The Mapmaker and the Ghost (24 page)

Goldenrod smiled. “But, anyway. I am sorry.”

Meriwether tilted his head, his transparent eyes beaming. “I think I always had an inkling that you would be the one to finally beat the obstacles. Well done, Goldenrod.”

“Obstacles? You mean Spitbubble?”

Meriwether nodded.

“But … he hasn't been here for two hundred years, has he?” Goldenrod asked with widened eyes.

Meriwether chuckled. “Oh no. Of course not. He and his band are just a bunch of regular kids … well, a bit more diabolical than most, perhaps. But anyone sent on the quest would have had their own set of obstacles to overcome. You have been the only one to fully succeed, obviously.”

As Meriwether talked, Goldenrod noticed that he was growing fainter still. His maroon overcoat seemed a creamy pink color now, and there were parts of it that almost blended into the sunlight completely.

Goldenrod frowned slightly. “So what happens to you now?”

“I'm free to go.”

“Go where?”

“On,” Meriwether said simply.

“But will you be …”

“Don't worry about me, Goldenrod,” Meriwether said gently. “I'm an explorer. On to new places and new adventures. And so are you, my girl. So are you.” The ghost gave her one more fond look and then was suddenly tree and twine and dappled sunlight. He was gone.

Goldenrod stared at the place where he had been. She would probably never see him again, she thought sadly.

Then again, if she had learned anything this summer, it was to never concede to the impossibility of anything and that things like limping ghosts, fantastic flowers, groups of children hiding out in the forest, and fascinatingly odd old ladies were all out there, just waiting to be discovered.

As she turned around to leave the clearing, her heart swelled at that thought and then again when she remembered Meriwether's last words: that she was every bit an explorer too.

Birch held the measuring tape against one oak tree while Toe Jam took the other end and pulled it to another oak.

“Four feet two and a half inches,” Toe Jam read off as Birch jotted the number down in his almost-full notebook. Toe Jam let go of the tape, and it went zooming back to Birch's hand.

When Birch looked up, he saw Goldenrod making her way over to them. She had been gone for the past twenty minutes, claiming that she needed to use the bathroom in the old lady's cottage. However, that was most definitely not the direction she was coming from now.

Birch frowned. If there was something else going on in this forest that wasn't what it seemed, he would very much like to know about it in advance this time.

“Where were you?” he asked Goldenrod.

“Oh, I took a detour. For a second, I thought maybe we had forgotten a part in that little clearing back there.” She pointed behind her.

Birch flipped through the notebook quickly. “We definitely haven't,” he said after he had made sure.

When he looked back up at Goldenrod, she was smiling at him. “Yeah, you're right. You know, you do make a really good Clark.”

Toe Jam's head snapped up. “You mean William Clark?”

“The very same,” Goldenrod said.

“He was an explorer. I'm related to his partner, you know,” Toe Jam explained, rather needlessly, to Birch. By this point, Birch had gotten the whole story of what Toe Jam's family crest meant, how Goldenrod had been inspired to take on this whole mapping business in the first place, and even the slightly creepy notion that a ghost had been haunting this very forest. “Meriwether Lewis was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle,” Toe Jam continued. Birch had observed that for all his love of everything disorderly and dirty, Toe Jam still had a touch of his parents' pomposity in him.

Goldenrod rolled her eyes a little as she walked over to check Birch's notebook.

“I think we're done here,” Birch said.

Goldenrod nodded. “I can hardly believe we've mapped
this entire forest and documented every single plant or creature we've come across,” she said proudly, “and all in two weeks! This would have taken me at least a month alone. I definitely couldn't have done it without you, Clark.”

Birch beamed.

Goldenrod then turned to Toe Jam. “Or you, Sacagawea. Really, you definitely helped out by knowing the forest so well. I'm glad your grandma lifted the ban.”

Toe Jam shrugged, but Birch thought he could see a smile as he looked at the ground.

“This is even better than what I had before,” Goldenrod said. Birch was glad to hear it. Originally, Goldenrod had considered going back into the forest to try and recover her green backpack, but then Toe Jam found out from the others that Spitbubble had destroyed it. Birch hadn't enjoyed seeing his sister's crestfallen face when she'd gotten that bit of news.

“So, what's next?” Birch asked.

“Well, we still have the western, eastern, and southern parts of town to do. I don't think it'll take as long as the forest, but the map wouldn't be complete without them,” Goldenrod said.

Birch nodded. “Think we can get it done before summer vacation ends?”

“We have three weeks. It's not a lot of time. But I think if you and I hustle …”

“Hey, what about me?” Toe Jam asked.

Birch looked over at him, surprised. “I thought your grandmother said you only had to help us with the forest.”

“Oh … yeah. She did,” Toe Jam said. “Right. Never mind.”

Birch and Goldenrod exchanged a glance.

“I actually don't know if we can get this done in three weeks with just the two of us, though,” Goldenrod started slowly. “So, if you'd like to help, Randy … well, we'd be more than happy to have you.”

“I … well, maybe. I mean now that I've started it, it wouldn't really seem right not to help finish.”

Goldenrod smiled. “Cool.”

Birch smiled too. Sure, Toe Jam could be showy sometimes, but Birch had actually grown used to him, sort of even liked having him around. And secretly, Birch had always really liked picking the sock fuzz from between his toes too.

