The Curse of the King. Peter Lerangis

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СКАЧАТЬ As he lifted it upward, the shard glinted in the sunlight. “What’s that weird star shape on it? A symbol from a secret nerd society?”

      “Mathletes!” Cass said. “It’s … a club. Of math people. We talk about … pi. And stuff like that.”

      “I like pies, too … but I don’t like lies!” Barry snickered at his own idiotic joke. “Especially lies about anti-American world-domination cults that kidnap kids for weeks at a time!”

      Cass was shaking now. “Jack, is he going loony tunes on us? Should we be calling nine-one-one?”

      Barry stepped closer, his beady eyes shifting from me to Cass. “You’re not a street tough, Casper, are you? And, Jack, you didn’t lose your memory and travel across the country. Your little story? It’s full of holes. My dad thinks your dad has connections with terrorists. Where does he fly all the time? What’s with all the long trips to Magnolia?”

      “Mongolia,” Cass corrected him.

      “Wait—terrorists?” I said. “There are no terrorists in Mongolia!”

      “Ha—so you were there!” Barry said.

      “My dad runs a genetics lab there,” I replied. Barry’s face went blank, so I added, “That’s the study of genes, and not the kind you wear.”

      Barry grabbed my shoulder and turned me around. He cradled the back of my head in his right hand. “Where’s the white hair, Jack?”

      “What?” I squeaked.

      He let go of my head and spun me back around. “That day you fell into the street—I saw this, like, upside-down V shape on the back of your head. Now it’s gone. It means something, doesn’t it? A secret symbol from some hidden organization?”

      Cass’s eyes were huge. Leave it to Barry, the dumbest person I knew, to come the closest to the truth.

      “Uh …” Cass said.

      “I’m right, huh?” Barry barked. “Go ahead, tell the Barry he’s right!”

       Let your enemy give you the lead.

      Dad had recited that one to me at least a thousand times. And now, in this moment, I finally understood it.

      I stepped right up to Barry and refused to blink. Then I took a deep breath and spoke fast. “You want the truth? Okay. My hair and Cass’s? Yup, it did go white in the back, in the shape of a Greek lambda, which is their letter L. Now our hair is dyed. The lambda means we inherited a gene from a prince who escaped the sinking of Atlantis. See, the gene unlocks part of our DNA that turns our best ability into a superpower. But it also overwhelms the body, and no one who’s ever had it has lived past the age of fourteen. In the last year of life, the body begins to break down. You get sick every few weeks. You can stay alive for a while if you get certain treatments, but eventually you die. We learned this from a group called the Karai Institute on this island that can’t be detected. They told us we can be cured if we find seven magical Loculi that contain the power of Atlantis, which were hidden centuries ago in the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. As you know—well, maybe you don’t—six of the Wonders don’t exist anymore. The thing in your hand is a piece of a destroyed Loculus.”

      “Jack?” Cass mouthed, as if I’d just lost my mind.

      Barry’s mouth was sagging. His eyes narrowed, as if he were still stuck on the second sentence. Which he probably was.

      Would he try to repeat his own mangled version of what I’d just said to his dad? I hoped so, because any sane human being would send him straight to a psychologist. And he knew it.

      “Well, that’s everything,” I said, reaching to grab the Loculus from Barry’s hand.

      He pulled it back.

      “Okay, so if you’re supposed to get sick every few weeks …” he said quietly, “how come you’re not sick?”

      “The fresh, rejuvenating Belleville air?” Cass said.

      Barry’s face curled. “You guys are playing me. That was the obvious-est lie! I’m going to get to the bottom of this. You watch, I’ll find out the truth.”

      “Great,” I said. “Meanwhile, will you give me that back?”

      “Why should I give you a piece of a destroyed Oculus?” Barry asked. “It might be worth something.”

      “Loculus,” Cass said. “With an L.”

      “Trust me,” I said, “it’s worth absolutely nothing to you.”

      “Awwww, really?” Barry said. “Nothing?”

      With an exasperated sigh, Barry held out the shard to Cass. Both of us reached for it at the same time.

      Before our fingers could touch it, Barry spun away. With a grunt, he tossed it far into the scrubby, trash-strewn woods.

      “Fetch,” he said. “With an F.”

      

      “WHAT HAPPENED TO your face?” Dad stared at me oddly, standing in the front door.

      I peeked past him to the sofa, where a strange man dressed in black was rising to his feet. “Thorns,” I said, touching my cheek, where the edges of thin gash peeked out from behind a Band-Aid. “We lost something in the woods.”

      I didn’t want to mention the shard in front of a stranger. It had taken us about a half hour on our hands and knees in the woods to find it. Which made us very late for school. The cool thing was, no one seemed to care. Cass and I were like returning war heroes. Everyone was nice to us. The nurse cleaned us up and gave me a whole box of Band-Aids. The principal herself, Mrs. Sauer (pronounced Sour), brought a Welcome Back cake into homeroom. Barry ate most of it, but it was still nice. I even had a session with the school psychologist, who said she was screening me for PTSD. At first I thought that was some kind of a sandwich, like pastrami, turkey, salami, and dark bread, but it means post–traumatic stress disorder. The only stress I felt was from thinking about the great sandwich I wasn’t going to eat.

      “Jack … Cass,” Dad said, “this is Mr. Anthony from Lock-Tite Security. After that strange little visit from the TV station this morning, I figure we’d better make ourselves safe from intrusions, wiretaps, recording devices. Somebody in this town—who shall remain nameless—thinks he’s going to win an Emmy Award for investigative journalism.”

      Cass nodded. “I understand, Mr. McKinley. I met his son. I don’t blame you.”

      “We’ll go upstairs,” I said.

      We raced each other through the living room and up the back stairs. Cass reached the second-floor landing first. He quickly tossed off his shoes and socks before walking on the Oriental rug that lined the long hallway. “I love the way this feels. This house is so cool.”

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