Saving Montgomery Sole (2 page)

I could practically see the little puffy “uh-oh” clouds floating above their heads.

“You know what?” Naoki tilted her head, tipped the flower horizontally, then upside down. “It does kind of look a little like a hair dryer,” she offered. “Oh!” she added, pointing at the bumpy brown center. “And there is a circle! Do you think that's what you saw, Monty?”

Thomas raised an imaginary scorecard and said in his best game show voice, “Remote viewing: survey says?”

I shrugged. As one of the only fans of anything as cool as remote viewers, sometimes I just wish this stuff would actually work … better … more.

“I'm giving it a 3.5 out of 5,” Thomas continued. “Mostly because I'm shocked it wasn't a hair dryer.”

“You're a 3.5!” I said, doing my best to keep a straight face but failing.

“You know that's not true,” Thomas cooed. He darted over and threw his arms around me in a massive bear hug. “And you know I love your weird experiments even if they never work.”

“
Sometimes
they work,” I huffed. “It's complicated.”

“Well, I love them anyway,” Thomas said.

“You love
me
,” I said.

“Mostly, yes,” Thomas said, giving me a small shove. “Even though you are bossy and made me sit on the floor in my new pants.”

“What? I'm not bossy!” I grinned. “I'm the chair!”

“Well,” Naoki said, lowering the flower back into the box, “I thought it was pretty cool. Now my turn.”

*   *   *

By the time we'd finished remote viewing all there was to view, or not, since no one “saw” any of the articles we brought, it was almost five thirty.

“Sometimes I feel like we enter a time vortex when we do Mystery Club.” Naoki sighed happily as she trotted down the front steps.

“Time flies when you're seeing through walls,” Thomas added.

“Have we done vortexes yet?” I asked, grabbing my phone out of my pocket to check.

When we got to the curb, Naoki's dad was there to take her to her pottery class.

Naoki's dad has hair longer than mine, and he wears it in a big bun at the top of his head.

“Let's go!” He waved from the car. “Hi, kids.”

“Hi, Mr. Wood,” Thomas and I greeted in unison, in that upbeat but drone-like voice you have to use when you're talking to someone's parents.

“Bye.” Naoki waved as she hopped into the car.

Thomas had a coffee date.

“Toodle-loo,” he said, blowing me a kiss as he ran off.

Because I refuse to take part in any activities beyond the one I sort of created for myself, I had nothing to do. So I went home, comforted by the quiet, the warm breeze that is the autumn air in California, and the sound of my boots hitting the concrete as I marched to the bus.

*   *   *

I love my house.

It has a massive pine tree in the front yard that looks like we have a magical creature in a big, pointy, feathered hat squatting on the front lawn. Mama Kate is afraid that one day it will fall on the house, and my sister, Tesla, used to have these crazy nightmares from the shadows the branches cast on her wall. But I love it. It smells like rain.

After the obligatory parental hellos and a hastily zapped microwaved burrito (Monday being the one night of the week we are allowed to eat wherever we want), I bolted up to the cozy paradise also known as my room. As soon as I was in, I kicked off my boots; slipped into my supersoft and paper-thin
FRANKIE SAYS RELAX
T-shirt and gym shorts; and flopped into the supercomfy armchair I have set up by my desk, which was an old kitchen table so it still smells like onions in some spots.

“Oh, hello, Internet,” I cooed as I flipped open the lid to my ancient but fully functional laptop.

I can lose a whole weekend ignoring the natural beauty of the fabulous state of California to read weird stuff online. Last year I spent a month obsessing over this woman who blogs and live-tweets about what she calls her “process of becoming a human cyborg.” Later I read an article that said she had to give it up because she was hallucinating, possibly due to lead poisoning from all the bolts and screws she was inserting under her skin.

Which, you know, is a little scary.

After polishing off my burrito, I spent an hour just clicking around the web.

I find most of my Mystery Club topics through random searches, which I keep track of in this app I found that was designed for overachieving businessmen.

There's a happy-face list, originally for listing good habits, where I keep all the mysteries I consider worth looking into:

 
ESP

 
That thing that lets people bend spoons

And there's an unhappy-face list, which is technically for tracking bad habits, but I use it, because it's there, for tracking those things I do not understand and never will, and don't care.

