by Gary Paulsen
OTHER YEARLING BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:
THE MONUMENT, Gary Paulsen
THE RIVER, Gary Paulsen
THE HAYMEADOW, Gary Paulsen
THE COOKCAMP, Gary Paulsen
THE VOYAGE OF THE FROG, Gary Paulsen
THE WINTER ROOM, Gary Paulsen
CHOCOLATE FEVER, Robert Kimmel Smith
JELLY BELLY, Robert Kimmel Smith
BOBBY BASEBALL, Robert Kimmel Smith
HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, Thomas Rockwell
YEARLING BOOKS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.
For a complete listing of all Yearling titles,
write to Dell Readers Service,
P.O. Box 1045, South Holland, IL 60473.
Published by
Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Copyright © 1993 by Gary Paulsen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademarks Yearling® and Dell® are registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80374-0
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by Yearling
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
.1
Duncan—Dunc—Culpepper and Amos Binder were riding their mountain bikes through the woods on the way to the library.
“What a great day,” Dunc said. “You don’t get many Saturdays like this.”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it.” Amos Binder pumped away right behind him.
“I wasn’t going to. I like the library.” The problem was, Dunc didn’t know if he liked it enough to spend a beautiful afternoon there. It was a sacrifice. He had to make those every once in a while for Amos. Amos was his best friend for life.
“I sure hope she’s there.” Amos was in love with a girl named Melissa Hansen and had been ever since he got out of diapers, or so it seemed. Despite the fact that Melissa had done mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Amos when he nearly drowned and hugged him when he had turned into a dog and even spoken to him when she thought he was his own cousin, she really didn’t even know his name. That didn’t stop Amos.
“Why did you say we’re doing this?” Dunc asked.
“Because I saw Melissa doing her homework there once.”
“Once.” Dunc accelerated into a gully and downshifted to come up the other side.
“I know—it was two months ago. But if she was there once, she’ll be there again.”
Dunc sighed. They whipped around a basswood tree. They were deep in the woods now, so deep they couldn’t even hear the city traffic.
“She called me yesterday,” Amos said.
“Did she?”
“Yeah, well … kind of.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was out mowing the lawn. I was just finishing up the B in my initials—I always mow my initials in the lawn first—when I heard the phone ring. It was Melissa’s ring.”
“Oh.” Dunc nodded his head. Amos swore up and down that Melissa’s ring was different from everybody else’s.
“I headed for the living room as fast as I could go,” Amos said. “Things were going perfectly—I mean good form, legs pumping right. I made the phone before the second ring, and I was thinking, all right, I’ve got it this time.”
“What happened?”
“I remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“That I was still pushing the lawn mower. I ran over the telephone cord. When I picked up the receiver, it was dead.”
“Too bad. Watch your head.” Dunc ducked. So did Amos.
“Luckily, no one was home,” Amos continued. “I pulled the mower back outside and ran down to the hardware store to buy a new cord. Of course, Mom and Dad found out what had happened anyway.”
“How?”
“We have that nice shag carpeting in the living room. Or used to. Boy, was Dad mad.” Amos upshifted to pick up speed. He flew off the top of a little knoll and didn’t land until he reached the bottom. He loved doing that.
“Did you hear about the burglary ring?” Amos also liked to talk while mountain biking. Dunc liked to pay attention to what he was doing. That’s why Dunc always came out of the woods without a scratch, while Amos always resembled a television commercial for Band-Aids.
“They struck again,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“That makes seven robberies in seven days.”
Dunc slowed down for a second to let a chipmunk pass. “What did they steal this time?”
“An antique gold nosering.”
“I guess that’s no big surprise.” So far, the burglars had stolen an old portrait, three spoons, a washtub, and various other odds and ends. At first glance it would seem that none of it was worth much, but first glances aren’t always right. The washtub originally belonged to Napoleon and was worth close to half a million dollars.
“Are there any clues?” Dunc asked.
“Not for sure—there’s a maybe clue in the paper. I’ll show it to you when we get to the library.”
Dunc powered up a hill and stopped on its summit. He waited. Amos stopped beside him. They looked down.
Below them lay Ghastly Gulch. At the bottom flowed Suicide Stream. Together they had claimed more than one inexperienced biker. It had taken Dunc three runs before he figured out how to cross it. Amos had tried a hundred times and still hadn’t figured it out.
“You know what to do, right?” Dunc asked.
“Right. Hang on, close my eyes, and pray.”
“No. Gun it as fast as you can until you get to the big oak tree, then veer to the right to avoid the root. Swing back to the left, or you’ll hit the rocks in the stream. Got it?”
