technology they had in outer space. And as a highly skilled liar himself, he was fairly good at knowing when someone wasnât telling the truth. âI donât believe you,â he said. He turned to Sarah and Dexter. âHeâs full of it. Letâs get out of here.â
âJake,â Sarah whispered, âif you told me yesterday that it was possible to fly through the solar system in a talking spaceship I would have thought you were bonkers. What if the wish thing is true? We could wish ourselves back to Earth! If it was destroyed maybe we could wish it back to life! How else are we going to get back home?â
âI agree,â Dexter whispered. âThe quantum whatever thing seems possible.â
âHeâs lying,â Jacob said through clenched teeth.
Sarah shook her head and turned away from Jacob. âI want to go for it,â she said to Mick.
âIâll go if she goes,â Dexter said.
Mick Cracken looked at Jacob and beamed. âWell, well, well. Seems as if your friends are the smart ones. You shouldnât be surprised. Iâm very persuasive.â
âOh, jolly day,â Praiseworthy said. âHow I love adventure. Master Cracken, I do wish you would find me a proper buccaneer flag to display. My fellow cruise liners would be so jealous if they knew what dangerous voyages I was embarking upon.â
Jacob couldnât believe that his friends sided with Mick and his stupid diamond instead of him. They didnât even care what he thought. He was billions of miles away from home. Billions. They had been gone for hours. But even those hours and billions of miles werenât as long and vast as the twelve years of friendship that had just been fractured by the appearance of Mick Cracken.
Jacob turned and walked away.
âJake,â Sarah said.
But Jacob didnât stop. He could feel Mickâs smile burning a hole in his back.
CHAPTER 13
J acob sat in the rear hold of Mick Crackenâs ship, and as he often did when he was upset, he thought about his father. Jacobâs dad was the type of person who was a little too much fun for his own good. He would always dress up like Sherlock Holmes with a crazy hat and wooden pipe on Jacobâs birthday and give Jacob clues about where he could find his presents, although sometimes he would end up forgetting where he hid them. Everyone liked him because of his silliness, and Jacob grew used to hearing his friends and classmates say his dad was cool. Jacob really wanted to believe them, even though his dad had a special talent for turning ordinary events into catastrophes. When he took Jacob fishing in the mountains one time he ignited a massive lighter-fluid soaked campfire that quickly spread to a nearby bush, and Jacob had to help stamp out the flames. Only Jacob Wonderbar and a North Face sleeping bag stood between a fatherly mishap and a raging forest fire, but thankfully boy and camping gear were up to the task. They never caught any fish either.
Sometimes Jacobâs dad would look at him like he was surprised that Jacob was there. It was as if he couldnât imagine that life had given him a small person who followed him around and depended upon him and had the same color eyes but different color skin and represented the one thing in his life that perhaps needed to be taken somewhat seriously. So while Jacob was too old and had seen too many movies to think that his parentsâ divorce was his fault exactly, he knew that he was a part of it. Not that he drove his parents apart because he was so much trouble to deal with, but rather he knew that his dad couldnât really picture himself being a dad. Jacob was a human-sized shirt that didnât fit. His dad looked at Jacob and saw a kid, and the presence of that kid made him an adult, and adults were people who grew old and died. Jacobâs dad left his kid and ran away so he could go be a kid himself again. But knowing that
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