Suitcase of Stars by Pierdomenico Baccalario

Author:Pierdomenico Baccalario [Baccalario, Pierdomenico]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781623702120
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Published: 2014-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

My bedroom looked like a cop’s office from a TV crime show. All the information I had about the Lily family was pinned to the wall. I thought that seeing it all laid out might help me figure out the mysteries from the last few days.

On one side of a sheet of paper, I wrote “Lily” and tacked it to the wall with a pin. Underneath that, I tacked several more pieces of paper. On each piece of paper, I wrote things I’d seen over the last few days that involved the Lily family in some way. The words were: spider, bicycle, Wizard Slayer, Spirit Powder, talking dead, Self-Propelling Pants, Trip Stick, Memory Remover Dust, and the BBMO (The Big Book of Magical Objects).

To the right of those words, I tacked the word Unexplained. Beneath that heading, I hung pieces of paper with the following words written on them: store opening, fast-growing trees on the promontory, talking seagull, the ancient castle, Mr. Everett’s list of names, the Dutch guest at the McStay Inn, and riddle in the bottle.

At the very bottom, I wrote out the riddle from the message in the bottle. Looking at all those words written out, it seemed strange to think that only a week before, I’d been complaining that my life in Applecross was boring.

As I stared at the wall, I considered all this strange information and looked for some sort of connection. I spent a long time thinking about that message in the bottle as I walked back and forth in my room. Still, nothing jumped out at me. Patches tried and failed to find a place to sit where he could keep an eye on me without getting stepped on.

Think, Finley, I thought. Just think.

I went over the riddle again in my mind. Four men and one woman, I thought. They run, she doesn’t. The men get wet, she doesn’t.

I tried to find a connection between the Self-Propelling Pants that belonged to Aiby’s father and the riddle in the bottle, but that didn’t seem to add up. I just couldn’t figure out what the rest of that story had to do with the color of their clothing.

So I went over the riddle again. And again. No luck.

When I’d stopped pacing, I could hear my parents downstairs discussing dinner and local news. It wasn’t anything particularly exciting — one of the Corman sheep had escaped from its enclosure, and Mr. Dogberry had died in his sleep.

I threw myself onto my bed and buried my head under the pillow. Nothing made any sense. I decided to take a nap in the hopes that a fresh look at things might help me see something I’d missed.

But before I could even close my eyes, Doug burst into my room. “So, little brother,” he said, leaning down until he was an inch from my nose. “Spit it out. Let’s hear it.”

I would have gladly told him what he wanted to know just to get him to leave, but I had no idea what he was talking about.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.