Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 (2 page)

Mr. Ardigo had a headache already. He checked his watch. They had been at the observatory less than fifteen minutes.

“The planetarium show starts in twenty-two minutes,” he said over the roar. “And then everyone will get a chance to look through the telescope.”

He checked his guidebook. “Apparently, we’ll be looking at a very rare planetary alignment. The last time it happened was over three thousand years ago. Kendra!”

Kendra stopped leaning so far over the railing that she would absolutely fall in and looked at him blankly. A small, small victory. She did not stop shrieking, though. They never do, thought Mr.
Ardigo.

“There’s a lot to see in here, and I want to get to it all, but you’re all going to have to cooperate, okay? Guys?”

Mr. Ardigo noticed that he was tapping his foot, and made a conscious effort to stop. He was always drumming his fingers or clicking a pen. Stuff like that drove his wife nuts. She was right. He
was too nervous. He had to learn to relax. He also had to make more money. Mrs. Ardigo’s dream was that her husband would ditch teaching altogether and open up a Quiznos.

He would never do it. He loved teaching. Well, not on this particular
day
, but in general, he loved teaching.

“Okay, let’s go, let’s go.”

His class broke away from the pendulum in one noisy lump and rushed past him on their way into the exhibits.

“Stick together, please, and keep your hands to yourself,” Mr. Ardigo said. “We’re going to be quiet and we’re going to be respectful. That goes double for you,
Parker.”

The teacher froze. He scanned the line of kids once, and then again. No Parker.

“Parker? Has anybody seen Parker?”

Nobody had. Mr. Ardigo let out a sigh and stared at the ceiling. Atlas, he thought. Atlas had it easy.

Parker twisted the puzzle again. It was a series of four interlocking metal squares, and the idea was to make them all line up. It should be easy, he thought, except for some
reason, it was ridiculously hard. He would get two in the right place, and then one would be way out of whack, and then he would fix that one, and ruin all the work he had done before. The thing
was impossible. Maybe if he could take the price tag off.

“I can never figure those things out,” said a woman behind him.

She was about sixty years old, and she was wearing a blue shirt with a collar and a Griffith Observatory name tag that read
JUNE
.

Parker smiled sweetly at her. He was just an innocent kid browsing the racks of a gift store. There’s nothing less suspicious than that.

“Me neither,” he said, putting the puzzle back on the shelf with the astronaut ice cream and the Lunar Lander play set. “But, you see, it’s not for me. I’m looking
for a present. For my mother.”

“Aren’t you sweet! Is it her birthday?”

“No, she’s...” His eyes found the floor. “She’s in the hospital.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said June. She was, too.

“Yeah, she’s pretty sick. I thought maybe, since I was here, I could get her something to cheer her up. I got her some flowers and stuff but it’s still pretty depressing in her
room.”

“Well, how about a stuffed animal? People love these!”

She held up a stuffed monkey wearing a NASA space suit.

“That’s great! Really great! But I was thinking maybe something like that?”

Parker pointed to a crystal sculpture of a shooting star lodged at the top of the highest shelf in the store.

“Oh!” she said. “That is pretty.”

June bit her bottom lip. She was a small woman, smaller than Parker, even, and he was twelve. If she was going to get that sculpture, it was going to take some effort.

“Let me just get that for you.”

June stood on her toes and reached as high as she could.

As soon as her back was turned, Parker expertly grabbed the metal puzzle and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.

June’s fingers touched the sculpture. For a second it looked like it might fall, but June caught it and showed it triumphantly to Parker. “Ha! Got it!”

Parker looked at the light sparkling off the crystal.

“Is it okay if I come back for it later?” asked Parker. “That way I won’t have to carry it around with me the rest of the day. I might break it. I’m pretty
klutzy.”

“Oh, you are not. I’ll bet you’re a natural athlete.”

“Could you set it aside for me? Please?”

“Of course. You come back for it whenever you would like.”

Parker thanked her and walked out the glass doors. It was that easy, he thought. If only he could get up the guts to grab some stuff out of a real store. Then maybe he wouldn’t be the only
kid he knew without a decent skateboard. Or a flat-screen TV. Or an iPhone.

