by Brandon Mull
“I just got back from the town library.”
“The library?” She started doodling a sailboat on the notepad by the phone.
“Mrs. Colson donated the ship to the library. And she wrote me a recommendation asking the head librarian to help me find it. I caught the librarian as she was leaving. She was really nice, maybe because the Sweet Tooth was helping, and we spent almost half an hour searching through three storage rooms. In the end, we found the Stargazer.”
“Yes! Great job. Do you have it?”
“I tried to talk her into letting me take it home for the night, but she resisted the idea. I used a few different approaches, but quit when she started getting angry. In the end, she said I could come take videos or pictures of it whenever I want. It’s pretty big, more like a ship in a jug than in a bottle. But I know right where it is. The only problem is, I’m going to look pretty guilty after we steal it tonight.”
“Have you talked to Nate?” Summer asked.
“Not yet. I just got home. I’ll call him. Let’s meet on the path at one. Bring your bike.”
“Okay. If I don’t hear back, I’ll assume that’s the plan.”
“Right. Oh, and Summer, the Brain Feed is amazing. I had this really coherent conversation with a cat. You won’t believe it.”
“That’s cool.”
“See you tonight.”
“ ’Bye.”
*****
Nate sat on the edge of his bed winding a yo-yo. He was trying to get the yo-yo to sleep, but it refused to hang and spin at the bottom of the string, and kept getting tangled instead. He tried again, throwing the yo-yo down, popping his wrist just before it finished unwinding. He timed it wrong. Not only did the yo-yo fail to sleep, it wound back up only halfway.
The failure was not too upsetting. Larger issues loomed in his mind. He and his friends were about to undertake another mission. This time they were invading a library. Each new mission felt more dangerous. Once Trevor had gotten trapped in the mirror, any semblance of fun had vanished. Magic candy was now only a tool to hopefully help undo the trouble they were in.
On prior occasions when Nate had felt overwhelmed by anxiety, he had always eventually ended up talking it over with his parents. They tended to be understanding and helpful. Sometimes they could make major worries fade away with simple reassurances or advice.
But he couldn’t get help from his parents on this one. He had tried to broach the subject of Trevor in the mirror with his mom twice already, but she became instantly distracted. The white fudge created a daunting communication barrier.
Nate wondered what would happen if he pressed as hard as he could, doggedly compelling his parents to recognize what was happening. In a way, he was afraid to try. He did not want to learn that no matter how blunt he was or how hard he pushed, he was cut off from parental support when he needed it most. At the same time, if there was a chance of getting any help from them, the hour had arrived. He had never yearned more for his parents to intervene and bail him out of a predicament.
Setting the yo-yo down, Nate walked resolutely out of his room and down the stairs. He entered the family room, where his dad sat watching sports news.
“Dad, can we talk?”
Nate’s dad snapped out of his television trance. “Sure, son, what’s on your mind?”
“I’ve gotten involved in something really dangerous,” Nate said. “I’m in way over my head. I need your help.”
“Tell me about it,” his dad said, eyes wandering toward the television screen.
“It has to do with the Sweet Tooth Ice Cream and Candy Shoppe,” Nate said.
“Love that fudge.”
“Dad, the white fudge is addictive. Not just because it tastes good. The fudge makes the people who eat it lose their focus and blinds them to what is going on around them.”
“I gave some to my boss,” his dad said. “He wants me to pick him up ten boxes of the stuff.”
“Which you shouldn’t do,” Nate urged. “The lady who runs the candy shop, Mrs. White, is some kind of magician. The white fudge is unsafe. Dad, I think she might try to hurt me.”
“Nothing wrong with eating fudge,” his dad said. “Just don’t go overboard. A little goes a long way.”
Nate frowned. His dad had switched his attention to the baseball scores flickering across the screen. “Dad, Mrs. White is trying to kill me. I’m not talking about eating too many sweets and having a heart attack. I’m talking about murder.”
His dad shifted in his seat and rubbed the side of his face. “Nate, I’ve had a long day, I don’t have time for your stories.”
“It isn’t a story,” Nate said, putting a Moon Rock in his mouth. He hopped into the air, twisting so that his body pressed flat against the ceiling before drifting down to the carpet. “Did you see that?”
“I told you, Nate,” his dad huffed, “I’ve had a long day.”
Nate leaped toward a wall, kicked off, and glided across the room. “Can you explain how I’m doing this?” Nate asked.
“Is there a show on you want to watch?” his dad asked impatiently. “Am I in your way? If you want the TV, you can ask me directly. I’m not a tyrant.”
Nate spit out the Moon Rock. He stood watching his dad. Through word or action, there appeared to be no way to pierce the fudge-induced fog. “Never mind, it’s no big deal.”
“Okay, don’t forget your homework,” his dad advised.
“My teacher forgot to give us homework,” Nate mumbled, walking from the room.
It was official. He was on his own.
*****
The cool night air ruffled Nate’s hair as he coasted down Monroe Circle. He saw Pigeon waiting on the path astride his bike. As Nate hopped the curb and skidded to a stop, he saw Summer peddling down the path.
