Candy Shop War (11 page)

“You look like you’re from India,” Trevor said. Pulling back his sleeve, he held up a pallid arm. “I’m all freckly.”

“You’re a redhead,” Summer said, feeling her features. “Am I Chinese?”

“Something like that,” Nate said.

“Cool,” Pigeon said, examining himself. “I was kind of hoping for black.”

“We better get moving,” Nate said. “We’ve got only an hour in our disguises.” They followed the jogging path to Greenway, then took Greenway to Main, where the Sweet Tooth Ice Cream and Candy Shoppe stood, the darkness inside making the windows opaque. With Nate in the lead, they ran across Greenway and hurried along Main. The museum was on the same side of Main as the candy shop, a couple of blocks down.

The stores and offices along Main were all dark, except for a bar on the far side of the street with neon signs glowing in the window. Antique streetlights shed a peach fluorescent luminance at regular intervals. A single car zoomed along the street, going well over the speed limit. The wooden sidewalks, carved hitching posts, and barrel garbage cans contrasted with the electric guitars in the window of the music shop Nate was passing.

With no other pedestrians on the street, Nate felt conspicuous. He noticed the silhouette of a man in an overcoat standing in front of the bar, apparently staring at them. The man had every reason to be watching them—they were a group of fifth graders walking along an empty street at one in the morning! Nate stole covert glances at the man until he turned and wandered into the bar.

Soon they arrived at the William P. Colson Museum. A hundred years ago, the two-story building might have housed the richest people in town. The sizable structure had a single turret and a covered porch. On the far side of the museum ran a side street. The neighbor on the near side was a small, old-fashioned post office. A narrow, shadowy alley ran between the post office and the museum.

Nate, Trevor, Summer, and Pigeon slipped into the alley. A cardboard box jiggled as a scrawny brown cat darted away from them. “I don’t feel good about this,” Pigeon whispered.

“It’ll be fine,” Nate said, although he had similar misgivings. Why did witnessing the fear of others tend to boost his courage? “We need to do what we planned. In and out. Pidge, you and Summer wait in the alley. You have the whistle?”

Summer unzipped a side pocket of her backpack and removed a plastic whistle, looping the string around her neck. “I’ll give it one long blow if you need to abort,” she said.

“Look,” Pigeon said, pointing at a high corner of the alley. “The bubble.”

The kids all looked up and saw a bubble the size of a baseball hovering near the roof of the post office. The bubble wobbled, drifted a bit higher, and floated out of the alley and out of sight.

“It looked the same as the bubble I saw outside the Nest,” Pigeon reported.

“Weird,” Nate said.

“What do you think it means?” Trevor asked.

Nobody had an answer. “I don’t like it,” Summer said.

“Me neither,” Nate agreed. “But we can’t do much about it now. We have to keep on task.”

Trevor and Summer started portioning out candy. Everybody got three Moon Rocks and a small handful of Shock Bits. Nate accepted the slender tube of Proxy Dust and the surgeon doll. “Remember to spit out your Moon Rock before using the Shock Bits,” Pigeon cautioned. “Mrs. White said the Mixers can be used with other candy, but that most of her sweets don’t combine well.” The others nodded.

“I want to come inside with you guys,” Summer complained.

“It only takes two,” Nate said quietly. “Keeping watch is just as important.”

“And way more boring,” Summer said. “Next time I’m doing the fun job.”

“I’ll keep watch again next time,” Pigeon volunteered.

Nate and Trevor crept to the front of the alley. Trevor held a short, rusty rod they had found at the creek. The street was quiet. Stepping into the street in front of the museum’s covered porch, Nate and Trevor each put a Moon Rock in their mouths. Nate recognized the familiar lightening sensation.

Trevor took a small hop and drifted mildly up toward the roof. Nate jumped as well, quickly passing Trevor and rising much higher than necessary. Nate was level with the second-story roof before he started descending. He landed lightly on the porch roof a little ways ahead of Trevor.

