Masterminds (6 page)

It's one of my earliest memories—I must have been three or four. I was playing in the sandbox in our
backyard. When you're little, you get a swing set and a sandbox before you graduate to the usual tree house and basketball half-court.

I'm making roads with a toy shovel. Serenity is one of the few places where a little kid can re-create the entire street grid in a sandbox.

When I hear the rattling sound, I don't know what it is. I've never heard it before. I turn and come face-to-face with a coiled snake—a diamondback, its tail in the air, poised and ready to strike.

I remember my father flying across the yard. His feet must touch the grass, but to me, he'll always be flying. He reaches out for me but pulls up suddenly as the rattler strikes. The triangular head slices toward me, and then pauses in midair partway between Dad and me. Almost like the snake can't figure out which of us to bite.

It's probably just a second but it feels like forever that the three of us are frozen in time—my father, the rattler, and me. We're silent—even the diamondback has stopped rattling—although Mom is screaming loud enough for all of us.

The snake has had enough. It dashes off, and Dad scoops me up in his arms. It's over that fast. By the time my younger self begins to cry, everything is back to
normal, and there's nothing to cry about. I might have forgotten the whole thing except for the conversation I overhear when I'm in bed that night:

“Why did you hesitate?” my mother demands. “He weighs forty pounds, Peter! A snakebite would have killed him for sure!”

“It was a diamondback, Tina,” is my father's response. “A little one, too—you know the venom is more concentrated in the very young! What was I supposed to do—get bitten myself?”

“If necessary,” Mom replies readily. “You know how valuable he is.”

I hear Dad sigh. “You're right. I'm sorry.”

Valuable
. When they yell at me, or roll their eyes at me; when they ground me for some minor thing that isn't even my fault, I remember that word and hang on to it. When I see another family having fun in a way we never do, I picture how Mom's lips must have moved to form those precious syllables.

I'm
valuable
.

If that's not love, what is it?

The Purple People Eaters aren't really purple. Their uniforms are more like a deep blue-violet. Look closely and you'll see it too.

I notice things other people miss. I think it's because I'm an artist, so I have an eye for detail. You know the smokestacks at the Plastics Works? You never see any smoke coming out of them. My parents say it's because the factory is a green industry that doesn't pollute. Steve (aka Dad) says they switched over in 1978. We're ahead of our time in Serenity.

It's important because Amber and I are doing a mural for our Serenity Day project. If there's anything coming out of the chimneys, it would be wrong. We want this to be as authentic as possible. I hope it goes better than the
book we were writing together. She says my pictures don't match her story, when it's
obvious
her story doesn't match my pictures. We got into a pretty big argument about that for about fifteen or twenty minutes, until this song we both like came on the radio. Amber and I fight a lot, but twenty minutes is kind of our maximum. She claims I'm immature because, at thirteen, she's technically a teenager and I'm still twelve. She's really only seven months older than me, but she never fails to make a big deal out of it. She says I'm too sensitive, but I'm obviously not. (She also says I use the word
obvious
too much. She might be right about that one.)

I have an artist's studio in our attic. Dad set it up for me. There's a window with a great view of the whole town and Carson National Forest in the background. At dusk, the light on the distant mountain faces reminds me of glowing amethyst.

Come to think of it, the Purples' uniforms have some of that too. Dark amethyst. Is that a real color? (Is there such a thing as
light
amethyst? I'll have to check.)

In the foreground we've decided to draw a cross section of our citizens. Obviously, we can't pose everybody, so we're collecting photographs to use as models. It's pretty interesting to look at still pictures of people you
see on a daily basis. Mr. Amani, who's more than a foot taller than his wife; Dr. Bruder with his goofy bow ties; Kurt Osterwald's bright red hair, which is a perfect match for his dad's. Then there's Eli, who's as dark as his father is fair. I'll bet his mom's hair was jet-black. Not that I'm anyone to talk. I look nothing like either of my parents. My dad insists that he found me on eBay. He's joking, obviously. He calls me Torific and I call him Steve.

