The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (4 page)

Jasper got extra lines for running in the classroom.

At twelve years old, Jasper may very well have been small for his age, and may not have been able to lift a school desk above his head or pull the door out by its hinges, but he could run faster than anyone.

Lucy was rather petite herself. She wore her hair long, and she had the most enormous brown eyes. She had a sweet round face and a crooked smile and delicate hands that were often busy creating something rather fabulous.

And Lucy had a magical memory. She could remember anything and everything.

But the fact that she was cute, and sweet, and a very good listener, and brilliant, plainly did not help her at school. She found that memorizing great swaths of text did not impress her teachers. Making clever things with her hands only made her classmates resent her. Pointing out that Napoleon became emperor in 1804 and not 1408 made her teacher furious, especially because the mistake was in the book itself and the book belonged to the teacher. A glare that shot daggers was her reward for informing her teacher, who was trying to translate from the French, that
mouton
meant
sheep,
not
banana.
And when Lucy showed her teacher the correct way to say “Kalamata,” while also explaining that it was not a species of tree frog but both an olive and a city in
Greece, she earned herself time in the corner for her trouble, after being made to write lines such as “I will not be an ugly horrid little know-it-all,” or “Lucy Modest is not modest.”

At the very least, Lucy’s cleverness made her teacher and her classmates uncomfortable. Once, a particularly nasty teacher stopped the whole class and said, to growls from the students, “If you’re so clever, why don’t you teach? The whole class is going to listen to Lucy. Oh, dear, she’ll have to stand on a chair because she’s too small for anyone to see. Oh, but that is against the rules, standing on chairs. Because of Lucy, the whole class is going to write ‘I will not stand on chairs,’ so you can thank her for that, class. And Lucy, you had better start remembering that you’re the child and I am the teacher. If you’re so clever, how come you didn’t figure that out, missy?” Tears had fallen on Lucy’s paper as she wrote, “I will not stand on chairs.”

Eventually, teachers took to making her sit in the back of the room, and ignoring her when she raised her hand in class. It was easier for them and much less disruptive. One teacher went so far as to make Lucy sit in a corner and wear a gag over her mouth (which prevented the little girl from chewing on her charm bracelet, which she did when she was excited, anxious, or unhappy). The teacher made her don a dunce cap as well. Sometimes (and this, too, prevented the little girl from chewing her bracelet), the teacher would tie Lucy’s hands together to prevent any “unrequested and unwanted creativity” that might originate in that corner. On Lucy’s chair, the teacher placed a placard that read, “I am Lucy and I am not as clever as I think.” The other students found this quite entertaining. They thoroughly enjoyed anything that brought Lucy down a notch or two.

But in general, they, like the teachers, usually ignored her—the exception being when they had something unfriendly to say.

Lucy’s classmates had devised ugly little rhymes in her honor, such as, “Lucy Modest thinks she’s the cleverest / but she’s the shortest and makes us the boredest.” Fortunately, Lucy had the decency and foresight not to correct their grammar. Sometimes, the other children were less clever but more to the point: “Lucy Modest stinks.”

Lucy usually obliged with tears and a swift departure.

Lonely as life was at times, Jasper and Lucy had each other. And they had their parents, too. Often. Or, at least, occasionally. The Modest family, on the whole, had no extraordinary problems. They never quarreled or bickered. It was the way their family worked. No family was perfect, Jasper reminded himself. Most families had mums who were home for them when they returned from school. Most children had mums waiting, open-armed, with warm biscuits and loving kisses. Jasper would have liked his mum or dad to be there when he and Lucy got home. But he also knew that his parents worked long hours or traveled a great deal for work. Parents worked because they had to. It was necessary. They did it for their children.

Everything changed with the arrival of those men. Those men in big black hats and long black coats and matching black boots, wearing dark spectacles that hid their eyes, speaking in whispered tones with strange and indistinct foreign accents. They seemed to move as one, all seven of them, as they came
knocking on the door.

Almost as if the men were expected, the Drs. Modest opened the door. The strange men lined stone steps like so many footmen and stood in total silence. Then, the doors of the coaches opened and two more men in black descended. They walked past their comrades and into the Modest home. Isabelle and Tobias Modest did not stop them—they did not, in fact, react in any way—but Jasper and Lucy certainly did, hiding on the landing at the top of the stairs.

The two men in black who had invaded their home were, without a doubt, the most bizarre men the children had ever seen in their entire lives. There would have been something funny about the whole thing, too, if it all didn’t feel so sinister.

The first man was not remarkable in build, nor was he remarkable in stature. He was average, you might say. He was totally average in every way, except for the fact that he was wearing a black satin fully-ruffed ballerina tutu around his middle and had a large black Mexican sombrero pulled down to his nose. He wore a long black silk scarf wrapped several times around his neck and up above his mouth, so all you could see were the dark glasses perched at the end of his nose, upon which the sombrero rested.

