As Vince took in the surroundings of the untidy kitchen, he could see that his friend’s exaggeration wasn’t all that far off. There were hundreds upon hundreds of miniature cats.
“How do you do it?” Vince asked, and the woman, thrilled to have someone more interested than appalled, was happy to talk.
“Shelters,” she said. “I get ’em from shelters. You’d be surprised how many cats nobody wants. I save ’em from gettin’ put to sleep and I bring ’em here. Of course, until a few weeks ago I couldn’t bring ’em all—but now there ain’t no limit!”
“But…how do you do it?” Vince asked again.
The woman gave him a smile that was missing some key teeth. “I’ll show you, but you can’t tell no one!”
Clearly she’d been itching to tell someone about it.
Vince followed the woman into her laundry room, where there was plenty of dirty laundry, but none of it looked like it had any intention of getting into a washing machine. A full-size cat was sitting on the pile. The cat lady grabbed it and, holding it tight, put it in the sink and turned on the faucet.
“No, don’t!” Vince said reflexively.
“Don’t worry,” the woman said. “I ain’t gonna hurt it. I just gotta get it wet. It won’t work unless it’s wet.”
As cats don’t like water, it did its best to squirm away, but she held it tight until its fur was soggy. Then she opened the door of an exceptionally old dryer with her free hand. “In ya go!” she said cheerfully.
“No!” said Vince again.
“You’re a nervous type, ain’t ya?” she said.
She shut the dryer and turned it on. It rumbled and grumbled, but as Vince looked in the glass door, he could see that the drum wasn’t turning. Something else was going on inside, though, because the cat was glowing.
“This is one a’ them ‘do not try this at home’ kind of things,” the crazy lady said. She shut the machine off after ten seconds, and when she opened the door, the cat was entirely dry. And the size of a hamster.
“I got the thing at a garage sale,” she told him, which he already knew. “First time I used it to dry my clothes, everything shrunk to doll size. In one of the pockets I found a dollar bill the size of a cookie fortune. When I realized it wasn’t just the clothes that had shrunk, I got to thinking…”
The tiny cat jumped up onto her sweater and climbed to her shoulder to nestle with a host of others. “It’s a dream come true,” she said. “Finally, after all these years, I have enough cats.”
And that line, Vince realized, was his in. He had discovered that for each of the items he had recovered, the object in question had fulfilled a need, or had slapped the person around enough to impart a valuable lesson. She might always be a crazy cat lady, but at least now she no longer had the insatiable desire to acquire more cats.
“I could use this,” Vince said, “to save the puppies…”
The woman was so moved, she gave it to him for free.
Nick went to school extra early the next day. He told himself it wasn’t for any particular reason, but if he had used the feeling recorder it would have said, in his own voice, that his reason was very particular indeed.
There was no one he could consult about his predicament. Sure, he could talk to his friends, but they didn’t have any more information than he did. Talking to his father last night had made it clear that Nick couldn’t share the truth with him. He needed an outside party. Someone kindly and wise, and above all, trustworthy.
So Nick went to school early to talk to Ms. Planck, because Mitch was right—she did know things. But more than that, her advice was always like comfort food.
He found her in the cafeteria, lining up cinnamon buns and croissants on the counter. There were no other cafeteria workers present, as none would ever arrive at such an ungodly hour.
“You’re an early bird today, Nick,” she said when she saw him. “Got a worm to catch?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he told her. “Thought I’d get a jump on the day.” He dug his hands into the carton of cellophane-wrapped pastries and helped line them up.
Once the pastries were out, Ms. Planck turned to the hot items. She put sausages on an industrial-size grill, poured prescrambled egg mix into a frying pan the size of a hubcap, and started cutting up fruit. As he watched her, Nick marveled. She seemed like more than a cafeteria worker. The way she juggled all the workstations, she was more like an artist. No—a scientist! Because there truly was a science to what she did.
Outside, the morning began to brighten. The last traces of the aurora faded from the sky. There was still at least half an hour before anyone else would show up, so Nick had plenty of time to talk. He didn’t know how to broach the subject…but just standing there watching her work and saying nothing was getting awkward, so he went for it.
“What would you say if I told you a secret society was after me, and my life might be in danger?”
She laughed. “I would say you’ve been watching too much TV.” Then she stopped for a moment, considered, and said, “Does this have anything to do with that garage sale of yours?”
Nick snapped his eyes to hers. “How did you know about that?”
“You told me, remember? A few days before that awful business with the asteroid.”
“Oh, right.” He cleared his throat. “Well, the thing is, all that stuff from the garage sale…it was a little more important than I let on.”
Ms. Planck heaved a watermelon onto the counter. “How so?”
“It belonged to someone.”
Out of nowhere she produced a big, shiny cleaver. “Belonged to whom?”
“Nikola Tesla.”
In one skilled move, Ms. Planck slammed the cleaver down, splitting the melon in two. “Tesla? That maniac?”
“He was a genius.”
Ms. Planck hacked at the watermelon halves, quartering them. “His experiments melted the town’s generator. Colorado Springs was dark for days.”
