet but musical, almost sounding like a different person.

The legends of the green chapels: Was that meant to be something about the woods? Ingrid didn’t think she’d ever heard anything so beautiful in her life; so different from those woods in “Hansel and Gretel.”

“Hunger or not,” Mom said, turning in to the driveway at 99 Maple Lane, “I just don’t buy it.”