If You're Reading This, It's Too Late

by Pseudonymous Bosch

  “They will turn up when we need them, you will see,” Pietro said defiantly.

  “I’m sure they’ll put on a fabulous show,” sniffed the archivist. He was obviously skeptical that they would turn up — whoever they were.

  “The Terces Society has many friends,” said Pietro, turning back to Cass and Max-Ernest. “But it is well that we do not all know each other. . . . Speaking of this, have you two figured out our name?”

  “Max-Ernest figured it out over the summer — he’s really good with stuff like that,” said Cass, in case anybody didn’t know.

  “It’s secret backward, right?” asked Max- Ernest.

  “Exactly right,” said Mr. Wallace, sounding faintly disappointed. “The early members found that whenever they said the word secret, it aroused too much interest. They called themselves the Terces Society so the riffraff would stay away.” He looked hard at their young guests.

  Cass and Max-Ernest each took an involuntary step backward.

  They had a thousand questions about the Terces Society, but they sensed this might not be the time to ask them.

  “And now, perhaps you will tell us why you’re here,” said Pietro. “You took a great risk.”

  Cass looked at Max-Ernest — he nodded — and she removed her backpack from her back. Silently, she unzipped it and pulled out the Sound Prism.

  Pietro twinkled. “Ah, I knew you would have a good reason for coming.” He shot a look at Mr. Wallace — as if to say, told you so!

  Owen laughed and shook his head ruefully. “You sneaks! Not even mentioning it in the car!”

  “Showed you up, did they, Owen?” asked Lily slyly.

  Cass and Max-Ernest glanced at each other, unable to hide their proud smiles.

  “We heard this was stolen,” said Cass.

  “It was, indeed,” said Pietro. “You have a done a very great thing — and, who can say? Averted much tragedy.”

  Cass was about to hand him the Sound Prism, but he held up his hand, stopping her.

  “And now — how do they say it on the television? I have a mission for you, if you choose to accept it.”

  They nodded eagerly. Cass gripped the Sound Prism in excitement.

  “Good. I think maybe you have heard of the homunculus?”

  “Yeah, but he can’t be real,” said Max-Ernest confidently. “You can’t grow a man in a bottle. It’s not possible.”

  “The Midnight Sun thinks it’s possible,” said Pietro.

  “Yeah, but . . . you don’t . . . er, right?”

  The old magician let the question hang. In a room like this, with half-built illusions all around, who could say what was possible?

  “And that’s why they want him?” asked Cass, after a moment. “Because they think he’s one of these man-made guys? And they want to make another one?”

  “We think they want something from him,” said Pietro. “Something he has or knows where to find.”

  “Like what?” asked Max-Ernest. He still wasn’t ready to believe the homunculus existed — let alone that it knew anything.

  “The grave!” said Cass, remembering the conversation they overheard on the boat.

  Pietro nodded. “That would be Lord Pharaoh’s grave. The alchemist who made the homunculus, he called himself Lord Pharaoh. Assuming this thing exists —” he added for Max-Ernest’s benefit.

  “Isn’t that redundant? Like calling yourself King King,” said Max-Ernest.

  Pietro laughed. “Redundant, yes. And vain. But those were not his worst crimes. The Midnight Sun, they believe he knew the Secret.”

  Max-Ernest and Cass fell silent, treating this information with the gravity it deserved. Pietro put a warm, calloused hand on each of their shoulders.

  “You must find the homunculus before the Midnight Sun. It is of the utmost importance.”

  Max-Ernest stammered in surprise. “Us? But —”

  “But they’re only children!” protested Lily.

  “It does seem dangerous,” said Owen. “Not that I’m volunteering. . . .”

  “Pietro, this is insane — even for you!” said Mr. Wallace, red-faced.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” He smiled broadly at Cass and Max-Ernest.

  Cass tried to smile back and show she was brave. She wanted to ask more about the homunculus. About why they were being given this task. But all she could get out was: “How —?”

  “With that —” Pietro pointed to the Sound Prism. “After all, it belongs to you.”

  Before she could ask why, he continued, “It’s the only tool that we have. And you, Cassandra, are the only one who can use it.”

  Cass looked at the ball in her hand as though she’d never seen it before.

  As though it were a stranger looking back at her.

  Alake at dawn. It is very cold.

  A familiar eerie song starts to play.

  Clouds of fog cling to the surface of the water. We can hardly see through the air, it is so wet and clammy.

  Dark, hulking trees move in and out of view like shadowy hunters stalking prey. In the background, jagged mountain peaks rise out of the mist like giant jaws ready to clamp down on the entire picture.

  A single bright spot interrupts the gloom. It is an orange triangle that, from a distance, looks like one of those safety cones used to divert traffic.

  Looking closer, we see that the triangle is not a cone but a lone camping tent standing on the otherwise empty lakeshore.

  Two boys are talking and their voices can be heard all across the lake — although, oddly, they are not shouting. From the sound of it, they’re maybe eleven or twelve years old, thirteen at the most.

  “Oh man! That freakin’ stinks!” says one.

  The other boy laughs. “Chill out, dude. Everybody does it!”

