The Mapmaker and the Ghost (10 page)

There was a glint of anger in the boy's eyes before they darkened again. He slackened his hold on Goldenrod's arm and yelled, “Toe Jam!” into the cavern.

Within a few seconds, there were more scuffling footsteps, and the staircase produced the dirty, ruffled frame of Randy.

“Yes, Spitbubble?”

So Randy is … Toe Jam?
Goldenrod thought.

“This girl here tells us that she followed you all the way to Headquarters.”

Toe Jam's jaw dropped as he saw Goldenrod. “Mold-and-rot…,” his voice trailed.

“Explain yourself,” Spitbubble said.

“I … I don't know how she got here,” Toe Jam said.

“Where were you when you saw him?” Spitbubble asked Goldenrod.

“Due west,” Goldenrod grumbled.

“Are you trying to be funny?” Spitbubble asked.

“No. If I was, I wouldn't be doing a very good job.”

“Shut up and answer the question. I don't need any extra words out of you,” Spitbubble said.

“I was answering your question. I was due west.” Goldenrod looked at the blank faces staring at her and sighed, pointing to where she had come from. “Over there, by a bunch of bushes with red berries.”

Spitbubble rounded on Toe Jam. “Well?”

“I don't know … maybe she means where I was meeting Toulouse,” he said.

“Toe Jam, I believe this is the second time I've warned you about bringing your
butler
into these woods.” He exaggerated the word
butler
in the same slow, dangerous way he had exaggerated
Meriwether
.

“How else am I supposed to get the stuff from him?” Toe Jam muttered.

“Oh, I don't know. By going to the house where you live and he works and where no one will suspect you hanging around. The fact that you actually have a house you can go to and get that junk from is the only use I have for you.” Spitbubble didn't blink once, penetrating Toe Jam with his glare. “And, if you can't even do that right, well …”

“That junk seems to pay for a lot of things,” Toe Jam mumbled.

“It pays for the privilege of letting you hang out with us. You don't want to do it anymore, no problem. The exit is that way …
due west
,” Spitbubble pointed.

That shut Toe Jam up. For a minute, Spitbubble continued to glare at him. And then he turned away as if nothing had happened. He handed Goldenrod's arm to Jonas.

“Take her down and keep her with her brother, Brains. Until I figure out how to clean up your mess.”

Birch had stopped crying, but he couldn't stop sniffling. He needed to figure out how to get himself out of there.

Maybe he could tackle—SNIFF—Lint with one of those video-game moves he had practiced—SNIFF—all summer. Then he'd run upstairs screaming an ear-shattering battle cry, take down the rest of the kids in one truly spectacular round housekick, and run back home and into his bed right before his mother—SNIFF—would be coming in with a hot bowl of soup.

As he was visualizing this awesome feat, he heard more footsteps on the stairs.

“We got another one,” he heard Brains say.

Lint looked up. “What's
she
doing here?”

“Guard her, Lint. This is no joke. Spitbubble's in a foul mood.”

And then Birch saw her—she was being led into the room by Brains. Birch's face broke into a wide grin.

Goldenrod loosened herself from Brains's grasp and hurried over to him. Birch immediately threw himself at her, holding on to her in a tight hug.

Goldenrod patted him on the head. Birch was so happy and relieved to see her that it was a few moments before he began to realize that if Goldenrod were in here—who on earth was out there to rescue him?

“So you know that girl, right, Brains? You know her family?” Spitbubble said as Brains came back up the stairs. He was leaning against the cavern wall, arms folded in front of his thin chest.

“Yeah…,” Brains trailed off.

“Good. Think of a way of scaring her and that little brat into never breathing a word of this to anyone. I expect you to make good on your nickname.” Spitbubble straightened himself out. “And make sure everything is set for tomorrow,” he said casually as he strolled out of the cavern.

Easy for him to say
, Brains thought to himself about a half hour later as he kicked a pebble moodily and walked into the bright sunshine. He was always the one that was coming up with the plans.
Then again, who else would do it?
he thought as he looked to the clearing by the side of the
cavern and saw No-Bone, Toe Jam, and Snotshot arguing while they were trying to make up teams for a game of tug-of-war. Toe Jam had created a nice mud pit with the help of the hose that Brains had hooked up a few weeks ago and they were using an old, frayed rope that one of them had picked up from somewhere. It was getting hard to keep track of who was contributing what to their inventory.

Toe Jam spotted him as he walked toward them.

“You're on my team, Brains.”

Brains shook his head. “I can't. I have work to do for Spitbubble.”

“In your super secret lab, I bet,” Snotshot snorted.

“It's not super secret. It's just super secret to you because you don't understand what I'm doing,” Brains said coolly.

“Brains, no one understands what you're doing. Albert Einstein would probably have a hard time,” Snotshot said.

Brains smirked smugly.

“Although,” Snotshot continued, “perhaps Thomas Edison might have a clue.”

Brains glared at her. She knew how he felt about that backstabber Edison.

“Without me—” he started.

