GhostsofNamelessIsland_epub

“Because this is when Miles and Tavi are doing it,” I say to Mom. I wait for a second before pulling out my ace card. “And, you know, it’s hard starting at a new school.”

When we dock at Rhodi, I race ahead to meet up with Tavi and Miles in front of the Petal and Stem. Tavi’s mom and Squiddy are both there, and Miles’s brother Jimin is standing by, ready to leave as Mom and I arrive. Mom and Tavi’s parents exchange nice to meet yous. Then Mom turns to Jimin and shakes his hand.

“Have I seen you somewhere before?”

Jimin slips his hand from Mom’s quickly, his eyes shifting to Miles.

“Nope. Anyway, gotta get back to the restaurant before Mom sends a search party,” he says, waving awkwardly, and off he goes, skipping a little before jogging out of sight.

“Shall we shop?” Tavi says, ready with the subject change.

“Stick to the list,” Squiddy says, and taps Tavi’s phone screen. She’s pretending to be stern, but I can see the smile behind her eyes.

“Highlighters?” Tavi pleads. “And sticky notes, you know how they keep me organized. And the binder clips with the skulls—”

“One pack of highlighters and one set of stickies. Binder clips are nonessential,” Squiddy negotiates.

Tavi sighs.

Mom looks at me, then at Miles. “You’re positive your parents are okay dropping Gus off outside the manor later? I’m more than happy to come pick him up at your house after I’m done.”

“Nah,” Miles says casually. “My dad likes going for drives at night. It clears his head.”

Mom kisses the top of my head and rubs it like she always does, making me feel more guilty than I already do because I know that whatever Miles’s plan involves, it’s going to mean lying to my mom again.

I hear a familiar voice approach from behind.

“So long as Ave isn’t the one driving, everyone’s safe.”

Mom turns to shove the tall guy with the topknot, and he nudges her back playfully. Raj. My stomach twists when I see the way his eyes shine at my mom—like he knows her favorite flavor of ice cream, somehow.

“You have to drive that way in Oakland,” Mom says. “You won’t survive otherwise.”

“Convenient excuse,” the guy with the fade says.

“Um, everyone,” Mom says awkwardly, like she’s not sure how formal to make this. Why is she acting so weird? “Allow me to introduce Raj, Darius, and Bev. They’re some of my oldest friends and colleagues.”

“Ooh, colleagues,” Bev jokes. “Makes hanging drywall sound fancy.”

Mom pulls me forward. “And this right here is my brilliant son, Gus!”

Brilliant? Since when?

“Hey, Gus,” Raj says. “Quite a crib you get to live in. We got a look at it the other day.”

“Yeah, I kn—”

Tavi’s foot presses hard onto mine.

“What was that?” Raj asks.

“I was saying, yeah, it’s quite a place. For sure.”

He nods, and I nod back, and now we’re both nodding, and there are suddenly a whole lot of people standing around being awfully quiet.

“Well, we’d better get that shopping done before they run out of . . . pens,” Miles says.

Once the last adult has rounded the corner, we speed through the Petal and Stem.

“Pencils?” I yell over a shelving unit.

“Check,” I hear Miles shout loudly from somewhere across the store.

“Protractors?” Tavi calls out.

“Grab me one too!” I answer back.

We’re just finishing paying at the cash register when in walks Charlie Cleave. His lips pucker into another stupid rodent dig when something white-hot like that night on the porch takes over and I take two steps to close the gap between me and him.

“Say it, Cleave. Say ‘rat.’ I triple-dog dare you to say ‘rat’ to me right now. Maybe this is the night I make it so the hardest food you can chew is cheese,” I growl.

I think the lights flicker in the Petal and Stem. Either that or I almost black out. I should be hearing one of those showdown-at-high-noon cowboy whistles right now. Instead, it’s just Charlie Cleave, blinking really fast, with breath that still smells like sausage, and a Petal and Stem cashier who would rather we leave.

“Whatever” is Charlie Cleave’s cleverest comeback. That’s it. Whatever.

When we get outside with our shopping bags stuffed with school supplies, Tavi and Miles blink at me in the same way Charlie Cleave did.

“What?” I ask them.

Miles grins. “Nothing,” he says. “I mean, ‘whatever.’”

Tavi follows him, winking over her shoulder.

We find a secluded place so we can discuss the plan.

“They’re starting demo in seven days,” I say. “There’s no stopping it.”

Tavi has bad news too. “There’s no way I can get back to the Seattle archives before Sunday. That’s Squiddy’s next rotation, and I can’t come up with a good reason to get one of them to take me any sooner than that. Which is super frustrating because now that we’ve found the hidden still under the porch, I actually have something to research! We know that Walker Brewers used to be located on that property at some point, which means Miles was right—”

“The Rothams were bootleggers!” Miles interjects.

