Applewhites Coast to Coast Page 18

  “We’ll chase her down in the morning,” Randolph said, having recovered somewhat.

  “We don’t know which way she went,” E.D. said. She looked over at Jake, and at Hal standing next to him. “Unless she told one of you what she was planning.”

  Hal shrugged and shook his head.

  “Why would she tell one of us?” Jake asked.

  E.D. narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “Good question.”

  Jake frowned. “All I know is that she was absolutely determined to get herself on television. I mean determined.”

  “Good thing she didn’t take Brunhilda,” Destiny said. “I still gots all my stuff. And my pirate hammock.”

  “Good heavens!” Lucille said, clutching Archie’s arm. “She’s taken our bed! And Jake’s.”

  It was only then that they all fully realized what it meant that the Pageant Wagon was gone.

  No one but Destiny got much sleep that night. Jake spent the night in Hal’s tent. Archie and Lucille crowded into the dinette bunk, which meant that E.D. had to share the couch with Cordelia, who flailed in the night, and kicked. Maybe she’s choreographing in her sleep, E.D. thought at two o’clock in the morning after taking an elbow to the ribs. Eventually, she gave up and snuggled in a comforter on the hard, cold floor with Winston.

  The family began to gather in the campfire circle not long after dawn. When Jake got there, milk and cereal and the coffeepot had already been put out on a picnic table.

  “Daddy’s been on the phone, saying he wants to see the car fix-it guy by the time the sun gets up over those hills,” Destiny said, nodding in the direction of the mountains as he dug into his bowl of Cheerios. “But when we go, Aunt Lucille’s not going with us.”

  “I’m staying here with Madame Amethyst,” Lucille said, from the boulder where she was sitting, staring into the steadily lightening sky and breathing in the steam from her coffee cup. “She’s the guide who took us out into the vortex yesterday, and she will be here any minute to pick me up. She’s offered me a place to stay for a few days to center myself in Sedona’s calming energies. I need to recover from whatever it was that sent me into a murderous rage against those poor, innocent cockroaches. Never in my life . . .”

  “Her name is Madame Amethyst?” asked Archie. “Really?”

  Lucille took another breath of steam. “Her birth name was Colleen Finklebaum. She used to be an advertising copywriter in New York, but she came here on vacation about ten years ago and never went back. She took her spirit name from the most spiritually resonant crystal. She’s very wise. And she flies her own plane, do you believe it? She’s going to fly me out to California in her Cessna to meet up with all of you, on her way to a gathering of shamans at Mount Shasta.”

  E.D. wished she could go by plane instead of in Brunhilda, which Archie and her father were planning to take turns driving straight through to the Rutherfords, twelve hours away, to try to catch up with Melody. Even without Lucille, it was going to be a long, crowded ride.

  “Hey, has anybody seen my computer?” Hal asked. “The tent’s packed, and it wasn’t with any of my stuff.”

  “Last time I saw it was when we were working on the Saunders video in the Pageant Wagon,” Jake said.

  “I’m sure I took it to my tent after.”

  “Melody took it,” E.D. said. And even though she had not the slightest shred of evidence, she knew it was true. “Does that mean all the video files are gone?”

  Hal shook his head. “Whenever we’ve had Wi-Fi I put everything into online storage. And it’s all backed up on flash drives, too.”

  “Do you gots all mine?” Destiny asked.

  “You’ve been making videos?” E.D. asked. “Since when?”

  “Since always! I got lots and lots of pitchers, but Melody said they weren’t good enough to be in the film you guys was working on. She says I’m too little to do good pitchers, but I’m not!”

  “Bring your camera to me,” Hal said, “and we’ll get all your stuff uploaded.”

  “Onto what?” Jake asked.

  “Mom’s computer. I put all my editing programs on it, too, just in case. And Archie’s, but that’ll be gone with the Pageant Wagon. You know the geek motto, back up, then back up the backups.”

