This Book Is Not Good For You (7 page)

By the time Cass got home, it was very late.

After bidding a hasty good night to her friends, she lingered on her doorstep, reluctant to face her empty house. If she never entered, she could maintain hope that her mother was inside.

You’re not my real mom anyway.

Those were virtually the last words she’d said to her mother. What if she never had a chance to unsay them?

What if she never saw her mother again?

Quietly, she started to cry, shedding the tears she’d had to hold back in front of Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji.

Stop that! she chided herself. Crying isn’t going to help anything. You are not a little kid. You are a survivalist. You are trained to tackle emergencies. Treat this situation as you would any other disaster. A kidnapping is nothing compared to a tsunami or a tornado.

With tremendous effort, she wiped her eyes and made herself focus on the task at hand: finding the Tuning Fork.

She knew what her first step should be: reading the Tuning Fork file in the Terces Society archives. But should she go now or wait for daylight?

She held her key in the door lock, debating the question.

On the one hand, she had very little time to save her mother. What had the note said? Two days?

On the other hand, Cass had to admit, she was very sleepy. And she knew from all of her survivalist training that she would not be very effective in her mission without sufficient rest. Serious sleep deprivation could impair her mental functions as well as her ability to handle stress. It could also affect her emotions and her immune system. If she went for too many days without sleep, she might even start to hallucinate.

Not to mention: if she got caught by Pietro or Mr. Wallace, how would she explain being in the archives in the middle of the night?

Perhaps she should go to bed after all, she thought, turning the key.

It was the first time Cass had spent the entire night alone in an empty house, and she checked and rechecked every room, making sure all her alarm systems were in place:

Unfortunately, under the circumstances, she still did not feel very secure.

She lay on her bed with her shoes on, afraid even to get under the covers; her blankets might slow her jumping out of bed. Unable to sleep, her mind racing, she counted the minutes until—finally—it was morning.

Cass was almost out the door and on the way to the Terces Society archives before she realized that she hadn’t brushed her teeth and that she was wearing her T-shirt inside out. Her teeth could wait. But she decided she had to put on her shirt properly. If Mr. Wallace or Pietro saw her looking so untidy they might wonder whether something was wrong.

By the time she was ready to leave again, there was a knock on the front door.

She got a lump in her throat: could it be her mother? Had Senor Hugo had a change of heart? Or was the evil chef here to collect the Tuning Fork ahead of schedule?

As she tried to decide whether or not to open the door, the knocking grew louder and more insistent:

“Cass, open up!” “Time for homework, yo.”

Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji. She’d forgotten that they’d rescheduled their “homework” session for that morning.

For a second, Cass’s heart lifted. Her friends were here! They would help her through this awful time. Together, the three of them would save her mother just as they’d accomplished so many dangerous feats before.

Then Cass remembered Hugo’s note and her heart sank. She couldn’t tell them what was happening. Hugo had made that clear. Cass knew her silence was a betrayal of sorts. Max-Ernest especially considered himself her partner. As far as he was concerned, he and Cass shared everything; they had no secrets from each other. But, Cass told herself, as hard it was, this mission was hers and hers alone.

How was she going to get rid of them?

Trying to look normal—but was it more normal for her to smile or look annoyed?—she opened the door.

“Surprise!” said Max-Ernest. “I mean, not really, but—”

“Hey, guys,” said Cass carefully, not moving from the doorway. “Sorry, you can’t stay. My mom, um, had to leave early for work. And now I’m supposed to… go to my grandfathers’.”

“But it’s Sunday,” said Max-Ernest. “Why’s she going to work?”

“I dunno, she… had a meeting.”

Max-Ernest studied Cass. “Did you guys have a fight—’cause of what you said to her? You know, about her not being your real mom. Is that why she left last night?”

Cass looked back at him, trying not to let her alarm show. Or even to blink. Max-Ernest’s astuteness had caught her off guard.

“Um…”

As painful as it was to think about, she had to admit his story was more plausible than hers. She decided to go with it.

