The Name of This Book Is Secret

  All this, don’t forget, in an amusing new accent—East Indian, say, or Korean.

  You like that scene? Please use it.

  But it didn’t happen.

  What really happened is that Owen drove away as soon as he knew the kids were safe with Cass’s grandfathers. He was so quiet about it that nobody noticed until the limousine was gone. I can’t say why he didn’t say good-bye—it wasn’t very polite, and it hurt Cass’s feelings more than she would have cared to admit. Maybe he didn’t want to intrude on Cass’s moment with her grandfathers. Or maybe he couldn’t choose the right accent for a good-bye. Or maybe spies are just like that.

  The Grandfathers

  If you don’t mind, I’ll skip the part of the ending where Sebastian jumps out of Wayne’s truck and runs over to Cass and starts licking her face.

  And where Cass hugs both her grandfathers in turn, and then both at once, and then both in turn again.

  And where she says she knew, just knew, they’d come, and she guesses (correctly) that Max-Ernest’s parents told them where to look.

  And, if you don’t mind, I’ll skip the part where the kids all climb into the back of Grandpa Wayne’s truck and they start driving down the mountain and everybody is really tired but really happy.

  You knew all that stuff was going to happen as soon Cass heard Sebastian’s bark.

  But there is one event that occurred on their way home—well, really it was more of a conversation— that I’d like to tell you about.

  Picture an old, roadside gas station. Grandpa Wayne was sitting in the driver’s seat of his truck, studying a map, while Grandpa Larry was filling the truck with gas. Cass and Max-Ernest sat in the back of the truck with Benjamin, who was sleeping next to them on a blanket so ratty it must have belonged to Sebastian. Sebastian, meanwhile, was standing by the truck’s tailgate, sniffing the gasoline in the air like it was a delectable treat.

  They’d already gone over the events that had transpired at the Midnight Sun five or six times when Max-Ernest looked at Cass and said, “So, I guess my doctor was wrong.”

  “About what?” asked Cass.

  “About how you’re just a survivalist ’cause of your dad being hit by lightning, and you don’t really care about saving people. ’Cause you actually did, you saved someone.” He pointed to the sleeping Benjamin.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Cass, sounding oddly uncertain.

  “Lightning, huh?” asked Grandpa Larry with a raised eyebrow. Apparently, he’d been listening from the gas pump.

  “You don’t know anything about it!” said Cass, her ears turning red.

  “Well, I know about good stories, and I’m all for them,” said Larry diplomatically, climbing back into the truck’s front cab.

  Inside the cab, he whispered something into Wayne’s ear. Wayne nodded somberly and started driving the truck back onto the road.

  “I guess I should tell you, I mean, now that we’re alive and everything,” said Cass, speaking to Max-Ernest but looking at her grandfathers, “I didn’t really tell you the whole story—about my dad.”

  “You mean there’s more, besides him being hit by lightning?” asked Max-Ernest, eyes wide.

  “Well, I don’t really know that he got hit by lightning.” Cass hesitated. “Actually, I don’t even know if he’s dead.”

  “You mean you made up the story?” asked Max-Ernest, incredulous.

  “I heard it on TV....”

  Max-Ernest stared at her, then broke into a big smile.

  “So, basically, you lied,” he said as if this were great news. “That cancels out my telling my doctor! We’re even! How ’bout that?”

  “You don’t have to be so happy about it.”

  “So who was your real dad?” asked Max-Ernest after a moment.

  “I don’t know,” said Cass matter-of-factly.

  “You don’t? Didn’t your mother tell you?” Max-Ernest couldn’t hide his astonishment.

  Cass shook her head.

  “Well, didn’t you ever ask?”

  “Yeah, when I was little. But she used to just say she would tell me when I got older. And ever since, it’s like, I don’t know, I’m afraid to ask. Like it would hurt her feelings or something.”

  “Well, I think you should ask again—”

  “Leave her alone,” said Grandpa Larry, leaning out the back window. “She’ll ask when she’s ready.”

