Tesla's Attic (9781423155126) (3 page)

“I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work,” Caitlin said drily, after Vince left with the wet cell.

Nick turned to Caitlin, the look on his face almost one of suspicion. “All these people coming in the storm, giving me all this money. It's like there's a conspiracy.”

“That's crazy,” said Caitlin. Then, as Nick was distracted by another buyer—a nun with an antique vacuum cleaner—she couldn't deny a desperate feeling to find her own particular object.

She moved to the end of the picnic table and found herself next to the Hispanic kid from school, whose name was on the tip of her tongue, but not really. Marshall or Randall or something. He had some odd family issue that rumored its way through school last year, but she hadn't cared enough to pay attention.

“Hey, Caitlin,” Marshall/Randall said. “You're not going to find much here that you'll like. It's all a bunch of old crap, you know, already picked over.”

“Well, as it happens I'm looking for—”

“For something new, of course,” Marshall/Randall interrupted.

“Something old, actually,” Caitlin corrected. “Something—”

“Something trendy, huh? Nah, nothing trendy either,” he went on, more than happy to finish her sentences. “It's all ancient
basura
. What would you expect at a garage sale, huh?”

“Mitchell, right?” Caitlin said, his name suddenly coming back to her.

“Just Mitch.”

She wanted to ask him if he'd felt drawn there, too, but all she managed was, “Why are you here?”

Mitch shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. “Just thought I'd, um, drop by.…Uh, excuse me.”

Caitlin wasn't used to people leaving her in the middle of conversations. That was
her
M.O. There were usually more important or interesting places for her to be than stuck in boring conversations with borderline entities. So she was completely unprepared for Mitch to walk away from her and cross to the picnic table, where he apparently found his Object of Interest.

Even though the garage sale had at first appeared to be a bust, people began to arrive in droves just a few minutes after the storm had started. Nick never equated the illumination of the old stage light with the influx of customers. Why would he?

First he sold the killer toaster to their next-door neighbor, an elderly woman who probably came from the same era as the appliance. Then a girl with a pinched face and uneven pigtails bought the old box camera. Some guy sprang for what Nick guessed was an ancient television set. A woman bought the odd-paddled mixer, someone else bought the thing that looked like a cast-iron clothes dryer, and he even sold the antique sewing machine (or vegetable juicer).

His dad could barely carry the objects out to people's cars fast enough, and Danny had to graduate to a toolbox, because the lunch box was too small to hold all the money. Yet as he made sale after sale, Nick's thrill turned into bafflement, which turned into suspicion. Now he wondered what Caitlin had whispered to the pudgy kid. He wondered if they were talking about him behind his back. In fact, the kid was approaching him right now.

“Hi, I'm Mitch, Mitch Murló.”

“Merlot?” asked Nick. “Like the wine?”

“No, Murló like Murphy and López smushed together, ground up, and pushed out the other end. My parents' idea—a half-Hispanic, half-Irish name that sounds French.” Mitch looked around approvingly. “Nice garage sale you're running—so, you gonna start at Rocky Point Middle School, or are you older or younger and I'm just not guessing your age right?”

“Uh…” Nick had to take a moment to mentally diagram Mitch's sentence. “Uh…yeah, no, you got it right, I'll be in eighth grade. I'll be starting—”

“On Monday?” Mitch interrupted. “Great! We should talk—I'll tell you which teachers to avoid, and where it's safe to sit without risking a beating.”

“Thanks. Actually I—”

“Want to hear it now? Sure. First of all, there's Mrs. Kottswold.…”

Nick had already been assigned to classes, so any talk of avoiding teachers was moot. But apparently Mitch only needed himself to carry on a conversation. Nick endured another minute of school trivia before he could refocus the conversation on the garage sale. “Yeah, that's all good to know. So…what do you have there?”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Mitch looked at the object in his hands, almost as if he were surprised to see it there, a little embarrassed by it, even. “It's a birthday gift for my little sister.” He held up the disk-shaped metal device, with a movable arrow mounted in the center. It was possibly a toy—it looked like an early See 'n Say cast in steel. But instead of barn animals, it had geometric symbols engraved around the circle. An ivory ring was attached to a pull string. “This looks good,” he said.

