Planning a two-week trip in a day and a half isn't as easy as it sounds, and it didn't sound very easy to begin with. Fortunately, all four of us had a fair bit of experience in trip preparations, so once Biff told us the rest of what we could expect, it wasn't too hard to start getting things together. It was also a big help to not have to pack dishes or pans or sleeping bags or tents. But it was time-consuming, and Joe and I both kept coming up with questionables. Like, "Should we bring matches, you think?" Or, "Won't we need some bug spray?" "How cold does it get up there at night?" "They have beds, but what about pillows?" We finally went on the theory that it was better to have and not need than need and not have, so we added in a bunch of things. Some of which later turned out to be useful, and some of which didn't.

As predicted, we weren't ready to leave until a little after one on Saturday. And even then, we didn't leave. We Hardys were ready, but the other half of the expedition had failed to make an appearance. Joe and I sat on our front steps and waited as patiently as possible for Biff and Chet to arrive, which mainly meant that I hid the cell-phone so Joe couldn't pester them with calls to hurry their tails on over. "After all," I reminded him, "Chet has to drive over to Biff's and load all his stuff into Biff's car first."

Joe was speculating about Chet trying to get a refrigerator- or at least a cooler of food- into Biff's trunk when the two of them finally showed up, at two-thirty-five. Both of them looked a bit sulky, and it turned out that they'd had several arguments: first on loading the car, then on which of them had mislaid the map, and finally over what music to listen to during the drive. It was unusual to see easygoing Chet so riled up, and I wondered if I ought to suggest that he ride with me and Joe with Biff. Fortunately, Joe managed to get them both to lighten up and we were on the road by a little before three.

Six hours of driving later, we stopped at a Comfort Lodge and got two rooms for the night. Joe and I took one, while Biff and Chet settled in across the hall. Chet was all ready to try room service right away, but we overruled him- it was too expensive- and went across the street to a Captain Flint seafood restaurant. The food was very good, though the waitress mixed up Biff's order and he had to wait a bit before he got the right plate. He was good-natured about it, though- maybe because she brought him a free dessert with the meal to make up for her mistake. It was after ten when we returned to the hotel to hang out for a while before going to sleep. Biff had turned rather subdued and I figured it was from all the driving; I was pretty beat myself. Chet was back in his usual cheerful mood and he and Joe had a rather amusing battle of wits before I called 'em off and said I was crashing.

The next morning, we were up at seven a.m. Biff emerged grumpily from his room, complaining that Chet had kept him awake with snoring; Chet countered that Biff's own snores had been what woke them both up. Joe diverted them with the suggestion that we find breakfast, which was pretty easily accomplished: the hotel had a complimentary 'Continental' breakfast laid out in the lobby. It consisted of coffee, juices and milk, a variety of bagels and toppings for them, and a selection of doughnuts and coffee-cake. We set to work on the spread and didn't get on the road again until about eight-fifteen.

"Is it just me," my brother asked thoughtfully after a few moments of silence, "or are they getting on each others' nerves more than usual?"

"It's not just you," I agreed. "But I'm not going to get inquisitive. If they want to talk, they'll talk."

"And if they argue?" Joe asked dryly. Joe hates arguments almost as much as I do, which is fairly contradictory of him, considering how good he is at them.

"With miles of forest around to explore, I doubt it'll be hard to avoid any quarrels," I pointed out. "And we don't have to stay at the cabin."

I had no idea how right I was going to be on that call.

We got into Vermont before noon, but didn't get to the Hooper's cabin until nearly two p.m. Part of the delay was due to stopping in the closest town- twenty-five miles from the cabin- to purchase a week's worth of supplies. We'd brought as much non-perishable stuff as we could, but there were limits to that. I was glad to see that prices were considerably lower there than at home, but even so, the bill was pretty big. We didn't try to get the entire two-weeks worth, planning instead to make a second trip when we started running low. It seemed more practical than having some of the food go bad before we could use it.

I kept my promise and let Joe do the last two hours of driving; by then, I was really grateful for the break. He was delighted with what he called the 'off-road' experience, though it was really a dirt road and we didn't veer off into the forest at all.

Our first few hours at the cabin were spent settling in. Chet busied himself unpacking the food and finding places to put it all. Biff, Joe and I brought in our luggage, then Biff went to unlock the boat shed and inspect the boats while Joe and I made up the beds. There were two bedrooms, with two single beds per room, one nightstand, two dressers, and a battery-powered lamp on each dresser. The floors were bare wood, but well polished- no splinters here- and there was a small oval mirror on one wall of our room. The other two walls had windows, one looking over the lake and the other gazing into the forest.

"Cool. At least if a bear comes out of the woods, we'll be able to see him," Joe remarked casually as we went into the living area to collect the other sets of sheets.

"You can look at him all you like," Chet informed us, pausing in his efforts. "Me, I'll be under the bed. I don't guess you guys brought a gun, did you?"

I pointed at the rifle propped on pegs over the cabin door. "Didn't need to."

Chet relaxed and went back to his work; I regarded the gun for a moment and hoped we wouldn't need to use it.

"We can always fire into the air and hope that scares our uninvited guest off," Joe pointed out as we went in to make the other two beds.

"That's true, I didn't think of it," I agreed, feeling better. Joe grinned as I gave him a pat for his suggestion, and then we got back to work. Biff came back in time to help us, but had to leave for a few minutes in order to show Chet how to use the propane stove. Then he showed us all the outhouse, which was really more a Porta-potty set up in a little shed beside the cabin. There was a door next to our room that led into the shed so we wouldn't have to traipse around outside in the dark, and there was also an outside access, which I thought was very convenient.

"And don't worry," Biff told us with a wry smile. "We're not the ones to worry about hauling any of that away. A truck comes by once a week to take care of it."

"Once a week," Joe repeated. "You might find me at a tree, by then- it's summer, and things might get kinda-"

"Can we talk about something else?" Chet broke in. "Listening to you and working with food don't go well together."

"He's got a point, though; isn't there a risk of typhoid or something?" I asked Biff.

"That's what the spray is for," Biff explained, pointing to a liter bottle full of disinfectant that sat beside the door. "You go in, you come out, you spray your shoes and hands. And there's more of it in the closet." He nodded to the 'closet', which was really more an alcove with shelves. There was an assortment of stuff that I hadn't really looked at yet, but I did see bottles of clear liquid sitting on the floor.

"Definitely a tree," I heard Joe mutter. "'Specially after the bean burritos."

"Joe," I suggested politely, "shut up."

"Thank you," Chet growled, and went back behind the kitchen counter to finish storing the last of the groceries.

Our first night and full day at the cabin were as peaceful and pleasant as any vacationers could have wished. Both our friends seemed to have mellowed out, now that they were no longer cooped up in Biff's car. Chet took up his coveted position as chief chef and organized us into whipping up a good dinner. After we'd eaten and cleaned up, we all went out to get a better look around and ended up on the lakeshore pier, watching the sun set behind the trees that surrounded the lake. The lake itself was calm despite its size; Biff told us it was five miles across north to south, and three east to west, at the longest points. There were several cross-country ski trails in the area, and at least one snowmobile route.

"Well," remarked my irrepressible brother, on hearing this, "that's good to know, in case we get a June blizzard. Hey, ow!" he concluded, ducking as Biff threw a twig at him.

"You shoulda told us before, I would've brought my skis," I joined in, laughing at the dirty look I got in response.

"Wise guys." Biff was trying not to smile, and the banter went on for a while.

"Let's go inside," Joe suggested as darkness settled in. "There's too many bugs out here. I didn't come on vacation to be a blood-donor for mosquitoes."

"They do get aggressive, unless there's a breeze," Biff admitted. "We seem to've gotten unlucky tonight."

"I hope one of us brought bug-spray," Chet remarked, standing up and slapping at a mosquito. "We didn't buy any at the store."

"I brought some," Biff and I said in unison, and then we laughed.

When we got inside, the light in the cabin seemed uncommonly bright after the dark outdoors, and the air was significantly warmer. Chet went straight into the kitchen and got seconds on dessert; Joe, inspired by the example, followed suit. After I'd watched them gobble the chocolate cake for a few minutes, I caved in and got some for myself. I have a weakness for chocolate. My brother grinned as he saw me cut a slice.

"Figured you wouldn't be able to resist."

"I can resist!" I protested, pulling out a fork. "But I can see that if I do, there won't be anything left to resist- you two will scarf it all. Might as well get it while it's here."

"I like your reasoning," Biff remarked, and helped himself to a bigger slice than anyone else's.

An hour or so passed pleasantly in general chitchat and joking, which slowly faded into yawns and silence. Finally we all had to admit that we were too tired to stay up any longer, and headed for our respective rooms. "If anyone tried to put me to bed this soon at home," Chet remarked as he was entering his and Biff's bedroom, "I'd throw a fit. It's barely even nine-thirty."

"Traveling," I replied through a yawn. "See y'in the morning."

The next morning, Monday, was clear and bright and hot- not as bad as Bayport, but hot enough. We spent the day near the cabin: inflating a few rafts and swimming in the lake; checking out the boat engine, which was skipping, and managing to fix it; assembling fishing poles and tackle boxes; digging bait, and wandering around the vicinity of the cabin to get familiar with the area. We had sandwiches on the big front porch for lunch, but ate inside for dinner, for the bugs were getting bad. Everyone's mood was chipper; there was a lot of joking and a certain smarty-pants got to take an involuntary swim. We all went to bed a good deal later that night than the previous one, despite our plans for a fishing trip early in the morning.

Tuesday was different. On Tuesday, we found trouble- or, more accurately, it found us, the way it always does.

What Biff hadn't told us, because he hadn't known, was that there was a junior scout camp across the lake from us. It hadn't been there the last time the Hoopers visited, and we wouldn't have been aware of it ourselves if Joe hadn't spotted the rotating lights of several squad cars flashing over the water. How he saw them, I don't know, for it was a very misty morning. We were out in the boat, fishing as planned, but when we saw the lights, we went over to take a look. And in doing so, we landed smack in one of the most dangerous mysteries we'd ever dealt with.

It started as a straightforward enough situation, if a rather serious one. A boy had gone missing from the camp during the night, and no one seemed certain whether he had wandered off and gotten lost, or had been kidnapped. Since he was the son of a famous football player, we concluded it was probably a kidnapping, and the evidence quickly began to point that way.

It ended three days later and several hundred miles north of where we'd begun, on a boat in the middle of the Saint John's river in Canada. Had we known at the start what that case would entail, we might have hesitated to take it on.

In the process of solving the case, Joe and I found seven more kidnapped boys, all of whom had been brainwashed into believing they were the test-tube creations of a mad geneticist, Randolph Rhee. Candir Karu, a bloodthirsty 'foreign representative' who thought his country was paying for cloned athletes, was involved too. But the one we had the most contact with was a sadistic lumberjack, Pierre Lafoote, who was Rhee's assistant and primary kidnapper. Lafoote had made the local Canadian lumberjacks assist him and Rhee, as a sort of spy-ring/brute-squad combination. Lafoote had also started stories to scare outsiders away- stories about the family of giants, descended from Paul Bunyan, who were 'terrorizing' the area.

These three, realizing that Dad and a bunch of Federal agents were hot on their trail, abandoned their 'demons den,' as the locals called it, and were planning to haul us all off to Greenland. Rhee had only been waiting until he could add Joe and I to his collection of brainwashed DNA material, as he regarded the boys; he was eager to begin experimenting on us.

