And so it’s important to remember — no, it is absolutely critical to understand that everything you have ever heard or believed, everything in the great story of the world, has been passed to you by someone else. Even in the sciences, it is a rare individual who has gone back to the beginning of his knowledge and conducted experiments to lay down the very foundations of his own thoughts.
Peter used the crowbar to pull apart the grate. He let it fall to the ground. There was no one but him in the back of the building where the air vent led outside. The LBs were distracting Boykins now — that was phase one of the plan. Phase one: Distract Boykins so Peter can climb in. Phase two: Make a big noise to draw Simon out. The key was for Peter not to be on record going into the school. He couldn’t use his RA badge or be caught on security cameras, because if anything went wrong, Peter couldn’t be implicated. Right now, Tina was using Peter’s ID to open the front door of the boys’ dorm, all the way across campus. She would do this once every ten minutes for half an hour to establish his alibi. He couldn’t lose his job at Marlowe. Not while the book was here. If anything happened, the LBs would have to take the fall. He stretched a little and swung his arms like a swimmer about to take a dive. Then he bent over and crawled in.
It was Isaac Newton who said he stood on the shoulders of giants. All those with knowledge stand on such shoulders. But all I present in this book is that perhaps our giants are dwarfs. Perhaps as we gaze at what we once thought were the farthest horizons of truth, we’re standing at the cliff side, its peak far above us.
Down the hall, Officer Boykins was reading the Post, trying to figure out why in the world people were famous for doing nothing but shaking what their mama gave them on a tabletop in fancy clubs. As Boykins was unscrewing the top of his thermos, he saw a figure walk in that he couldn’t quite make out.
“ID,” he said to the figure.
“ID?” mimicked the boy. “I left my ID in my locker. I have a . . . um . . . a game of, um, polo to attend to, participate in, and likewise.”
It was the rich kid with crazy hair that was always causing trouble around Marlowe.
Boykins wasn’t sure if he was being played or if this hooligan was acting a whole lot stupider than usual. “You’re not going anywhere with that gasoline, son.”
“What gasoline?” the boy mumbled, blatantly hiding a sloshing drum behind his back. Then he reached into his pocket and a whole bottle of pills (a club drug called W) spilled out. This was definitely out of Boykins’s jurisdiction. He picked up the phone.
“Administrators’ office,” said the gruff voice on the other end of the line. Boykins backed away from the receiver and looked at it. Was it broken? Because that was definitely not Sally, the assistant. Must be a temp.
Boykins hesitated. “Can you come down here? We have a situation.”
“What’s the situation?” asked the temp with a grunt. “’Cause I’m supposed to wait here for the polo players to check in.”
The smile on Boykins faded. “Did you say polo?”
“Yeah. Gotta stay here and make sure they’ve all got their . . . um . . . cornrows.”
“What in heavens are you blathering on about?” said Boykins. “What’s cornrows got to do with polo?”
“Tons,” said the temp. “Cuts down on wind resistance. And it’s better to bleach it, makes the hair weigh less.”
“Are you serious?” said Boykins. Somebody was playing him for sure. He was starting to think this was some kind of hidden-camera TV show. “Look, buddy, maybe you should come down here.”
Simon could hear people talking in the halls. He tried not to pay attention to anything that had to do with children. He flipped to the middle of the book. He was scoffing before he even finished one paragraph. How did this gullible old man climb so far in the field?
Once we establish that the claims of the Book of Gates are true, then the testimony of the legends is consistent. Each of the five figures undergoes tremendous punishment (figurative and literal), enough to create an extraordinary amount of emotional energy. In the instance of Garosh, it is quite easy to assume that some massive amount of stress-induced toxins could contaminate his very bones. Of course, this is all conjecture.
“You got that right,” said Simon, trying to ignore the noises from the hall, which sounded more and more like an argument. This book was pure science fiction. The old man didn’t present a shred of evidence.
The evidence of this claim would come from direct examination of Garosh’s bones (had we access to them). Since the mythic figure is said to have walked the desert for years in the undead state, it stands to reason that his bones would present highly abnormal osteographic patterns. The vertical pressure on the decaying bones, as the mummy staggered in the desert, would create vertical striations, unlike any we have seen in the past.
