“Adam?”
He shook his head.
“Is this your book or Logan’s?”
Adam pointed at the slightly creased pages. “It’s mine,” he said, “but I’ve never seen the map before.”
Dominic was digging in his bag. It didn’t take him long to find his book and flip to the last page. Nonsense words. No map. Eve had hers out next. No map. Alex’s was the same.
Darcy was staring at them all curiously as they compared the books. “Are they supposed to be the same?” she asked. “Why is this one the only one with a map?”
“We don’t know,” Eve said gently. “We thought they were the same, but we just don’t know. We’ve never seen this map before.”
“You don’t know?” Darcy’s tone was sharp. “You guys have done nothing but talk about these stupid books for a year and you don’t know if they have maps or not? My brother is gone…probably following this stupid map to who knows where, and you don’t know anything about it?”
“I’m sorry, Darcy. There’s just…a lot that we don’t know.”
“Obviously.”
Eve ignored the dig. There were more important things to worry about. Turning her back on Darcy, she said to the others, “Do you guys think he really is trying to follow this map? Why would he do that without telling us? What are we going to do?”
Dominic pointed to the little scroll drawing at the bottom of the page. Eve read the rhyme inside. “One alone may enter in?”
“To find the answers that you seek,” said Dominic. “We did want answers.”
“You think he took off on his own because he thought that was the only way to get answers?”
“Answers to what?” asked Darcy.
They ignored her.
“Why would he do that?” Eve raged. “Why would he do that right after we had been warned to stick together, to be careful of anyone that tried to get us on our own?”
“This isn’t someone, this is the Book!” said Adam. “We were also told that we could trust the book.”
“It’s in one book. It’s not in all of them. Why didn’t he at least tell us about it? Even if he thought he had to go alone, he could have told us about it first.”
“He started to,” said Alex.
Eve stared at her.
“Remember, he had something important to tell us. But then Adam told about the statue and we started talking about that and he changed his mind.”
“This is kind of big deal for just changing his mind.”
“Oh...no,” said Adam. “Oh crap, crap, crap.”
“What?” Eve didn’t think she could take more bad news. “What’s wrong?”
“This is in my book.”
Eve waited for more. “And?”
“If he saw it in my book and it isn’t in his…”
“He would have thought that you knew about it and were keeping it a secret,” said Dominic.
“What?”
“Think about it, Eve,” said Adam. “He was all ready to tell us something this morning. Then I went first. He was totally suspicious of everything I said, accusing me of trying to do the statue thing on my own without you all. He was thinking about this map. And then he decided not to tell us about it. I’d say he decided not to trust me.”
“But that wouldn’t be just about trusting you,” said Eve. “That would be about trusting all of us. I can’t believe that Logan would decide he couldn’t trust us.” She wouldn’t believe it. She just wouldn’t. No matter what the sinking feeling in her chest said.
“It’s not just about trust, though,” said Alex. “He was already feeling really left out of things. His face when Adam said he’d slept over at Dom’s house…”
“We didn’t plan that!” Adam protested.
“It doesn’t matter. It happened. And then you got a really important message and he wasn’t there. Again.”
“What really important message?”
Eve jumped. For a minute she had forgotten that Darcy was still there. They shouldn’t be having this conversation where she could hear it. Then she realized that it was almost dark outside. Their frantic ride into town had bought them a little time to come here, but if they didn’t get home soon, it would all be wasted. One more night of getting in past dark and Eve, for one, would be grounded for life.
“Crap. You guys, what are we going to do? If I don’t get home soon…” She gestured at the window.
“Obviously we have to find him,” said Alex. “The only question is how are we going to do it. We came home to plan things out a bit better. This is a different kind of trip, but it looks to me like it goes in the same basic direction.” She pointed at the map.
“But we can’t just go home and go to sleep when Logan is God-knows-where. I don’t know what is up with this map, but I don’t trust it. It’s not like the rest of the book. For all we know someone planted it there.”
Eve saw a light go on in Adam’s head. He looked up from the map with a stunned expression. “You guys…”
“Later, Adam.” Eve jerked her head in Darcy’s direction. To Adam’s credit, he shut his mouth, but he looked like it was killing him.
“You’re right,” said Dominic as if that last bit had never happened. “I don’t think we can wait. We were warned to stick together.”
“Are you going to call the police?” asked Darcy, looking properly scared now.
“No!” said Eve. “I mean, no. They don’t really do anything about teenagers who take off unless they’ve been gone for a while. Anyway,” with a glare for Dom and Adam, “I’m sure Logan is fine. He just decided to take a little trip. We’ll go and find him and find out what’s up, and then we’ll come home. Now we have an idea of what direction to go, I’m sure we’ll be home by morning.”
“If we’re doing this tonight there are a few things that need to be worked out,” Adam reminded her with another swift look outside at the gathering dark. “I could probably convince my mom I’m sleeping over at Dom’s again tonight, if we can get there before she’s too pissed off at me.”
“Don’t you people have cell phones?” asked Darcy.
