Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware (5 page)

Katie pressed herself against the side of the stairs where she squatted. Something strange was going on. She didn't know what, but she could tell that this was not your normal sports mom selling things out of the back of a van to raise money for uniforms.

She had forgotten Choate, forgotten crushes. Her Horror Hollow instincts took over, and she began to Detect.

She craned her neck around the edge of the concrete steps. The two were at the van, looking around suspiciously. Katie pulled back to conceal herself.

In a minute, she looked out again. They had opened the van's back door. They were intent on something inside. So intent that Katie could creep out and run, hunched, down the line of cars.

She could try to catch a glimpse of what was inside.

Meanwhile, in the gymnasium, the excitement was…

Oh. Pelt's still losing. Frank Minello versus Delaware #5. Noontime dazzle off the basketball backboard.

Sniffle. Sniffle. Blink.
Frank Minello's eyes flapped shut. He screamed, his mouth a lima bean of agony. He threw himself forward, his face buried between his knees.

Groans. 0–5.

Really not very exciting at all.

Forget it. Let's go back outside.

Team Mom and Mr. Lecroix stood by the back of the van. Mr. Lecroix bent forward to see what was in the shadows. Katie couldn't see a thing. The two conspirators were in the way.

Katie craned her neck. Still she couldn't see whatever it was that lurked in the dark. Luckily Katie had hidden beside a battered Oldsmobile Delta 88 jammed diagonally in a compact-car parking space with its front tires up on the curb. The Oldsmobile Delta 88 was a car so enormously long that Katie could have slunk down its tawny side with a whole SWAT team gesturing to each other behind her and still have been masterfully concealed. She thanked the stars above for good old-fashioned gas-guzzlers with
room for twenty clowns and a hurdy-gurdy and snuck forward in a crouch, her fingertips padding along the car's pockmarked surface.

When she raised her head again, she could see through the car's clouded windows, through the side windows of the van.

Team Mom was removing blankets or a tarp from something in the back.

There was a gleam.

Gold.

Something gold and jeweled and sharp was being unveiled.

Katie gasped when she saw it.

Inside, the crowd sat slumped on the risers. No one bothered to shout or scream. It was a massacre. The cheerleaders were no longer shouting and had given up human pyramids. They were off in the corner, playing Go Fish and mashing wads of Big League Chew into their mouths. It wasn't any use pretending that spirit or fight could win the day.

The day was basically lost to Delaware.

The score was 0–6. Choate Brinsley was up. After him, just Jasper, and then it was the end of the first half. If none of the Pelt team had won a round before then, there wouldn't be a second half. At 0–8, there was no way Pelt could win, so the game would be declared in favor of
Delaware. It would take at least one Pelt win in the first half before there was even a fighting chance of bringing home the gold, seated, bug-eyed trophy.

Combat was joined between Choate and Delaware's #2. No one moved. Pupil seized on pupil. Retinas glistened.

For a long time, there was no sound in the room except the clanging of the heaters, over which the air rippled and churned.

There is no thrill like the description of a game of Stare-Eyes.

Looking down at the players' bench, Lily considered how miserable Jasper must be, sitting there, straight-backed, waiting for his round and watching his beloved team fail again and again.

Suddenly, Choate got a look of horror on his face.

He shied away from his enemy's glance. He quivered, repelled by something—what?—that he saw—

He yelped and closed his eyes.

An angry growl rolled through the gymnasium. Two minutes and fifty-six seconds. That was all it had taken for the captain of the Pelt team to crumble. Two minutes and fifty-six seconds.

#2's eyes were mobile again, and full of ugly triumph.

Everyone was abuzz.

And Jasper was up.

Palms sweating, Jasper rose from the bench, dismally slapping palms with a teammate as he walked the long walk out onto the floor.

