IF YOU FIND THIS
I haven’t told you everything that’s happened yet, but for now I have to move these notes somewhere different. It’s not safe to keep them in my dresser, or anywhere at my house, after what happened in the smugglers’ tunnels—Jordan says anyone who’s after Zeke might be after us. So I’m moving these notes to the graveyard, behind the tomb with the stone boy, to an empty urn near the grave of ZACCONE. Before, my mom probably was the only one who would have found these notes, but now just about anyone could.
If you’re a kid reading this, don’t think you would fall in love with me if you met me. Maybe you think you would, but you wouldn’t. Not even 1%. My eyes are freakishly large, and my shoulders are stained with brown freckles, and my tooth is chipped from falling out of a tree. Here’s the truth—no one loves a boy who takes violin lessons. Here’s the truth—no one loves a boy who memorizes square roots.
Whoever you are reading this, I’m going to ask you a riddle. If you solve the riddle, I’ll give you the gold lighter of a high schooler as a prize. But I won’t tell it to you yet—I’ll tell it to you later.
FROM THE NOTES OF GRANDPA ROSE
Here, this here, is something he remembers: He learned to swim wearing stolen pants. Whether anybody believes him doesn’t matter, but as a thirteen-year-old already he could grow hair all over his chest. And now, just imagine, the clothesline springing, the clothespins flying, as this hairy bare-chested boy made off with a pair of trousers. Laughing, probably, as he leapt the fence. Those trousers, they were clean when he stole them, and never clean again. He hid them at the lake, when he wasn’t swimming: just wadded them together, then crammed them under a rock. The day after he stole them, that’s when they began to smell, and every day after that the odor got worse still. Monte was alone out there: just him, and the trees, and the dunes, and the water. If he had drowned, nobody ever would have known. Every day he made himself swim farther. He would swim from the clearer waters along the beach, through murky stretches of amber and sapphire and jade as the sand dropped off beneath him, out to where the water turned black. Then just float there, offshore, rising and falling with the waves. Generally, that’s where he was when the men came: As he bobbed with the waves, wooden motorboats would streak past, manned by men in fedoras, headed for the dunes. After dropping anchor, the men would unload their cargo from the boats onto the sand. The men were smugglers, worked for the gangsters in Chicago. Their cargo? Sometimes it was crates. Sometimes it was bodies. Liquor the gangsters had brewed, people the gangsters had killed: things to sell, things to hide. Here, this here, is something he remembers: He was awfully curious about those smugglers. In town, people traded rumors about the smugglers constantly, with hushed, anxious tones, as if trading rumors about bloodthirsty monsters that lurked just beyond the town limits. The smugglers had built a labyrinth of tunnels under the dunes, would store their cargo there. Sometimes he would sneak after them into the trees, but when they ducked through the entrance to the tunnels he was always too afraid to follow them inside.
After sunset, Monte would amble back into town, barefoot down the dirt streets. The village was changing: Electric lamps flickered in kitchen windows, where oil lamps had once shone; at the feed store, the pharmacy, tinny voices hollered from radios, mingling like ghosts with the voices of customers; automobiles blew through town, coupes and roadsters and sedans, on steel wheels with balloon tires. Picture him, those same green eyes, but fatter cheeks, much thicker hair, a less prominent nose. A boy, stepping over dropped apples that are dust now, stumbling over fallen bricks that are dust now, crossing paths with stray cats that are long dead. Dragging his hands along strangers’ fences, with fingers still pruney from the lake. If he was late, he ran home. He had been forbidden from swimming, which was why he’d had to teach himself to swim, out at the dunes, secretly, wearing stolen pants. His mother had drowned. His father built cabinets. In houses with mothers, the cabinets held fancy teacups and fancy saucers. His house didn’t have a mother. In his house, the cabinet held family heirlooms: the ivory revolver, the bellows clock, the golden hammer, the music box. His father often slept in a chair across from the cabinet, guarding the heirlooms from thieves. Remember, these days the heirlooms are worth a fortune, but even those days the heirlooms were worth some money.
