Tesla's Attic

by Neal Shusterman

  Petula had always admired Almira Gulch’s perfect posture as she rode her bicycle up to Dorothy’s house. With modern bicycles, however, such posture was impossible, unless one didn’t hold the handlebars. Thus, Petula had become a master of what she called “Venus de Milo cycling.” In other words, riding without arms. Of course, this left her with no brakes, but then Petula was not one to stop for anything—which is why she was nearly turned into roadkill by the LifeLine Cable truck that careened into Nick’s driveway and screeched to a halt mere inches from her.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Petula screamed at Random Force number six: the cable guy, but she didn’t wait for a response. He was the cable guy; it was a sufficient answer to her question. She jumped off her moving bike with practiced skill and let it roll onto Nick’s lawn, where it lost momentum and fell over.

  Here’s what Petula knew: at precisely four thirty, a dead body would be carried on a stretcher out of Nick’s house to an ambulance waiting in the driveway—but exactly when the death itself was to occur, she had no idea. Nor did she know who the victim would be. There was no way to tell from the image whether the lump beneath the sheet was male or female.

  Frankly, she didn’t care who it was, as long as it wasn’t Nick.

  She entered the house without knocking or ringing the doorbell, and she practically tripped over a mounted gold spike that was in the doorway for no reason she could figure.

  Nick’s annoying little brother brushed past her, shouting, “The cable guy’s here! The cable guy’s here!” like Paul Revere might have said had he been more interested in watching the British arrive on CNN.

  There seemed to be quite a lot of activity in the house. She rushed through the rooms, taking quick stock of the situation. There were more people present than she expected. Vince was coming down the stairs from the second floor with Nick. Then there was a man, presumably Nick’s father, shouting from the basement, “I’m still looking! I know it’s down here somewhere.” Caitlin was in the kitchen staring at Theo, and what Theo was doing there was anybody’s guess.

  This was actually good news. As the cable guy entered the mix, Petula quickly calculated the odds. There was only a one-in-seven chance that Nick would “buy the farm”—her father’s favorite euphemism for “kicking the bucket.” Of course, those were the odds if she didn’t include herself.

  And then it dawned on her that there was no reason to exclude herself. Now that she was there, she was equally at risk for a farm purchase.

  She ran up the stairs toward Nick, shoving Vince aside. Vince fell the rest of the way, almost, but not quite, breaking his neck. Close, but no cigar.

  “What’s wrong with you?” cried Vince.

  “Popular question today,” said the cable guy as he walked toward the living room, giving Petula a wink that was just on the cusp of being creepy.

  Petula ignored it and turned to Nick. “Come with me,” she said. “You’re in danger.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She grabbed him by the shirt and started shaking him. “Don’t you understand, you idiot? I’m trying to save your life.”

  “From what?”

  She slapped him, the way they do in movies, to knock some sense into him, but he just proceeded to slap her back, which made her so furious she slapped him again.

  Caitlin, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs, apparently saw enough of the exchange to say, “Can I slap Petula, too?”

  “Be my guest,” said Nick, pushing past Petula so he could take the object Caitlin was holding out to him. Something resembling a set of old-fashioned hair curlers.

  “What is she even doing here?” Caitlin asked Nick.

  For Petula, it was one of her personal pet peeves to be spoken of in the third person—but before she could level a complaint against either of them, the two were hurrying back up the stairs. In an instant they had disappeared into the attic.

  The idea of Caitlin and Nick being alone in an attic did not sit well with Petula, although it did make her feel better to know that Caitlin had a one-in-eight chance of dying today. Perhaps, she thought, Nick was a serial killer, and he was at this very moment strangling her in the attic. If so, Petula would keep his dark secret, and it would bond them together for eternity.

  But Petula knew she couldn’t count on that. What she needed was to improve the odds for Nick and herself by adding someone else to the equation. Someone who stood a much larger chance of spontaneously dropping dead.

  And wasn’t there a frail old woman who lived next door?

  Random Force number seven: Mitch.

