Unplugged

by Gordon Korman

  “Well,” I reason, “I suppose that’s pretty normal behavior. You know, for a carnivore.”

  “It’s totally normal!” she agrees sadly. “That’s the whole point. We’ve been keeping Needles because we didn’t think he could survive in the wild. But this proves he’d be just fine. We have to let him go.”

  I’m taken aback. Needles is the only reason this summer is bearable. Better than bearable! And now we can’t keep him anymore?

  Tyrell has another opinion. “Maybe Needles can make it on his own. So what? Most dogs could look after themselves if they had to. That doesn’t stop people from keeping them as pets. So we keep Needles—it’s the same thing.”

  “It’s not the same thing,” Grace counters. “There’s no law against having a dog, but think how many rules we break just looking after one little lizard.” She beings to count on her fingers. “Keeping a secret pet; stealing a boat; sneaking to Hedge Apple; bringing back meat; bribing Brandon with chocolate. The whole candy thing wouldn’t have started if it hadn’t been for Needles. It’s gone too far. It’s like we’re spitting in Magnus’s face every single day. It has to end.”

  I’m about to give her an argument, but she’s said the magic word: Magnus. When Magnus enters a conversation, I exit.

  “Well, we definitely can’t do anything until we talk to Jett,” Tyrell puts in. “Needles is his pet too.”

  I’m not thinking about Jett. I’m not even thinking about Needles. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m only thinking about my summer—the friends I’ve made, the fun I’ve had. Is that going to crash and burn once there are no more trips to Hedge Apple and visits to the run-down shed at the edge of the woods?

  We change direction and head out to the service buildings past the welcome center. Tyrell is still insisting that we can’t decide anything about Needles until Jett has a vote.

  Grace is adamant. “Don’t you agree that we’ve been breaking the rules and risking big trouble for too long?” she asks Tyrell.

  “I guess so, but—”

  She turns to me. “What do you say, Brooklynne? We took in Needles because he was helpless. But he’s not helpless anymore.”

  I just nod. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. Part of me knows that, Needles or no Needles, we can’t keep taking the launch to Hedge Apple without eventually getting caught. That would cause problems for the others, but for me, it would be a real crisis.

  Grace is triumphant. “You see? That’s already three of us who vote that Needles should be free. So even if Jett says no, he’s already outvoted three to one.”

  As we come up on the shed, something looks . . . wrong. On second glance, I realize why. The lock is off and the slider is open at least six inches.

  Tyrell points. “Hey—”

  We run the rest of the way. Grace gets there first, heaves the door wide, and we pound inside. The paint tray is overturned and up against a wall. Needles is gone.

  Tyrell and I wheel on Grace, who raises both hands to heaven. “I didn’t do it—honest. I wanted to, but somebody must have gotten here first.”

  I drop to the floor, which is still wet from the spilled water. Tyrell and I search every inch of the shed. Outside, we run our hands through the tall grass and weeds. I even try to feel inside the gaps under the wooden frame. If Needles is hiding somewhere, I’m about to get a bite on my finger that I won’t soon forget. But my fingers are safe. The lizard is nowhere to be found.

  “Hey, what are you guys doing?”

  I’m still flat on the ground with my hand under the shed when Jett shows up with a small bundle of hamburger wrapped in a napkin. Speechless, we stare at him as he peers into the shed and puts two and two together.

  “What happened? How did he get away?”

  “It’s for the best, Jett.” Grace repeats the spiel she gave us about why Needles had to be set free.

  Jett’s normally calm face flames red. “Why did you do that? You had no right to do that!”

  “I didn’t do it!” Grace stands up to him. “But however it happened, it was the right thing!”

  I always thought Jett was above it all—too cool to let anything get to him.

  Until now. He gets down on his hands and knees and performs all our searches times ten, moving outward from the shed in concentric circles. He even cups his palms to his mouth and hollers “Needles!” a couple of times before Tyrell and I silence him.

  “Shhh!” I hiss. “Someone will hear you!”