  “OK,” said Max-Ernest. “I was just saying—”

  But he didn’t say anything more.

  Cass’s Mother

  As you can imagine, Cass’s mother entered a state of extreme anxiety as soon as Cass failed to answer her cell phone at the usual hour. Proud of her self-control, her mother waited a whole minute before she called Cass’s grandfathers to ask where Cass was. When she couldn’t get through, she calmly and rationally drove to the airport—and screamed at the top of her lungs until she got on the first flight home.

  Late that night, as Grandpa Wayne’s pickup truck pulled up in front of the firehouse, a taxi was pulling out. Cass’s mother stood in the doorway. Her eyes grew stern when she saw Cass hop out of the back of the truck.

  “Cassandra! What were you doing in the back of that thing—do you know how dangerous that is? Not to mention against the law. And you two—” she said, pointing at Cass’s grandfathers. “You promised!”

  Now, to my mind, Cass’s mother getting mad about Cass riding in the back of a truck—when Cass had been doing far more dangerous things only a short time before—is both funny and realistic. But you may want to leave it out and go immediately to the following:

  And then Cass’s mother—she couldn’t keep it up any longer—she took her daughter in her arms and wouldn’t let go for one and a half minutes. (I know that doesn’t sound long, but count it out—one and a half minutes is a long hug.)

  “I missed you so much,” she said.

  “Me, too,” said Cass.

  And then Cass—she couldn’t stop herself—she cried for the first time since these adventures began, as if she’d been saving up her tears and now she was spending them all at once.

  Max-Ernest’s Parents

  Max-Ernest’s parents are minor characters who serve mainly as comic relief. (Relief for us, I mean. For Max-Ernest, no doubt, they weren’t funny at all.) Nonetheless, they deserve a mention:

  When he returned late that night, Max-Ernest naturally expected his parents to be full of questions. He started to explain, but his parents stopped him.

  “No, don’t say anything,” said his father.

  “No, not a word,” said his mother.

  A strange thing had happened while Max-Ernest was away: his disappearance had brought his parents together. Their concern for their son had made them overcome their differences—and agree to split up.

  Henceforward, they promised, they were going to be proper divorced parents. They would each have a house—separate from the other.

  “You ran away to send us a message,” said his father.

  “And we heard it loud and clear,” said his mother.

  Max-Ernest thought it best not to correct them.

  Amber

  There’s absolutely no reason to go back to Amber at this late point in our story. But she would get really mad if we didn’t.

  Not that she would say so. As the nicest girl in school, she would probably say it was “totally fine—I mean, I wouldn’t put you in my book, either.”

  I take it back. There is a reason to go back to Amber. If only to report what Cass said the next time Amber offered her a Smoochie.

  Cass said, “No.”

  A little word, it’s true—but, for Cass, a big deal.

  Mrs. Johnson

  If Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais are the true villains in this book, then what is Mrs. Johnson? If I had to pick, I would say Mrs. Johnson represents the law. She’s like the policeperson in the world of our book—the one who makes the rules, and who punishes you when you break them.

  Whic
h gets us that much closer to the ending of our ending.

  By now, readers will be wondering how much Cass and Max-Ernest confessed about their trip to the Midnight Sun.

  The answer is: everything and nothing.

  Oh, they tried.

  But whenever they described their experience, reactions ranged from polite skepticism to outright disbelief.

  You’d think that Benjamin Blake might have been some help. Why would he have a shaved head, Cass asked, if no one had wanted to suck his brains? But other people didn’t see it that way. There were plenty of reasons, they said. Like maybe he wanted to look like he was in a rock band. Or maybe he had lice.

  Frustratingly, Benjamin himself had only the vaguest memories of his ordeal. As far as anyone could tell from his mumbled account, Cass and Max-Ernest had taken him on a trip to Egypt, where he sat around a campfire and ate mint-chip ice cream.

