The Box and the Bone (7 page)

“No, it isn’t. It’s a great place to walk a dog. You can just walk around and around down here. See, like this.” She grabbed Lump’s leash and began to limp around the Pit. Carlos went back to where the other two PROs were watching, leaning on their shovels. The three of them went on leaning on their shovels while Susie walked around the Pit a couple of times, limping a little and acting very strange. Then she and Lump climbed back out and disappeared.

“Weird,” Bucky said. “Okay, you dudes. Get back to work.”

A little later the PROs gave up on the clubhouse area and began to move out around the whole Pit looking for places where the earth had recently been disturbed. Carlos was beginning to dig in a new spot when Eddy came over and stood next to him.

“Don’t look now,” he said. “But over there, to your right, in that bushy place. Somebody is hiding in those bushes and looking over the wall. With binoculars. I’m sure I saw some binoculars.”

“Oh yeah?” Carlos said. He checked on Bucky to see if he had noticed, too, but he seemed to be busy digging. “I’ll check it out,” he told Eddy. But by the time he’d eased over to the wall the bush was empty. The binoculars, and whoever had been looking through them, had disappeared.

Carlos went back to digging, wondering if the person in the tree had been Susie again. Except—as far as he knew—Susie didn’t have any binoculars. And if it wasn’t Susie, who was it? The whole thing was beginning to give him a slightly creepy feeling.

“T
HAT’S A BAD SCRAPE
,” Brigitta Garcia, Susie’s mother, said as she unwrapped a large-size Band-Aid. “How did it happen this time?”

“It was Lump’s fault,” Susie said. “He pulled me down. He just happened to see Carlos and he took off like a rocket and jerked me off my feet.”

“Well, perhaps you ought to let the boys walk Lump from now on,” her mother said.

“But I like walking him. Dad lets me do it.”

Her mother finished packing up the first-aid kit before she said, “Well, I’ll talk to your father about it. But it seems to me that walking a dog who weighs more than you do is not a good idea.”

Susie limped out onto the back deck and collapsed in a chair to wait for her knee to stop hurting. Actually, it had been Muffy’s idea, and it hadn’t been a good one. Pretending to be walking Lump in the Pit so she could check on what the PROs were doing would have been dumb even if she hadn’t fallen down and skinned her knee. Because those creeps obviously weren’t going to be doing anything important while she was there. The whole thing had been stupid.

She hoped Muffy had had better luck. Peeking over the wall with your mother’s opera glasses made a little more sense than trying to pretend you were just an innocent dog walker—instead of a spy. She sighed. As soon as her knee felt better she would have to go back to the Pit—but without Lump this time—and go on following the PROs.

While Susie was collapsed on the back deck waiting for her knee to quit hurting, the three PROs were still going over every inch of the Pit floor, searching and digging. Carlos was just about to suggest, for the third or fourth time, that they give up and do something else, when Bucky suddenly yelled, “Look. I told you so. There he is.”

Sure enough, there he was. The four-legged suspect, Nijinsky, was standing at the Pit entrance—
and
he was carrying the same big bone. But when Bucky yelled he turned around and disappeared.

Bucky threw down his shovel and started toward the stairs. Halfway there he stopped and looked back. “Come on, you goons. Get a move on. We have to follow him.”

Why?
Carlos was thinking.
Why do we have to follow him?
And when they caught up with Bucky, Eddy asked more or less the same question. “What do we want to follow Nijinsky for?” he asked. “You think he has the box on him, or something? Like in his pocket, maybe?”

Bucky gave Eddy a cold stare. “Can’t you figure anything out? He obviously came here to bury the bone again. Right? And he left because we were here. So now he’s probably going to bury it someplace else.
Like
”—he made his face say, “Now listen carefully, you retards,” as he went on—“like in one of his other burying places. Like, for instance, in the place where he buried something else just last night.”

Carlos didn’t know if Bucky could be right—but then again, he supposed he could be. He looked at Eddy and shrugged and the two of them followed Bucky across the Pit and up the stairs. They got to the sidewalk just in time to see Nijinsky turning into the Andersons’ driveway.

“There he goes,” Bucky yelled. “Come on. Get a move on.”

