Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware by M.T. Anderson Read Free Book Online

it was your vision playing tricks on you?” said Lily.
    â€œI am afraid not,” said Jasper. “Choate saw it too.”
    â€œChoate,” muttered Katie, more to herself than to anyone else.
    â€œKatie, you said that you saw something, too?” asked Lily.
    â€œHold, 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.”
    â€œWho?” asked Lily.
    â€œThat I don’t know,” said Jasper. “I justknow that they somehow reached me on the astral plane.”
    â€œYou should just get a cell phone,” said Katie. “Or inventorate one.”
    â€œThere is something sinister going on,” Jasper mused.
    â€œYeah,” 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 storyof her going out to sit on the gymnasium steps and what she had seen there: the mysterious deal between Mr. Lecroix and Team Mom.
    â€œMr. Lecroix,” said Jasper. “I know that name.”
    â€œBut 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.”
    â€œYeah!” 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.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” Lily called to him, running after.
    â€œThis is big. This is very big.” Jasper frowned.“And I remember now who Lecroix is. Everything falls into place.”
    â€œWho is he?” asked Katie.
    â€œErnest Lecroix is the director of the Pelt Museum. I once went there to donate artifacts from Venus and ancient Greece.”
    â€œI didn’t know there were things from you in the Pelt Museum,” said Katie. “That’s cool.”
    â€œThere 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.”
    â€œHow did you know about the spoons?” said Lily. “What’s going on, Jasper?”
    â€œWhat 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.”

15
    â€œI’ve been to Delaware,” said Katie. “My uncle Brad worked there as a door-to-door knife salesman.”
    Lily was lost. She didn’t see how any of this added up.
    Jasper, however, was adamant. “We’ll take the Gyroscopic Sky Suite,” * he said.
    He was anxious and moody. He wouldn’t look at Katie or Lily. He stared into the sumac and the tangled, gray grass.
    Then he sighed and began speaking. “Foralmost a year, I studied the ancient arts of meditation at a secret monastery in the mountains,” he said.
    â€œWe know,” said Katie. “It’s in
Jasper Dash and His Vertiginous Propeller Suit.
”
    Lily corrected softly, “I think it’s
Jasper Dash and the Sponge-Cake of Zama.
” And to Jasper she said, “You went to Tibet.”
    Jasper’s mouth was thin. “It was not,” he admitted, “precisely Tibet.” He sighed, and the autumn wind blew a lock of his