The Lost City of Faar (12 page)

Mark kept reading through the earlier pages, looking for something. Courtney was suddenly intrigued.

“You saw something, didn't you?” she asked. “Did you figure out who caused the habitats to crash? Was it Saint Dane?”

Mark didn't answer. The scowl of tension didn't leave his face either.

“Mark!”
Courtney shouted with frustration.

This rocked Mark back into the room. His look of worry was replaced by the look of a small boy who just got caught doing something wrong.

“I-I'm an idiot. A total idiot, th-that's all I can say.”

He was on the verge of tears. He held up the pages of Bobby's latest journal. “It's missing. The first page is missing.”

Courtney jumped to her feet and grabbed the light green pages from him. She shuffled through them quickly, looking for the missing page.

“That's impossible. We read it together, in the bathroom at school. It's got to be here.”

She flipped through the pages once, twice, a third time and then looked to Mark and shouted, “It's not here!”

“I know!” cried Mark.

“Don't panic. When was the last time we saw it for sure?”

“In the boys' room,” whined Mark. “We were reading when Mr. Dorrico burst in yelling and I jammed all the pages in my pack and—”

Courtney dove at Mark's pack and frantically dug through it.

“Don't you think I already looked there?” said Mark with frustration. “Like five times already?”

Courtney threw the pack down and clicked into a different gear. She knew that being all frantic and pointing fingers of blame wouldn't help get the page back. They had to think clearly.

“We had it in the bathroom,” she began, thinking out loud. “That's for definite. But we came right here. That means we lost it somewhere between the bathroom and here. It's gotta be here!”

Courtney started tossing the cushions on the sofa, desperate to find the lost page. Mark didn't help. His mind was already jumping ahead.

“There's another possibility,” said Mark softly. “M-maybe it never left the bathroom.”

“What?”

“I-I mean, everything happened fast with Mr. Dorrico and all. Maybe I didn't grab all the pages.”

Courtney stared at Mark. For a moment Mark was afraid she would lunge at him and tear out his adenoids. But she didn't. Instead she glanced at her watch.

“School's closed,” she said, all business. “If Mr. Dorrico found that page, he probably tossed it in the trash. That means it's either still in that trash can, or outside in the Dumpster.”

The two stared at each other for a solid thirty seconds. Neither wanted to admit what the next step might be. Mark broke first.

“We're going through that Dumpster tonight, aren't we?” he said, sounding sick.

“Do you want someone to find that page and start asking questions? Like the police?”

That was a no-brainer. There would be way too many questions to answer if Captain Hirsch of the Stony Brook Police saw that page. Mark and Courtney hadn't been entirely honest with him about their knowledge of Bobby's disappearance, so if someone else found that page, they would look really bad.

“I'll meet you there after dinner,” said Mark. “Bring rubber gloves. This is gonna be gross.”

And it
was
gross.

Mark and Courtney met as planned, right after dinner. Both used the excuse that they were going to the library on the Ave. Instead they spent a solid two hours digging through the Dumpsters of Stony Brook Junior High. Neither could have imagined that one school could create so much disgusting ick in one
day. Going through piles of discarded paper wasn't so bad. Paper was dry. Where it got tough was when they had to search through the stuff that
wasn't
dry. Their journey through garbageland couldn't have happened at a worse time. On that very day, the cafeteria had served spaghetti creole, the furnace had been cleaned and overhauled, and Miss Britton's biology class had the pleasure of dissecting frogs. That meant that the Dumpsters were loaded with sticky tomato sauce, greasy rags, and putrid frog guts.

It was not a happy two hours. Finally, after having wiped sloppy red sauce off yet another page for what seemed like the one zillionth time, Courtney had had enough.

“It's not here,” she announced.

“It's gotta be,” said Mark while wiping a smudge of grease from his chin. “Keep looking.”

Courtney hauled herself out of the Dumpster. She was done.

“Look,” she said. “If it's in here and we can't find it, then nobody else will either. It'll just end up at the dump and nobody will ever see it again.”