Two little Anderson grandkids came out to watch as Carlos trotted through their front yard. He felt stupid running across their lawn following Eddy, who was following Bucky, who was following a dog with a big, stinky bone in its mouth. He didn’t blame the Anderson kids for looking bewildered.

The kids were still staring wide eyed as the whole procession turned to the right and ran right on through the Andersons’ property, along the Prince Field fence, and on out through a grove of trees. They had passed the Andersons’ old deserted barn and were starting up the hill toward Castle Crag when Eddy caught up with Bucky and tried to talk to him.

“Look, Brockhurst,” he panted, “I don’t think … Why are we? … I mean, what’s the point of? …” But Bucky, and a few yards ahead Nijinsky, just kept on jogging. So Carlos and Eddy kept on going too.

A little way past the big old jagged boulder known as Castle Crag, Nijinsky suddenly stopped and sat down. Dropping the bone, he licked his chops and turned to look back over his shoulder. And then he grinned. Carlos was almost sure of it.

But when Carlos started to walk up to where he was sitting, Bucky held him back. “Shh,” he said. “Maybe this is it. Maybe he’s going to start digging.”

“This is
what
?” Eddy asked.

“This is where he buries things. When he doesn’t bury them in the Pit.” Bucky made a sarcastically patient expression like “I’m making this as clear as I can,” and said slowly, “Don’t you get it? This is probably where he buried the box.”

But then Nijinsky quit grinning, picked up his bone, and went on running. They were quite a way past Castle Crag when it started to rain.

“Hey,” Carlos said, “it’s raining. We’d better head for home.”

“Forget it,” Bucky said. “A little sprinkle won’t hurt you. That’s all it will be this time of year. Just a little sprinkle.”

A few minutes later the rain was coming down in bucketfuls, the wind was howling, and the three PROs were squeezed back against the trunk of a pine tree, soaking wet, cold, and miserable.

Nijinsky had disappeared. They hadn’t seen him go. He’d been there right in front of them just a minute before, but then, while their eyes were full of rain, he suddenly was gone. They huddled under the tree and shivered for a long time while the rain seeped down through the branches and dripped off their ears and the tips of their noses.

Nobody talked for quite a while, but at one point Carlos said, “I wonder where Nijinsky got to?”

“Huh,” Bucky said. “He’s probably somewhere around here digging right this minute. Dogs aren’t afraid of a little rain. If you guys weren’t such dweebs we could be out there watching him dig up the treasure.”

Carlos wiped the rain off his face and said, “Feel free, Brockhurst. Go right ahead.”

“Sure,” Bucky whined, “and have you guys sneak off on me while I’m gone.”

So nobody went anywhere. The three PROs waited under the tree, getting soggier and soggier, for a long time.

A
FTER THE RAIN STOPPED,
the sky got blue again. The sun began to shine and went on shining until it turned red and went down behind the hills. Athena sat on the Pappases’ front steps and watched the sky and sun. She was really waiting for the Nicelys and Aurora to get home, but they didn’t, so she watched the sun go down instead. But when it began to get dark and cold she went indoors and sat in her favorite place under the piano and practiced writing her name in the dictionary.

Nick and Diane were still working in their studio and Ari was busy working on his journal. Athena couldn’t find any paper to practice on so she was writing in the big dictionary. She had decided to write her name on every single page, and she was already on page twenty-three when Aurora came home.

After they’d hugged each other Aurora told her all about the beautiful mountains and lakes and chipmunks she’d seen at the Nicelys’ cabin, and then she helped Athena go to bed. But it was hard to go to sleep because there was so much to think about. Athena thought about Aurora being back home and about the beautiful chipmunks. And then she thought about how hard it had rained that day and all the things she had seen and done while she was waiting in the church. It was a long time before she went to sleep.

But when she woke up the next morning everything was back to normal. Aurora and Ari had breakfast cereal and went to school, and Athena had French toast. And then she went back to play at Dragoland. She was on her way there, pulling her doll family in the wagon when she found Laura Grant’s ballet slippers.

Laura Grant, who lived next door to the Pappases, was one of Athena’s favorite people—even though she was a teenager. Aurora and her friend Kate Nicely hated teenagers. At least Kate said they did.

