Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible

by Elwood, Molly;

  I put the canvas back the way it had been in case the driver looked in while I was sleeping. Then I ate a granola bar and drank some water. I hate to say it, but I relieved myself in the corner of the truck near the door. I didn’t have much of a choice. At least the pee seemed to trickle out the back door.

  I set the box off to the side and wedged myself back behind the cage. I wished I knew how long the drive would take, but all I could figure was that it took nine hours to get from Albuquerque to Las Vegas, and Portland had to be at least twice as far.

  

  I’d burrowed into the canvas next to the cage and must have slept for eight hours straight before I woke up with a jolt. We weren’t moving, but there was no way we were there yet, either. The driver was talking on his phone, right outside the back of the truck. “Keith? Yeah, it’s me. Just crossed into Oregon. This drive is killing me. Yeah, I’m busting my balls to get there. This is such a waste of my time. They should have just bought the stupid animal a plane ticket.”

  There was a pause. Then,

  “How big is it? It’s, well, it’s huge. Looks like a tall goat.”

  Like a goat? I frowned.

  “Oh, the cage. Let me go measure it.”

  My blood ran cold. He was going to find me. I felt completely exposed, even from my spot behind the cage. I pressed myself further into the corner as the door trundled up, letting the morning light shine in.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting out my tape measure. Geez, it smells back here.”

  I held my breath, waiting for the sound of him climbing in the back, but it didn’t come. I did hear the measuring tape hitting the ground outside.

  “Yeah, I’d say it’s…five feet by…four feet…by four feet.”

  What? Was he just making it up?

  I didn’t dare look—and apparently, he didn’t either. At Matilda, that is.

  He was scared of Matilda, so he was just making it up!

  “You got that? Good. Well, yeah, she was pointing her stupid hoof at me the whole time, but I don’t give a crap. So, I’ll be about five more hours…Yeah, this should be a cinch compared to last time. Silverware’s a lot easier to haul than paintings, that’s for sure.”

  What had he said? Silverware’s a lot easier to haul than…? Paintings!

  “Well, Bart’s gotta do some of his own legwork. It was too close last time. Yeah, well that’s a bunch of bull—” The slam of the truck door cut off the rest.

  I would have bet anything that they were talking about the Georgia O’Keeffe paintings they had stolen in Santa Fe. If I hadn’t had enough proof already, this conversation sure sealed the deal. I wasn’t imagining it all. But what was that about silverware?

  The truck came to life and started moving again.

  I leaned back on my backpack, and, try as I might to think about the robberies, I began thinking about the sideshow.

  Okay, I thought about Zeda.

  She actually kissed me.

  That’s when I remembered the tattoo she’d been drawing—I hadn’t even had a chance to look at it! I got out the flashlight, shined it on my arm, and grinned. She’d drawn a lion, shouldering his way through flames, with Spartacus written on a waving banner beneath it. I sighed just looking at it. It really was cool.

  After I’d stared at the tattoo long enough, I started to get my stuff together. I emptied out my backpack and separated the things I’d need from the stuff I could get rid of. I couldn’t believe I’d packed so much useless—and heavy—junk. Will’s scout handbook, for example. Sure, it explained how to make knots and eat off the land and store water, but why did I think I was going to need that?

  Sure, just steal my stuff, Poopy. It was Will’s voice, threatening me. I’ll get even sooner or later.

  Maybe I did need to learn something from the book. Like, how to barricade a bedroom door.

  As I thumbed through it, a thick piece of paper came loose and fell into my lap.

  It was a blank postcard.

  

  I shook Will’s book, and five more blank postcards slipped out. They were all from different places, places with weird names. Dynamite, Washington; Stop, Arkansas; Asylum, Pennsylvania; Covert, New York; Murder Bay, D.C.; Hazard, Nebraska.

  No. It wasn’t possible.

  I flipped the cards over, scanning them quickly. On the back of one card, dated ahead for mid-July, there was this message:

  Hello, Spartacus!

