Woundabout Read online

  “This park is boring,” Cordelia said, kicking at the dirt.

  Connor nodded in agreement. “Maybe Gray will play with us,” she said, and headed over to where Gray was sitting on the bench, reading the newspaper. The children sat on the bench on either side of him. Kip lay down in the dirt in front of them.

  “Something the matter?” Gray asked.

  “This park is boring,” Cordelia said again.

  “It’s just that it’s so dead,” Connor said. “Why do you come here every day?”

  “I suppose it is barren,” Gray said. “It used to be beautiful; the trees here, when they bloomed, were so full of petals they would explode like fireworks. They don’t grow anywhere else in the world.”

  “They don’t really grow here, either,” Cordelia said.

  “No,” Gray said, folding his paper and putting it in his lap. “I guess not.”

  “So why do you come here every day?” Connor asked again. “Doesn’t it make you sad to look at it and remember what it used to look like?”

  “No,” Gray said. He tilted his head. “Well, maybe a little. But it makes me happy, too, to remember it. And who knows—maybe one day it’ll bloom again.”

  “That would take a really good gardener,” Cordelia said.

  “Landscaper,” Connor corrected. “For a job this big, you’d need a whole team of landscapers.”

  The children looked out at the park of dust and bark and tried to imagine it alive again, but it was so dull they couldn’t.

  “Hey,” Cordelia said, suddenly realizing something. “You answered our questions.”

  “Of course I did,” Gray said.

  “But the Mayor said we shouldn’t ask questions,” Connor said.

  “Well, when you’re with me, and no one else is around, you can ask me whatever you’d like,” Gray said. “I don’t mind. But I may not have the answers.”

  “Thank you,” Connor said.

  The children looked over Gray’s lap at each other, trying to think of what to ask him. When they weren’t supposed to ask questions, they had hundreds of them, but now that they were allowed, it seemed as though all the questions had run away.

  “How did you meet Aunt Marigold?” Connor asked after a while. It seemed polite to ask Gray a question about himself.

  “Oh, well, back when I was running for Mayor, I also had a different job. I was the town’s only cabdriver. That’s what I was doing when she moved here,” Gray said, leaning back. “And so she hired me to pick her up from the train station with all her things. I had a different car back then, an old taxi, and with all her things, and steep roads leading up to her new house, the taxi couldn’t handle it, and the engine gave out. But your aunt Marigold, you know, is an expert with cars—”

  “She is?” Cordelia interrupted. “But she doesn’t even drive.”

  “You shouldn’t interrupt,” Connor said.

  “Sorry,” Cordelia said.

  “And there was that time when Dad’s truck broke down and he called Aunt Marigold, and she told him how to fix it,” Connor said.

  Cordelia shook her head. She didn’t remember, and the fact that there was something about their parents that Connor could remember and she didn’t suddenly made her feel very sad, like looking at a family photo and seeing yourself cut out of it.

  “Oh,” Connor said. “Sorry. It must have been when you were still a baby.”

  “That’s okay,” Cordelia said. “It’s not your fault.” She took a deep breath. “Gray, will you finish your story? Sorry we interrupted.”

  “I don’t mind,” Gray said. “I forget how little you know of your aunt. There’s not much more to the story, though. We got out of the car, and we fixed it together.

  She was impressed by how much I knew about cars and I thought she was one of the finest people I’d ever met. When we fixed the car and got her stuff home, she asked me to work for her. I said yes. There wasn’t much business in taxi driving.”

  “Do you like working for her?” Cordelia asked. “Is she nice?”

  “I enjoy it very much. Your aunt is very nice. She just worries a lot. You don’t know anything about her?”

  “She sent us presents for our birthdays every year,” Cordelia said. “She sent me a fish-eye lens for my camera.”

  “And we talked on the phone around Thanksgiving,” Connor said. “She always said she hoped we’d come visit her.”

  “But she never visited,” Cordelia said. “And Dad and Pop said we didn’t visit her because it was so far away.”

  “Once, when they thought we were asleep, I heard Dad say she lived in a weird little place and no one would like us there,” Connor said. Cordelia nodded.

  “Well, I like you,” Gray said. “And your aunt Marigold does, too.”

  The children nodded and looked at each other, wondering if it was enough to just have Gray and Aunt Marigold like them, or if they needed more.

  “How does Aunt Marigold know so much about cars when she doesn’t drive?” Cordelia asked, the question suddenly popping back into her head.

  “Oh, but she used to drive,” Gray said. “She was one of the best race car drivers in the world—and she built not just her race car, but the cars of some of the other best racers in the world, too.”

  “Really?” Connor asked. Both children found this hard to believe. “When?”

  “Before you were born,” Gray said. “Her car was called the Careful Catapult because even though she went so fast that it was like she flew out of a catapult, she never got into any accidents. She won several trophies.”

  “Why did she stop racing?” Cordelia asked.

  “Ah,” Gray said. “That’s the sad part of the story.”

  “You can tell us,” Connor said. “We know about sad stories.”

