This Isn't What It Looks Like (19 page)

“Who?”

“I can’t see his face—”

“Give me the monocle back.”

“No, never—”

“You have to!”

They wrestled, Benjamin straining to keep the monocle away from Amber, until it fell to the ground, skidding in Max-Ernest’s
direction.

Without thought to the consequences, he seized his chance and scrambled to get it. Benjamin and Amber stopped fighting when
they saw him.

“Max-Ernest, old chum! Thank goodness it’s you. Somebody I can reason with,” said Benjamin calmly. “That monocle is very valuable
to me. For purely sentimental reasons, you understand. It wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else. I appreciate your picking
it up for me. Very kind of you.”

“Um, you’re welcome…?” said Max-Ernest, clutching tight to the monocle.

“Wonderful. You can give it back to me now,” said Benjamin in the tone one uses with a little child.

Max-Ernest took a step backward. “No, I think I’ll keep it for the moment because… because…” He stammered, unable to think
of a reason that wouldn’t give away what he knew about Benjamin and about the monocle.

“Forget him, Max-Ernest,” said Amber in her sweetest, most insinuating voice. “Give it to me and I’ll be your friend for real.”

“When are you going to get it through your head
that I don’t want to be your friend?” asked Max-Ernest.

He wanted to run, but he hesitated. If he ran toward the exit, there was a very good chance Opal, the secretary, would see
him through the office window.

“Just give it to me; it’s mine,” said Benjamin. “This isn’t the time for games.”

“Sorry—”

Both Benjamin and Amber reached for the monocle at the same time. Trying to evade them, Max-Ernest stepped on his shoelace.
He fell backward and wound up sitting on the ground, still holding the monocle tight.

“I’ll take that,” said Opal, stepping up to them. Apparently she hadn’t gone back to the office after all. Before Max-Ernest
could think to resist, she took the monocle out of his hand and stowed it away in her big shiny purse.

“The principal will deal with you two later!” said Opal, addressing Benjamin and Amber.

She offered Max-Ernest her hand and pulled him up with surprising strength. “
You
are going to the nurse’s office right now. That’s going to be a nasty bruise on your elbow.”

*     *     *

The nurse’s office was empty. The blinds were closed and the computer screen was dark. It looked as though nobody had been
in there all day.

“You sit here,” said Opal, patting the pillow on the single cot in the room. Max-Ernest noticed her fingernails grazed the
sheets without smearing. Funny, he thought, she said they took “forever” to dry….

It was then that he realized what looked different about her today: her mole. He could have sworn that when they first met
it was on her right cheek—the right side of her face being the side you saw when you walked into the administration office—and
yet now the mole was on her left cheek.

“I’m going to see if I can’t scare up that nurse. I must say, I didn’t take you for the wrestling type.”

Casually dropping her purse on the nurse’s desk, Opal gave a shake to her mass of blond curls and walked out of the room on
her vertiginously high platform heels.

Not quite believing his luck, Max-Ernest waited until the secretary closed the door, then, as quickly as he could, he opened
her purse. He removed the monocle and left her compact in its place.

As soon as he sat back down on the cot, Opal breezed back into the room. “Silly me. I forgot—
Nursie is out for the day. Sick—wouldn’t you know it? Guess you’ll just have to muscle through.”

“Um, shouldn’t I at least put ice on my elbow or something?” asked Max-Ernest. Ever since the secretary had mentioned the
likelihood of his elbow bruising, he’d been imagining the worst. “I think I could have a fracture. Or maybe a sprain. You
know, they say a bad sprain is worse than a break—”

Opal waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, you’ll be fine,” she said, seeming to forget she was the one who’d brought him into
the nurse’s office in the first place. “Can you not be such a hypochondriac for once, Max-Ernest?”

As Opal shooed him out, Max-Ernest tried to follow her suggestion; he had more important things to think about than his elbow,
after all. Hopefully now that he had the monocle in his possession, he would be able to see what Benjamin had almost seen:
into Cass’s mind. And, hopefully, he would be able to bring her back home.

And yet, even as he was opening his locker, gathering his things to take to the hospital, he couldn’t help wondering: who
told the secretary about his hypochondria? It was most definitely odd: a woman he barely knew knowing him so well.

Almost as odd as a mole moving from her right cheek to her left.

Was it possible that the Midnight Sun had another spy—another mole—in his school? She certainly seemed more than capable of
putting a
KICK ME
sign on his back.

C
ass did not have much of a plan yet; she was hoping inspiration would strike.

She figured if she could make the soldiers turn around, she could slip behind them and untie the bandits, but that was as
far as she’d gotten in her thinking. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find a stick long enough to poke a soldier at a safe distance.
All the available wood in the area had been burned in the campfire. She looked for low-hanging branches she might break off,
but these, too, were missing.

“Are you sure you want to make these people your prisoners?” she heard the Jester asking the soldiers. “Will you not then
be as bad as bandits yourselves? No, you will be worse! ’Tis true they steal from the rich. But do not the rich first steal
from the poor?”

For some reason, Cass didn’t have much faith that the Jester’s logic would convince the soldiers. Or even that if his logic
convinced them, they would necessarily follow his suggestions. A more practical solution was required.

“How much gold have you? Or you? Or you?” the Jester continued. “Has not the King taken from your parents what should be theirs
and yours? It is he who is the master thief. The royal band on his head does not make him any less a royal bandit…. Aye,
that’s it, be gone, beasts! Thank you for allowing me to keep my feet!”

The regal beagles, it seemed, had decided to release the Jester from canine captivity. However, from the sound of their barking/bow-wowing/yapping,
Cass feared that the reason they were moving on was that they’d picked up another scent—hers.

Sure enough, the yapping got louder and louder, and within less than a minute Cass saw the dogs heading toward her. The soldiers,
she knew, would be close behind.

