Eleanor Arlington

Ian finds the key to Eleanor's box and finally gets to hear her voice- or at least her inner voice.

A couple of weeks later, I had been caught up in work and the rehab house I was fixing up on the side, and I had put Gabe's case on hold. I came home from the house I was working on one night and I turned on the shower. I was taking out my contacts and my right contact fell on the floor. "Damn it!"

I bent to pick it up and I had already taken off my left one so I was just feeling around for it when I felt something. One of the tiles on the bathroom floor was loose. I picked it up and there was something underneath it. I grabbed my glasses, turned off the shower, and went into the bedroom.

I held the object up to the light. It was a flat, silver key. I dragged out the wooden box from under the bed. I put the key into the lock and turned it. It made a satisfying clicking noise and the lock opened. I threw the padlock on the ground and opened the box.

Inside was a small blue notebook, a gold chain with a caterpillar on it, a small golden hairpiece shaped like a rose, a rag doll, a tattered teddy bear, and a picture book.

I examined the picture book, which included pictures of Eleanor as a young child with her parents and younger brother, a picture of her on the back of a horse, pictures of her and who I thought was Gabe at a school dance, and then later, pictures of her and another boy. I figured out that the second boy was Gabe, since there were pictures of their wedding. So the first boy must have been Frank. There were pictures of her with other girls and a few pictures of the club. One picture featured Eleanor at another dance with a very large boy who must have been Toby. The face had been scratched out of the picture.

As I was putting the picture book back and taking out the notebook, a picture fell out of the book. It was the picture of Eleanor and Frank at the dance. On the back, it said "Eleanor Arlington, 16 & Frank Butler, 17: Junior Prom, 1950". I started taking out other pictures, and they too had names on the back. I took out the picture of Eleanor and Toby. On the back, it said "Eleanor Arlington, 19 & Toby Emerson, 21: Winter Ball, 1953". I ran into the study and grabbed my notebook from my desk. I jotted down the name "Toby Emerson" and underlined it. I searched on my computer "Toby Emerson Boston 1953", but nothing helpful came up.

I decided I would make another trip out to Boston sometime next month since I'd earned extra vacation days from working overtime with the skunk people several days in a row, after they smuggled one into their bedroom somehow. Instead of being paid for it I asked for extra vacation days. My boss and I grew up together so he'd always been lenient with me. But before I left I wanted to wrap things up with my rehab house.

I went back to Eleanor's box and picked up the journal. She wrote nothing about what had happened during the infestation. Instead, the diary was filled with stories of a ten-year-old Eleanor, before the club ever started. She documented the start of the club. It was originally Gabe and Tommy. Frank found out since he lived on their street and told Eleanor, who lived two houses down.

Frank and Eleanor were accepted into the club after a quick and arbitrary initiation test, which was seemingly for Gabe and Tommy's entertainment. The rest of the initiation "ceremony" included picking an object, which is how they got their code-names. Eleanor picked a willy worm, which wasn't even intended to be included in the pile of objects, but they accepted it. Frank picked a xylophone mallet. Supposedly, Tommy had chosen a crumpled dollar bill and Gabe had chosen a toy pirate ship.

I guess they didn't know Jack that well, but when they found out there was another child close to their age in the block they invited him. She writes that Jack was the only club member who didn't live on Gabe's street. They dumped out the objects again; Eleanor says that among the objects was a blanket, a yo-yo, a ball of yarn, a soccer ball, and a jumprope. Jack, of course, chose the jumprope.

Eleanor wrote about her crush on Gabe and about her experiences in horseback riding. She stopped writing at some point- I don't know when because none of the entries were dated.

But she eventually picked up the pen and started writing again. She wrote about her relationship with Frank, which was growing more and more serious. She said that she was afraid he might propose, because she could tell he loved her, but she didn't love him. She still loved Gabe. She wrote that maybe if the love between them wasn't mutual she should break things off. But she never did, because she was afraid of being alone.

She wrote one day that she'd broken up with Frank and gotten together with Gabe. She wrote about Gabe's proposal to her. She wrote about Toby, who she said had just moved down the block from them. He would follow them to the treehouse every day and scream and cry loudly when they wouldn't let him in. She said he was mentally challenged in some way or another and didn't understand why they didn't let him in.

Eventually, Gabe decided to let him in, to avoid risking even more people finding out about the club and wanting to join. She wrote that the day before they'd decided to let Toby in, someone heard his screaming and came to investigate. Thankfully, it was an adult who wouldn't want to join, but they were afraid that might not be the case the next time.

So Gabe put Toby through the same test as everyone else, aside from letting him choose an object. They had already been referring to Toby as "insect", since he was an unwanted pest. Toby never caught on to the references to each club member on the banner, so they didn't have to change it, but he did notice that everyone else had necklaces and he wanted one. So Gabe gave him his ant charm; Eleanor never writes where the chains came from.

Toby is put through an initiation test, but this one is much more strenuous than the others, and required heavy lifting and swimming. They discovered that Toby was extremely afraid of deep water. Gabe took pleasure in terrifying the boy and laughing at him as he struggled to swim across, as did everyone else but Eleanor. He didn't ever make it across though, because he was a very poor swimmer.

She wrote that Toby was always the punchline of the club members' jokes, since he was such an easy target. He never realized that he was being made fun of. She said that Jack saw this as an opportunity to gain popularity among the club members, and made jokes about Toby whenever he got the chance. He went from being the misfit of the club who least fit in with the group, to being the clown of the group who everyone loved. Toby took his place as the odd one out, except he never knew it, and his unpopularity was to a much greater level.

Eleanor writes that she always tried to be kind to Toby because she felt so sorry for him. One day, everyone was talking about the winter ball and who they were going with. Eleanor and Gabe never talked about it, but they just assumed they were going together, as did everybody else. Toby got excited and worked up the courage to ask Eleanor. She accepted his invitation, much to Gabe's annoyance. He wanted to laugh at Toby's rejection, but instead was being laughed at for having his girlfriend go to the dance with the slow kid.

After the dance, things went back to normal in the Maniacal Song, until she suddenly stopped writing about the club. Her only post-infestation entry documented the birth of her daughter, Diana.

I looked at the teddy bear and the rag doll next. She had mentioned in the diary that Toby had given her his treasured bear, Mr. Crinkles, to prove his affection for her. She did not, however, mention the doll- at least not to my recollection.

I took the photo album out of the box to ponder over it again. When I lifted it from the box, that gold chain slid off of the album and fell to the floor. When I picked it up, I saw that the charm was actually a locket, and was slightly ajar. I felt so stupid for having missed that before. Were they all like that? I opened the locket, and inside was a picture of Eleanor on the left and a picture of the entire club, including Toby, on the right. This time the face wasn't scratched out, but it was too small to see in detail. I quickly went into the study and grabbed Gabe's chain from my desk. I opened the locket and, as I had hoped, there was a picture of Gabe and the same picture of the club that was in Eleanor's locket.

I was now more inspired than ever to find out not only where Gabe Watson was and why he left, but who Toby Emerson was, what happened to him, and what his relationship was with Eleanor. Now I had somewhere to start: Jack's house.