The Sixty-Eight Rooms (19 page)

They ran to the window and saw the crowd responding to having just witnessed their two suspects vanish into thin air. Out of breath, they watched the confused group, led by the perplexed Martha Williams. The angry townspeople stood looking at each other, turning in circles, throwing their arms up, not believing their own eyes. Ruthie nearly shook as she heard the irate crowd through the window; remarkably, Martha declared that it had all been a mistake. She began blaming other members of the group for causing her to see evil that did not exist. She even accused some of them of casting some sort of spell on her. She walked furiously down the street, leaving them to argue and throw accusations at each other.

“Can you believe that?” Jack said, astonished.

“Well, now I understand why they hanged so many people! Everyone was blaming everyone else for things they didn’t understand!” Ruthie thought about it all for a moment. “Jack, I’m worried. I hope we didn’t cause any trouble for Thomas and his family. This could be terrible for them.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Jack searched his memory. “I’m pretty sure I never read about anyone named Wilcox being involved,” he said. He thought some more. “Sarah said her husband owned a store. Remember what we learned in class—that the important merchants and their families were never accused.” But he was worried too. Then he looked back at the ship on the fireplace mantel. “I wonder …,” he said, walking over to it. “There was a name burned into the bottom of this.” He took the model of the
Mayflower
down to inspect the underside of it. “Look! Does this say what I think it says?”

Ruthie took a look. It was hard to make out, but burned into the bottom of the ship was a name. “Thomas Wilcox,” she read, astounded.

“Thomas made this model ship!” Jack exclaimed.

Ruthie could hardly believe what she was seeing, but there was no doubt that was his name on the ship. It didn’t
prove for certain that Thomas and his family were safe, but it was a good sign. “What is it doing in here? How did Mrs. Thorne get it?”

“I dunno,” Jack answered. He examined the ship with great admiration. “But Thomas sure built a beautiful ship!”

R
UTHIE AND JACK TOOK OFF
the cloaks, shoes and hats and put them back on the hooks where they’d found them. They returned to the corridor filled with new questions and perhaps one important answer: it appeared that the townspeople could not see room A1.

“So people from the past can’t see us enter the Thorne Rooms. We must just vanish into thin air,” Ruthie figured.

“It sure seems like that,” Jack agreed. They still planned to verify this by asking Sophie some carefully worded questions in the morning. “What I want to know is how that ship got into the room. How did Mrs. Thorne do that?”

“How did she do any of it?” Ruthie added, her head a jumble of questions. She was also beginning to feel something else: fatigue.

“It’s two in the morning,” she said, looking at her watch. “No wonder I’m feeling so tired all of a sudden.”
Ruthie realized she would fall asleep soon whether she wanted to or not and she still had to decide which room to sleep in. They decided that it would be safer for them to be on the European side for lots of reasons. First of all, if for any reason they had to leave fast, they would be near the alcove exit, where there was less chance of getting caught. Even if the Gallery 11 key worked on the door to the American rooms’ access corridor—which they bet it did—that door opened right in front of the information booth. Second, all of the food was on the other side and they were both getting hungry—they hadn’t eaten since just after the cockroach attack.

“We need to go now, because soon I’ll be too tired and hungry to make the climb,” Ruthie said practically. They decided to look into a few more rooms before they left—but just quick peeks, no adventures. They walked along the ledge looking into room after room. One of the things Ruthie observed was that the ceilings were all lower in the American rooms, not like the castle or palace rooms, although some of the rooms from the South were pretty ornate. She especially liked the rooms that had old toys in them. She saw a child’s tea set with a saucer that she knew in real size must be no bigger than a grain of rice.

Ruthie began to yawn as they made their way back to the duct tape climbing strip.

“Ready?” Jack asked, picking up the bucket from where he had left it and attaching himself securely to the sticky strip.

“Yep,” Ruthie said, following. They had become expert climbers. Jack said he was going to try to invent some sort of climbing strip like this for full-size people. “I’d make a fortune!” he said. Halfway up he warned, “Watch out on your left.”

Looking up and to the left, Ruthie saw what Jack was alerting her to—a fly had gotten stuck to the tape and was trying in vain to free itself. It was as big as Ruthie’s head and very ugly, with its hairy legs and large globe-like eyes. Its wings, though, were kind of beautiful, like leaded glass. It wasn’t scary once she got used to it. After all, it was stuck and couldn’t move. Besides, it was no kid-eating cockroach. She found herself going by it slowly, fascinated. She even began to feel sorry for it and wondered if she should stop to try to set it free. Keeping her balance, she reached over and pulled gently on one of its legs. The spiky hairs were actually softer than they looked. She lifted another leg off the sticky surface. With two legs freed, the fly automatically began flapping its wings and Ruthie had to pull back out of the way fast. That was all it took to liberate the creature, and it flew away down the dark corridor. She felt she had done a good deed.

The two weary climbers made it to the top and forged ahead through the long, dark heating duct. This time they knew to get away from the edge quickly, in case the heat went on while they were too close to it. Fortunately, the heat did not go on this time and before long they were on the floor on the other side again.

“You know what?” Jack started. “I think I’ll sleep full size out here in the corridor. Just in case.”

“You mean because of the cockroach?”

