Secrets in the Attic (Secrets 1)

"She doesn't."

"How can .. ."

"She doesn't want to notice," Karen answered before I could ask the question. It was what I had feared myself. "Forget about that. I'll see you tomorrow," she said. She turned to go back in, stopped, and turned back to give me a hug. "Thanks for being there for me," she said, and went back inside.

I got on my bike and then turned when I heard a door open and close.

Mr. Pearson came out of the house and walked toward the rear, where Karen said the apartment was located. He didn't look my way. He looked as if he was talking to himself.

I got onto my bike and shot off down the road, my heart pounding as if I had been riding for hours. My father was watching television when I arrived.

"All studied up?" he called from the living room when he heard me enter.

"Yes," I said.

"This is a pretty good show," he told me.

"I have to do some more reading for English class," I said. I really did, and I couldn't do that and the homework I planned to do in the morning and in study hall

"Go ahead. I'm going to bed after this. Big day tomorrow, two depositions and a court procedure. Your mother has the same shift as she had today. I might not be back for dinner. I'll let you know. You all right with it?"

"Yes. Maybe I'll invite Karen over."

"Good idea," he said. "Sleep tight, princess."

It brought tears to my eyes to hear him call me princess, because I was lying to him, or at least not confiding in him, and he trusted and loved me so. I wasn't his princess right now. Was that terrible, or was it okay to be loyal to a friend in need?

Lately, I was inundated with concerns. I felt as if I was in a downpour of question marks, rushing from the cover of one answer to another. I lay there thinking about what we had decided. Somehow, some way, we were going to try to get Harry Pearson to believe his dead mother disapproved of what he had been doing to Karen. That was a good thing, and if his mother were alive, she would disapprove for sure, anyway, I thought.

However, in my heart of hearts, I suspected from what Karen had described that Harry Pearson had a very special relationship with his mother's memory. If he found out what we were planning to do or realized we had done something that violated that memory and relationship, he could become so angry he would do something terrible, maybe poison Karen, just as she feared. And we would have been the cause of it! I truly felt as if we were juggling dynamite sticks. And lit ones to boot.

In the morning, we looked at each other like two conspirators, dying to talk about what we were planning but afraid of being overheard.

"I've been thinking and thinking about it all," Karen told me on the bus. "You hit on a good idea. His mother was big on wigs, and I'm sure they're still in the apartment."

"Wigs'?"

"She hated that her hair was thinning. 'She was actually getting bald, like a man gets bald. I saw her without her wig a few times, and she looked worse than a woman on chemotherapy. Even her eyebrows looked almost gone. Although she was allergic to lots of things, she was heavy with what makeup she put on. Her

cheeks were always too red, clownish. Her lipstick was on so thick it made her lips twice the size. That's not hard to copy."

"But . ."

"I'll look through the window into the apartment to see what's there, what we can utilize."

I nodded, but just the idea of sneaking into that apartment made me shiver now. Maybe I shouldn't have pushed so hard to go along with her.

That night, with my parents both gone, I prepared dinner for Karen and myself. I had spoken to my mother, and she told me to prepare one of my favorite things, lamb chops. She told me she had bought a rack and would have it ready to bake. Karen had to go to the drugstore to tell her mother she was coming to my house for dinner and studying.

While I waited for her, my father called to say he wouldn't be home for dinner, after all. My mother called to see if everything was all right, and then Jesse called.

"Daddy's away at a deposition," I told him, "and Mama's got an evening shift tonight."

"All by yourself in the Bates Motel?" he teased, and hummed the background music from Psycho.

I knew he was referring to the notorious Doral story, but that was exactly the wrong thing for him to be telling me at this moment.

"Very funny. Thanks."