The Secret Box (3 page)

5
Ethan

FACT:
Scientists have confirmed that some people are born good at math. It has to do with this thing called number sense. I don't have it. Neither does Jax. But my brother, Tyler, has about as much of it as a person can have.

J
ax and I equally disliked Tyler and it wasn't just because he was obnoxious. There was the whole rude thing, and the ego-bigger-than-his-head thing. But Jax only had to deal with Tyler on a part-time basis. I lived with the guy. It wasn't easy growing up in the shadow of a genius who constantly reminded you that he was a genius. “Hey, noob, don't trip on my Mathlete trophy.” “Hey, idjot, hand me my Science Olympian trophy so I can polish it.” “Hey, brainsap, better protect your eyes from the awesome gleam of my chess trophy.” Our dad had shelves built in the office just to hold Tyler's trophies.

I won a trophy once, for T-ball. We'd lost every game but the parents gave each of us a trophy because we'd “tried hard” and they didn't want us to feel bad about ourselves. Just once, I'd like to win a trophy that wasn't given to me out of pity—a trophy I'd actually earned. I know it sounds pathetic, but if it could be bigger than any of Tyler's trophies, that would be great.

We biked to my house, which was about a mile from Jax's. My parents had the house built with us kids in mind, so there was a family room with a pool table, a shed for our bikes, and a tennis court in the side yard. It was my job to mow the lawn, but a gardener took care of the other stuff. I have no idea how to prune roses.

My parents were at work. They own a toy-testing company in town. Tyler was up in his room. No surprise. “What?” he barked as I knocked. A sign taped to his door read,
Embrace the Zombie Apocalypse
.

If this summer was anything like last summer, he'd spend most of it perched in front of his computer, his skin growing paler by the day. I opened the door and we stepped into his cave. Jax held the box in her arms, concealing it with her coat.

The curtains were drawn so the screen provided the only light, casting its glow on Tyler's hunched shoulders. The voices streaming from the speakers belonged to his gaming friends, who were also locked away in their rooms. “Shove off,” Tyler grumbled.

Jax scrunched her nose. It always smelled bad in there, like sweat and something rotten. Bags of chips littered the carpet, along with soda and energy-drink cans. For someone so smart, Tyler sure was a slob. The only things he cleaned were the trophies.

“Uh . . .” I hesitated, because I hated what I was about to say. “We need your help.”

“I'm busy. Invasion in progress.” His fingers flew across his gaming mouse and keyboard, his legs twitching as if he were running a marathon. “Gotcha!” A Cyclops's head smashed into a pillar.

“Way to go!” a nasal voice said from somewhere in cyberspace.

“Check your health bar. Did you take damage?”

“Negative. Choosing new weapon. Power axe enabled.”

Another Cyclops lumbered down a dark tunnel. Tyler took aim with a glowing sword and WHAM! the head flew across the screen. Tyler snickered, then chugged some soda.

The game was called Cyclopsville and Tyler and his buddies had been developing it all year. It had started as a school project but had become an obsession. Tyler created the story and wrote the dialogue. He loved mythology, so he crammed it with all sorts of Greek and Roman monsters. His friend Walker designed the graphics. The other two friends were developing the game engine.

WHAM! Another Cyclops's head was severed. “There's not enough blood,” Tyler said into his mic. “The blood should coat the ground and walls, maybe some guts could hang from the ceiling. Can you do that?”

“Sure,” Walker's voice replied.

Jax and I had agreed on the bike ride over that we wouldn't tell Tyler the truth about where we got the metal box. Neither of us trusted him. And I had nothing to use for blackmail so if he wanted to turn me in, I wouldn't be able to stop him.

“Tyler,” Jax said. “We're serious. We need your help.”

“I have zero interest in your petty problems.”

I sighed. It was useless. Tyler was lost in his world. He could play all day and all night if my parents let him, and often they did. Only a natural disaster could have forced him from his game. Or a boost to his ego . . .

No way. I was
not
going to flatter my brother. But Jax, as if reading my mind, was ready and willing.

“Please help us,” she pleaded. Then she looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Because . . . because we're not smart enough to help ourselves. You're so much smarter than us.”

Tyler's fingers froze. He sat up straight. “Hey, guys,” he told his friends. “I need to pause the game for a minute. Prioritization code, Family Interference.” He muted the microphone, then spun around in his chair and pushed his dark hair off his forehead. His T-shirt had sweat stains under the pits and the pi symbol on the front. He stared at us with a dazed expression as his focus turned from the mythic landscape of Cyclopsville to his dark, humid room. “It's about time you two acknowledged your intellectual inferiority.”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes.

