Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life Read online

  She lets out a big sigh. “I don’t know. I think some people have a greater sense of their mortality than others. He knew the number of years that were allotted to him.”

  Neither of us speaks for a minute. Then I whisper, “I’m sorry I opened the package.” If I were a little bit younger, I would have blamed it on Lizzy.

  Surprisingly, she smiles. “Your dad would have opened it, too. He was curious about everything. That’s why he loved flea markets and collecting so much. He was fascinated by what objects people kept, and what they threw away. Remember those stories he used to make up about each thing he found?”

  I sit down across from her and nod. I do remember, but the memories are very foggy. After Dad died, it was like all the furniture was talking to me (but in Dad’s voice), and I had to make a conscious effort to remember that the hall table was just a table, not the very table on which the Declaration of Independence was signed. Which of course it wasn’t really.

  She runs her hand over the scratches that burrow deep into the kitchen table. “Remember what he said about this broken table when we found it?”

  I shake my head.

  “When we found this at a tag sale, your dad said it belonged to an old woman who was very overweight. She was sitting at the table when she saw in the newspaper that her lottery numbers had come in. In her excitement she fainted and fell forward onto the table, breaking one of the legs underneath her weight.” Mom gestures to the box and says, “He was so excited the day he got this box. He said it was the most unique one he’d ever seen, with all those keyholes. You were six at the time, and he starting filling it for you that very night. He didn’t engrave it until a few months later.”

  My eyes begin to sting with the onset of tears, but I blink them away. “So you know what’s in it?”

  She shakes her head. “He was very secretive about it. He kept it at the comic store in the vault.”

  So that’s why I never saw it around the apartment! “Do you have an extra set of keys?” I hold my breath until she answers.

  She shakes her head. “There was only one set. It takes four different keys to open it, and I mailed them to Harold. I can’t imagine what he did with them.”

  “Maybe Dad made an extra set and kept them at the store. I can ask Uncle Arthur if—”

  She just shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. I cleaned out all your father’s things from the store. There’s no other set.”

  I pull hard on the top of the box, not really expecting anything to happen. It is sealed up tight. “How am I going to open it, then?” I ask.

  “I honestly don’t know.” She stands up and takes the pitcher of iced tea out of the fridge. As she reaches for two glasses she says, “Lizzy’s dad has some tools. We can ask him to saw through it if you haven’t found a way to open it before your birthday comes.”

  I jump out of my chair, nearly knocking it over. Snatching the box from the table, I hug it to my chest.

  “I’ll take that as a no, then?” she says, sounding slightly amused.

  “Yes, that’s a no,” I say firmly, tightening my grip. I can’t let Dad’s box get sawed in half after hearing how much he loved it. After five years, he has sent me a message with one instruction, to open this box on my thirteenth birthday. Somehow, no matter how impossible it might seem, I am going to do exactly that.

  Chapter 3: The Keys

  I send Lizzy a note telling her that Mom doesn’t have the keys and that, miraculously, I’m not being punished. Hours later, as the grandfather clock strikes eleven, I finally get a response.

  I have a plan. Come over at 10 am. Bring the letter and the box. Sorry it took so long to get back to you, what with the whole Friday Night Is Family Movie Night thing. Field of Dreams again. AGAIN!!

  Don’t be late!

  Lizzy

  Lizzy’s plans always make me nervous, but in this case I have nothing to lose. Between dinnertime and now, I exhausted my own methods for opening the box. To see if extreme temperatures might loosen the locks, I put the box in the freezer for an hour. No change. Then I put it in the microwave. But before I hit start, I took it out, because what if the meaning of life is actually some tiny alien baby that my father rescued from certain persecution? I didn’t want to microwave the little guy to death.

  My final attempt was to wedge a butter knife under the lid, but instead of sliding inside the box, it only hit another layer of wood and wouldn’t budge.

  I do not like surprises. I won’t watch scary movies. I won’t answer the phone unless I can see who is calling on caller ID. I don’t even like it when someone says “Guess what?” and then waits for you to guess. Surprises make me nervous. Once you’ve had a real surprise, one that knocks the wind out of you and changes your life, all the little surprises remind you of that big one.

  This box is a little like that.

  It is now sitting on the center of my desk, mocking me. Only the size of a shoe box, it somehow overshadows everything else in my room, including the life-sized cardboard cutouts of the hobbits from The Lord of the Rings. And they’re not easy to overshadow.

  I write Lizzy back and ask for details of her plan, but she doesn’t take the note from the wall. After a few minutes I pull it back out and stick my ear to the hole. The poster covering her end of the hole blocks any light from coming through, but I can still hear her cat, Zilla, purring loudly. Actually, he roars rather than purrs. Zilla (short for Godzilla, since he destroys everything in his path) is fiercely protective of Lizzy and will lunge at anyone who goes near her room. I haven’t been more than one foot inside her bedroom in two years. I think Zilla believes he’s a pit bull. I knock a few times on the wall, but not too loudly.

  Mom taps on the door and brings me a peanut butter sandwich on a napkin. She gives the box on my desk a long look and starts closing the door behind her. Then she stops and says, “Oh, wait, I have something for you.” A few seconds later she’s back.

  “In all the excitement, I forgot to give you this.” She holds out what looks like an ordinary yellow Starburst candy. But as I examine it more closely, I realize the bottom half is actually orange. It’s a mutant Starburst!

  “Thanks, Mom!” I jump up from the bed and deposit the Starburst in the airtight Tupperware dish along with the other candy in my collection. It’s been a few months since I’ve added anything new. Airtight or no, the peanut M&M is starting to look a little green in spots. It was yellow to begin with.

  “You’ve had a big day,” Mom says. “Make sure you don’t go to sleep too late.” She makes a move like she’s going to kiss me on the forehead like she used to when I was little. But then she just tousles my hair and gives the box one more glance before closing the door for good. I have named the hour between eleven and midnight the Hour of Jeremy (H.O.J. for short). The city is so quiet and peaceful except for the police and ambulance sirens, the beeping of the car alarms, and the rushing of the water in the pipes. But when you grow up in the city, that stuff feels like background noise, and you don’t notice it. I feel like I’m the only person alive on the earth.

  Because of all my H.O.J. reading, I know a little about a lot. I always win when I play Trivial Pursuit. I would make an excellent Jeopardy contestant. Last night I learned that for everyone alive on earth today, there are thirty ghosts lined up behind them. Not literally lined up, of course, but that’s how many dead people there are compared to living people. In all, around a hundred billion people have walked on this planet, which, interestingly enough, is the same number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Science is my favorite class in school. I have a healthy fascination with the Milky Way, and not just because it has the same name as a chocolate bar.

  Usually my H.O.J reading is a mix of any of the books on my shelf (along with at least fifteen minutes on time travel). But tonight’s H.O.J. will be spent only learning about keys. This is what the Internet tells me:

  1. The first keys were used four thousand years ago by the ancient Egyptians to protect thei