Cold Cereal Read online

  “You try,” said Erno.

  Scott tried. The claw pinched the scroll, raised it up by its end, and dropped it again—too early. It rolled off an owl’s mortarboard and came to a stop against the glass.

  “We still have four dollars,” he said.

  Four dollars later they had accidentally won two owls and a dolphin, but the scroll remained in the case, lodged between Einsteins.

  “I don’t have any more money.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Are you guys done finally?” asked someone behind them. It was a younger boy with a juice-stained face and two shiny quarters in his chubby little claw.

  “Um. Okay,” said Scott, backing off. “But … can you do us a favor?”

  The boy frowned. “A favor?” he asked, over-enunciating the word like he’d never used it in a sentence before.

  “Yeah. Could you not try to get that yellow scroll? We’re trying to get that.”

  “Yellow … you mean that roll of paper? I don’t want paper. I want an old man riding a bicycle.”

  “Of course,” Erno muttered. “The one thing we can’t trade him for his quarters.”

  “That’s great,” Scott told the boy. “Never mind, forget I said anything.”

  The boy squinted at the scroll. “You guys want that?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t, so—”

  “Why? Is it good?”

  “No,” said Erno. “It’s totally boring. You don’t want it, seriously.”

  The boy looked at the scroll, then back at Scott and Erno, and then he stepped up to the controls. A second later it was clear to everyone present that the boy only had eyes for the scroll, and when the claw dropped, it hooked through a loop of pink ribbon.

  “Oh man,” said Scott. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Little jerk,” Erno muttered under his breath.

  The scroll dropped down the chute, and they could hear it thap lightly against the door of the slot below.

  “We’ll give you two owls and a dolphin for it,” said Scott.

  The boy had the scroll in his hands. “Stuffed animals are for girls. You two are girls,” he said with a sticky pink grin. Then he pulled at the ribbon and unrolled the page and stared at its inky center.

  “What does it say?” asked Erno. He sounded desperate.

  “Why should I tell you? It’s mine. It’s really awesome, though.”

  “We’ll give you two owls and a dolphin and…”—Scott searched his backpack—“an eraser shaped like Agent SuperCar and most of a pack of gum.”

  “Strawbubble?” the boy asked, looking at the pack.

  “Very Cherry.”

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Deal.”

  “Thanks,” Erno said to Scott as they exchanged their gum and toy eraser and stuffed animals for the secret message as if they were the sissiest spies alive. The boy ran off with his haul.

  “Suckers!”

  Erno unrolled the page, and together he and Scott read the single, typewritten line:

  THIS ISN’T A CLUE, EITHER.

  Erno sighed. “This is child abuse, right?”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Erno was beginning to consider inviting Scott to the house some afternoon, so now he couldn’t help seeing it as if for the first time, the way Scott would. It was old and cramped—full of hiding places but so creaky as to make for really noisy hiding. Deep down Erno knew they were all a little old for hide-and-seek anyway, but he’d have to have something to suggest after breaking the news that the Utz kids had no video games or television.

  The only board games they owned were Monopoly and Risk. Either one on its own might be considered by most sixth graders to be boring and overlong, so most sixth graders would not be able to appreciate what Erno and Emily had made when they combined the two into a bewildering supergame called Ronopolisk that was now in its fourth year and didn’t really encourage a third player. And wouldn’t it be a shame to stop now? Just when the Scottie Dog was poised to invade Poland.

  So no TV and no games. No games but the games, and Erno wasn’t supposed to share those, either.

  The discarded pink bow still lay like a scribble on the dining-room table. Was that significant? Was it a clue? Erno tried to tease some meaning out of its shape. It sort of looked like an ampersand.

  There were sounds coming from the library, the dry swish of a broom against the floor. It was Wednesday, and on Wednesdays their housekeeper, Biggs, came to clean and cook, and mend anything that needed mending.

