For Lili and Claire
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
SNEAK PEEK
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
I had a big favor to ask my uncle Dex, but first I had to listen to him tell me for about the millionth time all about the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg. That’s the town where we live in Virginia. Uncle Dex is really into history and so am I, though I don’t make a big deal about it. Especially to my best friend, Greg Troutman, because he hates school more than anybody on the planet.
We’d been studying the Battle of Fredericksburg in our sixth-grade history class, and I’d made the mistake of mentioning that to Uncle Dex. I was warming up to asking him if we could use some space in his store for our band to practice.
“The Union should have won that battle,” he said. “Did you learn that in history class, Anderson? All the Union had to do was cross the river into town. The Confederates weren’t even there yet. If they could have just crossed the river, the Yankees would have taken Fredericksburg and then marched on through Virginia into Richmond and probably ended the war a couple of years early. If only they’d had a bridge.”
We were in Uncle Dex’s junk shop downtown where he sold all sorts of vintage stuff and antiques and odds and ends. It used to belong to my grandpa, Pop Pop. Uncle Dex took it over last year after Pop Pop died. The actual name of the store is “The Kitchen Sink,” which is supposed to mean it has everything you might ever want, but Uncle Dex ends up having to explain what’s in there because most people think it’s a hardware store.
Uncle Dex jabbered on for a while longer about how the Yankees took too long getting pontoons down from Washington to make their own bridge, so Robert E. Lee had time to move the Confederate troops into position. And then when the Yankees finally crossed over the river, they got slaughtered.
“You know what Robert E. Lee said after the Battle of Fredericksburg, don’t you?” he said, hopefully winding down the history lesson. “It’s a pretty famous saying.”
I scratched my head, to show him I was seriously thinking about it, only I had on a beanie, so mostly I just moved the beanie back and forth. Greg said we should wear them to make us look cooler. I didn’t know if it was working, but when you’re invisible at school and trying to start up a band, you need all the help you can get.
“I guess not,” I said.
Uncle Dex straightened his baseball cap, lifted his hand, stuck out his index finger, and began quoting Robert E. Lee: “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”
“Right,” I said, not really sure what that was supposed to mean. I’d have to think about it later. For now, though, on to business.
“So, Uncle Dex,” I said, “I was wondering if maybe you might have some space in the shop’s basement, a room or something, where we could practice with our band?”
The Kitchen Sink basement isn’t just one room. It’s like the Roman catacombs, so I figured there must be plenty of empty rooms that Uncle Dex wouldn’t mind us using. And the farther away from anywhere people could hear us, the better — at least until we learned a few songs all the way through, and maybe some more chords.
Uncle Dex looked very serious all of a sudden. “A band?”
I nodded. “Yep. A band. Me and Greg. We both play the guitar. Well, I’m on rhythm guitar.”
Uncle Dex looked even more serious. And he started nodding. “So you probably need a keyboard player,” he said. “Like me.”
I didn’t know what to say. He’d caught me off guard. Was he seriously asking if he could be in the band? A grown-up?
“You know I used to play, right?” he said. “When I was in high school. We had a band, too. Plus, in college I was in a ukulele ensemble.”
“I’m not in high school yet,” I said, as if that was the real issue here. “I’m just in sixth grade. And anyway, we kind of already have a keyboard player.” That was a lie, but I had to say something.
“Oh yeah?” he said, as if he didn’t quite believe me.
“Yeah,” I said. “A girl, actually.” I blurted that out without thinking about it, although a girl had, in fact, asked me and Greg if she could be in the band. Her name was Julie Kobayashi and we hadn’t ever talked to her much, even though she’d been around since elementary school. She’d overheard us talking about our plans to write some songs and perform them at one of the All-Ages Open Mic Nights they had at this big warehouse downtown.
Of course, we’d told Julie Kobayashi no. We didn’t want a girl in the band, and especially a girl like Julie, who was probably even more invisible than me and Greg. With that much invisibility onstage, it would be as if we weren’t even there.
Not that Uncle Dex had to know any of that.
“Well, okay then,” he said. “But, hey, if you need a ukulele, I’m your guy.”
“Definitely,” I said, meaning “definitely not.”
Uncle Dex led me down to the basement, then through a confusing series of hallways until he suddenly stopped. “In here,” he said, tapping on a green door. “There’s just some of Pop Pop’s old stuff he bought at yard sales in this one. Clear it out and the space is yours.” He winked at me, which is a thing only grown-ups ever do.
We both had to pull hard to get the door open. It made one of those haunted mansion sounds that sends chills up your spine. Then we had to wade through a bunch of cobwebs to get inside, though we couldn’t go very far. A mountain of stuff was piled up everywhere.
Uncle Dex patted me on the back — another thing only grown-ups ever do — and then headed back upstairs to see if any actual human customers had wandered into the store.
I just stood there, frozen, overwhelmed by the amount of work it was going to take to even make a pig path through all that junk. I was also totally creeped out. I definitely had the feeling that I wasn’t alone.
