by Bart King
“Wow, that was cold,” Jason said.
I clenched my jaw. You know the rule: Never talk about someone’s mother—especially when that someone has a squished purple-green puck with mysterious properties.
So I tapped the screen and it started to flash:
ICE
ICE
ICE
WHY DID I LIFT THE PUCK TO MY HEAD? I don’t know. Maybe I finally understood that hiding or running away from my problems wasn’t working. Or maybe I saw that it was time for me to stand up for who I was and what I believed in.
But mostly it was because Coby said I was calling my “mommy.”
So as the puck cooled off in my hand, I held it to my ear like a phone without thinking.
This was not the smartest thing to do.
The puck’s frosty feeling hovered for an instant in my hand—then, like rainwater finding a gutter, it flowed right down my ear canal. Instantly, a mini-blizzard was swirling inside my head.
“Blouw!” I blurted. (I was trying for “Whoa!” but my tongue was already frozen.)
Inside me, an arctic blast was roaring through my body—and I needed to get rid of it! Pointing my right fist, I looked at the water pouring from the sink and imagined funneling the cold at it.
Meanwhile, Coby was almost done rinsing soap from his hands.
“Blouw!”
A blast of pale-blue power swept out from my fist and surrounded the sink. There was a brittle, tinkling sound, and Coby turned pale. That’s because his big wet hands were stuck in the faucet’s icy waterfall. And as more water came out, more ice formed around them.
“Hey!” Coby said, tugging at his hands. “You FROZE me? Not fair!”
“No, it’s not fair,” agreed Jason. “It’s awesome.”
I enjoyed the moment—I was in control! But I was also overflowing with freezing energy. As the bitter cold filled my body, my trembling thumb hit the puck’s stem to close the screen and (hopefully!) cut off its power supply.
But where could I send all of the ice already in my system? It had to go somewhere—
I swung my right fist at the first toilet stall and shot a short blast.
Shwink-CRACK!
Then I brought my left fist up and did the same thing to the next door.
Shwink-CRACK!
The icy blue bolts flew right through the metal stall doors, seeking out the water behind them. The toilet bowls must have frozen solid instantly.
It felt great. Even though I sensed that most of the energy was gone now, I kept firing. “Yeah!” I yelled, blowing another door open. “Take that!” But before I got to the last stall, there was an outraged squeak.
The door flew open, and a small, round boy bolted from it. How’d Coby miss him? He must have lifted his feet up when he heard us—and now was sprinting out of the bathroom in a blur. The kid almost looked familiar, but he vanished before I could place him.
“Whoa!” said Jason. “He moves fast for a little guy.”
As for me, I exhaled cool mist into the air and looked at the puck. This thing is really amazing! I thought, turning to Coby.
“Wow, sorry about all that before,” he said, grimacing. It took me a second to see that Coby was trying to make a friendly smile. It looked more like he had a face cramp.
I gripped the puck a little tighter and smiled back. My anger was giving way to a new feeling. There Coby was: frozen and helpless. And now it was MY turn to make threats. Maybe I’d tell Coby I was going to turn him into a full-body ice cube. Then I’d make him apologize for being such a jerk. And most of all, I wanted to make him sorry for ever messing with me!
I tightened my fists, looking forward to what would happen next—
“Noah?” Jason was looking at me like I was a total stranger. “Are you okay? You have a really weird expression on your face.”
Whoa. I’m like, gloating, or something. But that’s not like me. I’m totally not a gloater. And just like that, my wish for revenge went away. My hands unclenched and I took another, warmer breath. “I’m good. Thanks.”
Coby had silently watched all this while frozen in place. And then, sensing it was safe, he asked, “Hey, did that sparkly thing help you do all that?”
Argh! Why did I have to get a smart nemesis?
From my expression, Coby must have guessed the truth. “Does it do other things too? Like, can it make you fly?”
I raised my hand in annoyance. “Jason asked the same thing—”
But Coby must’ve thought I was going to shoot more ice his way. Desperately, he wrenched his hands, and with a brittle crack, he broke free from the frozen sink. Coby staggered backward, his hands still stuck together in icy handcuffs.
And then big, tough Coby Cage ran out of the bathroom faster than the little kid a moment before.
Wow. My thirst for revenge was overshadowed by a new, better, bigger feeling. “Victory!” I cried. “Jason, can you believe it? We beat him! High five!”
Jason left me hanging. “Oh, right,” I said, dropping my hand down. “You were touching the bathroom floor. Gross.”
He shook his head and gave me a look that said Do I have to explain everything?
So I thought about it…and a second later, realized the horrible truth: Now Coby knows about the puck.
TEN MINUTES AFTER I’D FROZEN THE SCHOOL’S TOILETS, I peeked inside the science classroom again. The girl with the nose ring was gone, and Mrs. Sanchez was grading papers at her desk.
