“He’s gonna need a job, right?” Daphna added.
Latty glanced at Milton, then turned to the twins. “I feel like it’s been a million years since we’ve had a good talk,” she whispered. “This feels good. I can see you two are worried about this, and that just proves you really aren’t children anymore. I don’t think we should have these silly secrets.”
The twins snapped to attention. “Secrets?”
“Your father’s a fine bookscout,” Latty said quietly, “but he never made much money at it, not very often anyway. It never really mattered, though. The truth is, he’s rich.”
“What?” both twins gasped.
“Your mother left him a great deal more money than you ever knew.”
“How much more?” Daphna demanded.
“Much more,” Latty admitted. “If he didn’t want to, your father wouldn’t have to work for the rest of his life. And I’m taken care of too, kids, so don’t worry about me either.”
In fact, the twins had never wondered how Latty was paid. They just knew she’d loved their mother like a sister and felt partly responsible for her death since she took that phone call and then got off so easy in the caves.
The Waxes lived in a fairly small house with nothing too fancy inside, though they had some expensive antiques. Multnomah Village was a nice neighborhood, but it was hardly the West Hills. There was rarely money for things like fashionable clothes, or techno-gadgets, or summer camps—
“We’re rich?” Daphna cried. She felt blindsided.
“Shhh!” Latty warned.
“You mean,” Dex demanded, feeling blindsided, too, “that he’s been ditching us all these years to search for books when he didn’t even have to?”
“Please!” Latty begged. But she could see she had some serious explaining to do.
“Fine,” she sighed. “Let’s talk. But not here. We’ll go to the cafeteria.”
The trio sat down at the end of a long table. At the sight of all the food, the twins realized they were famished, but they were even hungrier for the truth.
“Okay,” Latty said, sounding rather businesslike, “first, Daphna: since you were a little girl, you’ve had an amazing will to succeed at everything you do. It’s who you are. It’s your very identity, and Milton never wanted to sabotage that. Wealth can change a person, honey. It’s not uncommon at all.”
For once Daphna was not the least bit pleased to be praised. This was completely unsatisfying.
Latty turned to Dexter despite the look on Daphna’s face. “Dex,” she said, “rest assured, your father never intended to neglect you. He was not wasting his time. The reason he spent the last thirteen years scouting has nothing to do with finding actual books.”
“What do you mean?” Dex asked, trying to ignore the obvious implication that, unlike his stupendous sister, he had no will to succeed. Maybe he didn’t, but that made it no less insulting.
“I mean,” Latty said, “that what your father has been doing for thirteen years is searching for Adem Tarik.”
‘But—but, why?” Daphna asked.
“At first he was searching for information,” Latty explained. “And I certainly couldn’t blame him. In fact, I helped him. There were unanswered questions. No one ever took credit for discovering those caves, and no books were ever found, though I don’t know how they could’ve been after the collapse. The name Adem Tarik was all we had to go on. Your father and I spent months looking for answers when we moved here.”
“How come you didn’t look while you were still there?” Dex asked.
“That might have been easier,” Latty acknowledged, “but I pushed for us all to move right away. Your father was in such a bad state. I wanted him to get started on a new life as quickly as he could, so I flew here to find a house a few days after the accident. Your mom had already sold her shop, so I never even went back to Israel from Turkey. You all came a few weeks later.”
“If she sold her shop, why’d she go book hunting in the first place?” said Daphna.
Latty shrugged. “I guess it wasn’t completely out of her system. I wasn’t surprised she wanted to go. Not at all.”
“So, you never found out a single thing about Adem Tarik?” Dex asked, getting back to the point.
“Not one thing,” Latty confirmed. “But believe me, we tried. Eventually, I let it go, but I couldn’t get your father to do the same. I’m sorry now, but after a year or so, I encouraged him to consider scouting. It seemed like a good idea, even though it meant sometimes being away from you two. I thought the traveling lifestyle would be good for his health.”
