“The last you told me, Amory was in the glowworms’ pit,” Oggie said in an accusing voice. “He was trying to stay awake so he wouldn’t be sucked bloodless.”
“He still is. I mean, he was. In the glowworms’ pit. That’s where he met her.”
“Her!” Oggie stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and glared at me. “What do you mean? He met a GIRL?” He wasn’t too friendly with girls at that time.
“He did. Pretty amazing, right?”
Oggie frowned. “Who is she? What’s her name?”
“I’ll tell you tonight. Can you wait till then?”
“NO, I CAN’T,” Oggie said. “I can’t wait! Tell it now! Who’s this GIRL? I want to know.”
I looked up at the sky and kind of squinted as if I was having a hard time remembering.
“I don’t know if walking down a sidewalk is a good time to be telling something like this,” I said. “We should probably wait.”
“NO, WE SHOULDN’T!” Oggie yelled. “We shouldn’t! We can’t!”
I shook my head as if I was in grave doubt.
“You GOTTA tell it,” Oggie shrieked, so loud that this lady up ahead of us turned around and gave us a look.
“All right! Change the channel. I’ll tell.” I was laughing.
“Right now!” yelled Oggie. “Stop that laughing and tell!”
You never saw anybody look so different from the sad little kid that had dragged out of Mrs. Pinkerton’s ten minutes ago.
“Well, her name is Raven,” I started off, “and she has really short hair.”
Alphonse
ALL THAT WEEK, OGGIE looked more and more tired. Everything he did, he looked half-dead. I’d try to buck him up by giving him another Mole installment, or buying him a candy bar to zap his energy level, but not long after, he’d be on the ropes again.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Aren’t you sleeping at night?”
He just shrugged. I figured it was a combination of Marvin at school, his lost wallet, Mom and Dad’s arguments on the phone, and him being only six years old. It’s pretty hard to fight back with all that against you.
One night, Oggie was so tired, he fell asleep in the middle of dinner. Mom had to carry him upstairs to bed. She loved that, even though he’s pretty big for his age and weighed a ton.
I think it reminded her of when he was little, because when she came back downstairs, she said to me, “Want to make some popcorn and watch a movie like we used to?”
“Sure!” I said. I was happy she remembered.
We did that with Dad in our old house when Oggie was a baby.
Back then, Mom and Dad were really protective of me. I was only allowed to watch ancient Walt Disney movies like Kidnapped or Old Yeller. Oggie gets away with murder now. He watches anything he wants and no one pays any attention. When I was little, I couldn’t turn on the TV without permission, and even then Mom and Dad would usually watch with me to make sure I got through all right. I didn’t mind. We’d all curl up on the couch and eat popcorn and have a great time.
Just thinking about that made the old sinking feeling that comes over me sometimes come over me. I wished I could talk to Mom about our family. I mean, really talk instead of beating around the bush like we usually did.
I wanted to ask how it was going between her and Dad, if they were working things out better lately. I wanted to know if there was any chance he might move back in. During the show, I tried to think of some way to bring up Dad that wouldn’t make her mad.
“Do you still have my turtle photos?” I asked her when a commercial came on.
“They’re in the hall chest,” she said. “Why?”
“Dad said he wants to see them.” It wasn’t exactly true, but I said it anyway.
“They’re in the second drawer down,” Mom said.
I went and took them out. I held them under the light to get a closer look and … what a shock! There was Alphonse, clear as clear! I couldn’t believe it. I’d completely forgotten how he got started in real life. Seeing him like that in the flesh—or in the shell, rather—made me realize how much I’d come to care about him.
“Wow!” I said. “These photos are even better than I remembered.”
“You’ll return them, right?” Mom said when I came back in the living room. “I want to keep everything of yours here.”
“Why? Is Dad planning to move somewhere?”
“Not that I know of.”
“So, can’t I keep them over there for a while?”
“I’d rather you brought them back,” Mom said. “I love those photos. I don’t want to lose them.”
That kind of upset me.
“But what if I want them over there? To put on the wall or something. They ARE mine, you know.” I was thinking I might put them up where Dad could see them and be impressed.
“I know they’re yours. I just want to keep them here,” Mom said. “When you get a place of your own, you can have them. For now, I’m keeping everything.”
The movie came back on then, but I couldn’t watch it. A terrible anger came over me. The more I tried to sit with Mom, the more furious I was.
Here we were, Oggie and me, going back and forth and back and forth between two places that weren’t our homes and never would be. Everyone pretended they were, but really they had nothing to do with us.
One was Mom’s house, with all her stuff in it, and one was Dad and Cyndi’s, with all theirs. Oggie and I had no place. We were like pieces of furniture being moved in and out, passed around like baggage as if we didn’t own anything. As if WE were the things that were owned.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” I told Mom.
“I’ll let you know how the movie turns out,” she said.
“That’s okay,” I said, and got up and left.
“Is something wrong?” she called. “Can I do anything to help?”
“NO, YOU CAN’T,” I yelled back.
I didn’t tell her how mad I was, or that I’d seen the movie twice before with Dad and already knew how it ended. That just would have hurt her feelings. She’s a good mom, basically, who was just trying to do her best. The problem was, she didn’t have a clue what was happening with Oggie and me.