Tavi rolls her eyes. “It means there used to be a brewery on the property, not that it belonged to the Rothams. So now I need to find out whether there was a Felix connected to any of the businesses that used to operate on that land.” She squeezes her head softly. “Uuugghhhh, it’s soooo much research!”

I turn to Miles. “Speaking of research. Were you able to get anything from the EFR?”

Miles shakes his head. “Nothing clear enough. I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s not static or feedback. It’s like . . . sound layered on sound. I don’t know how to explain it.”

I drop my head into my hands. “So we don’t have a plan. I thought you were going to try to convince me we needed to go back to the manor since my mom is out tonight.”

“I am,” says Miles.

“What for? You just said the EFR didn’t pick anything up,” says Tavi.

“Because last time, we weren’t using the SoundMaxx5.0 with Double-Record and Replay capabilities,” he grins.

Tavi’s phone buzzes in her bag, and her screen lights the confusion on her face.

“Squiddy says I can come home with her and Mom now or hitch a ride with you guys later tonight.” She looks up at me. “Apparently, your mom and her Oakland friends are hanging with my moms now.”

“Weird,” I say.

“I don’t like it when parents make friends with parents,” Miles says. “Worlds colliding and all that. It’s spooky. Like they’re conspiring or something.”

“Our parents are friends,” Tavi says to him.

Miles shrugs. “That’s different.”

“What should I do?” Tavi asks.

“Go with them,” I say. “You can listen in and see whether they say anything about the demo. Maybe you’ll get some more history about the manor too.”

Tavi nods. “Good idea.” She starts to leave before she remembers what we were talking about when her phone buzzed. “Wait, let me see this Super-Pro-Sound-Whatzit!”

“That’s the tricky part,” Miles says.

“Awesome,” I say. “I really was hoping there would be a tricky part.”

“I ordered it from the restaurant’s computer,” Miles

hurriedly explains, “and I kinda forgot that the restaurant’s computer cache autofills the shipping address, so.”

“You shipped it to the restaurant?” Tavi says, slapping her hand to her forehead.

“And now we have to sneak a giant box out of your parents’ restaurant without them noticing on a night you’re not supposed to be there?” I ask.

Miles holds up his hands. “It’s okay; Jimin’s already on it. He owes—”

“He owes you a favor,” Tavi groans. “Of course he does. I’m sure this’ll go great.”

Tavi splits off to meet her moms while Miles and I make our way to Park’s on Park.

“Okay,” Miles says, “we grab the SoundMaxx from the backroom, take my dinghy to your place, get the recordings we need, pack up when we see your mom’s headlights, I ‘drop you off’ outside your front door and drive off before she sees I’m the one driving the cart and not my dad, and we’re in the clear. I don’t even need a wig!”

“That timing feels tight,” I say, wondering whether it’s too late to back out. This loose “plan” is already unraveling, and it hasn’t even started yet.

“You’re right,” Miles says. “We’re complete idiots for cutting it this close.”

I wait for the “but.” It doesn’t come. Miles keeps speed-walking toward Park’s on Park like his feet have wheels.

Then he laughs. “What do you want me to say? It’s not like we have a choice! This is our best and last chance to hear what the broken boy is trying to tell you if he’s not going to say it to your face. Our only other option is to do nothing. You wanna go with that one?”

He has a point.

Miles stops long enough to slap a hand on my shoulder. “All we need is a few minutes of recording. We’ll be in and out before your mom gets back.”

I have no idea whether that’s true, but Miles is right. Doing nothing isn’t a choice.

It’s a bummer that the first time I’m seeing Park’s on Park isn’t to actually eat here. I’ve heard so much about the place from him and Tavi that I know it must be delicious. The second we round the corner and I see the yellow-and-white-striped awning, it’s like I’ve entered smoked meat paradise, and the SoundMaxx is but a distant memory.

The place is packed, every table crammed with happy guests talking around smoking grates piled with sizzling pork and rice cakes. Huge exhaust pipes hang from the ceiling to suck up the smoke while diners wrap seaweed around red paste and rice and dip grilled pork and seaweed into anchovy sauce. It’s a blur of metal chopsticks and smoke and waiters in white shirts and red bandanas around their heads.

“Do not let my mom see you,” Miles says. “If she even thinks you’re hungry, she won’t let you leave until you’ve eaten an entire pig.”

A door from the back of the restaurant swings open to reveal a bustling kitchen, and out walks Jimin, making a beeline for his brother and me.

“Dad had to go home to fix a burst pipe. Mom put me on balancing the books so she could cashier, but she’s taking phone orders too!”

“Uh-oh,” Miles says.

“What does all that mean?” I ask, trying to keep up.

“It means if my mom sees me, she’s going to put me to work,” Miles says.

