“No—” began Omri, but then he stopped.
He heard his mother beginning to move about next door.
The Indian heard it too. He froze. The door of the next room opened. Omri knew that at any moment his mother would come in to wake him for school. In a flash he had bent down and whispered, “Don’t worry! I’ll be back.” And he closed and locked the cupboard door and jumped back into bed.
“Come on, Omri. Time to get up.”
She bent down and kissed him, paying no attention to the cupboard, and went out again, leaving the door wide open.
OMRI GOT DRESSED in a state of such high excitement that he could scarcely control his fumbling fingers enough to do up buttons and tie his shoe-laces. He’d thought he was excited yesterday, on his birthday, but it was nothing compared to how he felt now.
He was dying to open the cupboard door and have another look, but the landing outside his bedroom door was like a railway station at this hour of the morning – parents and brothers passing continually, and if he were to close his door for a moment’s privacy somebody would be sure to burst in. He’d nip up after breakfast and have a quick look when he was supposed to be cleaning his teeth…
However, it didn’t work out. There was a stupid row at the breakfast table because Adiel took the last of the Rice Krispies, and although there were plenty of cornflakes, not to mention Weetabix, the other two fairly set upon Adiel and made such an awful fuss that their mother lost her temper, and the end of it was nobody got to clean their teeth at all.
They were all bundled out of the house at the last minute – Omri even forgot to take his swimming things although it was Thursday, the day his class went to the pool. He was an excellent swimmer and he was so annoyed when he remembered (halfway to school, too late to go back) that he turned on Adiel and shouted, “You made me forget my swimming stuff!” and bashed him. That naturally led to them all being late for school, and furthermore, arriving in a very grubby condition.
All this actually pushed the Indian right out of Omri’s mind. But the minute he set eyes on Patrick, he remembered. And not for one single second for the rest of the day was that Indian out of Omri’s thoughts.
You may imagine the temptation to tell Patrick what had happened. Several times Omri very nearly did tell him, and he couldn’t help dropping a number of tantalizing hints.
“Your present was the best thing I got.”
Patrick looked rather astonished. “I thought you got a skateboard!”
“Ye-es… But I like yours better.”
“Better than a skateboard? Are you having me on?”
“Yours turned out to be more exciting.”
Patrick just stared at him. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No.”
Later, after they’d had the spelling test and Omri had been marked three right out of ten, Patrick joked, “I bet the plastic Indian could have done better.”
Unwarily, Omri replied, “Oh, I don’t think he can write English, he can only just speak—”
He stopped himself quickly, but Patrick was giving him a very odd look. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, what did you say about him speaking?”
Omri wrestled with himself. He wanted to keep his secret; in any case Patrick wouldn’t believe him. Yet the need to talk about it was very strong. “He can speak,” he said slowly at last.
“Beard,” said Patrick, which was their school slang for ‘I don’t believe you.’
Instead of insisting, Omri said nothing more, and that led Patrick to ask, “Why did you say that, about him speaking?”
“He does.”
“Itchy beard.” (Which of course means the same only more so.)
Omri refused to get involved in an argument. He was somehow scared that if he talked about the Indian, something bad would happen. In fact, as the day went on and he longed more and more to get home, he began to feel certain that the whole incredible happening – well, not that it hadn’t happened, but that something would go wrong. All his thoughts, all his dreams were centred on the miraculous, endless possibilities opened up by a real, live miniature Indian of his very own. It would be too terrible if the whole thing turned out to be some sort of mistake.
After school Patrick wanted him to stay in the school grounds and skateboard. For weeks Omri had longed to do this, but had never had his own skateboard till now. So it was quite beyond Patrick’s understanding when Omri said, “I can’t, I have to get home. Anyway, I didn’t bring it.”
“Why not? Are you crazy? Why do you have to get home, anyway?”
“I want to play with the Indian.”
Patrick’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Can I come?”
Omri hesitated. But no, it wouldn’t do. He must get to know the Indian himself before he thought of introducing him to anyone else, even Patrick.
Besides, the most awful thought had come to him during the last lesson which had made it almost impossible for him to sit still. If the Indian were real, and not just – well, moving plastic, as Pinocchio had been moving wood, then he would need food, and other things. And Omri had left him shut up in the dark all day with nothing. Perhaps – what if there were not enough air for him in that cupboard? The door fitted very tight… How much air would such a very small creature need? What if – what if the Indian were – what if he’d died, shut up there? What if Omri had killed him?
At the very best, the Indian must have passed a horrible day in that dark prison. Omri was dismayed at the thought of it. Why had he allowed himself to be drawn into that silly row at breakfast instead of slipping away and making sure the Indian was all right? The mere thought that he might be dead was frightening Omri sick. He ran all the way home, burst through the back door, and raced up the stairs without even saying hello to his mother.
He shut the door of his bedroom and fell on his knees beside the bedside table. With a hand that shook, he turned the key in the lock and opened the cupboard door.
The Indian lay there on the floor of the cupboard, stiff and stark. Too stiff! That was not a dead body. Omri picked it up. It was an ‘it’, not a ‘he’, any more.
The Indian was made of plastic again.
Omri knelt there, appalled – too appalled to move. He had killed his Indian, or done something awful to him. At the same time he had killed his dream – all the wonderful, exciting, secret games that had filled his imagination all day. But that was not the main horror. His Indian had been real – not a mere toy, but a person. And now here he lay in Omri’s hand – cold, stiff, lifeless. Somehow through Omri’s own fault.
How had it happened?
It never occurred to Omri now that he had imagined the whole incredible episode this morning. The Indian was in a completely different position from the one he had been in when Patrick gave him to Omri. Then he had been standing on one leg, as if doing a war-dance – knees bent, one moccasined foot raised, both elbows bent too and with one fist (with the knife in it) in the air. Now he lay flat, legs apart, arms at his sides. His eyes were closed. The knife was no longer a part of him. It lay separately on the floor of the cupboard.
Omri