The Danger Box Read online

  To

  the

  children

  of

  Three

  Oaks

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note: Opening the Box

  The Game Begins

  Zoomy’s Box

  I Arrive

  Secret Times Three

  Our Town

  Purple and No

  If I Was a Sheet

  News

  What I See

  Corners and Rounds

  Think!

  Deeps

  Enter Gas and Lorrol

  The Gas Gazette: Issue One

  Good-bye Troll

  The Search Box

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Two

  Broken Things

  A Teapot and a Pail

  Surprise

  No Room

  Eyebrow

  Horseshoe

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Three

  Stinging

  Worry Crumbs

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Four

  Featherbone

  Tools

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Five

  I Spy

  Red

  Blood and Guts

  A Palindrome with a Stutter

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Six

  Dilly Beans

  Don’t Ask, Can’t Tell

  We Get Curious

  Inside the Box

  A Heavy Hand

  Old Sauerkraut

  A Snowball

  Xs

  New Face in Town

  Soil

  Brain Boy Meets Firecracker Girl

  I Fly

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Seven

  Christmas in June

  A Simpler World

  Nine Words

  No Telling

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Eight

  Seeing

  A Bug’s Life

  Old Counts

  No Police

  Trapped

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Nine

  Just Am

  Whoa

  A Silent Witness

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Ten

  Rage

  Circling

  Tell Me

  Medicin

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Eleven

  By Heart

  Bang!

  Running

  Burning

  Watching a Death

  Blame

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Twelve

  The Weight of the Night

  One Piece

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Thirteen

  A Pebble in the Pie

  Fried Squirrel

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Fourteen

  Lemon in the Wound

  I Go

  Bait

  Jam

  A Hole in the Screen

  Thinking Like a Fish

  Knee-deep in Whoppers

  Hot, Then Cool

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Fifteen

  Hunting

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Sixteen

  This Is It

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Seventeen

  Turtles with Wings

  Planting Spuds

  Melted Glass and Blue Fingers

  The Wednesday Surprise

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Eighteen

  A Can of Guesses

  The Good-Bad Tangle

  Something Sneaky

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Nineteen

  A Gift

  Zoomy’s Letter

  Survival

  An Invitation

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Twenty

  Author’s Note: What’s Real

  The Quotes: Where to Look

  Acknowledgments: Who Helped

  About the Author

  Copyright

  It is like confessing

  a murder.

  — Charles Darwin

  His hand holding

  the purple crayon

  shook.

  — Crockett Johnson

  ONE OF THE objects in The Danger Box is real. It was stolen from its owners a long time ago and is still missing. It is fragile, easily recognized around the world, too valuable to put a price on, and could fit in your pocket. In wondering where it is today and dreaming up this mystery, I also thought about how:

  Every book is a box of ideas.

  Every book that shares secrets is a Danger Box.

  One day someone really will find what is hidden in this book. It could be you.

  Twelve words were painted in gold ink on the wall of an office in Dearborn, Michigan:

  Surrounding the message were exquisite photographs of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects, and plants. Every color in the rainbow glistened from that wall, which felt alive; feathers ruffled, blossoms swayed, eyelashes blinked. The office belonged to a man known only as Mr. Zip — his real name had vanished decades earlier.

  On the corner of his desk was a bowl made from a huge tortoiseshell. Inside, dozens of small glass cubes — each printed on six sides — twinkled in the light. Mr. Zip sometimes played with the cubes as if rolling dice.

  He knew about survival, of course, but he might have forgotten how risky a secret could be. He was old, and felt he had earned the comfort of a short visit with an extraordinary treasure.

  For a great deal of money, half of all he’d earned in a lifetime, Mr. Zip had bought the item from a private collection. He had asked no questions, and would give no answers.

  Soon he’d be seen as a hero, for he had found and rescued a world-famous piece of human history, an item that had been missing for over twenty-five years. After a few magical days in its company, Mr. Zip’s plan was to return the treasure to its original home. This was a challenge, an act of faith, and a final game: Mr. Zip would be remembered as a good and generous person, a man of heart as well as strategy. He hoped, in giving back this treasure to the world, to win forever. Didn’t fame, after all, count as survival?

  The plan was close to perfect.

  He’d hired four players who had never met; each knew only his or her own role. A series of moves would deliver one small, sturdy box with a hinged top, a container about one-foot square. The outside was scratched and stained. The box had been sealed shut with heavy tape, then shrink-wrapped in clear plastic.