 
Flip-flops

 
People's obsession with getting rid of all body hair

That night I was hoping to find a better psychic experiment and a more thorough explanation of how a person would actually see something psychically. I typed in a few questions along the lines of,
How can you see something someone else is seeing if you're not in the same place?

Alternately, I had this idea that I would find something about crystal balls.

I clicked something. Read something. Got a root beer. Came back. Watched a video of kittens playing guitars. Clicked something, and then I clicked something else, and before I knew it, there was a link to this other thing and a link to a website. And presumably, that is how I ended up at:

Manchester's Academy of Magic,

Mystical Forces, and New Believers

Which is weird because I was really not looking for anything specifically mystical, or magic, and I don't remember clicking a link about anything like that.

But suddenly there I was.

The website looked like it was designed in the nineties. The banner was in Times New Roman. Underlined. Top center, framed in lavender, was this drawing of a troll-like two-headed woman in a black cape. Like, the worst picture ever drawn.

Most of the text was about different kinds of mysteries. A lot of it was stuff I'd read before about different legends in different countries: fairy folk in England, the Huldufólk in Iceland. There was something about the Loch Ness Monster, which I'm sure has to appear on every website about anything magical or strange. For a second I thought maybe it was a
Dungeons & Dragons
fan site because there were a few
ye
s and
yore
s in there.

Ye-ancient-powers-of-yore-type stuff.

At some point, I clicked an
About
link next to a wizard picture, because, you know,
About
what? About wizards? Maybe something about spells?

Instead, the link took me to a page that was completely blank, except for a
Store
link.

Where there was only one thing listed.

THE EYE OF KNOW

Next to the title was a picture, like some sort of badly lit cell phone picture, of this white rock laid out on a piece of black velvet.

Completely genuine crystal amulet. Rock excavated from asteroid landing in the magical mountain ranges of Peru. When wielded by a skilled visionary, the eye is a portal to vision untold. Journey forward into insight. Explore the power of know. Amulet comes with adjustable leather strap and may be worn as a necklace, bracelet, or anklet. Instruction booklet included. Only $5.99!

When was the last time anyone you knew
wielded
anything?

I thought,
Maybe it's just a piece of rock from some guy's backyard. Possibly in Manchester.

“‘A portal to vision untold,'” I said to no one but the possibly unseen paranormal presences in my room.

What if it was … a portal?

Plus it was only $5.99.
That's, like, a cup of coffee and a doughnut
, I thought.

Looking at the site, I paused to suck out the last dregs of my root beer.

Couldn't be any worse than trying to see inside a box.

Why not?
I thought.

Fortunately, I have a credit card for just such occasions. Which I must, with no exception, pay off every month with my meager allowance or it gets taken away, because my moms are afraid kids today don't have the same appreciation for money that they did “back in the old days.” Not that I do that much shopping.

After my purchase, I went downstairs for a snack. My moms and Tesla, my younger sister, were sitting in the living room, watching TV. I say “my moms” a lot because I think of them as one being from time to time … They are two separate people. Momma Jo is tall; Mama Kate is short. Momma Jo is loud; Mama Kate is not.

Momma Jo says stuff like, “You look too un-busy for someone your age. Did you do your homework?”

Mama Kate says stuff like, “Did you want to talk about something?”

I'm told there was a time when I called Momma Jo “Bobo” and Mama Kate “Mama.” A little insulting, I'm sure, since Bobo was also the name of my favorite stuffed elephant, a present from Momma Jo for my second birthday.

“Fortunately,” Momma Jo often notes, “you grew out of that.”

As I slipped past the living room, the moms were getting ready to watch some show about a woman who is happy with her job but sad about her love life.

Tesla was on the carpet, still in her special workout gear, because even though Tesla is only eleven, she does yoga every day. To keep her core lean. Apparently this requires special clothes. “Breathing clothes,” Tesla calls them.

I can't watch TV with my moms anymore, because they won't stop asking me stuff.

Every time we sit down to watch TV, they immediately dive into this weirdly pointless Q and A.

“Did you know about this Facebook bullying thing, Montgomery?”

No.

“Oh look, Monty! Is that a Goth?”

Ugh. NO.