Ancient, Strange, and Lovely

by Susan Fletcher

  Seismic creepy, spying on your very own dad.

  One e-mail had a red “urgent” marker. From mjones@alaskastate.edu.

  mjones: Dr. Mungo Jones. The professor who had called Mom to come up last fall. And then she’d disappeared.

  Call me, the e-mail said. With all due haste. No signature block. No phone number. Nothing.

  It was dated two days ago.

  With all due haste? Who even talks like that?

  Alaska State was in Anchorage. I knew that from before. And the storage locker, the one with Mom’s boxes … also in Anchorage.

  I clicked on Dad’s database, checked for Dr. Jones. Nothing there.

  Back to the e-mail. I hit reply. What is it? I wrote. But I couldn’t send it. Just wrong.

  I exited Dad’s e-mail program, googled “Mungo Jones.” Found him on the Alaska State College website. Biology Department, specializing in wildlife biology, zoology, and cryptozoology. He’d written a bunch of books. I scrolled down to a picture of him in what must be his office. Black man. Salt-and-pepper hair. Deep-set greenish eyes that looked kindly and amused.

  I zoomed in on the picture, clicked around, checking out the office. Lots of books in cases. Framed documents and sketches of animals on the wall.

  Strange-looking animals.

  Wait a minute. Something there among the books. I zoomed in closer. A bird, perched on a shelf. Some kind of falcon.

  Might be taxidermy, but it looked real.

  Green eyes and a bird.

  Could it be?

  No.

  I’d never heard of a kenner outside of our family.

  Who was this guy? Why had he called Mom up to Alaska? Why did he want to talk to Dad now?

  My phone rang. I blinked.

  Dad?

  I checked caller ID.

  Blocked.

  “Hello?” I said. No answer. “Hello?”

  Hope pushed up inside me. “Dad?” I asked. “Are you there? Dad?”

  The phone went dead. I stared at it. Beeped off.

  Probably some phaging telemarketer.

  Click. A ladybug landed on the desk. I stared at it a moment, then logged onto Satellite Earth. I zoomed in on Alaska, then Cook Inlet, then Anchorage.

  Where are you, Dad?

  Zooming out, now, panning east. Mountains. Narrow, winding roads. Clicking randomly across the maps. South, to islands. North and east, to mountains. Trying to peer down into the spaces between the pixels.

  Is anybody there, anybody lost, anybody stranded, anybody hurt? Anybody wearing a Pendleton shirt and a navy blue jacket, anybody with a thick, brown-bear beard? Some stubborn, selfish man who doesn’t care enough about his daughters, left them with all that hope hanging out there with nowhere to go.

  What was he thinking?

  Where are you, Dad?

  Where are you?

  Aunt Pen found me facedown on Dad’s desk, drooling on the keyboard. “Bryn!” she said. “Bryn!”

  Even half asleep, I could tell she was seriously annoyed.

  I lifted my head. Dad’s screen saver was running, the one he’d downloaded from Mom: tiny microbes munching away at the sludgy brownish desktop until it was all clear, all clear blue water. Then it crudded over and the microbes went at it again.

  I couldn’t have been out long, or the computer would have gone to sleep. Still, it was darkish in here now. The screen bled blue onto the empty desk, and red and green LEDs glowed in the shadows.

  “Bryn. There are bugs all over the house.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “I know.”

  “It’s positively infested!”

  I shrugged. The bugs didn’t seem like such a huge deal, considering. Dad hadn’t called for nearly two weeks. That was a problem. The bugs were just bugs.

  “I’m speechless, Bryn. You should have told me right away. I can’t—” Aunt Pen stopped, took a deep breath, seemed to reboot. “You’d better come home, Bryn. Dinner’s ready and—”

  I am home, I thought.

  “—and your dad might call—”

  On the phone I carry with me everywhere, I thought.

  “—and you shouldn’t be alone now, honey. You just shouldn’t. Bryn—”

  Aunt Pen drew near, her perfume too sweet—annoying—and I knew she wanted to hug me. I felt my body stiffen.

