The Name of this Book Is Secret

Copyright © 2007 by Pseudonymous Bosch

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Or Else!

Little, Brown and Company

(they're neither little nor brown, but that's another story.)

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.hachettebookgroup.com

First eBook Edition: September 2008

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

That is, if you believe in coincidences.

Cover illustration and interior illustrations copyright © 2007 by Gilbert Ford

ISBN: 978-0-316-03992-5

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I'm sorry I couldn't let you read Chapter One.

That was where you would have learned the names of the characters in this story. You also would have learned where it takes place. And when. You would have learned all the things you usually learn at the beginning of a book.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you any of those things.

Yes, this is a story about a secret. But it's also a secret story.

I shouldn't even be telling you that I shouldn't be telling you the story. That's how much of a secret it is.

Not only can't I tell you the names of the people involved, I can't even tell you what they've done or why.

I can't tell you what kind of pets they have. Or how many annoying little brothers. Or how many bossy big sisters. Or whether they like their ice cream plain or with mix-ins.

I can't tell you about their schools or their friends or their favorite television shows. Or if they ride skateboards. Or if they are champion chess players. Or if they compete in fencing competitions. Or even if they wear braces.

In short, I can't tell you anything that would help you identify the people involved in this story if you were to meet them at your orthodontist's office. (Teeth, as you may know from watching television, are very useful when detectives are identifying cadavers.)

This is for your own protection as well as mine. And for the protection of your friends. And even of your enemies. (You know, those ones you say you want to kill but in the end you'd rather keep alive.)

Still, you must find my silence very frustrating.

How can you follow a story if you don't know whom it's about? Somebody has got to be getting lost in the woods, or slaying dragons, or traveling in time, or whatever it is that happens in the story.

I'll tell you what—I'll make you a deal.

To help you follow my story, I'm going to break my own rule—already!—and I'm going to give my characters names and faces. But remember these aren't their real names and faces. They're more like code names or cover identities, like a spy or a criminal would have.

If you don't like a name I choose, change it. If I write "Tim loved to pick his nose," and you prefer the name Tom to Tim, then read the line as "Tom loved to pick his nose." I won't take offense. You can do that with all the names in this book if you like.

Or keep my names. It's up to you.

Now, just as it's hard to read a story without knowing whom the story's about, it's also hard to read a story without knowing where the story takes place. Even if you were reading about extraterrestrials from another dimension, you'd want to imagine something about their surroundings. Like that they lived in a murky green miasma. Or in some place really hot.

Although the real location of this story will have to remain a mystery, to make it easier for all of us, why don't we say the story takes place in a place you know very well?

We'll call it Your Hometown.

When you read about the town the characters live in, just think of the town you live in. Is the town big or little? By the sea or by a lake? Or is your town all asphalt and shopping malls? You tell me.

When you read about the characters' school, think of Your School. Is it in an old one-room schoolhouse or in a bunch of double wide mobile homes? You decide.

When they go home, imagine they live on Your Street, maybe even in a house right across from yours.

Who knows, maybe Your Street is where the story really takes place. I wouldn't tell you if it was. But I couldn't tell you for certain that it's not.

In return for all the freedom I'm giving you, I ask only one favor: if I ever slip and reveal something that I shouldn't—and I will!—please forget what I've said as soon as possible.

In fact, when you're reading this book, it's a good idea to forget everything you read as soon as you read it. If you're one of those people who can read with their eyes closed, I urge you to do so. And, if you're blind and reading this in braille, keep your hands off the page!

Why do I write under such awful circumstances? Wouldn't it be better to scrap this book altogether and do something else?

Oh, I could give you all kinds of reasons.

I could tell you that I write this book so you will learn from the mistakes of others. I could tell you that, as dangerous as writing this book is, it would be even more dangerous not to write it.

But the real reason is nothing so glorious. It's very simple.

I can't keep a secret. Never could.

I hope you have better luck.

True, I cannot tell you the year this story begins, or even the month. But I see no harm in telling you the day.

It was a Wednesday.