The other man was taller, and was dressed simply in a black furry suit that covered his hands and feet. His face was bearded and, upon his head, he wore large fuzzy bear ears that matched his suit.

The two men disappeared into the locked study with Jasper and Lucy’s parents. The adults all spoke so softly that Jasper and Lucy could not hear what they were saying, even when the
children placed teacups against the study door to listen.

After hours of mysterious discussion, the strange men in black left without a word. Jasper and Lucy saw the concern on their parents’ faces, but the children were afraid to ask why. Lucy sat on the hearth rug, chewing on her bracelet as she watched her parents whisper back and forth, standing in the doorway long after the men had gone.

Nothing was said at supper. After eating barely a bite, Isabelle and Tobias Modest left the dining room table. Jasper and Lucy continued to pick at their own plates in silence. They really didn’t fancy eating, either.

That night, Jasper and Lucy were left to their own evening preparations when it was time to go to bed. They undressed and put on their nightclothes slowly, in hopes someone would come to talk. But no one did. Although they both lay awake for hours, no one came to tuck them in or say goodnight, or offer any words of comfort or explanation.

The next morning, the children found the cupboards in the nursery empty and those in their bedrooms bare. A set of clothes had been laid out for each of them. Jasper and Lucy dressed in silence and gingerly descended the stairs.

Instead of their normal breakfast on the table, Jasper and Lucy found their parents waiting by a large black carriage at the end of the drive, filled with steamer trunks containing what looked to be all of their clothes and other possessions. In the night, while they slept, the effects of the Modest children had been packed away. And still, Jasper and Lucy hadn’t a clue as to why. The children tried to get their parents’ attention, but muffled whispers and deep incomprehensible looks passed between the
adults, so there was never a chance to ask.

Clinging to one another, hunger falling unnoticed behind fear and confusion, Jasper and Lucy were shuffled into the waiting carriage, where silence prevailed. Within an hour, the family was on a train to Dover and, by that evening, on a ship headed for America. Still no words had passed between parents and children. No explanation. No comforting assurance that all would be fine.

Lucy had that charm bracelet in her mouth throughout their days at sea. Jasper was sure that, had the bracelet and charms not been made of something seemingly indestructible, Lucy’s nervous nibbles would have mangled it beyond recognition. She sometimes seemed to be getting awfully close to her wrist. This horrified Jasper, bringing to mind a story about his grandfather, who had once found, in a bear trap, the leg of a raccoon. The creature had found it preferable to chew off its own leg than be taken prisoner into some terrifying unknown.

With a simple, soft touch, Jasper had taken to gently urging Lucy’s wrist from her mouth. This worked, but only temporarily, so he began holding her braceleted hand in his as they walked. Their matching bracelets always seemed to interact oddly with each other, making an interesting tinkling noise as they jangled against one another, sometimes becoming entwined. The two siblings had tried at times to fit the odd-shaped charms together. Jasper, who loved puzzles, was convinced that whoever had made the bracelets had done a rather poor job. The charms never really fit.

After a week at sea, the family arrived in New York City, where they were met by another big black carriage with shaded windows and gold trim around all four doors. It had an oversized top, which made the inside seem huge and cavernous. It was driven by a big coachman dressed in a black suit with gold trim, who wore an oversized coachman’s cap and dark oval glasses. The coachman, in fact, looked very much like the carriage he was driving.

The carriage driver took them to a train station in the middle of Manhattan. New York City was enormous—almost as big as London—and at least as crowded, but Jasper and Lucy didn’t get to see much of it before they were hurried into the station and onto a waiting locomotive by a man in a long black dressing robe with a big black babushka on his head.

As on the ship, Lucy and Jasper had their own compartment. Their parents’ compartment was the next room over, connected by an adjoining door. The children’s room had bunk beds, a washbasin, and a table. Both children had been on trains in London, but neither had ever been on a sleeping train.

Together, Jasper and Lucy climbed to the top bunk and watched out the window as the train began to move from the station. If it had not been for the fear of what lay ahead, the ride would have been wonderful. But worry hung like thunder over them, rumbling with promise of something unwanted.

Lucy took the bracelet and wrist out of her mouth and clung to Jasper with both hands. They felt the rocking of the train get stronger as it sped into the night. In the moonlight, Jasper could see fear in his sister’s eyes.

“What’s going to happen?” she asked.

Jasper didn’t have a clue, but he couldn’t tell her that.

“Well, different things, surely,” came Jasper’s weak offering, “but everything will be all right.”

“Will it really be all right?” she pleaded. Lucy’s wide eyes showed utter trust in her brother. Jasper didn’t want to let her down, and knew he had to tell the truth. She remembered absolutely everything and she’d never forgive him if he lied.

Not that he ever would. Not to Lucy.

“I certainly hope so, Luce,” he said. “If not, we’ll make it right.” Just how he planned to do that was beyond his ken at that moment.