“Got it—”
Dunc started down.
“—I think.” Amos followed him. Just do what Dunc does, he said to himself.
Dunc hunched forward. So did Amos. Dunc swerved right when he reached the oak tree. So did Amos. Dunc ducked under a low branch of a maple tree.
Amos didn’t.
He ducked too soon. When he straightened up again he hadn’t cleared the branch.
It wasn’t a pretty sight.
His arms flew up for protection. He managed to get by the branch with only a few leaves and twigs hitting his face. But since his hands were off the handlebars, when he was supposed to turn left, he couldn’t. His front tire hit a rock, and the bike flew up in the air.
When Dunc reached the top on the other side he looked back. Amos’s bike was coming up the hill by itself.
Amos was kissing a tree.
“Quit fooling around, Amos.”
Amos peeled his face off. The imprint of the bark was driven into his cheeks.
“Are you all right?”
Amos nodded. “I’m getting better.” He pulled a maple leaf out of his left nostril.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t almost kill myself until after the oak tree. That’s the best I’ve ever done. Next time, I won’t almost kill myself until after the stream.” He grabbed his bike as it rolled back toward him and ran up the hill.
“Let’s get going,” he said. “Melissa might be there right now.”
.2
“I’m bored, Dunc.” Amos folded up the newspaper and set it on the table.
“This was your idea.” Dunc studied his book.
“I know, but it’s almost five o’clock.” He sighed. “I don’t think she’s going to show. Let’s go.”
“Not now. I’m interested in this.”
“I don’t have anything to do.”
“Finish the newspaper.”
“I already read all the important parts.”
Dunc looked up. “Like what?”
“The funnies and the sports page.”
“Those are the important parts?”
“Sure. In the Foofy the Dog strip, Foofy tried to get the dog food out of the cupboard, and—”
“Why don’t you read the front page? Find out what’s happening in the world.”
“I already know—nothing. Melissa didn’t show up.”
“I’m not leaving until I finish this chapter. Here—read the newspaper article about the burglary ring.”
“All right.” Amos picked the paper back up. “Here’s that clue I told you about. It’s an ad in the Personals column with yesterday’s date and the numbers fifteen, four, and twenty, the letter P, the word ring, and the name Mr. Zipzoo on it. The police think it might be a clue—that’s what it said in the article anyway.”
“It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” Dunc looked up.
“What about Mr. Zipzoo?”
“Maybe he’s the ringleader.”
“Must be.”
Dunc concentrated on his book again.
“What are you reading?” Amos asked.
“It’s a book about parasitic nematodes.”
“Parasitic nema-what?”
“Todes. Nematodes. Roundworms.”
Amos wrinkled up his face. “That’s gross. Why would you want to read a book like that?”
“It’s fascinating. Most of them are microscopic, but the Guinea roundworm can grow to over three feet long. Look, here’s a picture of it.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Come on, Amos—it’s cool.” He flipped the book across the table. As he did, a slip of paper fell out of it and fluttered to the floor.
“What’s that?” Amos asked.
“It’s the roundworm,” Dunc said, pointing to the picture. “You can actually see it wriggling under this guy’s skin.”
“Not the picture,” Amos said. “The paper. A piece of paper fell out of the book.”
Dunc reached down and picked it up. He looked at both sides and shook his head. “Weird.”
“What?”
“It has a date, an address, the word clock, and—” He stopped.
“And what?” said Amos.
“What did you say the name on the note the police found was?”
“Mr. Zipzoo.”
“That’s on here too,” Dunc said.
Amos stared at him. “Do you think—”
“I don’t know. Could be. Think we should check it out?”
Amos leaned back in his chair and shook his head. He looked across the table as if Dunc had some kind of skin disease. “Whenever we check something out, something bad happens.”
“That’s not true.”
“Sure it is. Either parrots swear at me, or ghosts scare me so bad I pee my pants, or dogs blow snot all over me. We have bad luck.”
“You have bad luck.”
“Same difference.” He turned the page in the book so he wouldn’t have to look at the roundworm.
“You’ll do fine this time,” Dunc said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because you’ve had bad luck all your life. How long do you think a streak like that can last?” Dunc looked back down at the note. “I wonder what those numbers in the paper meant.”
“What were they, again?” Amos asked.
“Fifteen, four, twenty, and there’s a P at the end.”
“I don’t know.” A thoughtful look crawled like a bug across Amos’s face. “Maybe Mr. Zipzoo is an alien, and he’s collecting knick-knacks from Earth for a museum on his home planet. Maybe the numbers are spatial coordinates, like they use on TV. Spatial coordinates always sound like that.”
