The Name of This Book Is Secret (4 page)

Cass
hated
people feeling sorry for her.

Each time she accepted a Smoochie, she promised herself she would refuse the next one, but Amber always managed to catch Cass when her guard was down. Before she knew it, Cass would find herself mumbling her thanks and shoving another Smoochie deep into her pocket.

That morning, Amber was accompanied by Veronica, the second prettiest girl in school (and not even the fourth or fifth nicest). After Veronica gushed about how sweet Amber was for giving Cass her Watermelon-Superburst Smoochie (as if it were an extra-good good deed to give it to Cass as opposed to someone else), Cass tried to enlist their support in uncovering the toxic waste. She figured if she got Amber and Veronica on her side, the whole school would rally to the cause.

Cass told them she knew there was toxic waste because the grass on the soccer field had turned yellow. And because all the dogs in the neighborhood acted nervous and pricked up their ears when they came near the school.

But all Amber said was, “Wow, you’re really smart, Cass.” And she left with Veronica, never bothering to answer Cass’s plea for help.

When they thought Cass was out of earshot, Veronica started giggling. “That’s why she has those ears. To pick up danger sounds. Like a dog.”

“Don’t be so mean, V,” Cass heard Amber say.

But she heard Amber giggling, too.

Covering her mouth with her shirt collar, and her hands with her cuffs, Cass started digging with renewed vigor. She wasn’t going to let Mrs. Johnson or Amber or anyone else stop her. And, later, when they all thanked her for saving their lives and begged her forgiveness—well, she’d decide what to do then.

Suddenly, she heard a voice behind her head.

“Hi, you’re Cassandra. I’m Max-Ernest. We don’t know each other. But I know who you are and you probably know who I am. Well, you definitely do now. But I mean you probably knew before because everybody here knows who everybody is. Even if they’ve never met. Isn’t that weird how you can know somebody and not know somebody at the same time? How ’bout that?”

Cass looked up to see a short—a mean person might say “puny”—kid looking down at her. It was true, she did know his name was Max-Ernest—but only because she’d heard other kids complaining about him. She could already see why he irritated them so much.

“So, you wanna hear a joke?” Max-Ernest asked.

Cass put her hat back on her head. “If it’s about my ears, I’ve heard them all before,” she said in a not very encouraging tone.

Max-Ernest swallowed nervously. “Actually, I think your ears are cool. They make you look like an elf. I mean, in a good way. Well, I think it’s good because elves are my favorite fictional humanoids. Well, favorite after orcs. Not that I would want to meet an orc. Besides, you don’t look anything like an orc. Or maybe I should quit while I’m ahead, right?”

He paused for a quick breath. When she didn’t take the opportunity to yell at him, he continued,

“Hey, do you think I talk too much? Everybody does. I don’t mean everybody talks too much, I mean everybody thinks I talk too much. Even my parents. They think I have a condition. My parents are psychologists. That means they’re doctors who cure people by talking. But my problem is talking and they don’t know how to cure me! How ’bout that?”

Cass didn’t know what to say, so she asked, “What was your joke?”

“Oh, I almost forgot! What is not enough for one, just right for two, and too much for three?”

“What?”

“A secret.”

She didn’t laugh any more than anyone else had.

“I don’t get it.”

“Well,” Max-Ernest explained patiently, “you can’t have a secret between yourself and yourself. You need someone else to have a secret with. That’s two people. But it’s not really a secret anymore if three people know it.”

Cass thought about this. “But that doesn’t make any sense. One person can have a secret. Three people can have a secret. It doesn’t matter how many people have a secret, as long as they don’t tell anybody else.”

Max-Ernest stared at her in surprise.

He was used to being ridiculed and teased and spat at and having his lunch stolen. But never before had anyone told him he didn’t make sense. He prided himself on his logical mind.

“No, no, you’re wrong!” he sputtered. “If you have a secret from somebody, they’re still two people!”

Cass shrugged. “Well, anyways, it doesn’t matter, because it’s not funny if you have to explain it.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“I don’t know, because you just have to get a joke. It’s not like a logical thing.”

“So then how do you know if a joke is funny?” Max-Ernest asked, extremely confused.

“You just do. Maybe you just don’t have a very good sense of humor,” Cass said helpfully.

“Oh.”

For the first time since she’d met him, Max-Ernest seemed at a loss for words. He looked so sad and defeated that Cass took pity on him.

“Or maybe you just haven’t found the right joke yet,” she added.

“Yeah, maybe.”

She didn’t know he had been trying out a new joke every day for months.

He was silent for another second. But only a second. Then he pointed to the hole in the ground. “So, what are you looking for? Buried treasure? Because buried treasure isn’t just in books, you know. There’s real buried treasure. Like in shipwrecks. Did you know the
Titanic
was—”

“I’m looking for toxic waste,” Cass said, cutting him off before he could go off on a tangent about the
Titanic.

