The Collectors #2

by Jacqueline West

  Van wouldn’t be sneaking to the wishing well tonight either.

  With a little sigh, he flopped back against the pillows.

  Peter’s eyes flicked toward him. “. . . You awake?”

  “I’m awake,” murmured Van. “Can’t you sleep?”

  Peter mumbled an answer.

  Van leaned over and clicked on the small bedside lamp, illuminating Peter’s face. Peter blinked in the glow.

  “I can hear you better if I can see you too,” Van explained.

  “Oh.” Peter kept still for a moment. Then, rolling his head on the pillow so that it faced Van, he said, “It’s so quiet out here. At home, even in the middle of the night, you can hear the city.” Awkwardness fluttered over his face. “I mean, not you. Just . . . people can hear the city. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” Van interrupted. “You can always feel the city too. People walking around. The traffic making the walls move.” He glanced at the windows, where the black sky floated its scattering of stars. “It’s harder to get to sleep out here.”

  “. . . least it’s just for one night.” Peter gave his pillow a punch. “Hopefully we’ll leave early tomorrow.”

  “If we’re as bad at breakfast as we were at dinner, I bet you will.” Van started to smile. “That was a pretty great burp you did. I thought your dad’s wineglass was going to fall over.”

  Peter’s grin flashed in the light. “Yours wasn’t bad either.”

  “I’ll keep practicing.” Van grinned back.

  They went silent again.

  Van gazed at the window, trying to pull his thoughts back toward his promise to Pebble, but for some reason, his mind kept returning to the look on Peter’s face when Van’s mother had tucked him in.

  “Do you ever miss your mom?” The words slipped out before Van could stop them.

  “What?” Peter’s voice was harder now. Colder.

  Van shut his mouth. He shouldn’t have asked. He shouldn’t have said anything at all. Being quiet was always safest.

  Peter kept quiet too, for so long that Van thought he wasn’t going to answer at all.

  But then he murmured, “I don’t really remember her. She died when I was little. And she and my dad were already separated, so it wasn’t like everything changed. Just half of everything.”

  Van lay perfectly still, taking in each word.

  “Do you ever miss your dad?” Peter asked.

  “I don’t remember him either,” said Van. “He and my mom were only together for a little while. It’s always been just me and her.”

  Peter frowned slightly. “Do you ever get lonely? With just the two of you?”

  “I didn’t use to,” said Van honestly. “But now I . . . I miss the city. I miss some people there.” He swallowed hard. “That’s actually why you’re here. I told my mother I wanted to visit. But I thought we’d be going there, not the other way around.”

  “Oh,” said Peter, his voice even chillier than before. “So there was somebody else who you really wanted to see.”

  “There’s somebody I need to see.” Van leaned into the gap between his bed and Peter’s cot. “I promised that I’d help somebody. I’m supposed to get an important message to them. But now I can’t.”

  “Can’t you just text them or something?”

  “No. I have to get the message to them in person, or . . .”

  A little of the chilliness was leaving Peter’s voice. “Or what?”

  “I can’t tell you,” said Van. “I’m sorry. I really wish I could.”

  The word “wish” gave him a sharp, painful jolt, like he had just bitten his own tongue.

  For a beat, both boys kept still.

  Peter grabbed the remote and muted the TV. A sudden hush blanketed them.

  “I’m going back to the city tomorrow,” said Peter slowly.

  Van met Peter’s eyes. In the dimness, their icy blue color disappeared. Now they were just two bright sparks, staring back at him.

  “I could take the message for you,” Peter finished.

  Van drew in a breath.

  He wasn’t sure he could trust Peter with this. He wasn’t even sure if he could trust Peter not to trip him when he walked by.

  But what other option did he have? He’d already lost two days, and his own plans kept crumbling under him like a floor tiled with soggy graham crackers. Soon it would be too late.

  “Just a minute,” he whispered.

