They all waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “You mean we’ll never be able to read it?” prompted Eve.
“I don’t know,” said Dominic. “I was jut thinking that maybe this story is meant for one person to tell everyone else. Like my grandma told me the first story when I was a kid. Like we’re supposed to listen to it, not read it.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just thinking.”
Alex watched him, thinking about his suggestion. She didn’t know if he was right, but there was a ring of truth in the idea. She even kind of liked it. This way they’d all be dependent on someone else to hear the story. Interesting.
Dominic kept walking just like he hadn’t said anything extraordinary. How did he do that? How did he come up with these ideas out of nowhere and not think anything of it? Fortunately she knew he wasn’t going to get away with brushing it off like that.
“So somehow Logan reads the story and after that none of the rest of us can?” asked Adam. “What if I didn’t know Logan? I would just never get to know that story? It doesn’t make sense.”
Alex smiled. You could always count on Adam.
Dominic shrugged. “I don’t know. It was just something I was thinking about. I don’t know how it would work, but we don’t know how any of this works, so it’s not that much crazier than anything else.”
“I think it’s an interesting idea,” said Eve. “Like maybe when someone has read one of the books, the other books know or something.”
“How can a book know something?” asked Adam.
“How can a book be nonsense one day and a beautiful story the next?” retorted Eve.
“Because we change,” said Adam. “Something changes in us to help us understand, like solving a puzzle or learning a language or something. That’s totally different than the book changing. That would be impossible.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Dominic. “Maybe it’s a stupid idea. Like I said, it’s just something I was thinking about.”
“I don’t think we should call any idea stupid at this point,” said Eve. “We don’t know anything.”
Alex noted that Logan wasn’t saying anything. He had the same little frown on his face that he’d been wearing for the last couple of months. “I agree with Eve,” she said. “Let’s just see what there is to see at the cave. I have a feeling we may find some answers there.”
“Or more questions,” muttered Adam.
No one could argue with that.
When they arrived at the site of the explosion, police tape still hung from the fence posts, marking the place as dangerous, but there was no one around. Without hesitating, all five kids ducked under the tape and walked toward the blackened bank of what used to be a creek.
Standing on the edge, they could see the charred pit, with its gaping hole reaching back into the earth. They were probably the only ones who knew just how far down that hole went.
“This is definitely the cave,” said Eve. “Or, you know, it was the cave.”
“You think the whole thing burned out…all the way down to the pilipi’s cavern?” asked Adam.
“Why else would someone blow it up?” said Alex.
They were all silent for a while. Alex knew everyone else was wondering, like she was, who was willing to go to such great lengths to destroy the pile of books that had been down there. Or was it the dead body of the creature that they were trying to cover up?
“Let’s get a closer look,” said Dominic.
They all climbed down the bank, slipping a little on the ashy surface.
“Good thing you suggested that change of clothes, Alex,” said Eve, looking down at her soot-smeared jeans. “Imagine my mother’s horror if I came home like this.”
“It still smells terrible,” said Logan. He looked repulsed, but at least the frown was gone for the moment.
He was right. There was no more smoke coming out of the hole, but there was a burned-rubber stench in the air that was much stronger now that they were closer.
“We don’t have to actually go in there, do we?” asked Eve.
“I don’t think we should,” said Alex. “It can’t be safe.”
“Guys! Look at this!” said Adam. He was bending over and examining something on the bank they had just come down. Alex didn’t have to move to see what he was looking at. The whole bank was crawling with little tiny black bugs. She shuddered.
At the same moment, Eve let out shriek. “What is this?!” She was holding out her hands, having just brushed off her jeans. They were covered in bugs. She began to jump around, shaking her hands violently to get the bugs off.
Looking down, Alex saw that the soot on her own legs was crawling. Then she noticed that the ground was moving strangely. They were everywhere.
“I think we should get out of here,” said Dominic quietly, but no one heard him. They were too busy clambering up the bank as quickly as possible.
Getting up was way harder than getting down. Alex could feel little insect bodies smashing under her hands. The first few times, she jerked back, but that made her slide back down the bank. Finally the feeling of hundreds of tiny feet crawling on her bare legs made her grit her teeth and drag her way crunching to the top.
At the top, they stamped and shook and brushed off every bug they could find. It took much longer than Alex would have liked. The insects clung with their tiny legs to her jean shorts, so that the most stubborn ones had to be pulled off with her fingernails. And there were just so many of them. Every time she thought she was almost done, she would feel a little prickle somewhere else. Eve was letting out a steady stream of curses as she jumped all around, the boys were grunting and yelping, but Alex restricted herself to the occasional moan. She doubted she would ever feel clean again.
When they were finally all bug free, they stared at each other for a full minute. Alex was sure that she could still feel something crawling on her arms. She wasn’t the only one. Every few seconds, someone would jump and slap at a nonexistent bug.
“When I said we’d find something at the cave,” Alex said finally, “this was not what I had in mind.”
