Island of the Unknowns

  “Carey takes the puzzle-book format … and gives it

  a rawboned and rich human story with a vivid sense of place

  … the writing crackles with plainspoken wit, and nifty little

  details sparkle …”—BCCB, starred review

  “Vividly drawn … characters are engaging …

  action is fast-paced. Should be on hand in every upper

  elementary and middle school library.”

  —Library Media Connection, starred review

  “Clever and unusual … Replete with diagrams, charts,

  and illustrated problems, the book will appeal especially to

  kids who love geometry, but it will also reel in fans of less

  numbers-centric books …”—School Library Journal

  “Lively and unique.”—VOYA

  “Will hook young readers. Science and math buffs will love

  the equations and charts, but even those bored by the technical

  details will be swept up in the fast talk and exciting action.”

  —Booklist

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales

  is entirely coincidental.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

  Carey, Benedict.

  The unknowns / by Benedict Carey.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When people start vanishing from a godforsaken trailer park next to the Folsom

  Energy Plant, two eleven-year-olds investigate using mathematical clues that were hastily

  planted by their friend Mrs. Clarke before she disappeared.

  ISBN 978-0-8109-7991-8

  [1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Conspiracies—Fiction. 3. Mathematics—Fiction.

  4. Trailer camps—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C2122Un 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2008033914

  ISBN 978-0-8109-9663-2

  Text copyright © 2009 Benedict Carey

  Activity Guide copyright © 2011 Shira Fass

  Book design by Maria T. Middleton

  Originally published in hardcover in 2009 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS, under

  the title The Unknowns. This edition published in 2011. All rights reserved. No portion of

  this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or

  by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without

  written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered

  trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums

  and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be

  created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the

  address below.

  www.abramsbooks.com

  For Victoria, Isabel, and Flora

  Special thanks to Kristine Dahl, Amalia Ellison,

  Susan Van Metre, Erika Erhart, and

  John Hastings. And to Thaylene Barrett,

  Wayne Barrett, and John Donich for checking

  the math. And, of course, to the Careys:

  Catherine, James, Rachel, Simon, and Noah

  Contents

  The Map

  1 Folsom Adjacent

  2 The Empty Trailer

  3 The Straw Equation

  4 Sick Stunts

  5 The Silver Triangle

  6 Sullen Hillbillies

  7 The Outhouses

  8 Mr. Pink

  9 TriCounty

  10 MapMaking

  11 The Silver Compass

  12 Thunder Underground

  13 Virgil

  14 The Point

  15 Visitors from Town

  16 Circles Underground

  17 The Control Room

  18 The Circumference

  19 The Invisible Room

  20 The Amulet

  21 Brute Force

  22 Over the Edge

  23 Threefourfive

  24 Lockdown

  25 This Blue Heaven

  26 The Return

  27 Malba Clarke

  The Map

  Tuesday, about 3 A.M.—

  Awake again, cannot turn my mind off.

  What am I missing? I’ve gone over everything. Everything. They can’t be on to me. I’ve covered my tracks. I’ve done nothing to blow my cover.

  Nothing I can think of, anyway …

  Maybe it’s time to get out. Now, while I still can.

  But what will happen to them? My little companions—I should never have befriended them. It just sort of happened. They have nothing and get so little help with the one thing that could get them out of this forsaken place. Thinking. Problem solving.

  Well, I tried. I have told them stories, stories with numbers and problems, and their brains just lapped it all up. How different the world looks, how much stranger and more fascinating, when problem solving is in the air: an adventure. And a necessity when you’re in the maze and need to get out in time.

  Like me.

  Those kids—oh, they’ll be distraught if the worst happens, I know it.

  Unless …

  So here’s the thing, and you can ask anyone about it: People were praying for something twisted to happen last summer. They didn’t care what it was, either. A hurricane, an earthquake, a hostage situation—seriously, anything. We wanted a problem, and a hairy one, just for something to do.

  You would’ve too, if you lived where we did. Folsom Adjacent, it’s called. Adjacent—uh-JAY-sent, is how you say it—means nearby or next to, so it doesn’t even have its own name. Doesn’t deserve it, really, because it’s not much of a town, or a place. Or even a neighborhood.

  Adjacent is a trailer park named after a nuclear plant, is what it is. Think of hundreds of beat-up mobile homes scattered around a gas station, a musty grocery store, a bar, and a desperate little elementary school, which was just two old trailers pushed together with a sign that said ADJACENT ELEMENTRY. Someone forgot the “a” and it never got fixed.

  Adjacent is on a small island, a coastal island, close to shore. On a clear day you can see miniature people having normal lives over in the city across the way, Crotona. Crotona is too full of very important people for its own good but at least it’s a real place, with actual stuff to do and see.

