Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of the Hidden Jewels, Carrie Cross [positive books to read TXT] 📗

me. Our living room smelled like sweet sawdust and harsh sweat.

“Excuse me,” I said, trying to brush past him.

“No. You wait a minute,” he said, grabbing my arm with a calloused hand. My heart lurched. No one his age had ever threatened me before. The skin on Ignado’s cheeks was pitted with acne scars. His brown hair was separated into greasy hanks. He flipped a few of them over his left shoulder as he leaned toward me, reeking of cigarettes.

I pretended I was checking out the remodel as I looked around, hoping to spot my mom. She had a short day on Mondays, but didn’t always come right home after work. My dad was working in his lab, but there was so much construction noise he probably wouldn’t hear me unless I screamed as loud as I could. I tried to swallow, but my throat wasn’t working. “Um, what?” I stammered.

Ignado’s brown eye jittered as he glanced from one side of the room to the other, probably wondering if either of my parents were nearby. Then he stared at me hard and smirked. “Why’d you need my screwdriver for? When I borrowed it to you the other day.”

Feeling my hands bunching up by my sides, I forced myself to relax. Wouldn’t do any good to let him know he was scaring me. “Because I needed to hang a picture,” I fibbed. “In my room.”

“Well, I been in your room. An’ there ain’t no pictures hangin’ up there.” Ignado smiled and folded his arms, like he’d caught me in a lie. Proud of himself. He leaned toward me and his brown eye narrowed. “And I saw your kit, Little Miss Detective.” He spit out the words like he’d bitten into a raw onion. Glaring at me.

When I get scared I think of my grandfather telling me never to back down when I’m in the right. So I took a step closer. So close I could smell his dirty hair. “Well, I figured you wouldn’t know what a Dream Catcher was, so I called it a ‘picture.’ You know that wooden circle with yarn woven through it, decorated with seashells? That’s what I needed to screw into the wall.” I took a deep breath, hoping he hadn’t noticed I’d hung it with a nail, not a screw. “And, why were you in my room? There weren’t any curtains to hang up there.”

Ignado’s pale, cloudy eye didn’t close all the way when he blinked. The hand that wasn’t holding the screwdriver clenched into a fist. “Just checking on the remodel.” He glared at me. I noticed little balls of perspiration beading up on his forehead.

“OK. Sure,” I muttered.

“Don’t be stupid,” he warned.

Maybe I’d better start playing stupid, I thought, so they don’t think I’m a threat. “Huh?” I asked, like I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Nuthin’.”

I shrugged, brushed past him, and headed upstairs with my heart pounding.

My mom’s voice stopped me from the bottom of the first set of steps. I’d never been so glad to hear it in my life. “Skylar, hurry up. It’s after three.”

“Hurry up and what?” I asked, looking down the staircase at her.

“Ballet day, remember?” she called. I’d completely forgotten. Like I could even think about dancing around in my pink tights when there was a bunch of stinky bikers trying to find Xandra’s jewels before I did, threatening me inside my own house.

“Mom, I’m sick of ballet.” I got to the top of the second staircase and hurried into my room, out of sight of the construction creeps. My mom clomped up the stairs and came into my bedroom, looking annoyed. I whirled around, thinking fast. “It’s so boring compared to gymnasti—”

“Skylar.” She interrupted me, sticking out her index finger. I knew she was about to count something up to prove her point. “We just bought you new ballet shoes and tights.” Her first finger stood for the expense of my shoes and tights. “And money doesn’t grow on trees around here.” She looked at me to make sure I was paying attention before she touched her middle finger. “We pay in advance each month and you have prepaid lessons to take. We can’t afford to waste money since we just bought this huge new house that you and your father insisted on.”

That we insisted on. Nice. “OK, I’ll pay you back for the lessons. I’m sick of bal—”

She wasn’t finished. Her ring finger was next. “You said you wanted to take ballet for another year and—”

“And I changed my mind. I’m tired of it now. It’s boring and I hate the music.” And I have clues to find!

My mom talked right over me. “—when you make a commitment, you stick to it.”

“I have homework.” And I need to find the next clue before Crew Gang does. Ignado called me, Little Miss Detective. They obviously know I’m looking for the hidden jewels too.

“You can do it after dinner. Now hurry up and get ready.” She clip-clopped down the stairs and I grabbed my head in my hands. I can’t leave the house while Crew Gang is here! I wanted to tell my mom so badly that the construction workers were threatening me. Trying to beat me to Xandra’s jewels. But I couldn’t say a word if I wanted to find them first. My mom was always warning me not to do anything dangerous. Like she’d ever let me compete with Smack’s crew for a gazillion dollars worth of diamonds. I’d be grounded before I could even say “jewelry box.” I didn’t have a choice. After I changed into my ballet clothes, I ran downstairs and headed for the garage.

One brown eye followed me all the way to the door.

