The Exact Location of Home (5 page)

~Dumbledore and Dobby

Great cache! Took miniature Mr. Potato Head, left bouncy ball
.

~Racer 14103

Had trouble finding this one… Came last winter in the snow and got too cold. Came back this spring. Got wet feet but found the container after some searching. Took arrowhead. Left Oklahoma state quarter
.

~Daring Don

Came by to check on this one & happy to see that it's being found by those who read the clues. Left a few more goodies today—key chain & plastic pig. Happy treasure hunting!

~Senior Searcher

“There he is,” I think.

“Who?” Gianna says, looking over my shoulder. I guess I thought out loud.

“Look.” I point to the Senior Searcher entry. “It's him. It's
got
to be my dad, Gee. Don't you see? It has to be. It's all so … him. The clue, searching high and low,
the fake hiding spot in the tree. My dad would
love
knowing that he's sending all kinds of people up a tree for a phony hiding spot. He loves tricks!”

Gianna takes the log book from me. She doesn't say anything, but she frowns at it. “Does this look like his writing?” She hands it back.

I think about the writing in the note to Mom. It doesn't really look the same. That writing was all boxy and neat, and this is a little shaky. But then, that was a letter he probably wrote with a pen at his desk, and this is a log book he signed in the woods with a tiny golf pencil. And it was probably cold out. He might have had gloves on. If you consider that, it sort of looks the same. “Yeah, it's his writing,” I tell her. I look back into the box and pull out another clue.

“And look! This is what he left.” I hold up the Canada key chain. “Dad and Mom took a trip to Quebec City after they first got married. That must be what this is from!”

“Zig, anybody could have left this.” Gianna takes it and tosses it back in the box.

“We need to find another one,” I say. I pull out the GPS and start checking the coordinates for Dad's other caches. “There's got to be another cache nearby that we can hit before it gets too dark. If we find the right one, I bet there'll be something that helps us figure out where he is.”

Gianna reaches into her pocket and pulls out a refrigerator magnet of a little Picasso painting. She tosses it in the box, takes out the Canada key chain, and hands it to me. “Here,” she says, and puts the lid back on the Tupperware. “You keep this one. But not because I think it means anything for sure. Just because I like maple leaves.”

“Thanks.” I put it in my pocket and help her brush the oak leaves back over the blue plastic box. We're almost back to the school when I think of something.

“Hey, can you hold on a second? I'll be right back.”

“Sure.” Gianna plops down on the grass and tips her head back to take in the last autumn sunshine. I run back into the woods.

This time, the cache is easy to find. I pry the lid off the box and take out the log book.

Climbed tree to look high. Fell out and looked low. Nice job, Dad. Call me, please
.

I start to sign my name and then stop. Nobody uses a real name geocaching. I need a secret spy name. But one that's still me—one that Dad will
know
is me. I erase my Z and sign instead,

~Circuit Boy

Just in case he comes back.

We get back to Gianna's house just as her dad is arriving with the hearse to unload a body he picked up from the hospital morgue.

“Hey there!” Mr. Zales lifts one end of a gurney out of the back while their employee Phil gets the other end. Gianna and I follow as they push the stretcher into the back door of the funeral home the Zales run on the bottom floor of their house. Some kids at school tease Gee about her dad's business, but honestly, if you spend enough time around here, it feels like any other business. It's just that the customers are dead.

“Take Mrs. Rapazzo to the prep room Phil, and tell her I'll see her in the morning.” Mr. Zales gives a little wave to Phil and the body bag and then motions us to follow him into his office. “How's the hide and seek going? Gianna told me you might try geocaching today.”

“It was fun. Zig fell out of a tree.”

“Whoa!” her dad says.

“I'm fine.” I give Gee a little shove. “I only sort of fell.”

Gianna picks a green apple out of the bowl in her dad's office and sinks into one of the big chairs.

“The GPS works well.” I hand the device to Mr. Zales. “It took us right to the location.”

Mr. Zales lowers his glasses on his nose and looks down at the screen.

