“Cool!” Robbie pulled it open. “It looks like it’s going to be a closet, but there’s stairs!” He immediately started down, and, reluctantly, James followed, flipping on the light at the top of the steps before descending.
Maybe he’d been building it up in his mind into something it wasn’t, but when he reached the bottom, James felt a distinct letdown. This wasn’t the spooky chamber he’d been dreading but merely a small storage room lined with boxes and sacks filled with unpacked junk from their old house. He glanced toward the corner where the dirty man had been standing in his dream. An exercise bike was pressed against the wall.
“This is killer!” Robbie was walking up the narrow open space in the center of the cellar. “You should ask your parents if you can make this into your room!”
James shook his head. “Not enough light. Besides, I like to have a window.”
“You could put extra lights in here. And you’d have tons of privacy. And if a tornado hit, you’d be totally safe.”
“Come on. How often does New Mexico have tornadoes?”
“Sometimes.”
“In Jardine? Never.”
“But this is so great! And it’s underground!”
While the basement wasn’t what his mind had made it out to be, James still didn’t want to stay here any longer than he had to, so he said, “You want to see great, check out my real bedroom. It’s upstairs. You can see the street from my window.”
Robbie grinned. “That’s cool, too.”
“We can spy on people.” James led the way back up the steps to the kitchen, and the two of them hurried past the parents, still talking in the living room, and headed up to the second floor. James pushed his door open wide and stood proudly to the side as his friend entered the bedroom.
“Wow,” Robbie said, taking in the posters on the wall, the built-in television cabinet, the beanbag chair on the large expanse of floor between the bed and the desk.
“Look over here.” James went over to the window, pointing down. On the sidewalk in front of the house, an elderly couple was walking slowly, arm in arm. On the street beyond, two men in racing gear bicycled past, going the opposite direction.
“This is awesome.”
“And they can’t see us that good because the tree branches kind of block us. Even if they were looking in our direction—which they aren’t.” James grinned. “This is my room. This is where I live.”
“You are so lucky.”
“And when I get my Wii, the only time I’ll leave my room is for meals.”
“Will I be able to come over?”
James fell into the beanbag chair in a way that he thought was impressively smooth. “Sure.”
Robbie leaned against the windowsill. “So, are you really coming back to Fillmore this year?”
“Yep. Thank goodness.”
“Was Pierce really that bad?”
“I told you—it’s a horrible school. I had no friends there. None. The kids are all—I don’t know—losers. I’m just glad to be out of there.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re coming back.”
There was a shout from downstairs. Robbie’s parents were leaving. The two of them hurried down. Robbie reddened with embarrassment when his mom gave him a hug, and he promised her he would behave. He took his suitcase and rolled-up sleeping bag from his dad, who playfully punched his shoulder and said, “We’ll pick you up in the morning, sport. Have fun.”
“Robbie can spend the day tomorrow if he wants,” James’s mother said. “We can bring him home in the afternoon or evening.”
“That’d be fine, if he wants to. That sound good to you, buddy?”
Robbie nodded happily.
“All right, then.” His dad smiled down at him. “Come home when you want to.” He looked over at James’s parents. “Whenever you get tired of him. We should be home all day.”
“Six o’clock at the latest,” Robbie’s mom said.
Good-byes were said, and after his parents left, Robbie toted his suitcase up to James’s room, where the two of them hung out and played computer games for the next hour.
For dinner, they had pizza, James and Robbie going with James’s dad to pick it up, and afterward they watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a movie they’d both seen a million times but that they both still thought was hilarious. Megan pretty much hid in her room for the entire evening, and that was another great thing about tonight—James hardly had to see her. BBC America was having a Doctor Who marathon, and they watched that until eleven, when James’s mom told them it was time to go to bed.
Robbie had already unrolled his sleeping bag on the floor, and while James’s mom had given him an extra pillow to use, he decided to rest his head on the beanbag chair instead. James, of course, slept in his bed. The two of them talked for a while in the dark—it was their goal to stay up until midnight—but they were tired, and within ten minutes both of them were fast asleep.
“James!”
The cry sliced through sleep and into his dream, waking him.
“James!” It came again.
He sat up groggily, opening his eyes. There was an edge of annoyance or desperation in his friend’s voice that indicated Robbie had been trying to wake him up for a while, and he had the sense that the other boy had been calling his name for some time.
James leaned over the side of the bed. “What is it?” he whispered.
“I want to go home.” It sounded as though Robbie was about to cry.
James squinted over at the clock Ms. Hitchens had given him last year for reading more books than any other student in the class. The multicolored numbers indicated that it was two thirty. “It’s the middle of the night!” James said.
Robbie did start to cry. “I want to go home!”
James felt scared. He had never seen his friend like this before and didn’t know what he was supposed to do or how to react.
But he was scared for another reason as well.
He was suddenly sure that Robbie had had a nightmare about the basement.
It was not something he would ask about, for the simple reason that he didn’t want to know, but the possibility frightened him, and he imagined his friend dreaming about the dirty man standing in the corner, grinning.
Maybe if they ignored the problem, it would go away. “Just go back to sleep,” James said. He felt sure that if they could just make it to morning, everything would be all right.
“I can’t!” Robbie cried.
There was a knock at the door, and James’s dad gently pushed it open. “Everything all right in here?”
“We’re fine,” James offered quickly.
“I want to go home,” Robbie said, sniffling.
His dad turned on the light, and the room was suddenly filled with a brilliant glare that, coming after the darkness, caused James to squint. “What’s the matter?” his dad asked kindly.
“I want to go home,” Robbie repeated.
The look on his father’s face told James that his dad thought the boy was probably just homesick. That was a possibility—but Robbie had stayed overnight at their old house before and nothing like this had happened.
“I have an idea.” His dad left for a moment and came back with a cordless phone, which he handed to Robbie. “Here. Let’s call your parents.”
Nodding assent, Robbie took the phone. In the silence, James could hear the beeping of the numbers as his friend dialed, and then several rings before a faint voice answered.
“Dad? I want to come home.” Robbie was no longer crying, but his voice still quavered with emotion. There was a pause. “I know.” Robbie sniffed into the phone. “Yeah.” There was a long silence. James could hear the faint chipmunk chatter of his friend’s dad on the other end of the line. “Okay,” Robbie said finally. “Okay. I will.” He handed the phone back. “Here. My dad wants to talk to you.”