I Kill the Mockingbird (12 page)

In the meantime, I’m still sort of shocked at what I did back at Mort’s. I kissed Michael Buskirk. At least I think I did. I wonder if he thinks that I did. If Elena is right, Michael
and I have started a conversation. But haven’t we kind of been having a conversation for our whole lives? That’s what friends do. But this is something new.

I take a picture book off a shelf and stare at the cover. Its title is
The Secret Circus
. I laugh out loud. This whole summer has been a secret circus. On the book’s cover, a group of tiny, smiling mice peer over the edge of a hot-air balloon
basket as they soar over nighttime Paris. Behind them, the city and the sky and even the brightly lit Eiffel Tower are simply drawn. I don’t see a circus anywhere. I’m guessing that the story inside this book is not really about the circus at all. I bet it’s about all the ways that those mice love each other and care for each other and even make each other crazy. That’s my favorite kind of story.
It strikes me that I’m living that story—secret circus and all—right now.

A familiar voice interrupts my thoughts. “Hello there!”

I turn and see Mr. Dobby heading toward me. “Oh,” I say. “Hello.”

Behind Mr. Dobby, Elena pokes her head out from the other side of a tall bookshelf. Just across the aisle from her, Michael does the same thing. The expressions on their faces are part terror and part—okay,
it’s all terror.

“Hello,” I say again to Mr. Dobby.

“I remember you!” he says. “You’re the young lady that crashed into Romance.”

“True Crime,” I tell him.

“No,” he says. “It was definitely Romance. What are you doing here?”

“Umm…” I wave
The Secret Circus
at him. “… shopping?”

“Alone?”

“I … uh … Why do you ask?”

He glances around as if somebody might be spying on us. Michael and Elena
duck behind cardboard displays. “Have you heard about the Mockingbird conspiracy?”

I stare at him blankly. “Are you talking about
To Kill a Mockingbird
?”

He nods. “That’s right. The whole thing has me keeping a very close eye on school-age shoppers this summer. I’m sure that a good girl like you is not involved, but—”

“What whole thing?”

Mr. Dobby steps back. His eyes open wide. “You don’t
know?”

“Know about what?” I ask innocently. At the same time, I look over the store manager’s shoulder and catch a glimpse of Elena and Michael quickly stuffing books behind nearby shelves. I’m not sure whether to laugh out loud or run for my life.

Mr. Dobby lowers his voice. “There is a secret and ongoing plot to prevent people from reading
To Kill a Mockingbird
!”

“There is?” I say.

He taps
a finger on the picture book in my hand. “Never mind
The Secret Circus
. This is a conspiracy!”

“
To Kill a Mockingbird
is on my school’s summer reading list,” I say.

“Do you have a copy?” Mr. Dobby asks me.

I nod. “It’s my favorite book.”

“You are very lucky.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Not everybody has been able to get their hands on the novel,” he explains.

Behind Mr. Dobby, Michael and
Elena finish their shelving and head for the exit. “Do you have copies available?” I ask the store manager.

“I do,” he says proudly. “A shipment arrived earlier today. It’s the first time we’ve been able to carry the book in weeks.”

“I know that some of my friends haven’t read it yet,” I say. “Do you think I could get a copy for them today?”

“You can!” exclaims Mr. Dobby. “Just follow me!”
He leads me past history and electronics and rock ’n’ roll. I see shelves filled with philosophy and baking and war and ballet. There’s even a display dedicated to zombie and vampire defense. I hope I never need one of those books, but I’m glad they’re here in case I do. In fact, I’m glad that all the books are here. The whole store reminds me just how much I love to read.

In front of me, the
store manager comes to a very sudden stop. “Mr. Dobby?” I say. “Is everything all right?”

Mr. Dobby says nothing.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

Mr. Dobby points at an empty shelf in front of us. “They’re gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gone!” The little man is on the verge of tears. “They’re all gone!”

“
To Kill a Mockingbird
?”

He nods.

“Maybe somebody bought them,” I suggest.

Mr. Dobby shakes his
head. He reaches out and pulls down the paper flyer that’s taped to the wall behind the empty shelf. He hands the little poster to me. I read the page aloud.

