SECOND EARTH

“Why did he go to Zadaa?” huffed Courtney. “Why didn’t he bring Spader here to Second Earth? This is his home!”

Mark knew the answer. Loor was a Traveler. She would be able to help Bobby explain things to Spader. Things were getting hairy on Cloral and Loor was the kind of person you went to when things got hairy. Mark felt that Courtney should have realized this, but her jealousy toward Loor was clouding her thinking. Not that he’d point that out to her. No way.

Courtney stood up angrily and shoved the pages back at Mark.

“Well, if Bobby Pendragon thinks his new friend can help him better than we can, then good luck is all I have to say!”

“C’mon, Courtney,” said Mark softly. “You know he did the right thing.”

Courtney looked as if she wanted to argue, but backed off. She knew.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” she said with a pout.

Mark now faced a dilemma. He had to tell Courtney about Andy Mitchell. He made a dumb mistake by leaving the page in the boys’ bathroom and because of it, Mitchell knew about the journals.

“I’m sorry, Mark,” added Courtney. She had calmed down. “You’re right. You’ve been right about everything from the beginning. It’s good that one of us thinks straight. At least now we know why these pages are different than the last ones. He wrote this journal on Zadaa, not Cloral, right?”

Mark wanted to scream. Courtney Chetwynde relied on him to be the brains of this duo and right now he was feeling like anything but. She trusted him and listened to his advice, which is more than anybody else ever did, except for Bobby sometimes. It killed him to have to admit he had screwed up royally.

“You okay?” asked Courtney, sensing that something was wrong.

“Yeah, sure, I’m f-fine,” answered Mark quickly. “Just worried about Bobby is all.”

“You’d better get those pages back to your house before anything else happens.”

Mark looked at Courtney, saw the trust in her amazing gray eyes and made a decision. He couldn’t tell her about Andy Mitchell. At least not yet. He wanted to work this out on his own rather than risk losing Courtney’s faith. This was his problem and he was going to have to deal with it.

So he gathered the pages of Journal #6 together, put them in his pack, and left for home. Normally, once they finished reading a journal, Mark would stash it in the safest place he knew—an ancient rolltop desk in his attic. His parents hadn’t gone up there in years and Mark had the only key. He wore it on a chain around his neck just to be safe. Every precaution had been taken. As soon as a journal was finished, it went into the desk.

Tonight was a little different though. Mark crept up to the attic and unlocked the desk drawer. He placed Journal #6 inside next to the brown rolls of parchment that were Bobby’s journals from Denduron. But rather than lock them up, he took out Journal #5—the journal Andy Mitchell had seen the first page of. This was the journal he would show Mitchell. He hoped that maybe this would be enough. Maybe Mitchell would think it was all a crazy joke and get bored after reading these pages. It was the best Mark could hope for.

He spent a sleepless night, wondering how he was going to get out of this predicament. Sharing the journals with Courtney made sense. Courtney was Bobby’s friend. Courtney could be trusted. But Andy Mitchell was different. He was an idiot. Worse, he was a bully-idiot. There was no telling what Mitchell would do with the information about Bobby once he got it. But as hard as he tried to figure a way out, he just couldn’t find it. He had no choice but to show Mitchell the pages tomorrow.

At school the next day Mark did his best to avoid Mitchell. He held out the desperate hope that Mitchell had forgotten all about the journal page he’d found in the boys’ bathroom. Mark got through the entire day without even seeing his nemesis. His hopes started to rise. He told himself that Mitchell didn’t care enough to even show up for school! Maybe this would all blow over.

Wrong. No sooner had Mark stepped out of his last class than he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

“Time for a little homework, aye, Dimond?” chuckled Andy Mitchell.

Mark’s heart sank. The guy hadn’t forgotten at all. It was time to deal with the devil. Mark shrugged Mitchell’s hand off his shoulder and said, “Let’s go.”

Mitchell snorted and chuckled. He made Mark’s skin crawl, but there was no way out of this. So Mark led him up to the boys’ bathroom on the third floor. No one would bother them there, especially not Courtney. After her run-in with Mr. Dorrico, they decided not to read the journals there anymore. This was the best place Mark could think of to get some privacy, and to avoid Courtney. He felt guilty as hell about it, but there was no other way.

When they got inside Mitchell stood with his hand out. Mark stared at him. Mitchell snorted back a good one and hawked a lougie into a urinal. Mark nearly retched. He had a fleeting thought of barging past Mitchell and running away, but that would have been useless. No, this was the only way. So reluctantly he reached into his pack and pulled out the roll of green, slick paper that was Journal #5.

Mitchell reached out to grab it, but Mark pulled it away.

“You gotta read it here and you gotta give it right back when you’re done,” Mark said. Mitchell wasn’t used to being ordered around like this, especially not from a geek like Mark Dimond. But Mark was intense. He was not fooling around. Mitchell snorted and chuckled, again.

