Chameleon (3 page)

He reappeared a moment later, nylons in hand, a silly grin on his face.

“How do you know what’s in your sister’s underwear drawer?” I blurted out before thinking.

Will flushed dark red and mumbled that they traded off doing laundry depending on who was busier.

“Oh,” I said. Sylvia did all my laundry except cross country clothes; I was too mortified by eau–de–Sam to let anyone else near those. Will and his sister didn’t have the luxury of being self–conscious.

I felt awful for embarrassing him, but he shook it off.

“I thought of something else,” he said, rippling away again. When he solidified beside me a minute later, he revealed a pair of headlamps: the kind that strap around your head to light your way in the dark.

“Hands–free,” he said, smiling. “Plus, in case you’re right about cameras, I figure a light above your face would mess up any pictures.”

“Genius,” I said, nodding in admiration.

We adjusted the face–smooshing nylons and strapped the headlamps on. Will leaned in to flick mine on. I felt his breath warm against my polyestered face.

“The disguise really works—you’re hideous,” I said. “How do I look?”

Misshapen lips formed a lumpy smile on Will’s face. “I would never pass judgment on a woman’s appearance.”

I shook my head, but it was true that I’d never heard him say anything about how a girl looked. “Your sister trained you well.”

“We ready?” asked Will.

I nodded.

“I’ve been thinking we should hold hands,” Will murmured. “So we don’t lose track of each other.”

Now it was my turn for a scarlet face. I hoped the dark nylons concealed this from Will. “Good thinking,” I said.

“I’m pretty sure holding hands’ll work,” he said. “I mean, when you hold something while you’re invisible, it stays in your hand unless you decide to drop it.”

“Right,” I agreed. Will’s hand felt warm, callused, and like it belonged there, folded around mine. I felt my heart pounding faster. How could this boy go from a friend I joked with to someone who changed the rhythm of my pulse?

What if we could read one another’s minds like before?
Crap!
This was not the kind of thing I needed to be thinking if we were about to turn invisible. Of course, it hadn’t been “mind–reading” per–se, more like sharing images. This sounded more manageable. I just needed to avoid forming images of Will holding my hand or kissing me or …
Stop!
I told myself.

“We can totally do this, Sam,” said Will, noticing my hesitation. “The running together part, it’ll be just like cross country again, right? Except a lot faster. And without bodies.” He gave my hand a quick squeeze and with that he vanished.

Will’s hand in mine felt like ice now that he’d rippled. I tried not to see it as a metaphor for our relationship. But his heart simply didn’t warm to mine.

Will came solid beside me again. “You sure you’re ready?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “As long as you stop interrupting my
process
here.” I reached out an arm to push him aside, but he rippled and was gone. I grunted out a single guffaw.

Besides my aching heart, my mind circled around one other thing: fear of Helga Gottlieb. Not helpful. I needed to be thinking calm thoughts. Coach drilled us about visualizing success when we raced. So I imagined Will and myself succeeding in our lab break–in. I pictured us together in Helga’s laboratory full of beakers, DNA strand drawings on the whiteboard …stacks of black books which we would steal. I felt a temperature change which meant I’d slipped out of my skin.

Together, Will and I took off running into the night, a cloudy sky pressing heavily upon the town. Las Abuelitas lay in the clutches of a winter’s night: dead and brown and icy–still. Strange to run so silently, so swiftly alongside the empty road.

I could feel Will beside me, his presence far more real than I’d expected. At first, I seemed to catch nothing from his mind. But then I noticed I could see the road as he saw it, super–imposed upon what my own vision registered. The doubled vision should have baffled and disoriented me. But it didn’t. My mind accepted both images.

Something from Will’s mind flashed into mine; he’d spotted a pair of raccoons shambling alongside the road, their eyes fixed upon his invisible form as he passed. Animals sensed us, somehow. I wanted to communicate to him I’d seen what he showed me. Only I had no idea how to do this.

