His gut tightened. Don’t tel me there’s a trooper at the front door!
“Jackie?”
“Weezy’s here to see you.” She frowned. “She looks upset. I asked her to come in but she said she’d wait for you in the front yard.”
Weezy! She could tel him if last night had been real or not.
“Great. Thanks.”
As he squeezed by her she put a hand on his shoulder.
“She couldn’t be in any … trouble, could she?”
Jack froze. Did Mom know? But how could she? It was—
When he saw how uncomfortable she looked he realized what she was talking about. He didn’t know whether to laugh or get mad.
“Weez? Are you kidding? No way! How can you even think—?”
“Wel …” She looked even more uncomfortable. “You two do spend an awful lot of time together … disappearing for hours …”
Now he laughed. “We’re just friends, Mom.”
“Famous last words.” She looked stern now. “Don’t you go jumping into anything you’re not ready for. Remember to use your head.”
“Okay, okay,” he said on his way to the front door. “Message received and understood.”
Why’d she have to think that? Weezy got upset a lot—a
And certainly not by me, of al people.
He found her in the front yard, leaning her back against the big oak. At first sight of her he couldn’t help thinking of him and Weezy … together. He never
thought of her like that. They’d known each other forever. They’d hung out in her bedroom lots of times and he’d never thought about …
But he remembered her kiss. Nice …
When she saw him she ran over. For an awful second he thought she was going to throw herself into his arms. Not that that would be so bad someplace
else, but not here. Because sure as Tuesday fol owed Monday, Mom was watching. That’d be al she’d need.
But she stopped short and grabbed his arm and began pul ing him toward the sidewalk.
Jack saw what his mom had meant about looking upset. Her eyes—no liner this morning—were bloodshot and her face was blotchy, as if she’d been
crying.
“It’s gone, Jack!”
“What?”
“The cube! It’s gone! So are those tracings I made. And the photos too. Everything is
They stopped at the sidewalk where she’d left her bike.
“What do you mean, ‘gone’? Maybe Eddie’s got them.”
“He swears he doesn’t and I believe him. Besides, I had them hidden and Eddie can barely find his own shoes. He’d never find the cube.”
“Your folks?”
She shook her head. “No. They were sound asleep when we sneaked out last night, and just as asleep when we sneaked back in. I know the cube was
in my room when I left—I had it out, trying to open it, before I heard the helicopters.”
“And you put it away before you left?”
“Absolutely.”
Her face scrunched up as tears fil ed her eyes. She looked like she was going to break down and start bawling. Jack raised an arm to put around her
shoulders, but a glance at his house revealed his mom watching from a living room window, so he settled for a hand on her arm.
He could sense how much she was hurting. That cube and pyramid meant so much to her—as if she’d been looking for something like them al her life.