It was all too much for him. Though his team members had mocked his cushionized suit's hydraulic rump—just as they had mocked his eye-weights, his pinnies, his jetpack, and his sandwiches of nutrient fungus-roast—still, they were dear to him. He was thrilled when they won a round, and they were overjoyed when he stared at an opponent unblinking for one, two, three hours. They were his team, through thick and thin, and he hated to see them lose. He knew Choate would take it hard. He looked up sadly toward the scoreboard. 0–7.

As he came forward, the town mustered some applause for Jasper Dash, their hometown hero, the Stare-Eyes champ they all could count on.

He was just about to step onto the court when Choate grabbed his arm. “Jas!” said Choate. “Something's going on!”

“I know,” agreed Jasper dolefully. “The breaking of my defiant young heart.”

“His eyes changed!”

“Who?”

“Number Two!”

Jasper regarded his captain carefully. “How do you mean?”

“I was sitting there—completely fine—and then his eyes changed. I mean, totally. They changed into snake eyes or cat eyes. Like he wasn't even human. You know, slitty pupils.”

“I didn't see it.”

“I don't think anyone else did. It's something weird. It completely freaked me out.”

Jasper protested, “But surely there must be a league rule against this kind of thing. Mid-round eye substitution.”

“I'm telling you, Jas, dude, it happened. It made me blink.”

Jasper looked distraught. “But then that means…, ” he said, stammering at the implication, “that means they didn't follow league regulations.”

“And no one can see but us.”

The referee blew his whistle.

It was Jasper's turn. It was all up to him. If he won, the game went on to a second round. If he lost, the town lost too.

He took his chair to meet his opponent.

Sun-blots struck from gold quivered on the walls of the van. Katie's eyes were wide with startlement.

Team Mom held some kind of sacrificial knife. It was covered in gems.

Lecroix took it from her hands and, fixing a little lens in his eye, inspected it closely. Team Mom smoked. She dawdled by the side of the van.

Lecroix nodded and handed it back to her.

She placed the knife in a wooden box and closed the lid. Now she took out some kind of idol. A dancing woman with a lute in her hands and a coral carnation blooming where a head should be. Lecroix squatted and peered at the statue.

Meanwhile, Team Mom uncovered another treasure. A boxy something…

Katie swiveled from side to side, trying to see through the row of windows. She ducked and slithered back along the side of the Delta 88.

She popped her head up near the trunk. Team Mom had taken out the artifact and held it in her arms for Lecroix's inspection.

It was a model of a building. On each of its many square towers there were little antennae.

Mr. Lecroix looked it over. He seemed very excited. He nodded again and again, and once kissed his fingertips. He rubbed his hands on his pants.

Katie shifted to try to see more clearly. Mr. Lecroix was obviously thrilled. The artifact looked like it was made out of cardboard. The antennae were plastic spoons.

Mr. Lecroix smiled. Team Mom slid the model back into the van. While she draped a tarp over the objects, Lecroix got out his wallet.

He was counting money. A lot of money.
Katie held her breath. She didn't know what was going on, but she could tell it was not legal.

Lecroix held a stack of bills out for Team Mom to take. She licked her finger and reached for the money. Her hand—

“Hey! Katie!” yelled Mrs. Mulligan. “Yoohoo, honey! What are you doing crouched over like that?”

Katie jolted with surprise. So did Lecroix and Team Mom.

Katie's mother called, “Straighten your back, darling! You're beautiful! Is crouched over next to a Delta Eighty-eight the kind of posture they teach at this school?”

Team Mom's eyes were trained on Katie Mulligan. They were suddenly very thin and evil.

Katie tried not to meet the woman's gaze.

Katie's mother pushed the passenger-side door open. “Hop on in, honey!” she said. “If you're done giving yourself scoliosis.”

Katie slid into her mother's car.

“Are you okay?” asked Mrs. Mulligan.

“Yeah, but I just—”

“Your girl was spying,” said Team Mom, her face huge in the window.

“No I wasn't,” said Katie.

“I'm sure she was,” said Katie's mom, scraggling Katie's hair with her hand. “You might not recognize her, but my daughter solves mysteries and fights evil? Famously?”

