Tom Finder Read Online Free Page B

Tom said. “But when I see it, I guess I’ll know.”
    Wolflegs looked at him. For a while he didn’t say anything. Then, “You forget everything?”
    Tom nodded.
    â€œYou forgot on purpose.”
    Tom shook his head once.
    â€œHow’d you forget?”
    â€œI forget.” He might have smiled, but the corner of his lips could hardly defy this kind of gravity.
    Wolflegs turned Tom to the right and pointed. “The Calgary Tower. There are fountains in here for the tourists. And I’ve got money to take you to the top. Come on.”
    At the fountain Tom slurped and guzzled until his stomach rounded out, then he drank a little more.
    Wolflegs led Tom into the elevator. “My son grew up in a box, in a square house with square rooms, and in the day he went to a square box school. No wonder he came here, to this place, where everything is boxes, only big. The god of boxed things lives here.” He grunted. “Boxes are good for coffins.”
    On their way up in the elevator, Wolflegs droned on, and Tom only half-listened to him talking about stars and what they looked like when he was a child, so many stars that there was no space between them. Tom was sure he could feel the lower gravity as they went higher and higher. It felt good.
    â€œWorst part of being on the streets is boredom,” Wolflegs said. “No school, no chores, no job. Feels good at first, then it gets boring. Drugs fill in the boredom, but they make you more bored, and soon you’re so bored that you want to die and so boring that nobody cares if you do. Stay close to the earth, Tom Finder. Sleep near the river; learn from it. Sit near trees, on green grass. Be like a weed that pushes up through the pavement and cracks the sidewalk.”
    Tom’s stomach sloshed and gurgled as the elevator came to a stop. The elevator doors opened.
    Wolflegs kept talking, but Tom didn’t hear him at all anymore. The whole city lay like a map below him. It was still, as if no people lived in it. If you looked closely you could see cars moving, but they moved slowly and silently.
    Tom walked from window to window, pressing his face against them, examining the neighborhoods and landmarks to see if he remembered anything. Nothing was familiar. It was when Tom looked almost straight down that he saw something he was looking for.
    It was a billboard. On it was a strange birdlike creature, and the words, T HE M AGIC F LUTE , S EPTEMBER 12–15. It made him feel a little sick to his stomach to look at it, or maybe he was afraid of heights since the Forgetting. Maybe before, too. There was no way to know. That opera, though, had something to do with home, with who he was. Maybe his mom worked there in ticket sales or something. His parents probably weren’t rich. They probably lived in an ordinary house and had two ordinary cars and worked at ordinary jobs. Maybe his dad was a welder, or a science teacher. His mom probably coached swimming in her spare time. She must have been the one who taught him to swim. They probably missed him like Samuel missed his son, Daniel.
    Maybe he’d rent a billboard like that to let his parents know where he was.
    â€œI might have found a way to find my parents,” Tom said. He noticed an electronic sign across the street that said JUNE 27.
    Wolflegs didn’t answer. He was looking too, trying to see the almost invisible people below. “Your power is given to help others. You will only be a Finder if you look for my Daniel.” His fingertips and nose were touching the viewing glass. There was a wolf in his eye.
    â€œDo you see him?”
    â€œNo,” Wolflegs said. He stepped back from the glass, and his eyes lost their animal gleam.
    They waited for the elevator in silence. On the way down Wolflegs didn’t look at him. The tears were streaming down his face again. They filled the acne scars on his stony face and streamed onto his black and gray braids. Tom