The Danger Box

by Blue Balliett

  ~a pogo stick = a baby seat for a car

  ~a set of bedsheets with a like new tag = four steak knives

  ~two metal snow shovels = six glazed flowerpots

  My grandparents seemed more cheerful than they’d been since the fire, and everyone was chatting.

  Out of that terrible hole, that painful place ~in our family and ~in the row of old buildings on Elm Street, it seemed like something good was growing.

  One of the kids at the barter was running around with a copy of the Gas Gazette, asking if anyone knew who the Mysterious Soul was. Then Lorrol and I overheard Mrs. Gander saying, “I guess there are issues of this paper coming out all the time. You can find them tucked into books in the library and into the South County Gazette. I’ve read three and I’m looking for more. I wonder if it’s a real person being described.”

  Someone else replied, “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What if it is, and there’s a prize if you guess right?” a little kid chirped. “How do you know if you’ve figured it out?”

  Lorrol and I looked at each other.

  “A prize?” she whispered.

  “Now we’re in trouble,” I whispered back.

  * * *

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Eighteen

  A FREE NEWSPAPER ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SOUL

  ~After decades of careful recording, I got a letter from another naturalist, a friend. He had stumbled on the same dangerous solution to this giant puzzle, the one I’d been collecting data on for many, many years. I didn’t know what to do.

  ~I wrote like mad, and finally published my ideas in a book.

  ~Even though the book became famous, I stayed in my study, at home.

  ~On the few times I went out in public, I got so nervous my stomach went wild — yup, you guessed it — and I had to rush for the bathroom.

  ~I believed what I wrote with all my heart, and knew it was important to communicate my insights. But all the arguing started by my ideas made me anxious and upset.

  ~I didn’t like ruining other people’s solutions to this same puzzle, even if I disagreed.

  ~I was always testing pieces to see if they fit with my design. Some did and some didn’t. If I was wrong, I was just as interested as if I was right. Sometimes more.

  Who am I?

  Have you ever been glad to be wrong?

  NEXT ISSUE TO COME.

  FREE!

  * * *

  “I HAVE IT,” Lorrol announced the next day.

  In squeezing past my chair at the library, she knocked my baseball cap sideways on my head. I straightened it out.

  “Me, too,” I said, “or part of it,” and I pulled a coffee can out from under my desk. It had a canning label on it with the words GAS GAZETTE GUESSES, and a slit in the top. “People can write down what they think, with their name and a date.”

  Lorrol clapped her hands and did a little jump, this time landing on the toe of my sneaker. “Perfect! And here’s what I thought of for the prize: Whoever wins gets to write a guest issue of the Gas Gazette, put their name on it, and it’ll go in our package to England, to the Darwin family! How’s that? Fame!”

  “Awesome,” I said, wiggling my toes to be sure they still worked. “And how about this: Whoever adds to the Gazette can then help us decide where to leave the printed copies, and maybe some will be mailed to friends and Gas’s stories and ideas will spread across the U.S. and maybe the world!”

  “Awesome, Zoomy! Brain Boy, that’s you!” Lorrol did another jump and must’ve thrown her arms up in the air, because this time my cap whizzed off.

  “Oh, sorry! I’m really beating up on you this afternoon.” She giggled as she reached under the table. “Hey, what’s this under your chair?”

  “I brought the Danger Box. I thought it was just right for storing our work. I cleaned it out and my grandma put some wax paper on the inside.”

  I handed it to Lorrol. It still smelled like firecrackers. Lorrol took an appreciative sniff. “Awesome.” She nodded. Then she pulled a bunch of copies of the Gas Gazette from her backpack and put them inside.

  We settled in to work, and added more to the pile. At the end of the afternoon, we asked Mrs. Cloozer if we could set up the Guesses Coffee Can on her counter and store the Danger Box down below. She agreed, and offered to lock both in the library’s old bank vault every night. She knew the Chamberlain family had had enough losses for a while.

