The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  “It makes me dizzy,” said Lucy.

  “That’s because you haven’t eaten,” said Jasper.

  “None of us has,” said Noah.

  “So let’s decide what we’re going to do,” said Jasper.

  “Well,” said Faye, indignantly. Even her stomach was betraying her. “I’ll just have to walk to Cousin Katharine’s and explain.”

  “We’re all going,” Jasper said, putting his hand on her arm. “We’re not going to let you go on your own.” Faye looked into Jasper’s eyes and he let go of her arm—not because she glared at him, but because she almost smiled.

  “How would you carry everything?” asked Lucy.

  “You’ll need our help,” said Noah.

  Faye had to admit she would need help. “Well, all right. We’ll think better after we get some food in our noisy bellies. Who can think with all that racket, anyway?”

  “After we eat, we should all meet here with our satchels,” said Jasper. “Do you have the address, Faye?”

  “Yes,” said Faye, rummaging in her pockets. She pulled out an old yellowed card. “This is from Aunt Susan. She sent it years ago for my mother’s birthday. I kept it because of the painting on the front. It’s an eagle soaring on the wind. The address is Seven Hawthorn Street.”

  “A hawthorn is a tree,” said Lucy, excitedly. “It can’t be far.”

  After filling their bellies, the children set about devising their plan. They were going to find Seven Hawthorn Street and talk to Faye’s cousins. But first, they had to be sure the nannies would not follow.

  “You’ll have to do it,” moaned Lucy. “I can’t bear to do it myself.” Her fingers, nails nibbled to the quick, received the brunt of her anxiety.

  “I’ll do it,” said Jasper.

  The plan was simple. Each child would tell their nanny they were going to the other’s house. Faye would say she was going to Noah’s, Noah would say he was going to Wallace’s, and Jasper would say he and Lucy were going to Faye’s.

  But Lucy was miserable. Having a memory like hers, Jasper often thought, was like carrying the truth of the world in your head. Lucy could not bear dishonesty. And it especially pained her to fib to people she loved.

  Even so, the children went ahead with the plan. Soon, with great care and sneakiness, they all met, hidden by some of the shrubbery near Noah’s house.

  “Do you think the men in black know that your cousin is in the neighborhood?” asked Jasper. They were counting down the minutes until the next black carriage would pass. They wanted to know exactly how much time they had, because they were not moving very fast with all of the bundles.

  “They could not know,” said Faye. “We haven’t seen them in years. We have different names. My mother probably has a relative in every city in the world.”

  In one fell swoop, the children made a dash as soon as the black carriage turned the corner. They ran until they were hidden by the trees lining the street of the next block.

  “The houses look empty,” Jasper said as they walked more slowly down the next block. It was true. There were no signs of life in any of the neighboring houses.

  Most of the journey was spent running and dropping and reorganizing the blanket-wrapped packages. They were heavy and awkward and cumbersome to carry. The house was about seven blocks away, but it felt a lot farther. At least Lucy knew exactly where the street was.

  It took all of nineteen minutes.

  “That was easy,” said Jasper, catching his breath, letting his package rest against his legs. They stood in front of the house.

  “And I thought I was the funny one,” said Noah, leaning over to catch the stitch in his side.

  Faye hurried up to the front door. She knocked. And waited. Then knocked again. A small boy of about four years old answered the door.

  “I didn’t know Katharine had any children,” Faye said, bewildered. “In fact, I didn’t know she was married.”

  “Mommy!” the little boy screamed. “There are very big children at the door and they don’t know me!”

  A lovely woman in a bright yellow dress came hurrying out from what was most likely the kitchen. She wiped her hands on her apron, her face dusted with flour.

  “May I help you?” asked the woman in a pleasant voice. The little boy hid behind her skirt, thumb firmly planted in his mouth.

  “You aren’t my cousin Katharine,” Faye said.

  “No, I am not,” the woman said, still smiling.

