The Name of This Book Is Secret

  “Guess the compass will have to wait,” grumbled Grandpa Larry. “Now get down. Smoke rises, so the best way to keep breathing is to stay low to the ground.”

  He and Cass crouched down and pulled their shirts over their noses, as if the room were filling with smoke. Larry pointed to the station’s old brass fire pole: “Ladies first.”

  Cass eagerly grabbed the pole and stepped out into the opening in the floor.

  “Wait,” said Larry. “Promise not to tell your mother?”

  “Promise,” said Cass, already starting to slide.

  Despite the fact that it was their job, Cass’s grandfathers couldn’t bear to sell anything; they loved all their things too much.

  As a result, their store was crammed so tight it was like a huge maze with walls of furniture. Every surface was covered with stuff they’d collected—from old clown paintings to mechanical monkeys to broken typewriters to things you couldn’t describe if you tried.

  By the time Larry and Cass had navigated their way through, the front door was opening to reveal a short pair of legs staggering under the weight of an enormous cardboard box.

  As soon as he saw the box, Larry rushed to the doorway and threw his arms across it, barring the way.

  “No, no, no! Bad Gloria!” he said sternly, as if he were addressing a dog and not a person under a box. “I told you last time, no more things. Look around. We’re stuffed to the gills.”

  “At least let me put this down for a minute,” complained the voice of the unseen woman.

  Taking pity on her, Larry grabbed hold of the box and placed it on the threshold. A small round woman in a bright yellow suit scowled at him. This was Gloria Fortune.

  “Don’t you even want to hear where it comes from?” she asked, still red-faced and breathing hard under her tall beehive hairdo. “Such fascinating things... Well, never mind!” she said brightly. “Is there a Dumpster in back?”

  Larry almost choked. “No! I mean, yes, there’s a Dumpster, but...you’re not...you wouldn’t... throw the box away?” he asked, as if Gloria were threatening murder.

  Gloria smiled slyly as she twisted a curl of hair that had sprung loose. “Sorry, Larry. You’re my last resort. I certainly don’t have any room.”

  Larry hesitated. “In that case—why don’t you come inside for a cup of tea, and I’ll just take a peek, before you do anything rash—”

  Gloria grinned victoriously. “You won’t regret it,” she said, entering the store.

  Sheepishly, Larry picked up the box and followed her back inside.

  “Sorry,” he whispered to Cass. “This should only take a second, er, minute, er, five, er, ten...twenty minutes at the most....”

  Gloria, as Cass learned over her third—or was it her fourth?—cup of tea, was a real estate agent, a “probate specialist,” meaning that she sold houses after their owners passed away. She was, in effect, a real estate agent for the dead.

  Gloria loved to gossip, and Larry was always ready to listen to ghoulish tales about her dead clients. (Wayne, who was a retired auto mechanic, always left to go fix something when Gloria was around.) As for the box of stuff she had just brought, it came from the home of a “strange and reclusive man—some kind of magician or something. What I call a real old coot,” Gloria said.

  “Watch it, Gloria,” said Grandpa Larry. “Some of us are pretty cootish ourselves!”

  The magician, Gloria continued obliviously, had died very suddenly several months earlier in a kitchen fire, the source of which was never determined. He had no known relations or survivors. “Not a single friend left, poor man.”

  Because the magician’s house was so “off the beaten path” his death might never have been discovered had not his gardener investigated the terrible smell emanating from the kitchen.

  Cass nodded knowingly at this bit of information. “The smell of decomposing flesh can be very strong,” she said, trying to show she was familiar with cases of this kind (although, I hasten to point out, her knowledge of corpses was not yet firsthand).

  “True,” sniffed Gloria. “But actually what the gardener was smelling was something else. Sulfurous, he described it. Like huevos podridos.”

  “That means ‘rotten eggs’ in Spanish,” said Cass, who was studying the language at school.

  “I thought it meant Talky Girls,” said Gloria pointedly.

  Cass considered it wise not to say anything more, and she excused herself to do some homework, pretending she was no longer interested in the story of the dead magician. But she continued to listen, or, as you might call it, eavesdrop, while Gloria finished telling her story.