A humble, unremarkable day. The middle child in the weekday family. A Wednesday has to work hard to be noticed. Most people let each one pass without comment.

But not the heroine of our story. She is the kind of girl who notices things that others don't.

Meet Cassandra.

Wednesday is her favorite day. She believes it's just when you least expect something earth-shattering to happen that it does.

According to Greek myth, the original Cassandra was a princess of ancient Troy. She was very beautiful, and Apollo, god of the sun, fell in love with her.

When she rejected him, Apollo became so angry he placed a curse on her: he gave her the power to predict the future, but he also ensured that nobody would believe her predictions. Imagine knowing that your whole world was about to be destroyed by a tornado or typhoon, and then having nobody believe you when you told them. What misery!

Unlike the Cassandra of myth, the girl who figures in our story is not a prophet. She cannot see into the future. Nor has she been cursed by a god, at least not to my knowledge. But she resembles a prophet in that she is always predicting disaster. Earthquakes, hurricanes, plagues—she is an expert in all things terrible and she sees evidence of them everywhere.

That is why I am calling her Cassandra—or Cass, for short.

As you know, I cannot describe Cass in detail. But this much I will tell you: from the outside, Cass looks like a typical eleven-year-old. Her major distinguishing feature is that she has rather large, pointy ears. And before you tell me that I shouldn't have told you about the ears, let me explain that she almost always covers her ears with her hair or with a hat. So chances are you will never see them.

While she may look like other girls, Cass is in other respects a very un-average sort of person. She doesn't play games involving fortune-telling or jump rope or strings of any kind. She doesn't even watch television very often. She doesn't own a single pair of soft suede boots lined with fleece. She wouldn't even want a pair, unless they were waterproof and could protect her in a snowstorm.

As you can tell, Cass is very practical; she has no time for trivial matters.

Her motto: Be Prepared.

Her mission: to make sure that she and her friends and family survive all the disasters that befall them.

Cass is a survivalist.

These are things Cass carries in her backpack every day:

Flashlight

Compass

Silver Mylar space blanket—surprisingly warm if you haven't tried one; also has useful reflective properties

Box of juice—usually grape, doubles as ink in a pinch

Bubble gum—for its sticking value, and because chewing helps her concentrate

Cass's patented "super-chip" trail mix—chocolate chips, peanut-butter chips, banana chips, potato chips (and no raisins, ever!)

Topographic maps—of all the closest desert and mountain areas, as well as of Micronesia and the Galápagos Islands

Rope

Tool kit

First-aid kit

Dust mask

Extra pair of socks and shoes—in case of flash floods and other wet conditions

Matches—technically not allowed at school

Plastic knife—because a jackknife is really not allowed

Schoolbooks and homework—when she remembers, which is not very often (she keeps forgetting to put schoolwork on her supplies checklist)

On the evidence of the items in her backpack, you might guess that Cass had led a very adventurous life. But you would be wrong. The truth is, up until the time this story begins, none of the disasters she predicted had befallen her. There'd been no earthquakes at school—none strong enough to shatter a window, anyway. The mildew in her mother's shower turned out to be just that—not the killer mold Cass predicted. And that child spinning around on the grass did not have mad cow disease—he was just having a good time.

Cass didn't exactly mind that her predictions hadn't come true. After all, she didn't wish for disaster. But she couldn't help wishing people took her concerns more seriously.

Instead, everyone was always reminding her about the boy who cried wolf. Naturally, they took that story to mean the boy shouldn't have cried wolf when there weren't any. But Cass knew the true moral of the story: that the boy was right, there really were wolves around, and they'd get you in the end if you didn't watch out.

Better to cry wolf over and over than never to cry wolf at all.

Of all the people in the world, only two paid attention to Cass's predictions: Grandpa Larry and Grandpa Wayne.

Larry and Wayne weren't Cass's original, biological grandfathers. They were her substitute grandfathers. Larry had been Cass's mother's history teacher in high school, and they'd remained friends ever since. Since neither of Cass's original grandfathers were around, Cass's mother asked Larry and Wayne to fill in.

