"Afraid of spiders?" I guessed.
But Bex plowed on, " . . . still a little deaf from the percussion grenade incident during final week."
So, yeah, that's how I ended up in the dumbwaiter.
I felt myself descending through the castle walls, lower and lower, while the noises in the kitchen grew louder and clearer.
"Are you sure you don't want some tea?" Bex's father asked.
"No thanks, Abe." My aunt's voice sounded weak - almost frail. "I haven't been sleeping all that well, to tell you the truth."
"Neither have we," Bex's mother added.
The kettle began to whistle. A chair scrapped across the floor.
"How close was it really, Grace?" Aunt Abby asked. "Was she in any danger?"
"Cammie is in contest danger," Mrs. Baxter said as the whistling stopped.
"You saw him, Abe?" Abby asked. Even though there wasn't a doubt who he was, it seemed to take forever for Mr. Baxter to answer.
"Yes."
"How was he?" Abby asked.
"Desperate," Bex's father answered.
"Do you believe it?" Abby asked.
"This is the way the Circle has worked for more than a hundred years . . ." Mr. Baxter started.
"But, Abe, we knew him," Abby pressed again.
After another long pause, Mr. Baxter said, "I believe Joe Solomon is the sort of man that no one will ever truly know."
Three seasoned and decorated operatives sat on the other side of the wall. Between them they'd probably mastered a hundred identities in a dozen countries. Names were just covers. Just legends. Hanging in the darkness, I wondered if anything about Joe Solomon was ever real at all.
It felt as if the truth were slipping away from me, falling, until . . .
Wait, I realized too late, I was slipping - literally.
Through a crack in the top of the dumbwaiter, I could see Bex holding the fraying rope, trying hard to pull me back up, but the rope slipped again.
Outside, the adults kept talking. I heard Mrs. Baxter saying, "We can't tell Cammie until we're absolutely certain . . ."
"We can never tell Cammie," Aunt Abby said.
"Hold on!" Bex's frantic whisper echoed down the shaft as the dumbwaiter dipped again.
This is not good, I told myself. This is not . . .
But outside the shaft, Mrs. Baxter's voice was calm. "She's almost seventeen, Abby. And the more she knows, the safer she'll -"
"Cammie will never be safe!" Abby said, and I remembered that a semi-stable dumbwaiter was the least of my problems.
"Hang on, Cam," Bex whispered from above. "I'm -"
"We don't know that Cammie would do something foolish," Mrs. Baxter went on.