I pulled out my cell phone so I could text Greg. We’d ridden our bikes downtown, but he was off wandering around somewhere while I talked to Uncle Dex. I couldn’t get a signal, though. Sometimes that happens. But sometimes if I lift the phone up over my head, I’ll get lucky.
So that’s what I was doing, waving my cell phone around, when a cold hand clamped down on my shoulder.
I screamed, and then dove forward to get away from whatever it was, crashing into an enormous pile of boxes that came tumbling down on top of me.
“Help!” I yelled — because of the hand and because now I was totally buried.
Somebody started pulling boxes off me — but I had a panicky feeling that it wasn’t Uncle Dex.
“Did you wet your pants, Anderson?” a familiar voice asked, and then burst out laughing, or rather, snorting.
It wasn’t Uncle Dex, as it turned out, and it wasn’t a ghost, either.
It was my moron best friend.
I yelled at Greg for a while for scaring me so bad, but it didn’t bother him. I don’t think he even heard half of what I said because of all his laughing.
When I finally calmed down and climbed out, and he finally quit snorting, I told him everything and we got to work clearing out Uncle Dex’s dungeon. It took us the rest of the afternoon. Mostly we just stacked boxes higher and higher up against the walls, which might have been kind of dangerous, but we didn’t know what else to do with them. We dragged a bunch down the hall to some other rooms also jammed with boxes and shoved the new ones in wherever we could find space.
I had to keep rubbing my eyes, and Greg sneezed his head off the whole time.
“I probably won’t be able to go to school tomorrow because of my allergies,” he said, sounding almost happy. “And by the way, your eyes are so red, you probably ruptured all the capillaries or veins or whatever. You should probably stay home, too. Maybe we can hang out.”
“I wish,” I said. If it was just my mom I might be able to fake sick, but Dad thought a perfect attendance record was more important than, well, anything. I hadn’t missed a day of school since I had to get my tonsils out in kindergarten. And even then, Dad tried to convince Mom that I should just take an aspirin and go.
One weird thing about clearing out all those boxes and junk was that there was this one beat-up wooden chest or footlocker or something that neither one of us would touch. We didn’t avoid it exactly, just sort of worked around the edges until it was sitting there all alone right in the middle of the room. It creeped me out for some reason, the same way the whole room had creeped me out when Uncle Dex first left.
Greg and I both acted like it wasn’t even there. I figured if I didn’t say anything and ignored it, he would haul it off or whatever. As it turned out, he must have been thinking the same thing.
“Well,” I said finally, at about six o’clock. “That just about does it.”
Greg stopped what he was doing and stood beside me. We surveyed the room, or the middle of it, where we’d cleared enough stuff away that we’d probably have space for us and our guitars and our amplifiers, which weren’t that big.
There still wasn’t any mention of the trunk.
“So your uncle,” Greg said. “He really wants to be in the band?”
“That’s what he said,” I replied. “But who knows. He’s kind of weird and was probably just kidding around.” The truth was you really couldn’t be too sure with Uncle Dex.
Greg grunted as he lifted one last box up onto an already shaky pile. I was too tired to help, so I just watched him drag it up there.
“I could use a hand here!” he yelled at me as he struggled with the box.
“Okay,” I said, and started clapping. He actually growled.
He climbed back down from the pile of boxes and sat down on the floor next to me. I thought maybe he would punch me on the arm, but he brought up the band again instead.
“Are we going to have to let that girl in?” he asked. “Julie Kobayashi. Since you told your uncle she’s playing keyboard?”
I groaned. I’d forgotten about her. Uncle Dex was gonna know we didn’t have a keyboard player if Julie wasn’t coming to practices at the shop.
“My brain’s tired,” I said. “We’ll figure it out later.”
Greg shrugged. “Okay with me,” he said, and stood up to leave.
I started to follow, but found myself taking one last look at the wooden trunk. It might have been just my imagination, but there seemed to be a faint golden glow around it. Kind of a shimmering light.
I rubbed my eyes one more time and looked again, but this time there was nothing. Probably it had just been the last light of the day coming in from this one high basement window about twelve feet up.
Greg was already halfway up the stairs, so I hurried to catch up. Uncle Dex was gone when we got upstairs. He’d turned off all the lights, probably forgetting we were still down in the basement all that time.
“Man, is this spooky or what?” Greg said.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Let’s get out of here.”
The only problem was that a key was needed to lock the store — which Uncle Dex must have forgotten.
“What now?” Greg asked.
I was tired and dirty from all that work, and wanted to just say that if Uncle Dex was forgetful enough to leave his store unlocked, that was his problem. My conscience got the better of me, though, so I texted him.
Oh man! Uncle Dex texted back. Not again. Okay, stay there. Be right down.