After setting her coat aside, Jax held out the box. Its metallic surface reflected Tyler's computer screen. “What's that?” he asked.

“I got it at a garage sale,” she explained. “It won't open. But if you push this button, the screen lights up with a message. It's a puzzle.”

“A puzzle?” One of Tyler's eyebrows arched. He was intrigued. His hand darted out and, before Jax could react, he pushed the button.

Attempt 6 of 10.
193 miles from the right spot.
Good-bye.

“Jeez Tyler, you just wasted a push,” Jax grumbled as she stepped away. “Don't do that again. Now we only have four pushes left.”

“It's got a GPS unit,” I said. “We have to go to a preprogrammed place in order for it to open.”

Tyler curled his upper lip. “Duh. That's obvious.”

Jax shuffled in place, her arms wrapped around the box. “So how would you find the right spot if your only clue is that it's one hundred and ninety-three miles away?”

Tyler snorted. “You're interrupting my game for something as easy as that? What a couple of morooons.” He spun back around and reached for the gaming mouse.

“I'm not a morooon, whatever that is,” Jax snapped. “And neither is Ethan. Why are you always so mean? Why can't you just help us?”

“What's in it for me?” Tyler asked, his back to us. “Are you going to give me whatever's in the box?”

“No way,” Jax said, her grip tightening.

“Then why should I help you?”

I wasn't one bit surprised. We should have known better than to ask my brother for help. Being smart didn't have anything to do with being kind or generous. “Let's go,” I said, heading for the door.

“No, wait. I want to figure this out.” Jax's gaze darted around the room. “Oh, I know. I got two Starbucks cards for my birthday. You can have them.”

“Caffeine as payment?” Tyler spun around. “Deal.” He held out his palm, fingers wiggling. Jax tucked the box under her arm, reached into her back pocket, and pulled out a thin purple wallet. Then she handed over the Starbucks cards. “Payment accepted,” Tyler said. After grabbing an atlas off his shelf, he pushed aside a bunch of candy-bar wrappers to make room on his desk. “Gather round, minions, and I shall educate your feeble minds.”

Jax set the metal box on the bed and we both leaned over Tyler's shoulders, watching as he searched through the atlas's index until he found a map of the eastern coast of the United States. He rifled through his drawer for a pen, then drew a dot on the map, right over Chatham. “The key to solving your riddle is geometry. This dot is approximately where I pushed the button.” He grabbed a ruler and took a measurement from the atlas's key. He drew a line out from the dot and into the ocean. “And this is one hundred and ninety-three miles away, the distance to the right spot.”

“It's in the water?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said. Then, using a compass, he drew a circle around the Chatham dot with a radius of 193. “Somewhere on this circle you'll find what you're looking for.” He grabbed his can of soda and took a long drink. “Lesson concluded. Now go play with your little box.” He reached for his mouse again.

Jax grabbed the atlas. “But this circle goes through Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania . . . it goes through six states. We only have four more times to push the button. We can't go to all those places.”

“Is there a way to narrow the search?” I asked.

Tyler grimaced, as if I'd asked him to give me one of his kidneys. “Jeez. Didn't either of you take geometry? You'll need another reading,
obviously
.”

“Where?” Jax asked.

“Somewhere outside of Chatham. Push the button again and you'll find out how far you are from the right spot.” He tapped his fingers on the desk, eager to get back to his game. “Then you'll draw another circle. Get it?”

We both shook our heads.

“What do you mean you don't get it? I went to the same middle school that you guys go to. Have they fired all the math teachers?”

We shook our heads again.

“Unbelievable. This is the state of our public education system.” He drew two circles on a piece of paper. “The circles will overlap in two places. One of those two places will be the right spot.” Then, with a sneer he added, “Duh.” He spun around in his chair, unmuted his microphone, and said, “Gentlemen, I have returned. Commence Operation Cycloptocide.”

“Reload from previous checkpoint.”

“Welcome back, Commander.”

Even though he was a complete jerk, Tyler had a whole mess of friends. Even though I was a nice guy, I didn't. Sometimes it works out that way.

Jax picked up the piece of paper. She stared at the two circles for a moment, her face clenched with confusion. “How far should we—?”

“No more questions, dweebs. Be gone.” Tyler acted like a king dismissing his servants, only this king had pimples and had never been on a date.

“Come on,” I said. I didn't totally understand the math but I knew we'd figure it out.

But Jax stood her ground. “I have one more question, Tyler, and I'm not going anywhere until you answer it. And you know I'm totally capable of standing here all day, in your room, bugging you.”

