Under Their Skin (6 page)

FOURTEEN

They were lucky: The snow was the dry, powdery kind that shoveled easily. A lot of it blew back onto the driveway as soon as they dumped it into the yard, but Nick and Eryn weren't really trying to clear the pavement. They were just making it look
like they'd tried.

“That's good enough,” Eryn said as Nick got down to the end of the driveway and emptied his last shovelful. Her voice was muffled by the scarf wrapped around her head.

“Should we do Mr. Cohen's driveway now or later?” Nick asked. “First thing or afterwards?”

He could tell Eryn was struggling with the answer.

“Now, I guess,” she said reluctantly.

They tramped down the block and turned onto Oriole Drive. All the streets in their new neighborhood were named for birds. Nick hadn't taken the time to look closely, but apparently all the streets in Ava and Jackson's mom's neighborhood were named for plants, or parts of plants.

Nick hoisted his shovel over his shoulder and felt a folded-up piece of paper rustle inside his coat. It was the map they'd printed out for getting to Briarthorn Lane. Eryn had insisted on it.

“We'll have our phones with us,” Nick had argued, trying to cut down on the number of tasks they had to do before leaving the house.

“Right, and we need to turn off the GPS function on the phones so Mom can't tell where we go,” Eryn argued. “I'm pretty sure that means we can't use Wi-Fi.”

Nick was kind of amazed that Eryn would think of something like that. That was spy stuff. She was a twelve-year-old wearing pink snow boots. Nick couldn't make the two things fit together in his mind.

Mom and Michael wouldn't really try to track us on GPS—would they?
Nick wondered.
Don't they trust us?

Why should Mom and Michael trust them when Nick and Eryn were doing things Mom and Michael didn't want them to do?

Nick knew that getting permission to go “around the corner” didn't really make it right.

Just go find out why Mom and Michael don't want us meeting Ava and Jackson,
Nick told himself.
Then worry about the consequences.

They got to Mr. Cohen's house, and Eryn began pushing her shovel ahead of her on the sidewalk, making a path.

“You go up to his house and let him know we're here,” she told Nick. “So we have an alibi. And a witness.”

Was Eryn maybe a little too good at thinking like a criminal?

Nick copied her technique with his shovel, clearing a path to Mr. Cohen's front door. The snow swirled around him as he stood on Mr. Cohen's front porch and rang the doorbell. From inside the house, Nick could hear a TV turned up loud, some talk show–type yammering about politics and “the type of world we're going to leave for our children.”

Nobody came, so Nick gave up on the doorbell and pounded his fist against the front door. He took off his glove so the pounding wouldn't be so muffled.

Finally Mr. Cohen opened the door a crack. Nick could see that the old man was wearing sweatpants under a thick terrycloth robe.

“Hi,” Nick said. “We're the Stone kids from around the corner. We're shoveling off your driveway and sidewalk so you can get out if you want.”

“Wasn't planning to,” Mr. Cohen grunted. He stood there blankly for a moment. His sparse hair was matted
on one side of his head, like he hadn't even bothered combing it yet this morning. “But—thanks. Um . . . you weren't expecting me to pay, were you?”

“No, no,” Nick said, trying to sound generous and kind. “It's our gift to you.”

“Oh,” Mr. Cohen said. “Okay. That's good. I'm on a fixed income, you know.”

He shut the door in Nick's face. Nick went back to Eryn, who'd already started on the driveway.

“Don't work too hard,” Nick told her. “He doesn't care if we shovel or not.”

“Alibi,” Eryn said, panting a little as she tossed a shovelful to the side. “Witness. Plausible deniability.”

Where did she come up with this stuff?

“He's going to remember what time we were here,” Nick warned, digging his shovel into the next swath of untouched snow. “He'll remember which TV show he had on.”

“He's a confused old man,” Eryn said. “We can say he's wrong about the time, just right that we were here. And the driveway will prove it.”

“Not if it's snowed over again,” Nick muttered.

“Then we can stop on our way back and freshen things up,” Eryn said calmly.

They were done in under fifteen minutes.

They considered stashing the shovels somewhere, because they could walk faster without them, but Eryn decided they needed the cover story of being kids out looking to make some money in the snowstorm. They both balanced the shovels against their shoulders and took off toward Lipman Park: Oriole to Raven to Eagle's Wing, and then into the neighborhood where all the streets were mammalian: Lion's Paw Drive to Elephant Street to Wolf's Howl Parkway. . . .

“Why do you think we didn't find anything else interesting in Ava's and Jackson's rooms?” Eryn asked as they slipped and slid along unshoveled sidewalks. Evidently everyone else was waiting until the snow stopped
before attacking the drifts.

“Maybe Ava and Jackson just aren't very interesting kids,” Nick suggested. “Maybe the real problem is that they're totally boring, and that's what Mom and Michael don't want us to find out.”

“Nobody's totally boring,” Eryn countered. “People are fascinating.”