“His health? Was he sick?” Daphna asked.
“Your father was a picture of health before the accident,” Latty said. “He’d never mention it, of course, but he was as strong as an ox. He could’ve run a marathon, even at his age. I’m not exaggerating.”
“Dad?” the twins scoffed.
“Yes,” Latty insisted, “but after the accident, he deteriorated. It was like his age caught up with him overnight. It wasn’t anything medical, the doctors said. Grief can do that to you.”
Latty paused to let a twitch pass over her cheek, and the twins could see plainly how fragile she was becoming. Her normally open, pink face was drawn and anxious. Her hair, usually kept in a neat bunch, was almost as out of whack as Dex’s spiky mess.
“They say traveling is the best medicine for mourning,” Latty continued. “To tell you the truth, I figured he’d settled into the job for its own sake years ago. He really did develop into a fairly decent scout. I wish I’d seen the signs better.”
“What signs?” Daphna asked.
“Well, for example, after scouting for a few months, he set aside a large amount of money—scouts keep a cache just in case a deal comes along that won’t wait for banks to open or checks to clear. The silly old-fashioned man stuffed his mattress with it.” Latty smiled at the thought.
Dex and Daphna looked at each other, relieved.
“But he wasn’t using it for that?” Dexter asked.
“I don’t think so. I’ve always done the financial record-keeping kids, so for that first period of time, I could see he was spending money on side-trips not related to the scouting itineraries I prepared. He was keeping up his search for Adem Tarik. I’m quite sure he really put the money aside so he could continue without having to endure my pestering him to get on with his life.”
The twins sat absorbing all of this, certain there was much more to ask. But before either thought of anything, Latty got up.
“Let’s go check on your father,” she said. “He’s been alone for far too long.”
CHAPTER 3
dirty words
“It’s that time again, everyone! Just say the word!”
“Wacky!” the audience shouted.
Dex and Daphna once again sat on the couch watching TV, or staring at it glumly anyway. The Anne & Anthony Show.
“Righteo!” said Anthony. He was a man with a chiseled jaw and the fakest smile ever.
“Okay, we have a caller on the line,” said Anne, the sculpted, bottle-blonde co-host. “Here’s your Wacky Word—remember,” she said, “if you define it correctly, you win! Anthony, why don’t you do the honors?”
“Love to, Anne.” Anthony flashed gleaming teeth at the camera and said, “Are you there, caller?”
“I’M PICKER!” the caller screamed, a man with the high, whining voice of a petulant child. Anne and Anthony, along with the entire audience, jerked back in their seats a bit.
“Whoa! Okay then, Picker!” Anne said. “We picked a doozy for you. Ready? It’s—’Whackembackemphobia.’”
“Abracadabra! Make me famous!” Picker shouted.
Dex and Daphna looked at each other and smirked.
“Aww,” Anthony said, “I’m afraid you only get one chance. ‘Whackembackemphobia,’ is the fear of broken ribs. Children get it when Mom slams on the brakes and whacks them with her arm to keep them in their seat.”
The audience laughed. Lots of nodding heads, especially among the kids.
“Shazam!” the man cried. “I AM PICKER! MAKE ME FAMOUS!’
The twins snickered.
“Well, Picker,” Anthony said, glancing offstage. “Best we can do is send you a couple of fine Anne and Anthony mini-statues. They’re good luck! Hang on the line—”
“I always tell them,” Picker blurted, “you gotta pick through a lot of garbage if you want to find a gem! That’s why I work here! I do it on my breaks! Make me fam—!”
There was a click. Picker was disconnected.
Anne and Anthony looked at each other, momentarily stripped of their grins. Then they shrugged.
“And they say our show is trashy!” Anthony quipped, recovering his face.
“Well, like they also say,” Anne added, “you can picker your friends, and you can picker your nose—but you can’t picker your friend’s nose!”
This joke was rewarded with gales of laughter from the audience.
Dex clicked the TV off.
