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“You never know,” said Gary. He looked into the saltwater fish tank. He peered into it like he was gazing into a crystal ball, hoping that it would somehow tell him what happened to Angeline. But all he saw was a fish, and he didn’t think that that told him anything.
“Maybe she’s sick,” said Miss Turbone. “Why don’t you go see her after school? I bet she’d like that.”
Gary knew she wasn’t sick. If she was sick she could have told her father. No, she wasn’t sick. It was something bigger. But he could still go over to her house after school, like Mr. Bone said.
He walked up the front stairs of the address he found in the phone book and rang the doorbell to her apartment. Nobody answered. She wasn’t at school and she wasn’t at home. This might be bigger than he ever even imagined. Maybe she was working for the CIA. She was certainly smart enough. That’s why when he called her on the phone, she couldn’t say anything in front of her father. But then, how did he know for sure that her father was even there? Angeline could have been lying about that too. All he knew for certain was that some man answered the phone—no, some person with a man’s voice. Angeline wasn’t a little girl at all. She was a midget Russian spy! Green socks. Green socks? It was some kind of code. She was trying to tell him something. She wanted to defect. She and agent XZ1000, who was posing as her father, were plotting to overthrow the government and…
“BOO!” said Angeline.
Gary stumbled down the stairs. “Have a nice trip, see you next fall,” he said.
Angeline laughed.
“I never even heard you coming,” said Gary. “You’re as quiet as a cat.”
“As a fish,” said Angeline. “Do you want to come in and see where I live?” She unlocked the front door of the apartment building and they waited by the elevator.
“You have an elevator,” said Gary.
“We have to,” said Angeline. “We live on the fourth floor.”
“We live in a house, so we don’t have an elevator,” said Gary.
“Do you have a backyard?” Angeline asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, you don’t need an elevator if you have a backyard. You can have a dog.”
“We don’t have a dog or an elevator,” said Gary.
They rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. Angeline unlocked the door to her apartment and they walked inside. “Would you like some salt water?” she offered.
Gary looked around the apartment. He was thrilled to be there, just as he was thrilled the time he got to go to Mr. Bone’s car. “Do you have any fresh water?” he asked.
“Yes, we have that too,” said Angeline.
“I’ll have fresh water,” said Gary. “My father said if you drink salt water you’ll go crazy. He said he read a book where a guy on a lifeboat drank salt water, then jumped in the ocean and was eaten by sharks.”
“How could that be?” Angeline asked. “You don’t go crazy from drinking water and you don’t go crazy from eating salt, so why would you go crazy from drinking salt water?”
Gary shrugged.
“Besides,” added Angeline, “fish aren’t crazy and that’s all they ever drink.”
“I didn’t know fish drank,” said Gary.
Angeline went into the kitchen and made them each a glass of water, no salt in Gary’s.
“Where’s your room?” he asked when she returned.
“This is it,” said Angeline proudly. “This is where I sleep.”
“On the couch?”
“It folds out into a bed,” said Angeline. “When I’m asleep it’s my bedroom and when I’m awake it’s the living room.”
“I just have a regular bedroom,” said Gary. “I wonder if my parents would let me sleep on the couch.”
