Book of Knowledge

by Slater, David Michael

  Daphna paused to swallow. She looked around the room. Everyone still seemed to believe her. But then Evelyn looked confused.

  “There were some books,” she said. “The twins seemed very agitated—”

  “Oh, gifts,” Daphna explained. “They just had their thirteenth birthday. The books are rare, but nothing too valuable.” Daphna held her breath, but Evelyn looked reasonably satisfied. It was hard to believe how well she was doing. All of this was coming to her freely. It was like she just needed help opening the tap, but once open, the lies flowed freely.

  “Can we get in touch with the kids?” Madden asked.

  “They promised to call every few days,” Daphna replied. “But otherwise, I’m not exactly sure where they’ll be.”

  “I see.”

  And that was it. They bought it all.

  The officers were somewhat concerned about not being able to take the twins’ statements, but Richards said it might not even be necessary. Eyeballs had been seen in the Village spending huge sums of money in the same stores from which he usually shoplifted.

  A suspicious shopowner called the police, and when they picked him up, he had not only piles of cash, but also an antique-style silver bookmark engraved with the initials MAW, for Milton Adam Wax. He’d claimed Milton gave it to him, along with the money. It seemed like an open and shut case.

  “He’s holding out on the names of his buddies,” said Madden, “but he won’t last. The amount of money he had, breaking into your house and taking it with a weapon—that’ll land him in McLaren down in Salem, which might encourage him to think about ways of shortening his stay. We’ll get all the boys, and we’ll get your money back, eventually. By the way, about how much did they take?”

  “Uh, um, well—” Daphna didn’t know what she should say, and worse, she was starting to tingle all over. She was going to turn back into herself.

  “No need to take a wild guess,” said Richards. He stood up, took a card from his breast pocket and handed it to Daphna. “Why don’t you take some time to figure that out, and give me a call when you think you know. We may need you to come down and give a statement, and we’ll probably need to talk to the kids when they get back. And you might consider a more secure location for your cash. Perhaps a safe.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that,” Daphna said, willing everyone to get going already.

  Officer Madden stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said. Evelyn got up, too.

  “No problem, Officers. Thanks so much for coming over—” Daphna opened the door, and to her immense relief, the policemen walked outside.

  Evelyn, however, stopped on the threshold and turned back. She was shaking her head, looking both pleased and baffled that things had so unexpectedly turned out so well.

  “Milton,” she said, “how’s your hip?”

  “Oh,” said Daphna. The tingling was intensifying, and something about the way Evelyn was looking at her made her nervous. Was she changing back right then and there?

  “Ah, it’s great, really,” Daphna said. “I’m so happy with it. Thanks for all your help, but I think I won’t stay over at the Home—”

  “That’s fine, Milton. I’ll take care of the paperwork.”

  “I should probably rest after driving around all night. You understand—”

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Evelyn scolded. Then she actually giggled. “What were you going to do in your condition? Still, I’m impressed with the superhero routine. You know I’ve always considered you a good friend, even if you haven’t been the best communicator.”

  “Ah—” Daphna was beginning to sweat. Should she run for the bathroom? Was Dex going to help? Then she realized what was going on. Evelyn was flirting with her.

  “I just want you to know that I’m here for you if you need me,” Evelyn said. “It will be tough for you without Latty. Teenagers aren’t easy to manage. If you need anything, call me.”

  “Um—thanks,” Daphna said. An idea came to mind, so she put her hand on Evelyn’s arm and said, “I really think we—I mean I really think I need a few days alone, to think, like totally by myself, after everything that’s happened.” She was tingling like crazy. She was going to have to run for it if this didn’t work right away.

  “I understand, like totally,” Evelyn teased. She put her free hand on Daphna’s hand. Then, before Daphna knew what hit her, Evelyn leaned forward and planted an awkward kiss on her cheek.

  Suddenly flushing like a schoolgirl, Evelyn turned and hurried off. Had she looked back for a final good-bye, she’d have seen a stunned Daphna Wax standing in the doorway with a hand at her cheek.

