“It’s too dangerous,” said Max-Ernest. “We’re only eleven. Personally, I don’t want to be kidnapped—just so we can know what happens at the end of a book.”
“That’s not the point,” said Cass heatedly. “Don’t you have any sense of honor? We owe it to Pietro to find out what happened. He was such a nice man—”
“We didn’t even know him!”
“I know—he didn’t really know anybody. That’s why if we don’t continue his investigation, who will?”
Max-Ernest didn’t have an answer.
“Besides,” Cass added, “it’s too late to back out. Maybe we don’t know who Ms. Mauvais is, but she definitely knows who we are.”
Cass and Max-Ernest emerged from behind the gym so lost in conversation that it took them several seconds to notice that the entire school yard was empty.
“I can’t believe it,” said Cass. “Finally they evacuate the school, and I wasn’t even there.”
“I think maybe it was a false alarm.” Max-Ernest nodded in the direction of the auditorium: kids and teachers had started streaming out.
Amber walked toward them, her Smoochie-of-the-week dangling from her neck.
“Where were you?” she asked. “You missed the assembly!”
Amber, who aside from being the nicest girl in school was also the chattiest (if she wasn’t so nice, you might have said she was the most gossipy), told them the news: Benjamin Blake was missing. That was why the police and fire department had been there.
Amber explained that Benjamin had been dropped off at school that morning, but he’d never gone to class. Nobody had seen him leave; nobody had picked him up. He didn’t have a hall pass or a trip slip or a doctor’s excuse or even a note from his parents. Any student who had seen Benjamin or who had any idea as to his whereabouts was supposed to tell Mrs. Johnson immediately, so the police could be alerted.
“I can’t believe you didn’t know,” said Amber when she finished her summary of events. “I thought you loved emergencies, Cass.”
“I don’t love them,” said Cass irritably. “I just like to be prepared. Actually, that’s what we were doing just now. Preparing for an emergency.”
“We’re collaborators,” said Max-Ernest.
Which made Cass want to throttle him.
“Oh, well, I think it’s so great you two are friends,” said Amber.
Which made Cass want to throttle her.
“By the way, I’m almost done with this,” Amber added, holding up her Smoochie. “It’s Cotton Candy. Do you want it, Cass?”
“Um, sure. Thanks, Amber,” said Cass automatically.
Which made her want to throttle herself.
“It was my hundredth Smoochie,” Amber boasted, as she handed it over. “They gave me this when I bought it.” She gestured to the front of her T shirt which said:
I’VE SMOOCHED A HUNDRED TIMES!
in glitter writing that sparkled in the sun. She twirled around; on the back the T-shirt said:
Honorary
Skelton Sister
“What’s a Skeleton Sister?” asked Max-Ernest after Amber had rejoined her friends. “Is that a horror movie or a comic or something?”
“Not Skeleton, just Skelt—oh, never mind,” said Cass. “Your name is better. That’s what they look like anyways.”
As she and Max-Ernest walked back to class, Cass told him about running into Benjamin that morning in the hallway. “I might have been the last person to talk to him—ever.”
And I was so mean to him! she thought guiltily. But she kept that part to herself.
“Are you going to tell Mrs. Johnson?” asked Max-Ernest.
“I don’t know. She’ll probably just think I’m making it up,” Cass said with more than a little bitterness.
Like most of the students at their school, Cass and Max-Ernest usually passed by all the artwork in the hallway without giving it any more thought than they gave the citizenship trophies in the glass case or the toy drive announcements on the bulletin board. Now, knowing Benjamin Blake was missing, they stopped and looked more closely at his paintings.
“I don’t see what’s so great about them,” said Max-Ernest. “I mean, what are they really pictures of? They just look like screen savers.”
“They’re not pictures of anything, that’s the point,” said Cass, who suddenly felt called upon to defend Benjamin. It was the least she could do, considering how she’d treated him. “Haven’t you ever heard of abstract art? Just look at the colors. And the shapes.”
