Peter Lerangis - Lost in Babylon

“A griffin repellant?” Cass said.

Aly shrugged. “There are bug repellants, shark repellants, so why not? I’ll learn about them and tinker with the formula.”

Tinker . That was what Bhegad called Aly. We each had a nickname— Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor. Aly was the Tinker who could fix anything, Marco the Soldier because of his strength and bravery, Cass the Sailor for his awesome navigational ability. Me? You’re the Tailor because you put it all together , Bhegad had said. But I wasn’t putting anything together now, except pessimism.

“DIIIIIIIIE!”

Nirvana’s sudden shriek made us all spin around. Torquin bounced upward and banged his head on the ceiling. “What happened?” I asked.

“The end of the song,” Nirvana said. “I love that part.”

“Anything good?” Torquin said, scrolling through the tunes. “Any Disney?”

Cass was staring out the window, down toward a fretwork of roads and open land. “We’re almost there. This is Youngstown, Ohio … I think.”

“You think ?” Aly said. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“I—I don’t recognize the street pattern …” Cass said, shaking his head. “I should know this. I’m drawing a blank. I think something’s wrong with my … whatever.”

“Your ability to memorize every street in every place in the world?” Aly put her arm around him. “You’re nervous about Marco, that’s all.”

“Right … right …” Cass drummed his fingers on the armrest. “You sometimes make mistakes, right, Ally?”

Aly nodded. “Rarely, but yes. I’m human. We all are.”

“The weird thing is,” Cass said, “there’s only one part of Marco that isn’t human—the tracker. And those things don’t just fail—unless something really unusual happens to the carrier.”

“Like …?” I said tentatively.

Cass’s eyes started to moisten. “Like the thing none of us is talking about. Like if the tracker was destroyed.”

“It’s inside his body,” Aly said. “He can’t destroy it.”

“Right. Unless …” Cass said.

We all fell silent. The plane began to descend. No one finished the sentence, but we all knew the words.

Unless Marco was dead.

turned and jogged up the street toward me, I whipped my two hands behind my back.

“So, are we there?” I asked nonchalantly.

Cass looked at me curiously. “What are you doing?”

“Scratching,” I replied. “A lottery card. Which I found.”

“And how will you collect if you win?” He burst out laughing. “Come on. The house is just ahead. Number forty-five Walnut Street. The green porch.”

I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him the truth—that I’d found a piece of burned wood and a gum wrapper on the ground, and now I was using them to write my dad. Maybe because it was a dumber idea than entering a lottery. But I couldn’t help it. All I could think about was Dad. That he was just one state away.

I shoved the note into my back pocket. We jogged up the road to Torquin and Aly, who were in the entrance to a little cul-de-sac in the middle of Lemuel, Ohio. Torquin had parked our rented Toyota Corolla in a secluded wooded area down the block, to avoid being seen. As I joined Cass and Aly, we stood there, staring at the house like three ice sculptures.

Torquin waddled ahead, oblivious.

“I can’t do this …” Aly said.

I nodded. I felt scared, homesick, worried, and nine thousand percent convinced we should have let Bhegad send another team to do this. Anyone but us.

The house had a small lawn, trimmed with brick. Its porch screen had been ripped in two places and carefully repaired. A little dormer window peeked from the roof, and a worn front stoop held a rusted watering can. It didn’t look like my house, but somehow my heart was beating to the rhythm of homesickness.

A kid with an overstuffed backpack was shambling toward a house across the street, where his mom was opening a screen door. It brought back memories of my own mom, before she’d gone off on a voyage and never returned. Of my dad, who met me at school for a year after Mom’s death, not wanting to let me out of his sight. Was Dad home now?

“Come!” Torquin barked over his shoulder. “No time to daydream!”

He was already lumbering up the walkway, his bare feet thwapping on the gray-green stones. Cass, Aly, and I fell in behind him.

Before he could ring the bell, I heard the snap of a door latch. The front door opened, revealing the silhouette of a guy with massive shoulders. As he stepped forward I stifled a gasp. His features were dark and piercing, the corners of his mouth turned up—all of it just like Marco. But his face was etched deeply, his hair flecked with gray, and his eyes so sad and hollow I felt like I could see right through them.

He glanced down at Torquin’s feet and then back up. “Can I help you?”

“Looking for Marco,” Torquin said.

“Uh-huh.” The man nodded wearily. “You and everyone else. Thanks for your concern, but sorry.”

He turned back inside, pulling the door shut, but Torquin stopped it with his forearm.

“Excuse me?” The man turned slowly, his eyes narrowing.

I quickly stepped in front of him. “I’m a friend of Marco’s,” I said. “And I was wondering—”

“Then how come I don’t recognize you?” Mr. Ramsay asked suspiciously.

“From … travel soccer,” I said, reciting the line we had prepared for just this occasion. “Please. I’m just concerned, that’s all. This is my uncle, Thomas. And two other soccer players, Cindy and Dave. We heard a rumor that Marco might be in the area. We wondered if he came home.”

“The last time we saw him, he was at Lemuel General after collapsing during a basketball game,” Mr. Ramsay said. “Then … gone without a trace. Like he ran away from everything. Since then we’ve heard nothing but rumors. If we believed them all, he’s been in New York, Ashtabula, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila, and Ponca City. Look!” He grabbed a basket of snapshots off a nearby table and thrust it toward me.

“I—I don’t understand,” I said, sifting through pixelated, blurry shots of jockish-looking teens who were definitely not Marco. “Why would people lie about seeing him?”

“People want the reward,” Mr. Ramsay replied wearily. “One hundred thousand bucks for information leading to Marco’s return. It’s supposed to help. Instead, we’re just bombarded by emails, letters, visitors. All junk. So take my advice, kid, don’t trust rumors.”

As Marco’s dad took the basket back and returned it to the table, two people emerged from inside the house—a trim, red-haired woman and a girl in sweats. The woman’s slate-blue eyes were full of fear. The girl looked angry. They were both focused on Torquin. “I’m … Marco’s mother,” the woman said. “And this is his sister. What’s going on? If this is another scam, I’m calling the police.”

“They’re just kids, Emily,” Marco’s dad said reassuringly. “You guys have to understand what we’re going through. Today it was a repair guy. Flashed some kind of ID card, said he was going to inspect the boiler. Instead he snooped through our house.”

“Bloggers, crime buffs,” Mrs. Ramsay said. “It’s like a game to them. Who can find the most dirt, post the most photos. They have no idea what it is … to lose …” Her voice cracked, and both her husband and daughter put arms around her shoulders.