I pushed the door open and cleared my throat. “Excuse me, Mrs. Sanchez, do you have a minute?”
Mrs. Sanchez looked up. “What can I do for you, Noah?” she asked briskly.
MRS. VICTORIA SANCHEZ (Elegantis eruditius)
APPEARANCE: Average height. Average build. Above-average presence.
VOICE: Calm and quiet, yet somehow always commands attention.
PLUMAGE: Long white lab coat. Straight black hair. Cool gray eyes.
RANGE: Mrs. Sanchez is only ever seen on school grounds. Like many teachers, she may not exist away from her classroom.
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR: Unknown.
STATUS: High. All younger life-forms know not to misbehave with her.
I stepped through the door and walked closer. “Uh, I was wondering if you’d take a look at something for me?” And with that, I set the still-cool puck on her desk.
Another teacher might have laughed or rolled her eyes or said, “What IS that?” But Mrs. Sanchez picked up the puck and began examining it. Her fingers immediately found its handhold, and a moment later, she pushed the stem on the side.
As the puck’s screen blinked into view, it gave off its familiar greenish glow.
“Do you have specific questions about this object, Noah?” Mrs. Sanchez asked, frowning at the puck.
“Well, for one thing, I was wondering about its screen,” I said. “Some people have trouble reading it.”
“But not other people?” Mrs. Sanchez gave me a keen glance, then got up and placed the puck on a scale. Weighing it produced frowning. Next, out came a magnifying glass. Mrs. Sanchez then pored carefully over every inch of the puck. She looked at its back last, and said something like, “It’s a quincunx.”
“Sorry?”
Mrs. Sanchez glanced up and motioned me closer. “Look—there’s a pattern of five indentations on the back of this object. See how they’re arranged?”
Leaning in, I peered at the puck’s magnified surface. I saw four slight dips, forming the corners of a square. A fifth indentation was in the square’s center. It was the same pattern used for the number 5 in dice or cards…or dominoes.
Mrs. Sanchez rose and walked to the whiteboard. “There’s a word for that pattern.” She grabbed a marker and wrote it out: q-u-i-n-c-u-n-x.
I looked at the word, and I liked the look of it. After all, the purple-green puck wasn’t really a puck. It was something more mysterious. More interesting.
Something like a quincunx!
Moving to a microscope, Mrs. San
chez positioned the lens over the back of the quincunx and looked in the eyepiece. Once in a while, she’d adjust the focus, but was otherwise motionless.
I stood in front of a lab table covered with beakers, and twiddled my thumbs.
She kept staring. And staring.
Restless, I experimented with twiddling my fingers. Then, since Mrs. Sanchez wasn’t looking, I stuck my arms out to the sides. Starting with one hand, I tried practicing a dance move Jason taught me called the pop-and-lock.
You know the one—you start by flipping your finger and wrist joints on one hand, then let the “ripple” move across your body? Of course, I didn’t want to use the pop-and-lock at one of our school dances. (I’d never even been to one!) Instead, I thought it might be a solid addition to my arsenal of Fake-Fu moves.
But as I made my first pop, my hand hit a beaker on the table behind me. The beaker spun to the edge of the table and almost fell, but I lunged wildly and just caught it. As I did, my elbow hit another beaker, which smacked into a third one. Suddenly, I was whirling around a table of clattering beakers, trying to prevent massive destruction. By the time I was done flipping out, Mrs. Sanchez was coolly looking at me.
“Sorry, Mrs. Sanchez,” I said. “None broke.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “But, Noah, I need to ask you a question.”
Uh-oh.
“S-sure,” I stammered.
She pointed to the quincunx. “Is this object yours? And if it’s not yours, where did you get it?”
Double uh-oh.
In a nervous rush, I said, “I don’t know where it came from or who it belongs to.” Mrs. Sanchez kept looking at me with no change in her expression. It was like I hadn’t said anything at all.
“But I found the quincunx under a bush,” I added helpfully.
Her eyes narrowed. “You discovered this object beneath a shrub?”
“At the bottom of a hill,” I added, blushing because it sounded so stupid. Looks like Jason was smart to stay out of here, I thought miserably. “I don’t know what it’s for exactly. But maybe it’s like a phone?”
Mrs. Sanchez waved me over to the microscope. “If so, then I can tell you one thing for certain.” She gave me a look. “If you’re right, then this quincunx is a cell phone.”
I stopped. Was she joking? Mrs. Sanchez never joked!
“What I mean,” she continued, “is that this would be a truly cellular phone.” She stepped away from the microscope and motioned me to her seat.
I sat down and looked through the microscope’s eyepiece. For a moment, I was blinded by the quincunx’s glittering reflection. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the glitter was coming from dozens of clear shapes.