“What else could I be looking at? That’s all there is!”
One painting consisted mainly of rippling circles, like someone had dropped something into a purple lake.
“Rain Song?” asked Max-Ernest, eyeing the card taped to the wall next to the painting. “Why is it a song? There’s no sound, no words—”
“How’m I supposed to know? I guess it’s what he thinks of when he thinks of...rain.”
Max-Ernest said it figured that somebody as nonsensical as Benjamin Blake would disappear. He probably didn’t even know where he was half the time.
“But I hope he’s OK, anyway,” Max-Ernest added. “Even though he never makes any sense, he’s not a bad person. At least, not bad bad. Just bad—logically. I mean, what if people were sentenced to death just cause they didn’t make sense—”
He trailed off because Cass wasn’t listening; she was reading the titles of the other paintings. One was called Music of Crickets and Cars. Another was Song I Sing When I’m Scared. Another was The Radio in My Mother’s Office.
A frown took shape on Cass’s face.
“What?” demanded Max-Ernest.
“Don’t you see?”
“See what?”
“Benjamin Blake is like the Bergamo Brothers.”
“What do you mean?”
“He has—what’s it called? The confusion of the senses.”
“He’s synesthetic?”
Cass nodded.
“How do you know?”
“All his paintings are paintings of music—”
“So?”
“So that’s a confusion of the senses. Like seeing songs.”
“Huh. Maybe,” said Max-Ernest, obviously not convinced.
“C’mon, we gotta tell someone!” said Cass, turning away from the paintings.
“Why? What’s the big deal?”
“Don’t you get it? He was the boy in the limousine. Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais—they kidnapped Benjamin.”
“But I thought you said Ms. Mauvais wasn’t the same lady as in the notebook.”
“Well, I take it back. I don’t care how old she is—they did it. Now c’mon—”
Cass started running down the hall. Max-Ernest struggled to keep up.
“You’re saying all this just ’cause of a purple painting?”
Cass nodded. “They must have seen Benjamin’s paintings when they were looking for us. And then she decided to take him. Just like she took the magician’s brother. And that violin girl.”
“You’re crazy,” said Max-Ernest.
“I am not!”
“This is just another one of your crazy predictions. Like with that mouse. You thought it died from toxic waste, and it was just rat poison.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” said Cass, her ears stinging. (She hadn’t known that Max-Ernest had seen the rat poison.) “Anyways, this is different. Benjamin’s life is in danger, and you don’t even care.”
“Well, I don’t think you really care, either. My new doctor says it’s just ’cause of the way your dad died with the lightning and everything that you’re a survivalist and you’re always trying to save everybody. It doesn’t have anything to do with them.”
Cass stopped running and stared at Max-Ernest. “You told your doctor about my dad?”
“So? You said it wasn’t a secret secret.”
“It’s not—”
“Then why are you so mad?”
“I’m not mad!??
?
“Your ears are all red.”
“They’re not!”
“You can’t even see them.”
“Anyways, it doesn’t matter what you think because I don’t think we should be collaborators anymore,” said Cass, surreptitiously checking her reflection in a glass case.
“Really?”
“With your condition, it’s not really safe. For either of us.”
“Nobody even knows what my condition is!”
“That’s why it’s so dangerous. I just can’t count on you. No offense. It’s not personal. Anyway, I gotta go to class.”
“Me, too,” said Max-Ernest.
Without saying good-bye, each turned away from the other and headed toward opposite ends of the hall.
I know—it’s upsetting.
I wish I could report that Max-Ernest suddenly understood why Cass might have not have wanted him to tell his doctor about her father, even if it wasn’t technically a secret, and that he immediately ran after Cass and apologized. Or that Cass suddenly realized that Max-Ernest hadn’t meant any harm by telling his doctor, and that she immediately ran after Max-Ernest and told him they could be collaborators again. Or that they both suddenly realized that friendship was more important than petty differences and they ran back toward each other and gave each other a big hug.
