Edison's Alley

by Neal Shusterman

  “Give me your shirt. I’ll take it home with me, and bring it back clean as new.”

  “Uh…”

  “That’s very kind of you,” his father said. “Nick, take it off.”

  “Well, okay…” And then he had another flash of inspiration. “Here, let me just put this down.” He reached over to rest the half-empty glass on an end table. Right now Nick was looking at that glass as half full.

  Being intentionally clumsy, he bumped his arm against the table lamp while setting down the juice. The glass flew from his hand, dumping its crimson contents on the ivory-colored sofa.

  “Oh, shoot!” said Nick.

  “You’re batting a thousand today,” his father growled.

  Nick grabbed the sofa cushion and held it out to Beverly. “Better take this, too.”

  Beverly sighed. “You know what? I’ll just bring the stain remover here.”

  Then the back door banged open and Nick heard his brother enter with Seth.

  “Good idea,” he told Beverly. Then he bounded upstairs to the attic before Seth could see him, and pulled the spring-loaded steps closed behind him.

  Retrieving the harp was going to take two people. Ideally, they’d have a vehicle for the job, but that would require Nick’s father, and Nick had sworn to keep him out of it.

  The best thing about a neighborhood garage sale, however, was that most of the items sold stayed in the neighborhood. As it turned out, the harp was in a house only two streets away.

  Nick’s dad and Danny had left early for baseball practice and would be gone all morning, so Nick knew he wouldn’t face the why-are-you-dragging-a-harp-through-the-house conversation once he and Mitch brought it home.

  Mitch arrived early. He seemed a little distracted—shell shock, Nick figured, from spending Friday evening with Petula, who could drain the life out of anyone.

  Mitch yawned. “You think the harp lady’ll really give it back?”

  “We’ll find a way to convince her,” Nick told him.

  “You think we’ll be able to carry it?”

  “It’s not full-size,” Nick told him. “And I remember it wasn’t as heavy as it looked.” But, Nick thought, Jorgenson and the Accelerati were still out there, and they might be watching. He and Mitch would have to cover the harp with something before they lugged it down the street. It wouldn’t prevent the Accelerati from knowing that he had retrieved another item, but at least they wouldn’t be able to see what it was.

  Nick scarfed a handful of dry cereal and was headed for the door when the doorbell rang.

  He hesitated. The door didn’t have a peephole, or any other way to determine who was on the other side without opening it. When, wondered Nick, did I become afraid of opening my own front door?

  “You expecting anyone?” Mitch asked.

  Nick didn’t answer. Instead, he bit back his own paranoia and swung the door wide in defiance.

  Standing there was a blond girl with sun-reddened cheeks. She was as muscular as she was tall. She looked down at Nick with cool yet intense gray eyes and said, “Are you ready to go? Where’s your crossbow?”

  Nick tried to come up with anything resembling a sensible response. When he couldn’t, he said, “Hold that thought.” Then he closed the door and took a nice long moment.

  “You didn’t tell me you had a crossbow,” Mitch said. “Can I see it?”

  “I don’t.”

  “But she said—”

  “Why don’t you go get a blanket to take with us so we can cover the harp. I’ll deal with this.”

  Once Mitch had left the room, Nick took a deep breath and opened the door again.

  The muscular girl looked him over. “You still don’t have your crossbow.” And she held up her own. It was a stainless-steel thing that looked to Nick like it would need three people to carry it.

  “Uh…do we know each other?” Nick asked.

  “Oh, right,” said the girl. “Sorry. I feel like I know you, since we chatted so much online.” She held out her hand. “Hi, Nick, I’m Val. It’s great to finally meet you in person. Now let’s kill some rabbits.”

  Nick was not quite up to speed, but his mental engine was primed enough to idle into the conversation. “Oh, was that today?”

  “You invited me last night,” Val said. “Bright and early Saturday morning, that’s what you said.” Then her expression got a little dark. “You didn’t forget, did you?”