“What a freak,” he said. “Shoulda tried ‘Please.’ That’s the real magic word, right?”
Daphna, who’d been contemplating the stupidity of morning TV, was jolted by Dex’s words.
“Um, Latty?” she gulped, barely able to contain her excitement. “Where does the garbage from Multnomah Village go?”
Latty didn’t look up from the drawer she was filling. “Metro Central, I think,” she said, “over in Northeast. Why do you ask?”
So Latty hadn’t been listening. Daphna scanned the room, wracking her brains for an idea.
“Dex and I are supposed to go see it. We’re working together on a—summer project. We’ve been putting it off forever. It’s due on the first day of school.”
“But, that’s eight days away!” said Latty, alarmed. “That’s not like you at all, Daphna. And right now is such a bad time to leave your father—Wait a moment, did you say you were doing a project together?” Latty looked at Dexter, unable to hide her wonder at the very idea. Dex hadn’t the slightest idea what his sister was talking about.
“Yes,” Daphna insisted, signaling to her brother with a significant look that this was important. “We’re supposed to take a tour,” she said, “and we’re supposed to keep a journal of what we see. A ledger—” she added as forcefully as she could.
Dexter looked at the TV, then finally caught on.
“Yeah!” he cried. “It’s my fault we haven’t done it yet. Daphna’s just being nice.”
“Teal’s in our group, too,” said Daphna. “Her mom’s supposed to take us over there this morning.”
“The girl that looks like you?”
Daphna nodded. But prettier, she couldn’t help thinking.
The twins looked at Latty as she considered the matter, worried she’d consider it all too unlikely a story. Latty seemed terribly anxious, but after a moment, she smiled broadly.
“This is the best news I’ve heard in who knows how long!” she declared, nodding like she always knew they’d come to like each other. But then a fearful look passed over her features again. “Oh, I guess I better not let my worries get in the way,” she said. “Your father will be fine. But, please, kids, please—be careful.”
“We will!” the twins promised, already halfway through the door.
In short order, they were scurrying through Multnomah Village, dodging the multitude of ruts, crevices and giant potholes in the roads along the way. It seemed like all they did anymore was tear through these crazy streets. It would be much easier if there were decent sidewalks. Despite the constant threats to their ankles, the twins were home in less than five minutes, trying to catch their breath in the kitchen.
“‘Abracadabra’ and ‘Shazam,’” Daphna panted. “They’re probably real Words of Power if you say them right! Someone at the dump must’ve found Rash’s Ledger!”
Dexter nodded, leaning on the table. “Thank God I threw it into a garbage truck!”
The moment Dex said this, Daphna realized why he’d thrown away Rash’s collected Words of Power. He’d finally admitted to her that he couldn’t read. So what good was the Ledger to him? She was sure he had the syndrome she’d heard about last year, a visual problem like Dyslexia that made words appear all mixed up and moving on their pages. She’d been meaning to look it up, but she hadn’t had the time with everything else going on.
“We’ve got to go out there,” Dexter said. “Let’s take a taxi.”
“Good idea. Do you have any money?”
The twins looked at each other.
Dex ran to his father’s room while Daphna called a cab.
When it arrived fifteen minutes later, Dex held out a stack of bills to the driver and said, “How fast can this thing go?”
CHAPTER 4
picker
For the following ten minutes, the twins—Dex white, Daphna green, both clutching door handles—watched the streets of Portland fly by under the wheels of their hurtling cab. The driver, whose license said his name was Herman Merk, seemed more than happy to endanger the lives of everyone in the vehicle. He went through five red lights, laughing at every squeal of tires and scrape of the undercarriage. But now he was finally slowing down.
It had been the most frightening ride of the twins’ lives, but they’d asked for it. Slowly, their terror subsided, and they began to look around at Industrial Northeast Portland.