But I can’t report any of those things; they didn’t happen. At another time, I might make up a make-up scene to make you feel better. Normally, I have no qualms about pandering to my audience. However, the way the story unfolds from here is affected by the fight between Cass and Max-Ernest. If I were to end their fight now, the rest of the story wouldn’t make any sense. So forgive me—in this instance at least, I must stick with the truth.
In fact, Cass wasn’t thinking that much about Max-Ernest after she left him; she was thinking about Benjamin Blake. More particularly, what Cass was thinking was that it was her fault that Benjamin Blake was kidnapped.
Her reasoning went like this:
1. Had she never taken the magician’s notebook, Ms. Mauvais and Dr. L would never have come hunting for her.
2. Had Ms. Mauvais and Dr. L never come hunting for her, they would never have seen Benjamin’s paintings.
3. Had they never seen Benjamin’s paintings, they would never have kidnapped him.
Conclusion: it was her responsibility to make sure he got home safe before he was burned alive in a sulfurous inferno.
Cass had only one clue as to Benjamin’s whereabouts: the name on the limousine in which he was taken away, The Midnight Sun Sensorium and Spa.
She had no idea what a sensorium was—unless it was one of those isolation tanks she’d heard about. You know, the ones in which people are submerged in water until they regress all the way back to being fetuses in their mothers’ wombs? But she knew what a spa was—more or less.
Spas were places for what her mother called “me time,” and they usually included a massage. Cass had even been to a spa once—if you counted the booth that Amber and her friends had built for that year’s school fair. (All they did was put slimy cucumber slices on your eyes and cold oatmeal on your face, but of course everybody loved the spa anyway because it was Amber’s.) The experience had done nothing to improve Cass’s opinion of spas; lying around being pampered when you could be training for an emergency was the opposite of everything Cass stood for.
It figured that someone like Ms. Mauvais would have a spa.
On the plus side, if her spa existed, Cass knew just where to find information about it. She had fifty minutes to get home and back before her next class. She would have to run—and hope that no one saw her.
After a week away, she was so unused to entering her house that she forgot the alarm code; she only remembered to punch in her birth date when the alarm started to sound. The curtains were closed and the house was dark, and Cass—feeling more and more like a thief—decided to leave it that way. If the neighbors saw the house lit up, they might ask questions. For a second, she thought of Max-Ernest. Had a friend been with her, she might not have felt so uneasy. But she pushed the thought away. It was better working on her own, she reminded herself. That was the whole point of being a survivalist.
Her mother’s obsession with travel guides had always mystified Cass, but she was grateful for it now. She pulled book after book from her mother’s shelves, until she had a mountain of them—all about spas. Then she sat on the floor flipping through the books one after another. They had titles like Spaaaaahhh! and Get Wet!, and they were filled with pictures of sunsets, and bubbling Jacuzzis, and smiling grown-ups wrapped in towels and getting massages. Cass thought all the spas looked alike, but, apparently, to her mother, each spa was different from every other. Her mother’s notes were scrawled across the pages: ”Looks like a dream!” “Too much $$$!” “Where’s the beach??” Next to one resort her mother had written: ”Take Cass next X-mas as surprise?” Quickly, Cass turned the page so she wouldn’t be tempted to read the entry.
By the time she got through the pile, Cass figured she must have read about every spa in the country but she still hadn’t seen a reference to the Midnight Sun. She’d already started the laborious process of re-shelving when she noticed an old, battered guidebook that had slipped behind the others. The front cover of the book had fallen off, revealing the first, yellowing page of the introduction, and...what was that word?
As it turned out, the word that had caught her eye was sanitarium (a sanitarium, she learned, is where they used to send people who had tuberculosis or were mentally ill). The introduction also mentioned solariums (glass rooms in which people bathed in the sun, back in the old days before their mothers worried about skin cancer) but not a single sensorium.
In the end, however, luck was with her. Buried inside the book Cass discovered an entry about the Midnight Sun. Here is what it said:
AH, TO BE YOUNG AGAIN!