  Adjacent’s got nothing, no mall or multiplex or skate park. Even Folsom Energy, the giant plant where half the parents work, doesn’t seem real. It was built entirely underground. All you see is a flat, dusty nothing surrounded by barbed wire and signs that say AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY all over the place. As if people wanted to sneak into that place. As if we weren’t already trapped behind barbed wire, a million miles from anything, in a place where nothing ever happened.

  Until one week in July, that is. That’s when suddenly it looked like the praying might have worked: People in Adjacent began to disappear.

  First there was Mickey Romo, some guy no one knew who lived alone in a trailer full of old computers. People said he liked to go out exploring at night, that he once scaled the cliffs down to the ocean. That he knew of caves down near the plant. Lunatic stuff. We thought, OK, so maybe this was just some loner who moved away, or got abducted by aliens or something.

  But that didn’t explain Mrs. Quartez. Mrs. Quartez was this lady who worked
nights at Folsom and used to play cards with her friends out in front of her trailer. She was something. She made these tortilla things, with cheese in the middle, and would give them to you still warm, and she pretty much never stopped talking.

  Well, Mrs. Quartez vanished too, just like Mr. Romo. Like they walked out of their trailers and jumped into the sea. The Crotona police sent a car out and actually interviewed people after that. You had to be there, seriously. One thing people in Adjacent could do—our only skill, when you think about it—was BS about things we knew nothing about. Those officers heard about eighty stories and left with nothing. It didn’t matter. The rest of us, us kids, we felt like the earth was moving. We thought maybe this was it. That something big was finally in the air, no matter what all the parents were saying.

  Typical Adjacent, no one had any idea what was coming. How could we? It’s like, how can you ever know what it feels like to be hunted, really hunted down, if it’s never happened? You can’t. And you can’t predict anything, either, like who will keep their heads when things get seriously ugly. Which, by the way, they did.

  The most twisted part of it, though, was that two kids, Lady Di Smith and Tom Jones, and this old lady friend of theirs, figured out what was happening and did something about it.

  And they did it by playing with straws.

  Di’s real name was Diaphanta, or something like that. People said she was named after an old movie star but no one knew for sure and her mom, Mrs. Smith, never said. The two Smiths lived in a small trailer near Polya’s General Store, which is pretty much the center of Adjacent, so you’d see them practically every time you went to buy milk.

  Di was all right, is the main thing to know. She had long, orange hair and this habit, kind of like a tic, where she kept twirling her right wrist, like she was working out a cramp or something. Everyone in Adjacent could mimic this twirling move and did so when she walked by.

  They called her “Princess Di” or “Lady Di,” most kids did, usually in a friendly way but sometimes not. Di didn’t like it at first and told people to stop, which of course they didn’t. Finally she decided it wasn’t all that bad being named after Princess Diana, who was beautiful and died young.

  Besides, her best friend had it worse. His full name was Tamir Abu Something Something al-Khwarizmi. Again, people didn’t know for sure and didn’t really ask his dad about it. They just called him Tom Jones.

  No one knew what to think of Tom. He was tiny for an eleven-year-old, bony as a little bird, and you never saw his eyes. He wore this Angels baseball hat all the time, everywhere, pulled down low. He lived with his dad, Muhammad, and a bunch of younger brothers, sisters, cousins, and visiting aunts and uncles who were impossible to keep track of. He mumbled to himself a lot, Tom did, walked kind of sideways, and of course older kids wouldn’t leave him alone.

  That summer Di and Tom were practically dying with dread. They were about to start junior high school, taking the bus over to TriCounty Middle and High School, the huge combined school on the Crotona side of the bridge. They had heard all the stories about TriCounty—every kid does—about Crotona gangs and nasty teachers, and by August those two looked like they were walking the plank or something.

  About the only thing that took their minds off of it was spending time with Malba Clarke.

  Mrs. Clarke was pretty old and lived by herself. She worked nights at the plant, so she was around during most days, and during school she had kids coming by for help with homework, especially number problems. She was about a billion times better than our normal teacher, Reverend Pete, who spent nights at the bar and usually rolled into class about an hour late, mumbling and angry.

  Di and Tom visited Mrs. Clarke every chance they got, and one morning they were wandering over toward her trailer. They walked in silence for a time, with Di twisting her wrist and Tom staring down at the swirls of dust in the road, shuffling along nearly sideways, like he did. They slipped under one trailer and climbed up and over a trio of beat-up units owned by Mr. Devlin, who was snoring loudly on the other side of an open window.

  Mr. Devlin’s hound, a ragged mutt called Noname, fell into step alongside them.

  “Princess Pudgy!” some kid yelled from a window. “Where you going, piglet?”

  Di didn’t answer.

  Somebody else yelled, “Hey, Tom, foxy hat. I think I want you.”

  It was still early, just after breakfast. The sun was low and warm, a maze of shadows moved across the island floor, and they could smell the sea; the greasy smell of Adjacent hadn’t really hit yet.