  Aunt Pen sighed, moved away. “Bryn, I’m worried too,” she said. “I miss him. I miss both of them. I was missing you. Come home, please?”

  When Dad didn’t call that night, Aunt Pen began to Take Things in Hand. She put Piper to bed early, then set up a control center at the dining room table and mobilized forces like an army general—calling people, texting them, IMing them, paging them. Dragging them away from their evening activities, summoning them to her at half-hour intervals throughout the next day. The cops would send a detective tomorrow morning. A lawyer, an accountant, and yard and housekeeping services would all show up.

  Plus an exterminator, for the ladybugs.

  Mom and Dad would never have let an exterminator in the house. Never. But Aunt Pen insisted they’d use only safe pesticides. As if there were such a thing. She said our bugs weren’t ladybugs at all, but Asian lady beetles. Invasive. Like kudzu. She had a wild look in her eye—neat fiend on overdrive—kind of desperate and fried.

  The list stretched out on the pad in front of her. Forward Dad’s mail to this house. Cancel the magazine subscriptions. Leave phone and e-service for a month, then re-evaluate.

  “He’s not gone,” I said. “He’s just a few days late.”

  “I’m not saying he’s gone!” Aunt Pen snapped. She lowered her face into her hands. Stayed like that for a couple of seconds. Looked up at me again. “Preparing for eventualities is not saying they’re going to happen. It’s just preparing.”

  But she was saying it. Everything she did was screaming it. He’s lost too. He’s not coming back, not ever.

  I felt a tight, airless box closing around me, a box that sealed out my old life, a box where I couldn’t be Bryn anymore, a box that didn’t admit the possibility that Dad could turn up tomorrow or the next day, apologizing like crazy but otherwise fine. And maybe—miraculously—with Mom beside him.

  And what about the critter? There’d be random people wandering all over our house and yard. And the police—they’d investigate Dad. Download his database, like they did with Mom. Root through his stuff. Confiscate “evidence” and not give it back.

  And sooner or later, somebody was bound to come sniffing around Dad’s studio.

  I ran upstairs and called Taj. “We’ve got trouble,” I said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Very un-Taj sounding. Ironic. Like he knew all about trouble, had plenty of it himself. But I didn’t want to hear about his trouble. Just plowed on through with my own. Told him what Aunt Pen was doing. “She’s gone stratospheric—treating a bunch of ladybugs like they’re carrying hantavirus or something. And the critter’s not safe anymore. They could fumigate the shed. Anyway, someone’s gonna go in there, an exterminator or the cops, or … someone. They won’t care that the critter’s super-endangered. They …”

  Funny background noises coming over the phone. Lots of voices. Some clattery sounds.

  “Taj?” I asked. “Where are you?”

  He sighed. “I’m in the hospital. Jasmine has gone into labor early and they’re trying to stop it.”

  All the words flew out of me.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Taj said. “I don’t think. It happened once before and it was fine.”

  “I … I’m sorry,” I said. “I mean, not that it was fine, but—”

  “I know what you mean. Look, I still have some ideas. Although …”

  “Although what?”

  “I’m having a hard time imagining where this thing belongs. Where’s its ecological niche? Does it even have one? And what happens if we introduce it someplace it doesn’t belong? And if it’s this big now, think how big it’s going to get. It�
�s going to be dangerous, Bryn.”

  “But—”

  “Okay, I’m looking, though. Long term. But about the short term …” More voices in the background. “You’ve got enough food and everything for a couple of days, don’t you?” he said.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “If you had a friend with a car, you could just pack everything up for a few hours if it looks like someone’s going in there.”

  “I’m a freshman. None of my friends have cars.”

  Background noises. A siren.

  “I still think the lizard’s safer in the shed than anywhere else I can think of,” Taj said. “Maybe nobody’ll go in there. I’m working on it; I’ll come up with something. And if … if they find it, well, you can’t blame yourself. You did the best you could.”

  “That can’t happen.”

  “Yeah, but if it does …”

  “It’s Mom’s. It’s her thing, Taj. Nothing can happen to it.” Voices. Someone talking to Taj.

