Out of town, Route 23 turned into a narrow highway with more curves and hills than a roller coaster. Trucks and cars whizzed past as I struggled uphill and wobbled down, braking to keep from going too fast. I couldn't understand how Arthur managed to get ahead of me on a three-speed bike.
Worse yet, the road's shoulder was narrow, overgrown with weeds, and littered with stuff thrown from car windows—beer and soda cans, bottles, plastic bags, fast-food wrappings. We had to ride on the edge of the asphalt most of the time.
Houses got farther apart, and soon we were in farm country. Rolling hills stretched away toward the mountains. Cows lay in the shade, chewing their cuds, looking thoughtful. Now and then a dog barked. The air smelled of honeysuckle and cut grass and diesel fumes. If it hadn't been for the hills and the traffic and the heat, it would have been a great ride.
After an hour or more, we reached the top of a hill. Below us I saw a fake stone castle wall with towers. Near the road, a life-size statue of Old King Cole perched on top of a tall sign that said, welcome to the magic forest. The statue's paint was faded, his body was cracked, and he was missing an arm. The other arm pointed at a sagging red gate. Over it, a tilting green dragon, minus a tail, stood guard, grinning a goofy grin. On the gate, a sign riddled with bullet holes said, closed for the season. Arthur sped down the hill, holding both skinny arms above his head, something I didn't dare do, and yelling, "Wahooo!"
"Are you crazy?" I hollered, but he was already at the bottom, screeching to a stop in the weedy parking lot.
The gate to the park was padlocked, but Arthur led me to a narrow path running along a sagging chain-link fence posted with no trespassing signs and red notices warning that the property was condemned as unsafe.
Hiding our bikes in the bushes, we followed the fence into the woods, trying to see what was on the other side. It was no use. A wild green vine draped everything—the fence, trees, telephone poles.
"It's a jungle," I said.
"Kudzu," Arthur said. "It grows all over everything." Warming to the subject, he elaborated. "Kudzu, the killer plant! Engulfs entire buildings, towns, trains, cars. It's unstoppable, indestructible, determined to conquer the world. Soon—"
"Stop!" I gave Arthur a shove, and he staggered backward, giggling.
"It's true," he said. "Once it gets started, kudzu takes over. Grandma knew this man who never left his house, too lazy to do anything but lie around all day. Well, one day he decided he just had to go to the store, but when he opened his door, all he saw was kudzu. He didn't have a hatchet or a chain saw so he was trapped. Pretty soon the kudzu oozed in under the door and through the windows. Now you'd never know a house was there."
"What happened to the man?"
Arthur shrugged. "I guess he's still in there."
"That's not true," I said, annoyed at myself for almost believing him.
"Ask Grandma. You didn't believe me about the murder, either."
I followed him deeper into the jungle. At last we came to a gap in the fence just big enough for us to squeeze through. Another bullet-ridden no trespassing sign hung over our heads. Arthur wiggled through the hole anyway.
"How about the sign?" I pointed at the red words printed on a rusty white background.
He shrugged. "I've ridden my bike out here lots of times, and I've never seen a watchman or a guard dog or anything—except maybe some teenagers fooling around. It's a great place to pretend you're searching for the ruins of ancient civilizations. Like Indiana Jones in the movies."
I hesitated, but Arthur was already vanishing into the kudzu. Taking a deep breath, I followed him into the Magic Forest. It was the first time I'd ever trespassed, and I couldn't help thinking I'd just taken a step into a new—and dangerous—life.
7
Arthur led me down an overgrown path, stopping now and then to examine a crumbling building or the remains of a ride. Here and there, storybook figures emerged from the kudzu, lopsided, grotesque, their noses gone, their fingers missing, their skin leprous with moss and mold. The place was a nightmare version of Mother Goose.
"Do you read Zippy the Pinhead?" Arthur asked. "The comic strip?"
I shook my head, too amazed by my surroundings to be interested in anything else.
"Zippy's this guy with a pointed head and a little topknot tied with a bow. He wears a long robe and he loves talking to giant sculptures, the kind that advertise things like restaurants and ice-cream stands and car-repair shops."