  One thing Nick knew for sure: you don’t tick off a girl who could arm-wrestle you into oblivion. Especially if she has a crossbow.

  “No, I didn’t forget…it’s just that—wouldn’t you know it—my crossbow’s in the shop.”

  “No worries,” Val said, reaching into an oversize gym bag. “I’ve got a spare.” And she presented him with a crossbow that was, mercifully, slightly smaller and lighter than hers.

  Clearly someone had pranked Nick by pretending to be him online and setting this whole thing up. Could it have been Caitlin? No, she’d never be that devious. But on the other hand, she had been devious enough to trick that poor jeweler, Mr. Svedberg, into telling them about the Accelerati. Before Jorgenson killed him for it, that is.

  Mitch came up behind him, smiling shyly. “You can go, Nick. I got this one covered.”

  “But—”

  “C’mon,” Val prompted. “You can ride on the back of my dirt bike.”

  “You’ve got a dirt bike?” Nick couldn’t believe he was allowing himself to be distracted.

  “I know this great wildlife preserve,” Val said, “where they let you thin out the populations.”

  Under normal circumstances, a girl with two crossbows and a dirt bike would be more enticing than some lady with a stringless dog-harp. But this was Tesla’s dog-harp. Even as Nick thought about it, he felt the uncanny pull of the half-finished device in his attic.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t go today.”

  She gave him a bone-crushing glare. “Oh, really? So you made me come all this way for nothing?”

  Mitch pulled him aside and spoke quietly. “Nick, you should go.”

  “Are you kidding me? The harp—”

  “I’ll call Petula and we’ll go get it together, right on schedule.”

  Nick shook his head. “Out of the question.”

  Mitch regarded him with an expression that was both sad and severe. “You keep telling me that we’re a team, but you do just about everything yourself.”

  “Well, that’s just because—”

  “—because you think I’m a screw-up, right? Go on, say it!”

  “Mitch, I don’t think that.”

  “Then prove it. Let me do this. Let me show you I’m not a screw-up.”

  Nick felt cornered, but maybe Mitch was right. He did have trouble trusting anyone with Tesla’s objects. It was time to show some faith in his friend.

  “Go on,” said Mitch. “Val’s waiting.”

  Nick turned to Val. “Well, I guess it’s okay,” he said, taking the smaller crossbow from her, “as long as we’re not expected to kill off all the other kids there.”

  “Cute,” said Val. “Like I’ve never heard that before.” She turned and strode back to the dirt bike, her mane of hair flowing behind her. “You coming, or what?”

  Nick turned to Mitch. “You promise you’ll go get the harp right away?”

  “Promise.”

  “And be careful with it—we don’t know what it does.”

  “When am I not careful?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—like your entire freaking life?”

  Mitch nodded, accepting the truth. “Well, then today will be the exception.”

  Nick turned at the rude sound of Val starting her dirt bike, which looked much more like a Harley with her on it. Well, if Caitlin thought this match-made-in-hell would rattle him, she had this coming. He resolved to go the distance just to show her, and skewer himself some critters.

  So he climbed on the back of Val’s bike and rode off for the hunt, trusting
Mitch and Petula to do the job.

  Caitlin did not know about Val. She was on her way to Nick’s house with Tesla’s abacus and the hope that, in addition to its mathematical properties, the device would help mend the fence between her and Nick.

  Then she saw Nick cruising down the street on a dirt bike steered by a stone-faced girl with wild hair and…was that a weapon slung across her back?

  They rode past, and Nick didn’t even see Caitlin.

  Needless to say, Caitlin was furious. But she didn’t know who to be furious at, or what it all meant. She should have talked to Nick sooner. After all, she was the one who had stormed off after he did nothing more than dredge up the nerve to ask her out.

  She continued to Nick’s house in something of a rage-induced daze, intending to leave the abacus at his door. There she found Mitch in the driveway, talking desperately into his phone.

