Max-Ernest lifted the lid of the cookie jar, then quickly closed it.
“What—moldy biscuits or something?” asked Cass.
“Something.”
“What?”
Max-Ernest wrinkled his face. “Sebastian…”
Cass winced. “You mean his ashes?”
“Unless they were just cleaning out the fireplace…”
Cass stared at the jar. “They must be taking him on the cruise.”
“The Egyptians mummified their pets all the time—it’s kind of the same thing,” said Max-Ernest. “I’ll bet there’ll be some cat mummies at the museum tomorrow. Hey, is that the trunk?”
The Jester’s trunk was lying in the shadows beneath the tailgate. Cass had resisted crying ever since they arrived at the garage sale, but at the sight of the trunk her eyes welled with tears.
“What’s wrong?” asked Max-Ernest. “Aren’t you glad we found it?”
“It’s Sebastian. He always helped us find everything. And now look, even when he’s dead, he still is.”
Cass laughed—and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
The trunk was much too heavy for the two of them to carry all the way to Cass’s house. They decided they would get their friend Yo-Yoji to help them move it later that evening. In the meantime, they pushed-pulled-heaved-shoved-lifted-dropped it into the small cement yard behind the firehouse.
“Hopefully, it’ll be safe for a few hours,” said Cass, standing victoriously over the trunk, her face pink and sweaty. “My grandfathers hardly ever come back here—as you can tell.” She gestured to the long vines hanging from the firefighters’ old basketball hoop.
“Aren’t you gonna open it?” Distressed, Max-Ernest put his hand on the trunk. The layers upon layers of travel stickers and receipts and address changes formed a crust over the surface that made the trunk slightly forbidding but all the more tempting. He couldn’t believe he’d put in all that effort and wasn’t going to be rewarded with a peek. “For all we know, this is our only chance. When we come back, it’ll be dark. And then—”
“OK, OK,” said Cass, who in truth wanted to look inside the trunk as much as Max-Ernest did. “Just don’t ask any questions about… you know. I shouldn’t have said anything about it.”
“Then how’m I supposed to help?”
“You’re not! That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“OK, but just let me ask you one question,” said Max-Ernest. “I was thinking about the story of the doctor who discovered the… it. Remember? The pharaoh executed him—after he told the pharaoh about the you-know-what.”
Cass gave him a look that said, Yes, I remember, but no, I don’t want to talk about it.
“He’s the one who wrote on the papyrus, right?”
Cass nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Do you think the papyrus was stolen from his grave? It must have been, right? I mean, how else—?”
Cass glared at him. “Max-Ernest! Do you want me to open the trunk or not?”
“Yeah, yeah, OK.”
Equally impressed and dismayed, Max-Ernest watched Cass work the large and complex combination lock that had stymied him months earlier when they first tried to open the trunk.
When she raised the trunk’s lid, Max-Ernest gasped involuntarily.
Cass hadn’t been exaggerating. Treasure was the right word. Inside the trunk, coins and jewelry and other precious objects sparkled tantalizingly—seemingly as bright and shiny as the day the lid first closed on them.
“Wow, your great-great-great-whatever-grandmother must have been a pretty good thief.”
“Yeah, she was,” said Cass proudly. “But she gave most of her stuff to the poor. I keep thinking—there must have been a reason she and the Jester left all this for me.”
Cass started pulling things out for inspection. Max-Ernest regarded the objects with awe, almost afraid to touch them.
“At first I was going to donate it—you know, for disaster preparedness or to fight global warming or child slavery,” she said, peering into a gold candlestick to see if anything was hidden inside. “But then I thought, who’s going to believe it’s mine?”
Cass opened a small silver box and found that it was full of uncut gems. They were beautiful even in their raw state and no doubt very precious, but they didn’t provide what she really was hoping for: another clue about the Secret.
Max-Ernest turned his attention to the brass lock. He still couldn’t get over the fact that Cass had managed to open it without him. He, not Cass, was supposed to be the expert combination cracker. Was she capable of finding the Secret without him, too? Of course, he wanted her to learn the Secret; so much depended on it. And yet—
“Hey, did you see this before?” he asked, examining the back of the lock. It protruded deeper into the trunk than might have been expected—like a box stuck to the inside of the trunk.
