Mummy Read Free

excellent. But I mean, stealing?” She gave a laughing shrug and spread her hands. “I mean, I think, you know—jail and all. And my parents and all. But good luck. I hope you make it.”
    She had, of course, timed this speech, because third lunch was twenty-one minutes long, and Emlyn always knew exactly how much time she had left, and she needed the bell to ring so she could make a graceful exit, with no more explanations or exchanges.
    The bell rang exactly when she expected it to, and everybody laughed in a silly way except Donovan, who didn’t understand random laughter. Then they separated.
    If Emlyn had not been a very controlled person, she might have begun yelling and walking on the wall. Mainly boys wall-walked, but if there was nobody watching, Emlyn sometimes raced down the hall and managed a footprint or two on the wall. But she paced evenly to her next class, said a courteous hello to the teacher (she was one of only a handful of kids who bothered), and sat neatly at her desk.
    Emlyn got high grades in participation, even when she never participated, because she kept her eyes glued to the teacher. It was one of her favorite deceptions. It was not wrong, and yet in a tiny way, it was. She never ducked her head, never hid in her book, never slid behind her own hair—and never said a single word or asked a single question.
    The two classes following lunch required immense self-discipline on Emlyn’s part. She did not permit herself to think of the museum.
    When school finally ended, Emlyn’s heart shot into the air. She felt like a Frisbee, thrown across green grass in a fine, clean swoop.
    It was the most wonderful idea in the world, even if Maris or Jack had thought of it.
    Stealing a mummy.

Two
    T HE EGYPTIAN ROOM WAS half-lit by long, narrow windows whose glass had strange yellow panes. On the walls was painted plaster taken from a tomb, on which flat, sideways-facing Egyptians in white linen skirts were fishing and tending cattle. There were pieces of statues, including two feet with toes so long they looked like fingers that any moment might start knitting a sweater.
    There was a Rosetta stone—pretend, of course, because the real one was in the British Museum in London.
    The inside wall was a piece of a temple: columns and some steps, a thing as big as a classroom. Small children could squeeze behind the columns and ambush their friends and make them scream.
    But in the center of this room was the only object that really mattered to small visitors.
    The mummy.
    Even the littlest children understood that this was a dead person. The only dead person they had ever seen. And yet they could not actually see this one, either, for she was wound in hundreds of yards of narrow linen strips. How terrifying was her solitary confinement. The children who were there at the same time as Emlyn were awestruck and afraid.
    The mummy was a princess. Her hand had once touched the cheek of a pharaoh. Her fingers had once held a glass. Caught the clasp of a necklace. Played with a cat.
    She was an object now. Property. A thing.
    How brave you are, thought Emlyn, to lie exposed. Staring at ceilings for all time. A princess who expected to lie in a pyramid beneath the sands of Egypt. Wrenched from her darkness. Imprisoned in a dusty room in a second-rate museum in an ordinary city in America.
    And now, I will rob your tomb again.
    Emlyn actually changed temperature thinking about it. A great heat of excitement flushed through her core.
    A guard drifted into the Egyptian Room. He barely saw the small children and the parents, but his eyes landed on Emlyn and studied her. Teenagers were not often here of their own free will. Teenagers, when asked about the museum, would say, “I went there when I was little.”
    Nobody in high school came here now.
    And teenagers never went anywhere alone. They were always among friends; they moved in packs, or at least in pairs. Emlyn was visible because she was alone.
    The guard moved