Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (21 page)

Biggs flicked a switch, and the vacuum groaned its last. “Yuh?”

Erno nodded at the vacuum bag, which deflated as the machine exhaled. “What happens when you fill that thing with … ashes and dust?”

Biggs scratched his cheek. “Gotta change the bag.”

Then, from out back:
“BIGGS!”

The big man was startled—you could tell because his expression almost changed. He rushed through the kitchen, grabbing a towel and a thick bathrobe on the way. Erno stuffed the riddle back into his pack and removed the book he’d been reading. A minute later Emily entered
the room, looking like a wet movie star in her big, white, furry bathrobe.

“Been shouting for five minutes,” she grumbled. “We need a new system. I really think we should take a serious look at the system as it stands right now.”

“Biggs was cleaning. Hey—what’s another word for
void?”

“Vacuum, emptiness, nothingness, vacuity, abyss
—”

“Thanks, that’s enough.”

“Why’d you need to know?”

“No reason.”

Biggs had to go to work at the library, and Emily wanted to tag along and research Goodco.

“You’ll be okay?” Biggs asked as they prepared to leave him behind. “Won’t get bored?”

“I won’t get bored.” Erno was certain.

They left, on foot, and after counting to fifty, Erno leaped to open the foyer closet and wheel out the vacuum cleaner. He stared at all its parts for a moment, then unzipped the bag and found a smaller paper bag inside. He pulled at this, but it wouldn’t come free, so he pulled harder and fell onto his backside with the bag and a thick burst of gray, clumpy fluff. It got all over the floor; it stuck to his face and hair. Erno snorted a couple
of times to clear his nostrils and examined the paper bag.

It had a circular hole, reinforced with cardboard where it had been attached to the vacuum’s throat. He peered into it. Was there a shape inside, a shape that couldn’t possibly have been sucked in through the vacuum’s mouth?

After a minute he tweezed it out through the circular opening with his fingertips: a long cardboard mailing tube, furry with dust. There were plastic caps in each end, and he pried one of these out and pulled at the contents.

It was another yellow scroll tied with a pink ribbon. What really surprised Erno, though, was what huddled at the bottom of the tube, below the scroll: money. A great wad of bills—hundred-dollar bills—bound by a strip of pink paper. Ben Franklin’s thick face gazed up at Erno from each bill, looking bored and disappointed, a look that said,
You should really put me in the bank, you know
—
a penny saved is a penny earned and all that
—
but you won’t, I know you won’t; nobody listens to old Ben Franklin
. Erno counted the crisp notes hastily and then wondered as he finished why Mr. Wilson had hidden ten thousand dollars inside a vacuum cleaner.

Next he untied the scroll, heart sinking as he expected yet another riddle. But this sheet of yellow paper had a small gold key taped to its center and a handwritten message:

Well, there was only one place where Erno could remember Emily doing
that
.

Biggs kept a bicycle for warm weather. It took all the strength Erno had to lower it noisily down the trunk of the tree, dangled from a length of wet rope, so that when he descended he could only manage to slide on his palms and arches.

He was going to get in trouble. There was no way he could get into the tree house by himself, much less hoist a bike back up there. But he’d keep his errand a secret. Despite being much smaller than Biggs, he could still ride the man’s bicycle if he didn’t mind bumping his crotch against the crossbar from time to time. Of course he
did
mind bumping his crotch against the crossbar from time to time.

Once, four years ago, Emily had traveled alone by train to the National Mathlympics in Washington DC. All the other mathletes were middle schoolers, and Emily was only nine; but she’d been training with seventh and eighth graders after school because the fourth grade had ceased to challenge her. She wasn’t team captain, but this was only because of her complete lack of leadership qualities, and because the older kids would never have consented to being fronted by a nine-year-old. But Emily was hands-down the star mathlete—she’d just never traveled alone before is all.

She had looked pale that morning. More than usual even.

So Mr. Wilson (who had been so much more enthusiastic about his foster children back then, Erno remembered) cooked Emily a huge good-luck breakfast with sausage
and
bacon
and
French toast
and
fried eggs. Mr.Wilson also believed in something called “breakfast dessert,” which Erno generally found redundant. He’d just eaten French toast, after all, which is basically just a pile of doughnuts. So when asked, Erno said he thought he’d skip breakfast dessert today. Emily selected a bag of miniature fruity marshmallows. Pink, green, yellow, orange. She comforted herself by eating these all the way to the train station—and inside the train station, and while waiting for her tickets to print at the kiosk. Then she spilled both the bag and the contents of her stomach on the way to the train platform. Erno thought he could probably remember the exact spot.

It wasn’t until he neared his destination that Erno realized what a sick joke of a hiding place this was. The train station was a Greek-looking stone box in the center of Goodborough, and its columned facade faced the tallest building in town: the Freemen’s Temple. If the temple had an architectural style, it would be called Early American Evil. It looked like it had been assembled on an Indian burial ground from the mismatching pieces of seven or eight evil castles. Somewhere a hundred years ago a bunch of vampires must have returned home at sunset and wondered where all their gargoyles had gone.

Erno fiddled with the U-lock in front of the station and shot suspicious looks over his shoulder as if the entire Freemen society might sneak up after he left to steal Biggs’s bicycle. He felt exposed. As soon as he could, he slipped into the train station and walked briskly away from the entrance.

