This Book Is Not Good For You (22 page)

From a distance, the couple mounting the tour bus in the Wild World parking lot would not have attracted much attention. Like so many other tourists at the animal park, they wore their new Go Wild! Wild World T-shirts above their plaid Bermuda shorts. The man wore a heavy camera around his neck, the woman wore dark wraparound sunglasses on her head. He carried a stuffed lion cub in his hand, she drank from an oversized cup with a purple giraffe straw. They looked exactly like everyone else who’d just spent a long hot day at the zoo.

Among the other passengers on their bus, however, they created a minor stir.

They were, first of all, so good-looking. He with his perfect tan face and perfect silver hair. She with her perfect porcelain skin and perfect gold bob.

At the same time, they acted so cool and aloof. They never smiled. They never spoke to anyone—not even to each other.

Were they foreign? Were they celebrities?

“I’ll bet they’re royalty!” somebody whispered.

Why hadn’t they been on the bus that morning? How had they gotten to the park?

“By limousine probably,” somebody guessed. “But it broke down. Or else their chauffeur just ran off with their daughter!”

Everyone had a theory.

And then there was that other odd fact about them—

“Mommy, why are they wearing gloves when it’s hot out?”

“Shh, honey!” The embarrassed mother shushed her son and smiled apologetically at the unnerving couple sitting two rows back. “It’s rude to point,” she whispered. “For all you know, they have a skin disease and they have to cover their hands. Don’t make them feel bad.”

Fascinated, the little boy stared at the strange couple. As he watched, the woman crumpled her kangaroo straw in half, and the man clenched the neck of his stuffed lion so tight that a seam burst in the poor lion’s head.

The boy burst into tears.

When she entered the CAT FOOD trailer three days later, Cass found Pietro and Mr. Wallace deep in conference around a small card table. They stopped speaking as soon as they saw her, leading her to believe (correctly) that she had been the subject of their discussion.

“Cassandra! Un abbraccio, prego!” Pietro stood, opening his arms for an embrace.

“So you have the clown camp today, eh?” he asked, releasing her.

Cass forced a smile. “Yeah, I somehow convinced my mom that it was the best way to keep me out of trouble.”

“Ha!” Pietro laughed heartily.

Cass looked awkwardly from Pietro to Mr. Wallace, who was sitting in stony silence. “So can I talk to you guys for a second?”

“Of course. Anytime—” said Pietro.

Mr. Wallace appraised Cass with a grim eye. “We know what you want to know, Cassandra. And the answer is: we don’t know.”

“But you’re the one who gave me to my grandfathers!”

“That’s true. But I never met your parents. I don’t know where they’re living, or even if they are living. As far as I know, the names on your birth certificate were made up.”

“So why did you have me? How did you get me? I don’t understand.”

“Sit down, Cassandra,” said Pietro. He gestured to a nearby stool, which she reluctantly took.

“Your parents, they gave you up—for your own protection. So the Midnight Sun, it would not know where you were.”

“A lot of good that did!” said Cass bitterly.

“Believe me, I never meant for you to get involved with the Terces Soceity, let alone the Midnight Sun,” said Mr. Wallace. “But Pietro thought you were ready.”

“No,” Pietro corrected. “I knew the Midnight Sun was going to find her whether she was ready or not. And they did. Is it not better that she is with us?”

“Who am I?” Cass demanded. “Don’t talk about me in the third person.”

Mr. Wallace hesitated. “Oh, how I wish your grandfathers had destroyed that box!”

“Tell her, Wilton,” said Pietro.

“Can’t we at least wait until she is eighteen? Cass is an… energetic girl, I give you that. But such responsibility…!”

“Tell her, Wilton. Or I will. We have no choice. She knows too much already. They know too much. We’ve talked about this—”

“Very well. Cass, I know you take an interest in disasters. What is it you call yourself again?”

“A survivalist,” said Cass defensively. “And I don’t just call myself that.”

“Good. Because what I am about to tell you—it will demand all your survival skills and more.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Cass,” said Mr. Wallace solemnly, “you are the Secret Keeper. There is one every hundred years. Your job is to know what no one else knows. To keep what is hardest to keep.”

“You mean, I’m supposed to know the Secret?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought nobody was supposed to know it. I mean, not even you know it, right?”

“Nobody but you. Let’s say you are the exception that proves the rule.”

Cass sat in silence for a second, trying to grasp what he was saying.

“But how can I know it if nobody knows it? Is it written somewhere?”

Mr. Wallace shook his head.

“Then how am I supposed to…?”

“I think you already know the answer to that,” said Pietro, putting his hand on her shoulder.

But Cass wasn’t sure she did. She wasn’t sure at all.

Later that day, Cass stared out the window at the raggedy half-hole that was once Max-Ernest’s father’s half-house.

“It’s like the best day and the worst day ever at the same time.”

“I know,” said Max-Ernest, straddling the one-foot gap that had run down the length of his bedroom floor ever since his parents had attempted (only half-successfully) to put their two half-houses back together. “It’s like… you feel like you don’t know who you are.”

“Yeah, just like that,” said Cass, surprised but glad that Max-Ernest understood how she felt. As we know, he usually wasn’t very good at feelings.

“Like you’ve been living a lie all these years,” Max-Ernest continued.

“Uh-huh…”

“It’s almost like waking up in a different body.”

“Exactly!” Cass smiled gratefully.

“I mean, it was the last thing I expected… everything came back negative. Everything. How ’bout that?”

Cass looked at her friend in confusion. “Wait—I’m talking about me, you know, what Mr. Wallace told me about being the Secret Keeper and everything… What are you talking about?”

“My allergy test, of course. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”

“Your allergy test?!”

“Yeah. The results came back. All negative.”

“You mean you’re allergic to everything?”

