Mom put a plate in front of me. Already she was a flurry of sparkles and spangles, wings and wonder. “This is one for the record books. What got you out of bed this early?”
Before I went to sleep the night before, I had planned my story out. But now that the time had come to speak the lie, it stuck in my mouth. I was a terrible friend, and after that day I would be a terrible daughter as well.
I chewed my pancake slowly and swallowed it with a gulp. “I’m going to Nickel’s house to try and make up with him.”
Mom knew all about the non-Dad parts of our fight, and a smile spread across her face. “You’re going to apologize?”
I nodded. “I was a jerk.” That part was true.
“It takes a big person to admit it when they’re wrong. Your little club’s important to Nickel.”
Had I made Focus Pocus sound as silly as that during our fight?
No. I’d done worse.
“I’m proud of you, Bob.” Mom reached over from her side of the table and patted my hand. I wished she wouldn’t. That one word, “proud,” was almost enough to make me confess everything and never leave the house again. Except this might be my last chance to find my dad before the satellite hit.
The pancake in my tummy squirmed around. It obviously didn’t like being in the stomach of a liar. “I better go,” I said. I scraped my plate clean and put it in the dishwasher.
When I opened the front door, something strange hung above the steps, fluttering and twisting in the wind. It was a long string with dozens of ribbons tied to it. The string went up past the porch roof and the windows, and all the way to the gutter that ran between my bedroom and the bathroom.
On the end of the string was a diamond-shaped kite taller than me, maybe even taller than Mom. It sat at a jaunty angle, shuddering in the wind like the house wore it as a hat. The old rooster weather vane had skewered it right through the middle.
I glanced at Mrs. Cuthbert’s house. No sign of her yet. I tugged at the kite, trying to get it down before she saw. Whatever the thing was made out of, it stuck fast. I pulled and yanked on the string until my good hand was covered in deep score marks. The kite stayed right where it was.
“Stupid house!” I screamed, kicking at the string and missing. “I hate you, you stupid, rotten house. What’s the matter with you?”
I yanked one more time on the string—which did nothing—and stomped off. It was a lot easier to stomp now that the roses grew upright instead of all over the path.
“Are you going to find the owner of that thing?” Mrs. Cuthbert asked from somewhere close by. “It’s huge. Probably worth a lot of money.”
I jumped and spun around to see her picking dead rose blooms from the bushes in her front yard. She still had her bathrobe and slippers on.
“Yes. Later,” I said.
“Later? Someone might have reported it missing. Someone might call the police.”
Heat burst into my cheeks. I knew who that “someone” would be. My mouth filled up with all the anger I had tried to keep in since the last time she had let me have it. “Well, go right ahead, you horrible old busybody.”
Mrs. Cuthbert’s mouth dropped open. “I beg your pardon, you rude little madam? Everything I’ve done has been for the good of this community and, whether you like it or not, for the good of your family as well.”
“No, it hasn’t. You called the police and ruined Grandma’s yard. You pretend you work for the FBI and mind everybody else’s business.” A horrible shooting pain in my sore arm forced me to unclench my fists. I gritted my teeth instead. “And we’re not klepto—kep—thieves either.”
The old woman’s face turned red enough for steam to come out of her ears. She threw a handful of dead roses onto the ground and pointed at me. “Oh, pretending, am I? What about your mother, hmm? Flouncing around here dressed like a fairy, even when she’s off duty. And what about your grandmother, poking her nose into my business all the time? She’s the real busybody.”
Not wanting Grandma or Mom to hear and come out to make things worse, I lowered my voice. “My mom is being herself, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Grandma isn’t the one peeking through our fence with binoculars.”
“There’s plenty round here who agree with me!” She waved her hand like there was a fly she wanted to swat away. “Some people round here might feel sorry for that mother of yours, but not me. I know better.” She headed inside.
“What? Why would anyone feel sorry for Mom?” I called after her, but she’d already gone.
Because of Dad? Did people feel sorry because he left us?