  Being a big mystery fan, Mrs. Cloozer helped in other ways. She let us use the library’s printer and paper supply, and didn’t share our research with anyone — although several bobby pins popped clear out of her hairdo when she realized our project was both factual and filled with secrets.

  “You two are onto something!” she whispered several times.

  We bounced out the door that day. The Gas Gazette was coming alive in its own way. I could see now that evolution was part chance, part environment, part odds, part surprise.

  I was also starting to see that surprise wasn’t all bad. If the notebook hadn’t disappeared from the Danger Box, the Gas Gazette wouldn’t be evolving in this way. If the store hadn’t been in trouble, I might not have tried so hard to figure out if the mysterious notebook was valuable.

  And if the store hadn’t burned down, well … that was way too sad to think about, but we definitely had a bumper crop of friends we’d never had to before.

  The mixture of Bests and Worsts in any kind of evolution sure was confusing.

  IF I’D MADE a list of all the good and bad things that happened that summer, I could’ve used all the purple ink in the Midwestern United States. As it was, I’m sure I used most of it. And I noticed something mighty odd: Sometimes good blurred into bad, and vice versa. The lists got tangled in my mind.

  Take Buckeye, for example. The first two times he turned up were horrible, and his trouble with the law was frightening. But I’d started to feel truly sorry and a bit responsible for him. And I could tell my grandparents felt bad in the same way, like maybe they could’ve prevented some of things that went wrong in his life.

  And then once Lorrol and I spied on the Fish, he escaped, and it looked like he might get away free and claim the notebook, I wanted to make things fairer for Buckeye. The way things were unfolding, Buckeye might go to jail and the Fish might be a lucky and famous man. It just wasn’t right. So that made me work even harder on telling the Darwin folks the truth.

  And here was something positive that turned out to be negative: Finding the old notebook in that beat-up box, and asking to hold on to it for a day or two. That felt like a lucky thing when it happened, and started Lorrol and me on our Darwin research. But if the notebook had been in the blanket, in the box, the way Buckeye left it with us, the store might still be standing. That is, if I hadn’t loved notebooks and asked to see it.

  So did that make finding the notebook good or bad? Bad, of course, but also good. What if the Fish had never found his opened box in the store? Would he then have watched our house, and found the notebook in the toolshed? Would the store still have burned that night? What if I’d never looked closely at Darwin’s notebook, and Lorrol and I had never figured out who wrote it? I couldn’t separate the goods from the bads because it seemed like both were in there and they kept changing places. But one thing stayed clear: I wanted that notebook to survive. The store could never be saved, but the notebook … well, it was still possible.

  It seemed like seeing wasn’t a big part of this, because so many things looked like one thing and then turned out to be another. A discovery wasn’t always a happy thing and a happy thing wasn’t always a discovery. I started to realize that I could figure out plenty without seeing a whole lot.

  I was thinking like a palindrome; stuff that went in one direction also seemed to go in the other.

  Then Lorrol brought news I didn’t expect.

  “ZOOMY?”

  “What?”

  “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.” Lorrol wriggled around on the bench out
side the library. I didn’t like the direction this was going.

  “You’re leaving and going back to the city.” That was about the worst thing I could imagine.

  “No, but I did something sneaky. Something I didn’t tell you about. I didn’t know until now if it would work, and didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

  “WHAT?” I asked, suddenly feeling like an anthill under a shoe. I was starting to go in all directions.

  “You know the day we visited the post office and Mr. Dither said he’d already sent everything out?”

  “Yes.” I was dying to do some chin tapping, but instead pulled out my Daily List Book and wrote ~Lorrol Tells.

  She waited a moment, then went on, “I asked my mom to stop outside the post office after she picked me up at the library that day. I ran back in and explained to Mr. Dither that I wanted to surprise your family, and could he please get back any of the packages he’d mailed yesterday. He said he’d already called the sorting station to ask, realizing this might be doable.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yes. Then, when I went in the next day, he showed me a small package that looked like the right size. It said, ‘Wade Finner,’ and gave a street address in Detroit. He explained that he had to get in touch with the sender and tell him the story.”

