The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  There was a collective gasp as a shower of pressed flowers fell upon the children.

  “You’ve broken it!” cried Lucy, grabbing the book back from Faye.

  “No I haven’t,” Faye said, taking it back from Lucy. “I just got the thing apart.”

  But Lucy pointed to the single linen page upon which she, and what seemed like generations before her, had pressed flowers. There were impressions of flowers, and stains from flowers, and bits of flowers all over the page. However, the corner of the page had been pulled away from the inside of the leather cover where it had been stuck. It was just the corner, but it was enough to see that there was writing under there.

  “Be careful,” Jasper said, taking it gently from Faye’s hands. He began pulling the page slowly and carefully away from the cover, so it would not tear.

  Flakes of yellowed paper caught in the leather straps looped through the spine of the binding. The cover was blank, except for some slight indentations.

  “It looks like it might once have said something—yes, it did. And from all of the flakes here, this book clearly had pages once,” said Wallace, running his finger along the inside of the spine.

  “Look at this,” Jasper said, his voice hushed as he pointed to the words on the page that had stuck to the cover. He turned it over and placed it face-up on the green book so all could look.

  On it was a written list of dates and names, handwritten in various inks, spanning many years.

  The earliest dates were almost totally illegible, with the exception of “Breda, November, 1618,” and a few other partial entries that seemed to go back to the mid-sixteenth century. But dates such as “Muktsar, Spring, 1705,” “Edinburgh, Late Autumn, 1738,” “Amsterdam, Mid-Summer, 1740,” and “Vienna, Early Spring (but too late), 1827” were clear to the eye. There was an entry for “Naples, Spring, 1872,” although the ink was slightly smudged. The date was not obscured, but the word “spring” was hard to make out.

  “That’s the year Mt. Vesuvius erupted,” said Lucy.

  “My mother has been to Naples,” said Noah, “once about two years ago, and once when she was a girl.”

  “My mum, too,” Jasper said, “when she was a schoolgirl. I think even my dad went when he was small.”

  “What was it doing in the nightdress drawer?” asked Wallace, caressing the smooth leather. “It’s ancient.”

  “When did you take it?” asked Faye.

  Lucy blushed slightly. “After the man was jumping on the bed and stole into Mummy’s night things, I went and took it and put it under my pillow so it would be safe. Then I saw all the flowers everyone had been pressing and I started pressing flowers, too.”

  “It must have been there when we arrived,” said Jasper. “And it must be Mummy’s, even though we’d never seen it before.”

  “What does that say on the front?” asked Noah. “There are words, or there were words.”

  “I know what to do,” said Wallace.

  Wallace handled the book as if it were a treasure. Careful not to place it near anything that might harm it, he brought it over to the classroom’s laboratory table.

  “Are you using chemicals on it?” asked Lucy, fearfully.

  “No,” he said, “only some ash, and not on the leather itself.”

  He placed a very thin piece of tissue on the cover of the book. Then, most carefully, he rubbed the ash on the tissue, and used a stick ruler to rub evenly. Words came out as if written by ghosts from the past. Just four words. “The Young Inventors Guild.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Noah.

  “Who were they?” asked Lucy. “All I know is one thing they did.”

  “What’s that?” asked Wallace.

  “They pressed flowers,” said Lucy. “Whatever else they did, they pressed flowers.”

  “My guess is they invented things,” said Noah.

  “But who were they?” Faye asked, running her finger across the cover.

  “When were they?” asked Noah.

  “Well, it’s ours now,” said Faye. “Whoever the Young Inventors Guild was, we have their book and it’s ours.” Faye looked at it again. “It is awfully strange, isn’t it?”

  “What?” asked Jasper, still looking at the book.

  “Well, here we are,” Faye said, “and we’re inventors, and whoever they were, these people considered themselves inventors. I wonder just how young they were. As young as us?”

  “And you know what?” asked Lucy, jumping from her perch on the table, scurrying to her desk, and pulling out all of their notes on the flying machine. “Now we’re the Young Inventors Guild.”

