The Name of This Book Is Secret (14 page)

Dear Mrs. Johnson,

Good day.

We have kidnapped the artist Benjamin Blake. Please bring one million dollars to the Midnight Sun Sensorium and Spa and leave it in a suitcase for us. Or else Benjamin Blake will be killed in a really terrible way!

Sincerely,

Dr. L and Ms. Movay

P.S. The address of the Midnight Sun is XXXX Xxxxxx Xxxxxx, Xxx Xxxxxxx, XX XXXXX.

It couldn’t have gone worse.

Five minutes after she slipped the note through Mrs. Johnson’s window Cass was summoned to her office.

Mrs. Johnson was holding the note in her hand. In all Cass’s run-ins with the principal she had never seen the principal so angry.

“I am extremely upset with you, Cassandra,” she said. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your handiwork? I can’t believe you would continue your childish pranks knowing one of your peers is missing and very possibly in grave danger.”

“But they really did—they had a limousine with Midnight Sun on it and I saw a boy in the window!”

“And you know for certain it was Benjamin? Tell the truth.”

More than anything, Cass wanted to say she did, but Mrs. Johnson saw the hesitation on her face.

“I don’t know what you have against that couple, but I’m warning you, if I hear you are troubling any faculty or students—or, heaven forbid, the police—with your outlandish theories, well, I’ll suspend you for the whole year! Am I understood?”

Cass nodded.

“I must admit, this is one of the most politely written ransom notes I’ve ever received. At least your manners are getting better. Now, out of my office!”

On the bus later that afternoon, Cass sat with her knees doubled up against the seat back in front of her, ignoring everyone and everything in her vicinity.

She
had
to rescue Benjamin Blake. But how?

Not with any help from principals or policemen.

And definitely not with any help from a certain nonstop talking boy.

The obvious step was to go to the Midnight Sun herself. But how would she get there? No way would her grandfathers take her. Not if it meant her skipping school and their risking the wrath of her mother.

Besides, even if she could get
to
the Midnight Sun, how would she get
into
the Midnight Sun? She wasn’t a celebrity and she didn’t have a royal title; she was just a kid. And kids didn’t usually go to spas.

Except maybe for kids like Amber.

What would Amber do if
she
wanted to get in?

When Cass got off the bus, she had an inspiration.

Before she could change her mind, she pulled the old guidebook out of her backpack, and looked up the Midnight Sun’s phone number. Then she dialed it on her cell phone. She could hardly believe what she was doing, and she had that giddy, dizzy feeling you get when you make a crank call—only this was much scarier.

To her relief, a machine picked up. “You have reached the Midnight Sun Sensorium and Spa,” said an unmistakable, icy voice. “Please leave a message if you are ready to say good-bye to the old you, and hello to the new.”

Cass shuddered, remembering what the magician had written about Ms. Mauvais making him feel as if he were drowning in the coldest water on Earth. Cass might not be synesthetic but she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Hello. This is...this is one of the Skelton Sisters. I’d like to make a reservation to stay at the Midnight Sun.”

She left her number. Then she dropped the phone onto the floor, wondering whether Max-Ernest wasn’t right, after all. Maybe she
was
crazy.

It took her a couple seconds to realize her phone was ringing.

Holding her breath, she picked up the phone and held it several inches away from her ear as if it were a particularly lethal kind of snake.

“Hello,” Ms. Mauvais tinkled on the other end. “How wonderful to hear from a Skelton Sister! To whom am I speaking, may I ask? Romi or Montana?”

“Um, neither,” said Cass, thinking quickly. “I’m the other one.”

“Oh, there’s another? I had no idea.”

“Yes, my name is Amber. I’m the youngest. They keep me hidden. But I’m famous also,” Cass explained. (She was glad she’d practiced lying on her mother.)

“Oh, you’re one of those secret celebrities? My favorite kind. Being in the public eye is so tiresome, don’t you think?” Ms. Mauvais inquired.

“Yes. That’s why I want to stay at the Midnight Sun. I hear it’s very private. And all your treatments—I hear they’re all really great. I know it’s hard to get a reservation. But I thought maybe since I’m a celebrity—”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” said Ms. Mauvais with a light laugh.

“Yeah, I do,” said Cass, not about to admit that that was all she knew.

“Well, you’re in luck. It just so happens we have an opening this evening. Shall I send the limousine for you?”

“Um, yeah, I guess,” Cass said, choking on her words. “That would be good.”

“Terrific. I’m sure you’ll love all of our treatments.”

Cass shivered. The way Ms. Mauvais said the word “treatments,” it sounded more like “punishments.”

Or maybe I should say I’ve come to my senses.

Rather than continuing to narrate the adventures of Cass and Max-Ernest, I’m going to end this book here—while they’re still safe.

More importantly, while you’re still safe.

I know, you’re angry with me. You’ve read this far—you feel you’ve earned the right to know how the story ends.

Go ahead: laugh, scream, cry, throw the book at the wall.

If you knew—well, there’s the rub, you don’t know, do you? If you knew the truth, I was going to say, if you knew everything this story entails, all those grizzly, gruesome facts, all those horrible, harrowing details, you’d thank me for sparing you.

Alas, since you don’t know, you will go to your grave hating me, thinking I am your enemy—when, for the first time, I am acting like a friend.