“That's just it!” cried Mark. “Bobby trusted me with his journals. I could never face him again if I lost even one page.”

He began digging again with even more energy. A tear grew in his eye. Not because the Dumpster smelled rank, which it did, but because he felt horrible for having let his best friend down. Courtney leaned into the Dumpster and put a hand on his shoulder. Mark stopped digging and looked at her.

“We're not going to find it here,” she said softly, trying to calm Mark down. “The more I think about it the more I think it's gotta still be in the garbage can in the boys' bathroom.”

Mark felt a spark of hope.

“You think?”

“We were in there just before last period, right? I always see the janitors emptying the garbage cans early in the day. I think
there's a good chance Mr. Dorrico saw the page and stuck it in the can and it's still sitting there, waiting to get emptied tomorrow.”

“I think you're right,” he exclaimed, his spirits rising. “All I've got to do is get there first thing, before it gets emptied.”

Mark felt much better. There was still hope, and a plan. Both were cautiously optimistic that they'd find the stray page the next day. The only thing they had to worry about for now was getting home and dumping their clothes before their parents caught a whiff of them. They both
really
needed a shower. It would be tough to explain why they smelled like rotten tomatoes, grease, and formaldehyde.

The next morning Mark was waiting at the front door of school as the janitors arrived for the day. He usually got to school early because he liked to hang out in the library and get some work done before classes, so the janitors didn't think it was odd that he was there. Mr. Dorrico was with the group. Mark knew that this was his chance to find out about the paper, but after what happened in the bathroom with Courtney the day before, he was totally embarrassed about approaching the man. Still, he didn't have any choice.

“Excuse me, Mr. Dorrico?” called Mark.

Mr. Dorrico stopped and looked at him suspiciously. The kids at Stony Brook almost never spoke to the custodians. It wasn't a law or anything, but the two groups didn't have much in common. Until today, that is. Mr. Dorrico stared at Mark. Mark could tell that he was trying to remember where he had seen him recently. Unfortunately Mark was going to have to remind him.

“My name's Mark Dimond,” he said tentatively. “R-Remember yesterday? I was in the third-floor bathroom with Courtney and we were reading and—”

“That's
how I know you!” exclaimed Mr. Dorrico.

At first he seemed happy for having solved the mystery of who this kid was, but his joy quickly turned sour as he remembered the scene from the day before.

“You kids think you're funny, don't you,” he scolded.

Mark didn't feel like being lectured, but he figured it would be better to let Mr. Dorrico blow off steam. He might have a better chance of getting the information he needed if Mr. Dorrico felt like he had done a good job of telling him off. So Mark didn't interrupt him. He stood there and took it.

“I've been working at this school for the better part of fifty years,” Dorrico went on. “There's nothing I haven't seen and nothing I haven't cleaned up.”

Mark thought that was a particularly disgusting thought, but he let the guy ramble.

“So if you think you're being clever or original by trying to make me look foolish, then you've got another think coming!”

“You are absolutely right, sir,” said Mark in the most respectful tone he could manage. “We both felt really bad about what happened. A girl should
never
be in the boys' lavatory. To make light of that rule is an insult to everything this school stands for. We felt so bad about it, we decided the best thing to do would be to apologize to you.”

He ended his speech with a big, sincere smile. He was afraid he was laying it on a little thick, but he was on a roll and couldn't stop. Mr. Dorrico was thrown. He wasn't expecting a total apology.

“Uh, well,” he fumfered. “You're right. Where's the girl? Shouldn't she apologize too?”

“She will,” answered Mark quickly. “As soon as she gets to school.”

“Okay then,” said Mr. Dorrico with finality. “I'm glad we agree.”
He started to walk off, satisfied with the knowledge that he had been shown the respect he deserved. But Mark couldn't let him go. He ran quickly in front of him.

“Uhh, there's one thing though,” he said tentatively. “When we were in there, we were doing homework. I know, bad place to do homework. But I'm afraid I might have left one of my papers behind. You didn't see it, did you?”

Mr. Dorrico kept walking.

