This boy needed a double cheese burger.
We kept walking until Grover saw a deserted two- lane road through the trees. On the other side was a closed-down gas station, a tattered billboard for 1990 movie, a d on o en business, which was the source of the neon light and the good smell. It wasn’t a fast-food restaurant like I’d hoped. It was one of those weird roadside curio shops that sell lawn flamingos and wooden Indians and cement grizzly bears and stuff like that. The main building was a long, low warehouse, surrounded by acres of statuary. The neon sign above the gate impossible for me to read, because if there’s anything worse for my dyslexia than regular English, it’s red cursive neon English. To me, it looked like: ATNYU MES GDERAN GOMEN MEPROUIM.
“What the heck does that say?” I asked.
I don’t know,” Lou said. She loved reading so much, I’d forgotten she was dyslexic, too.
Grover translated: “Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium.” Flanking the entrance, as advertised, were two cement garden gnomes, ugly bearded little runts, smiling and waving, as if they were about to get their picture taken.
I crossed the street, following the smell of the hamburgers.
"Hey…” Grover warned,"The lights are on inside,”
Lou said, “Maybe it’s open.”
"Snack bar,” I said wistfully.
"Snack bar", she agreed.
"Are you two crazy?” Grover said. “This place is weird.”
We ignored him. Right in front of us was a forest of statues: cement animals, cement children, even a cement satyr playing the pipes, which gave Grover the creeps.
"Bla-ha-ha!” bleat “Looks like my Uncle Ferdinand!”
We stopped in front of the warehouse door. "
"Don’t knock,” Grover pleaded. “I smell monsters.”
"Your nose is clogged up from the Furies,” Lou told him. “All I smell is burgers. Aren’t you hungry?”
"Meat!” he said scornfully. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“You eat cheese enchiladas and aluminum cans,” I reminded him.
"Those are vegetables." Grover cried. "Come on. Let’s leave. These statues are…looking at me.”
Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle Eastern woman—at least, I assumed she was Middle Eastern, because she wore a long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was completely veiled. Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was about all I could make out.
Apart from the fact that my seventh sense told me that she was an immortal. Her coffee-colored hands looked old, but well-manicured and elegant, so I imagined she was one of the good natured immortals. Her accent sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, too.
She said, “Children, it is too late to be out all alone. Where are your parents?”
"They’re…um…” Lou started to say.
"We’re orphans,” I said.
"Orphans ?” the woman said. The word sounded alien in her mouth. “But, my dears! Surely you're not out here on your own!”
"We got separated from our caravan,” I said. “Our circus caravan. The ringmaster told us to meet him at the gas sta io if we got lost, but he may have forgotten, or maybe he meant a different gas station. Anyway, we’re lost. Is that food I smell?”
Chapter 11
Start from the beginning