  The children were silent for a moment, reflecting on the book that lay in their hands and the inventions that lay in their brains. Who was this Young Inventors Guild? Why was the book hidden in the nightie drawer? Why did the Modest family have it anyway?

  “But what does this have to do with our parents?” Noah asked.

  “Well, it might not have... I don’t know,” said Jasper, staring at the book.

  Faye took the old page with the list of places. “Naples, 1872. Your mum was there, Jasper? When she was a girl?”

  “My mother, too,” said Noah. “She was there around then.”

  “Yes, but your mother is an opera singer, not a scientist or an inventor. Jasper, your mum was there when she was young?”

  “I think she was, but I don’t know the year,” said Jasper. “Do you, Lucy?”

  “She never told us,” said Lucy.

  “What about you?” asked Jasper, looking from Faye to Wallace. “Were your parents ever in Naples when they were young?”

  “I don’t know... I don’t think so,” Wallace said. “Maybe.”

  Suddenly, they all felt very far from their parents—as if they didn’t know them very well at all.

  That night, when Miss Brett returned from checking on the cow, which had a mouth infection from trying to eat the bottom of something that looked like a rocket, she chose to read to the children from a new book by a woman who had been a friend of her mother in England, where her mother lived until she was nineteen.

  “Edith Nesbit and my mother went to school together as girls, in Kent. Ms. Nesbit moved around quite a bit when she was young, but the two of them kept in touch until Ms. Nesbit moved back to London. But then my mother moved to America, and after a while, they lost touch. This book by Edith Nesbit was published last year, and I was so thrilled to find it. It’s called Five Children and It. Somehow, I thought you might enjoy it.”

  “Because it’s about five children?” asked Lucy.

  “Well, yes, but it’s not just about five children. It’s about five children who are made to leave the city and live out in the country, where they discover the most incredible thing.”

  “But they’re away from their mummy and daddy?” asked Lucy.

  “Yes, dear, they are,” Miss Brett said gently.

  The children let the rest of the world fall away as Miss Brett read them the book’s first chapter.

  When the children were all quiet, Miss Brett closed the book and blew out the candle. But the children were not asleep. The story made them think about how far away they really were from their parents. They might as well be on another planet or in another century. And what did they even know about the people they loved most?

  Out of habit, Faye reached for her necklace, Jasper and Lucy for their bracelets, and Wallace for his lucky coin in his empty pocket. Noah thought of Ralph.

  Tokens of comfort, all out of reach.

  LUCY TELLS A TAIL

  OR

  PIECES BEGIN TO FALL

  The children were up before Miss Brett the next morning. This had been happening more often than not recently, as sleep was elusive, coming late and leaving early. All their dreams were peppered with failed flights, fallen birds, and wayward rockets, and the children often woke one another with new and exciting ideas. The boys bounced ideas around their room until well after midnight, and even litt
le Lucy was prone to waking Faye, talking in her twilight sleep about tails and wings.

  “Faye? Do you think we need an extra thingie on the wing?” she’d say—or “Faye, your canard elevators might need to be adjusted.” Faye would groan into awareness as Lucy would drift back to sleep.

  Lucy and Wallace were the perfect team for keeping the designs, blueprints, equations, and drawings in order. Wallace had the best handwriting and was the most focused on organization, while Lucy was so clever with sketching, her drawings could be used as actual blueprints. As promised, Lucy was the keeper of the Young Inventors Guild journal, which is where they now kept everything. She slept with it under her pillow, in order to protect it from any more of those men in black, and she kept it tied tightly with a ribbon to maintain her fragile flowers.

  “If Lucy’s memory is perfect,” Wallace had asked at one point, “why are we keeping everything in the book? Writing things down might be dangerous.”

  Faye rolled her eyes. “Yes, she can remember everything, Wallace,” she said, “but she’s six, and her explanations are not always, well, explanatory.”

