The Danger Box Read online

  For some reason, the thought of a disaster made me think of Buckeye, and that squelched the story, at least for the moment.

  “Hey!” Gumps was speaking. “You crossing the Alps? Head in the clouds! Give me that blue and white saucer.”

  “Sorry.” I grinned.

  It was quiet for a few minutes while Gumps and I sorted. The front door was wide open, but there was no need to keep an eye on it — we always heard a visitor.

  The floors in our store were wood, and creaked loudly with every step. Even Gumps could hear them, and he said this worked better than any modern alarm system. He’d made paths through the mountains of stuff, mostly so I wouldn’t trip. I had a torn-up red sofa in the back where I liked to read and look at things up close, and that’s where I kept the lists of what my grandpa brought in from yard sales and, if I happened to be around, what he sold.

  We weren’t exactly sure how many treasures we had, because there were so many stacks, boxes, cabinets, and drawers. Once I found a dead mouse inside an old sugar bowl with the top on, but no sugar. We made up a Gam saying for that, something about All Sugar and No Spice Kills Even the Fastest Mice. Some of my favorite things had been there for as long as I could remember — a stuffed crocodile with black pebbles for eyes, a giant bone sword with a wooden handle, a whole bunch of old postcards from places like Niagara Falls and New Orleans, a funeral bridle with black feathers from the horse-and-buggy days, an umbrella stand full of featherbone whips, a hatbox filled with regular horseshoes as well as a worn Clydesdale horseshoe the size of my head — that’s from one of those giant workhorses with hairy feet — and tons of old sewing boxes. Some of the things made you want to smile, and some felt kinda sad.

  I opened the hatbox, turned a few horseshoes over, and picked a beautiful one for Lorrol. The edges were round with wear, and it wasn’t too big. I wiped it off on the front of my T-shirt and left it on my sofa.

  As we worked on the plates, Gumps sighed. “I’ll tell you, Zoomy. I had a hard time sleeping last night. Things have been so quiet this year; I’m not sure we’ll make it, with the taxes and all going up.”

  “What do you mean, ‘make it’?”

  My grandpa took off his hat, rubbed his head vigorously, and put it back on. “Old Counts, always will, but business over the last few years has just been slower and slower. Chicago folks aren’t spending like they used to, and some aren’t even coming to Three Oaks anymore. Everybody’s hurting these days, and the numbers are way down. We’re just lucky we own the store and our house. We’ll always have something to eat and a place to sleep. At least that’s the plan.”

  “Jeez,” I said. There was a moment of silence.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” my grandpa added.

  From the quick scrape of his neck-whiskers against his shirt, I could hear Grandpa Ash looking at me. He said slowly, “We’ll survive. And you’re a go-getter kid.”

  Creeeak — pop! Pop! This wasn’t someone familiar. I knew right away because my grandpa stood up and dusted off his knees. “Mornin’!” he said, and his tone of voice told me this was a guy.

  I didn’t hear the man reply, but I heard him walking slowly. Creak, creak. This meant he was looking at things.

  “You Mr. Chamberlain?” the visitor asked. He had a funny wa-wa voice, like someone chewing on a hot marshmallow.

  While Gumps walked around with the visitor, I got busy looking for my old science encyclopedia. Aha — under the sofa. It wasn’t up to date, but it worked fine for researching beetles or plants, and also heredity and traits.

  I needed more on Charles Darwin. Before I told Lorrol about my Investigative Research idea, I wanted a small head start. After all, she might already know a bunch about him.

  Here’s what I found out:

  Charles Robert Darwin, born in 1809, died in 1882 … Almost a five-year voyage on the Beagle … Published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859 … His theory that all species of life evolved over time from common ancestors, because of natural selection, is now the foundation for all modern biology…. What the heck were “species” and “common ancestors”? And what was “natural selection”?

  I looked up as I realized the man was walking closer. I didn’t feel like talking, so I took off my glasses and put my nose about two inches from the page. Sometimes it’s useful to have my eyes; when I get that close to whatever I’m looking at, people don’t usually want to interrupt.