  “I suppose you do.” Gray nodded. “Well, she had a boyfriend, another race car driver, named Benny Banai. They called him Benny the Boom because he broke the speed of sound a few times, which creates a loud pop they call a sonic boom. He and your aunt raced against each other, and sometimes she won and sometimes he won, but even though they competed, they still loved each other very much and worked on each other’s cars. But Benny wasn’t as careful as your aunt. He made a modification to his car to make it go faster, but Marigold told him not to—she said it was too dangerous. They had a fight about it, and then he drove off to try out his new car. It flipped in the air ten times when he tried to turn, and crashed. They rushed him to the hospital, and Marigold stayed at his bedside for a week, but even with all the operations he never woke up.” Gray paused and looked at the children, as if afraid to continue. He licked his lips slightly. “He died without ever waking up. After that, she stopped driving and moved to Woundabout.”

  Connor and Cordelia said nothing to each other, but they were thinking the same thing: their aunt had lost someone, just as they’d lost their parents. And she’d lost a brother, their father. She knew what they were going through—sort of. That made them feel a little less lonely, but also sad for their aunt. And it made them wonder if they were going to grow up to be just like her.

  “That’s so sad,” Cordelia said after a moment.

  “It’s a very sad story,” Gray said. “But your aunt has dealt with Benny’s death every day, and bit by bit, she’s gotten less sad. She’s certainly very happy now that you’re here.”

  “She is?” Cordelia asked. “It feels like she doesn’t know what to do with us, and with all the rules. Like we’re making her life harder.”

  “You might be right,” Gray said, looking up at the sky, “but that doesn’t mean she loves you less, or doesn’t want you here. She’s just trying to adjust. Change is uncommon in Woundabout.”

  The children nodded—the town seemed very stuck in its ways.

  “Hey, if you’re answering questions,” Cordelia said, “do you know what the thing missing from the Mayor’s house is?”

  “There’s something missing from the Mayor’s house?” Gray asked. Sud
denly his face looked very not-neutral. His eyes lit up with excitement, and his lips curled into an expression the children thought was probably best described as “satisfied.”

  “Yeah,” Cordelia said. “Something from a big glass box.”

  “Well,” Gray said, standing, his face becoming neutral again, “I’ve never been in the Mayor’s house since he moved in. So I’m not sure what he keeps in the glass box. But we’d better get going. I have to get to the store. Come on, I’ll show you more of the town.”

  Chapter 8

  When they left the park, Gray walked them through the town. They passed more houses, and also more businesses, including a post office that looked like a stamped letter from the front, and a pet shop that seemed to sell nothing but birds.

  Along the way, everyone stopped and said hello to Gray. Gray lifted his hat to them. Many of them stared at the children, and some tried to look as if they weren’t staring when they were.

  Also along the way, the children kept their eyes out for the Mayor’s missing thing. They had Kip stand next to strange-looking lawn ornaments and mailboxes, to see if they were the right size. But nothing seemed to be special enough—and it was all out in public. If they were going to find the thing, it would be somewhere off the main streets, somewhere hidden.

  Sometimes, Gray stopped and introduced the children to people. The people had different reactions. Mr. Phong, who was a barber, nodded at the children with a smile on his face. He wore an apron, and the giant barber’s pole on his shop spun around and around like a peppermint stick. “It’s good you’re here,” he said, though the children didn’t know what he meant. Ms. Burbank, who was trimming the hedges in her garden with a pair of shears almost as large as her flowered hat, looked down her pointed nose at Connor and Cordelia and made a harrumphing noise before turning away.

  Mrs. Stein actually came running out of her furniture shop to say hello. She wore overalls and had her hair back in a ponytail. “It’s so wonderful to meet you!” she said, bending down to shake each of their hands. “And what a cute dog!” she said, petting Kip’s head. Connor started to correct her, but Mrs. Stein kept on talking. “We so seldom get new people, and never get new children. It’s very exciting. It’s like there’s change again.” She stood up and smiled hopefully at Gray when she said this, but he tilted his head slightly and stared at her until she nodded and went back into her shop, saying, “Nice to meet you, but I need to finish making this rocking chair!”

  The children felt almost like celebrities. People seemed excited to see them or didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

  “Is it really so odd for new people to move into town?” Connor asked.

  “Not so odd,” Gray said. “But children are unusual. The Mayor has rules, you know, about children. You’re an exception.”

  “There are no children allowed in the town?” Cordelia asked.

  “Not for extended periods,” Gray said. “There are…” He paused, and stopped walking and scratched his chin. “There are conditions in the town that make it unhealthy for children to stay here too long. At least, according to the Mayor. So, for their own health, most children attend boarding school during the year, and then summer camp during the summer. That’s where most of them are right now. Though there aren’t many children here even when they are allowed back, for holidays and the like.”

  “So it’s unhealthy for us to be here?” Connor asked. “Is it pollution?”

  “No, no,” Gray said, “nothing like that. You don’t have to worry. It’s only a month until school starts, and then you’ll go away.”

  “We have to go to boarding school?” Cordelia asked, shocked to the point where her eyes felt wet. She was just getting used to their new home, and soon they’d have to leave again.

  “Yes,” Gray said. “Unless things have changed by then.”

