The Rule of Threes, Marcy Campbell [short novels to read .TXT] 📗

look into the house, but the sheet was blocking his view. He started poking around in some weeds growing next to the concrete steps. “Sometimes she hides a spare key under a rock,” he said vaguely.

I didn’t know how he’d find a key in that jungle of weeds. Some of them were up to my knees. But I tried to help, spreading the plants apart, feeling around on the ground. Then I stopped.

“Tony, if your mom is here, wouldn’t she answer the door? If she sees it’s you?”

Tony was on his hands and knees in the weeds, but now he hopped up the three steps and knocked. It didn’t seem like he knocked that hard, but the street was deserted and the door was thin, and the sound really carried. Tony jiggled the doorknob, and again I thought we were doing this all backward. Check the doorknob first. But it was locked. He knocked again, but no one came.

“Let’s check the windows,” he said and ran to the side of the house with the staircase.

“Tony, I really don’t think she’s home,” I said. “I’m sorry, but . . .”

He completely ignored me. He pressed his hands on the window, trying to slide it up, but it didn’t work. It must have been locked. Then he made his way around the house, doing the same thing to all the windows. I followed him, watching his movements become quicker and more erratic with each failed attempt.

Eventually, he’d worked his way through all of them and we were left standing next to an iron door, a bit bigger than my backpack, cut into the siding, a few feet up from the ground.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A coal chute,” Tony said. “I told you this house was old.”

“You heat your house with coal?” I asked. The only place I’d seen that was in very old books.

“Of course we don’t. But the old houses still have these chutes.” He shrugged. “The landlord never bothered to seal it up.”

Tony stood there and looked at me, really studying me, starting with my toes and going all the way up to the top of my head. Then he looked back at the coal door.

“Oh no,” I said, backing away from him. “No way.” I pulled out my phone and handed it to Tony. “Try calling her. Tell her you’re here, and find out where she is.”

“She won’t have her phone,” he said, but he took my phone anyway and pressed the numbers. The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up. “I told you,” he said, handing it back. “She must have borrowed a phone to text Rakell. They don’t let her have a phone in the rehab place.”

Tony sat down in the grass and dead leaves. He cupped his elbow and brought his thumbnail up to his mouth. We were both shivering. The wind had picked up. A plastic bag was twirling around in the street and landed in a spindly tree, where it hung on for dear life by its handles.

“I bet she’s in there and taking a nap,” he said, “or a bath. She listens to music when she takes a bath, so she wouldn’t hear us. And if she’s sleeping, she wouldn’t hear us then either, because she’s a really sound sleeper. She wasn’t sleeping well at that place. She told me.”

Tony’s eyes filled up with tears, and he tried to wipe them away with a twist of his knuckles. I took a deep breath. I knew what he wanted me to do, but wasn’t I in enough trouble already? I wished the BFFs were here, though I already knew what they’d say. Olive would screw up her face and say it was too dangerous, and Rakell would say go for it. Or maybe not. They were both surprising me lately.

There was a small handle on the coal door. I lifted it, finding it was heavier than I thought it would be. I peered into the darkness.

“Where does this go?” I asked Tony.

He jumped up and grabbed the handle from me. “To the basement,” he said, “where the furnace and washer and dryer and stuff are.” He looked at me with a hopeful expression. “I’d go in, but I tried once to sneak out of the house when I got in a fight with my mom’s boyfriend, and I almost got stuck. Plus, I’m way bigger now.”

I took a step back. “Isn’t this breaking and entering?” Did I really need to add that to the vandalism already on my permanent record? Not to mention stealing, I thought, as I looked at my backpack.

“You’re not breaking anything, just entering,” he said. He had fresh tears on his face. “Please, Maggie.”

I stuffed my backpack in first and heard it land with a quiet thunk. I could see it there on the basement floor, which didn’t seem too far down. I could jump it. It would be no different than jumping off our front stoop.

Getting through the door wasn’t very difficult, but I had to go feet first, backward. I scratched my stomach as I slid over the metal, but it didn’t hurt too bad. There was a little wriggling for my shoulders, but then I slid and fell a couple of feet.

I landed right on my butt, on the cold concrete floor. I stood up and rubbed it, let my eyes adjust to the dark.

“Are you okay?” Tony called through the rectangular patch of light.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I called back. I knew my butt would be sore later, and my stomach stung from the scrape, but there wasn’t any blood. I had dirt all over my clothes—ages-old coal dust, I guessed. I tried to brush some of it off.

Tony yelled, “Go upstairs and unlock the front door.”

I picked up my backpack and skirted a pile of laundry on the floor by the washing machine. There were some old baseball bats in the corner and cans and cans of paint lined up and stacked on top of each