He groaned. “Fine. One more question.”

“You ever heard of Juniper Vandegrift?”

“She's our great-aunt.” He pressed the mouse and his body jerked. “Whoa! Did you see that? I got him right in his one eye.”

“We have a great-aunt?” I asked.

“Yeah. She's Mom's and Lindsay's aunt, so that makes her our
great
-aunt.”

Jax leaned against the desk. “How come you know about her and we don't?”

“'Cause you two were babies when she had the big fight with Aunt Lindsay.” He scooted to the edge of his chair. “Hey, Walker, that dangling eyeball is a great effect.”

“Thanks,” Walker's voice said.

“What was the fight about?” Jax asked.

“I don't know. But she must have done something bad because our parents said she was never welcome in our family again. Now get lost. You're interrupting the campaign. Watch out, Skywalker! Forces of chaos invading.” The screen filled with splashing blood.

Just before I closed the door, Tyler added, “Farewell, inferior life forms.”

“My brother is such a sweet guy,” I said as we left his cave behind.

I expected Jax to add another sarcastic comment, because one of the things that fueled our friendship was our mutual contempt for my brother. But instead, she smiled. “This is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me.” Excitement danced in her brown eyes. “We have a great-aunt we didn't even know about and my mom is trying to keep me from opening her present.” She wrapped her purple coat around the metal box and hurried down the hall. “Come on. Let's go catch the next train.”

“Train?”

“Yeah.” Jax led the way through my house. She stopped to grab an orange from the fruit bowl. “We need to get outside Chatham for a second reading and we can't get far enough on our bikes. We'll be back before my mom gets off her shift and before your parents get home from work. You won't get into trouble, I promise.”

Where had I heard that before?

6
Jax

I
t turned out my family had a whole bunch of secrets that were as juicy as grapes.

There was the secret about my father, a man my mom always refused to talk about. He did the biological bit—helped create me—then disappeared, never to be seen again. No matter how much I pleaded, no matter how much I snooped, I never learned anything more about him. I knew that Mom and Aunt Cathy were keeping something from me because there were lots of times when I'd walk into a room and their conversation would stop.

So I tried to spy. Whenever my mom and my aunt were in a huddle, I'd stick in my earbuds and pretend to be listening to music, but the eavesdropping never worked. The cup-to-the-wall thing didn't work either. And each time I lay on the floor and tried to listen under the door, I ended up inhaling dust balls and my coughing gave me away.

But now there was a new secret—a great-aunt. Juniper Vandegrift. What a cool name. It sounded important. According to the return address, she didn't live very far away. But why had she and Mom gotten into a fight? Clearly it was a big deal, otherwise she'd visit us during the holidays. We'd talk on the phone. We'd do all the normal things people do with their great-aunts. Like open birthday presents.

As usual, I didn't have much money in my wallet, but Ethan did and he offered to buy my train ticket. I hate feeling like a charity case, so while he stood at the ticket machine, I thought about jumping the turnstile. The transit police were nowhere to be seen. I could probably get away with it.

“Here,” he said, handing me a round-trip ticket.

“Thanks. I'll pay you back.”

What would I do without Ethan? I gave him a hug. He turned red and tugged on his baseball cap.

We settled into some seats, the box tucked safely into my backpack, which I kept on my lap so no one could steal it. “Is it hot in here?” I asked.

“No.” He pointed to a vent. “The air conditioner is on.”

I wrapped my arms around the backpack. “Sure feels hot to me.”

An hour later, we got off at Penn Station in New York City. This has to be one of the most exciting places in the world! Every kind of sound, every kind of smell, every kind of person, every kind of food—all underground. Hoagies, gyros, iced coffee. Turbans, dreadlocks, braids. Brakes screeching, heels pounding, perfume mixing with B.O. Everyone going somewhere fast. A gigantic board showed all the destinations to choose from.

“Ethan, isn't this place great?” Where was he? Clutching the backpack, I spun around. “Ethan?”

He stood next to a vending machine, his back pressed against the station wall, his eyes wide. Poor guy. He hated crowds. “Are you okay?”

“It's too loud.” He looked like he might get sick.

“We won't stay long,” I assured him. “Do you think the GPS unit will work down here?”

“We should probably go up to street level.”

He followed me up the escalator. The city greeted us with honking horns, bright sunlight, and tons of tourists wearing
I Love NYC
T-shirts and posing for photos. We found a spot under an awning. I opened the backpack, pulled out the box, and pressed the button. Huddled together, Ethan and I watched as the screen lit up.