  Mitch knew that Nick was going to ask him for the Shut Up ’n Listen, because the machine had told him so. But the machine also told him it was best to do what Nick asked, regardless of how Mitch phrased the first half of the sentence. So, with the device in hand, he went to Nick’s house.

  The last thing he expected to see as he approached the house was Petula practically dragging Random Force number eight, an old woman, across the lawn toward Nick’s front door. A small dog in a knit sweater that embarrassed both the dog and the sheep that it came from angrily nipped at Petula’s heels.

  “We need your help! Hurry!” Petula screamed in the old woman’s ear. “Someone’s dying! Someone’s dying!”

  “Dying?” asked Mitch. “Who’s dying?”

  Petula looked at him, seemingly put off by the question. “I don’t know yet,” she snapped at him, and then she continued to the house with the old woman, pushing her through the front door.

  Petula had so many endearing quirks that, prior to yesterday’s kiss, Mitch might have misinterpreted as irritants. He smiled at the thought.

  Popping a jawbreaker into his mouth that was curiously the exact same diameter as his windpipe, Mitch stepped into the house behind them.

  Random Force number nine: Mr. Slate.

  Mr. Slate rummaged around the cobweb-covered basement, filled with the bittersweet nostalgia that can come only from someone acknowledging who they used to be.

  Among the few things that had survived the fire, there was a baseball signed by the entire Tampa Bay team. He had thrown it into a box, along with a few other singed knickknacks. But since everything in the box still smelled like smoke, he had stored it in the basement, because the memory of the fire overwhelmed any positive memories associated with the items.

  Only now that he had his own personal fan did he even remember the baseball. Since Nick and Danny had grown up with it as just a decoration on a shelf, it didn’t mean much to them—but he knew it might impress Theodore. If only he could remember which box it was in.

  “I’ll be back in a second!” he shouted up the stairs. “I’ve almost got it.”

  Then he reached for the farthest box, never knowing his hand was passing through a series of spiderwebs and disrupting the peace of several highly affronted black widows.

  And Random Force number ten: Nick.

  While Caitlin tried to figure out where the set of rollers fit in the device they were constructing, Nick went downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.

  He found Petula running up and down the stairs with the neighbor woman. “Up this way,” Petula told her. The old woman huffed and puffed as she hurried up the stairs, only to be told at the top that she had to race down instead. Although Petula was Colorado Springs’s ambassador of the abnormal, this was bizarre even for her.

  “What are you trying to do?” Nick said. “Give the poor woman a heart attack?”

  “Shush,” said Petula. “It’s our little secret.”

  Nick grabbed Petula and pulled her down the stairs and out the front door, bumping into the cable guy, who was also leaving.

  “Nick!” shouted Danny, bursting with joy. “We have six hundred and ninety-two channels! You wanna watch ’em?”

  “Kind of busy right now,” Nick responded. “You start and I’ll catch up.”

  “I’ll watch with him,” said Vince. “Channel surfing is the only
sport I excel in. In fact, someday I hope to go pro.”

  Once out on the lawn, Nick didn’t give Petula a chance to launch into anything but the truth. “Tell me what’s up with you!” he demanded. “In simple English, with no Petulisms.”

  Petula took a deep breath before she leveled this tasty little tidbit at him: “Someone in your house is going to die today. Never mind how I know, I just do. I came to save your life, so the least you could do is be grateful!”

  “Die? What do you mean, ‘die’?”

  “Well, off the top of my head, there are three definitions I can think of, but none of the others are verbs. Get it?”

  Nick put two and two together. “The camera you got at the garage sale!”

  “Never mind that.”

  “It tells you the future?”

  “Never mind that!”

  Then she froze, and Nick followed her gaze to the driveway, where the cable guy was backing out way too quickly, never seeing the old woman and her dog behind him.

  “Hey! Watch out!” Nick shouted. The old woman looked up, saw the truck, and jumped out of the way just in time. The truck rolled over the dog, but as it was such a small animal, the truck’s belly passed over it, leaving the sweatered pug unharmed but even more annoyed than usual.

