Sydney was finally awake, and I heard her pottering about upstairs. Mom and Dad were out doing yard work, so I started to make myself a quick grilled cheese for lunch. “Syd? Do you want anything to eat?” I hollered up the stairs.

  The pottering stopped, and Sydney came down the stairs. “What are you making, Ty-bear?” She smiled at me.

  I should have expected this oozy cheesiness, but I hadn’t thought about it. “Um, I’m making a grilled cheese. Do you want one?” Ty-bear? Seriously? She hadn't called me that at least since I was still losing my baby teeth.

  Sydney smiled and nodded. “Please, and I’ll start the tomato soup, if you don’t mind!” Humming lightly, she bustled around the kitchen. I stood at the counter, quickly flipping my knife across the bread, buttering the outsides. The pan on the stovetop started to sizzle, and I plopped the first piece of bread down in it, then the cheese on top of it. I opened the fridge and looked into the crisper.

  “Syd, want anything on it? Spinach or ham or… anything?”

  “Ah, gourmet today?” She giggled at her rhyme. “Plain is fine, thank you.”

  “Syd. You’re being really weird.” We were quiet for a moment. The soup ladle scraped against the bottom of the pot. “Your date went well?”

  “It went really well. We were out so much later than I meant, though.” Sydney frowned slightly. “Mom and Dad weren’t very happy. But Mom understood, a little bit. They told me to make sure it didn’t happen again.”

  “That doesn’t sound like something Stenway would let happen.” I flipped the grilled cheese and mashed it around the pan.

  “Well, see, I didn’t tell Mom and Dad this, but we had a breakdown, right outside of the little black and white diner, you know the one, and so we decided to sit and have a shake and wait for the car to get fixed, instead of taking the bus.” Sydney wrinkled her nose. “You know what the late bus is like.”

  “I don’t, really.” I slid the grilled cheese out onto a plate and handed it to Sydney, then began to make mine. Sydney may not want gourmet, but I certainly did. Cheese and spinach and some red onion… I reached to the back of the refrigerator. “Ah hah.” I pulled out a small foil wrapped package and waved it triumphantly.

  “That bacon is probably a month old.” Sydney looked at me doubtfully as she ladled soup out into her bowl.

  “Worth it.” I smashed my ingredients down onto my sandwich. “Well, I’m glad your date went well.”

  “Are you still mad at me?” Sydney pulled her sandwich apart until the strings of cheese snapped.

  “Yeah. I mean, a little bit. I told you really secret stuff that’s important to me, and then you told Stenway. I’m going to be mad about it for a while. Just, don’t do it again, okay?”

  Sydney slurped her soup, nodding her head. I didn’t believe her. But it was nice to pretend for a few minutes. When my sandwich was done, I joined her at the table, and Sydney carefully told me some details of their date. I listened, nodding, keeping track of all the things that Stenway said and did. I had a lot to think about on my way to the park that afternoon. So many things, in fact, that it wasn’t until I stepped off the bus that I realized that I had no idea where I was going to meet the fellows. I walked around for a few minutes, looking for places that the fellows might be using.

  There were a lot of people in the park, more than there used to be. A few families, a dozen couples, and one or two herds of young teenagers. Annoying. Adults tended to ignore you if you weren’t theirs, as long as you were safe, and couples were not interested in anything besides each other, but the teenagers seemed to have some weird responsibility towards you, like you were their sibling. Or they liked to try and mess with you. Either way, something to avoid.

  I kept well away from them as I walked towards the statue. The gazebo was between me and the statue and I started up the steps to go through it. I almost screamed when something thudded against the floor underneath me. I backtracked down the steps, something filtering back. The fellows, they’d said something about… about using the gazebo… That’s right. It had sounded dumb at first, actually still did, but regardless, I checked around to see if anyone was watching, and then ducked down to peer through the lattice.

  “Hey.” Donny grinned at me. He wiggled the bit of fencing in front of him until it was loose, then pushed it open. “Come in.”

  Scanning one more time around the area, I ducked down and crawled inside.

  “About time. Did you forget our meeting place?”

  “I didn’t think you were really serious about it.”

  Donny snorted. “You’re still figuring this all out. It’s okay. Peach said you had something for the group.”

  “Yeah.” We dodged around support poles until we joined the group, at the center of the gazebo.

  “What do you have for us?” Chris pushed his head into the little circle of light from the lantern.

  “I think the statue is hollow. The new one.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “So?” Clive laughed from somewhere in the darkness.

  “I don’t think marble statues are supposed to be hollow.”

  “Is it marble?”

  “Supposed to be limestone.” Peach pulled out his hand drawn copy of the blueprint of the park and ran his finger over it. “That was the plan.”

  "Well I don't think any stone statue is supposed to be hollow regardless of the kind of stone."

  “Enough. Donny, Clive.” Chris rapped out. “Go check it out and come back.”

  Peach shuffled around to sit by me and pulled out his dictionary of Supers. He showed me over it while we waited for Donny and Clive to get back. It was really impressive. He’d done quite a bit more work than I had, and his organizational system was completely different. I didn’t have mine with me but I promised that I would bring it to the next meeting so that we could compare.