We had the spookily accurate prophecy from a bunch of cultists known as Apocalypse to thank for some of this, and an Institute of Health investigation of Dad's to thank for the rest of it. The government had been searching for Rhee for some time, supposedly in concern over a virus that he and his team had been exposed to ten years previously, but in fact because they feared he'd begun to clone people. Of course, we also had our own talent for landing nose-deep in trouble to thank; the problem was that our ability to get ourselves out of trouble had been more unreliable than usual. Up until the very last minute, we weren't sure which way things were going to go, and that made us both very nervous. We had a rather desperate plan in place, but right after we implemented it, Rhee came in with a pair of syringes and dosed Joe and I with a sleeping drug. I fought it off as long as I could, hoping to hear the FBI moving in, but it was no use. The last thought in my mind as I succumbed was to wonder, despairingly, where I'd wake up and who I'd be when I did.

When I finally got my eyes open, feeling dizzy and disoriented, the first person I saw clearly was Dad. He was standing beside my bed, looking down at me with a relieved _expression. I immediately knew everything was all right, but it was a minute or two before I could untangle my tongue and speak. I took a moment to glance around, slowly, and recognized the bedroom Joe and I had been using in the Hoopers' cabin. Chet and Biff were also nearby, and I caught a glimpse of Joe in the bed beside me, still out cold.

"I am so glad to see you all. I thought we'd end up brainwashed in Greenland," was my first coherent remark. I sounded a little foggy and weak, but I wasn't slurring, and that was something.

"Nowhere near it," Chet answered complacently. "Safe and sound in Vermont, and still in possession of your wits- at least, you sound like it."

"How do you feel?" Dad asked, crouching beside the bed to talk to me. I became aware of the warmth of the air and pushed back the sheet that was covering me. Dad was in jeans and a light shirt, but the fellows were in shorts, so it wasn't just that I'd gotten used to the chilly Canadian air; it really was warm.

"Tired," I decided after considering for a moment. "A little dazed…and puzzled." I saw Joe stir in his bed and felt another wash of relief. "And very glad- so the plan worked?"

"It did. We got your message and set off at once, radioing for support from upriver. We caught the boat just before it got to the falls, surrounded it, and had little trouble getting them to surrender. In fact, it was a few minutes before they realized who it was that had come to their aid. You two did quite a job with your 'technical difficulties.'"

I smiled; that was what Joe called it, but our plan had really been little more than simple sabotage and it had hinged on our hope that the crew wouldn't be able to repair the damage before the FBI arrived. "Did they actually have spare parts, or not?" I inquired. That had been the most nerve-racking part of the whole thing, for we had not had time to look around and see what was replaceable and what was not. Too short of a delay could have been disastrous for us.

"They did have spare parts, but not for the equipment you wrecked," Dad replied, smiling.

"Good," Joe murmured from the other bed.

"We figured we'd better destroy something that wasn't too time-consuming to fix," I explained. "Otherwise they might've got suspicious. Especially with the fire starting right then."

"Yes, that might have been considered too much of a coincidence," Dad agreed. "We were rather worried when we saw all the smoke, though I had a feeling you two might have something to do with it," he added calmly.

"One of the boys set the fire with oily rags, as a diversion, so he could slip in and let us loose. None of the kids had the know-how to sabotage anything themselves, and we couldn't get out of the hold without help." I looked at my wrists: rope burns, of course. But not as bad as it might've been.

"An' besides, it seemed log'cal that something'd get damaged in the confusion of putting fire out," my brother agreed, yawning. "Water damage, even, from the bucket brigade."

"Sensible thinking. It did make it easy to pinpoint the boat."

"Say. What about the boys, Delta and Omega and all? We knew they weren't clones when they started remembering their parents, but what's going to happen to them?" Joe inquired, sounding more awake.

"They've been taken into government custody for the time being, until their families can be located. They're already re-orienting fairly quickly, so even if Rhee didn't keep records of their real selves, they should be remembering their names and homes very soon."

"So everything's wrapping up nicely," I mused, slowly sitting up. "Dad, what day is it?" I wondered suddenly, seeing the angle of the sunlight. As I spoke, Chet nudged Biff and they both slipped out of the room.

"It's Saturday," Dad started.

"Yikes, we lost a day," Joe murmured. "It was Thursday, last I recall."

"Yes, we found you Thursday around five-thirty and it's now a little after two Saturday afternoon. Rhee assured me the sleeping dose he gave you would have no ill effects…" Dad trailed off significantly, glancing from Joe to me.

"I feel okay, just hungry." I was quickly becoming aware of the emptiness of my stomach and a general weakish feeling- rather as if I was recovering from a bad cold.

"Me, too," Joe agreed, sitting up and stretching. "Well, maybe a little run down," he admitted a moment later. "But we hadn't eaten much for a while anyway-"

"And we were running on short sleep, too," I recalled. "And then all that tracking around in the woods, to top it all off." We looked it, too, I realized after a moment. We were still in the lumberjack disguises we'd put on two days ago.

"I imagine you'll feel more like yourselves when you've had something to eat and washed up, but I hope you'll take it easy for a few days."

"That's what vacation is for," Joe replied, and gave me a grin when I smiled.

"Yes, but that's what we thought last weekend," I reminded him.

"I guess we'll just have to work harder at relaxing, this time around," he retorted.

Dad laughed and stood up, and at that moment Chet and Biff re-entered the room. They were each carrying a tray loaded with what seemed like a feast. There was hot chicken soup, cold sandwiches, peanut-butter coated apple slices, glasses of milk, and chocolate-chocolate-chip cookies. We both dove into it, and I savored every crumb and drop.

"This beats that stew by a mile," Joe remarked at one point, referring to the horrible concoction that we'd been served while undercover at the lumber camp.

"Ten miles," I countered, and then had to pause and explain that while searching out Dr. Rhee's base, we'd stopped to try and gather information from several lumber camps along the way and stayed the night at one called Peapack. The name made Chet and Biff laugh; Joe took over and explained that the workers at Peapack had been one of a bunch in cahoots with Rhee and Lafoote.

"They were very unfriendly, except for the cook. He was helpful, but his food was terrible," I concluded, and turned my attention back to my sandwich.

After I finished eating, I did feel a good deal better and got up to take a shower and change clothes. When I was done, Joe took a turn, and we both agreed we felt one hundred percent improved. Dad didn't discuss the case any further, but suggested that if we were up to it, we could try some mild exercise. Like fishing. That met with everyone's immediate approval, and we were soon out on the pier, fishing rods in hand. It was another pretty afternoon, warm and clear with just enough of a breeze to ripple the dark surface of the lake. No one said much as we baited our hooks and cast our lines in. I sat down cross-legged and watched my bobber intently, slowly putting Canada out of my mind and taking in the present reality. The Hooper's cabin, the lake, my father and brother beside me, our friends nearby...

To our disgust, Joe and I both tired more quickly than usual, both from the aftereffect of the drug and the general lack of food. When Dad saw that we were tiring, he made us put our fishing gear away and shooed us inside to rest while he worked the grill and our friends did the rest of the supper preparations. We'd half-expected the menu to include the fish we'd caught, but Chet shook his head importantly from behind the kitchen counter.

"Red meat," he explained succinctly. "Fish tomorrow- for lunch, maybe."

"Not for breakfast, like they do overseas?" Joe asked innocently, and I laughed.

"Well, if you want to miss out on my special pancakes..." Chet paused significantly.

"Fish don't go well with maple syrup," Biff remarked, and Joe nodded thoughtfully.

"Lunch it is," he agreed.

An hour later, when the aroma from the grill was making me so hungry I felt I could eat a mothball, the meal was finally served. Steak with fried onions and mushrooms, corn, potato salad and biscuits. We all ate so much that no one said or did much of anything for half an hour afterwards, but eventually we did stir ourselves to do the dishes, clean the grill, and have dessert. We all sat around on the porch talking for a while after that, though not about the 'demons den'.

Joe and I turned in not long after dessert, drowsy from the fresh air and the large dinner. Joe fell asleep almost at once, but I lay awake for a little while, taking in the bright moonlight patterns on the walls and floor and wondering if I was in for bad dreams. Then I heard the door creak open, and, to my surprise, Dad came quietly into our room. I thought he'd come to say goodnight, but instead he spread a pallet on the floor between our beds, arranged it to his liking, and lay down. "I thought you'd sleep on the couch," I murmured. "More comfortable."

"I find I prefer to be in here," was all he said, but a warm feeling went through me at his inference. It was really nice to know he was close by, keeping an eye on us; reassuring.

I was even more pleased when he stayed around most of the next day- Sunday. He had another case waiting, but he said point blank that it could wait a little longer while he spent some time with us. He wanted to make sure we were all right, physically and emotionally, and we really enjoyed having him there.

I felt a lot better after the genuine rest, and Joe was nearly as energetic as usual. We explored the woods a bit, but since it was overcast, with showers every now and again, we mainly hung around and did indoor things- talking and listening to music and reading. Dad did bring up the case again, but didn't ask for many details, only wanted clarification on the facts that were relevant to his part of the investigation. I was glad of that; I had some serious feelings to get in order and didn't really feel like trying to go over all the scary parts yet.

Later that night, though, I wished I'd taken the chance while I had it. After we finished dinner, Dad gathered up his things, loaded his car, hugged us goodbye, and left. Joe and I stood on the porch, watching the rental car's taillights disappear around a corner, both of us feeling subdued and ill-at-ease. I rather wished we'd gone with him, though all he was doing was going to the nearest airport to return the car and fly back to New York.

"Maybe we shoulda gone with him." Joe voiced my thought after several minutes of gloomy silence.

"He wouldn't have taken us. He wants us to relax, have some downtime," I reminded him. He moved a little closer with a sigh and a nod and I leaned my arm against his shoulder.

"Let's go inside."

We did that, and eventually our moods lightened; Chet and Biff were sympathetic and managed to cheer us up with some card games and banter. All the same, we both had a restless night when we finally went to bed. After considerable tossing and turning on both our parts, I turned the light on and helped Joe move his bed over so we were side by side. After that, we both relaxed enough to fall asleep.

The next day, Monday, was a fairly quiet one. After we'd had a rather unorthodox breakfast of lunchmeat sandwiches, Biff and Chet made the long run into the nearest town to restock the groceries. Having Dad there had put an extra dent in the food. Joe and I elected to stay behind. We'd had about enough of traveling for a little while.

We were pretty lazy that day; we were tired after our restless night and didn't feel like doing anything energetic. Joe went in swimming for a while, but the most I did was to sit on the end of the pier and stick my feet in. I didn't know how he could swim after getting so nearly drowned a few days ago, but I didn't ask. No sense giving him the willies. I knew I'd have to get back in the water sooner or later if I wanted to keep from getting phobic about it, but I preferred to take it slowly, in stages.

When Joe'd had enough of swimming- as indicated by him climbing out and coming over to shake water all over me- we sat in the sun for a while without talking.

"We're going to have to do quite a bit of editing on this one," I said at last.

"Yeah. Mom might go for us helping find a lost kid, but I don't think she'd approve of Lafoote or Rhee," Joe agreed quietly. That struck me as one heck of an understatement, but I didn't try to correct him. It would be too difficult to try and phrase it accurately.

We talked a little longer, not so much about the case as about all the ground we'd covered in the past week. "We can certainly put it down as a foreign case, even if it isn't Sri Lanka," I remarked, and Joe laughed quietly.

"Who knows, that might be next."

"I'd settle for something a little closer."

"Yeah. It's funny, too, Frank- if it'd been a little mistier, or if we hadn't gone out fishing so early, we might've avoided the whole thing," Joe mused.