  “The sun is over the hills!” Randolph shouted, emerging from Brunhilda. His phone rang, and he answered, yelling, “Where is my blasted roadside assistance?” He listened a moment. “Ah, Govindaswami, sorry, I thought you were someone else. How is everything in—”

  He stopped then, his face first going pale and then flushing red as he alternately listened and spoke, his voice growing louder and more incredulous with each response. “Flagstaff? I didn’t even realize they had an airport—What? Impounded?” He ran a hand through his hair. “Homeland Security? What do they have to do with it? What do you mean they asked you about explosives? Don’t be silly, you do not have a suspicious accent. Don’t think another thing about it. I’ll get over to Flagstaff right now and straighten it all out. They threatened you? How dare they? You’re a citizen. I’m a citizen! They have no right—Well, immediately. I’ll call you as soon as—Yes, of course we’ll get it back. They can’t keep it; it’s private property!” By the time he hung up, Randolph was seething with fury.

  “The Pageant Wagon’s been impounded?” Sybil said.

  “Melody abandoned it in the middle of the taxi lane at the Flagstaff airport! So they impounded it and traced the license number. That’s why they called Wit’s End. For some reason Homeland Security got involved. Something about a suspicious vehicle. Something about homemade mechanisms of unknown but suspicious purposes. Govindaswami thinks because of his accent they may have thought he was a terrorist.”

  Archie slapped a hand to his forehead. “Unbelievable,” he said.

  “They actually threatened him with deportation. I’ve got to get over to Flagstaff now! Archie, you come along to drive the Pageant Wagon back.”

  “We’re still waiting for the mechanic,” Archie reminded him. “Plus, I don’t think you should take Brunhilda. If they thought the Pageant Wagon looked suspicious, what are they going to make of her?” E.D. looked at the big bus—she was so used to it she had forgotten how outlandish it looked. “And, Randolph,” Archie continued, “given your . . . issues with authority figures, maybe you shouldn’t be the one to go at all.”

  “Issues with authority?” demanded Randolph. “Ridiculous. I have no issues with authority! I am merely steadfast in the defense of my rights.” Archie rolled his eyes. “Anyway, it is my Pageant Wagon, it is my stage, for my show. I am going. End of discussion.”

  Archie held up his hand. “Fine. But leave Brunhilda here. Lucille’s new friend—Lady Crystal, or whatever—should be here any minute. Maybe she’ll be willing to drive you up to Flagstaff.”

  E.D. looked at her mother. “Archie’s right. You know how Dad gets with people in uniforms,” she said. “We can’t let him go alone.”

  And so it was that Lucille’s new friend, a woman with a mane of curly red hair, wearing feather earrings and a gold dream catcher pendant with an amethyst in the middle, drove off half an hour later with Randolph in the front seat of her bright yellow VW bug and Cordelia in the back, sent along to try to keep her father under control, or, if necessary, to bat her eyelashes charmingly at whatever authority figure he was insulting. “Remember, dear,” Sybil called to Randolph as the car pulled away from the campsite, “whatever you do, don’t yell at anyone!”

  Just after they left, the roadside assistance truck pulled up. The guy had Brunhilda running again about thirty seconds after popping the hood. “She just pulled the wire off of one spark plug. All you hadda do was stick it back on. Don’t any of you know nothin’ about engines?” Jake and Archie stared off toward the mountains, blushing, and E.D. thought it was high time she learned about cars!

  “Let’s get a look at Destiny’s videos,” she said to Hal, then. She needed something to keep her mind off what might be goi
ng on at the airport.

  “I’ll get Mom’s computer. I must have left mine in the Pageant Wagon and Melody just took it by accident. I doubt she even knew it was there.”

  Right, E.D. thought disgustedly. Whatever there was about testosterone, it appeared to make guys go totally brainless. Archie called the Rutherford Foundation to tell them there had been an unavoidable delay in leaving Sedona, but they would be on their way soon. Four hours later, just about the time E.D. had hoped her father would pull into the campground in the Pageant Wagon, the yellow VW came back instead. Cordelia climbed out of the passenger side as the family gathered around.

  “Is your father on his way?” Sybil asked.

  “Dad’s in jail,” Cordelia said, and burst into tears.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It took them a while to figure out exactly what had happened, with Cordelia wailing and blubbering. Madame Amethyst came over and dropped a set of keys into Archie’s hand. “That’s about all that’s left,” she said.