  Donny tumbled into the meeting place first. “Something is definitely fishy about that statue. We should check it out.”

  Chris frowned. “Peach, you and T.J. go take a look at it.”

  We followed orders, scuffling to get out of the gazebo. I hadn’t noticed how dirty I’d gotten from my crawl in. Oh well. Peach and I headed over to the statue and he started patting it all around, just like I’d done. I wanted a different view, this time, so I backed up and walked in a circle around it. Something seemed off, something about the dimensions. Maybe the torso was a little long?

  The statue was posed like a scientist; one hand on the hip, the other holding a beaker of some sort out at arms length, about shoulder height. The eyes were not focused on the beaker, instead they looked slightly upward. I went around behind to see where they pointed. There was a dip in the trees, and through that I could see the blank, dark back side of the Three-Fourths Bank (another example of adults being bad at naming things.) An interesting building; three-fourths of it was covered in wide, clear windows, and the last fourth was completely without windows, except where they wrapped around on the sides.

  There didn’t seem to be anything in that, so I looked around for Peach so that we could head back into the gazebo.

  “Tyler.”

  I jumped and turned around. Stenway striding towards me down the path. Glancing back over my shoulder to make sure that Peach hadn’t seen, I hurried to meet him.

  “Can I help you? I’m kind of doing something important right now.” I frowned at him, my hands on my hips.

  “You broke into my office?”

  For a moment, everything stopped moving. My hands felt ice cold. Stenway kept walking towards me. “You broke into my office.”

  “I… yeah.” My mouth didn’t seem to be working right.

  “And, let me get this straight.” Stenway stopped in front of me, almost touching me, so I had to crank my neck back to look into his face. “You believe that Mr. Left is a Super and I’m his sidekick.”

  “I don’t see why that’s so infuriating. That last part, I mean. That's basically a compliment.” I was scrambling for words now. And I’d started to heat up. This was Sydney’s fault. After we’d had that long talk, too…

  “Tyler, we gave you the run of the place. I trusted you to help the household and you abused that. We’ll get to the ridiculous suggestion about Mr. Left in a minute…”

  “You know what?” I was steamed now. “I never asked you to give me the run of the house. You have been asking me for favor after favor and okay maybe it was wrong to break into your study but now we’re even.” I folded my arms.

  “As far as I can see, what you did was break and enter, and that’s ‘not even.’ And I’m talking about the time you and your little friend went into my office, not the time I left to find the car.” Stenway glared at me.

  Sydney. “Wow, she really told you everything, didn’t she?”

  “You put her in a tight place by telling her everything, you know. You didn’t help the situation.”

  “It’s really that hard for her to keep her mouth shut? Look, it’s not like I want this to be a thing. I’m gonna really…”

  “This isn’t Sydney’s fault. This all comes back to you. You want him to be a Super, so you cook up all these scenarios and ideas and… You’re just a meddling kid.”

  I was livid. Sydney had ratted me out, Stenway was yelling at me… “Just lay off, okay? Look. That box is weird. I don’t care if you can explain it, it’s weird. Two, that statue,” I pointed, “Is hollow. Three… you gave me the wrong address for Ms. Higley. Four…” I cast my mind back. There wasn’t really a lot, actually. Now that I looked at it. I’d had no reason to bring my list of Stenway’s mess ups with me, but I wish I had.

  “The statue is hollow?” Stenway’s eyes widened slightly.

  I snatched at his reaction. “Yeah, that’s something that’s weird.”

  “Probably something like embezzling.” Stenway was looking over my shoulder, hard. He was super interested in that statue. I decided to poke around a little bit more.

  “The box is gone. From out of the book, too. That’s weird.”

  Stenway stared down at me. “What?”

  That was the one thing I hadn’t told Sydney. That was it. I’d merely told her that Clive and I had broken into the office to get a look at the box again, and gotten scared off. I’d figured that the box being gone was a big enough deal that she’d tell Stenway about it, regardless of my feelings, so I’d kept it close to my chest. That had clearly worked out for me...

  Stenway’s hand on my shoulder jerked me out of my thoughts. “What did you say?”

  “The box is gone.”

  “Box gone…”

  “Tyler?”

  “Ha!”

  I turned around, already knowing all too well what was going on behind me. The fellows stood there in a clump on the path. Clive was fiercely cracking his knuckles, and Chris Blue was showing more emotion than I had ever seen. He stepped forward. “Care to explain yourself?”

  “It’s not my… fault.” It was. I’d told Sydney, and she’d told Stenway. This was all my fault.

  “You’re done.” Chris pointed. “Don’t bother coming back.”

  “Oh, and if I see you at the drugstore…” Clive ground his fist into his palm.

  Chris nodded slowly. “We aren’t going to stop him.”

  I looked at them one by one. Peach looked disappointed, and Donny’s face drooped. Chris continued to point.

  I spoke up weakly. “You don’t own the park.”

  “Wanna bet?” Clive took a step towards me.

  Stenway shifted behind me, and Clive shrank back. Slowly, his eyes widened and he backed up, tripping over his feet. Donny rapidly patted Peach’s arm and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. As a group, the fellows turned and hurried down the path and out of the park.