You Have to Stop This

  What does this have to do with graduation? Nothing. But it’s important to think about because… well, you never know….

  Max-Ernest was so preoccupied with the Curious Case of the Walking Mummy (the actual case, not his graduation speech) that he’d almost forgotten he had detention on Monday morning.

  Luckily, when he tried to sit down at the Nuts Table at recess, Glob and Daniel-not-Danielle were there to remind Max-Ernest of his pitiable fate. They felt so sorry for him that they fortified him with a new pizza-flavored energy bar and an old Silver Surfer comic, respectively, before steering him toward his place of confinement—the school library.

  The library had once been Max-Ernest’s favorite place on campus. When he was in the lower grades and hadn’t yet become friends with Cass and Yo-Yoji, the books in the library provided a refuge from the confusing world of the playground. In those days, other kids always seemed to him to be speaking in code—a code he couldn’t crack, no matter how many methods he applied. Books, on the other hand, he could rely on to explain themselves; and if a book used a word he didn’t know, he could always look up the definition.

  He used to sit in the corner of the library reading and rereading first the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, later Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe. As he read, he would imagine he was an apprentice investigator hired to assist the detective heroes, never guessing that he would soon be solving mysteries of his own as a member of a top secret international organization—the Terces Society.

  Today, as he entered the library, he could see hardly a trace of the room he remembered. The old librarian, Pam, had retired a year before, and budget cuts meant that she had yet to be replaced. Gone were Pam’s more eccentric shelf labels, like BOOKS TO READ WHEN YOU’RE SICK and BOOKS FOR BOYS WHO LIKE BUGS and BOOKS THAT SMELL LIKE OLD SHOES. The only posters that remained on the walls were strict admonishments about the virtues (rather than the pleasures) of reading.

  In any event, there was no question of Max-Ernest’s picking up a new mystery to read right now. Whether he liked it or not, he was more than sufficiently occupied with a mystery already—a mummy mystery. And a doozy of a mummy mystery at that.

  Mrs. Johnson came out from behind the librarian’s desk when he walked in.

  “Sit!” She pointed to a table where Cass was already seated and writing in her notebook. “Dr. Ndefo hasn’t yet told me what happened at the museum, but I understand things did not go well. I’m sure I will learn all the details soon. In the meantime, I want you to work on your graduation speech and reflect on the terrible fate that awaits you should I choose not to let you graduate. Not only will you have to relive the current year—with me—but you will, in all likelihood, be dooming yourself to a lifetime of crime and poverty. Homelessness, hunger, early death—these are things you can look forward to….”

  Max-Ernest nodded, gulping. “You forgot prison.”

  “Where do you think you are now? And rest assured, I will be back to check on you, so no funny business,” she added as she walked out.

  Max-Ernest hadn’t seen Cass since watching the video, and there were many things he wanted to say when he walked up to her, but instead of blurting everything out at once, he extended his hand.

  “Shake.”

  “Why?” asked Cass, shutting her notebook. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d shaken hands—if they ever had.

  “Just do it.”

  Warily, Cass took his hand—then jerked hers away. “What was that? Did you take my ring?!”

  “No. Look—”

  He opened his palm and revealed a round metal disk with a button in the middle. Cass looked at it as though it might be the trigger for a bomb. “And that is…?”

  “A hand buzzer. It’s a prank. Very old school. You know, like a whoopee cushion or a squirt ring. Anyway, it’s got a spring inside. I thought maybe that’s how the ibis ring works. How ’bout that?”

  “So you think the ring is a prank, too?” asked Cass dubiously. “A joke ring? From ancient Egypt?”

  Max-Ernest shrugged. “Well, Dr. Amun liked cartoons, right? Maybe he liked pranks, too.” He wasn’t about to tell her he got the idea from his dream. “Where is Yo-Yoji, by the way?”

  “No idea. Maybe he got so spooked by the idea of a walking mummy that he’s dropping out of school and we’re never going to see him again.”

  “Yo-Yoji? I doubt it.”

  They were silent for a moment. For reasons that had only partially to do with a walking mummy and an ancient secret, talking wasn’t as easy between them as it had been even a short time before.