I glanced at Arthur. "Yeah?"
"In one strip, Zippy came here once and talked to some of them." Arthur waved his arm at the crumbling statues.
"Now that I think about it, Dad loves Zippy," I said, "but I always thought he was kind of boring."
"You just don't get the humor." Arthur's tone of voice suggested I might not be smart enough to appreciate Zippy. "It's very erudite. Which means—"
"I know what it means," I interrupted. "I'm just as smart as you are. I just don't like Zippy, that's all."
Arthur shrugged and kept walking. In a few minutes we came to a pond scummed so thick with algae it looked as if you could walk on it without getting your feet wet. Across a little bridge was a big blue whale made of fiberglass, chipped and worn from years of snow and sleet and rain. Kids had spray painted him all over with graffiti and gang tags.
"It's Willie the Whale." Arthur led the way across the bridge and knelt down beside the old hulk. Pushing some vines aside, he crawled into the whale's huge open mouth.
"Grandma took a picture of me in here." He struck a silly pose and grinned. "I wore a paper crown—they gave you one when you bought a ticket. I was King Arthur—get it?"
The whale smelled damp and mildewy, like an old basement with no windows. Spiderwebs hung from the roof of Willie's mouth, filled with little mummified insects. Beetles scurried away into the dark. Slugs had left slimy trails everywhere.
"This is disgusting," I told Arthur.
"It was fun when I was little." He picked at a red flake of paint on Willie's tongue.
"Shh!" I grabbed his arm. "somebody s coming!"
Without a word, the two of us pressed ourselves against the back of Willie's mouth, somewhere near his tonsils. Images of drug dealers and dangerous criminals flitted across the little movie screen in my head. Here we were, miles from help. No one knew where we were. Mom had warned me about lonely places. Why hadn't I listened?
Soon two people appeared. One was Nina. Wearing tan shorts and a plain white T-shirt, her expensive camera hanging from a shoulder strap, she looked as classy as ever.
The man with her was in his twenties, maybe younger. His dark glasses made it hard to tell. He wore faded jeans with one knee ripped out. His arms were tattooed from wrist to shoulder, and his hair was cut so short I could see his scalp. Next to him, Johnny looked like the All-American boy.
"It's Billy Jarmon," Arthur whispered. "Nina must have taken Johnny's advice and asked him to show her the sights." He shook his head in disgust. "she should've hired me."
"He looks mean," I said.
Arthur nodded. "He's already been in jail at least twice. Once for breaking and entering and once for stealing a Humvee and tearing up the Magic Forest with it. Knocked down a bunch of buildings and things just for the heck of it."
Billy and Nina stopped on the bridge, a few feet away from our hiding place. While he tossed stones at beer cans floating in the gunky water, she leaned against the rail and scanned the park as though she was scouting out good pictures.
"So you think it's here somewhere?" she asked Billy.
"Must be. It's not in the house. Whoever killed her trashed the whole place looking for it. The cops searched, too."
Billy sank a beer can with a stone and made the kind of explosion sound that third graders make when they play war. "Me and Johnny were thinking of searching the house ourselves," he said. "Just in case they missed something."
Nina shot Billy a frown, and he grinned. "Just kidding. We're law-abiding citize
ns, me and him. We'd never do nothing wrong."
Hearing this, Arthur poked my side and snickered. "Who do you think was riding in the Humvee with Billy when he went on his little spree?" he whispered.
From the look Nina gave Billy, I had a feeling she wasn't totally convinced he was telling her the truth about his aversion to crime.
Billy lobbed another stone and sunk a beer bottle. Kerpow! "We didn't think anybody would ever buy Mrs. Donaldson s house," he said, "but then that real estate agent got a hold of it. Mrs. DiSilvio's so slick she could sell George Washington off a one-dollar bill. I guess she learned some tricks from her old man."
Nina looked at him curiously. "What do you mean?"
He spat into the pond. "Mr. DiSilvio ain't what most people think. He puts on airs and sponsors soccer teams and donates money to the library and the hospital, but you dig deep enough, you ll find he's got another side altogether."
"Maybe I should interview him."