“Yeah,” she said with unfeigned discomfort. “That’s pretty much what happened. We had a fight this morning and she went to go shopping or something.”

“Well, can’t we come in anyway?” asked Yo-Yoji. “Now we don’t even have to pretend we’re doing homework for school. And we have to start researching the Tuning Fork sometime…”

Cass debated in her head again:

On the one hand, Hugo’s note had been very clear about not telling them what was happening.

On the other hand, how would it hurt for them to know where she was going? After all, they were supposed to be looking for the Tuning Fork. They didn’t have to know she was looking for it for Hugo, rather than for Pietro.

“Actually, I was on my way to the circus,” she said finally. “To read about the Tuning Fork in the archives.”

“Without us?” asked Max-Ernest. “You weren’t going to wait?”

“I know it’s kind of silly, but I thought maybe I would find out something first, then surprise you guys with it.”

“Oh,” said Max-Ernest, who didn’t look quite satisfied with her answer.

“Well, now that the surprise is ruined, we’ll come with you!” said Yo-Yoji.

“Um, OK…,” Cass said hesitantly, unable to think of a good reason to say No.

“Here, your mom forgot this—” said Max-Ernest, picking up a newspaper off the front stoop. “You know, you’re not supposed to leave stuff outside because then burglars think nobody’s home—”

Annoyed with herself for the oversight, Cass took the paper from Max-Ernest. She was really going to have to think ahead, she realized, if she didn’t want anybody to figure out that her mom was missing.

“Hey, what’s that on the paper?” asked Yo-Yoji.

Cass eyed the newspaper in her hand: “Ugh—!”

Apparently, a dog had relieved himself on top of it.

Max-Ernest laughed. “Don’t worry—it’s plastic. I got it from the clowns.”

Cass forced a smile. “Ha! That’s really funny!”

Max-Ernest looked at her strangely. “Now I know something is wrong! You never think I’m funny. Least not when I’m trying to be…”

Cass hid her face as she locked the door behind her.

Having friends who knew you well was supposed to be comforting, but right now it only made her more uneasy.

Clearly, carnies were not morning people. When Cass and her friends arrived, the circus was so quiet it could have been the middle of the night.

Through a trailer window they saw Mickey and Morrie playing checkers with some locals—no doubt the clowns were cheating the “rubes” out of their hard-earned money—but from the looks of it, the clowns hadn’t woken up; they’d never gone to sleep.

The only noise came from the Big Top. As they approached, they heard a man shouting inside. “Come on, you big stubborn cat—are you a lion or a mule? You think you don’t want to jump now—what are you going to do when this hoop is on fire?!”

“I didn’t know there were still lions in this circus,” said Max-Ernest nervously. “I thought they were all gone.”

When they peeked inside they saw an old man in a tattered satin suit holding a long tent rope in his hand. The kids recognized him as the “The Amazing Alfred, King of the King of Beasts.”

“Welcome, children. Don’t be frightened—I promise you, this fierce animal is totally under my control!”

He waved his rope in the air, attempting to crack it like a whip.

Years ago, they’d been told, Alfred had been a great lion tamer. Rather than a lion, however, the only beast in the tent this morning was a bored house cat, currently licking his paws and not paying Alfred the least bit of attention.

A bright pink hula hoop was positioned in the center of the ring, but the cat wouldn’t even look at it.

“Of course, there’s a simple rule about what to do if you run into a lion—whether you’re at the circus or in the African savanna,” Alfred continued. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Sure, Alfred—sorry, I mean, Mr. Amazing,” said Max-Ernest, who was feeling it was just as well they weren’t facing a real lion at the moment. Or a real whip.

“First of all, never run—that triggers their predatory instincts. Instead, spread your arms out so you look like a big animal who’s too much trouble to kill.” Alfred demonstrated—tearing his old suit as he did so.

“That’s just like with a bear,” said Cass impatiently. Although she’d never faced a bear in real life, she regularly included bear attacks as part of her survivalist training. “Now can we go?” she whispered to her friends.

“Precisely!” declared the lion tamer with a crack of his whip. “Why don’t you try it on that bear there—?”

