The adults followed in their cars, watching the Warden, Mr. Sir and Dr. Pendanski closely as they shepherded them back to the camp.
"Get your hands back," Mr. Gallagher said, "come on, get your hands back."
"No! I have to look inside," the Warden said, fighting Mr. Gallagher to get to the trunk, which had been safely stowed in the back of his Jaguar as Stella's property.
"Get your hands off!" Mr. Gallagher warned.
"This is mine! It was on my property," the Warden insisted. The Attorney General's assistant sighed in impatience. Mr. Gallagher and the Warden were squabbling.
"Stella, come on, put your things in your trunk, your mother is waiting, let's go," Mr. Gallagher said. Stella looked behind her. Zane and Hector both looked at her sadly, with big puppy-dog eyes.
"I can't leave without Zane or Hector," she said clearly.
"We'll be okay," Zero insisted.
"Stella, there is nothing that I can do for your friends," Mr. Gallagher sighed. Oh yeah?
"Don't worry," Dr. Pendanski said creeping an arm around Zero's shoulder. "We'll take good care of Zane and Hector." Zero frowned and Zane pulled him away from Dr. Pendanski roughly by the arm of his jumpsuit, glaring dangerously. Stella looked between them.
"I'm not leaving here without them," Stella said in a no-nonsense voice.
"Earl," Mr. Gallagher said, and the Attorney General stepped forward. "Would you please get me Hector's and Zane's files?"
"Certainly Andrew," the Attorney General said. "Ms. Walker- well?" Stella enjoyed seeing the Warden squirm.
"Get me the files of Zane Barlow and Hector Zeroni," the Warden said in a trembling voice. Stella nudged Zane and nodded to Dr. Pendanski. His eyes had widened. "Jus' do it!" Dr. Pendanski hurried into the office and Stella heard a door open behind them. Down the other end of the building, the door of the rec room had been opened. Someone strode outside, saw them, and did a double take. Alan stared, then yanked the door open, shouting into the rec room, "They're alive!" D-tent emptied out of the rec room before the other boys. Squid was the first one to reach Stella and flung his arms around her waist tightly, hugging the last breath out of her, spinning her around in glee.
"I can't believe you guys made it!" Squid beamed.
"We thought you were buzzard food!" Zigzag smiled.
"I'm not- I'm going home," Stella smiled.
"Going home?" the boys repeated, and more than one face fell. Stella's gaze went particularly to Ricky. He would know where to find her.
"Man you stink!" Armpit chuckled pushing Stella and Zane away playfully. "What've you guys been eating?"
"You smell like onions," Magnet laughed, and the boys all laughed too. They heard footsteps on the porch and Dr. Pendanski came back to the Attorney General, followed by a suspiciously shifty Mr. Sir.
"Well…there seem to be no files of Zane Barlow or Hector Zeroni," Dr. Pendanski said. He didn't know what else to do.
"What?" Armpit asked.
"Is that so?" Mr. Gallagher glared at the Warden, Ms. Walker. The Attorney General folded his arms across his chest and glared at Ms. Walker too.
"What kind've a camp are you running here?" he asked.
"A nice one," Ms. Walker said. The boys all sniggered. "If the state would give us some money, then we'd have some decent filing."
"I'm ordering an investigation of this facility," the Attorney General declared.
"What?" the Warden turned in disbelief.
"Sir," Theodore said to Mr. Gallagher, "do you have a pen and paper I can borrow?" Mr. Gallagher raised his arms and shrugged.
"No, I don't," he said, nodding to Mr. Sir, "but it looks like he does." Mr. Sir pointed to himself, "yeah, you got a pen?"
"Yeah," Mr. Sir growled, straightening his jacket collar to hide his face, handing Mr. Gallagher his pencil.
"You got paper?" Mr. Gallagher asked. Mr. Sir handed him his clipboard and hid his face again. Mr. Gallagher handed Armpit the clipboard. "Here."
"Thanks," Theodore said, and he scrawled something on the corner of a piece of lined paper and handed it to Stella. "Hey call my Mom for me," he said. "Tell her I'm sorry. Tell her Theodore said he was sorry."
"I will," Stella smiled. "And you boys-" she took the clipboard and copied her address six times, ripping them up and handing each copy to the D-tent boys, "had better come visit me. And that means you too Ricky." She gave him a meaningful look.
"Marion Seville," the Attorney General's assistant said, folding his round sunglasses into his breast pocket. Mr. Sir had turned away from the group and he stopped still as the man stepped onto the porch and walked over to him.
"Oh crap," they heard him mutter.
"It's been a long time since El Paso old Marion." The man forced Mr. Sir against the office wall with his hands out. "You're in violation of your parole, carrying this weapon." He took Mr. Sir's pistol from its holster.
"Well I had no knowledge of that," Ms. Walker declared.