He had been forbidden from touching the heirlooms. He would touch the heirlooms anyway. He has memories, memories of sneaking the heirlooms from the cabinet as his father slumbered across the room. If his hair was still damp, he would towel his hair with a curtain, quietly, then tiptoe past the fireplace to the cabinet. He didn’t sneak the heirlooms from the cabinet only to annoy his father. There was something that genuinely awed him about those heirlooms, about holding something that valuable in his hands. His great-grandfather had won the revolver during a duel with a ship’s captain: The hilt was made of a creamy ivory, smooth to the touch, and the barrel was textured with engravings. His grandfather had been presented the clock after pulling a jeweler’s daughter from a burning house: The clock wasn’t the type that was wound, within the clock was a bellows, that’s what ran the clock, air moving through the bellows, as if the clock were breathing. His father had been awarded the hammer. The music box had been made in Italy, for a famed composer, somewhere centuries back in his family tree. Monte always examined the heirlooms in that exact very order, saving the music box for last. He liked to savor it. Even then, when he came to the music box, he would stall before playing it: would disassemble the music box, then reassemble the music box, carefully inspecting each piece. Flick the clasp up and down. Breathe in the delicate musk of the polished wood. Finally, though, when there were no other ways to stall, he would allow himself to wind the crank. Then hold his breath, and stand very stilly. And listen to its tune. Invariably, that’s when his father would blink awake, when that music began playing: His father would scold him for touching the heirlooms, and ruffle his hair, and yawn and stretch and clap and then march into the kitchen to light the oven for their supper. Put those back where they belong, his father would holler.
Fact is, aside from the heirlooms, the only things they owned were boots and tools. They were truly poor. They never had money for anything. Consequently, their routine never changed. Every day his father was away doing carpentry. Every night his father fixed beef, carrots, and potatoes for supper. After the plates were rinsed, his father would doze off again by the fire, and the house would fall silent. They didn’t have a radio. Televisions didn’t exist yet, or stereos, or video games, or mobile phones. There were no dishwashers to thrum, no coffeemakers to ding. Some families owned electric fans, which at least could have made a whirring sound, but they didn’t have any. They had no radiators to ping and creak. Monte hated being there, in all that quiet. Sometimes he got so bored he would stick his hands onto the block of ice in the icebox, just to feel something. He felt as if he was going to be trapped in that house his whole life. He swore, if he ever got away, he was never coming back.
Weekends, time he could have spent with his father, he snuck away instead. If his father wanted help clearing gutters? He would sneak away to the dunes. If his father wanted help mending shingles? He would sneak away to the dunes. If his father wanted to toss around a baseball, kick around a football? He would sneak away to the dunes. All those afternoons he could have spent with his father, instead he spent swimming in the lake where his mother had drowned. He liked doing it because he knew it was the wrong thing to do. Afterward, though, he always felt guilty. When eventually he would slink back home, his father was never angry, only disappointed. Even then, Monte understood that the patience that man possessed was simply astonishing. But his father believed in him. His father was always trying to get him to do his homework, eat all his carrots. Such great things, his father would proclaim, squeezing his shoulders. Someday you’re going to do such great things. But Monte didn’t like doing good things. He liked bad things. He was a troublemaker. He looted coins from his father’s coat poc
kets to buy rock candy and slingshot pellets. He swiped pies, trampled flowers, chased dogs, smashed windows. He hid bicycles from their owners, spun street signs crooked. He used words even sailors wouldn’t. He loved almost being caught, getaways that left him breathless, getting shouted at from afar. It wasn’t that he missed his mother. People liked to say that was why he was a troublemaker, but that wasn’t why he was a troublemaker. Whether anybody believed him didn’t matter.
Everybody agreed though that the biggest troublemaker in the whole village was a girl named Ana Sharon. Fact is, she was quickly becoming a local legend. Ana accidentally or intentionally had started a fire in the schoolhouse, accidentally or intentionally had shot a horse. Ana wore boys’ boots and boys’ hats with her dresses, wore her hair like a flapper, sang vulgar songs. He has a memory of watching her tumble through the street having a fistfight with a one-eyed boy. Monte secretly loved her, but secretly hated her, too. What Monte hated was being outdone at troublemaking.
