Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Page #3

---

But it's not for a fixed safe, I don't think.

Could be a safe deposit box,

post office box.

It's old. Maybe 20, 30 years old.

How can I find the company

that made it?

Anyone could've made it.

Then how do I find the lock that it fits?

I'm afraid I can't help you there, unless you

wanna try it in anything you come across.

You never know what a key's gonna fit.

There are a million different possibilities.

That's what I love about keys.

They all open something.

Just one.

Shouldn't you be in school?

It's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Lie number two.

I started counting my lies earlier that

morning when I told Mom I had a fever.

I don't wanna potentially infect

a multitude of people at school.

I could be a walking pathogen.

I thought Martin Luther King's birthday

was in January.

It used to be. They changed it.

That was lie number three.

Hold on, Oskar.

Who's "Black"?

On the envelope?

Anybody you know?

Could be somebody who knows

something about the key.

Thanks for being

such a great locksmith.

What do you need these for?

A project on the census.

Lie number four.

Why aren't you in school?

-They said I know too much already.

-Ah.

Black, Black, Black.

Well, "Black" was definitely a person.

Probably.

If "Black" was a person, he or she

must have known Dad somehow.

Four-hundred-seventy-two.

But how?

And how was I going to find him/her?

Was this a Reconnaissance Expedition?

Lagos, Nigeria. And it drifted....

Dad's expeditions

always included a journey.

...2278.3 nautical miles.

Brazil!

And he always planned them,

down to the smallest details.

Five miles an hour.

Seven hundred.

What else could it be?

If there was a key, there was a lock.

If there was a name,

there was a person.

I'm home.

There had to be a lock.

I would find it because

he wanted me to find it.

Q-56. Q-56. Q-56.

And I would find it because it was the only

way I could stretch my 8 minutes with him.

Maybe I could stretch them forever.

I put together a backpack of vital things

I would need for my survival.

An Israeli gas mask Grandma bought me

two weeks after the worst day.

My tambourine to help keep me calm.

Binoculars, obviously.

I had to travel light

to be as quick as possible.

My expedition journal.

My father's father's camera.

A Brief History Of Time, by Stephen

Hawking, that my dad used to read to me.

Cell phone.

Fig Newtons, which I love.

The key, obviously.

And my father's message

to not stop looking.

And I wouldn't, not ever.

Hey.

Where you going?

Out.

Where?

I told you, to the comic book convention

with Minch. Be back later.

Lie number five.

Except for the "be back later" part.

Well, leave your cell phone on.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes