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  He hurried to the door. “Thanks, Mrs. Mitchell. Great ideas. Really. See you tomorrow.”

  He was gone, and Mrs. Mitchell didn’t know whether to smile or frown. So she did both, first one, then the other. And then she went back to grading the last report on the Civil War.

  Ted didn’t have a problem choosing whether to smile or frown.

  He liked his new idea. A lot. It grabbed hold of his imagination—first his mind, and then his heart.

  Even though he was going to get yelled at because he was late for chores, Ted smiled all the way home.

  Chapter 22

  QUESTIONS

  Ted thought about April and her family as he rushed through his Wednesday afternoon chores. He also thought about his town, about Plattsford, Nebraska.

  In his mind, Ted rode along his whole paper route, taking note of all the houses, Clara’s Diner, the town offices, the boarded-up storefronts, the grocery store, and all the people.

  He also thought about his school, about room one, about Mrs. Mitchell and all the students, including himself.

  And at the dinner table Ted decided to ask a question—a test question.

  He looked at his mom and said, “You know how we hear about huge disasters on the news? Well, if there were these people, and they lost everything they had, like in a hurricane or an earthquake, and some of them came to our town, do you think people here would try to help them?”

  She nodded. “Why, sure they would. Look at what happened with that big thunderstorm two years ago August, when it lifted the roof right off the Thompsons’ house? The very next day that family had a place to stay, they had help fixing their house, they had help with getting their winter wheat crop planted. They had more help than they knew what to do with.”

  Ted said, “But the Thompsons are neighbors. What about strangers?”

  “Shouldn’t make any difference. People here are good about helping out. If you can, you help.”

  So far, so good. Ted decided to push the test a little further.

  He said, “So, like, if two or three people needed a place to stay, and everywhere else was filled up, you’d let them stay here awhile? Right here at our farm?”

  And his mom said, “Well why not, for goodness’ sake? We’ve got a whole extra room upstairs that I only use for sewing now and then, and we’ve got the old bunkhouse where the hired hands used to stay. We could take care of six or seven people, if we had to. And we could feed them too, couldn’t we, John?”

  Ted’s dad made a face at the thought of that many more mouths to feed, but he nodded and said, “For a while. If we had to.”

  In his room a half hour later, Ted felt encouraged by what his mom had said. But he still had a lot of unanswered questions. And one question sat at the top of his list: Are April and her family still here?

  Because if they weren’t where he thought they were, if they weren’t close anymore like April had said in her note, then that would be the end of it.

  But if they were in town, Ted was going to do his best to try to make them feel right at home.

  Chapter 23

  INVITATION

  It was a rainy morning, so Ted had to wear his rain suit: jacket, pants, and a hood with a long visor. The rain gear made bike riding a hot and sticky business. Ted would have much rather been wet with rain instead of sweat. But his mom insisted. The bright yellow plastic kept the rain off, and it helped drivers see her son more clearly. The rain suit made Mrs. Hammond feel good. It made Ted feel like a giant goldfinch.

  Besides, this was one morning he didn’t want to be visible from half a mile away.

  When Ted reached the junction of County Road 7 and Route 2, he didn’t stop and pick up his bundle of newspapers. He was going to do that on the way back.

  Besides, his shoulder bag was loaded.

  He had made a predawn raid on the kitchen—three cans of soup, a plastic bag of dinner rolls, six oatmeal raisin cookies, and a two-liter soda bottle he had washed out and filled up with milk. Because if April and Artie and Alexa were still around, they probably needed more food.

  Ted turned right onto the state highway and pedaled the last half mile as quickly as he could, glad to see that the rain was stopping.

  His mom and dad had known the Kosczinski family, but Ted had never met them. Their place had been empty a lot longer than the Anderson farm.

  When the highway was clear of traffic, Ted turned off into the long, curving driveway. It was lined with a windbreak of scraggly cedar trees, which was good. They blocked the view from the highway and gave Ted some cover as he approached the house.

  The roof of the wide front porch was sagging, and the wooden siding that had once been white was weathered and gray. Half a dozen bricks from the chimney lay scattered across the upper roof, and large patches of shingles had been blown away. The front door and the first-floor windows were boarded over, but not fully covered. A lot of the second-floor windows were broken, probably by rocks.

  Behind the house and to the left, one side of the main barn was caved in. A ragged fence line limped toward the barn, posts leaning every which way, all covered with tangled vines and rusty barbed wire.

  The whole place looked dismal and unfriendly, and Ted almost wished April and her family weren’t here.

  But they were.

  As he walked his bike around the back corner of the house, Ted inspected a patch of rain-softened ground. And he saw clear footprints—April’s sneakers, the same footprints he’d seen in the dust inside the Andersons’ house.

  And when he looked up, there she was, looking out at him through a big rip in the back screen door. She was wearing the NASCAR shirt again.

  April gave him a little wave and half a smile, but when Ted said, “Hey!,” she shook her head and put a finger to her lips.

  After he tiptoed up onto the back porch, she whispered, “I don’t want Mama to know you’re here. I’ve been watchin’ you get your newspapers every morning from an upstairs window. Took ya awhile to find us.”

