The Mysterious Benedict Society

“Assuming we can stop whatever Mr. Curtain’s up to,” Sticky said.

Constance stood up. “You’re not helping my hopefulness, George Washington. I’m going to bed.” She frowned at the ceiling, then looked at Kate. “I’ll need a ride.”

After the meeting was adjourned and the girls had gone, Sticky and Reynie climbed into their bunks. Reynie hardly felt like sleeping, but he did need to calm down and clear his thoughts, and so lying in his bunk he turned to his usual method. He wrote a mental letter:

Dear Miss Perumal,

Every time I think of poor Mr. Bloomburg and his family, my mind returns to you. How would your mother — whom I know you love so much — feel if you just suddenly vanished from her life? It is an awful thing to consider. She loves and depends upon you, and I know you depend upon her, too. I never think of you without remembering your mother, too.

With these thoughts on my mind, I had a strange feeling earlier tonight. Looking around at Sticky, Kate, and Constance, I wondered how I’d feel if one of them disappeared. Sometimes Constance drives me crazy, but now I can’t imagine being here without her. I can’t say for sure, because I have no experience, but — well, is this what family is like? The feeling that everyone’s connected, that with one piece missing the whole thing’s broken?

Reynie paused in his letter to consider. Of the four of them, Sticky was the only one to have a memory of family life. Was it worse for him, Reynie wondered, to have felt loved and then rejected? Or was it worse to have always felt alone? Kate said she had no memory of her dead mother, nor of her father who abandoned her. And Constance — well, they knew almost nothing of Constance, but Reynie had the feeling that she, too, had never known a family.

Reynie’s mind went back to his last night at Mr. Benedict’s house. It seemed so long ago now, yet he remembered it with absolute clarity. Much like tonight, he had felt too worked up to sleep, and despite the late hour he had slipped quietly out of bed and crept down to Mr. Benedict’s study. Mr. Benedict had welcomed Reynie to sit up with him if he had trouble sleeping; and obviously he’d quite expected Reynie to do so, for when Reynie arrived, a cup of hot tea was waiting for him on Mr. Benedict’s desk. There was even a little jar of honey (and judging from the way Mr. Benedict’s papers stuck to his fingers as he worked, he had already been into it himself).

“You have a question for me?” Mr. Benedict said, as Reynie sat down.

Reynie laughed. “How do you always know?”

“I’m not sure,” Mr. Benedict admitted. “Perhaps it’s a matter of empathy. I know that if I were you I’d have questions.” He scratched the top of his head with one of his pencils. “Though come to think of it, perhaps it’s a matter of odds. You seem the type always to have questions. Thus at any given moment, it’s a safe bet for me to assume you have one.”

“I was wondering if you ever wish you had a family,” Reynie sputtered. He hadn’t meant to speak so directly, but once he’d begun to ask it, the words just tumbled out.

Mr. Benedict nodded. “Certainly when I was your age I did. But not anymore.”

Reynie wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or depressed by this revelation. He’d been wondering how it would feel for him to grow up without relatives. “You . . . you grew out of it, then? You stopped wanting it?”

“Oh, no, Reynie, you don’t grow out of it. It’s just that once you acquire a family, you no longer need to wish for one.”

Reynie was caught off guard. “You have a family?”

“Absolutely,” Mr. Benedict replied. “You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn’t depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family.”

Reynie had drunk up those words like life-saving medicine. Even though the next morning he would leave on a dangerous mission, even though he knew something terrible was coming down the pike, those words of Mr. Benedict’s had made all good things seem possible. Reynie had gone to bed thinking of the people he might one day — if everything turned out all right — consider a part of his family.

And now, lying in his dark room at the Institute in an altogether different mood, Reynie finished the letter he had begun to one of those very people.

At least I had you, Miss Perumal, if only for a while. Maybe you weren’t my family, but you were the closest thing I had — maybe that I’ll ever have. And now things are awful and seem likely to get worse, and I worry that I’ll never have the chance to tell you what it meant to me. . . .

“Reynie?” whispered Sticky from the bunk below.

Reynie cleared his throat. “Yes?”

“Were you having a bad dream? It sounded like you were crying.”

Reynie wiped his eyes. “I just . . . just can’t get over what he’s done to those poor people.”

“I know,” Sticky said. “It’s maddening to think what might be in that journal of his — to think there might be something we could use to stop him . . . but I know there’s no way we can lay hands on it.”

Reynie sat bolt upright. “Sticky!”

Sticky nearly fell out of bed. “What? What is it?”

“Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way,” Reynie said. “Maybe we don’t have to lay hands on it!”

Tactical Cactupi

The last class was dismissed into a perfect fall afternoon. Blue skies, cool temperatures, the subtlest of breezes. The sun seemed to rest upon a distant hilltop like a giant orange on a giant table.

On the plaza, Mr. Curtain sat in his favorite spot, gazing off toward the bridge, reading a newspaper with a look of satisfaction, occasionally making a note in his journal. A few students had gathered at the edges of the plaza and in the rock garden, passing the time before supper. As always, they gave Mr. Curtain plenty of room. No one dared go near him while he was working — which is why so many jaws dropped when Reynard Muldoon was spotted