Larry and Wayne lived around the corner from Cass in an old abandoned fire station. The bottom floor, where the fire engines had been kept, they had converted to an antiques store and warehouse. Their living quarters were upstairs, where in the old days the firemen had slept between fires.

Every Wednesday after school, Cass was supposed to work in their shop until her mother called to say dinner was ready. But, in truth, very little work ever got done at the fire station.

"You're just in time for tea," Grandpa Larry would say whenever she visited.

Grandpa Larry wasn't British, but he'd spent time in England when he was in the army and he'd developed a serious tea habit. Cass thought Larry's elaborate tea rituals were a little silly, but she loved the cookies Larry made (he called them "biscuits") and the stories he told while their tea was brewing. By now, Cass suspected that most of his stories were exaggerated, if not entirely made up, but they always included useful information—like how to put up a tent in a sandstorm or how to milk a camel.

On the particular Wednesday that this story begins, Larry was showing Cass how to make a compass by placing a cork in a bowl of water.^* The compass was almost complete, and the cork just about to point north, when her grandfathers' basset hound, Sebastian, started barking so noisily that the water shook out of the edge of the bowl.

Sebastian was blind, and now that he was growing old he was very nearly deaf as well. But he had the keenest sense of smell in town—everyone called him "Sebastian, the Seeing-Nose Dog"—and he always knew when visitors were about to enter the shop.

"Fire drill!" called Grandpa Wayne from down below, which was their code for when a customer had arrived.

"Guess the compass will have to wait," grumbled Grandpa Larry. "Now get down. Smoke rises, so the best way to keep breathing is to stay low to the ground."

He and Cass crouched down and pulled their shirts over their noses, as if the room were filling with smoke. Larry pointed to the station's old brass fire pole: "Ladies first."

Cass eagerly grabbed the pole and stepped out into the opening in the floor.

"Wait," said Larry. "Promise not to tell your mother?"

"Promise," said Cass, already starting to slide.

Despite the fact that it was their job, Cass's grandfathers couldn't bear to sell anything; they loved all their things too much.

As a result, their store was crammed so tight it was like a huge maze with walls of furniture. Every surface was covered with stuff they'd collected—from old clown paintings to mechanical monkeys to broken typewriters to things you couldn't describe if you tried.

By the time Larry and Cass had navigated their way through, the front door was opening to reveal a short pair of legs staggering under the weight of an enormous cardboard box.

As soon as he saw the box, Larry rushed to the doorway and threw his arms across it, barring the way.

"No, no, no! Bad Gloria!" he said sternly, as if he were addressing a dog and not a person under a box. "I told you last time, no more things. Look around. We're stuffed to the gills."

"At least let me put this down for a minute," complained the voice of the unseen woman.

Taking pity on her, Larry grabbed hold of the box and placed it on the threshold. A small round woman in a bright yellow suit scowled at him. This was Gloria Fortune.

"Don't you even want to hear where it comes from?" she asked, still red-faced and breathing hard under her tall beehive hairdo. "Such fascinating things... Well, never mind!" she said brightly. "Is there a Dumpster in back?"

Larry almost choked. "No! I mean, yes, there's a Dumpster, but...you're not...you wouldn't... throw the box away?" he asked, as if Gloria were threatening murder.

Gloria smiled slyly as she twisted a curl of hair that had sprung loose. "Sorry, Larry. You're my last resort. I certainly don't have any room."

Larry hesitated. "In that case—why don't you come inside for a cup of tea, and I'll just take a peek, before you do anything rash—"

Gloria grinned victoriously. "You won't regret it," she said, entering the store.

Sheepishly, Larry picked up the box and followed her back inside.

"Sorry," he whispered to Cass. "This should only take a second, er, minute, er, five, er, ten...twenty minutes at the most...."

Gloria, as Cass learned over her third—or was it her fourth?—cup of tea, was a real estate agent, a "probate specialist," meaning that she sold houses after their owners passed away. She was, in effect, a real estate agent for the dead.

