The Gypsy Game Read Online Free

time. Like, maybe you ought to give your dad some warning before you bring over a whole gang of kids. Besides, won’t he be mad at you for not going to the grocery store?”
    Toby shrugged. “He’s probably forgotten about getting food by now. Artists are that way. Sometimes he forgets about food for days at a time.” He turned to look at Melanie, and all of a sudden he began to grin. “And about warning him that we’re coming … You don’t have to worry in December. In the wintertime he wears overalls.”
    Melanie felt her face get hot. She looked away, wondering how Toby knew that one of the rumors she’d been thinking about was that sometimes his dad painted and sculpted without much on. Like almost naked, for instance.
    Melanie wasn’t too reassured by what Toby had said, but they were almost to University Avenue before she had a chance to talk privately to April. “Uh, April,” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking—”
    April pulled away impatiently. “Yeah? What?”
    “Well, it’s just that I’ve heard that Toby lives in a pretty weird place.”
    “Yeah, I know,” April said delightedly. “Come on. I can’t wait.”
    Melanie gave up. It would probably be all right. And besides, she really was curious to see if any of the rumors were true. She’d just have to be careful to keep an eye on Marshall. And Elizabeth, too.
    Toby lived just off University Avenue on top of a building that was mostly a bar and pool hall. Only you didn’t have to go through the downstairs to get up to where the Alvillars lived, which was good thing because no one was allowed in that part of the building who wasn’t eighteen years old. Instead, you went around back and then up some outside stairs that ended on a rusty metal platform. At one end of the platform was a big metal door that wouldn’topen unless you kicked it. Toby kicked it once, and nothing happened.
    “Back up,” he said, “so I can get a run at it.”
    They all backed up, and Toby ran across the rattly slats of the platform, kicked, and the door crashed open. From somewhere in the distance a hollow-sounding voice said, “Great Caesar’s ghost. What was that?”
    “It’s just me,” Toby yelled, “and some friends! Can we come in?”
    There was no answer, but he went in anyway. Melanie grabbed Marshall’s hand and followed Toby into an enormous room, practically a block long and almost as wide. It had a very high ceiling that was partly made from glass, and on the floor, stretching from one side of the room to the other, was—
junk
. Most of the junk seemed to be from wrecking yards or construction sites, but mixed in with the pipes and rods and wheels were bicycle handlebars, lampshades, stovepipes, birdcages, telephones, frying pans, and a bunch of pink plastic toilet seats. Some of it was woven and twisted and welded together into strangely threatening shapes with staring eyes and clawlike hands. Some of it was piled into tall, teetering towers like the metal skeletons of ancient castles. But most of it was just scattered around or stacked up in great, dusty piles.
    Melanie pushed Marshall back behind her and held him there as they moved forward, following Toby between two junk piles and, at one point, under the huge blue body of what looked like an almost life-sized brontosaurus.
    Marshall liked the brontosaurus. Hanging back, he pointed up at the tiny head at the end of a long archingneck that seemed to be made of hundreds of welded-together Chicken Of The Sea tuna cans. “Dinosaur,” he whispered. “Stop. I want to see the tuna dinosaur.” But Melanie kept pulling him after her as she followed Toby between the barrel-shaped legs and under the huge blue body.
    From there they wound their way through several other junk-pile jungles. Here and there among the piles Melanie noticed what might possibly be considered a living area: in one place a kind of platform with a mattress and a bunch of blankets scattered around over it; and in another,