“Yes, yes, we know,” No-Bone said, as he grabbed hold of one end of the rope. “There would never be a plan, and we'd all be doomed to go back to our homes.”

“And don't you forget it,” Brains said.

“How could we? You won't let us,” No-Bone said.

“Brains, are you going to play or not?” Toe Jam asked.

“Not,” Brains said.

“Okay, fine. Then I'll be on Snotshot's team,” Toe Jam said, a little too eagerly.

“Dude, no way,” No-Bone said. “This is how we always team up. How else are we going to keep ultimate score?”

“But this isn't fair!” Toe Jam said. “Lint's not here to be on my team. Unless he can come out—” Toe Jam looked hopefully at Brains.

“Absolutely not,” Brains said. “Lint's on guard, and he's staying there.”

“Fine,” Toe Jam said. “New teams, then.”

“You can't always be on the winning side, Toe Jam,” No-Bone said. “It'll be good for you to learn how to be a gracious loser.” He smirked.

“Who are you calling a loser?” Toe Jam said and then, after a pause, “Seriously though, you're both older and bigger than me. How is this fair?”

“Oh, fine,” Snotshot butted in. “Stop your whining. I'll be on a side by myself.”

Brains took one last glance at Toe Jam's defeated face. He could almost see the wheels turning in his head, trying to think of a clever reason to be on Snotshot's team instead.

Brains rolled his eyes as he turned around.

“Wait,” No-Bone called, and ran up to give him the
crumpled piece of grid paper. “Here, I finished the camera diagram.”

“Great. We're all set,” Brains said.

While No-Bone returned to his rowdy game of tug-of-war, Brains walked deeper into the woods. He needed to go to a place with no distractions.

Soon, the other kids' voices were replaced with the sound of a running stream. As soon as he heard the water, he let himself do what he never allowed himself to in front of the others—worry. So much of what everyone had done hinged on his plans and thoughts. What if something were to go wrong? What if they couldn't get the right equipment tomorrow or, worse, what if he'd miscalculated something and the generator wouldn't work at all?

And now, on top of everything else, he had to find a way to scare the Morams. As Brains passed by all the lush forest greenery, he was instantly reminded of the most vivid thing he knew about them: that they lived in a nice house with sweet parents and a pretty extraordinary garden.

He had played in that garden a lot way back in kindergarten, when the foster home he was staying at was only a block away from the Morams' house. He remembered how he and Goldenrod had dug holes for tulip bulbs while her mother had brought them out peach iced tea and fruit snacks. Every now and again, when he had happened to pass by the Morams' house in the springtime, he had seen those tulips,
now grown purple, red, and yellow, and he'd been reminded of that happy and simple summer.

But that was a long time and many foster homes ago.
This is my home now
, he thought, as he stepped into a small stone cave situated right by the stream.

Unlike the lair, this cave consisted of only one longish room. Most of it was taken up by a large wooden table on top of which lay all sorts of beakers, Bunsen burners, wires, plugs, circuit boards, a microscope, a telescope, and other various scientific instruments. Most of the equipment came as a result of meshing together a few different chemistry sets. Some of the supplies No-Bone had graciously nicked from the middle school laboratory before school let out. And some, like the telescope and a lot of the electric wires, Spitbubble had actually allotted some money to because he believed in their importance.

In a lot of ways, the lab was the greatest part of being a member of the Gross-Out Gang. Obviously, Brains was aware that he was smart, but it was one of the first times he felt that someone else really appreciated it. None of his foster parents had ever stuck around long enough to really know that about him: troublemaker, yes, but brilliant troublemaker, not so much. Even though, really, how was a scientist supposed to come up with new theories and inventions if he didn't accidentally blow up a basement or two?

“Right?” Brains said directly to the poster that was
taped above his workstation. A man with gelled black hair, a mustache, and a slight smile looked back at him. His hero, Nikola Tesla.

Tesla was a pioneer in electricity and radio. He invented the Tesla coil, capable of shooting one million volts of electricity into the air, which he loved to use during demonstrations simply to keep his audience on their toes. He would amaze and confound them by lighting bulbs that were plugged into nowhere. He helped invent robots and remote controls. And he was a bit of a mad scientist. In a word, he was the very definition of awesome.

Oh, and he'd had a pretty serious rivalry going on with Thomas Edison. Brains was totally on Tesla's side, of course.

The thing was, if Tesla could come up with all those ideas in the late nineteenth century, surely Brains could solve the Gross-Out Gang's problems with just a little bit of help from twenty-first century equipment.

Brains closed his eyes and listened for the faint sound of gurgling. That gurgling came from the underground hot springs that started below the lab and ran all the way to the giant lair. And that gurgling was the key to Brains's plan to bring heat and electricity to the lair and to make the forest a permanent home for all of them.

He allowed himself a small smile.

A short while later, Brains was putting on a disguise in the form of a navy baseball cap attached to a blond
mullet—probably a donation from Snotshot's old theater department. He put his new, carefully prepared brown box underneath one arm, gave a final nod to Tesla, and set out to, as Spitbubble had said, make good on his nickname.