  The man walked past. Then I heard him stop.

  “This box for sale?” he asked.

  “Ah, no … just for storage,” my grandpa replied.

  I kept wagging my head back and forth, but stopped reading.

  “Could I look inside?”

  “I suppose so. But, ah … it’s not for sale.”

  I heard the swish of fabric as the man lifted out the old blanket. He gave it a little shake.

  “How about this?”

  “Not today,” Gumps said. “But I’ve got some nice English plates that just came in.”

  The man was walking back toward the front of the store now.

  “Thanks” was all he said as he left. His voice had gone from city-friendly to hard as nails — and all in one word.

  I closed the science encyclopedia.

  “I wonder if we should call the police,” Gumps said.

  I HAD TO think fast. I believed Buckeye, this was the problem. I believed he was capable of doing bad things to us. Capable. My shoulder still remembered his hard, mean hand.

  “No police,” I said. “Then we’d have to tell about where the box came from. Kin is kin,” I added, feeling like a stinker. I didn’t mean it the way my grandpa thought I did.

  Gumps grunted. “Kind of you, boy. You’re a good kid. But I didn’t like the way that fellow recognized that old box. He was lookin’ for something, that’s for sure.”

  “You think?” I asked.

  “I know.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “What’s in that old notebook, anyway?” My grandpa’s voice was worried, which worried me.

  “I think it’s someone’s travel book. No name but I saw an old date. I wanted to do some library research on it today, see if I can figure out what we got.”

  I didn’t mention the Beagle — maybe because I was afraid it would make the notebook sound too valuable. Then something hit me like a flash of lightning: If I was careful, maybe I could rescue the store! What if this notebook had belonged to someone close to Charles Darwin and it was worth a lot of money? The idea was dazzling.

  But my grandparents … I knew they’d never agree to sell something stolen. But what if it wasn’t … what if Buckeye had picked it up at a yard sale? And what if we called the police right now and they came for the notebook but didn’t arrest Buckeye? What if he somehow found out I’d ratted on him? The thought made me breathless with dread.

  “No police yet,” I said. “Can I just have this afternoon?”

  I heard Gumps scratching his head. “Just today,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of holding on to something hot.”

  “What if it’s not? If it really did belong to Buckeye and he gave it to you, like he said?” I asked.

  Clanking ahead of me toward the front door, my grandpa only grunted.

  AFTER LOCKING UP the store, Gumps patted me on the back. “You’re a spunky kid,” he said. “But don’t get carried away.”

  “I still need to go to the library,” I said. “Can you walk me over after lunch?”

  On the way home, neither of us said a word. I know we were both deep in worry crumbs.

  Right then I hated hiding things and I hated secrets. And I realized something big: Secrets are only good when you want to keep them. When you’re forced to keep them, they feel like they’re eating you up inside. Like you can’t escape. Like you’re trapped. I thought of the mouse in the sugar bowl.

  My stomach was churning, but I was strangely calm. It was almost as if I couldn’
t go jittery-splat. The list of people I had to keep secrets from was now every single person in my world.

  One afternoon of trying to figure out what we had, that was all. Then I’d give the notebook back to my grandparents, they’d probably give it to the police, and who knows what would happen next. We’d keep the door locked.

  ~Go to Library, I thought, and crossed it off in my head. Picturing the x-ed-out line made things better. Then I thought of the shaky Xs in the old notebook, and felt a surge of excitement.

  What if I rescued our family? They’d be so proud of me once it was all over!

  ~One, ~Afternoon: That was all. The thought was worth the weight of all these secrets.

  As if he could hear me struggling, Gumps suddenly put a big hand on my shoulder. “You’re a smart one,” he said. Then he did something odd. He took off his Old Counts baseball hat and put it on my head.

  It came down to the top of my glasses. “Thanks,” I said.

  I could picture the separate parts of myself moving along: First one blurry foot, then another, then my body, and my head in my grandpa’s hat, surrounded by Deeps.

  * * *

  The Gas Gazette: Issue Nine

  A FREE NEWSPAPER ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SOUL

  ~I’ll never forget first going ashore in Brazil. I thought I’d landed in heaven.

