Minerva Clark Goes to the Dogs (16 page)

Sylvia didn't seem to mind that the police were not coming. She sat with her legs crossed, tried to clean the grit from beneath her nails, straightened her skirt, arranged her hair a little more. I could tell she was a girl waiting to be rescued.

I tried to keep my mind from straying to thoughts of Jupiter. Just the thought of Frank doing anything to hurt him made tears spring to my eyes. I could not afford to cry, not now. I focused on what everyone said, that Frank loved animals. Even though he was a hateful thief/kidnapper/liar, with a stupid nickname, he was still an animal lover. I tried to picture Jupiter sacked out in one of the nice small animal habitats inside the shelter, safe and sound.

As Sylvia had predicted, Tonio dropped everything. I bet it took him less than half an hour. Outside the shed there was the sound of two people clomping through the urban wilderness, and two voices, Frank's and Tonio's. They sounded all buddy buddy. We heard the screech of the rusty bolt, then the creaky door swung open. The inside of the shed was suddenly bright with sunlight.

I'm not a total dork when it comes to love. I've had an almost-boyfriend, witnessed Reggie mooning over Amanda the Panda, and have seen my parents kiss and
make up a thousand times, until they couldn't do it anymore. I thought I was getting a handle on the mystery of love and attraction, but then I saw Sylvia with Frank and realized I didn't know a thing. Here was this creep who'd betrayed her and she still loved him.

I watched, horrified, as she stepped out of the shed and into Frank's arms.

“You're a pain, you know that?” His voice was soft. He ran his hands down her hair.

“You love it,” she said.
“Eres tan estupido como un perro.”

I have had one year of Spanish. I think she said, “You are as stupid as a dog.”

I should have run. Behind Frank's shoulder I could see the highway, the cars cruising by, but I just stood there. The emergency exit door was propped open as usual, but I just stood there. I glimpsed my phone not far away, shining among the weeds and broken glass, but I just stood there.

I am only in middle school, after all.

Tonio reached into his pocket and produced a piece of duct tape, folded over on itself to make a small packet. Frank plucked it from Tonio's palm, ripped it open, and gazed at the red diamond. It wasn't big, less than a carat, I guessed. It didn't look very impressive, stuck to the silvery tape, just a small piece of something very old and close to perfect that came from deep in the earth.

“I'd say it's time to give Oreo his afternoon snack,” said Frank, closing his hand around the diamond. “And tell him he's flying the coop earlier than planned.”

For a second I thought they were all just going to walk away and leave me there, which never happened on TV.

Then, faster than a lizard startled while sunning himself, Frank leaped to my side, grabbed me around the neck, and pressed a towel to my face. He moved so fast he even startled cooler-than-thou Tonio, who stood next to his sister, just watching. Frank kept mashing the towel against my face. I tried to wrench myself away, but he was too strong. The towel smelled like Downey, and like the medicine you put on sore muscles. And then I went limp.

I woke up.

Where was I? In another shed? This time there were lights. Bars of neon lights across the low ceiling. Cool cement floor. No windows. Not a shed. Air-conditioning. A small room. Okay, I thought, okay.

Don't freak out. Do not freak out. Hearing your own self scream is one good way to launch a freak-out, so don't do that.

I was lying on my side. It was not the side I normally slept on. I'd been dumped on that side, facing the wall. Concrete wall. My hands weren't tied. Not a good sign. Meant there was nothing easy to do to get myself out of here. Laid there for a minute, listening.

No voices, no traffic. Quiet, except for a low humming sound, a click, a clank.

As soon as I sat up, my head throbbed as if my heart had relocated itself in my skull. It ached as if a steel cap was being slowly tightened by the hand of an unseen torturer. It was a headache out of some horrible sci-fi universe. I didn't know the meaning of headache until that moment.

In a way, this helped me. It hurt so much I couldn't think about how long I'd been there, or whether my brothers were frantic with worry, or whether the brilliant pigeon Oreo had already taken off to find McCarthy and deliver the diamond.

I was thirsty.

