Her left ear burned against white plastic. She listened. Nothing. Nothing. She pressed the intercom phone into the side of her face. Still nothing. Sam sighed, stuck a finger through the cord and twisted it clockwise, like an ’80s teenager waiting for her crush to pick up.

“Anything?” her cousin asked. Tabby sat crossed-legged on the linoleum. Her knees lifted up and down like hummingbird wings. She was hoping for good news. Good news in the form of a jangle of curtain rings, a rip of a Velcro-sandal on carpet, a swish of jeans, a breath.

But Sam couldn’t hear anything.

“Zilch,” she reported. And hung up the phone.

Tabby filled her cheeks with a mouthful of stale air and pushed it out again. This habit was probably very common in frazzled business women. Not so common in 10-year-old girls. Especially ones that sit inside butler’s pantries alongside jumbo-packs of digestive biscuits. But tonight everything was serious. Maybe even frazzled-business-woman serious. The Hamilton cousins were playing The Game at their constipated aunt and uncle’s house. Not Hide-and-Seek. Not Sardines. The Game. And there were rules. Proper ones. Published in purple gel-pen on the back of a Lebanese Takeaway Menu.
The Rules of The Game:

1. You can hide anywhere, but have to move to another spot every 10 minutes

2. One person seeks (except if minding Nicky)

3. No asking grown-ups where hiders are

4. Only the Spy is the allowed inside butler’s pantry with intercom!!!!!

“They’ve turned into ghosts,” said Tabby. “Now, they can walk through walls!”  

“Or they’re just good at hiding,” said Sam.      

“Or they’ve vanished into the Underworld. Seriously, I walked–” Tabby stopped and frowned at little Nicky in the corner. His small hand strangled the neck of a peppercorn container and he was shaking it up and down like a maraca. “I mean, we walked around the house a thousand times. And looked everywhere.”

Sam glanced at her Aunt’s kitsch kitchen clock. The one her mum said was “probably the kitschiest of any kitsch kitchen clock ever.” It hung above the intercom, bordered with turquoise knives and forks. The big hand, doubling as a teaspoon, moved past the first stroke.  8:06.

They were over an hour into the first round of the night. And there was still no sign of Christopher. Or Hugh. Or Ruth. Christopher was often hard to find because he was a seasoned professional at 11 years old. But Hugh and Ruth weren’t. They were eight and seven. They should be discovered in 10 minutes – huddled behind doors, spread-eagled under beds, sandwiched between hanging nighties. It didn’t make sense.
“What about the dining room?” said Tabby. “No, actually, they wouldn’t be there. We checked the laundry. I thought they might be in the dryer. Then again, they wouldn’t choose the same hiding place twice, would they?”

“Maybe we should ask the parents,” said Sam.

The grown-ups were eating in the next room. Metal spoons chinked against ceramic dessert bowls through the wall.

“Safety in numbers,” she remembered her camp leader telling the group.

Tabby’s mouth parted at the suggestion. “And give those idiots the satisfaction that we cheated playing The Game? No thanks. Anyway, you’re The Spy. You can’t leave the butler’s pantry.”

Yes, Sam remembered with dread, she was The Spy. All thanks to that unlucky round of eenie meenie. Her cousins stood on the back lawn after dinner, insect repellent shiny on their sun-tanned arms. Two finger-beats landed on Sam’s sneaker. She felt sick. It was her first time being alone in the butler’s pantry with only the intercom for company. “Risk in remoteness,” her camp leader warned.

The intercom was the sort of gadget you would only find in a house like this one – owned by kid-free, rich people like her aunt and uncle. The phone connected to six entries around the property: Garden Shed, Swimming Pool, Tennis Court, Front Gate, Back Gate and Billiard Room. Sam’s job was to report any noises. If she heard someone loitering near the shed, she might press Front Gate and shout, “Action near the shed!” or something cheesy like that. But tonight she didn’t hear a thing. Well, until Tabby and Nicky burst into the butler’s pantry at 7:33 with defeated faces. Sam was saved. Tabby licked a purple drop near her nose –  remnants of the black-current Frosty Cup she had just maimed with a spoon.

“Nicky and I have to leave now,” she said, standing.

“Leave?” said Sam.

“Yes. Before someone catches us in here. Remember the plan?”

Sam swallowed. She remembered the plan.        Tabby took one of Nicky’s sticky hands in her own and they walked back into the kitchen. Before she shut the door of the pantry, she turned to face Sam. Her eyes were wide. Like two, shiny black berries.

“We’ll be waiting on the tennis court,” Tabby whispered. “Check all the entry points. As soon as you hear one of them, read their location over the intercom. We’ll go and hunt them down.”

Sam nodded. Tabby smiled. The door clicked shut. The butler’s pantry was strong with the smell of paprika. Sam was alone again. 

She placed her strawberry-flavored Frosty Cup in the hammock of her skirt and pulled the intercom phone off the hook. With an index finger, she prodded the Tennis Court button, waited for the LED to illuminate green and listened hard for Tabby and Nicky. A crow cried. Truck brakes squealed a few blocks away. Sam waited. She couldn’t hear anything. She half-thought Tabby would give her a cue – yell out, “Let’s hang around the tennis court, Nicky!” But Tabby was ultra competitive. She would be crouched on the grassy court, waiting in silence. In case someone was hiding nearby.
Sam stretched to the next button: Swimming Pool. When the bulb glowed, she listened to the whir of the pool filter, the wind rattling the gate lock. Nothing else. It was pointless listening to this entry point. No one would hide near the pool. Only under the pool cover. Which Christopher tried and almost drowned.

