The Boxes by William Sleator

Author:William Sleator
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

CHAPTER TWELVE

The next day, Thursday, Henry and I met with Crutchley Development after school.

It was arranged the night before. Henry’s parents didn’t understand it, and neither did Aunt Ruth, and the three of them didn’t like it at all. But Crutchley was in control. Their offer of a million dollars put the ball in their court. And Crutchley wanted to see Henry and me, no one else, at their offices.

The auditorium was locked at lunch that day. Henry and I whispered in the library. “Okay, Henry. I want you to be totally honest,” I said. “I mean, a million dollars would change your life. Maybe you don’t care so much about the clock, and Uncle Marco, and saving the neighborhood. I don’t blame you. Don’t pretend you’re on my side just to be nice.”

“I’m nice, but I’m not that nice.” Henry smiled. “If I wanted the million dollars, I’d want it, for sure. But what will it mean? We’ll move into some boring modern house. We’ll have nicer cars. I’ll maybe go to a private school and an Ivy League college.” He shrugged. “Who needs it? Especially when you think about the alternative.”

“Yeah, well, if Aunt Ruth got a million dollars, I’d never see a penny of it anyway. Not that I really care. It’s like you said—consider the alternative and nothing else matters. What does Crutchley think is going on?”

“They must have seen and heard enough to get an idea of what the clock can do,” Henry said, very serious now. “Wow, could a development company ever use something like that! They’d have our houses wrecked and that mall built in days. If they didn’t believe it, they wouldn’t make that kind of offer—only hours after the spy got into your house.”

“So what are we going to do? I mean, we can’t just tell them! It has to be a secret.” I twisted my hands together. “It just keeps getting worse and worse. I can’t stand this! I don’t know how I can even go there. Maybe I can pretend I’m sick or—”

“That would just be putting it off. We have to get it over with.”

“But what are we going to do?” Suddenly I was close to tears.

“The only thing we can do is play dumb and wait,” Henry said. “We don’t admit to anything; we don’t know anything. It all has to come from them.”

“But then what? What if they really do know what’s going on? Then what do we do?”

“I don’t know.” Henry looked grim. “Maybe we just go on playing dumb. Deny everything. Make it look like their spies made it up. Try to convince them nothing unusual is happening.”

“But if that works, and they take their million dollars away, Aunt Ruth will kill Uncle Marco’s annuity—and then she’ll kill me. I mean it, Henry. That’s what she’s like. If she killed me, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised.”

“No, you wouldn’t be. You’d be dead,” Henry said, with a trace of a smile. “Anyway, what would

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