“And guess what?” Gianna says. “We found a geocache guy who calls himself Senior Searcher, and Zig thinks —”

I kick her, and she coughs on her apple.

“I think the whole thing is really interesting,” I say, and give Gianna a shut-up look. Her parents are friends with my mom, and the last thing I need is her finding out that I'm looking for Dad.

“Well, good afternoon!” Gianna's Nonna twirls into the office in a bright purple dress. Gee says Nonna's Alzheimer's disease has been getting worse. It's hard for me to tell because I don't see her as much since the Zales started having her go to a memory care center during the day. She still forgets a lot of things, but she looks healthy enough. Today she's carrying a big plate of funeral cookies, which make her look even better. “Want one, young man?”

“Thanks, Nonna.” I take a couple cookies from the plate. They're Italian wedding cookies to the rest of the world, but at the Zales' house, they're funeral cookies. Nonna bakes them to share every time there are calling hours scheduled.

“Introduce me to your friend, Gianna.” Nonna nods at me.

Gianna sighs, but she smiles. “Nonna, meet Kirby Zigonski. He likes to be called Zig.”

“It's nice to meet you.” I shake her hand for the third time in a week, even though she's known me since I was eight. It's better than telling her the truth and having her get all sad because she can't remember.

“Thanks for the cookies, Mom,” Mr. Zales says. Nonna sets down the cookies and lets him lead her back upstairs.

“Hey, guys!” Ruby appears at the door. She has an orange duffel bag over her shoulder with rolled-up poster paper sticking out of it. She looks down at the cookies.
“Ooh! Nonna's been here.” Ruby bites into a cookie, and crumbs tumble down the front of her sweatshirt.

“How was your Birds First meeting?” Gianna asks. Ruby's the only kid in her birding and environmental action group, but she's fine with that.

“It was great. Really great.” Ruby pops the rest of the cookie in her mouth and pulls a folded newspaper clipping from her pocket. “We have a new issue that's going to be huge. You're not going to believe this.” She unfolds the article and hands it to Gianna. I read over her shoulder.

Development Threatens Rookery Bay Wildlife

Environmental activists gathered at City Hall last night to protest a condominium project planned for Smugglers Island. The project, approved by the Town Zoning Board and the State of Vermont two years ago, includes fifteen waterfront condominiums, a nine-hole golf course, and a club house on the former state land purchased by real estate magnate Henry Nicholson last summer
.

“Things have changed on Smugglers Island, and this project needs to change, too,” said Stephanie James, founder of Birds First, a regional bird watching and wildlife protection group. “In the two years since the New York State Environmental Board approved this project, a colony of Great Blue Herons have established a significant nesting site at Rookery Bay, the location for the proposed project.”

James said the herons moved to the Rookery Bay site after motorboat traffic disturbed their old nesting site further south on the lake. She said the Nicholson project would involve clear cutting twelve acres of Smugglers Island in order to make room for the condominiums and golf course. “These are the trees where the herons are nesting,” James said. She showed the City Council photographs of the heron nests. “If this project is allowed to continue, these birds will once again find their homes swept out from under them by careless people. I urge the council to take action.”

Mayor Robert Bush said that the project had already received all necessary approval and would move forward
.

“That's it?” Gianna looks up from the paper. “Just ‘Oh well, it already got approval, too bad for the herons?'” She has angry red spots on her freckled cheeks. I've seen those spots before. The mayor better watch out.

“I know.” Ruby sets down her duffel bag. “My Aunt Barbara is a member of Birds First, too. She says they're all going to protest at the next City Council meeting and they'll even go to Montpelier to do something at the State Capitol if they need to. She says the guys involved in this development project are real dirtbags. I guess one of them's in jail right now because he hired somebody to cut down a tree on a golf course in Florida to get rid of a bald eagle nest that was in it so they could expand the course.”

“What happened to the eagle?” Gianna asks.

“She flew off, but her eggs got destroyed when the tree came down.” Ruby opens her backpack, and a pile of markers spills out onto the floor. “All so some rich retired guys can play eighteen holes of golf instead of nine.”