It is the oldest quest on Earth.
The thirst that can never be satisfied.
The battle that can never be won.
Or can it?
The Midnight Sun Sensorium and Spa
promises nothing less.
Created over a hundred years ago by a select group of doctors and spiritualists, the Midnight Sun is one of the most exclusive—and most mysterious—resorts in the world.
Like the mythical Shangri-la, this magical mountaintop utopia has given rise to many rumors. Some say that guests of the Midnight Sun soak in baths of molten gold. Others that they drink the blood of newborn monkeys. Still others dismiss the Midnight Sun as a scam and a fraud.
Science? Medicine? Witchcraft? Who knows...Their treatments are closely guarded secrets. No one speaks about the Midnight Sun in public if he or she hopes ever to visit again.
Intrigued?
Unless you’re a celebrity, or you have a royal title next to your name, it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation at this secret sanctuary. But those brave enough to try can call (XXX) XXX XXXX. Or write XXXX Xxxxxx Xxxxxx, Xxx Xxxxxxx,
XX XXXXX.
Cass put the book in her backpack, mulling over what she’d read. Why did so many grown-ups want to be young, she wondered, when it took so long to grow old? It was like going on a million-mile road trip then wanting to turn around without getting out of the car.
Still, she’d seen enough commercials to know old people would do anything to look younger. OK, maybe not a bath of molten gold—it would be so hot, you’d burn up. But she didn’t doubt that Ms. Mauvais would drink monkey blood, given the chance.
Now Cass had the address of the Midnight Sun. But what to do with it? That was the question she asked herself as she ran back to school.
She couldn’t just give it to Mrs. Johnson. Not after their last conversation. If Max-Ernest didn’t believe her theory about Benjamin’s kidnapping, Mrs. Johnson never would.
Cass thought about writing an anonymous note—like a tip-off from a concerned citizen. But then she had a better idea: a ransom note.
Anybody could write an anonymous note, she reasoned; a ransom note would really get Mrs. Johnson’s attention. And Cass knew from detective books and television shows that the police used ransom notes to track down bad guys. With any luck, Mrs. Johnson would send them to save Benjamin as soon as she read it.
Below is Cass’s note. Naturally, Cass was careful to disguise her handwriting. Also, she tried to be very polite because she was writing to Mrs. Johnson, the principal with principles:
Dear Mrs. Johnson,
Good day.
We have kidnapped the artist Benjamin Blake. Please bring one million dollars to the Midnight Sun Sensorium and Spa and leave it in a suitcase for us. Or else Benjamin Blake will be killed in a really terrible way!
Sincerely,
Dr. L and Ms. Movay
P.S. The address of the Midnight Sun is XXXX Xxxxxx Xxxxxx, Xxx Xxxxxxx, XX XXXXX.
It couldn’t have gone worse.
Five minutes after she slipped the note through Mrs. Johnson’s window Cass was summoned to her office.
Mrs. Johnson was holding the note in her hand. In all Cass’s run-ins with the principal she had never seen the principal so angry.
“I am extremely upset with you, Cassandra,” she said. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your handiwork? I can’t believe you would continue your childish pranks knowing one of your peers is missing and very possibly in grave danger.”
“But they really did—they had a limousine with Midnight Sun on it and I saw a boy in the window!”
“And you know for certain it was Benjamin? Tell the truth.”
More than anything, Cass wanted to say she did, but Mrs. Johnson saw the hesitation on her face.
“I don’t know what you have against that couple, but I’m warning you, if I hear you are troubling any faculty or students—or, heaven forbid, the police—with your outlandish theories, well, I’ll suspend you for the whole year! Am I understood?”
Cass nodded.
“I must admit, this is one of the most politely written ransom notes I’ve ever received. At least your manners are getting better. Now, out of my office!”
On the bus later that afternoon, Cass sat with her knees doubled up against the seat back in front of her, ignoring everyone and everything in her vicinity.