S. Bodeen - The Compound

In the nursery, Lucas and Cara romped. They threw beanbags at each other while Quinn played in the playpen.

Lucas skipped over to me. “Play with us, ’kay?”

“Yeah.”

Then it hit me. Lucas had said those words. The mystery inside . The first day I came to their room. “Lucas!”

“What?”

“Come here a sec.” I whispered in his ear, “Can you show me your clown, remember, that you showed me before?”

“‘Kay. They can’t see, though.” Lucas’s eyes darted to Cara and Quinn.

“Sure.” He led me to the closet. The clown came out from the hiding place.

“You’ll be careful?”

I liked listening to him, to his nearly five-year-old diction. “Yeah.”

Piece by piece, I took the clowns apart, setting them down until I held the inner clown.

Shaking produced nothing but silence.

Close inspection revealed no secret notches or buttons.

Then I read the word written on the bottom again. At first, I had assumed it was only the manufacturer, but perhaps…

“Hey, Reese, come here.”

Lucas tried to grab the clown from me. “Don’t let her see!

I held it out of his reach. “Lucas, it’s okay.” She came into the closet. “What’re you guys doing in here?”

“Reese, is this French?” Over Lucas’s head, I handed her the smallest clown.

Squinting, she read the word. “Hautbois.”

Lucas kept trying to grab it back.

I pushed him out of the way. “Reese, what does it mean?”

“Translated? High wood.”

I groaned. Talk about cryptic. “Thanks.” I took the clown back, wondering what to do next.

Terese started to leave, then stopped. “Is that something to do with the code?”

Lucas took the clown from my hand.

I shook my head. “I thought it was, but it doesn’t make any sense.”

Terese shrugged. “I guess not. What would my oboe have to do with it?”

My heart jumped. “What?”

“Hautbois , high wood. That’s where the word oboe comes from.”

I tried to keep my voice calm as I grabbed her arm. Touching people seemed more normal all the time. “Is your oboe in the music room?”

She nodded.

I raced out of there. In the music room, Terese’s oboe was on its stand. I took it apart and scrutinized every section. A mystery inside . Did that refer to the clown or the oboe? What?

The case caught my eye. I brushed the parts aside and focused my attention on the case. Solid, sturdy, the case had probably cost a lot of money, too. That wasn’t a priority as I tore into it, ripping out the lining. The case was empty, nothing. I kicked the pile of lining nearest to my left foot. A piece of paper fluttered out. Between my fingers, the item felt more like parchment. The paper was blank.

“No, no, no.”

With the parchment firmly in my grip, I left the room and went to the kitchen. I sat in the nook, the paper on the table in front of me. I tried to figure out the reasoning for it all. Dad telling me the word turdueken .

Which led to Lexie remembering the mystery inside .

Which led to Lucas and the nesting dolls, obviously a present from Dad.

From there, hautbois , which led to Terese’s oboe.

We had all played our part. Hadn’t we? Was that my role, to put it together?

I looked at the parchment. Was this also meant for me to figure out?

As I flipped the parchment over and over, something occurred to me. When we were eight, Eddy and I had been into playing spy games. Dad gave us invisible ink and we wrote secret messages. But that was from a kit I didn’t have anymore.

Something else came to mind. A chemistry lesson Dad had done with me. You could make an ink. Out of what?

I carried the parchment into the lab. I remembered: phenolphthalein. And that it could be revealed by something. Damn, I couldn’t remember. Vapors, some kind of vapors.

In the lab, I scanned the shelves of chemicals, hoping something would ring a bell. It had to be something simple, everyday, right? If it was too complicated, Dad risked me not ever figuring it out. He did want me to figure it out, didn’t he?

No. Of course he didn’t.

Even if I had figured out the first clue, turducken , he wouldn’t have expected me to go to Lexie, who would provide the next part. And Lucas and the nesting clowns. They were a present from Dad. He knew I wouldn’t go to the nursery.

And Terese. He knew what I called her, how I didn’t like to be around her. He relied on my own predictability to keep me from finding the answer. I didn’t get along with my sisters enough to get their cooperation.

He counted on me being the same selfish, detached, untouchable loner I had been ever since we entered the Compound. Living behind my wall, not letting anything out. Or anyone in.

What else had he counted on me doing? Or not doing?

There was a plastic tote of cleaners sitting nearby. I fiddled with the bottle of glass cleaner, thinking how my father yelled at Mom and the girls if the lab wasn’t spotless.

I paused.

Behind the bottle of glass cleaner, there was a container of bleach. I stared at it for a moment, then felt myself actually grinning. “Yes!” Ammonia fumes. Ammonia fumes revealed the phenolphthalein ink.

Donning a face mask and gloves, I went to work with a beaker of ammonia. I held the parchment over the beaker. “Please, please, please.”

A message slowly revealed itself. Numbers. Lots of numbers, over two dozen.

The code?

What else could it be?

I had it. I had the power to get us out of here. Someone clapped hands behind me, in a slow rhythm. I turned.

My father stood there, leaning against the doorjamb, still clapping slowly. “Well done, Eli. I’m impressed.”

His face was raw and bruised. “Dad! Are you okay?”

He shrugged a bit. “Oh, fine. Fine as anyone can be when HIS WIFE IS TRYING TO POISON HIM!”

His shout made me jump. I took a step back, picking up the parchment as I moved. Had he done something to Mom? “She didn’t know, she just wanted you to have bread and—”

He held up a hand to silence me. His face was sweaty but he didn’t seem shaky. Exactly the opposite. “So you have the code now.”

I nodded. “We can get out, get you some help…”

“I don’t need ANY HELP!”

Again, his shout made me jump. I clutched the code in my palm.

He took a step inside the door.

I had to get out, away from him, and try the code. Me getting out was our only chance.

Dad let out a loud ragged sigh. “You try to do everything for your family, and what do they do in return?”

I sensed it was a rhetorical question.

“They try and poison you.” He picked up a Bunsen burner and slammed it on the floor for effect. I used the distraction to take a step toward the door, even as he moved slowly away from it, looking for something else to throw.

“I gave you everything. Everything…” He started picking up anything in his reach and hurled each item as he spoke. “Everything.” A tray of test tubes hit the ground. “Everything.” A pile of petri dishes hit the near wall, glass flying. “Everything.”

When he used both hands to pick up a microscope, I took my chance and ran out of the room as fast as I could.

I heard a roar behind me as he realized I was gone.

I shoved the parchment in my pocket and ran toward the door, my arms pumping. My heart pounded, more from the last few minutes than the physical exertion. At the hallway to the infirmary, I paused. I wanted to make sure Mom was okay. Make sure he hadn’t hurt her. But the only way to truly help her was to open that door and get help.

“Eli?” Dad’s faint voice from behind me spurred me on. I ran down the hall, into the family room, and through the archway.