Box of Shocks Read online

  Box of

  Shocks

  Chris mcmahen

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2011 Chris McMahen

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McMahen, Chris

  Box of shocks [electronic resource] / Chris McMahen.

  Type of computer file: Electronic monograph in PDF format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-918-6

  I. Title.

  PS8575.M24B69 2011A JC813’.54 C2011-903337-2

  First published in the United States, 2011

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011929398

  Summary: Oliver, a pampered only child, collects souvenirs from his daring exploits,

  but discovers that the most shocking things of all can’t be catalogued or contained.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed

  this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover image by Getty Images

  Author photo by Ben McMahen

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, STN. B PO Box 468

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA CUSTER, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  For my brothers, John and Ivor.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  One

  Ionly lie to Mom and Dad when I have to. Like now.

  It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon in October, and I’m down in the basement of our house digging in the dirt floor with a rusty old shovel. The basement is the only place in the house Mom won’t go. She’s afraid of mice, spiders, snakes—that sort of thing. Right now, she’s at the top of the stairs.

  “You better not come down here, Mom,” I call up to her. “I just saw two spiders, and a minute ago, a mouse ran right past me. It was being chased by a snake.”

  I didn’t actually see the spiders or the mouse, and I’ve never seen a snake down here. Sure, it’s a bit of a lie, but it’s the only way I can keep Mom from coming down here and telling me what to do.

  As for Dad, he’s not afraid of mice, spiders, or even snakes, but he does have a dust allergy. When he goes into the basement, he ends up coughing and sneezing for about a week, so I’m pretty safe from Dad.

  That’s why I like it down here. It’s the only place in the house where they can’t bug me.

  “I hope you were careful on the stairs, Oliver,” Mom says.

  She’s worried about me and the basement stairs ever since the time when I was five and Deedee, the babysitter, was taking care of me. I did a few somersaults down the stairs and ended up breaking my arm. Sure, it hurt, but it wasn’t such a big deal. Mom and Dad were pretty freaked out though. Now they figure every time I walk down the basement stairs, I’m going to do a repeat performance.

  “Yes, I was careful on the stairs, Mom,” I say. “I made it all the way down safe and sound. No broken arms, both my legs are still attached and my brain is still inside my skull. You don’t have to worry.”

  Besides being left alone, there’s another reason why I like it down in the basement: I love to dig in dirt. Especially this dirt. Our house is so old, the basement floor is just dirt. And I like dirt, because dirt has possibilities. You never know what you might dig up.

  Who knows? Maybe I’ll find a stash of money. Maybe a gang robbed a bank, used this house as a hideout and hid millions of dollars under the dirt floor. And maybe they were caught in a shootout before they could dig up the money.

  You never know.

  “Oliver!” Mom again, calling from the top of the stairs.

  “What is it?”

  “Your lunch is ready.”

  Lunch! Why would I care about lunch when I’m about to dig up a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills or a trunk full of gold bars?

  “It’s okay, Mom. I don’t want any lunch,” I call back.

  “But it’s already on the table. And it’s your favorite.”

  “My favorite? You made me chocolate-covered jellybeans for lunch?”

  “No, Oliver. It’s macaroni and cheese. Your favorite food in the whole world.”

  I hate it when she says something is my “favorite food in the whole world.” Macaroni and cheese is not my favorite food in the whole world! My favorite food in the whole world is actually marshmallow pizza. I’m not expecting Mom to serve up marshmallow pizza anytime soon unless someone discovers that marshmallow pizza is in the same food group as broccoli, Brussels sprouts and spinach. For some reason, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.

  “Okay. I’ll be up in a minute,” I say.

  This is another lie. I won’t be up in a minute, because I want to dig. Even though I haven’t discovered any hidden loot yet, there’s a chance I might dig up something else— like some old bones. Not that I’d be crazy about digging up an old skeleton, but if I hauled a skull upstairs, my mom would freak out. I’d enjoy that.

  A few minutes later, I hear, “Oliver! Your lunch is getting cold!”

  “It’s okay,” I reply. “Macaroni and cheese always tastes better when it’s cold. In fact, it tastes best when it’s completely frozen!”

  “Don’t be silly, Oliver.”

  “I’m not being silly, Mom.”

  That’s when my shovel hits something. Something hard. I jab at it a couple more times. It’s not hard like rock. It feels wooden and hollow. Treasure chests are wooden and hollow. But so are coffins!

  The back door opens, and I hear footsteps crossing the kitchen. I recognize those footsteps. It’s Dad. Dad doesn’t care if I dig in the basement. If I’m lucky, maybe he’ll distract Mom for a while so I can keep digging.

  I dig faster. Could this actually be a treasure chest? Then I think, Skulls are also hollow and sort of wooden.

  I stop digging.

  But what if it’s not a skull? What if it’s a treasure chest full of hundred-dollar bills or bars of gold or diamonds?