  “I want someone to hear me!” Jett insists. “I want Needles to hear me!”

  “Come on, Jett,” Tyrell reasons. “We all like Needles, but when did he ever come running when you called his name? When did he ever come running, period?”

  Jett twists away from us and turns furious eyes on Grace. “You’re the one who said we had to have a lizard in the first place! You think I cared one way or the other if he drowned in the river or got snapped up by some hawk?”

  “He’ll be okay—” she begins.

  “You made me care!” he thunders. “And now I’m supposed to turn it off just like that”—he snaps his fingers—“because you’re done with the poor little guy? Yeah, well, I’m done with you!”

  I expect him to storm off after that great exit line. Instead, he lovingly washes out the paint tray, fills it with fresh water, and sets a little mound of hamburger on the dry part of the slope. “In case he comes home,” he explains, leaving the door about six inches open. Then he turns his back on all of us and walks away.

  “Wow,” Tyrell comments. “I didn’t think he’d get that upset. I didn’t think Jett got that upset about anything.”

  “It’s upsetting for all of us,” Grace puts in. “But we have to be strong—for Needles.”

  “Oh, please,” I mutter. “Maybe you didn’t let him go, but you sure wanted to.”

  I scan the Oasis property and the adjoining woods. Needles could be anywhere by now, but it almost doesn’t matter.

  Team Lizard is history.

  18

  Tyrell Karrigan

  The stress of losing Needles and having Jett and Grace not talking to each other makes me break out in a rash.

  Or maybe I was going to break out anyway. Evangeline’s broccoli slaw does that to me. But when your two best friends are engaged in open war, it only makes it worse.

  Jett and I keep checking the shed. No Needles. Jett insists on changing the water, but the meat gets all buggy, so we have to throw it away. Jett doesn’t talk much on these missions. I guess it’s too painful. I never realized he was so into Needles.

  I miss Needles too. Till now I didn’t know how important it was to have a cool secret thing going on in my life. I mean, Needles didn’t have much personality, but dealing with him added some variety to my days. Plus Jett’s so down in the dumps over losing Needles that all the things we used to do together have ground to a halt. No more candy business. No more trips to Hedge Apple. We’ve even stopped doctoring Sarah’s Landon letters. Jett’s lost interest, and I don’t have the guts to steam them open on my own. The weird part is Sarah actually seems more frustrated by her mail now, not less—as if she misses having pages of unsolvable puzzles to chew on.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask when I see her gazing miserably into the latest letter.

  She’s despondent. “I think Landon might have found another girl.”

  “What? He would never do that!”

  She sighs. “Maybe not. But something’s missing. He’s just not into me the way he used to be.”

  And when I try to reassure her, she attacks me with an eyelash curler. Those things may look harmless, but it really hurts to get your pinkie squeezed in one.

  The problem isn’t really Sarah, though. It’s Jett. I’ve never had a friend like him—someone cool; someone exciting. And he actually liked me. At least I thought he did. Since Needles has been gone, he hasn’t been in a very friendly mood. Or maybe the whole thing was mostly in my head and Jett and I were never that close to begin w
ith.

  I’m in the woods, waiting my turn for the ladder up to the zip-line platform, when someone grabs me by the back of my T-shirt and hauls me into the woods. By the time I figure out what’s happening, I’m staring face-to-chest at Brandon.

  “What’s the big idea?” I exclaim, outraged.

  “Why don’t you ask your friend Baranov?” Brandon sneers. “Where’s my candy? I know you’re selling the stuff all over the Oasis, but that doesn’t change what you owe me!”

  My mind races. With Needles gone, Brandon can’t blackmail us anymore. Jett must have cut him off—which makes sense, since the candy supply has dried up.

  I raise myself up to my full height, which is still a good ten inches shorter than Brandon. “We don’t have to give you anything anymore. For your information, Needles is gone.”

  He brays a dirty laugh. “I know that, genius. Who do you think turned him loose?”

  I’m blown away. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I didn’t get my candy,” he informs me. “Now you know I mean business.”