“Why?”
“Well, I was wondering why the back of the lock was so big—and then I saw this groove here, and I’m thinking that it might—”
He gripped the back of the lock and twisted; it unscrewed like the top of a jar.
“—come off like this,” he said, now holding it in his hand.
The back of the lock turned out to be a small box lined with cracked, papery old leather. Inside was a gleaming gold ring tied to a strip of shredded linen.
“Look—I think it’s Egyptian!” said Max-Ernest. “You think it belonged to the doctor?”
“Give that to me,” said Cass quickly.
Max-Ernest reluctantly handed her the ring.
Unexpectedly heavy for its size, it was molded from solid gold and resembled a signet ring. On top was a flat gold oval inlaid with lapis lazuli, the brilliant blue stone favored by the ancient Egyptians. Some of the stone had been chipped away, but enough was left to show the original image: a long-beaked bird presented in profile in the classic Egyptian style.
When Cass saw the bird, her pointy ears tingled with excitement. “Hey, um, is there a hieroglyph that looks like this?”
“Why? Does it look like one of the hieroglyphs you saw?” Max-Ernest knew that the Secret was supposed to be Cass’s, and Cass’s alone—they had been warned repeatedly that it was dangerous for anyone else to share knowledge of the Secret—but it was impossible not to ask.
“Just answer the question.”
“I thought you didn’t want any help.”
Cass gave him a look.
“Yeah, it’s the hieroglyph of an ibis. The ibis was worshipped by the Egyptians, so you see a lot of them,” said Max-Ernest, studying Cass’s reaction. “But it isn’t always just an ibis. Sometimes it’s a symbol for Thoth—”
Cass tried to keep her facial expression neutral. “Thoth?”
“Remember from the spa? The god of magic and writing and judge of the dead?” (Years before, near the beginning of their adventures together, the god’s name had proved vital in their quest to save Benjamin Blake at the Midnight Sun Spa.) “If you think about it, that would make more sense than an ibis. The Sec—I mean, it is supposed to be about immortality, right?”
“Max-Ernest! Thanks, but that’s enough, OK?”
His mouth tightly closed, Max-Ernest contemplated this unwanted and unexpected shift in his relationship with Cass. In the past, the quest for the Secret had always brought the two of them together. Would it ever be that way again, he wondered, or would the Secret forever come between them?
Avoiding his glance, Cass examined the ring.
After the papyrus had turned to dust, Cass had the presence of mind to sketch the hieroglyphs in her notebook—but her memory was hazy, and her knowledge of hieroglyphs was scant. At best, the hieroglyphs she’d drawn bore a shaky resemblance to the originals.
During her studies for the Egypt unit, she compared her drawings over and over again to the hieroglyphs she’d seen—but with little luck. Before today, she’d succeeded in identifying only the first two of the five hieroglyphs: they meant
because and what. Or she thought they did.
Now, thanks to the gold ring, she realized that the third hieroglyph depicted an ibis. She recognized the long curving beak. The rest of the bird—a football-shaped body atop stick-like legs—had been too smudged to read, at least in her recollection.
It wasn’t much, and it didn’t yet make any sense, but it was the beginning of the Secret:
Because what ibis
Or perhaps:
Because what Thoth
GRADUATION SPEECH
First Rough Draft (Or is it rough first draft? Or first draft of rough draft? Or… you get the point.)
By Max-Ernest, aka ME, i.e., Me, Myself, and I
ASSIGNED TOPIC: The Secret of Success
TITLE: Mummies, Middle School, and Me (That’s alliteration, if you didn’t know. Of course I know! I wrote it, duh…. Wait, you did? Then who am I?)
Open with mummy joke:
Maybe—
What is a mummy’s favorite musical program?
Name That Tomb.
—or—
What do you call a mummy who wins the lottery?
A lucky stiff.
—or—
What did the sign at the Egyptian funeral home say?
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED OR DOUBLE YOUR MUMMY BACK.
