They jumped back on their bicycles and pedalled to the Mormon house, as fast as they could. The shadows were getting sharper, and more complicated. The clipped boxwood globes punctuating the median of Main Street glowed brilliantly at the sun’s edge, like a long rank of crescent moons with three-quarters of their spheres darkened, but still visible. Crickets and frogs had begun to shriek in the dark banks of privet along the street. When, at last—gasping for breath, stepping down hard on the pedals—they rode in sight of the frame house, they saw that the porch was dark and the driveway empty. Up and down the street, the only soul in sight was an ancient black man with sharp, shiny cheekbones, as taut-faced and serene as a mummy, ambling peacefully down the sidewalk with a paper bag under his arm.
Hely and Harriet concealed their bicycles beneath a sprawling summersweet bush in the median’s center. From behind it they watched, warily, until the old man tottered around the corner and out of view. Then they darted across the street and squatted amidst the low, sprawling branches of a fig tree in the yard next door—for there was no cover in the yard of the frame house, not even a shrub, nothing but a brackish tuft of monkey grass encircling a sawn tree trunk.
“How are we going to get up there?” said Harriet, eyeing the gutter which ran from first to second story.
“Hang on.” Breathless with his own daring, Hely shot from the shelter of the fig tree and ran pell-mell up the stairs and then—just as rapidly—skimmed down again. He darted across the open yard and dove back under the tree, by Harriet. “Locked,” he said, with a silly, comic-book shrug.
Together, through a tremble of leaves, they regarded the house. The side facing them was dark. On the street side, in the rich light, the windows glowed lavender in the setting sun.
“Up there,” said Harriet, and pointed. “Where the roof is flat, see?”
Above the pitched roof-ledge peaked a small gable. Within it, a tiny, frosted window was cracked an inch or two at the bottom. Hely was about to ask how she planned to get up there—it was a good fifteen feet off the ground—when she said: “If you give me a boost, I’ll climb up the gutter.”
“No way!” Hely said; for the gutter was rusted nearly in two.
It was a very small window—hardly a foot wide. “I’ll bet that’s the bathroom window,” said Harriet. She pointed to a dark window positioned halfway up. “Where’s that one go?”
“To the Mormons. I checked.”
“What’s in there?”
“Stairs. There’s a landing with a bulletin board and some posters.”
“Maybe—Got you,” said Harriet, triumphantly, as she slapped her arm, and then examined the bloody mosquito smeared on her palm.
“Maybe the upstairs and downstairs connect on the inside,” she said to Hely. “You didn’t see anybody in there, did you?”
“Look, Harriet, they’re not home. If they come back and catch us we’ll say it’s a dare but we need to hurry or else let’s forget about it. I’m not sitting out here all night.”
“Okay …” She took a deep breath, and darted into the cleared yard, Hely right behind her. Up the stairs they pattered. Hely watched the street while Harriet, hand to glass, peered inside: deserted stairwell stacked with folding chairs; sad, tan-colored walls brightened by a wavery bar of light from a window facing the street. Beyond was a water cooler, a notice board tacked with posters (DO TALK TO STRANGERS! RX FOR AT-RISK KIDS).
The window was shut, no screen. Side by side, Hely and Harriet curled their fingers under the tongue of the metal sash and tugged at it, uselessly—
As soon as it was gone, they stepped out of the shadows and tried again. “What’s with this?” Hely whispered, craning on tiptoe to peer at the center of the window, where the top pane and the bottom pane met, perfectly flush.
Harriet saw what he meant. There was no lock, and no space for the panes to slide over each other. She ran her fingers over the sash.
“Hey,” whispered Hely, suddenly, and motioned for her to help.
Together, they pushed the top of the pane inward; something caught and squeaked and then, with a groan, the bottom of the window swung out on a horizontal pivot. One last time, Hely checked the darkening street—thumbs up, coast clear—and a moment later they were wriggling in together, side by side.
Hanging head down, fingertips on the floor, Hely saw the gray specks on the linoleum rushing in at him, fast, as if the simulated granite was the surface of an alien planet hurtling at him a million miles an hour—