  “Whoa,” I breathed. “So why did you hide this from me?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure it would add up! Listen. I know it doesn’t look good, but I wanted to give you the best gift ever. Like, just hand the notebook over. Magic, poof! It’s back. Then, when I realized I’d started something that might cause even more family tsuris, I thought I’d better shut up about it until I consulted with my mom.”

  “So what did your mom say?” I was feeling better already. Lorrol hadn’t done anything I wouldn’t do; she’d just started something helpful that was sprouting dangerous leaves. That sure sounded familiar.

  “I went out to the car and talked with her. I told her about us suspecting the Fish. She went back in with me and also asked Mr. Dither, who was now all twitchy about the package. Then she tried to explain the truth, hoping that might help: We thought the package was a special notebook, one that had great value to the Chamberlain family.

  “Mr. Dither’s fingers went wild drumming on the counter. He pointed to a slip of paper, a confirmation label with the sender’s phone number on it.

  “‘I called and left a message,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know when he calls back.’”

  Lorrol told me she groaned, and warned Mr. Dither that this man could be a criminal.

  “Poor Mr. Dither looked all confused and worried,” she went on. He said, ‘But I can’t just give it to you. It’s not yours.’ And I said, ‘It’s not his, either!’

  “Then Mr. Dither said, ‘Why not, if he bought it?’

  “‘Because I don’t think he bought it, he stole it!’ That’s when Mr. Dither’s fingers practically joined the Olympics, they were going so fast.”

  Here Lorrol paused and took a breath.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Poor Mr. Dither.” I imagined him handing the package to my grandparents, and them handing it to me. I suddenly felt an inch or two taller. “Lorrol, you’re the best friend ever!” I blurted.

  “Wait,” Lorrol said. “Mr. Dither called the police. After Mom and I left.”

  “The police!” I said, my heart sinking.

  Lorrol nodded. “They took the package and have been holding it. They just talked to my mom — we honestly didn’t know until now that they had it. Meanwhile, Mr. Dither says the sender, Wade Finner, phoned back and sounded really angry on the phone and muttered something about making sure Mr. Dither got fired. My mom tried to reassure him, but I feel awful that I stirred up this new trouble. And my mom is worried. She wants us to be extra-careful.”

  “And did you tell Mr. Dither or the police that we think this is one of Darwin’s notebooks?”

  “No, my mom and I didn’t know if that was a good idea. We just told them that it was important and fragile. Now they want to talk with all of us.”

  It seemed like more and more pieces were falling into place, but I still felt a lump of sadness and now a teeny bit of anger. Not against Lorrol, just against the rules that said this notebook wasn’t mine. Even though I’d rescued it. And Lorrol had just rescued it again! And that dream about saving our family; it seemed like we’d been so close to having it come true. Some amazing glory would’ve been mine. I’d almost let go of all that after the notebook disappeared, but now …

  It felt kinda like I’d been handed a delicious cheese-burger only to have it snatched away just as I opened my mouth ~wide, ~WIDE, ~WIDE for the first bite. This is a secret, but knowing the notebook was still in Three Oaks made me want to snatch it back. It made me hungry all over again.

  “Maybe I’m not so different from the Fish,” I said slowly.

  “Huh?” Lorrol asked.

  “Greedy. Knowing the notebook is nearby makes me want to have it. It was my discovery.”

  “Yeah.” Lorrol sighed. “It’s frustrating. But remember: We’re investigative reporters. You and me and Gas — he was one, too. And our kind of reporting means a lot of questions. You don’t always get the answers. Or get to keep them.”

  I nodded. She was right. “Lorrol, you’re an amazing Firecracker,” I said, then we both got embarrassed and she shoved me in the shoulder and I shoved her back. In the next five minutes we sat quietly on that bench, just thinking.

  Sometimes side by side feels better than words.

