Through the Hidden Door Read Free

God’s truth. Just a few scratches. I checked it out.”
    “How’d you check it out?”
    “Went out the kitchen entrance. Biked downtown. Looked in Finney’s front window. Dog’s curled up in front of the fireplace. Sleeping like a baby,” said Danny. “Not even a Band-Aid on him.”
    “Her!” I corrected him. “Danny, are you telling me the truth?”
    “Truth! Saw it with my own eyes. So sleep, kid. Okay? And kill that goddamn speech defect before Silks yanks you in for a round of his gravel therapy!”
    I thought of how much I had shared with these boys, of how close I’d been to them and all their rottenness.
    I twisted around in my twisted covers. “But even so, Danny. If they find out who did it—”
    “No one’s gonna listen to poor blind Snowy,” said Danny. “And the rest of the boys—they know better than to rat on us. They might get hurt. I’m a nose tackle, baby. I can hurt a lot of people, and no one’s gonna be quick enough to see. Accident. Easy. The boys know.”
    Easy was how Danny drifted out of my room. I slipped to the floor in my sheet cocoon and fell asleep there.
    I dreamed, oddly, of an earthquake that measured twenty on the Richter scale, in the middle of Greenfield, Massachusetts.
    Not only did the whole school crumble upon itself, ivied walls and stained glass windows shattering, but it went down in a shower of flying Right Guard deodorant, video cassettes, Frequent Flyer coupons, and PC jr.’s. Top-Siders spun through the air, forever parted from their mates. J. Press blazers blazed. Navy blue rep ties with the school crest knotted themselves around the branches of our two-hundred-year-old elms, and the molten sinuses of the earth filled like candy dishes with Binaca breath spray, graphite squash racquets, and Yale sweat shirts with the sleeves carefully ripped off at the shoulder.
    I woke at five, halfway under my bed. Senior boys on honors are allowed private rooms. I had one. Tomorrow, if I were still at Winchester, I’d be rooming with a lower former or maybe three of them.
    I dressed in track sweats and crept downstairs. Then I trotted across the common and three miles into Greenfield, down Hancock Street to the Finneys’ house. Only an orange cat, flicking his tail from a fence top, took notice of me.
    Four times I circled the house, each time trying to peer in without seeming to. Finally I hid in some juniper shrubs under the living room window, popped up, and looked in for one and a half seconds.
    No collie slept by the fireplace. Nor in the familiar chintz-covered wing chairs. I’d had formal Sunday tea in that living room a dozen times with Finney and Dr. Dorothy. The collie usually growled at us boys from behind a gateleg Hitchcock table. But the collie wasn’t there either. I sprinted out of the bush and back toward campus. Since I detested jogging and only did it when the coaches forced me to, I knew I’d live on aspirin for a week.
    “I’ll jog all year if it’ll make you happy, God,” I gasped, my breath steaming, tears welling in my eyes. “Please, God, let that dog live. I’ll do anything if you let that son-of-a-bitch collie live unharmed. If you help me, God, I’ll give my year’s allowance to the ASPCA. I’ll save the whales when I grow up. If there’s a next life, I’ll volunteer for a hitch as a Tibetan yak herder. Somebody has to do it and it will be me (pant), Barney Pennimen (huff), and I’ll give my yaks (puff) expensive food! I swear to God, God.”

Chapter Two
    I NLAID MAHOGANY BOOKSHELVES LINED Mr. Finney’s office, floor to ceiling. Scattered among the calfskin-bound volumes were Indian pots and a couple of model clipper ships. The rug was a purplish Sarouk, worth a mint, and the chairs dark squeaky leather, ancient, British, grand. In one of them sat Mr. Finney, full bellied, white eyebrowed, and smoking a pipe that had gone out. In the other, Mr. Silks, hair in place, diddled with the finial on a silver humidor.
    “Sit down,