Read Flying in Place for Free Online

“This is your secret place?” she said when we got there. “This old dock? Everybody knows about this place. They don’t come here ’cause the beach is more fun, that’s all.”
    I felt myself turning red. Now Jane thought I was a fool. Did people know I’d been coming here? Had they been watching me? “It’s just a place to talk,” I said. “It’s not the secret.”
    “Okay, so quit being so weird and tell me the secret.”
    “You have to promise not to tell anybody.”
    “I can’t do that until I know what it is.”
    “Jane!”
    “I’ll promise if it’s something that won’t hurt anybody.”
    “Of course it won’t hurt anybody! I wouldn’t do that.”
    “Okay. So tell.”
    “All right.” This wasn’t going very well, and I was getting nervous. I drummed my hand on the wooden dock and got a splinter. Great. “Okay. There’s this locked room in my house, see—”
    “What’s in it?”
    “I don’t know what’s in it. It’s locked.”
    “Why’s it locked?”
    “My mom doesn’t want anybody in there.”
    “Oh. Like my mom and her study. You can’t go in there when your mom’s in there? It’s her quiet place? Is that it?”
    Every room was my mother’s quiet place. “No, she doesn’t go in there. Nobody goes in there. That’s why I need your help, because I want to find out what’s in the room.” If I could get into Ginny’s room, maybe I could find proof that she was real. The bracelet she’d talked about, or those yellow pajamas. Then I’d know I wasn’t going crazy. But I couldn’t tell Jane about Ginny, because then she’d really think I was weird.
    “If your mom doesn’t want you in there she must have a reason,” Jane said. “Anyway, what am I supposed to do about it?”
    “Well, see, I can’t find the key—”
    “Try the key to another room, maybe. I can’t pick locks, Emma.”
    “The other rooms don’t have locks. Not working ones, anyway. My mother had this one put on before I was born.”
    “Wow,” Jane said, and laughed. “She really doesn’t want you in there.” But at least she sounded interested now. “What do you think you’re going to find, anyhow? A dead body or something?”
    My mouth got dry. “I don’t know. But it must be something pretty interesting. So anyhow, you know that big ladder your dad used when he was painting your house? Do you still have it?”
    Jane started giggling. “Shoot, Emma! What, we’re going to drag that ladder out of the garage and climb into this room and nobody will see us? Are you crazy? That ladder must weigh about thirty thousand pounds, anyhow. We couldn’t even carry it. Use your own ladder.”
    “We don’t have one,” I said. “My father hires people with equipment for stuff like that—”
    “Oh, people like us, right? Because he’s too busy being a rich doctor and having dinner with the mayor? Huh! Can’t even get his hands dirty with paint.”
    “He gets his hands dirty all the time,” I said, my throat constricting. “He cuts people open.”
    Jane glared at me. “He hardly even says hello to any of us.”
    “Well, I do, don’t I? Come on, Jane, you have to help me—”
    “No, I don’t,” she said. “The whole thing’s nuts. If your mom doesn’t want you in there you shouldn’t go in there. You’re asking me to steal my dad’s ladder—”
    “Not steal! Just borrow!”
    “It’s wrong,” Jane said. “If Daddy caught us he’d be mad. It’s dangerous; we might fall. Anyhow, we wouldn’t get away with it, even if we did it at night. Even if we got the ladder out of the garage without my folks knowing about it, you think we’re going to climb into that room without anybody noticing?”
    “We could do it when my dad was at the hospital,” I said. “My mother never hears a thing.”
    “Your mother? Are you kidding? Emma, you even think about whispering to somebody in that class and she’s on you like fur on a gorilla. Forget it. This whole thing’s