Happily, you don’t know how to find me. If you did, I’ve no doubt, you would try to bribe me to finish the story. I know how you are. I know how I am, too. I am very susceptible to bribes. As you’ve probably noticed, I have no self-control whatsoever.

I like chocolate best. But I also have a fondness for cheese.

If, for instance, you were to pass under my nose a very ripe brie—you might think the brie was gross and stinky, but you would be wrong, oh so wrong—and you tempted me with a bite, only to tell me that the price of the bite was my continuing the story, well, I’m afraid I might start writing without a moment’s thought. Now, if you were to hand me, say, a piece of chocolate, dark as night, European in origin, with a very high percentage of cocoa—don’t forget that high percentage of cocoa—well, there’s no saying what I would do. Or wouldn’t.

As a matter of fact, it just so happens that I’ve been saving for a special occasion a piece of chocolate very much like the one I just described. Right now, it’s sitting high up on a shelf that I can’t reach without a ladder. I put it there so I wouldn’t eat it without first fully considering the matter. I must admit, I’ve never wanted it more than I do now.

The chocolate on my shelf is of the finest quality. I won’t mention the brand here; that’s the kind of information that could help my enemies track me down. Trust me, though, it’s not cheap. Many cacao beans have given their lives to make that chocolate. I can practically taste it now.

Hmmm, what must I do in order to eat it?

It would be wrong to eat the chocolate without offering you something in return. I’m not the kind of person who accepts a bribe and then pretends he doesn’t know what the bribe means. Where’s the honor in that?

In short, if I want to eat the chocolate, I must keep writing.

What an awful, awful choice! On the one side: I renounce the chocolate, stay healthy and trim, and put an end to this reckless tale-telling. On the other side: I climb up the ladder, feast on chocolate, and then, full of sugar and guilt, I continue my story, knowing I’m possibly sentencing you to a fate worse than death.

Actually, put like that, the choice is pretty easy.

I’ll be right back.

Really, it was. Dark and stormy.

As if the weather itself had conspired to turn our tale into a ghost story.

Or as if—and this seems slightly more plausible— Ms. Mauvais somehow controlled the skies and was using them to obscure the events of the evening.

In any case, the weather makes my job easier. It creates the proper mood. And it eliminates the need to hide certain facts. Like the location of the street corner on which Cass was waiting. With all the rain, you could hardly have seen her anyway.

For Cass, sadly, the weather didn’t make things any easier, only wetter. And colder. Teeth chattering, she stood under a street lamp, clutching her backpack to her chest for warmth. Not that it was much help; the backpack was no drier than her clothing.

It had been difficult figuring out what to wear.

After her phone conversation with Ms. Mauvais, Cass had gone back home again, and rifled through her mother’s closets; she even tried on a dress for the first time in over a year. But despite her recent growth spurt, she still looked like she was playing dress-up when she put on her mother’s clothes. She’d also considered borrowing Amber’s “Honorary Skelton Sister” T-shirt, but she couldn’t bring herself to call and ask for it. Plus, Cass realized, a real Skelton Sister probably wouldn’t wear the T-shirt anyway.

Finally, she chose to wear her usual jeans and sweatshirt, but she modified the outfit with a pair of furry boots her mother had bought for one of their never-taken ski trips. They didn’t look exactly like the fuzzy boots that Amber and her friends wore but they were close enough. (I know, at the beginning of this book, I told you Cass would never wear boots like those; I was forgetting she might wear them as part of a disguise.)

Now, she regretted the boots. Not only were they too big, they were soaked through. Her feet sloshed around in them, and they splattered when she walked. She felt like Bigfoot.

Her other new accessory was equally impractical for the weather: a pair of sunglasses. But even Cass knew that celebrities wore sunglasses all the time, indoors as well as out. Also, they helped disguise her face—which, presumably, is why celebrities wear them. (Had Cass asked me, I would have told her what I always tell people who are trying to go incognito:
lose the shades.
They only make you look more conspicuous.) Cass felt certain that neither Ms. Mauvais nor Dr. L would recognize her—they had seen her face for only a second—but it was best to be careful.

Her backpack, it goes without saying, she never considered leaving. Never mind whether a Skelton Sister would have worn it or not.

Cass thought wistfully about the hot pot of tea that Grandpa Larry would undoubtedly be making on a rainy night like this one. She wished she’d stopped at the fire station for a cup before heading out to meet the Midnight Sun limousine. Instead, she’d phoned her grandfathers and told them she was staying overnight at Max-Ernest’s house to work on their volcano experiment (for which the due date kept being conveniently postponed). She slept there all the time, she added. And her mother had already spoken to Max-Ernest’s parents, so there was no reason to ask her mother’s permission.

Her grandfathers had asked a few questions and demanded Max-Ernest’s phone number, but they were still feeling so guilty for making her upset about the Symphony of Smells that they hadn’t given her much trouble. The hardest part was having to listen to Grandpa Larry and Grandpa Wayne argue about whether she should make her volcano erupt with Alka-Seltzer or dry ice.

“You trust me, right?” Cass had asked. (She felt a little guilty herself playing on
their
guilt, but she needed to get them off the phone.)

“Of course we do!” they assured her.

Then she had called her mother and told her pretty much the same thing—except to her mother she said it was her grandfathers who had spoken to Max-Ernest’s parents, so there was no reason to phone them. “And don’t call me at nine tonight, OK?” Cass added. “Max-Ernest and I are going to be working.”