House Arrest Read online

  “Wait.” Mikey sounded bewildered. “You mean she had an aneurysm and fell into that barrel?”

  For the first time, Veronica looked uncertain. “We’re not sure how she got in there yet,” she admitted. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this.…” She glanced toward the doors, as if hoping a producer would come in and rescue her. Then she shrugged and continued. “The police took one of the cameramen, Chuck, in for questioning. Apparently he’s been providing Sylvia with nonprescription pain pills. Their theory is that he found her dead and panicked, thinking she OD’d. He could have stuffed her body into that barrel without realizing it would be used in a challenge so soon.”

  I was surprised she was telling us so much. Even though she looked calm, cool, and collected, with not a sleek blond hair out of place, I guessed she was as shaken up by this as anyone else.

  I was even more surprised to realize what this meant: The game was still on. If the producers thought this was just terrible bad luck—sort of like Frank’s “accident” with the log pile—they wouldn’t shut us down. And why would they? They didn’t know about the worst of what had happened since Mitch had left—the glass in the ice, Mary’s attack, even the latest round of threatening e-mails. I bit my lip, wondering if it had been a huge mistake to keep that stuff from them.

  “Wow,” Bobby T said. “That’s wild.”

  Olivia nodded. “It’s sad that she died,” she said. “Still, at least it was sort of, you know, natural or whatever.”

  “And at least it wasn’t some freaky little dead girl, either,” Mary put in. Her eyes darted around to the shadowy corners of the huge room. “This time,” she added softly.

  Decisions, Decisions

  Obviously, nobody was in the mood to continue the challenge. Instead, Veronica drew the name of a team out of a hat to decide the winner.

  “Blue Team,” she announced, glancing at the slip of paper. “That’s Joe Carr, Mikey Chan, Mary Moore, and Gail Digby.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Mikey cheered weakly. When he pumped his fist, a little goo dripped off his shirt.

  “So what do we win?” Gail asked.

  “I’m glad you asked.” Veronica’s evil smile was creeping back. “Because this was a team challenge, each member of the winning team must choose a new deprivation for the entire house.”

  “What?” Mikey yelped. “You mean we’re gonna lose four luxuries at once?”

  “Oh, man,” muttered Ripley.

  Bobby T looked worried. “Remember, my fabulous Blue Team buds,” he said, “having the Internet benefits all of us. Especially now that we don’t have TV anymore.”

  “Good point,” agreed Mikey, glaring briefly at me. Guess he was still holding that grudge.

  “Oh, please.” Gail rolled her eyes. “Plenty of people still live without the Internet every day, you know.”

  “Not by choice, I bet,” Bobby retorted.

  Veronica looked pleased. Probably because everyone else in the room was unhappy. Joe and the other Blue Teamers all looked kind of anxious at being stuck in this situation. And everyone else was already worrying about losing their favorite luxuries. Well, except maybe Gail. She probably wouldn’t be happy until we were all living on bread and water in a bare room.

  “All right, people.” Veronica headed for the door. “Blue Team, I’ll need your decisions in one hour.”

  “An hour?” Bobby cried in dismay. He gulped. “Um, I mean, that doesn’t give them much time to think about this.”

  Or much time for him to come up with bribes, I thought. He was really going to have to scramble if he had any hope of saving his blog access.

  “One hour,” Veronica repeated. “I’ll see you then.”

  As soon as she left, everyone rushed the Blue Team members. I didn’t want to get involved in all the lobbying myself.

  Stepping over to Joe, I leaned toward him. “Try not to make too many enemies with this,” I murmured in his ear. It was getting harder to stay under the radar when the two of us kept winning challenges.

  Joe just looked at me and rolled his eyes. “Duh,” he said.

  O-o-okay. So maybe he didn’t need my advice.

  I headed for the door. I’d just stepped outside when I heard someone hurrying after me. It was Brynn.

  “Hey,” she said breathlessly. “It’s a pretty crazy scene in there. I’m kind of glad our team didn’t win.”

  “Me too,” I agreed.

  We wandered downstairs and out into the yard. The crew was already working on draining the pool. Yellow police tape marked out the area where we’d found Sylvia.

  Luckily, the mansion’s grounds were big enough to avoid all that. We skirted around the hustle and bustle and headed for the wild area beyond the manicured yard. It was pretty cool back there. Ravines, rocky areas, scrubby brush. All kinds of wildlife. We scared up tons of birds, a jackrabbit, and a handful of lizards as we walked.

  We wandered in silence for a while along the edge of the biggest ravine. Finally Brynn stopped and sat down on a wide, flat boulder. “I wonder if there are cameras way out here,” she said, glancing around.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I sat down on the same boulder. But I was careful to leave at least a foot of space between us. I admit it, I was feeling kind of self-conscious. I don’t know if it was because we might be on camera, or if it was from being out there alone with Brynn.

  Okay, scratch that. I do know which it was. It was being with Brynn. But possibly being on camera didn’t help. She was gazing back toward the house. From out here, it looked a lot smaller. “I can’t believe someone else died here,” she said softly.

  She looked so sad all of a sudden that I wanted to take her hand. But I didn’t. Maybe it was those cameras. Or maybe I’m just a dork, like Joe always says.

  “You heard what Veronica said,” I told her. “It was just a freak thing. It could have happened anytime, anywhere.”

  “I know.” She turned to face me, her huge green eyes scared and vulnerable. “But it happened here.” She sighed. “You know, I kind of wish the show had been shut down by this, like those guys were saying. This was fun at first, but lately…” She smiled wanly. “Thirty thousand dollars is no million bucks, but at least it’s something, right?”

  I realized she was talking about dropping out again. “What?” I was horrified at the thought of losing her. Er, I mean, of the bad guy succeeding and driving away a deserving contestant. “No, Brynn,” I blurted out. “You can’t quit!”

  She bit her lip. “I’m not usually a quitter. But things are so crazy around here.” She stared at the bandages on her hands. “What if something worse happens next? I mean, I was the one who almost drank that glassy ice water, remember?”

  I don’t panic easily. But I was kind of panicking now. I flashed back to when Joe and I had received our instructions for this mission. The info had been hidden inside a fake book called The Bonehead’s Guide to Talking to Girls. Right now, I kind of wished that book had been real. And that I’d memorized it.

  “Listen.” I leaned closer. “Whoever is doing this stuff obviously wants us all to quit. You can’t let them win. Besides…” I paused and swallowed hard. “I, uh, I can’t imagine, you know, being in this house without you.”

  “Really?” Her smile lit up her face, chasing away the gloomy shadows from her eyes. “That’s so sweet of you to say, Frank. I would miss you, too. You’re really special, you know that? I mean it.”

  She leaned a tiny bit closer. I held my breath. For a second I thought…

  But no. She glanced around and laughed. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” she said. “Never knowing if you’re being filmed.”

  “Uh, yeah.” I wiped my palms on my jeans. Even though it wasn’t very hot out, they were kind of sweaty all of a sudden. “Should we head back to the house? Veronica will be coming for those decisions soon.”

  We returned to the great room to find everyone else still there. Joe shot us a suspicious glare. ATAC teaches us to be observant. I’m sur
e it hadn’t escaped his attention that Brynn and I were the only ones missing.

  Just then Veronica strode in. “Hello, everyone,” she said. “I trust you have some decisions for me?”

  Joe went first. “I choose to deprive the house of books and magazines.”

  He looked kind of smug when he said it. I could guess why. He knew getting rid of reading material would bug me more than anyone.

  But I wasn’t going to let it bother me. Actually, it was a pretty good choice. Nobody else looked particularly upset, except maybe Mary and Hal. And neither of them was likely to cause much trouble for us.

  “I’ll go next,” Mikey spoke up.

  “All right,” Veronica said. “What’s your decision, Mr. Chan?”

  Mikey smiled. “I choose—exercise equipment.”

  “What?” James howled. “You can’t do that!”

