by Pete Hautman
Brian looked at the old white scar on his elbow. That, at least, was real.
4
the rhododendron incident
Bruce Bain stood atop a rickety stool in his crowded, book-crammed study, trying to read the spines of the books that lined a sagging shelf just below the ceiling.
“Hey, Dad,” Brian said.
Bruce Bain flinched, but managed to retain his balance.
“One moment, son,” he said. “You haven’t seen my copy of Somatic Empathy in Nematode Neurons, have you?”
“Uh, not lately. Hey, did we used to have a dog?”
“A dog? Why do you ask?”
“I remember a dog,” Brian said.
“I’m allergic to dogs, son.”
“So…did you and Mom adopt me, or did you abduct me?”
“You’ll have to ask your mother, son. She keeps all the family records.”
Brian rolled his eyes. His father, absorbed in his own little world, had heard Brian’s words, but hadn’t really listened to what he was saying.
“Aha!” said Mr. Bain. “Here’s my copy of Sea Snail Aquaculture Techniques! I’ve been looking all over for that!”
“I’m going out,” Brian said. “If Mom comes home, tell her I’ve gone out to get my eyeball pierced.”
“I’ll let her know.”
Brian stopped his skateboard at the top of Grant Street and looked down the block-long hill. It was not the steepest hill in town, but he could get going about fifteen miles an hour by the time he reached the intersection with Third Street. On a skateboard, that was fast. The trick was to make a split-second decision in the final twenty feet before hitting the cross street, when approaching cars—if there were any—became visible. He would have about a tenth of a second to either go for the crossing or bail out into Mrs. Atkinson’s rhododendron bush. Brian had rolled down the hill lots of times before. So far he hadn’t had to bail out once.
He was standing with one foot on his skateboard getting himself psyched up when a small green Hyundai pulled up beside him. The driver was an Asian woman, maybe thirty years old. He had never seen her around town before, and he usually noticed people of Asian ancestry, since there were hardly any in Bloodwater. And this woman looked like she could be Korean.
She lowered her window. “You aren’t planning to go down that hill on your skateboard, are you?” she asked. She had a strong accent. Definitely Korean.
Brian shook his head.
“Good,” she said. She added something that sounded like a garbled version of the word choosing. Their eyes locked, and for a moment Brian felt as if his chest were full of ginger ale.
She could be my real mother, he thought.
She smiled and nodded. The moment passed. Brian watched her drive down the hill and turn left.
What had she said? Brian replayed the strange word in his head, trying to remember if it was something he had learned at the Korean language camp he had attended last summer. Choo-Sing? Cho-Sun?
Suddenly he had it: Cho-sim. He knew that word. It was Korean, and he remembered what it meant.
Beware!
Beware of what?
Brian shook his head. This was all Roni’s fault. Every time anything unexplained happened, she assumed it meant something dreadful and mysterious. And now, thanks to her, every time he saw a Korean woman, he would wonder if she was his biological mother.
He looked down the hill and narrowed his eyes. Beware? Ha! He’d done this lots of times before.
He pushed off.
Bratten’s Café and Bakery, in downtown Bloodwater, was home to the best donuts in the county. It was also, as Roni had discovered a few weeks earlier, a Wi-Fi hot spot. On most days she could pick up a strong, unsecured wireless signal from one of the tenants who lived above the coffee shop. Roni was sitting at one of the outdoor tables with her laptop, looking at the picture of Bryce Doblemun, when she heard the clatter of a skateboard. Brian rolled up to the table and kicked up his board. He had red scratches all over his arms and face, and his T-shirt was torn.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“Got in a fight with a rhododendron bush,” Brian said. He took a newspaper from under his arm and plunked it on the table. “Where’s your Vespa?”
“Good old Hillary has a flat tire. She’s at Darwin Dipstick’s garage. Why were you fighting with a bush?”
“Don’t ask.”
“You’re in a mood. Better get yourself a donut.” Roni had already finished her raspberry-stuffed long john.
Brian pointed at the newspaper. “Page twenty-three,” he said.
Roni read the article about Brian’s paper-airplane triumph while Brian browsed the pastry counter. He returned to the table with a chocolate-covered cake donut—her third-favorite. When he sat down across from her, she stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. He looked different, somehow more exotic now.
Brian took a bite out of his donut, chewed for a moment, then noticed her staring at him. “Why are you looking at me that way?” he asked.
“I’ve never met an abducted adoptee airplane builder before.”
“Very funny.” He set his donut back on the paper plate. Roni had never seen Brian take more than thirty seconds to devour a pastry. “I think my dad’s losing it,” he said.
“You’ve been saying that ever since I’ve known you.”
“I told him I was getting my eyeball pierced. I think he believed me.”
“Do you ever wonder about your real parents?”
“Real? You mean like not imaginary?”
“I mean biological.”
Brian shrugged. “Oh. Not really. When I think about it, which isn’t often, it’s more like a science fiction story, like I came from a different planet. Planet Korea.”
“I always suspected you were an alien.” She turned her computer so the screen faced Brian. “You think he’s from the same planet?”