  “Biggs!” Erno called into the next room. “Did Mr. Wilson say anything to you about this ribbon?” He looked down at the table, then back at the doorway, and was startled to find Biggs standing next to him.

  “You all right?” Biggs asked in his dull way.

  “Yeah. You sneaked up on me.” Even as Erno said this he could scarcely believe it, looking up at the man. What would Scott think of Biggs? He was, as always, enormous. More than eight feet tall, he stooped to get through every doorway. Even when he sat down, as he did now on a dining-room chair, he seemed too tall, and his knees pointed up at the ceiling like churches.

  “Good day at school?” asked Biggs, scratching a huge hand over his cheek. As impressive as Biggs was, his hands still seemed two sizes too large, and were as thick and pink as hams. They were outmatched only by his feet. Which admittedly Erno had never seen, sure, but they had to be gigantic because why else would he wear such shoes? So long and tapered and to all appearances seaworthy. Like kayaks.

  “School was fine,” Erno answered. “Did Mr. Wilson mention anything to you about this ribbon? Like, did he tell you not to touch it?”

  “No,” said Biggs, scratching the back of his neck. “Just never disturb stuff like that.”

  Erno nodded. Of course Biggs knew all about the games. As housekeeper he would sometimes uncover hidden clues meant for Erno and Emily, and he’d been asked in these cases to leave them as he’d found them.

  “I think Emily’s figured it out already.” Erno sighed. “The new game, I mean. Or she’s figured out how to figure it out, which might as well be the same thing.”

  Look at me, thought Erno. Talking about it. It felt good to talk about it. You could tell Biggs anything.

  The only answer that came from Biggs was a sort of whuffling sound. He was sniffing the air, the great nostrils of his broad pug nose yawning wide. Erno had to stifle a yawn just looking at them.

  “What is it?”

  “Washing machine’s done,” said Biggs.

  Erno smelled nothing but didn’t argue as Biggs rose and walked soundlessly away. He’d never noticed it before—everyone else in the Utz house made the old wood creak and whine when they moved. Everyone but Biggs.

  Nothing was said about the scroll at dinner that night. Of course. They mostly sat in silence.

  Mr. Wilson said, “Erno, could you pass me the square root of one hundred and forty-four peas?” So Erno began to portion them out onto his foster father’s plate using chopsticks that had been laid out for just that purpose.

  “Emily,” he continued, “would you please spear your father another piece of moribund domestic avian muscle?” And so Emily served him some chicken. This was ordinary dining-room conversation in the Utz house, but Erno still strained to catch every word, worried that it might contain some clue. It made dinner exhausting.

  It was days later when it hit him, and he called Scott right away.

  “Archimedes is an owl,” he told him.

  “He is?” said Scott. “I thought he was a Greek guy.”

  “He’s that too. But … have you ever read The Sword in the Stone?”

  “No. I’ve seen the movie.”

  “There was a movie?”

  “Sure. They show it sometimes on the Disney Channel.”

  “Oh. Well, we don’t have a TV.”

  “You don’t … what?”

  “Have a TV. We’ve never had one.”
r />   There was a longish pause, during which Erno occupied himself by imagining Scott’s horrified face. He was used to this kind of reaction. He may as well tell people that they didn’t have a toilet.

  “Well, I haven’t seen the movie in a while,” said Scott. “I don’t remember the owl.”

  “He can talk, and his name is Archimedes. He belongs to Merlin. That story we read the other day made me think of it.”

  “Sooo … the claw of Archimedes rests…”

  “On Merlin? On Merlin’s shoulder? I’m sure I’m onto something here. I … there was a new scroll sitting on my nightstand today when I got home.”

  “What did it say?”

  “IN YELLOW PAGES FIND THE NAME

  AND PAY A CALL TO END THE GAME.”

  “It was a hint.” Erno sighed. “I bet you a hundred dollars Emily didn’t need a hint.”

