The Lost Days by Rob Reger Read Free Book Online Page B

How did I learn to pick locks? Interesting.
    Inside, the van was a little disappointing. There were tubes and wires and stuff everywhere, but it looked to me like they were just for show. So it’s an art car. Not a mobile laboratory. But still, pretty cool.
    Hunted all over the van looking for clues and was just about to give up when I remembered to look under the seats. I was feeling around under the driver’s seat when I found something metal that felt like a lever, so I pulled it, and there was this unlatching sound, and a little hidden compartment clicked open in the side of the van. Sweet! And inside was a cat collar like Miles’s and NeeChee’s with a tag for “Sabbath”! Asked the cats, and sure enough, the one with the shredded ear, the Cat Formerly Known as Cabbage, answers to “Sabbath”! I put the collar on him. This is GOOD stuff—a solid link between the van and the cats! I bet the van and the cats were Rachel’s.And that makes it even more likely she didn’t leave under good circumstances—because what kind of person would leave their cats behind, unless there was foul play? And I bet the cats have adopted me because I am so much like her. Am looking forward to finding the last collar.

    Sabbath

    I found one other thing in the van worth writing about. I think it pretty much confirms my theory that Raven is a cold-blooded murderer who killed Rachel, my mother, most likely after a riproaring, hairpulling struggle inside the van.
    It’s a chunk of her wig.
    Very, very late, or early, depending on how you look at it
    Hung out at Jakey’s and didn’t leave until around dawn. He has this game called Brats Blow Chunks that we both just had to beat. It took a while.
    Hadn’t seen him since my ordeals with Police and School. It was kind of nice how, when he first saw me, he looked worried for about a second, and then he just started laughing.
     
    
J AKEY :
   
You ran a restaurant that served human flesh?
    
M E :
   
[Laughing.] Good one, huh?
    
J:
   
No wonder you got 40 years of detention.
    
M E :
   
Yeah, well, just wait till I get my revenge.
    
J:
   
I think you already did.
    
M E :
   
What are you talking about?
    
J:
   
Come on, you know it yourself. You won, and those people will never get over it.
    
M E :
   
[Getting very interested.] That’s what I was hoping. I mean, it was kind of cheating to have Attikol buy my way out. It’s almost like admitting I was guilty in the first place.
    
J:
   
Well, that’s not how they see it. I think they just lost their favorite victim.
    
M E :
   
How do you know? You see them at the medicine show or something?
    
J:
   
Oh yeah. Everyone in town shows up there sooner or later. Anyway, sad cases. Your teachers have been arguing with their goldfish, and writing them detention slips, and suspending them from extracurricular activities. And your favorite patrolman just boughthimself an entire case of Ümlaut’s Pätented Pötion of Pöwer.
    
M E :
   
Say no more. You’ve made me a very happy girl.
    
J:
   
[Laughing.] By the way: toaster.
     

    FISH POOP IS NOT FISH FOOD!

    Day 10
    Had an excellent creepy dream that involved flying around Blackrock like a bird. After I got tired of daredevil aerial stunts, I started looking around town for somewhere to land. I didn’t want to land on anything painted beige; I knew that stuff was deadly. And wouldn’t you know—I couldn’t find anything not painted beige. Started getting really tired and anxious to find a place to land, even for a second, but I couldn’t find the minipark tree, and the buildings started crowding together so that I couldn’t even find the ground. Finally I got so exhausted I just dropped out of the sky onto this beige roof. Right away the paint licked up my legs and crawled up my body and over my face, all cold and sticky and beigelike, into my mouth and