Mark lunged at him, but Mitchell danced away.
“Aw, c’mon,” laughed Mitchell. “Don’t you want to share?”
He held the pack out toward Mark. Mark swiped at it, but Mitchell pulled it away and laughed.
“How bad you want it back?” Mitchell taunted. “Bad enough to swim with the rats for it?” He backed toward a storm drain in the curb. It was plenty big enough for the pack to fit through.
“Don’t!” Mark shouted desperately.
Mitchell dangled the pack over the drain. “What’ll you give me for it?”
“What do you want?” asked Mark nervously.
Mitchell thought for a moment, then spotted something on Mark’s hand. “I’ll trade the pack…for that big old ring”
Mark couldn’t give up the ring, no way. But he didn’t want to lose the pages, either. He hadn’t read what Bobby wanted him to do yet.
“Think fast, Dimond,” snickered Mitchell as he dangled the pack over the storm drain. “The pack or the ring…pack or the ring.”
Mark didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, a steely-strong hand clamped down on Mitchell’s wrist. He looked up and came face to face with Courtney. She had been calmly watching the scene from the bench. She might not have known how to deal with the mysterious disappearance of Bobby and the Pendragons, or the fact that the world had just turned upside down, but the one thing she knew how to handle was a bully like Andy Mitchell. She squeezed his wrist and stuck her nose in his face.
“Drop that in the sewer,” she said through clenched teeth, “and you’re going in after it…headfirst.”
They stood that way for a long moment. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, Mitchell smiled.
“Jeez. I was just kidding around,” he said.
Courtney reached over with her other hand and grabbed the pack. Once she had it, she let Mitchell go. He pulled away quickly, while rubbing his wrist to get the circulation flowing again.
“It was just a goof,” he said, trying to save face. “Where’d you get that butt-ugly ring anyway?”
Mark and Courtney stared at the guy until he felt so uncomfortable that the only thing he could do was leave.
“Jeez, lighten up,” he said as he turned and jogged away. Courtney tossed the pack to Mark.
“Thanks,” said Mark with a bit of embarrassment. Now that the crisis was over, he knew he hadn’t handled it well.
“I hate that weenie,” she said.
“We’ve got to go somewhere and finish reading this,” Mark said seriously. “I’m nervous about having these out in public. Let’s go back to my house.”
“Uh-uh,” Courtney said uncomfortably. “No offense, but your room is like…rank.”
Mark looked down, embarrassed.
“Hey, don’t sweat it,” she said with a smile. “All guys’ rooms are rank. It’s just the way it is. Let’s go to my house.”
It was a short walk to Courtney’s house, and neither of them said much along the way. Both had their minds on the pages. There were a lot of questions to be answered, but one stood out above all others: What was the dangerous favor that Bobby wanted Mark to do for him? Courtney was dying to know. So was Mark, but he wasn’t all that sure he liked the idea of having to do something dangerous, no matter how important it was. Up until now, Mark’s idea of doing something dangerous was to ring somebody’s doorbell on Mischief Night and run away. Given what Bobby was going through, the stakes here were a wee bit higher than that.
They arrived at Courtney’s house, which was very much like Mark’s. They both lived in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. But rather than go to Courtney’s room, Courtney took Mark down to the basement where her father had a workshop. Mark had a fleeting moment of disappointment that he wouldn’t get to see the inner sanctum of the glorious Courtney Chetwynde, but there were larger problems to deal with.
The two sat down on an old, dusty couch and Mark opened his pack. He laid the precious pages out on a coffee table in front of them. The two hesitated a moment. As much as they were dying with curiosity about what happened next to Bobby, they were also a little bit frightened about what the pages contained and what new and disturbing wonders they would reveal. They each took a breath.
Then Courtney looked to Mark and said, “You ready?”
“Yeah.”
They looked down at the pages and picked up where they had left off.
I was going to get myself out of here and kiss this place good-bye-with or without Uncle Press.
Journal #2 (continued)
Denduron
My plan was to climb back to the top of the mountain, get past those cannibal quig beasts, find the gate that leads to the flume, and get the hell out of here. Simple, right? Yeah, sure. I’m not even sure I couldfind that stupid cave again, let alone survive the climb through the snow and the quigs. Still, my mind was made up. It was better than staying here.
But it wasn’t going to happen today. The suns were going down and it was getting dark. Yeah, that’s right. Suns. Plural. Remember I told you there were three suns? Well, they all set at the same time, but in opposite parts of the sky. North, south and east…or whatever they use for directions around here. I figured I had to spend the night and sneak away once it got light. Besides, I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything since I had a banana and some raspberry Pop-Tarts before the basketball game I never made it to.
Loor brought me to a hut that was like the one I woke up in, only smaller. In one corner was a pile of furry animal skins.
Loor pointed to them and gave me a simple command. “Sit.”
I did. It was smelly, but comfortable. There was a small stone fireplace where Loor quickly and expertly made a fire that gave us light and took the chill off. Osa arrived soon after with a cloth sack that I quickly found out was full of food. Yes! We all sat around the fire and shared loaves of crunchy bread; some weird fruit that looked like an orange but you ate like an apple; and some soft nutlike things that tasted like licorice. Maybe it was because I was so hungry, but this odd meal was delicious. I would have preferred some fries from Garden Poultry Deli on the Ave, but this did just fine. While we ate, Osa gave me some strange instructions.
“Is there someone back on Second Earth whom you trust above all others?” she asked.
It didn’t take me long to come up with the answer. I told her it was you, Mark. Sure my family’s cool, and of course I trust them, but a friend is someone who gives you trust because they want to, not because they have to.
Osa handed me a stack of blank parchment paper that was all yellowed and crunchy. She also gave me a crude pen that looked like it was carved from a tree branch, along with a small bowl of black ink.
“It is important that you write down all that is happening to you,” explained Osa. “Every chance you get, write your thoughts, your feelings, and describe the things that you see. Think of it as a journal.”
“Why?” was my obvious question.
“Because you will send them to your friend for safekeeping,” she answered. “I will not lie to you, Pendragon. This is a dangerous journey. If anything should happen to you, this journal will be the only record of what you have done.”
Yikes, that sounded grim. It was like she was asking me to write out my last will and testament. Part of me wanted to refuse because doing what she asked made me feel like I was going along with the program. And I definitely was not. On the other hand, what she said made sense. If anything happened to me, nobody would know the real story. I didn’t like that. If I was going to go down, I wanted everybody to know why.
“How are we going to get it to Mark?” I asked.
“Write first,” she said. “When you are ready, I will show you.”
That was interesting. If she could get these pages to you, that meant she knew how to use the flume in the other direction. Maybe this would be my chance to find a way home. So with that in mind, I took the pen and went to work. I set myself up next to the fire, using a piece of wood on my lap as a desk. It took a while to get the knack of using the pen because it wasn’t exactly a Bic Rollerball. I had to dip the pointy end in the ink and scratch the words out on the paper. It was a pain, but after a while I got to where I could write a whole sentence without having to re-dip.