“Uh…right…” said Nick. “I'm sure your sister would love a weird piece of junk instead of something—”

“Something new in a box? You bet she would! She's not into the whole corporate America commercialization-of-birthdays thing.” Mitch played with the string on the device. “Anyway, how much?”

Nick shrugged. “I was thinking of—”

“I only brought ten with me,” Mitch said, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. “But I can go home and get more.”

“Okay, what's going on?” Nick demanded. “Did that girl Caitlin put you up to this? What are you all planning?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Mitch said indignantly, holding out the ten.

Nick sighed and took the bill. “Fine. I hope your sister enjoys it.”

As Caitlin wandered closer to the garage, she saw it. The perfect item.

An old reel-to-reel tape recorder. A big, bulky thing the size of a suitcase, complete with two plate-size spools of audiotape. In a flash of inspiration, she saw her entire
garbart
project. She'd pull the guts out of the machine and drape the wires and other electronic bits over and around the thing. Then she'd wrap the entire mess with the audiotape. She even had a title.

Media Frenzy.

She raced back to Nick, unable to control herself as she pulled bills from her purse. Even though Caitlin realized she was falling into the same trap as the others, she was powerless to stop it. She only wanted to spend ten, but she found herself holding out a twenty to Nick.

“How much do you want for that tape recorder?” she asked. “Is this enough? I have more.”

Nick looked at the bill in her hand but wouldn't take it. He just shook his head. “It's junk! It's not worth anything. What's wrong with you?”

Caitlin felt tears—actual tears—building in her eyes. “I don't know! I don't know! Just take the money and let me have it! Because if you don't, I don't know what I'll do!”

Nick reached out to her in a kind of daze, but whether he intended to take her money or take her hand wasn't clear. Her last impression of him before he grabbed her was that he looked like a deer in headlights.

It turned out there was a reason for that.

The car, a Buick that had seen better days, wasn't speeding down the street intentionally. However, the man driving found himself in such an unexpected hurry to reach the garage sale he couldn't help himself. He barely noticed his car jumping the curb and, at the time, the tree in front of him felt like a minor inconvenience. With the rain beating down on his windshield and a pair of faulty wipers, he never even saw the two kids in his path. But he did notice the table of merchandise in front of the garage, illuminated by a certain light that could only be described as compelling.

Nick didn't have time to think, only to act. He rammed Caitlin, tackling her to the ground just as the car plowed into the tree. Had he hesitated a split second, they both would have been crushed by the car, but Nick's reflexes were just fast enough to save them. Now, lying together on the wet grass, Caitlin just stared at him.

“Excuse me, but did we almost just die?”

“Yeah, I think so.” He helped her to her feet and they both stared at the car, its front end crumpled against the tree. Funny, but the moment
after
nearly dying felt as uneventful as the moment right
before
nearly dying. Nick figured the seriousness of the moment would hit him much later, when he actually had time to freak out about it.

Danny hurried up. “Did anybody die?” he asked. “Dad's in the bathroom, but if somebody died I'll get him out.”

The driver forced his way past the air bags, got out of the car, and instead of looking at his vehicle, asked anyone who was listening, “Is this the garage sale? Is there anything left?” Then he went to the long table to pick through the dregs of the dregs of Nick's garbage, just like everyone else. All that was left were broken fragments of things that could not be identified when they were whole, much less now that they were in pieces. Yet people still sifted through them like prospectors panning for gold.

“These people are nuts!” Caitlin said, then added, “And I was just one of them!”

Apparently the sudden shock of nearly getting killed had jarred her out of the weird state she had been in—yet even now, Nick couldn't help but notice the way she was drawn back to that reel-to-reel recorder in the garage, and he followed her.

“I already paid you for this, right?” Caitlin asked, standing over the recorder, her hand on it almost possessively.