Her finger migrated to the second button. It read – Oh no. No. She would skip that one. She blinked away the two words and looked to the fourth button. Garden Shed. Much better. The button was too high for her to reach in a sitting position, so when she went to jab it, her finger slipped and hit something else. A green light glowed. But the wrong one. It was too late. She had pressed it. She had pressed it! Reality crashed, ice-cold water over-head, as she realized where her right ear was. Billiard Room.

She saw it. Underground and too small. The windowless walls, the low ceiling, the scallop-shaped lights, the faded green billiard table. She remembered her uncle saying, “I dial upstairs and get a Lager brought down every 20 minutes.” Her aunty nudged him in the ribs and her dad said, “Bet you’d get the odd cold chill in here, right Dunc?” He said it like a joke, but nobody laughed. He said it when they toured the house after the auction. The only time Sam thought she would stand in that room on that threadbare carpet. But now, she was there alone. At least, her left ear was …

Wait. There was something else. The sound of billiard balls. One slow-moving ivory sphere meeting another in the middle. Clink. The other ball would roll, maybe a centimeter in the other direction, then it would be still again. But that was all it took. Sam knew. Someone was down there.

Christopher.

It couldn’t be the other two. No way could it be quiet Ruth, entertained with just a jig-saw puzzle. Or reptile-obsessed Hugh, who spoke non-stop about the frogs with see-through skin. It could only be Christopher. Christopher who was six months younger than Sam but always acted like the eldest cousin.

Christopher who took everything to the next level, to one-up her, like she wasn’t good enough to be the leader in age. Christopher with his tangled mop of blonde hair, his skinny legs sticking out of pumpkin-orange board shorts. Christopher, the idiot. He was hiding in The Billiard Room.
It wasn’t a rule. But everyone knew it existed. What was it called? An unspoken rule. That was it. There was an unspoken rule between the cousins that nobody would hide there. It was a button they agreed to ignore on the console. A place their minds didn’t dare wander.

Until Christopher broke the pact.

Sam felt her heart thump-thumping as she went to press Tennis Court. Her mouth was dry. It was like she was swallowing sand. How could she make Tabby go down there? It was The Game, Sam reminded herself. It was a part of The Game. She would be okay. Nicky would go downstairs with her.  

She cleared her throat and spoke through the receiver.

“Movement in the Billiard Room.”

Guilt churned. Sam didn’t wait to hear Tabby inhale or Nicky whimper. Instead, she pressed Billiard Room and listened for Christopher. For a second, there was nothing. Then, Sam could hear his breaths filling up the room. They were strange. Deep. Gasping. For a moment, she swore they belonged to someone else. A runner having done the 10K. An old man lying in a disinfected room.

Was he okay?

The breathing sped up. In and out. In and out. Each breath harder to draw, as if oxygen was slowly becoming liquid. Sam realized she was praying for Tabby and Nicky to arrive. Not to find Christopher and win the game. But to save him from suffocation. Her heart hammered. She tried to remember if her cousin was an asthmatic. She tried to remember an air-force blue puffer. Or a conversation about Ventolin.  
Then, somewhere beyond, a door knob rattled.    

Tabby and Nicky. They were there! There to catch Christopher. There to rescue him.  Hinges squealed. A door slammed flat against a wall. The breathing got louder. Sam’s stomach flipped. It wasn’t right. It was all wrong. Something about that sound. Something about that room.

A high-pitched scream exploded in her left ear.

The phone slipped from fingers and plastic smashed into plaster. The receiver bounced on the cord like a bungee jumper. Sam fumbled for it. Finally, she grabbed the phone and plastered it to her ear.

“Christopher! Are you okay? Tabby? Tabby? What’s happened? Is everything– ”

“Sam?”

Tabby’s voice echoed. But it wasn’t coming through the intercom in crackles. It was clear, from behind her. Sam spun around.

Tabby was there. A braid dangling over one shoulder as she leaned through the doorway of the butler’s pantry. Sam’s head spun. It was impossible.

“H–how did you get here so quickly?” Sam spluttered. “Is he alright? I thought … I thought he was dying!”

“Who?” said Tabby.

“Is he still in the Billiard Room?”

“The Billiard Room?” Tabby narrowed her eyes. “Who with any sense would go in there?”

“Christopher!” Sam yelled.

“Sam …” Tabby gave her a strange look. “Christopher’s out here.”

She let the pantry door swing open. The black-and-white tiled kitchen fell into focus. Sam’s cheeks went cold. There were three kids sitting atop the kitchen cabinets. Hugh. Ruth. And Christopher. Each dug into a bright-colored Frosty Cup. Each laughed. “You wouldn’t believe it, Sam! Nicky and I walked through the dining room on the way to the tennis court and they were all eating dessert at the table!”

Her cousins were all breathing normally. They kicked their legs. Heels banged into cabinet doors like hammers. Boom, boom, boom.

“So I guess we win!” Tabby sang.

Sam opened her mouth and shut it again. She tried to find words that would explain all of this. But they didn’t exist.

“Hey.”

Tabby brought her head to a shoulder, dark eyes blinking.

“Who were you talking to when I walked in?” she asked.

“I …I …”

But Sam didn’t have an answer. Her left ear was ringing.