"Because he's not in the mood!" It was Marta, shooting to her feet. The other students sat stunned and gaping.
Even Wendell Waxmo was briefly flustered. He fiddled with his bow tie-today's color selection was lime green-before collecting his wits and boring in on Marta.
"Miss Gonzalez, it's nice to have you participating, finally, in a class discussion. Would you mind telling us bow you happen to know that Mr. Waters isn't in the mood for singing?"
Marta glanced sideways at Nick, who nodded for her to sit down. He appreciated what she was trying to do-spare him from an incredibly awkward moment-but he didn't want her to get in trouble.
"I'm waiting, Miss Gonzalez. " Wendell Waxmo brushed at the lapels of his tattered old tuxedo. "Kindly tell us why your friend doesn't feel like belting out a song."
"Because his father got blown up in Iraq, " Marta said quietly, "and nearly died. So leave him alone, okay? Just leave him alone. "
Wendell Waxmo looked as if a bowling ball had been dropped on his toes. His mouth froze in the shape of an "O, " and the sound that emerged was a long faint hiss, like a tire going flat.
Nick didn't know what to do. Most of the kids were looking at him with expressions of sympathy and sorrow; even Smoke had closed his book and was studying Nick from across the room.
Marta sat down, her eyes glistening with tears. She scribbled a note and thrust it at Nick: I want Mrs. Starch to come back!
Gradually the color returned to Wendell Waxmo's face, and he cleared his throat much too loudly and moistly. Once again he'd been upstaged in his own class, only this time the circumstances didn't allow for a witty retort.
"Mr. Waters, our sincere prayers are with your father, and your family. War is a tragic event, " the substitute said, "but life does go on. So, people, please return your attention to page 329 and the theory of punctuated equilibrium."
Nick raised his left hand.
"Yes, Mr. Waters?"
"My dad's going to be okay, " Nick declared in a strong voice. "The doctors say he'll be fine."
Wendell Waxmo hoped the boy's upbeat attitude would energize the rest of the class. "What good news!" he said. "I think that calls for a round of applause!"
The students stared at the man as if his pants had fallen down. Wendell Waxmo looked at the clock on the wall: nine long minutes until the bell.
"One piece of unfinished business, " he said briskly. From his battered briefcase he removed the essay written by Duane Scrod Jr., upon which the brutal grade of D+ had been scrawled supersized with a bright red marker. It was painfully visible to all members of the class, even those in the back row.
Wendell Waxmo waved the paper in Smoke's face and said, "Pimples indeed, Mr. Scrod. " The essay was covered with crimson slashes, circles, and scribbles.
"It wasn't even my idea, " the boy said. "Mrs. Starch is the one who made me write it."
"Well, she's not here, is she?"
"But how'd I mess up so bad?"
"In a word: scholarship, or lack thereof. I'm going to leave this disaster in Mrs. Starch's desk so she can see for herself. " Wendell Waxmo returned to the front of the class and placed the pimple paper in Mrs. Starch's top drawer.
The other students remained silent, but the mood was definitely hostile. Nick saw Marta trying to write another note, the veins in her neck pulsing with anger. Finally she crumpled it and mouthed the words "I hate him!"
Nick, too, felt bad for Smoke, who seemed floored by the D+ grade. Crazy Dr. Waxmo should have waited until after the bell to return the essay instead of embarrassing the kid in front of everybody.
Smoke raised his hand.
Wendell Waxmo called on Graham, who wasn't expecting it. "Mr. Carson, tell the class how punctuated equilibrium relates to the concept of speciation."
Graham stood up and confidently gave a totally wrong answer, as usual.
Smoke raised his hand higher. Wendell Waxmo looked the other way and called on Mickey Maris.
Mick couldn't stand it. He cleared his throat and spoke up. "Duane has a question, Dr. Waxmo."
"What?" The substitute wheeled around and speared Nick with a glare. "Are you interrupting me, Mr. Waters?"
Nick gestured toward Smoke. "Duane's had his hand up."
"I'm not blind, am I?"
"No, sir."