  I’m so mad that I momentarily forget who I’m talking to—a guy who could take me apart with his bare hands. “That’s not how blackmail works!” I howl in his face. “You got rid of the only thing that gave you power over us!”

  “Yeah,” he chuckles, then thinks it over. “Wait—what?”

  But I’ve already turned my back on him. I’ve got to find Jett and Grace and end the war between them. Needles was turned loose by the world’s dumbest blackmailer. If I wasn’t so upset, I’d be laughing my head off.

  “You tell Baranov he still owes me!” he calls after me.

  “Or what?” I toss over my shoulder. “You’ll tell Magnus about the lizard that isn’t in the shed anymore?”

  I leave him standing there, fuming and still a little confused over where he went wrong.

  I’m on my way to cottage 29 when I spy Jett standing outside the meditation center. I adjust my course, panting, “Jett! . . . I have to tell you something! . . . This is important!”

  “What is it?” he asks a little impatiently when I reach him and stand there gasping, trying to catch my breath.

  “Grace isn’t the one who let Needles out!” I manage. “It was Brandon—revenge for not getting his candy!”

  His eyes widen for a moment, but then a look of understanding comes over him. “Figures. Poor Needles.”

  “So Grace is innocent,” I remind him.

  He’s unimpressed. “Brandon just beat her to it. Never trust someone who always thinks she knows what the right thing is. They can justify anything.”

  He has a point. There’s a certainty to Grace that’s a little scary. The same way she can convince herself to keep a lizard, she can change her mind and convince herself he has to go. It’s a good quality most of the time. I like a person who has the courage of her convictions. But when she turns on a dime, those convictions can whip around and whack you in the side of the head. They sure whacked Needles.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask him. “We don’t have meditation again till tomorrow.”

  Jett looks me in the eye. “I’m going to spy on Ivory.”

  I stare at him. “Why?”

  “Doesn’t it bug you that the adults around here all think Ivory is God’s gift when she’s obviously a giant phony?”

  I shrug, thinking of my own parents. “I guess. I mean, they like Magnus and the other pathfinders. But Ivory is definitely their favorite.”

  Then he tells me this crazy story about Ivory trying to get him to confess to selling candy bars. “She waved a light-up pen in front of me, and it was like she was trying to get inside my head or something. So I want to see what goes on during these special one-on-one meditation sessions. Maybe she’s doing that to the adults too. Maybe that’s why they love her so much.”

  Okay, it sounds a little out there. On the other hand, I can tell by the look on Jett’s face that he believes what he’s saying 100 percent. Plus, I’ve always kind of wondered why my folks think the sun shines out of Ivory’s butt.

  “How are you going to pull it off? You don’t think she’s going to notice a guy hiding under her desk or behind her curtains?”

  I should have figured that Vladimir Baranov’s son would have it all planned out. “There’s an air vent in the wall of her office. I noticed it when she was working me over. I’m pretty sure it’s big enough for me to fit into.”

  Wow. The thought of squeezing through some tight ventilation duct brings on an attack of claustrophobia. I have that too—along with the hives, the heaves, and everything else. “You’ll have to stay in there a long time,” I warn. “Maybe until she leaves her office. You know, so she doesn’t hear you moving around too much.”

  Jett nods. “I can do that.”

  Even though I’m half convinced he’s imagining things, I feel a surge of admiration. I could have my suspicions of Ivory for a hundred years and still never work up the guts to convert that into real action.

  He pulls me into the cover of the side of the building. “Here comes Ivory now.”

  I peek out to see the meditation pathfinder crossing the grass from the area of the cottages, accompanied by her next appointment. Guess who it turns out to be? My dad.

  Jett pulls the grating off the wall and squeezes inside. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  And before I have a chance to think about it, I’m on my hands and knees, cramming myself behind him into the duct. How can I pass up a chance to see why Ivory has such a hold over both my parents?

  “What are you doing?” Jett hisses over his shoulder.

  “Coming with you,” I whisper back.

  “Okay, but we have to be dead quiet. If we get caught in here, it’s not going to look very whole.”