"Well, no, not exactly. Dad still would've called us to help find Rhee. But it all mighta turned out way different," I pointed out.

"Hmm, true." Joe was quiet for a moment, running his hand through his almost-dry hair. "Let's go in and see if we can scrounge something for lunch," he suggested after a moment. I agreed, and between leftovers and ingenuity, we had a pretty decent meal.

It was getting on towards four when Chet and Biff arrived, and from the way they both slammed doors as they got out of the car, it seemed plain they'd gotten into another argument. Joe, who was sitting on the steps, frowned, glanced over his shoulder at me, and then got up. I'd been about to go inside, but turned back around and went to help bring in the numerous bags of groceries. Half an hour later, everything was put away and both the fellows seemed to have calmed down a bit. Joe escaped outside while I went into our room and tried to settle on a book to read. I had brought several of my favorites, but at that moment, none of them seemed particularly enticing.

Neither Joe nor I ever did ask what that argument had been about, but for all intents and purposes, it was over by dinnertime. We had a fairly simple dinner, since Chet was weary from the trip, and then there was ice cream for dessert. Biff had managed that by taking a small cooler along and packing the two gallons in several bags of ice, transferring it to the freezer when he got back. There was some teasing about what uses that ice could be put to- like down people's backs or into their beds while they were sleeping- but in the end Biff emptied all the water and half-melted ice chunks into the lake.

I was in the outhouse when whenever it was that sparked the pillow fight happened. I heard a few muffled shouts, and on opening the door, nearly got beaned by a rogue sofa cushion. After pitching it back towards Joe, I avoided the battle and tried to stay out of the way, which was easier said than done. Chet went to the opposite extreme and pummeled both Biff and Joe with pillows until he nearly knocked a lamp over.

"Hold it!" I called, grabbing the lamp and righting it. "Stop, time out, cool it...knocking things over is not in the itinerary, nor is breaking them."

"Yes, Dad," Biff snorted, tossing his pillow back on the sofa, and suddenly I bristled with anger.

"Well, it's your parents' stuff; I guess you can smash it if you want, but I think Joe and Chet should try to restrain themselves. After all, they are guests," I said in icy tones.

"Smash what?" Biff demanded.

"The lamp, for one," I snapped, gesturing at it.

"Hey, bro...chill a little," Joe suggested quietly. "He didn't see it. Good save," he added. I shrugged and headed for the door, kicking aside another pillow as I went. Joe joined me a few minutes later, sitting down beside me on the steps. I was grateful for his presence, and grateful that he didn't try to ask what was wrong or start a conversation. I couldn't have said exactly what was wrong, and I wasn't in the mood for chitchat.

It's not like me to get so sharp and I knew I was overreacting to Biff's response, but the truth was that my mood had been pretty low since Dad left. The case had rattled me more than I liked to admit, and Dad's departure had left me feeling more insecure than usual. It meant I was back to being the 'person in charge', and I had even less enthusiasm for that now than I'd had when the trip started. But just then I wasn't in the mood for self-analysis, so I just sat there feeling surly and trying to get over it. I half-expected Biff to come out and carry on with the 'discussion', but he didn't and I was about as grateful for that as I was to Joe for keeping me company. Joe had shut the cabin door- very likely on purpose- so I couldn't tell if Chet and Biff were discussing me, or for that matter, discussing anything.

Probably. Maybe Chet's the one suggesting that Biff not mess with me right now.

After a while, I calmed enough to notice that it was a clear night, starry and warm, with almost enough of a breeze to keep the bugs away entirely. I gradually relaxed and even started to feel a little foolish for snapping off the way I had. It certainly hadn't solved the problem, only compounded it. I resolved to try and keep my temper under better control and was just thinking that maybe we should head back inside- it was getting pretty late- when Joe demonstrated his ability to read my mind. "Ready to go back in?"

"I was just about to say that," I told him, putting my hand on his shoulder. "And- Joe- thanks for the company. It helped."

He gave me the look he always gives me when I thank him for some piece of moral support: a sort of smile that's more in his eyes than anywhere around his mouth. Not wry or subdued; it's as if his feeling is too deep for a friendly, easygoing grin. I always feel this rush of affection, or connection, or something, when he smiles like that. "Anytime." He touched my fingers for a moment, then pried my hand from his shoulder, stood up, and pulled on my arm till I gave in and stood, too. He nearly ended up pulling me down the steps to the ground, and I gave him a little warning cuff as he led me to the door and opened it.

When I got inside, I noticed right away that the door of Chet's and Biff's bedroom was shut. Biff was sitting on the sofa, though, ostensibly reading a motorcycle magazine. He looked up as we came in, then quickly looked down and closed the magazine. I also noticed that the cushions had all been picked up and put neatly back on the sofa and chair, and I assumed the pillows were back on the beds, too. "Uh, hey," our friend said rather nervously, which puzzled me a little. "Everything, um, cool?"

"Actually, it's still pretty warm outside," Joe said lightheartedly. Biff looked at him a moment, then grinned wryly.

"You know what I mean."

I nodded. "It's cool."

Biff relaxed visibly. "Thanks for grabbing the lamp. My mom's real fond of it. It belonged to her mother, and she'd skin me if anything happened to it." He got up, dropping the magazine on the little square table that served as a coffee-table, hesitated a moment longer, then murmured, "See ya in the morning," and escaped into the bedroom. I wasn't sure what to make of that, and turned to look at my brother questioningly. Joe regarded the closed door rather wryly, head cocked to one side, and when he caught my gaze, his eyebrows went up in a silent question. He didn't seemed at all surprised at Biff's behavior; it was my reaction he was questioning. I frowned and led the way into our room, where we could talk without being overheard.

"What's with him?" I asked as soon as the door was closed.

"What do you mean?" Joe countered, sitting down on his bed with a yawn. I crawled up the foot of my own bed to the head; my bed was against the wall and his was still right beside it, from when we'd moved it two nights ago.

"You know what I'm talking about!" I protested, sprawling on my back. "Why's he acting like that?"

"Yeah, but I want you to spell it out. What is he acting like? Answer that and you'll answer your own question."

"You sound like me," I muttered, and suffered a sudden realization of why my 'question for a question' tactics often earn me a fist in the arm- or elsewhere. I concentrated on my question, not waiting for a smartass reply. "He's acting like he's nervous- but what's he got to be nervous about? I mean, he could beat me in a fight..."

"You don't fight with adults," Joe answered cryptically, and I heaved a sigh.

"Joe...it's too late for riddles. Please. Either help me with this or don't, but stop confusing me, okay? I don't have your intuition, so I can't figure out what's behind Biff's behavior."

Joe turned onto his stomach, propped himself up on his elbow, and regarded me seriously. "Biff wouldn't ever get into a fight with you over an authority issue, Frank; no more than he'd take a swing at his father- or our Dad. Roughhousing is one thing, but challenging you is another thing entirely."

I shut my eyes and waded through that. "You're saying that when I snapped at him, he took it as...as me asserting my authority? And now he's nervous 'cause he thinks I'll-" I stopped, feeling very tired. Bloody authority! "I still don't get it. What's he think I'll do, ground him?"

"Probably not that, but he didn't know whether you'd come back inside as his friend or as his authority figure," Joe informed me. "So he didn't know how to behave. Sure, it's his parents' place and we're his guests- but when the adults aren't around...well, you're the next-closest thing, big brother. Even though you don't like it much."

"Now there's an understatement," I grouched, draping my arm across my eyes. "It's bad enough being 'responsible' without being 'surrogate parent and disciplinarian' as well." A new thought struck me and I lifted my arm, peering at Joe. "How d'you know, anyway?"

"Been there, done that." Joe shrugged, his smile almost apologetic. "I won't say you replace Mom or Dad in my mind, but there've been times you've made me wonder if I'd be facing my brother or my lecturer."

"Lecturer," I repeated, groaning.

"Like when you used to lecture me about my grades...you sounded a lot more like a teacher- or maybe a teacher's aide- than yourself."

"Great." Not.

"You said if you knew how to stop doing it, you would," Joe ventured.

"I wish you wouldn't sound like that, I'm only your brother, not-"

"I know, but giving advice that nobody's asked for is tricky."

"I would be thrilled for some advice," I told him, and I meant it.

"Okay, then my suggestion would be to keep your suggestions and opinions and all strictly to yourself. Like tonight- instead of suggesting we stop pillow-fighting, you could have just waited till it fizzled out. You even could have let the lamp fall over- it wasn't your responsibility to keep it from breaking, it was Biff's. That's kinda the harsh line, though; he is our buddy and we don't want stuff broken."

"Keep my mouth shut, in other words?" As if I was much inclined to chat anyway...but he had a point; when I did talk, it was often to make a suggestion or give a reminder.

Joe frowned, thinking. "Not really that simple. It's more- decide what you want to be responsible for and don't go any further than that. I mean, if someone's health or safety is at stake, yeah, time to be responsible. But if it's just a matter of ordinary inconveniences, like broken lamps..."

"So just let people look out for themselves?" I was having a hard time grasping the idea.

"Assume that they're capable of looking out for themselves," he clarified. "And if you're wrong, well- you were wrong, and they've learned a lesson."

"But that's so..." I nearly said spiteful. "Insensitive."

"Frank, that's teenagers," Joe said seriously, sitting up. "Lots of teenagers are immature and self-centered- at least a little bit, and some a lot. They're kids trying to be adults, but they haven't finished- some haven't started- learning foresight and responsibility yet. You-" he pointed at me "-have. I have, too. Not as much as you have, but more than some. So you can be a typical teen and focus more on 'me, now' than 'us, future' and not be very mature or responsible- or, you can be you and accept that you're a lot more grown-up than many people your age."

I was silent for a long time, thinking about that. Joe lay back down after a while, turning onto his side and watching me ponder. "I'm not always mature," I said at last, not sure whether to feel defensive or not.

"No. Even Dad isn't always mature- no one is 'always' anything. I'm not saying you have to go to extremes, Frank-"

"So either I continue to be me and not particularly enjoy it, or I start imitating my peers and feeling like a fake." I shifted to sit cross-legged, planting my elbows on my knees and resting my chin in my hands. Joe was silent for a moment, blinking, and I found a blush spreading over my face as I realized what I'd said. I'd never suggested before that I didn't like being me.

"Or take a middle ground," Joe responded at last. "Like instead of reminding three people of four different things, just ask if everyone's sure they haven't forgotten something. You can scale back without going into complete shut-down, you know."

"Well..." I rubbed my forehead, trying to concentrate on that aspect of things. "Okay, I take your point about scaling back. But- I don't like always being in charge, but it has become a habit. I think I should try to break the habit completely; trying to scale it back will probably just mean that I fall right back into it again."

"Pessimist!" my brother snorted. "Perfectionist!" He cuffed my knee gently, and I looked tiredly at him. "If you didn't expect perfection from yourself all the time, you'd enjoy being you a heck of a lot more," he informed me. "And if you didn't always anticipate screwing up, you'd get satisfaction from seeing things go right, instead of worrying about the next thing that might go wrong."

"When did you turn into a psychologist?" I wondered aloud.

"I haven't, Frank, but I've known you all my life and I have been taught to see patterns," Joe reminded me. "Just like you have," he added with a smile. "And you know you've given me a lot of good, accurate advice about my weak points. You've helped me be a lot more content with who I am. I just wish you were happy being you."

I blushed again, wishing I'd been a little more careful with my words. "Actually, most of the time I am," I told him, and wondered if I was lying or not. I dismissed the thought almost at once, though; I wasn't up for a bout of self-analysis at the moment. "It's just this authority thing- when that's not being a problem, I'm fine. I really don't know which is worse, though: the actual 'old for my age/be the responsible one' thing, or getting teased about it all the time."