“I saw something,” he answered thoughtfully. “It was a green piece of paper with writing on it. Didn't look like a normal piece of paper though. It was more like a piece of plant or something.”

“Yes! That's it!” shouted Mark jubilantly. “Did you throw it in the trash?”

“I got a policy. Things get misplaced. If I find something that looks like schoolwork I'll leave it where I found it for a day in case the kid comes back to fetch it. If it's still there after a day then . . .”

Mr. Dorrico continued talking, but nobody was listening. Mark was already gone. As soon as he heard that the paper was left out in the open in the bathroom, he beat feet for the third floor.

Mark flew up the stairs, sprinted down the hall, skidded around the corner, and blasted through the swinging door that led into the lavatory. When he got inside he did a quick look around to discover there was no journal page to be seen. He dropped to his knees and looked on the floor. He checked all the stalls. He looked on the window ledges and under the sinks. No page. He then grabbed the wastebasket and turned it over. It was empty. Mark felt sick. Could one of the other custodians have thrown it away and then emptied the wastebasket last night? That wouldn't be fair. Courtney said they didn't empty them until the morning. But then where was Bobby's page?

Mark sat down on the floor of the lavatory, totally beaten. His
last hope was gone. He dropped his head into his knees and closed his eyes. He knew he had to clear his head and think. What would he tell Bobby? He had let his best friend down. Bobby was able to flume all over Halla and stop wars but he couldn't even be trusted to hold on to a sheet of paper.

“‘Hi, guys. I gotta apologize for taking so long to write. So much has happened since I left you two, I'm not really sure where to begin.'”

Mark heard those words being read aloud. They were the first words from Bobby's Journal #5—the first words on the missing page.

Mark raised his eyes from his arms. When he did, his heart sank even deeper than it had been a few moments before. Standing inside the door to the boys' lavatory, holding the missing page, was Andy Mitchell. Mark stared up at the kid with greasy dark-blond hair and a bad case of acne . . . and wanted to retch.

If it was possible to have a true archenemy in junior high, then Andy Mitchell was Mark's archenemy. Mitchell was the kind of guy who loved to pick on guys like Mark. The word “bully” always jumped into Mark's mind, but he was a little old to be afraid of bullies. Still, Mitchell loved to harass Mark. He'd cheat off of him in class—when Mitchell decided to show up for class, that is. He'd make fun of Mark's stutter for the amusement of his equally idiotic band of friends, and he never passed Mark in the hallway without giving him a quick punch in the arm. Mark always had to be looking over his shoulder for Mitchell because he never knew where the next bomb was coming from.

The only time Mark was completely safe was when he was with Bobby or Courtney. Mitchell never messed with those guys. Like all good bullies, he was also a coward. Of course, since Bobby left on his adventure, Mark found himself alone more
often and at the mercy of the ever present Mitchell. Mark knew he was a classic creep whose power came from the fact that he wasn't afraid to intimidate and belittle. But he was also the kind of guy who would find that power ebbing as his peers grew up and stopped taking him seriously. Unfortunately that time wouldn't come for a while yet. For now, Mitchell was in charge.

Mitchell stood inside the lavatory door with Bobby's journal page in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other.

“There's two possibilities here, Dimond,” said Mitchell as he gave a quick, juicy snort. Mitchell always seemed to have a cold. It added to his hideous mystique. “Either this is some lame story you're writing, or you know exactly what happened to Pendragon and you're not telling anybody.”

Mark slowly stood up. His mind was in overdrive. What would he tell this guy to get him to give up the page and leave him alone? There weren't a whole lot of options open.

“Y-You g-got me, Mitchell,” Mark said tentatively. “It's a s-story. For English. Where did you get it?”

“I found it in here after school yesterday,” answered Mitchell. “What's the deal? You miss your buddy Pendragon so bad you gotta make up stupid stories about him?”

“I-I know. It's really s-stupid,” said Mark.

This was going pretty well. Mitchell was making up all the answers. Mark didn't have to do anything. Now all he had to do was get Mitchell to give him the page.