The Mapmaker and the Ghost Read online

  “We got another one,” he heard Brains say.

  Lint looked up. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Guard her, Lint. This is no joke. Spitbubble’s in a foul mood.”

  And then Birch saw her—she was being led into the room by Brains. Birch’s face broke into a wide grin.

  Goldenrod loosened herself from Brains’s grasp and hurried over to him. Birch immediately threw himself at her, holding on to her in a tight hug.

  Goldenrod patted him on the head. Birch was so happy and relieved to see her that it was a few moments before he began to realize that if Goldenrod were in here—who on earth was out there to rescue him?

  14

  THE LAB

  “So you know that girl, right, Brains? You know her family?” Spitbubble said as Brains came back up the stairs. He was leaning against the cavern wall, arms folded in front of his thin chest.

  “Yeah…,” Brains trailed off.

  “Good. Think of a way of scaring her and that little brat into never breathing a word of this to anyone. I expect you to make good on your nickname.” Spitbubble straightened himself out. “And make sure everything is set for tomorrow,” he said casually as he strolled out of the cavern.

  Easy for him to say, Brains thought to himself about a half hour later as he kicked a pebble moodily and walked into the bright sunshine. He was always the one that was coming up with the plans. Then again, who else would do it? he thought as he looked to the clearing by the side of the cavern and saw No-Bone, Toe Jam, and Snotshot arguing while they were trying to make up teams for a game of tug-of-war. Toe Jam had created a nice mud pit with the help of the hose that Brains had hooked up a few weeks ago and they were using an old, frayed rope that one of them had picked up from somewhere. It was getting hard to keep track of who was contributing what to their inventory.

  Toe Jam spotted him as he walked toward them.

  “You’re on my team, Brains.”

  Brains shook his head. “I can’t. I have work to do for Spitbubble.”

  “In your super secret lab, I bet,” Snotshot snorted.

  “It’s not super secret. It’s just super secret to you because you don’t understand what I’m doing,” Brains said coolly.

  “Brains, no one understands what you’re doing. Albert Einstein would probably have a hard time,” Snotshot said.

  Brains smirked smugly.

  “Although,” Snotshot continued, “perhaps Thomas Edison might have a clue.”

  Brains glared at her. She knew how he felt about that backstabber Edison.

  “Without me—” he started.

  “Yes, yes, we know,” No-Bone said, as he grabbed hold of one end of the rope. “There would never be a plan, and we’d all be doomed to go back to our homes.”

  “And don’t you forget it,” Brains said.

  “How could we? You won’t let us,” No-Bone said.

  “Brains, are you going to play or not?” Toe Jam asked.

  “Not,” Brains said.

  “Okay, fine. Then I’ll be on Snotshot’s team,” Toe Jam said, a little too eagerly.

  “Dude, no way,” No-Bone said. “This is how we always team up. How else are we going to keep ultimate score?”

  “But this isn’t fair!” Toe Jam said. “Lint’s not here to be on my team. Unless he can come out—” Toe Jam looked hopefully at Brains.

  “Absolutely not,” Brains said. “Lint’s on guard, and he’s staying there.”

  “Fine,” Toe Jam said. “New teams, then.”

  “You can’t always be on the winning side, Toe Jam,” No-Bone said. “It’ll be good for you to learn how to be a gracious loser.” He smirked.

  “Who are you calling a loser?” Toe Jam said and then, after a pause, “Seriously though, you’re both older and bigger than me. How is this fair?”

  “Oh, fine,” Snotshot butted in. “Stop your whining. I’ll be on a side by myself.”

  Brains took one last glance at Toe Jam’s defeated face. He could almost see the wheels turning in his head, trying to think of a clever reason to be on Snotshot’s team instead.

  Brains rolled his eyes as he turned around.

  “Wait,” No-Bone called, and ran up to give him the crumpled piece of grid paper. “Here, I finished the camera diagram.”

  “Great. We’re all set,” Brains said.

  While No-Bone returned to his rowdy game of tug-of-war, Brains walked deeper into the woods. He needed to go to a place with no distractions.