  No one had counted on a fifth player: death. As the box traveled by boat across the Atlantic Ocean, a porthole threw a perfect circle of blinding light on its shiny top. Just at that moment, on a blue June day, Mr. Zip died. Final bubbles of air left his body as a burbling wake churned behind the boat, each moment carrying the box closer to its destination.

  Mr. Zip’s personal assistant was just pulling him from his swimming pool, where he’d suffered a fatal heart attack, when Player One handed the box to waiting arms in New York City. The player breathed deeply and set off to enjoy a day in Manhattan before flying back to London.

  Soon Player Two was crossing Pennsylvania in a rented car, the box on the front seat beside him. Next, it rode with Player Three, humming along in a delivery van as far as Toledo, Ohio.

  The final leg of the trip was in a new Ford truck, one with an empty gun rack, from Toledo into Michigan. Player Four had instructions to proceed directly to Flint, watching to be sure he wasn’t followed, and then double back toward a massive estate on the outskirts of Dearborn.

  Mr. Zip’s assistant knew nothing about the delivery. He’d never heard of the plan, the players, or the box. He knew nothing about the complicated payment system, or the millions of dollars set to be released from a bank outside the United States.

  Mr. Zip had told no one, not one living soul, about his scheme. He had counted on survival.

  That, as it turned out, was
a mistake; death changed all the rules.

  Soon the game included Zoomy, Lorrol, a boy named Gas, a drunk, a stranger, and a small town in Michigan — that is, if it could still be called a game.

  I’M PULLING THE Danger Box out from the back of the toolshed. Now I’m crouching by the rakes and hoes. It’s a windy June night, and the shadows from the kitchen light are bumping and chasing. I’m alone, at least I think I am. I open the box, a small cherry crate, and a tangy whiff of gunpowder drifts out.

  Inside are pieces of blown-up firecrackers and a few old shotgun shells. I don’t need to see them; I know the contents by touch. Each year I add stuff. Now I close my eyes and dig down into the mixture.

  Yes! I feel the fabric and beneath it, a firm shape.

  “Poor thing, I’m sorry you’re buried out here,” I whisper.

  I tap my chin while I count to twelve, one number for each year of my life. Dut, dut goes the tapping. Swish, whoosh — now the sounds of summer in the big trees over the toolshed.

  As I’m about to slide the box back in its hiding place, I hear footsteps. Uh-oh, not Grandpa Ash. Or Grandma Al. I feel around, grab the nail on the edge of the toolshed door, and slowly pull the door closed. If I pull too fast it will squeak. Squeaks and secrets don’t go together.

  I hold my breath. Thump-squish, thump-scree, thump-squish. It’s a man — I can tell by the weight of his steps.

  It’s dark in the shed, as speckly-dark as black pepper. Thump, whump, thump! My heart feels like a firecracker that’s about to go off. I pretend my heart is in the Danger Box, and has already exploded.

  I HAVE ALWAYS lived in Three Oaks, Michigan. Or almost always: I was a few days old when I turned up on the kitchen steps of my grandparents’ house one spring morning. Wrapped in an old sweatshirt, the arms tied together to keep me cozy, I was inside a cat carrying case. The door was shut. My Grandma Al says that this was smart.

  A piece of paper with unfamiliar handwriting was taped to the top of the case. My grandma still has it. One word is spelled wrong, but someone worked hard to make the message as neat as a canning label:

  Buckeye Chamberlain Is My Father

  My Name Is Zoomy

  Kep Me Please

  Grandma Al was first in the kitchen that morning, and she heard a funny sound coming from outside. She opened the back door, and the rest is history. By the time my Grandpa Ash thumped downstairs to the kitchen, Gam — that’s what I call her — was sitting at the kitchen table with me in her arms. She had tears running down her cheeks.

  “Good Lord, whadda we have here?” my grandpa thundered. Gumps — that’s the name I gave him — always shouts, because he can’t hear well. He looked at the carrying case. “That a barn cat or a kid?”

  “This is Zoomy,” my grandma said. “He’s ours.”

  MY GRANDPA HAD some doubts, I guess, but he tried not to let on. I came with a full head of black hair and was the brown of an autumn acorn. In the shock of the moment, he couldn’t figure that out. He’d never seen an unpink member of the family.

  He scratched his head and just kept saying, “But his name is Zoomy,” and then, “Well, I’ll be. If turtles have wings!” Gumps only says that when he’s one hundred percent amazed.

  I should tell you who Buckeye is, and what Zoomy was, and then you’ll understand how they knew I was me.

