The Miraculous Page 5
Faye shook her head at him. “Rationality does not suit you, Wundie. But have it your way. We’ll look up who ordered it.”
“Look them up? Where?”
“Probably the town hall,” Faye said. “This cemetery is owned by Branch Hill. My mom had to file all kinds of forms with them when my grandfather died.”
“Fine!” Wunder started down the hill. “I’ll go there now.”
“It’ll be closed soon. Tomorrow, Wundie. We’ll go tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll go tomorrow afternoon,” Wunder said.
“That’s what I said, Wundie,” Faye said. “We’ll go tomorrow afternoon.”
Chapter 13
Wunder told himself that all he was going to learn at the town hall was the name of the perfectly ordinary person who had put up the memorial stone. He told himself that it didn’t have anything to do with ghosts or reincarnations or witches.
But even so, that night and the next day, he felt restless, edgy, unsettled. Like he was going somewhere he wasn’t sure he was supposed to go. Like he might find something out that he didn’t want to know.
After school, he hurried in the direction of the bike rack, where Faye was going to meet him. He was at the top of the school steps when he heard Tomás’s voice.
“Hey, Wunder!” he called. “Wait up! I thought we could go to Oak Park. Play some soccer. What do you think?”
Wunder turned to see his best friends coming toward him. “Soccer?” This was another thing Tomás had started doing this year—asking to play soccer. Aside from a few halfhearted attempts at catch with his father—neither of them being particularly athletic—Wunder had never been interested in sports. He shook his head. “I can’t. Sorry, Tomás.”
“Or we could go to the Snack Shack,” Tomás said. “Come on, Wunder. It’s been me and Davy forever.”
Davy had come up next to Tomás. “And what about the Unexplainable and Inexplicable Phenomenon Society?” he asked. “When are we going to have another meeting?”
“Never,” Wunder said, louder and more forcefully than he had intended. Davy flinched. Wunder thought about apologizing or maybe explaining, but then he didn’t.
Down at the bike rack, Faye had appeared. She held up one black-gloved hand.
“I have to go now,” Wunder told his friends. “I have some things to do.”
Tomás stared, goggle-eyed, at Faye. Her black cloak billowed. Her eyes were black smudges. “With her?”
“Yes,” Wunder said. “With her.”
He didn’t say the rest of what he was thinking. He didn’t say that Faye had asked him about his sister, that Faye knew his sister’s name. He didn’t think Tomás knew his sister’s name. He didn’t even think Davy did. He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed down the stairs.
“But, Wunder,” Davy called after him, “I wanted to tell you something! It’s about my paper route!”
Wunder used to help Davy with his deliveries on Sundays, when he had the most. They would take their bikes, cutting through the woods—which Davy would do only if Wunder was with him—talking about the latest miracles and tossing paper after paper.
“I can’t help anymore, Davy,” Wunder said.
He didn’t turn back around.
* * *
Faye had brought her bike that day, so after she tied her cloak in a huge, velvety knot to keep it from getting caught in the wheels, they both rode to the town hall. Wunder stayed a little ahead the whole way so he wouldn’t have to talk.
“I go to church here,” Faye told him as they leaned their bikes against the rack next to the fountain.
“In the town hall? Is that allowed?” Wunder asked. “What about separation of church and state?”
“We rent a public meeting hall in the basement,” Faye said. “It’s a very small, exclusive church. You have to speak Korean to attend, so don’t even ask. You’re not invited.”
Wunder’s own church, St. Gerard’s, was big and bright. There were high ceilings and stained-glass windows and polished pews that gleamed. He wasn’t sure how he would feel about going to services in a basement.
“Not everyone needs somewhere fancy to pray,” Faye told him. “My grandfather used to say he felt most spiritual walking in the woods. And I meditate in my room every morning.”
“You do?”
“I do, Wundie,” Faye said, wrapping her cloak tightly around herself. “My grandfather taught me that too. And it gives me serenity throughout my whole day. Don’t I seem serene?”
She stared at him, eyes unblinking, face impassive. Wunder wasn’t sure if it was a serene look necessarily.
“I guess,” he said. “Maybe. Except when you scream.”
“I’m only human, Wundie,” Faye said. “Sometimes you have to scream.”
They went through the double doors of the town hall. Inside, on the far wall, there was a mural of a long-limbed, green-leafed tree, and in front of it was a huge desk surrounded by rows of cabinets.
There was only one person at the desk. It was a woman who was wearing a shiny, bright pink shirt and glaring fiercely at her computer screen. Her gold name tag read EUGENIA. When she noticed them, Eugenia’s bright pink mouth turned up in a sort of grimace-grin.
Wunder paused at the sight of that very unwelcoming expression, but Faye wandered right up to the desk.
That left Wunder no choice. Faye could not be trusted to talk to Eugenia alone.
“Hello, ma’am,” he said, hurrying up to the desk. “I’m Wunder Ellis, and my friend and I had a question about a stone we found in the cemetery—not a grave marker, more like a memorial? Where would we find out about something like that?”
Eugenia had directed her grimace-grin at him while he spoke, but as soon as he was done, she focused her attention back on Faye. Faye stared right back, her face expressionless, her arms crossed under her black cloak.
