Courtney looked at the ring, looked back at the parchment papers. Mark could tell the wheels were turning in her head as she tried to make sense of everything he had just thrown at her. Finally, she stood up and tossed the parchment pages over her shoulder like yesterday’s news.
“Gimme a break,” she said with a sneer.
“Hey!” squealed Mark as he frantically ran after the pages. There was a slight wind that scattered them across the empty lot so he had to scramble before they blew away.
“What do you guys think I am?” Courtney barked. “Some kind of idiot?”
“N-no! It’s n-not like-” Mark’s stutter was back.
“You tell Bobby Pendragon that I’m not dumb enough to go for such a stupid joke.”
“B-but-”
“What happens next? Am I supposed to get all worried and tell everybody that Bobby missed the game last night because he got flumed into another dimension and had to battle cannibal beasts and unless he rescues his uncle from some dark knights on horseback he might miss the next game too?”
“W-well, yeah.”
“Oh yeah, that’s perfect,” shouted Courtney. “Then Bobby jumps out and yells, ‘Surprise!’ and I have to move to another state because no one will ever let me forget that I was dumb enough to fall for the most ridiculous practical joke in the history of practical jokes. I don’t think so!”
With that, she snatched up her pack and started to walk away.
“Courtney, stop!” shouted Mark.
Courtney wheeled back to Mark, throwing him a look of total disdain. When you get a look like that from Courtney Chetwynde, it’s really hard not to quickly dig a hole and bury yourself in it. It took every bit of strength for Mark to go on. When he spoke, it was sincere and without a trace of a stutter.
“It’s hard for me to believe it too,” he began. “But this isn’t a joke. I don’t know if everything in those pages is true, but I’ve seen some things that I can’t explain. I swear I have. And it’s enough to make me believe something totally bizarre happened to Bobby.”
Courtney didn’t move. Was she starting to believe him? Or was she just waiting for him to finish so she could tell him, again, what an idiot she thought he was?
Mark took the chance and continued, “I know it’s a lot to swallow. But if this is all just some big old practical joke, then where’s Bobby’s house?”
Courtney looked past Mark to the empty lot. Mark wondered what she was thinking. Was she remembering how she had come to this spot last night, gone inside a house that was no longer here and kissed Bobby Pendragon?
“I’m scared, Courtney,” added Mark. “I want to know what happened, but I don’t think I can figure it out by myself.”
Courtney stared at Mark for a moment more, as if trying to read his mind. She then walked past him to stand in the center of the empty lot. She did a slow 360 around to take everything in. But there was nothing to take in. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to show that a family of four, with a dog, had lived there not twelve hours before. Courtney was the kind of person who was always on top of things. It didn’t matter if it was a game of volleyball, or an argument with her parents, Courtney always knew how to handle difficult situations and turn them to her advantage. But this was different. She couldn’t control this situation because she didn’t know the rules. Yet.
“All right,” she said thoughtfully. “We can’t go crazy trying to figure out everything at once. It’s just too…too much.” She was half talking to Mark and half thinking out loud. “I don’t know anything about quigs or Travelers or plumes-”
“Flumes,” he corrected her.
“Whatever,” she snapped back. “That’s all fantasy to me. But this house…this house being gone is about as real as it gets. If we can find out what happened to the house, maybe that’ll point us toward Bobby.”
Mark smiled for the first time in forever. He had an ally, and it was somebody he knew could make things happen.
“Where do we start?” he asked.
Courtney started to walk toward the street with her long, bold strides. She was now on a mission. “We’ve got to find his parents. No way they disappeared too.”
“Excellent!” shouted Mark. They were moving forward.
Courtney suddenly stopped, whirled around, and went nose to nose with Mark.
“And I swear, Dimond,” she said while jabbing him in the chest with a strong finger. “If you’re pulling my chain about all this, I’ll slam you so hard you’ll have to reach up to tie your shoes.”
“So noted,” gulped Mark.
Courtney continued on toward the street. Mark followed while stuffing the parchment papers into his pack. As he was about to step onto the sidewalk, he took one last look back at the empty space where his best friend’s house used to be. He could understand where Courtney’s disbelief was coming from. The story contained in the parchment papers was tough to believe, even though some of it had proven to be true. At least the part about Courtney, that is. That was the easy part. The rest was just plain incredible. And there was a mystery too. Nowhere in the pages did Bobby say anything about his house disappearing. If everything had played out the way the pages said, when he and his uncle Press took off on the motorcycle, the house was still here. Something happened to it after they were gone, which meant Bobby didn’t know that his house was history. Oddly enough, this gave Mark some hope. Courtney was right. If they could figure out what happened to the house, then maybe they could make some sense out of what happened to Bobby.
There was another thought that nagged at the back of Mark’s mind, and it was one he didn’t feel comfortable sharing with Courtney. At least not yet. It had to do with the ring, and the fact that Bobby sent the pages to him. The question that Mark kept asking himself was: “Why?” If all that Bobby wrote about were true, and he was on a most incredible adventure, then why would he take the time to write down everything that happened and send it to him? Sure, they were best friends, and Bobby wrote that he hoped the pages would someday prove that he wasn’t making everything up. But that didn’t seem to be enough to justify doing it. Mark felt that somehow there was an important reason that he should know about what was happening to Bobby.
For now, he was happy just to be on the road to making sense of what had happened to his best friend. The logical place to start would be to find Bobby’s parents, and ask them what happened to the house. So with that positive thought in mind, Mark turned his back on the empty lot and ran to catch up with Courtney. They were both sure that their questions would soon be answered, they would find Bobby, and life would return to normal in time for school the next day.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Their investigation first took them to Mark’s house. They figured it would be easier to track down Bobby’s parents over the phone than by racing around town on their bikes, or by taking the bus. Mark lived on a cul-de-sac about a half a mile from Bobby’s house. Rather, half a mile from where Bobby’s house used to be. Of course, when he left for school that morning Mark hadn’t anticipated that the fabulous Courtney Chetwynde would be paying a visit to his bedroom that afternoon. The odds of that happening were roughly the same as…well…his best friend being launched across the universe.
“Wait here,” commanded Mark as he ran into his bedroom and closed the door in Courtney’s face. Courtney rolled her eyes, but respected his privacy.
Mark took one look at his room and wanted to faint. He wasn’t sure which was the most embarrassing: the dirty underwear and socks that were scattered everywhere; the cartoon superhero posters that he hadn’t gotten around to taking down; theSports Illustrated bikini posters that he had just gotten around to putting up; or the rancid smell that seemed to permeate the whole squalid mess. Mark went into overdrive. He threw open a window, scooped up an armload of the offending Fruit Of The Looms and jammed as many as he could fit behind the pillow of his unmade bed.
Then the door opened and Courtney charged in.
“Look, I’ve got two older brothers. It’s not possible to gross me out-” She took a look at the room and stopped dead in her tracks. Mark stood frozen holding a bunch of dirty gray socks that in an earlier life had actually been white. Courtney sniffed the air and had to try hard not to gag. “I was wrong. I am totally grossed out,” she managed to say. “Did something die in here?”
“S-sorry,” he said in complete embarrassment. “It n-needs a little air.”