  ~I was dazzled by how dense and lush and beautiful everything was. Listening to a symphony of sounds — insects, birds, who knows what else — my heart was full. My mind was “a chaos of delight.”

  ~I collected enough flowers “to make a florist go wild.”

  ~One day I caught sixty-eight species of beetles. And I was “red-hot with Spiders,” too. I never dreamed of all the glorious forms of life I was seeing.

  ~I was buzzing with excitement. I prepared tons of specimens to send back for examination.

  ~Sometimes I felt as though I was standing in a huge cathedral, with an oddly perfect mixture of singing and then silence, a grand and “universal stillness.”

  ~Had I ever been so happy?

  Who am I?

  NEXT ISSUE TO COME.

  FREE!

  * * *

  LORROL PICKED THAT afternoon to explode.

  As soon as I sat down, she slammed her hand on the table. Before she even said hi. I jumped.

  “My mom is such a royal DORK!” she said. “Dork, dork, DORK!”

  “How come?” I asked. I took off the baseball cap, suddenly realizing I might be next on the dork list.

  “She wants me to start going to her camp. But I hate those kids! They’ve got chicken legs. And they’re good at sports and like cold water. They all know each other. Plus, I’m BUSY. Here. In the library.” Lorrol wriggled so fiercely in her chair that it skated along the floor, making a sound dangerously close to what happens if you eat too many dilly beans.

  There was a pause, and then we both laughed. I mean, Lorrol honked. And suddenly the storm was over.

  “If you had a big project, would she let you stay?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Like what?”

  I took a deep breath. “Like finding out everything about Charles Darwin. And a boat named the Beagle,” I said.

  “I knew it!” Lorrol crowed. “I saw the word Galapagos on your computer screen, and everybody knows that’s where Darwin went.”

  They do? I thought.

  “Maybe it could be investigative reporting, and you’ll become an expert on this stuff,” I suggested. “Then your mom would know you were doing something worthwhile.” I was starting to turn into a big-time sneak. “You could take notes.”

  “You’re brilliant, Zoomy!” I could hear Lorrol beaming. “So how come you’re interested in Darwin?”

  I shrugged. “Just am.”

  “Told you the name Brain Boy was a good one.”

  “Naw,” I said, pleased but embarrassed. “I’m probably just stupid,” I blurted. Little did she know how stupid: Playing games with what might be stolen property. But these weren’t games, I reminded myself. This was my family. And the store. And I had one afternoon.

  TWO HOURS LATER, Lorrol had taken every book on Darwin off the library shelves. We were barricaded in books. Meanwhile, I’d also been working the Search Box.

  I found out a ton. Like, Darwin had been at the Galápagos Islands in 1835. And so had the Beagle; he’d traveled from December 27, 1831 to October 2, 1836. I wished madly that I could tell her about the notebook — she’d be so excited. Maybe soon.

  I read that Darwin had been studying nature while on board the ship. He’d collected mostly rocks and fossils early on, then hundreds of plant and animal specimens. He did his best to preserve them, and sent everything back to England in crates. He studied and observed and recorded. One of the things he began puzzling over was where so many species came from, and how they became slightly or hugely different from one another — species meaning any group of living things that can reproduce. In those days, there was still a ton to be learned about how nature worked, and a ton no one understood.

  Lorrol was sitting next to me, thumbing through the books.

  “Did you learn about evolution in school?” I asked.

  “Just a movie,” she said. “Then I think we do more detail in eighth grade.”

  “So what does evolution mean? We haven’t exactly gotten to it.”

  I was afraid Lorrol would make fun of me, but she didn’t. She thought for a minute. “Actually, it’s called the theory of evolution, which gets a lot of people confused. My teacher made a big point of explaining that evolution wasn’t a theory meaning a guess. For scientists, a theory is an explanation backed up by so many facts that it must be right. You’d think experts would choose another word so as not to give the wrong idea.