  “WHY did you DO that!” Petula yelled at Nick. “This whole thing could have been over, but, no, you had to save the old lady!”

  “So I was supposed to just let her get flattened?”

  “Yes!” Petula told him. “Better her than me or you, or anyone else in your house!”

  Nick didn’t have time to argue the logic of death prophecies. He turned and ran back inside with Petula close behind, clicking the odds back to one in eight.

  Mitch had never been accused of clairvoyance, or of being in any way in touch with the ripplings of supernatural frequencies. Indeed, he had trouble with the radio tuner in his mother’s car.

  But perhaps his symbiotic relationship with the Shut Up ’n Listen had fine-tuned his metaphysical awareness, so that now he felt a palpable sense of foreboding. Or perhaps it was just Petula announcing that someone was going to die. While everything around him was hectic, nothing looked particularly deadly. Except perhaps the deadly volume of the TV, which Nick’s little brother didn’t seem to be able to control.

  “I can’t change the channels, either,” Danny said to Vince, sitting next to him on the sofa. “This thing is broken already.” Then he banged the remote on the coffee table.

  Vince practically had to scream over the TV. “It probably just needs batteries. Give it to me.”

  The TV and the conversation were so loud, Mitch felt his heart begin to race. He sucked harder on the jawbreaker, and almost reflexively pulled the string on the Shut Up ’n Listen.

  “What I should do is—” Mitch began, and released the string. But the TV was so loud he couldn’t hear the answer. So, putting the device right up to his ear, he pulled the string again. “What I should do—”

  And the machine said, “—is get out. Now.”

  Mitch was so shocked that he gasped, causing the jawbreaker in his mouth to roll back down his tongue toward his uvula, which stood like a single upside-down pin in a bowling alley.

  And Mitch was about to score a spare.

  For Petula there was no feeling worse than helplessness—to know something beyond a shadow of a doubt, and also know she couldn’t stop it or control it. She had tried, but that blasted old woman simply wouldn’t die.

  “Nick! No!” She ran after him as he reached the front door, hoping that an adrenaline rush might give her the strength to grab him and hurl him across the lawn to safety. Instead, as she followed him inside the house, she had just enough adrenaline to make her walk a little bit too quickly, catch her foot on the threshold of the front door, and fall headlong toward a golden spike that seemed specifically placed there to impale her.

  Down in the basement, Mr. Slate finally wrapped his hand around something cool and round. The familiar feel of a baseball in his hand was a sense memory that always brought a flood of good feelings. Theodore would most certainly be impressed by it. Perhaps, thought Mr. Slate, he could tell him about the time he almost pitched a no-hitter against the Cubs. There’d be no mention of “Whiffin’ Wayne” today!

  Wayne Slate was blessed, or cursed, as it were, with a sizable coat of arm hair, a nuisance when reaching through spaces crisscrossed with sticky webs, and right now his arm was practically cocooned in the stuff. But that was only the half of it.

  There comes a time in every man’s life when he must face the spider of his nightmares. But in Wayne Slate’s case, bad luck came in threes.

  Theo had no particular interest in a baseball signed by the Rays—except, perhaps, for the cash he could get for it on eBay should the opportunity arise. Nevertheless, ogling it in Mr. Slate’s presence would endear him to the man and solidify his presence as a friend of the family. Caitlin’s reaction was already priceless, and the dividends of this venture could only grow, proof of the old adage “Success is the pest’s revenge.”

  He had nothing but high hopes as he dipped a skewer of chicken satay into a curious beige sauce that smelled nothing like peanuts, and he lifted it toward his mouth.

  Caitlin was aware of none of this, as she was alone upstairs in the attic—and was only now beginning to wonder what was keeping Nick. By the looks of the half-built device before her, there were at least a dozen pieces still missing, but perhaps it didn’t need every piece to work—or, at least, to partially work. For the life of her, however, she couldn’t figure out where the hair curlers fit. She opened the case and pondered them. Six bluish-gray cylinders made of tightly coiled wire. Perhaps, she thought, the case was just a holder, and the coils fit on the device individually. If that were so, all she had to do was remove them from the case and find where to insert them.

