Mike Stellar (16 page)

“Now get on your belly,” I ordered. “When you see those awful shoes clicking toward you, give me a signal.”

Larc looked annoyed at my bossiness, but she did what I asked. I ran back to the desk and grabbed the book. Frantically flipping through the pages, I felt my heart leap when I looked at the page numbers. The book started on page 212. Why would she have ripped out all those pages? I yanked the page from the frame out of my pocket. It had page number 259 on one side and 260 on the other. I flipped through Mrs. H’s book; 259 wasn’t missing. It was right there in the book. I flattened the page from my pocket onto Mrs. H’s desk and compared it to the page in the book. They were exactly alike. No changes that I could see at all.

Weird. Weird. Weird.

I flipped through the rest of the pages, but they all looked normal, too.

My heart stopped. Larc was waving her hand at me and chirping this strangled
cuckoo cuckoo
noise. I quickly flipped to the first page of the book, ripped it out, and stuffed it into my pocket. Larc was up on her feet and scrambling to her desk. We brushed by each other.

“Cuckoo?” I whispered.

“I don’t know how the heck to whistle,” she said.

I landed in my seat with an
oof
just as Mrs. H opened the door and walked back into the room.

I struggled to keep my breathing normal, even
though my heart was leaping out of my chest. Mrs. H looked at me accusingly, but she didn’t say anything.

After just enough time to catch my breath, the teetering beehive shook as Mrs. H stood. “Detention is over. Thank you for your good behavior this evening. It was a pleasant surprise. Now, go home, both of you. And I don’t want to see you in another detention again.”

Larc and I stood quickly, murmured our good-byes to Mrs. H, and bolted out of the room.

Once we were in the hall and out of earshot, Larc gasped, “You are a crazy man!”

I nodded and laughed. “Hey, I had to seize the moment.”

“Whatever,” was Larc’s retort. “I’ve never once been in trouble with my aunt—until I met you, Michael Stellar.”

“Well, you’re not in trouble anymore, are you? We didn’t get caught, did we?”

“You
didn’t get caught,” she said. “Why is that book so important, anyway?”

I stood there, not understanding why Larc wasn’t understanding. Then it dawned on me. I’d never told her about the page from the broken frame. I frantically reached into my pocket and pulled out the rumpled sheet of paper.

“This was hidden in the frame I broke back at Mrs. Halebopp’s apartment,” I said breathlessly.

Larc looked at the paper skeptically. “It’s just a poem.”

“From a book just like the one on her desk!” I said excitedly.

Larc looked at me curiously. “I still don’t get it.”

“Why was it hidden?” I nearly shouted. “And why is she reading a
real
book and not using readers?” My mind was racing…. There had to be something to this. There just
had
to be.

“I don’t know, Mike,” Larc said cautiously. “Aunt Beebo likes poetry, especially twentieth-century stuff like this one. She has a lot of old poetry books. She says she likes the way the pages feel between her fingers.”

“But why was this hidden in the frame?” I asked, waving the paper in Larc’s face. “Why would a ripped-out page from a book be hidden behind an old certificate?”

“I don’t know, Mike,” Larc said impatiently. “Don’t you think we have enough mysteries to solve right now?”

“But, Larc,” I interrupted, wanting desperately for her to feel the excitement that was welling up inside me, “almost all of the pages of her book were ripped out. Don’t you want to figure out why?”

Larc looked at me long and hard. Finally she sighed. “Okay. I believe you. There’s something bizarre about that book. But, Mike, we can’t worry about some old book right now. Have you already forgotten about your par—”

“Of course not,” I snapped, angrily stuffing the page back into my pocket. “I just think there’s something to this.”

“You have to talk to your parents,” Larc said. “You can’t just hide from that, Mike.”

I shook my head. “No. I can’t talk to them. Not now. Not if they’re planning to sabotage the ship.” I felt the energy drain from my system. “I mean, if that’s what they’re really doing, Larc, then
they’re
the bad guys.” Things were becoming disturbingly clear as I said them out loud. “This whole time, I’ve been angry at everyone for believing that my parents were in on some conspiracy. But, Larc, it seems like Nita was trying to tell me that they really
are
the bad guys. They
have
been covering things up.”