  Soon, the other kids’ voices were replaced with the sound of a running stream. As soon as he heard the water, he let himself do what he never allowed himself to in front of the others—worry. So much of what everyone had done hinged on his plans and thoughts. What if something were to go wrong? What if they couldn’t get the right equipment tomorrow or, worse, what if he’d miscalculated something and the generator wouldn’t work at all?

  And now, on top of everything else, he had to find a way to scare the Morams. As Brains passed by all the lush forest greenery, he was instantly reminded of the most vivid thing he knew about them: that they lived in a nice house with sweet parents and a pretty extraordinary garden.

  He had played in that garden a lot way back in kindergarten, when the foster home he was staying at was only a block away from the Morams’ house. He remembered how he and Goldenrod had dug holes for tulip bulbs while her mother had brought them out peach iced tea and fruit snacks. Every now and again, when he had happened to pass by the Morams’ house in the springtime, he had seen those tulips, now grown purple, red, and yellow, and he’d been reminded of that happy and simple summer.

  But that was a long time and many foster homes ago. This is my home now, he thought, as he stepped into a small stone cave situated right by the stream.

  Unlike the lair, this cave consisted of only one longish room. Most of it was taken up by a large wooden table on top of which lay all sorts of beakers, Bunsen burners, wires, plugs, circuit boards, a microscope, a telescope, and other various scientific instruments. Most of the equipment came as a result of meshing together a few different chemistry sets. Some of the supplies No-Bone had graciously nicked from the middle school laboratory before school let out. And some, like the telescope and a lot of the electric wires, Spitbubble had actually allotted some money to because he believed in their importance.

  In a lot of ways, the lab was the greatest part of being a member of the Gross-Out Gang. Obviously, Brains was aware that he was smart, but it was one of the first times he felt that someone else really appreciated it. None of his foster parents had ever stuck around long enough to really know that about him: troublemaker, yes, but brilliant troublemaker, not so much. Even though, really, how was a scientist supposed to come up with new theories and inventions if he didn’t accidentally blow up a basement or two?

  “Right?” Brains said directly to the poster that was taped above his workstation. A man with gelled black hair, a mustache, and a slight smile looked back at him. His hero, Nikola Tesla.

  Tesla was a pioneer in electricity and radio. He invented the Tesla coil, capable of shooting one million volts of electricity into the air, which he loved to use during demonstrations simply to keep his audience on their toes. He would amaze and confound them by lighting bulbs that were plugged into nowhere. He helped invent robots and remote controls. And he was a bit of a mad scientist. In a word, he was the very definition of awesome.

  Oh, and he’d had a pretty serious rivalry going on with Thomas Edison. Brains was totally on Tesla’s side, of course.

  The thing was, if Tesla could come up with all those ideas in the late nineteenth century, surely Brains could solve the Gross-Out Gang’s problems with just a little bit of help from twenty-first century equipment.

  Brains closed his eyes and listened for the faint sound of gurgling. That gurgling came from the underground hot springs that started below the lab and ran all the way to the giant lair. And that gurgling was the key to Brains’s plan to bring hea
t and electricity to the lair and to make the forest a permanent home for all of them.

  He allowed himself a small smile.

  A short while later, Brains was putting on a disguise in the form of a navy baseball cap attached to a blond mullet—probably a donation from Snotshot’s old theater department. He put his new, carefully prepared brown box underneath one arm, gave a final nod to Tesla, and set out to, as Spitbubble had said, make good on his nickname.

  15

  GOLDENROD’S FAN BASE

  Goldenrod and Birch had been sitting side by side against the cavern wall for only a few seconds when Goldenrod had to ask, “How did you get here?” She whispered it to him, keeping an eye on Lint’s massive back, which was blocking their exit.

  Birch looked guilty. “I followed you,” he finally whispered back.

  “Why?”

  “I dunno. I was bored. Whatever you were doing seemed like more fun than being at home … What were you doing, anyway?”

  Goldenrod shrugged. Considering all that had happened, it now seemed silly to keep her mapmaking such a big, dark secret. “Oh, I was just drawing a map,” she finally said.