The lion tamer pointed to the side of the tent where a rather heavy and hirsute (which you may recognize as a polite way of saying fat and hairy) woman was now standing with her arms folded. This was Myrtle, the circus’s bearded lady.

“Alfred!” Myrtle scolded. “What are you doing with that poor kitten? Kids, what are you doing here so early? Pietro didn’t say anything…”

“They’re here to keep me company,” said Yo-Yoji quickly. “You know Lily. She likes me to start practicing before the sun comes out.”

Myrtle snorted. “You won’t have any fingers left by the time that woman gets done with you!”

“Oh great!” Cass moaned a moment later.

She hadn’t anticipated the CAT FOOD trailer being padlocked. But right there, hanging from the door handle, was a large combination lock. Compared to other devices employed by the Terces Society it looked crude, but no doubt it was effective in keeping out intruders. The one exceptional feature of the lock was that there were letters rather than numbers on its face.

“Chill,” said Yo-Yoji. “We can always find Pietro or Mr. Wallace to let us in.”

“No, no, we can’t because…,” Cass stammered. How to explain that they were the last people she wanted to see right now? She was hoping desperately not to run into them.

“Don’t worry,” said Max-Ernest. “I know where Pietro keeps the riddle.”

“What riddle?” asked Cass.

“The one that tells you what the new combination is every day.”

“Oh,” she said, relieved that he knew about the combination but also a bit peeved that she hadn’t been privy to this information.

Max-Ernest returned with a slip of paper pulled out from under an abandoned cotton candy machine.

“‘What do you call a lion bite that doesn’t hurt?’” he read.

“A LION LICK?” Yo-Yoji offered.

“A LION KISS?” guessed Cass.

Max-Ernest shook his head in disgust. “No. Those are totally wrong. The answer has to be more… you know, like a pun.”

“How about LION GUM?” asked Cass. “Like all you’re getting is his gums, not teeth? That’s a pun. Sort of.”

Max-Ernest shook his head again. “You guys are hopeless. It’s so obvious.”

“Oh, yeah—then what is it?”

“Easy. CATNIP. A lion is a kind of cat—that’s why it says CAT FOOD on the trailer. That’s probably where Pietro got the idea. And a nip is like a little bite that doesn’t hurt. But it’s a pun because catnip is also that stuff that makes cats go crazy. How ’bout that?”

“Pretty good, but I’ll save my applause until I see you open the door,” said Cass.

“Yeah, man, we still don’t know if you’re right,” said Yo-Yoji.

But of course Max-Ernest was right. And the door opened with ease.

The Terces Society archives were notoriously esoteric and equally extensive, going back many generations.

Inside the trailer, file boxes were stacked to the ceiling. The space was crammed tighter than Cass’s grandfathers’ antiques store. But here everything was in order, nothing out of place.

Every box, every file, every photo, every scrap of paper had been meticulously labeled by Mr. Wallace:

Cass found the Tuning Fork file wedged between Tunes, Celtic and Tunnels, Rumored Under Pyramids.

Unfortunately, she discovered, there wasn’t much in it. Just the drawing of the Tuning Fork that Mr. Wallace had shown them and a long hand-written manuscript on yellowed paper. The manuscript was in Spanish, but there was an English translation attached.

While Yo-Yoji and Max-Ernest looked through other file boxes to see if they could find anything else that would be helpful in their quest, Cass sat down on the speckled linoleum floor and started reading aloud:

25 October, 1597

I write this journal sitting on a beach, I know not where.

New World or Old World or some Other World altogether.

After six weeks at sea, I have washed ashore on a desert island and I am alone but for the lizards and my thoughts.

Next to me is the fatal object that caused a great ship to sink. Yes, that small silver tool lying there so innocently on the sand killed the crew of the Santa Xxxxx as surely as if it stabbed each sailor in the back—and yet it never so much as touched their fingers.

Myself, I am the only survivor.

My story begins on another island, Teotihuacan, grand capital of the Aztec people. The island city that rises out of the Lake of the Moon.