  Wwell! Everythhing is going greeat out herre on thee roaad. Had a grreeat crowd on the fourth of Julyy—so many peoople! Tell Will hi and give youur dad a hug, ok??

  Love,

  Mom

  It was a really simple code. All you had to do was read the doubled letters to spell, “Where are you?” As in, why haven’t I come to rescue her yet, I guess.

  But the messages didn’t matter anymore. I stared at the cards. There was only one explanation for them: Will had sent me the postcards—the ones I thought Mom was sending to ask for help.

  No. No. No.

  “No!” I finally growled through gritted teeth.

  I was beyond seething. Beyond rage. Those words don’t begin to describe what I felt. Even “seething, white-hot rage” doesn’t cut it. I was so angry, I was seeing through time.

  Mom hadn’t been kidnapped at all! And Will was—well, Will was the most hateful, rotten, arrogant, gutless, goat-faced, moronic, maggot-infested garbage pile to ever ooze across the face of the earth.

  Sometimes I wished there were better words.

  It was probably a good thing I was trapped in the back of that truck. If I’d had any room to move or stuff to throw, I would have started destroying things—like my fists, trying to punch a building over.

  “‘Where are you?’” I spat out, repeating Will’s secret postcard message. Oh, Will, just you wait. I’ll be there soon enough.

  In my mind, I was already home and in Will’s room destroying every single trophy in the World of Fartcraft with a sledgehammer. I was shredding the sports posters that plastered his walls. I was ripping his mattress apart with my bare hands. See a common theme here? Destruction. I wasn’t Poop Lip anymore. I wasn’t Ryan. I wasn’t even Spartacus. I was The Destroyer.

  Yeah, “seething rage” doesn’t quite cover all that.

  I stomped around in the back of the truck, making up new curse words and fantasizing about which of Will’s prized possessions I’d break first. When I added it all up, the day-to-day crap, the swimming pool trick, and now this? I mean, what was wrong with him?

  I took a deep breath. Then another. Trying to clear my head. Trying to think.

  Breathe. Instant Calm Breath Method.

  Breathe in for four counts. Hold it for four. Breathe out for four…

  Forget about Will for a minute, Spartacus. Just think about what this means for the plan.

  

  I already talked about how my mom was always doing odd things. There was the jumping off the roof, of course. And the time I found her karate-chopping boards in half in the garage. And the time she practiced kickboxing with a mannequin she got from the mall.

  It wasn’t until after she showed me her audition video, about a year before she disappeared, that she opened up to me. One day I came home to find her throwing knives at a dartboard in the backyard. She was going to stop, but I convinced her not just to keep going, but to teach me as well.

  We spent the next few hours throwing knives. She showed me how to hold them so I wouldn’t hurt myself, how to feel the weight of the knife, how to fling it with just the right amount of spin. Then Will and Dad got home. Dad discovered us in the yard and hollered at Mom and we had to stop. That’s how a lot of our time together ended.

  I wasn’t good at knife throwing that day, but despite Dad forbidding it, I practiced on my own in secret and got a lot better. I decided to
surprise her, to show her I had a crazy side, too. I got a couple of library books on it and read about it online. Then, I practiced using our steak knives and the side of the shed. After a few months of chucking knives, I finally felt ready to show Mom what I could do.

  And I’ve already explained how Mom could be weird sometimes. But there was more than knife-throwing weird or elk-riding weird; those was okay with me. But weird like—well, let me explain.

  Ever since the accident, she had these headaches that kept her in bed for days. Other times, she wouldn’t sleep at all. Sometimes, she said, the ringing in her ears was too loud to hear anything. When she was having one of these “spells,” Mom was irritated and just wanted to be alone.

  She was smack dab in the middle of one of these episodes when I said I wanted to show her something. I don’t know why I asked her then—maybe I thought it would cheer her up. She had a migraine, but still agreed to come out back with me.