“Nice work finding the ship,” Nate said to Pigeon.
“Thanks,” Pigeon said. “The only hard part is, the library has an alarm system. But I can guide us straight to the Stargazer. I saw the key Mrs. Wagner used to open the supply room, and I saw the drawer in her desk where she keeps her key ring. Her office has a window on the ground floor, so if we break in through the window and snag her keys, we can be in and out in a couple of minutes.”
Summer pulled up beside them. “You guys ready?”
“The library has an alarm,” Nate told her. “Did you try to get the alarm code?” he asked Pigeon.
“When I tried to get Mrs. Wagner to let me take the boat home, she started acting suspicious of me,” Pigeon said. “After she had started resisting the Sweet Tooth, I got nervous and couldn’t think of even a vaguely plausible explanation for why she should give me the alarm code.”
“So what do we do?” Summer asked.
“We try to get out before anybody responds to the alarm,” Nate said. “Let’s go.”
They rode their bikes down the path and then turned onto Mayflower, which they followed until reaching a tree-lined street called Goodman Road. Not far down the road they came into view of the Nelson J. Colson Memorial Library, a sprawling, modern structure with lots of huge windows. The unusual slopes and angles of the contemporary library contrasted sharply with the neighboring old barn and fenced pastures. The decrepit barn stood near a paved road that branched out from the library parking lot and passed beneath an arched sign for Goodman Farm.
“What’s with the farm?” Nate asked.
“It’s cool,” Summer said. “That’s the original barn. It’s mainly for show. The rest of the farm is more current. They have real animals, but they run it like a park so people can see how a farm works. You can milk cows, feed pigs, pet sheep, take a hayride, that sort of thing.”
“My family likes to go there,” Pigeon said.
“I’ve been there on field trips,” Summer said.
“Gotcha,” Nate said. “Where are we headed, Pigeon?”
“This way,” he said, riding his bike onto the lush lawn encompassing the library. The grass was thick and ready to be mow
ed, making peddling hard work. Pigeon gave up grinding forward and walked his bike over to the side of the library, leaning it against the wall behind a bush. Nate and Summer did likewise.
Pigeon led them along the side of the building, trudging through wood chips, weaving around shrubs and young trees. He peeked through a window. “Anybody bring a flashlight?” he asked.
“I forgot,” Nate said.
“I have one,” Summer said, removing a small black flashlight from her pocket.
Pigeon pressed the flashlight to the glass and clicked it on. “Not this one,” he reported. “I pretended to be admiring Mrs. Wagner’s view and unlocked her window. If she didn’t notice, it’ll make life easier.”
After peering into the next window, Pigeon gave them a thumbs-up. Pressing his palms against the glass, he slid the window sideways. “Phew,” he said. “If we’d had to break the glass, I would have looked ten times more guilty. If we’re careful, they may not ever realize anything was taken, and I’ll be off the hook.”
The windowsill was about the height of their necks. Nate boosted Pigeon and Summer through, then grasped the windowsill, kicked off the wall, and pulled himself up. By the time he was standing in the office, Pigeon had the keys in hand. A steady beep filled the air.
Clutching the flashlight, Pigeon led them out of the office and down a hall. The beeping continued, warning them to punch in the code to disarm the alarm. They reached a staircase that went down to a basement and curved up to a second story. Pigeon led them up. Near the top of the staircase, the beeping stopped and an obnoxious alarm started blaring. Emergency lights flashed.
They ran along a hall at the top of the stairs. One side of the hall had several doors and a couple of drinking fountains. The other side overlooked orderly ranks of bookshelves on the first floor. The hall let them out near a reference desk in an airy room divided by row after row of shelves.
Pigeon raced back into the book stacks, fumbling with the keys. At the end of the shelves they reached a wall with a gray door. Pigeon jabbed a key into the doorknob and opened it. The windowless room beyond was cluttered with books, cardboard boxes, stacked chairs and desks, framed pictures, wheeled carts, a pair of overhead projectors, a film projector, a phony-looking suit of armor, and metal shelves stocked with fake flowers and other diverse knickknacks.
The alarm blaring incessantly, Pigeon directed them to a shelf in an obscure corner of the room where the USS Stargazer sailed inside a clear bottle beside a marble bust of Mark Twain.
“It’s huge!” Nate shouted over the alarm. “That looks like a refill bottle for a water cooler!”
“I told you it was big,” Pigeon said.
The bottle rested on curved wooden mountings to prevent it from rolling. Nate scooped his arms under the bottle and lifted it off the shelf. It was almost too heavy for him to carry. Not only was the bottle big, but the glass seemed thick. “Lend me a hand, Pidge,” Nate grunted.
With Pigeon holding one end of the bottle, carrying the Stargazer was no problem. When they exited the storeroom, Pigeon kicked the door shut and made sure it was locked. They hurried between the bookshelves and hustled across an area full of tables and chairs near the resource desk.