And maybe that’s why as a seventeen-year-old he started burying bodies for the smugglers: Because working for the smugglers meant trouble that even she couldn’t outdo.
SKELETONS OF CHILDREN
The next day during lunch Jordan was sitting alone at a table next to Mark Huff’s.
“Stand back up, Calculator,” Jordan (forte)said. “You’re not eating here.”
“But you have no one else to eat with,” I (mezzo-forte) said.
“Just because everyone hates me lately doesn’t mean everyone’s going to hate me forever,” Jordan (forte)said. “If I start eating with you, though, that will be the end of me.”
I looked around from table to table. I didn’t know where else to sit. I stood back up.
“Also, I’m signing up for your treasure hunt,” Jordan (forte)said. “I’ll help you look for your grandpa’s treasure, but when we find it, I get a third of it.”
“I thought you were afraid even to be seen with me?” I (mezzo-forte) said.
“I’m doing it for Grandpa Dykhouse,” Jordan (forte)said. “He never wanted to be dead before. He used to have something to live for. His sailboat. But after he retired he had to sell his sailboat to pay for my Grandma Dykhouse’s hospital bills, and after my Grandma Dykhouse died he had to sell his house to pay for his own hospital bills, and then my parents got a room for him at the rest home, because neither of them wanted him living with us.”
Someone at Mark Huff’s table threw a wrapper at Jordan’s head.
“I hate you too,” he (fermata)shouted at them. Then to me he(mezzo-piano) muttered, “I’m going to buy my grandpa a boat.”
As per usual, I ate lunch in a bathroom stall.
From inside the stall, chewing my carrots, I could hear the quivery faint crooning (pianissimo)voices of kids in the choir room rehearsing, cycling from chorus to verse to bridge.
Sometimes I felt like I was the only one who noticed the music the world was playing—the only one who heard the song of the drainpipes, and the bedsprings, and the wheelbarrows, and the spilled marbles, and the flagpoles during windstorms, and the bleachers applauding, and the teakettles rumbling, and the lightbulbs humming, and the sticks cracking underfoot. I wished everyone understood—I somehow wanted to share it—there was music, not just noise, but music, there, every sound a note in some chord, even silence only another rest. I got lost in that music, sometimes, that everything was playing together. I could get totally overwhelmed with feelings—just listening to (pianissimo)echoes of the choir singing, and paper towel (piano)crinkling between someone’s fingers, and a leaking faucet (pianissimo)dripping water. Our town was my favorite song.
Leaving the bathroom, I spotted Little Isaac and Big Isaac hurrying along the hallway. I ducked into the bathroom and peeked from the doorway. The Isaacs bounced past. “Marcus, Marcus, Marcus!” they (forte)chanted, wrapping their arms around Mark Huff. Mark Huff (mezzo-piano)laughed, then started (piano)telling them a story. I waited until Mark Huff had led them away.
When I walked into math class, someone had drawn a pair of faces on the chalkboard. The first face had a straight line for a mouth, with crooked teeth hanging there. The second face had a squiggly line for a unibrow. Underneath the drawings, the chalkboard said,
2 EYEBROWS = 1 BRAIN
1 EYEBROW = 0 BRAINS
Everyone (forte)laughed, except the Geluso twins. Crooked Teeth (piano)muttered, “Nobody’s teeth are that crooked.” The Unibrow (forte)crumpled homework and threw it at Jordan. “What?” Jordan (forte)said, turning around, (piano)laughing. “I didn’t draw it.” That only made everyone (forte)laugh more. Then the math teacher carried in a stack of quizzes and erased the drawings and made everyone solve problems at the chalkboard.
Zeke was waiting for me after school, clutching a fistful of thief money. Today’s high-tops were metallic gold, with thick gold soles. While we walked to our locker, I told Zeke what Jordan had drawn on the chalkboard during math class.
“I truly hate that kid,” Zeke (mezzo-forte) said.
“Jordan?” I (mezzo-forte) said.
“What’s so difficult about using somebody’s actual name?” Zeke(crescendo) said.
In band class, everyone had learned new terms. Crescendo means “play louder”—so if you were playing mezzo-forte, you would play forte, then fortissimo. Decrescendo means “play softer”—so if you were playing mezzo-piano, you would play piano, then pianissimo.
