Another Pan (32 page)

Simon still wasn’t impressed. His new paperweight had its ends crumbled away as well.
And look at that — the markings are circular
. . . . The noise in the hall was impossible to ignore at this point. Simon would have to go tell the children to shut up.

Simon was disgusted. He slapped the book shut, pushed away from the desk, got up, and walked to the door, taking the book with him. He opened the door and stuck his head out to yell. To his surprise, two boarding boys were standing over a terrified Officer Boykins, screaming something about a color-blind world where people are judged by their abilities in polo, as opposed to the color of their cornrows. It looked like the big one was about to beat up the officer. Simon would have to intervene somehow.

“Hey,” he shouted. “Hey, you!” he said again, using the book as a pointer.

Suddenly, Simon saw something. The three people in the hall had turned. The boy with cornrows said, “What do you want?”

But Simon wasn’t paying attention anymore. All he could do was stare at the book. The wrinkled, old brown-stained book with a broken spine, which had rested under his new paperweight, looked brand-new. The spine was perfectly whole; the pages were as white as the day they came from the printer. Simon couldn’t bring himself to believe it. He heard a noise and turned back into the classroom. There was that new RA he’d seen hanging around with the Darling brats. He had jumped down from the air vent. He had Simon’s precious bone in his hands.

“No, it’s mine!” shouted Simon. It was all he could get out.

The punk smirked at him and said, “Not anymore.” Then he ran and jumped out the window.

I knew it!
thought Simon.
I knew it was true!

It
was
true. Peter had known for ages. Now he sat alone in his dorm room, away from Tina or the LBs. The Garosh bone — the second batch of bonedust — rested in his lap, and he examined it inch by inch. Ever since he’d arrived here, Peter’s anxieties had multiplied. He didn’t have much time. Every time he had found the book, he had been discovered, or else the book had been moved again, before he could make multiple trips.

He remembered now that it was the Darlings who had helped him get this far.
Three bones down
. That Wendy, she was good to have around. She was inspiring, beautiful, innocent. He liked that about her — her innocence. He could tell each time he touched her face that Wendy felt guilty about her boyfriend. She was the loyal type. Maybe he would ask her to visit him sometime, when there weren’t so many people around. Maybe he would ask her what she dreamed about at night. Did she ever wish she could live forever?

As for Peter, he had had another nightmare last night. He had seen the broken blue eye again. And this time, it wasn’t his decrepit, hunchbacked old nanny, with her quiet steps and her moth-ridden clothes. It wasn’t the woman who had shown him the book and then yanked it away. The nanny who had lived forever and always hungered for more children to corrupt, the one who beat him with her antique hook, the ageless governess against whom only one child, Peter, had ever plotted payback. No, this was a far more beautiful woman, with blond hair and a black overcoat, an exciting woman like all the ones that he let into his life every day. He wondered if he should trust them so easily. He wondered if he should trust Wendy.

For a few days after getting the second batch of bonedust back from Simon, Peter disappeared, taking all three bones with him. John and Wendy didn’t have any idea where he was or what he was doing, just that he wanted to be left alone. John had a fit. (“He just
took
the bones? We could’ve
died
. Worse, we could’ve gotten
expelled
!”) Wendy didn’t mind, though. She was beginning to trust Peter. She knew that he was obsessed with bonedust, that the quest consumed him, and that he had been chasing it for a long time. If she had to guess, she would say that bonedust days were extremely rare, and that he had been walking around with Elan’s toe in his pocket for a while. So maybe he deserved some time with it. She knew he wouldn’t steal the bonedust or jeopardize her father’s work — unlike Simon. She wondered if she should break up with Connor. Even though she had agonized over whether leaving one guy for another was despicable, she was beginning to think that maybe things weren’t so black and white. Wasn’t dating Connor just to help John make friends equally dishonest? For some reason, the conversation she had overheard through the closed door of the nurse’s office kept coming back to her, reminding her to chase her own happiness.

As for Simon, ever since Peter had stolen that bone, it had been all-out war. Now Simon knew that the legends were true — or at least true enough to make him rich and famous. Did he believe that bonedust could give eternal life? Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing was for sure: he knew there were five mummies out there that had been unaccounted for in all of history. He knew they were the five mummies from the legends, with verifiable backstories and an identifiable time period. The possibility of magic powers was a bonus. Finding the mummies would be enough to make his career. Finding a gate into a hidden treasure trove would make him a legend. Simon didn’t care about ever-living dust the way Peter did. He wasn’t desperate to live forever — except in history books. His name was the entirety of him.
Rich and famous, acclaimed and renowned, the untouchable Professor Grin
.

Meanwhile, Wendy and John were grounded indefinitely. Professor Darling was livid about the AP calculus closet incident. He ranted and ground his teeth over the fact that this irresponsible RA had not been fired. Apparently, Peter had done nothing expressly wrong . . . and he was part of a union. So Professor Darling took his anger out on his children. Had he not warned them that this Peter character wasn’t their sort? Had he not expressly forbade them to fraternize with him? Was any of this unclear? Wendy and John didn’t protest too much (even Wendy, who was way too old to be grounded). Any new provocation, even the smallest detail they might accidentally reveal, and they would have to spill everything to their dad. And for now, they had Simon to deal with.

“Thank God he’s too selfish to ever say anything to Daddy,” Wendy had remarked.

John hadn’t responded. Because, to be perfectly fair, Simon hadn’t done anything John wouldn’t do — if necessary.

A few days later, Peter returned. John demanded to see the bonedust. “What have you done with it? It belongs to all of us!”

Peter just stared at him with an amused look. Then he straightened up, looked John square in the face, and said, in the most serious tone they had ever heard him use, “Let’s get one thing straight, little man. The dust belongs to
me
. All five of them belong to
me
. If you’re not cool with that, I don’t need your help.”

When John didn’t respond, Peter flashed a bright, toothy grin and put an arm around both of their shoulders, taking them into his confidence the way a bird takes its chicks into its nest. Even though he didn’t like Peter, John accepted the gesture, telling himself that it was some kind of acquiescence. Besides, he liked feeling included, like one of the LBs. LB77NY. That would be his handle. He would change all his online accounts later tonight. For the past few weeks, John had looked on every website and in every chat room for LBs. He had found a few. None of them talked to him. It seemed that to be an LB, there was no getting around Peter. So, as much as John disliked the cocky RA, he would accept this gesture. Maybe now Peter would tell the LBs they had to talk to him. And maybe later, Peter would be gone and he and Simon could be head of the LBs.