Jonah wiped the grime off his fingers onto his shirt. He looked down at his white shirt and saw the black stain. “That’s going to earn me an hour washing the outer windows at home.” He turned back to the display cases. 6243987240, 6243987241, 6243987243.
“It’s missing. I know I have the number correct.” He wiped off more of the thick black dirt to get a better look at the other shelves. 6243987242 was missing. “It’s not here.” Jonah frowned. He slowly walked back to the desk where Wallace was rocking back and forth on his heels.
“Wallace, the one I was looking for is not there.” Jonah leaned against the edge of the desk.
“Then maybe it doesn’t exist. We need to get out of here.” Wallace glanced around nervously, “We’re going to get caught. You know Mom will be very unhappy if I get in trouble again.”
“Shhh. Ben doesn’t know you’re my half-brother by mother. “ Jonah glanced quickly around the sub-basement to see where Ben was at. “Wallace, all the other cards are there, numbers leading up to the one I was looking for, and numbers for after that one. But that particular one is missing.”
Ben walked up to them. “I found the card for ‘Winterhaven Founding Families and Exclusionary Genetic Control’. I also found another interesting card in the next case. ‘Earth Day – Save Our Planet’. Which one do we want to look at first?”
Jonah looked at both cards. “Earth Day. Let’s find out what that is.”
Ben carefully slid the card into the machine. He watched the screen light up, ‘Loading, Please Wait’. The title on the card finally appeared on the screen.
“What is Earth Day?” Ben asked the machine.
“Earth Day was celebrated in the United States on April twenty-second. It was a day designed to…” the monotone voice cut off when the screen flickered then went black.
“What happened?”
“Who’s down there? Wallace, why were the wind turbines running? What are you doing in the basement?” a voice called down the stairs.
“I’m in trouble. I’m in so much trouble.” Wallace closed his eyes and whimpered.
“Wallace, tell him you were making sure the machine still worked. Hide the cards!” Jonah whispered. He grabbed Ben by the arm and pulled him around the corner of a display case into the deep shadows. He was concentrating so hard on getting them hidden that he didn’t see Ben slide both cards into his pocket.
The two boys watched from the shadows, trying to control their breathing so they wouldn’t be heard, waiting to see what would happen to Wallace. Each footstep on the stairs seemed to take hours to hit. Thump, thump, thump…
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