“I think it would be more appropriate for my twelve-year-old daughter to address me as Dad,” he tells me.

“Sure, Steve, I'll get right on that.”

He isn't mad. I'm the princess of his heart. Maybe I'm a little old to be called that, but as long as Malik doesn't find out, I figure there's no harm.

Mom and Steve met in the bleachers at a water polo match at the University of Alabama. It was love at first sight. They moved to Serenity because they never wanted to be apart, and the Plastics Works had jobs for both of them. That was important, because they both had student loans to pay back. I always ask them to tell me the story again because it's so romantic. I like to picture them walking hand in hand through the entrance to the plant on their first day of work—not just husband and wife, but coworkers too. (This takes some imagination since the
factory grounds are off-limits to nonemployees.)

“Best decision we ever made,” Dad says, “because it brought you into our lives.”

“You would have had me no matter where you guys lived,” I always point out.

He shakes his head. “Wouldn't have been the same. There's something special about this place. You wouldn't have been your Torific self anywhere else.”

Steve and I don't see eye to eye on everything. It's my dream to travel to places like New York and even Europe to visit the amazing art museums there. He thinks it's just as good to look at paintings and sculptures on the internet.

It's so obviously not the same. “Come on,” I wheedle. “Let's take a trip. When's the last time you and Mom went on vacation? I've never even been outside Serenity.”

“We have everything we need right here.”

“If I'm going to be an artist,” I persist, “I have to learn from the great masters. You can't do that squinting at a screen. I have to walk on the same cobblestones as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci!”

The next time I open up the computer, I find a virtual tour of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.

“Steve!” I'm exasperated, but I'm laughing too. His stubbornness is part of what makes him my dad. It's
annoying, but deep down I realize I'm pretty lucky with the life I've got.

“I won't be twelve forever, you know,” I tell him with a mischievous grin. “I'm going to Europe—if you and Mom won't take me, then I'll go when I'm in college. You guys can't control what I do forever.”

That makes him look really uncomfortable. I guess it's hard for any father to deal with the fact that his little girl is growing up.

Later that night, I notice Eli outside my window on Harmony Street. This isn't a huge coincidence. In Serenity, you always see someone you know because you know everybody (except the Purple People Eaters, obviously).

Anyway, there's Eli, walking up and down, looking kind of unsure of himself. I realize that the house he's staring at is Randy's—at least, where Randy used to live before he got sent to his grandparents. What a crummy piece of luck that was. Everybody feels bad about it, but that obviously goes double for Eli.

I abandon my mural and run down to join him on the darkened street. He looks a little embarrassed when I get there, like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't.

“Have you heard anything from Randy?” I ask,
because it's obvious that something's bugging him.

He shakes his head. “It's been two weeks. It's like he's dropped off the face of the earth.”

I frown. “What do the Hardaways say?”

“Just that he's really busy and I'll hear from him one of these days.”

“That's doesn't make a lot of sense to me,” I muse. “How long does it take to shoot an email—
Arrived in Colorado. Everything good
?”

“He told me he'd write. It was the last thing he said before the car drove away.”

“He was probably really stressed that day,” I reason.

“Yeah, but he said it twice. He made a really big deal out of it.” He looks determined. “So I keep asking myself: Why would my best friend promise to write, put such a fine point on it, and then not do it?”

I wish I could help him somehow, or at least wrap my arms around him and tell him everything is going to be okay. (Ha—can you imagine if Malik found out about
that
?) But all I can manage is a shrug.

Eli answers his own question. “I think he did write. I think he wrote before he even left. There's a message for me here somewhere.”

There are about a million things wrong with that
logic. For example, if Randy already knew what he wanted to say before he left, why didn't he just say it? What could be so secret? We don't keep secrets here.

But I just say, “A message? Where?”