  Faye was right. No matter how brilliant Lucy was, the explanations she had to offer could sometimes be a bit cumbersome. Wallace, on the other hand, had a knack for precision. He kept beautiful notes. Everything was clear and precise, and it made progress easy, because they could detect miscalculations and adjust with each attempt. The green book of the Young Inventors Guild was now a real book.

  “I don’t know if Wallace should get to keep the notes,” Faye had said to Jasper.

  “Why on earth not?” he asked.

  “Because he never is around when we need him,” she said, a frightening amount of sincerity in her voice.

  Jasper wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. With a look, they both seemed to agree to leave things be and let it remain a silent truth between them.

  They still had much to overcome—like the fact that, to hold an engine as heavy as Noah’s, Faye would have to design her wings to span two hundred feet. But in order for Faye’s wings to be moved by Jasper’s propeller, they would have to be no longer than six feet each. And Lucy’s tail, on paper—actually, made of paper—worked to balance the wings, but the flight pattern was erratic and the wings flip-flopped through the air. They had run out of material from the classroom, so they used the old tractor, the siding for the old barn, and the tin roof for parts.

  But today, as the children sat under the willow, snacking on the first apples of the season and looking at the birdwatcher as he untangled himself from his binoculars, Wallace thought that a truly good birdwatcher could not be so clumsy. A good birdwatcher needed to become a part of the tree—invisible, so the birds would not be frightened away.

  Wallace suddenly felt as if he was not a part of the tree. Only he had done nothing to contribute to the aeroplane.

  “I know what you say, Jasper, and it is kind, but the truth is I’m mostly a chemist,” he said, biting into an apple. The apples were definitely not ripe yet—they were small and tart and hard as a rock. “My work doesn’t include wings and tails.”

  “Wallace, you’re doing something very important,” said Jasper, who had noticed how downcast Wallace sounded. “Besides, you have helped. It was you who pointed out the adjustments that got more than five horsepower out of that last engine.”

  “But that was only after Noah said there needed to be an adjustment. I simply suggested that—”

  “It was you who pointed out that a weight balance needed to be attained in the space between the glider wings.”

  “Only because Faye knew there was a ratio issue and asked me to calculate her estimation.” Wallace looked pleadingly into Jasper’s eyes.

  “Well, it was you who found ‘The Young Inventors Guild’ written on the cover of the journal.” Jasper put his hand on Wallace’s shoulder.

  “Jasper, it was only because I opened it.”

  “But we might never have—”

  “You know that isn’t true,” said Wallace. “I’ve done nothing vital. You have your propeller and—”

  “And without you, I’d never have considered the angle-shift improvements you suggested.”

  “That isn’t true. You know that. And Faye has the wings and Lucy has the tail and Noah has the engine.”

  “But Wallace—”

  “Is Wallace feeling insignificant?” Faye said, walking over.

  Jasper shot her a look that she understood. “Jasper’s right, Wallace. You have been helpful. Truly. Every step of the way,” said Faye, looking back to Jasper as if to prove she understood what was needed. She did not, however, totally believe what she said. What could be more important than the wings? And what a waste of time Wallace’s little experiment was. Faye resented Wallace, but the wilting look Jasper gave her kept her quiet.

  “Look at that bird!” she said suddenly, pointing to a bright red bird perched on the fence at the edge of the field.

  “It’s a cardinal,” said Wallace. “They’re not so uncommon.”

  “Well, the birdwatcher seems excited about this one,” said Faye. “That’s probably why he’s come back again.”

  “Maybe there’s a nest around here somewhere,” said Lucy.

  “Maybe,” said Faye, absentmindedly.

  “Samson has a nest,” said Lucy.

  “I said I—what?” Faye said.

  “Our little bird. I can hear him tweeting,” said Lucy, who proceeded to tweet. “See? He answers me.”

  “You’re mad, Lucy Modest,” Faye said. “You really are.”