I didn't have to pee, so I reasoned that I hadn't been there long. Maybe I'd just gotten there. Maybe it was still broad daylight outside.

I stood up, looked around. Frank had stuck me in a large closet, half the size of my bedroom. It was given over mostly to electrical stuff.

I went to the door and tried the handle. Duh. Of course it was locked. I banged on it for a while with my fists.

“Help!” I yelled. “Help me!”

Hearing myself scream for help made me even more afraid than I already was. No one was coming. No one was going to rescue me.

I looked around the room. On the opposite wall there were things we hadn't even gotten to in basic
electronics—I wish I'd paid more attention to bitter old Mr. Lawndale than to Bryce Duncan—big gray boxes with circuit breakers and glass bulbs and spinning meters. There were other gauges with long bars of red, yellow, and green, with a needle sitting smack in the center of the green. There were thick red and blue wires that disappeared into blocks, other wires that were clamped to the wall with oversized screws. There were signs all over the place. DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE! DO NOT TOUCH!

I had no idea what I was looking at, or how it could be of any help to me. My stomach grumbled. It'd been hours since that bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats. I could turn off the power, I guess, but what would that accomplish?

In a corner opposite the wall with all the electrical stuff, I spied a dried-out mop that looked as if it hadn't been used in a year, a push broom and dustpan, a few big plastic buckets full of spare parts, spools of copper wire, and a cardboard box of something that looked sort of familiar. I picked one up. It was blue, the size of a salt shaker, with two prongs sticking out of one end. I leaned over and read the side of the box: 400 μF CAPACITORS.

Capacitors … weren't those the exploding things from basic electronics?

It's amazing what hope will do for hunger, thirst, and a headache fierce enough to drive your eyeballs right out of their sockets.

I could do this.

I looked around. I needed something to set the capacitor on. Something near the lock. In class, we'd had those pieces of wood called breadboards. I wondered if there was anything like that here. I spied the cleaning supplies, picked up the dustpan, turned it over in my hands. Would this work?

I wedged the dustpan into the crack between the door and the doorjamb, right above the lock. The handle stuck out, creating a little shelf. I set the capacitor on the side of the handle, right next to the door. I went to the electrical side of the closet, found a pair of wires—one red, one black—that disappeared into a fuse box with a giant on/off lever. I pulled the lever down, to off, half expecting the lights to go off, but nothing happened.

That was good. My palms were slick with sweat. I tried to remember just how Mr. Lawndale did it.

I yanked the wires from their clamps. Any pair of wires would work, right? As long as one was positive and one was negative, right? I kept waiting to get zapped but, I reasoned, I lived through one gigantic electric shock—the shock that changed my life—I could survive another one.

Nothing happened. The room hummed with electricity. Click. Clank. I could taste my bad breath from not having eaten.

I tugged the wires across the narrow room to where
the capacitor sat perched on its dustpan shelf wedged into the door beside the lock. I go to a Catholic school even though we Clarks are not Catholic. I knew some patron saints, however. I sent a prayer up to St. Clare, who ran away to become a nun when she was my age. She was the patron saint of television, and not electricity, but it was the best I could do.

I twisted the red wire around the short leg of the capacitor, the black wire around the long leg.

I dashed across the room to the fuse box. My hands were shaking. I flipped on the lever, and crouched low in the corner behind the cleaning supplies.

I waited.

What was taking so long? Maybe I'd done it wrong? Just as I was trying to figure out my next move, the capacitor exploded.

I was deaf, my nose filled with the burnt aroma of melting plastic and that bizarre peanut butter smell. My eyes watered from the smoke. I leaped up, and sure enough, there was a hole the size of my fist by the doorknob. I turned it and the door sprung open and out I went, running down the long dingy hallway, headache gone, hunger gone, thirsty yes, but who cared about thirst? That psycho Frank had stuck me in the basement of some warehouse. At the end of the hallway, up two flights of metal stairs there was a door to outside. I took the stairs two at a time. I could see a thready frame
of sunlight around the edges, and I crashed out the door and onto the street, startling a girl in a halter top walking by with her dog on a leash, one of those cute mutts that live forever.

