Ice Shock (7 page)

I look at her slowly. “I'm feeling a little sick, yeah …”

She touches my forehead with the back of her hand. “You don't feel feverish … but you're shaking.”

“Huh … so I am …”

Mom wraps her arms around my shoulders and gives me a long hug. “My poor baby. Get to bed and I'll bring you a cup of tea.”

My voice muffled against Mom's hair, I mutter, “I'm not a baby.” But I don't stop her hugging me. Truth is I hardly notice, I'm so wrapped up in my thoughts. The implications are staggering.

I mean … everything that Tyler knows. It explains why he's so skeptical about my UFO-abduction cover story, why I've never felt able to fully trust him. The one thing I can't figure out is
how
.

I've known Tyler by sight for years. Did Madison recruit him? Is there some sort of organization?

Then something truly horrible occurs to me.

What if Tyler and Ollie are working together?

I feel physically sick.

What if he was texting Ollie? What if she's the link with Madison, not Tyler? Now that I really think hard about it, both
Tyler and Ollie came into my life around the time of the burglary. Okay, I'd known Ollie as “TopShopPrincess” from my blog, but only for a few weeks. What if Tyler overheard me talking about my blog with someone at capoeira, and then contacted Ollie to tell her to start commenting on it? Did I ever talk about my blog, though? I start to panic, struggling to remember.

Dad had been interested in the Ix Codex for months before he went missing. The NRO knew about it, so whatever outfit Madison works for—if there is anyone else—they might have known about it too. Ollie and Tyler could
both
have known about the Ix Codex long before I did.

What if they've both been watching me from the start?

I try to think through everything they could know, everything that could put me in danger. My mind is racing, my heartbeat too.

I need to calm down. Be logical
.

Abruptly, I pull away from my mother.

Mom strokes my frozen hands. “Would you like something to eat too?”

“No,” I say, feeling distant. “I mean, yes, a sandwich, please.”

“Well, you can't be all that sick … ,” Mom says with a smile, kissing my cheek.

I need food because I need to think. One of them betrayed me—Tyler or Ollie. Maybe even both.

I need to figure out which—and fast.

I lie spread-eagled on top of my duvet, staring at the ceiling until Mom arrives with my food and tea.

I kind of like getting this attention from Mom. I start concocting this little fantasy where Mom knows all about my secret life and waits at home for me with tea and homemade cookies and sympathy.

But that could never happen. If Mom knew … whew. There's no way she'd let me out of the house.

So, Ollie? Or Tyler? Or both?

I think about Ollie.

The way she kissed me
.

That was acting? If it was, I don't know how I can ever trust a girl again. I could never, never pretend like that.

I can't tell whether I'm angry, upset, or scared. It's some horrible combination of all three.

And I write:

The Case Against Ollie:

1. She came from nowhere, just in time to get involved in the Ix Codex mystery.

2. She got me out of the house last night, the only time when someone could have stolen the pages from the document folder.

I think
really
hard, then add:

3. In Mexico, after I'd been to Ek Naab, she kept asking me what was in the case I was carrying, and where I got it.

4. She heard me mention to Rodrigo that my dad might have been in Saffron Walden because of a famous archaeologist.

The Case Against Tyler:

1. He only really started being my friend after my dad's disappearance.

2. He got me out of the house the night of the burglary earlier this year.

3. After Madison stole Mom's copy of the John Lloyd Stephens book from my house, I tried to replace it and found it in a secondhand bookstore in Jericho. How come Madison showed up at that shop? Only Tyler knew I was on my way there.

4. And how come Madison showed up in Saffron Walden?
Only Tyler knew I was on my way … and he wouldn't let me see who he was texting on the bus trip.

On paper it looks pretty balanced. One's as shady as the other.

My heart tells me it's Tyler … my gut tells me it's Ollie.

And my head tells me that it really could be both.

I get very close to calling Montoyo on my Ek Naab phone. Only the total dumbness of what I may have done stops me.

But then I get to thinking. What if the copied pages of the codex don't actually contain any important information—what if they only contain information that couldn't possibly be of any use? Stuff that could never harm Ek Naab?

Then all that running around in Batman costumes has been a wild-goose chase—nothing more. And all that's really happened is that I've exposed Tyler. Or Ollie. Or both.

For the first time, this idea gives me some hope. I even manage a grim smile, thinking of the NRO getting all excited, imagining they'd found the Ix Codex down in Saffron Walden. Only to find a big fat zero.

Maybe it's not such a disaster. Maybe I can decipher those pages myself and see what's written there. Then I'll know if I'm in big trouble—or not.

I munch the sandwich, licking my fingers as I bring up the scans of the codex on my computer screen.

Thank God I scanned them
…

I stare for ages at the page with a few glyphs translated into syllables. It takes me an hour struggling with a Mayan dictionary to work out that there's something wrong.

Each Mayan word is written as a glyph made up of a few symbols that represent syllables, all stuck together. Except when the glyph is one picture, one word—an ideogram.

If you can read the syllables, you should be able to put them together to make words that exist in the Mayan language. A syllable can be something like
ek
(meaning “black” or “dark”) or
naab
(meaning “pool” or “water”). Stuck together, these become the glyph for “Ek Naab.”

Well, I keep staring at the syllables on the pages I scanned, trying to work out the words they make. But all I get are words that I can't find anywhere in the Mayan dictionary.

It's not that I can't recognize the syllables. I know plenty, like
kan
,
ta, na
,
el
,
ek,
and
to
.

But the words—gobbledegook!

Unless this is some older or different version of Mayan writing that used a different system of arranging the syllables to make words, then these are not Mayan words.

As in, the codex is not written in Classic Mayan.

And then I remember what they told me when I was in Ek Naab meeting the other Bakabs, descendents of Itzamna who guard the four Books.