He doesn't answer, but he's looking past the house into the Hardaways' backyard. “I don't know,” he says finally, “but it must be someplace he thinks I'll find it.”

I follow his gaze directly to the tree house.

“No problem, then,” I say. “I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Hardaway won't mind if you look around.”

“I think the Hardaways are mad at me. It's really weird. They don't talk to me anymore. It's like they talk through me. And when I come around, they make excuses that they have to leave.” He sizes me up, as if wondering whether or not he can trust me. “Besides, if Randy left me a hidden message, it was so his parents wouldn't see it.”

Now I'm uncomfortable. “So you're—”

“Going to check the tree house.” He smiles sheepishly. “At least, I'm trying to work up the guts to.”

“I'll go with you,” I blurt, surprising even myself. Maybe it's wrong, but there's something intriguing, even irresistible, in the idea of this message from Randy to Eli (if it exists). What could this special forbidden information possibly be? I can't imagine keeping a secret from anyone,
much less Amber,
my
best friend. It's almost as if seeing it will open a hidden door I never even knew existed.

“Randy kept an old coffee can in his tree house,” Eli confides in me. “When we were little kids, it was kind of his treasure box. He had a rodent skull, and this rock he was convinced was a rare fossil. There was a shark's tooth I'm pretty sure was plastic. We haven't looked at it lately, but I know the can is still there.”

“And that's where the message is?” I ask dubiously.

“I don't know. Probably not. Maybe there
is
no message. I have to try, though. But I don't want Randy's parents to see me.”

I understand his problem right away. The houses in Serenity have big windows and open rooms. We've got nothing to hide (at least I thought we didn't). Even from here, we can see the flickering of the Hardaways' wide-screen TV. For us to enter the backyard, we'd be parading ourselves right by Mr. and Mrs. Hardaway.

And then it comes to me. I can picture the layout of things from all perspectives. Obviously, it's connected to being an artist, but it's more than that. I understand how things work—like I can envision the finished puzzle before anybody puts the pieces together. It's not anything I do; I just
know
.

So I place myself on the couch with the Hardaways, and design a route that will take us to the tree house without being noticed. We creep along the outside of the fence, and then climb over into the Hardaways' yard once we're under cover of the pool heater. From there, we're up the ladder and into the tree house in short order.

Eli's brought a small flashlight. He finds the coffee can right away. It's nestled in a hole in the tree trunk. With trembling hands, he lifts the lid and dumps the contents of the can out onto the wooden floor.

There they are: the rodent skull, the plastic shark's tooth, and a few other random items that someone a lot younger than us might have considered treasure. There's a stack of three-by-five index cards held together with a rubber band. I take a look at the top one and frown in confusion. There's somebody's photograph at the top and scribbled notes underneath. The face in the picture seems kind of familiar.

“Isn't that—?”

Eli snatches the pack away. “You're not supposed to see these.”

But I've already identified the photograph. “That's a Purple People Eater!”

Even in the gloom of the tree house, I can see his face
is red as a tomato. “They're Purple People Eater cards,” he confesses in a voice so low it's like he's hoping I won't hear it. “Randy and I made them. You know, kind of like baseball cards, only with—”

“I get it,” I assure him, holding out my hand. Reluctantly, he gives me the deck.

I riffle through it. There must be two dozen cards, each one with a photo of a Surety agent (candid, obviously. Purples never pose. These must have been taken on a cell phone from behind hedges or around corners). The facts below are very much like what you'd find on sports cards, with the difference that they're all made up, including the names—RUMP L. STILTSKIN, MIKE “ARACHNOPHOBIA” JONES, ALEXANDER THE GRAPE, SCREAMING MIMI, SECRET AGENT MAN, and even a couple of military titles, MAJOR NOSEHAIR and GENERAL CONFUSION. The “information” looks like real statistics, but it's all crazy stuff, like winning pancake-eating contests and being twelfth in line to the Sultanate of Altoiletstan.