by Tony Abbott
With pretty much no other thought in our heads, Frankie and I dived into the dark, smoking crack in the wall. We tumbled over and over until we hit something.
Something that said, “Hey! Get off my toe!”
Chapter 3
I blinked.
In the dim light I could see that Frankie and I were in our second closet of the day. Luckily, it wasn’t a stinky one. But it wasn’t empty, either. By the slim crack of light around the door, I could see a third person crouching in there with us, peering out. It seemed to be a boy.
I nudged Frankie. “Where are we?” I whispered. “And don’t tell me we’re in the book.”
“We’re in the book,” she said, tapping the book’s cover. “The zapper gates must have zapped us again.”
“You’re still on my toe!” whispered the boy. “Get off!”
“Sorry!” I said, jumping back next to Frankie.
The boy was about our age, dressed in rumpled jeans, a white shirt that had once been a lot whiter, and a tattered vest of brown flannel. Also, he was barefoot.
“Just for the record,” asked Frankie, “who are you?”
“Hush!” said the boy. “My aunt Polly’s just outside. She’ll find us.”
There was a scuffling sound outside the closet. “Tom!” cried a voice.
The boy chuckled softly. “Aunt Polly’s all mad because she thinks I stole her fresh strawberry jam that took her so long to make. But I swear I never had a lick.”
“Y-o-u-u—Tom!” cried the voice from outside.
“Tom’s me,” he whispered. “Tom Sawyer. I never saw you in my closet before.”
“I’m Devin. This is Frankie,” I said.
“Pleased to meet you,” Tom said. Smiling, he stuck out his hand for me and Frankie to shake.
It was sticky.
“What’s that stuff on your fingers?” asked Frankie.
“Jam,” said Tom. “Now, shhh. We can sneak out if we’re careful.” Holding a finger to his lips, which he then took a moment to lick, Tom gently pushed open the closet door.
Thwack! A thin hand came down from nowhere and grabbed Tom by his vest and hung on tight.
“There!” snapped a voice. “I might have thought you were hiding in that closet! Out into the light with you!”
Tom, Frankie, and I tumbled out into what looked like a small, old-fashioned kitchen. Aunt Polly stood there, her feet planted on the floor. She was a thin, strong-looking, old-fashioned lady. She glanced at us over a pair of old-style spectacles perched on her nose, scowled harshly at Tom, and refused to let him go.
“Well, what have you been doing in there?” she snapped.
“Nothing,” said Tom, wriggling in her grasp of steel.
“Nothing? Look at your hands. And your mouth. What is that?”
“I don’t know, Aunt Polly,” said Tom, his eyes wide with fake innocence.
“Well, I know what it is!” the woman said. “It’s the jam I told you not to touch. So help me, I’ll swat you!”
She reached for a stick that was leaning against the kitchen table—probably just for the purpose of swatting Tom—and held it over his head.
Suddenly, Tom pointed. “Look behind you, Aunt!” The old lady whirled around, and Tom shot out the back door like a rocket. He scrambled across the yard and leaped over a dirt-splattered fence and away.
“Why, you—Tom!” Aunt Polly called out. Then she grunted to herself, turned on her heels, pulled her glasses down, and looked over them at us.
“Well, and who are you two?” she said sharply.
Frankie gulped. “Um … we’re …”
“New friends of Tom,” I said. “Just passing through … your closet.”
The woman shook her head as if it didn’t matter, anyway. She took a deep breath and shook her head.
“Tom’s played tricks on me so many times. But, my goodness, he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I somehow ain’t got the heart to punish him. But punish him I must. I know he’ll steal off and not go to school today. It’s mighty hard to make him work tomorrow on Saturday, and, oh, he hates work more than he hates anything else, but if I don’t punish him some, I’ll be the ruination of the child.…”
Aunt Polly started mumbling to herself and got back to making more jam while we scrambled out the door just as Tom had done.
Leaping over the fence, we found ourselves on a dusty street in the center of a tiny village.