  Van slipped out of bed. He dug in his top dresser drawer until he’d found a notebook and pen, hunching over the paper so that Peter couldn’t see. By the glow of the dim light, he wrote:

  Dear Nail and Jack and Sesame and everyone—

  This is Van Markson. I’m sending you this letter because I am far away, at Fox Den Opera, and I can’t get it to you fast enough by myself. A boy I know is delivering it for me.

  Pebble and Mr. Falborg are here. They have a big house nearby. There’s an old wishing well in the woods, and Pebble says the Eater living in it is one of the oldest ones on earth. Mr. Falborg is going to try to trap it and keep it for himself.

  You need to come here this Friday evening to stop him.

  Pebble and I will be watching for you.

  Please.

  Van

  Van underlined the final “please” three times.

  He folded the paper into a little packet. He didn’t have tape or staples or stickers, but in the bottom of the drawer, he found one miniature Band-Aid. Van sealed the note shut.

  He turned to find Peter kneeling on the floor beside his model stage.

  Peter had taken a few treasures out of the box and arranged them next to SuperVan: a cluster of trees, a plastic bear, a tiny china squirrel.

  The same tiny china squirrel that Van had stolen from Peter’s own bedroom.

  Van’s heart shot into his windpipe.

  But Peter wasn’t acting suspicious. He merely moved the squirrel through the plastic trees, steering it by its quirked china tail.

  “Um . . . ,” said Van shakily. “Here’s the message.”

  Peter looked up. “What do I with it?”

  “You need to take it to a place called City Collection Agency.” Van’s heart, still wedged in his windpipe, was pounding, making his entire body shudder slightly. “It’s a little gray office between a fancy bakery and a pet store. . . .” He sketched a map on the back of the note and passed it to Peter. “Don’t wait for anybody to come out. Don’t even knock. Just slide the note under the door and leave.”

  “City Collection Agency,” Peter repeated. “Do you owe somebody money or something?”

  “No,” said Van. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Really? Are you sure?” One corner of Peter’s mouth tugged upward. “Van, is the mob after you?”

  A surprised laugh slipped out of Van. The pounding of his heart softened just a bit. “You’ll take it there as soon as you can, right?”

  “I promise.” Peter slid the note and the map into his pajama pocket. He turned back toward the scene on the stage, bumping the china squirrel with one finger. “I used to have a squirrel just like this, I think.”

  Van’s heart moved throatward again.

  “Uh . . . ,” he squeezed out. “It is yours. I took it from your room. A long time ago. During your birthday party.”

  “You did?” Peter stared up at Van. His eyes were wide. Not angry—just surprised.

  “I’m really sorry.” Van squeezed his fingernails into his palms. “I just—I wanted it so much. You should take it back.”

  “That’s okay,” said Peter lightly. “I don’t need it. You can keep it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I never used those animals anyway. It’s yours now.”

  “Then you should take something else in exchange,” said Van. He dropped onto his knees next to Peter and placed one hand on his collection box. “Something special. What do you want?”

  Peter shook his head. “I don’t need to take one of you
r treasures.”

  “No. Really,” Van insisted. “You can pick whatever you want.”

  When Peter still didn’t move, Van reached into the box himself. He fumbled through the layers of buttons and keychains and cake toppers and decorative erasers, until his fingers closed around something truly special.

  “Here,” he said, pulling it out and pressing it into Peter’s palm.

  Peter raised it into the glow of the bedside lamp. “What is it?”

  “Amber,” said Van. “I found it on a beach in Germany. And you can see that there’s an ancient leaf trapped inside.”

  “Whoa,” breathed Peter.

  Even in the dim light, the amber glowed like a candle through a jar of honey. Inside its warm, gold heart sat the teardrop shape of a tiny leaf—a leaf that had fallen from some long-dead tree thousands or even millions of years ago.

  Watching Peter squint down at the sparkling amber made Van think of the marble he’d pressed into Pebble’s hand just after meeting her for the first time. Both times, sharing this small, special part of himself had felt like the right thing to do. Maybe giving a treasure to the right person could be as exciting as finding it in the first place.

  “You’re sure I can keep this?” asked Peter.

  “Yes.” Van smiled. “It’s yours.”