Where was I? I'd been worried that I would make my escape only to find that I was somewhere so foreign that getting home would be as hard as getting out of that stupid closet. But no. The Burnside Bridge loomed up beside me. Straight ahead was Waterfront Park, and then the river. I was on Burnside, the busy main street that separates the north side of Portland from the south side of Portland. I craned my neck, and there, soaring above me atop the roof of the warehouse I'd just busted out of, was the MADE IN OREGON sign, our city's famous landmark.

I knew right where I was. And what I had to do.

There's something called adrenaline, which is a magical drug that your body produces all on its own. It's the fight or flight drug. It makes time slow and pain disappear and helps contribute to that feeling that you might just be an undiscovered superhero. I am going into eighth grade with no special skills and I just almost blew a door off its hinges. When I was a little girl, and used to watch
Star Wars
over and over again with Morgan, I dreamed of being a princess with a blaster. Now I am practically her.

I should have gone straight home to Casa Clark, told Mark Clark I'd been held captive first in a shed, then in an electrical closet, by the same dumb but scary security guard turned jewel thief, asked him to make me one of his special chicken salad sandwiches, let him call the police and file the report and wait for the detectives to come and take my statement, called Chelsea de Guzman and let her know what I'd gone through, all in the name of finding the rare red diamond that had gotten her in trouble with her dad.

I should have, but I was a princess with a blaster, and a mission.

On my way to the bus stop I found a pay phone and called Reggie. Even though I had a cell phone, Mark Clark had drilled into my head the importance of always carrying a couple quarters in your pocket, just in case something happened. I don't think he ever imagined the “something” would be a lunatic throwing my phone into the shrubbery before locking me in a shed.

I dialed Reggie. I had no hope that he would be able to help me, but he answered on the second ring.

“Dude, you are so not going to believe this—”

“Hi, Minerva.” Again, his voice was low and flat. He sounded sick.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah.” He was so
not
all right. “What's up?”

“I need an IP. Meet me at the transit center.”

“Sure. When?”

I was stunned. “You don't have to hang around in case Amanda the Panda calls or anything?”

“Nah,” he said. He sounded as if he was going to cry. I don't think I'd seen Reggie cry since preschool, when one of the kids at the indoor play gym bashed him in the head with a toy dump truck.

Why more kids my age don't take advantage of our city's great public transportation system, I don't know. It beats riding your bike, travels just about anywhere you'd need to go. I hopped on the MAX. I was a little delirious that Reggie was going to meet me. I hadn't seen him in what felt like forever.

I didn't know what time it was. It was still glary bright outside, but it could have been dinnertime. Summer in the northwest is deceiving. It doesn't get dark until nine o'clock. Five o'clock p.m. feels like noon. My white hoodie with the blue Hawaiian flowers marching up the sleeve was filthy. I tied it around my waist.

When I got off at the transit center, Reggie was already there. His mom must have dropped him off. He stood under a tree with his hands shoved deep in his back pockets, making his saggy pants sag even more. Why boys thought this was a worthwhile style of dress, I'll never know. His thick bangs hung in his eyes, which were such a dark green they almost looked black. He
smiled when he saw me, but it wasn't his normal big goofy Reggie smile. He looked tired.

I was pretty much out of my mind with joy to see him, but couldn't tell Reggie that.

On the number 10 bus, I filled him in on everything, chattering like Chelsea de Guzman after she'd had too many lattes. Usually, Reggie is not very good at listening. He interrupts when he gets a big idea. He can't help it. The only thing he asked was where we were going.

“To the humane society. You gotta take a look at this pigeon coop thing. That's where Frank is hiding the diamond. Or actually, he's hiding it in the craw of that bird Oreo. That's kind of a great idea, isn't it? Who would ever look inside a bird?”

“Pretty excellent,” said Reggie.

“He was supposed to send Oreo out Friday to McCarthy, the guy who's fencing the jewel, but since I found out about it he's sending Oreo out earlier. How can we intercept him, do you think?”