  I start digging again, a little faster, until I can see the outline of something with four corners.

  Upstairs, the microwave pings. Mom must be warming up my macaroni. I dig a bit more and brush the rest of the dirt away with my fingers. Now I can see what looks like a wooden box. It’s too small to be a coffin. That’s a relief. The top is all scratched and scraped like it’s been hit with a shovel. Probably my shovel.

  I dig around the outside edges with my fingers until I can wriggle them underneath and pull the box up out of the dirt. It’s shaped like a shoe box, but a bit bigger. There’s no writing on the box—just some squiggly black designs on the sides.

  It feels light. That’s not good. Gold bar
s or even tightly packed bundles of hundred-dollar bills would weigh more than this. But there has to be something good inside. Boxes get buried for a reason.

  “Oliver! I warmed up your macaroni.”

  “Just give me a minute!” I shout.

  “We don’t have much time, Ollie!” Dad says. “We have to leave for your dentist appointment in twenty minutes.”

  The dentist? Last week, I had to get my eyes checked. The week before that, I had to see the doctor because Mom was worried about a rash on my elbow.

  “And be careful on those stairs,” Dad adds.

  Be careful going up the stairs? Who’s ever heard of anyone falling UP stairs?

  “Yeah, I’ll be careful, Dad,” I say, hoping he’ll leave me alone for a few more minutes. I can’t wait to find out what’s inside this treasure box.

  There are hinges on one side of the box. Very carefully, I pull the edge of the lid. As it swings open, I hold my breath, ready to be amazed by what’s inside the box.

  I open the lid and see…nothing!

  No gold bars. No hundred-dollar bills. No diamonds—nothing except dead, stale air! What kind of a buried treasure is this? Why in the world would someone bury an empty box in the basement of our house?

  There should be a law that if you find a buried box, there’s got to be something inside it. And whatever’s inside should make you stinking rich or at least famous. Or there should be something magical that will change your life—maybe a ring that makes you bulletproof, or a hat that gives you the power to shoot lightning bolts out of your eyes. Not just stale air!

  The great buried treasure in the basement floor is an empty box. Whoop-dee-doo!

  “Ollie! Get a move on! We don’t want to be late!” Dad calls.

  “Yeah! I’m on my way up. Just give me a minute.” I hear his footsteps moving across the house to his home office.

  Who wants some stupid empty box? I should bury it back in the dirt and let some other poor sucker dig it up in a few hundred years.

  But just as I’m about to drop the box back into its hole, I think of something. It’s a plan!

  A brilliant plan!

  A spectacularly brilliant top-secret plan.

  A top-secret plan so spectacularly brilliant, just thinking about it will make my hair burst into flames! Yes, my plan is that good!

  But my spectacularly brilliant top-secret plan is interrupted when Mom shouts from the top of the stairs. “Oliver! I don’t know what you’re doing down there, but it’s time to come up for your lunch. Do you hear me, Oliver?”

  “Yeah, I hear you, Mom!” I try to fill in the hole where the box had been by kicking the dirt with my foot. For my spectacularly brilliant top-secret plan to work, I can’t leave the box down here. I need to be able to get to it easily. But it has to be in a safe, top-secret place where no one except me can find it.

  The best place would be somewhere in my bedroom. The problem is, I’ll have to find a way to smuggle it up there without Mom or Dad seeing it. It’s too big to stuff under my shirt—Mom would notice right away. What can I do? If they see my box, my spectacularly brilliant top-secret plan will be ruined.

  As I stand in the basement with the box in my hands, I get a lucky break. The phone rings, and I hear Mom crossing the floor to answer it. This is my one and only chance.

  I tuck the box under my arm, dash up the stairs to the kitchen, tear down the hall, take the stairs two at a time to my room and close the door.

  I have to hide the box—fast—before Mom gets off the phone or Dad comes out of his office.

  But where can I hide it? I have to find a really good place because I’m pretty sure Mom snoops around my room when she brings up the laundry or does the vacuuming.

  I head to my closet, grab all the clothes on hangers and throw them on the bed. I look around inside the closet, trying to find a nook or a cranny to hide the box. I’m about to give up when I notice one of the wooden wall panels has a corner sticking out. I grab the corner with my fingertips and wiggle it. Gradually, it loosens until—pop!—it comes right off. In behind the panel is a small space in the wall between two boards. It looks about the same size as the box. I grab the box and slide it into the space. Amazing! It’s a perfect fit! It’s as if the box had been made for this spot. Or the spot had been made for the box. Either way, this hiding place is perfect.

  I carefully push the piece of wall paneling back in place.

  Downstairs, Mom calls, “Oliver! Are you still down in the basement?”

  “No, Mom! I’m in my room!” I gather up my clothes and start hanging them up. “I’ll be down in a second.”