“Exactly. I don’t want to wake up with some giant hissing monster about to take a bite out of me. One of us needs to stay on guard.”

“You’re probably right. You sure you’ll be okay out here on the floor?”

“No problem. I can sleep anywhere. Besides, I don’t really care about sleeping in one of those fancy beds—I’d only want to sleep in one of the castle rooms and they don’t have any beds in them. I’d be on the floor anyway.”

After returning to full size, eating some trail mix and helping Jack arrange a bed with their coats, Ruthie shrank back down again. She had Jack place her on the ledge outside room E17, the very first room she had entered. She walked into the room and felt happy with her choice, partly because she was so tired but also because one of her first wishes on seeing these rooms had been to experience sleeping in a bed this grand. She walked around the room and looked at all the sixteenth-century objects one more time.

She took off her sweatshirt jacket, placing it on a chair near a big carved wooden cabinet. Then she took her shoes off and laid them on the floor next to the bed. She pulled back the silk bedspread to find satin sheets underneath. She climbed in and stretched out. The sheets were cool and slippery. It felt wonderful. From the bed she looked around at the painted walls and the massive
chandelier and up to the high canopy. She pretended that this was her room and that she led a life that allowed this kind of luxury.

As she lay there, she thought about everything she had experienced in the past few hours and how lucky she and Jack were to have stumbled across this magic key. She rubbed her fingers across it in the pocket of her jeans. Questions whirled around in her sleepy head: How did the key work, and had Mrs. Thorne known about it? Where had the pencil and barrette come from? How had Christina’s book and Thomas’s
Mayflower
model ended up in these rooms? She thought about Thomas and figured he would be a man of nearly seventy when Ben Franklin did his famous key and kite experiment. Would Thomas hear about it? Would he remember Jack, the visitor from a faraway place called Chicago who’d showed him the fantastic object and tried to explain electricity to him? She still worried about the safety of Thomas’s family and whether she would be able to find out if she and Jack had caused problems for them. Could they warn Sophie about the dangers ahead in the French Revolution? And how could they ever go back to being just plain kids in Chicago? Ruthie fell asleep and dreamed all night of rooms, arrows and shimmering books, all dancing in her head to beautiful, glittering music.

“Hey, Ruthie, wake up!” Jack’s voice came from the corridor. He said it a few more times, and then added, “It’s almost seven!”

Who cares? Let me sleep
, Ruthie thought groggily as she rolled over and tried not to wake up.

“Ruthie! The museum opens at ten—we only have three hours left!”

That did it. Ruthie sat up in the beautiful bed and rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t still dreaming.

“Ruthie!” he called again, more insistently.

She called out to Jack, “Okay, okay! I’m waking up! Just give me a second.” Ruthie was really tired and forced herself to stay sitting up. She wanted to linger in this room fit for a queen. After a minute, she got off the bed, put her shoes on and, yawning, walked out to the corridor, where she found Jack raring to go. He lowered her to the floor and she took the key out of her pants pocket and dropped it.

“C’mon,” Jack said to the full-size Ruthie. “We promised Sophie we would meet her, remember?”

“Of course I remember, Jack. Just give me a minute to wake up, okay?” She looked at him and wondered how he could be so wide awake. “How long have you been up?”

“I dunno … about a half hour, I guess,” he said, handing her a chocolate chip granola bar.

“Thanks.”

Ruthie chewed in silence for a few minutes, waiting for her morning fog to lift. One thing she knew for certain: they had miscalculated how long they could go without using the bathroom. Even without having had anything to drink since yesterday afternoon except a few sips of cider,
she wasn’t going to be able to wait till they left the rooms. She wondered if Jack was having the same problem.

“Hey, Jack,” she started, “do you, uh, need to use the bathroom?”

“Yeah … I was wondering if you did too.”

They were both quiet for a moment, thinking.

“You don’t suppose we could ask Sophie where there’s a restroom?” Jack suggested.

“I don’t think I can hold it that long. And what if she doesn’t know where there’s a restroom?” Ruthie really didn’t want to go behind a bush in a public park in eighteenth-century Paris.

They had two options: trying to find a bathroom in the Thorne Rooms or somehow getting out to the ones in the museum. Almost all of the Thorne Rooms predated modern plumbing, and who knew how far into another world they would have to travel to find some sort of restroom. And they wouldn’t be wearing the right clothes for any of the rooms.

“The museum bathrooms are just around the corner,” Jack said. They were coming to the same conclusion.

“We can shrink down, go under the door and run along the baseboards. I bet we’ll be safe—the full guard staff isn’t on duty yet. We’d be as small as mice—we weren’t picked up by the motion detectors when we tried to get to the American corridor. Once we’re in the stalls, we’ll get big.” Ruthie was sure this was the best option.

“Okay. Let’s try it!” They ran to the door and let the key perform its magic.

Once they were out of Gallery 11, they felt even tinier, like two specks in a huge universe. The lights were still off in the museum. As five-inch-tall people, it was a much longer trip. They followed the baseboards through the hall, but they did have to make one nerve-wracking run across the wide-open space.

On the final leg of their journey, when they were about twenty feet from the bathrooms, something happened that they should have expected but didn’t. Ruthie noticed it first.

“Uh-oh, Jack. Something’s happening! I feel—”