He smiled a sly smile. Then he looked in the window of the gift shop and saw June struggling to put the crystal star back on the shelf.

Parker sighed.

He walked back into the gift shop and steadied June while she put the thing back. Then she thanked him, and he sneaked the metal puzzle out of his pocket and back on the shelf. He never would
have solved it, anyway.

Parker left the gift shop. He had better get back. Mr. Ardigo might have noticed he had left the group, and the last thing Parker needed, really, was to get in trouble again. His mom would kill
him. Before he could take two steps, though, Parker was confronted by two of his classmates.

“Hey, Parker, what are you doing in the gift shop? You know you can’t afford anything in there.”

Great, Parker thought. Jason Sussman and his buddy Adam. They were two kids with more money than brains, and they were not fans of Parker. Both Jason and Adam were bigger than he was. In fact,
almost every guy in his class was bigger than Parker. His mother told him he was going to hit a growth spurt soon, but Parker would believe it when he saw it.

“Jason. Adam. What’s up?”

“Adam and I were just admiring your shoes,” said Jason. “Hey, where do you think I could get a pair like that?”

Parker gritted his teeth. He was wearing sneakers from Payless. The worst thing that could happen to a kid was to get caught wearing sneakers from Payless.

“My uncle brought them back from England, so you probably can’t get them. Sorry.”

“He bring you that shirt, too?” asked Jason. “It looks like something you would get at Kmart.”

Caught again. Parker hated going to school with rich kids.

“Ouch!” he said. “You got me. Well, see you later.”

Parker turned to go. He would walk away. He would stay out of trouble.

Jason stepped in front of him. “Come on, Parker. What’s your hurry? Let’s hang out for a minute.”

“You know, Jason, I would like to, really, but I think I had better be getting back. If Mr. Ardigo finds out I’m gone, I’ll be in detention for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, well, it’s just that Adam and I have a question for you.” Jason stepped right up to Parker. “What’s it like being poor?”

Parker bit his lip. He would stay cool. “You know what they say, Jason. Money can’t buy you love.”

“Yeah, but it can buy a lot of other things.”

Parker couldn’t help himself. “Obviously, not a decent haircut,” he said. “It looks like you got yours in a helicopter in the middle of a tornado.”

Adam guffawed, but the smirk on Jason’s face disappeared. Parker knew he had made a tactical error. Rich kids can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

“Kidding!” he said. “I’m just kidding around.”

“Oh, we know,” Jason said. “You’re a funny guy.”

“Great! So we’re cool?”

Jason shook his head. While Adam stood watch, Jason shoved Parker against a wall.

“I hate funny guys,” said Jason.

Parker stepped back, but there was nowhere to go. He was boxed in.

“Come on, guys,” he said. “This is stupid. Let’s just go find the class.”

“Wow. Now you’re saying I’m stupid? You just don’t know when to shut up, do you?”

Jason raised his fist and laughed when Parker flinched.

“See that, Adam? He’s just a talker. Parker’s jealous. He knows that we have futures. We’ll go to college, and then we’ll get killer jobs and make lots of money,
and he’ll be watching from the sidelines. See, Parker here doesn’t have a future. He’s trash and he’ll always be trash. He’ll probably end up in jail.”

Jason leaned right into Parker’s face.

“Just like his father.”

And that’s when Parker snapped. The fingers on his right hand closed into a fist and he punched Jason in the face as hard as he could.

Jason fell to the ground, and for a moment, everything was calm. Jason clutched his nose, Adam stared in disbelief, and Parker stood, his hands still clenched, shocked at his own outburst.

Then Jason pulled his bloody hand away from his messed-up nose and broke the tension.

“Oh, Parker,” he said. “You are so dead.”

Parker looked at Jason. Then he looked at Adam. Then, for a split second, he looked at June, who was watching horrified from the gift shop. Then Parker made maybe his best decision of the
day.

He decided to run.