And now a thought flashed through me, white–hot like lightning: we had no way to talk to each other in Helga’s lab.

Our inability to talk gnawed its way along my stomach. We should have thought about this. Would it endanger us in Dr. Gottlieb’s lab, the silence that lay between us? I wanted to ask Will’s opinion. Slipping my hand from his, I came solid.

Will rippled in front of me, sensing my absence. “What’s wrong?” he asked, walking back to me.

“We won’t be able to talk in the lab. Not while we’re invisible. What if we need to say something to each other?”

Will frowned. “Hmmm. Let’s get off the road.”

We stepped into straggling grass that lined the highway and stopped beside the up–tilted slates, so like tomb–markers, scattered across the land in this area. In the dark, I couldn’t make out the red lichen which had reminded me of bloodstains last October. Maybe the red lichen died back in winter. Will sat, slumping against one of the stone slabs. I squatted, avoiding the eerie standing slates.

“Man, it’s cold.” He looked at me funny. “Sit closer? For warmth?”

Self–consciously, I scooted closer. A small heat hummed between our bodies.

“Much better!” Will said, grinning.

He viewed me as a heat–source. Nothing more.

I shook back disappointment, let it float off on the cold night wind.

“I don’t know if we’ll need to talk. It’s just, once I realized that we wouldn’t be able to, I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” I said.

“Like a piece of popcorn–skin stuck between your teeth,” he said.

I grunted out a small laugh.

“We both know what we’re going in for, right?” Will asked.

“Duh.”

“So, as long as nothing goes wrong, I don’t know that we’d need to talk.”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to imagine what we might need to say to one another, picturing the lab again. “Omigosh! Will, I have an idea!”

He turned toward me, brown eyes curious.

“What if we imagined blackboards and visualized writing things on them?”

“Ni–ice,” said Will, elongating the word into two syllables. “You’re a genius!”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

Will shrugged and stood. “Let’s find out. It’s too damn cold to sit here any longer.” He reached for my hand, pulling me up. He started to let go once I’d arisen, then grasped again, mumbling, “Guess we need to hold hands.”

He slipped into cool nothingness, and I turned my thoughts to the creek at Illilouette, the beauty of the clear water as it glided over multi–colored rocks. I rippled.

Immediately, in my mind’s eye, I saw writing upon a chalkboard:
So this moose walks into a bar …

I wrote on the board,
I see what you’re writing!

Letters formed like magic below mine, in Will’s familiar writing.
So I think this works, huh?

This is, like, a major scientific breakthrough!
I wrote.

Which makes you a scientific genius,
Will wrote back.

I smiled.
We could tell Mickie it was your idea, and she’d have to treat you with a little more respect, huh?

Ha! Like that would ever happen,
wrote Will.
But, seriously, Sam, no way are we ever telling her about tonight, okay?

Will had a point. If we told Mickie about our discovery, it had to be minus the part where we visited Dr. Evil’s laboratory.

I promise,
I wrote.

Will wrote
, Pinky–swear?

Guys don’t pinky–swear,
I wrote.
That’s a girl thing.

I was raised by a girl. Ish.

Fine. I pinky–swear,
I wrote.
Now are we going to do this thing or what?

Let’s go!

Will and I tore off through the grass, back to the highway, gliding along at a speed that should have been terrifying but wasn’t.

Birds must feel this way when they soar,
I wrote.

It’s like nothing else I know,
wrote Will.

The silence felt eerie; normal running created all kinds of noise. Here we sailed with only the sounds of the night: an owl hooting, the rustle of grass in a breeze, the occasional whoosh of a car. We continued silent as the night creatures we passed along the highway to Merced. I could see an eerie glow from the city now, reflecting back down from the clouds. Merced used fog–lights designed to pierce the thick tule fog of winter. The orange–yellow light seemed to whisper,
Caution! Caution!
as we approached.

Check. This. Out.
Will’s handwriting appeared in entire words this time, instead of letter–by–letter.

