The house was empty when I arrived home from school. Mom had left a note on the kitchen table to say she’d taken Alice to dance class. She always left a note even though I knew Alice had dance every Tuesday. I grabbed a handful of chips from the pantry and waited for the knock on the door. Frank showed up about twenty minutes later.
“Check this out,” he said. The bright red encyclopedia landed on the kitchen table with a thud. Frank’s mom had bought a complete set of encyclopedias for their family back when Raymond started junior high school. She said they’d need it for their assignments, and you couldn’t count on the set at the library ’cause people didn’t always put the books back in the right place or they kept the one you needed way too long. It happened to me all the time, and I wasn’t even in junior high school yet.
When I asked my mom for a set, she said that it cost as much as a month’s worth of food and that if she had that much extra money, there was a long list of stuff she’d spend it on before she bought a set of books we could easily get at the library. Or, I guess, from Frank.
He opened to a page that had a picture of the ocean with a triangle drawn above it and a heading in big black letters:
THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE
“Told you it was real,” Frank said. “Encyclopedias don’t lie.”
The information below it took up two whole pages. I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture of the airplanes in the middle of the second page. They were exactly like the ones that had disappeared in the movie.
The paragraph under the picture talked about the planes and boats that went missing and said the whole thing was still a big mystery.
Frank shoved his hands in his pants pocket and pulled out a wad of crumpled-up paper. “There’s more.” He flattened out the creases. “Yesterday at the library, the front desk lady helped me find this article in a magazine. A real-life scientist wrote it. I read it and took a bunch of notes while my mom was deciding which book she wanted to check out.”
The title was “The Real Truth about the Bermuda Triangle.”
“So what did you find out?” I asked.
“This scientist guy did a bunch of studies,” Frank started. He was talking in a real low voice even though no one was home. “And he came up with two possible explanations. The first one is that the lost city of Atlantis is buried deep in the ocean in the exact spot of the Bermuda Triangle.”
“What’s the lost city of Atlantis?”
“It’s a place that sank into the ocean like a million years ago. No one really knows what happened. Maybe it was ’cause of an earthquake.”
“Or a meteor,” I suggested. “Like what some people say happened with the dinosaurs.”
“Maybe. Anyway, the details are a little sketchy. Like no one knows where in the ocean it is. There aren’t exactly any maps and encyclopedias from a million years ago.”
“What does all that have to do with the Bermuda Triangle?” I asked.
“People say Atlantis has magical powers and can shoot energy beams from old fire crystals.”
“How’s it do that?”
“That part is also a little sketchy,” Frank said. “But the guy who wrote the article thinks it could explain all the missing planes and boats.”
“And that would explain the disappearing kid from Mayson?” I asked.
“No,” Frank began. “But his other explanation could.”
Alice opened the front door and slammed it shut before I could ask another question. She stormed into the kitchen.
“What are you doing home?” I demanded. So what if I sounded a little rude? She was barging in on Frank and me in the middle of an important, private conversation. Maybe she would go sulk in her room and leave us alone. Instead, she plopped herself in a chair. Right there at the table with Frank and me.
“Mom dropped me off. I didn’t want to stay at dance.”
I knew asking why would be a bad move. A really, really bad move. So I slowly pushed back my chair and tried to make eye contact with Frank to get him to follow my lead. If we played this right, we could escape to my bedroom. My chair scraped against the linoleum floor as I stood.
“Why didn’t you want to stay?” Frank asked her.
Shoot. I sat back down.
“Madame Robin gave out the parts for our spring performance today. Do you know what part I got?” Alice crossed her arms. She glared at me as if whatever had happened in dance today was all my fault.
“N-n-no.”
“I’m girl walking across stage. Ten years of dance class and I’m walking. It’s a five-second part. Meanwhile, Gloria Amato, who has only taken dance for two years, gets the lead. She’s onstage for practically the entire two-hour performance. And you know why, don’t you?”
“She’s better?” I responded.
Alice’s glare morphed into something horrible. I pushed my lips together super tightly, determined not to say another word that would make her face any worse.
“No, birdbrain,” she said. “It’s because her last name is Amato and my last name is Wexler.”
I glanced at Frank as I thought about this. He was curling up the corners of the crumbled piece of paper with his fingers.
“You’re not going to say anything?”
That had been my plan. But since she was insisting on something, I said, “Your teacher assigned the parts alphabetically?” This time, I really wasn’t trying to be rude. I was only trying to figure out why our last name made a difference.
“No!” Alice rolled her eyes. “I’m Jewish, and she’s not.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
She sighed. “Think about it. Why do you think Dad’s never gotten a promotion after all these years at the factory? Mr. Martona was promoted. So was your friend Nicholas’s dad. Gloria Amato’s mom. Heck, even Frank’s dad has had two promotions now. He’s one of Dad’s bosses.”
Frank refused to meet my eyes.
Alice continued. “But not our dad. He’s had the same job since he and Mom moved here almost twenty years ago. Since before both of us were born.”
“Maybe he likes that job,” I suggested.
Alice shook her head. “It’s not just that. Haven’t you noticed how Mom and Dad never talk about being Jewish with anyone other than Grandma Esther?”
“They like to keep it low key,” I said. “Because we’re not religious.”
“Is that why Dad keeps a prayer book in his nightstand?”
“You shouldn’t be snooping through his drawers,” I said.
“I wasn’t. He showed it to me. When I turned thirteen. The same way he’ll show it to you. In private, without anyone else knowing.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Look around you, Danny. People may smile at us, but that doesn’t mean they like us living here. I’m not making this up. It’s real.” She stopped. “No offense, Frank. I know you like us.”
Frank shifted in his chair. “I think I hear my mom calling me.”
“But you live three blocks away,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s definitely her. I really have to go.” He stood up, grabbed his encyclopedia and crumpled paper, and headed toward the front door.
“Don’t listen to Alice,” I whispered, following him. “She didn’t mean all that stuff. You know how she is; when she gets mad about something, she doesn’t know when to shut up.”
“It’s fine. Don’t sweat it.” He opened the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait,” I said. “What about the scientist guy and the Bermuda Triangle? You never told me the second explanation.”
A sly smile crossed Frank’s lips. “Aliens.”