“Have any of you ever seen anything like this?” asked Adam. He was holding out his hand, where one little bug still crawled slowly along. It was perfectly round, about the size of a pencil eraser, and was all black except for one tiny red dot on its back. It crawled on six legs but didn’t have any wings or antennae, or even a head, as far as Alex could tell.
“No,” she said, closing her eyes.
“Not me,” said Logan.
Dominic just shook his head.
“Eve? Do you know anything about bugs?”
But Eve was hanging back, not looking. “No, I don’t. And I don’t want to. This is like something out of a nightmare. I hate bugs.”
“Well, we need to keep this one,” said Adam, “and see if we can find out what it is. Those bugs have to have something to do with the explosion. I just need something to put it in.”
“I’ve got a water bottle in my bag,” said Alex. She ripped open her backpack, which was when she discovered that the bugs had found a way in there, too.
A new round of scuffling started, while everyone dumped out the contents of their bags and shook and stomped away all the bugs. After the last one was dead, Alex felt pretty shaky. She wanted to sit down, but she was afraid there were more of the horrible things on the ground.
Instead, she located her plastic water bottle. There was one last mouthful of water. Alex was thirsty, but after seeing forty bugs crawl on that bottle, she wasn’t about to drink from it. She dumped the water out. When it was empty, she handed it to Adam. His sample bug had gotten lost in the panic, but it was terrifyingly easy to find another one.
“You’d better poke some holes in it,” said Logan, when Adam held up his new captive.
“Do we really care if it dies?” asked Eve.
“It will be easier to figure out what it is and what it does if it’s alive,” said Logan. “Plus, there’s no point in k
illing if we don’t have to.”
Alex wasn’t worried about killing one bug. There were obviously a whole lot more down there. She didn’t say anything, though, as Dominic took out a pocket knife and made two tiny holes near the top. The bug was crawling around and around in circles on the bottom of the bottle. For a minute they all just stared at it.
“Hey! What are you kids doing here? Get away from there!” shouted a voice from behind them.
They jumped and whirled around. There was a man ducking under the tape and heading straight toward them. Quickly, Adam stuck the bottle back in Alex’s open backpack.
“You kids not understand what police tape is for?” The man was still shouting, even though he was right next to them now. “This place is dangerous, not a place for kids to play. It’s also private property. My private property. Which means you’re trespassing. Get on home before I call the cops on you.”
“We’re so sorry, sir,” said Eve in her best sweet-talking voice. “We were just working on a summer school project about insects, and we saw some interesting ones on the road out there. We followed a trail of them, and it led us here. We hardly even noticed the police tape.”
Alex was amazed all over again at how easily Eve could invent convincing lies. Even more amazing, the farmer obviously believed her completely because the angry look left his face.
“Well, you need to be more careful, kids. School project or no school project, this is a dangerous place to be.”
“Of course,” said Eve. “We’ll leave right away.” She started to usher them all back toward the police tape. “So that’s a lot of bugs you have back there,” she said in a completely casual voice. “Do they bother your crops at all?”
The man looked a little alarmed. “There’s no more bugs than usual, far as I can tell. What kind of bugs did you kids see?”
They all ducked under the police tape as Eve answered. “I don’t really know what kind they are. Maybe you can help us. Alex, show him the one in the bottle.”
Adam was glaring warningly at her, but Alex didn’t see that there was much choice. She pulled out the bottle and held it up in front of the farmer, who squinted down at it. The angry look came back right away.
“Think this is some kind of joke, do you?” His voice was getting loud again. “Very funny, make up some story and show me an empty bottle?”
Alex looked down. The bug was plainly crawling around in the bottle. They all stared at the man for a second. As usual, Eve was the first to recover.
“Oh man! It must have escaped. Would you mind if we go back and find another one? You can come with us, of course. We just really need it for our project.” She turned her brightest smile on the farmer.
Unbelievably, it worked again. The farmer still stared at them suspiciously, but he finally nodded his head. “I guess if there are as many bugs as you kids say, I should have a look.”
They tramped back toward the pit and stood on the very edge. It was crawling with bugs. Eve and Alex stepped back hastily, and even the boys looked a little sick. But the farmer was looking around calmly. He bent down and picked something up, cupping it in his hands.
“Here you go,” he said, holding he hands out toward Alex and the bottle with a little smile. “I wouldn’t exactly call two or three of these guys a lot of bugs, but I guess you kids live in town.”
A tiny cricket sat in his hand.
Alex tried to act normal as he slid the cricket into the bottle, but her hands were shaking. He couldn’t see the black bugs. Not at all. A few were crawling on his shoe, and he acted like they weren’t there. It was even worse than having them all over her lunch. She didn’t dare look at anyone else for fear that her face would give her away.
“Now, you got your bug, you kids get on out of here. Don’t let me see you poking around any more, or I really will call the cops.”
Alex could barely breath as she heard Eve thanking the farmer, and she couldn’t take her eyes off his collar, where one little black bug with a red dot was moving slowly toward his neck.