  Buckeye is their son, and their only child. He’d been gone for eight months when I turned up. My grandparents had checked the mailbox and hoped for a phone call day after day, then week after week. They’d been real worried — Buckeye was only nineteen.

  He was hard to tame, as Gumps put it, and drove the family truck so fast it got wrapped around more than one tree. He drank stuff he wasn’t supposed to drink. He liked staying out late with girls. There were fistfights and word fights. He got in trouble both at school and with the police, partly because he always blamed someone else for what went wrong. He thought other people were trying to hurt him even if they were trying to help. He wanted to be good, as Gam said, but just didn’t seem to know when enough was enough. Or when to trust. Or when to quit teasing.

  “Teasing!” Gumps snorted. “How about breakin’ the law?” Gam always bobbed her head around like her shirt collar didn’t fit when he said things like that.

  After leaving high school, Buckeye had moved over twenty miles down the road to live in the top of a peach grower’s barn and work in his orchards. That was in the town of Berrien Springs.

  Then my grandparents got a call. Buckeye had missed three days of work. His boss reported that one afternoon he had just plain walked off through the trees. He didn’t come back.

  Months went by. No calls, no letters. My grandpa called it the Waiting for Buckeye time, and said it hung like a wet morning on the house. That spring day when Gumps came downstairs to find no coffee but Gam sobbing happily in a chair — I guess that was the first wonderful dawn in a long time.

  Zoomy was the name their son Buckeye had called his best friend, his invisible best friend, when he was a kid. He’d loved Zoomy to pieces. There was no mistaking that name.

  That’s where I came in. No one outside of our family knew the name Zoomy; Gam had taught her son to keep his friend a secret. That made me Real. A Gift. Maybe Buckeye told his girlfriend what he wanted to name their baby, or he’d shared stories about his childhood. Either way, it didn’t matter to my grandparents. My name was all the proof they needed. I was clearly Buckeye’s son.

  I was the Secret from a Secret. The first had been the invisible Zoomy, of long ago, and now the second was the real Zoomy. Me.

  Actually, my mother was a secret, too, so that made three: I was the Secret from a Secret from a Secret.

  And all in a very small town.

  THREE OAKS HAS one main street. The train between Chicago and Detroit runs through the middle of the town but doesn’t stop. It hasn’t since 1959. On either side of Elm Street — that’s the one with the stores — are parallel streets with blocks of wooden houses, two to the west and three to the east.

  An old sign at the edge of town says:

  WELCOME TO THREE OAKS

  HAPPY TO HAVE YOU

  SORRY TO SEE YOU GO

  There’s one official map and I know it by heart, north to south. Most of the streets are named after trees:

  ~Pine

  ~Chestnut

  ~Walnut

  ~Buckeye

  ~Butternut

  ~Hickory

  ~Cherry

  ~Poplar

  ~Beech

  ~Sycamore

  ~Maple

  ~Elm

  ~Linden

  ~Ash

  ~Locust

  ~Orange

  ~Spruce

  ~Palm

  ~Oak

  ~Cedar

  ~Paw paw

  ~Magnolia

  After the streets come huge fields of either corn or soybeans, depending on the year. Roads and lawns end suddenly in open land. There aren’t many fences in Three Oaks. Property lines are mostly marked by crops and trees.

  In the summer, it’s short greens and tall greens and sometimes a smudge of other colors. In winter, it’s squinty white, and sometimes deep when it looks flat. In early spring and late fall, the town gets brown and black, like an old photograph. I always keep a purple pen in my pocket to remind me of how strong and clear the world can be. It bounces around with my Daily List Book.

  Purple is one of my secrets. It helps me imagine I can see more clearly than I really can.

  NO AND PURPLE go together. Both have the same rounded feeling in my mind.

  I try to start each daily list with the word purple somewhere in the first line (like, ~Put Purple Pen in Pocket) and the word no in the last line (~No Wearing Socks to Bed). That makes the two ends of each day fit like they’re supposed to, like spoons in the silverware drawer.

  Each day is a circle that begins with a purple and ends with a no.

  My grandma says no tells the outside world to watch out f
or your toes, and purple is the color of believing.

  I’D BE A goner without my lists. I love the way a list makes a big hodgepodge of things simmer down and behave. Gam says lists have been around since the beginning of time.

  Besides my Daily List Book, I keep separate notebooks with lists of all sorts of other things: private secrets (P on the cover), stuff I want to research (R), names I like (N), bugs I’ve found or been given (B). I also have G (garden) and S (our family store). I’ve been doing this for a long time. I store all the notebooks in shoe boxes under my bed.