In Teotihuacan, there lived a boy of twelve or thirteen or so. The son of farmers, he worked in the royal granary, and every day he carted baskets of food and grain to the palace of the great emperor, Moctezuma.

He was known as Caca Boy—a name that thankfully does not have the same meaning in the Aztec language that it has in ours!—because he carried so many of the seeds the Aztecs call the cacahuatal.

You cannot imagine the importance the Aztec people place on this shriveled little seed. It is the coin of the realm. They trade the seeds for all manner of goods just as if the seeds were bits of gold.

But it is the strange brown drink they make from the cacahuatal seeds that gives the seeds their true value. This is a frothy and spicy concoction that is quite delicious when sweetened. I would go so far as to say it is addictive. Soon, I predict, it will be all the rage in Europe.

The Aztecs call the drink chocolatl. *

Moctezuma had millions and millions of cacahuatal seeds stored in enormous bins of straw and clay. To scoop up the seeds, Caca Boy climbed inside the bins, sometimes sinking all the way to his chin. He spent so much time surrounded by the seeds that his skin was stained a dark brown, and his hair, his very pores, his whole body, stank of cacahuatal.

This would not have been so terrible, for he loved the smell, save for one thing: sadly, he had never tasted chocolatl.

Among the Aztecs, the drinking of chocolatl is restricted to the noble classes: royalty, priests, and warriors. Commoners are considered unfit for such a luxurious elixir. At the palace, the rules were even more strict: only the emperor could drink the chocolatl prepared in the royal kitchen.

If Caca Boy took so much as a sip he would be sentenced to death.

Every day, after making his delivery, Caca Boy would linger outside the palace kitchen and torture himself by watching the emperor’s cooks prepare the emperor’s chocolatl.

Cup after cup they made, pouring and re-pouring until the chocolatl was whipped into a delicious froth. There was red chocolatl. White chocolatl. Black chocolatl. They served it with honey. With vanilla. With flowers. All for the emperor. Always in the emperor’s special golden goblets.

One day, instead of frothing the emperor’s chocolatl herself, a cook nervously placed his goblet in front of a mysterious and strangely ageless man in a shimmering robe.

In his gloved hands, the man held a silver fork that ended in two long prongs. While Caca Boy watched, mesmerized, the man carefully lowered the prongs into the emperor’s chocolatl. Then he rubbed his palms together, rolling the handle of the silver fork back and forth, causing the prongs to spin faster and faster until you could barely see them.

Soon, the chocolatl was whipped into the biggest head of foam Caca Boy had ever seen. It grew and grew until there was a frothy white mountain ten times the size of the goblet beneath—and yet the goblet never overflowed onto the table.

The aroma was so strong it nearly threw Caca Boy backward.

Afterward, Caca Boy asked the cook who the man was.

“He is a sorcerer. They say his silver fork will make your food taste like anything in the world so long as it is something you have tasted before—or even that your ancestors tasted before.”

“So if I had the fork, could I turn dirt into chocolatl?” asked Caca Boy, wide-eyed. “My father tasted it once. He said it was like drinking gold.”

“Remember your place, Caca Boy! The drinking of chocolatl is forbidden to your kind,” said the cook sharply.

“Besides,” she added, lowering her voice, “magic like that always comes with a price.”

Caca Boy didn’t see the sorcerer’s silver fork again for three years.

By then, the Spanish had arrived. War had broken out and the city was in chaos.

Even the emperor’s palace was looted. From the shadows by the kitchen, Caca Boy watched the Spaniards carting away the treasures of his civilization like so much trash.

While Caca Boy silently cursed the Spanish, he saw something silver drop out of a soldier’s arms. Caca Boy couldn’t believe his luck. In a flash, he darted into the street and pocketed it. And then he ran.

He knew the emperor’s guards would kill him if they caught him with the silver fork. If he was lucky, he might be sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli. *

The Spanish were even more vicious. If he were caught by the Conquistadors, he would be sacrificed to their greed—and much more quickly.

There was only one place to hide.