Upon reaching the hall that led to the stairs, Nate and Pigeon stopped, the bottle cradled between them. Three figures waited in the hall, blocking their exit, lights pulsing around them. Denny, Eric, and Kyle.
“A boat, huh?” Denny called, striding forward. “Hand it over.”
“What are you guys doing here?” Nate asked.
Denny rolled his eyes. “What do you think, Dirt Face? We got a call from Mrs. White and followed you. Give me the boat.”
Summer took a baggie of Shock Bits out of her pocket and dumped some into her hand.
“Don’t make this hard!” Denny yelled, pointing at her. “Trust me, we have candy you guys haven’t seen.”
“Jump through a window,” Summer advised Nate, walking past him and putting the Shock Bits into her mouth.
Holding his end of the bottle with one hand, Nate snagged an Ironhide from his pocket. Like most jawbreakers, it felt smooth and hard against his tongue, and tasted sugary.
Denny shoved a small cookie past his lips. Eric and Kyle also each ate something. Kyle’s fingers began sparking.
Denny began to swell. In seconds his oversized T-shirt looked small on him. His shoulders widened, his limbs grew longer and thicker, his belly expanded. Warts erupted on his face, and his nose plumped up like a potato. A sloping brow jutted over sunken eyes. He sprouted up to well over six feet tall, his frame filling out into the powerfully bloated physique of a professional lineman. Opening his inhumanly large mouth, he roared, drowning out the alarm and displaying dull yellow fangs.
“Run!” Summer shouted.
“Can you hold it?” Pigeon asked.
Nate hoisted the cumbersome bottle onto his shoulder and fled into the room with the bookshelves. Several large windows at the far side of the room offered a view of the old barn, dimly visible by the lights of the parking lot. As he studied the far wall, a particular window caught Nate’s attention. It had a table beside it, which would provide the height he would need to leap through the glass.
As he ran, Nate questioned whether he really wanted to jump through a second-story window. He had the Ironhide in his mouth, but his skin did not feel any different. Then again, the bottle was heavy enough that it should be hurting his shoulder, but although he felt the pressure of the weight, there was no discomfort.
He heard another roar from Denny, alarmingly near. Even with his adrenalin pumping, the bottle was so heavy that he could barely manage, let alone run fast. Reaching the end of the room, Nate used a chair to step up onto the table near the tall window—a single pane of glass about four feet wide and eight feet tall. Trusting the jawbreaker, knowing that if it was a dud he was about to die, Nate charged across the table and lunged at the window with all his strength, aiming beyond the glass.
Head, arms, bottle, and torso punched through, and for a terrible moment, he lost momentum and hung draped over a jagged sheet of glass, feeling the pressure against his waist, but no pain. Then the glass buckled beneath him and he tipped forward, plunging headfirst toward the patio below along with a swarm of transparent knives. Disoriented as he was, Nate tried to twist his body to cushion the ship, but he felt the bottle rupture in his embrace as he struck the concrete.
Without the Ironhide he would have impaled himself and broken his neck. With the Ironhide, he experienced the wild rush of the fall, and a tactile sensation of striking the patio, but no pain. Glass had shredded his shirt, and shards glittered on the concrete all around him, but he did not have a scratch or a bruise on his body.
Two of the Stargazer’s masts had snapped, and a long crack traversed the bow, but otherwise the ship seemed mostly intact. Nate got up and ran away from the library, uncertain of where to go. He saw headlights, and recognized a police car coming down Goodman Road toward the library parking lot.
The nearest cover was the barn, so Nate ran toward the dilapidated structure. Without the heavy bottle, carrying the ship was no problem. Coming around to the side of the rundown building, he found a modern door. It was locked, but had window panes. He searched around for something to smash the glass, finally remembering that his hand would do just fine. He bashed his fist through a pane, receiving no scratch and feeling no pain, reached down, and unlocked the door.
Pushing the door open, he hurried inside and shoved it closed. Enough light filtered in from the parking lot through several high windows that he could faintly distinguish the strange forms of antiquated farming equipment on display around the room. Seeking a hiding place, Nate wove between obsolete plows and combines until he reached a rickety ladder that led up to a high loft. The rotten rungs creaked in protest as he ascended, cradling the Stargazer in one arm while climbing with the other.
When he reached the loft, Nate did not like the warped contours of the floor or the
way the wood groaned beneath his weight. He reminded himself that if he fell, he just had to protect the ship, because his body would not suffer any injury. Emboldened by the thought, he proceeded to a hatch in the roof and started stacking old crates in order to reach it.
*****
Summer gaped at the monstrous new version of Denny, knowing that Nate would never escape with the ship if she failed to slow him. She held up her hands menacingly, hoping he might find the prospect of a shock discouraging. He leered and strode forward. Glancing back, Summer saw Nate dashing away with the Stargazer braced on his shoulder. Pigeon was swallowing some Shock Bits of his own.
Denny tried to brush Summer aside, but when his hand met hers, electricity sizzled. He lurched backwards several paces and dropped to one knee. Rising, he let out a barbaric cry of resentment.