  Daphna remained where she was, too flustered to realize she’d become herself again. She didn’t even hear the heavy thud behind her. It was Dex, collapsing on the floor in hysterics. The sound of cackling came from the air where he lay.

  CHAPTER 18

  the good life

  “Oh, ha, ha, ha,” Daphna said, returning to her senses and quickly closing the door. “Come back, Dexter.”

  Dex reappeared. “First Emmet, then Antin, and now Evelyn,” he sniggered. “You’re one hot chick.” Dex felt a surge of ill will at having been forced to see his sister this way again—as someone’s potential girlfriend rather than just a girl. Of course, in this situation, she was a man, which was absurd.

  But regardless, from the moment Antin called her good-looking the other day, he’d been bothered about it. Just the fact that Daphna thought she could flirt with someone as dangerous as Emmet or Antin galled him.

  Of course, she hadn’t pulled it off with Antin, but still, watching the little romantic scene with Evelyn unfold had angered him to the point of irrationality. He’d plainly seen how distressed his sister was getting, yet he didn’t step in.

  “What’s wrong with you, Dexter!” Daphna demanded. “If Evelyn would’ve seen me change back, we’d’ve been doomed. She would’ve freaked out! But I’m sure that would’ve been worth a good chuckle.”

  As ridiculous as it was, Daphna couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride at having turned Evelyn’s affections to their advantage, even if she hadn’t accomplished it as herself. The disaster with Antin had cast some major doubt over her recently discovered flirting skills.

  Dex didn’t respond to his sister’s railing because he’d realized something. When Antin had knocked her nearly silly in the burned out bookstore, he hadn’t interfered then either, and it wasn’t because he was being restrained. He hadn’t even tried.

  Now Dex knew why: secretly, he’d been pleased. He couldn’t face it at the time, but there it was. Dex felt horrible about it now—Daphna had been trying to save their lives! He also finally understood what an idiot he’d been for almost letting Evelyn find them out.

  But, he wasn’t going to dwell on guilty feelings. How could Daphna blame him anyway? He was just doing whatever he was doing in this life, right? Dex wondered if maybe people weren’t even responsible for reactions they didn’t intend. Maybe thoughts crossed people’s minds as randomly as words crossed the pages of the Book of Nonsense. If you lived a trillion lives, what thought wouldn’t you have?

  “All right, all right,” Dex said, getting up. “Keep your hair on. I wasn’t going to let her see you change back. You seem to enjoy flirting, anyway.”

  “Fine, whatever, Dexter,” Daphna retorted. “I imagine if she’d seen me change back, you would’ve solved the situation in a way you’d’ve enjoyed more, like by bashing her in the head with something.”

  “Yeah, that was my plan exactly,” Dex snapped, but he’d been stung. He didn’t know Daphna had seen how elated he’d been after thrashing Antin and all his thugs. It did get them out of the ABC, didn’t it? He hadn’t enjoyed hurting anyone. Maybe he’d only enjoyed their trying to get out of his way.

  “Anyway,” Daphna said, “my flirting probably bought us a week of privacy. If we’re lucky. Shall we spend the whole time bickering?”

  “I guess not,” Dex said. “I guess
we better get busy. But man, that Evelyn lady. Is she pathetic or what?”

  “She’s lonely. Don’t be such a jerk.”

  “Got a crush, do you? You two are soul mates, you know. Maybe she’ll bring you that gift we saw in her files for Dad.”

  “Shut up, Dexter! Look, there are things we need to do.”

  “I know, I know,” Dex conceded. Enough was enough. “We’d better get back to our books.”

  “There’s that,” Daphna agreed, “but don’t you think we better figure out a way to get the rest of that money back before the cops do? Who knows how long it’ll take for them to give it back if they find it. And what are they gonna think if they find out how much it really is? It looked like hundreds of thousands of dollars! That’s probably money Dad—Adem Tarik—I don’t know what to call him! It’s probably money he collected over who knows how long. They’re going to have questions, Dexter.