"You won't learn nothing from that guy," Billy said. "Like I said, he's slicker than slick."
"He owns the corporation that bought this property." Nina waved a hand at the kudzu and the overgrown paths and poor old Willie, crumbling away in his scummy pond. "I hear he got it cheap."
"Nobody thought it was worth anything then. I mean, the place was broke and people were starting to go to big parks like King's Dominion. You ever been there? They got some great rides. The Rebel Yell, the Cobra." Billy threw a stone at Willie. It bounced off the fiberglass over our heads with a loud thunk.
Nina nodded thoughtfully and aimed her camera at the whale. "Just a few more pictures," she said, "and we can leave."
Arthur chose that moment to scoot out of Willie's mouth, straight into another photo opportunity.
"What are you kids doing here?" Billy yelled.
I was about to run, but Arthur walked right up to him. "What's it to you?"
Billy scowled, but Arthur stood his ground, arms folded, and looked him in the eye. Why was he always bent on antagonizing people who could pulverize us? First Danny and his gang. Now Billy. Was he crazy or what?
Nina stepped in front of Arthur. "I met these boys at the library," she told Billy. "Logan lives in the house where Mrs. Donaldson was murdered, and Arthur lives next door. His grandmother—"
Still scowling, Billy said, "I already know Arthur. And his grandmother."
"Well, then." Nina turned to me with an apologetic smile. "Logan, this is Billy Jarmon." She spoke as if we were guests at a fancy garden party, meeting at the refreshment table.
"Pleased to meet you." I offered to shake his hand the way I'd been taught, but he ignored me. So much for being a peacemaker.
"I wanted to see where Mrs. Donaldson worked," Nina told us, "but I was uneasy about coming here alone. Johnny didn't have time to show me the park, so he gave me Billy's number. It's such a fascinating place. Absolutely surreal."
While Nina talked, Billy sighed and shifted his weight from his left foot to his right foot and back again, obviously bored. "I asked you what you're doing here," he muttered to Arthur.
"You're showing Nina around, and I'm showing Logan around," Arthur said in a sassy voice that made me cringe.
"Just now I seen a copperhead sunning itself on the path near the gate," Billy said. "If one of them suckers bites you..."
"Copperheads won't bother you if you don't bother them," Arthur said in his most irritating know-it-all voice.
I tugged at his arm to shut him up. "We ought to go," I said. "It must be nearly dinnertime."
"Snakes ain't all you got to worry about," Billy went on. "Dopers hang out here. Gangs. Types you don't want to be messing with."
"Oh, Billy, please stop." Nina looked around nervously, as if she expected to see criminals lurking in the kudzu. "You're scaring me."
She wasn't the only one he was scaring. Thanks to Billy, the deserted park had taken on a creepy atmosphere, and I was more than ready to leave. I tugged at Arthur's arm again, harder this time. "My mother expects me home by—"
With some annoyance, Arthur shrugged my hand off his arm. "You're not scaring me," he told Billy. "I've been here lots of times, and I've never seen anything dangerous. Not once. No snakes, no gangs, just some dopers who were too stoned to notice me."
Nina stepped between Arthur and Billy. "You know what, boys? Logan s right. It's almost five o'clock. Why don't we give you a ride home?"
"We've got our bikes," I said.
"Billy has a pickup," Nina said cheerfully. "We can load the bikes in the back."
We all looked at Billy. Nina was the only one who smiled at him. "You don't mind, do you?"
Although he didn't seem at all happy about it, Billy muttered, "Yeah, sure." To Arthur and me, he said, "Don't keep me waiting. It looks like it's going to rain."
While we d been talking, a bank of clouds had risen above the trees, covering the sun and darkening the park. A gust of wind lifted branches, turning the leaves white side out. The kudzu reared up and swayed like a monster waving long, green shaggy arms.
"We'll meet you at the front gate," Nina said.
Arthur and I plunged into the kudzu and made our way to the fence. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the wind picked up. Though I didn't think much of Mr. Billy Jarmon, I was glad we were going to have a ride home.