“Accidents happen,” Nick said—but the thought didn’t sit well with him. The man who had designed the machine in his attic was precise. He did not leave things to chance. He was not accident-prone.
Or was he?
“Anyway,” Nick said, “I need to get back some of the objects I sold, and my friends seem to think you could help. And I guess I do, too. I mean, you know a lot about what goes on in town.”
Ms. Planck continued to cut the melon until it was in serving-size pieces. “That’s true. And I belong to an antiquing meet-up group. Its members are always going to garage sales. I’ll bet some of your missing items might be with them.” She looked at him. “You mentioned a secret society…Do you think someone else is after those objects?” she asked. “Do you think they might have followed you here?”
Nick glanced over his shoulder reflexively, and then felt silly about it. “No one followed me,” he said. “No one knows I’m here.”
“Good,” she said. “Better safe than sorry.” Then she took a step toward Nick, melon juice dripping from the blade of her cleaver. “Why don’t you make me a list of all the items you’re missing,” she said with a warm smile, “and I’ll see if I can help you track them down.”
That sounded like a good idea, so Nick reached into his backpack for pen and paper.
In moments of extreme stress, the mind can do very strange things. Such was the case when Nick began his list for Ms. Planck.
He pulled a piece of paper out of his notebook and set it on the counter. As he fished through his backpack for a pen, the edge of the paper, which was too close to the flame under the skillet of eggs, caught fire. Nick pulled it away, but he only succeeded in moving the burning paper onto the grill, where sausages were sizzling in their own grease. The grease ignited, and flames leaped toward the stainless-steel vent hood.
And suddenly Nick was somewhere else.
In an instant he was back in Tampa. Almost four months ago. The fire! His mother! It was happening all over again. He knew he was still in the cafeteria
kitchen with Ms. Planck, but that didn’t erase the feeling of absolute dread inside him. The flames were all around them now, on every wall, every surface.
He grabbed Ms. Planck with adrenaline-pumped strength. “We have to get out of here!” He pulled her so hard that the cleaver fell from her hand and embedded itself in the linoleum floor. “Hurry! While there’s still time!”
But Ms. Planck pulled herself free and walked back into the flames.
“No!” Nick shouted. What was she doing? He could save her! He had to save her! It couldn’t happen again!
She went down on her knees, apparently overcome by the smoke, and Nick found himself frozen, unable to do anything but watch…
…as she pulled a small fire extinguisher from a low cabinet, aimed it at the grill, and put out the grease fire with a single blast from the nozzle.
“Well,” she said, “so much for the sausages.”
All at once Nick realized that the flames that had seemed so huge, so all-consuming, were in his mind; they were really confined to just a corner of the grill. The smoke was already gone—there hadn’t even been enough to set off an alarm. Still his heightened sense of terror remained.
“Now then,” said Ms. Planck, “how about that list?”
Nick found he could barely breathe. He craved fresh air. He needed to clear his thoughts, because, although the fire might be out in the kitchen, it still raged in his brain.
“I gotta go.” He turned and ran, almost tripping on the cleaver on his way out.
Nick ate lunch from the hallway vending machine that day. He did not want to return to the cafeteria and be reminded of the feeling he’d had that morning. Not so much the panic as the vulnerability.
He had kept his head in much worse situations. Even when Vince dropped dead in Beverly Webb’s foyer, Nick had managed to stay relatively calm and knew what he had to do. But this morning had revealed a massive chink in his emotional armor—and if he was prone to irrational fear, there was a chance he could freak at the absolute wrong moment. All could be lost.
He tried not to dwell on it. School was, for once, a welcome distraction. He kept his mind on his schoolwork and his teachers’ lessons. In history class, he inadvertently glanced over at Caitlin, who offered him a slim, possibly apologetic grin. It was the same grin she’d been offering him for days.
He wasn’t sure what it meant. He doubted she even knew. It was awkward, and Nick didn’t have the time or patience for awkward anymore. That would change when…well, it would change when it would change. He couldn’t spend his time worrying about that now. Not when he had so much more on his mind.
Thoughts of his mom, and the fire, and the life he had lost before he moved to Colorado peeked around every unguarded corner of his brain. They threatened to overwhelm him, but by last period he had managed to smother the fire and regain, if not peace, then at least stability.
The effort had exhausted him, but his day was still not over. After school he went to Mitch’s house, because they had to track down a phone number for the harpist.
Mitch’s little sister opened the door, and when she saw him, she said, “You’re the one who gave my brother the toy that said funny things. It’s broken now.”
“I know,” said Nick. “Can I come in?”
She seriously considered the request, then chose to allow him entry.
This was the first time Nick had been in Mitch’s house. It looked normal on the surface, but the walls seemed to breathe the absence of Mitch’s father. Or maybe that was just Nick’s imagination.
Mitch’s room was a pigsty—and Nick sensed it was a pretty accurate reflection of Mitch’s mental space as well. He hadn’t known Mitch before Mr. Murló went to prison, and maybe his friend was a slob before all that, but Nick sensed that this current state of disarray was a direct result of the state of his family. It was as if Mitch’s life had spun into a tornado that left its debris scattered around his room.
