by Pete Hautman
“I was just leaving,” I said.
• • •
So much for Billy being my secret weapon. The mystery of Flinkwater would have to wait until he was done getting tutored, or REMEMBERed, or whatever. I was a bit peeved at him, to tell the truth.
After what happened to him later, I felt pretty bad about that.
• • •
On the way home I was trying to figure out how to write my paper for Mr. Westerburg’s class without subjecting myself to further mortification or library sneeze-fests, when I noticed I was being followed.
I’d been followed before, like a couple months ago when the Department of Homeland Security thought I was a terrorist.I Their black SUVs are easy to spot, but they hadn’t been bothering me lately.
But this was no black SUV following me. This was a familiar-looking gray cat.
“Mr. Peebles, is there something I can do for you?” I asked politely.
Mr. Peebles stopped walking, sat down on the sidewalk, and looked off at something utterly fascinating to him but completely invisible to me. The way one does, if one is a cat.
I continued toward home. Mr. Peebles let me get about twenty feet away, then continued to follow me. He followed me all the way to my front door, where I stopped to explain the situation to him.
“Mr. Peebles, inside this house there is a Siamese cat. His name is Barney, and he is a jealous cat who believes that all other cats are evil demons. You should go home.”
“Merp?” said Mr. Peebles, tilting his head.
“Yes, merp,” I said. “Now go home.”
If that cat understood what I was saying, he chose to ignore it.
“Scat!” I yelled, waving my arms vigorously.
Mr. Peebles backed up to the spirea bush and left his stinky calling card. He then trotted over by the maple tree, tucked his feet beneath his body, and closed his eyes to slits.
* * *
I. Oops. I said I wasn’t gonna do this.
6
DustBots
My mother had made significant progress with the DustBots, if causing them all to clump up in the corner of the living room could be called progress. When I walked in, she was stabbing commands into the handheld control module while yelling at the bots to disperse. My mother is not a woman who is accustomed to being ignored. But the DustBots didn’t seem to know that.
Just in case you have been marooned on a tropical island for the past two decades, I should explain about DustBots.
Imagine a gerbil. Bigger than a mouse, smaller than a rat, and cuter than either. Now imagine that instead of fur it has a shiny plastic case in your choice of eight colors, and instead of being alive it is a robot. Now imagine your home, only very, very clean. When activated, an ACPOD DustBot will seek out dirt, dust, and other undesirable substances and transport them to the kitchen trash can.
The DustBot was invented by Gilbert Bates seventeen years ago. It is the single most successful tech product in history—the average home in the United States has three DustBots. The average home in Flinkwater has nine. We have seventeen, and all of them were huddled in one corner of the living room, humming and buzzing.
This was not normal DustBot behavior.
Barney was crouched a few feet away, keeping an eye on them.
“Mom, what did you do to the bots?”
“I have no idea.” She thrust the control mod at me. “See if you can fix it.”
I checked the display on the mod and saw right away that she had accidentally activated the herding function. I turned it off. The pile of bots began to disperse, their randomizers sending them off in every direction, searching for dirt.
Barney sprang into action. Before I could stop him, he flipped three of them onto their backs. I scooped him up and turned the bots right side up.
“I was hoping to program them to avoid the cat,” Mom said.
“Barney does not choose to be avoided,” I said. “By the way, I went to the library. I looked through everything they had on Flinkwater”—a slight exaggeration—“and found nothing. So I’ll probably fail history.”
“That is unfortunate,” she said, and from the set of her jaw, I saw that she would be no help, despite that fact that I had just helped her with the DustBots.
I went to tell Dad that Mom was going to let me flunk Mr. Westerburg’s class. I found him standing in the hallway staring down at Barney.
“What is this creature doing in our house?” he asked.
“That’s Barney,” I said. “He’s a cat,” I added sarcastically.
“Who is Barney?” he asked.
“That is Barney,” I said. “Our cat?”
“We have a cat?”
“Dad!” I hated when he teased me.
“When did we get a cat?”
“Eight years ago!”
The look he gave me was one of utter confusion. He really didn’t remember. Like most older people, Dad can be absentminded at times. I mean, he’s in his forties. But not remembering Barney?
“Dad, are you okay?”
“Certainly,” he said, but he still had that puzzled look on his face. “How could I forget old Blarney?”
“Not Blarney! Barney!” I was getting more worried by the second.
“Yes, of course. Er . . . is there something I can help you with?”
“Not unless you’ve remembered how Flinkwater got its name.”
“Sorry. My memory’s not what it used to be, Ginger.”
At least he remembered my name.
7
Mr. Peebles
Mom was at the bathroom sink using a tint comb to touch up the roots of her spiky black hair. She is serious about her hair and her nails. Every hair must be raven black from tip to root, and every nail must be red, sharp, and gleaming. It’s part of her patented witch-queen look. She likes to be intimidating. She says it comes in handy at work.
“Mom, Dad forgot we have a cat.”