The next morning before school, I took my Alphonse photos out of her control and brought them with me to school. When school was over, I took them to Saturn and taped them up in my closet. After that, every time I sat in there writing, I’d look up at Alphonse and feel close to him. Even though he was only in a photo, he felt real, as if he was watching over me to make sure the story came out right.
And not just the story, either. With Alphonse there, all of me felt protected.
Ghost Driver
LATE ONE NIGHT AT JUPITER, I woke up with a jump. Maybe I heard a noise, I don’t know. When I looked over at Oggie’s bed, it was empty. I thought he might be in the bathroom, but the light wasn’t on in the hall. Everything was dark.
I lay still for a while listening, then I got up and went to look for him. He wasn’t anywhere upstairs. I went downstairs, but he wasn’t there, either. I began to get scared that maybe he’d run away. But where would he go? I opened the front door and took a look down the street.
The cold air hit me in the face. We’d just gone into November and temperatures had dropped into the thirties that week.
I stepped outside anyway. The street was dark. A lot of streetlights on Dyer Street are broken. The city never comes to fix them, even if you report it. Mom used to get upset when we first moved here, because back in Ansley Park there was no problem. You never even thought about streetlights. They just worked without anyone doing anything. In Ansley Park, a person could walk down the street at midnight without a worry in the world.
I breathed in little gasps of freezing air and looked up and down the street. I couldn’t see Oggie anywhere.
I went back inside and put on a coat and some shoes so I could walk around. When I came out again, I heard a motor running in the street.
Nothing was out there, though, just a line of parked cars along the curb, including Mom’s heap.
The motor kept running. Every once in a while, it would rev up louder, as if someone was impatient to get moving, then it would go back to normal. I walked down the front steps and up to the chain fence. I still couldn’t see anything. All the cars were dark, no taillights, nothing.
The motor went on running and running, really close by. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I began to feel spooked, as if maybe it was coming from the fifth dimension or some other weirdo, invisible place. I don’t believe in that stuff, though.
I went out through the chain fence. Now I was practically on top of the motor, but I STILL couldn’t see anything. For about a minute, I stood there, freaked. Then I saw something.
Somebody was in Mom’s car. He was sitting in the dark with the motor turned on. Only the shadowy top of his head showed. It was Oggie.
I dropped down fast and came up close to the window. He never saw me. He was sitting behind the wheel, his face a pale green in the dim dashboard lights.
He put on the left-turn blinker and turned the wheel left. He put on the right-turn blinker and turned right. He stretched his legs way down and stepped on the brake. The car kind of shuddered. He came back up then stretched down again and stepped on the accelerator, revving the motor as if he was really going somewhere.
In his mind, I could see he was. Oggie was pulling in and out of traffic, stopping at red lights, turning onto side streets. He was going up the ramp to the expressway, looking over his shoulder to see if traffic was coming. He was putting on the brakes for a slow car in front, then speeding out around it. He was going, going, out beyond the city, through the suburbs, into the country, far away from Jupiter. He was leaving us behind.
I knew I should stop him.
I should’ve opened the car door, made him turn off the motor, and ordered him inside.
Mom would’ve had a heart attack if she’d known he was out on that street by himself. Dad would’ve gone ballistic.
I didn’t do anything. I went back in the house and tiptoed upstairs to bed.
After a long while, Oggie came in and climbed in his bed. I still didn’t say anything. I pretended I was asleep. Pretty soon, he was quiet and started the slow breathing that means he’s conked out. I just lay there in the dark with my eyes wide open.
I was happy for Oggie, that’s why I didn’t stop him. From the way he was handling the car, I figured he’d been out there before, probably lots of times. It must’ve been what was making him so tired. Maybe he had dreams of leaving us all behind someday. You couldn’t blame him for that. Our family was such a mess. Or maybe he just liked being alone, in control for a change, behind the wheel of a car.
Whatever, I had to admire him. He wasn’t the kind of fighter Dad would have liked, but in his own way, he was fighting. He knew nobody was ever going to teach him to drive—to REALLY drive the way he wanted to. He knew he was too little. The only way he could learn was to get up enough steam to teach himself.
Thinking about that kind of ruined me for sleep. I got up and walked around the room a few times. I looked out the window at Dyer Street. I wished we didn’t live here. I wished we still lived in Ansley Park, where all the streetlights worked and I could go outside at night if I wanted. I felt mad and boxed in, as if I wasn’t even up to Oggie in figuring out how to fight back.
Suddenly, out of the blue—or maybe out of the brown—The Mysterious Mole People blasted into my mind. I remembered that I hadn’t written down the last part I’d told Oggie yet, the part about Amory meeting the girl investigator. That was an important turn of events. I didn’t know why yet, but I had an inkling it would lead to some hopeful developments down the line. The only way to find out what was to sit down and write. Right now! I couldn’t wait until the closet at Saturn.
I grabbed my spiral notebook and went in the bathroom.
The Mysterious Mole People
AMORY ELLINGTON IS IN a dark Mole hole.
