Read Online Jakarta Missing by Jane Kurtz - Free Book Online Page B

magic place.”
    â€œOh, right.” Dakar started to trot. “We have to go quickly, though. I should go home and see if they’ve got Jakarta’s plane schedule yet.”
    â€œIt’s on my uncle’s land,” Melanie said, hurrying to catch up. “I always knew it was magic, but I didn’t have anyone else who would know, too.”
    Melanie’s uncle’s land was on the edge of town, and they both were panting by the time they got to it. Melanie pointed to a house but shook her head. She steered them into a grove of trees.
    Dakar looked up. Above her head, leaves flickered as if they were candle flames and the wind were trying to blow them out. Trees in Cottonwood were mostly shaped the way Jakarta had first taught her to draw a tree with a fat crayon—two lines, curved at the bottom, and a round top. It made them look friendly and old. Okay, not as old as the old frangapani tree she and Jakarta had loved to visit. But a lot older than the feathery jacaranda trees Yusef had just planted in the Nairobi yard.
    If only this magic grove were full of eucalyptus trees. She’d climbed the boarding school eucalyptus trees with Jakarta at least a hundred times, always pretending she wasn’t afraid, hoping the skinny branches were as tough as they seemed to be, imagining Jakarta was a red rose and she was a briar. But maybe Melanie’s leaves would actually fall off when the weather got cold, the way leaves did in books. They looked green and sturdy, but she could see dabs of interesting colors at the other end of the grove.
    â€œThis way,” Melanie said, “for the mysterious, magical place.”
    A creek ran through the grove. Tree roots, from a tree growing close to the water, stuck out from the bank, their twisted arms forming ledges and little caves. “Cool.” Dakar scrambled up to sit on a root. It was like sitting on the back of a snake.
    â€œ Très cool.” Melanie scratched her back against the trunk of one of the big trees. “Is this the kind of place where an Allalonestone would be? Or is the Allalonestone a real thing in Africa?”
    Dakar hesitated. She and Jakarta were the only ones in the whole world who knew about the Allalonestone. But Jakarta had never said don’t tell anyone else, had she?
    â€œThere’s no such thing as an Allalonestone,” she said. “I did used to think it was real, though. Jakarta told me about the hoodies that caught people and forced them inside the Allalonestone. Once you were in there, nothing would get you out. Almost nothing.”
    â€œMaybe it’s over there.” Melanie pointed to a rock jutting out from the creek, shiny with wetness. “Beware of the Allalonestone.”
    â€œNo.” Dakar shivered. “I think it’s huge and flat, and the water runs over it. At first, I think even Jakarta halfway believed in the Allalonestone.” She remembered running through trees near Maji. “Look,” Jakarta was calling to her. “That tree has beards hanging from it. Those are hoodie beards.” Looking up at the mossy beards, Dakar walked right into something sticky. She’d screamed and pawed at her face, sure the hoodies must have left a thin ghost film all over everything to catch people and take them to the Allalonestone. But the sticky stuff was only a huge spiderweb.
    Should she tell Melanie about the time Mom disappeared? Should she say, “I have this terrible memory of pushing on Mom’s door, whimpering”? Should she tell about Jakarta’s strong hands pulling her behind the woodstove? Jakarta whispering, “The hoodies have got Mom, but don’t worry. We’ll get her back.” And they had, hadn’t they?
    No, she couldn’t tell that. Some things were way too personal even for true friendship. But this was a magical place, worthy of secrets. Maybe she could share a little part of it, anyway. She took a deep breath.