The Secret of Zoom

by Lynne Jonell

“So . . .” Dorset traced a line in the dirt with her finger. “What’s it like to have a father?”

  Christina looked around the circle of children. The faces were all different, and yet every child had the same look: unwashed, uncared-for, eyes large and hungry.

  The small boy at Christina’s side tugged at her sleeve. “Not a Happy Orphan Daddy,” he whispered. “The real kind.”

  “Well,” Christina began, and stopped. What could she possibly say?

  The orphans inched closer, leaning in to hear.

  Christina tried again. “I guess . . . a real father keeps you safe.”

  A soft sigh went up from each orphan throat.

  “What about a mother?” asked a small girl with tangled hair and an upturned nose. “What does she do?”

  Christina gazed at the girl thoughtfully and reached out a hand. “A mother does a lot of things. Like this, for one.” She pulled the girl in close and began to comb gently through the tangled hair with her fingers.

  “Does she use ribbons?” asked the girl dreamily.

  “Sometimes,” said Christina. “If she has them.”

  “My mother would always have them.”

  A boy in a gray undershirt stirred restlessly. “She would not. Your mother abandoned you.”

  The girl under Christina’s hands snapped straight. “Well, so did yours!”

  “No,” said the boy, shaking his head. “I think maybe I was stolen.”

  “Me, too!”

  “That’s what happened to me!”

  “It did not, you bragger.”

  A babble of voices rose in heated discussion. A guard stepped outside the guardhouse, yawned and stretched, and began to stroll toward the orphan camp.

  Dorset stood up and rattled her tin can. “Come on, it’s time.”

  The children scrambled to their feet, picked up their cans, and shook awake the few orphans who were still asleep. In a moment, they had formed a ragged column and begun to march off the flat sleeping area and down the terraced steps to the mines.

  “Maybe when I was little, my mother was going to give me a ride in my stroller,” said the boy in the gray undershirt, hooking his can to his belt. “But then she had to go inside for something she forgot, and Lenny Loompski came along and stole me.”

  The girl who had wanted ribbons looked serious. “She shouldn’t have gone back inside.”

  “It was just for a minute,” said the boy. “She didn’t mean to.”

  On the edge of the orphan camp, behind a stone slab on the first terrace down, Christina found Danny sitting in the dust.

  She spoke softly, so as not to startle him. “Hi, Danny. My name’s Christina.”

  The big boy raised his face, his eyes dark brown pools of misery. “Steena?” He blinked and looked down again at his hands.

  “What’s that you have there?” Christina took a step closer.

  Danny opened his cupped hands to reveal a stone the size of a small egg. “Rocky.” He moved his big thumb over it, back and forth, as if he were petting something very fragile.

  Christina watched him for a moment. “I found something of yours,” she said. “Here.”

  Danny stared at the rubber cow, unbelieving. The rock fell from his hands as he reached for the toy, his face changing from hopeless misery to delight. “Bubby!” he cried. He pressed the cow to his cheek, his neck, his chest, and turned bright eyes to Christina. “Taff gave her to me!”

  “I know,” said Christina gently. “Taft is my friend, too.”

  “You know Taff?” Danny gazed at her. “Is he coming to get me?”

  Christina hesitated. Taft was stuck inside the mountain just as certainly as Leo and her mother were. He couldn’t sing the notes needed to get the planes activated again, even if the fuel tanks were filled to overflowing with zoom.

  “We are going to get him,” she said at last. “But not right this minute.”

  Danny scrambled to his feet. “When?” he asked urgently.

  “Soon,” said Christina, desperately hoping it was true. “Very soon.”

  “HEY! You, there!”

  Christina looked up to the rim’s edge where a guard, bored and sleepy, was scratching himself.

  “Get a move on!”

  Danny crammed Bubby the cow into the front of his shirt and obediently shambled down the stair-stepped path to the mine’s lower levels. Christina followed more slowly.