“Hmm,” said Simon, glancing at the bone sitting on his desk. It also had vertical striations. Proof that Professor Darling didn’t even know basic science. If this bone had those striations, too, then how could they be proof of the mythic bone with all its special bonedust. Whoo. Magic beans, all of it.
Outside in the hall, Officer Boykins was trying to pacify the punk kid, who was irate at not being allowed into his own school.
“This is outrageous,” said the boy. “I mean, seriously, man, me and my can of fuel have a polo game to get to. Now. Do you want me to call my father?”
Boykins kept thinking that this was all wrong. “You’re in serious trouble, son. I suggest you surrender the gas and the pills right now.”
“Bite me,” said the kid. And then it got even worse.
“What’s the matter, Roy?” came the temp’s rough voice as he strolled down the hall. It was that rapper’s giant son, who had been going to this school since who knows when.
Just last week Boykins had busted this one for smuggling drinks onto campus.
“You’re the temp?” Boykins asked. “But you’re —”
But before he could finish, the so-called temp jumped in with serious anger in his voice.
“What? What am I? I’m black? Is that what you meant to say? Is this a racial thing?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, now wait a minute,” said Officer Boykins. “I was gonna say —”
“You called me in the office,” said the temp, “because you can’t do your job, and then you start getting racial? And what are you doing with my boy over there? What do you need? Fingerprints? Would you like to Tase him a few times to see if he screams like a real Marlowe student?”
Officer Boykins began to cower and worry about his job. And Poet was just warming up.
In addition, of the five mummies (and, in fact, of all mummies and human bones to date), only Garosh’s bones would exhibit the odd trait that the ends, where the joints meet, would have crumbled away in a circular pattern after years of grating against each other postmortem.
Simon still wasn’t impressed. His new paperweight had its ends crumbled away as well. And look at that — the markings are circular. . . . The noise in the hall was impossible to ignore at this point. Simon would have to go tell the children to shut up.
And last, the most convincing piece of evidence would come from the bones themselves. The dust from the decayed bones would have some sort of regenerative effect on carbon-based material. For instance, the legends claim that when treated with bonedust, all decay on human flesh (scar tissue, for instance) would be reversed.
Simon was disgusted. He slapped the book shut, pushed away from the desk, got up, and walked to the door, taking the book with him. He opened the door and stuck his head out to yell. To his surprise, two boarding boys were standing over a terrified Officer Boykins, screaming something about a color-blind world where people are judged by their abilities in polo, as opposed to the color of their cornrows. It looked like the big one was about to beat up the officer. Simon would have to intervene somehow.
“Hey,” he shouted. “Hey, you!” he said again, using the book as a pointer.
/> Suddenly, Simon saw something. The three people in the hall had turned. The boy with cornrows said, “What do you want?”
But Simon wasn’t paying attention anymore. All he could do was stare at the book. The wrinkled, old brown-stained book with a broken spine, which had rested under his new paperweight, looked brand-new. The spine was perfectly whole; the pages were as white as the day they came from the printer. Simon couldn’t bring himself to believe it. He heard a noise and turned back into the classroom. There was that new RA he’d seen hanging around with the Darling brats. He had jumped down from the air vent. He had Simon’s precious bone in his hands.
“No, it’s mine!” shouted Simon. It was all he could get out.
The punk smirked at him and said, “Not anymore.” Then he ran and jumped out the window.
I knew it! thought Simon. I knew it was true!
It was true. Peter had known for ages. Now he sat alone in his dorm room, away from Tina or the LBs. The Garosh bone — the second batch of bonedust — rested in his lap, and he examined it inch by inch. Ever since he’d arrived here, Peter’s anxieties had multiplied. He didn’t have much time. Every time he had found the book, he had been discovered, or else the book had been moved again, before he could make multiple trips.