Max-Ernest nodded knowingly. “Yeah, I heard they always put schools over toxic waste dumps. Because the land is really cheap. And then they don’t tell anyone. And then everyone gets sick. You want help? Hey, they have rubber gloves in the science lab. Maybe we should get some. Exposure to toxic waste might give us a skin rash.”

Cass smiled. Maybe Max-Ernest wasn’t so bad after all.

After her experience with Amber and Veronica, Cass had vowed never to discuss her predictions with anyone again. But she made an exception for Max-Ernest because he seemed so knowledgeable about toxic waste. By the time they returned to the soccer field with the laboratory gloves, Cass had told him all about the dead magician, the dead mouse, and the mysterious sulfur smell.

Max-Ernest scrunched his nose. “It doesn’t smell like rotten eggs to me. Are you sure it’s the same smell?”

He suggested they take out the vial from the Symphony of Smells and compare it to the scent of the soccer field. Cass was slightly annoyed that she hadn’t thought of this herself. Nonetheless, she pulled the wooden box out of her backpack to show him.
^*

When she opened the small dusty vial and took a whiff she had to agree it didn’t smell much like the soccer field. Perhaps she had jumped to conclusions too quickly.

Max-Ernest put his face to the ground and sniffed. “I think the grass smells more like you-know-what—”

“No, what?”

“You know, number two!” said Max-Ernest, turning red.

Cass rolled her eyes. But when she sniffed the ground herself, she had to agree he was right.

Then she noticed something she hadn’t seen earlier: only three feet from the mouse, there was a pile of fertilizer. What they were smelling was manure!

And there was something else: a box with a picture of a rat inside a red circle with a slash through it. Rat poison. That’s what had killed the mouse. She decided it wasn’t necessary to point this out to Max-Ernest. If he noticed it himself, fine. If he didn’t, well, he didn’t. No sense making him cocky.

Anyway, it didn’t mean there wasn’t toxic waste. Not necessarily.

Meanwhile, Max-Ernest had begun inspecting the Symphony of Smells more closely. “Did you see that the back comes off?” he asked.

Cass hadn’t noticed, but she didn’t say so. She wasn’t sure how many more of Max-Ernest’s discoveries she could take.

Max-Ernest pulled a velvet panel away from the inside of the box’s lid and a bunch of papers slid out onto the ground.

Cass started looking through them. “Beethoven... Mozart... Franz Liszt...Who’s that?”

“Beethoven and Mozart are classical music composers, like from a long time ago,” said Max-Ernest. “Maybe Franz Liszt is, too.”

“I know who Beethoven and Mozart are! I just didn’t know who Liszt was,” said Cass. “Anyway, these look like recipes... See? Symphony Number 9—juniper, chocolate, allspice... Sonata Number 12—mint, rosemary, lavender...I guess they’re like smell versions of the music? Like scratch and sniff?”

“I seriously doubt that. How could there be a smell version of music?” asked Max-Ernest, who, as you know, was always very logical. “Music is made of sound.”

“I know! I don’t mean it’s really music. It’s just a cool idea, like, I don’t know...elves and orcs. Here, look—”

She held up a hand-drawn chart, and started reading aloud. “First violin: ginger. Viola: maple. Cello: vanilla.”

“It’s an orchestra?”

“Right—the Symphony of Smells. Here’s oboe. That’s what I play. It’s licorice.”

“Huh,” said Max-Ernest, turning over the oboelicorice connection in his head. “Why do you think it’s licorice? Do you like licorice?”

“Not the black kind. But I don’t really like oboe either.”

“I still don’t see how a smell is supposed to be music,” said Max-Ernest.

“Maybe we should play one,” said Cass, pointing to the sheet music. “Or smell it, I mean.”

Using the chart to locate their “musical instruments,” they tried smelling Beethoven, then Mozart, then a symphony by Franz Liszt. All the music smelled good, except for the Liszt, but eventually even Cass had to admit she couldn’t tell what was especially musical about it.

As they put the music back in the case, a tattered piece of paper fell out and started blowing around in the breeze. Cass caught the paper just before it landed in the manure. It was smudged and wrinkled and singed around the edges, but she could still make out the words written on it.

“A message for the winds,”
she read aloud.
“In order to spell it, you must first smell it.”
Below this note, the names of four instruments had been written, one beneath the other:

“You think it’s some kind of coded message?” Cass asked.

Max-Ernest nodded. “Definitely! You can tell by the instructions. I’ll bet all we have to do is turn the instruments into smells.”

Using the chart, they wrote the name of the matching scent next to each instrument name. And this is what they came up with: