Chapter 6

Chapter Six IN WHICH They Find Unexpected Things in the Icebox Jared rolled over at the sound of his mother's voice. She was angry. "Jared, you better get up." "What's going on?" Jared asked sleepily, peering up from the covers. For a second he thought he'd missed school, until he remembered they'd moved and not even so much as set foot in the new school yet.

"Up, Jared!" his mother said. "You want to pretend you don't know? Fine, let's go downstairs so you can see what's going on." The kitchen was a mess. Mallory had a broom and was sweeping up broken pieces of a porcelain bowl. The walls were painted with chocolate syrup and orange juice. Raw eggs oozed down the windowpanes. Simon was sitting at the kitchen table. His arms were covered with the same bruises Mallory had been wearing only a day before, and his eyes were red-rimmed, like he'd been crying. "Well?" his mother asked expectantly. "I—I didn't do this," Jared said, looking around at them. They couldn't really believe he would do something like this, could they? And there, on the floor of the kitchen, next to drifts of cereal and scattered pieces of orange peel, Jared saw small tracks in the flour. They were the size of his little finger, and he could clearly see the imprint of the heel of a foot and a feathering in the front that might have been from toes.

"Look," Jared said, pointing. "See. Little footprints." Mallory looked up at him, and her eyes were narrowed with fury. "Just shut up, Jared. Mom says she saw you down here last night. You made those footprints!" "I did not!" Jared yelled back. "Why don't you look in the freezer then, huh?"

"What?" Jared asked. Simon gave an especially wet-sounding sob. Their mother took the broom from Mallory's hand and started sweeping up the flour and cereal. "Mom, no, the footprints," Jared said, but his mother didn't pay any attention to him. Two strokes of the broom, and the only proof he had was swept into a pile of rubbish. Mallory opened the freezer door. Each of Simon's tadpoles was frozen into a single cube in the tray. Next to them was a note written in ink on a piece of a cereal box: Not very nice to ice the mice. "And Jeffrey and Lemondrop are gone!" said Simon. "Now, why don't you tell us what you did with your brother's mice?" said his mother. "Mom, I didn't do it. I really didn't." Mallory gripped Jared by the shoulder. "I don't know what you think you're doing, but you're

about to start regretting it." "Mallory," their mother cautioned. His sister let go, but the look she gave him carried the promise of later violence.

"Mom, I didn't do it."