Gloria loved to gossip, and Larry was always ready to listen to ghoulish tales about her dead clients. (Wayne, who was a retired auto mechanic, always left to go fix something when Gloria was around.) As for the box of stuff she had just brought, it came from the home of a "strange and reclusive man—some kind of magician or something. What I call a real old coot," Gloria said.

"Watch it, Gloria," said Grandpa Larry. "Some of us are pretty cootish ourselves!"

The magician, Gloria continued obliviously, had died very suddenly several months earlier in a kitchen fire, the source of which was never determined. He had no known relations or survivors. "Not a single friend left, poor man."

Because the magician's house was so "off the beaten path" his death might never have been discovered had not his gardener investigated the terrible smell emanating from the kitchen.

Cass nodded knowingly at this bit of information. "The smell of decomposing flesh can be very strong," she said, trying to show she was familiar with cases of this kind (although, I hasten to point out, her knowledge of corpses was not yet firsthand).

"True," sniffed Gloria. "But actually what the gardener was smelling was something else. Sulfurous, he described it. Like huevos podridos."

"That means 'rotten eggs' in Spanish," said Cass, who was studying the language at school.

"I thought it meant Talky Girls," said Gloria pointedly.

Cass considered it wise not to say anything more, and she excused herself to do some homework, pretending she was no longer interested in the story of the dead magician. But she continued to listen, or, as you might call it, eavesdrop, while Gloria finished telling her story.

In fact, almost nothing of the magician's body was left—smelly or otherwise. The fire had been so intense that only a few of his teeth remained. (See, I warned you about teeth.) Curiously, while the magician's entire kitchen was incinerated, the rest of the house was left unscathed, as if the fire had gone out as quickly as it had started.

According to Gloria, the source of the noxious aroma was never found, and traces of it still lingered. She hoped it wouldn't hamper the sale of the house, which was going to be difficult enough thanks to the house's "quirky and offbeat" character.

Gloria pronounced these words as if they were slightly distasteful, but Cass, not knowing precisely what they meant, thought they sounded just grand. She decided if she ever bought a house she would want to buy one just like the magician's.

After Gloria left, Wayne rejoined the others to rifle through the magician's belongings. Mostly, the contents of the box were disappointing. What Gloria had described as a "contraption for mixing potions" turned out to be an ordinary kitchen mixer. And what she had guessed was "something to make objects disappear" was in fact a piece of exercise equipment.

They thought they'd extracted everything they could, when Sebastian started barking excitedly. The blind dog circled the box, sniffing it, like there was something inside he really wanted. Or something inside he was really scared of. Or both.

Cass pushed aside the last remaining bits of newspaper at the bottom and saw something they'd missed earlier: another box. Sebastian's barks grew louder as she pulled it out.

The box was flat, about the size and shape of a briefcase, and fitted with brass hinges and fastenings. It was made of a darkish, reddish, stripy type of wood, and it was carved with a design of swirling vines and flowers surrounding an uplifted face. The face was shown in profile inhaling what looked like curling smoke.

"Rosewood," Wayne said, taking the box from Cass so that he could examine it more closely. "Too large for a cigar box....Maybe a cutlery case?"

Larry nodded. "Probably...Art Nouveau design. About a hundred years old. French?"^* He took the box from Wayne and held it up to look at the bottom. "No markings. Looks like one of a kind."

"Can I open it?" Cass asked. She knew from experience they could go on for hours if she didn't stop them.

Wayne nudged Larry, and Larry handed her the box. "Go ahead," he said, although, no doubt, he would have liked to open it himself.

With a substitute grandfather peering over each shoulder, Cass carefully sprang the latch and raised the lid. From their gasps, Cass could tell they'd never seen anything like it before. She certainly hadn't.

The interior of the box was upholstered in lustrous purple velvet. Nestled in the velvet, and arranged in four concentric semicircles, were dozens of sparkling crystal vials. Most of these vials (Cass later counted ninety-nine of them) contained liquids in a variety of colors: lavender water, amber oil, alcohol in an alarming shade of green. Other vials were filled with powders of various degrees of fineness; others with flower petals, leaves, herbs and spices, shards of wood and bark, even dirt. One vial held a single strand of hair.