"Whatever Duane wants to ask can wait, I'm sure."
Nick said, "That's not right."
"Yeah, answer his question, " said Marta.
Wendell Waxmo's ears turned pink and his bald spot began to tingle and his tuxedo shirt began to itch. What had gotten into these kids? It was unbelievable!
He banged a pudgy fist on the desk and said, "Quiet, you little termites-"
At that moment there was a firm rap on the door, and Dr. Dressier entered the room. He pointed at Nick and said, "Mr. Waters, I need to see you in my office. Right away."
Twilly Spree had been born in Key West thirty-four years before the Red Diamond Energy Corporation came probing around the Big Cypress. Twilly's father was a gung-ho real estate salesman; his mother grew bonsai trees and wrote a dreadful romance novel that she published under the pseudonym Rosalee DuPont.
When Twilly was eighteen, his grandfather had died suddenly, leaving the young man a generous inheritance of $5 million. Twilly had invested wisely and was now wealthy enough to buy his own private jet, if he wanted one.
He didn't. He seldom left the state of Florida, a place that he loved, a place that was breaking his heart because it was disappearing before his very eyes.
Twilly Spree had good intentions but a rotten temper, which occasionally got him into hot water. He didn't like high-rise buildings and freeways and ugly housing subdivisions named after nonexistent otters or eagles. He didn't like concrete and asphalt, period, and he especially didn't like the people who were burying the wilderness under concrete and asphalt.
And although he gave away thousands of dollars to conservation groups, Twilly Spree sometimes got personally involved in the causes in which he believed-too personally involved. One time Twilly witnessed a driver tossing hamburger wrappers from a car, and he followed the man a hundred and three miles down the turnpike, all the way to Fort Lauderdale. That night, the litterbug was flabbergasted to find four tons of raw garbage on top of his red BMW convertible. Twilly, watching from the top of a pine tree, wasn't the least bit ashamed of himself.
While he could easily afford to book penthouse suites at the finest hotels, Twilly preferred a pup tent under the stars. For a month or so, he'd been camping east of Naples, in a marvelous cypress strand known as the Black Vine Swamp, On the day of the fire, Twilly had been deep inside the tree line, observing a group of school students on a nature hike. An unexpected turn of events had prevented him from chasing down the arsonist at the time, though Twilly was confident he would eventually catch the culprit.
The helicopter now circling above the swamp didn't concern Twilly, because his campsite was so well concealed that it could not be seen from the air. He was aware that the chopper was leased to the Red Diamond Energy Corporation, and that Red Diamond was preparing to drill for oil in the wetlands. Twilly did not approve.
As a first warning, Twilly had captured one of Red Diamond's workers, stripped off the man's clothes, and then glued him to a tree trunk. The fellow had not been harmed, but he'd been made to feel extremely unwelcome. The iron pipes that he had been unloading were already on a freighter bound for Haiti, where they would bring much-needed water to the vegetable fields of poor farmers. Twilly had the funds and the connections to make such miracles happen.
After the glue incident and the pipe disappearance, Twilly had expected Red Diamond to beef up security. Therefore the appearance of the helicopter was no surprise. As soon as the aircraft flew away, Twilly slipped out of the trees and made his way across a grass prairie until he reached the precise longitude and latitude of a way point that was logged on his handheld GPS. There he sat down crosslegged and amused himself by watching a line of bull ants ca
rry off a dead cricket.
Within minutes a different helicopter flew in from the south and stopped to hover directly above Twilly, the backwash from the rotors disrupting the ant parade and making the soft grass dance and flutter crazily.
It was a helicopter paid for by Twilly himself. He waved to the pilot, who opened the door and pushed out a bundle that landed with a damp thud ten yards from where Twilly waited.
With a pocket knife, he sliced open the thick outer binding and pried off the slatted lid to make sure that the important contents of the package weren't damaged. Inside, he counted two dozen small plastic bottles, each filled with a whitish liquid. The bottles had been packed on a bed of dry ice, to keep them cold.
Twilly Spree smiled and thought: Hope springs eternal.
