Walls within Walls Read Online Free

padded into the apartment, the swish-swish of the surgical booties marking their every step.
    â€œWhy the footwear?” Brid asked.
    â€œExcuse me?” said Lily.
    â€œWhy do you wear those booties on your feet?”
    â€œWell, we don’t wear shoes in the home,” said Lily, “as Sonia, our housekeeper, likes things extra sanitary. We weren’t sure what your house rules were, so we brought our own booties.”
    â€œDo you go to Saint James’s School?” CJ asked Lukas.
    â€œThe local private school?” asked Lukas with a hint of snobbery.
    â€œYes,” CJ said.
    â€œOh, no, we both go to boarding school in England. Our parents mostly travel, so they think it preferable that we should go to the best schools in the world, no matter where they are.” Lukas said this with great enthusiasm.
    CJ, Pat, and Brid exchanged knowing glances as they led the way into CJ’s room. They all thought the same thing: do not tell these kids about the eye behind the wall.
    â€œDo you know the history of this apartment?” asked Lukas, brushing back his blond hair and hiking up his pants a bit before he sat down on a moving box. Brid thought he acted like a thirty-year-old man instead of a boy of about twelve.
    â€œNot really,” said Brid. “Our mom liked it because it was built at an interesting time in New York City—when things were really thriving and changing.”
    â€œThat’s right,” said Lily. “Grand buildings were going up everywhere.” She ran her hand along the intricate woodwork of CJ’s bookcase. “Our parents say it’s hard to find places like this anymore.”
    For a girl of about ten, Lily had an uncanny ability to speak like an adult. She had red-framed glasses and dark red hair held in place by a neat headband. Brid felt squirmy and uncomfortable.
    â€œOur apartments used to be connected, you know,” said Lukas. “They were owned by a family, the Posts, of the packaged food empire. They merged with the Huttons, a family that had a banking empire.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, they merged?” Pat interrupted. He had said nothing the entire time the Williamsons were present, which Brid thought was admirable and unlike him.
    â€œA young man from a rich banking family married a lady from the food industry, a family that pretty much invented packaged food for supermarkets,” Lily said. “Before that, you had to go to the bakery to buy bread, the butcher to buy meat, and so on.”
    â€œAnyway,” Lukas continued, “they were married, and at first they lived in a fantastic town house around the corner from here. When the Posts constructed this building, they demolished their old house and rebuilt the entiretown house on the top two floors here. They could enjoy views of the skyline and Central Park, while living in one of the grandest apartments in New York City. They were fabulous entertainers and had many grand fêtes here.”
    Even CJ felt like he needed a dictionary to talk to this boy. “So then years later, when they wanted to sell it, they split their big apartment in two?”
    â€œFour,” interjected Lily. “Two apartments on both the twelfth and thirteenth floors. Our living rooms used to be one giant ballroom. When they created our separate apartments, they split it down the middle. That’s why your living room is so enormous.”
    â€œBut we’re on the fourteenth floor, not the thirteenth,” Patrick piped in.
    â€œWell, they call our apartments fourteen north and fourteen south, but really we’re on the thirteenth floor. Nobody would live on a thirteenth floor; people thought it unlucky, so this building goes from twelve to fourteen,” Lukas said with a strange gleam in his eyes.
    â€œWhat do these poems on the moldings mean?” Brid asked as she pointed to the intricate writing far above their heads.
    â€œThe Posts adored