  “A map?”

  “Yeah, a really detailed map of all of Pilmilton. That’s why I was exploring the woods.”

  “Is that why you’re all green and brown and stuff ?”

  “Well, I was trying to blend in so they wouldn’t see me—” Goldenrod started.

  “Cool!” Birch’s blotchy face suddenly brightened, and Goldenrod had to smile. If only everyone else in the world was as big a fan of hers as he was. For a moment, she thought about telling Birch all about Meriwether too. But when she looked into his eyes and saw dark pools of worry, she reconsidered. It seemed like Birch might have already had enough frights for one day and ghost stories were probably not going to help.

  “How did you land in the middle of that clearing?” Goldenrod whispered instead.

  “I lost you for a minute when you started running. And then I was just following the sound of your footsteps, and before I knew it—”

  “Jonas and Charlie,” Goldenrod interjected.

  “They call themselves Brains and Lint here,” Birch whispered. “And the girl is Snotshot. And then there’s No-Bone and Toe Jam.” Birch counted off on his fingers. “And, of course, Spitbubble.”

  Goldenrod was impressed. “Looks like you’ve picked up a lot.”

  “Yeah, well, I also happened to hear all about their plan to break into the museum tomorrow. Which is probably why they’re not going to let us go.” Birch looked sad again.

  Goldenrod had gathered as much too, though she still couldn’t figure out what on earth they could want from the science museum. “Well, we’re here together now,” she said brightly to Birch. “Like Dad always says, two Morams are better than one!”

  Birch gave a weak smile. He was silent for a minute before speaking again. “I did something kinda bad to get here,” he finally said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mom—she thinks I’m sick and in bed. She has to know by now that I’m gone. She’ll be so upset …” Birch’s voice trailed off.

  Goldenrod put her arm around his shoulder and whispered even more softly, close in his ear, “We’ll find a way out of here. We have to.”

  Mrs. Moram had spent a very satisfying morning in her garden, pruning and weeding. Her dahlias were coming along exceptionally well this summer, a particularly bright, purple one causing her an immense amount of cheer. She’d have to take a picture and send it in to the Dahlia Society. It definitely had a shot of ending up in next month’s newsletter.

  She’d hardly noticed the time go by as she worked in the sun. It had been cool and breezy for July, one of those perfect gardening days, and she had so enjoyed her time outside that she all but forgot her other responsibilities.

  It was only when she heard Mr. Chen, one of her neighbors, call in his son for lunch that she realized she was hungry. And goodness, Birch must be too.

  Mrs. Moram first went into the kitchen and rummaged around in a cabinet. She found a can of chicken noodle soup in the very back. She popped it open and set about heating it up which, unlike Mr. Moram and his obsession with food creation, was about as complicated as her cooking skills ever got. While the soup was bubbling, she poured a glass of orange juice and toasted a piece of bread in the special “smiley-face” setting of their toaster. She smeared the toast with some strawberry jam, ladled the soup into Birch’s favorite bowl, and set up the whole meal on a little tray. Then she took out a small, skinny vase and filled it with a few of the budding goldenrods that she had plucked that morning.

  She smiled as she artfully arranged the tall, bright yellow stalks. Mrs. Moram knew that goldenrods were an odd choice of favorite flower for a gardener. They weren’t necessarily the prettiest and, in fact, were often mistaken for weeds. But she found them beautiful and resilient. She loved their bold, unapologetic yellow color. She loved that they were wildflowers, not easily killed or intimidated like a lot of the other more traditionally cultivated species. They were strong instead of delicate, and she thought that every garden should have a good mixture of both.

  When the whole thing looked just right, Mrs. Moram took the tray and set off upstairs.

  She entered Birch’s quiet room. He was lying very still on his bed. He must be really sick, she thought to herself, feeling sorry for her poor son.

  She gently put the tray down on his bedside table and went to rearrange the covers around him.

  BUZZ!!!

  It was their exceptionally loud doorbell. Mrs. Moram jumped and, in doing so, moved the covers a little with her hand, causing her to think that Birch had stirred.