8
Arthur yanked his Raleigh out of its hiding place in the weeds. "Billy's a despicable ignoramus with the social presence of a flea, just like his brothers and his sisters and his aunts and his uncles and his cousins—the ones in jail and the ones on probation and the ones who haven't been caught yet."
I tugged my bike free of a clinging kudzu vine. Five more minutes and it would've been completely engulfed. "He doesn't think much of you, either."
"I doubt he likes you any better."
"Well, I wasn't the one sassing him."
"I was provoking him." Arthur glanced over his bony shoulder at me. "Not sassing him."
Not sure of the difference between sassing and provoking,
I stared at Arthur. "Why?"
"I just told you—he's a despicable ignoramus." Arthur laughed and shoved his bike uphill toward the remains of the Magic Forest's parking lot. "Plus he was getting on my nerves."
At the edge of the parking lot, we came to a quick stop. Nina and Billy seemed to be arguing. She gestured and he shook his head. Under the dark, towering clouds, they looked small and sort of helpless—even Billy.
"I bet Billy's mad at Nina for offering us a ride," I said.
Arthur scowled. "He'd better be nice to her."
Suddenly, Billy turned and saw us. "Get over here!" he yelled. "You think I got nothing to do but wait for you?"
He threw our bikes in the truck's bed and told us to get in the cab. The back seat was barely big enough for Arthur and me, but it was better than riding out in the open with the bikes.
Before Billy started the engine, the rain hit the windshield in huge drops. To the east, a jagged fork of lightning shot across the sky, followed by a clap of thunder loud enough to make Nina and me jump.
Rocked by the wind, the truck lurched out of the weedy parking lot and onto the road. Every time we hit a bump, Arthur's and my knees and elbows jostled each other. His skinny little bones felt as sharp as iron rods.
Arthur leaned over the seat and said, "Don't you love thunderstorms, Nina? Can't you just see Thor up there, tossing his lightning bolts at the earth?"
She cringed at the sound of thunder, but Billy shook his head. "Thor," he snorted. "What are you talking about?"
"He's one of the most powerful Gods of the Aesir," Arthur said scornfully. "I thought everybody knew that."
Billy stopped the pickup so suddenly, we all flew forward. Turning to Arthur, he said, "If there's one thing I hate, it's a smart-mouth kid. You want to get out and walk home?"
"Sorry," Arthur muttered. I was glad he had enough sense to apologize. The rain was coming down so hard we might as well have been going through a c
ar wash. "But—"
"Not everybody keeps their nose in a book, bud."
With that, Billy stepped on the gas. The tires slid on the gravel, and the pickup fishtailed a little. Nina cried out. I fastened my seat belt, but Arthur just gazed at the rain blurring the world outside his window. By some miracle, he seemed to have lost his appetite for talking.
"Please drive carefully, Billy," Nina said. "I hate thunder and lightning and rain."
"Say a prayer to Thor," Billy suggested.
No one laughed except Billy. Hunched over the steering wheel, he concentrated on driving. Though the upper part of his face was visible in the rearview mirror, I still couldn't see his eyes. He'd kept those sunglasses on, despite the steamy windshield and dark sky.
After that, nobody said anything. When we passed the Toot 'n' Tote, I said, "To get to our houses, turn right on the next street. Then—"
"You don't need to give me no directions," Billy muttered. "Everybody knows where the murder house is."
I slumped beside Arthur. Great. I lived in the "murder house." Everybody knew where it was. And what had happened in it.
At last Billy pulled into our driveway, and we hopped out to get the bikes.
Without looking at either Arthur or me, Billy slammed the pickup into reverse and backed out of the driveway. Nina leaned out her window and waved to us. "Bye, boys. Nice to see you again!"
Arthur and I stood under a big tree and watched the pickup splash off through sheets of water running across the road.
"What a creep." Arthur turned and started for home just as his grandmother stepped out on the porch, police whistle raised.
"Where have you been?" she hollered at him. "I was about to file a missing-persons report!"
"Riding bikes with Logan, and then the rain started." Arthur glanced at me and waggled his eyebrows as if he were warning me to keep my mouth shut about the Magic Forest.
That was fine with me. My parents would have grounded me for a week if they knew where I'd been.