It all started to make sense. Why my parents had been acting so weird … why they were so distracted … even why Mr. Shugabert was watching the family so closely. My eyes widened as the thought occurred to me. The Project must suspect them of something, and that was why Mr. Shugabert seemed to be everywhere. He wasn’t on the trip just to be Mom’s executive assistant and regular ol’ Stellar Family Pain in the Bootie. He was there keeping an eye on everything. He
knew
they were up to something.

“Sugar Bear,” I whispered to myself, “he’s a
good-guy
spy?”

“Huh? Did you say something?” Larc had wandered over to look out one of the windows in the lobby

“No, I just …” I trailed off, seeing the window behind Larc. “Whoa. Is that the …?”

Larc nodded solemnly. “It’s the Fold. We’re coming up on it fast now. I bet we launch tomorrow. Maybe even tonight.”

Out the window was a seething black mass. It looked like heat waves over hot pavement—nearly invisible, but clearly there, writhing, furious. Every now and then sparks of color would shoot around its perimeter, giving us a better idea of its size and shape. It was kind of like a big doorway. But it was in constant motion, growing wider one minute and taller the next, then back down to the size it was before.

“It looks like it’s alive,” I said in a near whisper. “It looks like it’s
breathing.”

Larc and I walked closer to the window. I felt her take my hand and I wasn’t embarrassed at all. That seething mass made me feel small and insignificant. It wasn’t a feeling I liked.

“You know how a bee must feel as it’s hurtling toward the windshield of an electri-bus?” I asked Larc quietly. “That thing gives me the same feeling.”

After staring at
the Fold and watching it move closer to us, Larc and I both wanted to move farther away from it. We wandered down the halls of the ship, looking for a quiet place to sit and talk. I knew I’d be in crazy trouble for being late to dinner, but I didn’t care. Right now having Mom and Dad mad at me for not eating my soy patties on time seemed ridiculous. We stopped outside the library. There was a bench to sit on and no one around. So we sat. We were still holding hands, though now it did feel a little awkward, and I took my hand back. It was all sweaty and hot—almost burning. I wiped it on the inside of my pocket.

“Where were we?” Larc asked quietly, looking up at me intently.

“Uh,” I said, feeling a blush come to my cheeks, “I think we were talking about my parents being traitors.”

“Oh, right.” She looked away.

“And I said that I thought Sugar Bear might be a good-guy spy,” I offered.

“You did?”

“Just before we saw the Fold.”

“Oh.”

“So now what? My parents are planning on destroying this mission just like the last one. Or so it seems. I guess the first thing we should do is try to stop them.”

“But think about it, Mike. Why would they want to destroy the
Sojourner?
They’re
on
the ship.”

“I
have
been thinking about it, Larc. It’s
all
I can think about. I mean, maybe that glowing escape pod that Dad didn’t want me to find out about has something to do with their evil plan. Even Sugar Bear was checking it out the other day.”

“I still think you should ask them about your suspicions,” Larc said. “Before you do anything crazy.”

“No way. They’ll just lie to me. They’ve been lying to me this whole time. For two years!” I stood up and paced in front of the bench. “I just can’t believe it, Larc.” I put my face in my hands and mumbled, “This is so much harder than researching a speech. I should have just researched my speech and not messed with any of this crazy stuff.”

Larc touched my elbow, pulling me back down to the bench.

“Don’t say that, Mike. I mean, yes, studying is important. But so is this. You should know who your parents are and what they’re up to.” She paused. “I never knew mine.”

“What do you mean? What about your dad?”

“He’s not really my dad.”

“He’s not?” I looked at Larc, shocked. “But he’s so tall.”

She pinched me. “All tall people aren’t related, Mike.”

