Overnight (6 page)

She watched the clock tick past eleven more minutes before Mr. Donnelley thudded downstairs. Damp, red-faced, and changed into an ugly tan-striped tracksuit. He plodded past Martha and into the dining room, his cell phone in hand, talking to himself.

“The mail, the mail. What the…? Did we not get mail today?” He was peering into an empty basket on the console. He was standing so close to Martha that she could have stepped on his slippered foot.

“There.” From her perch on the first step, Martha leaned forward and pointed across the hall to the coffee table in the darkened living room.

That’s where the mail got dropped in her house.

Mr. Donnelley frowned as he noticed Martha. He lumbered into the living room. Martha watched him snatch up the stack of mail, cross the hall back into the dining room, and drop the whole bundle in the console’s mail basket. Then he took all the mail out again to read, proving his point to nobody.

Picky, picky, thought Martha. That’s the Donnelleys. Him
and
her. Maybe that’s what made them marry each other. Or maybe one turned picky to copycat the other.

Mr. Donnelley ripped open envelopes and hardly read their contents. Soon, he had discarded the whole mess in the mail basket.

“Yes, I’m here!” he barked into the phone. “I’ve been holding for over three minutes. Hope this doesn’t indicate how you guys handle emergencies!” There was grit in his voice. Mr. Donnelley was used to getting things done. Martha bet he was a mean dad or boss when he got angry. “I’d like to report a child who might be missing. Description? Um, stay right there. Let me put my wife on the line.”

When the two police arrived in their squad car, the Donnelley house became a public place of banging doors, of heavy footsteps, of deep adult voices asking questions, of walkie-talkie static and blue lights swirling.

The police, Officer Mustache and Officer Bird Eyes, ordered the girls to come inside—“Too dangerous!”—and they asked them all the same things.

Who had seen Gray last?

Approximately when was Gray seen last?

What was the last thing Gray said?

Where did Gray say she was going?

Zoë talked the most, but Ty had the most answers. He said Gray had left the family room to get some juice the same minute the car Fiori Dulce passed Renata in the Daytona 500.

“It’s a rerun, but we can still pinpoint that time,” said Officer Bird Eyes, making a note in her book.

Martha’s own secret squeezed her stomach. Should she tell the police about that lady by the mailbox? No, no, not now. The right moment would come. Besides, it was fun to have a secret. It was fun to hold her secret like a chocolate heart melting in her mouth.

“Look, guns!” said Leticia, pointing to the holsters as the officers went upstairs to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Donnelley privately, in the den.

“My dad owns a gun,” Serena admitted softly.

“Mine, too,” lied Martha, trying to imagine her bookworm father with a gun dangling from his soft hand.

“Rugrats, listen up,” said Topher. “Cops say you have to stay put and all together. So we’re gonna camp out here in the dining room. You leave only with special permission, and only for, like, the bathroom. Got it? ’Cause we don’t know if there’s, y’know, someone…” His eyes darted to the window, to the parked police car alive with light and scratchy sound.

“Gray is ruining my party!” Caitlin burst out. “I’m sick of looking for her and thinking about her!”

“Me, too,” added Kristy.

“Wow. If your friend got, like,
hit
by a
bus
and is lying in some, like,
hospital
room,
unconscious
and
bleeding
,” Topher answered, “then I personally will go sit beside her bed and wait for her to wake up. So that I can be the first one to tell her how
you guys
said she, like,
ruined
your party. Some friends
you
are.
Brats,
more like. Now who wants pizza? Plain or pepperoni?” He pointed to Leticia. “Plain or pepperoni? Let’s go!”

“I’m lactose intolerant,” said Leticia. She had not looked at Martha once since she had come inside. Not once. Leticia was being a pain. A real fun-wrecker, and all over such a tiny thing as cheating.

“The pizza’s cold,” said Serena.

“I’m not hungry,” added Zoë.

Martha said, “Lemonade and pepperoni.”

Topher snapped his fingers and pointed at her in a way that made Martha blush. “Take an example from this kid. One lemonade, one slice of pepperoni, coming up. If it’s too cold, give it to me and I’ll stick in it the microwave.”

Girls glanced uncertainly at Martha and then began to sit down, spreading their laps with pink napkins as Topher opened the pizza boxes on the sideboard. He used a spatula to carry and slide the first piece onto Martha’s plate. He poured her lemonade. Martha said thank you and took a huge bite to show the rest of them how easy it was.