Do you see what I’m doing now?
Will asked.
I’m imagining whole words onto the board instead of spelling them out.

I imagined myself writing out whole words at once.
Much faster this way
.

Too bad you don’t know sign language
, Will wrote.
I’m sure I can sign faster than I can imagine words on a chalkboard.

That gave me an idea.
It doesn’t have to be a chalkboard. We could write on a piece of paper.

Or a computer screen
—Will typed on an imagined screen and I saw it.

We can write on anything!
The idea tickled me. This was stupid–fun.

We continued along the highway, experimenting within our shared mind–space.

My fastest method for sending thoughts was via an imagined cell–phone screen whereas Will’s was on a blank piece of notepad paper. Will wrote that he’d always had a soft spot for pencils and notepads.

Far sooner than made rational sense, Will and I left the foothill country for the smooth floor of the Central Valley. UCM glowed at the outskirts of the town of Merced, and we aimed for it like moths drawn to a flickering flame.

I swallowed, praying for a better fate than that of the moth.

Will wrote to me,
Not exactly your most hopeful image, that last one.

Yeah, sorry
.

We’re going to be just fine,
wrote Will.
We get in, we find the books, we get out. You’re getting better at rippling, you know.

Thanks,
I typed back.
I’m fine as long as nothing scares me.

So we’ll just avoid scary situations,
wrote Will. Then he drew a huge smiley–faced sunshine on a clean sheet of paper and what I could only assume was a rainbow. It was very ugly.

Thanks,
I typed.

He drew an arrow to the smiley and wrote
Sam
beside the arrow.

I felt laughter burbling inside me. Will knew how to make me lighten up.

Upon reaching the building that housed Helga’s lab, I felt another mental shudder, remembering how Helga strapped me down to her dentist–chair in order to interrogate me. Will must have seen the image.

You know that’s not happening this time, right?
he wrote.

I know.

We’re going to stick together, and besides, we’re invisible,
wrote Will.

Only until we grab the black books,
I typed.

Good point,
Will responded.
But no unnecessary risks. You risked a lot last time. Come on. Let me be the one who ripples solid to grab the books.

Helga’s never seen you, and we need to keep it that way. This is about your sister, too, Will.

He didn’t write back immediately.
Alright. It’s you that grabs the books. But if anyone at all is in the building, the whole deal is off, okay?

Totally,
I typed, wondering if we were idiots for doing this.

Excerpted from the private journal of Helga Gottlieb, circa present day

I have stolen the truth from Father’s journals at last! A small fact which my father has chosen to keep from me these many years. Father believes the genes of the female de Rochefort line are superior to my own. Superior to his, that is, since I am his offspring. Well, if he can swallow this bitter knowledge, then so can I.

I do not know whether to be furious that Father would hide such information from me or to admire him for doing exactly what I, in his place, would have done.

But no. That is inaccurate. I know my feelings well enough at this moment. I am angry at this betrayal. How many times has Father praised my efforts in unlocking the hidden secrets of Nature’s code, while, all the time, he knew me to be chasing down blind alleys?

But at last I hold in my hands this fact I have sought after for so long; I can accept it or reject it, but it will remain the singular truth: the very genetic sequences that have made my mind capable of so much more than the brightest minds Science has produced also contain sequences for psychoses. Not from my genes will the future salvation of mankind be created. But I shall not become embittered. I have not been defeated.

See? I write dispassionately. I can embrace truth and overcome it. Yes, I shall overcome this bitter discovery. And in this ability of mine to embrace what is, from that ability shall come triumph and the Improvement of the Race of Man.

Father bides his time, waiting to collect the genes of the girl descended from Elisabeth. I shall seize the opportunity. And the girl. Oh, yes, the girl. She will be mine before she becomes his!

Here goes,
I wrote as we bore down upon the front of the building.

Hey, Sam? No matter what, don’t drop hands, okay? We can’t talk if we aren’t touching.