  “Not again!” says the first boy. “If you don’t get out of the tent right now, I’m going to kill you!”

  A few blades of grass block our view of the lake as we listen to the boys in the tent, taking note of their presence, but not making a sound.

  We are like a crocodile, or a snake. A predator lying in wait.

  A boy — the farter, we’re guessing — steps out of the tent. “Hey, where’s Tommy?” he asks.

  “Hiking with my parents,” says the boy inside.

  “But your dad told you to watch him —”

  “He did?!”

  Suddenly, we lift our head and disappear into the brush.

  Darkness.

  What a creepy dream, Cass thought. It was almost like she was the homunculus. Waiting.

  But for what? Not to eat those kids?

  Automatically, she reached for her sock-monster. Then remembered that Ms. Mauvais had tossed it to the Skelton Sisters. Sigh.

  Why did the homunculus come to her in her dreams? When she had no idea how to find him in reality.

  “This is your job and you cannot fail. It would be . . . a catastrophe,” Pietro had repeated before saying good-bye.

  It had taken all her courage to ask why she was the only one who could use the Sound Prism. “You will see” was Pietro’s cryptic reply.

  He’d hardly been more forthcoming when she asked how to use it. “Ah, I wish I could tell you. But I do not know.”

  Of course, even if she’d known exactly where to find the homunculus, or how to use the Sound Prism, it wouldn’t have done her much good anyhow. She couldn’t leave the house.

  How often did Terces Society members get grounded? she wondered bitterly. I’ll bet Pietro didn’t think of that when he gave us our mission.

  Grounded.

  Such a

  heavy

  word.

  Grrrrrounnnnded.

  Say it out loud.

  It sounds almost onomatopoeic, doesn’t it?*

  In the past, Cass had experienced the word only as a threat. Being grounded was something that happened to other kids, to bad kids, not to her. Even when Cass and Max-Ernest had run off to the Midnight Sun Spa, her mother had been so re
lieved that her daughter had returned home safe that she’d barely reprimanded her. She figured Cass had learned her lesson.

  But evidently Cass had not learned her lesson.

  “You know who has learned her lesson? Me!” said her mother, who, now that she was no longer worried about Cass being lost at sea, was absolutely furious.

  “I don’t know who you think you are that you can keep running away like that, but this time you’re not getting off so easy. I don’t care whether this is some kind of plea for help or premature teenage rebellion or you’re trying to get back at me for every wrong I’ve ever done to you or you just like boats a lot. You, young lady, are grounded for the rest of the year!”

  Other than being confined to your house, being grounded often means losing privileges of various kinds. The problem for Cass’s mother was that Cass didn’t seem to mind having things taken away. Or at least she didn’t let on if she did. (Cass knew she was going to be punished; she figured she should just grin and bear it.)

  They were in the kitchen when her mother set down the rules — Cass eating cereal at the counter, her mother opening, and then slamming shut, cabinet doors at random.

  The conversation went something like this:

  Mom: “And there will be no extracurricular activities of any kind!” Slam.

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “I’m taking away your cell phone!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “And no television!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “No Internet!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “Nothing fun whatsoever!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “And no dessert!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “No Thai food — not even pad thai!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “OK, fine — then no dinner at all!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “All you get is gruel!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “I’m taking away your bed!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “You’ll sleep on the floor in chains!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “Fine!”

  Cass: “Fine.”

  Mom: “Fine! Fine! Fine! Is that all you can say? Fine — then you know what, you can just leave this house right now! And don’t come back!”

  Cass: “So then you mean I’m not grounded?”

  Mom: “Oh, you are so grounded! You can’t believe how grounded you are! You’re not leaving this house ever!”

  The transition from screaming fight to mutual mother-daughter silent treatment was nearly instantaneous. An unrelenting quiet fell over the house like a miserable spell of weather. And it seemed it would never lift.

  They both sought distraction wherever they could find it — anything to relieve the tedium that overtook their household.

  Before Cass was grounded, when salespeople had called, Cass’s mother always hung up or shouted a few choice invectives into the phone; now she engaged salespeople in long conversations about the weather in India or the Philippines or Macao, while Cass tried to eavesdrop and pick up information about the world without letting her face show any interest.

  In an effort to make her time more productive, Cass pretended being grounded was a Terces Society survivalist training exercise.

  Although her mother never made good on her threat to take away her bed, Cass slept on the floor anyway. What food she ate she ate standing up — and with her hands. And in her spare time, she taught herself the entire alphabet in Morse code: she didn’t want to be caught unawares the next time Max-Ernest tapped her on the shoulder with an emergency message.

  Indeed, she became so proficient at Morse code that she decided that from here on in, all Morse communications with Max-Ernest should be backward: Esrom code, they could call it.

  That is, if she ever got to communicate with Max-Ernest again.

  One evening after dinner, not long after the grounding began, Cass told her mother — truthfully — that she was going upstairs to study. What she didn’t tell her mother was that she meant study the Sound Prism.