  The mines were like a big rough bowl beneath an endless gray sky. The top level was fissured with cracks where the zoom had been sung out already, by children or birds. Here and there, Christina could see a blackened crevice, where perhaps the children’s notes had been slightly off.

  She picked up a pebble and rapped sharply at a bit of lichen on the terrace wall, flaking it off. Would it look like she was working? She had no tin can.

  Just above her, amid the rocks that fenced the Starkian Ridge, something moved and ruffled. A harrier poked its smooth feathered head above its nest, roused, and opened its yellow beak, crying a protest at being disturbed.

  Below, the orphans’ voices all lifted together in an imitation of the cry, and Christina could hear the clink of tin cans as they were pressed against the rock. At her fingertips, a spot of zoom that had been beneath the lichen suddenly glistened, melted, and fell in drops to the ground with a pop! pop!

  “I heard that!” shouted the guard. “Someone’s wasting zoom!”

  The sun bumped above the mountains, throwing instant shadows, blue-gray and sharply edged. Christina moved like a cat into the deep shade of the rock wall, glanced over her shoulder, and slipped down to the next terrace, and then the next. She couldn’t afford to be noticed, if she ever wanted to rescue Taft and Leo and her mother. And she had to rescue them; she was the only one who even knew where they were, apart from Lenny and his guards.

  But how, how? She was just one girl against an evil man who seemed to have almost everyone on his side. She didn’t even know how she could rescue herself.

  A low-lying fog had settled in the deepest level of the mine, and Christina could see the heads of the orphans moving above it, ghostly in the swirling vapor. She hurried down the last few steps and ducked into the cold and clammy mist.

  Child-shaped forms moved past her like smudges in a cloud. Sound was echoed, magnified—harriers calling one to the other, children crying out like frightened birds, metal tapping stone. Christina huddled out of the way, her back against the terrace wall. She had to think. She had to plan.

  Instead, pictures of her father rose in her mind’s eye.

  Her father, rumpled and absentminded, patting her shoulder as he passed.

  Her father, rustling the morning paper, setting down his coffee to draw out a math problem on his napkin.

  Her father, anxious to do the right thing, carefully writing down her height, weight, dental appointments in the green scrapbook—knowing it wasn’t enough, but trying his best; her father, whose greatest desire was to keep her safe.

  Christina wanted nothing more than to run into the safety of his arms. If only he were here, right this minute, she would tell him everything and then he would come up with a good solution.

  She blinked until the moisture was gone from her eyes. All right, then, so her father wasn’t here. What would he do if he were?

  Well, he wouldn’t be sniveling uselessly. He would be looking at the problem step by step. Don’t worry about the final answer yet, he would tell her. What do you know right now that you can build on?

  Christina drew in the dirt with her finger. She knew a lot, actually. She knew all about Lenny Loompski’s horrible plans for the orphans. And Lenny didn’t know that she knew.

  That was an advantage.

  What else did she know that Lenny didn’t?

  He didn’t know who she really was. A dirty face and no braids had fooled him completely. Christina’s hand went to the back of her neck, touching her cropped hair, brushing against Taft’s shock collar . . .

  Wait! She ha
d forgotten the biggest advantage of all! Lenny and his guards didn’t know that her shock collar, the thing that kept the orphans penned up on the ridge, had been cut through and no longer worked!

  She fingered the duct tape where it joined the two ends. She had to keep the guards from noticing it. Luckily the tape was gray—everything in this place was gray, it seemed—and her hair was just long enough to cover it, if she didn’t bend forward.

  That was her solution. She just had to wait for a moment when the guards weren’t paying attention and then slip over the ridge and hike down the mountain. She would go for help—she would find her father—

  She would have to be careful not to go off the cliff, though. The side of the mountain where she had been stranded in the plane was way too steep for anyone but a mountain goat. No, she would have to look for a safer way down. Of course she couldn’t use the road.

  But what if her father was still in jail?

  And what if Lenny had guards waiting at her house?

  Christina poked at a hole in the knee of her jeans. She did not want to think about guards that might be waiting for her somewhere.