  “Do you think she’s there, this early?” said Tom.

  “She has to be, yeah, she should be, she probably is,” said Di. “She gets home and fixes breakfast, which is kind of like her dinner, and her dinner is like her breakfast. She kind of lives backwards, I was thinking, and my theory is that maybe she’s like one of those wizards in a book, you know, who starts out old and keeps getting younger.”

  “Why do you always have to have a theory? She just works nights, is all.”

  “What’s wrong with having a theory? Maybe if you had more of them you wouldn’t get those spaced-out crazy spells you have.”

  Tom stopped, pulled his hat down, and kept walking.

  Mrs. Clarke lived in a deluxe unit, L-shaped with an extra room and built-in air-conditioning. She had a table and chairs in back, and always seemed to be preparing something to eat or drink for visitors.

  No one could say exactly how all that homework happened in there. She’d be serving iced tea and telling some story—usually about some lunatic she knew growing up in the Pink Palace, a housing project on the far side of Crotona—and she would kind of take a break and ask, “So, what’s this?” and pick one of the problems.

  That’s how it started. She wouldn’t really give you the next chapter in the story she was telling until a problem or two got solved. And the stories were pretty good, is the thing. Mrs. Clarke had been around, in the Navy for a while, married a Navy SEAL guy, and traveled, to places you’d heard about: Seattle. Miami. Even Washington, D.C. Just a ton of places for one person, and all real places, they were. Anyway, it was strange what happened after that. She would start telling her story again, and break again, and after a while the problems got weaved into the story somehow, and you looked up and you were done. You had figured out whatever it was you needed to.

  Di, Tom, and Noname circled around the trailer, to the back patio, and saw something odd: Mrs. Clarke’s patio table was out of place, and one of the chairs was lying on its side. Usually she put everything back exactly in its place, and made everyone else do the same; she was pretty insane about things like that.

  The trailer was quiet, shades down, looking like its eyes were closed. Di and Tom could tell that she wasn’t there. And it looked like she hadn’t been around in a while.

  Noname pawed at the back door, but Di and Tom stopped short.

  “No! She’s not there, can’t you see?” Di said to the hound. “C’mon. Let’s go back. Noname!”

  But, typical Noname, the hound pawed crazily, he smelled something, and the door snapped open. Di and Tom didn’t budge. They had spent hours on top of or under just about every trailer in Adjacent. They knew every crawl space, which ones had good hiding places and which didn’t. They could disappear under a unit near the center of town and reappear almost anywhere in Adjacent. Same thing on the trailer roofs; they’d boost themselves up on a windowsill and be up and gone, moving from one roof to the next. But now suddenly they couldn’t bring themselves to enter one without the owner knowing.

  “Let’s close the door and just go,” Tom said.

  Di’s feet would not move. She was still staring at the ground, rocking back and forth.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What if something happened? Wouldn’t she want us to make sure everything’s OK?”

  She would, Di knew. Mrs. Clarke would have said that when you can’t decide whether to act or wait it is usually better to
act. Acting sets the mind in motion, she would have said; and you can always change directions if you’re wrong: “And searching for a solution is the best reminder that there is one.” How many times had she said that?

  Di looked around. They were on their own; no one was watching. Mrs. Clarke’s door faced away from the central cluster of trailers, so they were out of sight of most windows.

  They went in.

  Noname was sniffing the floor of the kitchen. Everything was familiar and somehow alien at the same time. Mrs. Clarke’s office was neat, the dishes put away, her bed made. All normal there. But something was not at all right, and Di and Tom fought the urge to run. They crept through the place almost on tiptoe, without knowing exactly why, or what they were looking for.

  They found it in the kitchen. Noname was sniffing and licking some maroon spots on the tile floor. The spots trailed across the floor like spilled gravy, which Mrs. Clarke would have cleaned up immediately.

  Tom dropped down on all fours. He had an idea what he was looking at but didn’t want to say it out loud. Di traced the spots to the door, and saw more, trailing along the small paved patio. Her heart was working so hard now that she could feel her neck bulging and pumping. She returned to the kitchen, stood over Tom, and, turning to the hound, said, “No! What are you licking, what!”

  But they knew what it was. It was blood, and it had to be Mrs. Clarke’s blood. Their tutor and friend—their secret weapon, really, who was going to help them in the new school—was gone.

  Mrs. Clarke was abduction number three.

  They ran. They ran like they were being chased, out toward the edge of the island, to the rusted chain-link fence that ringed the bluffs overlooking the ocean. From there they flew along the fence to the Point, a bulge of rock that hovered above the entrance to a narrow cove, about fifty yards below.

  They ducked through a hole in the fence and slipped down between two boulders and into a shallow cave invisible from above. Here they had a view of the open ocean to one side, and of the cliffs dropping down to the cove on the other. They had complete privacy.