I stood there for a while, the wind tossing bits of leaves and dirt against my bare legs. Mrs. Cuthbert wanted to cause trouble. She wanted me to run to Grandma and make her mad.
Tears dribbled down my cheeks before the wind could dry them. I blinked back the rest, stuck out my chin, and walked off toward Humphries’s Gift and Guzzle on West Street. No one would need to feel sorry for us again. Not after today.
Even though I knew Mrs. Humphries, I’d never been inside her store before. When Mom shopped at the Gift and Guzzle, she made me wait in the car so I wouldn’t beg for candy. I crossed the fingers on my good hand for luck. I shook bad thoughts out of my head and looked around for a sign of old Mr. Bones.
The Gift and Guzzle used to be a gas station when Mom was my age. The old tin Texaco sign took up most of one side wall, along with newer ones advertising cola and Barney’s Bait Shop. The roof of the porch that ran along the front drooped at one end and shuddered in the wind like a twitchy eyebrow. A few wooden barrels, filled with small shrubs and sprinkled with cigarette butts, were lined up on either side of the door.
There was no sign of Mr. Bones or his rickshaw.
A little bell above the shop door tinkled as I peeked inside. Mrs. Humphries had her back to me, humming to herself while she tidied the rows of leather belts, cowboy hats, and grizzly bear candles. She turned with a smile at the sound of the bell.
“Well now, if it isn’t Robyn Goodfellow. I was sorry to hear about your arm.”
News got around Calliope faster than Mr. Bones could ever pedal. “Uh, thanks. It’s not that bad,” I said. “Is it true Mr. Bones waits around here sometimes?”
Mrs. Humphries lifted her eyebrows and put down the bottle opener she had been dusting. “Mr. Bones? Oh, yes. Every day. All day. He’d be my best customer if he bought more than a can of soda per day. I’ve had raccoon families move in under the store that were easier to get rid of than him.” Smiling, she shook her head. “And don’t you go mentioning the raccoons to anyone, or I’ll deny it cold, you hear me?”
Raccoons living under your store sounded like a good-luck charm to me, but I could see how some people in Calliope might overreact. “I hear you. Has Mr. Bones been around today?”
“He was out there a few minutes ago. Some fool probably hired that contraption of his. They’ll learn that lesson in a hurry.”
“What lesson? What will he do?” My eyes got so wide they dried out a bit.
Mrs. Humphries chuckled. “Don’t look so startled. He’s harmless. Just a bit…shall we say…stern? That rickshaw, though. Rattles your bones. Ha, I guess that’s where the nickname came from.”
I swallowed nervously past a lump in my throat. “Okay. Thank you.”
I almost had the door closed again before she stopped me. “What on earth do you want with Jack Bones?”
I was about to tell her the truth when the perfect answer popped into my head. “School project. We’re studying transport, and I, uh, thought the rickshaw was interesting.”
Mrs. Humphries rocked back on her heels. “Interesting? That would be one way to describe it. So long as you’re not planning to ride in it. Your mom would be devastated if she lost you too.”
“Lost me too?” Like she lost my dad?
; Her face turned that strange shade of pale adults always had when they realized they had talked themselves into a situation and had no idea how to get out.
“Oh, look there,” Mrs. Humphries said, her smile too wide and plastic. She pointed out the door as Mr. Bones’s coat fluttered past. I knew she wouldn’t tell me any more than anyone else would. So I gave Mrs. Humphries a quick wave and hurried after Mr. Bones.
At the edge of the porch, I watched as he maneuvered the rickshaw against the wall, out of the wind. Every joint in his body popped and cracked as he eased his hunched self off the bike seat.
“Hello,” I said in a small voice.
He turned slowly to face me. That close, I could see why everyone called him Mr. Bones. All that showed under the hood of his coat were dark eye sockets, pointy cheekbones, and a sucked-in mouth. The skin covering it looked dry and tight, like he might be nothing but a skeleton after all.
