A Tangle of Knots

by Lisa Graff

  When the man spied the book, his face . . . changed.

  It only lasted a moment, no more than a blink, but V was sure of it. For one fraction of an instant, the man in the doorway had been a different person. The outer edges of his eyebrows had turned up, just a touch. His usually straight nose had tilted to a crooked angle. And his normally flat hair had developed a hint of a cowlick.

  The man was a chameleon.

  When the curly-haired girl left the room not two minutes later for some task or another, V scooped the glossy white book off the bed. V was curious to know what could possibly make a man so excited that he revealed his true self, a self he clearly wanted to keep hidden.

  It seemed to be a book about some sort of archaeological excavation. There were photographs of people digging, people scraping dirt off of bones. V flipped to a page filled with photos of men and women of all sorts holding shovels and smiling. It was a generally unremarkable book.

  And then V noticed one particular fist-size photo in the bottom left corner that, for just a moment, elbowed all thoughts of the chameleon clean out of her head. It couldn’t be. It just . . . couldn’t.

  It was.

  She studied the photo more closely, and as she did, the thoughts of the chameleon trickled back into her brain. V scrambled to the window, where she could just make out the chameleon, tossing his two blue suitcases into the back of his pickup truck. He covered them quickly with a wrinkled brown tarp, then called across the parking lot to the tiny black-haired girl.

  With two sharp shrick-shricks, V ripped the photo out of the book. She tucked it in her pocket. And, as fast as her two old legs could carry her, she hurried down the stairs.

  37

  Cady

  THERE WAS AN ODD SORT OF CLATTER FROM THE TRUCK BED AS Cady piled into the car to join Toby, but when they checked in the mirrors, neither saw anything more than the brown tarp that Toby kept there to cover suitcases.

  “Probably just a squirrel or something,” Toby declared.

  “Aren’t we leaving a little earlier than we planned?” Cady asked as Toby turned the key in the ignition.

  Toby shook his head. “You never know how much traffic there will be, and parking’s always a disaster. Better early than late, that’s what I always say.” And he gave her a smile. It seemed off, somehow, but Cady wasn’t quite sure why.

  38

  The Owner

  BRRRING! THE PHONE CLATTERED ON ITS STAND. BRRRING!

  The Owner hadn’t noticed the missing truck until it had been far too late to catch them. What an imbecile Toby was. Brrring! Couldn’t he see what a gift he’d been given in that girl? Brrring! The Owner would find them. Brrring! He was frustrated, but not worried. Brrring! Now that he knew the Talent existed, he would find a way to get it. Brrring! It was only a matter of time until he—

  Brr—!

  “What?” the Owner snapped into the receiver, breaking off the phone midsqueal. “What could possibly be so important that a person could let the phone ring twenty-seven times?”

  “I . . .” The voice on the other end was meek, kind. A young woman. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” she said. “I’m Jennifer Mallory, from the orphanage. I was looking for Cadence.”

  “Get in line,” the Owner replied. And he had almost succeeded in slamming down the phone when he heard the muffled words on the other end. “What did you say?” he asked, returning the receiver to his ear.

  “I only wondered,” the woman repeated, “if Cady and Toby had left for the convention center yet.”

  39

  Will

  WILL STOOD IN HIS MUDDY SOCKS ON THE LOWEST STEP OF THE Poughkeepsie train station, pressing his hands into his ears as the train screeched to a noisy stop. He had (as usual) been following his nose toward an adventure, and (as usual) he couldn’t quite remember the route his nose had taken him on. What Will did know was that it had been an amazing day—giants! monsters!—and that all he needed to make his adventure complete was an enormous helping of cake.

  Will looked down at his feet. He wiggled his cold, damp toes inside his cold, damp socks.

  It turned out that adventure was a tiring thing. Will’s feet were sore, his bones were exhausted, and he missed Sally something awful. Even if he did find some cake, what good would it be without Sally there to enjoy it with him?

