The Magic Misfits - Neil Patrick Harris Page 0,19

the group, her lip beginning to twitch with fear. She looked to the broken window. A jagged hole glittered like monster teeth in the light of a nearby streetlamp. Outside, a breeze whipped up a few fallen leaves, making them skitter across the sidewalk, sounding like claws.

Mrs. Larsen called out from upstairs. “What in the world was that noise?” Coming down the stairs, she shrieked at the mess in her living room.

Mr. Vernon put his hand on her shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, my dear woman, but I believe we need to call the police again.”

NINE

After the police showed up at the Larsen house for the second time that evening, after they examined the scene of the crime, asked even more questions, and confiscated the brick and the note, after Leila retrieved a frightened Top Hat from under the sofa, after Mr. Vernon promised to get everyone home safely and then led them all out the door, after Mrs. Larsen, Ms. Parkly, and Ridley cleaned up the broken glass and patched the window with a sheet of plastic, Ridley finally headed through the doorway underneath the stairwell and down the ramp to the little room her father had set up for her a few years prior. She flicked the light switch, and a couple of old Edison bulbs glared from their cords hanging over her workbench.

The walls were black, and the room felt like little more than a large closet, but Ridley took pride in the fact that the space belonged only to her. Shelves and cabinets flanked the space. Extendable grabbers were propped against a few tables so that Ridley could access containers and tools in corners and up high. Her father had called this the lab, which made Ridley smile. To think of herself as a mad scientist with an actual lab made her feel powerful and strange. She knew she wasn’t mad, whatever that meant, but she knew that tinkering on projects calmed her down and helped her think.

And if there were ever a time that Ridley needed to feel calm, this was certainly it.

She examined the plans she’d drawn up at the end of the summer and compared them to the device she had been working on ever since—a big black box with a set of wheels attached to its underside. The contraption lay on the floor beside the table in the center of the small space.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Not now, Mother!” Ridley called out. Couldn’t she have even a few minutes to work without being interrupted? But the door opened anyway. “Oh. Ms. Parkly…” Although she’d wanted to be alone, she still felt an odd disappointment that it wasn’t her mother who’d come to check on her. “I thought you’d left.”

“Not yet!” said Ms. Parkly. “Do you mind?” She ended the question by gesturing toward the space, asking if she could enter. Ridley nodded reluctantly. After spending a few moments trying to figure out where to sit down, Ms. Parkly awkwardly perched on Ridley’s workbench, slipping on a sheaf of papers before righting herself again. “Silly me!” she said with a giggle.

“What is it?” Ridley said, turning over the pages on which she’d carefully drawn out her plans.

“I wanted to see if you were okay.”

“I guess I am.” Ridley held up her arms. “No cuts. No scratches. No bruises.”

“Ah, well, I didn’t really mean that.”

Ridley looked into her teacher’s eyes, searching for a clue as to what was really going on in her head. “Where’s my mother?”

“She’s calling some people about coming to fix the window tomorrow. I offered to stay over, but she said no.” Ms. Parkly glanced at the box on the floor. Ridley tried to move forward to block her view. It was meant to be a secret, especially from someone as puzzling as her teacher. “Do you want to talk about what all happened?”

“Not really.”

“Do you want to talk about… anything? I find it’s helpful when I’m feeling… flustered, frustrated, or downright ferocious!”

What on earth is this woman talking about? Ridley wondered. Her mother? The librarian’s attack? Carter’s uncle?

Or the brick?

“Something that helps me when I’m feeling stuck is looking at a problem from a different angle. If I think that I know the only solution, it can make me feel like I’m out of control when that solution doesn’t work. Or when no one else wants to do it my way.”

“Uh-huh,” said Ridley, unsure where she was going with this.

Ms. Parkly’s sharp nose seemed to point down at her.