“If we’re trying to learn about your grandfather’s life, we should talk to everybody who knew him. But there’s a problem. Which is that basically everybody who would have known him now lives in the graveyard,” Zeke(mezzo-forte) said.
“You mean is dead,” I(mezzo-forte) said.
“So I scheduled a seance with Kayley Schreiber,” Zeke (forte)said.
“The homeschooler?” I (glissando)said.
The homeschooler was our age, but homeschooled, obviously. She knew about voodoo, wrote fortunes for kids on slips of paper. Writing fortunes would have been just weird, except that the fortunes she wrote were never wrong, which was weirdspooky. Sometimes the fortunes were warnings, like POP QUIZ TODAY or DON’T RIDE THE BUS WALK HOME, but sometimes the fortunes had only a black circle—like a giant decimal point or a filled whole note—which meant death was coming for you. In third grade, she gave the Gelusos the black spot, and that night a tree fell during a storm, crushing their doghouse and killing their dog. In fifth grade, she gave Peter Burke the black spot, and that night he choked to death on a fish bone while his babysitter was sleeping. It’s not the black spot that does the killing—the black spot only warns you of what’s already coming.
My brother was still young, but that was the sort of thing he might become after he died—some trees became paper, became sheet music or graphing paper or fortuneteller fortunes. He might become something useful, but he might become someone’s black spot.
“Tonight?” I (forte)said.
“They may be dead, but they can still answer our questions,” Zeke (forte)said.
We rounded the corner.
Our locker was open. Our locker was empty.
Someone had written FREAK and FREAK and FREAK inside the locker with black marker. On the floor of the locker, where Zeke’s gold backpack had been, someone had written NO MORE PIGGY BANK. My backpack was missing. All of my homework.
Zeke was so pale he looked ≈ dead.
“Did you give our combination to the Isaacs again?” Zeke (pianissimo)whispered.
“I swear I didn’t,” I (piano)said.
“But then how…?” Zeke (pianissimo)whispered.
We just stood there, gaping at the empty locker.
“You had so, so, so much money,” I (piano)said.
Zeke stared at the few crumpled dollars in his fist.
“I’ve been saving money to visit my dad,” Zeke (pianissimo)whispered.
Maybe Zeke’s dad works in the Upper Peninsula too, I thought, but Zeke (piano)said, “My dad is a soldier still. When I was younge
r, he fought in Iraq, and afterward got stationed in Arabia. He would leave for Arabia, then come home again, then leave for Arabia. That was our life. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then one time he didn’t come back. He got stationed at some base in Italy, and got a house there, and started a new family. Now that’s where he lives, even when he’s on leave. It was like he forgot who he was.” Zeke rubbed a finger over a FREAK. “My dad had three kids with his new wife, so I have three little brothers there now I’ve never even met.”
“And now you’ll never get to?” I (piano)said.
“I’ll still get to,” Zeke (piano)said. “The Isaacs don’t want my money. They want something I stole from them. They’ll try to trade my money for what I stole.”
A kid with a piccolo came galloping down the hallway, looking > hyper, (fortissimo)shouting, “Fire in the parking lot, fire in the parking lot!”
We ran to the parking lot with everyone who wasn’t on buses already—Emma Dirge, the Geluso twins, the kid with the piccolo. Mr. Tim was there already, (forte) hosing the garbage bin with a fire extinguisher. The Geluso twins(fermata) booed him for putting out the fire.
“Can’t imagine what’s in there to light,” Mr. Tim (mezzo-piano)muttered. “The bin was just emptied this afternoon.”
Mr. Tim used the handle of his broom to fish something out from the garbage bin—the charred remains of a gold backpack. Ashes tumbled out, caught in the wind. I spotted a couple of half-burned dollars in the whirlwind of ash, floating off into the parking lot.
“At least it wasn’t a kid,” Mr. Tim (forte)said.
Now Zeke was so pale he looked = dead.
“They burned my money,” Zeke (piano)whispered.
Mr. Tim fished out another backpack—a black one—mine. Bits of half-burned homework went floating off into the parking lot after the bits of half-burned dollars.
If You Find This Page 8