  * * *

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Nineteen

  A FREE NEWSPAPER ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SOUL

  ~I wrote a bunch of other books in my lifetime, all looking at pieces of the Giant Puzzle that was once my secret.

  ~In order to do that, I set up thousands of experiments.

  ~I collected and dissected barnacles.

  ~I bred pigeons.

  ~I became fascinated by orchids and also by carnivorous plants, ones that ate insects or a tiny bit of meat.

  ~I grew prickly, climbing, and flowering plants, and moved them around the house in biscuit tins and pots. I talked to them.

  ~I watched my children develop and I studied the behavior of animals at the zoo, especially orangutans. Their emotions look similar to ours.

  ~I once placed a container of worms on the piano and observed them when my wife played a note. The worms hated the vibrations, but if the family played instruments and shouted nearby, they didn’t seem to mind.

  ~I never got tired of testing. I was overheard saying, “I shan’t be easy till I’ve tried it.” That’s me: Once I had a question in my mind I absolutely had to see if there was an answer.

  ~Some questions stayed questions.

  ~Tough questions have a beauty of their own, don’t you think?

  Who am I?

  NEXT ISSUE TO COME.

  FREE!

  * * *

  WE FOUND OURSELVES at the Three Oaks police station later that afternoon. There were six of us who’d been asked to come: Gam, Gumps, me, Lorrol, her mom, and Mr. Dither. Officer Nab, who had visited our house both before and after the fire, welcomed us into the back room. Our local policeman, Officer Bagg, manned the phone by the front door. He didn’t mind; this was more excitement than usual.

  “I want to begin by thanking you for coming so quickly,” Officer Nab said formally. We all nodded, wondering what was next.

  “This,” he said. I couldn’t see what he was holding, but heard him move. “Can anyone tell me what this is?”

  Gumps cleared his throat, and a bunch of chairs squeaked. Lorrol swallowed, a loud ga-glump sound. That made me swallow, too.

  “Well, Zoomy and Lorrol have an idea,” my grandpa started. “But I’m not sure any of us know for sure.”

  “Did you open it?” I asked. “If it’s our notebook, it’s easy to prove who wrote it. You can see every page online.”

  “Well,” the officer said slowly. “We won’t d
o that while we’re all sitting here, but this being an investigation …”

  No one said a word while paper rustled at one end of the table.

  “Careful,” I breathed. “It’s very old.”

  The next thing I heard was a couple of Huhs, then “Yup, that’s the one,” from Gam.

  Lorrol, who was sitting next to me, clapped her hands and did one bounce. Scree went her chair. “Zoomy’s the best identifier — give it to him!” she ordered, and bounced again.

  Mrs. Shein murmured, “Lorrol, honey …” but then a big hand put something down in front of me. Something familiar.

  “Ohhh …” I said. Picking it up, I took off my glasses and held the notebook in front of my nose.

  I read those three beautiful words and smelled the sweet mix of musty paper and history. Lightly and quickly, I touched the cover to my chin, a good-bye tap that I knew Gas would understand. And I suddenly realized, right then and there, that you can’t always see what’s in front of you no matter how you see. At least, not while it’s happening. That struck me like ~a bolt of lightning, ~a clap of thunder, ~a tidal wave.

  What a thought! It lifted tsuris, and somehow freed me. It made lots of what I’d lost feel not lost. Of course, that was true for Gas, too. Sometimes experience gets sifted through time, notebooks, lists, imagination — until it becomes an ingredient in something bigger, or a necessary piece in a puzzle. Until it starts to make sense. Until it’s no longer just itself. Had Gas himself put the idea into my head? Maybe he had.

  As soon as I realized that how you see and what you hold in front of you doesn’t always equal what you understand, not right then, I also knew, in a flash of pingness, that what you experience is yours forever. Yours to keep. Yours to turn over and over in your mind. It’s YOURS. As I held the notebook that Charles Darwin had also held, I knew he was giving me something I’d never lose,