The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno Read Free Book Online Page A

secret passageway behind a large painting of a
    pale lady; i was too frightened to enter
    but Billy, like always, led the way
    we crept past the rather large wooden door and
    into a narrow hallway which wound downwards
    there were a number of cobwebs inhabited by a variety of
    long-legged, menacing-looking spiders, but we simply marched on
    the three of us, Billy holding the light, Fenton mumbling, and me
    looking behind for any sign of a ghost, bandit, or otherwise
    unlikely villain; we then discovered a large trunk, which when opened, as
    you might have expected, revealed the pirate’s glowing costume …
    The boy detective places the diary under the mattress of the creaking bed. Then Billy lifts the True-Life Junior Detective kit out of his suitcase, staring at it with a remembered softness and a certain kind of disdain. It has not aged well: The corners are caved in and the cartoon boy on the cover of the box—a boy who had once been blond and whose hair is now gray and dirty—holds up a magnifying glass, discerning a secret message which will never be completely translated. The box is now old and sunken, the cartoon child small and withered, the paper having begun to turn and decay.
    Billy, ignoring his shaking hands, begins to open the kit, then stops himself, and finally decides to place it in the bottom drawer of the white dresser. He closes the drawer and stares at it, behind which the detective kit lies, unopened; the boy detective can only dream of what might be inside.
    We cannot blame him for putting it away. We cannot. We cannot blame him for being afraid.

    SIX
    The boy detective begins to pack his bag again, removing the lovely press clippings from his walls, folding them so gently, returning them to his small yellow suitcase. He is through the double glass doors of Shady Glens and walking down the street, when Effie Mumford, still in her purple and white winter jacket, comes hurrying after him.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I did not think I was ready and now I know it,” he huffs, hurrying toward the bus stop at the end of the block.
    “But wait. What about my bunny? Aren’t you going to find its head?”
    “I can’t help you with that.”
    “But you said you’re a detective, didn’t you?”
    “Yes. No. Not anymore.”
    “But look,” the girl says, stopping, reaching into her puffy pocket, and retrieving her bright purple wallet. “Here is a dollar if you can find it.”
    “I don’t want your money,” Billy says, setting down his suitcase, breathing heavy.
    “No, take it and find out.”
    The boy detective stares at the soft, wrinkled dollar. He stares at her small open palm, her weirdly round face, the white patch over one eye, the smashed glasses. He thinks he is staring at the picture of how his heart must look: small and sad and mashed. Billy pauses, feeling the sun beat down on his neck, the sweat on his forehead, the smell of the flowers outside—puffy and sweet—the barking of a dog somewhere, the sky looming wide open above his head, the sound of bees glowing in the very last moments of summer, and he knows if he were to keep walking toward the bus stop, he would never see any of these things again. He would never try again: He would simply walk back into the familiar, perfect world of his own death. The boy detective closes his fist around the money and smiles slowly.
    “OK, yes.”
    “Yes?”
    “Yes. I will find it. I will solve this case by the end of the week.”
    “Good. Thank you. Thank you, Billy.”
    The girl stares up at him with a grin as wide as some unnamed equatorial line, and then she squeezes his hand.
    The boy detective turns, picks up his bag, and begins walking decisively back toward Shady Glens. He hurries back into his room, hoping no one has noticed his quick departure, lays his suitcase on the floor, and climbs onto his bed. He finds one of his bottles of pills, the Ativan, and takes two more than he should and very, very soon his vision begins to blur.