  The day after Cass and Max-Ernest returned, a team of firemen and police investigators went to examine the site of the Midnight Sun, and the kids waited hopefully for their report. But the fire had decimated the entire spa. Incredibly, there were no survivors other than the kids. Or no survivors willing to identify themselves anyway. It was as if the Midnight Sun had never existed. The investigators would say only that they suspected arson.

  After hearing the police report, people were no longer skeptical about Cass and Max-Ernest’s story; they were downright suspicious.

  In a more emotionally satisfying book than this one, the principal would have wept when Cass returned. She would have apologized for ever doubting Cass, and she would have begged Cass’s forgiveness. There would have been some sort of celebratory assembly and Cass and Max-Ernest might even have received medals—for “best survivalist” and “best code breaker,” say.

  Well—by now you know this book better than that.

  (And, no, I’m not giving any ground on this one.)

  Mrs. Johnson couldn’t prove it, but she was certain that Cass and Max-Ernest were responsible for Benjamin Blake’s disappearance, rather than for his rescue.

  I won’t go into detail about their hours of detention and hard labor because the subject is too infuriating to my sense of justice (yes, I have a sense of justice, although not always an active one, I admit). If you’re a sadistic sort, you can flesh out that part for yourself. Otherwise, join me in turning a blind eye to their suffering.

  Thankfully, after what Cass and Max-Ernest had been through, any punishment their principal could dish out was comparatively easy to endure.

  What was harder to endure was that no one in the world believed them.

  Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais

  You didn’t honestly think they’d gone up in flames—did you?

  I can’t tell you much about our villains’ actions after our heroes escaped. I don’t know how many of their guests they let burn to death (probably most of them) or what awful price they extracted from those they saved (probably a high one). I don’t know what sinister alchemical materials they managed to salvage before they ran. Still less can I tell you about their nefarious plans for the future, although I would bet my life they had them; creatures like Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais do not, as a rule, give up after a setback—they vow revenge.

  What I can tell you with certainty is that they were last seen silhouetted on top of a mountain ridge not far from what was once the Midnight Sun. They were on horseback (remember those horses running loose during the fire?), and they had paused to take in the view and to say good-bye to their old fortress of a spa. Then, with a cry that echoed for miles, they whipped their horses into a gallop and disappeared over the ridge.

  Wherever they were heading, it was too close. Whenever they return, it will be too soon.

  THE END

  WELL, NOT REALLY.

  No, that last chapter wasn’t really the last chapter.

  Don’t feel bad if you put a lot of work into it; the work wasn’t wasted. Many important things happened in that chapter—at least I think so.

  I’ll tell you what, if you’re that angry, just push the book aside and forget all about this chapter—and all about Cass and Max-Ernest, and all about the Secret, and all about me, too.

  Good riddance, right?

  No, you want to keep reading?

  OK, how’s this for a compromise: why not think of your chapter—Chapter Thirty-two—as the last chapter? As for this chapter—we’ll make it Chapter Zero. If anyone asks, it doesn’t exist. It’s the nothing chapter. The un-chapter. It simply doesn’t count.

  And we won’t call it the ending, either. That grand title we’ll leave for your chapter. This chapter we’ll call the denouement.

  One dictionary defines denouement as “a final part in which everything is made clear and no questions or surprises remain.” By that definition, it is exactly the wrong word to describe this chapter. This chapter will make nothing clear; it will raise many questions; and it may even contain a surprise or two. But I say we call it the denouement anyway because the word sounds so sophisticated and French.

  You see, there was one more occurrence in the lives of our two heroes that I must relay before we are finished. And this occurrence—I doubt it will give you what people call “a sense of closure.” If you’re anything like me—and I fear you are, if you’ve read this far—you’ll find it more maddening than anything else.

  My intent is not to torture you. I want merely to show you that there is a larger picture—that our story doesn’t begin and end with this book.

  Or with Cass and Max-Ernest.

  Or even with you and me.