"Oh." Joe frowned and I wondered if he was convinced or not. "Well- we got 'em to quit blond-joking me, so maybe we can get 'em to stop teasing you, too."

"Worth a try," I agreed, trying to squash a strong sense of pessimism. Joe was right about that; my habit of looking on the dark side of any situation was really not a good one. I should try to think positive. "Especially if I- scale back."

"Yeah, that way there'll be less for 'em to joke about in the first place." Joe smiled and I felt a twinge of genuine optimism. Maybe this really would work. "But it wouldn't hurt to ask 'em to cool it."

I brooded over that for a few minutes, realizing he was right and wondering how to go about it without making my friends feel lousy. Then I decided I was too tired to figure that one out now. It would wait till my head was clearer. "In the morning," I murmured.

"Yeah. Too late now." Joe turned over onto his back and yawned. "Time to go to sleep."

"Definitely." I reached down and pulled up my covers from the foot of the bed. "Thanks, Joe."

"Y'welcome," he replied, smiling. "G'night, big brother."

"Does that mean I'm supposed to get up and turn off the light?" I inquired. "'Cause if it does, I'm going to have to walk right across your bed."

Joe grumbled a little, but he got up and switched off the overhead light, leaving the room in darkness. I lay awake for a while, watching the moonlight slowly shift across the ceiling, listening to Joe's quiet breathing, and thinking of all we'd talked about.

Breakfast the next morning was cheerful, and as we were polishing off the eggs and bacon, Biff asked what everyone wanted to do. Joe suggested a hike; Biff mused about the canoe that he wanted to try and repair, and Chet was wild to try and catch 'Old Sam', a bass of apparently legendary size who lurked down near one end of the lake. "The Paul Bunyan of fish," he declared with a wink, at which I rolled my eyes. "He's snapped off three of my lines already, but today will be different. I've got a ninety-pound test line, and I'm gonna get that sucker."

"That fallen log, you mean," Biff retorted with a grin. "It's shallow down there," he added for our benefit. "Water's full of fallen trees. I figure he's hooked three different logs- or one log three times."

"Logs don't swim in circles before they snap your line," Chet argued.

Joe laughed. "Not as a general habit, no. Well, I'm up for it anything legendary. How long an outing are we talking about, here?"

"A couple hours, at least. I guess we'd better take some lunch." Chet pushed back his chair, then paused, looking at me. "I mean, if we're going."

I had several different responses leap to mind, including one about what happened when we tried to go fishing last Tuesday. Since any one of them would have come off as 'Frank's being very grouchy', I stifled them all and finally shrugged, saying only, "I'll vote yes- is it unanimous?"

"Looks like it is, but you didn't look any too thrilled at the idea," Biff commented.

"I'm half asleep," I explained, which was true. "I was just debating whether to go along or go back to bed." It wasn't actually going back to bed that was tempting me, it was the thought of not going along at all. But saying so would open a real can of worms- figuratively, anyway- so I kept quiet on that point, too.

"Oh, come on along," my brother urged. "You can snooze in the boat if you get too sleepy."

I'm gonna regret this, I'll bet anything... I squashed that thought, too, nodded and got up from the table.

For the next hour, everything was controlled chaos as we got the dishes cleared, made lunches, and prepared the fishing gear. The boat- not Biff's Envoy but a smaller lake-appropriate outboard- was bobbing at the end of the pier and once we'd all got settled, Biff started up the engine and headed out. It took us a little while to get to the spot, since the Hoopers' cabin was close to the south end of the lake and the fishing spot was way up at the north end. Biff told us it was a real wilderness up there, mentioning that the road stopped halfway around, leaving only the hiking and skiing trails. We saw what he meant about fallen logs when we got there, nearly half an hour after leaving the cabin. "Did they used to lumber in the area, or was there a plague of beavers?" I asked as we drifted very slowly past the fifth sunken trunk in as many minutes.

"It was some tree disease, actually," Biff replied. "The pines are still standing; it's the other ones that died and toppled. The hardwoods, maple and oak trees."

Joe, unasked, leaned over the starboard side and kept an eye out for sunken logs. After a moment, Chet glanced at me and then did the same on the port side, and I wondered rather sourly why. Getting my permission? Or anticipating my suggestion?

"I'd think you'd know this route in your sleep by now," Chet remarked to Biff.

"I was just thinking that myself. After three days of twisting through the same maze-"

"Tree dead ahead," Joe broke in, and Biff swung us to the left. "Okay, you're clear now."

"That's that one where we saw the big turtle," Chet observed, looking over. "You guys should've seen him, he was like the size of a turkey platter. Is he there today?" He stood up to peer at the log and I frowned.

"Chet, you know not to stand up in a boat."

"Huh? Oh, right, captain." He sank back down, giving me a slightly sheepish smile, but I couldn't return it.

"Biff's the captain, not me."

"Um...okay." Chet gave me an odd, sort of perplexed look.

"I'm just saying...anyway, you'll scare the fish if you tumble overboard."

"Well, yeah."

"No, no turtle," Joe added, and silence fell. It was a perfect opportunity for me to ask my friends not to keep perceiving me as an authority figure- and teasing about it- but I didn't speak. I knew the mood I was in too well; my words would come out cross and accusing and make everyone feel bad. And if they thought it was only a fit of sleep deprivation making me grouchy, they would be a lot less likely to keep it in mind.

A few minutes later, Biff stopped the engine and dropped anchor. "This is it. Gentlemen, start your fishing poles," he joked.

"And let Old Sam beware. Today he gets hooked." Chet was the first to get his line in the water and settled back with an expectant look.

"What happens if he goes for one of our hooks?" I wondered aloud.

"He'll break your line." Then he frowned. "Oh. Yeah, I probably should've handed out this stronger stuff to the rest of you. That way, no matter whose bait he goes for, he's ours... I can't believe you didn't think of that, Frank!"

I did. Just now.

"I thought that's what he just did," Biff snorted.

"I mean ahead of time. He's the ultra-planner, not me, but it looks like he missed a trick this time."

"Oh, I get ya. Tsk tsk, letting the ol' brain slip up a bit, are we?" Biff was grinning, I could tell from his voice, but I didn't turn to him.

"Nobody's perfect," I replied, deliberately keeping my voice light when what I really wanted to do was snarl, 'Leave me the hell alone!' at them both. Why the blazes didn't I just stay behind? I knew I'd regret this! I baited my hook, dropped the line in, and set about ignoring the little jabs that came at me about my supposed perfection.

"Knock it off, you guys," I heard my brother saying, and welcomed the support. Then I tuned out completely for an while. Fishing's good that way, watching your bobber can be incredibly hypnotic.

It must have been at least an hour before I got a couple nibbles and pulled out of my trance long enough to check my bait. Gone, of course, so I re-baited and tossed the line over again. It was really a nice day, I thought, feeling a lot more relaxed. We were in the shade, the sky was clear, the humidity was minimal, and there was just enough of a breeze to keep the heat bearable.

Biff was in the rear, near the tiller. I forget sometimes how big the guy is until I take a mental step back; he's already a bit over six feet and definitely the most muscular of us four. In fact, there's not many seniors on the football team bigger than Biff. He had pulled on his baseball cap, covering most of his dark-blond hair, and his pale-blue eyes were fixed on his own bobber.

Chet had shifted up into the nose of the boat, but his line was angling off to my left, so I regarded his profile for a moment. He's a few inches shorter than me but definitely bigger. A lot of people mistake his size for fat, but the truth is it's mostly muscle. He's round, but he's not- as one fool had the misfortune to suggest- 'porky'. His green eyes were narrowed. I mused a moment about how misleading stereotypes can be: Chet, with his reddish crew-cut and freckles, was far less temperamental than, say, my fair blond brother.

Joe was leaning against the side of the boat with a faraway look on his face- fishing is one of the few things he has an almost infinite amount of patience for. He'd forgotten to comb his hair, which always gives him the look of an irresistible ragamuffin. I could see faint circles under his winter-blue eyes, which made me frown a little, but his _expression was one of lazy contentment. He'd finally passed Chet in height a couple months ago, and while he was nowhere near Biff's physique, he was definitely going to be huskier than I. He's always been sturdier than me- never chunky, but even in the gawk stage of adolescence, he didn't look too thin and bony. Not like Biff and I did.

I felt my tightly wound temper relax as I took in the peace of the quiet lake. My irritation slipped away. I'd explain why I was grumpy and ask them to back off the teasing...but not now, not with everything so blissfully silent and calm.

I had just turned back to my fishing pole when Joe gave a yell of surprise. I whipped around, adrenaline bursting through me- right in time to see Joe's fishing pole fly from his hands and disappear under the murky water.

"Well, that was no log, for sure," I remarked, staring at my incredulous brother and willing my heart to slow down again.

"That," he retorted, "was a thirty-dollar fishing pole!" He thumped his fist on the rim of the boat.

"And a large fish," Biff conceded, scratching his head. "A very large fish. Unless there's a scuba diver playing pranks in the area."

We all gave him looks of disbelief. "Right," Chet scoffed, shaking his head. Biff shrugged good-naturedly.

"I'm just keeping an open mind. Y'know- with these two around, everything is a little...suspicious." He grinned at me.

"Okay, well, I'll admit that. I'll keep my mind open too, but I'd rather have an open cooler; I'm hungry."

"I'd rather have my pole back," Joe muttered, peering over the edge of the boat as though hoping to see the fishing rod surface. He did cheer up a bit at the thought of the fish story he'd have to tell, but we decided that rather than risk any more fish-thievery, we'd come back another day- with stronger lines.

After we finished our lunch- to lighten the load for the trip back, as Chet phrased it- we turned around and made speed home again. Chet and Biff held a physics debate about that all the way back, trying to decide whether the weight in the boat was the same or not. I finally got them to drop it by remarking that we were at least one fishing-pole lighter and that if they wanted, we could be a couple bodies lighter, too. "Hey, no swimming on a full stomach," Chet protested, pretending that I meant I would be the one to hop overboard. "You'll get a cramp."

At that, I decided it was time to shut up entirely before I lost what tranquility I'd found. I watched the shoreline fly past, deliberately putting myself back into the meditative state I sometimes fall into when reading. In that frame of mind, I seldom hear anything anyone says to me.

The rest of the week- Wednesday, Thursday and Friday- seemed to take forever to pass. It's not much like me to count off the days and hours, especially when on a vacation trip, but I was so eager for that one to end that I actually got homesick. And when I wasn't homesick, I was either off in the clouds of 'not listening' or actively struggling to keep my barbed thoughts from escaping through my mouth. Again, that's not usual behavior for me, but this was one considerable exception.

The problem was our friends and their good intentions. There's that saying about where 'good intentions' will get you, and it occurred to me quite a few times over those three days… They'd knew how narrow our escape had been, and they'd been present when we gave Dad some of the details about Dr. Rhee's alleged genetic experiments. So, knowing we'd had a rough time and seeing how subdued we were when Dad had to hurry off to his next case, they decided we needed cheering up and distractions to help us forget our troubles. They must have been perplexed when my mood not only didn't rise but actually lowered after all their good-natured attempts to cheer me up. But Chet and Biff are both loyal and determined, and they carried right on with their program of trying to make me feel better. Joe was much less of a difficulty for them, but he's always been lighter-hearted anyway.

