Bearer of the Pearls by Faust Terry P.;

Author:Faust, Terry P.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
Published: 2017-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

The Break-In

After everything that had happened, I should have slept like a brick, if bricks sleep, but I couldn’t help going over all the mysteries. In fact, listing them all should have tired me out. Instead I tossed and turned and finally threw on my bathrobe and went for a drink of water.

My eyes were used to the dark, so I was surprised the hall, which is usually very dark, was softly lit. The floorboards creaked as I tiptoed to the railing around the stairway. The quiet sound of a voice, Ben’s voice, talked with pauses, like a telephone conversation. It came from his room. Light streamed out from under his door. I put my ear to the door and heard, “Why didn’t you tell me before?!” I could tell Ben was as close to being angry as I’d ever heard him.

“Ben?” I rapped a knuckle on his door, careful not to wake my aunt and uncle down the hall. His voice cut off, mid-sentence. The door opened a crack.

“What?” he said. He was in bizarre pajamas with a face covering the front, a crazed, wild-haired old guy wearing a scarf and a strange blue phone booth next to him. Tyrone used to run around the apartment in boxers, so seeing Ben in pajamas was far from a big thing.

“Who’s the guy in the scarf?” I asked.

“Dr. Who.”

“Who?”

“I refuse to suffer a bout of Abbott and Costello. If you don’t know, I won’t explain.”

“Fine. What are you doing?”

“Talking with Oliver and Werling,” he whispered. “You should go back to bed.”

“I can’t sleep.” I looked in and saw his computer was fired up. But Werling and Oliver weren’t there—thank God.

Ben glanced past me, like I might have been followed, then opened the door. “I’m Skyping. Come in before you wake everyone up.”

I leaned against the desk next to HAL’s monitor. The screen was split with Werling on the left and Oliver on the right. Werling suddenly blinked like mad and buttoned the top of his blue-striped PJs. “Jeez, Ben, how long has Wendy been there?”

“He can see me?” I pulled my robe tighter. Ben pointed to a tiny golf ball with a lens clamped to the monitor. I jumped back and out of its range. “You could’ve told me there was a camera!” I hissed. I check myself in his dresser mirror. The light-brown terrycloth robe was hardly a fashion statement—about as jazzy as the average grocery bag. My hair was flat on one side. I mussed it around.

“Hello? Wendy? Where’d everyone go?” Werling asked.

Ben offered me his chair and pulled a small bench over from the foot of his bed. He sat. “Wendy just came in.”

I leaned into the camera’s range. “Hi, I couldn’t sleep.” Somehow, it being late at night and everyone in pajamas, I guessed I could put up with Werling.

“It is just as well,” Oliver said. “I have questions for you.”

On the other hand, Oliver was something else. He wore blue silk PJs and a matching cap.

Ben said, “We all have questions for you, Wendy.

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