  Ted nodded. “I thought you were gone. And I even thought it was my fault. That last day I left? My teacher was driving past, and she saw me, and … and I had to tell her about you.”

  April’s face darkened, so Ted rushed ahead. “But I made her promise not to tell anybody, and she didn’t. She didn’t. She could have, and I know she felt like she ought to, but she didn’t. She’s okay. Really. And that’s not why the police came. It was some high school kids came out there. But you probably figured that out.”

  She shook her head. “We didn’t know anything. One second we’re all asleep, and then there’s all these voices and flashin’ lights. We hid out upstairs in a closet. And when it got quiet, we came here. It was bad. And my mom’s still upset. But I can work it out. And Artie’s bein’ more help than he was. We’re goin’ as soon as we can. As soon as my mom can handle it. I’m gonna work it out.”

  All this was said in whispers, with the torn screen door between them.

  And the second time April said she was going to work it out, Ted thought, She’s like me. She’s trying to do everything herself.

  As if he had known it all his life, instead of for less than one day, Ted said, “Y’ know, it’s okay to get help when you need it. And you need help. ’Specially your mom.”

  She hissed, “There’s nothin’ wrong with her.”

  “I know that. But she—”

  “We don’t need any help.”

  Ted said, “Then why’d you leave me that note? In the other house?”

  “Food,” April said, with a toss of her head. “We just needed food.”

  “Fine—here,” and Ted unloaded his shoulder bag. “You can tell your mom you found all this lying on the back steps. And don’t bother saying thank you. Don’t want you to feel obliged. Since you don’t need any help.” He pulled something else from his bag and set it down next to the soup. “And you might as well keep this, too.” It was the old copy of Little Women, carefully wrapped in plastic to kee
p it dry.

  Ted was all the way back at his bicycle before April caught up to him. He spun around, and she said, “I just … I just don’t know what I ought to do. I just … don’t.”

  Ted said, “Well, me neither—not exactly. But if you want, I can tell you one thing for sure.”

  April nodded, and Ted said, “I know for sure that you and your mom and brother have to get out of here right away. And into a real house, someplace where you can stay like visitors. Otherwise your mom’ll get into trouble. Because of you and Artie, mostly. Parents aren’t allowed to keep kids out of school, or keep kids in a house with no plumbing or electricity or anything. It’s against the law. They’ll take both of you away from her. Mrs. Mitchell said so. And I believe her. She knows about stuff like that.”

  April nodded slowly as Ted talked. She kept a brave face on, but Ted was pretty sure she was scared, to have the problem laid out like a fish on a skinning board. It scared him, too.

  In a small voice, April said, “So … you’ve got an idea?”

  Ted did have an idea, but it had changed three times just in the last hour. He went with his newest concept.

  “My idea is that I come out here later with my mom, just me and my mom in our van. Your mom knows me, and she’ll like my mom. And my mom’ll invite your mom and her family to come and stay at our place for a few days.”

  April shook her head. “She won’t want to do that.”

  Ted said, “She’ll be okay, once she sees how people want to help.”

  April said, “People wanted to help us back in Texas, too—from the army. Family assistance people. Mama didn’t like it when they came. Always ended up crying. And then she packed us up and took off.”

  Ted said, “But this won’t be like an army visit. It’ll be a mom talking to another mom.”

  “Well, my mom’ll want to run off if I tell her you’re comin’. Then what?”

  Ted shrugged. “Don’t let her. Make her stay. You and Artie. Tell her that both of you really want to go and stay at the Hammonds’. For a visit.”

  “You mean, say no to my mom? You don’t know her. She’ll get mad.”

  Ted felt like he had to be tough, almost mean. “Who cares if she gets mad, as long as she gets helped? Because she needs help. That’s what my teacher says. So she can stop being scared. Because she doesn’t have to be scared, not about anything.” Ted thought a second, then said, “Maybe you shouldn’t tell her we’re coming. My mom and I’ll just show up. But you do whatever you think’s best.”

  April looked back toward the door, and then said, “You better go now. She’s gonna wake up soon. So … when’re you comin’ back?”

  Pulling a time out of thin air, Ted said, “About … four o’clock. Just me and my mom.”

  April made a face like she’d stubbed a toe. “And you’re sure I’ve got to do this?”

  “I’m sure you’ve got to do something. That’s all I’m sure about. And this makes more sense than anything else I can think of.”

  April shrugged. “Then I guess we’ve got to try it.”

  “Yeah,” said Ted, “we do.” He bent down and picked up his bike. “Have a good day, okay?”

  “Won’t be easy,” she said. “Thank you for the food. And the book.”

  And as Ted got to the corner of the house, April called softly, “Hey, you were right about the pump. At the other place. Works great now. ’Bye.”

  Ted smiled over his shoulder and waved. And at that moment he wished with all his heart that he didn’t look like a giant goldfinch. On a bicycle.

  Chapter 24

  MYSTERY-PROOF

  Ted was tired of thinking. He felt like his thinker needed a day off. Or a month. Maybe a year. And it was only nine thirty in the morning.

