York: The Shadow Cipher

CHAPTER TWO

"What?"

"You're supposed to be watching your cholesterol!" Theo said, "I guess he'll be watching his cholesterol go up."

"Ha-ha," Mr. Biedermann said. He dug around in the bag, pulled out a cardboard container and a fork. He opened the container and forked up a bite of blintz. "Where's Tess?"

"Walking the cat," said Mrs. Biedermann. "Good. She'll work off some of that anxiety."

Theo said, "No, she won't. Tess is like a Lion battery. She can't walk it off or run it out."

Mr. Biedermann laughed. "Oh yeah? What does that make you, kid?"

"Her extremely calm and well-adjusted brother," said Theo.

"Ah," said Mr. Biedermann, chewing, swallowing. He nudged a stray Lego with his toe. "I thought the school people would be here by now."

Mrs. Biedermann said, "Yeah, me, too."

"Though I suppose it could be all the commotion out front."

"What commotion?"

Mr. Biedermann shrugged. "I don't know. Someone filming a movie, maybe? I saw a crowd and some cameras and went around back to the service entrance."

Theo kept snapping furiously, liking the idea of a commotion. Maybe the principal would be forced to postpone till the afternoon. Or next week. Next month. Actually, September would be great, because then maybe he could build the whole city of London just like his mom had suggested. Or something else entirely. The Great Wall of China. The Shah Mosque in Iran. The Tower of David in Jerusalem. The Great Library of—

"I still don't get why you didn't build the Morningstarr Tower," Mr. Biedermann said through a mouthful of blintz.

Snap, snap, ow! His dad sounded just like Tess. Or Tess sounded like his dad.

Theo said, "I just wanted to do something different." 

Mr. Biedermann nodded as if he understood. Then he said, "Why?"

Before Theo ever started the Tower of London, he had tried to build the Morningstarr Tower. The Morningstarr Tower had twelve elevators that could move in any direction, escalators that zigzagged up the middle of the building, entire rooms that could be rotated and recombined to form new rooms of any shape or size. And that was only the beginning. It had taken the Morning-starrs fifteen years to complete. Theo could have worked for months and months and still not gotten the model right. Not even close to right. Sure, he could have built a serviceable representation of the building's facade, but that would be like making a mannequin and saying you'd created an actual human being. He would never have finished the whole thing soon enough to enter the Lego contest, which offered scholarship money in addition to more Legos. And hadn't Grandpa Ben used to say, "Is your work finished or is it just due?" So, Theo had tried to build something easier, something faster. And he'd won! Yet here he was, still building, almost out of time.

A sudden pounding on the door made him fumble with his blocks.

"The school people?" said Mr. Biedermann. "How did they get in?"

"It's probably just Cricket careening around the halls with her trike again," said Mrs. Biedermann.

Mr. Biedermann said, "Or her little brother practicing his karate kicks."

"I'm not sure that putting Otto into martial arts was the best idea."

"Remember the damage he did with the Wiffle ball bat? At least he can't knock the bulbs out of the fixtures anymore."