  “What does she mean, that’s all that’s left?” Sybil asked Cordelia.

  “It’s gone!” cried Cordelia, dabbing carefully at the corner of her eyes so that she didn’t smear her eyeliner. “The Pageant Wagon! They . . . they . . .”

  Sybil put a hand on Cordelia’s shoulder. “They what, dear?”

  “They took it apart!”

  “Don’t tell me they took the stage off the side!” said Archie. Jake groaned, and thought about how much work it would be to reassemble the mechanism, especially without Bill Bones and his metalworking expertise.

  Madame Amethyst was leaning against her car now, shaking her head. “The term they used was ‘dismantled.’ For the purpose of national security.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it!” Cordelia wailed. “The hood was over here, the engine was over there, all our stuff was just lying around in piles, totally shredded. They took the windows out! They took the tires off the wheels! It looked like a used-bus-parts store! They thought there was a bomb in it somewhere!”

  Sybil was rubbing her temples. “No wonder your father is in jail. I’d better make some phone calls.”

  “Well,” said Archie, shaking his head. “So . . . that happened.” He wandered off toward the cooler they’d put out on the picnic table and started making himself a sandwich.

  Lucille stood for a moment, watching him. “Want a hug?” she asked him. He shook his head. She went over to Madame Amethyst. “I guess if they shredded our stuff, I don’t have much left but what I’m wearing,” she told the woman. “If you’re still okay with having me stay with you for a while . . .”

  Madame Amethyst nodded and opened the door for her.

  Lucille stopped before getting in, and turned to the rest of them. “I’m really sorry about deserting you like this. But you know what the airline people say—put your own oxygen mask on first. I have full faith in this family. We will all come through this ordeal one way or another. I’ll catch up to you all in a couple of days. Blessings on you!” She got into the car, then, and firmly shut the door.

  When the Volkswagen had driven off, and the rest of the family had gone back into Brunhilda, E.D. wheeled around at Jake, her face furious. Jake stepped back a foot and put his hands up. “Why are you glaring at me?” he asked, annoyed at himself for blushing.

  “What do you know? What did Melody tell you?”

  “Do you think I knew she was going to steal the Pageant Wagon and fly to California? Well I didn’t! Don’t you think I would have done something to stop her, or at least told somebody?”

  “I don’t know!” E.D. shouted back. “I don’t know what you would do when it comes to her!”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re not yourself when you’re around her.”

  Jake tried to convince himself that wasn’t true, but he knew better. “You mean the way you aren’t yourself when Tyler Organic’s around?”

  He saw E.D. flinch.

  “Fine,” said E.D. after a moment, walking away to the picnic table and sitting with her back to him. “Fine. Whatever. It’s none of my business.”

  Jake wished he hadn’t lost his temper, but he didn’t know how to take it back. E.D. wouldn’t even look at him. He realized suddenly how very much he missed having her to talk to. Before he had even thought about her being his girlfriend, E.D. was his friend, and since Melody showed up she hadn’t been either one. It was strange to think about, since he had been traveling in such close quarters with so many people for so many weeks, but Jake realized what the odd feeling he had in his stomach was. He was lonely. Had been lonely since the Expedition started.

  All right, Semple, he thought. What do you do when you don’t get what you want? Was he supposed to sit around moping about it? Of course not. But what was he supposed to do? He couldn’t very well just tell E.D. that he missed talking to her.

  Right?

  He went over and sat next to E.D. She still wouldn’t look at him.

  “So,” he said. “This is awkward. I, um . . .” He took a deep breath. “I miss talking to you,” he mumbled. She didn’t react. Maybe she hadn’t even heard him—he hadn’t managed much more than a whisper. He cleared his throat. “I know things have been weird. I’m sorry. I guess. Or whatever.” Smooth, Semple.

  She sighed. “Yeah,” she said at last. “This has all been pretty weird. But, thanks. You, too. Or whatever,” she added with a tiny bit of a smile.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  “We go after her. We finish the Expedition.”