  Max-Ernest eyed her notebook. “Is the you-know-what in there? I mean, the hieroglyphs?”

  Cass hesitated.

  “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  Cass rolled her eyes.

  “That’s OK, you don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to show it to me. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” He had practiced these words in his head, and he felt he had delivered them with admirable calm.

  Cass looked at him. “You get that it’s not because I don’t want to, right?”

  “You don’t? I mean, it’s not?” Max-Ernest couldn’t look her in the eye.

  “No, you dummy. Haven’t you noticed I keep asking for your help even though I can’t really talk about… it. I can’t do this without you; you know that. You were the one who found the ring in the trunk, remember?”

  “I didn’t think you’d noticed,” said Max-Ernest, trying not to choke up. “Actually, if you want to know the truth, I didn’t think you really wanted to be friends anymore.”

  “What? That’s—”

  “Ridiculous?”

  They both laughed.

  “OK, now that’s settled. So what do you think… it… is?” asked Cass.

  Max-Ernest shook his head. “I have no idea. But the walking mummy? I can’t help feeling he must have something to do with… it.”

  Cass looked at her friend in surprise. He didn’t usually put much stock in feelings, only facts. “So then you think the mummy really came back to life?” she asked. “You, Mr. Rational?”

  “I didn’t say that exactly.”

  “Hey, wait, I just thought of something,” said Cass excitedly. Quickly, she opened her notebook and peeked inside, careful not to let Max-Ernest see what she was looking at. “Is there a hieroglyph that looks like feet? And could it mean walk?”

  “Yes, there’s a hieroglyph that looks like feet—there’s one that looks like pretty much everything. And sometimes it means walk. I think it can also mean run, cross, move, go—whatever makes sense for where it is.”

  Cass wrote notes as Max-Ernest talked. “Forget I’m telling you this,” she said, “but for a long time, I thought the last hieroglyph of the… it… just looked like a letter V. But now that I think about it, I sort of drew the V with feet. Maybe the feet were the important part of the hieroglyph, and I just didn’t realize it.”

  “So you’re thinking that the you-know-what is about walking—and therefore that’s what made the mummy walk? I thought it was about an ibis or Thoth.” Max-Ernest couldn’t hide his skepticism.

  “So then what’s your theory about what it is?” asked Cass, closing her notebook. “I know you have one. You always do.”

  Max-Ernest shrugged.

  In truth, he did not have a theory about what the Secret was. Not currently. For a long time, he had suspected that the Secret might have something to do with the legendary philosopher’s stone—the magical substance that was the holy grail of alchemy and that turned lead into gold and made people immortal. More recently, however, he’d begun to doubt this theory. The philosopher’s stone was a European myth. The Secret, on the other hand, had originated in ancient Egypt. Didn’t it therefore make sense to look for the Secret in Egyptian mythology?

  He thought he might have hit on something when he read about the Book of Thoth—a book said to contain all the spells of the universe. But what, th
en, would the Secret be? If the Secret came from the Book of Thoth, it literally could be about anything.

  “No, I know it’s hard to believe, but I really don’t have a theory,” he said.

  “Yoo-hoo!”

  For a second, neither of them recognized the giddy girl bouncing through the door with a sheepish Yo-Yoji in tow.

  “Hi, guys! Did y’all miss me?”

  “Amber?!” Cass and Max-Ernest cried out at the same time.

  Amber appeared transformed, and yet the most astonishing thing about her transformation was how much like herself she still looked; she was just a better, more beautiful version of the Amber they’d known for years. All traces of acne gone, her skin was smoother than ever, with a new hint of pink on her cheeks and a new dewiness on her lips. Her eyes sparkled; her smile effervesced. Her hair shimmered, and when she tossed it, it seemed to float in slow motion like a shampoo commercial brought to life. There was something dazzling and unreal about her; she was a mirage of youthful perfection.

  “What happened to you?” asked Max-Ernest. “We heard you went blind or something.”