  One rainy Wednesday afternoon, not very long after her experience at the Midnight Sun, but long enough so that she’d already grown extremely tired of trying to convince people that her experience was real, Cass was sitting upstairs at the firehouse having tea with Grandpa Larry—just as she had done every Wednesday for years.

  This time, however, they were not alone. Much to the delight of Grandpa Larry, who loved nothing more than a fresh audience for his stories, their Wednesday ritual had recently grown to include Cass’s new friend, Max-Ernest, and as a special guest today, Benjamin Blake.

  This week’s tea was Earl Grey—a tea that Benjamin insisted was incorrectly named because it tasted pale blue. (Benjamin had a similar complaint about orange pekoe, a tea that he said tasted olive green; green tea, on the other hand, was not green but bright yellow.) Grandpa Larry tried to explain that Earl Grey was named not for its color, but for Charles Grey, the Second Earl Grey, also known as Viscount Howick. However, his young listeners didn’t appear to care much about the Viscount. So Grandpa Larry gamely switched topics, and started to relate an old and gratifyingly bloody Chinese legend about the origin of tea.*

  It was then that they heard Sebastian barking downstairs: a customer had arrived.

  “It’s Gloria—I’ll be in back!” Grandpa Wayne shouted from below.

  As always, Gloria had arrived at the fire station with a big box of stuff. The kids waited impatiently as Grandpa Larry carried it in for her.

  “Gloria, this is Max-Ernest and Benjamin. And you remember Cass—” said Grandpa Larry, after he’d finally found space to put the box down.

  “I think so,” Gloria said. “Wasn’t she here last time?”

  Cass waited for more, but Gloria only smiled in a vague sort of way, as if Gloria barely remembered her.

  “Yeah, and we saw each other at the Midnight Sun, too,” Cass prompted, in case Gloria thought Cass didn’t want her to mention it.

  “The Midnight Sun? You mean the spa?”

  Gloria seemed genuinely surprised. “You must be thinking of someone else,” she said. “I took a terrible fall right before I was supposed to go. Ask Larry, he’ll tell you. Spent a week in the hospital. They thought I might have amnesia—it was just like Days of Our Lives! But how was it? I’m dying to hear! I didn’t know they allowed children....”

  Cass looked closely at Gloria, expecting some secret communication��a
threatening glance or a sly wink. But Gloria’s face was blank. Either she thought she was telling the truth or she was a very good actor.

  “Um...it was...OK,” said Cass slowly. “But it’s not really there...now...”

  “It isn’t?” Gloria asked, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Cass, will you please put Sebastian outside? He’s about to chew this box apart,” Grandpa Larry broke in before Cass could answer.

  “It’s so weird,” said Cass as she tied Sebastian to a post in back of the fire station. “It’s like I dreamed the whole thing. The spa. Ms. Mauvais. Everything.”

  “Well, you didn’t—and even if you did, how come I dreamed it, too?” Max-Ernest protested. “Unless we had some kind of Vulcan mind meld. Or wait, I know, maybe we’re two split personalities in one schizophrenic brain! That would explain everything—”

  “I didn’t mean I really thought I dreamed it—just that it felt like that,” said Cass, cutting him off. (Even though Max-Ernest had supposedly been cured, he still had a tendency to go on and on if you didn’t stop him.)

  Benjamin, who’d been silently struggling to follow the conversation, mumbled something and pointed back toward the fire station.

  “He says to be quiet and listen. He thinks it might be important,” Max-Ernest translated.

  Inside, Gloria was telling Larry a story. As loud as she was, they could only make out about half of her words:

  “...Never so surprised...in all my life...the gardener...and here I was trying to show the house...”

  As she listened, Cass grew increasingly excited. “She’s talking about the magician’s house! You think she discovered something?”

  They weren’t able to pose this question to Gloria immediately, because Benjamin Blake’s mother had arrived to pick him up. But as soon as he’d gone, Cass and Max-Ernest begged Gloria to start her story again from the beginning. She didn’t understand why they cared so much, but she was happy to oblige. (Gloria had lost her memory, not her love for attention.) The story went like this: