Kepler’s Dream (22 page)

My grandmother was startled. “Ignacio Aguilar is back in town?” She took that information in, and then gave her son a good, hard look. But her eyes were forgiving. “Well. I suppose everything comes full circle, doesn't it.”

“Yes, and Grandmother,” I blurted, “Ignacio told us about the accident by the river, and what really happened. And the thing is—”

My dad put up a hand to stop me. “There will be time to get to all that, Belle. But first, there's something else Mother and I have to talk about.”

She nodded, as if in perfect agreement. “I told you that you couldn't stay here. Walter, I have realized that that was a
mistake.” My grandmother's voice did not falter. “More than that, it was an unkindness. For which I apologize.”

This left my father speechless. I'm not sure he had ever in his life heard Violet Von Stern utter the word
apologize
. The rest of what he had to say vanished. He would have to get to it later.

“And I regret that I had Christopher staying here instead of you. I can see that that wasn't right.”

It was as though these old arguments had caught up with my grandmother and almost knocked her over. She didn't seem completely steady on her feet. My dad actually held out his arm for her, and to my surprise, she took it. Together we all left the Librerery behind—for that day, at least.

“Don't worry about it now, Mother. Let's go inside.”

Hildy and Lou were running around out there. Chasing the ghosts of skunks or swans, or whatever it was they did together.

“I should fix us some sort of supper. After all, here you are at last,” the GM said as we walked back toward the house. I was filled to the gills with Mexican food, but Dad hadn't gotten around to eating at the restaurant. He'd been too busy talking.

“Well, I'd appreciate that,” he said, “if you have the energy.”

“We must have some cold meat in the refrigerator. And it wouldn't be hard to make some sort of slaw …”

Me and my dad—
ahem!
my dad and I—traded smiles behind my grandmother's back. The slawer, back in action!

And then the three of us went inside to sit around a table together in the House of Mud, for the first time—in history.

ELEVEN

I H
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D TH
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OT
muc
H OF
an
artist. Still, one of my goals as a camper this summer was to figure out how in the world my grandmother's old House of Mud was laid out. I had been working on a plan of the place for weeks now, and was pretty close to done. I wasn't sure what I would do with it when I had finished. Maybe enter it in next year's science fair.
House Plan
:
How One Old Adobe Home Can Be More Complicated Than an Ancient Labyrinth
.

I was sitting outside near the former pond (asteroid indentation), notebook on my knee, adding to my picture the constellation of cottonwoods the GM had told me about before. As I looked up to check on the pattern of the trees, I saw a hoodied figure approaching me. It was tall Jackson, without his sidekick.

“Hey,” he said. “How's it going?”

Once again he was recognizing my existence! It was still surprising—like I had somehow managed in the past couple of
weeks, in spite of not yet being twelve, to enter the ranks of the Visible.

“Not bad.”

“What are you drawing?” he asked curiously.

“Oh, nothing.” Which is the kind of dumb thing you say when you're nervous. It was pretty obvious I wasn't drawing nothing. “That is, my grandmother's house,” I corrected myself, then showed him what I had so far. He looked at it pretty closely and nodded.

“You interested in architecture?”

Was I? I didn't know. “Maybe. I guess.” Then, to sound less wishy-washy, I said, “Also, I think me finishing this might somehow help us find Kepler's
Dream
.” I wasn't sure that was true, but it was a nice idea. As though, if we could just figure out all the nooks and crannies of my grandmother's crazy home, Rosie and I might have some breakthrough about what had happened to the famous
Dream
itself.

“Good luck with that.” But the guy said this as though he meant it—not sarcastically. “
Somnium seu Astronomia Lunari
. The dream, or astronomy, of the moon. Right?”

I nodded. This surprised me: Jackson, at least, had taken in what the Kepler book was. He might have more furniture upstairs than my grandmother gave him credit for. A couple of chairs. Maybe even a sofa.

“Kepler got there first, you know?” he went on. “To the moon. In his mind, anyway.”

“
My grandfather thought he was ahead of his time.”

“For sure he was. Though he caught a lot of flak for it.” He pulled out a few sunflower seeds and started chewing them. I was wondering when we'd get to those. “That's why NASA named the mission after him. Because he imagined life somewhere other than on earth.”

“Mission?” The word made me think of my mom. Her treatment being like a kind of mission. “Which one?”

“Their new unmanned mission—trying to find life, or the possibility of life, on other planets.” He spat out a few shells. “It's this huge project. They call it the Kepler mission. After him. Same dude.”

I was staring at him the way people do in a movie when a dog or cat starts speaking in a regular human voice. This wasn't what I expected to hear from the tall sunflower guy.

“Anyway, I'm getting out of here. I just came over to say good-bye. I'm going up tomorrow to Polaris.” I must have still looked stunned, because he clarified, “The sci-fi convention, that is. Not the star itself. I don't have any space travel planned. Not yet.” He gave a funny sideways look.

I laughed, hoping that wasn't uncool. “Yeah, me either.” Again, not what you'd call a smart remark, but I was still more used to the mosquito treatment from these guys. I couldn't believe we were having an actual conversation.

“OK. Take it easy.” Before he turned away, he added, “Hope you find it, by the way.”

“
Find what?”

“Your Polaris.” He smiled in a hard-to-read way. “That is, you know—your dream.”

I wasn't sure what he was talking about, so I just said, “Yeah. Thanks. See you later.”

And he turned and walked away. I realized that Jackson was not, after all, someone whose back I was so eager to see. I returned to my drawing like I was super-interested in what I was doing, but in my mind I kept replaying what he and I had just said, and wondering through its meanings.

Beyond the cottonwood trees, in my plan, there was the place Miguel lived, and near there the feed bins, and I decided to add them, too. When I had begun this project, it was only going to be the house itself, but then I had to show the
Librerery,
and so I added some of the busted-up old coops, and decided the cabin and sheds ought to be in the picture also. I was just writing “Miguel's Cabin” in what passed for my best handwriting when something occurred to my sleepy memory.

That closed door.

The night Rosie took me into their cabin, when Miguel had disappeared and, as we now knew, my dad and several peacocks were thumping around on Grandmother's roof—well, I remembered that in that dim light I saw two other doors in the home Rosie and her dad shared. One must have led to the cabin's bathroom, but the other one to—what?

For the first time in this whole adventure I felt a flutter of a
question about Miguel. If there was an extra room in there, what did he use it for?

“Hola.”

A strawberry-scented bubble popped just about in my ear, and I jumped. It was Rosie, of course.

“Hi.” I tried not to look startled.

“How's the map coming?” I showed it to her. “Looks pretty good” was her verdict, which was almost as good as getting a smiley face from Ms. Nelson. Then Rosie lowered her voice. “So—guess who knows the text-obsessed short kid?”

I shrugged.

“My cousin Lola.” Rosie widened her eyes and waited for me to understand what a great lead this was. She popped another bubble. “
And
… ,” she went on, “Lola told me he's already gotten in trouble at school a couple times. Guess how?”

“I don't know.”

“Hacking. He once hacked into the English teacher's grading account and gave himself an A!”

That seemed funny, the idea that Tweedledum would try to scheme his way into seeming smarter than he really was. “I guess my grandmother wouldn't have heard about that, though,” I pointed out. “Abercrombie would have vouched for him. His nephew.”

Rosie agreed.

“The other one just left,” I told her. “Jackson. I think they're winding up their work today. He actually talked to me, about Kepler and stuff.”

“
Oh, yeah? Like he had any special knowledge of Kepler's
Dream
?”

I thought about it. “Maybe,” I admitted. I realized you're not being a very good detective if you get distracted by the fact that one of your suspects is actually being nice to you. “He was friendly, anyway. That was new.”

Rosie stood up, then put out her hand to pull me to standing. She thought we had better find the other one, Texty, before he went home, too. She still had a feeling that he was behind what had happened, and so did I.

We started to walk down the side path together, and I thought of that uncomfortable flutter I had had a few minutes before. I didn't want anything cluttering the air between Rosie and me, so I decided it was best just to ask her about that other room in her dad's cabin. I explained that I had wondered when it came to drawing it.

“Oh, the workshop. You want to see it?” she asked. “It's pretty cool.” So we took a quick side-cut. As we stepped up the slatted wooden steps, I thought of the last time I had gone in there with this girl, who at the time thought I was something like an idiot (or at least a lousy rider). It's like I said before: friendship isn't a math equation. You never knew how things would work out.

As soon as we were inside, we heard a raspy sound coming from behind the closed door, and Rosie said, “I guess he's working.” She stopped outside and knocked. When her dad opened the door, he looked surprised to see both of us but, to my relief, not annoyed.

“
Hi, girls.” He smiled at me. “Hey, perfect timing, Ella. I was just finishing this up for you. Come in.”

And he ushered us into a small, sawdusty workshop that was completely crowded with tools and boards and sandpaper and aprons and oil …