Ann Martin - Kristy Power!

"My brothers will be home any minute," Cary said. "Ben usually stops by the elementary school to walk Stieg home." He opened a cupboard. "Are you hungry?" I was, but I said I wasn't. I'd thought about it and decided I probably wouldn't be able to trust any snack Cary whipped up.

He made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it while I watched (feeling hungrier than ever). Just as he was putting his plate in the sink, his brothers burst through the door.

"Hey, Ben. Hey, Stieg. You guys have met Kristy before, right?" ' Cary's brothers are cute. Ben (short for Benson) is eleven. Stieg is eight. Both of them seem smart and well adjusted. Neither of them seems to take after Cary in the sarcasm department.

"Kristy would like to interview you," Cary told them. "Remember? For that project I told you about?" The boys nodded. "I'll go first," Stieg volunteered.

"Great," I said.

"You can talk in the den," said Cary, leading the way to a small room filled with shelves of books. I took a seat in a comfortable leather easy chair, and Stieg sat opposite me on a cushy-looking red couch. "Have fun," said Cary as he closed the door behind him. And I could have sworn I saw that eyebrow do its thing in the last glimpse I caught of his face. Uh-oh.

Stieg looked at me expectantly.

I cleared my throat. "Okay, let's see," I said, glancing down at the list of questions I'd prepared.

"Do you want to hear about the time Cary stole something?" Stieg asked, a mischievous look in his eyes.

"Uh, sure." I picked up my pencil. This sounded interesting. I hadn't known Cary had a criminal past.

"It was back in Illinois," Stieg said. "We were at the supermarket with my mom. I was watching Cary, but he didn't know it. So I saw when he put a pack of gum into his pocket." A pack of gum! I'd been expecting something a little more unusual. Lots of kids have stolen packs of gum. "Did you tell on him?" I asked.

"I didn't have to," Stieg replied. "My mom saw him too. She made him give the gum back and apologize. She was pretty embarrassed, I think. You know, because my dad used to be a policeman." I'd forgotten about that. Once, when we thought Cary might be a suspect in a local burglary, the BSC members had tried to learn a little bit about his background. We hadn't found out much, but we did discover that his father had been a police officer until Cary was about eight. Now Mr. Retlin is a locksmith. I scribbled a couple of notes. "Anything else?" I asked.

"He always hogs the remote when we're watching TV," Stieg said. "And once, when we were little, he pinched me so hard I cried." Now that he'd started, Stieg couldn't seem to stop reporting Cary's misdeeds. "He cut all the hair off this girl's doll one time. And he broke my mom's favorite vase." I nodded. "Go on." I had actually stopped taking notes, but I was tickled by Stieg's recitation. I had the feeling he was trying to get back at his big brother for something. For what? Oh, probably just for being a big brother. I know how that is. You envy your older brothers for all the privileges they seem to have. And you store up grievances. It's only natural to try to even the score when you have a chance.

Finally, when Stieg started to wind down, I tried to ask him some of the questions on my list. But he wasn't interested in answering. He'd had his own agenda for our interview, and he was satisfied now that he had revealed all of Cary's "crimes." Eventually I realized that I'd learned all I was going to learn from Stieg. I thanked him and asked him to find Ben for me.

A few minutes later, Ben was sitting on the red couch. He wasn't nearly as open as Stieg had been, but he wasn't as evasive as Cary had been the day before either. He answered my questions straightforwardly without adding any extra comments.

When I asked about the town they'd lived in back in Illinois (it was called Oak Hill), he told me its population and principal industries. He explained why his dad had left the police force (the work was too dangerous) and said that Cary had been a star on his Little League team when he was younger.

His answers were complete but not very interesting. Except for one. When I asked why his family had moved away from Illinois, Ben clammed up. "Ben," I asked again. "Why did you leave Oak Hill?" "I can't tell you that," he answered, folding his arms across his chest.

It was clear that there was no changing his mind, so I moved on to another subject. But that answer - or nonanswer - nagged at me. I wondered if there were some big family secret about the move.

When I'd finished with Ben, I asked him where the bathroom was. He sent me upstairs. When I was done there, I walked down the hall, peeking into the Retlins' bedrooms.

I know, I know. It's not nice to snoop. But hey, I was on a mission. Some biographers go through the trash their subjects throw out! Talk about snooping. Compared to that, glancing into a bedroom or two was nothing.

One room had bunk beds. That must be Ben and Stieg's. The room across from it had one big bed and two closets. That must belong to Cary's parents.

The room at the end of the hall had to be Cary's. I walked quietly toward it. I thought I'd stand at the open door and peek in, just to get a sense of what Cary's room would be like. But then something came over me - a terrible urge. I went back down the hall and glanced out a window. Cary was outside, filling a birdfeeder in the backyard. Yes! He was busy. I hurried into his room and eased the door shut behind me. I think you can tell a lot about a person from his room, and I wasn't about to pass up the chance to check out Cary's. In the back of my mind I knew it was wrong. But I couldn't resist.

Oh, yeah. This was Cary's room all right. Who else would have a poster of the universe with a little YOU ARE HERE arrow pointing to Earth? Who else would have a weird painting of clocks melting all over the place? (Claudia told me later that it was probably by a guy named Salvador Dali, who was famous for "surreal" paintings.) Or one of a man with a big green apple for a head? (That was by Magritte, according to Claudia. Also a surrealist.) A bulletin board over his desk was covered with funny postcards, bizarre newspaper headlines ("Goat Responsible for Power Outage," said one), and cutout pictures of movie monsters. It was quite a display.

I turned around slowly, taking in the room. His green plaid bedspread and curtains looked relatively normal, but the lamp on his bedside table was pure Cary. It was a miniature skeleton with a lightbulb held high in one hand.

I looked back at the bulletin board. I had to admit that it was pretty cool. Then my glanced dropped to his desk. On top was an open notebook. I figured Cary must have started his homework while I interviewed his brothers. I bent over to look at it, wondering if he'd figured out how to do the math problems we'd been assigned that day.

It wasn't his homework.

It was more like a journal.

And once I started reading, I couldn't stop.

I felt a chill run through my body.

Okay, spare me the lecture. I know it was wrong to read Cary's private thoughts. And I knew it then. Still, all I wanted to do at that moment was to read more. But I was scared to turn the page. Would Cary know I'd been snooping?

Just then, I heard footsteps in the hall. They were coming toward the room I was in. I froze.

The footsteps came closer.

And I couldn't make myself move.

Chapter 6.

"Kristy?" I was speechless. I couldn't answer. It had taken all my presence of mind to jump away from the desk just before Cary walked into the room. When he appeared, I was staring at a poster that showed two hands, each in the act of drawing the other. If that sounds strange, it was. But it was actually kind of neat. According to the caption on it, the artist's name was M. C. Escher.