Two second-story windows opened onto the porch roof, just as the blueprints had indicated. Trevor glided to the window on the left, and Nate followed him, stepping carefully so he would move low and slow over the wooden shingles. At the window, Trevor spit out his Moon Rock, as did Nate, shingles creaking underfoot as they became heavier. Nate crouched low, eyes scanning the street, wishing they had more cover. At least the street looked empty.

Trevor removed a plastic bottle from his pocket and squirted a pane of glass with the clear solution Mrs. White had given him. The pane almost immediately disappeared. He reached his hand through the vacant square, unlocked the window, and opened it. He and Nate entered, shutting the window behind them.

The room was dark, illuminated only by light filtering in from the streetlamps outside, and it contained a female mannequin positioned as if she were weaving wool yarn into cloth on a large loom. A spinning wheel stood in the corner. A velvet rope spanned the doorway opposite the window.

Trevor and Nate walked across the room and ducked under the velvet rope into a dark hall. Trevor produced a small flashlight, and it took only a moment to find the door with the narrow window above it. “Boost me,” Trevor said.

Nate laced his fingers, and Trevor stepped into the impromptu stirrup. Nate held him as high as he could. Reaching up, Trevor squirted the window with the fluid and it vanished. Trevor jumped down.

“You’re up,” Trevor said, taking a spool of kite string from his back pocket.

Setting the surgeon doll on the floor, Nate tore off the end of the Proxy Dust tube and slipped the tiny scrap of paper into his pocket. He sprinkled a little dust onto the doll. Upending the tube, he dumped the rest into his mouth. The dust tasted like slightly sour tangerines.

Nate instantly felt lightheaded, and reached out to support himself against the wall. The room seemed to teeter. He sat down on the floor, which swayed so steeply that he tipped onto his back, all sense of equilibrium lost.

When the room stabilized, Nate sat up, staring down at his plastic hands. He flexed his fingers, then rubbed his palms together, but felt nothing. He had no nerves. “No way,” he said, his mouth soundlessly forming the shape of the words.

He glanced up at Trevor towering over him, then over at the Indian version of himself, slumped unconscious against the wall. Trevor stooped, grabbed him around the waist, and lifted him up. Nate could not feel Trevor’s hand, and he experienced no sensation as Trevor raised him. If not for his sight, he would not have known that he was moving. “That you?” Trevor asked.

“Yes,” Nate mouthed, making no sound. He waved an arm instead.

“I guess you can’t talk,” Trevor said.

Nate made an okay sign with his fingers. Trevor tied the kite string around his waist. They had decided to always keep the doll fastened to the string, in case they had to extract it hurriedly. Trevor tossed Nate through the window and lowered him to the floor.

“Nate,” Trevor said, “since you can’t talk, give the string three hard tugs when you want to come back. Until then, I’ll feed you slack and shine the light through the window.”

Although he could feel nothing, Nate found he could move pretty much like normal, right down to blinking. He ran across the room toward the corner Mrs. White had identified in the plans. The room was full of tables and displays, so he had to zigzag to reach the distant cabinet. Trevor was not tall enough to angle the flashlight beam down into the room, but enough light reflected off the roof for Nate to see fairly well.

When he arrived at the display cabinet, Nate found it was tall, with glass doors. From his ten-inch height, the cabinet looked the size of an office building. The only way in without causing damage would be to squirt the glass, but he had neglected to bring the solution.

Nate raced back the way he had come and tugged on the string. Trevor pulled him up, looking befuddled when he saw that Nate was empty-handed. Nate pointed at the window and pantomimed like he was spraying it.

“Gotcha,” Trevor said, handing Nate the plastic bottle and lowering him back into the room.

Nate raced to the cabinet. Holding the bottle under his arm like bagpipes, he squirted the window with the clear solution. The glass dissipated into nothingness.

The lowest shelf held black-and-white pictures of coal miners, a pair of work gloves, and a large chunk of some green mineral. He would have to jump to reach the next shelf. There appeared to be just enough room between the cabinet door and the shelf for Nate to squeeze up to the next level. Leaving the plastic bottle behind, Nate jumped. Dangling from the lip of the higher shelf, he hoisted himself up with no strain. As a doll he was small but surprisingly strong.

