William's Midsummer Dreams by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Author:Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

CHAPTER

14

Midway up the tall ladder there was just room enough for a person to turn around, reach up overhead, and unhook the rope. He’d done it so many times before, it had become almost automatic. And now, reaching out into near darkness, it was reassuring to find that the rope had been replaced on its hook. Which must mean that one of the stagehands had climbed up and replaced it, as they always did at the end of act 2. There it was, right where it was supposed to be, and always had been when Puck reached up to grab it and take off on his soaring entry.

Lifting the rope off the hook, William ran his hands up and down its rough, scratchy surface. It felt familiar—the same as always—or maybe, not quite? There was—what? A slightly increased slippage, as his hand moved up and down. Almost as if … He was still wondering just what the difference was when he noticed something else. A smell.

William had always had a sensitive nose. A nose that had reacted strongly to such things as the stifling, musty odor of his attic hideout at the Baggetts, and later to the clean, fresh smell of Aunt Fiona’s house. And now his nose was telling him that there was a smell up there, halfway up the backstage ladder, that seemed to be coming from the rope itself.

Lifting it to his nose, he breathed deeply—sniffed and sniffed again. And then he knew. It was a familiar smell, one that usually made his mouth water a little. He swallowed hard. What the rope smelled like was definitely—bacon. William sniffed again, and nodded. No doubt about it, the rope smelled like bacon.

Standing on tiptoes, he smelled again farther up, beyond where his hands usually reached. No. Only a bit of dusty dryness. No bacon there. And no slippery smoothness, either. But down where he usually held the rope, he could still feel a slight, slippery difference.

Grabbing the rope with both hands, as he always did before he pushed off, William leaned back on his heels, testing his grip. There was a bit of a slip, but not much. Not nearly as much as he remembered feeling when he’d confidently swung off into space that afternoon—and found himself sliding on down the rope until he landed, too soon and much too hard. Which could mean that in the meantime someone had wiped it clean, at least as much as was possible.

It was then that William began to put it all together. Since that afternoon, when he’d made his embarrassing crash landing, somebody must have come backstage, climbed up the ladder, and carefully wiped off as much of the … the what?

Yeah. He had it. Bacon grease. Somebody had wiped off most of the bacon grease that it had been smeared with. Probably the same person who sometime earlier had put a thick layer of grease just where William’s hands would grab hold. And it didn’t take much longer to figure out who that someone must have been.

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