The Quest for the Kid

by Adrienne Kress

  Page after page, Sebastian went through the book. Evie sat down next to him holding a tray of crackers and cheese, but she didn’t say anything, and there wasn’t much she could do anyway except crunch quietly beside him. Once in a while he stopped to look at a photograph of someone more closely, but then it wasn’t the Kid, so he kept going.

  More than halfway through Sebastian spotted him. Just like that. So easily and clearly. The Kid. Grinning that same grin from Alistair’s pictures, looking very sure of himself, almost too sure. The name beside the photograph: Charles Wu. And then another name: Powell and Son.

  “What’s that?” asked Sebastian to no one in particular.

  Evie looked over his shoulder at the book. “I don’t know.”

  Ms. Velos came over to his other side. Both of them being so close on either side, crowding in on his space, kind of reminded him of being confined in the tunnels of the Vertiginous Volcano. It was fine. He was fine. The walls weren’t closing in on him. It was just two curious people who could walk away at any time.

  Preferably right now.

  “Ah, that’s his agency,” said Ms. Velos.

  “Oh,” said Evie and Sebastian at the same time. Ms. Velos stood up and placed her hands on her hips, and Evie sat back in her seat. Sebastian was mercifully free once again.

  “Do you know where Charles Wu is?” asked Sebastian.

  Ms. Velos shook her head. “I don’t. And it’s very interesting that you’re looking for him,” she replied.

  “It is?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Dashing, joining the conversation but not leaving his lounging situation. “No one’s seen him for a while. In fact, no one’s seen him at all since his accident. I suppose it makes sense that you’re looking for him, since it seems he’s disappeared.”

  “That’s not possible. People and things don’t just disappear. They have to be somewhere. Matter cannot be destroyed,” said Sebastian, shaking his head and looking back at the book.

  “True…” Ms. Velos trailed off for a moment, then found her thought again. “If you want to find him, maybe start with his agency.”

  Evie stood up in a flash, moving almost as quickly as the mechanic servant guys. “Yes! Of course, his agency! Yes!”

  Sebastian stood as well and then pointed to the book. “Can we get a copy of this page?” Evie looked at him. “To show the others, in case they need proof.”

  “Oh right. Good idea!”

  No sooner had the request been made than the mechanic servant guys appeared, whisking away the book and returning with a photocopied page still hot from the copier.

  “Thank you so much,” said Evie as Mr. Dashing and Ms. Velos walked with them out of the red leather room and into the black-and-white-checkered foyer.

  “Anytime. Members help members. Come back on Friday. This time we’re racing homemade go-karts,” said Ms. Velos excitedly.

  “Maybe,” said Sebastian, his hand already pushing open the outer door.

  “And if you need any driving lessons to work on your skills, we host workshops all the time,” added Mr. Dashing, shaking Evie’s hand.

  And then they were outside again. In the empty parking lot in front of the large white building and the small-seeming (but not really) black door.

  “So that happened,” said Evie, staring ahead of her a little blankly, and a little out of breath.

  Sebastian stared at their car, waiting for them patiently at the far end of the parking lot. He was relieved it was still there.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That happened.”

  Evie lay in her bed, wide awake and still full of energy and dinner. The day had started so badly but ended so well. From a morning when the adults had been sneaking out to avoid them to a triumphant afternoon return with right on their side and even Catherine apologizing for not taking Evie’s idea seriously, today had definitely been a victory. They had followed up their visit to SRAC with a phone call to the Kid’s agency and discovered that the Kid’s agent’s name was Annalise and that her personal assistant hadn’t seen her in the office for a while and had no idea if or when she’d return, which seemed odd. But even better, they’d also discovered that Annalise had plans to meet with some PR firm called C Squared the next day. So that had all been seriously helpful, but what had really put the cherry on top was that neither Catherine nor Benedict had disagreed when Evie had suggested that the four of them crash the meeting.

  Her plan. No one else’s. She’d have been okay if it had been Sebastian’s, she supposed, but finally it was starting to feel like things were getting back on track to rescue her grandfather.

  Okay, so she still wasn’t totally happy with the adults, but she appreciated that they had apologized to her and they’d all made up. It was always impressive to Evie when an adult said “sorry” for something to a kid. People so often held grudges, needed to be right even when they weren’t, especially adults when a kid had proven them wrong. And she had to give them credit for apologizing.

  More important was the very simple fact that, regardless of the drama surrounding what she and Sebastian did, her plan had worked. It had actually worked. They now had so much more information on the Kid. Heck, they even now knew for sure that he was a stunt-car driver, and they were going to go meet his agent tomorrow. They knew the Kid’s new fake name, even: Charles Wu. And his real name: Jason—something she’d never even thought to ask Benedict and Catherine. In her head, his name had just been “the Kid.”

  The point was, she had been right and the adults had been wrong. Which, well, wasn’t something she’d normally want. She’d want them all to be right together, but she felt great satisfaction that her plan that had been dismissed had been so successful. Maybe now they’d trust her more.

  Or remember that they did trust her. That she was there to help. That she was there to find and save her grandfather.

