The Twin Powers (19 page)

The colonel, the guy in the Smokey Bear hat, was marching by himself up front. He looked as if he thought he was the hero in a movie.

The whole thing looked like a movie.

Except I was scared.

“This is your final warning,” yelled the colonel. “Leave the area immediately. All of you.” He ran his pointing finger across the horizon.

Britzky said, “Could he be seeing more of them than we do?”

“Like imaginary Toms and Eddies and Buddys?” said Alessa. “In their minds?”

“We're staying right here until you call off the test,” yelled Eddie.

Somehow I could tell he was the real Eddie, not a hologram Eddie. I felt so proud of him. And then I remembered that he didn't know the truth about me.

One of the two Toms waved his arms, and the gun on the tank rose up and pointed at the helicopter. It flew away.

The soldiers began whirling around suddenly, as if they were being surrounded by hundreds of Toms, Eddies, and Buddys in a giant circle.

“I wish we could see this,” said Britzky.

“Then the twins would be controlling your mind too,” I said.

“Be worth it.”

The soldiers dropped their guns and began to dance in the circle we couldn't see.

“Let's go,” shouted Alessa. Britzky and I followed her out from behind the rocks. The real Tom and Eddie ran out to meet us. They grabbed our arms and pulled us into the circle.

“How many are there?” I asked Tom.

“A couple hundred,” said Tom. “I lost count.”

“Why can't we see them?”

“They're in the soldiers' heads.”

I didn't know how long we danced and sang, but the heat was leaving the desert and night was beginning to fall when we fell too, exhausted.

The colonel never joined us. He just plopped down onto the sand and cried.

Suddenly, the soldiers began screaming and racing back to their trucks and jeeps as if they were being chased by . . . rattlesnakes!

Because they were!

Dozens of snakes burst out of the sand and began slithering forward, rattling.

“That is so brilliant,” said Britzky. “What powers!”

“They're real,” screamed Tom and Eddie. They were paralyzed.

I remembered the flares in the backpacks we had carried from the plane. I made a circle of flares around us and lit them. The snakes stayed outside the circle of fire.

I was standing in the light of one of the flares, feeling proud of myself, when Eddie took a hard look at me and said, “Why are you dressed like a girl?”

 

 

 

 

Very impressive.

It seems like the Earths have earned another chance, Dr. Traum.

What do you have in mind, John?

Hold up on the decision for a year. See what else they can do.

Let me talk to the Council. I have a feeling they can be persuaded.

TOM

CULEBRA DE CASCABEL, N.M.

1958

 

W
E
were sitting in the sand around a fire, sharing the food we had taken from the plane, when Grandpa suddenly appeared like a mirage in the desert. I couldn't tell if it was him or his hologram.

“Good news,” he said. “The testing was called off. The Council was very impressed. You bought the Earths another year of survival.”

“Yesss!” said Britzky, jumping up. He grabbed Alessa and Ronnie. The three of them hopped up and down.

“Not so fast,” said Grandpa. “You're going to have to do much more in the next year to convince them further, and you're going to have to do it here on this planet. We can't take the chance right now of sending anybody back to 2012. Those two agents, Mathison and Quinn, are in Washington. With the Lump and the director. They know Tom and Eddie are twin halfies.”

Britzky and Alessa looked at each other and dropped their heads. I could feel their gloom.

“Don't feel bad,” I said. “It would have come out. You guys are great.”

That was nice. For Tom.

I traced the thought to Ronnie. If she felt a tickle in her mind, she didn't scowl at me.

“Will we ever get back home?” said Alessa.

“Hard to say,” said Grandpa. “Might depend on what you do here.”

“Just think,” I said, “you won't have to give that report on the tour to the middle-school assembly.”

Nobody cracked a smile at that. I could sense dark clouds in the minds of Britzky and Alessa. They were feeling sad about their families, wondering when they would see them again. I thought about my stepmom. I had barely thought about her in the past week, so much had happened. I knew she cared about me. I would find a way to get a message to her, to Alessa's and Britzky's families, too.
Don't worry. We're all right. Just busy saving the world.

Grandpa stood up. “We better get going. There's a small vehicle in
Friendship One
we can use to get out of this area after we blow up the spacecraft. Can't let the 1958 space-agency guys find a 2012 rocket ship.”

I looked over at Eddie. He hadn't eaten much—he was just holding on to Buddy and staring down.

You okay?

How could he lie to me for so long?

It's she.

Whatever
.
Eddie was having a hard time with Ronnie as a girl. He had barely talked to her or looked at her.

“He's old-fashioned,” said Alessa to me, noticing Eddie's unhappiness. “It's going to take him a while.”

“It's no big deal,” said Britzky. “I always thought Ronnie was a girl.”

Ronnie smiled. “If you're so smart,” she said, “what are we going to do now?”

