Hildie stole another peek out the window, then smiled. “Looks to me like he’s doing just fine. Right now, I’d say the odds are about two-to-one that Jeff’s going to have to pay me off.” She chuckled mischievously. “And, oh, how that boy hates it when he loses bets with me!”
Brenda took a bite of the doughnut, then smiled at Hildie. “You really love these kids, don’t you?” she asked.
“Every one of them,” Hildie replied. “There’s nothing as satisfying as watching these children grow up and become everything it’s possible for them to become.”
They’ll take him, Brenda said silently to herself, forming the words more as a prayer than anything else. They’ve just got to take him. He belongs here.
As Brenda MacCallum and Hildie Kramer stepped out onto the loggia half an hour later, Josh glanced up for a split second, then quickly returned his attention to the board. In his mind, he reviewed once more all the various moves the pieces he still controlled could make, then shifted his point of view to the other side, calculating all the possible countermoves Jeff could make to whatever he might do.
Unless there was something he hadn’t noticed, he could move his castle four spaces ahead, and no matter what Jeff did, he would be able to capture Jeff’s king on his next move.
And then what would happen?
Jeff was the same age as the boys in Josh’s class at Eden School, and he remembered the looks in their eyes on Monday, when he’d been able to answer the questions they had not.
Angry looks, looks that had hurt him almost as much as if they’d hit him.
Would Jeff look at him the same way?
Or had Jeff deliberately lost, making mistakes on purpose?
In his mind he reviewed the whole game, move by move. The image of the board was clear, and as he mentally replayed the long match, he very carefully studied everything Jeff had done.
None of his moves had been stupid, and none of his mistakes — if there had been any — had been obvious.
And the situation now was obvious, too.
So if he didn’t make the move with the castle, Jeff would know that he himself was throwing the game.
Still he hesitated.
And then, next to him, he heard Brad’s voice. “Come on, Josh, do it. He knows you’re going to. Why don’t you just finish him off?”
Josh glanced up to see both boys watching him. Brad looked eager to see the last move, but Jeff looked …
What?
Not mad. In fact, he looked as if he knew what was coming, and was just waiting for it to happen.
Tentatively Josh reached out and shifted the castle.
“Checkmate!” Brad crowed. “He got you! On his very first game, he got you!”
Josh didn’t move, waiting.
A smile — slightly twisted, but nevertheless a smile — appeared on Jeff’s lips. If he was angry, his eyes didn’t show it. Indeed, they barely showed anything. “Pretty good,” Jeff admitted. “Maybe we ought to enter you in the tournament this year.”
“And maybe you ought to pay me my dollar,” Hildie Kramer, appearing at the door, reminded him.
Jeff shrugged. “All my money’s up in my room. How ’bout if I pay you later on?”
“How ’bout if you get my dollar before I forget about it?” Hildie countered.
“Aw, come on, Hildie, gimme a break—”
“A bet’s a bet. If you can’t stand to lose, don’t play the game. Now go on.”
“Aw, Jeez,” Jeff groaned, but got to his feet and signaled to Josh to come with him. “Come on, you might as well see how terrible the rooms are here. Maybe you can talk your mom out of putting you in this jail.” He ducked out of the way as Hildie took a playful swipe at him, and a moment later darted into the house, with Josh following.
As they entered the huge foyer, Josh stopped, gazing around him in wonder. At the foot of the stairs, Jeff grinned at him.
“Cool, huh?” he said.
Josh nodded, his eyes fixed on the brass cage of the elevator. “Does that work?” he breathed.
Jeff’s grin broadened. “Sure. Wanta ride it?”
Josh nodded mutely, already moving toward the ancient contraption. He pulled the door open, watching as the polished brass slats of the barrier folded in on themselves. Stepping inside, he waited for Jeff, then closed the door with a resounding clang. He pressed a worn black button with a faintly visible arrow pointed upward still etched into its surface, and the machine came to life. From somewhere below, gears meshed, and the car jerked into motion, rattling satisfyingly as it rose slowly to the second floor, guided only by its skeletal frame.
“Really cool,” Josh breathed as he followed Jeff out onto the second floor landing.
“Wait’ll you see my room,” Jeff replied. “It’s the coolest one in school.”
Josh frowned, remembering Jeff’s words of only a few moments ago. “But you said it was like a jail—”
“I was just giving Hildie a hard time. Come on.”
He led Josh to a room at the end of the hall. Opening the door, he stepped aside to let Josh go in first. “Ta-da!” he sang, flinging out an arm as if he were a magician who’d just amazed his audience. “The most excellent room in school, awarded to me because I’m a truly awesome person!”
Josh gazed around the large room. It was at least four times the size of the one he shared with his baby sister at home, and had windows on two sides. There was a desk covered with a scattering of books and papers, and an unmade bed with a jumble of dirty clothes at its end. But what grabbed Josh’s attention was an enormous aquarium that sat against the wall next to one of the windows. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before, and it was filled with fish he instantly recognized from pictures he’d seen in the Eden library’s collection of National Geographies.
“Jeez,” he whispered. “That’s saltwater, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” Jeff grunted. As Josh went over to look more closely at the aquarium, Jeff began rooting around in his desk in search of the money he kept hidden there.
“How do you keep it so clean?” Josh asked. “In school, we couldn’t even keep a little freshwater one balanced.”
“It’s computerized,” Jeff told him. “See?” He began showing Josh all the sensors in the tank, sensors that were attached to the computer that sat on his desk. “The computer’s always monitoring it, keeping the water aerated and checking all the filters. It even keeps track of the salinity, and tells me what I need to add.”
“Wow,” Josh breathed. “How long have you had it?”
Jeff shrugged. “A while. Since last year. But I’m getting kind of tired of it. I mean, fish don’t do anything, you know?”
“But it’s neat,” Josh protested. “If I had something like this—”
But Jeff wasn’t listening to him. “If you want to see something neat,” he interrupted, “you should see what my brother’s got”
“Your brother?” Josh asked. “Where is he?”
“Next door,” Jeff replied. “Come on.”
He led Josh to the room adjoining his own. Without bothering to knock, he pushed the door open and walked in. In contrast to the chaos in his own room, this room was neat and tidy, the bed made, all the clothes put away in the closet and dresser. The desktop was bare save for a computer, and all the books were neatly arranged on the shelves.
A boy sat at the computer terminal, his fingers flying over the keyboard, his eyes glued to the monitor. If he was aware he was no longer alone in the room, he gave no sign. Jeff nudged Josh, held his finger to his lips, then crept up behind the other boy. Abruptly, he grabbed his brother’s chair and spun him around. “My brother, the computer nerd,” he announced.
Josh’s eyes widened.