  I have to be careful how I put everything back in my closet. Mom’s a neat freak, and she’s always after me to keep my room in perfect order. This includes the closet, where everything has to be hung up exactly right. If everything’s just shoved back in my closet, she’ll get suspicious. The last thing I want is Mom getting suspicious.

  “Oliver! What are you doing up there?” Mom calls again.

  I hang up the last few shirts, close my closet door and head downstairs.

  As soon as I step into the kitchen, Mom says, “Just look at your hands! Absolutely filthy! What have you been doing?”

  Of course, I’m not going to tell her what I’ve been doing. I can’t. The box is a perfect secret in a perfect hiding place that Mom and Dad will never know about. They’ll never know about it as long as I’m careful, that is. I’m about to make up an excuse about my dirty hands when Mom says, “Before you eat your lunch, you’d better scrub those grubby hands, young man.”

  I’m happy to wash my hands. As I watch the dirt swirl around in the bathroom sink and spin down the drain, I can’t stop thinking about my secret box—a secret box begging to have secret things hidden inside.

  As I shovel macaroni and cheese into my mouth, I try to imagine what sorts of things I could put in it. I’m not sure exactly. I do know that it has to be something spectacular. Something amazing. Something… well, something that would shock Mom and Dad.

  That’s it! I’ll call it my Box of Shocks.

  Two

  For the next couple of weeks, the Box of Shocks is on my mind every day. Whenever I’m sure Mom and Dad won’t barge into my room—which isn’t very often— I pry off the wooden panel in the back of my closet, carefully slide the box out of its hiding spot and place it gently on my bed. Each time I open the lid, I do it slowly. I take a deep breath, inhaling that musty air. I stare down into the empty box and think, What should I put in my Box of Shocks? Maybe snack food—not the healthy whole-grain sugar-free snack food Mom gives me that tastes like dog food. I’ll keep snacks in my box that actually taste good.

  No. Using this secret box to hide junk food isn’t good enough. If I’m going to keep a secret from my parents, it has to be really, really shocking. It has to be something that would shock their eyeballs right out of their heads and make their hair stand up on end. If they ever saw what was in the box, smoke would drift from their ears and maybe even their nostrils.

  The problem is, I can’t think of anything shocking enough.

  Everything changes on October 29. When we’re all eating supper together, Mom says, “Are you and your friends going trick-or-treating on Halloween this year?”

  As soon as Mom mentions trick-or-treating, I know exactly what I’m going to put in my Box of Shocks!

  “Of course we’re trick-or-treating,” I reply. “And please don’t give me the speech about being too old.”

  “It’s okay, Ollie. We’ll leave it up to you and your friends to make that decision,” Dad says.

  “Then why did you ask me?”

  “Well, normally, you spend weeks getting your costume together, but this year you haven’t mentioned a thing about it,” Mom says.

  “I’ve been busy. Too much schoolwork, I guess. Anyway, I can always be a ghost.”

  “You don’t want to use your costume from last year?” Mom says.

  “Yeah,” Dad s
ays. “I thought the headless insurance salesman costume was one of your best. Very scary.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” I say. Mom and Dad look at each other, a little surprised. Until this year, my Halloween costume has been a really big deal. I’ve always tried to be something no one in the history of Halloween has ever been before—like a giant talking turkey or a punk penguin or a headless insurance salesman. But this year, I don’t care about my costume. I’ve got something much, much more important to think about.

  On Halloween night, Mom hauls an old white sheet out of the linen cupboard. Dad helps me cut eyeholes in the right places. I look at myself in the mirror and can think of only one word: Lame. This has to be the lamest costume I have ever worn for Halloween—and that even includes the year I dressed up as a cowboy when I was three.

  As Mom hands me my pillowcase loot bag, I’m thinking about my plan for tonight, and the ghost costume doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Especially when she and Dad give me the usual trick-or-treating speech as I head for the door.

  “There are four things we want you to remember, Oliver,” Mom says.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be careful on all the stairs, I’ll watch out for mean dogs, and I’ll be sure to check the candy before I eat any.”

  “That’s right, Ollie,” Dad says putting a hand on my shoulder and staring into my ghost eyeholes. “But there’s one more thing, more important than all the others. You and your buddies are not to go near the Milburn house.”

  “I know…I know. You tell me the same thing every year.”

  “And we mean it every year,” Mom says. “Especially this year, after the stories we’ve heard.”

  “What stories?” I say.

  Dad shakes his head and says, “You are absolutely forbidden to go near that place.”

  “Please promise me you won’t go there, Oliver!” Mom says, peering over Dad’s shoulder.

  “I’ll be fine, Mom,” I say as I take off down the stairs. At least I didn’t lie.

  I always go trick-or-treating with my friends Reggie, Karl and Grayson. This year, there’s a problem. For my top-secret plan to work, I have to go alone. My friends can’t come with me. All of their parents are friends with Mom and Dad. If one of them blabbed something about what I did on Halloween night, in no time flat, Mom and Dad would know. My secret would be out. It would spoil everything.