(Question: do I have to credit book I get joke from?)
Transition:
All joking aside, you might think mummies are a funny thing to talk about in a graduation speech.
Thesis:
If you really think about it, however, graduation resembles mummification in many ways. Both involve preparing for the next stage of life—or, in the case of mummies, the afterlife.
(Nice one, Max-Ernest. *Blushes* Why, thank you, Max-Ernest. Don’t mention it, Max-Ernest.)
Main Body of Speech (Ha-ha, get it? A mummy is a body—well, a dead one…):
As most people know, the mummification process begins with a corpse’s brain being pulled out of his nose.
This is a lot like learning—only in reverse. In school, our teachers put things in our brains so every student “knows” (knows/nose, get it?) everything he should. Although, to be honest, I think some teachers pull stuff out of our brains and try to make us empty “airheads.” (Probably shouldn’t put that in this speech, should I?)
Semi-random factoid: the Egyptians thought people thought with their hearts, not their brains, so you’d have to say “airheart” if you wanted to insult their intelligence—not that you would. The Egyptians were pretty smart.
Anyway, the Egyptians wanted to take everything they could with them into the afterlife: servants, animals, food. But when you graduate, you can’t necessarily take everything with you. Friends, for example. Everybody says that in upper school, sometimes people don’t even talk to their old friends. It’s like they don’t exist….
Wait. Scratch that. What does that have to do with anything? Back to mummies—
Max-Ernest had spent the entire bus ride to the Natural History Museum trying out mummy jokes for his graduation speech. (The opportunity to make a speech was an honor bestowed on him as Bookworm of the Year, winner of the Book-a-Day Reading Challenge; also, there was the fact that nobody else had volunteered.) By the time they neared their destination, his friends were brainstorming ways to silence him.
“Maybe we’ll find some loose mummy bandages and we can gag him with them,” suggested Yo-Yoji, who, as usual, had an entire seat to himself and was comfortably reclining with his long legs up, showing off his neon-orange sneakers.
Cass, sitting with Max-Ernest in the seat opposite Yo-Yoji, shook her head. “Nah, he would just tell jokes with his hands. Don’t forget he knows sign language.”
Max-Ernest nodded cheerfully. How many mummies does it take to change a lightbulb? he signed, mouthing the words.
“OK, so we tie his wrists together—” said Yo-Yoji, ignoring him.
“Forget it,” said Cass. “He’ll just tap Morse code with his foot.”
Max-Ernest started tapping the floor: N-O-N-E, T-H-E-Y L-I-V-E I-N E-T-E-R-N-A-L D-A-R-K-N-E-S-S.
“Then we’ll bury him in a sarcophagus,” Yo-Yoji persisted.
Cass shook her head again. “With our luck, an earthquake will push it to the surface, and he’ll jump out and tell some dumb joke about zombies—”
“Like this one?” asked Max-Ernest, grinning. “Do zombies eat hamburgers with their fingers?”
“See what I mean?”
“No, they eat their fingers separately!”
The plump boy who called himself Glob leaned over the seat in front of Max-Ernest. “Dude, zombies tell better jokes than you do—and I bet they give better graduation speeches, too.”
“Leave him alone, man,” said the boy sitting next to Glob, his voice muffled by the dreadlocks that covered his face. This was Daniel—more popularly known as Daniel-not-Danielle. “Zombies are cool. They kick mummy butt.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive categories, you know,” said Max-Ernest. “Zombie equals dead body that comes back to life. Mummy equals dead body. Ergo, mummy that comes back to life equals—”
“Silence, please!”
It was Mrs. Johnson, standing up near the front of the bus.
Our friends shrank in their seats. Although they were no longer quite as scared of their principal as they once had been, she still held the power to suspend them or even to prevent them from graduating middle school. And as much as they all feared graduating, there was one thing they all feared more: not graduating.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Johnson, holding on to her turquoise-blue hat as the bus lurched to a stop in front of the old brick museum. “Let’s start practicing our museum voices now. Remember, a museum is not a zoo. It is a place of quiet contemplation and reflection—”
UNWRAPPED: REAL MUMMIES!