  “Ah, but he can,” said Veronica. “In fact, the crew is on its way to seal off the door right now.”

  For a second I thought James might leap across the room and throttle Mikey then and there. No wonder. He lives to work out. Plus everyone in the room knew that Mikey had done it to get back at him for all the “fatso” stuff.

  Then it was Gail’s turn. She chose to shut off the hot water taps in the bathrooms. There were a number of groans at that one.

  Gail looked kind of smug. “I’ve had to live in apartments without hot water before. No big deal for me,” she said. “We’ll just see how the rest of you do when you have to live like poor folks, huh?”

  “Don’t worry.” Veronica glanced pointedly at the walk-in fireplace. “You’re all still welcome to heat up as much water as you like on the fire.” She smirked. “Of course, you’ll find that a bit more labor-intensive than turning a faucet.”

  “Great.” Ripley rolled her eyes. “That’ll really help when I want to take a shower.”

  Veronica turned to Mary, the final member of the Blue Team. “Ms. Moore, what about you?” she said. “Your decision, please.”

  Mary cleared her throat, looking nervous. “I, uh, I choose—Internet service,” she stated meekly.

  “Nooooo!” Bobby T cried. He leaped for his laptop, which was sitting on one of the coffee tables. He flipped it open and scrabbled at the keys. “I have to let my readers know.…”

  He looked at the screen. Then his face crumpled. I actually felt kind of bad for the guy.

  “Too late.” Veronica smiled smugly. “You’re already off-line.”

  Where There’s Smoke…

  I thought Bobby T was going to cry. He was staring at his Internet-less laptop as if someone just killed his best friend. Come to think of it, maybe someone had.

  But that wasn’t the end of the day’s surprises. “You can start figuring out how to live with your new deprivations in a moment,” Veronica announced. “First, I want to let you know there will be another elimination soon.”

  “Huh?” Olivia said. “But you said those would happen once a week. It hasn’t been a week since the last one.”

  Veronica did not look sympathetic. “Life doesn’t always happen on schedule,” she said. “Not even in Deprivation House.” She turned as if to leave, then paused. “Oh, one more thing.” She smiled. “Actually, two more things. George and Georgina, come on in!”

  The door opened. A pair of teenagers walked in, a guy and a girl. They were both blond. They also shared the same round blue eyes, full cheeks, and button noses.

  “Please say hello to George and Georgina Taggart,” Veronica said. “They’re twins, and they’ll both be joining you here in the mansion.”

  “Hey,” George said with a grin. “What’s up?”

  Georgina rolled her eyes. “Have some class, George,” she complained. “You sound like a hood.”

  “Nice,” murmured Gail sarcastically.

  Frank was standing nearby. I stepped toward him. “Check it out,” I whispered. “Georgina looks a lot like Brynn. How about you go for her and leave Brynn to me?”

  I was joking. Sort of. Frank looked irritated and didn’t say anything.

  “All right, then.” Veronica seemed pleased now that just about everybody was in a state of shock and/or dismay. “I’ll leave you to get acquainted. For now.”

  She left. Georgina glanced around. “Hi,” she said, stepping toward Brynn. “Cute sweater. We look like the same size—I might want to borrow that sometime.”

  Brynn looked taken aback. “Oh,” she stammered. “Um, sure.”

  Someone let out a groan. It was Bobby T. I doubt he’d even noticed the new arrivals. He was still staring at his laptop.

  “It’ll be okay, dude,” James told him. “This just means you’ll have to interact with real live people instead of virtual ones.”

  Bobby didn’t look amused. He stood and tucked his laptop under his arm. “I think I’ll go take a nap,” he announced with a frown. “What else is there to do in this place now?”

  He stomped off and disappeared through the door. George Taggart stared after him curiously.

  “What’s with him?” he asked.

  Ripley rolled her eyes. “Never mind,” she said. “So, where are you two from?”

  I left her to play welcome wagon. Brynn had drifted over to stand beside Frank again. The two of them were leaning toward each other, talking quietly.