He flashed an "okay" sign to the pilot and the helicopter buzzed off, leaving the prairie silent in the slanted morning light.
Nick didn't want to hear bad news about his father from Dr. Dressier, who was practically a stranger, but why else would the headmaster have pulled him out of class?
Dr. Dressier didn't say a word as they walked to the administration building. Nick felt like turning around and running away as fast as he could. If his whole life was about to fall apart, he wanted to be at home when it happened. He pondered if his mom had already been notified. If so, where was she? And who was there to comfort her?
"Have a chair, please, " the headmaster said when they got to his office.
Nick needed to sit down. The room seemed to be spinning, and Dr. Dressier sounded as if he were speaking into a bucket.
"Can I call my mother?" Nick asked.
"Why?"
"Oh. So she already knows."
Dr. Dressier looked puzzled. "Knows what?"
Nick had never fainted, but he was pretty sure that he was going to keel over any second. With his free hand, he clutched the arm of the chair to keep himself upright. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that the room would stop moving.
Is my dad dead? He couldn't make himself ask the question. He was too afraid.
"Are you all right?" the headmaster asked.
"No, sir, not really."
"Is your arm bothering you?"
Nick said, "There's nothing wrong with my arm. I strapped it up this way because I'm training to be left-handed."
"That's an interesting project. " Dr. Dressier was trying to sound supportive, which didn't make Nick feel any better.
"Still, you look pale, " the headmaster said. "Let me call the nurse-"
"Please don't. I'll be okay. " When Nick opened his eyes, he saw that Dr. Dressier was holding an envelope. "This came to the school, Nick, addressed to you."
"From who?"
"Read it closely. Then I have some questions, " Dr. Dressier said.
When Nick took the envelope, he saw that somebody already had opened it. That's not cool, he thought angrily. What if the letter was personal?
Sensing that Nick was miffed, the headmaster said, "It's just a precaution. We have to make sure that undesirable persons aren't trying to contact our students on campus."
"So you read my letter?"
"We're just being careful, Nick. As you can see, there's no return address."
That was the first thing Nick had noticed, too, and with huge relief. He was sure that the Army National Guard wouldn't send a death notice in an unmarked envelope, especially a lavender-colored envelope. He unfolded the letter:
Dear Mr. Waters,
I've learned that you and Miss Gonzalez have taken a strong interest in my health and well-being. Let me assure you that I am just fine, and I intend to return to my teaching duties at the Truman School as soon as possible.
You and Miss Gonzalez are the only students to express any concern for me, and I'm grateful for that. However, I must firmly ask you not to probe any further into my personal affairs or to visit my home without a proper invitation.
Instead, both of you should focus on your academic studies (which, as I recall, could stand some improvement).
Sincerely,
Mrs. Starch
The message had been typed on stationery bearing Mrs. Starch's name. If it was fake, Nick thought, the imposter bad done an excellent job of imitating Mrs. Starch's stern tone. In any case, Nick was overjoyed that the letter had nothing to do with his father's medical condition.
The headmaster wasted no time getting to his questions. "Did you and Marta really go to Mrs. Starch's house?"
Nick nodded. "Nobody's seen her since the field trip. It just seems so weird."
"She had a family emergency, " Dr. Dressier said, "and she informed the school that she'd need some time off. There's nothing weird about that."
Dr. Dressier didn't sound very sure to Nick. In fact, he sounded like he was trying to persuade himself that Mrs. Starch's sudden disappearance was normal.
"How did you and Marta even get to her place? It's way out near the mall, " the headmaster said.
"We walked from the movie theater."
"And what did you find when you got there?"
Nick considered his response carefully. He and Marta had promised each other not to tell anyone about the man who called himself Twilly and said that Mrs. Starch was his aunt.
"Well, she wasn't home, " Nick said. "It looked like she hadn't been there for a while."
Dr. Dressier folded his hands in a mechanical way. It seemed to Nick that he wanted to appear unruffled.
"Did you see anything unusual?" the headmaster asked.