“I got it!” Mitch said, almost camouflaged within the mess. He waved a piece of paper at Nick. “I called the coffeehouse where the harp lady is performing—I told them I was taking harp lessons and lost her number.”
“And they gave it to you?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it, ’cause I’m, like, the worst liar in the world.”
“Did you call her?”
He handed Nick the slip of paper. “I figured I’d leave that to you.”
But Nick put the phone on speaker—after all, Mitch had tracked down her number; he shouldn’t be shut out of the call.
“Hello, Ms.…Devereaux?” Nick read the name off the flyer, certain he had mispronounced it.
“Speaking,” the woman said.
“Uh…I had a garage sale a few weeks back?” he said, his voice unintentionally questioning. “You bought a harp?”
“Ah! You’ll be wanting it back, I imagine,” she said immediately. She didn’t seem surprised or concerned, which both surprised and concerned Nick.
“Can we come by in the morning?” Mitch blurted out. “To talk about it?”
She instantly agreed. Nine o’clock sharp. After they hung up, Nick turned to Mitch. “Did that seem weird to you?”
“Compared to what?” Mitch asked. He had a point; any yardstick they had for measuring weirdness had been pulverized into sawdust over the past few weeks. Nick could only hope that whatever awaited him tomorrow would be less bruising than his encounter with the weightless guy.
In the meantime he looked forward to getting home so he could just hurl himself onto the living room sofa and make the world go away for a while.
Unfortunately, the world had staked a claim in Nick’s living room today.
When he opened the door, his father was sitting on the couch. And sitting across from him was none other than Beverly Webb.
The situation was crystal clear to Nick. Her son, having recovered from his pizza issues, had identified him, and she and his father were waiting to ambush him with an accusation of breaking and entering.
His first instinct was to shout It wasn’t me! His second instinct was to turn and run. But instead he simply held his tongue and waited for the ax to come down.
“Nick,” his father said sternly.
“Uh…yeah?”
“As you can see, Beverly’s here. With Seth…”
Nick prepared himself for the worst. But then his father said:
“Seth’s helping Danny with his fielding.”
Nick took a deep breath and released it. “Fielding,” he said. “Right.”
Beverly looked at him, all warmth and understanding. “Nick, I want you to know there are no hard feelings about the other day.”
“Thanks,” said Nick, taking another deep breath. “So…where’s Seth now?”
“Out back, with your brother,” his father said. “Beverly and Seth will be staying for dinner. And before you say anything—it was my idea. They had a break-in recently, so I thought it best if they spent the evening with friends.”
“Wow,” said Nick, not sure how convincing he sounded. “Did they take anything?”
Beverly shook her head. “No—we came home and that scared them away. But Seth got a good look at one of them. Big guy. Scary.”
“Probably just some pathetic lowlifes,” Nick’s father offered. “I’m sure they won’t come back.”
His father had called in an order of Chinese, since pizza was currently out of the question. Nick imagined how the dinner scene might go with Seth sitting at the table with him, then erased the scene from his mind.
“You know what? I have lots of homework,” he said. “I think I’ll skip dinner tonight.”
His father started to protest, but Beverly stopped him. “It’s okay, Wayne, really.” The fact that she thought Nick was just being rude allowed him to actually be rude, so he brushed past her without saying good-bye and went into the kitchen to get a drink. On the way, he inconspicuously grabbed off the hallway wall the one family photo saved from the fire, and he slipp
ed it beneath his jacket—so that Seth had no chance of seeing Nick’s face.
Had Seth been more observant, he might have recognized this house as the one where he had bought the stain remover—and he might have remembered that the kid who sold it to him had just broken into his home. But it seemed that Nick had lucked out, and as long as he stayed out of Seth’s line of sight, he figured he was safe.
But how long would his luck hold if Seth’s mother kept poking around Nick’s father?
As he stood at the refrigerator pondering these things, an idea came to him that might take care of at least one of the Beverly-related problems he currently faced.
He looked through the fridge until he found the perfect beverage: pomegranate juice. He poured himself a nice tall glass, then went back to the living room with his elbow wide.
Accidents, as Nick had pointed out that morning, do happen. He bumped into Beverly, jostling the glass, and pomegranate juice the color of blood sloshed all over his white shirt.
“Nick! Be more careful!” his father scolded.
“Sorry.”
“It was my fault,” said Beverly.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Nick, and then he caught himself. “I mean, I wish, but no—it was my fault.” He looked down at his shirt. “Great. It’s stained. And my favorite shirt, too.”
“I’ll get a napkin,” said Beverly.
“Too late—it’s already soaked in.”
“Well, if you dab it right now…”
“Are you kidding me?” said Nick. “Pomegranate juice never comes out.”
“Too bad,” said his father. “That was a good shirt.”
“It’ll leave a permanent stain,” Nick said.
“What a shame,” said Beverly.
“It’s ruined,” Nick said, “because nothing can possibly get a pomegranate juice stain out of a white shirt.” Sheesh, it felt like rubbing two sticks together to start a fire. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Wait,” Beverly finally said. “I’ve got a stain remover—it can get a stain out of anything.” And then she held her hand out to Nick. “Take off your shirt.”
Nick just stared at her. “What?”
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