  Evie sat up in bed with a grin on her face. Yes! Today she was the queen of solving problems.

  Quickly she jumped to the floor and put on her shoes. Then she flew out of her room and went to knock on Sebastian’s door.

  He answered it, bleary-eyed and blinking. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s time. Let’s go to the library and research the men in black!” she replied in an excited whisper.

  He took a moment, just standing there. “Evie, I’m exhausted.”

  “We have no other chance. We’ll be on the hunt for the Kid tomorrow, and the library will be filled with people and it’ll be harder to sneak in and not be seen,” she replied. What was wrong with him? Where was his usual spark, his usual need to solve all problems? It was research! “You love research!”

  “Can’t you do it and tell me what you find out?” He made eye contact with her finally.

  “I…I mean…yes, I guess.” What was happening? Her insides started to squirm. Sebastian’s reluctance did not feel good, not at all.

  “Great. Okay. Good luck. If you have trouble, I’ll help you tomorrow, but you can do it.” Evie knew Sebastian wasn’t a liar, but the way he had answered did not make the offer sound like the truth. It was probably just that he was so tired. But so was she. Tired had nothing to do with it. They had to find her grandfather in any way possible. They didn’t have time to be sleepy.

  “Thanks,” she said, and she just stood there as Sebastian closed the door. She stared at it for a moment. She felt very alone, more alone than when Catherine and Benedict had gone off without them. More alone than when she’d been living at Wayward School. It was a type of alone you felt when you actually weren’t. When there were other people around but you still felt lonely. It was a really bad feeling.

  No. She shook out her body, took in a sharp breath, and readied herself. She’d do this with or without him. Besides…besides, this had been her idea in the first place. And she was tired of convincing people of things.
Time to just do it her way and not worry about sleepy boys.

  So she turned around, quietly left the suite, and moved into the hall. The pug was asleep at their door and gave her a look as she tiptoed over it. “Shhh,” she said, and it went back to sleep. Not a very effective guard dog, really.

  In no time she was whisking her way up to the library level and stepping out into the large open space. It glowed a kind of orange from the lights of the city outside. In many ways it reminded Evie of the library at the East Coast society headquarters. The library was several stories tall, but instead of everything being a dark wood with dark banisters and dusty objects hanging here and there, once more there was a white cleanliness to it all. The balconies were curvy as if they had been formed naturally out of a beige stone. The low walls that prevented someone from falling over the side swooped and bent in a very natural kind of way. Everything looked like it had been carved out of something preexisting. Which of course made no sense, as they were at the top of a skyscraper.

  The floor rippled with shadows, and Evie looked up to the skylight high above her. There was no tree growing through the center, just a vast emptiness. The light coming down was constantly moving and shifting. She suddenly realized it was the pool! The skylight was the pool, and the ripples were the water far above moving a little in the wind outside. It was an eerie effect. Like ghosts slipping across the floor.

  Evie peered around and saw a sign by the stairs. She approached it. It was a directory. Carefully she read until she came across the words “Society Database,” with the number four next to it highlighted by the watery moonlight. With a deep intake of breath, Evie made her way to the stairs. She climbed to the fourth level, followed signs, and eventually found a bank of computers. They sat along a wall of windows, and the LA skyline glowed behind them. Here Evie could see the orange in full view, lighting up the sky just below the black of night. She sat down as softly as she could at the computer and opened up the database, relieved she didn’t have to enter a password or anything. She supposed it made sense; after all, it was hard enough to get into the society building, so members probably assumed that anyone on a computer inside would be allowed to be.

  In a few clicks, she was staring at an empty search bar.

  Now what?

  She didn’t know much about these men in black. She didn’t even know their full names. But, she supposed, she did have their initials. Evie entered K into the last names search bar and felt some satisfaction as the page on the computer refreshed into…a list twelve pages long. Okay. Well, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but it was a start, and she had all night.

  She read the first line: “Ka, Jane. 2016. Admitting officer, Algens.”

  Algens. Myrtle! That was Myrtle’s last name. That was kind of neat. What was an admitting officer? Probably someone who…admitted to something…Oh! No! It was someone who approved new members, who allowed them into the society. It was the person who let new members in!

  That was fun to realize. She continued reading the Ks. As she did, she became more and more aware of how ridiculous this search was. She didn’t even know what she was looking for; she didn’t know who any of these people were. Any number of them could be a Mr. K. The only times she recognized a name were when “Algens” appeared as the admitting officer.

  Wait.

  The Mr.s had a problem with her grandfather specifically…obviously….What if…

  She went back to the search page. Instead of searching for members, she searched for “admitting officer.” The list rearranged itself alphabetically by the officers’ last names, and sure enough Myrtle Algens, the president of the Explorers Society and Evie’s new guardian, was the first entry. She had admitted many members, and there was something about knowing how important she was that made Evie feel quite proud that she knew the woman personally.

  But that wasn’t the name she’d been hoping to find.

  She flipped the alphabetical arrangement so that the first name was of higher importance than the last name, and immediately the name she was looking for rose to the top.

  “Alistair Drake.”

