Will shot me a dirty look, but Lloyd went on.
“And I told you I have one, too. Dan Lloeke is my brother—my twin brother. And Dan…well, let’s just say he’s done some awful things that we’re all paying for.”
“Your twin,” I repeated slowly.
“Yep,” Lloyd said, looking at me thoughtfully. “Jerome”—he waved in the general direction of where the man had disappeared in the crowd—“and I do this pretty regularly.”
Oh god. I knew I was giving myself away, but I didn’t care.
“But the shaved head—” I stuttered.
“We both went bald in our twenties.”
“And the tattoo—”
“Same band, different songs.”
“And…and the face.”
“Twins,” he said again. “Identical.”
Will just sat there in disbelief, trying to sort everything out from the pieces he was hearing.
I was quiet for a few moments before I confessed.
“I called the police. I thought—”
Lloyd waved his hand dismissively, before I could apologize.
“I understand, Spartacus,” he said, looking me in the eye. “You did everything you could. I would have done the same thing.”
As he said my name—my real name—I felt like I finally understood who I was.
After Lloyd drifted off and Will went to fetch my backpack, I had my first moment alone.
I felt like I’d been going at a hundred miles an hour since, well, since forever. I saw Zeda and the sideshow through the thinning crowd and she waved at me. I was smiling, waving back, when I remembered. I’d been going a hundred miles an hour since I lost Matilda.
Matilda.
I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about her.
I am the worst pseudo-boyfriend ever.
Ignoring what the SWAT guy had said about staying on the bench, I raced over to the first firefighter I saw.
“I need a ladder. My—well, my pet is up in a tree and she’s…she’s really important.”
Zeda jogged over to me while the firewoman fetched a ladder.
“What are you doing off your bench?” Zeda teased.
“I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier,” I began, my shoulders slumped. “Matilda—well, she got out.”
“Oh, no!” Zeda clapped her hand over her mouth. “I forgot about her!”
“She might still be in the last place I saw her, though,” I said trying to sound hopeful, but I couldn’t hide how dejected I felt. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said softly, surprising me by pulling me into a tight hug. When I pulled away, I saw she was crying.
Will appeared with Remmy and Robin and we all walked along with a panicked Zeda as I led three firefighters over to the funnel-cake stand.
“That old girl has got enough sense to survive anywhere.” Remmy was trying to comfort Zeda. Then he turned to me. “And don’t look so glum, kid. That Great Responsibility we talked about doesn’t mean you have to be a superhero and save everyone.”
“But it was just one lemur,” I sighed. “How could I not hold onto a single, tiny lemur?”
“Spiderman, as far as I know, never had to babysit an aye-aye,” Remmy said. “And, lemur or no, I sure think you’ve done more than your fair share of the hero work in the past few days.”
“I agree,” said Robin.
“Me, too,” sniffled Zeda, squeezing my hand again.
“Ditto,” said Will.
I looked around at the tired but hopeful faces and felt a bit of relief. There was nothing I could say. I was with friends—and they understood.
The firefighters leaned a ladder against the booth and Zeda called out: “Matiiiilda! Matilda? Here, girl!” She was wringing her hands so tight it was hard to watch.
I really, really hoped she was still up there. It was so dark and everything had been so crazy and loud. She had to be scared, being in a strange place, away from Zeda and the sideshow. They were the only family she had. She just had to be up there.
Will, seeing my shining eyes, reached out and put a heavy hand on my shoulder. I nodded back at him.
Then the five of us just stood there, looking up into the dark tree branches, listening as the firefighters rustled about. And then one of them let out a frightened yell:
“AAAAYEEE!”
Zeda clapped her hands, jumped up and down shouting, “Matilda! Matilda! Matilda!”
We all cheered. Zeda grabbed me in a bear hug. Relieved, I looked over Zeda’s shoulder at Will, who was giving me the thumbs-up.
Funny how it all turned out, this reuniting-families business. Zeda got Matilda…and I got Will.
Will was pretending to make out with his hand.
I snorted.
At least it was something.
Epilogue
After the police were through talking with us, the sideshow offered to give Will and me a ride to Brenville. I won’t ever forget the look on Dad’s face when he saw us getting out of that crazy sideshow bus. At first, he was angry with everyone. He yelled at me and Will and even Remmy and Robin. But he calmed down after they explained to him how I’d pretty much single-handedly brought down Bartholomew’s World-Renowned Circus of
The Incredible and International Crime Ring.
Then I couldn’t get Dad to shut up about it.
It was embarrassing. It didn’t help that the story was all over the Oregon news. It even made the national news. By the end of the first week, everyone in town had heard, and I couldn’t avoid the whispers of people saying, “Did you hear what Spartacus did?”
The Sideshow of Curiosities and Mayhem stuck around Brenville for a few days—they even did a few performances in the pool parking lot. It seemed like the whole town came to watch them at least twice.
The show was every bit as amazing as Remmy had said it was. I definitely thought Zeda’s fire-breathing routine was the best part.
But even though I was something of a hero, Dad didn’t think that completely made up for my running away. Will came up with a deal, though, where he’d share in my grounding. That way I’d only be grounded for the rest of the summer—and not the rest of my life.