Nick immediately thought about the creepy gallery of stuffed animals inside Mrs. Starch's house. "It was dark, " he said, dodging Dr. Dressler's question without having to invent a lie.
"But clearly she knew that you and Marta had been there, or else she wouldn't have written the letter."
It had to be Twilly who'd told Mrs. Starch about encountering the two students. However, Nick saw no reason to inform Dr. Dressier that he and Marta had been captured by an odd stranger wearing a ski cap and an ammo belt full of live bullets.
"Maybe she peeked out and spotted us from an upstairs window, " Nick said. "Just because she didn't answer the door doesn't mean she wasn't home."
"Yes, that's true, " said the headmaster.
"Have you talked to her since she's been gone?"
Dr. Dressier stiffened behind his desk. "As I mentioned before, she's been in communication with the school."
"But have you actually talked to her? Has anyone?"
"I'm certain that she'll call, " Dr. Dressier said curtly, "as soon as her family situation is taken care of."
The phone rang, and the headmaster picked it up. After listening for a moment, he excused himself from the office. Several minutes passed, and Nick grew restless.
He noticed a thick file marked "B. Starch" on a corner of Dr. Dressler's desk. Nick flipped open the file and hurriedly started skimming the pages. Normally he wasn't a snoop, but he was still highly annoyed about his letter being opened without his permission. He figured that Dr. Dressier owed him one.
Nick was searching for a particular piece of information, but the paperwork in Mrs. Starch's file was mostly dull and routine. He found what he was looking for just as he heard the muffled voice of the headmaster, speaking to someone outside the door. Nick shut the file folder barely half a second before Dr. Dressier walked in.
"I only have one more question, Nick."
"Yes, sir."
"Can you absolutely guarantee that you and Marta will follow Mrs. Starch's wishes? Please give her the privacy she needs at this time. It's only fair."
"We were worried about her, that's all. We didn't mean to cause any hassle."
Dr. Dressier seemed to be struggling with the notion that any of Bunny Starch's students cared that much about her.
"Look, I know she's not the most popular teacher at Truman, " said Nick. "In fact, just the opposite. But after what happened on the field trip..."
The headmaster nodded. "Yes, it was very courageous of her t
o go back for Libby's medicine while that fire was burning. And don't worry, Nick, the school will honor her appropriately when she returns."
Dr. Dressier escorted him out of the office, apparently believing that Nick had promised not to concern himself further with the whereabouts of Mrs. Starch. In fact, Nick had made no such pledge.
"Did you talk to any of her family?" he asked the headmaster.
"No, I didn't."
"I heard she had a nephew, " Nick remarked in an innocent tone.
"Not that I'm aware of, " Dr. Dressier said. His curious expression confirmed what Nick had seen in Mrs. Starch's employment file. She had no sisters or brothers, which meant it was biologically impossible for her to have a nephew named Twilly-or Joe or Fred or Engelbert, for that matter.
In fact, Mrs. Starch's file didn't list any living relatives, which made her excuse of a "family emergency" seem highly suspicious.
Nick was eager to show Mrs. Starch's note to Marta, but he didn't make it back to biology class. As he hurried out of the administration building, he heard a car horn honking, and then somebody shouted his name.
It was his mother, waving from the parking lot. Nick couldn't see whether she was crying or not. He swallowed hard, and ran to meet her.
FOURTEEN
It had been on a creek deep in the Everglades where Nick had learned that his father would be leaving for the Mideast. They were in a small flat-bottomed boat being poled along the shallows by a guide who was hunting for redfish and snook. The fishing trip had been an early Christmas present to both of them from his mother.
Nick sat on a cooler in the center of the boat, watching his dad cast a fly rod with an easy, flawless rhythm that was almost hypnotizing. Fifty feet of line would snap straight behind him and float in midair, then loop tightly and shoot forward, dropping the fly as softly as a snowflake. It was a marvelous sight to see.
"My Guard unit's been called up," Nick's father said, his eyes fixed on the water.
"To fight, you mean?"
"I guess we'll find out when we get there."
"How long will you be gone?" Nick tried to keep the emotion out of his voice.