One by one, the other girls asked for orange, grape, or lemonade. For plain or pepperoni. Leticia peeled cheese off her slice without a word. Nobody said that the pizza was too cold, although it was.

Topher moved around them like a hasty waiter, the type Martha’s parents would complain about. He removed Gray’s place setting, slapping the paper cup and plate on the sideboard.

When Mrs. Donnelley returned to the dining room, Martha could tell she had been crying. Her eyes had that salted look. With a wobbling arm, she picked up the grape soda bottle, found an empty pink cup, and aimed.

“The police say that Gray has probably wandered off on her own adventure and will be back soon,” said Mrs. Donnelley, rocking the bottle up and down so that the liquid tipped out in small spurts. “The one officer said it happens all the time! It’s only been maybe two hours at the most. Silly girl! I don’t know what I’ll do when I see her again. Hug her very tight, I guess! Very tight! Who wanted this cup of grape soda? Oops, maybe I poured it for myself!”

She laughed and took a sip. Mrs. Donnelley thought she had them fooled, but she didn’t fool Martha, even as she forced the birthday party to continue.

“Cake time!” she sang.

She carried out Caitlin’s candlelit pink cake and started the girls singing “Happy Birthday” and she didn’t let Caitlin blow out the candles because Caitlin was just getting over a cold and nobody wanted germs, right, girls? Then she returned the cake to the pantry for Topher to cut and serve, and she set the tray of presents from the sideboard in front of Caitlin.

“Open mine! Open mine!” the other girls begged.

Martha did not want Caitlin to open hers. She squeezed out of her seat and trailed Mrs. Donnelley back into the pantry.

“Stan Rosenfeld works in the city, I just got hold of him and he’s on his way,” Martha overheard Mrs. Donnelley say in a low voice to Topher. “He thinks Lenora took Robby to an early movie and dinner, so nobody’s at the Rosenfelds’ house right now. He’s going to get a neighbor over in the event Gray shows up there. Oh, dear lord, if something happened to that child, nobody will ever forgive…”

Mrs. Donnelley bumped against Martha as she swung around the corner, a pink plate of pink cake in each hand. She blinked. “Martha, what are you doing in here? Go sit down,” she chided. “It’s almost time for presents.”

Martha scowled. Her mother had bought Caitlin’s birthday present, and it was sort of stupid. A green velvet beret and matching mittens. But her mother preferred practical gifts to toys, and she had said it was either the beret-and-mittens set or a giant leather-bound
Complete Works of Shakespeare.

“Mom! That’s, like, a present that a teacher would give!” Martha had protested.

“Oh, Martha. If your sister Jane were as critical as you, I’d be at my wit’s end.” Her mother had flopped her pocketbook on the counter. “Let’s take the hat set, then. It’s absolutely adorable and it’s on sale. End of story.”

At the time, Martha had been relieved that her mother had not tried to push the Shakespeare book. But the hat-and-mittens set was not a good present, either.

Right this very moment, it seemed especially bad. Totally
unc.
And with Leticia acting all nasty tonight, Martha knew there was a chance she might get teased for it. Martha preferred to be the tease-r, not the other way around.

She waited until Mrs. Donnelley went upstairs to join Mr. Donnelley and the police. Caitlin had just opened Kristy Kiss-up’s gift, three CDs and a bottle of SPF 30 glitter sunscreen.

The other girls ooohed, how expensive, how nice!

Topher’s cell phone rang and he stepped into the kitchen to take the call in private.

Martha slipped out of her seat and followed him.

I have to go to the bathroom,
she mouthed.

Topher put his hand on the mouthpiece. “Use the one down here.”

She nodded, then left swiftly through the pantry and raced upstairs. She sneaked past the den, pausing a moment to listen in on what was being said behind the closed door. In voices soft and overlapping, the police and Mr. and Mrs. Donnelley were talking about assembling a search party, about who else to notify, about what to do and what not to do.

“…keep the little girls together until their parents come for them,” said one of the officers.

“Yes, yes. Topher has it under control,” squeaked Mrs. Donnelley.

They were being sent home? Tonight? Ha ha ha. Some party. Oh, this would be a good one to hold over Caitlin. How her birthday party was the worst one of the year. Martha smiled to herself and took a lively hop hop hop down the hall.