The station was high ceilinged, marble tiled, full of people, bags, and carts that sold flowers and coffee and cinnamon buns. Erno weaved through obstacles toward the hall that led to the NJ Transit train platforms. And when he found what he believed to be the exact spot where Emily had lost her marshmallows four years ago, he half expected it to feel significant: colder than the rest of the hallway maybe, or haunted by the distant wails of embarrassed vomiting. But it was just a spot. A spot next to a wall of coin-operated lockers.

Some of the lockers had keys inside their locks, and these did not look like the mysterious key from the vacuum cleaner bag. But Erno inserted that key into the closest locker, and when it fit, he turned. The door sprung open and revealed another cardboard cylinder and a small note that read
Good work, Erno
.

Despite himself Erno’s heart took flight at these simple words, then retreated sheepishly back into his chest.

There were a lot of papers here. The rolled-up stack inside was thick, and difficult to squeeze from the tube. Once out, the pink pages stretched and uncurled in Erno’s arms. These were the notes Not-Vivian had wanted so badly to find, thought Erno, skimming the first page. They had to be. The paragraphs were dotted with references to Milk-7, and mentions of E1 and E2. Erno flipped through the contents. The notes were organized like a journal, but with the odd drawing here or diagram there. Things that made no immediate sense to him. But he was struck with a sobering thought: Mr. Wilson had stuffed ten thousand dollars into a vacuum cleaner, but what he’d
really
hidden well were these notes.

There was a polite knock at the door, so Scott knew it was John, wanting to talk again. Polly would not have knocked so tentatively. Or at all.

Mick crawled back under the bed. “Yeah?” said Scott.

It wasn’t the Reggie Dwight of historical dramas and action movies that opened the door. Reggie Dwight the movie star was commanding and calm. He would dash in on a horse. Or a pair of skis. Reggie Dwight would drop from the ceiling in a tuxedo brandishing some lean German pistol. John Doe sputtered in wearing a white tee and swishy beige pants.

“That was Goodco,” said John.

“What was Goodco?”

“The telephone call. A minute ago.”

“I didn’t hear it ring.”

“It doesn’t,” John sighed, “really matter. They want me
at the factory tomorrow morning, early. For the commercial shoot. They’re going to send a car. I think it would be all right if you kids came along.”

Scott fidgeted. “Do I have to?”

John looked at him silently, then scratched the back of his neck. “Polly wants to go. I venture to say she is desperate to go. She may do something cartoonish, like explode or whistle like a kettle if she can’t.”

Scott nodded. “You should take her.”

“Yes. Well, I can’t leave you home alone … can I? A ten-year-old?”

“I’m eleven.”

John winced. “Oh, heck. I’m sorry—”

Polly appeared in the doorframe. She had fixed herself a plate of frosting.

“We get to go see the commercial!” she sang, hopping.

John smiled warmly at her. She beamed up at him. “It’s not going to be as exciting as you think,” he told her. Then, “Are you eating frosting?”

“Not exciting: Sounds great,” Scott grumbled. He hadn’t intended to grumble. The comment sounded light, playful in his head. Less grumbly. John glowered, and Scott added, “Why are you in your pajamas already?”

“They’re not pajamas. They’re yoga bottoms. And this isn’t about my bottoms—”

“Erno and Emily wanted to know if I could sleep over
tonight,” Scott said quickly as the thought struck him. “That would be perfect, right? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me tomorrow.”

John nodded slowly. “Erno and Emily? Are they the friends we tried to visit last night?”

“They’re back. Erno says sorry about the flowers. He thought they were … something else. I didn’t really get it.”

Polly was looking daggers at him. Hurt, confused daggers. She could tell he was trying to get away with something but was perhaps puzzled by his lifetime record of never trying to get away with anything.

“All right,” said John. “When you’ve packed your kit, I’ll take you.”

“I can walk,” Scott insisted.

“You’re allowed?”

Polly was still staring. “He’s allowed,” she said.

“’Twas one o’ the magic places,” Mick told Scott as they exited the bus at the edge of Avalon Park. “The Isle o’ Avalon. You’d know it as Glastonbury.” Mick glanced up at Scott’s blank face. “All right, maybe yeh wouldn’t. But yeh might know it as the place where the Lady o’ the Lake lived.”

Scott had heard of her, at least. “She gave King Arthur his sword, Excalibur.”

“Aye. Queen Nimue, the Lady o’ the Lake. She lived on
that rich island where it was always apples an’ twilight. She raised Lancelot, too.”

“Lancelot the knight? Really?”

“Really. Lancelot du Lac. He was French, but he grew up beneath the water. That’s what
du lac
means—‘of the lake.’”

“Beneath
the water?”

“Lotta caves down there.”

They came to a stop in the parking lots next to the Avalon Park Authority offices. Nearby, families were grilling and throwing Frisbees in spite of the autumn air.

“Want to get inside the backpack?”

“I really don’t.”

Mick was now operating under the theory that Americans were generally too afraid of personal embarrassment to make much ado over a two-foot-tall elf-man. Even those who
could see
him would look quickly away for fear they might appear to be staring. Even those who stared wouldn’t mention it to others for fear of saying the wrong thing.

“Your man James Bond should’a been a dwarf,” Mick said. “He could stroll right into the secret lair an’ all the bad guys’d pretend not to notice him.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say
dwarf
,” said Scott.

“So what now?”

They stared at the vast, expansive park. What now, indeed.