  “Hey,” I said, stepping over to them. “Bro. Want to go outside for some fresh air?”

  “Can I come too?” Brynn asked before Frank could answer. She shrugged apologetically. “I just don’t want to be alone right now. You know.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that there were a dozen other people in the mansion she could be not-alone with. Why did it have to be Frank? Her sudden interest in my brother was getting really annoying.

  “Never mind,” I muttered. “Actually, I think I’ll stick around and meet the newbies.”

  Everyone except Bobby hung out for a while getting acquainted or talking about everything that had happened that day. But eventually people started to drift off. Ripley and Olivia took the twins for a tour of the rest of the mansion. James went out to chop wood—probably the closest he could come to a workout. Others just wandered away without explanation.

  Finally the only ones left in the great room were me, Frank, Brynn, Silent Girl, and Hal. Brynn and Frank were sitting together on the couch. They were mostly talking about nothing. Hal was scribbling notes on his pad, his mind probably lightyears away. Silent Girl was just sitting there staring at the fire. Silently.

  I stood up. “I’m hungry,” I announced. “Think I’ll grab a snack.”

  Brynn was the only one who looked up. “See you,” she said with a smile.

  I wandered out, trying not to think about leaving her there with Frank. Instead I thought about the mission. Now that someone else had died, things seemed much more urgent. Had Sylvia really died of an aneurysm? Or could someone in the house want that prize money enough to kill for it?

  In a way, it made no sense. What if the whole show had been shut down? Then nobody would get that million-dollar prize. What would anyone have to gain by that?

  Since we seemed to have a little downtime, I decided to snoop around a bit. Maybe I could get some more info on our prime suspects.

  First I checked on Bobby T. When I peeked into his room, he was sprawled out on the bed. He appeared to be sound asleep.

  I moved on. Just down the hall was the bedroom shared by three of the girls, including Ripley and Gail.

  When I peeked in through the half-open door, neither of them were in there. But the third roomie was—Mary. Her back was to the door, and she was doing some kind of weird headstand. It looked like yoga to me, though I’m no expert on that stuff.

  Whoa. Who knew there was such a tight little body under those baggy dresses she always wore? Also, I couldn’t help wondering if yoga was a regular part of her homeschool curriculum, because she was doing some pretty intense-looking moves. She started off doing a headstand, but then she lifted herself
up until her head was off the floor and she was balancing only on her forearms as she moved her legs around in different poses. Who says skinny little girls can’t have upper-body strength?

  I only watched for a second before I started to feel like a Peeping Tom. She was showing almost as much skin as Ripley always did. I left her to it and moved on, still keeping a lookout for our major suspects.

  Nobody else was upstairs. As I headed down to the first floor, I noticed Mikey. He was standing by the back door looking furtive. A moment later he ducked outside.

  I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen me. What was he up to? I decided to find out if I could.

  Dashing for the door, I followed him outside. He was halfway across the yard, heading toward the ice shed. He had to take the long way around the police tape near the pool.

  I started to follow. But just then a voice called my name. I turned to see Ripley hurrying toward me.

  “Hey,” she greeted me. “How about those Taggart twins? They seem really full of themselves.”

  “Oh yeah?” I shrugged, a little distracted. Mikey had just disappeared around the corner of the shed. “You seemed to be getting along with them pretty well earlier.”

  She laughed. “Oh, trust me,” she said. “When you grow up in the spotlight, you learn to get along with everyone.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that she hadn’t learned that lesson too well. Wasn’t that why she was here? To prove that she could get along without acting like a spoiled brat?

  “Anyway, it’s crazy how this show keeps throwing these surprises at us,” she went on. “I can’t believe we got two new people and four new deprivations on the same day.”

  “Don’t forget the elimination,” I said. “Sounds like that could happen today too.”

  “Good point.” She adjusted her hat. “Who do you think will get axed? I’m guessing Bobby, thanks to that little tantrum just now.”

  “Yeah, could be.” I was still distracted. But this time it wasn’t because of Mikey. “Hey, do you smell smoke?”