He remembered now that it was the Darlings who had helped him get this far. Three bones down. That Wendy, she was good to have around. She was inspiring, beautiful, innocent. He liked that about her — her innocence. He could tell each time he touched her face that Wendy felt guilty about her boyfriend. She was the loyal type. Maybe he would ask her to visit him sometime, when there weren’t so many people around. Maybe he would ask her what she dreamed about at night. Did she ever wish she could live forever?
As for Peter, he had had another nightmare last night. He had seen the broken blue eye again. And this time, it wasn’t his decrepit, hunchbacked old nanny, with her quiet steps and her moth-ridden clothes. It wasn’t the woman who had shown him the book and then yanked it away. The nanny who had lived forever and always hungered for more children to corrupt, the one who beat him with her antique hook, the ageless governess against whom only one child, Peter, had ever plotted payback. No, this was a far more beautiful woman, with blond hair and a black overcoat, an exciting woman like all the ones that he let into his life every day. He wondered if he should trust them so easily. He wondered if he should trust Wendy.
For a few days after getting the second batch of bonedust back from Simon, Peter disappeared, taking all three bones with him. John and Wendy didn’t have any idea where he was or what he was doing, just that he wanted to be left alone. John had a fit. (“He just took the bones? We could’ve died. Worse, we could’ve gotten expelled!”) Wendy didn’t mind, though. She was beginning to trust Peter. She knew that he was obsessed with bonedust, that the quest consumed him, and that he had been chasing it for a long time. If she had to guess, she would say that bonedust days were extremely rare, and that he had been walking around with Elan’s toe in his pocket for a while. So maybe he deserved some time with it. She knew he wouldn’t steal the bonedust or jeopardize her father’s work — unlike Simon. She wondered if she should break up with Connor. Even though she had agonized over whether leaving one guy for another was despicable, she was beginning to think that maybe things weren’t so black and white. Wasn’t dating Connor just to help John make friends equally dishonest? For some reason, the conversation she had overheard through the closed door of the nurse’s office kept coming back to her, reminding her to chase her own happiness.
As for Simon, ever since Peter had stolen that bone, it had been all-out war. Now Simon knew that the legends were true — or at least true enough to make him rich and famous. Did he believe that bonedust could give eternal life? Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing was for sure: he knew there were five mummies out there that had been unaccounted for in all of history. He knew they were the five mummies from the legends, with verifiable backstories and an identifiable time period. The possibility of magic powers was a bonus. Finding the mummies would be enough to make his career. Finding a gate into a hidden treasure trove would make him a legend. Simon didn’t care about ever-living dust the way Peter did. He wasn’t desperate to live forever — except in history books. His name was the entirety of him. Rich and famous, acclaimed and renowned, the untouchable Professor Grin.
Meanwhile, Wendy and John were grounded indefinitely. Professor Darling was livid about the AP calculus closet incident. He ranted and ground his teeth over the fact that this irresponsible RA had not been fired. Apparently, Peter had done nothing expressly wrong . . . and he was part of a union. So Professor Darling took his anger out on his children. Had he not warned them that this Peter character wasn’t their sort? Had he not expressly forbade them to fraternize with him? Was any of this unclear? Wendy and John didn’t protest too much (even Wendy, who was way too old to be grounded). Any new provocation, even the smallest detail they might accidentally reveal, and they would have to spill everything to their dad. And for now, they had Simon to deal with.
“Thank God he’s too selfish to ever say anything to Daddy,” Wendy had remarked.
John hadn’t responded. Because, to be perfectly fair, Simon hadn’t done anything John wouldn’t do — if necessary.
A few days later, Peter returned. John demanded to see the bonedust. “What have you done with it? It belongs to all of us!”
Peter just stared at him with an amused look. Then he straightened up, looked John square in the face, and said, in the most serious tone they had ever heard him use, “Let’s get one thing straight, little man. The dust belongs to me. All five of them belong to me. If you’re not cool with that, I don’t need your help.”