“I Kill the Mockingbird.”

19

The Second Most Exciting Funeral of All Time

“That was a close one,” Michael says once we step aboard the bus heading back to West Glover.

Elena points at the bag I’m holding. “It couldn’t have been that close. Lucy had time to shop.”

I take a seat as the bus lurches forward. “You weren’t standing next to Mr. Dobby when he started to cry. I had to buy something.” I pull
The Secret
Circus
out of my bag. “Also, I really wanted this book.”

Elena plops down beside me. Michael sits in the row ahead of us. He turns to face Elena. “Where did you hide your Mockingbirds?” he asks.

“Ornithology,” she replies.

“You hid
To Kill a Mockingbird
with the bird books?” I ask.

Elena shrugs. “I was being ironic.”

Michael pulls out his phone and punches at the screen. “I put mine behind
True Crime.”

“We are not criminals,” I say.

“Not true criminals.” Elena leans into me as the bus swings out of the mall parking lot.

I point at Michael’s phone. “Who are you calling?”

“I’m not calling anybody. I keep a list on my phone of all the places we’ve hidden books in case we ever get a chance to put them back.”

Elena shakes her head. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men—”

“—probably wouldn’t be enough to put all these books back where they belong,” Michael says.

They’re both right. Books are going missing all over the country now. I can’t imagine how we’ll ever be able to put them all back. This morning, we found online newspaper reports of I Kill the Mockingbird activity in Montgomery, Alabama; Salt Lake City, Utah; Madison, Wisconsin; and Spunky Puddle, Ohio.
“If we’ve made it there, we’ve made it everywhere,” Elena said when we saw the news from Spunky Puddle.

Michael’s reaction was a little different. “This is seriously out of control.”

Neither Elena nor I could disagree. On the bright side, every one of those articles mentioned a surge of renewed local interest in
To Kill a Mockingbird
. In Madison, the disappearing books inspired a local theater
group to stage
To Kill a Mockingbird
in a public park. In Montgomery, the local library announced plans to host a day-long, community-wide
To Kill a Mockingbird
read-aloud. Anybody can stop in, step up to the podium, and recite a few pages. There are rumors that Harper Lee herself might be there, if not in person, then in spirit. In Spunky Puddle, the mayor invited all one hundred seventy-two
Spunky Puddle citizens to join him for the movie version of
To Kill a Mockingbird,
which he’ll be showing on the back of his barn on Saturday night.

But then I think about Mr. Dobby. The look on his face was devastating. He was totally crushed when he found the empty shelf covered in I Kill the Mockingbird flyers. Not only that, even though we don’t want to admit it—not to the world and not to
ourselves—there are people out there who are stealing books under the I Kill the Mockingbird flag. We started this whole thing to do something good, but now bad things are happening, too. “You know it’s time to end this,” I say to Michael and Elena.

Michael looks up from his phone. Elena turns in her seat to face me. “Lucy,” she says, “we can’t just shut it off.”

“We have to,” I tell her.

“But it’s not just the books. It’s all the people who joined us online too.”

I look at Michael. “How many do you think there are?”

He shrugs. “Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands … Who knows?”

Outside, cars and trees and people glide by our windows. They are unaware that the fat, blue bus rolling past them contains a trio of radicals, rebels, and literary terrorists.

“We have to end it,” I say.

“What
if we can’t?” asks Elena.

“We can,” I promise.

The bus goes over a big bump as if the road beneath us disagrees.

Elena sighs. “But how?”

“We’ll just have to figure it out,” I say.

“We’ll need a big finish,” she tells me.

“We’ll need to not get caught,” says Michael.

“That would be good, too,” Elena agrees.

The bus takes a sharp corner then comes to a stop beside the Federal Green. It’s
late afternoon, the sky is blue, and the air smells like freshly cut grass. We’re the only ones getting off in West Glover, so we thank the driver then head over to the bleachers at the baseball field. A couple of T-ball teams are playing something that looks like baseball. I see Michael’s mom kneeling next to a little girl who is wearing a batting helmet the size of a spaghetti pot. Officer Buskirk,
still in her police uniform, whispers into the girl’s ear, and then the two of them break into laughter. A moment later, the child steps into the batter’s box. With her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, she stares at the ball, which is resting on a black tee in front of home plate. Suddenly, the girl swings clean and fast. The ball leaps off the end of her bat and flies far and deep
into center field.