“Worse! I’m allergic to nothing! Look—” He turned around and pulled up his shirt so Cass could see his back. “You see anything? Like a welt or a rash?”

“Uh, not really. Just some dots.”

“See. How ’bout that? They pricked my back with all these chemicals and venoms, and I didn’t react to any of them!”

Disappointed, he turned back to face Cass. Now Cass was really confused.

“What’s wrong with that? You should be happy.”

“Happy? But it was my allergies that kept me alive. I didn’t eat Hugo’s chocolate ’cause of them… and now my parents talk to each other! My life is over!”

Cass laughed out loud. How could she respond to that?

“What? And now you think I’m funny, too? Everything is terrible.”

“Max-Ernest, listen to me. It wasn’t because of your allergies that you didn’t eat that chocolate, it was ’cause you were being smart. Yo-Yoji and I were being crazy. Anyway, the good news is you can try chocolate now.”

“I know,” said Max-Ernest, calming down. “Actually, I bought a chocolate bar as soon as I got the test results. But I’ve been too scared to eat it.”

“Well, where is it?”

“Frozen in a block of ice in the freezer.”

“Get it now.”

“Now?” Max-Ernest repeated, frightened.

“Yes, now.” She pointed to the door.

The expression on Max-Ernest’s face as he swallowed his first bite of chocolate can only be described as ecstatic. It was like a blind person seeing for the first time. Or like a baby discovering television.

“Now I get it!” he said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me how good chocolate was?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought everybody knew.”

Max-Ernest shook his head. “What do you think would happen if I only ever ate chocolate for the rest of my life?”

“You’d get sick.”

“No, no, that’s not true!” Max-Ernest declared with all the fervor of a religious convert. “I read that it has these antioxidants. It makes you live longer. And you don’t get heart attacks. How ’bout that?”

As Max-Ernest rhapsodized about the wondrous health effects of his newfound love, chocolate, Cass thought about the strange, and possibly very unhealthy, effects of a certain chocolate bar in her possession. She’d been carrying it around in her backpack ever since Hugo gave it to her.

Suddenly, she realized why.

She already knew how to find the Secret, Pietro had told her. She’d thought he was talking nonsense, but now she understood.

She already knew the Secret—that was the point. The Secret was inside her. It was just that she had to dig it out.

With a solemn sense of determination, she reached into her backpack and pulled out the plastic baggie that contained Hugo’s last Palet d’Or.

Max-Ernest’s eyes lit up. “Is that more chocolate? Can I have it?”

“It’s Senor Hugo’s.”

“Oh. I’m not sure… do you think I should? I mean, it looks good… really good…” He reached for the chocolate, eyes glazed, mouth watering.

She snatched it away from him. “You can’t.”

“Why? You already had one.”

“It’s not for you.”

“Why? I want it. I have to make up for all the chocolate I never ate before.”

“Because I’m going to eat it,” she said. “He made it for me.”

“You are? What are you saying?! What was I saying?!” exclaimed Max-Ernest, coming to his senses. “We can’t eat that chocolate! Nobody can! It’s dangerous. Why would you want to do that again?”

“It’s just something I know I have to do. It’s like what Lily tells Yo-Yoji: to go forward you must first go back.”

“So you want to become a samurai? Or just charm a snake?”

“Neither. I’ll be going into my own past, remember? Or my own ancestors’ past.”

Max-Ernest stared at her. “You’re serious, huh?”

She nodded.

“Is it to find out the Secret?”

“In a way… it’s hard to explain.”

“To find out who your parents are?”

“Yes, but no. I mean, I know who my real parent is—my mom. But I still need to know who I am. That’s what I need to find out. Not the Secret. My secret. But it’s kind of the same thing. I think.”

“But what if you can’t come back? We don’t even have the Tuning Fork anymore.”

“Yes, we do.”

“I thought you gave it back to Mrs. Johnson.”

“I’m going to… just not yet.”

She pulled the infamous object out of her backpack. Her grandfathers had convinced her to return the Tuning Fork to the principal, and everyone else had agreed it would be best. But she’d been stalling as long as possible. As if she’d known she would being needing it again all along.

Max-Ernest was starting to panic. “But this chocolate is stronger, right? It could take you a hundred years to come back. What if everybody you know is old or dead and you’re still the same age? Or the reverse. You could come back really old but to everybody on Earth it will seem like only a second has passed. Or—”

“I’m not leaving Earth. I’ll be right here.”

“Sure, maybe your body will be… but your mind will be in a different dimension!”

“I trust you.”

“You… do?” Max-Ernest stammered. For some reason he wouldn’t have been able to explain, those three small words had brought tears to his eyes.

“Uh-huh. You’ll bring me back before anything goes wrong, I know you will… but Max-Ernest, if I do find out the Secret, I won’t be able to tell it to you—you know that, right? And that doesn’t mean I don’t trust you. It’s just because I can’t. Sometimes even best friends have to keep secrets from each other.”

Max-Ernest didn’t say anything. But after a moment, he nodded.

“Good,” said Cass, relieved. “OK, well, here goes—”

She raised the chocolate to her lips. Then paused. Like everyone, she’d often fantasized about time travel. But she’d never imagined that she’d actually do it. And certainly never like this. She was fairly confident that none of Max-Ernest’s dire science-fiction predictions would come true. Nevertheless, she had a feeling that when she came back—assuming she came back—nothing would be the same.

“Hey, Max-Ernest, just in case, well, tell my mom I love her.”

“No, Cass, don’t—!”

But Cass had already bit down on the chocolate bar.

“OK, I’ll tell her…,” Max-Ernest concluded.

He could tell she didn’t hear him. She was lost in the taste of chocolate.

The deepest, darkest chocolate of all time. The chocolate of time.