"Oh yeah," Mr. Sir grumbled, "jus' like you didn't know Pendanski wasn't no doctor neither."
"What?" The boys all laughed at Dr, or Mr. Pendanski's frown of disapproval.
"Sit down Marion, you're under arrest again," the man said, forcing Mr. Sir to sit down on the bench beside the office door.
"Marion?" Ricky said, slipping an arm around Stella's waist. "Say, I didn't know that was a man's name." The boys all laughed.
"It ain't," Mr. Sir grumbled.
"Oooh," the boys laughed. The Attorney General finished his phone call.
"Okay, this facility is now under our jurisdiction," he announced.
"What?" the Warden said.
"Boys, put these three bozos over there," he said, gesturing to the bench, "let them see the other side of the Texas criminal justice system."
"Excuse me?" They all cheered a little too loudly!
"Come on boys, you're coming with us," Mr. Gallagher said, gesturing to Zane and Hector. "Let's go."
"What?" Alan stepped forward with a hopeless lost-puppy expression, tripping after Stella. "They get to go too?" Stella put her hands on Alan's shoulders.
"Alan, when you get outta here, you come find me," she said seriously, "and I'll have my grandma straighten your mom out. If not, you can always sneak in an' sleep on the couch." Squid grinned.
A bolt of lightening lit the sky at the same time as they all jumped violently due to a loud thunderclap. Everyone turned to the sky, past the porch ceiling, where storm clouds were rolling in above the weather vein and water tower.
"What's that?" X-Ray asked, as they all turned to see the violent grey clouds rolling in.
And then it started raining. The boys gasped and raised their hands to the heavens as the clouds emptied their contents, cold droplets that drenched through their jumpsuits in seconds. Stella put her things in the trunk of Mr. Gallagher's trunk and the boys did the same, and stepped out into the rain without her hat, beaming up at the sky as the water soaked through her. The boys all ran out from under the shelter. Squid took his hat off and smoothed his hair back as the rain soaked through it, Zigzag started doing a funky dance, Armpit bounced around, Handsome Rob and Zane and Wrench had taken their shirts off and were yelling hoarsely. Stella jumped around in inexplicable happiness. Alan spun Hector around on his back and laughed as they stumbled, and Ricky came up to Stella, his normally buoyant and uncontrollable blonde hair plastered to his face and neck.
"Your shirt's going see-through," he shouted over the rain, but Stella just laughed. He put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her. Stella, standing in the rain, had never felt so comfortable. She laughed and slung her arm around Ricky's neck as he kissed her passionately.
"Stella! Zane! Hector! Come on, let's go!" Mr. Gallagher called, hunching his shoulders as he ran to the driver's seat of the Jaguar. Zane and Hector ran over with their things, which had been salvaged from D-tent by Squid, who never gave up hope that they would return, and Stella put her hand on the trunk.
"Stella," Ms. Walker stepped down from the porch with a pleading expression, "Stella, won't you just open it? Just let me see what's inside, please."
"Excuse me?" she said, closing the trunk door with a tut.
"Stella," X-Ray called her over, shaking her hand. "You be careful out there in the real world. Everyone's not as nice as us."
"All right boss," Stella grinned, as Hector and Brian jumped around like jack-in-the-box's.
Soaking wet and laughing uncontrollably, Zane, Hector, and Stella slid into the back seat of Mr. Gallagher's Jaguar. Stella rolled the window and shouted to the boys.
"D-TENT!" The boys all turned to wave at her, grinning and jumping around like great goons! As Mr. Gallagher drove off, Twitch started twitching and Squid had to wrap his arms around him and haul him off the ground to keep him running after them. The sun shone brightly but the rain clouds never quit.
Zane had lugged the trunk up several flights of stairs to Stella's apartment, following Mr. Gallagher and Stella. Zero walked behind them, grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire Cat. Mr. Gallagher had explained on the drive home that Stella's mother had invented the cure for foot-odor, and had made herself a very rich woman within days of her patenting it. She had mentioned Stella's case to him and he had done some digging. Stella squeezed Zero's hand as he mentioned several witnesses had seen someone stop driving past her the day Clyde Livingston's shoes had been stolen at 4:30 and dump some green drinks on her before driving off. Clyde Livingston's had been stolen at 3:50 at the other side of town, near the mall in the neighboring town. Mr. Gallagher knocked on the door and Stella's mother answered it.
Sandy opened the door abruptly to find Mr. Gallagher on her doorstep with three other people, two older teenagers, one boy and one girl, and a small boy. All wore orange jumpsuits and all stunk of onions. She frowned, and then she discerned a sharp, pretty button nose from the girl's totally unrecognizable face.
"Oh my God! Stella? Is that you? Ma- Ma, come quick," Sandy shouted over her shoulder, and she heard her mother harrumphing from her bedroom. She thundered to the front door.