  “Seed of the Month Club Delivery,” she heard a loud and cheerful voice calling.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to wake you, sweetie. Let me go get that, and I’ll come check on you in a bit, okay? Have some soup,” she said, as she hurried excitedly out of Birch’s room and toward the front door.

  16

  A DISHONEST LIVING

  Spitbubble was proud of his height; it allowed him to look rather menacing when he walked, as he placed one firm marchlike step in front of the other. It also helped that he kept his fists balled up at all times, as if ready for a brawl with anyone in his warpath. But he knew that his strongest weapon was his black glare, the way it could, and had, stopped many people in the middle of a conversation, made them falter, made them show weakness.

  He was using this glare now as he stared across a glass counter to a leather-faced man with a stringy ponytail hanging morosely from his otherwise bald head. The man was examining Toe Jam’s gold coin minutely.

  “Looks dirty,” he finally grunted.

  “That’s because it’s old. Antique. Check out the date.” Spitbubble pointed to the ancient date inscribed on the coin’s surface.

  “Humph,” the man, called Barnes, said.

  They were standing inside Barnes’s Barn, Pilmilton’s tiny pawnshop that was filled to the brim with useless junk that people had cast off through the years. The case Barnes and Spitbubble were leaning over was filled with probably at least fifty items in and of itself: clocks that had no hands, tarnished earrings with no mate, an object that might have either been a medieval torture device or a really dirty spork.

  Spitbubble, however, knew that this junk wasn’t how Barnes really made his living. The store mostly served as a front for the kinds of things that Barnes really collected and sold to handpicked clientele. Things like famously misplaced paintings and the rare and valuable coin he was now turning over in his hands.

  “I’ll give you seventy-five bucks,” Barnes finally said.

  “That’s not what this is worth,” Spitbubble said calmly.

  “If you can find someone else who’s willing to pay more, I’ll gladly consider a counteroffer,” Barnes sneered. Being the only pawnshop owner in town had its advantages, especially if you also happened to be okay with more than a little dishonesty.
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  Spitbubble thought for a minute, took in a deep breath, and then quick as a flash snatched the coin out of Barnes’s hand and returned it to his pocket. “All right. No biggie. See you later, then.”

  He barely got a glimpse of Barnes’s utterly startled face as he calmly turned on his heels and strode the two steps it took to reach the front door. He had just pushed it open when he heard, “Wait.”

  He turned around calmly and stared at the man, who was now stretching his cracked lips into something that might be considered a smile in a creepy, horror-movie-bellhop sort of way. “I can see I’m dealing with a pro here,” Barnes said.

  “I don’t have time for your hot air,” Spitbubble said breezily. “We both know that I have a one-of-a-kind and valuable item.”

  “And we both know it wasn’t exactly left to you by your dear, dead aunt Gertrude,” Barnes grumbled.

  They glared at each other for a moment. “Three hundred,” Barnes finally said.

  “Five hundred,” Spitbubble said.

  “Three-fifty is my final offer,” Barnes said. “I could have you arrested, you know.”

  “Ditto,” Spitbubble said coolly. He used his black glare one more time with his hand still on the shop door.

  “Fine! Four hundred. But that is absolutely it, you sniveling brat.”

  Spitbubble smiled as he marched into the most perfect-looking suburban block any television show creator could have imagined. The whole street was lined with big, leafy maple trees, and each house was a slightly different color combination than the next. One was pink with a gray roof. The next, green with a black roof. The next, yellow with a blue roof. And so on. Each different, but the same.

  With his infamous glare, Spitbubble zoned in on one particular house, the gray one with the black roof, and strode up to it. He opened the gate of the house’s white picket fence, marched up the driveway, and banged a fist on the front door, causing it to swing open easily. He strode into the quiet, pristine house as if he owned the place, smirking a little at the mahogany furniture, matching beige sofa set, and, most especially, ginormous framed black-and-white photo that hung over the fireplace. It was of a young dark-haired boy in a patterned sweater, grinning a missing-toothed grin, and posing with one hand under his chin.