  As she reached for one of the coils, it didn’t occur to her that electrical transformers were made of coiled wire—and that those made of tempered tantalum and designed by Nikola Tesla might be several degrees beyond deadly. In fact, touching them with bare hands would be far worse than being struck by lightning again.

  The fact that the cable guy had left the TV in less-than-perfect working condition infuriated Danny. He continued banging the remote on the table, venting his frustrations at the stupid thing.

  “Dad!” he shouted. “Do we have batteries?” He tried to pry open the battery compartment, but it wouldn’t budge. He didn’t even know whether it took AA or AAA, or one of those stupid little square ones that are supposed to make smoke detectors work but obviously didn’t work well enough to keep their mom alive. For this reason, Danny hated batteries with a passion, so he kept banging the remote on the table while Vince went to the TV to lower the volume the old-fashioned way.

  Nick came in, all worked up about something, and looked at Danny like the blaring volume was his fault.

  “Turn that thing down!” he yelled, as if Danny hadn’t already tried. But before Danny could say anything, Nick grabbed the remote from him to try it himself.

  Fine, thought Danny. Let him get the batteries. Exasperated, he hurled himself backward onto the old sofa, once more giving rise to a cloud of ancient dust, and once more shaking the portrait of Great-aunt Greta—this time hard enough to knock it off the wall.

  Although Nick had no way of knowing this—the moment he grabbed the remote from Danny was the moment of convergence of multiple cosmic strings of human fate. Mitch had felt it coming, but now he was much more preoccupied trying to give himself the Heimlich maneuver. Petula caught a glimpse of it in that telltale print from her camera—but right now she was much more interested in a certain metallic object toward which her body was falling, which might or might not pierce her heart.

  All Nick knew as he aimed the remote at the TV and hit the power button was that all hell broke loose. A picture came crashing down from the wall behind him; Mitch hurled himself at the corner of an end table; and N
ick’s father burst up from the basement, screaming like a little girl.

  Many lives were saved that day because of Mr. Slate’s high-octave scream, which was substantially louder than the blasting TV. The scream made Caitlin drop the curler container in the attic, and the curlers rolled on the floor, sparking and sizzling a warning not to be touched.

  The scream made Theo freeze an instant before he put the lethal peanut sauce in his mouth.

  And the scream made Danny jump up from the sofa just as the huge oak picture frame crashed down on the spot where he had been sitting.

  As for Mitch, the corner of the end table did the trick. It sent the jawbreaker flying toward the front door, where it ricocheted off the golden spike—not powerfully enough to knock it over, but enough to move it slightly off center—so that as Petula came down on it, it didn’t pierce her heart but instead tore her blouse and gave her a nasty scrape on her side.

  In the kitchen, Theo, thinking quickly, used his uneaten chicken satay skewer to scrape the surly black widows from Mr. Slate’s arm before they bit him, and they were quickly crunched underfoot.

  And in the living room the TV blared, as Nick’s attempt to turn it off had absolutely no effect.

  At least not on the TV.

  Vince had never liked the childhood games they had made him play in kindergarten. Even then he’d had enough objectivity to notice how almost all of them were designed to isolate and/or humiliate a single child. Namely him. Someone is always left holding the hot potato. There are lots of ducks, but only one goose. Some poor slob has to be “it.” And, as everybody knows, the cheese stands alone. Somewhere along the way, Vince decided to embrace it, and he made dark isolation a badge of honor.

  As far as he was concerned, today’s unpleasant turn of events was just an extension of a running theme. The universe was singling him out as “it” once again.

  Vince had no way of knowing that the remote would not work for Danny because it was coded to Nick’s bioelectrical fingerprint, so it would only work for him. Vince also had no way of knowing that it was not programmed for LifeLine Cable’s 692 channels, because it didn’t come from LifeLine Cable.