Deadwood (21 page)

“Dr. Blitzer, was this house really here when Thomas Brynwood was alive?” he asked, although he wasn't sure why.

“The cottage wasn't. It's Victorian—built when Thomas Brynwood was long buried,” she said, looking up from her weeds with her sharp blue eyes. “But the estate was his once. Some of these plants might have been here. That old ash, possibly. The daffodils nestled under the ground might have been planted then, maybe a single bulb that multiplied into the huge clumps and sweeps that grow here each spring. Likely the distant ancestors of these asters bloomed then, and definitely the progenitors of the weeds I battle daily. That's one reason I love this cottage—not just the pretty gothic stonework, but the way the land is still connected to an older time.”

“It's beautiful,” Hannah said, touching the petals of a tall blue aster as if it might break.

“A wilder garden takes getting used to, but this is what landscape ecology is about,” Jenna said. Still kneeling, she snapped off the aster and raised it to Hannah with a flourish, who smiled and tucked it behind her ear. “The beauty is the interplay of species—not just plants, but how they communicate with, harmonize with, and depend upon animals in their midst. You've met my bees, but I've identified more than three dozen animal species in here. It's their garden as well as mine—rabbits, insects, birds, bats.”

“Bats?” Martin asked, involuntarily hunching his shoulders. Thank goodness it wasn't dark.

“Of course,” Jenna said, the lines around her eyes crinkling into fine folds. “Maybe those little houses on the posts would seem less charming if you knew that they weren't for birds. They're bat houses.”

“Bat houses. Huh,” Martin said. He remembered the bees swarming over him and pictured the same scene, but with bats. Not pleasant. He made a mental note to escape before dark. “Um, we actually came for something. Could we please borrow your high-school yearbook?”

Jenna stabbed her trowel into the ground and stared at them. “My yearbook? What are you talking about?”

Martin had forgotten Jenna didn't know what they were really up to—she didn't even know he was related to Michelle Medina. He gaped, not sure what to say.

Hannah laughed a little, as if it was all a harmless misunderstanding instead of a continuing, life-or-death deception. She lifted her hand, as if to twist her earring, but touched the flower in her hair instead. “It's all part of the community history project. Remember, we're trying to find out who might have made which carving, and since it's mostly high-school kids, we thought a yearbook might have some clues.”

“Ah, yes. So, you haven't found out who carved those mysterious sigmas?”

“Well, no,” Hannah paused, kicking a clod of dirt with her toe. “We got sidetracked. We didn't think they were important, after all.”

“If you don't know what they mean, how can you tell they're not important? You have to consider all the evidence before you dismiss it.”

Hannah bit her lip, so Martin stepped in. “Do you have a yearbook? Dr. Wiggins told us you'd have one for 1990. He gave us one from 1989.”

“You can't mean Mark Wiggins?” Jenna relaxed. Martin had said the right thing for once. “I haven't thought of him for years. I had such a crush on him back then—the big senior in the state science fair. He never seemed to notice me, though.”

Hannah looked wistful, touching the blue flower again, then her hand dropped and she asked, “So, can we please borrow the yearbook, Dr. Blitzer?”

“Of course you can. It's not like I spend a lot of time reliving my glory days. I wish I could forget most of it. High school was so humiliating.” She stood, plucked off her gloves, and dusted her hands. “Let me get the book. Just don't hold anything in it against me.”

Hannah frowned as soon as she disappeared.

“I can't believe we—I—could have been so stupid,” she said. “We forgot all about those dumb sigmas as soon as we focused on Jake.”

“Don't worry about the leads we didn't follow. We're doing it now.”

“But it could be too late,” she said. “I'm the one who brought Jake into this. If I hadn't asked for his help, he never would have thought of the Spirit Tree, much less decided to chop it down for fun and profit.” Hannah hunched her shoulders.

“You were trying to help.” He wanted to touch her, but kept his hands by his sides.

“Some help. I'm worse than the curse,” she said, her face crumpling. “Whatever we do, we can't tell Jenna what Jake's planning.”

“But she said the tree's a rare specimen—maybe she could hold up his application. Your dad's trying to slow down the process, but she could stop it. She's a professor—people would listen to her.”

“But
we
have to do it.” Hannah's voice pitched upward. “The tree asked
us
, and if we stop Jake, Jenna will never know what he's planning. I don't want her to know that we've been lying to her.”

The screen door screeched open, and Jenna held a maroon, leather-covered book beneath her arm and a glass of iced green tea in each hand.

“That was quick,” Martin said, hoping she didn't notice that Hannah was upset.

“My library is well-organized,” Jenna answered. “I thought you two looked thirsty.”

“Thanks,” said Martin, swirling the glass so the ice cubes clinked.

Hannah chugged her drink like a pro. When she had drained the glass in record time, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Thanks, Dr. Blitzer, but we really have to get going—my parents are expecting me any minute.” She handed the glass back to Jenna. Martin hadn't even taken two sips.

“OK then,” said Jenna, holding out a card that looked like it was made out of an old paper bag. “Here's my business card. If you let me know when you're coming, I can make pumpkin bread.”

“Thanks!” Hannah slipped the card into the yearbook, zipped up her backpack, and turned to leave. Martin took one last, delicious gulp of iced tea before he gave Jenna the almost-full glass and followed Hannah as she shot off in a sprint. She was faster than he was over short distances.

“Where are we going?” he said, gasping. “Why'd we leave so fast?”

“I really have to go home,” she said over her shoulder. The flower had fallen from her hair. “I'm already so late I won't be able to shower before church. My brother will wish he were back in the hospital if he has to sit next to me.”

