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Informationen zum Autor Rob Renzetti Klappentext "Plagued by forgotten memories and cryptic notes, Zenith Maelstrom catches his sister sneaking back to the bag in the basement and follows her on a perilous journey to confront their past mistakes in the surreal realm of GrahBhag, as they striving to protect each other from imminent peril and the looming threat of Eternity Tower"--]cProvided by publisher. Leseprobe The Mysterious Message The bag hissed. When he shoved the hockey stick inside its overstuffed interior, he could have sworn that it hissed in protest. He dropped the bag to the entryway floor. “Hey, watch it.” His friend Kevin chuckled. “I said you could borrow my stuff, not break it.” Zenith Maelstrom ignored Kevin Churl’s sarcasm and stared at his friend’s scruffy duffel bag. The “hissing” was just the sound of the wooden stick scraping the bag’s vinyl interior, but Zenith heard it as a complaint. He’d already crammed Kevin’s baseball bat, tennis racket, and four croquet mallets inside, and he supposed the bag had had enough. Too bad. He grabbed the hockey stick again and shoved it all the way inside the duffel. Zenith tried to zip the bag shut, but only made it halfway before the bulky equipment inside stopped him. He opened the bag back up, then tried zipping faster, as if he could surprise the laws of physics. The seam affixing the zipper to the bag began to rip. “Hey, what did my bag ever do to you?” Kevin’s tone was a little less playful this time. With reluctance, Zenith unzipped the bulging bag. He felt silly. Why was he getting so upset? Kevin’s duffel wasn’t his enemy. It was just a bag with too much stuff inside. And yet he wanted to thrash it for defying him. “So, uh,” Kevin said. “Happy to loan you my equipment. Can you tell me why you need it?” “I can’t,” said Zenith. He flipped the bulbous heads of the croquet mallets around so that the bulky parts of the gear were evenly distributed within the bag, rather than bunched up at one end. Now the zipper closed. “Okay . . . Can you tell me when you’ll return it?” “I can’t,” repeated Zenith. With some difficulty, he shouldered the heavy bag and offered Kevin his hand. Kevin slowly shook it. “Can you tell me anything at all?” “I can’t,” said Zenith as he left through the front door and headed toward his own house at the other end of the block. “Okay, then, thanks!” Kevin called. “Always a pleasure chatting with you.” Zenith felt bad asking so much from his friend and giving so little in return. He couldn’t tell Kevin why he needed his equipment. He couldn’t tell himself why he needed it. He couldn’t remember. He took a note from the pocket of his dark blue hoodie, hoping he’d interpreted its message correctly: “Prepare for battle! Get weapons from Kevin before returning to GrahBhag.” Zenith had taken this to mean he should borrow his friend’s sports equipment, because whenever they began any game, Kevin always said “prepare for battle.” He certainly didn’t think it meant he should borrow the Churls’ steak knives. But why did he need weapons of any sort? What or where was “GrahBhag”? And why should he have to puzzle over the note in the first place? It was in his handwriting and dated yesterday. And yet he couldn’t remember why he’d written it. Zenith scratched the scar above his left ear. He didn’t remember much lately. He knew his little sister, Apogee, was angry with him, but he wasn’t sure why. She wanted something from him, but he didn’t know what. The answers danced around the edge of his mind, just out of reach. The effort to remember was exhausting, yet he was getting very little sleep. He’d tried taking allergy medication because it always made him sleepy during the day, but at bedtime it just made him feel dizzy. He returned home as the summer sun dipped beneath the horizon. The hous...