Distraction-wise, things weren't so bad. We hiked the trails, we swam and fished more, we even made the long trip to town and spent the day checking everything out. Joe helped Biff with the engine of the little boat, which was starting to knock again. My brother could be a fine mechanic if he chose, he has a real knack for it, and that's with virtually no training at all.

It was the 'cheering-up' part that was the real heart of the problem. A group of guys- even if they're great friends- isn't a terribly sensitive gathering, even if some of them are fairly sensitive as individuals. So the cheering up- which, in fairness, did often start as amusing remarks and jokes- very quickly devolved into what I least wanted to deal with: teasing. The battles of wits were bad enough, annoying me so that I obstinately refused to indulge in them, but the full-fledged teasing usually sent me off to the bedroom Joe and I were sharing. It was either that or lose control of the bitter replies lurking under my tongue. And it wasn't just the barbs directed at me that angered me; I don't particularly appreciate it when people taunt my younger brother, either. Joe didn't seem to mind, but I did. I was in a bind: I couldn't respond the way my friends hoped I would; I wasn't in the mood for anything that resembled mockery. But I certainly couldn't let my temper loose on them when they were only trying to help.

I might've handled it a little better if their main method of teasing me hadn't been exactly that thing I'd become so disenchanted with: my 'responsible, mature, old for my age' attitude. Never mind that I was deliberately doing far less of that than I had in the past; it was still the primary source of cheerful jabs from my friends. Especially since I was being so 'humorless' and 'dour' and generally acting 'like one of those ultra-conservative old coots who thinks it's a crime to be young and full of fun', as long-winded Chet phrased it Friday evening after dinner. I needed to 'lighten up'.

At that, I decided I'd had enough; I left the cabin without a word and went down to the pier to watch the summer sunset alone. I sat down on the very end and stared across the dark water at the trees, then considered, grimly, that someone might find it amusing to come up behind me and give me a push into the lake. And they'd probably think it was funny, too. With that in mind, I moved back a few feet and leaned against one of the support beams. The sky was a beautiful deep blue, the reflections clear in the still water, the fading sunlight glowing golden- and all I wanted to do was get up, walk to the car and drive away. But I knew I couldn't. There was no way I could take off and leave Joe behind- in that respect, I did have to be responsible. 'Tomorrow we leave,' I reminded myself. 'It'll be better on the drive home, they can't mock me then, and Joe won't.' That was a consolation and I felt some of my angry frustration easing away, but I remained unhappy. Some snide little inner voice was reminding me how I hadn't wanted to do this, how I'd known I wouldn't enjoy it. 'Vacations are supposed to be fun,' I grumped mentally. 'Not to make you wish you'd stayed home, and not to feel like a complete loss of time that you could've been using for something better!'

I didn't notice how long I sat there feeling surly, but it couldn't have been long before I heard footsteps crunching behind me. I turned, expecting to see Joe, but to my surprise it was Chet, bearing the last of the ice cream in the two-gallon jug. Joe was following him, carrying bowls and spoons, and Biff was trying to manage several bottles and jars of toppings at once. The sight actually made me smile, something I hadn't done much of recently. "Voila," Chet declared as he set down the ice cream with a thump. "Sundae time!"

I kept my mouth shut my initial ill-tempered reactions, and particularly on the notion that the sweet stuff would attract bugs, and instead took the bowl and spoon that my brother handed me. Chet scooped out large helpings of the chocolate and vanilla ice cream while Biff busily opened topping lids. The three of them were very cheerful and there was quite a bit of laughter and joking around as they chose what to put on the impromptu sundaes. Before I knew it my own spirits were beginning to lift, and for a change, there were no mocking jabs.

"Gross! Disgusting! Chet, how can you do that?" my brother exclaimed in a grossed-out voice, and I turned to see Chet scooping maraschino cherries directly from the jar and eating them.

"Yuck!" I agreed. How anyone can eat those sick-colored chemical-soaked things is beyond me. Give me a genuine cherry with a stem and stone any day.

"If you want disgusting, look at that." Chet wrinkled his nose at Biff's hefty dose of caramel sauce. "It looks month-old melted toffee," he declared.

"I wish I'd thought to get bananas," Biff lamented, ignoring this disparagement of his favorite topping. Then he tried to explain to me that chocolate sauce on chocolate ice cream was redundant. "Try something you haven't got already," he urged, offering the marshmallow sauce.

"No, thank you; marshmallows do best with s'mores," I replied, at which point Joe took the jar and tasted a spoonful of it. "Now, really, Joe, how is that different from Chet eating cherries out of the jar?"

"The difference is, marshmallow sauce is the same as marshmallows out of a bag, just softer. And marshmallows are good- not like those sick-cherry imitations," my brother retorted.

"Hey, these are no worse than a cherry-cordial from a box of chocolates!" Chet protested.

Joe replied, shrugging, "Well, those are gross, too."

The back-and-forth went on while we ate, and we all got pretty keyed-up from the sugar. There were a couple little scuffles and it really was a bit of a surprise that no one fell, or got pushed, into the lake. As the sunlight faded into dusk, the mosquitoes began to arrive in droves, so we gathered up the sundae-makings and took them inside. The ice cream container was empty; that got thrown away. After we'd finished cleaning up, we sat around on the porch and talked. I got a little edgy, expecting the teasing to start up again at any moment, but it didn't. The moon came up and the stars began to come out, and that was when Chet suggested a night swim. It was a warm night, so we put the idea into practice almost at once. 'Almost', because there were some minor details in the way, like getting swim trunks on and finding towels.

When we were all ready, we ran back down to the pier, Biff winning the impromptu race. He halted near the end of the dock, supposedly to catch his breath, and there was a typical struggle to see who would be the first to (involuntarily) enter the water. Joe and Biff tied at this, because Joe took the straightforward method of grabbing Biff's arm and leaping right off the end of the pier. Chet seemed to admire the tactic, if the way he tried to repeat it on me was any indication, but I twisted out of his grip and he went in backwards without me.

We swam and splashed and dove and even had a few races. And there was a definite bonus to the fact that we were miles from anywhere, because we were noisy. The water, cold enough during the day, seemed even colder at night, though it probably wasn't. About an hour after getting in, I decided I was chilled enough and suggested to Joe- whose teeth were chattering- that a cold swim needed the remedy of a towel, clothes, and maybe something warm to drink. "Unless you want more ice cream," I added, and he groaned.

"Don't say 'ice'," he requested, splashing out of the water and wrapping up in his big beach towel. I joined him; Chet and Biff followed a minute or two later and I led the way back to the cabin. We did warm up pretty quickly, especially when Biff brought out a packet of hot chocolate mix and made cocoa.

"This is crazy, you know," Chet remarked as we sat around sipping the drinks. "First ice cream, then a cold swim, now hot chocolate and jeans and all...it's like we can't decide if it's summer or winter."

"It's summer, it's just not as warm in that lake as it is at the Bayport beaches," Joe pointed out. "Especially when the sun's gone down. And the air's a lot cooler, too."

"You know it sometimes gets down in the fifties, even the forties, up here in the summer?" Biff asked quietly of no one in particular. "Sometimes we've had fires going and sweatshirts on."

"Brr." Joe took another sip of his hot chocolate and gave an exaggerated shiver. I wondered if we were in for another sugar high, but as an hour and then another wore by with nothing more than talk and joking and some card games, I concluded not. We were all tired out from the swim and I figured the only reason no one had gone to bed yet was teenage stubbornness. When you've got the opportunity to stay up late, with no one in authority telling you to be off to bed, you tend to make the most of it.

We finally packed it in around midnight, admitting that we might as well turn in, since we'd have a busy day tomorrow. As I was crawling into bed, feeling the nicest kind of weariness, Joe came in from the kitchen. We did our face-wash and tooth-brushing at the kitchen sink, since there wasn't one in the outhouse. Joe flicked off the light, shut the door and came to sit on the side of my bed. His hand rested on my arm as he asked softly, "Have a good evening, bro?"

"Yeah," I answered, settling back and looking up at him. "I wonder- do I have you to thank for that?" I'd almost swear he blushed, but even with the moon shining in through the window, there wasn't enough light to be certain.

"Well," he started, sounding oddly shy, "when you went outside after dinner, they, uh, talked a little about how- how gloomy you've seemed. Couldn't figure it out, they were both like, 'nothing seems to be working, he won't even smile.' So I told 'em- again- that if they really wanted to help, they should knock off the teasing and just try to have a good time without it." Joe paused for a breath, then added, "They weren't so sure, but I reminded 'em that you never have liked to be teased, much. You always tell 'em to knock it off a lot sooner than anyone else does, or ignore 'em altogether. So they said okay, they'd try it. And now I guess they know I was right."

I couldn't stifle a chuckle; he sounded so smug, so suddenly. "I guess they do," I agreed, touching his wrist. "Thanks, Joe. I keep thinking I should tell them exactly what irritates me, and why, but...it'll raise so many problems."

"Like why you never told them sooner," he suggested, and I knew what he was referring to.

"Yeah. I really was going to talk to them Tuesday, but I was so grouchy- I knew if I said anything, I'd be too harsh. And I don't want to make 'em feel bad, Joe, I just wish they'd stop. I can't win, you know? Either I take charge and get teased for it, or I don't and get teased for that."

"I don't think I ever really paid attention to that before," Joe admitted. "But that's happened to me, too. If I lose my temper, someone makes a joke about that; if I control it, somebody makes a joke about how incredible it was that I didn't blow up."

I turned onto my side, thinking about that. "Makes you feel like you can't ever get it right. And it's not even your fault- but it sorta feels like it, doesn't it?"

Joe nodded and I watched moonlight and shadows shift across his face. "A least we've got a start. Maybe we won't need to explain an awful lot, just gradually get less and less tolerant of the nasty kinds of teasing."

It was my turn to nod. "Some things are okay to tease about. But there's others- they hit you right where it hurts, no matter who's saying it or how they're saying it. Like, imagine if one of us called Chet 'Porky Pig' like that one asshole did."

"Head for the hills if you pull a stunt like that," Joe muttered. Then he yawned and rubbed his eyes. "Bed. And home, tomorrow."

"Day after," I reminded him, letting go of his wrist. "Remember, we've still got to pack up and pull out. And we'll probably have to stay overnight somewhere again."

"Oh, I forgot." Joe got up, but paused, looking at me. "Sleep well."

"You too." There was more hope than courtesy in my reply; he'd had a wretched night Wednesday and it had taken a long time for me to soothe him. Even when I'd tucked him in beside me, he'd continued to shiver for twenty minutes or so. He hadn't told me what had scared him so badly, but it didn't take a genius to figure it was case-related. I hoped this latest nightmare passed quickly, but I knew it wasn't likely; Joe's nightmares have a nasty habit of sticking around for a while to scare the daylights out of him.

I always hate to see him frightened, it makes me feel helpless, even though Joe stoutly insists that I help him calm down faster than anyone else could. I never am sure if he means that, or if he says it so I won't feel inadequate. It would be so like him to do that, he always thinks of other people first.

The trip home was more or less the reverse of the trip up, with a couple minor exceptions. The first was that we got packed and had the cars loaded by eleven a.m., even with the complications of breakfast and tidying up the cabin. We managed that by splitting the chores; Joe and I loaded up both cars while Chet and Biff did the cleaning up part. Chet packed up all the remaining food into the plastic grocery bags from the last shopping trip and put half the bags in the backseat of each car. "So we'll all have plenty of stuff to snack on if we need to," he explained. "Better than pulling over and sharing stuff out." Everyone agreed this was sensible and Joe remarked that we might not even need to stop for lunch.