“Go!” Jimin hisses. “While you still can!”

“Min-Joon!! Oh, thank goodness!” I hear a voice call.

“Sorry, Little Bro,” Jimin whispers, hurrying to the back.

“Who’s Min-Joon?” I ask.

“Me, dummy,” Miles says. “She likes using my Korean name better.”

A small woman whose face I recognize from a certain video message to my mother comes running down the center aisle of the bustling restaurant. She expertly dodges the servers with their pans of hot coals. Her sparkly canvas shoes glimmer under dim lamplight as she scoots right up to Miles and says something to him in Korean.

“Eomma, I can’t; I promised—”

Miles’s mom holds his hand and pats the top of it as she pulls gently toward the back room, but there’s zero doubt in my mind this tiny woman could crush that hand between hers if she needed to. Miles can argue all he wants. He’s not leaving this restaurant anytime soon.

She stops long enough to notice me.

“This is Gus. Gus, my mom.”

“Nice to meet—”

“You’re hungry,” she deduces.

Then she takes my hand, too, and before I know it, we’re

both in the back room of the restaurant, a closet-sized office of sorts, with a folding table serving as a desk, a small stool, a computer monitor at least a decade old sitting in one corner, piles of papers and receipts in another, and a giant leather logbook plopped in the middle.

Miles’s mom says something else in Korean, and without a word of protest from either of them, Jimin stands and hands the pen to Miles. His mom pats me on the cheek, Jimin follows his mom to the cashier desk to take phone orders, and Miles drops down into Jimin’s place.

“Seriously?” I ask.

“This is going to take three hours at least,” Miles whimpers. “My parents are totally old school. They keep a record of EVERYTHING.”

“But now? It can’t wait?”

“Did you see it out there?” Miles says, flinging his arm toward the restaurant. “If we skip the books for one night, it takes a week to catch up again. I told you; we’re all part of the business. It’s pointless to argue with my mom.”

Now that I understand.

“You’re right,” I say, my brain scrambling to improvise a new plan. I want to pace, but the office is too small, so I can take only a couple steps before I turn around. I’m basically walking in circles. The second I turn once more, Miles’s mom is back with a metal folding stool, which she flips out with one flick of her wrist and onto which she shoves me down to sit.

“You’re hungry,” she says again. “Help Min-Joon with the books. You’re good at recordkeeping?”

“Not really,” I say.

“Help anyway,” she says.

Yep. Pointless to argue.

“Thank you for the stool,” I say to her back because she moves fast. She returns a second later with piles of barbequed pork, rice cakes, seaweed sheets, white rice, and a bowl of kimchi.

“I love you,” I whisper to her.

She pats me on the cheek again.

“Thanks, Eomma,” Miles says, frustrated but still polite.

As soon as his mom leaves, I dig in, fumbling with the chopsticks.

Miles glares at me.

“What? Eating helps me think!”

Miles lowers his head to the desk.

I’ve plowed through half of my pork and seaweed when inspiration strikes. “I can do it!” I say. “If it’s just writing down numbers and adding columns, I can do that. Basic math. No problem. You go to the manor and set up the Sound-thingy!”

“Cool, cool,” Miles frowns, turning the logbook toward me. “How’s your Hangul?”

Beside every dollar amount and date is what I can only assume are words made from the Korean alphabet. In answer to Miles’s question, my Hangul is nonexistent.

Miles shakes his head. “You’re going to have to set up the antennae alone,” he says.

“What? No. Negative. Terrible idea,” I say, tackling  the kimchi.

“Wait, have you had kimchi before?” Miles asks, trying to bat away my chopsticks, but I dodge him.

“Yeah, at a buffet once. It’s pickled cabbage, right?” I say, stuffing a bite into my mouth.

“Uh, not exactl—”

This is what it feels like to incinerate from the inside. My tongue may never recover. It’s a shame too. I still had some pork left.

“I tried to warn you,” Miles says.

I set the plate down on my chair.

“It has to be me?” I ask after regaining feeling in my mouth.

Miles leans back in his chair and pulls a rectangular box almost as tall as me from behind the door. The box is completely unmarked aside from the shipping label and FRAGILE stamps. It could be weapons-grade plutonium in there for all I know.

“Miles, I blew up a microwave once making oatmeal. I’m not your man—trust me.”

“It’s really straightforward,” Miles says, shoving the box into my hands. “Basically, you unfold it, plug it in, aim it, and turn it on; it does the rest for you. That’s it. Honestly, you’re probably doing most of the work by being there.”

Oh. I get it. Because I’m the ghost bait.

“I never really thought of it that way,” I say.

“Hey, we all have our gifts, right?” he grins, slapping me on the arm.

“Wait,” I say. “How am I going to get back to Nameless?”