  “‘In yellow pages find the name,’” said Scott. “You think you’re supposed to find the name Merlin in the original poem? Hold on.” Erno could hear Scott muttering to himself before his voice came back clear, and clearly excited. “In the first poem there are two Ms, eighteen Es, seven Rs, four Ls, and three each of Is and Ns. Two-one-eight, seven-four-three-three.”

  “That’s just enough digits to be a local phone number.”

  “It said to … what, make a call?”

  “Pay a call,” said Erno. “Doesn’t that mean to visit someone?”

  “The phone number’s worth trying anyway, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call you back.”

  Erno hung up, tried the number, then dialed Scott’s again. “Didn’t work,” he told him. “I got one of those ‘The number you’ve dialed is no longer in service’ messages.”

  “Well, but listen to this: in the original poem, the first M is the twenty-fourth letter. The first E is the third. If you check them all like that you get two-four-three, four-one-four, two-three-three-four.”

  “That’s long distance,” said Erno. “What area code is that?”

  “It’s the Congo. In Africa. I just looked it up.”

  Erno bit at a hangnail. “If this isn’t the answer, Mr. Wilson is gonna kill me for calling the Congo.”

  “Can you do it as a three-way call?”

  Erno could, and soon both boys listened as the number rang for the second, third, fourth time. Then voice mail:

  “You have reached the voice-mail box for THIS ISN’T A CLUE, EITHER. If you’d like to leave a message—”

  Erno opted not to leave a message.

  CHAPTER 6

  At lunch the following day, Erno sat at the end of the table and glared at the yellow pages, too antsy to care much what Denton or Roger or Louis thought anymore. Veterans Day was in two days.

  “What is that thing again?” asked Denton.

  Erno mumbled, “It’s a class assignment,” which was now technically true.

  Suddenly a big book fumped down on the bench beside him: a fat brick of flimsy yellow paper. The Yellow Pages. Scott stood over him.

  “Not those yellow pages,” he said, pointing to the poems in Erno’s hands. “These Yellow Pages.”

  “Have you been carrying that around all day?”

  “No, I just borrowed it from the school office.”

  “Um, guys,” said Erno to the guys. “You remember Scott, right?” They each nodded or grunted or didn’t do anything at all.

  Scott sat down. “‘In yellow pages start your quest. Find the name.’ Well, look at this.” He thumbed through the book to a page he’d marked, then traced his finger down to a small box in the corner:

  MERLE LYNN

  C.P.A.

  Tax and Financial Planning

  211 E. Ambrose 215-5937

  “Start your quest?” Denton scoffed.

  “Nerd quest,” said Louis.

  “The quest for the … the quest for the … magical ….” said Roger, struggling to finish, “… calculator. Am I right?” He grinned, palm in the air, and awaited his high fives.

  “If this doesn’t work I can just run away from home,” said Erno later after school. “There are probably all kinds of other families that would be happy to have me. I’m not completely stupid, right? I could play their games and take their tests and beat the pants off their biological kids.”

  “I don’t think other families have tests,” Scott answered. “Sorry my little sister is tagging along.”

  “It’s fine. Long as she doesn’t mind visiting Merle Lynn, C.P.A., on her way home.”

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” said Polly. “Ooh! Yard sale! Kid’s yard sale!”

  A girl of seven or eight stood in her front yard behind a TV tray and a bright orange poster that read FOR SALE.

  “We don’t have time,” said Scott. But Polly was already bounding up the yard, singing, “Yooou only say that’ cause YOU’RE mean, an’ you have abandonment tissues.”

  Erno looked at Scott. “‘Tissues’?”

  “She means issues.”

  “So your mom’s a scientist?”

  “A physicist, yeah.”

  “Factory or headquarters?” asked Erno. There was no question that she worked for Goodco in some capacity. Why else would a family move here? Scott said his mom worked at headquarters, and Erno was relieved to hear it. HQ kids and factory kids didn’t mix much.