“I don’t know, but he’s not me. I mean, even if I did live with another adoptive family when I was little, I don’t think my name was Doblemun, and”—he pointed at the picture of Vera Doblemun—“I don’t remember her at all.”
“Wait—you lived with another family?”
“I remember some stuff. But it was probably a dream. How much do you remember from when you were four?”
“Lots,” Roni said. But when she thought about it, she wasn’t all that sure.
“My parents did not abduct me,” Brian said.
“True, they don’t seem like the kidnapping type,” Roni said.
“I asked my dad about it.”
Roni laughed. “You asked your dad if he abducted you?”
“Yeah. He said I should ask my mom.”
“If she abducted you, do you think she’d admit it?”
“Look, this whole thing is stupid.” Brian stood up. “My parents would not lie to me. This is just some kid who, just because he’s my age and Asian, you think looks like me. Which he doesn’t.”
Roni looked down at Brian’s donut. “Are you going to finish that?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Roni didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She took a bite, claiming it as hers. So much for her one-pastry-a-week diet.
Brian said, “I’m sure my mom knows all about this kid. It happened here in Minnesota, and a kid getting abducted is a big deal, right?”
“Not so much if he gets snatched by one of his own parents.”
“Anyway, I’m sure she knows about it. I mean, it’s her job.”
“So are you gonna ask her?”
Brian shrugged.
“Where is she?”
“At the police station.”
5
a family matter
Brian sailed into the police department, waved at Agnes, who was behind the counter, and got his head rubbed by George Firth, one of the old-timers with the Bloodwater Police. He circled past the entrance to the jail and down the hall toward his mother’s office. Roni stayed close
behind him. Brian loved these rare moments when he was the one in charge. Usually, he was trying to keep up with Roni, but the police station was his territory. He’d been coming here for as long as he could remember.
Detective Annette Bain was digging through a file cabinet and talking to herself. He heard her say something that sounded like, “Drat barn wigglesnoot trashooper!”
Sometimes she could be almost as weird as his father.
“Hi, Mom,” he said.
Mrs. Bain shot a look at Brian, and then at Roni, then back at Brian. She stood up straight and asked, “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” said Brian.
“You look like you’ve been in a fight with a bobcat.”
“Oh.” Brian remembered that he was a little scratched up. “Actually, it was a rhododendron.”
“And what were you…oh, never mind. Have you come to lodge a complaint against the bush?”
“Um, it wasn’t really the bush’s fault.”
Mrs. Bain pulled a file from the cabinet. “Hello, Roni. Are you the one who caused my son to engage in fisticuffs with a rhododendron?”
Detective Annette Bain did not entirely approve of Roni Delicata. Brian could hardly blame her. Every time he nearly got himself killed, it seemed Roni was somehow involved.
“I have an alibi,” said Roni.
“Show her the picture,” Brian said.
Roni, for once, just did what he asked her to do. She opened her laptop and turned it on. A few seconds later the age-progressed image of Bryce Doblemun was looking out at them.
His mom sat down behind her desk and stared at the slightly chunky Korean boy’s face. “I hadn’t seen this latest age progression,” she said.
“You know about him?” Roni asked.
“Bryce Doblemun? Of course I do. He disappeared several years ago from his home in Minneapolis along with his adoptive mother. Apparently she ran off with him. There was quite an investigation. As far as I know, they are both still missing.” She frowned at Brian, then at Roni. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Roni thinks he looks like me.”
“Ah, I see. Looking for another mystery, Roni?”
“You have to admit, it is kind of a coincidence,” Roni said. “He looks just like Brian. Same age. And he disappeared from Minneapolis, which is pretty close to Bloodwater. Also, he’s an adoptee.”
Mrs. Bain raised one eyebrow. Brian knew that raised eyebrow well. Roni was treading on dangerous ground.
“And?” said Mrs. Bain.
Roni, to Brian’s horror and admiration, plowed ahead.
“So…how did you get Brian?” she asked.
Mrs. Bain sat back in her chair and placed one finger on the side of her chin. “We adopted him, as you well know.”
“How old was he?”
“Roni, I understand your curiosity, but don’t you think that this is rather personal?”
“I was just—”
“Really, Roni, it’s a family matter.” She stood up. “Now, if you two sleuths will excuse me, I have work to do.”
Brian knew that if he didn’t say something, Roni would never let him forget it.
“Mom, do you have, um, papers for me? Adoption papers?”
“Of course we do.” She looked at her watch. “Can we talk about this later, sweetie?”
His mom called him “sweetie” only when she was trying not to be mad at him.
Mrs. Bain picked up the file on her desk. “I’ll see you at dinner,” she said. “And when you get home, put some antiseptic on those scratches.” She walked out of the room.
“I think she knows something she’s not telling,” Roni said as she shut down her computer.
Brian had a prickly feeling deep in his gut. He was afraid that Roni might be right.
6
the lost emperor
Roni was talking a million miles an hour as they left the courthouse.
“…and even if your folks really adopted you like they say, maybe Vera Doblemun stole you and then you escaped and got found on a street someplace and you were re-re-orphaned—”
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as re-re-orphaned,” Brian said.
