S. Bodeen - The Compound

“Father did it.” She didn’t even blink. She just knew.

That jolted me a bit. “Yeah.”

“I told you so.”

“Yeah, you did. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Truly sorry.” I put a hand on her arm.

Her eyes slowly tracked to my hand on her arm.

I moved my hand away from her. I didn’t remember the last time I’d touched her. Maybe I never had.

She looked up at me. “Can we go home?”

“I hope so.” I forced a grin. “And now we need your help. We have to find the code for the door in order to get out, okay? I think I found a clue. I mean, Dad actually told me this word and I think it might be the clue.”

Lexie wiped her chin on her shoulder. “What’s the clue?”

“Turducken.”

Lexie spoke up. “Didn’t we have that for Christmas one year?”

“Yeah, it was great.” My mouth watered.

“No, it was disgusting.” Lexie pushed her plate away. “Dad made me eat a piece, ugh.”

“Do you remember anything about it?”

Lexie didn’t say anything, but her shoulders rose slightly.

Terese took a drink of water, spilling some.

I dug around in one of the drawers. My knuckles were sore and I remembered seeing a bottle of ibuprofen. “I tried to piece together a password on his computers, nothing worked.” I found the bottle. Totally expired. I swallowed two, anyway.

Lexie looked at me. “Now what?”

I hopped up to sit on the counter. “Don’t know. Any ideas?”

Terese wiped her eyes. Her voice was meek. “Do you think the word is supposed to trigger something? Make you think of something else that is the code?”

I made an attempt to encourage her, which was not something I was experienced at. “That might be true. Good thinking.” At least it sounded sincere to me.

Lexie groaned. “Why are we even trying to figure this out? Hello . Dad is a brainiac, for cripes’ sake. I mean, despite everything, he’s still way smarter than you, Eli. Can’t we wait for him to get better and just tell us the code?”

“Mom and Dad need medical help that we don’t have. We can’t wait.”

“Does he truly want us to figure it out?” Terese looked skeptical.

For a moment I glanced at Lexie. “Of course he does. So please, try to think of anything at all that might help. Even if it seems stupid. Let me know, okay?”

Terese nodded and stood up. “They’ll be waking up from their naps soon,” she said. “I’ll check on them.”

Lexie went with me to check on Mom and Dad. “I’ll stay with them, Eli.” They were both asleep.

I needed to think. And I did my best thinking when I ran.

On the treadmill, I focused. Turducken, that long-ago Christmas, what did I remember? Everything, I needed to remember everything.

Free association.

A chicken inside a duck inside a turkey. A turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. Poultry, game bird, water fowl, webbed feet, rooster, hen, drake, mallard.

Nothing. I had nothing.

I got off the treadmill and held my hands over my head, catching my breath. I’d run more than eight miles.

“Eli.” Lexie beckoned from the door. “I may have thought of something.”

I walked over to where she stood with her arms crossed.

“What?”

“I’m not sure.” She leaned against the wall. “Maybe it’s nothing…”

I wiped my face with my sleeve and forced myself to wait, silent.

“I’d just gotten home for Christmas vacation when those things came.”

“Turduckens.”

“Yes. I’d missed lunch to take a final, and then with the ride home I was starved, so I went in the kitchen to ask Els to make me a sandwich or something. Dad was there. We just got to talking, because I hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving. And he was so excited when they started carrying in those turduckens. I asked him why he was so excited about a bunch of turkeys and he said, ‘These have a surprise inside.’”

“That’s it?”

She shrugged a little. “Sorry.”

“No, I wasn’t being mean, Lex, honest. It may help.”

“Right.” She left.

I stripped off my sweaty shirt and dropped to the floor to stretch.

Lexie came back in. “I’m wrong.”

“About what?”

“What he said. It wasn’t, there’s a surprise, it was… Oh, now I remember, because he said it in a silly voice, like a French accent. I remember because he never did that, acted silly. He said, ‘Eeets not just a turkey. There eees a meesstery inside.’ “She waited. “Hello, I remembered. Does it help?”

I didn’t answer. My mind was whirling. A mystery inside . So familiar. I’d heard that recently. But where? And when?

A mystery inside .

Those words ate me up. For the next hour, I sequestered myself in Dad’s office and looked through everything I could find in the papers, books, CDs. Even some of the National Geographies . Nothing struck a chord.

I gave up. Had to. I was driving myself crazy.

Out in the hall, I ran into Terese. For the first time ever, her hair was down, not in pigtails. Her eyes were red. She put her head down and tried to walk right by me. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer. But I knew. She was scared.

Something else about her was different. “Reese, I know you’re upset about Mom and Dad. We haven’t even given you a chance to deal; we’re just shoving all this on you.” I knelt, so that I looked up at her. “I know I’ve been a crappy brother lately—”

She wiped her eyes. “You’ve always been a crappy brother.”

Her accent was gone.

“Okay, fine. I’ve always been a crappy brother. But I’m here now, okay? For whatever you need.” I figured it out. Why she looked different. She wasn’t in purple. Instead, she wore black. That and having her hair down made her look older. No. Not older. Just her own age for once.

Funny. The Compound had a way of making me feel older than I was. I’d felt like an adult since I was nine. But the Compound seemed to have done the opposite to Terese. She’d stayed the same, perhaps even regressed. Maybe she felt a change coming. So she felt she had to change, too.

“Want to go to Dad’s office with me?”

She nodded.

In the office she was quiet, just leaning against the door and looking around. “Why do you call me Little Miss Perfect?”

Embarrassed, I stammered. “You are, like, perfect. You always do the right thing and say the right thing and everyone loves you for it.”

“No.” She paused. “Not everyone.”

“Huh?”

“Lexie doesn’t love me. Neither do you.”

“Yes, she does. She just doesn’t show it.”

She waited a moment. “And you, Eli? Do you love me?”

“Of course, you’re my sister.”

“But you don’t like me. And that’s worse than not being loved.” She started to leave. “Reese, wait.”

She turned back.

I looked at my feet, stalling. “Honestly, I’ve had a hard time here without Eddy. I was closer to him than anyone. And you, you’re a lot like him.” I took a deep breath. “I hated that you were here and he wasn’t.” Even though it was my fault he wasn’t there, I had blamed her. “It was always the situation, not you. You’re my little sister. Yeah. I do like you.”

One of her shoulders went up and down. “You know, you’re not that bad a brother.”

“Really?” I wanted to know.

“There’s still a chance for you, anyway.” She smiled a tiny bit. “Want to go see the babies with me?”

I’d been cooped up in the office for hours; maybe new scenery would give me a fresh perspective. Or maybe I was trying to live up to my new status as not-so-crappy-brother-after-all. “Just for a while. I’ve got to get back to Mom and Dad.”