Doll Bones Read Free Page B

growing up,” he said, which seemed to be one of those weird things adults would say sometimes, stuff that was really obvious and to which there was no reply.
    Since his dad had come back, he’d been really fond of saying that kind of thing.
    “I guess.” Zach shrugged off his dad’s grip and went up to his room.
    He dumped his backpack out on the bed and sprawled on his stomach, reaching for his social studies book. He read the chapter he was supposed to and then started on punctuation, toeing off his sneakers. It was hard to concentrate. His stomach gurgled with hunger, and the smell of dinner made waiting to eat even harder. He was tired from practice, and the last thing he wanted to do was more schoolwork. He wanted to sit in front of the television and watch the show about ghost-hunters or the one with the thief who worked for the government. Ideally, he’d be watching them from the couch, with a huge plate of spaghetti and sausage on his lap.
    Mom probably wasn’t going to go for that, though. Ever since Dad was back, whenever he wasn’t working, she was all about the family sitting together at the table without phones or games or books. She kept quoting something she’d read in a magazine—some kind of study that having dinner together was supposed to make Zach a happier adult and make her lose weight. Why they did it only when Dad was at home, if it was so important, Zach wasn’t sure.
    As all of this went through Zach’s mind, something struck him as odd. That morning when he’d left for school, William the Blade had been sitting on the edge of his desk along with a bunch of the other action figures who were the semi-expendable crew for the Neptune’s Pearl. But now none of them were there.
    He glanced around the room. It wasn’t very clean, even though every Sunday his mother made him “straighten it up a little.” His dirty laundry was piled around his hamper more than in it. His bookshelf was stuffed with books on pirates, adventure novels, and textbooks that spilled onto the floor. His desk was crowded with magazines, his computer, LEGO pieces, and models of ships. But he knew the pattern of his mess. He knew where his guys should have been and where they were not.
    He got up clumsily, half sliding off his mattress. Then he bent down to look under the bed. Their black cat, named “The Party,” would sometimes sneak into his room and knock things over. As Zach squatted on the rug, though, he didn’t see William the Blade anywhere on the floor.
    He started to get anxious. William was his best character—the one he’d played the longest and the one that was still at the center of almost every one of his stories. Two weeks ago Poppy had introduced a fortune-teller who told William that she knew who his father was—and suddenly, while hunting down his past and trying to get the Queen’s curse removed, William had become more fun to play than ever.
    Poppy was always doing that—improvising, jumping into the gaps in a story, creating something new and interesting and a little scary. Sometimes it annoyed him—William’s story was whatever Zach said it was, right?—but most of the time it was worth just giving in and trusting her.
    It was important for William not to be missing. Because if William was missing, then there was no rest of the story, no more crazy ideas, no payoff, no ending, no more.
    Maybe, he thought, maybe he was making a mistake. Maybe he’d misremembered where he’d left the figures. Maybe William and the others were with the rest of his toys. He walked over to where his duffel of action figures should have been, just inside his closet. But the bag wasn’t there either.
    He felt odd. Like something was pressing on his chest.
    He stared at the spot, waiting for his brain to supply some explanation. Panic bloomed in him. He was sure the duffel had been resting on the floor that morning when he’d stumbled over it to get a T-shirt off a hanger.
    But maybe he’d left it over