A Thief in the House of Memory Read Online Free PDF

liked.
    â€œâ€˜I call architecture frozen music,’”he wrote. But that was as far as he got.
    â€œPssst.”
    It was like air escaping from a pierced tire. Dec sat back in his chair, surprised but not frightened.
    â€œPssst!”
    How old had he been? Three or four. He wheeled himself back a step or two and stared at the shadowy darkness of the recess under the desk.
    She was curled up there. Lindy. She held a finger to her lips.
    â€œSHHHHH,”
she whispered.
    She had a rascally grin on her face. She motioned for him to join her, as if some urgent business was afoot. His four-year-oldself obeyed, scampering under the desk and into her waiting arms. She pressed her finger to his lips. He could smell the nicotine.
    â€œWhy are we hiding?” he whispered, cuddling in close.
    â€œDaddy,” she whispered back, kissing him on the forehead.
    Daddy? “Why?”
    â€œTo make him pay,” she said, holding back a giggling fit. But before she could explain, he heard Daddy’s voice calling for them.
    â€œLindy, Declan, where are you?” He remembered how his mother pulled him closer, placed her hand gently over his mouth. And Dec could remember her body shaking with suppressed laughter.
    Then his father came to the door of the study and walked in.
    â€œAre you two in here?” he asked.
    Silence.
    â€œAw, come on now, guys,” he said.
    Silence.
    â€œI swear, Lindy, I don’t know who’s the bigger kid.”
    He didn’t sound angry, thought Dec. Just left out. He remembered waiting on pins and needles for his father to find them. But his father never did.
    â€œWhy did we hide from Daddy?” he asked, when the door to the study had clicked shut. Lindy, sitting up cross-legged now, smoothed his hair back with her hands.
    â€œIt’s good for him,’ she said.
    â€œGood for him?”
    â€œYeah,” she said, licking her finger and smoothing out Dec’s eyebrows. “It’s good for him to know how easy a person could get lost in this drafty old dump.”
    The whole episode came back to him as clear as a movie. He touched his eyebrows. They felt wet.
    The door to the study clicked open. Dec caught his breath. He half wondered if it was his father, still looking after all these years.
    â€œDeckly?”
    He waited silently. Then Sunny was at the desk, bending down, her chubby hands on her knees, squinting at him sitting there cross-legged in the dark. She smiled with a rascally grin all her own.
    â€œWho’s It?” she asked.

I-Less
    D EC S TEEPLE waited for Ezra, his lunch before him on the cafeteria table looking even more miserable than Dec himself. It was uneaten but not untouched. He had constructed an edifice of limp carrot sticks and celery stalks, a bagel and three olives. A monument to waiting.
    He wore Roy Orbison dark glasses. They were almost ugly enough to be cool, but not if you were wearing a Green Eggs and Hamlet T-shirt that said:
    I would not, could not kill the king
,
    I could not murder anything
.
    Dec was tired. He’d been up half the night again, staring from his window towards the big house, drawn to it and afraid of it at the same time. He had to talk to someone about what was happening to him. Where was Cling Wrap when you needed him?
    He sat at the only table in the cafeteria with its ownblackboard. Melody Fong and Martin McNair were using it to argue over an equation that proved the universe was a giant Twinkie. Arianna Osmanli was doing the
New York Times
crossword behind a veil of blue-black hair. Langston Parchment was silently destroying Richard Pergolesi at chess. And directly across the table from Dec, Vivien Ulman was busily writing in her journal. Dec became absorbed with the crown of her blonde head. Hair, pale as a whisper.
    â€œWhat are you writing?” he asked.
    She looked up. “An ode. Well, a mock ode. Want to read a mock ode?”
    â€œNo, thanks,” said Dec, staring