What We Saw at Night - By Jacquelyn Mitchard Page 0,19

as “we,” maybe they would again, too. Besides, I’d been doing my own thing. I had a job. I was maturing, even if they weren’t.

I focused on the positives. School was out. Summer was here. We were ready to trace.

The first night, we didn’t expect to be able to do anything. But we didn’t count on the very excellent Duluth Orchestra Hall. Nor did we count on the way some hah-hah public sculptor had set up what essentially was a Parkour garden. Rob laughed when he saw it: a piano keyboard set in a series of pillars, each about ten feet long and ten feet wide and ten feet apart, pillars in a row that grew taller and taller—from a height of four feet to about twenty feet. Some were dark rough granite and others were a pale gray, almost white. Apparently, at least according to what Rob Googled on his phone, it represented piano keys. It had cost the city of Duluth more than a million dollars.

“These guys must have a convention every year where they laugh their heads off at city government,” Rob said.

Juliet said, “You think?”

“Maybe they believe it’s really art,” I said.

“I think they think it’s all a big gag,” Rob said, typing away at his phone. He summoned up a bunch of pictures, including the Detroit giant bathtub (The Heart of the Lake) and the Pittsburgh Horseshoe (called—God help me—Irony), as well as the one we dubbed the Seattle Rattle, which was supposed to represent an ancient anchor. As far as we could tell, it was a baby toy that would not have passed a safety inspection.

“Well, I’m not complaining,” I said. I made a point of looking into both of their eyes. “This is a perfect setup for a Tribe like us, right?”

BEFORE WE STARTED, we treated ourselves to a fairly lavish dinner at La Prairie Rouge. I’d found myself flush with more money than I’d ever had in my life, as Tessa insisted on paying me $12 an hour because Tavish liked me so much. Still, we shared two entrees among three: oysters and salmon with dill. Then we hurried back to Orchestra Hall. In the car, Juliet and I changed out of our long black skirts into our long black Spandex pants. We did a few long vaults over the lowest “key,” to warm up.

After that, we tried a standing jump to balance on its top, whereupon Juliet did a back flip off the second-highest key … whereupon we began to notice that a man in a dark blue uniform was more than casually interested in our abilities … whereupon we noticed him walking, then jogging toward us … whereupon we got arrested.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said the police officer. “May I please see your driver’s licenses?”

Reluctantly, we extracted them from our backpacks. Slowly, and very respectfully, Rob said, “Please excuse me. But we are not driving.”

The cop looked at us in that measuring way certain scary people have: as though trying to decide whether it’s worth messing up their hair to bloody your face.

“I did not ask you if you were driving. I asked for your driver’s licenses,” he said.

“What we were doing is a kind of discipline, a sport called Parkour,” Rob said.

“I don’t care if it’s Parcheesi. My kid brother got caught doing it, at the parking garage, outside the Macy’s. It’s like skateboarding without the skates, and surfboarding without the surfboard, or like suicide without the—”

“Sewer?” I said helpfully.

He acted as if he didn’t hear me. Normally I would never have said a thing like that in a situation like that. I still have no idea why I did. Juliet gave me a look of such alarm and disgust that I would have turned myself into a giant granite piano key at that moment. But it prompted her to draw her trump card.

“My father would not do this,” she said with a sad sigh.

“And who is your father? The mayor?”

“No, he is your brother officer. Thomas Sirocco, deputy chief of the Iron County Sheriff’s Department but former detective in the Minneapolis Police Department.”

“He get in trouble?” the cop asked plainly.

“No, he moved to Iron County because he wanted to. Fifteen years ago.” She blinked several times and swallowed. “So that I could be treated at the Tabor Clinic.” Juliet could really turn it on when she wanted to. She was so pitiful a drama-dolly that I wanted to cry, myself. “I have a fatal illness. Xeroderma Pigmentosum.”