“I wish I could.”
“It’s not funny. He just asked me who Barney was.”
“I’m sure he was just distracted—as I am at this moment.”
“He told me this morning that there’s an epidemic of forgetfulness at ACPOD. Maybe he caught something.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean ‘epidemic’ literally, Ginger.”
“Yeah but what if he did?”
“It’s not all bad. There are several things I would not mind forgetting. How do I look?” She leaned her head toward me. “Any gray showing?”
“There wasn’t any before you started, Mom.”
“Good. That’s when you want to catch it.”
A horrific screeching came from downstairs.
My mother looked at me and said, “I understand we have a cat.”
• • •
I ran downstairs and followed the caterwauling. All the yowling was coming from Barney, who was standing stiff-legged on top of the refrigerator looking down at Mr. Peebles, who had somehow gotten into the house and onto the kitchen counter. Several of the cupboard doors were standing open. Mr. Peebles was digging into the one we used for canned stuff, sorting through it with his paws, pushing aside the baked beans, stewed tomatoes, and various soups.
“Mr. Peebles!” I said. “How did you get in here?”
He looked at me over his shoulder and said, “Merp.”
Barney hissed.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Mr. Peebles reached deep into the cupboard and clawed out a can of tuna. The can fell to the counter and rolled off the edge onto the floor. He hopped down next to it and looked up at me.
“Mrowr?”
Barney, who also knew his way around a can of tuna, fell silent. Both cats were staring at me with that insistent look—you know the one—where they are trying to eat you with their eyes. Frankly, it was a little spooky.
“Okay,” I said. “You win.” I opened the can and divided it into two bowls. Both cats were twining around my feet, best of friends now that they had
a common mission. I put the bowls down and watched them eat. It took about twenty seconds. After they finished eating, Barney turned his back on Mr. Peebles and proceeded to lick his paws, having decided to pretend that there was no strange cat in the house. Mr. Peebles went to the back door and silently commanded me to open it.
“Hang on a minute,” I said. I went to get Barney’s cat crate. If I could coax Mr. Peebles into it, I’d take him back to the Tisks, who lived just a few blocks away. Everybody knew where the Tisks lived. It was the only house in town with a life-size, smiling, blond, blue-eyed Jesus statue in the front yard. But before I could get the crate, I heard the screen door slam. I ran back to the kitchen. Mr. Peebles had somehow opened the door and let himself out. I caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared over the backyard fence.
I looked at Barney. Barney looked at me.
“I’m glad you’re not that smart,” I said.
He lashed his tail and strutted off in search of a DustBot.
8
Charlotte’s Web
I figured if a cat was smart enough to read a book, break into a house, order dinner, and open a door, then I was smart enough to figure out how to write my Flinkwater report without wasting more time on unnecessary research. I’d just make something up. I mean, if the origins of the Flinkwater name were so mysterious, Mr. Westerburg probably didn’t know either. I sat down at my desk and began to compose my report.
There are many theories as to the origin of the town name Flinkwater. Some believe that “flink” is a Native American word meaning “sweet,” or possibly “putrid.” Or maybe it is the name of a fish. Or possibly Flinkwater is a misspelling of Fairview or some other common town name, as back in the old days people did not have spell-check, and their handwriting was practically impossible to read. Even Charlotte, the spider in the book Charlotte’s Web, could write and spell better than some of those people.
I wasn’t sure about that last bit. I knew Charlotte was a spider who spun words in her web, but I hadn’t actually read the book. I wasn’t sure about the spelling thing.
Since I’d been meaning to read it anyway, and Mr. Tisk had made it sound so interesting, I pulled up the document on my tab, flopped down on my bed, and dove in. It took all of ten seconds for me to get completely absorbed in the story. I’d read all the way to chapter 11—that’s when Charlotte writes her first words—when my mom yelled at me to set the table for dinner.
“Just a minute!” I yelled back, and kept on reading. I was relieved to find that Charlotte the spider could spell just fine. I wouldn’t have to change my report.
My mom started yelling again, so I set my tab aside and stomped downstairs.
“I was doing homework,” I said.
“Well I’m doing housework,” she said. All she was doing was putting a frozen lasagna in the microwave oven, which barely qualifies as work, and certainly isn’t as technically challenging as setting the table. But I had the sense not to point that out. Mom was quite proud of her microwaving skills.
I set the table quickly, hoping to get back to my book for another chapter or two before dinner.
It was not to be. As I was setting the table, she rattled off a list of other Important Tasks that required my Immediate Attention.
“You left your shoes on the floor by the front door, the ficus plant needs water, and the cat box needs emptying.”
“Mom, I’m not a bot!”
“Neither am I. Now hurry up; dinner will be ready in thirteen minutes.”
Glumly I set about my assigned tasks. The cat box was the worst. Barney watched me scoop out his old turds, waiting patiently so that he could start the process all over again.
“You are very stinky,” I told him.