  Mom stood there in her robe with her arms crossed while I pinned my target to the shed—a shark photo from National Geographic (which is funny, when I think about it now). I stepped ten paces away from it. Then I did Mom’s Instant Calm Breath Method to ready myself for the throw. I pulled back the knife, aimed, and let it fly.

  It stuck right in the shark’s forehead.

  “Splendid spin,” she breathed. “Impressive.”

  I’d definitely chosen the wrong time to show her, because that’s all she said. Then, she patted me on the back, and turned to go inside. But I couldn’t let her just go back in. I needed to ask her something. I felt like I’d earned the right to ask her this—maybe that’s why I’d been working on the knife throwing all along.

  “What happens if you get into the circus?” I blurted out, my words almost running together.

  She turned back to me and smiled weakly.

  “Well, it’s not easy to get in. It’s a long shot for me to make it. I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

  She didn’t get what I was asking, so I said what I meant: “Will we get to see you?”’

  Her eyes went bright for that moment, like she was really there with me and not thinking about her bed.

  “Of course you’d get to see me, Spartacus,” she said, looking at me. Her voice was soft, but clear. “You’d see me a lot. And I’d come and see you. We’d still be together. I promise.”

  She even put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed it before turning to go back inside.

  But that’s what she said: “I promise.”

  And she had never broken a promise.

  What I’m trying to say is this: My mom was bizarre. That’s pretty clear by now, I guess. Maybe it was because of the car accident. Maybe it was a midlife crisis. Maybe she’d always been that way. Who knows? But whatever she was, she cared about me. And she wasn’t a liar. Something must have been really wrong for her to break her promise.

  So that’s why I had to keep going, no matter what.

  Even if Mom hadn’t been asking for my help. Even if the postcards weren’t true. Even if there had been no destroyed house, no Black Van, no Not-Mom. Even if Bartholomew hadn’t been involved in robbing museums. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Mom would have visited me and Will if she could.

  So what did Will’s prank with the postcards change?

  Absolutely nothing.

  I still had to make sure my mom was okay.

  

  When I was calm again, I lifted the canvas on the cage and fed Matilda some grubs (all I can say is Ewwww). After she finished eating, she lay down against the bars with her body warm against my thigh. I sat there and petted her surprisingly soft fur, trying to clear my mind. As mad as I was, I couldn’t afford to spend all my energy plotting against Will. I needed to focus on what was coming up, what I was about to face in Portland. Bartholomew was today. Will could wait until tomorrow.

  So there in the dark, I tried my best to sit still and meditate like a monk. As I concentrated, my plan began evolving, improving. When the final idea came, though, it gave me a rush of chills. I was almost too scared to even think about it, but as I tentatively turned the thought over and over again in my mind, I realized it was fairly airtight. That, and it meshed perfectly with my reckless mood.

  It was good. This new plan just might work.

  

  By four in the afternoon, it was time to put my plan into action—and I was more than ready to get out of that hot, stinking truck. We might arrive in Portland at any time, and when I got out of the truck, I’d have to hit the ground running. Literally.

  With that in mind, I decided to leave the suitcase behind. It would just slow me down and make me look even more suspicious—besides, I had another way to get Mom out.

  The first thing I had to do was use Nero’s face paint to cover the freckle on my lip. It wasn’t a “disguise,” but it would help. Next, I gathered everything I was going to keep with me and stuffed it into the side pockets of my backpack. I left the main part empty so there would be a nice, big-ish place for Matilda.

  Yep, I thought to myself with self-loathing. Just gonna carry a wild animal in my backpack. Brilliant, Poopy.

  Apparently, in my darkest moments, I still thought of myself as Poop Lip.

  Okay, this wasn’t the best plan. First of all, Matilda was an endangered species. How many aye-ayes did Zeda say were even left? Like, a thousand? What if I squished her in the bag or something? But with how she looked—patchy fur and giant yellow eyes—well, I couldn’t just carry her around in public.