  “I’m very sorry,” Faye said, collecting herself. “I was looking for—”

  “Of course,” the woman said, smiling. “I’m sorry, Katharine does not live here.”

  Faye’s heart sank. How stupid, she thought. How could she have been so foolish as to expect her family to still be living there? It had been her fault, leading them here, giving them hope, making them believe. It had been her stupid pride that had made her believe she would be the one to save everyone. Now they were standing there with nowhere to go.

  And they felt helpless. Would they be captured by Reginald Roderick Kattaning? Would they ever see their parents again? Heads down, their burdens suddenly impossibly awkward and unbearably heavy, the children turned to leave.

  “Wait, dears,” called the pleasant lady. “You’re looking for Seven Hawthorn, aren’t you? You see, this is Nine Hawthorn.”

  Five hearts skipped five beats.

  The woman smiled and continued. “Many people make that mistake. I keep meaning to fix our address plate. That English ivy is a terror. I can never keep it under control. It grows over everything, including the address and, on top of that, one of the numbers is broken.”

  Faye looked at the house number and saw that, indeed, the ivy was covering part of the number, and the big chip really did make a “7” out of the “9.”

  “So, there still is a Katharine?” asked Lucy. “And a number seven?”

  “That’s the house there, next door,” the smiling woman said, pointing. “There is indeed a Katharine. She’s a teacher, I believe. Is that who you’re looking for?”

  Faye nodded again.

  “Well, I saw her not long ago, watering the daffodils in the front garden. She should be home, dear.”

  They all thanked the woman and, carrying the suddenly less awkward and quite manageable bundles, hurried next door.

  On the porch was an elderly man in a large chair. The man was snoring away, emitting large snorts, his chin moving his white beard as he mumbled, and his great moustache fluttering in the wake of his snorfling, threatening to find its way into his mouth.

  Faye ran up the steps to the porch and knocked loudly on the door. Noah walked over to the man, curious to see whether or not he would in fact inhale his grand moustache.

  The door was opened by a very elderly woman. Faye knew this was not Aunt Susan, because Aunt Susan had died years before. She also knew it was not Katharine because Katharine was not at all an old lady.

  “Yes?” the old woman said.

  “I’m looking for my cousin Katharine,” said Faye.

  “The bishop ain’t to be disturbed,” she said, wagging her finger inches from Noah’s face. Noah sheepishly returned to the doorway, having clearly invaded the space of the sleeping old man.

  “That’s Uncle Milton!” said Faye with excited recognition.

  “‘The bishop’?” Jasper asked Faye softly.

  “Uncle Milton was a bishop,” she whispered back. Louder, she said, “I’d like to see Cousin Katharine, please.” She tried to give a smile to the grumpy old lady. It didn’t seem to work.

  “Not here,” said the woman with a prominent Irish lilt. “You her students?”

  “No, I’m her cousin,” said Faye.

  “Don’t look like her,” the woman said, suspiciously.

  Faye’s hand went to her face. With her dark olive skin and, of course, her accent, colored with Indian and British pronunciations, she really didn’t look or sound anything like Katharine.

  “My mother is Gw
endolyn—”

  “Ah, the one what’s gone and moved across the sea,” the woman said knowingly. “Went and married that foreigner, ain’t it?”

  How this Irish woman, with a voice like a grouchy leprechaun, could consider someone else, anyone else, a foreigner was beyond Faye’s understanding.

  “Yes,” Faye said, now anxious. “Do you know where my cousin is? How we might find her? It’s rather urgent.”

  “Course I know,” the woman said. “I’m the housekeeper. I keep the house. Course I know where everyone is.”

  “Lovely,” said Faye. “Would you be so kind as to tell us?”

  The old woman gave them a piercing stare, looking each one of them dead in the eyes. Then she turned to Faye.

  “Thems with you?” she asked, nodding toward the others.

  “Yes,” said Faye.

  “Well, Miss Katharine’s with her brothers at the shop.” With that, the old woman began to close the door.

