This didn’t make any sense to Ollie. “But,” she burst out, “to burn bone to ash, the fire would have had to burn at fourteenhundreddegrees at least, for two hours or more.” Ollie had done a lot of research about fires in the last year. Trying to prove to herself that there had been a way, some possible way... There hadn’t been, of course. But she was left with useless knowledge about fires.
Mr. Easton looked pleased. Ollie had spent the last year determinedly silent in class, and here she was spouting random facts. “You aren’t the first one to point that out, Ollie,” said Mr. Easton. “There have been a lot of theories. Maybe the fire burned hotter than normal. Leftover heating oil, some compound in the paint. Tar.
“Those men from before,” Ollie heard herself saying. “The husband and brother-in-law—they disappeared too...or maybe the children just weren’t there.”
“Where would they have gone?” Ollie heard herself say. “Isn’t that a lot of people to justdisappearon one farm?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Easton. “That’s why they call it an unsolved mystery. The county sheriff questioned Garrett Webster pretty well, of course. A big party searched the farm grounds, thinking perhaps the fire was to cover up a crime.”
At this the whole class perked up.
“They didn’t find anything,” said Mr. Easton, suddenly brisk, seeing the eager faces. “You gang of ghouls. Because there was nothing to find. Five years ago, Linda Webster rebuilt the old farm by the river, got it running, has been hugely successful. Now we’re going there today, not to dwell on the past, but to learn more about the future of farming in this state. So can anyone tell me...”
Storytime was over. Ollie wished class was over. There was something in all this she didn’t understand. She wanted to keep reading.
7
IT WAS STILL RAININGby the time they got done with homeroom. Ollie had listened to the announcements, with half an ear, fingers itching for her book. She could still hear Mr. Easton’s voice sayingthey never found any bodies.
But Ollie didn’t have time to read yet. They were going to the farm. The bell rang and the sixth grade piled outside, pulling on caps and coats and backpacks. The bus squatted in the middle of the wet parking lot like a prehistoric swamp monster, the two golden eyes of its headlights gleaming out through the fog.
Mr. Easton popped out of the bus door and the swamp-monster illusion dissolved. “Hurry up!” he shouted, waving his arm. The sixth grade hurried through the rain. Already, rows of faces peered through the bus’s misted-up windows.
Ollie splashed across the puddled parking lot, cradlingher book under her rain jacket. The bus was steamy warm. “There you are, Ollie,” said Mr. Easton.
Ollie didn’t answer. She was frowning at the bus driver. He was big, with a thick gray beard. In fact, he was sort of gray all over. Gray-white. Mushroom-colored. Except his lips were red. He gave her a shifting sideways grin. Ollie decided she didn’t like his grin.
“Where’s Ms. Hodges?” she asked. Ms. Hodges was their usual driver. She had been driving Evansburg school buses for forever. She would call students by their older siblings’ names and sometimes ask Ollie, with a vaguely sympathetic tone, what she was reading.
“Resting,” said this bus driver. Ollie, for no reason at all, thought of the skeleton in the Brewsters’ attic lurching down the stairs. “Had to rest, did Ms. Hodges.”
“Ollie,” said Mr. Easton. “First of all, be polite. Second of all, find a seat! It’s time to go. Mr.—Jones, was it?—works on the farm. He very kindly volunteered to take over for Ms. Hodges. Such beautiful misty weather! What an adventure we’ll have today, hm?”
Ollie, not being part walrus, did not like bad weather. Also, the bus driver didn’t seem much like a Mr. Jones to her. But Mr. Easton was getting impatient. Ollie peered down the aisle. There were no empty seats. Except...
No—really?
The only empty spot was next to Brian Battersby. Well, sort of empty. Even though Brian wasn’t that big, he took up most of the seat, sprawling and joking with his two friends in front of him. Why wasn’t one ofthemsitting next to him? Hockey stars didn’t sit by themselves.
Ollie marched down the aisle. Coco Zintner was sitting next to Monika Damron, who had headphones on and was ignoring her. Coco was scribbling in her sparkly notebook. Ollie, glancing down, saw that the notebook was open to a drawing of a chessboard with a lot of arrows and cross-outs. This surprised Ollie. In her mind, Coco Zintner and chess diagrams didn’t go together.
Ollie looked closer. Coco’s drawing was a picture of an endgame, the last few moves of a match. The white side was losing. Before she could stop herself, Ollie muttered, “White castle to h6 and mate in five moves.”
The new girl jumped, looked at her paper, then looked up at Ollie. A sunrise of openmouthed delight dawned on her face. In fact, she looked so happy that it made Ollie feel snappish. “Obviously,” she added.
Snappish because of memory. Her mother had been a math professor at Evansburg College. She had taught Ollie math with games. Multiplication, division. Later algebra, and then geometry: symbols like magic spells, written on the skin of the world. She would entertain Ollie on hikes by setting her a problem at the trailhead and asking for ananswer at the top of the mountain. One night, Ollie had overheard her mom whisper to her dad, “Well, Olivia is better than I was at her age. Let’s try her on music and chess; they often go with math.”
They had put the upright piano in the entryway of the Egg (the only place it would fit) and Ollie had begun plinking out songs; they had given her a chess set, and Ollie still remembered the taste of triumph, the celebratory piece of apple pie, on the evening she’d first beaten her mom without having been spotted a piece.
But the piano had sat silent for nearly a year now, and Ollie’s dad wasn’t good at chess.
Coco took no notice of Ollie’s tone. “You play chess?” she said, shrill with delight.
Ollie supposed Coco had a right to be surprised. Coco hadn’t known Olliebefore. Coco was so excited, she had begun to wrinkle the paper on her lap. “Want to play? I don’t have a set, but we can call it—”
“No,” said Ollie.
“But...” Coco drooped at once.
