The Name of This Book Is Secret (8 page)

“I know what a secret code is! What about the funeral? Why’s he saying a funeral can be fun?” Cass asked, studying the notebook. “That’s kind of weird. Or do you think it’s ’cause ‘fun’ rhymes with ‘one’?”

“That’s the only rhyme. There would be more if that was the reason.”

Cass handed him the notebook, annoyed.

“You look at it then. What makes you the secret code expert anyway? How many have you figured out?”

“You mean like real secret codes?”

Cass nodded.

“You mean like besides the one in the Symphony of Smells?”

Cass nodded.

“Um, well, none,” admitted Max-Ernest. “But I’ve read about a lot of them.”

“So you don’t really know anything about secret codes then,” declared Cass, who believed you had to experience things to know about them.

She looked over at Max-Ernest to see if he would contradict her but he wasn’t paying attention to her anymore. He was staring at the notebook.

“It’s so obvious!” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

“What?”

“Look how all the capitalized words look the same. LISTEN and SILENT...SCHOOLMASTER and THE CLASSROOM...DICTIONARY and INDICATORY...”

“Yeah...?”

“They’re anagrams!”

“Right,” said Cass nodding. Then she asked, “What’s an anagram?”

“It’s when two words have all the same letters but in a different order. Then when one word spells another one backward it’s a kind of mirror writing called a palindr—”

Cass cut him off before he could start another lecture. “Okay, I get it. They’re all anagrams.”

“Even the numbers,” Max-Ernest continued. “ELEVEN PLUS TWO is like TWELVE PLUS ONE. Only two capitalized words don’t have an anagram—”

“THEN UNREAD!” finished Cass, growing excited. “We have to figure out an anagram for THEN UNREAD.”

Max-Ernest found a piece of paper and they started trying different letter combinations (Cass had done this before with her grandfathers when they played Boggle and Scrabble):

THE DEAR NUN

RAN THE DUNE

EAT RUDE NNH

RED NUT HE NA

TREE HAD NUN

And so on. Most combinations were total gibberish. And none worked when you tried to put them into the magician’s sentence. They thought they might have it with HUNT A DEER or HEAT UNDER, but then they realized both combinations were missing an N. All the while, Max-Ernest kept talking to himself.

“Can’t you keep you mouth closed for even a second?” said Cass.

“But I think I’ve got it,” said Max-Ernest, trying to talk through his teeth.

“What?”

“It’s UNDERNEATH!” exclaimed Max-Ernest, giving up on keeping his mouth closed because he was much too excited. “If you want to read my book, just look UNDERNEATH. How ’bout that?”

Cass nodded. “Yeah, that must be it! Like underneath the ground, I guess. Do you think he buried it somewhere?”

They didn’t have any time to discuss the matter further because Cass’s mother had arrived to take Cass and Sebastian home. Despite having to leave Max-Ernest’s just after they decoded the magician’s secret message, Cass was very glad to see her mom. It had been a long and scary day and a hug had rarely felt so good. But there was sadness in the hug, too. More than anything, Cass wanted to tell her mother everything that had happened at the magician’s house. But she couldn’t.

There were two good reasons not to tell:

1. She had lied about her plans for the day and her mother would be angry and possibly ground her.

2. Her mother would worry about her safety and wouldn’t let her investigate further, grounded or not.

As you might have guessed, Cass’s mother wasn’t as easy to put off as Max-Ernest’s parents when it came to the condition of her child’s clothing. But Cass told a story about chasing the blind dog through the park that was so long and involved that her mother gave up trying to understand and just said she was glad Cass was OK and the state of her clothing wasn’t important.

Cass knew her mother well enough to know when something was on her mind. Sure enough, her mother didn’t get out of the car when they got home. Instead, she turned and looked at Cass and said she had something to tell her.

At first, Cass thought her mother was going to tell her something really terrible, like that she was getting married or dying of some rare fungus. How could she have not seen this coming? She, Cassandra, the one who predicted everything! And her mom had fallen in love and she hadn’t even known?

As it turned out, the news wasn’t so terrible. Her mother was going away on a business trip to Hawaii. The insurance company she worked for was sending her to a conference on “risk assessment” (which sounded kind of interesting) in Honolulu; and she was going to stay an extra couple days so she could spend a little “downtime” (which sounded boring) on the beach. Grandpa Larry and Grandpa Wayne had agreed to let Cass stay with them while her mother was away.

Cass couldn’t have been more surprised if her mother had announced she was flying to the moon. She hardly ever traveled—and she
never
traveled without Cass.

No doubt, her mother was
interested
in traveling; you could even say it was a hobby of sorts. She was famous for her collection of travel guides, and her friends always asked for her help planning their trips. From the best beaches in Costa Rica to the coziest cabins in Colorado, no matter where you were going Cass’s mother had a book on the subject. She had guides to trekking in Nepal even though she’d never gone on a single hike in her life, and maps for helicopter skiing in Canada even though she was afraid of flying
and
she didn’t like the snow.

To Cass, nothing was more torturous than hearing about all these fabulous places she would never get to see. To her mother, books were better than travel. “Who needs to go somewhere when you can read about it,” her mother liked to say. “You don’t even have to wait in line at the airport!”

Now, finally, her mother had decided to take a vacation—or at least to add a vacation onto a work trip. And Cass wasn’t invited?

“I know it doesn’t seem fair,” her mother said, “but it’s just not practical. Next time, you’ll come—I promise.”

Once she got over the shock, Cass assured her mother that the Hawaiian work-plus-vacation trip was no problem. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “Anyways, I like staying with Grandpa Larry and Grandpa Wayne. Because they let me do whatever I want. Just kidding!”

“Thank you for being so mature and understanding,” said her mother, hugging Cass for the third time in as many minutes.