“Lots to do on this planet,” said Britzky. “Check the timeline. We could be freedom riders.”

“Freedom riders?” repeated Ronnie.

“They rode buses in the South to fight against racial segregation,” said Alessa.

“Count me in,” said Ronnie.

“It's dangerous,” said Grandpa. “People get killed fighting for what's right.”

I said, “Mark Twain said, ‘The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.'”

I liked the way everybody looked at me and gave me a fist or a thumbs-up. Except for Eddie. He just sat there, cross-legged in the sand. I couldn't get into his mind. Lockdown.

I went over and gave him a light punch on the shoulder. Buddy growled at me. Trying to get Eddie to smile, I yelled, “Raiders rule!”

Eddie sighed but he didn't look up. I wasn't sure why he felt so hurt. I guess I'm still not a touchy-feely guy.

The team needs you, Cap'n Eddie.
When his head came up slowly, I said,
Don't let us down.

He looked at Ronnie. “Why didn't you trust me?”

“I didn't trust anybody,” said Ronnie.

“Veronica had her reasons,” said Alessa, giving Ronnie a squeeze. They looked like old friends. Old girlfriends. “I'm sure she'll tell you someday.”

Ronnie walked over to Eddie and put her hand out. “I'm sorry, Eddie. I was afraid you would hate me.”

He took her hand and stood up. “How could I hate you? My sidekick. My best friend.”

“Group hug,” yelled Alessa.

I thought Buddy licked my leg but I wasn't sure.

“Freedom riders,” said Eddie. He was still holding Ronnie's hand. He winked at her. “We'll probably need a freedom driver.”

“Yo, bro, way to go,” I shouted.

I realized I was starting to talk like Eddie. He was laughing when he thought back at me,
You have to talk like that?

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

I
DON'T
fit in at school because I don't do what I'm told if it's stupid. I don't keep my mouth shut when I have something to say. I don't let bullies push me around. And I can't just stand there and watch bullies pick on other kids. That's how I got kicked out of my last middle school.

I was in the cafeteria minding my own business but keeping my eyes unstuck, as usual. You have to stay alert. I was eating at one of the tables back near the trash cans. The zombies call kids who eat at those tables losers, dorks, orcs, humps, trolls, Goths, stoners—you know, because they can't stand people who aren't undead like them.

I call us rebels.

This was on a Friday before a football game, and there was a pep rally going on in the center of the cafeteria. I can't understand why middle school kids play football. Jocks are dumb enough already. They don't need their brains banged around more. The jocks yelled, their girlfriends danced, and the zombies clapped. At the rebel tables we pretended to ignore them.

One of the jock bullies noticed that we weren't clapping, so he walked over with that jock-bully walk, toes pointed in, shoulders rolling, and said, “Where's your school spirit?”

The rebels froze up and looked down.

This is a problem. It takes a lot to get rebels to do something as a group. Rebels need leaders, but they have trouble following one. They're rebels.

The jock bully picked up a tray from our table and let the food slide down on a kid's head. Spaghetti and chocolate pudding. The jocks and their girlfriends cheered, and the zombies clapped harder. The teachers pretended they were too busy on their BlackBerries to notice. Teachers let jocks get away with stuff. Maybe they're afraid of them, too.

I recognized the bully, a guy who was always slamming into kids' shoulders in the hall. He wasn't even a good football player. Typical.

He picked up two more full trays and started strutting around the table, balancing them on his palms. He kept turning his head to make sure the jerks at the jock tables were watching. They whistled and pounded their feet as he circled my table deciding whom he would trash next.

I waited until he was three steps away before I slipped out my TPT GreaseShot IV. It's about as big as a pencil flashlight: the smallest cordless grease gun you can buy online. It has an electronic pulse and can be set for semi- or full automatic. I had only one chance and I'd never used the grease gun in combat before. I put it on full automatic.

He was about a foot away when he turned his head again back toward the jock tables. That's when I fired grease in front of his red LeBron X South Beach sneakers.

The right sneaker hit the grease puddle, slid, and went up in the air.

He went down in slow motion.

It was funny. I was thinking,
Too bad nobody's shooting this
.

Too bad, somebody was.

You can see it on YouTube.

The two trays rose off his palms. He was howling like a dog as the veggie tacos, burgers, fries, and drinks avalanched onto his head. Then his left sneaker slid into the grease and he was lifted completely off the floor.

Kids were screaming as he slammed down on his back, arms out. I'm not sure exactly what happened next because that part wasn't on YouTube and I was moving out.

I try not to hang around the scene of my paybacks. It's a sure way to get caught—standing around looking like you're waiting for applause.

It didn't matter. The YouTube clip shows that the person shooting the grease gun was wearing the same blue Bach Off! hoodie I was wearing that day.

It was a zero-tolerance school.