Ice Shock by M. G. Harris

older than you?”
    I laugh. “Are you kidding … ?” And emphatically add, “No way!”
    â€œSo you’d go out with me … ?”
    â€œOllie, of course I would!”
    â€œHow about right now—how about a movie and then ice cream at G&D’s?”
    I could burble stuff about her making my dreams come true, but thankfully I don’t.

8
    My first date with Ollie and I can’t even blog it. Mind you, the idea of anyone reading what I’d write about that is just too embarrassing.
    Well, in fact, it’s a false start. Ollie gets a text while we’re in the line for the movie and she has to go home. Seems that she’s forgotten that she has a big schoolwork deadline the next day. So I trudge home, a bit deflated.
    How can she think of schoolwork at a time like this?
    On Monday before I leave for school, I manage to remember to grab the document folder with the copied pages from Ix Codex—no way can I leave it around the house while I’m out. I stuff it into my backpack and carry it around all day. I don’t take it out of my backpack until I’m on the bus home that afternoon.
    Seeing Madison again was a shock. Oxford used to feel so cozy and safe, especially compared to Mexico. But now that I know Madison’s back in the UK, it makes me wonder. Oxford, Beirut, Mexico—Madison sure gets around. Is he based here,though? When Madison burglarized our house last year, stole our computers and that book by John Lloyd Stephens, I assumed he was a secret agent working for the CIA or something. Back then I’d never even heard of the National Reconnaissance Office.
    But when I was actually interrogated by the secret agents who were on the case—agents from the NRO—they told me that Madison wasn’t with them.
    In fact, they were pretty sure he was on more than one Most Wanted list.
    And anyway, the NRO were already on my case—ever since they captured and murdered my dad, they must have been monitoring my e-mails and Web searches. The NRO have been after the mysteries of Ek Naab ever since they found my grandfather’s crashed Muwan, back in the 1960s.
    So if Madison didn’t tell the NRO about my involvement with the Ix Codex, who does he work for?
    Or could I be wrong?
    Could it all be a big ruse—Madison being a suspected terrorist wanted by the FBI and CIA? What if he’s actually one of their own, but working undercover? An undercover double agent, like Krycek from
The X-Files
.
    Maybe only Madison knows who he really works for.
    I turn these thoughts over and over, wondering. Who is Simon Madison? Why did he steal that book by John Lloyd Stephens? Is it possible after all that he did kill my father?
    And I’m so lost in this that it’s only on the bus back home that I think to look at those pages one last time before I burn them. And that’s when I notice.
    The pages inside the document folder have been switched
.
    The copied pages from the Ix Codex, the diary entry, the translation, and all the copies are gone. Instead, there are just a handful of blank pages.
    I look around the bus. I’m suddenly paranoid. Is Madison following me even here?
    But no. It’s more serious than that. I’ve had these documents on me the whole time, except for last night. There’s only one possibility, and it almost stops my heart to think it.
    Ollie.
    Is that why she came around last night? Is that what it was all about—getting me out of the house so that Madison could come over and steal the pages? I didn’t lock the back door until I came home—Madison could have sneaked in, gone to my room. Mom might never have noticed.
    The more I think about it, the worse I feel. I’m almost dizzy, totally distracted. When someone from school yells, “Josh, wasn’t that your stop back there?” I realize that I’m on the way to Woodstock and way past my house.
    Why, though? Why would she?