Free The Gypsy Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page A

for a bath. Not if he could help it, anyway.
    Judging by the smell, you might have thought that Bear had never had a bath before, but apparently he had. At least,when he heard the water running, he seemed to know exactly what was about to happen. And Marshall had been right when he said that Bear would hate it. As soon as Ken shut off the faucet and turned toward Bear, he began to whine and back away. And when Ken said, “Okay, boy, it’s all ready. Jump in,” Bear flopped down on his back with all four feet in the air.
    So getting Bear into the tub turned out to be a really high-risk project. Not that he ever growled or threatened to bite. He just went limp and refused to cooperate. It took all four of them pulling and pushing to stand him up and shove him toward the tub. Then, when Ken put Bear’s front paws on the edge of the tub, his hind legs collapsed and he sat down. And when Ken pulled up on Bear’s rear end, his front paws came down off the tub. It went on like that for quite a while, with April and Melanie having fits of hysterics and Ken laughing too, now and then, in between saying,
“Sheesh
!
”
under his breath and some other pretty gross-sounding things in Japanese that he refused to translate.
    Finally, with April and Melanie lifting on each side and with Ken at the rear, they got Bear into the tub, and suddenly the battle seemed to be over. Once he was in the water, he just stood there looking quietly miserable while Ken held his head and the girls soaped him up. With all that long black fur, it took half a bottle of baby shampoo and lots of scrubbing before he was completely covered with white suds.
    “Hey, look!” Melanie said. “Now he’s a polar bear.”
    “Yeah, maybe,” April said. “A polar bear with black roots.”
    Ken didn’t say anything. In fact, he’d been strangely quiet ever since the bath had started. Quiet and preoccupied, as if he was waiting and listening for something to happen. But then, when they’d almost finished rinsing off the suds, Ken suddenly yelled, “There it is! There’s the phone,” released his hold on Bear’s head, and disappeared through the kitchen door. And of course the minute his head was free, Bear jumped out of the tub and …
    “Look out!” April yelled, and started to run for cover, but it was too late. Bear shook himself.
    Ken was in the kitchen a long time. While he was gone, April and Melanie got most of the flood cleaned up. By using up at least half a dozen beach towels, they’d gotten Marshall and Bear and the laundry room at least partly dry, and they’d started in on drying each other when Ken finally came back. April’s blond hair was straggling in wet strings around her face, water and suds were still dripping off Melanie’s chin, and they were both having fits of hysterical laughter. But when they saw Ken’s face, they quit laughing.
    For a moment no one said anything. Then April swallowed hard and asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
    Ken’s shoulders lifted in a strange, jerky shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t …” His voice faded out to a whisper and then came back again. “It’s Toby. Toby is—gone.”

Twelve
    “GONE?” APRIL FINALLY managed to ask. “What do you mean, ‘gone’? Gone where?”
    Ken shook his head. “I don’t know. His dad doesn’t know. That was Tobe’s dad on the phone. What he said was Toby went to bed last night, and this morning—” Ken gulped, blinked, and then went on, “And this morning, he wasn’t there.”
    Silence. Marshall came over and grabbed his sister’s arm the way he always did when he was frightened, and even Bear seemed to realize that something was terribly wrong. He’d been jumping around like crazy, celebrating the end of his bath, but suddenly he stopped prancing and lay down with his chin on his front paws.
    At last Melanie said, “But he can’t be gone. April saw him just yesterday morning. Didn’t you, April?”
    April nodded. “Yesterday morning. At