  The duct is so tight that I barely have enough space to reach around and pull the grating back into place on the wall. The farther we squirm, the darker it gets, until the passage lightens again and we come alongside another grill. Jett shakes his head, indicating that this is not Ivory’s office. I crane my neck and peer out into the main meditation room—the one where the kids’ sessions are held.

  We wriggle on and pretty soon it’s pitch-black again. It’s dusty too, and I rattle off three sneezes in a row.

  “Cut it out!” Jett rasps.

  “I can’t help it,” I plead. “I’m allergic to dust.”

  “You’d better help it. We’re getting close.”

  Over his shoulder, I can just make out a faint patch of light. It has to be another grate—this one into Ivory’s office.

  Jett gets there first and flashes me a thumbs-up. This is the place. I wiggle my way forward and arrive at the grill just in time to see Ivory come into the office, followed by my father.

  I take a deep breath. Big mistake. Another speck of dust finds its way into my nose and the sneeze is already forming in the back of my nasal passages. Jett snakes out a hand and squeezes my nostrils shut. The urge passes. Close call.

  Ivory and Dad are seated on opposite sides of the desk. So far, they’re just chatting. Dad is reporting weight-loss totals—he’s already down six and a half pounds, and my mom has lost five. Ivory says that’s great, but reminds him that wellness is not about numbers. It’s a healthy lifestyle for your mind and body that allows you to become truly whole.

  In the gloom, my eyes find Jett’s. If this is what we crawled through the guts of a building for, then it’s not worth it. A classic Oasis conversation—the kind that must happen five hundred times a day around here, as the adults break their arms patting themselves on the back about how whole they are.

  It goes on for a long while, until I’m actually struggling to keep myself from yawning—which would be almost as bad as sneezing. That’s when I catch the first whiff of incense mist from the vaporizer, and it hits me that Dad is saying a lot less, and his voice sounds kind of drowsy.

  Jett points, but I already see it. A blue light gleams off my father’s forehea
d. I tilt my head for a better angle and spot the pen in Ivory’s hand. It’s illuminated, and Ivory draws it back and forth in front of Dad—exactly the way Jett described it!

  We listen to Ivory’s rich, almost musical voice. At first, it’s the same kind of stuff she tells us kids: “Empty your mind of all thought. Concentrate only on your breath. When-I-breathe-in-I-breathe-in . . .”

  “When-I-breathe-out-I-breathe-out,” Dad says along with the meditation pathfinder.

  “You are immensely relaxed and filled with joy,” Ivory goes on. “Happier than you have ever been in your entire life. . . .”

  That’s new. We kids just get to empty our minds. We don’t get to fill them with relaxation and joy. Maybe it’s like voting. We’re not old enough yet.

  “Your joyfulness lifts you up as if you are lighter than air. You are happy. You are healthy. You are whole. From your great height you look down at the source of all your happiness—the Oasis. And all at once”—Ivory’s tone drops an octave—“it’s gone!”

  The next thing we hear is a pitiful mewling sound. It’s so foreign, so heartbroken, that it takes me a minute to recognize that it’s coming from my own father. I can’t see his face because his head has slumped, but his shoulders are shaking with emotion. He’s crying—sobbing at the thought of losing the Oasis.

  My first instinct is to bust through the grate to go to Dad—to tell him all this isn’t real. Jett seems to read my mind and reaches out an arm to bar my way.

  “Do you want to save the Oasis?” Ivory demands.

  “Yes! Yes!” Dad blubbers. “I’ll do anything!”

  I’ve lived all my twelve years with my father, and I’ve never seen him so devastated, so vulnerable, reduced to whimpering like a baby. It’s the most horrible experience ever!

  Ivory is speaking more quietly now, and for a few long minutes, I can’t make out what she’s saying. The next time I hear Dad, though, he’s totally normal, except for a nasal tone from all that sobbing. It’s like he has no memory of the giant breakdown he just suffered.

  Beside me, Jett exhales heavily. So it was hard for him too, not just me because it was my father.