  The yard girl was selling those kinds of toys that were popular in drugstores and dollar shops. Action figures with SOLDIER HERO printed on their uniforms. Fashion dolls with names like Marbie and Babbie. Polly examined a stiff little figurine of a prince nobody had ever heard of with a lean sword and a shield shaped like tree bark.

  “Where’d you get him?” she asked the girl.

  “Cereal box.”

  Polly paid fifty cents for the prince, and she marched him up and down Scott’s backpack all the way to Ambrose Street.

  “Stop that,” said Scott.

  Erno nudged him. “This is it.”

  They were standing in front of a high-peaked row house: all eaves and gables and a tall turret topped with a conical cap. A plaque on the porch read CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT. Two filing cabinets sat like young lovers on the porch swing.

  Scott and Erno approached the front door while Polly hung back a few steps, suddenly shy. Erno rang the bell, and a man answered.

  He was an ample, bowling pin–shaped man with a gray beard trimmed close. He wore a threadbare blue bathrobe over his boxers and wifebeater. The robe was pilly in places and no more than a meager crosshatch of thin gauze in others. It appeared to be worn not so much out of modesty as out of a sense of loyalty to the garment itself.

  “Hey,” said the man. And when none of the kids immediately answered, he added, “Selling candy?”

  “Um, no,” said Erno.

  “Too bad.”

  “Are you… Mr. Lynn?”

  “Call me Merle.”

  The hall behind Merle was cluttered with plastic binders and cardboard boxes. And dust. Erno didn’t know what he was supposed to do. If this Merle was in on the game, he wasn’t being very forthcoming about it.

  “You have an owl,” said Polly behind them. The boys followed her gaze past Merle into the house—and then they too could just see a live barn owl watching them from a fireplace mantel in the next room.

  “That’s true,” said Merle. “Do you like him? Is that cool?”

  “It’s … a little weird,” said Scott.

  “Yeah. You don’t know the half of it, kid.”

  Polly abruptly raised her new figurine and told him, “I’ve got a little prince.”

  “Sweet. Well, if that’s everything—”

  “Wait,” said Erno. “Did my … dad give you anything to give me, or … anything?”

  “Who’s your dad?”

  “Augustus Wilson.”

  “Oh!” Merle blinked. “Yeah, well, I’m finished with his taxes, but your sister came and got’em a week ago.”

  Their mother had died in childbir
th. That’s what they’d been told. Their real father had possibly never been in the picture.

  Though they’d always lived in the same house, they’d had a revolving team of foster parents, photos of whom still climbed the wall above the stairs: a mother with a face like a fist, posing stiffly with the infant Utz twins as if caught between two car alarms. A picture of Brad, a very nice man who got a very nice job offer in Maryland and left after only ten months. A candid shot of Erno and Emily with their second foster mother, taken by her husband in Cereal Town at Christmas. The old woman was yanking Emily’s arm over some misdemeanor in front of Marshmallow Manor while Erno scanned the park for a place to hide. It was remarkable both for its Hansel-and Gretelishness and for the fact that it was the nicest picture anyone had of this woman. And there were more recent photos with Mr. Wilson, who had thus far outlasted each of the others by four years.

  The one and only constant in their lives had been Biggs, the housekeeper. He’d helped care for Erno and Emily when they were small. Biggs seemed to be good at everything he did, be it knitting them sweaters or fixing a carburetor, and he was a competent nanny, though he approached every task with the same dull demeanor and apparent lack of interest. Now Biggs only came on Wednesdays, and Erno wished it were more often. Dull as he was, Biggs was always helpful, and tireless, and hugely loyal. It was like having a horse that could cook. Erno thought about visiting him from time to time, but neither of the twins knew where he lived. Erno would have been astonished if you told him that Biggs lived at the top of a tall oak tree in Avalon Park, though Emily probably would have just nodded thoughtfully.

  Erno hurried home. He unlocked his front door, and there was Emily, sitting in the stairwell with a bag of candy in her lap.