  “Is that what people are saying?” Amber laughed—a tinkly laugh that chilled her schoolmates without their quite knowing why. “I just had a little cold, that’s all. So sorry to keep your friend out of detention. Mrs. Johnson said I could borrow him for a moment.” Amber smiled at Yo-Yoji. “I know it was torture for him… right, Yo-Yoji?”

  Yo-Yoji didn’t say anything, but his cheeks flushed red.

  “Borrow him? He’s not a library book,” said Cass, stone-faced.

  “It’s just that he’s so good with graphics and computers and stuff, and I needed to make posters for Grad Night,” said Amber breezily. “See?” She held up a flyer with a picture of King Tut’s mask on it. “Doesn’t it look awesome? Ridiculous, right?”

  Max-Ernest noted silently that Amber had used Yo-Yoji’s word without apparent effort.

  “Oh, yeah, totally ridiculous,” imitated Cass, obviously noting the same thing—not so silently.

  “The theme is going to be King Tut,” Amber blithely continued. “You know, ‘Dance like an Egyptian’? We’ve been practicing.” She demonstrated, bending her arms and wrists at right angles, and thrusting one hand forward and one hand back. “C’mon, Yo-Yoji. Show them.”

  Blushing even harder, Yo-Yoji put his hands in position and started doing the Egyptian dance.

  Amber smiled at Cass and Max-Ernest. “Cool, huh?”

  Max-Ernest winced. It wasn’t that dancing like an Egyptian was necessarily uncool—Max-Ernest didn’t feel qualified to make that judgment one way or the other. It was just seeing Yo-Yoji reduced to following Amber’s orders. It was more disturbing than when Yo-Yoji had been in the grip of a seventeenth-century samurai.

  “Why don’t you guys try?” Amber suggested.

  Cass and Max-Ernest shook their heads: not a chance.

  With Amber’s attention directed at the others, Yo-Yoji pointed at Amber as if to say, Don’t look at me, look at her. But somehow that only made it worse.

  Max-Ernest looked at Cass to see how she was responding to the humiliation of their friend. Her face remained calm, but her ears were a fiery crimson.

  Indeed, a lot of thoughts were racing through Cass’s head at the moment—most of them unrepeatable in polite company. But one question was paramount: what had happened to Amber?

  “Speaking of the dance, do you guys have any Egyptian stuff?” asked Amber casually. “Like, maybe some costumes or something left over from the Egypt unit?”

  “My costume was paper, and it ripped when both my parents tried to take it,” said Max-Ernest truthfully.

  “What about you, Cass, don’t you have anything?” asked Amber.

  Cass shook her head, staring at Amber.

  The only other person Cass knew to have changed so dramatically was their friend Benjamin Blake, and his transformation had been courtesy of the Midnight Sun. Come to think of it, the new Amber reminded Cass very much of a young Ms. Mauvais….

  “Maybe some jewelry,” Amber persisted. “Like a bracelet or a ring or something?”

  “What would you want a ring for?” asked Cass, a vague suspicion beginning to form in her mind.

  “Oh, I was just thinking, you know, like for a prize, or for the queen of the dance or something. Not for me, if that’s what you were thinking,” said Amber with a laugh. “Why? Do you have an Egyptian ring you could loan us? It would be awesome if you did.”

  While Amber spoke, Yo-Yoji kept motioning behind her back. At first Cass thought he was still doing the Egyptian dance, but then she realized Yo-Yoji was trying to point to something. After looking Amber up and down and then up again, Cass figured out what it was: the silver tote bag hanging from Amber’s shoulder.

  “Hey, Amber, where did you get that bag?” she asked.

  At the top of the bag was a tag bearing an insignia of a black sun and the words SOLAR-ZERO LLC.

  “Um, I got it in—actually, I don’t remember,” Amber stammered, her bubbly ease momentarily fizzing. “I think it was my mom’s. I could try to get you one if you like it,” she added, recovering.

  “That’s OK. I just thought I recognized the name.” Cass looked significantly at her friends as Amber walked quickly away.

  Max-Ernest’s eyes widened. “That’s it! I knew it was a weird name. Zero in twenty-four-hour time is midnight.”