So I stayed. Greg, on the other hand, couldn’t. “I’ll get in trouble with my dad if I’m not home by six-thirty,” he said. I knew he wasn’t kidding about getting in trouble. His dad was always grounding him — and for stuff you wouldn’t think a parent would even notice, like Greg forgetting to put the top back on the toothpaste tube. I felt bad for him.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I said.
Greg nodded. I could tell he felt guilty that he couldn’t wait with me. And then he brightened a little. “Hey, at least we have our practice space!”
“Yeah,” I said, and then we did this complicated secret handshake we made up, and he took off, pedaling furiously to make it home in time.
I went back inside the store to wait for Uncle Dex.
I realized I’d left my beanie down in the basement, so figured I might as well go back down to our new practice room and get it. Plus, I should probably check on where we could plug in our amps.
But when I got down there, the old locker was glowing again, with that same shimmering golden light. I was sure of it this time.
“Whoa,” I muttered to myself.
I crossed the room and felt around the edges for the latch.
“Probably treasure,” I said out loud.
The locker practically sprung open on its own, but there wasn’t any gold inside. No jewelry, no secret stash of money. Just a bunch of old stuff that looked like it was from the military or something: a U.S. Navy peacoat, some sort of army belt buckle, a pair of black boots, a trenching tool, an old army medic’s kit, and some other stuff. Nothing that looked too cool.
A draft blew through the room and I started shivering. I hadn’t brought a jacket, so I pulled out the peacoat and put it on. It was kind of big on me but really warm — and just like that, the chill was gone.
The glow was gone from the chest, too. I shook my head and looked again. Still no golden glow. I looked around nervously, to make sure I was still alone. The room seemed smaller, more claustrophobic, but probably that was just the shadows. The only light in there was a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling with a silver chain to turn it off and on. I shut the top of the wooden locker — I’d had enough of that musty smell for one night — and latched it back shut.
I kept the peacoat, though. It was kind of cool, and obviously nobody would ever miss it.
No sooner had I turned to leave, to head back upstairs and wait for Uncle Dex, when I heard something. A voice that sounded so real it made me freeze in my tracks.
The voice said, “That’s mine.”
I whirled around to see who’d spoken, but nobody was there.
Heart thumping, I ran up the stairs as fast as I could go — so fast that when I got to the front of the store I crashed right into Uncle Dex.
“There’s somebody down there!” I yelled.
“In the basement?” Uncle Dex asked.
“Yes! Yes! I heard him!” I kept yelling.
Uncle Dex reached behind the counter and grabbed a baseball bat. “Did you see anybody?”
“Uh, no,” I confessed. “Not exactly.”
Uncle Dex looked at me hard. “What do you mean, ‘Not exactly’?”
“Well, no. I mean, I didn’t see anybody. But I did hear somebody. Or something. I mean, I think I did.”
I could tell by the look on his face that Uncle Dex was officially skeptical. He dropped the end of the bat on the floor and leaned on the handle.
“Should we go take a look?” he asked.
I thought about the wooden trunk, and the golden glow, and the feeling like I was being watched
down there, and the sudden chill, and the peacoat, which I still had on, and the voice that I’d heard, or thought I’d heard. Maybe I was still spooked from Greg scaring me earlier.
“I don’t know,” I said, sounding pretty lame even to myself. “I might have just gotten nervous or something, being down there alone. It’s spooky.”
Uncle Dex laughed. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “It’s not so bad.”
I shivered, remembering that voice. Not so bad? I wasn’t so sure.
I thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. Uncle Dex locked up the store good and tight, and he gave me a ride home, throwing my bike in his trunk even though the lid wouldn’t close. But the strangest night of my life had only just begun.
Mom wasn’t feeling well when I got home — that happens a lot because of her MS — so I made her some soup and brought it into the bedroom. MS is multiple sclerosis, this disease that messes up your nervous system so sometimes you can’t even walk or use your hands, and it makes you supersensitive to all kinds of things, like hot and cold temperatures. There isn’t a cure, and it gets worse the longer you have it, with a lot of pain and weakness in your muscles and all. Mom says it comes and goes, and she says her MS isn’t as bad as a lot of other people’s, but I’m not always so sure about that.
Meanwhile, Dad was stuck in traffic coming home from Washington, DC, which is something that happens a lot because of his job, and because traffic on Interstate 95 is the worst in America. At least according to my dad.
“Did you have a good day?” Mom asked when I laid the tray next to her on the bed. She looked pale. I’d also made her some hot tea, and I handed her that first.
“Pretty good,” I said. “Uncle Dex is going to let me and Greg have our band practice in one of the basement rooms at the shop. We had to clean it all out first, though.”
“That’s nice,” Mom said, taking a sip of tea. “Your uncle Dex could stand to see a friendly face every now and then. Ever since Pop Pop died he’s been pretty lonely.” Pop Pop was Mom and Uncle Dex’s dad.
I missed him, too, of course — he took care of me a lot when I was little and Mom’s MS got pretty bad for a while, plus, he was the one who got me interested in history — but I had other things on my mind right at the moment.
The Secret of Midway Page 1