The Books of Itzamna are written in code
.

Of course. Mayan glyphs, but not Mayan language. Like writing that uses letters from the English alphabet but is in another language.

But how to crack the code?

From what I can tell, the “translation” page is nothing more than an incomplete syllabary—a translation of some of the syllables. As if someone, perhaps Eric Thompson himself, tried to decode the Mayan inscription.

My guess is that he got no further than I did. And I'm sitting here with a Mayan dictionary—which Thompson couldn't have had, because in his day, no one alive could read Mayan hieroglyphs…

And yet. I keep staring at the “translated” words I've written. There's something weirdly familiar about them. I just can't tell what.

kan-ta-na. el-ek-to mak-ne-ti-ka pul-sa
.

Mom knocks softly at my door. “Feeling better?”

I'm miles away, thinking about glyphs. “Hmm?”

Mom clears her throat, a little nervously. “Can we talk about Christmas again?”

I look up in silence.

“I've been thinking that I'd like us to go on a retreat.”

I gulp down a mouthful of my sandwich. “A retreat? Like, in a convent or something?”

“Yes.”

“No way. No way
on earth
.”

Mom presses her lips together tightly. In a very quiet voice, she says, “Well, let's talk about it some other time, when you're feeling better.”

“There's no way I'm spending Christmas at a convent!”

“Hmm,” she says vaguely. “Oh, I almost forgot, there was a postcard for you today. From Mexico. There must be some kind of funny ad campaign going on, because I've had a couple too. You might have seen them lying around.”

I stare at her, baffled. “Postcard?”

“They're in the kitchen. You didn't see?”

I follow Mom downstairs as she carries back the tray. In the kitchen, she pulls a postcard from a pile of envelopes. Then she takes two postcards from the fridge door. One I recognize as a photo of Tikal, the famous Mayan city they used as the rebel base in the first
Star Wars
film.

How long have those postcards been on the fridge door? I've managed to miss them entirely.

She tosses all three onto the table. All are photographs of different Mayan cities. I turn them over, one by one.

The same capitalized writing. A few words on each card.

DEATH.UNDID.HARMONY.

WHAT.KEY.

Those are the messages on Mom's two cards.

My latest message reads, ZOMBIE.DOWNED.

“It must be some kind of game,” she says. “We must be on some mailing list after your trip this summer.”

“I've got one of these postcards,” I tell Mom. “You didn't say that there were others …”

I check the location stamps. All mailed from Veracruz. I get my own first postcard and check the dates, then arrange the cards in order of arrival. Put together, the messages read like this:

WHAT.KEY.HOLDS.BLOOD
.

DEATH.UNDID.HARMONY
.

ZOMBIE.DOWNED
.

“It's rather odd,” Mom admits. I glance at her. Not a trace of irony—she totally means it! It's amazing what your brain will miss when you're completely in denial.

But me—I know better. To the untrained eye, it might look like gibberish, but somewhere, somehow, there's a message. It's meant for me.

And it almost certainly spells danger.

If there's going to be danger, then suddenly a retreat seems like a pretty safe place for my mom.

“So tell me more about this retreat …”

“We could stay with the Benedictines at Worth Abbey … they're really interesting and lovely people, and it's not all praying, you know …”

Warily I say, “Mom … you do know I don't even believe in God anymore?”

She waves a hand, shrugs. “Oh, all teenagers go through that. The thing is to keep going to Mass, so that you're always open to the Holy Spirit.”

“But … how can I believe in a God that let my dad be
murdered
?”

Mom sighs. “That's the sort of thing you can talk about at the retreat. There'll be people around who can answer those questions better than I.”

I shake my head. “I'm not going. But …”

“Go on …”

I take a deep breath. “I think
you
should go. It'd be good for you, over Christmas.”

“But, Josh … without you?”

“You need something like this. And me … I need to be with my friends.”

Although right now I can hardly imagine what friends
…

Mom takes my hand. “I'm sorry. This has all been terrible for you, I see that now. I'm sorry if I was wrapped up with my own problems before. But don't you think we should be together—the first Christmas without your father?”

“I think that you need the praying and the talking and stuff … and I don't.”

“And what do you need, Josh, to stay up late, hanging around with girls, listening to loud music?”

I grin and shrug. “Well, yeah, Mom, I'm fourteen!”

“Who would you stay with? Tyler? Ollie?”

“Probably not, actually. I might stay with Emmy. From school.”

“Emmy?” Mom eyes me suspiciously. “Is she your girlfriend now?”

“No! She's just a friend.”

“Because I don't think you should stay with a girlfriend.”

I groan. “Mom!”

“Anyway,” she continues, “in case you were wondering, Rodrigo called me back yesterday. About that whole business
with him thinking he'd seen your father. Rodrigo checked his calendar. Turns out he was also in Saffron Walden a couple of months before, in April. They made the recording then, in the same church. He's been wondering if he could have had the occasions confused. Seen your father the first time he was there, not in June.”

I'm stunned. “He actually said that?”

“Well, he wasn't sure. To be honest, he still thought it could have been June. But the facts simply don't match with June, do they?”

I chew my lip. Now that I've actually been to Saffron Walden, I know that the facts show that it
was
June. But I can't let on.

“I suppose they don't.”

Mom seems satisfied. “Well, Josh, I'm going on that retreat. I feel strongly that you should come too, but you're too old to be forced.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say seriously. “Thanks for thinking I'm old enough to choose.”

She sniffs. “It's a pity I don't agree with your choice. But I suppose that's how it is when your children grow up.”

Mom looks happier now. And I'm happy too—happy that I've found a way to keep Mom out of any danger while I investigate all the weird things that have started happening. I have this unexpected feeling of being Mom's protector, instead of the other way around. It doesn't feel bad, not at all.