DUSTY TOMBS. ANCIENT CURSES.
WALKING DEAD.
From King Tut to Boris Karloff*, mummies have long captured our imagination. Yet they are not just creatures of fantasy, haunting us on late-night television and on the streets at Halloween. They are material specimens of lost worlds—real people of the past whose bodies have been preserved so that we may study them today. What were their lives like? How did they die? What secrets do they hold in their ancient hands? Join us as these voyagers from the past take us on a journey across time.
SPECIAL THANKS TO EGYPT’S SUPREME COUNCIL OF ANTIQUITIES
EXHIBITION MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GRANT FROM SOLAR-ZERO LLC
Contrary to Mrs. Johnson’s assertion, the museum was quite loud. The marble floors and vaulted ceilings magnified the kids’ every footstep, and a lot of other sounds besides.
Most of the museum would be closed to the public for another two hours, and museum staff were using the time to repair exhibits and take inventory. It can be startling to hear soft-spoken curators shouting instructions or grave-faced museum guards joking with each other, but it certainly makes a museum livelier. If you’ve never visited a museum when it is closed, I recommend it; that’s when a museum really comes to life.
The special, behind-the-scenes tour had been arranged by Daniel-not-Danielle’s father, Dr. Albert Ndefo, who happened to be the chief curator of the mummy exhibit. Dr. Ndefo—also known as Albert 3-D, in reference to his three degrees: one in archaeology, one in anthropology, and one in Egyptology—greeted them next to the eight-foot-tall stone sarcophagus that stood just inside the entrance, dwarfing anyone who passed by. “Hi, everybody, welcome to chaos. We’re just doing a little rearranging before the noon rush!”
The Nigerian-born professor had dreadlocks like his son’s, but at the moment his were tied back under an old, camouflage-patterned sun hat that looked as though it had been to the desert and back more than once. He wore a T-shirt that said ARCHAEOLOGY—DIG IT!, and he ushered his guests into the exhibit as if they were entering an excavation of buried ruins.
“Watch your backs,” he warned. “The mummies most likely won�
��t attack, but museum workers have been known to shoot poison darts.”
As if on cue, a student bumped into a ladder, and a loose power cord fell down. Mrs. Johnson shrieked. Her students giggled.
“So, what is a mummy?” Albert 3-D asked rhetorically, beckoning the last few stragglers inside. “Simple: a mummy is any dead body whose tissue has been preserved beyond the usual time. In this exhibit, we have naturally occurring mummies as well as man-made ones. Mummies created in caves, in sand, in icebergs—and even, in the case of bog mummies, underwater.*. There are specimens from Peru, Chile, Greenland, Norway, and, of course, ancient Egypt. And then there are the animal mummies….”
The first room of the exhibit was large and gray, with few doors and fewer windows. It looked not unlike a tomb—a strange, futuristic tomb in which mummies were confined in protective glass cases. On the walls were big backlit photos of archaeological digs and ancient burial grounds that cast a ghostly fluorescent glow on the faces of the students.
The students fell silent as they got their first look at the mummies on display. While the bog mummies were hardly more substantial than rags, others looked strong enough to stand. Some were wrapped in the familiar linen bandages; others, in sheets. Some were naked; others were wearing elaborate jeweled garments. Some had hair; some were bald. Some were sitting up; some, lying down. One was curled in a ball; another was slumped over.
A few students had to look away and take deep breaths; the mummies of UNWRAPPED: REAL MUMMIES! were altogether more real than they had imagined.
Yo-Yoji shook his head. “Ridiculous, man.”
Max-Ernest nodded uncertainly. Ridiculous was a word that Yo-Yoji had been using often lately, but as with many of the words he adopted, you didn’t always know if it was meant in a positive or negative sense—or in some other sense comprehensible only to those fluent in the language of cool.
“I’ll let you look around, and then we’ll talk in a few minutes,” said Albert 3-D. “Unless someone has a question right now?”
“I do,” said Glob. “Is it true people fart after they die? And if a mummy farts, will it still stink a thousand years later when his coffin is opened?”
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