Once Biff had locked up the cabin and made sure no one could take the boat, we got under way. I let Joe do the driving until we got to the Interstate. It took nearly three hours before we saw Interstate sign, and when we paused at a gas station to change places, he actually seemed relieved to give up the driver's spot. "Gets to your arms after a while, doesn't it?" he said ruefully, rubbing his shoulders.

"Be grateful we have cruise control," I told him, readjusting the mirrors. "Otherwise your leg would be in even worse shape than your arms."

"I can believe that," he admitted. "Y'know, I'd think being on the Interstate would be easier than back roads- no stop signals, no slowing down for left turns. Just hit the cruise control and let the graded road take care of the majority of the curves."

"Not that simple," I explained. "There's always the chance of a traffic slowdown, for one thing. And then you've always got to be alert on who's coming up behind you- and who you're coming up behind. Everyone's always going a little slower or a little faster than everyone else- or a lot, sometimes- so it's always this big...well, not a game exactly, but like a competition of who is passing whom and at what point. The patterns are always shifting and you don't dare let your concentration lapse. If you do, you could end up road pizza." I fell silent for a moment to make the merge into traffic, then added, "And there's always on and off ramps changing the pattern, too."

"I do dislike merges," my brother muttered. "I always think we're going to get sideswiped."

"We won't," I assured him.

Forty minutes later, Joe was asleep, leaning back in the seat and slowly slumping towards the passenger door. I wondered briefly if his fatigue was due to the driving, to a bad night, or from rising early. Then I dismissed it and let him sleep for a while. As predicted, we didn't stop for lunch. When my stomach started to rumble, around two, I woke Joe by turning the radio on. He was a big help, organizing a sandwich for me and even holding the steering wheel steady once or twice so I could eat without dropping anything.

We stopped for supper around seven, but we had a no luck when it came to finding a hotel that wasn't all booked up. Finally, exasperated, we got back on the highway and proceeded to the next exit...and the next...and the one after that. "This is ridiculous," I complained, rubbing my tired eyes with one hand. "There has got to be at least one decent hotel around here that isn't full up."

"What I can't figure is why they're all full," Joe mused.

"It is vacation season," I reminded him. "And it seems there's been an outbreak of weddings lately, too."

Joe laughed a little at that. "In that case, we better start trying at the places no bride in her right mind would send her guests. Like two-star, not three and four-star."

"I'll even settle for half a star," I muttered. "Better than sleeping on the side of the road."

The motel we eventually ended up in was about that bad, too. It consisted one small main room, containing two double beds, two chairs, a small table, two lamps, and the inevitable television and clock radio. The bathroom was about the size of a closet, with a shower but no tub. It was non-smoking, but dreadfully crowded, musty and shabby. The table had definitely seen better days- two of its legs had been broken and repaired with duct tape- and the rest of the furniture was scuffed and battered; the sheets were worn and the mattresses lumpy. Biff optimistically pointed out that there was no sign of either rodents or insects, which was some consolation, even though Joe suggested that the local animal and pest population had taken off due to lack of human guests. We took turns in the bathroom, ignoring the shower on the grounds that the faucets were rusted too tight to turn, sprawled out on the beds- and quickly discovered another feature of our abode. The noise.

Not the typical traffic noise; just the opposite. We'd left the Interstate quite a ways behind, gambling that this tiny town- not much more than a village- would not be booked solid, unlike the larger towns. We were correct, of course, but when you stay in an old, weather-beaten room far from lights and civilization, you can find yourself getting a bit creeped out by the intensity of the silence. And the darkness. No streetlights, no headlights, no brightly lit store signs shining against the curtains, just solid blackness. It should have been peaceful and familiar, since we'd just spent two weeks alone in the woods, but this was different. Up in the Hooper's sturdy, well-cared for cabin, we'd had nothing much worse than some very noisy crickets and frogs.

This motel room was another story entirely. Once the lights were off and the quiet darkness closed in, I started noticing all the other noises. The creaks and groans and poppings of wood settling. At least, I was pretty sure it was just the wood settling; but all the same, the sharpness and suddenness of some of those creaks and cracks was downright unnerving. And the thunk of something solid landing on the roof every so often didn't help either. I couldn't figure what that was about: acorns, maybe, except it was too early for acorns. I could tell Chet was uneasy- he was restless- and for once, Biff didn't joke about ghosts. I guess he was feeling creeped-out himself and didn't want to make things any worse.

I finally got too tired to worry about the noises anymore and drifted off into a surprisingly peaceful sleep. I did wake up twice- once when Chet was snoring, which stopped when Biff dealt with him, and once when Joe crawled out of bed to use the bathroom- but falling back asleep was no problem.

The room seemed much less threatening the next morning, more pathetic than creepy, but we never did figure out what those bangs on the roof had been. I didn't point it out to the others, but I think Joe noticed, as I did, that there were no trees overhanging the area close enough to have dropped anything- and there was nothing to be dropped, either. No fruit, nuts, berries or pinecones. After we'd had breakfast and were back on the highway, Joe suggested that perhaps some pranksters had been in the area, throwing stones to scare the motel's patrons. It seemed like a fine explanation to me, so we left it at that- even though I hadn't seen any footprints, either.

We got home before noon Sunday; the extra time we'd driven the previous night in search of a hotel had carved our travel time down considerably. I let Joe drive the last hour or so into Bayport, since he was familiar with the roads and being a pest about it. Besides, I was a little tired and my back was sore. Chet and Biff were ahead of us, and both waved out the window as Biff turned down the road that would take them out to the Morton farm. "Didn't Chet leave his car at the Hoopers' house?" I wondered aloud, vaguely remembering that Chet had driven into town two weeks ago.

"I bet Iola or someone drove it back," Joe responded, halting at the eternally red light on Picket Road. "I hate this light."

"You and the rest of this city," I replied. "They need to pass a law against it." I was feeling remarkably light-hearted with only a slight tinge of regret that our 'trip' was over. It wasn't the worst we'd had, but it certainly wasn't anywhere near the best, either. Even the time when we'd gone to check out the Honeycomb Caves had been less exasperating. Also less dangerous, even though Joe had fallen over a cliff, Biff had been clunked on the head, and Chet stunned when his metal detector was booby-trapped... Okay, so maybe it had been almost as dangerous. But despite that, the Honeycomb Caves had been a lot more enjoyable, most of the time.

"What they really need to do," my brother answered with unexpected seriousness, "is adjust the timing. Well, finally!" he growled as the light turned green.

"Is it just me, or are you a bit on the grumbly side?" I inquired, looking at him curiously.

"It's not just you. I didn't sleep very well."

"Oh. All the noise?"

"Sort of." Joe scowled. "Revved up my imagination enough to give me some not-too-nice dreams."

"You can always grab a snooze when we get everything inside," I suggested as he turned carefully into our driveway and edged our car into the garage beside Mom's.

"I might." He shut off the engine and stretched his arms, then hopped out, opened the passenger door to grab out the bags of food, and headed for the kitchen entrance. I leaned over to hit the trunk-open button, then got out and dragged my suitcase and duffel bag inside.

"Hi, honey," came Mom's voice from the dining room as I walked into the cool kitchen. Joe had already unloaded one full bag, placing things at random around the countertop. "Did you boys have a good time?"

"It wasn't bad," I said neutrally, if not entirely honestly. "We've definitely had worse trips-"

"What, nothing mysterious happen for a change?" Mom teased, coming into the kitchen and giving me a brief hug. "What's with all this food?"

"We didn't want to waste it," Joe explained, turning to her. "And this is only half of it," he added with a smile. Mom put her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

"Maybe we could give some to the Food Bank. Like the oatmeal," she suggested, nodding at the round container.

"Oh, that Chet!" Joe exclaimed, breaking out of the embrace to lift the oatmeal carton and heft it. "He knows we hate oatmeal!"

"Not as much as he does, according to him. Biff got that, we should give it back to him," I mused. "The trunk's open," I added, heading for the upstairs with my luggage. "And actually, Mom, we did have a mystery- tell you about it in a bit." I tossed that over my shoulder from halfway up the steps.

"Not another one!" I heard her saying to Joe. "I swear, everywhere you two go-" Then her voice was lost as I went into my room and thankfully dropped the heavy suitcase on the carpet.

In for a lecture, I bet- and she hasn't even heard the case yet. Heavy-duty editing on this one, Frank!

So when I got back downstairs, I did exactly that, not telling her much more than the bare bones of the whole thing. Joe jumped in with details, as usual, but minor stuff- things like how uncomfortable it had been to snooze on a train seat, how chilly it was in Canada, how thick the forest was. He also made some observations about the lumberjacks in the camp where we spent a night that had Mom smiling.

"So this runaway boy-"

"Kidnapped," I corrected. "Lafoote kidnapped George and tried to take him up to Rhee's hideout in Canada."

"Ah. Which you found when your father and a Federal representative-"

"Mr. Chester."

"-Asked you to tail this foreigner-"

"Candir Karu, yes. Who thought he was getting genetically-engineered athletes from Rhee for his country, but was actually getting kidnapped, brainwashed, naturally-created boys who happened to be very big and strong for their ages," I concluded.

"And we even got some sightseeing in on the way," Joe added cheerfully as Mom frowned. "The Reversing Falls on the Saint John's River were really incredible! I've never seen a river flow upstream before!"

Mom relaxed a little, looking interested. "I never have either," she mused. "That must have been quite a sight. Though I must say, I'm not entirely happy about the two of you tailing that man. It sounds-"

"Oh, we stood up on top of an old fort and looked out through one of those telescope things," Joe assured her, omitting the part about how we'd foolishly followed Karu down an alley and had to talk our way out of a nasty situation. Neither Dad nor Mr. Chester had mentioned that Karu was carrying a knife, nor that he was apparently very ready to use it. Joe and I had nearly found that out the hard way.

"Now that was sensible thinking," Mom said approvingly.

"Thank you," I answered cheekily, and she laughed. "And Dad was there- he spent a day with us in Vermont," I went on. "So that was cool. Did he finish that new case yet?"

"I expect him home tomorrow or the day after," Mom answered, getting up from the chair she'd settled into. Joe and I were on the sofa, facing her. "It's not as much of a case as usual for him- I understand the thing is to compare modus operandi and see if he can build enough of a convincing case to charge a rather deft bank robber. They've got him on four robberies, and they think they can pin three more on him as well."

"Cool!" Joe exclaimed, high-fiving me without warning.

You'd almost think she was a detective herself, she knows so much of the vocabulary. "If anybody can figure out a link, Dad can," I commented, keeping the other thought to myself. Mom may have picked up the talk, but she doesn't care to be complimented on it.

Sometimes it makes me wonder; why'd Mom marry Dad, knowing he was a detective, if she didn't care for his job? Did she think she could get him to change his mind and be a banker or something? I never quite dare to ask her about it; I figure if she did have it in mind to persuade him into another job, she might be a bit sensitive about the fact that it hasn't worked yet.

The rest of the day passed in a pretty typical after-vacation manner. We returned to the kitchen to finish putting the food away, then went upstairs to unpack. Dealing with the clothing was easy enough; everything had been worn at least once and all of it smelled fishy. That's the problem with packing fish-stinky clothes in with other stuff; you might just as well spray the entire bag with essence de fish. Rather than shove everything into my hamper and have it smelling up the room, I hauled it all down to the washing machine in the basement. Joe had had a similar idea, and between us we had two quite sizeable piles, one light and one dark.