  “Wait, the shop? What shop? Where is it?” Faye asked, grabbing hold of the door.

  “Twenty-Two South Williams Street,” the woman said, again trying to close the door.

  “Where is that?” asked Faye, again stopping her.

  “You go right a few blocks, left, then west up and down that way.” The old woman pointed this way and that, and then she peeled Faye’s fingers from the door and closed it with a decisive bang.

  “Actually, it’s left three blocks and then right,” said Lucy, looking up at the others with an almost apologetic grin.

  “Well, if I had to pick between Lucy and that old woman as the one to follow,” Noah said, stepping over to stand beside Lucy, “I’d pick Lucy, any day.” Lucy beamed.

  With that, the children picked up their satchels and headed in the opposite direction from where the old woman pointed. After several left and right turns, they found themselves on a rather busy street.

  “We passed South Williams loads of times,” said Lucy, “and I’ve seen the shop at number twenty-two.”

  “Even if you hadn’t, Lucy,” said Jasper, pointing across the street, “how many shops on South Williams could there be?”

  “It’s her!” said Faye, jumping up and down. There, on the corner, was a shop, and in the front, bending over a bicycle, was Cousin Katharine. Faye rushed across the street, minding the traffic, with the other four quickly, but carefully, following.

  Faye shouted, “Katharine!”

  Katharine stood up. Her dark hair was pulled back and mostly hidden beneath a light hat. At first, she did not seem to recognize Faye, but then, all at once, she grew a marvelous smile that lit up her whole face.

  “Is this my little Faye?” she asked, hugging her cousin tight. Faye was almost as tall as she was.

  “Oh, I’m so glad to find you,” said Faye from the depths of Katharine’s embrace.

  Katharine looked around. “Where are your parents?” she asked. “And who are these fine young people?”

  “These are my schoolmates. Mother and Father... well, they’re working on a project. But we must talk...” Faye looked around, then whispered, “And we must talk in private.”

  “All right.” Katharine thought for a moment. “Come with me,” she said.

  The bicycle shop was full of gears and drawings and parts, as well as finished bicycles. They looked lovely. There were even a couple tandems—bicycles built for two riders. Several men were working at benches and testing wheels. One sketched something at a drafting table.

  “I thought you were a teacher,” Faye said.

  “I am,” Katharine said, “but I help my brothers out here at the shop when I can. I love to ride and tinker. Mother always taught us the pleasures of working with our hands.”

  The children followed Katharine to the back room and closed the door behind them.

  “Right,” Katharine said. “Tell me, what is going on?”

  It took several minutes to explain to Katharine what had transpired. They left out several details. Many, in fact. They divulged no information about what their parents were doing. They didn’t know anyway. About Reginald Roderick Kattaning, they said simply he was in pursuit of their creation and that he was not a very nice man. Of the Young Inventors Guild, they told her nothing.

  “We’ve been led to believe our project would be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands,” said Faye, cryptically. “It might bring about problems for those closest to it, and to our parents, if it were discovered.”

  “What are you saying, Faye?” said Katharine.

  “It’s just that we’ve created something very powerful, and it must be kept secure,” said Jasper. “We can’t keep it where we’re staying.”

  “And what is this invention?” Katharine asked, looking worried. “A weapon?”

  The children looked at one another, and then at Faye.

  “Faye, you should do the honors,” said Wallace.

  Faye slowly unwrapped her satchel. The others followed.

  Forty minutes later, Katharine opened the door to the room, flushed with excitement at what she had heard and seen. She went over to the man working at the drafting table and whispered in his ear. He stood abruptly, spilling his pencils onto the floor.

  “Ed,” he called to the man aligning a set of wheels on a bicycle, “please get my brother.”

  The man hurried through the door that led to the back porch. He returned almost immediately with another man, younger than the draftsman, with a dark moustache and a wrench in his hand. Both the draftsman and the younger brother with the moustache followed Katharine into the back room.