  Click-click-clack!

  Will perked up his ears. There was a sound from the train that sounded suspiciously like—

  Click-click-clack!

  “Sally!” Will leapt up the stairs and, with the ease of somebody who has been losing himself in curious places for six long years, Will—click-click-clack!—slunk his way aboard the train. He followed Sally’s chattering—click!—through the lunch car—click!—past the luggage compartment—clack!—and down the main aisle.

  “All aboard! Last stop New York City!”

  Click-click-clack!

  “Sally!” he cried, squeezing himself through to the next car. “Hold on, I’m almost—”

  Click!

  Will came to a halt. It was not Sally making the noise. Sally was nowhere to be seen.

  “Ticket please, ma’am.”

  Click-click!

  It was the train conductor, snipping holes in the tickets of each passenger as he passed through the aisle. He reached for the ticket of the woman in the nearest seat, who—based on the numerous crossword puzzles scattered around her—appeared to be a Talented solver. “You’ll need a ticket for your son as well,” the conductor told her, nodding his head at Will, gaping in the aisle.

  “Oh, he’s not my—”

  But Will had vanished. As the train lurched to a start, Will tucked himself neatly into an overhead luggage rack and curled into a tight ball, doing his best to rub some warmth into his muddy toes. He hadn’t found Sally, and he hadn’t found the end of his adventure, either.

  Will sniffled. For the first time in his life, he thought he just might be lost.

  40

  Cady

  THE CONVENTION CENTER IN NEW YORK CITY WAS EVEN MORE swarming than last year. Everywhere Cady looked there were bakers and their guests, dashing from here to there, clanging cake pans together and hollering about butter. WELCOME TO THE FIFTY-THIRD SUNSHINE BAKERS OF AMERICA ANNUAL CAKE BAKEOFF! a silver banner greeted them.

  Toby gripped her hand tightly. “Good thing we got here early,” he said, his gaze traveling down the long rows of baking stations in the center of the room, where the contestants would be competing. Volunteers were bustling with last-minute preparations, checking to be sure that each station had the same ingredients in the same amounts, wiping down the counters, preheating the ovens. A man with hair as slick as a pregreased cake pan pushed an enormous flour barrel on a wheeled platform to fill the smaller containers at each station. He didn’t seem to be paying much attention to his job. His nose was buried deep in a copy of Face Value, even as he walked, so that he spilled more flour than not.

  Cady searched the crowd. Whispers from admiring fans seemed to be echoing off the walls. “There she is, that’s the little orphan!” “Look, it’s Cadence! She’ll win again this year for sure.” But no matter how many people seemed to know her, none of them was Miss Mallory.

  She’ll come, Cady assured herself. Miss Mallory will come, and she’ll declare the adoption official, and that will be that.

  Cady led Toby toward someone who looked like she might be in charge—a very large lady, wearing a tall white chef’s hat—wondering if everybody’s stomachs churned so much inside them right before they got everything they’d ever wanted.

  41

  Marigold

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN MARIGOLD FINALLY GOT A chance to squeeze in some Talent-hunting. Cady had already left for the bakeoff, so Marigold was all by her lonesom
e, out in the wooded spot where Argyle Road met the main highway. (It was a good place for Talent-hunting, Marigold had discovered, because there was no one to bother her but a few squirrels.) The air was still as Marigold tried one Talent after another, making her way slowly down her list. Yodeling. No. Standing on one foot. No. Hopping from tree to tree. (Ouch.) No. Marigold tightened her bracelet more securely around her wrist and pressed on, stretching her toes to their tippy-tips and arching her arms above her head to figure out if her Talent was ballet dancing.

  “Maybe you have a Talent for farting. You’ve always seemed especially good at that.”