"Where is she? Where's my grandbaby?" Ma asked. Sandy just stared as the pretty blonde girl smiled and waved slightly. The two boys, one tall, muscular and blonde, and the other small and black with tightly-curled hair, moved out of the way.
"Oh my God! Honey, what have they had you doing? You are so skinny," Sandy gasped, and Ma pulled Stella over the threshold into a hug.
Stella had changed. She was no longer the pudgy, unhappy and self-conscious sixteen-year-old who got bullied at school. She was lovely: Tall and slender, she stood above Sandy and her mother, and rivaled the height of the good-looking blonde boy. Her hair had been cut short and bubbly curls bounced around her chin under her worn cowboy hat. She wore a t-shirt with the arms ripped off and the arms of her jumpsuit tied around her waist, heavy black boots tied on her narrow feet and a thin black-and-red bracelet around her wrist.
"Hi Momma," she said softly, when her grandma released her.
"Oh we have missed you so much," Sandy cried, hugging her daughter tightly. She let her go and Stella straightened up proudly. Sandy glanced at the boys still standing in the doorway quietly.
"Ma'am, I should return to my office," Mr. Gallagher said. "I'm expecting a call from the Attorney General with regard to your daughter's camp mates."
"Well, come on boys, come in," Sandy smiled encouragingly. "Mr. Gallagher, thank you so much!" Mr. Gallagher smiled and nodded and excused himself. The blonde boy hauled something off of the floor and carried it inside with a groan.
"What've you got there?" Ma asked suspiciously.
"Grandma, this is Zane Barlow," Stella ruffled the blonde boy's wavy blonde hair, "and this is Hector Zeroni."
"Did you just say Zeroni?" Ma asked.
"Sure did," Hector said.
"Ah!" Ma exclaimed, bending and kissing Hector's cheeks.
"Momma, we had to dig a hole every day," Stella began, "and last night when we got back to the campsite after we found Zero," she nodded to Hector, "we dug another hole and found Kissin' Kate Barlow's treasure. Look at the name on the trunk." Zane carefully placed the dirty trunk onto the dining table. Sandy put her glasses on and peered at the metal plate: Stella Hargrove.
"Oh my goodness!" Ma gasped softly. "It's my mother's chest. She used to talk about it. Kissin' Kate Barlow took it when she shot my daddy."
"How 'bout we open it," Stella suggested quietly, smiling softly. Sandy got her bolt-croppers and safety glasses.
"Okay, one more thing," she said conditionally. "No matter what is in this box, we are still family."
"We are the Hargroves! We know!" her mother said excitedly. Sandy glanced at the bolt-croppers and handed them to Stella. She took them with a grin and Zane held the trunk steady.
"Cross your fingers," Stella advised, and they counted down.
"One…two…three," Stella clenched the arms of the lock-cropper together and the lock split.
"Oh my god! Honey, you are so strong," Sandy laughed, and Stella pulled the leather straps that held the trunk together off, then gently pulled the lid off and back on its hinges.
Jewels and pearls, studded-gold cups and plates, brooches, necklaces, earrings, glittered in the apartment light. There had been an unpredicted storm and rain thrashed against the windows.
"Wow!" they all gasped and whispers.
"Oh my goodness!" Sandy reached into the trunk and pulled out a book.
"Let me see that," Ma sighed, and Sandy handed it to her, pulling out loose leafs of elaborately decorated paper.
"Okay, guys, guys, hold on," Stella said loudly, putting things back in the trunk, "before we do anything, I think it only fair that half this goes to one of my best-friends, Hector Zeroni." Sandy glanced up. But Zane was smiling at Stella with his arm around her shoulders.
"You wanna go halvsies?" Sandy said, "well," she shrugged, "that seems fair to me. What about you Zane?" Zane looked almost like a trapped animal under her gaze.
"Momma, I was thinking," Stella said, and Ma groaned softly. "Zane's parents died and he has nobody else."
"You want him to stay with us," Sandy smiled. "Of course he can stay, you too Hector." Hector beamed. His mouth seemed too big for his face when he smiled.
"Is that really worth 25,000?" Ma asked, staring at the first page of a thick wad of stocks in Sandy's hand.
"AT&T," Sandy read.
"Wait, check the date," Zane advised. He and Stella took a page and peered closely at the small, paled writing.
"1905," Stella read out finally.
"What's it worth honey?" Sandy asked.
"Well it's worth a lot more now," Zane said, shrugging. "Millions, at least."
"Millions!" The word resounded through the apartment strung with stinky old sneakers and bad wallpapering. Sandy took the pile of papers.
"One for us, one for Mr. Zeroni," she said, grinning. "One for us, one for Mr. Zeroni." The boy's face was jubilant.
"Now you can finally hire that squad of private detectives to find your mother," Stella grinned, hugging Hector. Zane chuckled and hugged them both.