  “Well, when he flew out of my hand—”

  “Flew out of your hand?” Noah’s ears perked up. “When was he in your hand?”

  “Oh, I visit him sometimes,” said Lucy. “When you’re all arguing about the aeroplane and being silly, I go and visit Samson. I call him down and he comes. He’s thinking of starting a family.

  “He’s what?” Faye looked at the little girl. “You are barking, howling mad.”

  “Anyway,” Lucy continued, dignified and upright, “Samson is able to use his tail to cut the air when he takes off and lands. Maybe we can make the tail less flat, as I had it, and more angled.”

  “Angled?” Faye was about to argue when she realized Lucy was correct.

  “I don’t know what it needs exactly,” said Lucy. “I don’t think I know the word for it. But we can try.”

  After weeks of designing and redesigning, Lucy’s comment on the positioning of the tail made everyone reconsider its importance.

  “I don’t know what it’s called,” Lucy said at least three times a day.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Faye, standing on her desk with a paperboard copy of the wing-and-tail design, with Lucy’s adjustments. “It probably doesn’t have a name. It’s just the position of the tail.”

  “Or not always,” said Lucy. “Sometimes not the tail.”

  “Lucy, you’re starting to make as much sense as those men in black,” said Noah.

  Faye shushed him.

  Then she launched the model.

  With the wound miniature propeller, the plane, for the first time, maintained height in the air and flew across the classroom.

  “Yes!” said Faye. “Yes! We’ve done it!”

  Everyone cheered. Getting the tail right had changed everything. They would have to try it again, this time with a properly weighted center.

  No one but Wallace noticed Lucy’s thoughtful pout.

  Lucy looked at Wallace. “There are more bits,” she said, tugging at his sleeve.

  “Yes, but the pieces are coming together,” he said.

  And putting the model into action, in the meadow, was the next thing to do.

  During the carriage ride home for the weekend, Lucy, having dozed since she stopped waving, sat up.

  “I’m famished,” she said, rubbing her eyes, then her belly.

  “Amazing, after having nearly eaten your entire fingers,” grumbled Jasper, trying to get comf
ortable again after just beginning to sleep.

  “Jasper!” Lucy said, holding out her hands like a little waif begging for alms. Jasper sighed and reached down to the basket on the floor between his legs. Pulling back the napkin, Jasper released the smell of the butter cakes. He took one out and handed it to Lucy. She took it in both hands, deeply breathed in the scent, then took the biggest bite possible for such a small girl.

  “You’re going to get it everywhere,” he said, but Lucy seemed determined to catch every crumb.

  “Anyone else hungry?” he asked. There was enough for everyone to have two.

  When they passed Willow Street and Magnolia Street, Lucy clapped her hands in excitement. “We live near here,” Lucy said.

  “How do you always know?” Jasper asked. The neighborhood did look somewhat familiar, but so did the several other neighborhoods they had passed.

  “Look at the names of the streets, silly. In our neighborhood, I remember seeing Willow and Magnolia. And that elm tree there,” she said, pointing. “It has a birdhouse on that second-lowest branch. I remember that. Also—”

  “Sorry for asking,” Jasper said, rolling his eyes.

  The driver turned right, passing the Modests’ One Elm Street, but the carriage didn’t stop. Instead he turned right onto Oak.

  “Okay, here we go,” said Noah. “Bets, anyone? I call seven. It was six last week. Maybe they’re stepping up security!”

  “Five,” said Jasper.

  “Three,” said Lucy, hopefully.

  “Four,” said Wallace.

  “Seventy-two,” said Faye, slumping in her seat.

  The children had been making bets to see who guessed correctly the number of times the carriage went around the block.

  This time, Jasper was right. After five rounds, the carriage stopped in front of One Maple, and Noah took his bag—his small, but heavy, package—into the house.

  Wallace was eager to get inside. He knew it was fanciful, but even after months of disappointment, he still hoped, every weekend, that his father would be home to greet him. His hand darted to his pocket, for what he knew would not be there.