  He had been sitting at his writing desk ever since the Pledge of Allegiance, thinking and thinking and thinking. About what he’d said to April earlier. About how he was going to help her, and her mom, and her brother.

  Ted had already chewed the erasers off of three new pencils, and he had covered two pages in a spiral notebook with aimless doodling. Thinking and thinking and thinking.

  Because so many things had to happen before four o’clock this afternoon.

  Like asking his mom if three homeless people could come and visit for a while. Oh, and would you take off early from work so you can be home in time to drive to the Kosczinski place and convince a frightened lady to get in the van with us? And, yes, all three of them are staying for dinner. And overnight. And none of them have had a shower or a bath in at least a week, maybe two.

  Ted hadn’t even worked up the courage to talk to Mrs. Mitchell yet. Because he had things he needed her to do too. Gratefully, she’d been busy for the last half hour, arguing with the eighth graders about the scores she had given them on their Civil War reports.

  As Ted sat there, pencil in his hand, trying to avoid thinking about April and his mom and Mrs. Mitchell, his eye landed on the book he had finished over the weekend, The Blood Runs Cold. It was right there on the corner of the desk.

  And Ted asked himself, Why do I like mysteries so much?

  And since he had his pencil handy, he flipped to a clean sheet of paper in his notebook and he wrote that very question at the top of the page:

  Why do I like mysteries so much?

  And then he tried to think some more. So he could write down every reason he could think of.

  And he thought, Look at me—I’m so crazy that I’m trying to solve the mystery of why I like mysteries so much!

  But crazy or not, Ted actually wanted to know, so he began writing out the reasons.

  1. I like the action and the suspense of a mystery.

  2. I like seeing how the detectives think about the clues.

  3. I like how everything works out in the end.

  4. I like it when the detectives outsmart the bad guys.

  5. I like to figure out the solution before the story ends.

  Ted felt like he could keep finding more reasons, but he knew he was only trying to avoid thinking about April’s problem. And his own problems. Which were related to April’s problem.

  And at that moment, it struck him: Today—this whole day—it’s like a mystery!

  But it wasn’t, not really. Because most mysteries started with something bad that’s already happened, or that’s about to happen. And the mystery is, how did it happen, and whose fault is it? Start with a bad thing, and figure out how it happened, or who did it.

  For today’s events, Ted wanted no mystery at all. Zero suspense. He wanted everything to work out just right.

  So he thought, I guess what I need today is an antimystery.

  Because he wanted this day to be mystery-proofed. Ted wanted nothing bad, nothing unexpected, not one single scary, uncertain moment.

  But how? he thought. How could I ever make that happen?

  And there he was once again, thinking and thinking and thinking.

  Except this time, he got results.

  Ted knew he couldn’t really bad-proof the whole day. But in a flash he realized there was one way to come very close. He could at least give himself a fighting chance to end up with a mystery-free day.

  It was simple, and he already knew that it worked, and he had even proved it before.

  To mystery-proof a day, a week, maybe even a whole life, Ted needed one simple idea, just two words: Be Prepared.

  The idea was so basic, so clear.

  Ted was pretty sure that the hard part would be the doing.

  Chapter 25

  THE DOING

  “You promised this girl I was going to do what? At four o’clock? Today?”

  It was ten thirty Thursday morning, and Ted had borrowed Mrs. Mitchell’s office phone for the first part of his preparations, the talking-to-his-mom part. He was glad that she was in Wheaton, and he was in Plattsford. His mom worked at a bank three days a week, and her desk was right out in the lobby. So that helped to keep her from yelling too loud.


  And after the shock had worn off, and after Ted had told her all the details of the little family’s story, Katherine Hammond warmed right up. “Those poor dears,” she said. “What they must have been through!”

  And because his mom was a decent detective herself, she said, “Say—you’re the one who’s been taking food from the pantry, to give to those people, right?”

  “Right,” Ted admitted, “but I’ve got a record of everything, and I’m paying for all of it.” It’s hard to be mad about kindness. And so the first part of his preparation was finished.

  Twenty minutes later Ted had completed all the other calls on his list. And he’d gotten a positive, enthusiastic response from everybody.

  He felt like this thing was coming together. And it seemed like the hard part wasn’t the doing after all. The hard part had been figuring out what the doing ought to be.

  What Ted didn’t know was that after he had made his one phone call to his mom, she had then made four phone calls. Because once she had bought into Ted’s plan, she needed to make some preparations of her own.

  And Ted also didn’t know that after he’d made his one phone call to Delmar Breslin, the town manager, Delmar had made six other calls of his own. Plus he’d walked across the street to talk to his friends at the American Legion post.

  And after Ted had called Clara at the diner, and Mr. Dawcey at the feed store, and Mr. Jackson at the used car lot, and Mrs. Albright at the bank, and Deputy Sheriff Linwood at the town hall, and Pastor Ablom at the Lutheran church, all of these people had made phone calls and visits and run errands of their own. And some of them had also sent e-mails, and some of them had even given a few orders.

  There wasn’t much time, and everyone in town wanted to be prepared.