  In fact, almost nothing of the magician’s body was left—smelly or otherwise. The fire had been so intense that only a few of his teeth remained. (See, I warned you about teeth.) Curiously, while the magician’s entire kitchen was incinerated, the rest of the house was left unscathed, as if the fire had gone out as quickly as it had started.

  According to Gloria, the source of the noxious aroma was never found, and traces of it still lingered. She hoped it wouldn’t hamper the sale of the house, which was going to be difficult enough thanks to the house’s “quirky and offbeat” character.

  Gloria pronounced these words as if they were slightly distasteful, but Cass, not knowing precisely what they meant, thought they sounded just grand. She decided if she ever bought a house she would want to buy one just like the magician’s.

  After Gloria left, Wayne rejoined the others to rifle through the magician’s belongings. Mostly, the contents of the box were disappointing. What Gloria had described as a “contraption for mixing potions” turned out to be an ordinary kitchen mixer. And what she had guessed was “something to make objects disappear” was in fact a piece of exercise equipment.

  They thought they’d extracted everything they could, when Sebastian started barking excitedly. The blind dog circled the box, sniffing it, like there was something inside he really wanted. Or something inside he was really scared of. Or both.

  Cass pushed aside the last remaining bits of newspaper at the bottom and saw something they’d missed earlier: another box. Sebastian’s barks grew louder as she pulled it out.

  The box was flat, about the size and shape of a briefcase, and fitted with brass hinges and fastenings. It was made of a darkish, reddish, stripy type of wood, and it was carved with a design of swirling vines and flowers surrounding an uplifted face. The face was shown in profile inhaling what looked like curling smoke.

  “Rosewood,” Wayne said, taking the box from Cass so that he could examine it more closely. “Too large for a cigar box....Maybe a cutlery case?”

  Larry nodded. “Probably...Art Nouveau design. About a hundred years old. French?”* He took the box from Wayne and held it up to look at the bottom. “No markings. Looks like one of a kind.”

  “Can I open it?” Cass asked. She knew from experience they could go on for hours if she didn’t stop them.

  Wayne nudged Larry, and Larry handed her the box. “Go ahead,” he said, although, no doubt, he would have liked to open it himself.

  With a substitute grandfather peering over each shoulder, Cass carefully sprang the latch and raised the lid. From their gasps, Cass could tell they’d never seen anything like it before. She certainly hadn’t.

  The interior of the box was upholstered in lustrous purple velvet. Nestled in the velvet, and arranged in four concentric semicircles, were dozens of sparkling crystal vials. Most of these vials (Cass later counted ninety-nine of them) contained liquids in a variety of colors: lavender water, amber oil, alcohol in an alarming shade of green. Other vials were filled with powders of various degrees of fineness; others with flower petals, leaves, herbs and spices, shards of wood and bark, even dirt. One vial held a single strand of hair.

  “What is this, some kind of chemistry set?” Cass wondered aloud.

  “Hmm, could be,” said Larry. “Did you know that in England pharmacists are called chemists?”

  Tou
ching the velvet for the first time, Cass noticed something that had been hidden by a fold: a small brass plaque on which someone had engraved the words:

  The Symphony of Smells

  “‘The Symphony of Smells’?”

  “Maybe it’s a perfume-making kit,” suggested Wayne.

  Cass pulled out a vial and opened it. A sharp citrus aroma was released into the air.

  “Lemon?” she guessed.

  She handed the vial to Wayne and pulled out another. They spent the next few minutes opening vials, and guessing the scents they contained: mint, lime, root beer (“sassafras,” Larry called it), wet wool, old socks, freshly mown grass.

  “I think it’s a kind of smelling game,” said Cass, who was enjoying herself immensely. “To train your nose. Like if you were a detective. So you would know what you were smelling in an emergency. Or at the scene of a crime.”

  “Whatever it is, my nose is getting very tired,” said Larry.