  “And then there’s Latty! Don’t you think we should at least try to find her and tell her what’s going on? The poor woman probably is running cross country, looking for a place to hide! After all she’s done for us! We’ve been totally ungrateful. I feel worse than I did about the way I treated the Dwarves—I mean the Council!”

  As usual, Dex realized, he hadn’t thought everything out. As usual, his sister had. “Okay,” he said. “What should we do first?”

  “Well, I guess it makes sense for me to do some scouting. I’ll teleport to the police station to see if they know any more than Evelyn told us. I wish I could be invisible, too. Then, it’d be easy. But still, if I can look like anyone—” Daphna made up her mind. “I think you should hit the books, or book, again. It’s too bad you can’t read the Ledger, but still, you could find more Words in the Book of Nonsense.”

  “Okay,” Dex agreed, trying not to sound as pessimistic as he felt.

  “Right, then.” And with that, Daphna spoke a Word, and she was gone.

  Dex took in a breath and slowly let it out. The inevitable frustrations awaiting him were daunting, but he forced himself to slouch downstairs and sit at his desk. The word he’d last been trying was gone, so he picked a new one at random. Of course, nothing happened when he tried it. The phone rang. Dex stood up, paced around the room until it went silent, then sat down again. He tried the next word. Nothing. He went on to the next. Nothing. The next, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  For nearly an hour, Dex kept at it, but soon enough, his stamina waned. He began getting up more frequently to kick debris around his floor. The phone kept interrupting, too. Gradually, the breaks got longer and longer. Dex took a nap. He built some weird gadgets out of spare parts under his bed. He watched TV. He ate lunch. He took another nap.

  Dexter’s third nap developed into a full-fledged slumber, and he slept right into the late evening. When he finally jolted awake, he lurched off his bed, realizing he’d lost several hours of valuable time. One more try, he decided, lurching sleepily back to the desk. He sat down, chose a word and said it.

  Nothing.

  “That’s it,” he hissed, standing up. With a forced calmness, Dex took up the old book. To hell with it, he thought, the Council wanted it destroyed anyway. He got a good grip on each cover and prepared to pull it to pieces.

  “Dexter! What are you doing?”

  Dex dropped the book and fell into his chair, scared to death again. “STOP DOING THAT!” he roared.

  “I’m sorry!” Daphna said. “I’m sorry. Look.” She dropped a heavy, bulging garbage bag onto the floor. Then she grabbed a handful of plastic from the bottom and overturned the whole thing. Out tumbled bundles and bundles of cash.

  Dex rushed over and picked some up. “How did you do it?” He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or annoyed. He was both.

  “It was in the ABC.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Daphna described her afternoon. She’d first teleported to the police station disguised as a stranger. Inside, she’d hung around for almost two hours hoping to overhear something, though she had to go into the bathroom every ten minutes or so to keep from changing back into herself, which made her sure she was going to miss something.

  Finally, just as she was about to give up, three cops came in dragging along what looked like the rest of Antin’s flunkies, though not Antin himself. A couple of them were crying, and they were all pleading not to be sent to jail.

  “They didn’t look so tough anymore,” Daphna commented. She’d walked along behind them until they were hauled past a barrier she couldn’t cross, but she managed to hear one of them whisper to another, “Just, whatever you do, man, don’t mention that bookstore. Give ‘em all kinds of places if you gotta. He’ll mangle us with worse than broken boards.”

  “Wow,” Dex said. He couldn’t help but smile at the image of those jerks reduced to tears. He bet more than one of them was wetting himself then.

  “So I went to the ABC,” Daphna explained. “Antin was in there, underneath, in the dark, sitting on top of all the money.”

  “Sitting on top of it?”

  “Yeah. He was just sitting there talking to himself about how he was going to throttle all those morons, how he’d told them to lay low, not go spending money all over the place like a bunch of imbeciles. Some of the time he paced around, ranting and raving about his birthday and being hungry. He was probably looking over his shoulder every two seconds. He’s crazy, Dex. He’s way worse than Emmet ever was.”

  “So what did you do?” Dex wanted to ask whether she’d made out with him to get the money, but he restrained himself.

  “I just sat in the dark and listened,” Daphna said. “After—well, I don’t really know how long it was—but eventually, he stormed out, probably to get food. So anyway, I just grabbed the bag and teleported back here.”

  “And it came with you—”

  “Yeah, what do you mean?”

  “If you’re holding on to something, it teleports with you.”

  “Yeah! Maybe I could take you!”

  “That’s what I was think—” The phone rang just then. “It’s been doing that all day,” Dex groaned. “Probably Evelyn looking for another kiss.”

  “I take it things didn’t go so well here,” Daphna said. “But it’s no big deal. We just have to keep at it. I’m wiped out again, but we still have five whole days left.”

  “We have as long as we want,” Dex corrected. Why that didn’t occur to him until just then, he had no idea.

  “What do you mean? School starts on Monday.”

  “School starts when we go to school, Daphna. Think about it. Who’s here to make us go?”

  “Dexter,” Daphna said sharply, “we have to go to school. We have to make it look like our lives are totally normal for as long as we can. Otherwise, everyone will be on to us, and who knows where we’ll end up.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Dex groused. That was obviously true.

  Daphna was relieved this didn’t develop into another massive argument. “I’m starving,” she abruptly announced. “I skipped lunch.”

  Dexter was hungry too, so the twins headed upstairs. When they reached the kitchen, they both smelled something delicious, which was odd since neither of them had prepared anything. The smell wasn’t coming from the kitchen, so they wandered around until Dex opened the front door. There on the doorstep was a steaming tureen of soup. Next to it was a basket containing nuts and chocolates. Dex brought them inside.

  “What in the world?” Daphna asked.

  “There’s a note in the basket,” Dex said, heading right to the kitchen table. Eat first and ask questions later was his thinking.

  Daphna took the folded note. Dear Milton, she read, I know things have been awfully rough on you and the kids lately. I respect your need to be alone, but that doesn’t mean you have to be hungry! I’m betting Latty did most of the cooking, so I thought I’d help ease the transition with my Skordalia. Hope you like garlic! Bon appetit. Love, Evelyn.

  “Hey,” Dex said with
a mouthful of soup. “Potatoes! This is delicious!”

  Daphna served herself some soup and tried it. “Yum!” she agreed. “Walnuts, too.” Then she turned thoughtful for a moment. “You know, Dex,” she said, “maybe we’ve been looking at this situation all wrong.”

  “No doubt. If you’d’ve let her kiss you on the lips, who knows what we might’ve gotten.”

  “Funny, Dexter. But I mean it. Think about it. We’re rich, totally free, and now we have our own cook! This is what you call the good life.”

  The phone rang again just then.

  “Evelyn,” Dex said.

  The twins waited it out, then dove back into their soup. The pair ate with relish, and fifteen minutes later, they sat back, satisfied. The phone rang again, and they ignored it again. But when it stopped, something occurred to Dexter.

  “Why would Evelyn keep calling if she respects Dad’s need to be alone?” he asked.

  “She wouldn’t,” Daphna said, reaching quickly for the phone. She keyed in the voicemail code, and the twins both listened in.

  CHAPTER 19

  black spider, brown cow

  Beeeep. Message one: no message. Beeeep. Message two: no message. Beeeep. Message three: no message. Beeeep. Message four: no message. It wasn’t until message seventeen when an urgent but familiar whisper came on.

  “Kids, this is Latty. I don’t know what else to do but leave a message. I’ve been calling all day. Please listen to this and then erase it right away. You might have reasons not to answer the phone, but I beg you to find a way to let me know you are safe. I have to know you’re okay, or I’ll lose my nerve completely.

  “I know your father, Adem Tarik, is gone. I’m following him. He came home last night and found the money gone. I saw this from outside his bedroom window. I assume you moved it, and that makes me slightly less anxious about you right now. If you need anything, anything at all, buy it. Use that web delivery service I use for groceries.