Attempt 7 of 10.
206 miles from the right spot.
Good-bye.

“Uh . . . can we go now?” Ethan asked, chewing on his lower lip.

“Sure.”

We were pretty quiet on the train ride back. Ethan read some tourist brochures. No doubt he'd be sharing some facts with me. Kids teased him when he did that at school. They didn't understand it was his way of trying to be friendly.

I stared at the commuters, wondering if any could be my great-aunt Juniper. Did she have black frizzy hair like me or shaggy brown hair like Ethan? Was she shy or outgoing? Did she like purple? I wrapped my arms tightly around the backpack. Why was Mom mad at her?

As soon as we got to my house, we hurried up to my room. It was almost dinnertime but Mom wasn't home yet. Ethan texted Aunt Cathy to tell her that he'd be home in an hour. After setting the box on my bed, I found a compass and ruler in the back of my desk drawer. Then I tried to remember Tyler's instructions. Make a circle . . . draw a line . . . something about geometry.

I hadn't paid much attention in geometry. News alert: measuring angles and lines is about as exciting as clipping your toenails. Those minutes in class had ticked so slowly, I started to think that somebody had poured molasses into the clock.

“What are we supposed to do again?” I asked Ethan.

He downloaded a map of the eastern coast of the United States, printed it, then set it on my desk. “The first readings were roughly one ninety.” Slowly and precisely, he drew a line just like Tyler had drawn, then using the compass he created a circle. I leaned over his shoulder. “You're breathing in my ear.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He rearranged the ruler. “The reading we did in New York was two hundred and six.” Ever so slooooowly, he drew another line. I tapped my feet.
You're not getting graded on this, so hurry it up,
I almost said. He drew another circle. We both leaned over the map. The circles intersected in two places.

I pointed to one of the intersections, which lay in the middle of Lake Oneida in New York State. “We'll need a boat if we want to go there. I don't know how we'd do that.” I pointed to the second intersection. “Hey, that's Washington, DC. That's easy to get to. Let's try that first.”

“You want to go to DC?” Ethan asked.

“I want to open the box. DC makes a lot more sense than a lake. Besides, Juniper wouldn't send me out on the water. That would be totally dangerous.”

Ethan chewed on the end of the pencil. “Do you think your mom will let you take the train to DC?”

I sat on the edge of my bed and released a long sigh, like a leaking balloon. No way would Mom let me go to Washington, DC, on my own. She was as protective as a momma bear. I think being a single parent made her feel that she had to be both my dad and my mom, so she went a little crazy sometimes trying to fill both roles. And I'd gotten into some trouble lately, so she didn't totally trust me anymore. She was still mad at me for the whole grocery-store incident.

Let's get one thing straight—I'm not a shoplifter. I was just wondering how it would feel. I was standing in the candy section and I thought about how easy it would be to stick a Snickers bar up my sleeve. If I acted normal, no one would know. I could walk right out the door. So I did. But as soon as I got outside, I felt really bad and I turned around to put it back.

I wasn't fast enough.

Turns out they have security cameras all over the place and someone had been watching me. The manager called Mom and I thought she was going to explode when she stormed into the office at the back of the store. “Jacqueline Alice Malone,” she hissed, her face bright red. “What were you thinking?” She was wearing her apron and name tag from the diner.

I didn't know how to explain it. “I'm sorry.”

The manager agreed not to call the police as long as I didn't come into his store again without adult supervision. I felt like a baby who needed a sitter.

“Why?” Mom asked when we got into the car. “Why would you steal?”

“I just wanted to try,” I said with a shrug. “I was going to put it back.”

“You wanted to try?” She gripped the steering wheel until her fingers turned white. “Have you done this before?” I shook my head. She took a long breath, released her hands, and looked into my eyes. “Listen to me very carefully. Stealing is wrong. And it's not the life I want for you.”

“Life? What are you talking about?” Jeez, was she overreacting or what? “It was just a candy bar. It's not like I'm trying to be a career criminal.”

“Career criminal?” She clenched her jaw. “Don't do it again. Ever. Do you promise?”

“Yeah, okay. I won't do it again.”

I hadn't told Ethan. It was way too embarrassing. I'd shared most everything with him but not
that
.

So how could I get to Washington, DC? If the candy-bar incident had happened a few months ago, maybe Mom would have cooled off by now. But it had happened just last week, so the memory was still fresh. “We're going to have to get someone to take us,” I told Ethan.

“Us?” He groaned. “When did I volunteer?”