Putting away the other stuff I'd taken along- my books and some cds- took a little more time, mostly because I'm picky and like everything in alphabetical order. Joe came in and sat in my desk chair, watching and making the occasional remark about my 'persnickety' nature, while I retaliated with comments about his 'chaotic décor' attitude. When everything was unpacked, we went downstairs for a snack, then got pressed into service helping Mom. I got to dust while Joe vacuumed, and as usual he charged my feet with the vacuum while I was moving around the house. I pretended to bait him like a bull with my dust rag a few times, dodging until I accidentally ran into a chair and decided to give up the bullfighter act.

After the chores were done, Mom started getting supper. By then the laundry was finished, so we lugged that upstairs and spent about an hour putting it all away. It wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't mixed our stuff together; figuring out which socks and jeans belonged to whom took some time. I had finished putting my stuff away and was about three pages into a book when Mom called us to set the table. Dinner was soon served; chicken chow mein, with rice, chicken chunks, celery, mushrooms, and water chestnuts, as well as those funny dried noodles. We helped with the dishes, then had dessert. Chocolate chip cookies.

The rest of the evening was divided between watching TV and- in my case- reading the book I brought down from my room. When ten-thirty arrived, Mom shooed us upstairs to shower and get ready for bed.

"That's another thing we left out," I remarked quietly to Joe as we reached the upstairs landing. "Late bedtimes."

"I know. I suddenly feel like a nine-year-old again," he sighed. "Oh well," he added with a yawn. "I am tired. I never took that nap."

"I am too. And it'll be good to sleep in our own rooms…" Or would it, I wondered. We'd gotten rather used to sharing a room. "Or you could always come in and keep me company," I offered casually.

"I might," he agreed. "Dibs on the bathroom!" he added with a wicked grin, and I cuffed his arm as he scooted off to claim it.

As it turned out, Joe did end up in my room, falling asleep beside me while I read after my shower. Mom didn't comment on that when she came in to say goodnight, only kissed us both and reminded me not to stay up too late reading. I didn't pay quite enough attention, though, and fell asleep sitting up, the light still on beside me.

The next day started out in a perfectly normal manner. They always do, the days that change your life.

Dad wasn't home when we got up, which was disappointing but not particularly surprising. After breakfast, Joe and I got delegated to do some of the yard work that had accumulated in the two weeks we were gone. Joe gave vent to his usual remarks about wishing we had a smaller yard; I retaliated with my usual defense that at least the lawn mower wasn't the old-fashioned push type. It was the sort with a lever that you pulled to send it moving, rather like the gears on a car. Joe grumbled about wanting a ride-mower, as he called it; I had to laugh at the thought. Our yard's just not big enough to justify one of those sit-and-steer machines.

"Do you know how silly you'd look, driving one of those on this lawn?"

"I don't care; at least it'd be done faster," my brother grumped. "And sitting, instead of walking back and forth and back and forth and-"

"Okay, okay, I get the idea. To and fro," I teased. I was on my knees near one of the flowers and shrub beds that bordered the house. Several large piles of dandelions lay in clumps on the grass where I'd tossed them. "Don't step on my trowel," I warned as he hefted the bag and moved towards the backyard.

"Oh, oops, almost did. Glad it wasn't the fork-thingy," he answered absently.

"I left that downstairs, don't need it." I turned my attention back to the weeds and heard the mower start up again a few minutes later. That was the inconvenient thing about it: we had to turn it off each time we wanted to empty the bag, and turn it back on again when we'd replaced the bag. Otherwise, we might've lost a couple fingers.

By the time I finished all the weeding- both sides of the house, the smaller front-yard beds and the very small bed beside the back porch- I was so hot, sweaty and tired that the only thing I wanted to do was lie down in a cold bath and go to sleep. I decided, regretfully, that that would probably be risky, so I settled for a cool shower and felt immensely better when I was done. Lunch helped a lot, too; my energy level took a distinct lift after I'd eaten. Joe, who didn't seem nearly as tired as I, was in an almost irritatingly cheerful mood and wanted to go do something else.

"Like what?" I asked when he came into my room with this suggestion. I had decided to read more of my book and was lying on my back, partially propped up on my pillow, when he bounced down on the side of the bed and made his suggestion.

"I dunno...we could go out and work on the Sleuth, it's been three weeks-"

"More work?" I groaned. "Haven't you had enough slave labor for one day? Especially in this heat? You think the yard was bad, at least we had trees! It'll be full, blazing sun on the docks!"

Joe's enthusiasm faded noticeably. "Well...I guess that's true. But we do have to do something about the boat soon, Frank. She'll rot in the water if we don't."

"Maybe tomorrow," I offered. "And she won't disintegrate on us that fast- it'd take a year or two, at least, for the salt water to work past the paint and protectant."

Joe made a sort of noncommittal grumble, the noise he always makes when he's caught in an exaggeration. "Okay. Well, then...we could do something else- we could take that oatmeal over to Biff!"

"Why don't you do that?" I suggested. "That way you can do the driving."

"What about you?"

"Me, I'm going to lie here and read," I explained, holding up my book. "And listen to my back break in half," I added. I'm not above a bit of exaggeration myself, especially when there might be a bit of compensation forthcoming.

"Aww...poor Frank. All that kneeling really got to you, didn't it?" Joe teased.

"Hey, at least you got to stand upright! I had to hunch over like- like-"

"Igor."

"Him. Or Quasimodo, either one... I really do ache."

"Shoulda made it a hot shower, not a cold one," Joe told me, standing up. "I'll go take Biff his revolting oatmeal- and when I come back, I better find you lying on a hot water bottle or something."

"It's too hot for that now," I complained. "I'll just have to suffer till the sun goes down."

He knew exactly what I was trying to do, of course; Joe has magic in his hands and when he decides to give someone a backrub- that's it, they're asleep, forgone conclusion. I've never yet seen him fail to put someone out like a light, and when you wake up, you feel marvelously relaxed.

"And you call me a manipulator," he muttered, grinning at me.

"You are, mister puppy-dog-eyes," I replied, smiling back. "Who d'you think I learned from?"

Joe laughed. "All right, I suppose I won't have any peace till I give in to your so-called hints. So much for subtle. But I am going to take that oatmeal out of the house first. I don't want to forget about it and then find Auntie G cooking it up and dishing it out, some day in the near future."

"That's the worthiest cause I've heard in a month!" I exclaimed, sitting up. "Go, hurry, get it out of here...you never know when she might show up!" It was just the sort of thing our great-aunt would do, too- make us all oatmeal for breakfast for weeks on end, buying new containers when the old one ran out. "Say hi to Biff for me- and ask him why he didn't bring Sherlock with him on our trip."

"You know, I wondered about that myself," Joe agreed. Then he gave me a little wave. "See you in an hour or so. You know how he is."

I nodded as my brother disappeared. Biff is not as talkative as Chet- few people are!- but whenever we visit him, or he us, we invariably end up taking a lot more time than we bargained for. A simple trip to drop the can of oatmeal off ought to take Joe maybe five minutes, not counting travel time, but it wouldn't. It would devolve into Joe coming in out of the heat...and playing with Sherlock, Biff's Great Dane...and the two of them talking about motorcycles or baseball or girls or...

Sometimes I think Biff and Joe would make better brothers than Joe and I. Not only are they both fair-haired and blue-eyed and muscular, they both have that whole lighthearted way about them. Always optimistic, always friendly and cheerful- and always ready to take a swing at anyone who threatens to push them or their friends around. I've never commented on it to Joe, though. I don't want to take the chance of hearing him agree, even in the most joking manner. It's not that I'm all that insecure, it's just that the thought of not having Joe as my brother- or worse, of having anyone replace me in his life- well, neither is a pleasant thought, and I try to avoid them.

After Joe left, I opened my book and started reading again, leaning back against the pillow. I heard our car drive off, and then got absorbed in the intricacies of the 'Alex Delaware' novel. I got about six pages further along before there came a tap at my door. "Huh? Oh, hi, Mom. You just get back?" I hadn't heard her car pull in, but that's not unusual for me when I'm reading.

"Hey, honey. I got back while you were showering. They were out of the size of shelves we need, so they put an order in and we'll have to go back and pick it up," she explained with a grimace. "So I got home sooner than I expected." Over the winter, there'd been an accidental spill of hot cider on one of our bookshelves, and the resulting stain was pretty impressive. But since it was in the den, which we don't use much, everyone kept forgetting about the need to replace the shelf. "Where'd your brother go?"

"Oh, taking that oatmeal over to Biff before Auntie Gertrude decides to do a random stop-in and cook it for us," I replied, smiling, and she laughed.

"Good idea, I'm not too fond of the stuff myself. The yard looks great," she went on, smiling.

"Thanks," I said wryly. "Next time, I think we'll delay our departure by a day so it's not so strenuous when we get back."

"Not such a bad idea." Mom hesitated. "As long as we've both got a lull, Frank, I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. About Joe."

I put the book down- I'm never going to get through this chapter, at this rate- and sat up again. "Sure. Something wrong?"

"In....a sense, I guess," Mom said slowly. "Frank- you have a lot of influence over your brother."

A little warning bell started to go off in my head. "Up to a point," I agreed carefully. "But even so, he's pretty stubborn."

"True. But he listens to you more than just about anyone else. And if you ask him to do things- or even suggest that he do things- he's more likely to agree with you, follow your lead."

I could have argued with that, but I didn't. Joe's one person I don't mind leading, but it's not because he follows me unhesitatingly. Our friends often do that, but Joe's just the opposite: he makes me stop and think, questions me, adds his own suggestions to mine. Still, if I ask him to trust me, he does; if I tell him to back down and get a grip on himself, he does that, too. He warns me not to get so caught in logic that I disregard feelings and hunches, but not as often as I persuade him not to let his emotions run away with him, so on the surface, that does make me look like the leader of our little team. That, and I usually get stuck with the 'debriefing' or explaining aspects. People will assume that the one providing the explanations is the one in charge.

I nodded slowly at my mother as she paused, and waited for her to go on. I just knew she was going to ask me to persuade Joe into- or out of- something, and I had a feeling I wasn't going to like it at all. Neither, probably, was Joe.

Maybe that was why I was so careless when Dad got home.

Dad arrived the next day, Wednesday, at lunchtime. He was wearing his 'successful case' _expression, which is pretty close to his normal _expression, only happier. He greeted Mom and me and Joe, went upstairs to change, and came right back down to join us for lunch. While we ate, he talked a bit about the wrap-up of his case: He and Sam had managed to pin not three but four more robberies on the bank thief, who'd finally given in and confessed.

I was pretty quiet, but my silence went unnoticed by both Dad and Mom. Joe noticed, of course; he'd been keeping a rather puzzled eye on me ever since he got back from Biff's and found me in one of the most silent and dour moods I'd ever been in. I hadn't told him what was on my mind, partly from a subdued desire to defy Mom. She'd told me how she wanted me to influence him, and managed to get me to agree to think about it. My version of thinking about it wasn't what she had in mind, though; I had decided that the best way to thwart her was to say nothing about it at all to Joe. But mostly I was still reeling from the implications of her request, and I couldn't decide what, if anything, to do or say about those. The irony was that I didn't really want to think about it- it hurt too much- but I couldn't seem to concentrate long on anything else.

After lunch, Dad went up to his study to go through his mail and messages. Mom started some laundry, then left to go to the post office. I went up to my room; Joe followed, trying again to ask what was bugging me so badly. I was musing over whether to give in and tell him or not when Dad appeared in the doorway. "So, everything looks to be settled for the time being, investigation-wise," he remarked, sounding pleased. "As long as we have some free time, we might as well enjoy it- though I half-expected you two to be out on some new mystery already."