  “Just one more,” said Cass, picking up a vial from the end of the second row. There was a hairline crack in the vial, and it was nearly empty, save for a light dusting of yellow powder. She opened it—and recognized the smell immediately.

  It was the smell of huevos podridos. Rotten eggs.

  QUESTION: What is not enough for one, just right for two, and too much for three?

  ANSWER: A secret.

  Max-Ernest, eleven-year-old aspiring stand-up comedian, had read the joke—really a riddle, if you want to get technical—in one of his seventeen joke books, and now he was trying it on each of his twenty-six classmates in turn.

  None of his classmates laughed. Or even smiled.

  Most of them were so tired of his jokes that they didn’t bother to respond at all. Those who did said things on the order of “Uh huh” and “Whatever” and “That’s stupid” and “No more jokes—it’s so annoying, Max-Ernest!” and “Why can’t you just have one name like a normal person?”

  You or I would probably burst into tears if our jokes met with such negative reactions, but Max-Ernest was used to it. He never let what other people said upset him.

  He was going to be the funniest and best stand-up comedian of all time. He just needed to practice.

  Max-Ernest looked around the school yard for a student who hadn’t heard his joke yet. There was only one. She was squatting by the edge of the soccer field, a baseball cap on the ground beside her.

  He didn’t know her personally because they didn’t have any classes together. But he recognized her on the basis of a certain physical feature: her big, pointy ears.

  Since I’ve already made the mistake of describing Cass’s most identifiable trait (yes, her ears! I thought she never exposed them, but I guess I was wrong), I may as well describe our other hero, Max-Ernest, for you. But remember what I said about forgetting what I said? Try to erase the image of Max-Ernest from your head as fast as you can—for your own safety.

  Aside from his small size, the first thing you would have noticed about Max-Ernest was his hair. Each strand stood on end, as though he were a cartoon character who had just stuck his finger in an electrical socket.

  His hairstyle was not a fashion choice; it was a philosophical one. Max-Ernest cut every hair on his head the exact same length because he didn’t like to favor one hair over another. Hairs may be made of dead cells, he reasoned, but they’re still growing things, and each one deserves to be treated fairly. (If you think this point of view is a bit odd or eccentric, well, I’d have to agree.)

  That hair is dead but still growing is what is known as a paradox: something that seems impossible but is nonetheless true. Max-Ernest was very fond of paradoxes, as he was of all kinds of riddles and puzzles and word games.

  Max-Ernest also liked math. And history. And science. And just about any subject you can think of.

  Despite his diminutive stature, Max-Ernest attracted attention wherever he went. He couldn’t help it. As you will soon discover yourself, Max-Ernest was a talker. A big talker. He talked all the time. Even in his sleep.

  His “condition,” as his parents called it, was so extreme that they’d taken him to numerous experts in hopes of finding a diagnosis.

  The first expert said he had attention deficit disorder. The second expert said the first was out of order. One expert said he was autistic, another that he was artistic. One said he had Tourette’s syndrome. One said he had Asperger’s syndrome. And one said the problem was that his parents had Munchausen syndrome.

  Still another said all he needed was a good old-fashioned spanking.

  They gave him pills to take and exercises to practice. But the more ways people tried to cure him, the worse the problem got. Instead of stopping his talking, each cure gave him a new thing to talk about.

  In the end, the experts weren’t able to agree on a name for Max-Ernest’s condition any more than his parents had been able to agree on a name for him.

  HOW MAX-ERNEST BECAME MAX-ERNEST

  A Short Story

  Max-Ernest was a preemie. That is, he was born prematurely—about six weeks earlier than expected.

  Prior to his entering the world, his parents hadn’t done anything to prepare for his arrival. They had no stroller, no crib, no annoying musical toys, no baby wipes, no box of diapers. There were still plenty of pointy, dangerous things around the house.

  And they had no name for their baby.

  As the lump of shriveled pink flesh that would become Max-Ernest lay in the hospital incubator, like a small chicken (or maybe rabbit?) roasting in a glass oven, his parents argued about what to call him.