“Oh, right,” said Eve. It was weird how often she totally forgot about her phone since the book had come into her life. “You can just call. Or better yet, have Dominic call. That’s always more convincing.”
“What about you?” asked Alex.
“I don’t think that there’s any way my mom will buy you having another birthday this soon. Actually, at this hour, she probably won’t believe anything I say. I’m just going to have to go for it and deal with the trouble when we get back. If she doesn’t know where I am, she’ll want to kill me, but she won’t be able to do anything about it until she finds me.”
“What if she calls the police?” asked Alex. “Reports you missing.”
“She wouldn’t,” said Eve. “Too embarrassing. She’ll assume I’m just out partying.”
“What if she calls our parents?” asked Adam.
That stopped Eve. “Okay, that’s something she might do. Then she would blow it for you.” She gritted her teeth. “What do we do?”
Alex took a deep breath. “Maybe she would be okay with you sleeping over if my dad called.”
“You think you could get him to do that?”
“If I called and told him you were spending the night and we needed him to ask her for us, he’d do it.”
“And he wouldn’t notice that neither of you are actually there?” asked Adam.
“Honestly, he really probably won’t. We can stop by in a bit. It would be a good idea to get some stuff before we leave anyway. If he saw me for a few minutes, he’d know we were in the house. There’s almost no way he’ll come out of his studio again tonight. We should be back long before he notices anything is weird.” There was a bit of a pause as Alex looked uncomfortable. “I hate lying to him. But I really feel like this is something we have to do.” She had her back to Darcy so her meaningful look was only for the other three.
“Agreed,” said Adam. “Let’s get calling.”
He and Alex dug out their phones, and Adam handed his to Dominic. The three of them trooped down the tiny hall and outside to make their calls.
Eve turned to Darcy. “Thank you for showing us the map. We are going to find him, I promise. I’m sure he’s fine, but it’s always better to have friends with you when you’re doing something you’re not supposed to do. For tonight, we need you to not tell anyone about this. We’ll all be in a lot of trouble if our parents find out.”
Darcy narrowed her eyes. “What is going on? You keep talking like I’m not here, but I’m not stupid. My brother is gone. You guys are worried, but you don’t want any adults to know about it. It doesn’t make any sense. What is the deal with this stupid book?”
“I can’t really explain it all right now.”
“Try.”
Eve sighed. “You know how the words in the book don’t make sense? Well none of this makes sense…unless it does. I know that isn’t an answer, but it’s the way it is. I can try to explain more soon, but tonight we have to worry about finding Logan.”
Darcy stared hard at Eve for a few minutes. “Okay,” she said finally. “Find Logan. No matter what you say, I can tell you guys are worried about him. I won’t say anything for tonight. I’ll tell Mom that Logan hired Jo so he could sleep over at Dominic’s. She’ll be a little mad, but she’ll get over it. She feels sorry for Logan. But when you guys get back tomorrow, you’re telling me everything.”
“I promise,” said Eve, hoping that Logan wouldn’t kill her for this.
Then a cold feeling came over her, and she just hoped that he was still there to be angry about it.
12
The Book and the Map
"She just doesn’t think her mom will let her stay unless you call. Her mom can be kind of strict like that.” Alex listened to her dad’s slightly absent voice and felt intensely guilty for lying to him. If this weren’t absolutely necessary... “Thanks, Dad. Her number is 555-3127. Yeah, Mrs. Sloane. Can you text me and let me know what she says? I should be home in like 15 minutes, but if she says no, Eve needs to head the other direction. Thanks, Dad. I’ll bring you some dinner over in a little while. Yeah, actually, it’s probably a little past dinner time.”
The guilt got stronger for not telling him how late it actually was. “Okay. Bye. Love you, too.”
She hung up the phone. “I hate lying to my dad. He’s too nice about it. He doesn’t deserve it.”
Adam, who was watching Dominic talk on the phone in his most polite voice, just nodded and made a sympathetic face.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you so much, Mrs. Cleary. My grandma would like to know if you need him home at any certain time tomorrow.”
Adam’s face relaxed. “She said yes.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell him. Thank you, ma’am. Goodnight.”
“Of course she said yes,” said Alex. “Who could say no to that many ma’ams?”
Dominic handed the phone back to Adam. “It’s called being polite.”
“Was I criticizing?”
“She wants you home by noon tomorrow, Adam. What did your dad say, Alex?”
“He’s calling Eve’s mom. He’ll text us her answer soon. If he doesn’t forget. If I don’t hear anything in a few minutes, I’ll call him back.”
“So what’s the plan?” asked Adam. “What do we do with that thing?” He gestured at the Medusa.
“I think you and I take it back to Maddie’s on our way to my house. Tell her it went farther than we had time for and we’ll try another day but we’re busy the next couple of days. Then we head to my house and get some stuff and let my grandparents know we’ll be gone.”
“What are you going to tell them?” asked Alex.
“That we’re going camping,” said Dom. “They like me to do stuff in the woods. And it’s probably true, too, which is good. It’s impossible to lie to my abuela.”
“Do you have camping stuff? ‘Cause that would be really helpful.”