"Oh, yeah, we're slacking off a bit," Joe joked, and I smiled. "Vacation, you know...we get a little lazy."

Dad laughed quietly. "Well, we never did go into much depth about that last situation of yours. Care to give me a briefing before we decide what to do with our down-time?"

Joe glanced at me; I shrugged. "Sure." I'd hardly thought about the 'demon's den' case for the past two days; I'd had other things on my mind. "We haven't written up our case notes on it yet," I realized suddenly. "We should do that."

"I'll get the notebook," Joe offered. I nodded and followed Dad down the hall and into his study. For some reason, we always talk about investigation-stuff in there. Probably force of habit.

I closed the door automatically, sat down on the old sofa, then asked, "Was there anything new about those brainwashed kids?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. All of the boys are making very rapid progress in the counter-conditioning. Mr. Chester did contact their parents and the families were reunited within twenty-four hours," he answered, smiling at me with a touch of pride.

"I bet there were a lot of very happy people," I murmured, trying not to blush as I imagined the scene.

"I'd say that was an understatement. Some of those children had been missing for almost a year. A terrible ordeal for any parent." Dad turned rather somber. "They're extremely grateful to you boys."

I felt my face get hot in spite of myself. "A lot of luck-"

"And a lot of determination. The boy who disappeared from the camp- George Watley- didn't need the same sort of treatment, of course, but he is undergoing counseling to help him get over the kidnapping. Mr. and Mrs. Watley are going to be sending a reward to you and Joe, by the way."

Before I could answer that, Joe slipped in and sat beside me, notebook and pencil in hand. Grateful for the distraction, I absently turned and gave the door a push to close it, then settled back and tried to decide where to start.

It took a long time to tell, even though we did our best to keep things more or less in order. Dad didn't ask too many questions, knowing most of them would get answered further along during the explanation. We didn't edit the details, the way we had with Mom; we didn't need to. Dad wouldn't like the fact we'd been in considerable danger at a number of points, but he wouldn't have a fit about it or prevent us from taking other cases because of it. So I didn't hold back from telling him what Lafoote did to us to try and make us talk.

Loggers have a competition where they stand on a floating tree-trunk and keep their balance on it while it spins in the water. Log-rolling, they call it. Lafoote had his henchmen row us out into a lake and try our luck at it- with our hands tied. Behind us. We had lasted maybe half a second before falling in.

Swimming with your hands tied in front of you is difficult, but possible. Swimming with your hands tied behind you is impossible, as we found out the hard way. Lafoote wasn't going to let us drown before we told him what he wanted to know, but he waited long enough before telling his men to pull us out that I became convinced he'd changed his mind.

After that, he took us to a local sawmill, strapped me on the conveyer belt, and turned the saw on. He did mention, later, that he would have shut it off in time, but I had my doubts. Luckily, even his own henchmen thought that was going too far, and they all left so they wouldn't have to watch. One of them went even further than that; he surreptitiously loosened Joe's ropes before he left. Joe got loose, knocked Lafoote out, and got me out of there- I was in mild shock, but the necessity of getting away as fast as possible helped me pull myself together.

After we'd finished explaining, Dad went back over a few points, questioning and clarifying. He was particularly interested in the Apocalypse cult and asked several questions about them. Then he asked a few more about the camp director, Smith; about Lafoote, who had worked with Smith in lumbering camps before, and about the Peapack camp, where we had not had a friendly reception. In fact, Dad asked for so much clarification that I decided it was a good thing that he'd actually been involved and already knew the general outline. I obviously hadn't done a very good job of debriefing this time. Joe's habit of hopping in with details had helped, too, but I felt a touch of exasperation at myself for being so flutter-headed.

"Sounds like this one shook you up a bit more than I thought," Dad remarked kindly, looking at me. "You're a bit disorganized, son."

"Maybe we should've written it down sooner," I offered, feeling sheepish. Or maybe Mom's little request was getting to me even worse than I'd realized.

"Probably not a bad idea. The sooner you write it down, the better, and you didn't get home for a week anyway," he agreed. "Still, I had the general gist, and it's plain you two made some good snap decisions at the time. I wish you'd been able to make your stalling plan a little more foolproof, but it worked."

He was referring to the way we'd sabotaged Rhee's boat to prevent him from getting to the nearest airfield and taking off for Greenland. "I wished that myself," I agreed, frowning. "My biggest worry was that the brainwashed kids would fall back under Rhee's manipulation and let us down- or turn on us entirely."

"Fortunately, very few people re-submit to someone, once it's been revealed that that person has manipulated them," Dad assured me. "Once they get past the disbelief, there's generally a great deal of anger, and it would have taken Rhee a lot of time to work past that and re-condition them to obey him. He probably wouldn't have managed to make them trust him again, and the secondary conditioning would likely have been more fragile than the first."

"That's good to know," Joe murmured, sighing.

"It certainly is," came Mom's voice, and all three of us started in shock. I turned swiftly, and stared in dismay at the study door. It was open just a crack- just enough to see Mom standing on the other side. I couldn't see more than her outline for a moment, but I wondered, very uneasily, how long she'd been standing there. Quite a while, from the icy anger in her voice.

"Laura?" Dad said in surprise.

Mom flung the door open, but didn't step inside. I winced a little as the doorknob banged against the study wall, but most of my attention was taken by the look on my mother's face. She was furious.

"What's not so good to know," she went on, "is that not only have my sons been lying to me about the dangers involved in their so-called missions, my husband is obviously approving of and assisting in these- cover-ups."

"We didn't lie," Joe said, his voice soft. I knew that tone; he was afraid of becoming the target of her anger, but he was also determined to defend us. "We didn't, we just left stuff out. It's not the same."

"You did it to deceive me!" Mom turned on him. "There's a name for that, Joseph Hardy- lying by omission!"

Joe didn't reply. I glanced over at him and wondered if I was as pale as he was. I certainly felt like it, and my stomach was churning; I hated confrontations, but I couldn't let Joe take the brunt of this one. "We didn't tell you about the danger because we knew you'd get upset about it," I told Mom, and she fixed that daunting glare on me. "You always do, even when you know it's all over and we're fine. So we figured there was no point in worrying you with stuff that was already finished."

"Are you trying to tell me you were protecting me?"

"Well- I- yes-" I fought the urge to drop my eyes.

"No, Frank, you weren't. You were protecting yourselves! You knew I would be upset. You decided I might be less likely to let you run off and fling yourselves into danger at the drop of a hat. And you concluded that as long as I didn't know how dangerous it was for you, I wouldn't step in and prevent you from working on these idiotic cases! So you lied! It never occurred to you that if I wanted to stop you, I would- danger or no."

"Laura," Dad's voice came through the ringing in my ears. "The boys..."

I didn't hear the rest, not clearly. Idiotic cases? Flinging ourselves into danger?

Dangerous for us?

Stop us?

"Stop us?" I repeated aloud, barely realizing I was on my feet. "Hey, Mom, if you're so bent on people telling the truth, why are you lying through your teeth?" I heard her give a sort of hiss, but went on, feeling fury and fear churn inside me. "You don't want to stop us from working on these 'idiotic' cases. You don't give a red cent if we fling ourselves into danger. All you care about is making sure he-" I pointed at my brother "-doesn't get hurt. Dad and I aren't of any consequence at all, in your mind- Joe's the important one, and you'll do whatever it takes to force him out of this idiotically dangerous profession."

There was, surprisingly, silence. Mom was staring open-mouthed, Joe was white and wide-eyed, and Dad was frowning in a mix of displeasure and puzzlement. I felt a weird tingling in my hands, a strangely disconnected sensation in my head. Adrenaline; I'd felt it before, though never quite like this. My nervous system was going haywire, but my voice was incredibly steady.

"You proved it yesterday," I said into the silence. "Yesterday, when you came to me and tried to get me to talk Joe out of investigating. Oh, you made it real clear, Mother. You don't mind if I keep working with Dad. That's fine; if I want to do that, I've got your blessing, right? I can go on flinging myself into as many dangerous situations as I care to, and you won't bat an eye. But you want me to use every bit of my influence over Joe, to keep him away from this profession, to talk him out of investigating- you don't even care if I lie to him in the process or not, so long as I give it my best shot. 'If you tell him that he's better suited to some other interest, he'll listen to you,' those were your exact words."

Joe wasn't white anymore; he was turning scarlet with anger. Dad's jaw was clenched tight, and his dark eyes seemed to bore into my mother. Mom didn't look at him; she raised her chin and glared at me. "I did not suggest," she started.

"You're right, you didn't suggest, you damned well said it straight out!" I shouted. " 'I don't like the thought of Joe being a detective, and I can't seem to persuade him that there are other options. You have the most influence on him, maybe you could manage to divert his interest.' And the hell with me, right? Never mind that working without a partner is a lot more dangerous than working with one- I'd be long dead if it weren't for Joe!" I wanted to go on, but I was shaking and breathless. And some small voice inside me was warning me that I had better stop there, before I said what I really wanted to say. It would only end up hurting my brother.

Joe said it for me, though. He had been silent until then, but now he crashed to his feet, knocking his chair over, and took two swift steps towards Mom. "You bitch!" he hissed, reaching out to clutch my shoulder. "You- you talk about liars, what are you, you backstabbing bitch! So much for caring about your sons- don't you mean son, singular? Your whole life's a lie, you pretend you care about us, but it's always me. Oh, don't deny it, anyone with eyes can see it! You aren't even subtle about it anymore! Like Monday, when we were doing the yard work and you came out and gave me a glass of lemonade and didn't bring Frank any. Well, guess what, Mom, I gave him half! I'm not letting you play favorites with me, I don't want your rotten privileges and your smothering affection!"

"I- he- he wasn't working as hard as-" Mom started, stammering a little, flushing guiltily.

"Bull!" Joe bellowed at her, his hand tightening. "He did all the weeding, all of it, all four of the beds, he pulled over a hundred weeds," he added savagely to Dad. "And what did you say at supper? 'Nice job on the lawn, Joe,'" he mimicked, wheeling on her again.

I noticed, vaguely, that Dad had risen from his chair and was scowling. Mount Hardy number three was about to erupt, I thought, half-shocked at my own irreverence. Why was everyone talking over my head this way, acting as if I wasn't right there, couldn't understand? I gave myself a little shake, forced my mind to concentrate on Dad's deep, angry voice.

"-hoped that I was misinterpreting your behavior, Laura, since the last time I brought this up-"

The last time?

"You noticed too, then." Joe seemed to pounce on the words as swiftly as I did.

"We've discussed this before and your mother promised to stop-"

"Why?" I demanded, interrupting Dad as I looked at my mother. "Why?" Joe had noticed, I had felt it, Dad had known and even tried to talk to her about it- why was she bothering to deny it? She was playing favorites deliberately, but why?

Mom returned my gaze and I could make nothing of her _expression. "You're misinterpreting, all of you-"

"Misinterpret?" I hardly recognized my own voice. "How the hell else is there to interpret it? You don't love me- admit it!"

"That will be quite enough out of you!" Her finger jabbed towards my face and I recoiled, feeling Joe's hand drop from my shoulder. "You-"

I shoved past her, through the open door, then turned to give one last shot. "If I needed any more proof, there it is," I told her, my voice shaking despite all my efforts to control it. "Look what you're trying to scold me for- being the victim of your favoritism. Meanwhile, look who's calling you a bitch and a backstabber and getting away with it!"

"He's right," Dad said grimly. Mom turned on him with a cry of anger, Dad barked something back at her- and then I was running, running down the stairs, through the living room, out of that house.