Stolen Secrets (7 page)

Chapter 22

The third-grade class was a blast.
Out of 23 kids, only 12 had made it through No TV Week without watching (or so they had said). Everybody wore a name tag with their room number. I helped pass out the pizza. One boy, Darrel, said he didn’t like pizza, so his mother had packed carrots and celery. I ran to the cafeteria and found an untouched sub sandwich. Darrel’s eyes grew round as hot air balloons. When I gave it to him, I figured I had made at least one friend for the night.

Red Rock Elementary is a flat, one-story brick building half the size of the middle school but twice as confusing. It kind of looks like the Pentagon, with five entrances for the different grades. In the middle is a combination library/auditorium, where special speakers talk to the kids. The fenced-in playground is outside a back door, and you have to walk outside across the playground to get to the gymnasium.

You’d think it would be easy to figure out where to go, but if you’re not careful, the hallways are like a maze, with curious trails that lead to dead ends and doors that open to spooky unused rooms.

I’ve worked in the church nursery, so it wasn’t hard to figure out that the adult leaders wanted me to blend in and help. When they asked me to get something, I asked Darrel to point the way.

After the clown came, one of the adults said I could take a break. What a relief! I hate clowns. I wandered down the hall to wait for Mom and noticed the technology room. The computers were awesome.

I sat at a computer hooked up to the Internet and put my fingers over the keys. I remembered the guy on Sam’s answering machine. He had said a lot of things I didn’t understand, but one thing stood out.
“Sam . . . have to get used to that.”
What did he mean?

I typed in
Samuel Timberline
on a search engine, and a bunch of things came up. A water well survey in Louisiana, a bus route in Texas, a magazine with features about the sawmill industry, but no Sam Timberline—as in stepfather of Ashley and Bryce.

I went to another site where you could look up phone numbers and addresses and typed in our home number. The computer stared at me like I had digital bad breath. Finally, it came back with an error message. I typed in Sam’s office phone number, and the same message popped up. I typed in our address and the message said, “No information for that listing.”

Strange.

I typed in our nearest neighbor’s information, and it popped up like lightning. Every house around us came back with complete listings. Every house except ours.

I heard applause in the auditorium and shut down the computer. I hoped the clown was finished.

Chapter 23

Wally clapped and giggled
at the clown—Ding-Dong—whose big trick was to pull balloons out of his nose by pushing a button that made a doorbell sound. He then blew the balloons into animal shapes and passed them out.

Ding-Dong tripped on his oversized shoes and fell. I thought Wally was going to split his sides laughing. The rest of the kids clapped politely as Mrs. Genloe helped Ding-Dong up. The clown pulled her down with him, and Ping-Pong balls fell out of his hat. He held up a sign: Ding-Dong’s Ping-Pongs.

Finally, a whipped-cream pie came out, and the kids whooped. I could tell Mrs. Genloe knew the drill by the way she moved away from it, but the kids thought it was real. When Ding-Dong slipped again and let go of the pie, Mrs. Genloe ducked and the beloved gym teacher (wearing a plastic bag over his clothes) took the pie full in the face. The kids laughed wildly, pointed at him, and screamed when he shook his head like a dog and sent whipped cream flying.

Wally rolled on the floor and stomped his feet. His face turned red.

Ding-Dong brought out his trained pigs that had been on some late-night show doing tricks. I felt bad for Mom having to follow an act like this, but that’s show business.

Mrs. Genloe had everyone stand and stretch after Ding-Dong gave a final ring of his bell and left. Then she introduced Mom as a successful author who lived in the area. She mentioned Bryce—who wasn’t there—and pointed me out. Wally looked up at me like I was some kind of a celebrity.

I got nervous. Mom didn’t have orange hair, balloons coming out of her nose, whipped-cream pies, or dancing pigs. She just had a few pages in her lap.

Chapter 24

The room got really quiet
when Mom began, especially after the laughing and squealing over the clown.

“I want to read a scary part of a new story I’m working on for kids,” Mom said. “The main characters are twins, and they live right here in Red Rock.”

Kids looked at each other, and the one Ashley was watching pointed at me and nodded.

“This chapter is called ‘Underwater.’”

As soon as she started, I realized this was really our story about being chased by robbers near Gold Town. She made the reservoir into a river and changed lots of stuff, but I knew where the idea came from. When the car went into the water, you could’ve heard whipped cream dripping from the gym teacher’s face. A couple of kids put their hands over their eyes.

Mom and Sam had told us we couldn’t tell anyone about that weekend, how our SUV had plunged into the water and we almost drowned. Now Mom was telling it in a story! That didn’t seem fair, but something about it also felt great.

There was a lot more screaming in the real crash, and the dad in Mom’s story had time to give the kids instructions and tell them when to hold their breath, but the whole thing made me scared again. You don’t survive an event like that and not have it affect you big-time.

The water was just about up to their chins when Mom put the pages down and said, “That’s as far as I’ve gotten.”

The kids wailed that it wasn’t fair to leave them hanging, so Mom smiled and pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. “Well, this is one of the drafts I threw away, but if you’d like.”

Chapter 25

By the time Mom finished,
she had the twins on a rock in the middle of the river. Even the teachers and parents seemed to hang on every word. Mom stopped without saying if their father made it out of the car with their little brother, but I could tell if Mom ever had it published it would be a hit.

Someone raised a hand. “Is that true?”

Mom smiled. “That’s the fun of making up stories. It doesn’t have to be true. But if it feels like it could happen, and if it touches you somewhere down here—” she put a hand over her heart—“you know it’s a good story.”

“How do you come up with your ideas?” another kid said.

Mom looked at me and winked. “I let my imagination run.”

A girl near Wally whispered, “I think it would be cool to have a writer for a mother, don’t you?”

“That’s what I want to be when I grow up,” another said.

Everybody clapped for Mom. She waved good-bye to me, and Bryce walked her to the front door.

“Is everyone having a good time?” Mrs. Genloe shouted.

The kids screamed and put fists in the air.

“We almost didn’t have this get-together tonight. We almost had to cancel. Does anyone know why?”

“The attack!” a boy yelled.

“Those two girls,” a girl said.

“The guy is still on the loose,” another said.

Mrs. Genloe nodded. “Well, we thought this would be a good opportunity to learn some safety tips. So I’d like you to welcome three guests. Actually, four.”

A police officer walked down the hall with a dog at his side. The boys went wild. The girls
oo
h
ed and
aa
h
ed at the dog.

Mrs. Genloe held up a hand. “You’ve all heard different things about what happened that day, haven’t you? Let’s talk about what really happened.”

The kids gasped as Cammy Michaels and Tracy Elliot walked onto the stage.