“Let’s find out.” Rusty pulled open the screen door.
“Hey, we can’t go in,” I told him.
Stepping in front of me, he tried the handle of the main door. “What do you know? Isn’t locked.”
“Of course not,” I said. In Grandville, back in those days, almost nobody locked their house doors.
Rusty swung it open. Leaning in, he called, “Hello! Anybody home?”
No answer.
“Come on,” he said, and entered.
“I don’t know. If nobody’s home ...”
“How’re we gonna know nobody’s home if we don’t look around? Like you said, maybe Slim passed out or something.”
He was right.
So I followed him inside and gently shut the door. The house was silent. I heard a ticking clock, a couple of creaking sounds, but not much else. No voices, no music, no footsteps, no running water.
But it was a large house. Slim might be somewhere in it, beyond our hearing range, maybe even unable to move or call out.
“You check around down here,” Rusty whispered. “I’ll look upstairs.”
“I’ll come with you,” I whispered.
We were whispering like a couple of thieves. Supposedly, we’d entered the house to find Slim and make sure she was okay. So why the whispers? Maybe it’s only natural when you’re inside someone else’s house without permission.
But it wasn’t only that. I think we both had more on our minds than checking up on Slim.
I was a nervous wreck, breathing hard, my heart pounding, dribbles of sweat running down my bare sides, my hands trembling, my legs weak and shaky as I climbed the stairs behind Rusty.
Over the years, we had spent lots of time in Slim’s house but we’d never been allowed inside it when her mother wasn’t home.
And we’d never been upstairs at all. Upstairs was off limits; that’s where the bedrooms were.
Not that Slim’s mother was unusually strict or weird. In those days, at least in Grandville, hardly any decent parents allowed their kids to have friends inside the house unless an adult was home. Also, whether or not a parent was in the house, friends of the opposite sex were
Rusty and I, sneaking upstairs, were venturing into taboo territory.
Not only that, but this was the stairway where Slim’s grandfather had met his death. And at the top would be the bedrooms where Jimmy had done many horrible things to Slim, her mother and her grandmother.
There was also a slight chance that we might find Slim taking a bath.
And neither of us was wearing a shirt. That’s fine if you’re roaming around outside, but it makes you feel funny when you’re sneaking through someone else’s house.
No wonder I was a wreck.
At the top of the stairs, I said, “Maybe we oughta call out again.”
Rusty shook his head. He was flushed and sweaty like me, and had a frantic look in his eyes as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to cry out with glee or run like hell.
In silence, we walked to the nearest doorway. The door was open and we found ourselves in a very spacious bathroom.
Nobody there.
The tub was empty.
Good thing, I thought. But I felt disappointed.
What was nice about the bathroom, it had a fresh, flowery aroma that reminded me of Slim. I saw a pink oval of soap on the sink. Was that the source of the wonderful scent? I wanted to give it a sniff, but not with Rusty watching.
We went on down the hall, walking silently, Rusty in the lead. A couple of times, he opened doors and found closets. Near the end of the hall, we came to the doorway of a very large, corner bedroom.
Slim’s bedroom. It had to be, because of the book shelves. There were lots of bookshelves, and nearly all of them were loaded: rows of hardbounds, some neatly lined up, while others were tipped at angles as if bravely trying to hold up neighboring volumes; books of various sizes resting on top of the upright books; neat rows of paperbacks; crooked stacks of paperbacks and hardbounds; neat stacks of magazines; and scattered non-book items such as Barbie dolls, fifteen or twenty stuffed animals, an archery trophy she’d won at the YWCA tournament, a couple of little snow globes, a piggy bank wearing Slim’s brand new Chicago Cubs baseball cap and her special major league baseball—autographed by Ernie Banks.
In one corner of the room stood a nice wooden desk with a Royal portable typewriter ready for action. Papers were piled all around the typewriter. On the wall, at Slim’s eye level if she were sitting at the desk, was a framed photo of Ayn Rand that looked is if it had been torn from a LIFE or LOOK magazine.
Slim’s bed was neatly made. Its wooden headboard had a shelf for holding a radio, books, and so on. She had a radio on it, along with about a dozen paperbacks. I stepped over for a closer look at the books. There were beat-up copies of
