Jasper Dash’s house was the only one on the street with a hangar and a missile silo. The other houses were ranch style, meaning flat. They had basketball hoops in their driveways and drum kits in their two-car garages. Jasper’s house had walls of block glass and panels of metal, curved stucco corners, and huge, white, saucer-shaped decks, below which wild hedges grew.
After the game, Lily went to Jasper’s house for lunch to console him. Katie rode her bike over to meet them there. She no longer was thinking about Choate’s meanness. She was thinking about stolen artifacts.
Lunch wasn’t ready, so Mrs. Dash sent them out to walk in the woods until the macaroni was cooked. It would take a while to cook. The Dashes had a microwave, but it didn’t work very well. Jasper had invented it himself years before. It was so old and primitive that when it was on, you could actually see the atoms bouncing around inside like the numbered Ping-Pong balls in the state lottery.
Having set the table, the three put on their coats and set out behind the house along the broad, leafy trails where Jasper had, a lifetime ago, zipped along on his first vehicle, the Astonishing Gasoline Velocipede. They walked past hillock and swamp.
It was autumn. The leaves were brown or off.
The three of them walked along in a line. Their breath came out in steam. “Don’t worry, Jasper,” said Katie. “There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I let my team down,” said Jasper. “I wanted to show them that I could be one of them, though I may dress differently. Inflatably. And instead, why, Katie, I lost the game for them.”
“First of all, you didn’t lose the game for them,” said Katie. “Everyone lost their own round. And second of all, I have to say, I don’t think Choate Brinsley is so great, anyway. It’s okay to let him down.”
Lily kicked up leaves with her toe and said, “Jasper, it sounds like the Delaware team cheated somehow.”
“Illegal mid-round eye substitution,” said Jasper, shaking his head. “Completely unnerving. This league has gone to the dogs.”
Lily asked, “What do you mean when you say Number One’s eyes were different?”
“Like a cat’s eyes. You know what a cat’s eyes look like?”
“No,” said Katie. “Because my cat is so completely lazy. I’ve never seen her eyes actually open.”
“Which?” said Lily. “Trish?”
“She didn’t move for a week. Dad thought she was dead. We were about to bury her when someone noticed the chicken was missing from the counter.”
“Maybe,” interrupted Jasper firmly, “his eyes were more like a snake’s.”
“That’s the only pet lazier than a cat,” said Katie. “They move once a month.”
“You don’t think it was your vision playing tricks on you?” said Lily.
“I am afraid not,” said Jasper. “Choate saw it too.”
“Choate,” muttered Katie, more to herself than to anyone else.
“Katie, you said that you saw something, too?” asked Lily.
“Hold, chums,” said Jasper, putting up his hand. “There’s one more detail. When I was in my trance, someone called out to me. Through ESP. Someone, somewhere, needs help.”
“Who?” asked Lily.
“That I don’t know,” said Jasper. “I just know that they somehow reached me on the astral plane.”
“You should just get a cell phone,” said Katie. “Or inventorate one.”
“There is something sinister going on,” Jasper mused.
“Yeah,” said Katie. “I’ve got to tell you about the van.”
They turned a corner onto a broad, rutted track softened by moss and fallen pine needles. They walked down an avenue of ancient concrete bunkers built into the hillside, covered with grass and spruce trees and birches. The doors were massive and rusted shut. They had not been opened for many years.* Katie narrated the story of her going out to sit on the gymnasium steps and what she had seen there: the mysterious deal between Mr. Lecroix and Team Mom.
“Mr. Lecroix,” said Jasper. “I know that name.”
“But here’s the weirdest treasure in the van,” said Katie. “A model of some kind. It was of a building, like a fortress or something. Everything else she showed him was made out of gold and silver and coral. This was made out of cardboard.”
Jasper stopped in his tracks. “And it had spoons on the roof.”
“Yeah!” said Katie. “Plastic spoons! And you knew, how?”
Jasper gazed into the spruce. He said nothing.
He turned around and started marching back to the house.
“What’s going on?” Lily called to him, running after.
“This is big. This is very big.” Jasper frowned. “And I remember now who Lecroix is. Everything falls into place.”
“Who is he?” asked Katie.
“Ernest Lecroix is the director of the Pelt Museum. I once went there to donate artifacts from Venus and ancient Greece.”
“I didn’t know there were things from you in the Pelt Museum,” said Katie. “That’s cool.”
“There are not things from me,” said Jasper. “Why, Mr. Lecroix did not believe that I had been to Venus or to ancient Greece. He rejected my donations, using as an excuse that he wished to stand by the museum’s proud concentration on traditional butter-churning techniques.”
“How did you know about the spoons?” said Lily. “What’s going on, Jasper?”
“What does all this mean?” asked Katie.
Jasper stopped in his tracks and turned to them. “It means, my friends, gather up your khakis and pith helmets. We are going, chums, to Delaware.”