“Whatever—you know what I mean. Or maybe Vera Doblemun was horribly murdered by a gang of child stealers and they sold you to an adoption agency. We should find out which agency you got adopted from. We could break in and look through their records. We could—”
Brian stopped. Roni kept walking. It took her a couple of seconds to realize she’d left Brian behind.
“What?” she said, looking back.
“I don’t want you stirring things up,” Brian said.
Roni looked at him as if he were insane. “You don’t want me to investigate? We need to find out—”
“Shut up! I know who I am. My parents are not criminals.”
“I just—”
“Suppose you found out that your mom maybe wasn’t really your mom. Would you want me running all over town dredging up your family history?”
“I wouldn’t turn down your help.”
“I’m not saying I don’t want your help. I just want to find things out my way, at least to start.”
Looking chastened, Roni said, “Will you tell me what she says, at least?”
“Absolutely.” Brian dropped his skateboard to the sidewalk and caught it with his foot. “If I find out I’m really the Lost Emperor of Korea, you’ll be the first to know.”
As Roni watched the Lost Emperor of Korea roll off, she was already thinking of ways to move the investigation along. Don’t go stirring things up? Who did he think he was dealing with? Stirring things up was her specialty.
She slung her backpack over her shoulders and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans—sort of a boy thing to do, but it seemed to help her think. Besides, she had decided not to care what anybody thought of her. That Roni Delicata, she just does her own thing, people would say. Problem was, nobody seemed to notice.
She looked around to see if anybody was noticing now.
Downtown Bloodwater on a weekday afternoon was not exactly a happening place, unless you were a sixty-something retired schoolteacher in the market for some moldy old antiques. Roni saw several of that breed carrying large shopping bags and peering into shop windows. To them, she was all but invisible—just another slightly schlumpy, slightly overweight, slightly loitering teenager. The only kids her age they really noticed were the big scary ones.
Sooner or later, she thought, they’ll notice me. One big case was all it would take—a missing kid found, the capture of a dangerous criminal, or a story on the front page of the paper. The day I graduate from high school, she decided, I’m out of here. She would go to London, Paris, New York…even Minneapolis would do. Someplace where things were happening, where she would fit in with the other strange people who just did what they felt like doing.
Until then, she would keep digging up information about the missing Bryce Doblemun—even if Brian Bain didn’t approve.
Real emperors had thrones, crowns, and loyal subjects. It sounded like a lot of work. Were there ever emperors in Korea? Had Korea ever lost an emperor? He would have to look it up.
As he walked into the quiet house, Brian did not feel like royalty. He felt like a vague, amorphous blob that was slowly floating around the world, twirling in all directions, tethered to no place at all. Yikes. If he didn’t watch it, the next thing he knew, he’d be writing poetry.
Brian heard his father muttering to himself in his office, but he didn’t feel like trying to get his attention. Way too much work. He walked quietly up the stairs, collapsed on his bed, and stared at the ceiling. What was his earliest memory? The little dog? The red-haired lady? They seemed like a dream, and maybe they were. But what about his earliest memories of his current parents? His mom liked to tell a story about taking Brian to the county fair and letting him wander. He had walked around without ever once looking back to see where his parents were. Of course, the
y’d been right behind him all the time, following him to make sure he didn’t get into trouble.
Brian remembered that day, or at least he thought he did. The way he remembered it, he had been searching for his little dog.
His mom—his second or third mom, he should probably call her, maybe even shorten it to Mom3—thought it was a funny story because he had been such an independent and fearless kid. “You just took off on your own,” she would say with a laugh. “If we hadn’t stopped you, you’d have joined the carnival!”
What else did he remember? Going on a ride. Riding on a big duck that went around in circles with a lot of other big ducks. A kiddie ride, but it had been exciting at the time. Seeing his parents’ blurred faces watching him as he went around and around and around.
Brian felt as if he were melting into his bed. If he didn’t know who he really was, was he in danger of dissolving? He rolled off the bed and fell to the floor on his hands and knees. He crawled to his dresser, pulled open the bottom drawer, and dug into the far corner under a sweater he hardly ever wore because it made his neck itch. He pulled out a small wooden box and removed a small metal coin. On one side was a picture of a building surrounded by Korean writing. The other side had a big numeral 10 next to the words THE BANK OF KOREA 1972. It was the only thing he had from Korea, and he couldn’t even remember where he had gotten it.
He thought of biting it to see if it was gold. It had a goldish glint to it. He wondered what it was worth—maybe he should take it on Antiques Roadshow. Tell his story. Maybe his country would discover him then.
Maybe he really was a lost emperor.
7
darwin dipstick
Batman has his Batmobile; Green Lantern has his ring; Wonder Woman has her invisible airplane. Roni needed Hillary, her trusty Vespa, if she was going to seriously work on this case. Roni had run over another nail, and Darwin Depaul—better known as Darwin Dipstick—had said he could fix the Vespa in a jiffy. A “jiffy” meant she needed to stay on his case if she wanted Hillary back before the snow flew.