“I’m sorry,” Eugenia said, not sounding the least bit sorry, “but I really have work to do. Please see your little selves right out.”
“Eugenia,” Faye began. “Listen.”
“I’m sure you’re really busy!” Wunder hurried to cut her off. “We just want to know who bought the stone. Or asked the town to buy it, or however it’s done.”
Eugenia had already turned back to her computer screen. Her bright pink fingernails tap, tap, tapped sharply on the keyboard, dismissing them. “I’m so sorry, dear,” she said, “but I can’t give out that kind of information. Good-bye now.”
“Why not, Eugenia? It’s a public record, isn’t it?” Faye asked, and Wunder noticed with some alarm that the sharpness had already started to creep into her voice.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s public per se,” Eugenia replied, “but I do know that it certainly is not public to two little children, especially when one of them is dressed like some kind of Frankenstein bat creature.”
“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Wunder said. It was very obvious to him that they were going to have to figure out another way to get what they had come for. “Let’s go, Faye.”
“Public information is public information.” Faye’s voice was even louder, faster, shriller. “You have no right to keep it from us.”
Eugenia looked back up from her computer. Her grimace-grin had become a scowl. “Here’s some public information for you: Graveyards are not playgrounds. It seems to me that you and your friend Mr. Ellis have an unhealthy obsession with death, and I certainly will not be contributing to that.”
“You are discriminating against me!” Faye screeched.
“You lower your voice, young lady,” Eugenia said.
“You are making judgments about my character and my life choices based on my outward appearance! Based on my clothing!”
“Of course I am,” Eugenia snapped. “What are you thinking, dressing like that? And that eyeliner. You look absolutely ridiculous!”
Faye smacked a gloved hand onto Eugenia’s desk, her ridiculously lined eyes blazing. “Here’s some publi
c information for you—we are trying to uncover a very significant miracle. A possible resurrection! And you—you don’t know anything about miracles. You don’t know anything about mystery. You don’t know anything about cloaks! Et cetera!”
“Come on, Faye,” Wunder said. “Let’s just go.”
Eugenia had gotten to her feet. Her hands were on her hips, and she was emitting bright pink waves of fury. “What I do know is that you two better show your little selves out of this town hall before I have to call security and have you escorted from the premises!” She jabbed one pink-nailed finger in Faye’s direction. “You need someone to get you in line. And you need to get to know the Lord!”
“I already know the Lord,” Faye replied. “And if you really knew anything about Him, you’d know that He likes miracles too. And probably cloaks! Robes, for sure!”
“Faye, come on!” Wunder managed to pull Faye toward the door by the much-discussed cloak. He yanked her outside, into the late-afternoon sun.
“Can you believe that woman?” Faye cried, stomping past the fountain. “She’s supposed to be a public servant. And a Frankenstein bat? That doesn’t even make sense!”
“You are wearing black gloves. And a cape—I mean, cloak.”
“I’m a student of the paranormal!” Faye yelled. Then she flipped her hood over her head.
She was under there for quite a while, but when she came out, her face had relaxed into its usual deadpan expression. “I guess we know what we have to do,” she said.
“We do?”
“Break in,” Faye said. “Steal the record.”
Wunder shook his head. “No, Faye. We can’t do that.”
No matter what he believed or didn’t believe, the law still mattered. Breaking and entering would never be okay.
“Wundie. Listen,” Faye said. “You want to figure out who put that memorial stone there, right? If it’s someone with the same name as your sister or someone doing it in honor of your sister or—”
Wunder didn’t want her to say the other possibility again. “Yes, I do!” he cried. “But we’ll get caught. We’ll get in trouble.”
“We won’t,” Faye said. “Because I have a plan. And if we do get caught”—she raised her voice to a scream again—“I will place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Eugenia the Pink Priss!”
Chapter 14
Wunder had always marveled at kids who snuck out of their houses in movies. They made it seem so easy—opening their unsqueaky windows, shimmying down very sturdy drainpipes. He never thought he would be brave enough to do something like that. He was sure if he tried, he would be caught.
But on Saturday at midnight, he crept out of his room, left through the front door, and biked off down the street.
No one noticed.
Faye was waiting for him at the corner a few blocks away. She stood in a bright circle of streetlamp light, making it look like she was about to be abducted by aliens. Or like she had just been zapped down to earth.
“Wundie, turn that flashlight off,” she said as he rode up.
“We need it,” Wunder said. “How else will we see where we’re going?”
“There are streetlights some of the way,” Faye said. “And there’s the moon, the stars, et cetera. We’re going to break into a government building, Wundie. We need to be discreet.”
“Discreet like you were with Eugenia?”
“I’m sorry, what was that, Wundie? I can’t hear you when you mumble,” Faye said.
Wunder turned off the flashlight with a sigh and stuck it into his backpack.
But as they pedaled off, he wished he had kept it out. The darkness was so dark that he didn’t understand how Faye could see where she was going. He rode behind her, concentrating on the little red reflector on the back of her bike.