“The guy who did that belongs be in jail.” I bend down to get a marker that rolled under the desk. “So what are these for?”

“I thought we could do some posters that say ‘The Herons Were Here First.'” Ruby hands Gianna a red marker. “Start lettering, okay?”

“I'll help, but let's go upstairs. I think Dad has a meeting down here this afternoon.”

“Zig, wanna help, too?” Ruby starts putting markers back in the bag.

“Nah, I'm going to head home. I've got Internet research to finish for the social studies project.”

Gianna gasps as if she's shocked. “You mean you didn't do your homework right after school on Friday?” Hers won't be done until first period study hall tomorrow.

I wave and head home feeling a little guilty. But it was only a partial lie. I am going to do some online research before Mom gets home. It just won't be social studies.

Unless geocaching counts as a geography lesson.

The answering machine light is blinking when I get home. It's Mom.

“Hey, Kirby. Mabel called in sick, and they offered me an extra shift, so I'm going to be late again tonight. And I'm sorry but I didn't get to the store, so there's not a whole lot for dinner, but you can fix…uh…I think there's stuff for grilled cheese and maybe a can of soup unless you ate it Friday night. We have cereal, and I think there's milk, but check the date. Love you. I'll see you by ten.”

The message's end-beep drones on a long time, rubbing it in that I'll be fixing my own dinner.

I get a glass of ice water and plop down at the kitchen table. The toaster's still here from the other day, so I start sanding the electric connectors again. Maybe there's just some crud on them that's messing up the connection. I sand them until they're perfectly clean and press down the button on the toaster to see if the coils heat up.

Nothing.

It figures, today.

I go to the fridge and pull out the package of American cheese. Even through the plastic bag, I can see mold growing on it. There goes the grilled cheese. There's not enough peanut butter for a sandwich. No canned soup. And Mom's right to be suspicious of the milk—it expired last Tuesday. But way in the back of the freezer is a personal-sized pizza, so I unwrap that, toss it in the oven, and head for the office with a bag of stale pretzels.

At least I have unlimited computer time tonight. Mom's not here to come sniffing around after my hour is up.

I go back to the geocaching website to one of the cache pages Gianna bookmarked earlier, Aromatherapy. There has to be some kind of contact information for the people who hide the caches, doesn't there? What if one gets washed away in a flood or carried off by a bear? Wouldn't they need to contact the person who hid it?

Sure enough, all the user names are highlighted as a link. Someone calling himself Dumbledore's Apprentice hid this one. I click on the name and end up on a profile page.

Jackpot.

Dumbledore's Apprentice, it turns out, is an earth science teacher from Horace Falls, ten miles away. There's a photograph of the guy, smiling like crazy with the Grand Canyon in the background, which makes sense. The Grand Canyon is probably a billion times better than Disney World for an earth science teacher.

Best of all, there's an email link. If Dad's new address I here, I'll be able to email him. Maybe he'll even write back before Mom gets home.

I type Dad's geocache name, Senior Searcher, into the search box, click on the link for the cache we found today, and land back at the coordinates page that sent Gianna and me tromping through the woods, looking up, looking down, and falling onto the blue Tupperware box.

Dad's name is there – Senior Searcher – with a link to his profile page.

Before I click on it, I reach into my pocket and take out the I Love Canada key chain. It's smooth and kind of faded, like it got carried around in somebody's pocket for
a long time. He and Mom were only married a year when they went on that trip. It would have been almost fifteen years ago. Before they had me. Before Dad got so crazy busy traveling for his business. Before they fought all the time about money and the risks Dad always took with it. Before Mom decided she'd had enough.

I turn the key chain over in my hand. It's weird. I've heard Mom talk about this trip to Quebec and how much fun they had and how she laughed and laughed at Dad trying to speak French when all he took was a year of it in high school and only knew how to order pastries and find out where the bathroom was. She said it was one of the best times in their marriage. I can't imagine Dad just dumping the key chain in a plastic box for some treasure hunting kid to find, like it's junk.