“What did your mom say to that girl?” I ask Michael.

He shrugs. “She says something different to everybody.”

“Is it always the right thing?” Elena asks.

He gives a little smile. “Pretty much.”

We cheer for the little girl as she sprints around the bases. By the time she tags third, we are jumping up and down and screaming out loud. Michael’s mom sees us and starts to laugh.
“SAFE!” we all shout when the girl slides into home.

Officer Buskirk gives us a big smile and two thumbs up. “Your mom is proud of you,” I say to Michael.

He nods.

“Is that why you’re so good?” Elena asks him.

“I’m better than I’d be without her.”

“Is that why you don’t want to get in trouble?”

“Probably,” he admits.

A loud
PING!
from another aluminum bat connecting with a baseball interrupts
our conversation. The three of us turn to watch several small fielders run around with no apparent destination. Finally, the ball turns up in one of their gloves. From there, the game quickly turns into a mix of catch and tag and brawl. “I’m beginning to understand why they call this America’s pastime,” I say to Michael.

Elena shakes her head. “It’s like you can’t look away.”

“It’s because you
don’t want it to end,” Michael tells her.

“You know,” Elena says after a moment, “I really don’t want to go to high school.”

“High school will be fine,” I promise.

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re tall and smart, and now you’ve got a boyfriend.”

“Right,” I say. “Everybody in high school wants to be friends with geeky girls shaped like skyscrapers. As far as having a boyfriend, we hardly
kissed.”

“But you will.”

I shift uncomfortably on the hard bleacher seat. “We’ll see,” I say.

“Hello,” says Michael. “I’m sitting right here.”

“I just mean that it’s too soon to call you my boyfriend,” I explain.

“Fine,” says Michael, but he sounds annoyed.

“I wouldn’t mind calling you my boyfriend one day,” I tell him.

“Really?” he asks.

“Really.”

Elena rolls her eyes. “Well that didn’t
take long.”

“Elena,” I say, “you’re pretty, you’re smart, and you’re funny. High school boys are going to fall all over you.”

“That’s because they’ll trip on me before they notice I’m there.”

“You’ll cut them down to size,” I say.

“And then you’ll have them where you want them,” Michael tells her.

That makes Elena laugh.

“If you want them at all,” I add.

Elena sighs. “You really think it’s
going to be all right?”

“I know it will.” I remember what Mom told me back at the cemetery. “Because we’re going to do it together.”

The three of us sit quietly for a while. We watch the tiny T-ball players skip and run and laugh as they chase a bucket of tennis balls that Officer Buskirk has tossed onto the infield. Suddenly, Elena blurts out a question. “What if we throw a party?”

“For what?”
says Michael.

“That’s how we can end the whole Mockingbird thing.”

“A funeral for the Mockingbird?” I ask.

Michael looks up at the sky. “We weren’t supposed to kill it.”

“We didn’t,” says Elena. “And it won’t be just a funeral. It will be more like a festival.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I say. “Remember what Father Wrigley told us at Mr. Nowak’s funeral. It wasn’t just an ending.”

“It sure
wasn’t,” says Elena.

“How are we going to throw a funeral?” Michael asks.

“We’ll send out invitations,” says Elena as if it’s obvious. “And we’ll post it online, too. People from school and around town can come. Maybe our friends on the Internet will come, too. Even if they can’t, we’ll let them know that it’s time to put everything back where it belongs.” She looks around the Green. “We can
do it right here!”

Michael looks at Elena as if she’s lost her mind. “What happened to not getting caught?”

That stops Elena, but only for a second. “We’ll just have to do it in secret.”

“Are you serious?”

Elena stands and points at the park around us. “There’s picnic tables. There’s plenty of parking. There’s a playground. There’s a bandstand. This will work!”

“She’s serious,” I say to Michael.

“First we kill the mockingbird,” says Elena, “and then we throw the most exciting funeral of all time. What do you think?”