  There was a second hole on the other knee, and a jagged rip just above it. Christina brushed the frayed edge back and forth, marveling.

  She had never played hard enough to get holes in her clothing before. After all the times she had watched other children on the playground, skinning their knees and wearing holes in their pants playing Chase and Tap, she had finally gotten outside and done things, too—climbed trees, run after garbage trucks, explored caves, slid down into mountains.

  But she had not wanted to be chased, or grabbed, or kept prisoner for real. And the kids at Dorf Elementary had a teacher to run to if they got hurt or were scared.

  Christina lifted her head, struck by this idea. If she could find the school, could she run to a teacher for help?

  Yes—yes, she could! She could ask for old Mrs. Lisowsky! Her music teacher would believe and help her, surely. All she had to do was find just one grown-up who would listen, who would tell the police and everyone else that Lenny Loompski was not what he pretended to be.

  The fog was thinning. Christina stood up. She would keep her eye out for the best way off the ridge, but in the meantime, the most important thing was to blend in with the orphans. She had to get a tin can.

  “Dorset!” she hissed, recognizing the girl passing a few yards away. Christina strode quickly toward her—and stumbled on a rock she didn’t see. She staggered, twisting, and fell heavily on her right shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” Dorset’s concerned face appeared above her. “You can’t move fast in fog, you know.” She peeled back Christina’s shirt and examined her shoulder. “You have to feel with your feet before you step. You’d better learn, because we get a lot of fog here, with all the streams running through the rock.”

  Christina tried not to moan aloud. “Now you tell me,” she managed, gritting her teeth against the pain. “I think I broke my whole shoulder.”

  Dorset’s fingers pushed and prodded. “You’re bleeding. And you’ll have a good bruise. You might have pulled a muscle, too. But I don’t think you cracked anything.”

  “Stop—moving it,” Christina gasped. “I believe you.”

  Dorset sat back on her heels. “If you tell a guard, they might give you an extra rag for a bandage.”

  “No.” Christina struggled to sit up. “No guards. If they get that close, they might notice—”

  “Notice what?”

  Christina hesitated. Then she bent forward, lifting her hair off the nape of her neck.

  Dorset took in her breath sharply. She touched the duct tape with reverent fingers. “Can you cut mine? Do you have a knife?”

  Christina nodded. “But no duct tape. It’s back on the truck.”

  Dorset leaned forward. “What are you going to do?” she whispered. “How can I help?”

  Christina told her. It took some time.

  The last rags of fog drifted away. Dorset, her whole face alive with excitement, helped Christina to her feet. “I know where there’s an extra tin can.”

  “But that’s Joey’s can!” said a boy with a snub nose and dark thick hair. “She can’t take it. You said we’d leave it there to remind us.”

  More orphans gathered behind Christina and Dorset, staring mutely at the blackened entrance to the underground mine. To the left was a box of candles and matches; to the right, a small pile of stones, carefully stacked, and a battered and dented tin can. Someone had put the flowering tops of a few straggling weeds in it and filled it with water.

  “Hey! Orphans!”

  Every face looked up. The shouting guard, silhouetted at the mine’s top, put his hands on his hips. “Breakfast!”

  “Listen,” said Dorset to the gathered children, rapidly and low. “We’ll always remember Joey. Every one of us piled a stone here in his honor. But this girl needs a tin can so no one knows she’s a spy.”

  “A spy?” The word went from mouth to mouth like a whispering breeze.

  “And she’s going to help us get off this mountain. But we have to help her, first.”

  “Orphans! NOW!” yelled the guard.

  “Go, go!” urged Dorset. “And don’t look so happy or the guards will know something’s up!”

  The children filed up the stairs, pulling their mouths down as best they could. But their eyes were bright and their backs straight with joy.

  “Better tell them to slump,” murmured Christina. Dorset nodded, looking worried, and ran up the side of the line, whispering as she went.

  Christina picked up the tin can. Gently, she laid the flowers to one side, poured out the water, and turned to go. Then, hesitating, she turned back.