“Yesss?” he asked, drawing out the s into a lizard’s yawn.
My mouth opened and my tongue moved, but nothing came out.
He gave up on me and turned back to his bike. It looked about as bony as he did. So did the rickshaw. It was nothing but a pair of painted planks with wheels and a beat-up canopy overhead.
He bent over to pinch his tires, ignoring me.
This was stupid. If he was scary or…whatever, people would not keep hiring him to drive them around. Mrs. Humphries had called him stern, but if I could survive Mrs. Cuthbert, I could survive a cranky rickshaw driver.
I needed to suck it up and speak. “I—um—can I hire you?”
He stood up straight and spun around with a wide smile on his face. At least, I think it was a smile. It looked more like a dark gap in his face. No teeth.
“Why didn’t you say so? My price is a dollar. No haggling. You pay your dollar, fair and square.” He sounded different now, lispy and almost friendly.
“No, sir. A dollar is fine.”
“Climb aboard, kid.”
Sitting on that hard seat was like waiting outside the dentist’s office: I had no idea what might happen, but I knew it would be uncomfortable. The old man eased himself onto his seat and leaned around to face me. He held out a hand as white and bony as his face. “Dollar.”
I dropped the bill into his hand and wriggled backward in my seat.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Um, the Densdale Lagoon, please.”
He froze with my money halfway to his pocket. “You what now?”
“The—the Densdale Lagoon. It’s a water park. In Densdale. Like a lagoon.”
What an idiot I was. This guy was old. The bike looked even older. I never saw him anywhere outside Calliope. He probably couldn’t come close to making it that far.
“Densdale? What in the name of all things Calliope do you want to go there for? The swimming hole not good enough for you?” He snorted so hard that steam should have come out of his nostrils. “Not a thing you can do there that you can’t do here.”
Of course he wouldn’t go to Densdale. This was a stupid idea.
“I’m sorry.” I moved to jump out of the rickshaw, but he held out that awful hand to stop me.
“You paid your dollar, you take your ride,” he said.
* * *
• • •
The rickshaw had looked fast the day I broke my arm, but it felt faster once I was on board. I squinted and held on tight with my good hand. Mr. Bones’s coat snapped around like a superhero’s cape, slapping my legs if I relaxed them.
“You must be fit,” I said, trying to make conversation with the hunched-over man in front of me.
No answer.
“Because, you know, all that pedaling.”
Still no answer.
Biting my lip to keep myself from talking any more, I concentrated on not becoming roadkill.
“The wilds of Densdale right ahead,” Mr. Bones said as we passed the sign on the town border. It read YOU’RE LEAVING CALLIOPE. AIN’T TOO LATE TO CHANGE YOUR MIND!
There was no sign welcoming us to Densdale, because Densdale thought we’d been a part of the city all along. If you looked at a map, you’d agree with them too. You had to be from Calliope to know better.
The tree belt on the edge of town could have been a portal to a whole other universe. On one side, we were a bicycle-powered rickshaw on an almost empty road. On the other side, we were a very small, very flimsy contraption among a million cars whose drivers knew lots of curse words.
Between the beeps and revving engines, I heard Mr. Bones mutter something rude about Densdale. He snarled, leaned over his handlebars, and pedaled like a bear was on our tail.
Getting to Densdale was the easy part; you only had to leave Calliope to manage that, and Calliope was pretty small. Densdale was not. An hour of frantic pedaling later and we were less than a third of the way to the lagoon.
This plan was the worst.
We sped around corners, the rickshaw tilting until there was nothing but air under one tire, sometimes both. Bugs and the wind whizzed past my ears. Mr. Bones had a pretty relaxed policy on stop signs too.
We zipped through sets of traffic lights, tires screeching all around us. Mr. Bones cackled like a witch from a bad fairy tale. “Ha!” he yelled, swerving around a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
My heart pounded until I could barely hear the traffic. If I survived the trip, it would be a bigger miracle than if the satellite missed my house.