PROPERTY OF PROFESSOR J. ELLISON

CAHILL UNIVERSITY

UNEARTHED OUTSIDE TAL SALHAB, SYRIA 7/12/63

DOCUMENT B31771—TRANSLATED 2/65–10/68

VESIROTH’S JOURNAL, CIRCA 1200 B.C.

The war came to us.

I had heard of the battles, of course, when I went into town to barter for goods, and I saw the soldiers when I sold my crops in the city. No one could tell me what the war
was about, though rumors abounded. Some said it was a dispute about land. Others thought it was a battle to control the river that sustains us all. Perhaps it was not about anything so practical.
Perhaps someone’s great-great-grandfather had insulted someone else’s great-great-grandfather hundreds of years ago and everyone was still upset. Such things are what make
wars.

I was a farmer, not important enough to be kept informed, too busy to find out for myself. The fighting meant nothing to me. It did not affect the seasons or the way the sun
hit the soil or the way the sands shifted in the north. I was concerned only with my crops and with my wife and with my daughters. I had no time for politics. There was always work to
do.

The day that changed my life forever progressed like any other. I was in the fields, the hot sun on my back. My youngest sat near me in the dirt. She was playing with a toy
stallion I had carved from a spare piece of wood. I remember how she looked up at me and how she smiled. She was beautiful and young and perfect, and I adored her. When I winked at her, she
giggled.

I cherished those moments, and I knew that when the workday was over and our simple meal was eaten, my family and I would gather by the fire. My hands would be sore and my
back would ache, but my daughters would make up stories to entertain me, and we would all laugh. We would sing songs and play silly games. I would send the children to bed, and my wife and I would
share a quiet moment, knowing we were blessed. My life was hard, but I would not have traded places with the sultan. I was happy.

My daughter went back to her toy, and I returned to my work. That is when I saw the soldiers riding toward the house.

I was confused. I was no one. Their war had nothing to do with me.

My daughter abandoned her toy and hurried to meet them, her black hair flowing behind her as she ran. She loved horses, and she had hoped that the men galloping to us in a
storm of dust were part of a circus. She thought the best of people, always. Children do.

I knew better. They carried torches and swords. These men were part of no circus. I dropped my scythe and I ran.

I grabbed my daughter in my arms and I put her inside our little house. I knew my wife would be grinding meal by the fire. I knew my oldest child would be tending the animals
nearby.

I gathered them together and told them to stay inside. I took my copper ax, the finest tool I owned, and I went out to meet the soldiers.

Surely, they would listen to reason. Surely, they would see that we were no threat, that we were a humble family with no ties to power, no stake in their fight.

The men stopped their horses in front of me. I raised my hand in greeting.

I was rewarded with a club to the side of my head.

I fell to the dirt.

I tried to get up, but my legs would not stay beneath me. I saw these men dismount from their horses and kick in the door to my house. I stumbled toward them, but I could do
nothing as they raised their torches.

The soldiers laughed as they set fire to my home, laughed when my daughters and my wife cried out from inside, laughed when I tried to stop them.

I was weak. They batted me away like a toy. I fell again, and one of the men grabbed me by the hair. He held my arms behind my back and forced my face down into the fire. I
could hear my own skin as it sizzled like cooked meat.

Thankfully, I blacked out. I would not have to hear my family’s cries as they died.

Hours later, as I faded in and out of consciousness, I felt myself being dragged from the smoldering ruins. It was an old man. I tried to tell him to leave me where I was.
Everything I had was gone. I had no reason to keep on living.

Before the words could come, the blackness took me again. That is how I came to travel with Farrad, alive but with all meaning for my life stripped away.

PARKER RAN DOWN A SET
of stairs and straight into the observatory’s crowded main exhibit floor. He pushed his way through a group of Cub
Scouts looking at a video slide show of the stars, and by a family with six (six!) kids in matching T-shirts who were testing out a set of scales that showed you how much you would weigh on
Mars.

He ran behind a statue of Einstein sitting on a bench, and then up another flight of stairs, using kids and guides as shields, but he couldn’t shake Jason and Adam. They were right behind
him.