“And maybe if we discover an animal or something, we can name it after me this time,” Toe Jam said as the three of them started packing up their stuff.

Goldenrod shot him a look. “Let's not get carried away, Randy. Okay?”

When Goldenrod, Birch, and Randy returned to the Moram house that afternoon, it looked as busy as it had been over the past week. There were parts of the front lawn and garden that still looked like the surface of a scorched planet, but most of it was being restored to green again.

Randy immediately went over to a corner where Brains and Lint were quietly laying down some new squares of grass. Old Sue's husband, who also happened to be the town judge, was a good friend of Mrs. Moram's and had given the restoration of her garden as one of a few options for their community service. Brains had chosen it almost immediately. Goldenrod supposed it meant that he must have some semblance of a conscience somewhere in there. And, obviously, Lint was going to do whatever Brains did.

Goldenrod smiled secretly as she watched Lint bend and
move with ease, his leg as muscular and strong as ever. She wouldn't be surprised if he won his family's annual half marathon this year. After all, he would have plenty of time to practice, given that he wasn't going to be spending much of it stealing protein bars. Come to think of it, Goldenrod hadn't seen his lint ball make an appearance over the past couple of days either.
Perhaps he's lost his taste for them
, she thought amusedly, and then felt a slight jolt of affection for the kid. Just the day before, Lint had returned Goldenrod's yellow baby sock to her. He had even rinsed it out.

“Jonas.”

Brains looked up from his work as Goldenrod's dad walked over to him.

“If you're interested, I would very much like it if you were to come into my lab sometime next week. I've heard about some of the, er, work you've been doing. And I could really use your help with this new project. We're trying to find greener sources of energy for Pilmilton, you know,” Mr. Moram said.

“Seriously?” Brains asked in surprise.

“Seriously. If what I've heard is true, well, some of the ideas you've had are very impressive. Though, um, not stealing from a museum. You shouldn't do that,” Mr. Moram added hastily.

“I would really like that, Mr. Moram,” Brains said quietly. “Thank you.”

Mr. Moram was whisked away then by order of Mrs. Moram, but when Brains looked up to see that Goldenrod was watching him, he gave her a small smile.

Goldenrod smiled back. Maybe, like her, he also had happy memories of the last time they had been in her mother's garden together.

As Goldenrod watched the three members of Spitbubble's Gross-Out Gang digging, her thoughts flitted for a moment to Snotshot. When she had been brought into the police station for questioning, it had been discovered almost immediately that her father had been frantically searching for her ever since she had run away from home. Within hours, they had been gleefully, and apparently somewhat tearfully, reunited, though Goldenrod could barely imagine liquid leaking from some part of Snotshot's face that wasn't her nose. Knowing that the judge had gently suggested that Snotshot be sentenced to some sort of service in her own town, Goldenrod wondered what she was doing now.
Perhaps wiping the snot off of little kids at a day care center
, Goldenrod thought to herself with a smile.
Wouldn't that be ironic?

As for No-Bone, he actually
was
working with little kids—choosing to volunteer at a gymnastics school that was a couple of towns over. From something Goldenrod had overheard Brains saying, it seemed like the school had even helped to locate an old friend of his in China, whom he was now happily exchanging letters with.

“Goldenrod, could you help Cassandra with that bush?” her mother said as she tossed a pair of orange gardening gloves at her and woke her from her reverie.

“Sure,” she said. As Goldenrod put on the gloves, she couldn't help but smile at her mother's giddy expression. It had a lot to do with her garden being so diligently worked on under her careful supervision, for sure, but Goldenrod knew that there was something else that was keeping her so elated these days. As the much-read piece of stationery from the Horticultural Society stated, the discovered blue rose was going to be named just as Goldenrod had requested:
Rosa janine
, after the very best gardener and lover of flora that she had ever known. After all, her mother had named
her
after a flower, so it only seemed fitting to name a flower after her mother. Besides, she couldn't very well name a new species of flower Goldenrod.

Giving Mrs. Janine Moram this piece of news had finally been the trick to getting her to smile again. And now that it looked like her garden would be even more spectacular than it had been before, she was pretty much in a constant state of euphoria.

“Birch, could you come over and help your dad with pulling up some of this old grass?” Goldenrod heard her mother's cheerful voice as she made her way over to where the old lady was packing some dirt around a small bush.

Cassandra looked up at Goldenrod's approach and smiled. “And how did it go today?”

“Well, Pilmilton Woods has officially been mapped in its entirety,” Goldenrod said.

“Bravo,” Cassandra said. “Is it ready to show your friend Charla yet?”

“Almost.” Goldenrod smiled. “I might as well get the rest of Pilmilton in there too. I think she's gonna love it.”

“Good,” Cassandra said and then lowered her voice so as not to be overheard by the others. “Did you see him?”

Goldenrod nodded. “I said good-bye,” she whispered back. “He's gone now.”

“He must have been very proud of you, Goldenrod.”

“I hope so,” Goldenrod said.

“Meriwether Lewis may have dealt with grizzly bears and blizzards and even getting accidentally shot in the thigh by one of his own men … but even he never had to deal with Spitbubble.”