That night I called Alexa and told her all about the hidden floor, and then I studied algebra until bedtime. It took me a really long time to fall asleep, and when I finally did I had a strange dream: Wearing my ballet shoes, tights, and a leotard, I slipped outside into the pitch-black backyard and walked around blindly with my arms out in front of me. Screwdrivers, hammers, and nails stuck up out of the grass and I tried not to step on them, taking small, mincing steps. I searched for something while I tried to avoid stumbling over the railing and plunging into the canyon. The ragged mountainside beckoned me. I crept closer. There was a clue that I needed to find, and I ignored the danger of the cliff. Feeling along the cold metal railing, I reached the end and then turned around. After doing grand jetes toward the center of the yard, I did pirouettes until I got dizzy and fell onto my back on the grass. Then I sat up and tried to focus my eyes in the dark.

I was looking at the gazebo.

The next morning I woke up groggy. I hadn’t slept well, and the mysterious meaning of my dream was nagging at me. A force had pulled me into the backyard. Like there was a clue that was demanding to be found. By me.

I crawled out of bed and climbed the spiral stairs to my office. Sitting down at my desk, I unlocked my clue box and took out the picture of Xandra Collins. Her eyes twinkled like she had a secret to tell. “Where did you hide the next clue?” I whispered. “And what does the map with the missing footsteps mean?” Xandra smiled her mysterious smile, but her tilting eyes didn’t give up any answers. The memory of the dream tapped at my brain like a woodpecker, letting me know it was something I needed to pay attention to.

After deciding to re-create my dream, I hurried out into the backyard and walked slowly toward the metal fence, skipping the ballet moves. Wisps of fog swirled around the hills, moving in and around the peaks like floating ghosts. The grass was damp with dew, smelling fresh and green in the thin morning sun. Hanging onto the first section of railing, I bent over it and looked down into the steep canyon. Jagged rocks jutted out of the hillside. Yellow, orange, and red nasturtiums and wild mustard weeds grew in between the boulders. The mustard plants had tiny yellow blossoms and bright green leaves with wavy edges.

I followed the guardrail all around the side of the backyard until it ended near the greenhouse. Then, as I had in my dream, I wandered into the center of the yard and twirled around until I got dizzy before I collapsed onto my back on the grass.

The sky continued to spin above me. When it stopped moving and I sat up, the gazebo was in front of me. I got a funny tingling feeling, like I had done this all before. The gazebo was still covered in peeling white paint, and the bench had the same stained cushions on it from before we moved in. My mom had been too busy grading history essays and writing lectures to fix it up. I walked inside and sat on the bench.

At first I didn’t notice anything. Then my eyes traveled up to the highest peak: the pointy tip that matched the ceiling in my office. I remembered noticing a bird’s nest up there the first time Ms. Knight showed us the gazebo. The same nest was balanced up on the rafter, so I climbed up onto the table to see if it held any eggs. It was empty, dry, and dusty. Some crafty bird had woven pine needles and dry twigs together in a nice tight circle and lined the nest with torn pieces of white paper topped with dead grass. I stood on my tiptoes for a better look and grabbed the rafter to steady myself. And my heart skipped a beat.

On one of the pieces of paper there were some faint, numbered footprints.

My pink sneakers wobbled on the tabletop. It’s part of the map! One of those pigeons must have found this tucked away somewhere when the house was abandoned and used it for her nest. This is what my dream was trying to tell me: Look in the bird’s nest.

Then I heard Smack’s squeaky voice shouting from across the lawn. It got louder as he came closer to where I was hiding. I jumped off the table and ducked, flattening myself onto the ground. Slowly inching forward, I peeked through the slats in the gazebo. “This is all you got, Dummy? I tole you to order ten percent more than you needed, Dusty. Now we gotta go to Home Depot.” Smack cussed loudly and spat a thick loogey onto our grass. Dusty stomped back to the pickup truck with Smack following on his short legs, grumbling about the extra cost. Fortunately they were so busy arguing that they hadn’t spotted me. I stayed on my stomach with my heart pounding until I heard their truck rumble down the hill, and then I climbed shakily to my feet.

Looking back into the nest, I thought about all of the places we’d seen bird turds before we moved in. Pigeons had roosted all throughout the house. There was part of a nest in what became my mom’s sitting room. Bird droppings littered the floor of the butler’s pantry, the library, and the garage. Wherever Xandra had hidden the other half of the map, some clever bird had found it and used it to pad her nest. And I found it before Crew Gang did.

Reaching up, I pulled the bird’s nest down and set it gently on the table. Then I carefully lifted out three soft pieces of dirty paper. They were stained and a little bit shredded, but I could still make out numbered footsteps and shapes on them. After replacing the bird’s nest on the rafter, I picked up the fragile pile and cradled it between my hands while I raced upstairs to my office.

Sitting down at my desk, I unlocked my clue box and took out the partial map from the hidden floor, smoothing it out in front of me. I set the first torn piece of bird’s nest paper next to it. “Wait a minute,” I said aloud, picking up another piece. The footprints on the bird’s nest paper had the missing numbers on them. There were also some curving shapes on the strips that looked like C’s and other marks that looked like L’s. I rearranged the papers until C-shapes met each other and formed whole circles, the L’s combined to form a hexagon, and all of the footprints flowed in numerical order. Then I carefully taped the map together. There was still a chunk of it missing.

After the final