All around him, the kingdom of the Mysterious Mole People stretches away, a million miles of tunnels that go everywhere in the world: through the ancient tombs of Egypt, to the diamond mines of South Africa, past the buried warriors of China, into the ice caverns of Antarctica.
Amory needs to escape if he expects to continue his investigation of the complicated and confusing Mole civilization. Also, he needs to set himself straight with the Mole People themselves, who have so mistakenly taken him prisoner. So far, they’ve been too frightened to come close enough to even TRY to communicate with him.
The Mysterious Mole People aren’t really that hard to figure out, of course. They’re good creatures who were driven underground by the evil practices of human beings in the world above. Amory believes he could be friends with them if they’d give him a chance. There are a lot of things he doesn’t agree with in the human world, too—for instance, how people don’t respect other people who are young, or poor, or who can’t stand up and fight for themselves.
If only Amory could talk to the Mysterious Mole People. If only he could talk to anyone! He misses Alphonse desperately. The old turtle has been gone for days. Who knows where or what is happening to him.
A terrible sinking feeling comes into Amory’s heart. He believes he is lost and defeated. He believes he is forgotten and unloved.
ABANDONED.
Suddenly: A match strikes in the dark.
A flame flares up.
A voice whispers, “Sh-sh! Don’t make a sound. I’ve come to rescue you.”
“Who are you?” Amory asks. By the light of the match, he sees a girl with really short hair.
“Come on,” she whispers. “My name is Raven and I know a way out.”
Amory is suspicious.
“Who says I can trust you?” he whispers back. “How do I know you won’t get me in deeper trouble than I already am?”
Raven laughs. “You can trust me,” she says. “Look, I’m in the same fix as you. I’ve been down here investigating the Mysterious Mole People for a year. It’s hard working alone. We could join forces. What’s your name?”
“Amory Ellington.”
“Well, come on, Amory. Our first job is to get you out of here.”
“But how did you get in? I’ve been over this whole Mole hole. There’s not a crack or a loose stone anywhere.”
Raven points upward and Amory sees a slim rope, knotted at intervals, hanging down almost invisibly into the room. It’s attached to something high above, out of sight, in the dark. As he watches, Raven begins to climb it.
“I’ll go up first,” she says. “When I get there, I’ll call back to you. Then it’s your turn.”
Raven’s Warning
A LOT OF STRANGE THINGS can happen while you’re writing a story.
You can start thinking your characters are real and begin to talk to them.
You can feel bad when they’re trapped, or excited when they’re rescued, or happy when they meet somebody who might be a friend—even if you made these things happen by writing about them.
Your story can get very weird and begin to haunt you. Or very scary and begin to scare you.
Or very real and begin to come true.
A couple of days after that night of writing in the bathroom, I’m walking out of school when a hand touches me on the shoulder. A voice whispers, “Sh-sh! Don’t make a sound. Just walk in front of me.”
The hand steers me off to one side, behind some bushes around a corner of the school.
“Hey, what’s up?” I yell. I hadn’t been feeling very well that day. Being surprised like that made it worse.
“Sh-sh, Archie. You want the whole world to see us?”
It’s Raven!
“Well, what do you want?”
“To tell you something.” She glances around to make sure nobody is watching.
“Listen, you got trouble on your head. Cat Man is after you.”
A sort of cold snap wen
t through me when I heard that. It had been about a week since I’d done the job at Garden Street. I’d begun to think I’d made a clean break.
“He’s mad you never came back,” Raven said. “He’s got Ralphie and Ringo out looking for you right now. They’re around here somewhere. Cat Man found out where you go to school. He knows when you get out.”
I looked over my shoulder. A sick feeling was in my stomach. I thought I might be coming down with something.
“What are you going to do?” Raven asked.
“Go home, I guess.” I was trying to think which home I was supposed to go to that day, Jupiter or Saturn. Everything was a little fuzzy.
It’s funny how, when something really scares you, your brain doesn’t work too well for a few minutes. It goes off on other lines of thought because it doesn’t want to face up to the real situation.
The line I went off on right then was Amory Ellington. The Mysterious Mole People story had been on my mind a lot lately. I thought how I should put in the point I just figured out, that Amory’s brain wouldn’t work too well for a few minutes when he got scared. It would be a good touch in the story tell readers something they’d maybe felt themselves but never put into words before.
“Archie!”
“What?”
“What’s the matter with you? You’ve got big problems!”
“I know.” I stared at Raven. Then I sneezed.
“You’re sick,” she said, totally disgusted. “You can’t even think straight. Come on. I’ll get you out of this.”
“You will?”
She nodded. “Come with me over to Garden Street before Ralphie and Ringo find you. We’ll check in with Cat Man. I’ll tell him you were sick but now you’re better. He’ll think you meant to come back all along and let you alone.”
“But I don’t want to go back!” I cried. “I don’t want those jobs. I could GET CAUGHT.” I sneezed again.
Raven looked at me as if I was some pitiful child that didn’t know how to take care of itself.
“You should’ve thought of that before you came the first time,” she told me. “You bought into the Night Riders. Now you’ve got to deal with them.”
How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive Page 6