He hadn't, of course, but we were partners. “We'll need a chaperone.”

“Who?”

“Tyler,” I said.

Ethan cringed. “No way. I'm not driving all the way to Washington, DC, with my brother.”

“Why not? He's got a driver's license
and
a car.”

“Why not?” Ethan's voice cracked. It had started doing that lately. “Uh . . . well, the first reason is because he's a terrible driver. It took him four tries to get his license. He couldn't figure out how to parallel park so he blamed it on the car.”

“Then we won't let him parallel park,” I said.

“Okay, but the second reason is he'll make us listen to his gaming music.”

“We'll wear headphones. That'll work.”

“Maybe.” Ethan rearranged himself in the desk chair. “But there are other reasons, like—”

“I know all the reasons,” I interrupted, summoning my confident voice, the one I used when I needed to convince Ethan to help me. “I know Tyler's a pain. But we can't ask your parents to take us, and we can't ask my mom to take us. We have to keep the box a secret. Tyler's the only choice.” I grabbed the box off the bed and held it in front of Ethan. His face was reflected in its gleaming surface. “This is really, really, really important to me. I need your help. Please?”

Ethan crossed his arms and grumbled under his breath. “Yeah, okay.”

“Yay!” I cheered, happy that I was going to solve this mystery but also happy that Ethan was going to be there with me—because going on this adventure without him would be like going to Disneyland alone. And who wants to ride Space Mountain solo?

“Now we have to figure out how to convince Tyler.” I glanced at the alarm clock next to my bed. It was getting close to dinnertime. Mom would be home soon. “He's already seen the box and he knows we're trying to solve the puzzle. Do you think I should tell him the truth? It would make things a lot easier.”

“Sure, you can tell him the truth,” Ethan said. “If you want him to blackmail you for the
rest of your life
. Remember when he found out I got a D on my history test? I'd stuffed the test in the bathroom garbage can and he found it and basically made my life a living hell. I had to dust all his Star Wars figurines and wash all his socks by hand.
By hand
. Have you smelled Tyler's socks?”

“Yeah, I remember.” The blackmail wasn't a surprise. Tyler often used blackmail to enslave us, his lowly relations. What I couldn't understand was how Ethan got such bad grades when his head was full of so many facts.

I stared out the window, my mind seeking some sort of plan. How could we convince Tyler to take us? He thought we were a couple of annoying kids, so he wouldn't care about helping us. “We have to give him a reason to go,” I said. “Something he can't refuse.”

Ethan shrugged. “The only things he cares about are his trophies and his games.”

I spun around. “Yes, that's it. Maybe there's something going on like a gaming event.” I set the box on the desk and squeezed into the chair next to Ethan. My fingers flying across the keyboard, I began to search for events in WA DC. “There's a symphony,” I read. “Classical music. There's a cat show. A bunch of plays. There's a geocaching event. There's a lecture by some doctor. There's—”

“Go back,” Ethan said. Then he pointed to the geocaching event. I clicked on the link. “It's a competition.”

“What kind of competition?”

“Geocaching is like a treasure hunt. You use a global positioning unit to find the treasures. Look, it says anyone can enter but you need to be in a team of two or more.” And then we both said, “There's a trophy!”

This had possibilities. Tyler pursued trophies like a big-game hunter. I read farther down the page, then groaned. “Crud! It was last week. We missed it.” I sank against the chair. It would have been perfect. Luring Tyler with a trophy would have been easier than luring a cat with tuna fish. “Wait a minute, I know what to do.” I pasted the event's flyer into a new document, then changed the dates to this week. “Ta-da!”

“The font doesn't match,” Ethan pointed out. “He'll notice.”

“He won't notice if I do this . . .” I put the word
trophy
into a huge bold font so it almost jumped off the page. Then I snickered. “He won't notice anything else.”

Gravel crunched beneath tires as Mom pulled into the driveway. “We'll talk to him in the morning,” I said, printing the flyer, then shoving it into my desk drawer. “I'll come over right after breakfast.” Then I grabbed the box and hid it in the back of my closet, under my winter coat. I didn't want to leave it, but I knew it would be safe. Mom never asked me to clean my closet.

“When he finds out we changed the date, he'll kill us,” Ethan warned as we headed downstairs and out the front door.

“He won't kill us.”

“Then he'll do something worse.” Ethan grabbed his bike handles. “He'll make us wash his underwear.
By hand
.”

At that moment, I couldn't think of anything more disgusting. But it was a risk I was willing to take. Because that box was my birthday present and I was determined to open it.

Curiosity may have killed the cat but I was no cat.