  “I have to go, Bryn. Hang in there. I’ll call you when I can.”

  14

  RATTLED

  NEAR HAINES, ALASKA

  Josh heard a crunch of gravel and looked up to see Wayne Hazleton’s pickup heading up the drive. He lifted the axe overhead and brought it down once more, relaxing his grip a second before the blade bit into the wood. The wood split clean and easy, all the way to the block. Josh set the pieces in the pile, inhaling the sweet smell of fresh-cut hemlock. He’d been hoping to finish the stack before dinner, but Wayne was going to want to talk. Going to want to hear about the eggs.

  “Joshua,” Wayne said, sliding out of the truck. He shut the door and ambled over to the woodpile, hitching up his belt beneath his belly overhang. Wayne was a big man, big all over. But he moved with a gliding kind of grace, like a walrus in the water.

  Josh nodded. “Wayne.”

  “How goes the battle?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  “Hear you found yourselves some eggs.”

  There you go. Wayne was in on the fossil poaching. Tight little unit, led by Cap and sworn to secrecy. Wayne was also Josh’s boss in the summers. Owner of the gillnetter he worked on.

  Josh nodded. “Yeah. On the Kenai. Petrified. Some kind of lizard or dinosaur.”

  “Think you got ’em all?” Wayne asked.

  Josh shrugged. “A couple broke. And there were supposed to be some others, some newer ones. You hear about those?”

  “Yup.”

  They never had come across those fragments Quinn had talked about. But Quinn had stuck to his story. Claimed his prof had threatened to turn him in for poaching unless he surrendered the newer egg to him.

  “I hear some of our guys went poking around for it,” Wayne said.

  “Poking around for what?”

  “That other egg. The one Quinn gave the professor.”

  “Where?” Josh asked.

  “Prof’s office. And his home.”

  “He let them in?”

  Wayne pushed back the bill of his cap. Squinted at him.

  “They broke in?”

  Wayne shrugged. “This is serious business, Joshua. It’s not just the money. You know what would happen if a fresh one ever surfaced. A TV reporter behind every bush. Tree huggers and G-men swarming in here like a plague of locusts. Poachers popping off anything that twitched. And lawyers! You couldn’t take a crap without an affidavit.”

  But Josh was still with the break-in. They actually broke in? “Did Cap know about it?” he asked.

  Wayne didn’t answer. He spotted a beetle on his jacket and flicked it off.

  Cap couldn’t have known. Could he? He’d have put an end to it. Taking fossils was one thing, but this was something else.

  “Didn’t find anything, anyway,” Wayne said. “That Quinn guy probably made it up.”

  Right. Quinn liked to talk, make himself look important. But Cap …

  Wayne cocked his head, studying Josh. “You’re still with us, right, Joshua?”

  “Yeah,” Josh said. He looked down at the dirt, scuffed his toe. Was he with them? He wasn’t sure anymore. He didn’t like the poaching—not at all. And Cap had changed, since the divorce. Times had gotten tough for him, and he seemed … harder than he used to be.

  “Cap said you were kind of rattled about those eggs.”

  Rattled. Josh felt the blood rush into his face. Was that what Cap had said?

  He hadn’t been rattled. He’d been ticked. Annoyed at Zack. Bothered about the poaching. Humiliated by Cap.

  Which was why he hadn’t told about the sat phone right away. The phone he’d found near the far opening of the cave.

  He’d planned to tell Cap. Eventually. After he’d charged the phone and found out whose it was.

  But he’d held on to it way too long, deciding what to do, and now it was too late. If he told now, Cap would know he’d kept something from him. Wasn’t with the program.

  Had Cap sent Wayne to check up on him?

  “I’m fine with it,” Josh said. “I’m fine.” He set up a piece of hemlock, lifted the axe, brought it down hard, all the way to the block. The shock of the striking blade jarred the tense muscles in his arms and shoulders and back.

  “Whoa, easy there, son,” Wayne said. “Keep that up, you’re gonna tear yourself apart.” He hitched his belt. “A word to the wise, Joshua: Don’t mess with us. We need total commitment. If you can’t give us that …” He shrugged. “Well, I know Cap. He won’t say much, but he will cut you out.”