  She sat on her bed and turned it around in her hand, tracing the silver band with her finger and peering into the hundreds of little holes. How was this ball of sound supposed to help her find the homunculus? Was it as simple as listening until she heard him? How would she recognize the homunculus’s voice when she did?

  If he even had a voice.

  Suddenly, she overheard her mother talking. The walls in their house were quite thick, and normally any sounds coming from downstairs were muffled and unintelligible. But Cass could hear her as plainly as if they were in the same room:

  “I always meant to tell her,” her mother was saying, “but it never seemed like the right time. And now she’s getting older, and I’m so afraid of losing her. . . . I know she’s a smart girl — she’ll figure it out, and what then?!”

  Her mother sounded frantic.

  Grandpa Larry, Cass thought. She’s talking to Grandpa Larry on the phone.

  And almost at the same time, she thought: my father! She’s talking about my father. What else could it be?

  “But I can already hear the sounds of a rebellious teenager,” her mother protested. “I can only imagine what she’ll be like next year — you know how daughters get with their mothers. And if I tell her, she’ll just have one more excuse to hate me. . . . Sure, she loves me NOW — you don’t think anything can change that?”

  Could anything change that? Cass wondered. What was her mother’s secret? Was her love for her mother so strong that it would survive anything?

  What if her father was a mass-murderer and he was in jail for life?

  Or what if — what if her mother had killed her father? They could have had a fight, and it was self-defense. Or maybe it was just an accident. Either way, her mother wouldn’t have wanted Cass to know.

  It fit the facts — you had to admit that.

  No, she was being ridiculous: her mother wasn’t a killer. And for all she knew, her mother’s secret had nothing to do with her father.

  Cass glanced with trepidation at the Sound Prism. She would have to be more careful about what she listened to in the future; some things you just didn’t want to hear.

  Later that night, when she was sure her mother was sound asleep, Cass snuck out the back of her house.

  The night air was surprisingly warm for the time of year, and she enjoyed the newfound sense of freedom as she walked along their high wooden fence to a certain patch of dirt behind the remains of an old doghouse.

  She hadn’t visited this spot in a few years, but when she was younger it had been a frequent hideout. She called it the Barbie Graveyard because it was where, one night when she was nine years old, she’d ceremoniously buried every single doll she had. She’d marked the site with a melted Barbie toaster.

  “They all died in an electrical fire,” she told her mother somberly. “I couldn’t save them.”

  That next day she’d declared herself a survivalist.

  Now, she had something else to bury.

  It had occurred to her that the Sound Prism might not be safe in her bedroom. What if the Midnight Sun broke in while she was asleep and she never had time to hide it?

  She tossed the Sound Prism back and forth in her hands as she looked for the best place to dig. At first, she barely heard the sound the Sound Prism was making. But when she held it still, she noticed that the sound stopped as well.

  She tossed the Sound Prism between her hands again. And there was the sound. Like singing. Why was it so familiar?

  Growing excited, Cass tossed the Sound Prism high into the air —

  As it spun, the Sound Prism emitted a strange and wonderful sort of music — music that sounded impossibly close and yet seemed to come from far, far away.

  Like the singing of fairies or sylphs.

  Like the ringing of a thousand tiny voices inside y
our ear.

  As soon as the Sound Prism fell back into her hand, Cass tossed it into the air again.

  She stared, listening.

  It was the song from her dreams.

  A note from a teacher can get you out of a myriad of difficulties — tardiness, say, or PE.

  Sadly, when it comes to a serious crime — like running away from a field trip — a note only helps if it absolves you of the crime; it doesn’t do you much good if it blames you for the crime.

  The note that Mr. Needleman (aka Owen) sent to Mrs. Johnson did not excuse their misadventure on the ocean. On the contrary, it explained that Cass and Max-Ernest had taken advantage of his good nature to escape from their class.

  Mr. Needleman claimed that he’d suffered “severe emotional trauma” while pursuing his “reckless” and “renegade” students. He was checking himself into a mental health facility; therefore, unfortunately, he did not expect to return before the end of term.

  He ended by saying he was considering suing the school for criminal negligence and suing Cass’s and Max-Ernest’s parents for raising criminals.

  Cass was horrified. She couldn’t believe Owen would write a letter like that. They would probably be suspended. Or even expelled! She’d been right not to trust him, after all, she told Max-Ernest.

  But Max-Ernest pointed out that Owen had only done what he had to do. “If he just talked about how great we were, Mrs. Johnson would think we forged it. And what would be the point of that?”

  As it turned out, Mrs. Johnson did not suspend the juvenile delinquents otherwise known as the heroes of this story.

  “Match the punishment to the crime, that’s my motto,” she said, staring imperiously at them from under a new royal blue hat, as they stood against the wall in her office like prisoners awaiting a firing squad. “Why should I give you time off from school for running away from school? Does that make sense to you?”

  Instead, Mrs. Johnson chose a far less pleasant course: detention.

  For the rest of the year.

  “Does that mean the whole year or just the school year?” Max-Ernest asked. “Also, do we have to sleep here, or do we get to go home at night?”

  Mrs. Johnson didn’t deign to answer.

  Cass tried to hide her smile.

  Detention.