“Mom, you really don't have to—”

“Toot your horn? Are you kidding? I am so proud of you. You are my little angel.” Katie's mother explained to Team Mom, “My daughter is named Katie Mulligan. Katie Mulligan? Maybe you recognize her from her series of books, Horror Hollow?”

“Katie Mulligan,” said Team Mom. “Hm.”

“Ring a bell?” said Mrs. Mulligan. With a cheerful little laugh, “Well, she'll be ringing plenty of bells soon enough if she stays hunched over like that.”

Nobody laughed. Katie was confused. “It was
a joke,” said Katie's mom. “About the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He had a hunched back. And he rang bells. He was a bell ringer.”

“A bell ringer,” said Team Mom.

“Ding, dong,” said Katie's mother. “Don't I know you from the PTA?”

“No,” said Team Mom, “I am from Delaware.”

“Oh, Delaware,” said Katie's mother politely. “Huh. Delaware! That's nice. Aren't there a lot of… Don't you have…” Katie's mother tapped the steering wheel with her thumbs. “Wow, Delaware. Well, welcome! Nice to meet you!”

Team Mom blew a stream of smoke into the Mulligan's car. “I'm sure,” said Team Mom to Katie, “that we will meet again.”

And with that, she walked away across the parking lot.

In the auditorium, things did not look good. Lily could barely stand to watch. Jasper was haggard, gray, his eyes red, his mouth open, his whole body sagging forward and swaying. Meanwhile, his opponent, #1, sat enthroned in his folding chair and radiated triumph.

To Jasper, every second was agony.

The round had started out well enough. Jasper, confronted by his enemy's eyes, sank into the meditative half sleep he had learned at the secret mountaintop monastery during days wreathed in fog, paired off with a wrinkled gingko tree. The world faded like an illusion too dull to sustain. Jasper could distantly hear sounds, as if through water—the dropping
of a pen, the thumping of the radiators—but everything seemed so far away that nothing, he felt, could touch him.

But it was at that point that the eyes—the animal eyes in the human face—bit into his vision like fangs. Illegal mid-round eye substitution.

Jasper faltered—snapped out of his trance—and saw #1, serpent-eyed, staring at him.

He had maintained his control. But he could feel himself being mesmerized by that monster gaze, as he had once seen the giant cobras of Uttar Pradesh, swaying side to side, hypnotize their mammal prey—a brush-whiskered English High Commissioner of Trade—before striking.

Jasper could not hold on much longer. His eyes were dry. The room flashed negative and positive. He struggled to re-achieve the trance that would allow him to sit out the round in serenity, withdrawn from the world.

But the serpent eyes glared at him, demanding that he yield.

He would not. He tried to straighten his back. He tried to steel himself for another minute.
Just…
, he thought,
one minute… If I can make it one more minute… and then one minute after that… and then one minute after that…

Jasper had never met anyone who could beat him at Stare-Eyes.

Trembling, he gawked athletically. Seconds went by.

It had been a half an hour. Everyone had fallen silent. People sat nervously in the stands. They folded and unfolded programs. Two girls cried into Dixie cups.

No, things did not look good for Jasper and Pelt, there in the gym.

And then, in the silence, Choate Brinsley put his hands together. People looked at him, startled.

He began to chant: “J-Dash! J-Dash! J-Dash! J-Dash!”

It was stupid, but someone took it up; and then someone else; and then a third. And soon
the whole crowd had joined in, clapping together, calling out Jasper's name.

And because of them, Jasper remembered his town. He remembered community. He remembered that everyone was there not just to see him staring, but to be together, because people need to be with other people and dogs and elms—and Jasper felt the whole enthusiasm of the town of Pelt behind him, the hopes of the village mailman and butcher and tinker and the little toilet-paper peddler who wobbled up and down the streets on his sparkly bike, piping, “TP! TP! TP for sale!”