  “Zane!” Marigold slapped her hands to her sides and whirled around. Sure enough, there was her delinquent older brother, perched atop a bicycle that most certainly didn’t belong to him. Attached to the back by a short length of rope was Zane’s skateboard, piled high with four powder blue suitcases strapped down tight, each one stuffed to bursting. “Off to Louie’s to sell some more stuff you stole?” Marigold sneered, hands on her hips.

  “What do you care?” Zane replied, pressing his bike forward.

  Marigold cut him off, gripping her fists around Zane’s handlebars. “I care because you tried to steal my bracelet.” From far down the wooded road, Marigold could hear the sound of a car, someone leaving the Emporium, but she didn’t move an inch. If she did, Zane would zoom right by her, and then he’d never learn his lesson. “You can’t just do stuff like that, Zane.” Now the squirrels seemed to be interested in what was happening in the road. A few of them began inching their way out to the dirt path, yut-yut-yuting as they sniffed at Zane’s tires.

  Zane tried to jerk his handles away. “I never stole your stupid bracelet,” he said.

  Marigold clutched the handlebars, anger radiating from her knuckles. “So you’re a liar now, too?” she spat. “No wonder you have to go to boarding school.”

  Zane jerked his handles again, harder this time. “Shut up,” he snapped. “Mari the Middling.”

  With a rage that welled up from deep inside her, Marigold pushed her brother and the bicycle, hard, backward down the path . . .

  . . . straight into the oncoming car.

  42

  V

  V COULDN’T QUITE SAY WHAT HAD COMPELLED HER TO LEAP into the back of that truck (not that she could say much of anything). She didn’t know where the chameleon was going, or what she planned on doing when she came face-to-shifting-face with him. Perhaps this chameleon was nothing like the one who had charmed her Caroline right out from underneath her. Perhaps Caroline hadn’t needed much charming to begin with. But what if V could have stopped it all if she’d only said something? What if, by exposing this chameleon, V could stop a similar mother from experiencing a similar heartache?

  She had to try.

  V smoothed her hand over the photograph she’d ripped from the book, the faces tinted lightly brown from the sun shining through the tarp above. Three people, working on an archaeological dig in the blazing sun, smiling together for the camera.

  The mother.

  The father.

  A baby girl.

  V clutched the photograph to her chest with one hand, sloughing her way out from under the tarp with the other. She lifted herself from the truck bed and did her best to take in her surroundings.

  The convention center. The chameleon had driven them to the convention center in New York City. V knew the towering glass building well. She’d given many talks here in her time. V followed the stream of visitors in chef’s hats and colored aprons, some toting cake pans under their arms, others simply fidgeting nervously.

  V snuck her way through the side entrance, past a greasy-haired young gentleman pushing an enormous barrel of flour. (The man was too engrossed in his book to notice her entrance, which V supposed she should take as a compliment.) She steadied herself, taking one last look at the photograph for courage, then—bumping only slightly against the flour barrel as she nudged past—V made her way inside.

  She did not, at that moment, realize that she’d dropped the photograph.

  43

  Mrs. Asher

  WHAT DOLORES HAD BEEN HOPING FOR WHEN SHE ROLLED down the window was a breath of fresh air. A bit of a country breeze to help clear her head as she continued down the highway.

  What she got was a faceful of ferret.

  “Aaaaaaggggggghhhhhh!” Dolores screeched, swerving as she struggled with the furry blob that had attached itself to her nose. She finally managed to pull to the side of the road and wrestle the critter to her lap. “Sally!” she cried, willing her heart to slow to only three hundred beats per second. “Where on earth did you—You scared me half to—Oh, Sally.” Dolores’s voice softened as the ferret curled into a frightened, hairy ball and sniffled a sad sort of sniffle. “You miss him, too, don’t you?”

  Click-click-clack, Sally replied.

  Dolores scratched at the scruff of Sally’s neck. “Where in the world could that boy be? I bet you’d know”—scratch, scratch, scratch—“since you and Will are always going on all those adven—”

  Dolores stopped talking. Slowly, with one hand still around the ferret in her lap, she returned her foot to the gas pedal and eased back onto the highway.

