Last Message by Shane Peacock Page A

Johnny didn’t look pleased.
    The boy reluctantly led me to his little room, not much bigger than a walk-in closet and even more cluttered than the living area. I wasn’t even sure where his bed was at first, because it was under mounds of clothes and toys and video games and other electronic equipment. Other than the posters on the walls (of a bunch of hard-core bands I’d never heard of), the only items that weren’t mixed into this rubble was a laptop that formed the peak of the mountain on his bed and a large flat-screen TV on a shelf. It was blaring when we came in.
    He began rummaging around in the piles. And as he worked, he actually said something, the very first words he’d uttered since I’d met him, spitting it out under his breath in a sort of snarl. “ Américain ,” he hissed. Then he muttered, “ Capitaliste! ” It was a pretty strange thing for a kid his age to say.
    Finally, he found what he was looking for. I could tell because he suddenly stopped moving and stood up. His back was to me. I stiffened. Then my hands started to tingle.
    When he turned, he was holding a rock a little larger than a man’s fist. It was mostly covered in barnacles and algae, but part of one side, probably the side on which it had rested in the cockpit, was an unusual pink and purple color; it actually glowed.
    I reached for it.
    But he pulled it back.
    â€œMoney,” he said. He pronounced the word with barely the trace of an accent. He rubbed the thumb of his left hand against his index finger and smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant grin.
    I took out a few Euros and handed them to him. He snorted but snatched them. I reached out again, but again he pulled the rock back.
    â€œJust to look,” he said.
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding me, butt-head,” I snapped, then instantly prayed that he didn’t understand.
    He gave me a funny look but did not hand over the rock. “Money,” he said again.
    I gave him a few more Euros and ripped the rock from his hands.
    â€œHey!” he cried.
    I pulled it away, thrilled to have it in my grasp, wondering if this indeed was the rock my grandfather had carved and given to the one-and-only Antoine de Saint-Exupéry!
    There wasn’t a single word carved onto the glowing part, not that I could see. And the rest was just a mass of hardened green growth. At first, I felt like throwing it through the kid’s window. But then I had an idea. I marched out of the room—butt-crack boy in pursuit, cursing me in French—and headed for the lab. Mr. Halliday put himself between his kid and me, and that allowed me to slip into the lab, find a screwdriver, sit down and get to work.
    My hosts were soon looking on, the father standing slightly in front of the son to keep him from interfering.
    I started on the side of the rock that needed the least amount of work, the side that was partially clear. The rest of this bottom part was only covered in algae—no barnacles. I scrubbed it clean with a cloth. What appeared was more of the glowing surface of the rock, shining purple and pink. But there were no words carved into it either. With a sigh, I turned the whole rock over. Maybe this thing was just what Halliday thought it was: a big unusual stone that had smashed through the window of the cockpit when the plane crashed to the ocean floor. Maybe it had zero connection to St. Ex and Grandpa.
    I began grinding the thick wall of barnacles off this side. I worked until I had chipped a hole in that wall. Then I actually gasped. I saw something carved into the rock at the bottom of the hole I had created. I began working frantically. Soon a little word emerged… friend.
    I held the rock up to my face, my hands shaking so much that I dropped it with a thud, almost cracking the lab table.
    Halliday picked it up and stared down into the opening I had scraped in the barnacles. “ Mon dieu! ” he cried. Scurrying away, he