So Athena hated teenagers too. At least most of them. All except the ones who were ballet dancers and who belonged to a nice dog like Jinsky. And who were thin and beautiful with lots of long dark hair and a soft friendly smile. Athena especially liked the friendly smile. Kate said that some people at Castle Court thought that Laura Grant was unfriendly. Aurora said that was only because she was shy.

But Laura Grant wasn’t ever shy or unfriendly to Athena, so when Athena found the ballet slippers in the wet grass she wanted to do something to help.

The slippers were near the sidewalk, where Laura must have dropped them when she was on her way to school that morning. Maybe while she’d been running to catch the bus.

Athena looked up at the sky. It was gray and rainy looking again, and she was sure that being rained on wouldn’t be good for ballet slippers. She sat down on the sidewalk and looked at the slippers and wondered what to do. She knew it wouldn’t help to knock on the Grants’ door, because both of Laura’s parents went away to work every day.

While she was still wondering Jinsky came around from behind the house. When he saw Athena he bounced over to say hello and while Athena was patting him and shaking his paw he noticed the slippers too. At first he only sniffed them and wagged his tail, but then he picked them up in his mouth and trotted off. When he got to the Grants’ front porch he lay down and began to chew. Just in time, Athena dashed up the steps and grabbed the slippers away.

She was still standing on the Grants’ front porch when suddenly she knew just what to do. She went back to her wagon, unwrapped the old tin box, and opened the lid. Sure enough, just like she thought, it was the perfect size to hold two pink ballet slippers. She put the slippers inside and closed the lid. Then she put the box right by the sidewalk so Laura would be sure to see it when she came home. She went on to Dragoland then, feeling very good because Laura’s ballet slippers were safe and sound. Of course she didn’t have a tea table anymore, but that was all right. A nice big brick would be almost as good.

That same Monday morning at recess, when Susie Garcia came out of the third-grade classroom at Beaumont School, Muffy Brockhurst was waiting for her. “Come here,” she said. “Hurry. I’m supposed to be playing soccer.”

Muffy was telling the truth—for once. Susie could see Muffy’s fourth-grade class out on the soccer field. “Why aren’t you?” she asked. “Playing soccer, I mean?”

“Because we have to talk,” Muffy said. She wrinkled her pug nose. “Besides, I hate soccer.” Then she frowned and leaned closer. “Did you follow Carlos yesterday, like I told you to? You know, after they left the Pit and went away somewhere?”

“No,” Susie said. “I didn’t.” She pointed to her bandaged knee. “I skinned my knee really bad when Lump pulled me down in the Pit. I had to go home and get it doctored. And after my mom got it bandaged …” She shrugged. “They’d disappeared. I looked in the Pit and everywhere, but they weren’t there.” She was telling the truth. After her knee quit hurting she’d gone to the Pit, and then she’d called the Wongs and the Brockhursts. And nobody seemed to know where the three guys had gone.

Muffy put her hands on her hips and glared at Susie. “So,” she said, wagging her head from side to side, “you hurt your poor little knee and you had to run home to Mommy. And you let those guys get away and they didn’t come back for a long time. Not till after it stopped raining. And when they did get back they were all sopping wet and covered with mud. Like maybe they’d been digging somewhere.
Get it! Digging!
And we don’t know where because you let them get away.”

Susie glared back. “Well, where were you? Why didn’t you follow them?”

“Because I was hiding. Carlos must have seen something when I was peeking over the wall with the binoculars, because all of a sudden he started coming toward me. So I ran down across the Weed-patch and hid by the creek. And by the time I got back they were gone. But I didn’t worry too much because I thought you must have followed them.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Well, didn’t you even ask Carlos where he’d been? Like, when he got back home all sopping wet.”

“Sure,” Susie said, “I asked him.”

“And … and … what did he say?”

“He just laughed and went, ‘How soon do you have to know?’ That’s what he always says when I ask him something. Did you ask Bucky?”

Muffy shrugged. “Oh sure.”

“What did he say?”

“The usual. Like, ‘Get lost, dog meat.’ And some other stuff your mommy probably wouldn’t want you to hear.”

Susie glared, because she hated it when Muffy treated her like a little kid just because she was in third grade and Muffy was already in fourth. She started to walk away but Muffy grabbed her arm. “Look,” she said, “this was all your idea in the first place. You were the one who found out about the treasure and asked me to help find it.”