The Book of Nonsense (2 page)

 A match was struck inside the cubby, and two candles were lit by a pair of trembling hands.

 “Come in! Come in, my good man,” croaked a ragged, rasping voice. “I'd love to have a word with you.”

While his sister and father were no doubt drooling together in some lame bookstore, probably that new one Daphna had been practically living in all summer, Dexter Wax ranged over the many unpaved roads of Multnomah Village. It wasn't really a ‘village,' of course. That was just a rustic name for their neighborhood, specifically for the row of antique shops—junk shops in Dex's opinion—running along the main street. Dexter had an atrocious sense of direction, but he loved to walk, and he didn't care about getting lost for a while. The way he figured it, you can't miss what you don't aim for.

 No way, no how, was he going to sit around waiting for his father. Why should he, just to watch Milton get all jazzed up with Daphna about how much a pile of useless old books might be worth? And so what if it was their first chance to spend time together in over a month. He'd probably leave right away for another trip, anyway. Dex would just say he forgot what time the cab was coming. And so what if he never forgot details like that? There was a first time for everything. If his dad actually was planning something for their supposedly big-deal thirteenth birthday, Dex thought it would be ideal if he could manage to “forget” to be there for that, too. Maybe he'd sneak out of the house before everyone got up tomorrow morning.

 Scraggles of ripped material flicked from the holes in his jeans as Dex passed the Multnomah Village Post Office and merged onto the path that led into Gabriel Park. It was going to rain any minute, but that annoyance didn't even register. He was too agitated about having his last week of freedom messed up to worry about darkening skies. He needed some time in the Clearing.

Off the trail ahead was a path he'd forged in the woods last year. It was the first day Dex had ever skipped school, so he'd been looking for a place to hide. The good thing about middle school was that the teachers were far too busy to apply much pressure to a kid who barely scraped by, as long as he didn't bother anyone.

Of course Dex had gotten lost as soon as he'd gone into the woods that day, but while looking for a way out, he'd come upon a circular clearing ringed by a group of interesting trees. In the springtime some of them had greenish flowers hanging from them. It was like stepping into another world, a quiet, peaceful world, all leaves and branches and birds.

Dex had been going there several times a week all vacation long to watch seedpods spinning in the breeze when they fell. There was nowhere else he could go to get away from all the nags in his life. He could go see Ruby, of course, his secret friend at the rest home. She understood him, but going there was always dicey since Daphna might be around at any time doing her stupid good deeds.

Absorbed by a rising tide of hostility, Dex hurried on with his head down, watching the path pass beneath his shoes.

There was a second in which Dex saw the other shoe. It was huge, but there was no time to react. He collided with its owner, someone massive, and went crashing to the ground.

The next thing he knew, Dex had been seized by the neck, lifted to his feet and jammed against an enormous cedar tree. Three inches off the ground now, his feet twitched uncontrollably. His eyes bulged. Strangling, he was just able to take in the hideous red eyes of the monstrous boy squeezing the life out of him.

The boy, whose sunglasses had been knocked askew, leaned into Dex's face and whispered, “What a coincidence! Maybe it'll be you.” But then he said, “Better wait,” and dropped Dexter in a heap.

“Yeah, you better wait, you—!” Dex roared, gasping and scrambling to his feet.

 Emmet smiled expectantly, but when Dexter failed to finish, he laughed outright. And there was other laughter, too. A tall, lanky boy with upward swept, spiky red hair standing nearby cackled like a lunatic and repeatedly looked back over his shoulder at some other laughing boys behind him. Dex avoided all these well-known hoodlums like the plague. Fortunately, they hadn't been around much that summer—but of course they'd be here now.

“I said keep away!” Emmet yelled at the red haired boy. “Or no deal!”

“All right, all right,” the boy said, “C'mon, fellas.” Snickering, he led his gang away, looking over his shoulder as he went. Emmet watched them go for a moment, then turned and walked off without another glance at Dex.