It was pretty nice of him.
But then, it was pretty nice of me not to bring up the whole Will-sending-me-postcards story to Dad. But after all we’d been through together, we had a newfound respect for each other.
It took maybe two weeks of transition, but Will never called me Poop Lip again. Neither did anyone else—except for the guy at the gas station, but he’d always been weird. And, strangely enough, everyone thought the logical replacement for Poop Lip was Spartacus. It was like, over a week, I’d become someone else.
And not a single person brought up the pool incident—to my face at least, which was all I could hope for.
As for Eli, he was grounded for even longer than I was. Then again, it was because he took forever to read James Joyce’s Ulysses and write his book report for his parents.
“Eight hundred pages!” he’d exclaimed to me. “Eight hundred!”
I figured I was going to owe him for a long time to come, but he never complained or blamed me. In fact, when Dad sent me over to apologize to his parents, Eli greeted me with a triumphant smile and a couple of enthusiastic high-fives.
“We totally brought him down,” he said, and I grinned back.
Then his parents sent him up to his room. He gave me a thumbs-up as he slowly and comically backed out of the room. His parents just shook their heads.
And if his parents weren’t happy with him, they wanted to strangle me. I had to sit at the Carson dining room table and get chewed out by his father and mother, each of them speaking over the other in their rush to call me “reckless” and “irresponsible�
� and “out of control.”
It was a strange summer, to say the least.
I hadn’t been home long when I read the news online about Blue and White. They were let out on bail, but disappeared before their trial. Two crazy bats, out on the lam. I honestly wasn’t too worried about White coming after my skull to hold her yarn balls, like she’d threatened. But…even a whiff of vanillaroma air freshener made me jumpy.
I never heard from Hailey again. I tried to find her online, but she wasn’t anywhere to be found. I wished I could find out if she ever went home, or if she found someone to trust. For a while, every time I saw a semi-truck, I craned my neck to see if she was driving.
Eli and I weren’t allowed to talk until school started. We did, of course, we just had to be sneaky. We met at the fence a lot that summer, me slipping comic books and candy to him from the “outside.”
We also emailed each other strange new posts we found on IHateBartholomewsCircus.com. Someone was still updating the site. The posts had gotten more and more outrageous, including ridiculous stories about The Incredible’s temporary hiatus and exile to Asia. Even though we were fairly certain Bartholomew was the one updating the site as part of his evil plans, I couldn’t help checking it. It was as addictive as ever. And it made me feel like I was staying connected to Mom.
Mom.
I heard from Mom less than before, but it’s not hard to understand why. Her postcards came from places like Shanghai and Seoul. She said they were still “performing” (whatever that might have meant), but she never mentioned where. I guess with Interpol after you, you couldn’t be too precise in your postcards. And I’m sure they were all being read before they got to me, anyway.
It’s kind of hard facing the fact that the world is sometimes nothing like you think it is. I could make a mile-long list of things I’d gotten wrong—everything is so much easier to see in retrospect. Sure, it’s easy to say I made mistakes because I was just a kid who didn’t know any better. But if I learned anything from the whole experience with Bartholomew and my mom, it’s that you can’t ever be too sure about anything.
Just look at Will. I thought he was evil, without one redeeming quality. But after he realized what a crappy brother he’d been…everything changed. Will became, well, actually cool. We even started having fun together.
And then there was Dad. I’d always looked at him as the enemy, the one who practically drove Mom off. But what Mom had told me was the truth. He had stayed with us after she’d taken off. Sure, he was a big grump for a long time after she left, but, looking back on everything, I couldn’t really blame him. Dad was someone who’d loved and lost, but he was dealing with it the best he could. He loved Will and me, though. And he was trying. Especially after I came back, I could see he was trying. So I tried. And when he suggested I join the swim team in the fall, I humored him.
And my mom? Well, she wasn’t the person I thought she was. To say the least.
For a long time, lots of people would ask me about her. Teachers, kids, Eli, Zeda. Especially Zeda; she always grilled me for details. Whenever we saw each other (which was never enough), or talked on the phone (which was as often as we could), she had a hundred different questions for me.
“Do you hate her? Do you love her and hate her at the same time? Can you ever forgive her? What would you do if you saw her again?” Tough questions like that.
But it’s complicated.
I always think about what Lloyd told me on the phone once, when I asked him what it was like having such a messed-up brother.
He said, “You can hate what your family does, but you always have the choice to still love them like family.”
I guess that’s how I feel about Mom. I don’t like what she’s doing, but I don’t have a say in how she leads her life, do I? If I could stop her, I would. Honestly, just thinking about her and Bartholomew out there, together, makes me so mad sometimes. But I know that I still love her, and I always will. And I still haven’t given up hope that she might get tired of her dangerous life and come home someday. If she does, well, I’d take her back, no questions asked. (Though I can’t say the same thing about the cops or Dad.) Even after all she’s put me through, she’s still my mom.
And I love her.
And that’s one of the only things I am sure about.
Spartacus Ryan Zander and the Secrets of the Incredible Page 29