“If he’s not your dad, then who …”

“He’s my—”

“Well, well, well …” Mr. Shugabert walked around the corner and nearly gave me a stroke. He must have specially padded shoes; why couldn’t I ever hear him coming?

“What have we here?” Shugabert shot us his million-watt grin. “Two little lovebirds making a nest?”

We didn’t say anything. Larc scooched closer to me on the bench, though.

“Isn’t it late for two youngsters to be out roaming the halls?” he asked. I could tell he was trying to seem cool and friendly, but there was something about his eyes. They narrowed ever so slightly.

“What are you kids up to, anyway? I made some excellent soy patties for supper, Mike. I even made
enough for Larc. Of course, they’re probably cold by now….”

“We’re not hungry,” I muttered.

“Oh, is that right?” He tried to laugh and it came out sounding like a strangled cough.

“You know, technically, it isn’t in my job description to cook dinner for Marie or her family. In fact, I’m late to a meeting because I stayed to whip up some food for you guys. But since Marie is so busy, I thought it would be nice to help her out with dinner.”

“What kind of meeting?” I asked.

The question seemed to catch him off guard. “Oh … you know. With all the other executive assistants.”

“That’s funny,” Larc piped up. “I haven’t really seen a lot of other executive assistants, have you, Mike?”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “Just think of what everyone is missing, not having the disembodied voice of a dude acting as their alarm clock. No cold soy patties waiting for them when they get home after a hard day of work …”

Mr. Shugabert could tell we were testing him, and a vein in his neck started to throb as his smile grew bigger and bigger until it threatened to eat his face.

“Come to mention it,” I said, “you do a lot of helping out with family stuff, don’t you? You’re kind of, uh, always around, aren’t you?”

“It must be exhausting,” Larc said, shaking her head.

“Just doing my job,” he said. The vein in his neck was keeping its own little high-speed techno beat.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m going through a …
thing
right now and I just want to sit here with my friend and talk for a little while. I promise I’ll be home soon.”

Mr. Shugabert began to pace in front of me and Larc like a panther ready to pounce. But I was the one who pounced. Something in me snapped.

“What are you up to?” I asked suddenly, my eyes flashing. “We’re just quietly sitting here, minding our own business, and you appear. Whenever I walk down a hallway, you’re there. Whenever I do
anything
, you’re there. What is
up
with that? You’re not
my
executive assistant. You’re just my … Sugar Bear.”

“Mi-ike,” Larc said out of the corner of her mouth. “That was a
terrible
rhyme.” And then she laughed like she was being tickled from the inside out.

Sugar Bear lost it. “Stop calling me that!” he said angrily.

“You’re just a big, stupid …
spy,”
I said.

Larc’s eyes widened so much I thought they might pop out of her head. Mr. Shugabert lunged toward me.
This is not how I want to die.

He grabbed my arm. “If it wasn’t for Aurora telling me to keep my hands off, you’d be toast right now, little boy. I’d have locked you in a closet days ago!”

He gave me a good shake and I seized the moment. I slipped my loose hand into his jacket pocket. My fingers tightened around his handheld. As he gave me another rough shake, I yanked my hand out of his pocket and shoved it into mine. He suddenly let me go and I bounced roughly back against the bench.

“Look at me, tiny man,” Mr. Shugabert said, seething. He grabbed my face and squeezed my cheeks together. “Aurora didn’t say anything about me keeping my hands off your parents. You better tell them to watch out. Aurora’s not stupid. She knows what they’re—” He abruptly stopped talking, as if he realized he was saying too much. He let go of my face and walked away without another word.

“You think he just resigned?” I asked Larc, clutching my chest and hoping I wasn’t having a heart attack.

“I have no idea.” Larc looked at me with wonder.

I alternately rubbed my cheeks and my arm and said, “I guess taunting him on purpose wasn’t such a swell idea.” Larc’s eyes widened. “But we know good guys don’t threaten kids and toss them up against benches.” I paused and rubbed my arm again. “Hey, look what I got besides a big bruise and a heart attack….”