This was one of Mom's lines, something she'd used on them when they were younger and complained about not liking certain kids in their class.

They'd quickly learned not to complain about anyone. Even the boy who still picked his nose every day of third grade. Even the girl whose favorite topic for every conversation was ear wax.

“Mr. Cohen is boring,” Nick said. “He just stood there like,
duuhhh . . .”

Nick did an open-mouthed imitation that would have included drool if he hadn't been afraid it would freeze on his chin.

“One should always be compassionate toward the elderly,” Eryn said loftily, imitating Mom again. “One could even argue that they are reminders to us that any one of us might someday face a battle against infirmities and disabilities and mental decline.”

Nick snorted.

“You're mean,” he said.

“Me?” Eryn protested. “You're the one making fun of a defenseless old man!”

They struggled onward through the snowdrifts for a few moments in silence. The wind seemed fiercer than ever, cutting in under the hood of Nick's coat.

“Do you really think I'm mean?” Eryn asked. “Is that my true identity? Is that what Ava and Jackson might think of me?”

How was Nick supposed to answer that?

“Mom says you're not supposed to worry about what other people think of you,” he said. “The question is, what are we going to think of Ava and Jackson?”

“No, the question is, what's the big secret about them?” Eryn asked. She stamped her foot hard, smashing a pile of fluffy snow completely flat. “And why are Mom and Michael trying so hard to keep us from finding it?”

FIFTEEN

Lipman Park, when they reached it, was a vast, frozen wasteland of drifted snow. Eryn's feet had been numb since back at Mr. Cohen's, and she couldn't understand how she could feel so cold even as she was sweating beneath her coat, sweater, and Under Armour.

Getting to the other side of Lipman Park seemed about as practical as walking across Siberia. Or to the South Pole.

Nick took the first step off the sidewalk, into the untouched terrain. He pulled his shovel down from his shoulder and planted the handle in the snow, like a flag.

“I claim this territory for Nicholas the First of Maywoodia!” he cried out.

Eryn quickly landed the handle end of her shovel beside his.

“And Eryn the First of Maywoodia!” she added.

She liked that he didn't even bother arguing,
Nunh-uh! I claimed it first!
And she liked that neither one had looked around first to see if anyone was watching them. Not that anyone sane would be out in this weather
to
watch them.

I bet Ava and Jackson would never pretend snow shovels are flagpoles,
she thought as she and Nick picked up their shovels again.

How could she think that when nothing in Ava's or Jackson's rooms had seemed much different from anything in Eryn's or Nick's rooms?

Was there the slightest detail about the other kids' rooms that had been different?

She trudged forward, directly into the wind, for several painful steps before the answer came to her. The difference wasn't something that had been in the other kids' rooms—it was something missing.

“Nick, hey, Nick,” she said, pounding on his back. “Did you see any worthless treasures in Jackson's or Ava's rooms?”

Because she had her scarf over her mouth, the question came out more like,
Id oo ee a-ee orth-ss . . .

She pulled the scarf back, and the snow that had piled up on it collapsed in on her neck. She shook it off and asked her question again.

Nick squinted back at her from beneath his ice-
encrusted hood. He even had ice in the hair that poked out from underneath his knit cap.

“Worthless treasures?” he repeated.

“You know, like that feather you've had since you were five, because you said it gave you luck in a T-ball game,” Eryn said. “Or the stone I picked up on that one picnic with Dad years ago—the one that looks like it has a ribbon of gold in it, even though everyone told me it isn't gold. The things Mom always says are pointless to keep, and why don't we just let her throw them out? But we never do.”

“Maybe Ava and Jackson actually listen to her,” Nick said. “Or Michael told them what she's like, and so they keep all their worthless treasures at their mom's.”

“Maybe,” Eryn said. She couldn't let go of the sense that she'd figured out something important—a major clue. She just didn't know why it would be important.

They kept walking through the deep snow. Eryn tried to avoid the drifts that were high enough to spill over into her boots, but it was hard to tell when everything around her was white and frozen. Even the air felt frozen.

“I put the posters back up in your room,” Nick said as they passed the tree that stood in the middle of the park.

“You did? Why?” Eryn asked.

“I didn't want Mom or Michael to have any reason to
be suspicious about anything,” Nick said. “We can't let them see that anything's changed.”

Eryn guessed that he'd done that while she was still looking through Ava's and Jackson's rooms and he'd given up. It kind of seemed like she should be mad at him for messing with her posters without asking, but she felt grateful instead.

“Okay,” she said.

They reached the far side of Lipman Park. Eryn liked knowing she was back on paved sidewalk, no matter how icy and slick it was. Briarthorn Lane was only a few blocks away now.

“You aren't thinking we'd knock on the door first thing, are you?” Nick asked. “I think we should scout around first and see if their mom or stepdad are home. Do they have a stepdad?”

“I don't know,” Eryn said, and it bothered her that she didn't even know that. She shivered, and it wasn't just because of the snow melting against her neck.

She rewrapped her scarf and kept going.