  There they found five children standing around a small contraption obviously built to fly. Faye stood up.

  “This is Faye, Cousin Gwendolyn’s daughter,” said Katharine.

  The two men didn’t look up. Instead, they walked around the small craft.

  “Gentlemen,” coaxed Katharine, “please stop drooling for one moment and greet Cousin Faye.”

  “Little Faye?” asked the draftsman, looking around as if suddenly aware that others were in the room.

  “Well,” Katharine said with a smile, “she’s not so little anymore.”

  The two men seemed taken aback at the sight of Faye. They studied her, as she studied them. “You’ve grown, Little Faye,” said the younger brother with the moustache.

  “And you’ve grown a moustache,” said Faye.

  “This is some machine,” said the younger brother with the moustache.

  “Who built this?” the draftsman asked.

  “We all did,” said Faye.

  “But it was her idea,” Noah said.

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Faye. “I know when a thing is my idea. This was all of ours.”

  “It’s wonderful,” said the younger brother with the moustache.

  “It’s a fantastic design,” said the older brother.

  “And it flies,” said Katharine.

  The two men looked at Faye. She nodded.

  “It flies?” they both asked in unison.

  Faye’s smile broadened. “Yes, it does.”

  “It truly flies on its own power?” the younger brother with the moustache asked, looking at the engine.

  “Yes, although it depends on wind for lift,” said Wallace. “And you have to—”

  “You’ve got to keep it for us,” said Lucy. “Faye says you’re the only ones we can trust.”

  Faye started to explain, but the younger brother with the moustache cut her off with another stunned sputter. “And you say it really flies?”

  “Yes, although we haven’t built a larger-scale craft yet,” said Faye.

  “We’ve been working on our own designs,” said the draftsman, running his hand along the wing of Faye’s craft.

  Faye said, “We’ve worked out that the wing-warping—”

  “Wing-warping? Of course!” said the younger brother with the moustache. “We’ve been working with kites and found—”

  “Yes, kites!” exclaimed Faye. “That
would have been an excellent way to visualize, to get a real, solid handle on—”

  “Faye,” said Jasper, catching her by the sleeve, “who are these fellows? How do we know we can trust them?”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said the younger brother with the moustache, kneeling down and looking Jasper right in the eye. “Terribly pleased to meet you,” he said.

  “This is Lucy, Jasper, Noah, and Wallace,” said Katharine. “They’re friends of Cousin Faye. Children, these are my brothers, Wilbur and Orville.”

  “I can see the similarities between your creation and our most recent design,” said Wilbur, still examining the aeroplane, “but you’ve done a much better job with the engine, the propeller, the wings, and—”

  “You need to take this working half-scale prototype,” Faye began, but Orville cut her off.

  “What do you mean ‘take’ it?”

  “We need someone to take it from us,” said Faye. “In fact, it would be best if the full-scale model was completed and made public. Someone else is bound to be close, and it’s safer to have it out there than hidden and at risk of finding its way into the wrong hands.”

  The children all looked at one another. They had not counted on Katharine’s brothers being interested, let alone knowledgeable and, in fact, working on the same thing. They had come seeking a place to hide their invention. What they’d found was a place to launch it.

  “May we have a moment?” Jasper asked, but the brothers only nodded, enthralled as they were with the aeroplane.

  “Are we just going to give them the aeroplane?” asked Wallace, incredulous. “These guys aren’t going to want to simply hide it. And we don’t even have a patent.”

  “We have no choice,” said Noah. “We’ll just have to be the silent geniuses who changed the world.”

  “And we do want to change the world, don’t we?” asked Faye. “We don’t want to destroy it, and chances are we may never have a chance to let it fly it ourselves.”

  “We can let them finish it,” said Jasper. “Then, when it’s safe, we can let the world know it’s ours.”

  “Even if that’s not until we’re dead,” said Noah.

  “Noah might be right,” said Faye. “With everything going on, who knows if it will ever be safe to be in the public eye?”