  Peter slipped the amber carefully into his pajama pocket, along with Van’s folded note.

  The boys climbed back into their beds. Peter used the remote to switch off the TV. Van clicked off the bedside lamp. Indigo darkness poured through the window, filling the room with the hue of the night sky.

  “Good night,” Van murmured to Peter.

  “Good night,” Peter murmured back.

  Van took out his hearing aids and set them on his bedside table. Velvety quiet took their place.

  In the darkness and the silence, Van’s thoughts drifted outward, tracing a line of knots that tied him to one person, and another, and another. In spite of the burping, and the jokes, and the amber, he still wasn’t sure that he could trust Peter. But he had no choice. Pebble probably didn’t trust Van completely either, but she had to rely on him for help. Van wasn’t sure that they could trust the Collectors to do the right thing when it came to Wish Eaters, and the Collectors almost certainly felt the same way about him. Maybe this was what happened when problems grew too big for someone to solve them alone. Maybe you had to take the risk of relying on someone else.

  Van glanced over at Peter, watching the blankets rise and fall with Peter’s deep, peaceful breaths. Then he burrowed under his covers and let his own eyes slide shut.

  12

  Pebble’s Past

  The Greys left late Sunday morning.

  Peter gave Van a last wave through the window of the sleek black car. Van waved back, hope and worry fluttering in his chest like two fighting birds.

  For the rest of that day, and the next, and the next, Van stayed inside the converted stables while Fox Den Opera surged into high gear. Preparation for the season-opening production of Hansel and Gretel had taken over every inch of the grounds. Even in his bedroom, with the windows closed and the door shut, Van could catch the roar of trucks on the drive, the buzz of construction on the stage, the shouting of staff members hurrying by.

  But the nights were as silent as ever.

  On Wednesday night, Van lay half asleep in bed, trying to feel comfortable in the stillness, when a band of light slashed across his ceiling.

  Van jerked backward. His head thumped the wall.

  The light slashed again. It swept back and forth across the room, illuminating patches of wall and floor and bed before landing blindingly in Van’s eyes.

  Van squinted into it.

  It was the beam of a flashlight. It was coming through his window. And aiming it, outlined by pale moonlight, was a familiar figure.

  Van stumbled out of bed, pushed his hearing aids into his ears, and flung the window open.

  “. . . Come out and talk?” said Pebble.

  Van nodded. Tugging a cardigan over his pajamas, he clambered out the low window.

  Pebble led the way to the edge of the woods, where they could huddle without being seen. She aimed the flashlight at the ground.

  “. . . Get to it?” she asked, speaking too fast for Van to comb the words out of the sound. “. . . Take them inside?”

  “The message?” Van repeated. “I took care of it.”

  Even in the dimness, he could see Pebble’s shoulders relax. “Good,” she breathed. “So they’re coming?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  Pebble’s head cocked. “. . . Din tell you?”

  “Well . . . ,” said Van. “I couldn’t get to the city myself. I tried. So I had to send the message with somebody else instead.”

  “What?” Pebble’s voice was like the edge of a saw. “With who?”

  “With a friend,” said Van, wondering if “friend” was the right word for Peter. “I mean—with the boy I had been staying with. He doesn’t know what the message said. He doesn’t know about the Collection. He was just going to deliver it to the collection agency office and leave.”

  Pebble let out a breath so fiery it almost made Van’s eyes water. “You can’t—” She broke off, her voice shaking. “You can’t just trust people like that!”

  “But sometimes you have to trust people,” said Van. “You trusted me.”

  “. . . Maybe it’s not good enough,” Pebble muttered. Or it might have been Maybe I shouldn’t have.

  Either way, the words stung.

  “Can I hold the flashlight?” Van asked. “So I can see your face?”

  Pebble passed it over, mumbling sure or sorry or something else.

  Van pointed the light at her. In the beam, she looked rumpled and tired, with faint pink edges around her eyes.

  “I know you can’t trust everybody,” said Van. “But there are lots of people who are good. Or they’re good enough.”

