Eleven Read Online Free

water at the river's edge.
    Mack slid open the back window of the workshop, a level in his hand. “Be careful, Sam.”
    And from the deli window next door, Onji called, “He's the only kid who could drown himself in six inches of water.”
    “Don't worry,” Sam called back. He knew what Mack was thinking. Last week Sam had rowed past the bridgewhere the river widened out, the water deeper and swifter there. Somehow one of his oars had floated away from the boat, leaving him a mile downriver to wait for someone to pull him and the boat onto the bank.
    “Stay this side of the bridge. All right?”
    “I will.”
    “He's an accident waiting to happen,” Onji said.
    Mack nodded. “Can't take your eyes off him for two seconds.”
    They were joking, but Sam knew Mack was afraid of the water. Sam threw his sneakers into the boat, peeled off his socks, and splashed his way into the water.
    The temperature was shocking, numbing his toes. He pushed the boat hard, scraping the bottom along the sand, grit under his feet, and jumped in, rubbing his feet with cold hands.
    Night Cat came to the edge of the water and meowed. Not asking. Ordering.
    Sam angled back and scooped him up. “Okay?” He buried his face in the cat's fur. It had a smell all its own, a Night Cat smell. There was that wisp of a memory: the cat, fur matted down, teetering on the edge of a boat. And Sam, reaching, reaching, the boat tilting, the edge almost level with the water.
    He felt a pulse in his throat, his heart thumping, as Night Cat twisted away from him and darted to the backseat.
    Stop
, he told himself.
    The pipe clanked against the building. He stared at it. It was worse every day. How was he going to get Caroline up to the attic? Sometimes Mack went away for an hour or two to deliver furniture, but he couldn't count on it. Was it possible to screw the pipe back to the side of the wall?
    But Onji saw too much; Onji saw almost everything. Sam would just have to wait and see.
    He waved back at both windows, a little guilty that he wasn't helping Onji today. Saturday was Onji's busy day. And Mack's, too. Mack had been in the workroom early, repairing an old chair, smoothing out a deep gash in one of the legs and threading in new caning for the seat.
    Sam began to row, feeling the pull in his arms and his back. As the boat moved away from the shore, the sound of Indian music floated out of Anima's restaurant, light music with bells that reminded him of Anima herself.
    Sam rowed fast, through the narrow channel where the rushes were over his head. He pulled the dripping oars into the boat and dropped the anchor, a brick tied with a rope, onto the sandy bottom.
    Overhead, the stalks swayed and rattled against each other, and a kingfisher flew up and away from him. He sat back and raised his face to the sun, listening to the water lapping against the boat.
    It was the best place to think.
    Missing.
He said it aloud, and Night Cat looked up at him. “I have to think about all this, figure ou…” His voice trailed off.
    Mack always tackled things in steps, counting on his fingers, one of them bent from a long-ago accident. “First sand the pieces, then join them with carpenter's glue, use the clamps until everything dries. Next, sand again, stain—”
    And Mrs. Waring in the Resource Room: “Look at the syllables, break the word down, one piece after another.”
    Steps.
    All right.
    Caroline first. She was the key. They'd open the box somehow, she'd read what the clipping said, and anything else that might be there.
    Caroline didn't know he could hardly read. With her head down, turning pages, she might not have noticed that he left for the Resource Room every afternoon.
    How could he tell her?
    His mind veered off. That room. He knew it as well as Mack's workshop. And Mrs. Waring, the smell of her lunch coffee strong as she spoke, her voice with a twang:
Saaam.
Her smile was great, even though her teeth were a little crooked.
    Once she'd showed him a