Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (7 page)

“‘In yellow pages find the name,’” said Scott. “You think
you’re supposed to find the name Merlin in the original poem? Hold on.” Erno could hear Scott muttering to himself before his voice came back clear, and clearly excited. “In the first poem there are two
M
s, eighteen
E
s, seven
R
s, four
L
s, and three each of
I
s and
N
s. Two-one-eight, seven-four-three-three.”

“That’s just enough digits to be a local phone number.”

“It said to … what, make a call?”

“Pay a call,” said Erno. “Doesn’t that mean to visit someone?”

“The phone number’s worth trying anyway, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I’ll call you back.”

Erno hung up, tried the number, then dialed Scott’s again. “Didn’t work,” he told him. “I got one of those ‘The number you’ve dialed is no longer in service’ messages.”

“Well, but listen to this: in the original poem, the first M is the twenty-fourth letter. The first
E
is the third. If you check them all like that you get two-four-three, four-one-four, two-three-three-four.”

“That’s long distance,” said Erno. “What area code is that?”

“It’s the Congo. In Africa. I just looked it up.”

Erno bit at a hangnail. “If this isn’t the answer, Mr. Wilson is gonna kill me for calling the Congo.”

“Can you do it as a three-way call?”

Erno could, and soon both boys listened as the number rang for the second, third, fourth time. Then voice mail:

“You have reached the voice-mail box for
THIS ISN’T A CLUE, EITHER
. If you’d like to leave a message—”

Erno opted not to leave a message.

At lunch the following day, Erno sat at the end of the table and glared at the yellow pages, too antsy to care much what Denton or Roger or Louis thought anymore. Veterans Day was in two days.

“What is that thing again?” asked Denton.

Erno mumbled, “It’s a class assignment,” which was now technically true.

Suddenly a big book fumped down on the bench beside him: a fat brick of flimsy yellow paper. The Yellow Pages. Scott stood over him.

“Not
those
yellow pages,” he said, pointing to the poems in Erno’s hands. “
These
Yellow Pages.”

“Have you been carrying that around all day?”

“No, I just borrowed it from the school office.”

“Um, guys,” said Erno to the guys. “You remember
Scott, right?” They each nodded or grunted or didn’t do anything at all.

Scott sat down. “‘
In yellow pages start your quest. Find the name.’
Well, look at this.” He thumbed through the book to a page he’d marked, then traced his finger down to a small box in the corner:

MERLE LYNN
C.P.A.
Tax and Financial Planning

211 E. Ambrose 215-5937

“Start your quest?” Denton scoffed.

“
Nerd
quest,” said Louis.

“The quest for the … the quest for the … magical ….” said Roger, struggling to finish, “… calculator. Am I right?” He grinned, palm in the air, and awaited his high fives.

“If this doesn’t work I can just run away from home,” said Erno later after school. “There are probably all kinds of other families that would be happy to have me. I’m not
completely
stupid, right? I could play their games and take their tests and beat the pants off their biological kids.”

“I don’t think other families have tests,” Scott answered. “Sorry my little sister is tagging along.”

“It’s fine. Long as she doesn’t mind visiting Merle Lynn,
C.P.A., on her way home.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” said Polly. “Ooh! Yard sale! Kid’s yard sale!”

A girl of seven or eight stood in her front yard behind a TV tray and a bright orange poster that read
FOR SALE.

“We don’t have time,” said Scott. But Polly was already bounding up the yard, singing, “Yooou only say that’ cause
YOU’RE
mean, an’ you have abandonment tissues.”

Erno looked at Scott. “‘Tissues’?”

“She means
issues
.”

“So your mom’s a scientist?”

“A physicist, yeah.”

“Factory or headquarters?” asked Erno. There was no question that she worked for Goodco in some capacity. Why else would a family move here? Scott said his mom worked at headquarters, and Erno was relieved to hear it. HQ kids and factory kids didn’t mix much.

The yard girl was selling those kinds of toys that were popular in drugstores and dollar shops. Action figures with
SOLDIER HERO
printed on their uniforms. Fashion dolls with names like Marbie and Babbie. Polly examined a stiff little figurine of a prince nobody had ever heard of with a lean sword and a shield shaped like tree bark.

“Where’d you get him?” she asked the girl.

“Cereal box.”

Polly paid fifty cents for the prince, and she marched
him up and down Scott’s backpack all the way to Ambrose Street.

“Stop that,” said Scott.

Erno nudged him. “This is it.”

They were standing in front of a high-peaked row house: all eaves and gables and a tall turret topped with a conical cap. A plaque on the porch read
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT
. Two filing cabinets sat like young lovers on the porch swing.

Scott and Erno approached the front door while Polly hung back a few steps, suddenly shy. Erno rang the bell, and a man answered.

He was an ample, bowling pin–shaped man with a gray beard trimmed close. He wore a threadbare blue bathrobe over his boxers and wifebeater. The robe was pilly in places and no more than a meager crosshatch of thin gauze in others. It appeared to be worn not so much out of modesty as out of a sense of loyalty to the garment itself.

“Hey,” said the man. And when none of the kids immediately answered, he added, “Selling candy?”

“Um, no,” said Erno.

“Too bad.”

“Are you… Mr. Lynn?”

“Call me Merle.”