But there was still more laughing. Dex saw the rest of them now. Pops, the rich kids who played Frisbee in the park. Dex steered clear of them, too.

It was baffling. Was what happened funny enough to make so many kids who'd otherwise go nowhere near one another stand together and laugh at him this much?

Yes, Dex realized, because he finally felt the wetness spreading down his pant-leg. There were no words to describe the humiliation—or the fury. Dex opened his mouth to rage at these callous jerks, to somehow bring down the sky itself on every last one of them. But he couldn't even manage a word.

Suddenly, thunder exploded directly above. Rain came down in wild sheets, and everyone scattered.

Dex, coming back to his senses, seized the opportunity to slip into the woods and then down onto his hidden trail. Like the living-dead, he shuffled all the way to the Clearing without processing a single thought.

Once there, he walked to the center of the leafy ring and dropped down into a collection of soggy moss and leaves. He could've found a sheltered spot under a tree, but he just didn't care. If there had been a pit dug there, he'd have jumped right in.

For the next hour or so, Dexter lay like a corpse, watching the scene he'd just endured play repeatedly in his mind.
Why couldn't he
have said something?
How many times in his life had he prayed for a clever comeback, a razor-sharp word or witty one-liner to demolish a tormenter? He saw other kids do it all the time, but not once had he ever managed it.

Instead, he'd been forced to meet teasing with stone silence, which in its own way was effective. By the end of elementary school, kids stopped asking him to spell words like ‘cat' because he simply wouldn't respond. But Dex had always known in his heart-of-hearts that silence was the refuge of the weak.

And now he realized this refuge had been nothing but an illusion, a matter of luck. In avoiding trouble these last few years, he'd also been avoiding the truth. Eventually, Dex now understood, your number comes up. That's when truth grabs you by the throat and makes you piss your pants. It had always been just a matter of time.

Dex tried to fall sleep, but every time he got close, some noise around, some animal rustling or people walking nearby, kept him awake. If someone discovered the Clearing it was going to be the last straw. Mercifully, no one did.

At some point, Dexter thought he heard himself whimpering, but he was sure the wetness sliding down his cheeks was only the rain.

“I'll be right out,” Milton said.

Before Daphna could protest, he disappeared into the cubby, leaving her alone and offended. She'd never been allowed to watch her father actually negotiate the sale of his books because he thought she shouldn't be exposed to the dirty business of haggling. Daphna hadn't minded so much in the past, but recently she'd been reading about the art of negotiation. It was fascinating how many subtle ways there were to get people to agree to your terms. If you were really good, you could even make them feel like they got the better deal.

Instead of heading off to browse, as her indignation urged her to do, Daphna considered something that filled her with guilt. But she had a right, didn't she? Hadn't Milton said a thousand times she'd make a fantastic book scout one day? Well, how was
that
going to happen if she never learned how to bargain?! She was going to be a teenager in a matter of hours, for crying out loud. Besides, he owed it to her for being gone so long. 

It was decided.

After glancing over her shoulder, Daphna approached the shelves that composed the cubby's six walls and slowly walked around them. Maybe a little spy hole was already there, so she wouldn't have to make one—not that it would be spying, not really. Technically, maybe, but spying on your father in a used bookstore could hardly be called
real
spying. Daphna felt terrible, there was no denying it, but she was determined.

Unfortunately, there were no spaces visible between the books, and they were all the exact size of the shelves. Daphna ran her finger along the spine of a thick volume, and with the utmost care, pulled at it. She pulled harder. It was stuck. They were all stuck jammed together like bricks in a wall.

Frustrated, Daphna knelt to tie her shoe. Tugging angrily on the laces, she figured the issue was settled, but from her new position she spotted a book wedged diagonally between two others. After only a moment's hesitation, she leaned forward and peered through the triangular space above it.

By the weak, flickering light of two dripping, misshapen candles, Daphna saw a man who looked like the oldest person in the world. She visited elderly people all the time at Multnomah Village Rest and Rehabilitation Home, the R & R she called it, where she read to a group of senior citizens, but this man looked twice as ancient as most everyone there. Bowed and withered, he had a pasty, pinched face and arms as skinny as twigs.