  “So here’s what I remember: The theory of evolution is like a huge, tree-shaped jigsaw puzzle, a tree of life. Darwin sketched it out, and scientists of all kinds are still filling it in. I think it means seeing everything in the plant and animal worlds as being related, waaaay back. And the evidence is everywhere — in fossils, under microscopes, in our surroundings. The idea is that all of us came from a first spark of life and over a gillion-bazillion years, we evolved.”

  “You mean billions,” I said.

  “Yeah, exactly. Over an unbelievably long time we slowly, slowly became a bunch of different species. We kept changing and still are, because of survival of the fittest. Actually, Darwin called it natural selection, because natural happenings had a lot to do with who lived and who died — like climate, earthquakes or volcanoes, food supplies, disease, things like that. The organisms — isn’t that a cool, sciencey word? — that could adapt and survive then passed along their, um, whatever —”

  “Traits?” I wasn’t feeling quite so dumb.

  “Exactly. Others died out. Became extinct. It’s all about change and luck. Or maybe it’s probability.”

  I nodded. Did probability mean stuff that would probably happen? “Yeah, traits, survival, that’s kinda what I thought,” I said. “I have a science encyclopedia I look at sometimes.”

  Inside, I thought about survival of the fittest and shivered. Was Buckeye more fit than me and Gam and Gumps?

  I took off my glasses, no longer caring if it made me look funny; I could read faster that way. Now we were both reading like maniacs. Lorrol was also scribbling things down on a pad of paper.

  We both said “Whoa!” many times. You’d think we had a roomful of galloping horses. I forgot all about tricking Lorrol into helping me learn about Darwin; I was getting hooked. On my own.

  “I never knew what kind of person Darwin was,” Lorrol said. “He struggled with lots of things. He was an anxious, spacey kid who wasn’t great at school. And a terrible speller, like my mom. Whoa, he had a stutter sometimes! Just like me when I first meet people. And guess what? He made lists all the time, just like you!”

  I felt a ping of shock in my brain, like the first kernel of popcorn exploding in hot oil.

  “Whoa,” Lor
rol went on, “he filled dozens of small notebooks, and kept them nearby all his life. Like he needed them. It sounds like he had to do things in special ways, or — yikes!”

  I’d grabbed the book and was dragging it toward me, my nose now almost touching the page. I must’ve looked dangerous, because Lorrol sat back. I read like mad while Lorrol waited.

  “Jittery-splat!” I shouted. I was so excited that a gob of spit shot out and landed between us. I swiped around with my elbow.

  “He’d get what?” Lorrol asked.

  “Jittery-splat. It’s what happens to me if too much is going on too fast and I get upset.”

  “Like me when I explode?”

  “Yeah. There are slightly different kinds.” I grinned at Lorrol and couldn’t see her face perfectly, but I heard her grin back.

  “Got it,” she said. “Yours sounds less noisy than mine.”

  “Well, I dunno,” I said. “But lists help me change gears. They’re a tool. And it sounds like Darwin needed them, too! I never knew there was a famous person like that.”

  I kept reading. Ping, ping … the ideas were firing to right and left. “Listen to this!” I said. “He had a whole system, and used one kind of notebook for one thing, and one for another. And he carried something called ‘field notebooks’ when he left the Beagle to go exploring. That means he took notes wherever he was, and some were messy. Whoa, he also crossed everything off!” PING!

  Then Lorrol said, “I’ll bet everyone kept notebooks in those days, because that was the only way to record ideas. It’s unusual now, but probably wasn’t then.”

  “Yeah, maybe not,” I said slowly. My mind was spinning wildly in the Deeps, sparks flying. Not only was Darwin a jittery guy like me, but he used lists and notebooks, also liked Xs…. Was it even the tiniest bit possible that I really did have a Darwin notebook under my bed? Everything fit so perfectly!

  “That’s crazy!” Lorrol said, and I jumped. Had she just read my mind?

  Busy with her book, she didn’t look up. Suddenly I was tapping my chin, so I opened my Daily List Book and wrote ~Take Deep Breath. I did, blowing it out noisily like Gumps. I put Xs on my line, and felt better. Crazy … was I crazy?