She had the advantage of invisibility, but that went only so far with creatures whose olfactory organs were forty times more
sensitive than a human’s.

Thinking quickly, she pulled off her sweatshirt and threw it to her left in the direction of a boulder. Meanwhile, she stepped
quietly in the opposite direction.

The ruse worked. The beagles piled onto her sweatshirt, pawing furiously at the mysterious garment, looking for Cass. When
she didn’t appear, they growled in frustration and ran circles around the boulder.

Afraid to break into a run, lest she attract their attention, Cass edged slowly away from the dogs. She was on the verge of
escape when the dogs suddenly
lost interest in the boulder and started sniffing around again.

Quickly, she unbuckled her belt and tossed it under a bush.

Again, the beagles dove after their quarry, scrambling to get her belt. Again, they were frustrated to find Cass gone, the
belt no longer attached to her waist. Again, they sniffed.

Cass, meanwhile, wet her finger to see which way the wind was blowing. Stealthily, she crept in the upwind direction, hoping
that way would hide her scent. Alas, she miscalculated; beagles follow not airborne but ground-borne scents, and they started
running toward her anyway.

Increasingly nervous, Cass bent down to untie her shoes.

The game continued—although to Cass, obviously, it wasn’t a game—Cass tossing her left shoe to the right and her right shoe
to the left, then her right sock to the left and her left sock to the right, until she was standing barefoot and shivering
behind a tree.

What to do next? She’d succeeded in confusing the dogs enough that they were now fighting over her socks about thirty feet
away from her. But they would be diverted for only so long. And the soldiers, no doubt, would be fast behind.

Cass hesitated. She might be invisible, but she certainly didn’t relish the idea of undressing any further.

“Heh heh heh.”

A peculiar snorting, wheezing, laughing sound startled her. Like a pig imitating a hyena. Or maybe vice versa.

“Heh heh heh.”

Cass reeled around to find the homunculus watching her from on top of a rock.

“Mr. Cabbage Face!” she whispered, excited.

“Why do you keep calling me that? My master’s housekeeper sometimes called me her ‘little cabbage face,’ but I thought it
was because she was always giving me her leftover cabbage….”

“No, it’s because—there’s no time to explain. How long have you been here?”

The homunculus shrugged his little shoulders. “Awhile.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Too fun to watch you hopping around,” said the homunculus, smirking.

Cass noticed that his speaking had improved remarkably now that he was no longer the one being teased but was rather the one
doing the teasing.

“Funny. What are you doing here?”

“Right now? Looking for food. But those cheap bandits don’t have any meat. Only this rotting potato—” He held up a moldy potato.
A worm peeked out the side.

“Gross,” said Cass, stepping away.

“They eat like peasants,” said the homunculus, throwing the potato to the ground in disgust. The worm he kept—and popped into
his mouth. “Mm, not bad…”

“I think that’s so they can afford to feed the real peasants,” said Cass, trying to ignore the end of the worm wiggling between
his lips.

“I came here to warn you. Lord Pharaoh is looking for you.”

“Why?”

The homunculus furrowed his brow. “Something about a secret that will make him live forever. You are the only person who can
show it to him, or the only person who can keep him from it. One or the other, I forget. He saw it all through that eyeglass
of yours.”

“You mean he knows about the Secret?” Cass asked excitedly. Although the warning about Lord Pharaoh was ominous, it was also
the first clue to uncovering the Secret she’d encountered since entering the Jester’s world.

“I don’t know about any secrets. All I know is he is a very scary man. If he finds you, I offer you this advice. His weakness
is vanity. Show him a mirror and you will gain a minute.”

“A mirror? Uh-oh—!”

Whether it was owing to Cass or the potato or Cabbage Face himself, the dogs were back on Cass’s trail, yapping wildly.

“Oh, don’t worry about those blasted beagles,” said the homunculus dismissively. “I can get rid of them.”

Cass looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not planning on eating them, are you?”

The homunculus grinned. “Now there’s an idea….”

“Mr. Cabbage Face!”

“Actually, beagles taste terrible. Very gamey. Come here, I want to show you something before I go.”

“There’s no time!”

“Look—”

The homunculus hopped off the rock and onto a bed of leaves and pine needles. Brushing them aside, he revealed a large burlap
tarp. He lifted a corner—and a silver candlestick poked out. Then he pulled the tarp off altogether. Underneath was the wooden
chest the bandits had stolen from the procession. Cass recognized the big brass lock. Half open and filled to the brim with
coins and jewels, the chest was a veritable treasure trove. It glistened, glittered, and gleamed, beckoning as only treasure
can.

“For you…” He hesitated, not being very experienced with gift-giving. “Nobody ever did anything nice for me before.”

“Wow. Thanks. But all this treasure isn’t really yours to give, Mr. Cabbage Face,” Cass scolded. “Besides, my job now is to
free those bandits. And if I offer this stuff to the soldiers, they’ll just take it—they won’t free anybody.”

The homunculus didn’t have time to respond. The beagles were fast descending on them.

“Quick—hide under the tarp,” he whispered. “I’ll get them out of here.”

“But you can’t run fast enough. They’ll catch you.”

“Who said anything about running?”

As Cass dove onto the pile of treasure, the homunculus threw the tarp over her. After recovering the tarp with leaves, he
headed toward the dogs and let out a shrill whistle. “Beagles, you greedy dogs—you’re no better than hogs! Catch me if you
can!”

The homunculus made a gesture with his hand that Cass, watching through a hole in the tarp, didn’t recognize but assumed was
very rude. Then he scrambled up the nearest tree.

Barking angrily, the dogs pawed and scratched the base of the tree trunk until the homunculus climbed out onto a long branch
and dropped over the edge, catching the branch with one hand.