The next shelf had more pictures, a pair of old glasses, a cracked glass mug shaped like a stout man in a tricornered hat, a cigarette case, and a deck of cards. Nate leaped and caught hold of the next shelf. Kicking out a leg, he boosted himself up. Here were more pictures, a leather-bound book, and a silver pocket watch with the numbers written in Roman numerals. Excited, Nate approached the book. Despite the dimness, he could read the title embossed in gold leaf:
The Collected Reflections of Hanaver Mills.

Relative to his stature as a doll, the pocket watch was about the size of a manhole cover. Nate lifted it up, surprised that he felt no strain and bore the weight easily. Setting the timepiece down, he approached the book. It was fairly thick. He picked up one end of it. The weight was not a problem, but the shape made it unwieldy at his current size.

After trying a few methods of carrying the memoir, Nate decided he would probably have more luck sliding it, and then tying the string around it to get it up and through the window to Trevor.

The first dilemma was how to get the items down from the third shelf to the floor. His thinking was suddenly interrupted by the shrill sound of a whistle blowing. “Time to go,” Trevor called in an urgent whisper. The flashlight beam wobbled as Trevor began taking in the slack of the string. Nate froze, looking from the timepiece to the book.

*****

Summer peered out of the alley, waiting impatiently. How long did it take to grab two objects from a cabinet? It seemed like Nate and Trevor had been inside the museum forever. There had been a moment of tension when they first leapt up to the roof, but the action had not attracted any attention. Since then, she had seen a couple of cars go by on Main, but otherwise the uneventful waiting was mind-numbing.

“Do you think they’re all right?” Pigeon asked, breaking the silence.

“Of course,” Summer said. “Better off than we are, sitting in some stupid alley.” Looking at Pigeon, with his dark brown skin and leather jacket, it was like she was talking to a stranger. He crept forward, scanning the street. “I wish I had a mirror,” she said. “I’d love to see the Chinese rendition of myself.”

“Police car,” Pigeon warned, withdrawing deeper into the alley and crouching down. Summer shrank into the shadows as well, flattening herself against the wall. From farther back in the alley, she could see only a narrow slice of Main Street. The police car flashed by. Summer edged forward in time to see the taillights disappearing around the curve toward Greenway.

“Now, why are you kids hiding from the cops?” said a deep, no-nonsense voice behind her. Summer and Pigeon both whirled. Pigeon squealed. A few steps away, deeper in the alley, loomed a big man in an overcoat and a brown fedora. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh, nothing,” Summer said, conscious of the Moon Rock in one hand, the Shock Bits in the other, and the whistle around her neck.

“Awful late to be hanging around a dark alley doing nothing,” the man observed. He had his hands in his coat pockets.

“We could say the same to you,” Summer said.

“I’m not doing nothing,” the man said. “I noticed you two hiding here looking guilty and it made me curious. Where are your friends?”

“Who?” Summer asked innocently.

“The other two boys you were with. The Indian kid and the redhead.”

Pigeon turned and tried to run, but the man sprang forward adroitly and seized him by the collar of his jacket. He had a big hand with thick fingers and hairy knuckles. Summer saw Pigeon stuffing the Shock Bits into his mouth, so she ran from the alley and blew hard on the whistle twice.

The man released Pigeon and chased her down the wooden sidewalk, catching up in a few long strides. He grabbed her elbow harshly in one hand and pulled the whistle off over her head with the other. Crushing the plastic whistle between his thumb and forefinger, the man hauled Summer back toward the alley. By the light of the nearest streetlamp, she could see his face better. Square jaw with a firm chin. Heavy eyebrows. Hard eyes. He was gripping her by the same arm that held the Shock Bits. She had a Moon Rock in her free hand, but didn’t see how it would help her as long as he was clutching her.

Pigeon emerged from the alley just before they reached it, fingers sparking in the darkness. The man stopped just out of reach. “Shock me, shock her,” the man said.