  “I bet you have a great personality, though,” I said. Matilda blinked shyly, the flashlight’s beam making her delicate, crinkly black ears glow pinkish. She reached out with her long finger and touched the door latch, her whiskers quivering.

  Think about Zeda. You’re doing this for Zeda.

  Before I lost my nerve, I fished Zeda’s key out of my pocket and flung open the cage door. Matilda didn’t hesitate either—she scrambled right up my pant leg and into my arms.

  I cringed as she sniffed my face with her damp, pug nose. “You’re—you’re just like a slow-moving cat, aren’t you?” I said, trying to make myself feel better.

  After that, Matilda and I sat in the dark, the backpack open in front of us. I ate the last two granola bars and gave some water to Matilda, who slurped it straight from the bottle.

  That’s when the truck started to slow down. I put a mildly annoyed Matilda in the backpack (after distracting her with some more grubs), and got into position.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The look on the driver’s face when I burst out from the truck, screaming, “Yahhhh!”?

  Priceless.

  I streaked off like a madman through a parking lot filled with midnight blue trucks. Printed on each of them, in red, curvy letters, was Bartholomew’s World-Renowned Circus ofThe Incredible.

  There was no mistake—I was finally in the right place!

  But I didn’t slow down. I ran and ran. I ran until the circus was out of sight. When I finally ran out of gas, I was in a park next to a river.

  “Yesss!” I whispered out loud. I was so proud of myself. I was panting and slowed to a speed walk, feeling more than a little cocky. That is, until I saw a poster with my face on it, stuck to a lamppost. Then another one.

  Not good.

  I immediately tore down the Missing Child fliers and stuffed them in a trashcan.

  I don’t know how the fact that I was still a missing kid had slipped my mind—I’d only been worried about Bartholomew catching me—how was I going to do this if everyone else was looking for me, too? All my nervousness came flooding back. I yanked Will’s baseball hat further down on my head and looked away from people as we passed.

  I saw another Missing sign, this one inside a shop window. Guilt washed over me. I’d probably messed up Dad’s whole week—and yes, even wo
rried him—but I had to push that feeling away. If everything played out according to plan, I’d be forgiven in just a few hours. Mom would be home and Bartholomew’s secret would be uncovered for everyone to see. I took in a shaky breath and kept going.

  The park curved with the river and I walked until I could look back and see the circus. It was set up right at the edge of the park, with the sprawling blue and red tent backed up against the water. It looked just like the picture from Bartholomew’s website.

  It’s funny; I knew I would catch up to the circus at some point, but I didn’t imagine how it would feel, seeing it in real life. I thought I’d feel a little bit of amazement, but all I could feel was anger.

  I couldn’t watch very long, though—by now, the guy from the truck must have told everyone about the screaming kid jumping out at him, not to mention the missing animal. I needed to get out of the area for a bit.

  As if reading my mind, Matilda started scritching around inside the backpack. I reached back and absentmindedly patted the bag, hoping she wasn’t getting too rattled around in there. But my mind was racing. Would Bartholomew’s people connect me with Matilda? Maybe, if Not-Mom and Sharkman had told Bartholomew about our run-in in Albuquerque.

  Don’t think about it, I told myself. You can’t change what Bartholomew might or might not know. Not now.

  But I still didn’t have a good grasp on what I was going to do with Matilda once I was inside the circus—not to mention during the rescue.

  And why did you promise this again?

  Well, I knew why. Zeda. Now I had to deal with it. Sure, Matilda was a small hiccup in The Plan—a tiny, balding wildcard. But the rest? I had the rest figured out.

  

  Portland is five hours away from Brenville—and they are about as different as they could be. Portland has skyscrapers and green parks and seems to sprawl forever. Will and I had been to Portland a few times with Mom. Dad hated the city and never went, but Mom loved it. She would take us to these hole-in-the-wall places to eat noodles, to renovated warehouses to buy stacks of used books, or to outdoor markets to hunt down bargain hula-hoops and old trunks and other used junk.