“I do, but I don’t know how much we want to carry. If we’re going to catch up with Logan, I doubt we’ll be getting much sleep.”
“The bus,” said Adam. He was studying the map again. “There’s a bus that goes up 14. We could take it up, get off a little early, and we’d be pretty close to this symbol.”
“That’s perfect,” said Alex. “I was wondering how we were going to ride up there in the dark. But if we get off the bus about there, it will probably be all forest, so we’d be walking anyway. Plus, we might make back some time on Logan.”
“Unless he took the bus, too.”
“You think he took the bus?” asked Eve, coming out the door and closing it behind her.
They showed her the map and explained.
“I still can’t believe he did this. That we’re doing this. What did my mom say?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Alex. “My dad is supposed to text me the answer any minute.”
“Great. I think I got Darcy calmed down. She says she won’t tell anyone tonight. She’ll tell her mom Logan’s sleeping over with you guys. But I had to promise her I’ll tell her everything when we get back.” She shrugged. “I thought it was about time for that anyway.”
“Logan’s going to kill us,” said Adam.
“I hope he tries,” said Eve. “The way I feel right now I could take him down no problem.”
“We don’t know for sure what happened yet,” said Adam. “For all we know, someone was threatening him.”
“Right,” said Eve. “And they nicely gave him time to hire a babysitter.”
“You never know.”
“Sometimes you do.”
Alex was still looking at the map. Something was so off about it. She had the worst feeling that they really didn’t want to know what was at the end of it. “You guys, what if this takes us longer than tonight? What are we going to do?”
“We’ll just have to deal with that if it happens,” said Dominic. “We’ll call home and try to make up another story.”
“Yeah, but Logan’s mom will expect him home no matter what.”
“We can hire the babysitter for another night,” said Eve. “I’ve got money. And if we get home as planned, we’ll just go down and tell her it’s off.”
“I really don’t think we’ll be gone that long,” said Adam. “If we can take the bus up most of the way…”
“But there aren’t exactly GPS directions here. It’s a few symbols and a little poem. It could take us a while to figure it out,” said Eve.
“And we have no idea what we’ll find when we get to the end,” said Alex. “What if it’s something dangerous? What if Logan is in trouble?”
“Or what if this isn’t even where he went?” said Dominic.
That was depressing.
“Okay,” said Adam. “You’re right. Better safe than sorry. But I have to say, if we don’t get back by tomorrow, I doubt my mom is going to be cool with just another phone call.”
“We can worry about that if it happens,” said Dominic.
Alex’s phone buzzed. She looked down. “She said yes. We’re on.”
• • • • •
Two hours later, Alex looked around the parking lot that served Dunmore as a bus station. Ten o’clock at night was not a great time for four teenagers to be waiting for a bus. There were only three other people there, and all of them were looking suspiciously at the group. Eve, with her usual charm, had chatted up the guy selling tickets from a little booth on the corner of the lot. It was her first time going camping, she claimed. Her dad talked her mom into it. Not that it was really camping when they were staying in a friend’s cabin. She acted so innocent and excited and dropped reference to her parents so many times that the ticket guy seemed to give up the idea that they were runaways. Still, Alex would be glad when they were actually on the bus and headed out of town.
When it pulled in, it was big and sleek, but the smell inside was somehow off. A
lex waited behind Eve while she prattled her whole story again to the driver as he took their tickets. She wound up by asking him to make sure they got off in Henry’s Junction. They had agreed to use one of the bus’s regular stops, a little tourist trap community tucked into a fold of the mountains. It was not too far from where the first of the trail markers seemed to be on the map, and using a regular bus stop would attract less attention than asking to get off in the middle of nowhere.
The seats were soft and comfortable even though the strange smell was obviously coming from them. Alex stuffed her heavy backpack under the seat in front of her. It now contained a supply of water and some food, a couple of sweatshirts and a pair of socks, her flashlight and extra batteries, and the Book of Sight.
“We should try to get some sleep,” Adam was looking over the back of the seat in front of them. “We’ll probably be walking all night. This will take an hour or so, and the driver said he’d make sure we got off in the right place.”
Alex just nodded as she felt the bus pull out of the parking lot. Had she thought that she would feel better once they were going? Every muscle in her body was tense, and her stomach was churning. Logan could be anywhere in any kind of danger. They had just lied to their parents and were now headed off on a bus to wander around the mountains in the dark, following a map that came from no-one-knew-where. No one would know where they were. If they got in trouble, no one would even be looking for them before the next afternoon. It had seemed like the only thing to do, but now that they were actually here, Alex wondered if they were being seriously stupid.
She tried to tell herself that it was decided, it was done. She tried to lean back and close her eyes, but there was no relaxing. There was no way she was going to get any sleep.
“I know, right?” said Eve, looking over as Alex shifted in her seat again. “Like we could possibly sleep right now.”
“I feel like I swallowed some Red Spots or something,” said Alex.
“Eew! I already said I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t need that image to help me,” Eve grimaced. “But yeah, I’m way wired. You want to read the book together?”
The Broken Circle (The Book of Sight 2) Page 15