How My Brain Ended Up Inside This Box

Chapter Five

"So," she whispered. "Good news and bad news, I see."

It was Parsnip Caravan, dressed in her usual calico dress and yellow knee socks, her fine golden hair all brushed out and on her face with its perfect proportions was a half a smile, or maybe only forty percent of one.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, still on my knees on the floor in front of her. She stood up in that regal way of hers and began to pace the small dimensions of the room.

"On the one hand," she continued, "you figured out the window frame. You were the first of the others to do that, you know. I must admit I am surprised it was you. I was eighty percent it would be Lindley, but no matter. On the other hand, you didn't figure on the perimeter precautions, but just wandered off idly as if they wouldn't notice."

I lifted my hands in an unseen gesture indicating "what are you talking about?" but she was paying no attention to me, just going on with her lecture.

"Naturally the old guy was alerted when you tripped the wires. You encountered him, yes?"

"Yes," I confessed, feeling seventy percent dumb and the rest confused.

"Where, exactly, did that meeting occur?"

"At the road."

"Ah, so you made it that far. No further, I suppose? Pity, but understandable. There's nowhere else, you know, not anywhere nearby. Where could you have gone?"

"I didn't see anything," I admitted.

"No, you couldn't," she said. "Why didn't you wait? But never mind. What's done is done and now they know. How settled are you, anyway?"

"How settled?"

"Yes," she turned to face me, "it's a simple question. Are you fifty, sixty, seventy percent settled?"

"I don't know how to calculate that," I told her.

"Then less than fifty," she snapped. "Oh, well. This isn't optimal. Not at all."

"Am I a boy or a girl?" I blurted out.

"Don't be stupid," she snapped, but didn't answer the question. She paced in silence for several minutes, covering the length of the room and back approximately seven times in that interval. I got up off the floor and sat down on my bed while she accomplished this feat. Finally I spoke.

"What are you doing here?" I repeated myself.

"Well, now that you've gone and tripped the wires, and now that they know about you, that you were out and about, that you've reached that particular milestone, I'd say our time is extremely limited. They'll move quickly now. Probably today. It's four o'clock in the morning now, so we still have a chance. I doubt they'll do anything before breakfast. They're so fixated with that sort of thing, it's astonishing sometimes, it really is. They wouldn't even march off to war without their coffee and toast and jam."

"You mean Mother?" I said. She was a stickler for breakfast.

"Of course," Parsnip replied. "That one. And the others. Can't forget about them. They'll all have to be dealt with eventually."

"Mother said she could get a hundred kay for you," I said in a sort of mean way. I never liked Parsnip Caravan. I never liked her less than at that moment.

"Mother's an idiot," she snapped. "And dangerous. But now we have work to do. We have to gather the others. We can meet behind the school, at the picnic table. That should still be safe for a while. I'll get Lindley and Margaux. You get Random and Hellen."

"What about Joker?" I asked.

"Not yet," she said. "He's too far behind. The others are more or less where you are, less than fifty but more than thirty three. I was hoping we'd have a day or two more to get settled, but here we are. Oh, use this," she said, pressing a strong iron bar into my right hand. "It'll do better than that piece of the bed frame you had. We'll pop out their windows, climb in and get them. Quietly, of course, and quickly. We don't have much time. Have I said that already?"

"Yes," I started to reply but she interrupted me as she strode to the window frame.

"We'll meet up as soon as we can."

"What do I tell them?" I said.

"Just say it's a test. It won't be a lie. It's final exam time for us."

And then she was gone, slipped out through the hole as soft as the dew on the grass. I was completely awake. I didn't understand more than twenty percent of the things she had said, but I felt the urgency terribly and knew that I had to obey her and promptly. I was outside again before I'd even decided, and then the next thing I knew I was popping out the frame at Random's shed and climbing into his room. I leaned over him as he slept and gently shook him by the arm, whispering his name as I urged him to wake up. That boy could sleep! I had to push harder and harder until I was practically pulling his arm from its socket before he opened his eyes and I had to cover his mouth to keep him from shouting.

"We have to go," I whispered. "I'll explain on the way but we have to get going and fast. There's no time to waste."

He grabbed my hand and pulled it away from his mouth.

"Why?" he whispered back.

"Because I'm your friend," I replied as nice as I could.

"Okay," Random said, and I didn't have to say anything else. I did the same thing with Hellen while Random kept watch outside of her shed. She was easy and just did what I told her to do. I figured she was the thirty-three percenter that Parsnip was talking about. Within less than ten minutes the whole class, minus Joker, was sitting around the table outside of the school and Parsnip was calling the meeting to order.