| don’t have to worry about being kidnapped,” she said in her usual firm voice. “I promise. I’ll do everything I can to prevent that.” It would have been really reassuring, except that Mom’s voice quivered at the very end. And why would Mom think she’d need to prevent anything? Chess Chess woke up in the middle of the night with aches in his legs. Growing pains, he thought. Mom had explained them to him a year ago, and then she’d helped him look them up online. Finn had asked, “What? It hurts to grow as tall as Chess? Maybe I’ll just stay short!” Finn was still so little he thought you could control things like that. Chess couldn’t remember his own brain ever working that way, thinking he got to choose whatever he wanted. For as long as Chess could remember, he’d had to be the responsible oldest kid, the one who had to help Mom with Emma and Finn. The mini grown-up. Was it just because Dad had died when all three of them were so young? Or did the other Rochester, the one who’d been kidnapped, feel that way, too? Chess could picture the other Rochester—Rocky—crouched beside his younger brother and sister in some locked, windowless back of a van somewhere, or some locked, windowless basement. The younger kids would be crying. But Rocky would be telling them, Everything’s going to be all right. I’ll take care of you. Even if he was really thinking, There’s |
a switch, because suddenly light glowed around her. “Oh, good,” Finn said. “I didn’t know where the flashlights were, anyway.” Chess and Natalie were already rushing toward the opening. Both of them had to hunch over and touch their hands to the floor to duck through the secret doorway—it was really more like a half doorway. At least Finn only had to bob his head to the side and then back up again as he scrambled after them. He stepped into the secret room and joined the others in looking around and around. Despite the smell, the room he stood in now was clean and neat with no evidence of bugs, dead or otherwise. The walls were lined with shelves, and unlike the shelves in the Boring Room, these shelves were packed. Finn saw cartons of Campbell’s soup and ramen noodles, and bundles of water bottles and peanut butter jars. He saw row after row of canned peas and tuna fish and pear slices, applesauce and mandarin oranges and corn. “It’s just a pantry?” Finn said in dismay. “We have something as cool as a secret room hidden under our house, and Mom just uses it to store food?” “And old shoes?” Emma asked, pointing at a stack of shoeboxes Finn hadn’t noticed. Maybe they were full of spare new shoes—Finn saw that the picture on the side of the nearest shoebox was of the very same sneakers he wore on his feet. “What if there aren’t shoes |
