Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13 Dan froze. No! he told himself. You can't let anyone see that you've noticed anything new…. He forced his arm to start moving again, to keep rubbing the wax stick across the paper. But he was careful to keep the wax stick in the area away from the secret words. He scooted forward onto the paper, as if he was just trying to reach the farthest word, "FOREBEARE." But he was really trying to cover the secret line of poetry with his knees. Was it just his imagination, or was everyone standing too close? Claustrophobically close? Who would catch on first— would Ian over on the one side see the words But if not quite covered by his left knee? Or would it be Jonah on the other side seeing the ye be not quite covered by his right knee? Why hadn't Dan spent his whole life up to this point eating constantly so he'd have really,

really fat knees? Dan's wax stick careened almost off the paper. He hadn't been this bad at coloring since kindergarten. No, wait, he told himself. Use it! He whipped the paper away from the tombstone and began tearing the page into pieces. "Messed up," he said, trying to sound matter-of- fact. "Sorry." He tucked the torn papers facedown under his foot. "Amy?" he said. "Want to hand me another sheet of paper?" Amy's eyes met his. He could tell she knew he'd found something. She understood he was trying to hide it from the others. "Sure," she said, and gave him the paper. As he very, very carefully started another rubbing of only the top four lines of the poem, Amy started talking. "Did anybody else get to see Shakespeare's birthplace?" she asked, clearly trying to distract

everyone from Dan. "The wallpaper in some of the rooms is painted cloth— kind of like cheap tapestry is how the guide described it. But it's really gaudy looking. And back in the 1800s when tourists visited the house, they wrote their names on the walls and windows. There was a fight over who controlled the house, and the names on the walls were whitewashed over, but there are still some windowpanes with names on them, even of famous people like Sir Walter Scott…. Oh, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited the birthplace together in 1786, I think, and both of them signed the guestbook…." Obviously, Amy was trying to bore everyone to the point that they all just fell asleep. Dan finished two rubbings and handed them out. Hamilton drifted toward the door. So did Ian. But Sinead leaned closer. "I read about that!" she said to Amy. "And did you know that P. T. Barnum tried to buy Shakespeare's birthplace in 1847?" Amy added. "He wanted to ship it to the United States and put it on wheels, to be displayed all over the

country. Like it was part of his circus." "That's awful!" Sinead said. Dan thrust a rubbing into Sinead's hand. Then he did one for Jonah, too. Okay, Amy, he thought, hoping she could read his mind again. Start moving everyone else toward the door so I can do a rubbing for us with all the secret lines. "Perhaps you would be so good as to do another rubbing just for me?" Alistair said, leaning in close. Dan jumped. He'd been so focused on Amy and Sinead that he hadn't even noticed that Alistair had arrived, too. "I— I thought you were teamed up with the Starlings now," Dan said. "I'm just doing one per team." "Ah, but what is a team, really?" Alistair asked cryptically. "Shakespeare said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Is that also true of the word team? Or—family? What do the words really mean?" Alistair was definitely losing it.

Just to get rid of him, Dan did another quick rubbing and handed it to him. Now it was only the attendant standing over Dan. "Young man," the attendant said. "It's past six." "Last one," Dan said frantically. "I promise." He did the top part of the rubbing in a flash, getting only the barest hint of each word. Then he shifted positions. He filled in the last part, the secret part, upside down, with his back toward the attendant. Dan just hoped the old man wasn't craning his neck and looking over Dan's shoulder. Dan actually got goose bumps thinking about what could happen— what if the attendant saw the words appearing on Dan's paper and cried out loudly enough for everyone to hear, "Great Bard in Heaven! I never knew it said that on Shakespeare's tomb!" Dan was trying so hard to keep the attendant from seeing the secret lines of poetry that he didn't look at them himself. He reached the bottom of the tombstone and dropped his wax stick. Then he rolled up the paper as quickly as he

could. "Thanks," Dan told the attendant. As soon as he got outside, Dan pulled Amy aside. The others were just ahead of them, but Dan couldn't wait. He unrolled the paper and held it so only Amy could see. "Didn't I do a good job on this one?" he asked, trying to make it sound like he was only bragging, showing off his work. The silver rubbing glowed in the fading sunlight. And finally Dan got to read the entire poem from Shakespeare's grave, secret lines and all: Sweet, Dan thought. This is actually poetry I