  Cass nodded. “And solar means…”

  The three friends looked at each other, acknowledging the awful fact: Solar-Zero LLC was the Midnight Sun.

  Which meant the Midnight Sun had financed the mummy exhibit.

  Which meant the mummy’s arrival in their lives—and his mysterious departure—was no coincidence at all.

  It was something much worse.

  It was just before noon. The sun was high, but the circus was still quiet.

  A handsome, impeccably dressed man with a cool, unruffled demeanor strolled along the midway, his hands casually resting in his coat pockets.

  At first glance, he couldn’t have looked more out of place in these decidedly scruffy surroundings. The trash-strewn ground had likely never been trod upon by shoes as shiny as his. The tattered tents were almost an insult to his smooth tan skin. And behind the rusty bars of an ancient cage, the mangy mane of a once-regal lion seemed to wilt in the light of the man’s perfectly coiffed silver hair.

  But if you happened to look closely at his eyes, you might have read there a different story. They were the eyes of a much older man—much older than this man at first appeared. You could see the telltale beginnings of crow’s-feet around the corners, and the whites of his eyes had a slightly yellowish cast. But it wasn’t simply a question of age; it was also the emotion in his eyes—the tears. The sight of the circus moved him, it seemed, reminding him of his lost youth, perhaps, or of something or someone from his past.

  Possibly, it was this memory that caused him to stop in front of a greasy old popcorn cart and close his eyes for a moment.

  He mumbled to himself. Four words. They sounded like a spell or an incantation. Or a very odd recipe.

  “Heliotrope… Echinacea… Licorice… Peanut butter…”

  When he opened his eyes, two clowns—or at least two men who had been made up as clowns the night before (and hadn’t washed their faces since)—stood in front of him.

  “Admission is ten dollars,” said the skinnier, taller clown whose name was Morrie. “Exact change only.”

  “Well, if you want to give us a hundred dollars, that’s OK, too,” said the shorter, fatter clown, Mickey. “Just don’t expect any change back.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, for a hundred, we can give him something back. How about a smile?”

  Mickey grinned. “Right. No change. Except the change in our moods. Nothing sadder than a sad clown.”

  “Why should I pay anything?” asked the visitor. “The circus is closed.”

  Morrie nodded. “I couldn’t have said i
t better myself! The circus is closed. You pay, we open it for you.”

  “And do what? A clown act? I’m getting that for free.”

  “Oh, so now you think you can make fun of us, huh, wise guy?” Mickey growled.

  “Yeah, mister, we make the jokes around here!” growled Morrie. “Your job is to be the butt of them.”

  The visitor chuckled. “Easy, friends. For your information, I’m not some rube walking into the circus so you can make me into your next mark.”

  “Well, you’re not some old carnie, either—I can tell you that much,” said Mickey, studying the well-groomed man in front of him. “Not with that fancy, sort-of-European-sort-of-not accent of yours.”

  “Yeah, where you from anyway—Paris, Texas?” asked Morrie.

  Mickey laughed. “Good one, Morrie.”

  Morrie took a bow. “Thanks, Mickey. I perform here every night. Tell your friends.”

  “I’m here to see Pietro,” said the visitor, losing patience. “Can you tell me where he is?”

  At the mention of the circus master’s name, the clowns relaxed slightly.

  “Pietro? Why didn’t you say so?” exclaimed Mickey.

  “And who should we say is calling at this god-awful hour?” asked Morrie.

  “It’s noon.”

  “That’s high noon to you,” Morrie corrected.

  “And bedtime for us,” Mickey added.

  “Tell him a… relative is here to see him.”

  “Relative, huh? Come to think of it, you do look kind of like the old man,” said Morrie. “Sort of the newer, shinier version.”

  Mickey nodded. “Kind of like when they take those classic old cars and reissue them fifty years later.”

  “What are you, his nephew or something?” asked Morrie.

  “Actually, I’m his twin brother,” said the visitor, extending his hand for the first time. “Doctor Luciano Bergamo, at your service.”

  “His brother?!” exclaimed the clowns in unison.

  Neither clown moved to shake the man’s hand. They just stared in disbelief at his pristine white glove.