The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen (19 page)

Katie thought about this. She rocked onto her haunches. She said to her friend, “Is Jasper going to always stay the same, then?”

“I don't know,” said Lily.

“What will happen,” asked Katie, “what will happen if we get older and he stays the same?” Her voice caught in her throat. “If we're in college or married to people and he's still a kid?”

“I don't know,” whispered Lily even softer.

They sat side by side without speaking. One room away Jasper slept, exhausted by his day,
heavy with allergy medication. He breathed softly, his hair smeared across his forehead, his bed lumpy with the electrical parts he liked to study before he fell asleep.

“I don't want to leave him behind,” said Lily.

Katie sighed. “He already is behind,” she said. She faintly smiled. “It's kind of cute. Sometimes I have to remind him—‘Hello, welcome to 1998!'”

Lily looked at her friend, startled. She could barely make out Katie's features.

“Katie,” she said quietly. “It's not.”

“Not… ?”

“Nineteen ninety-eight. It's a lot later than that.”

Time passed slowly in the room after Lily said this. It was marked by the thrumming of the furnace somewhere far below. Neither of them knew what to say.

Lily whispered, “Nineteen ninety-eight is when the Horror Hollow series came out.”

Katie did not look at her friend for a while. She thought about what Lily had said. She drew
her knees up against her chest and put her arms around her legs. “I'm stuck,” said Katie. “I'll never grow up. And you will.”

“We don't know what's going to happen,” said Lily.

“Jasper and I won't change and you will. You'll be a mother.”

“We're best friends. We'll always be,” Lily insisted; but Katie didn't respond.

The wind picked up outside and they heard the hotel creaking. They looked at each other's faces in the dark.

“Let's wake him up,” said Katie. “We'll play cards. All together.”

“Let him sleep,” said Lily. “Don't worry, Katie. We have years.”

“Maybe,” said Katie. She took Lily's hand. “Maybe we do.”

They stared out the window, but all they could see now was their own faint reflection, their faces in the night, as if they hovered, ghost eyed, in the cold.

Snow fell over the mountain.

The next day there were pancakes for everyone. There were waffles.

Jasper, Katie, and Lily tramped through the snow. They went over bridges and made their way through tall ravines. Their voices echoed. They went skiing with the Cutesy Dell Twins. The Twins taught Lily how to stay standing.

In the forest the snow flickered with light like mica. It fell in dust from the trees. Katie pulled on boughs to douse the others and they screamed. They pelted her with snowballs.

Katie and the Cutesy Dell Twins decided that they were going to dress up for dinner and get Lily to dress up, too, and they talked about it while they skied down the slopes. Katie could
tell that Lily was kind of excited by the idea of seeing herself with her hair done up fancily.

Jasper, meanwhile, turned up the collar of his Strato-jac and went over jumps on his amazing subatomic rocket-sledge.

Dr. Schmeltzer and Mrs. Mandrake tobogganed down a slope together, screaming all the way. They went over a jump and whapped to a stop at the bottom, inches from a river.

“You, dearest, are a crazy man,” howled Mrs. Mandrake happily.

“Darling, please don't call me that.”

“Crazy?”

“A man. To the bats, I am a Long Ground-Mouse.”

The water polo team and the Cutesy Dell Twins were getting very friendly at the bottom of the slope. The Manley Boys, miffed that they hadn't solved the case, were hiding each other's ski hats and pretending it was a crime.

Katie, standing on her skis, looked around her at all the people rising on the lift and shooting
past her on the trail, the people laughing and skidding and jumping.

It is strange that everyone staying at the Lodge that weekend was so full of longing—for their youth, or their horse, or their fame, or their glitter, or perfect joinery, or night flight— so full of longing that they ended up a little broken somehow, unable to see what was obvious to others, unaware of what year they lived in, or how they looked, or what was right and wrong. We all are lost and confused in this way, so full of longing for things: This is why we need people who solve mysteries, whether they are the mysteries of bloodstains on the carpet, or the mysteries of space, or the mystery of who we are.

Of course, Katie didn't think about these things for long. She was just thinking how grateful she was that people had let her do what she was good at. Other people could play in bands or paint or make things out of wood. She could
solve crimes and fight off things that jumped out of bushes.

Remembering her tantrum at home on the garage floor, she was really glad she wasn't in that mood anymore. She was glad that everyone seemed happy now, even the Quints, who were all skiing down the mountain, tied in a clump, with police officers snowboarding alongside them.

And though she couldn't have put it into words, Katie was also thinking this: In this world, this confusion of motive, opportunity, and means, where everyone yearned to the point of blindness, where she herself didn't even know the year, where the solutions made no more sense than the questions—still there was the mountain, and there were people falling in love and families soaking each other with ice, and there were dogs playing tricks in the powder, and there were friends like Jasper and Lily.

These things were no more substantial than a phantom horse or a snowfall in July. But that
was why she had to embrace it all so hard, with such joy.

Jasper waved up to her. Katie waved back.

She kicked off and skied toward him—right toward him—and didn't stop until she'd collided with him and Lily, and, together, the three of them lay aching and laughing and pummeling each other in the snow; and their skis were crossed like the swords of musketeers of old who pledged oaths of fealty, many daring escapades, rakish hats, and friendship eternal, come what may.

The following article was sent to me by a reader:

> LONDON (Reuters)—A lone whale, with a voice unlike

> any other, has been wandering the Pacific for the past

> 12 years, American marine biologists said Wednesday.

>

> Using signals recorded by the U.S. Navy to track

> submarines, they traced the movement of whales in the

> northern Pacific and found that a lone whale singing

> at a frequency of around 52 hertz has cruised the

> ocean since 1992. Its calls, despite being clearly

> those of a baleen, do not match those of any known

> species of whale, which usually call at frequencies of

> between 15 and 20 hertz. The mammal does not follow

> the migration patterns of any other species either,

> according to team leader Mary Anne Daher. [Dec. 8, 2004]

Oh, to travel the dark whale-roads of the earth with a song no one else sings, calling for a
mate who shall not find you, companions who do not sink or sound, save in your barnacled dreams. What could be lonelier than this whale, alone of its kind?

This book I dedicate to you.

Though you cannot read it, may you find joy in your own song and the friendship of crabs, and rhythm in the oscillation of kelp.

(For use by young adventurers whose astounding lives often take them to a mountain setting where they encounter thrilling dissatisfactions)