Shawna raised an eyebrow at me, puzzled by the sharpness in my voice. "Okay," she replied with a shrug.
We were finally allowed back in the building. Brian and his mother continued to talk, while the other R.A.s shepherded their campers back to the dorms. As those of us from Drama House started toward the porch, Arthur cut across the lawn. We reached the steps at the same time, and some of the girls shied to the other side. Shawna and I turned to him.
"Don't trust anyone," Arthur said softly. "Not anyone."
Walker must have been told what happened before rehearsal the next morning, but he didn't bring it up. Katie was right: Maggie got stuck with the disciplinary stuff. Given that everyone was short on sleep, rehearsal went amazingly well. The play had been blocked in its entirety, and Walker was talking about our getting off book-getting our lines down-by next week.
During our midmorning break I went downstairs to return a relaxation tape to Maggie and get the next one in the series. Finding her office door closed, I raised my hand to knock, then heard someone speaking.
"You're blowing this way out of proportion," Brian said.
"I don't think so," Maggie replied coolly. "I think it's rather important that a mother be able to trust her son.
"But there was no point in telling you until-" "It was too late?" she suggested.
"Don't put words in my mouth!"
"Brian, how can I trust that you're not-" "You just have to," he told her. "I'm better at these things than you are. Let me handle the situation, Mom, okay? Okay?"
"She won't," a hushed voice interjected.
I jumped at its closeness. Arthur seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.
"Those two are always fighting," he said, his jaw quickly thrusting out and retracting like a turtle's.
"Parents and kids do," I replied quietly.
"They make me jittery," he went on. "People like that, you don't know what they're going to do."
"What do you mean?"
"People like that just go off suddenly," he said. "I've seen it happen."
I wondered if Arthur knew of some real trouble between Maggie and Brian or if he was projecting on them his own uneasy state of mind.
"Arthur, last night, when we were returning to Drama House, why did you tell us not to trust anyone?"
He didn't answer, just chewed a square yellow fingernail. His clothes smelled smoky. Farther down the hall was the door to the tower. I reasoned that he had slipped in there to have a cigarette, then emerged and surprised me. He probably knew all the nooks and crannies of the theater. According to my mother, it isn't the CIA who knows the secrets of the world, but building custodians and hairdressers.
"Have you worked at Stoddard long?" I asked.
"Long enough," he replied.
"Did you work here last summer? Were you around for last year's camp?"
He shoved nervous hands in his pockets. "No. I move in winter. Winter always makes me feel like I should be somewhere else. I came here last winter."
So he couldn't have observed something suspicious when my sister was killed. But he might have noticed some recent activities that would be useful for me to know.
"When the electricity went off yesterday, were you around?"
"I'm always around," he replied guardedly.
"Oh, I know, I know you do your job. I was just wondering if you saw anyone doing something he or she shouldn't. Or perhaps you saw one of the campers alone in the building, not with the group of us."
"You came back alone on Monday," Arthur noted.
Oh, good. He'd seen me being suspicious, and I hadn't even been aware of him.
"Anyone eke?"
"Paul and the weird girl."
"Arthur, do you have any idea who could be cutting the power?"
"No," he replied quickly. "I don't know nothing! I don't see nothing!"
"Okay, okay, no problem, I was just wondering."
He was too nervous and worried to provide information now, and the best thing for me to do was back off. But I had been around a lot of custodians in my life; I would slowly make him my friend.
"Where are we going?" I asked, two hours later.
"If it were up to me, California," Brian said, taking my lunch tray from me, setting it down at the base of a maple at the far end of the quadrangle. "But that's a long walk, so let's stop here."
The energy our troupe had shown earlier in the day had run out by lunchtime. Maggie didn't want kids returning to the dorms unsupervised, but she let us bring our lunches out on the quad and take a nap there, where she could keep an eye on us. Kids had scattered over the grass, some in the shade of tall, leafy trees, others basking in the sun.
Brian stretched out on the grass. I sat and rested my back against the maple's rough bark.
"The truth is, Jenny, there are two more long days till the weekend. Lots of stupid stuff is happening around here, and I have to deal with it. I need a reward-lunch with you."
"It must be tough for you and your mother. Being in charge of the dorms as well as working all day in the theater, you never get a break."
"I think it's getting to her more than me," he said.
"How so?"
Lying on his back, Brian gazed up at the tree, thinking before he answered. The movement of the branches, the shifting sun and shade, were reflected in his dark eyes. "She's overreacting to things. The pranks in the theater have got her really upset. This morning she accused me of them."
I decided not to tell him I'd heard part of their argument.
"Why does she think you'd do something like that?"
"To mess things up. To get back at Walker."
"I didn't realize you disliked him that much."