  44

  Zane

  IT WAS A CURIOUS SENSATION, BEING HIT BY AN ONCOMING CAR while flying backward on a bicycle. Somehow thrilling and terrifying both at once. Like a roller coaster, but without a safety bar.

  The part after the collision, where Zane flew feet-over-face past his handlebars and thwacked headfirst into the dirt, that wasn’t thrilling at all.

  There was a screech of tires and the slam of a car door.

  “You damn kids!” came a voice behind him.

  Marigold rushed to Zane, picking his head out of the dirt. “Oh, Zane, I’m so sorry, are you okay?” Zane was not okay. His whole head throbbed, his palms were burning. He wondered if he might have broken an ankle.

  “You damn kids!” came the voice again. The Owner. “Move this mess, now!”

  As Zane did his best to rub the sting out of the back of his neck, Marigold stood to her full height, hands on her hips. “You hit my brother!” she screeched. Dozens of squirrels, Zane noticed as his vision began to clear, had leapt out from the trees, and they were swarming into the road in order to . . .

  Actually, what were they doing? Zane craned his neck ever so slightly, pins and needles soaring up his spine as he did so, to take in the scene.

  A mangled bicycle. Four suitcases burst open in the dirt. Cameras, wallets, belt buckles. And jars. There were jars everywhere, scattered across the road. Broken and cracked and slivered, every last one. And rising up from the shards of each broken jar—Zane blinked when he saw it—was a fine sort of mist. A gray haze that swirled up into the sky, slowly at first, then swaying slightly with the breeze until it funneled up, up, up into the clouds.

  Yut!

  Yut!

  The squirrels seemed fascinated, digging their curious faces right down into the broken glass to sniff.

  Yut yut! Yutyutyutyutyut!

  The Owner had noticed the mess, too. And he wasn’t as happy about it as the squirrels.

  “You damn kids!” he screamed again. His face was purple, veins bulging in his forehead. With two burly hands, he lifted the twisted heap of a bicycle off the ground and threw it into the bushes. A pedal caught Marigold in the cheek, and she squawked in surprise, slapping her hand to cover it.

  But Zane had already seen the blood forming.

  “You leave my sister alone!” he howled, rising, teetering to his feet. Zane’s ankle wailed at him to stay still, his hands hollered, his knees shrieked, but Zane didn’t listen. He lunged at the Owner, sending the squirrels chittering in all directions.

  Things became a bit of a blur after that.
Maybe it was because Zane was in so much pain that he found it hard to follow the events that unfolded right in front of him. But what seemed to happen (although it couldn’t be what really happened, because it was all too peculiar to be true) was that something in the Owner’s pocket let out a soft plunk!, like a pebble being tossed to the floor, and the Owner suddenly shrunk two inches. And then, without warning, there was a sharp chill in Zane’s forehead. He couldn’t tell if it lasted a moment or a lifetime, but it was . . . cold.

  And then, all at once, the Owner shoved Zane back into the dirt.

  In the Owner’s hand was a small rock of ice.

  45

  Cady

  “AND WHAT CAKE WILL YOU BE BAKING TODAY?” THE LARGE woman with the chef’s hat asked Cady.

  “Hmm?” Cady looked up from her baking station, just as the man with the greasy black hair wheeled by with his flour barrel. Nose still in his book, he scooped a mound of flour from the barrel into Cady’s container. She coughed out a bit of flour dust.

  “Your cake,” the woman said again. She tapped the clipboard in her hand. “I have to write it down, what you’ll be baking.”

  “Oh, I . . .” Cady looked up into the bleachers, where the rows and rows of guests were sitting. She couldn’t spot Toby, but she knew he was there somewhere. Miss Mallory would be, too, soon. Probably the last time I’ll ever see her, Cady thought.