"What is this, some kind of chemistry set?" Cass wondered aloud.

"Hmm, could be," said Larry. "Did you know that in England pharmacists are called chemists?"

Touching the velvet for the first time, Cass noticed something that had been hidden by a fold: a small brass plaque on which someone had engraved the words:

The Symphony of Smells

"'The Symphony of Smells'?"

"Maybe it's a perfume-making kit," suggested Wayne.

Cass pulled out a vial and opened it. A sharp citrus aroma was released into the air.

"Lemon?" she guessed.

She handed the vial to Wayne and pulled out another. They spent the next few minutes opening vials, and guessing the scents they contained: mint, lime, root beer ("sassafras," Larry called it), wet wool, old socks, freshly mown grass.

"I think it's a kind of smelling game," said Cass, who was enjoying herself immensely. "To train your nose. Like if you were a detective. So you would know what you were smelling in an emergency. Or at the scene of a crime."

"Whatever it is, my nose is getting very tired," said Larry.

"Just one more," said Cass, picking up a vial from the end of the second row. There was a hairline crack in the vial, and it was nearly empty, save for a light dusting of yellow powder. She opened it—and recognized the smell immediately.

It was the smell of huevos podridos. Rotten eggs.

QUESTION: What is not enough for one, just right for two, and too much for three?

ANSWER: A secret.

Max-Ernest, eleven-year-old aspiring stand-up comedian, had read the joke—really a riddle, if you want to get technical—in one of his seventeen joke books, and now he was trying it on each of his twenty-six classmates in turn.

None of his classmates laughed. Or even smiled.

Most of them were so tired of his jokes that they didn't bother to respond at all. Those who did said things on the order of "Uh huh" and "Whatever" and "That's stupid" and "No more jokes—it's so annoying, Max-Ernest!" and "Why can't you just have one name like a normal person?"

You or I would probably burst into tears if our jokes met with such negative reactions, but Max-Ernest was used to it. He never let what other people said upset him.

He was going to be the funniest and best stand-up comedian of all time. He just needed to practice.

Max-Ernest looked around the school yard for a student who hadn't heard his joke yet. There was only one. She was squatting by the edge of the soccer field, a baseball cap on the ground beside her.

He didn't know her personally because they didn't have any classes together. But he recognized her on the basis of a certain physical feature: her big, pointy ears.

Since I've already made the mistake of describing Cass's most identifiable trait (yes, her ears! I thought she never exposed them, but I guess I was wrong), I may as well describe our other hero, Max-Ernest, for you. But remember what I said about forgetting what I said? Try to erase the image of Max-Ernest from your head as fast as you can—for your own safety.

Aside from his small size, the first thing you would have noticed about Max-Ernest was his hair. Each strand stood on end, as though he were a cartoon character who had just stuck his finger in an electrical socket.

His hairstyle was not a fashion choice; it was a philosophical one. Max-Ernest cut every hair on his head the exact same length because he didn't like to favor one hair over another. Hairs may be made of dead cells, he reasoned, but they're still growing things, and each one deserves to be treated fairly. (If you think this point of view is a bit odd or eccentric, well, I'd have to agree.)

That hair is dead but still growing is what is known as a paradox: something that seems impossible but is nonetheless true. Max-Ernest was very fond of paradoxes, as he was of all kinds of riddles and puzzles and word games.

Max-Ernest also liked math. And history. And science. And just about any subject you can think of.

Despite his diminutive stature, Max-Ernest attracted attention wherever he went. He couldn't help it. As you will soon discover yourself, Max-Ernest was a talker. A big talker. He talked all the time. Even in his sleep.

His "condition," as his parents called it, was so extreme that they'd taken him to numerous experts in hopes of finding a diagnosis.

The first expert said he had attention deficit disorder. The second expert said the first was out of order. One expert said he was autistic, another that he was artistic. One said he had Tourette's syndrome. One said he had Asperger's syndrome. And one said the problem was that his parents had Munchausen syndrome.