  “…and I don’t know where you are, Petula, but this is the third time I’m calling,” he said. “So look, I’ll just come over to your house and wait…”

  Caitlin put the lead-lined abacus case into Mitch’s hand.

  “For Nick,” she said. “Tell him…” She thought about it for a second. “You know what? Don’t tell him anything. Just give it to him.” Then she went back home, where she smashed a bunch of things and glued them onto canvases, creating what were perhaps her most heartfelt works of art.

  It aggravated Caitlin that she cared. After all, she was pretty, she was popular, she was smart. Her life did not rise and fall on the attention of any boy. Even so, losing that attention didn’t feel very good.

  She had always prided herself on being a girl of action, and today that meant something more than the creation of her mash-terpieces, as her parents called them. There was something else that needed to be destroyed before something new could be created.

  So she went into the kitchen, picked up a landline, and called Theo—because lately hearing Theo’s voice on a “smart” phone just didn’t seem right.

  From his first few words, he sounded distracted, and she knew he was watching ESPN. He had checked out of the conversation before he’d even checked in.

  After some small talk so small it was actually microscopic, she told him, “I’ve decided it’s time we make our breakup official.”

  “Okay, sure,” Theo said absently. “Wait—what?”

  “No more studying together, no more being seen together, no more showing up at my house for food.”

  There was silence for a moment as Theo let it sink in. “You mean I can’t even eat there anymore?”

  “That’s right. I’m sorry, Theo, but it’s best this way.”

  “Wait,” said Theo. “Is this because of what happened with Galileo’s mascot?”

  Caitlin had no idea what he was talking about, but still she said, “Yes, Theo, that’s exactly why,” and hung up.

  Then she smashed the phone, and glued it to a canvas.

  Unlike Caitlin, Petula knew about Val, because she was the one who had been impersonating Nick online. She’d been doing it for quite some time now. At first it was just for entertainment value, but more recently it had a purpose.

  She had created a profile for him in a medieval weaponry chat room, and had struck up a conversation with the most intimidating girl she could find, for the purpose of blindsiding Nick exactly as she had done today.

  It wasn’t hard, really. Her own knowledge of Dark Age death devices had captured Val like a heretic in an iron maiden. And so, while Nick floundered at his door, negotiating with an armed teenage huntress, Petula was on the move, waiting for Ms. Planck at the harpist’s house.

  She had already ignored three phone calls from Mitch. She knew why he was calling, and she listened to his messages only because his increasingly frantic voice soothed her.

  “This will be a feather in your cap, Petula,” Ms. Planck said as she arrived. “If we retrieve this item because of you, the Accelerati won’t forget it. You’ll be well on your way up the secret society’s ladder, and they will give you the respect that you deserve.” Then she added, “And it won’t look bad for me either—I need something more to show for my efforts. Do you know how close I was to getting a list of the missing objects from Nick? That would have made me the belle of the Accelerati ball!”

  “The Accelerati have a ball?”

  “Honestly, Petula!” Ms. Planck said, shaking her head. “That’s a figure of speech.” Then she suggested, “Perhaps you could sweet-talk that list out of him.”

  Petula knew that was as unlikely as pigs flying. Although, considering some of the experiments she’d heard about in the Accelerati’s genetic research department, flying pigs were not entirely out of the question.

  They arrived at the harpist’s home, which was unremarkable—just one on a street of similar ranch houses. Petula reached out to ring the bell, but the door opened before she could.

  The woman inside seemed to be in her thirties. She was wearing a loose-fitting flowery dress, and she had the air of contentment usually reserved for people too stupid to know that their lives were miserable.

  “Hello,” she said, in a rather musical tone. “You’ve come for the harp, haven’t you? I was expecting two young men, but things change, I suppose.” The smile never left her face. It was calming in a disturbing sort of way. The woman exuded a sense of inner peace and trust that made Petula not want to trust her at all.

  “Come in,” she said. “Stay for a moment, won’t you? There’s no need to rush.”