When John didn’t respond, Peter flashed a bright, toothy grin and put an arm around both of their shoulders, taking them into his confidence the way a bird takes its chicks into its nest. Even though he didn’t like Peter, John accepted the gesture, telling himself that it was some kind of acquiescence. Besides, he liked feeling included, like one of the LBs. LB77NY. That would be his handle. He would change all his online accounts later tonight. For the past few weeks, John had looked on every website and in every chat room for LBs. He had found a few. None of them talked to him. It seemed that to be an LB, there was no getting around Peter. So, as much as John disliked the cocky RA, he would accept this gesture. Maybe now Peter would tell the LBs they had to talk to him. And maybe later, Peter would be gone and he and Simon could be head of the LBs.
Tina sat on the bed in her RA dorm room, trying not to slap the poor, rich white girl that had been yammering on about her stupid problems for the past half hour (what kind of loon names their daughter Yale, anyway?). Oh, my thighs are fat, my face is too square, there’s a lump in my breast, my boyfriend is not really my boyfriend, Chelsea bought the exact same skirt as me. Can you feel this lump?
Tina pretended to listen as she stared out of her window and watched the perfectly trimmed front lawn of Marlowe, with its resident squirrels that looked just a little plumper than the squirrels in Central Park, its trees that looked a little more lush, its Gothic buildings trimmed with spires and gargoyles and family crests carved into brick. Even after the underworld infestation had turned the school into a pit of despair, it still looked nicer than any place Tina had ever lived. Please, please, someone show me the rule that says you can’t stab your advisees. ’Cause I don’t think it’s actually written anywhere. Right? Right?
Tina had never seen such needy teenagers in her whole life — and she had lived among real orphans, real runaways, kids with actual problems. The girls in her hall were at her door every chance they got, with every made-up reason and crazy need imaginable, and Tina was starting to suspect that they just wanted attention. What kind of wack-jobs do they have for parents? Tina wondered, putting out another plate of boxed donuts. Apparently, the superrich haven’t heard of Entenmann’s, and, what do you know, they can pack it away just like everyone else.
“OK, chica.” Tina took a deep breath. “I got about thirty seconds of patience, so I’ll make it fast. You don’t have breast cancer, you’re dangerously underweight, and all the purging is making your breath stink. If you wanna be loved, stop talking and get a dog.” Yale started to whimper. Oh, geez. “Kidding, kidding!” Tina patted Yale on the head like a puppy. She hoped the girl didn’t expect a hug. “Stop crying.”
“I can’t”— sniff —“because I have”— sniff, sniff —“a boyfriend . . . but”— sniff —“he’s not . . . really my boyfriend.”
Tina sighed. “You know what, Yale? I get it.”
Yale stopped crying.
“Yeah, I get it,” said Tina. “I have a guy just like that.”
“You?” Yale said, because not even Tina could deny Tina’s hotness.
“Yeah, girl,” said Tina. “It happens. I’ve been with this guy — let’s call him Mr. Dirtbag . . . for years. Years. And now he’s running around, feeling up this new chick every chance he gets, making lame excuses, and I’m still sitting here, waiting for him to gimme the time of day. How’s that for fair?”
Yale sniffed and took another donut. “You mean Peter?”
“No, I do not mean Peter,” Tina snapped. She started roughly pulling a loose thread off her Marlowe bedspread.
“’Cause he’s kind of cute,” said Yale. She started digging for her diet pills in her Lady Dior handbag.
“All right . . . time for you to go,” said Tina. She wondered why she wasted her time with Peter. Why she did everything he asked. Why she stood by and watched him slowly seduce that private school brat away from her boyfriend. And Wendy . . . she was worse than Peter. Just another rich girl who can never be satisfied. Tina had seen how close Peter and Wendy had become in the past few days, and especially since getting that third bone. She hated Wendy for being the one to help him find it — for replacing Tina as Peter’s useful right hand. Tina had seen Peter and Wendy together in the halls, in empty classrooms, when they thought no one was looking. . . . Wasn’t one guy enough for her? Didn’t she know how hard it is out there just to get one man who’ll stick around, one decent guy who’ll take care of you? This Connor character wasn’t as bad as the other boys around here. Tina saw how he befriended Wendy’s nerdy brother and how he stood up to the LBs for their game-fixing scam. Couldn’t Wendy be happy with one good, honest man in her life? Why does she have to come after mine?
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