  “Changed how?” Connor asked. “Environmental cleanup?”

  “Something like that,” Gray said. “But you shouldn’t worry. Marigold will visit you every weekend, I’m sure of it. And I will, too.” He stopped walking and knelt down to look the children in the eye. “I know, it’s a new place, your life is different, and now you’re finding out it will change again at the end of summer. But I promise, whatever your life here is going to be like, your aunt loves you very much and she’s going to make that life the best she can. Okay?” The children nodded in unison. They believed him, but they were also scared about going away to another new place. “Plus, there will be children your age there.”

  “Can we bring Kip?” Connor asked.

  “I believe they allow pets, yes,” Gray said, standing. “And besides, maybe things will be different by then.”

  They walked along the street in silence for a few blocks more, Connor and Cordelia trying to picture boarding school. At least, they thought, they’d have each other, and silently reached out to hold hands.

  When Gray stopped walking, they looked up to find themselves in front of a large supermarket with glass sliding doors that opened when they sensed him. A large sign over the doors said GRETEL’S GROCERY.

  “Now, if you children see something you want to get for home, just let me know. Maybe a few treats—but not too many.”

  They went into the supermarket, which was even bigger than it looked from the outside. Brightly colored cans of vegetables and fruit made archways into each of the long aisles. Gray grabbed a shopping cart from the side of the store and took a list out of his pocket.

  “We’re not eating soup again, are we?” Cordelia asked as they followed Gray down the rows of food. There were brands and foods the children had never seen before, almost all of them canned or frozen, in colors so bright they looked like toys rather than food.

  “No.” Gray smiled. “No more soup. I thought spaghetti and meatballs was probably a safe choice.”

  “Or broccoli,” Cordelia said. She loved broccoli.

  “Okay,” Gray said, leading them over to a wall lined with vegetables and marked GREENHOUSE FRESH! PICKED TODAY! “Broccoli it is.” He chose two giant heads of broccoli and put them in the cart. They explored the rest of the grocery, going down aisle after aisle of huge boxes. The children checked the small back alleys of food, looking for something that didn’t belong—the thing—but found nothing but food. Sometimes the children saw something that reminded them of home, but wasn’t quite the same, like the Honey Bits cereal that looked like the Honey Bites cereal they were used to. Even the bear on the box looked almost the same, except this one wore a red shirt instead of a blue one. They stared at the box for a while before putting it in the cart. It wasn’t quite the same as home and it felt wrong. Cordelia would have said it was like a blurry photo of her house, and Connor would have said it was like a house with the same outline but a different design. But they knew they were feeling the same thing. Before they bought their groceries, the children took the Honey Bits box out of the cart and ran to the cereal aisle to put it back. They took a cereal that was entirely unfamiliar to them, Grain Gears, instead.

  When they had finished shopping and had all their groceries, the children and Gray set out again, the children keeping their eyes peeled for the Mayor’s mysterious artifact.

  Chapter 9

  Outside, the sky was silvery and the wind was blowing stronger and colder than it had been before. The children rubbed their shoulders to keep warm. The walk to Aunt Marigold’s house was mostly downhill, and sometimes Kip would notice a stone or a piece of trash that was blown just enough by the wind to start rolling downhill, and would chase after it. The children called him back each time, but he led them off track more than once. Luckily, Gray didn’t seem to mind. He was smiling through it all. Once, Kip ran quite far ahead of them and Cordelia ran after him, yelling, “Come back here, Kip! Come back here right now!” Eventually she caught up to him and grabbed him by the leash—pretty hard, Connor thought. But she led him back to them, and everything seemed to be fine.

  They walked by more houses and
a few of the construction sites they’d seen when they came into town. But what was strange was that they were empty, the buildings still only half built. The children had thought before that they were closed because of the rain, but there was no rain now.

  “Shouldn’t there be people working there?” Connor asked, pointing at what looked like the skeleton of a tower, all metal rods—a frame for where the building would go. Down by the bottom, there were the beginnings of a brick wall, but it stopped one flight up.

  “All construction was halted when the Mayor was elected,” Gray said. “No new buildings.”

  “What?” Connor said. “That’s ridiculous. Cities need new buildings to grow.”

  “The Mayor doesn’t want the city to grow,” Gray said. They were nearly at Aunt Marigold’s house now.

  “Why not?” Connor asked. “Couldn’t new buildings make room for the people who want to move in? And they could bring in new jobs, and new stores and new ideas, which would bring in more people. A city with room to grow is a city with room to get better.”

  “I agree,” Gray said in a soft voice. “But I’m not the Mayor.”

  They could see Aunt Marigold’s house now, but Kip could see something else: a small pebble that was just starting to roll downhill. Off he went, chasing after it so fast that he yanked the leash from Cordelia’s hand.

  “Stupid!” Cordelia yelled. Connor stared at his sister for a moment. She’d never called Kip a name before. Kip seemed to understand that it wasn’t normal, either, because he stopped and turned around, his head so low he was practically about to turn into a ball and roll away himself.

  Connor ran forward and grabbed Kip’s leash, and walked him back to Cordelia.