“Whatever,” he said, and swiped the pages away from Mark. He walked over to one of the stalls saying, “I’ll read it in here.”

“You will read it right here, where I can see you!” commanded Mark.

Whoa. If Mitchell wasn’t sure about how important those pages were to Mark, he sure was now. Mark was not going to allow Andy Mitchell to control this situation any more than he had to. He already had too much control as it was. If Mitchell didn’t do exactly as he said, Mark was ready to grab the pages away and take his chances with the police.

Mitchell chose to back off and gave another signature snort.

“All right, be cool,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll read ’em wherever you want.”

Mitchell then walked to the far wall, turned his back to it, and slid down to the floor. With one last snort, he began to read the journal.

Mark didn’t move. He stood by the sinks, staring at Mitchell. This was killing him. With each passing second he felt as if he were betraying Bobby a little bit more.

Mitchell took forever to read the journal. He wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist and he constantly had to ask Mark the meanings of words. Mark would roll his eyes and explain to him what words like “submerge” and “erosion” meant. Worse, when Mitchell got to words that were specific to Cloral like vators or pecks, his total cluelessness made Mark want to scream. Mark felt bad for any teacher who was saddled with the likes of Andy Mitchell. He wondered who had the patience to teach him how to tie his shoelaces.

Finally, mercifully, Mitchell finished the journal and looked up to Mark. This was the critical moment. Mitchell’s first reaction was going to tell Mark how much trouble he was going to cause from here on in. Mitchell stared at Mark for a moment, as if trying to pull his thoughts together. Mark figured that pulling those slim thoughts together couldn’t take more than a nanosecond. It didn’t. Mitchell snorted and laughed again.

“Who are you kidding?” he said with a sneer. “You made this up!”

Mark didn’t react. He just stared at Mitchell. The truth was, he didn’t care if Mitchell believed the journals were real or not. But Mark realized instantly that not reacting was the exact wrong move. He saw it in Mitchell’s eyes. Mark realized that if he had argued with Mitchell and said something like “I didn’t make it up! It’s all true! I swear!” then Mitchell would have figured he was just some loser geek with a wild imagination and that would have been the end of it. But he didn’t. By not arguing, he had done the exact opposite. His silence convinced Mitchell that everything in the journal was true. Mark wished he had a second chance to react, but it was too late.

Mitchell began to stand up. Before he got his balance, Mark swiped the journal pages out of his hand.

“Easy!” complained Mitchell.

“Are we done now?” asked Mark as he rolled up the journal.

“Done?” laughed Mitchell. “We’re just starting! I want to read the other journals. The ones from that Denduroni place.”

“Denduron. I can’t let you—”

“And I want to read the journal that showed up here yesterday. I’m not stupid, Dimond. I saw it. It was brown, not green like this one. You already got another delivery from Pendragon and I want to see it.”

“N-No way! I agreed to let you read the rest of—”

Mitchell lunged at Mark, grabbed him by the shirt, spun him around, and slammed him against the hard tile wall of the bathroom. He knocked the air out of his lungs and Mark nearly passed out. Mitchell wouldn’t let him go though. He stuck his nose right in Mark’s face and hissed, “Stop tellin’ me what to do, you little freak. You wanna mess with me? I’ll hit you so hard you’ll be eatin’ and fartin’ out of the same hole.”

Mark didn’t believe that was possible, but he didn’t want to risk it.

“Now listen to me. Do not tell Courtney Chetwynde I know about this. If you do, I’ll go right to the police and fry both of your butts. Understand?”

“But—”

Mitchell slammed Mark against the wall again. This time Mark hit his head on the tiles.

“Understand?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“And I want to see the rest of them journals. We are sitting on a very big thing here. Someday we are gonna be famous, thanks to that weez Pendragon.”

Mark was horrified. Mitchell, the village idiot, was already planning on how to release the journals to the world. This could not get worse.

“I want to see another one of them journals,” he commanded, then threw Mark out of the way, and strode toward the bathroom door.

With one final snort, he then kicked the door open and left.

Mark sunk down to the floor, hurting in more ways than one. He had messed up worse than he could imagine. Mitchell now had complete control over him. Worse, if he told Courtney about it then Mitchell would make sure that the police knew everything. There was no one he could go to for help. He wanted to handle this on his own, but he was doing a truly bad job. He had let Bobby down, he had let Courtney down, and he had let himself down.

And then, just to add to his confusion, the ring on his finger started to twitch. In the past this had always been a moment of excitement because it meant he was going to hear from his best friend again. But now the idea of another journal arriving meant that it was going to be one more journal he would have to share with Andy Mitchell. One more journal that he would have to explain to the dimwit. One more journal that marked his total failure as a friend.

Mark took off the ring and put it on the floor. He then rolled over and turned his back to it. He knew what was going to happen. He didn’t have to see. He closed his eyes and softly whispered, “I’m sorry, Bobby. I’m going to fix everything, I swear.”

When he turned back around, the ring was lying right here he had left it. Next to it was another journal.