He knew that in another time, in different circumstances, this would be an adventure—riding his bike in near-total darkness while everyone was asleep, stars burning bright, bright above, sharp autumn air waking him up again and again.
But it wasn’t another time. It was now, and he was going to break into the town hall to prove that a stone in a cemetery wasn’t a miracle.
And not just that. Wunder knew that what he was really proving to himself was that none of it—the witch, the bird, the DoorWay House—none of it was a miracle. After tonight, he wouldn’t have to force himself not to think about those things, because he would know that they meant nothing.
After tonight, the stone of his heart would never warm again.
They rode their bikes to the back of the town hall and hid them in the bushes. Then Faye led him down a small flight of stairs to a basement door.
“How are we going to get in?” he whispered.
He had to wait for his answer while Faye slowly pinned back her bangs, then searched through the many pockets of her voluminous cloak. Finally, she held up a silver key. “My mom’s been setting up the chairs for church every Saturday afternoon since before I was born,” she said. “So she has her own key. Take that, Eugenia the Pink Priss!”
Inside, the basement was filled with rows of folding chairs. Each chair had a blue book and a red book set on its seat. There was a podium at the front of the room, the plain wooden kind that teachers use, and a small table draped in green cloth with a cross set on top of it.
Even though the room didn’t look anything like St. Gerard’s, Wunder could feel that it was a special place for the people who met there. He moved slowly and quietly down the center aisle.
Faye, for all her supernatural sensitivity, didn’t appear to feel the same way. She was already at the other end of the room, opening a metal door set to the left of the podium. There was a staircase there.
“Up we go,” she said, and Wunder hurried over to her.
They crept up the stairs, their footsteps only slightly muffled by the blue industrial carpet. At the top, there was another door. It was just like the door at the bottom—metal, beige-painted, and completely plain—no windows, no signs.
“I don’t know if my key opens this one,” Faye said. “I guess we’ll see.”
She pushed the key into the doorknob and turned. The lock clicked open. She turned the knob, pushed, and—
BLEEEEEEP! BLEEEEEEP! BLEEEEEEP!
“Wundie! Listen!” Faye shrieked.
Wunder froze at the sound of the alarm, his heart pounding, his eyes wide. They were going to be caught. And even worse than that—they weren’t going to find out what they had come to find out. He wasn’t going to prove anything. He was going to be left wondering and wondering and wondering.
He couldn’t let that happen.
“Hurry!” he shouted.
The alarm bleeped on as they raced through the doorway and into the main foyer of the town hall. There was Eugenia’s desk ahead of them, computer screen black, cabinets rising up behind like sentries.
Wunder yanked open desk drawers while Faye rummaged through cabinets. He tried to be careful, but his heart was beating so fast and his hands seemed clumsy and strange. Papers and paper clips and sticky notes were soon scattered across the floor.
And then, there it was. A black three-ring binder with the words CEMETERY RECORDS typed in black on a white label.
“I found it!” Wunder cried. He flipped the binder open to the middle, but inside was row after row after row of dates and names, and the alarm was still blaring. He wasn’t going to be able to find the right record fast enough.
He slammed the binder shut and tucked it under his arm. “Let’s go!”
They went out the way they’d come in, pounding down the stairs, through the meeting room, and out the basement door. They leaped onto their bicycles and pedaled away as fast as they could, Wunder balancing the binder on his handlebars.
But instead of getting far, far away from the scene of the crime, Faye jerked her bike into the first alley they came to, less than a block from the town hall.
“Let me see,” she said, propping her bike against the wall.
But he got off his bike too and sat on the ground. He pulled his flashlight from his backpack.
He opened to the first page of the binder. The entries turned out to be in chronological order, but the most recent one was more than three months old. There were some loose papers though, in the front folder of the binder. Wunder pulled out the first one.
The paper was creased in thirds. When Wunder unfolded it, he saw that it was a form stamped with the oak leaf seal of the town of Branch Hill. Across the top, it read MEMORIAL OTHER THAN GRAVESTONE.
“What did you find?” Faye peered over his shoulder. Her cloak fell across the paper.
“I’m looking,” Wunder said. “Back up a little, would you?”
She moved back about two inches.
INSCRIPTION, the form read. And then, in sprawling black script: “Behold! I tell you a miracle. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.” Let us, then, change together. With great love, Milagros.
Faye reached for the binder. “Let me see. You’re taking forever.”
Wunder tightened his grip. “I’m. Looking. Hold. On.”
DEDICATOR, the form read. And beneath that, in the same rambling lettering, there were three words. Not a name. Just: The DoorWay House.
Wunder stared at the words lit up by his flashlight. He could imagine the hand that had written those words, the same hand that had waved to him on the day of his sister’s funeral.
“It says ‘The DoorWay House,’” he told Faye very, very quietly.
“‘The DoorWay House’?” She leaned over to see the paper. “‘The DoorWay House’? What do you mean ‘The DoorWay House’?”
“That’s who ordered the stone,” Wunder said. “The DoorWay House.”
Faye pressed her hands against her cheeks. “The witch,” she breathed.
The alarm suddenly stopped.
“The witch,” Wunder said. He put the form back in the binder. Then he set the binder on the ground and got onto his bicycle.