Dunc ignored him. “I bet this is a message from Mr. Zipzoo to one of the burglars that works for him. There’s one thing I don’t understand—why would he leave messages in library books? Anybody could find them.”
“No way. How many people are strange enough to look in a book about parasitic nematodes?”
“I did.”
Amos nodded. “My point exactly. I bet that book has been sitting on the shelf for years without ever being opened. When was the last time someone checked it out?”
Dunc flipped to the back cover. “Nineteen fifty-three.”
“See what I mean? What safer place could there be to hide a note?”
“Except now we found it. We know the place, the date, and what they’re going to steal,” said Dunc.
“Maybe we should go to the police.”
Dunc shook his head. “Don’t you remember the appliance smugglers?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess we can’t go to the police.” Dunc and Amos had once found an underground tunnel that some appliance thieves were using for storage. It was filled with gunpowder barrels from the Civil War. One of the thieves had lit a match and taken out most of that side of town. The police were still a little touchy about it.
“This address looks familiar,” Dunc said. “Do you know it?” He handed the paper to Amos.
Amos read it. His head popped up.
“What?” Dunc asked.
“That,” Amos almost shouted, “is Melissa’s address!”
.3
“Think about it, Dunc. We can be heroes!”
Dunc shook his head. “I don’t want to be a hero.”
“Not just a hero,” Amos said. “I’ll be a hero. I’ll rush into Melissa’s house and save her from some big dastardly brute. She’ll love me forever.”
“Speaking of big dastardly brutes, I saw in the paper that her brother Rocko is home from college. What happens if he catches us in his house?”
“Big deal.”
“Maybe you forgot. He plays the offensive line for one of those Big Ten football teams.”
“What position?”
“I didn’t say he plays a position. I said he plays the line. The whole line.”
“So? If we catch this burglar and save Melissa and her family, Rocko will be my friend for life. A guy like that is good to have for a friend.”
Dunc slid the paper back into the book and put it on the shelf. He turned and studied his friend and thought, Right there is the problem. He is my friend. My best friend for life. And here is a chance for him to realize his dream. He sighed. Amos’s dream was to get to talk to Melissa. He knew he had to do this thing—for Amos. But it would hurt, he thought. Somehow he would hurt himself.
Amos had been going on all this time. “They’ll be so grateful in that house, they’ll probably ask me to move in. I can see it now. Melissa will think the sun rises and sets on me—”
Dunc stopped him. A small figure, not more than five feet tall, walked into the aisle past Dunc. He put his face up close to the row of books at the beginning of the aisle and started moving sideways down the aisle, staring at each book as he moved. Then he stopped, reached up, and took the nematode book down. He opened it, put the note into h
is pocket, and hurried past Dunc and Amos and out of the library. He was wearing a hat pulled low and a jacket with the collar up, so it was impossible to see his face.
Amos watched him leave. “I wonder …”
“Wonder what?” Dunc was moving toward the door.
“I wonder if the clock he’s going to steal is in Melissa’s room.”
Dunc shook his head. “Man, you’re hopeless. Come on, we’ve got to follow that guy.”
Dunc made for the door with Amos following, but outside there was no sign of the man. The streets were empty except for some girls and boys crossing at the corner. There was a row of maples with thick foliage along the street, and Dunc thought he heard a sound up in the trees but could see nothing and shook his head. “I don’t know how, but he’s gone, just gone.”
“Maybe he’s faster than we thought.”
“Must be.” Dunc started down the steps. “Let’s get home.”
“Home? Why? It’s still early.”
“We have to get some rest.”
“Rest?”
“So we can be alert tonight when we try to catch this guy.”
“Ah—I almost forgot.”
Amos followed him down the sidewalk.
.4
The moon was full that night. It lit up the Hansen yard silver, almost as bright as day.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” Dunc whispered. He and Amos lay together in the bushes by the front walk.
“Peeling my eyes—what a stupid expression. Can I do that like an orange, or do I need a knife?”
“Quiet!” Dunc pointed. A shadow darted through the trees at the side of the house.
Amos shook his head. “It’s a dog.” Ever since the time he’d been bitten by a werewolf and turned into a dog, Amos thought everything was a dog.
Dunc shook his head. “Since when do dogs walk on two legs?” He pointed again. The shadow melted into a shrub next to the house. It was the small burglar.
“How’s he going to get in?” Amos whispered. “He’s too short to reach the window.”
As if in answer to his question, the man jumped. He caught the second-story windowsill above his head with one hand and silently opened the window with the other while he was hanging there. One swing of his legs, and he was inside.