  She clicked on it, and her grandfather’s name repeated over and over and over again. It made her heart sing. And it made the task ahead of her seem less slow and painful. She had the patience to go through the list, if only to see her grandfather’s name before her, to know that he’d once been respected enough that he’d been granted the responsibility of welcoming new members. She liked that.

  She began the task, staring at name after name. As any members with last names starting with M, I, or K appeared, she wrote the names down on a pad of paper next to the computer. She went through the list like this for a good half hour, until she noticed something different. Next to the name “Fiona Montgomery” she saw a little x at the end, after the row of information about her. When Evie clicked the x, a little window popped up with text that said “Dismissed, Algens” and a date below that. She read the words carefully and then returned to going through the names, this time looking for the x. A few minutes later, she found another. This time it said “Dismissed, Butler” with a different date. And then she spotted another: “Dismissed, Algens.” And then a fourth: “Dismissed, Drake.”

  She paused to think. Dismissed.

  Quickly she left her page of Alistair Drake–appointed members and went back and typed in a new name: “Catherine Lind.”

  Catherine’s profile came up easily, and the admitting officer was Evie’s grandfather. Sure enough there was also a little x next to her name.

  “Dismissed, Algens.” And a date. Twenty years ago.

  Dismissed. Evie pondered again.

  That obviously meant “banned.” It meant the person was no longer a member. And the name after “dismissed” was the last name of the person who’d been the one to cut off the person’s access to the society.

  Evie thought about what she’d just read.

  “Dismissed, Drake.”

  She thought back to her train of thought moments earlier, while she’d been lying in bed. Adults and grudges.

  What if…

  Evie examined all her search options, and sure enough, there was a way to put all the dismissed members into a list, categorized by year dismissed. This list was much shorter, only five pages. She dutifully went through all of them, searching for her grandfather’s last name as the person who’d been the dismisser. She searched and searched, and then…there it was. And there it was again. And again.

  And something else too. There was only a handful of times when Alistair Drake had dismissed someone from the society, but there were indeed three last names that stood out clearly. Mandrill, Indolangur, and Kipunji. M. I. K. One right after another. All around twenty-five years ago.

  And all banned by her grandfather.

  Evie sat back in her chair and stared at the glowing screen. Adrenaline was pumping fast through her body, and she could feel herself almost buzzing. The feeling reminded her of the thrill she’d felt while driving earlier in the day. She’d found them. She’d finally found the men in black. She was sure of it.

  “You seem satisfied,” said Alejandro, pulling up the chair next to her at the dark computer to her right.

  She jumped at hearing his voice and turned to look at him. “You are very good at sneaking up on people,” she said.

  “Well, I spent my life exploring sacred sites. One has to be careful and quiet all the time. You don’t want to disturb,” he replied. “Plus I bought these new shoes, and the soles are very soft.”

  Evie nodded. She didn’t know what else to say.

  “You have found something,” said Alejandro.

  “Yes. I have.” She was so excited, she just needed to share, even if it was with someone who wasn’t entirely supportive of her and her team. “Three names that match up with the letters of those bad men. Men who were
all banned from the society. All around the same time. And all by my grandfather.” She thought the way in which she’d phrased that made it sound extra dramatic and exciting.

  “Interesting,” said Alejandro, nodding. “That is quite the connection.”

  “Yes! And don’t you see? Clearly they wanted revenge on my grandfather because he kicked them out. Clearly also there was something bad about them if they were banned in the first place. They did something they shouldn’t have done. It makes sense that these guys want to hurt him.”

  “Well, yes, in a way. I am not so sure things are as clear as you say they are, though,” said Alejandro.

  “I think they are,” replied Evie. It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it?

  “Well, let us see here. Your grandfather banned these men. But your grandfather was also banned. Is your grandfather then a bad guy?” asked Alejandro, leaning back in his chair.

  “No, of course not. I mean…what the Filipendulous Five did wasn’t good, of course…”

  “They created a tsunami that destroyed an island’s homes and ruined the lives of many. That, I’d say, is more than just ‘not good,’ ” replied Alejandro.

  “No. I know that. I didn’t mean to make it sound like it was no big deal. It was. But they didn’t do it on purpose. They were trying to save their own lives deep underwater, being attacked by a monster. And they did make up for it and stuff. They felt really bad and gave away everything they had to help,” said Evie, feeling immediately defensive of her grandfather and also a little uncomfortable with what the West Coast president was implying.

  “So being banned does not necessarily mean one is bad,” concluded Alejandro.

  “But this is different. We know how bad these men are because they’ve been doing awful, destructive things.” Yes! Good point, Evie, she told herself.

  “Yes, they have. I just want to make sure you think about bad and good and what that means.” Alejandro stood up and placed a warm, steady hand on Evie’s shoulder. “You are with two members of a team that many across the world do not think is good. You are trying to rescue a man who many never want to see again.” Evie made an attempt to speak, but Alejandro spoke first. “Other people’s judgment, my judgment, does not prove fact. But to trust in bad and good and nothing in between is dangerous. Do not be blind to facts. Do not be blind to loyalty. And do not let loyalty blind you.”