Despite the fact it wasn’t long past nine o’clock, large, lumbering trucks belching black fumes turned this way and that around them. On either side of the straight roads were large, dilapidated warehouses and dirty silos. A persistent hum seemed to vibrate in the air amid the sounds of engines and the scrapes and groans of massive bundles being raised or lowered on forklifts.
The cab bumped over railroad tracks. Then it crossed a bridge and approached a large fence with an open gate. As they passed through, the buzz behind them was drowned out by a tumultuous noise coming from somewhere on the grounds of the facility.
Daphna was just about to let Herman know he could stop when yet another noise reached them, the sound of panicked cries. Seconds later, a mini-tide of white-faced workers, burly men in orange jumpsuits, flooded through the gate and rushed toward them.
Herman jammed on the brakes as the twins recoiled, but the men took no notice of the car. They fled around it as if running for their lives. Dex and Daphna turned to watch them bolting down the road. Just then, a bone-rattling collision rocked the cab, sending the twins crashing to the floor. When the car settled, Herman lunged through his door, bellowing. The twins, dazed but unharmed, followed suit.
An enormous piece of misshapen metal had been driven right through the hood. The engine was smoking.
Suddenly, something slammed and shattered on the gravel directly between the twins. It was, or had been, a stone birdbath. Dex and Daphna gawked at its carcass. Clearly, it would’ve killed one of them had it landed a foot away in either direction. Without a word, Herman turned and fled.
“What’s going on?” Dex asked, unable to look away from the deadly shards scattered at his feet.
“Let’s go see,” Daphna replied, more prudently peering up into the sky. It was empty but for a large number of pigeons flying furiously away from the area.
Hesitantly, the twins walked in through the gate, past an empty booth and toward an immense warehouse. The riotous noise they’d heard at the gate was coming from within. Devastating crashes, the sounds of breaking glass and tearing metal, were shaking the walls of the building.
As they approached, something shot into view, a black streak, out of a broken window. Garbage bags. Dozens of oversized garbage bags streamed into the air and fell to the ground like fantastically swollen black raindrops.
Dex and Daphna watched the spectacle with nervous fascination as they moved slowly toward the entrance of the warehouse. Once it came into view, their attention turned toward the now nearly earsplitting sounds coming from inside. It was dark and d
ifficult to see, even with the jagged shafts of sunlight slicing in. What they could see, they could scarcely believe.
Objects of every conceivable shape and size careened around the unlit interior of the warehouse in the midst of a newspaper, cardboard and plastic hurricane. With devastating force, the objects were colliding and crashing into the inner walls, most of which had been felled in the tumult. It was as if a giant hand was shaking a snow globe filled with all the world’s junk. Complete and total chaos reigned. Entering would surely kill them.
A voice, barely audible through the din, cried out something incomprehensible.
“Someone’s in there!” Daphna shouted.
“How could that be?” Dex yelled back.
The twins strained to listen, but just then, the pandemonium ceased. All in one instant, everything fell to the ground. It was as if someone had flipped a switch. Lighter objects, mostly sheets of plastic and newspaper, wafted around. It was the eeriest thing Dex and Daphna had ever seen.
For a moment, all was silent, but then the voice came again. “I AM PICKER!” it bellowed. “I will be famous!”
“That’s him!” Daphna whispered. “He’s got Rash’s Ledger!”
“Famous!” the voice wailed. “Famous!”
Without consulting each other about the wisdom of the idea, Dex and Daphna stepped tentatively into the warehouse. The smell was repulsive, but they put it out of their minds and tried to head toward the voice. Between the paper and plastic fluttering all around, and all the other debris now strewn willy-nilly, it was nearly impossible to move anywhere with purpose, but they did the best they could, working toward the cry of, “Famous! Famous! Famous!”
The twins chose different paths, each wending their way over and around stacks of sheet metal, mounds of concrete and piles of paint cans, but neither seemed to get any closer to the source of the voice. At some point, they ran into each other at the foot of a mountain of old tires. By then, both were covered in what looked like sheathes of laundry lint.
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