  They heard scuffling in the dust behind them and turned to see Hal, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot with Sybil’s laptop hanging from one hand. “You guys done fighting?” he asked. They nodded. “Good. You’ve got to see this.”

  “What is it?” asked E.D.

  “Just watch,” said Hal, setting the computer up on the picnic table. He hit play on a video. The camera panned across Brunhilda and the Pageant Wagon, parked by the barn at Wit’s End.

  “I’ve seen this,” said E.D. “This is what you used for the start of our final presentation.”

  “Just . . . watch,” Hal repeated. The shot on-screen changed—there were the Applewhites trying to take a photo in front of the buses. It was chaos. Everybody was arguing, jostling one another into different positions. Randolph was yelling, Winston was barking. Off to the side stood Melody, in a vivid turquoise halter and hot pink shorts, her hair falling alluringly over one eye. She turned to look right into the camera, and winked. The shot froze with Melody smiling slyly, and over the picture appeared a title:

  Surviving the Applewhites—

  by Melody Aiko Bernstein

  “Where’d you get this?” E.D. asked.

  “Online! Melody posted a bunch of videos. It’s not just this one—everything that’s been posted in our name for weeks has been videos that she must have made!”

  “What about ours?” E.D. asked desperately. “Your summaries? My tutorials?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hal. “They’re not there. They’re not anywhere. I don’t know where they went! I sent them to the right place, I’ve checked! And everything she posted . . . that first one is bad, but it gets worse. Much worse!”

  Jake swallowed hard as Hal pulled up video clip after video clip. If he hadn’t been so completely mortified, he would be really impressed. Melody must have been filming a lot more often than she let on. And she’d included only footage that made the Applewhites, and Jake, look like total, complete idiots. Loud, opinionated, arrogant idiots.

  There was quite a lot of Randolph yelling at people. Every time he yelled she would cut to somebody looking sad—even if it wasn’t from the same time, or even the same stop on the Expedition. Rehearsal footage was all about Melody getting laughs, and Randolph yelling, and Melody rolling her eyes. At the stop in Clayton, Tennessee, it showed Sybil totally losing control of a roomful of small children. Then in swept Melody to the rescue, as if it had been
she, and she alone, who saved the day. Jake realized that she couldn’t have done that filming—she had just stolen bits from Hal’s video. And she’d included snatches of Destiny’s tantrums, which made it seem that he was always out of control. Hal came off looking like the world’s most awkward recluse. You’d see the back of his head or get a glimpse of him ducking into his tent on the roof of the bus. There was Hal blushing and turning away. Then came Melody’s makeover—the whole unveiling of the “new Hal” was included. Melody the hero.

  There were a few clips showing E.D. bossing people around, but mostly Melody had managed to make her look clueless and lonely. “What’s wrong with how I dress?” she was asking in one clip, wearing a tattered T-shirt and a faded pair of baggy jeans. E.D. yelped in fury at that part. “She must have hidden the camera behind her backpack!” There were shots of Melody coaching E.D. on how to fix her hair and talk to Tyler Organic. There was even a shot, from behind a bush, of E.D. and Tyler kissing on the steps of the Organics’ classroom bus. Jake felt so awkward about it he closed his eyes for that part, but he could hear E.D. making little strangled noises as she watched. Lucille looked daffier than she really was, Cordelia snotty and stuck-up, Archie clueless, and Zedediah bossy and just plain mean.

  The hardest for Jake were the bits she’d included of Jake’s worst moments in Our American Cousin, interspersed with images of audience members not laughing. He felt totally gutted.

  “It’s bad,” Hal said. “Every one of these was up on the competition website. And you can tell she was learning the whole time, just like Jake and I were. The editing gets better and better at making us look bad. She even stole a lot of it from my video logs!”

  “What about my tutorials?” E.D. asked. “They’re just gone?”

  Hal shrugged. “Not one has been posted since Valley View. This is why she borrowed my laptop so often late at night,” he added apologetically. “She said she had insomnia. How could I be so stupid?”

  “Believe me, Hal, it wasn’t just you,” Jake said, and felt himself blushing. He had thought maybe he understood Melody at least a little bit, but no. He had no idea what she’d been capable of all along.