The Box and the Bone Read Online Free PDF Page A

with it. Didn’t you say they were going to meet in front of Eddy’s garage? You know, after dinner, if Bucky gets out of being grounded.”
    “Yes,” Susie said uncertainly. “They said if. They said they’d meet if Bucky could sneak out.”
    Muffy made a snorting noise. “He’ll get out,” she said. “He always does.”
    “Well,” Susie said, “I don’t know if I can get out.”
    Muffy gave her a disgusted look. “Sure you can. All you have to do is watch for Carlos to leave, and as soon as he does you come over to my backyard. Okay? If those jerks can sneak out, so can we. Right?”
    Susie clenched her fists and stuck out her chin. “Right!” she said.
    Back at the fishpond Athena was still standing with the two dolls in her hands, watching as Muffy and Susie disappeared across the cul-de-sac. When they were out of sight she made the doll in her right hand bounce up and down and say to the doll in her left hand, “She said bone . Muffy said bone .”
    Then the doll in her left hand said, “Yes. Jinsky’s bone, I bet. Let’s go see if they took Jinsky’s bone.”
    Athena put down the dolls and headed for the Pit. By the time she’d finished putting Jinsky’s nice big bone back where it belonged she was starting to get hungry. So she went back to the fishpond, packed up her doll family, and went on home.

Chapter 9
    I T JUST SO HAPPENED that Rafe was in charge that night at the Garcias’. Carlos’s seventeen-year-old brother, Rafe, was usually in charge when both their parents were working late at their restaurant. That was fine with the other kids, because Rafe usually was too busy with his own stuff to be much of a nuisance. And on that particular night it simply meant that sneaking out would be especially easy.
    Right after dinner Carlos went to his room and waited for the signal that would mean that Bucky had escaped from being grounded. While he waited he sat by the window and thought about the tin box and the old coins that might be worth thousands of dollars.
    At first he was thinking only of what you could buy with that kind of money. Like a new bike and blade skates and all kinds of top-of-the-line sports equipment. He pictured himself walking into a Sporting World store and strolling up to the clerk and going, “Well, let’s see. Give me one of these, and two of those and a couple of those over there.” It was a fun thing to imagine—for a while. But too much of that kind of imagining can get you into trouble.
    Like, for instance, you could start wondering who had owned those old coins in the first place and what they had been planning to do with them someday. It was an uncomfortable thought. And it led to an even more uncomfortable one. Like wondering how much of a sin it would be to go ahead and keep all that money—without even trying to find out who the coins really belonged to.
    Carlos got up and walked around the room looking for something else to put his mind on. He picked up books and magazines, looked at them without really seeing them, and put them back down. He thought about listening to his Walkman—and realized that he couldn’t because it might make him miss Bucky’s signal. Time seemed to be going very slowly.
    The sun had been down for quite a while before a pebble finally bounced off his window. And by the time he’d tiptoed down the hall, snuck out the back door, and met Eddy in front of the Wongs’ garage, it was nearly dark.
    “Where’s Bucky?” he asked.
    Eddy grinned. “Officially?” he asked. Or unofficially?”
    Carlos grinned too. “Both, I guess.”
    “Well, officially he’s not here. And we haven’t seen him.” Eddy lowered his voice to a whisper and tipped his head toward the overgrown hedge that bordered the edge of Dragoland. “Unofficially, he’s hiding in the hedge.”
    Carlos’s smile widened. “Well, I guess we better go find him, then. Unofficially, of course.”
    They didn’t have to look very hard. They’d barely turned off the