Briarthorn Lane, when they reached it, looked a lot like their own street: pleasant two-story houses; a tree or two in every yard; everything muffled and still, as if the blanket of snow absorbed every motion and sound.

Eryn found herself wanting to tiptoe, which was almost impossible to do in snow boots. She started wishing her winter coat was white or cream-colored instead of bright purple. Any color that wouldn't stand out against all the snow.

“Forty sixty-seven . . . forty seventy-five . . . forty eighty-three,” Nick whispered, coming to a stop in front of a Cape Cod–style house painted gray with blue trim.

Eryn felt a tremor of panic in her stomach.

“Don't just stand there!” she complained. “Don't be so obvious!”

“Is there a nonchalant way to spy on your secret stepsiblings?” Nick asked.

Eryn looked around. Of course nobody else was out in this weather. Pretending she was only trying to shield her face from the wind, she pulled her scarf tighter, bent her head down, and took off running toward an evergreen tree planted at the side of the house. As soon as she reached it, she dove down under the low branches.

The branches shook, dumping snow on her and, a moment later, Nick.

Good,
she told herself.
It'll be like camouflage.

She lifted her head, inched slightly closer to the house, and peeked in the nearest window.

SIXTEEN

“Let me see too,” Nick hissed, coming up behind Eryn.

She turned her head just enough to frown at him, but scooted slightly to the left.

Eryn's shovel was in his way, so he took it from her and tucked it—and his own—under the tree branches, mostly out of sight. Then he pressed his forehead against the cold bottom pane of the window, his face just high enough to bring his eyes level with the lowest part of the glass. He could see a living room—or maybe it was a family room—with floral couches and ruffled curtains. He felt sorry for Jackson, and maybe for Ava, too; apparently their mom liked stupid fussy, frilly stuff.

Then Nick realized Ava and Jackson were sitting on one of the couches.

Why did it take me so long to notice them?
Nick wondered.

How had they blended in so completely with the flowery pattern?

They were sitting so still. Nick had never known anyone his own age who could sit completely motionless like that.

Both of them held laptops against their knees, and maybe their eyes flicked back and forth, reading the screens. But they were both turned sideways, so Nick couldn't tell for sure.

“It's definitely them, right?” Nick whispered to Eryn.

She nodded without glancing his way.

Nick wasn't sure why he'd had to ask. Both Ava and Jackson looked exactly like the pictures back at Mom and Michael's house. Nick didn't have any way to measure it, of course, but he would have said their hair was exactly the same length; the scar in Jackson's eyebrow was just as distinct.

Why did that seem odd?

Nick heard footsteps inside the house and ducked his head down. Then curiosity got the better of him, and he peeked over the window ledge again.

A woman was standing in a doorway behind Ava and Jackson. She had the same reddish hair as Ava, but hers was even longer, falling in waves halfway to her waist. She was wearing a thick green sweater over a pair of jeans that looked strangely tattered and worn for someone who owned such frilly, prissy couches.

Evidently she'd just called out to Ava and Jackson, because they finally moved—finally proved themselves capable of movement—by turning to face her.

“Keep watching,” Nick whispered to Eryn. “I'll listen.”

He turned his head to press an ear rather than his eyebrows against the glass.

“—work on your research for those essays,” the woman was saying, her voice distant and swimmy through the glass. “I want to see true, high-quality sixth-grade work.”

So they're in sixth grade like Eryn and me?
Nick thought.
They really are the same age as us?

The woman was still talking.

“I'm going to chop vegetables for the soup. Doesn't this cold weather make you want soup?”

Nick didn't hear Ava or Jackson answer, but they'd probably just grunted or shrugged. That's what Nick did when Mom asked stupid questions like that.

He heard footsteps again, like the woman was walking away.

He went back to looking in the window. Ava and Jackson didn't move. Ava and Jackson didn't move. Ava and Jackson didn't move.

“Oh, this is thrilling,” Nick complained to Eryn.

“Wait,” Eryn whispered back. “I'm thinking.”

“Think about the fact that we don't have forever,” Nick said. “Think about the fact that if we aren't back home before Mom and Michael get there, they'll kill us. We'll be grounded until we're thirty.”

“We won't ever turn thirty if they kill us,” Eryn said.

“Exactly. So we'd be grounded forever.”

But Eryn probably didn't hear his witty comeback, because just then a blast of music came from the back of the house—probably from the kitchen where the woman had gone to chop vegetables. It was one of those old songs Mom and Dad listened to, something from when they were in college. Nirvana? Smashing Pumpkins? Beastie Boys? It all sounded the same to Nick.

Whatever it was, it was
loud.
It was loud enough that the woman wouldn't be able to hear anything from the living/family room, not even if Ava and Jackson screamed.

Probably not, anyway.

Nick started shimmying away from the window and out from under the evergreen.

“Where are you going?” Eryn whispered.

“To meet Ava and Jackson,” Nick said. He stood up. “What else did we come all this way for? I'm going to knock on the door.”