  Ms. Planck, however, got down to business the moment they stepped inside. “The harp is part of a collection that should not have been split up. I hope you can understand our need to retrieve it.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We’ll buy it back,” Petula said, wedging herself into the negotiation.

  “And for much more than you paid for it,” Ms. Planck added.

  The woman just looked at the two of them, her eyes smiling as broadly as her lips, it seemed. “Oh, you don’t have to pay me. Take it as my gift. I’ve come to realize I can’t keep it. Now that it’s touched my life, I’m happy to let it move on.”

  This made Petula even more suspicious—and probably Ms. Planck, too, because she, more than anyone, knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch.

  “So then what do you want?” Petula asked. “You must want something.”

  Ms. Planck gently touched Petula’s arm to quiet her, and said, “Can you show it to us?”

  The woman led them into a den. There it sat beside a baby grand piano. It was about four feet high and was gunmetal gray with gold highlights. A beautiful object, with one very obvious problem.

  “It really doesn’t have strings,” said Petula.

  The woman chuckled lightly. “Oh, it most certainly does.” Then she asked, “Would you like to hear me play?”

  Petula couldn’t imagine how a person could play a stringless harp, but Ms. Planck said, “Yes, we’d love to hear it, if you would be so kind.”

  The woman pulled up a small stool, tilted the harp so that it rested on her shoulder, and began to move her fingers in the empty space where the strings should have been.

  Petula heard nothing. Nothing at all. But she could feel the music. It seemed to echo inside her. Not just in her bones, but in a deeper place she never knew existed—or at least had never accessed. The soundless music tapped the well of her soul.

  “My God,” whispered Ms. Planck. “It’s strung with cosmic string!”

  Petula had heard of cosmic string theory. How the universe was made up of invisible threads stretching beyond the three dimensions that humans can experience. No wonder this woman seemed to be tuned in to something larger than herself. Because she was! She was playing the universe!

  Then the howling began. Just as the man at the Beef-O-Rama had told them, this delicate melody, out of the range of human hearing, was calling to dogs like an ultrasonic whistle. And they sang with it, harmonizing. Like the man said, it wasn’t m
usic, but whatever it was, Petula wanted it to last.

  But Ms. Planck said, “Thank you. It’s lovely, but we really need to go.”

  The woman looked up—not at Ms. Planck, but at Petula, who had crossed the room and was now standing just a few feet away from the harp. The soundless music had drawn her. She felt betrayed by her own legs, and would have to find a way to punish them later.

  “You want to play it, don’t you?” the woman said kindly. “I think you should.”

  “No!” said Ms. Planck, and she pulled Petula back, whispering into her ear. “Cosmic strings are capricious and unpredictable. You don’t want to touch them.”

  “But…but just a single strum couldn’t hurt.”

  “Of course it could! Look at her.” They both turned to the smiling woman, whose eyes seemed to be seeing through them to another place entirely. “Clearly she’s lost her mind!”

  Then Ms. Planck addressed the woman. “We really do need to go. Petula, grab the light end, and be careful not to touch the strings. I’ll take the base.”

  The woman stepped back and let them lift the harp. They moved it to the doorway, where Ms. Planck put down her end. “Wait here,” she told Petula, then went back to the woman.

  “I can’t just take the harp without leaving you something.”

  The woman heaved a sigh that seemed both blissful and melancholy. “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “It’s not what you want, but it’s necessary.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said again.

  Petula was much more interested in the harp than the transaction. Even silent, the invisible strings seemed to resonate. So Petula reached out a single finger, moved it toward the seemingly empty space, and as soon as she felt the tiniest bit of resistance, she plucked the unseen string.

  The effect was immediate. It was intense, and too much to process all at once. If that’s what a single string did, Petula couldn’t imagine what playing all of them would do—especially if you knew how to play.

  Ms. Planck must have felt the vibration, because she snapped her eyes back to Petula. “I told you not to!”

  “I didn’t mean to! My hand slipped!”