“Junior told me I’m supposed to bury these under the angel and wait for a message. Thing is, there are, like, four billion angels in this cemetery.”
Dulcie nods. “That’s a toughie.”
“I thought maybe you would know where? Like maybe that might fall under the category of special angel-privy info you could share?”
She leans back, crosses her legs and swings one out, touching me lightly each time with her boot. “I told you, Cameron, I’m just a messenger.”
I put my hands up. “Fine. Junior Webster wanted me to bury these sunglasses under the angel? I’m on it. If this doesn’t work, I really don’t give a shit anymore. Move your feet.”
Dulcie sweeps her boots to one side. I make a small hole in the fresh dirt of the soldier’s grave, drop in the sunglasses, and cover them up. I wipe my hands on my jeans and sit beside Dulcie to wait. Gulls circle overhead, crying. After five minutes, I check the ground, but there’s nothing.
“So where’s this secret message?”
“Beats me,” she says, dipping into a secret stash of ChocoYums. “But I love the not knowing. The sense of mystery. Don’t you?”
“No. I really, really don’t.” We sit quietly for another minute or two. My butt hurts and all I want to do is leave. “Should we say something? Are there some, like, magic words that could speed this along?”
Dulcie puts her hands out like a magician about to levitate a rabbit. “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.” She shrugs. “I heard that on the radio once.”
“That’s it. I’m out of here.” I stand up and promptly trip over a large rock on the path. Under the rock is a scrap from today’s newspaper, the classified section.
“Did you find it?” Dulcie asks, peering down at me from her new perch at the top of the willow tree. She’s totally showing off.
“Could you let me read this, please?”
She mimes a zipper over her lips, and I scan the section of newspaper. It’s all a random jumble:
HERE AND THEN NOT—MYSTERY OF THE COPENHAGEN INTERPRETATION SOLVED! NEW PHOTOS OF LONG-LOST INUIT BAND FISHING IN SNOW.
BUY NOW. VALHALLA YARD GNOMES—LAWN ORNAMENTS FIT FOR A GOD.
DEAR TOBIAS, I FORGIVE YOU. TO ERR IS HUMAN; TO LIVE, DIVINE. LET US LIVE TOGETHER FOR THE REST OF OUR DAYS. I WISH IT TO BE.
NEED A RIDE TO THE YA! PARTY HOUSE? WE’VE GOT SPACE IN OUR CAR.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS CORPORATION’S TRAVEL OFFICE IS NOW OPEN.
LOOKING FOR WORK? OUR OPERATIONS ARE EXPANDING! CALL UNITED SNOW GLOBE WHOLESALERS
AT 1-800-555-1212.
There are at least twenty different classifieds here, none of them particularly meaningful or helpful.
“This is hopeless,” I say.
Dulcie’s voice floats down from the tree. “Keep looking. You’ll find it.”
“Yeah? How do you know?”
“Because I believe in you, Cameron,” she says without a hint of sarcasm.
I look again, and this time, way down in the right-hand corner, I see a tiny, illustrated ad for the Roadrunner Bus Company with their tagline: Follow the feather.
“Hey, is that it? Is this what Junior meant?” I start, but the willow tree’s empty. Dulcie is already gone. A sudden gust of wind tears the paper from my hand and blows it far away. I’m left with just a scrap. Two words: to live.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In Which Junior Webster’s Cryptic Message Does Not Become Any More Uncryptic, and the Worst Pictures Ever Taken of Us Are Circulated
We’re at the bus station, feeding my dad’s credit card into the ticket machine. Our bus to Daytona is scheduled to leave in five minutes. I don’t know if that’s the bus we need to be on; I’m just going off what I saw on the classifieds page. It mentioned the YA! Party House. The Party House is in Florida. There are three buses leaving this evening and one of them is headed to Daytona; ergo, we are headed to Daytona. I am divining my future based on a classified ad I found in a graveyard.
“So, you think this is part of the secret message?” Gonzo asks, looking at the newspaper scrap.
“Don’t know, don’t care right now,” I say. The ticket machine wheezes like an old man, coughing out two tickets to Florida in a painfully slow fashion.
“To live. Maybe he means too live,” Gonzo says, making a long “i” sound. “You know, like, like, hey, cats and kittens, it’s all too live,” he says, adopting a hipster voice.
“Or maybe it’s just bullshit. To live? That’s not a secret message. That’s a fortune cookie.”