  She laid one more stone on the little cairn. She said a brief prayer.

  She ran up the stairs after the orphans, a lump in her throat.

  CHRISTINA cleared the rim and saw before her the flat sleeping space of the orphan camp and the dead remains of the night’s fire, a pile of white flaky ash that smelled of smoke. She joined the line of orphans forming near the guardhouse, where a rough wooden table held a large, steaming pot and a stack of bowls. The garbage truck, parked in the small lot at the end of the road, added its own distinct aroma to the air.

  Christina shuffled forward as the line moved, carefully shifting her eyes from side to side. Up above the cone with the opening to the cavern, the tall slabs of rock ringed the camp like prehistoric fangs. Beyond, she knew, was the cliff. She couldn’t escape that way.

  Of course the gravel road was on a more gradual slope and curved down into the forest. But she would be all too easy to catch on the road.

  Splat. Christina looked down at the thin, lumpy, whitish gruel in her bowl. It looked like library paste.

  She dipped her spoon in. It tasted like library paste. No wonder Taft had been so enthusiastic about the blueberry pie. She gave her bowlful to the child next to her—the garbage truck had taken away her appetite, anyway—and glanced back over her shoulder.

  On the far side of the terraced mines, the rocks weren’t so high, and beyond them she could see trees sloping down. That would be the best way to go, if only she could get there without attracting notice.

  But it was impossible to get to the far side with the guards watching at the rim.

  The children worked the mines all day long, the heat baking off the bare rocks in shimmering waves. In her efforts to blend in, Christina sang just like the other orphans, collecting only a little zoom. She didn’t want anyone to notice anything special about her.

  Her shoulder ached steadily. Her socks were shredded from the hard, stony ground, and her feet, unused to going barefoot, were tender. At noon, she washed the blood off her shirt in one of the little rivulets that trickled through the rocks. Blood might draw someone’s attention.

  She got hungrier as the day went on. The half slice of stale bread at lunchtime was not what she had been hoping for, and by suppertime she
was ravenous.

  But it was almost sunset before the children were finally allowed to trudge up the wearisome steps, half asleep and faint with hunger, and told to line up in rows.

  The pickup truck full of food—well, partly full—was now parked in the lot next to the garbage truck. Christina stared at it with a mixture of dread and longing. Would anyone notice that some of the food was missing? And, more important, would she and the others get anything decent to eat, at long last?

  The guard Barney was in and out of the garbage truck cab, cleaning the windows and side mirrors. He whistled between his teeth, first sloshing a rag into a sudsy bucket, then pulling a rubber squeegee across the windshield with a satisfying squeak.

  He looked positively carefree. But as Lenny Loompski’s long black car pulled up the gravel road, he stopped whistling. He polished a little harder.

  Was he getting the garbage truck ready for tomorrow? Christina tried to remember everything she had heard. They’d had an order for zoom . . . it would be sung out of the plastic toys . . .

  A car door opened with a creak. “Oh, wonderful!” cried a gentle, quavering voice. “An orphan choir on a mountaintop!”

  Startled, Christina whipped around. Emerging from the car was a small, wrinkled woman, a little hunched over, with a fuzz of light red hair and the look of an inquisitive bird.

  What on earth was Mrs. Lisowsky doing here?

  “But I’m afraid I’ve lost my glasses.” The music teacher ducked into the car again and felt around with her hands.

  Christina chewed on her lip. She had wanted to find her music teacher and ask for help. But she couldn’t possibly say anything in front of Lenny and his guards.

  “Attention, Happy Orphans!” Lenny got out of the car and stood with his arms open wide. “Now I know you have undoubtedly stuffed yourself full of supper—”

  “We haven’t had any,” said a small voice, instantly shushed.

  Lenny gave a fierce scowl and a jerk of his chin, and one of the guards instantly clapped a hand over the speaker’s mouth, hefted him like a sack of potatoes, and carried him off, struggling silently.