  His mother wanted to name him after her father, Max, but his father wanted to name him after his father, Ernest. Neither parent would budge. Max-Ernest’s mother declared she would rather her child have no name at all than have a crusty old name like Ernest. His father swore that he’d rather have no child at all than that his child have a meager, mini little name like Max.

  Being only a few days old, Max-Ernest was unable to tell his parents which name he preferred. But that didn’t stop them. When he cried, Max-Ernest’s mother took it as evidence that he hated the name Ernest and wanted the name Max. When he spit up on his chin, his father said it was a sign that he hated the name Max and wanted the name Ernest.

  Finally, a nurse threatened to put their child up for adoption if they didn’t reach a decision. So Max-Ernest’s parents decided to split the difference and put both names on his birth certificate. But the argument left them so bitter and angry that they got a divorce as soon as they left the hospital with their baby.

  Now eleven years old, Max-Ernest has been able to speak quite clearly for a long time. But whenever his parents ask him which name he prefers, as they do every year on his birthday, he goes mute. He knows that to choose one name over the other is actually to choose one parent over the other, and, like most children, he’d rather do anything than do that.

  Thus Max-Ernest has two names to this very day and very likely will keep them for the rest of his life. The End.

  At the exact moment Max-Ernest eyed her from across the school yard, Cassandra was digging in the mud with her bare hands. Dirt kept getting under her fingernails, and she muttered to herself that she should be wearing protective gloves. It wasn’t like her to be so unprepared.

  She glanced a few feet away to a spot under the bleachers, where a small gray furry thing was lying in the grass: a dead mouse.

  Sure, maybe the mouse had died of natural causes, Cass thought. But then why was she smelling rotten eggs again? What if the mouse had died from the same thing as the magician? What if the whole town were built over a toxic waste dump? If she didn’t do something about it, everybody she knew would perish!

  Or should she let them? Maybe they didn’t deserve to live.

  If you haven’t guessed already, Cass was having a bad day.

  That morning, she had told her school’s principal, Mrs. Johnson, that she had reason to suspect their school was built on top of a toxic wast
e site. Cass made the sensible suggestion that Mrs. Johnson evacuate the school and order an excavation of the grounds.

  Mrs. Johnson, who was a real stickler (“a principal with principles,” she called herself), gave Cass a stern look. “What’s the magic word, Cassandra? Whether you’re asking for an evacuation or a glass of water?”

  “Please evacuate the school,” said Cass impatiently.

  “That’s better. But the answer is still ‘No.’ What did I tell you about the boy who cried wolf?”

  From there, the day only got worse:

  “You look like you need a Smoochie.”

  Amber caught Cass on her way out of the principal’s office and there was no escape. There was never any escape from Amber.

  Amber was the nicest girl in school, and the third prettiest.*

  Amber’s only fault, and it was more like a charming habit, was that she was “totally addicted,” as she put it, to a particular brand of lip balm called Sweet ’n Sassy Lip Smoochies by Romi and Montana. (Romi and Montana Skelton, otherwise known as the Skelton Sisters, were teen heiresses and television stars who controlled their own cosmetics empire; Amber “totally worshipped” them.) Every week, Amber got a new, differently flavored Smoochie, and she gave the previous week’s away. Most kids in school considered it a great honor to receive Amber’s half-used Smoochies, and they dangled them from their necks like Olympic medals. Cass, on the other hand, knew the only reason Amber gave her so many was that Amber felt sorry for her.

  Cass hated people feeling sorry for her.

  Each time she accepted a Smoochie, she promised herself she would refuse the next one, but Amber always managed to catch Cass when her guard was down. Before she knew it, Cass would find herself mumbling her thanks and shoving another Smoochie deep into her pocket.

  That morning, Amber was accompanied by Veronica, the second prettiest girl in school (and not even the fourth or fifth nicest). After Veronica gushed about how sweet Amber was for giving Cass her Watermelon-Superburst Smoochie (as if it were an extra-good good deed to give it to Cass as opposed to someone else), Cass tried to enlist their support in uncovering the toxic waste. She figured if she got Amber and Veronica on her side, the whole school would rally to the cause.