He wore a brown, featureless robe, in front of which lay a long, snow white beard that shook as his body trembled. Milton Wax, who was quite a bit older than the parents of Daphna's peers, looked like a tower of strength next to him.

“Give it to me!” the old man suddenly demanded. Milton seemed too stunned to react, as was Daphna. “Give it to me!” he repeated, holding out a skeletal hand. Daphna noticed he had his eyes closed.

“Pardon me?” Milton managed.

Then something even odder happened. For a second Daphna thought she'd gone deaf, because the grizzled buyer mouthed something at her father. However, an instant later she heard him say in a calmer voice, “Give me that book now.”

To Daphna's growing surprise and confusion, Milton did exactly that. He set the book on the old man's hand and said, in a perfectly conversational tone, “I've been thoroughly confounded by this book. I'm sure I've never come across anything older. It's filled with nonsense, a hodgepodge of words, most of them not even real as far as I can tell. I wonder if it's not the journal of a madman or some—”

Daphna knew her father was liable to go on for ages when he started talking about the books he'd acquired. But on this occasion, he'd barely gotten warmed up when the old man clutched the book against his chest and began inhaling and exhaling in deep, raspy gasps.

“Are you okay, Mr.—?” Milton asked, clearly alarmed.

But the old man recovered quickly, though he kept his eyes closed.

“Pardon me,” he wheezed. “At my age, a man is prone to bouts of these sorts, but I assure you, I am in no danger.” Then he took a deep breath and brought the book back down. “The name's Rash, Asterius Rash.”

Daphna knew well that both buyers and sellers cherished unusual volumes, but the way this strange old man cradled Milton's book, the way he lifted and turned it with his knobby knuckles and brought it so close to his face that it touched his forehead—it was like nothing she'd ever seen.

Rash flipped the book over and over, tenderly stroking the mutilated covers with his fingertips and palms; he even passed its cracked spine under his nose, sniffing it like she once saw a man sniff a cigar. Then he put it to his cheek like she'd seen her friends Wren and Teal do with their love notes at school.

Finally, after having done everything but taste it, the old man set the book on the table and rested a hand on it. Was he ever going to open it? He just sat there with his head down and eyes closed, breathing heavily again.

“Mr. Rash?” Milton inquired.

After a moment, Rash's shoulders began to shake. Then his whole frame shuddered as an extended episode of coughing rocked him. The eruptions slowly intensified, coming more and more rapidly in short, throaty bursts. Daphna was sure Rash was having a serious attack, but when the coughing noises transformed into chortles, she realized what was really happening. The old man was laughing. Finally, Rash threw himself back into his chair and roared openly.

No one laughed like that
, Daphna thought, and definitely not for this long. Something was seriously wrong with that man. He was even more terrifying than that disgusting boy. She wished her father would excuse himself so they could leave, but Milton just stood there in a perplexed silence, his hands in the pockets of his old tweed blazer.

Daphna's feet were falling asleep. She changed position on her knees, bumping the shelving unit in the process. The noise she made wasn't loud, but Rash abruptly stopped laughing, snapped his eyes open and turned toward the sound. For only an instant, his eyes seemed trained directly on Daphna's peephole, but the instant was more than long enough to make her heart quail beneath her ribs.

It was the eyes again. They weren't red like Emmet's. They were much, much worse. Rash's eyes were blank, colorless—they were dead. Yet they were also impossibly wide and piercing. Fortunately, they quickly rolled away.

He's blind!
Daphna thought.
How can
someone appraise books when he can't see
them?

Rash, his interest in the noise apparently gone, had his head back over the book again. He began to speak, this time in a carefully controlled manner. “Please, excuse my little outburst,” he said. “This—book, this book of—nonsense—may I ask where you found it?”

Milton didn't respond at first. Then he said, “Perhaps I should come back another time.”