Out of breath, I turned to Frankie. “We’re in the book, just like last time. I can’t believe it’s happening again.”
“No kidding. It’s the most impossible thing ever,” she said, opening the book. “But it’s worse this time. We lost Mrs. Figglehopper’s precious scribble page. It’s a treasure, she said, so we definitely have to find it. But where? It wasn’t in the closet. Or in the kitchen, either.”
“You know what?” I said. “I bet there’s no way out of here without it. It’s probably one of the weird rules of being dropped into books.”
“Like when you try to jump ahead to the next chapter and the whole scene rips in half?”
I nodded. “Tell me about it. Everything cracks and we get totally toasted.” I took a deep breath as we started to wander down the main street of the village. “I just hope we don’t get trapped in this book forever,” I said. “Things look pretty dull around here.”
“Thanks for being so upbeat,” said Frankie. “Next time I’ll just lie down under the falling books.”
As Mrs. Figglehopper had told us, the book was written about a hundred and twenty-five years ago, so that meant we were in the past. The village had a bunch of wooden buildings and houses on both sides of the street. The trees were heavy with leaves, the sun was shining, and it was fairly hot, so it was probably pretty near summer. Beyond the trees was the shore of a hugely wide river.
Frankie peeked in at the first few pages of the book. “I think this small town is next to the Mississippi River,” she said.
I laughed. Then I stopped. “Whoa, brain flash! I just realized something! This book is named after Tom Sawyer, right? Because the story is all about him, right? So all we have to do is follow Tom and we’ll find the lost page!”
Frankie blinked. “Good brain flash. Where’s Tom?”
We looked around. He wasn’t anywhere.
“Maybe you’d better read some to find out,” I said.
“Maybe you’d better.”
“But you read faster!”
Frankie stared at me. “If I read faster, it’s only because I always end up doing it more. Because you won’t.”
But she cracked open the chubby book, anyway, and did some reading, while I breathed in the summer air.
“Well, Tom gets into more trouble,” she said after a few minutes. “He skips school, goes swimming, throws a clump of dirt at his little half brother, Sid, then wrestles a kid in fancy new clothes.”
“Sounds like Tom knows how to waste a day like the best of us.”
Frankie chuckled. “And for all that, Aunt Polly punishes him, just as she promised to.”
“Brutal. Is he back in the closet?”
Frankie snickered. “No, he’s got to do some kind of huge chore—”
“Chore!” I gasped. “Well, that’s gotta slow the story down. Better read ahead to a more exciting part. Like the part where we find the lost page.”
“I can’t. The words are getting all blurry.” Frankie showed me the book. All the words were hazy and impossible to read.
Ah, yes, the blurry factor.
We had learned from the first time we dropped into a book that the words always get blurry when you try to read ahead of where the story actually is.
“So we know one thing,” I said. “We’re right at the chore part of the story.”
“Chores are tough news,” said Frankie. “How about we go find Tom and cheer him up?”
“I’ll tell him a joke,” I said.
But when we found Tom, I wasn’t sure he needed any ch
eering up. He was already pretty cheery.
In fact, he was whistling.
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About the Author
Over the last two decades, Tony Abbott has written dozens of mysteries, comics, and adventure books for young readers aged six to fourteen, with series including Danger Guys, the Time Surfers, the Weird Zone, Underworlds, Goofballs, and the long-running fantasy series the Secrets of Droon. He is also the author of the fantasy epic Kringle and the realistic novels Firegirl (winner of the 2006 Golden Kite Award for Fiction), The Postcard (winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery), and Lunch-Box Dream. Among his latest novels is The Forbidden Stone, the first installment of the twelve-book saga the Copernicus Legacy. Tony has taught on the faculty of Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing, is a frequent conference speaker and visitor to schools, and presents workshops to creative writers of all ages. His websites include www.tonyabbottbooks.com, www.thecopernicuslegacy.com, and the literary blog www.fridaybookreport.com
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Tony Abbott
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8685-0
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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