Martin would have sat next to her all day, no matter what she smelled like. He was probably pretty ripe, too, as his mom used to say.
Used to say?
The ache in his chest had nothing to do with exertion. Martin reminded himself that his mom would say the same thing if she were there. She was far away, but she was still the same mom he knew—the same quick temper, the same wicked sense of humor, the same endless energy, the same good nature that refused to see anything bad in Martin, even when it stared her in the face.

The moment he got back to Aunt Michelle's house, he looked for his mom online. Her IM account was inactive, so he sent an email.

Hi Mom. School is going as great as I expected. I think my social studies teacher Mr. Michaelson is really interested in my work. Hannah, A.J., Waverly, Libby, Jenna, Jake, and I are all working on the same project with the Spirit Tree, but we're kindagoing in different directions. Ha! You know how that is. I wish you were here to get us working together. We could use a logistical expert. I've been running a lot, and Hannah is helping me train
.

Well, I better take a shower now, because I have a club meeting for Junior Junior Executives of Tomorrow later. Aunt Michelle likes me to look sharp
.

Stay safe
.

Love, Martin

None of it was a lie. It wasn't all true, either, but that was the best that Martin could do. His mom always said his best was good enough, but he didn't think that was true, either.

Martin wondered how Aunt Michelle's Lexus managed to be simultaneously luxurious and completely uncomfortable. Forget the fact that he had to squeeze in next to her computer stuff and some very dangerous-looking designer gardening crap—the problem was the company. He never thought he'd miss A.J.'s bumpy bench seat and horrible taste in sports radio.

At least for once he actually had something to talk about with Aunt Michelle. Might as well follow up one of those old leads. “Aunt Michelle? Have you ever heard of Six Sigma?”

“Don't tell me they're teaching you about that in Junior Junior Executives of Tomorrow,” she said.

“No, no. I read something about it somewhere else,” he said, hoping she wouldn't pry.

“Well, don't read any more of it. Six Sigma is outdated,” she said, and Martin felt some of his discomfort easing, like air escaping from an overinflated tire. “The Happy Elf Bakery tried it, and look what happened.”

“What happened?” Martin asked. “I'm not from around here.”

Aunt Michelle's mouth was off and running full-speed. “The company tanked, and it was the fault of everyone who worked there. When business started going downhill, a bunch of Six Sigma consultants got the management stuck on method, science, incremental improvement, and more methods. They even came in to tell us about it in Junior Executives of Tomorrow. I was in high school, but I already knew that's not how you get things done,” she said, shaking her head with a sneer. “When you want something, you don't get it with a mathematical formula. You get it by going for it—grabbing it with both hands and even taking it by force, if that's what you have to do.”

“Are you still talking about business?” Martin said.

“Of course. That's how I became vice-president of Horizon Network Communications,” she said, pointing at a placard on the dashboard as proof—
Reserved Executive Parking
. “Everyone thought cell phones were a fad when I started in the mobile division, but now look at me. I started doing the job like I owned the place, and now I practically do. That's how I became president of Junior Executives of Tomorrow and co-vice president of the Spirit Club back in high school, and it's how I became the youngest-ever president of the Brynwood Estates Community Association. Nobody wanted that job until I took it. Back then, everyone thought the association was just about telling people what kind of trash cans they could have and when to put them at the curb.”

“Isn't it?” Martin said. “You complain about it enough.”

“So? Who wants the neighborhood to look trashy?” she snapped. “Next thing you know, the streets of Brynwood Estates will be lined with pickup trucks and broken lawn chairs, just like the hills of Lower Brynwood.”

“There are worse things,” Martin said. Hannah lived in the hills, and he preferred the shabby twin houses to the fancy cardboard boxes Aunt Michelle ruled over.

“But I want better,” she said, cruising through a yellow traffic light. “That's why I took over the garden club from those dumpy old ladies with dirty fingernails. Power was there for the taking, and now nobody in Brynwood Estates says boo to me. Except Jenna Blitzer—she's been thumbing her nose at me for years, fighting citations, arguing in meetings in front of the whole committee. Now I'm finally going to beat her. Not by incremental change, asking her to mow her grass two inches shorter or chopping down those overgrown shrubs when she's not looking. No, the Lower Brynwood city planners just asked for my input into the new parking lot for the high-school stadium. Bigger stadium, more cars, more concrete. We'll need more land near the school, and all we have to do is seize it. Eminent domain!”

“What's that?” Martin asked. He didn't like the sound of it.

“A nice legal loophole. I love rules!” she said with the kind of enthusiasm normal people reserved for puppies or ice cream. “People like me make them, and people like her follow them.”

“But I thought she didn't have to follow the community association rules.”

“She has to obey this one,” Aunt Michelle said. “Eminent domain means the township has the right to seize any property needed for development in the public interest. They pay the property owner, but the property owner can't refuse. Guess whose land we're going to use for the parking lot?”

Martin felt a little sick. Aunt Michelle didn't wait for him to answer.

“Jenna Blitzer's,” she said, nearly singing. “That eyesore of a weed patch will be wiped from the face of the earth.” She laughed. “And she doesn't even know it yet. I'd love to be the one to tell her, but apparently the town has lawyers for that.”

She stopped the car in front of the community center and snapped the power locks open. “Here you are, Martin. Junior Junior Executives of Tomorrow. Have fun.”

Martin was too stunned to shake off Libby's attention when she sat next to him in the meeting.

“Now we're working on the Spirit Tree together!” Libby said. “My parents are the town's lawyers, and they helped Waverly and me get on the student fundraising committee.”