“Merp,” he agreed.
• • •
I wasn’t able to get back to Charlotte’s Web until after dinner, and there was a nasty surprise waiting for me. When I started on chapter 12, I became immediately confused. All the characters had changed:
One evening, a few days after the writing had appeared on the wall, Charlotte called a meeting of all the children in the barn cellar.
“I shall begin by calling the roll. Wilbur?”
“Here!” said the boy.
“George?”
“Here, here, here!” said George.
I stopped reading. Writing on what wall? What children? Who was George? And Wilbur is supposed to be a pig, not a boy!
It was a completely different book. I flipped back to the previous chapter. Everything had changed. All the animals had been replaced by kids, and instead of a spider writing words in her web, it was a girl named Charlotte writing on a wall. It made no sense at all!
Something—or someone—had hacked into my copy of Charlotte’s Web and changed all the words.
9
A Tisk Problem
I took my tablet to ACPOD’s director of cyber-security services, who just so happens to be my father.
“This is rather odd,” he said, looking at the corrupted text on my tab.
“It’s more than odd,” I said. “It’s literary terrorism.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far. Have you tried downloading a fresh copy?”
“Yes! It’s the same.”
“Let me try.” He picked up his own tablet and logged on to the county library system. A few seconds later Charlotte’s Web popped up.
“Hmmm,” he said, scrolling through the first few chapters. “Is Charlotte supposed to be a little girl who writes on walls?”
“No!”
“I didn’t think so. It seems the library file has been corrupted as well. Let me check out some other titles.”
A few minutes later he had looked over the digital editions of The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and War and Peace.
“These all look fine,” he said.
“I know who did this,” I said.
• • •
Nothing is ever simple.
If I were in charge, I’d have ordered an immediate SWAT raid on the Tisks and hung them up by their thumbs until they agreed to fix Charlotte’s Web.
That’s probably why I’m not in charge.
“Ginger, we don’t know with any certainty that Mr. and Mrs. Tisk are behind this,” my dad said.
“Who else would replace all the talking animals with talking humans?”
“It could be one of their parishioners, or any number of other people. What we need to do is wait until Monday and contact the administrator at the county library system. They’ll be able to restore the damaged texts and trace the invasive bug back to its source.”
“But I need Charlotte now,” I whined. I am not above whining. Sometimes it works.
“Then you’ll have to borrow a paper copy.”
“From who? The library’s closed!”
“Maybe one of your friends?”
“You’re the only person I know who reads paper books! Can’t you just go over to the Tisks and tell them if they don’t fix it they’ll be in big trouble? Mom would.”
He laughed. I hate it when he laughs while I’m trying to be serious.
“Maybe you should pitch this to her, then.”
“Maybe I will!”
“Good luck.”
• • •
I have to explain about my mother. My mom is scary. I’ve mentioned her long, blood-red fingernails and her glittery eyes and her crown of spiky black hair, but I haven’t told you she is six feet tall with a tongue that could slice a steel bar into frightened little disks. She would be the perfect weapon to unleash upon the Tisks—if I could get her with the program.
That was the problem. Mom is big on self-reliance, as in, Ginger, do not ask me to solve your Flinkwater problem for you.
In other words, she is not the nurturing type.
I found her in the backyard enjoying herself in a quiet sort of way by pinching beetles off her rosebush.
“Mom, did you ever read Charlotte’s Web?”
“The book about the pig and the spider?” she said. “I could use a spider right now. Look at what these creatures are doing to my flowers.”
“Yeah, I could use a spider too. But I have a Tisk problem.”
“Tisk problem?”
“Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Tisk have hacked my tab.” I explained what had happened and how I was sure the Tisks were involved. Several rose beetles met their doom as I spoke.
“Your father is the cyber-security expert. Did you talk to him?”
“He says he’ll contact the county library on Monday, but I was hoping maybe you could talk to the Tisks before that.”
“And why is this so urgent?”
“I need to finish reading about Charlotte.”
“Don’t you have other things you could be doing? Have you finished that report you were working on?”
“Charlotte’s Web is part of my research.”
“How is a book about talking animals pertinent to a paper about the history of Flinkwater?”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“I’m sure it is,” she said as she pinched the head off another beetle.
• • •
It was no great surprise that my mother the beetle pincher had refused my desperate call for help. As I said before, she was not the nurturing type. Clearly, I would have to take matters into my own hands.
10
Ransom Note
The life-size Jesus statue in the Tisks’ front yard made an excellent guardian. His blue eyes seemed to follow me as I walked past him, silently reminding me of all ten commandments and how I’d broken at least four of them. I didn’t think I was breaking any at the moment, but he still made me kind of nervous. I rang the doorbell. A few seconds later the door opened and Mrs. Tisk was staring out at me. Or maybe she was looking through me—it was hard to tell. She reminded me of the statue, only less alive. She didn’t say anything; she just stood there with her crown of pale blond hair and colorless eyes.