We finally slowed down around the halfway mark. Overhead, the clouds grouped together like they had a party planned, and we had to travel straight into the wind. The old man shoved his coat hood back off his head. Underneath, his scalp was as white and shiny as a polished skull. I shuddered and checked whether Alyssa’s note was still inside my cast, where I’d tucked it that morning. Having it there felt like safety, like I’d find out about my dad for real, that day.
Mr. Bones pulled the rickshaw into a small side street and stopped. He twisted around in his seat to face me, and little dribbles of sweat slid over his pointy cheekbones. “You got your heart set on this whole lagoon thing?”
My muscles were exhausted from holding on. They gave up when he said that, and I slumped back in the rickshaw. There was no way one old man could get us to the lagoon on time.
He let out a sigh that sounded exactly like the wind whistling under the roof at home. “Let me catch my breath, then we’ll carry on.”
A little bit of hope tickled inside me, but it went out again. “No. This was a dopey idea. I’m sorry.”
Muttering something about “sad eyes” and “sucker,” Mr. Bones got back on the bicycle. “This had better be about something more important than swimming, or I swear…”
“It is,” I promised.
Mr. Bones, his rickshaw, and I were on the road to the Densdale Lagoon for three hours in total. During that time, I learned how to drive a rickshaw one-handed and took a turn pedaling whenever we came across a quiet side road. While Mr. Bones rested, he told strange, pointless stories.
“Once, I drove Mayor Tippins almost this far,” he said during my last turn pedaling. “I worked hard that day. He ain’t a small man.”
“Mayor Tippins? Cool.” It was not really cool. Mayor Tippins wasn’t a real mayor any more than Calliope was a real town. But his great-granddaddy had been mayor before Densdale ate Calliope, and everyone acted like he had the job now. Including him.
“Yup.”
“And then what?” I asked, panting as I stood up on the pedals to get the rickshaw up a slight rise.
“I drove him home again.” Yep. Weird stories with no point.
“How come you decided to give everyone rickshaw rides?” I asked, slowing down from tiredness.
“Obvious, isn’t it? If it weren’t for me, people might start wanting a bus route through town,
and then what, eh? Next thing we know, Densdale’s getting all smug and thinking it owns us. I do it for the town.” He chuckled to himself. “Besides, a couple of the old ladies I drive around bake me cakes and cookies.”
I laughed and pulled over for him to take his turn.
By the time we had the lagoon in sight, I didn’t think he was scary at all, or even that cranky. Frightening looks did not mean frightening man—at least, not in this case. He pulled the rickshaw into the almost-empty lagoon parking lot and let out a huge sigh of relief. “We did it.”
“We did!” I clambered out of the rickshaw and looked around. “There aren’t many cars.”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s the weather. There’s still plenty of afternoon left.”
I smiled harder than I had since the satellite news broke. Because Mr. Bones was as close to a friend as I had left, I held out my cast for him to sign and handed him my marker.
“First time I ever signed one of these things.” He grinned toothlessly and scrawled Jack Bones in raggedy letters across the middle of my cast, then added a skull and crossbones as a sort of signature.
“Thanks,” I said, peering up at the sky. There were a lot of clouds hanging around, the thick purple-gray sort that held nothing but trouble. Sunshine was an important part of any trip to the Densdale Lagoon. The pools were not heated, and the whole thing was outdoors.
“I could bring you back next weekend, when the weather is better,” Mr. Bones said, and I could tell he hoped I would say yes. I promised myself I would take regular rickshaw rides if I survived the satellite. “Your sainted momma wouldn’t be happy with me if I left you here in the rain.”
“You know Mom?” I asked.
“Who in Calliope doesn’t? Lovely girl. Lovely. Shame about, you know, everything.”
“Everything?” I didn’t know, but by then I had a pretty good idea. My dad. I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Not that day. Not when the truth about Benjamin O’Malley was so close I almost tasted it. “It’s okay. I’m meeting some friends here. It kind of has to be today,” I said.
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