  Pebble was silent for a moment. It was the kind of silence that meant something else was coming—like the inhalation before a scream.

  “. . . Know why I left Uncle Ivor for the Collectors?” she said at last.

  “No,” Van answered. “Why?”

  “Because people who say they want to help you always want something else too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Pebble’s mossy-penny eyes fixed on the ground. She spoke slowly, as though she were digging up words from someplace where they’d been buried for a long time. “Uncle Ivor kept me shut in the house for the first eight years of my life.”

  “What?” said Van, even though he was quite sure he hadn’t misunderstood. “Like . . . you could never go outside? Not even to school?”

  “Not even in the yard,” said Pebble. “He kept all the doors locked and the curtains shut. I never saw a single person except for Uncle Ivor, Hans and Gerda, and the people on TV. Sometimes I’d go to sleep, and I’d wake up in the same bed, but in a different room in some other city or country. And that house would be all locked up too.”

  “But . . . why?”

  Pebble’s voice grew sharp. “Because the Collectors couldn’t know about me. They knew all about him, but they had no idea that he’d wished me. That I even existed.” She let the words hang for a moment. “He said it was to keep me safe. But that wasn’t all it was.”

  Van wanted to reach out for her, but Pebble looked a bit too prickly to touch. “Was it really lonely?” he asked instead.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I had Uncle Ivor and Hans and Gerda. That’s what I was used to. That’s all I thought I needed.”

  Pebble’s words slid into Van like a key into a lock.

  For most of his life—until he’d met Pebble and Barnavelt and Lemmy—Van had had his mother, and no one else. The two of them traveled the world, alone but together. Like Pebble, Van had fallen asleep in one room or city or country and woken up in another more times than he could count. But then, in each new place, he and h
is mother would put on their shoes and head out to explore. They would visit castles and museums and parks. They’d try out a dozen shops, looking for the very best gelato.

  Thinking of Pebble, trapped in a moving cage, made Van feel luckier than he’d ever felt.

  “Uncle Ivor tried to make it nice,” Pebble went on. “He let me help with the Wish Eaters. And of course we could wish for anything we wanted. I had rooms full of toys. I had pet lizards. I had a pinball arcade. And Uncle Ivor had his collections.”

  Pebble shifted, leaning against a fallen tree. Van perched on a stump beside her. He focused the light and his eyes on her face, following every word.

  “But then one day, when I was eight years old, Uncle Ivor took me out into the backyard.” Pebble’s face shifted, a strange smile curling the corners of her mouth. “I still remember how the ground felt under my shoes. So different from wood or carpet. And I remember the air, how it was always moving, even when there wasn’t any wind. How the sun fell through the leaves.” She glanced up at the leaves, where nothing fell through now but inky darkness.

  “We were at the house in the city. Uncle Ivor sat me down by the fountain. There were Wish Eaters in the trees around us. They got to be outside, and I didn’t.” Pebble’s smile turned bitter. “Uncle Ivor told me I was finally old enough to do some really important work. I could help him and the Wish Eaters. All I had to do was keep my eyes open, and not tell anyone about him. I said okay.” Pebble shifted uncomfortably, patting at her sides with both hands like she was searching for coat pockets to slide them into. “Hans put me in the car and drove me through the city. I’d never been in a car before. I just stared out the window the whole time, because I couldn’t believe how big the city was. How many people there were. Hans stopped at a corner and told me to get out of the car. So I did. And then he drove away.”

  “What?” said Van. “He just left you there?”

  Pebble nodded. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t even know our address. All these people were driving past me, walking around me, bumping into me, and it was like—like they couldn’t even see me.”

  “What happened?” Van asked.

  “I just stood there for a long time, because I didn’t know where to go. I was crying. Nobody stopped to help me. But then I noticed this—this squirrel.” Pebble’s lips twitched. “This pale gray squirrel. It sat on a wire above me, keeping perfectly still, just staring and staring at me. So I stared back. Because at least somebody could see me.” She paused, gazing at an empty branch above. “Then the squirrel jumped down and squeezed through an open window into this little office building . . . so I ran after it.”