  Josh watched him as he left. The sun, sinking toward the western mountains, struck glittering sparks off Lynn Canal. Overhead, an eagle caught a thermal and drifted slowly higher. When Wayne’s pickup had disappeared around the bend, Josh sat down on the chopping block. Pulled the sat phone out of his pocket. Turned it on.

  It hadn’t been hard finding a charger; eBay’d had a bunch. Josh had played around with the phone long enough to figure out whose it was. That other professor, the woman from Oregon. The one who’d disappeared.

  Josh scrolled through the options, brought up the family pictures. Or at least, he guessed they must be family pictures. There was a studio group shot of the professor herself and a husband and two daughters. Vacation shots of the same people at a mountain, a beach, a lake. Close-ups of each daughter alone. A girl who looked five or six, with a canary sitting on top of her head. An older girl with a cockatiel on her shoulder. Eighth grade, maybe? Ninth?

  Something about the older one got him. Not that she was hot or anything. But something about her …

  Her eyes were green. So were her sister’s. He’d never seen eyes that green. The older girl’s eyes turned down a little at the corners, making her look serious, even when she smiled. He wondered if she was the one he’d called. On the speed-dial line called “B.” After he’d blocked caller ID.

  He could still hear her voice, the saddest voice he’d ever heard: Dad? Are you there? Dad?

  Josh could relate. He knew what it was like to miss your father. Sometimes even when you were with him.

  He turned off the phone, stuffed it back in his pocket.

  He’d better get rid of this thing. Dump it. Next time he was in town, he’d throw it off the end of a dock.

  15

  A FRIEND WITH A CAR

  EUGENE, OREGON

  The thing that got wedged in my brain and wouldn’t come unstuck was what Taj had said about a friend with a car.

  I did have a friend with a car.

  Sort of.

  Sort of a friend.

  Sort of a car.

  I’d seen Sasha in her car in the school parking lot. It was a little VW, paleo-old. Doors: rusted out. Paint: all patchy. Engine: rough and loud.

  The possibility of a car changed everything.

  I went up to my room at Aunt Pen’s, found Sasha’s number, and then sat there on the bed looking at it. Texting would be easier, but maybe not as safe. I put Stella on my shoulder for moral support. “Sasha’s k
ind of scary,” I explained to her. “Not bad-scary, but still. Plus she’s a junior. Plus she doesn’t know me all that well.” Stella stretched up and nibbled my ear.

  Just punch the buttons already.

  I punched the buttons. Sasha picked right up. “Hey.”

  “Sasha?”

  “Yeah, Bryn.”

  “Um, how’re you doing?”

  “Pretty good. You?” There was a tone to it, like, We’ll just do this pointless dance until you’re ready to tell me why you called.

  I swallowed. “I have kind of a strange problem. Can I ask you a favor? But you can’t tell anybody. It’s important to keep it, you know, secret.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You won’t tell anybody?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Right. I explained, trying not to sound nervous. When I finished, Stella cocked her head and clacked her beak, like she had a comment to make. But from Sasha, nothing.

  “Sasha?” I said. “Are you there?” I’d feel monster dim if the connection had broken and I’d just spilled the whole egg story to my bird. Not that I didn’t talk to her. But still.

  “Wow,” Sasha said at last. “That’s impressive. Nobody’s got problems like you.”

  Well, at least I was impressive at something.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” Sasha went on. “I’m sure he’ll be back, though. Things always take longer than people think—that’s a rule. But the cryptid lizard. That’s exponentially cool.”

  “Cool” was not the word I personally would have chosen. But if Sasha thought it was cool, that could be good. “Then, you can help?”

  “I am so all over it.”

  ‡ ‡ ‡

  At midnight, I pulled on a hoodie and jeans and tiptoed into the hall. I stopped by Aunt Pen’s room, listened at the door. Snoring. Good. I crept downstairs, snagged a flashlight, whisked a steak knife from the block, and headed down into the basement.