3
Danger, Fear, Fire
Walking through the trailer park clutching a flower wrapped in wet paper towels, Eve thought about how much her life had changed in just one year. A year ago, she wouldn’t have been caught dead in this neighborhood, but now it was almost as familiar as home and honestly a lot less stressful.
Of course, a year ago she would have mocked anyone who believed in magical flowers and talking tree stumps, and now she was carrying one and going to visit the other.
The weirdest part was that it felt normal.
“I guess after you’ve seen enough impossible things, nothing feels impossible,” she said out loud to no one.
Eve knew that talking to yourself was another sign of craziness, but that, at least, was nothing new. She had always talked to herself when there was no one else around. Eve liked to talk.
Glancing down at the flower in her hand, which was open a little wider than before, Eve picked up her pace. She couldn’t wait to show this to her friends.
When they had left the explosion site an hour earlier, they had all been shaking. Eve still got a chill when she thought of all those bugs crawling on her and another chill at the thought that the farmer couldn’t see them at all. They had quickly decided that they needed to show the bug to the Dund and the Gylf, the only magical creatures they knew for sure how to find, to see if they might know what it was. Since Logan had to be home before his mom went to work, they decided to visit the Dund first. The Dund was in the field right behind Logan’s house.
As soon as Eve had heard that they were going to see the Dund, she’d decided to make a detour to her house. There was a flower she needed to ask him about. It had taken a little work to cut one of the blossoms from the plant without her mom seeing, but she didn’t think she had been gone too long.
Eve could tell that something was off the second she saw Logan’s trailer. Dominic, Adam, and Alex were all standing in the blazing sun outside while Logan was nowhere to be seen.
“What’s up?” Eve asked.
“Logan’s mom has to go into work early,” said Adam. “He’s not very happy about it. There’s not going to be time to visit the Dund before she leaves.”
“So that ran you out of the house?” asked Eve.
“It was a little tense in there,” said Alex. “No one was saying anything, but there was a definite vibe.”
She had barely spoken the words when Logan’s mom came out the door. She was a small woman with dark, wispy hair and a permanently tired expression. She smiled at the kids as she went by, though, and her smile showed how pretty she could be.
“Sorry to spoil your plans, kids,” she said. “Feel free to hang out here as long as you like.”
“It’s no problem, Mrs. Talbott,” said Eve. “We don’t mind.”
Logan’s mom smiled again and waved her hand, but she was already hurrying to her car.
“No point in waiting around out here,” said Eve, pushing open the trailer door.
Logan was standing with his back to them, rattling something in the sink. He didn’t turn around when they walked in.
“Sorry that took me so long,” said Eve. “I just really wanted to get this flower first.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Logan said, still not turning around, “since once again I’m stuck here.” He paused for a second. “You guys should still go without me. There’s no sense in waiting. We don’t all have to be there.”
“No way you’re missing out on something this big,” said Eve, without even looking to see if the others agreed with her. She opened a cupboard. “Do you have a cup or something? This flower is going to die without water.”
Logan finished washing a tall glass with a faded Snoopy decal on it, filled it up, and handed it over. Then, finally, he shut off the water and turned to face the others. “You guys should really go. These bugs could be dangerous. We can’t afford to wait until my mom gets a day off work. Especiall
y since that will be never.”
The last part was just bitter enough that no one really wanted to answer it. Fortunately, Eve’s flower had been worth the trip. Delicate pink petals spread open in a star shape to show off a glittering yellow heart. When Eve set it down on the table, it managed to make even the cracked Formica look like something special.
“Wow,” said Logan in a totally different tone. “That’s really beautiful.”
“I know, right?” said Eve. “But that’s not why I brought it to show you.” She stopped. “Where are Darcy and Sam?”
“Sam’s asleep. Darcy’s locked in her room pouting. That should take her at least an hour.”
“Okay,” said Eve. “Watch this. My name is not really Eve Sloane. Really I’m called Pocahontas. I’m an Indian Princess.”
Everyone looked at Eve like she was crazy.
“Watch! Watch the flower,” she said and continued to babble nonsense about being an Indian guide while the flower slowly closed up its petals into a tight bud. The room was silent. “Keep watching,” said Eve. “Actually, all of that was a lie. I really am Eve Sloane. I’m fifteen years old and I live with my mom and dad and two sisters on Pinecrest Circle.”
The flower’s petals slowly opened again.
“It knew you were lying?” asked Alex. “How is that possible?”
No one took their eyes off the little blossom.
“Last year I broke my leg while sky diving,” said Adam. The flower folded in on itself. “I’ve never even been sky diving.” The petals parted again.
“Where did you find it?” breathed Logan.
“In my front yard,” said Eve, “but my mom found it in the mountains. She went hiking with some friends last weekend. Well, “hiking,” you know. More like showing off new Columbia sportswear while power walking the paved trails. But anyway, she found this flower and dug it up to put in her perfect garden. That’s illegal, of course, but she’ll do just about anything to have a prettier front yard than the neighbors.”
“Could she see what it did?” asked Alex.
The Broken Circle (The Book of Sight 2) Page 3