“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Max said with a grin. “What’s with the apple?”
“Pardon me?” Doug said.
“The apple. Where’s the salty, crunchy junk and carbonated sugar water?”
Doug cleared his throat. “I’m trying to lose weight. There are things I need to be prepared for. If I’m going to live a long, healthy life, I mean.”
Max nodded and lightly punched his shoulder. “Good for you, Doug. I’m proud of you.”
Then it was Doug’s turn to blush, and he looked at Max’s hand and sighed as he turned on the movie. Toward the end, Cody Jarrett made his last stand against the police high above the ground, pacing the top of a building that looked suspiciously like the Bird Cage Club. I glanced at Doug, who winked, as Cody Jarrett screamed, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” right before dying in a huge, fiery explosion.
I gave Doug a WTF stare.
He mouthed back, “Ignore. . that. . part,” and winked again.
I looked back at Cody Jarrett as he was eaten alive by white, crackling flames. Doug’s little joke was hard to ignore, since I live at the Bird Cage Club now.
Its isolation in the clouds made it a logical and necessary decision.
Plus, I have a smart, loyal, and (somewhat) humorous sidekick and a small dog with the confidence of an angry buffalo to help guard the door.
I tried one more safe house the day after the Ferris wheel incident, an empty apartment in a three-flat on a desolate street in Lawndale, but as soon as I was locked inside, the phone rang. It was old-fashioned with a rotary dial, mounted on the wall. I lifted it and listened without saying anything. I heard movement and muffled voices but whoever held the phone was simply breathing. I hung up, paced the room, peeked out the window, and it rang again. There are few things as creepy as an old phone brrr-ringing in a hollow apartment, insisting that it be answered as if it knows you’re there. I tried to ignore it but it wouldn’t stop, so I picked it up again. There was silence, and then very quietly I heard the haunting jingle-tune of an ice cream truck.
“Lou?” I said desperately. “Mom? Dad?”
The line went dead.
I hung up, stared at it for a beat, then lifted the briefcase and fled the apartment.
Maybe it had been a wrong number dialed twice or maybe it was just an eerie coincidence, but both my gut and my paranoia politely disagreed. I rode the steel elevator up to the Bird Cage Club, and I’ll stay here until the day my family is reunited at our house on Balmoral Avenue. It’s times like these, late at night when I’m studying, that I think about home most often. I can picture us there, my mother making petite, delicious ravioli, my dad trying once again to reattach the old lightning-struck weather vane to the slate roof, and Lou and Harry absorbing something obscure and intelligent on TV. I can’t see Uncle Buddy there anymore but at least I love him again, and forgive him.
This is the last entry I’ll make in my journal tonight but will continue writing in it tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day until I find my family.
I realize now that it’s much more than a school project.
It’s actually another important explanation of who and what the Outfit is, and someday, when I’m done with it, I’ll include it where it belongs-in the notebook.
I used to study Italian in order to prepare for the trip my parents promised me if I graduate from Fep Prep with honors. Now I study it as a survival course, since so much of the notebook is written in Italian. Somewhere in that collection of tattered and worn pages stuffed between old leather is a secret that tops all others-the ultimate secret that I hope will help me find and free my family.
Especially the last chapter, “Volta.”
I knew that it meant “time.”
Once I looked deeper into my Italian dictionary, I realized that it has another meaning too. So, for tonight, my three new words are:
potere-power
interno-inside
volta-vault
I removed the brass key from the back cover, thumbed away tarnish, and saw “001” engraved on its face below three letters-UNB.
It hadn’t occurred to me until now that the key to ultimate power may actually be a key, and that it would open a vault.
Now, all I have to do is find it.