The Donnelley house was boring for exploring. It did not have secrets. The lights burned too high for shadows and the wastepaper baskets were empty. Inside every closet that Martha opened, the hangers faced the same way and the clothes hung straight and unwrinkled.

In the master bedroom, Martha discovered that Mrs. Donnelley’s closet was sorted by color. Pale to dark, then prints, with hatboxes on top and a partitioned shelf to house each pair of shoes. Martha rearranged a few pairs with their wrong mates.

Mr. Donnelley’s closet had plenty more ugly tracksuits. Maybe he thought tracksuits made him look young and athletic, and disguised the fact that he was too old for Mrs. Donnelley? Nice try, thought Martha. He looked especially old in their wedding picture, compared with Mrs. Donnelley, whose hair was like black silk while he had about three strands left. Gross. Why had Mrs. Donnelley picked him?

She placed the wedding picture facedown on the nightstand.

It was inside the cedar chest at the foot of the Donnelleys’ bed, underneath the neatly folded squares of sweaters, that Martha found her treasure. A cellophane package of mothballs, delicate as spun sugar candies.

Aha!

She knew mothballs were seriously poisonous. One of Martha’s first memories was of her mother uncurling her fingers to pry out a mothball like a pearl from its shell. Then cuffing both Martha’s hands under the running faucet.

“Never, ever! Where is your sense, Martha?”

Martha ripped out a Kleenex from Mrs. Donnelley’s bedside table, then she opened the package. The sweet, acrid smell burst into the air. Making pincers of her fingers, she pronged and dropped a single mothball into the Kleenex, then folded it neatly. Stole down the hall into Caitlin’s room, where she tucked the packet in the zip pocket of her carryall bag.

She smiled as she zipped her bag. It was fun to sneak around, mess with things, claim tiny souvenirs. She liked to think of the dopey Donnelleys puzzling over the turned-over wedding picture, the mismatched shoes, and the ripped cellophane package.

Where is your sense, Martha?

Her parents both liked sense, and so did her big sister, Jane. All they did was read, read, read. They never did anything. It was always up to Martha to do the fun things, to shake things up and flip them upside down, even if it meant getting into trouble. Martha was usually willing to risk trouble over sense. That’s why she was the head of the Lucky Seven.

In Caitlin’s bathroom, Martha scrubbed the smell of stinky mothballs from her hands. Then she sat on the bath mat and waited until she was sure that her present was unwrapped and done with.

“M
ARTHA’S NOT HERE BECAUSE
she got you a lick present.”

Leticia was guessing, but she bet it was true. Mrs. Van Riet was a mom who purchased practical gifts. Mrs. Van Riet was practical to a fault, and completely preoccupied with health. Whenever Leticia stayed over at Martha’s, there was always a salad plus a vegetable and boring juice Popsicles for dessert. Mrs. Van Riet was also the only mother Leticia knew who had taped little
x
es on the rug to show how far away you were supposed to sit from the television. Mr. Van Riet was no better, either, always layering Martha against the cold and telling her about how scientific studies proved that sunlight and dyed food were potentially deadly.

“Quick, open it!” Leticia said. She thumped her fist on the table.

“Open it!”

“Open it!”

“Open it!”

Caitlin clawed at the wrapping paper.

“What is it? What did she give you?” Leticia craned forward.

With the tips of her fingers, Caitlin held up a green velvet beret and a pair of matching mittens attached by a string.

“Mittens!” Exaggeratedly, Leticia slapped a hand over her mouth.

Serena laughed. “Who wears mittens, right?” she asked softly, looking over at Leticia and shaking back her hair.

“God, that is so cheap,” whispered Kristy, sliding her eyes at Caitlin. “That must have cost the least amount of any of our presents.”

“No kidding.” Zoë’s voice was quiet, too. Leticia knew that it was because nobody wanted to risk the chance of Martha overhearing.

The dare rushed through her and made her talk loud. “Hey, you guys, let’s call Martha
Meow
,” she suggested. “You know, like, because of the three little kittens who lost their mittens?”

The others looked at Leticia and giggled and then looked around at one another. Rarely did they gang up on Martha. Usually they spent their time trying not to land on the wrong end of one of Martha’s jokes.