Drenched people kept arriving from the street. Many of them were not in rain gear or even carrying umbrellas. It was like they were drawn to the place like moths to a flame.

Or a bulb
, Nick thought.

Nick turned to the oversize bulb on its stand, lighting up the garage and casting long shadows stretching out like spokes toward the mob examining the merchandise. There was something about that light. Not quite hypnotic, but soothing. Penetrating. Nick could feel it tugging at him like some sort of secret gravity. Was that crazy?

He reached over to the light, took the switch between his thumb and forefinger, and clicked it off.

The light died, its filament dimming to a faint orange glow before extinguishing entirely. And when he looked at the people scavenging the table, everyone took one last gander at the piece of broken junk in their hands and put it down.

“Well,” someone said, “this was certainly a waste of time.”

Everyone else seemed to agree, voicing thoughts from disappointment to disgust.

“I can't believe I missed the game for this.”

“Look at my dress! Soaked!”

“They have some nerve calling this a garage sale.”

“Did I just run my car into a tree?”

None of them seemed to remember that just an instant before they had been willing to shell out whatever money they had for whatever they could get.

Caitlin, coming up beside Nick, breathed a deep, shuddering breath. “I feel better now.”

“I guess you don't really want that tape recorder, do you.”

Caitlin looked down, a bit guiltily. “Actually, I still want it,” she said, “just…not quite as much as before.”

Nick nodded, reached into the box of cash, and pulled out a twenty. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I made enough money anyway. You can have it for free.”

Reluctantly, Caitlin took the bill, clearly disturbed by the whole experience. “Thanks,” she said. “It's too big to walk home with. I'll come back with my mom later.”

“Maybe,” suggested Nick, “when you come over, you could stay for dinner.”

But Caitlin gave him an awkward, apologetic grin. “Maybe I'll just get the tape recorder.”

“Right,” said Nick, trying to hide both his embarrassment and disappointment. “Well, thanks for stopping by.”

And then she was gone, just like that, along with everyone else who no longer had any interest in the junk on the table. Last to go was the man who hit the tree, as there were pieces of his front bumper he had to throw into the trunk before struggling to drive off with a wilting air bag in his lap.

Well, at least Nick could console himself with an incredibly fat wallet, even if somehow it felt like the money wasn't really his. That it had been stolen by unintentional trickery.

“Wow,” said his dad, coming out of the house to see the flotsam and jetsam spread out on the table. “That turned out well!”

“Yeah,” said Nick, “surprisingly well.”

“Then can we get something to eat?” Danny asked. “I'm starving.”

“You two go—my treat,” Nick said, handing his father a few bills from the toolbox. “Just bring me back something. I'll stay and clean up this mess.”

As his dad and brother drove off, Nick brought the tall stage light into the house, then went back outside with a large trash bag. But before he began tossing the remaining junk, one last car pulled up the long driveway, a pearlescent-white SUV that seemed to be dry in spite of the rain. Some kind of optical illusion, Nick figured.

As a flash of lightning ripped across the sky, all four doors opened simultaneously. Four men stepped out, all tall and each dressed in a pastel color—cream, pale green, teal, lavender—as if they had been on their way to an Easter parade. In one smooth move that almost seemed choreographed, the four men opened umbrellas.

They walked up to the picnic table and stood around Nick, who tried not to feel, or at least not to show that he felt, intimidated.

“So sorry we're late,” said the tallest of the four. “We only heard about this at the last minute.”

One of the others held up a copy of the flyer and read aloud, “‘Antiques, Vintage Toys, Furniture, Tons of Cool Stuff.'”

The tallest guy wore a vanilla-colored three-piece suit, while the others had on slacks and crisp shirts. Due to a trick of the light, perhaps, or the contrast between the pastel shades and the gloomy weather, their clothes almost seemed to be glowing.

“‘Tons of cool stuff,'” the man in the vanilla suit repeated, then he flashed and held a cheery, soulless smile that creeped Nick out. “Sadly, I imagine no one showed up in this storm.”