Her mother might not have been so grateful had she known what Cass was thinking while they were hugging. The reason Cass was being so mature and understanding was that she had come to the conclusion that the timing of her mother’s trip was perfect.

In reality, she hadn’t been kidding when she said her grandfathers let her do whatever she wanted. With her mother gone, it would be much easier to go back to the magician’s house and start digging. And then to solve the mystery of his death. And then to save the rest of the world from suffering the same fate. And then to have everybody know what a hero she was and that her predictions were real and that she wasn’t just crying wolf.

Unfortunately, Cass’s mother seemed to think that her absence meant Cass should have less freedom rather than more.

A week after she broke the news about her trip, even though she was late for the airport, her mother spent twenty minutes listing all the things Cass wasn’t allowed to do while she was gone. Including sliding down the fire pole and riding in the back of Wayne’s pickup truck.

Cass’s mother pushed a credit card into Cass’s hand. “For emergencies,” she said. “But there better not be any!” Then she turned toward Cass’s substitute grandfathers (and now substitute guardians). “Remember, she’s not as adult as she seems—she’s still our little girl.”

Which was just about the most infuriating thing her mother could say.

“Don’t worry—we’ll keep her on a tight leash,” said Grandpa Larry.

Which made Cass even madder.

“Yeah, Sebastian has a few extras,” joked Grandpa Wayne.

Which was so unfunny it wasn’t funny.

Apparently, keeping Cass on a tight leash meant dragging her around with them wherever they went. As soon as her mother left, Grandpa Larry and Grandpa Wayne started filling all her out-of-school time with trips to flea markets and swap meets and garage sales and auto parts junkyards. They said they were “just checking out the competition,” but Cass noticed they never left anywhere empty-handed. After two days with them, Cass never wanted to see another old or broken thing for the rest of her life.

Still, the field trips were a relief compared to the time she spent in the shop. Whenever she was at the fire station, Cass worried that Gloria might show up and tell her grandfathers about seeing Cass at the magician’s house. What had Gloria called her—a trespasser and a thief? Hearing those words would be enough to get her grandfathers to call her mother. And to get her mother to cancel the rest of her trip. And to get Cass in pretty much the biggest trouble she’d ever been in.

Unable to bear the suspense any longer, Cass asked her grandfathers if they’d heard anything from Gloria.

“Oh, don’t you worry, she always comes back,” said Grandpa Wayne, completely misinterpreting Cass’s concern. “And I’m sure she’ll have plenty of loot! Maybe she’ll even have a new adding machine for us! Wouldn’t that be cool?”

Cass wasn’t sure what could be less cool than a new adding machine unless it was the way Grandpa Wayne said the word “cool.” In any case, his answer did not reassure her.

But Gloria stayed away that day. And the next. And the next. Gradually, Cass’s anxiety about Gloria
re
appearing was replaced by a new anxiety: an anxiety about Gloria
dis
appearing. What if Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais had done something to her? Was that why Gloria hadn’t dropped by the shop? The more Cass thought about it, the more certain Cass became that Gloria had met some terrible fate. The magician’s house was so remote, Gloria’s body might rot there for years and nobody would know.

When the next Saturday arrived, Cass’s grandfathers announced that it was time for them to take their once-a-year inventory. Each and every single thing in the store had to be counted. Cass could only imagine what this would be like. The store was so disorganized that it would take an entire year to catalog its contents—and then it would be time for the next year’s inventory! She couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to return to the magician’s house and resume her investigation.

As if she were just trying to be helpful, she offered to take Sebastian for a walk while her grandfathers were working. They accepted on condition that she not stay away too long. Cass knew they’d lose track of time as soon as they got started on the inventory so she readily agreed. She even promised to clean up after the dog. (Being blind, Sebastian had a tendency to go about his “business” in inconvenient places.)

There was one thing she had to do before she left: in case her grandfathers were more efficient about taking inventory than she imagined, Cass stealthily removed the Symphony of Smells from her backpack and slipped it back onto the shelf where Grandpa Larry had last stored it. Probably, they wouldn’t look, but it was better to be careful. Besides, her backpack was heavy enough as it was. The magician’s notebook, of course, she kept. No way was she leaving that.

Then she said a loud good-bye and headed out with Sebastian.

The morning was sunny and windy, which was one of Cass’s favorite weather combinations, and she was happy and excited about the day ahead of her. (She also liked it when the weather was sunny and rainy at the same time, which is when you’re most likely to see a rainbow. However, mud would have made it difficult to dig, so it was a good thing it wasn’t raining.) Mentally, Cass went over her list of supplies—she took her own inventory, so to speak—until she was satisfied she had everything she needed, from a collapsible shovel to extra plastic bags for picking up dog poop. In no time at all, Cass felt confident, she and Max-Ernest would find whatever it was the magician had buried in the ground. She only hoped they didn’t find the magician—or Gloria—buried along with it!

When she reached Max-Ernest’s house, Cass hit a snag.

Max-Ernest was standing in the driveway, flipping a coin in the air. On one side of him, his mother sat in her car. On the other side of him, his father sat in
his
car.

“Okay, heads I go with Mom, tails I go with Dad,” he was saying as Cass walked up to him. (This was the way Max-Ernest made many decisions concerning his parents. So he didn’t have to pick a favorite.)

The coin fell to the ground before he could grab it.

“Oh, darn! You made me mess up,” he said to Cass.

“Well, that’s okay because you’re not going with either of your parents. You’re going with me,” said Cass. “We’re going back to the magician’s house,” she added in a whisper.

“We can’t. I’m going to a new doctor,” Max-Ernest whispered back.

“Tell them it’s important.”

“But he thinks he knows what my condition is. I have to go!”