Free If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late by Pseudonymous Bosch Page B

it.”
    Cass looked at the ball in her hand as though she’d never seen it before.
    As though it were a stranger looking back at her.

A
lake at dawn. It is very cold.
    A familiar eerie song starts to play.
    Clouds of fog cling to the surface of the water. We can hardly see through the air, it is so wet and clammy.
    Dark, hulking trees move in and out of view like shadowy hunters stalking prey. In the background, jagged mountain peaks rise out of the mist like giant jaws ready to clamp down on the entire picture.
    A single bright spot interrupts the gloom. It is an orange triangle that, from a distance, looks like one of those safety cones used to divert traffic.
    Looking closer, we see that the triangle is not a cone but a lone camping tent standing on the otherwise empty lakeshore.
    Two boys are talking and their voices can be heard all across the lake — although, oddly, they are not shouting. From the sound of it, they’re maybe eleven or twelve years old, thirteen at the most.
    “Oh man! That freakin’ stinks!” says one.
    The other boy laughs. “Chill out, dude. Everybody does it!”
    “Not again!” says the first boy. “If you don’t get out of the tent right now, I’m going to kill you!”
    A few blades of grass block our view of the lake as we listen to the boys in the tent, taking note of their presence, but not making a sound.
    We are like a crocodile, or a snake. A predator lying in wait.
    A boy — the farter, we’re guessing — steps out of the tent. “Hey, where’s Tommy?” he asks.
    “Hiking with my parents,” says the boy inside.
    “But your dad told you to watch him —”
    “He did?!”
    Suddenly, we lift our head and disappear into the brush.
    Darkness.
    What a creepy dream, Cass thought. It was almost like she was the homunculus. Waiting.
    But for what? Not to eat those kids?
    Automatically, she reached for her sock-monster. Then remembered that Ms. Mauvais had tossed it to the Skelton Sisters. Sigh.
    Why did the homunculus come to her in her dreams? When she had no idea how to find him in reality.
    “This is your job and you cannot fail. It would be . . . a catastrophe,” Pietro had repeated before saying good-bye.
    It had taken all her courage to ask why she was the only one who could use the Sound Prism. “You will see” was Pietro’s cryptic reply.
    He’d hardly been more forthcoming when she asked how to use it. “Ah, I wish I could tell you. But I do not know.”
    Of course, even if she’d known exactly where to find the homunculus, or how to use the Sound Prism, it wouldn’t have done her much good anyhow. She couldn’t leave the house.
    How often did Terces Society members get grounded? she wondered bitterly. I’ll bet Pietro didn’t think of
that
when he gave us our mission.
    Grounded.
       Such a
                heavy
                    word.
                        Grrrrrounnnnded.
    Say it out loud.
    It sounds almost onomatopoeic, doesn’t it? *
    In the past, Cass had experienced the word only as a threat. Being grounded was something that happened to other kids, to
bad
kids, not to her. Even when Cass and Max-Ernest had run off to the Midnight Sun Spa, her mother had been so relieved that her daughter had returned home safe that she’d barely reprimanded her. She figured Cass had learned her lesson.
    But evidently Cass had
not
learned her lesson.
    “You know who
has
learned her lesson? Me!” said her mother, who, now that she was no longer worried about Cass being lost at sea, was absolutely furious.
    “I don’t know who you think you are that you can keep running away like that, but this time you’re not getting off so easy. I don’t care whether this is some kind of plea for help or premature teenage rebellion or you’re trying to get back at me for every wrong I’ve ever done to you or you just like boats a lot. You, young lady, are grounded for the rest of the year!”
    Other than being confined to your