The hall behind Merle was cluttered with plastic
binders and cardboard boxes. And dust. Erno didn’t know what he was supposed to do. If this Merle was in on the game, he wasn’t being very forthcoming about it.

“You have an owl,” said Polly behind them. The boys followed her gaze past Merle into the house—and then they too could just see a live barn owl watching them from a fireplace mantel in the next room.

“That’s true,” said Merle. “Do you like him? Is that cool?”

“It’s … a little weird,” said Scott.

“Yeah. You don’t know the half of it, kid.”

Polly abruptly raised her new figurine and told him, “I’ve got a little prince.”

“Sweet. Well, if that’s everything—”

“Wait,” said Erno. “Did my … dad give you anything to give me, or … anything?”

“Who’s your dad?”

“Augustus Wilson.”

“Oh!” Merle blinked. “Yeah, well, I’m finished with his taxes, but your sister came and got’em a week ago.”

Their mother had died in childbirth. That’s what they’d been told. Their real father had possibly never been in the picture.

Though they’d always lived in the same house, they’d had a revolving team of foster parents, photos of whom still climbed the wall above the stairs: a mother with a face like a fist, posing stiffly with the infant Utz twins as if caught between two car alarms. A picture of Brad, a very nice man who got a very nice job offer in Maryland and left after only ten months. A candid shot of Erno and Emily with their second foster mother, taken by her husband in Cereal Town at Christmas. The old woman was yanking Emily’s arm over some misdemeanor in front of Marshmallow Manor while Erno scanned the park for a place to hide. It was remarkable both for its Hansel-and Gretelishness and for the fact that it was the nicest picture anyone had of this woman. And there were more recent photos with Mr. Wilson, who had thus far outlasted each of the others by four years.

The one and only constant in their lives had been Biggs, the housekeeper. He’d helped care for Erno and Emily when they were small. Biggs seemed to be good at everything he did, be it knitting them sweaters or fixing a carburetor, and he was a competent nanny, though he approached every task with the same dull demeanor and apparent lack of interest. Now Biggs only came on Wednesdays, and Erno wished it were more often. Dull as he was, Biggs was always helpful, and tireless, and hugely loyal. It was like having a horse that could cook. Erno thought about visiting him from time to time, but neither of the twins knew where he lived. Erno would
have been astonished if you told him that Biggs lived at the top of a tall oak tree in Avalon Park, though Emily probably would have just nodded thoughtfully.

Erno hurried home. He unlocked his front door, and there was Emily, sitting in the stairwell with a bag of candy in her lap.

“Merle Lynn, C.P.A.,” he told her.

“Here,” she said, and offered the bag.

He sat down beside her. “Where did you get all this?”

“It was my prize for winning the game. I saved some for you. There’s a lot of chocolate, and those peanut butter things you like. And a lot of gummi. You know how much I hate gummi.”

Erno sat down beside her and reached into the bag. He took a peanut butter roll, and Emily ate a toffee.

“Don’t people do their taxes in the spring?” he asked.

“Dad was having the last seven years refiled. To see if he could get more money back. He cashed in a bunch of investments, too.”

Erno nodded politely. Money stuff was beyond him. “How long ago did you solve it?”

“The day I got suspended.”

“Well. On Monday your suspension will be over, but Carla will still be ugly.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” said Emily, and she looked him in the eyes. “I’m ugly too.”

Erno started to say “No you aren’t,” but Emily cut him short.

“I’ve just been thinking about it, is all. Carla hurts people, but I think that’s all she has. That’s her
thing
. Making fun of her just makes her worse.”

Erno’s face was hot. “Well,
you
made fun of her. You called her stupid.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have.”

Erno knew she was right, but he was a little sore from being lectured to by his sister. “For someone who understands people so well, you sure don’t know how to deal with them.”

“I know,” said Emily. “I think that’s
my
thing.”

She released a long sigh.

“I’m so SICK OF SCHOOL!” she added, loud enough to send a flock of sparrows in the front yard out of their tree. “I wish we could just QUIT!” In that same moment, a lightbulb in the front room burned out, almost as if Emily had startled it.

“You know,” she said quieter, a guilty look in her eyes, “sometimes I think we could. Quit. We already know more than the teachers do, anyway.”

“Maybe
you
do. I don’t.” But Erno agreed that theirs was
maybe not the most rigorous school. So much busywork, so many movies and field trips. “Do you remember that February when we celebrated Slacks History Month?” he asked. “I think that just started as a typo.”

Emily looked at him imploringly. He could tell she wanted permission to say something. He could even roughly guess what it was.

“I… I’m not trying to brag, or anything,” she said.

“It’s okay,” said Erno halfheartedly.

“It’s just … well, you know how much I read at home.”

“Sure.”

Emily glanced around, making sure the school’s spies weren’t listening in.

“Well, I haven’t actually learned anything at school since the second grade. Not one thing.”

Erno assumed she was exaggerating. But then he recalled Egg Drop Day, and Emily’s Ovothopter rising pluckily into the western sky as two hundred other eggs rained down like a biblical plague. Emily didn’t exaggerate; Emily was an exaggeration.

“Everything they teach us is already in my brain,” she said, a look of haunted wonder on her face. Then she ate another candy. Erno stared at the candy.