Behind the Curtain Read Free

Momworld.
    “Excuse me,” Mom said, folding her napkin. Her footsteps faded fast, those sheepskin slippers making almost no sound at all.
    Ty and Ingrid looked at each other. “What does Dad do, exactly?” Ingrid asked.
    “Huh?” said Ty. “Works for Mr. Ferrand, you know that. Pass those egg rolls.”
    “How much are you going to eat?”
    “Got to get my weight up.” Ty bit off half an egg roll. “These are the best,” he said, or something like that—hard to understand him with his mouth so full.
    “It’s because of the ends,” Ingrid said.
    “The ends?”
    “The way Ta Tung egg rolls have those browned ends,” Ingrid said. “No one else does that.”
    Ty examined the remaining end of his egg roll. “Browned,” he said. “Cool.” He gave her a quick look. “How do you know stuff like that?”
    From Sherlock Holmes, of course, who believedin the importance of observing small things. But one small thing Ingrid had noticed was the way most people’s eyes glazed over when she got started on Holmes. She just shrugged and said, “What does Dad do for Mr. Ferrand?”
    “They develop things,” Ty said. “Invest. Dad’s the number-two guy, vice president.”
    “How many vice presidents are there?”
    “Just Dad. Gonna eat that last one?”
    Ingrid passed Ty the last egg roll.
    Somewhere upstairs a door closed. Dad’s voice rose for a moment. Then Mom said something and Dad got quieter. The whole house grew quiet, except for Ty’s chewing.
    Time to clean up.
    “Rock paper scissors,” Ingrid said.
    Ty nodded. They made fists. Their eyes met. They tried to read each other’s minds.
    “One, two, three,” said Ty.
    They pumped their hands. He was going for rock, beyond doubt. There was no one Ingrid knew better than Ty. She flashed spread fingers—paper.
    And Ty: scissors. Scissors? He never did scissors. “Don’t forget the countertops,” he said on his way out.
    Ingrid cleaned up. First came scraping off the plates. That meant opening the trash cupboard and again setting eyes on The Echo —two copies now, theirs and the Grunellos’. Ms. Julia LeCaine, formerly blah blah… vice president of operations. Did that make Dad vice president of everything else? Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe the richer the company, the more vice presidents. Microsoft probably had thousands, all of them with money piling up faster than they could count. If they got rich, the four of them, this family, the first thing she’d buy would be…what, exactly? Ingrid, loading the dishwasher, was trying to come up with the perfect kickass something when the doorbell rang.
    Ingrid went to the hall, switched on the outside light, opened the door. Sean Rubino? Sean was the older brother of her best friend, Stacy, and had dropped Stacy off at the house once or twice, but he’d never come to the door.
    “Yo,” he said.
    Ingrid peered past him. His car, a dinged-up old Firebird with a HELL ON WHEELS bumper sticker, was parked on the street, no one in it.
    “Hi,” Ingrid said. Had he come to pick Stacy up? “She’s not here.”
    “Who?” said Sean.
    “Stacy.” And come to think of it, wasn’t his license suspended because of that DUI thing on Labor Day?
    “I’m looking for Ty,” Sean said.
    “Ty?” Sean and Ty weren’t friends. Sean was two years older for one thing, a junior at Echo Falls High, and also not into sports, although he was pretty big.
    “He in?” said Sean.
    Ingrid gazed up at him. Sean looked a lot like his sister: same broad face, same color hair—although hers wasn’t gelled up like that—but the feeling you got from seeing them was very different. “I’ll get him,” she said.
    He came in, stood in the hall, glanced around.
    Ingrid went upstairs. Mom and Dad’s door was closed, Ty’s open. He had a pile of books on his desk but was playing a video game.
    “Sean Rubino’s here to see you,” Ingrid said.
    Ty turned away from an exploding worm creature. “Yeah? Tell him to come