These were tiny pentagons, tightly packed against each other like a puzzle. Faint double lines formed a border around each pentagon. Inside these lines was a single, round form, a tiny ball of purple and green. And this is where the quincunx’s glittering came from—those balls were like miniature colored suns.
I recognized what I was seeing. We had just been studying this in class. With a gasp, I pulled my head back from the eyepiece.
“It should look familiar,” said Mrs. Sanchez. “After all, those are actual cells.”
I bent down over the eyepiece again. “So the outsides of the cells are membranes?”
Mrs. Sanchez didn’t say anything. She wanted me to figure it out.
And if these are cells, then the bright balls in the middle—
“And the round, glittery things are…nucleuses?”
“Nuclei,” corrected Mrs. Sanchez. “Keep looking.”
So I did. I stared and stared, and at first, I didn’t understand what I was looking for. But after about thirty seconds, I saw it.
The cells are moving.
The movement was very slow, but there was no mistaking it. As my eye swept over the purple-green cells, I saw one of them doing something familiar: it was splitting into two parts.
“I think I just saw one of the cells reproduce!”
“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “Because this device is alive.”
IT’S NOT THAT I FREAKED OUT. But after Mrs. Sanchez told me that the “device” was alive, I muttered something about my parents picking me up. Then I grabbed the quincunx and ran out of the science class.
So, okay, maybe I freaked out a little.
When Jason saw me burst into the hallway, he chased after me. The two of us sprinted and didn’t stop until we were off-campus. Finally, I bent over panting and Jason—who wasn’t even breathing hard—phoned his dad for a ride. (Ever since Jenny’s accident, Mr. Bright drives the twins almost every-where.)
“Okay,” said Jason, hanging up. “Why are we running?”
Still huffing, I managed to ask, “Do you…want to know something…really weird?”
Jason looked thoughtful. “How should I answer that?”
Gingerly, I pulled the quincunx out. “This thing is alive.”
Jason wasn’t impressed. “So its battery isn’t dead?” he scoffed. “Big deal!”
“No, no. It’s not not dead. It’s ALIVE.”
Jason just looked at me. “Huh?”
* * *
Pock! Pock! Pock!
The air hockey board hummed in the garage as the black puck bounced back and forth. Jenny and I were playing a game, but it was mostly just to cover the sound of our voices.
“So you didn’t tell Mrs. Sanchez about ICE?” Jenny asked, shifting her paddle to her left hand. Then she caromed the plastic puck off two of the rink’s edges, and it spun past my paddle, into the goal.
Pock! Pock! PING!
Another point for Jenny.
“Just practice,” I protested, fishing the puck out of the return slot. “And no, I didn’t say anything about that to Mrs. Sanchez. We’re the only ones who know what it can do.”
“And Coby Cage,” corrected Jason, looking up from his cell phone. “Hey, Jenny, what about Dad?”
Pock! Pock! Pock!
Jenny’s eyes never left the puck. “I think he was too distracted during the power pole accident to notice anything. But you can add Mrs. Sanchez to your list, because now she knows part of the story.”
Pock! Pock! Pock!
Jason shook his head impatiently. “This is such a waste. Noah should just announce what he discovered and then sell that—that—what do you call it now?”
“A quincunx.”
“How could I have forgotten? Anyway, that quincunx could make us rich.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Jenny, her eyes lighting up. “Noah should let a charity or a scientific organization have it. Think of all the good it could do!” She lunged forward.
Pock! PING!
This time, the hockey puck shot through my goal so fast, it ricocheted out and went flying through the air. “I’m done. You really don’t know what ‘practice’ means, do you, Jenny?” I asked.
Handing Jason my paddle, I turned and faced the garage shelves. They were piled with board games: Monopoly, Battleship, Risk, chess, dominoes—
Dominoes.
I thought about how I’d found the quincunx, and what I’d done with it. I thought about the unintended effects my actions had.
And that’s when I came up with my Domino Theory. You know—how we’re surrounded by invisible dominoes? And they can knock over other dominoes that we don’t even know about?
I threw my shoulders back and made a decision. “We’re not selling the quincunx,” I announced. “And we’re not giving it to charity or science either.”
The twins stopped playing and looked at me in surprise.
“I’m the one who found this thing,” I said. “So stop telling me what to do. And I want to keep it a secret. Let’s see what we can figure out on our own. Okay?”
Jenny sucked her lips in and bugged her eyes out. “O-kay,” she agreed reluctantly, positioning her paddle in the middle of the board.
“Fine,” said Jason. “I’ll go along
too.” Giving his sister a cocky look, he added, “And now, let me show you how to play this game.”
Pock! PING!
Jenny yawned and left the air hockey table. “You two are really terrible at this.”
* * *
“Okay, Noah, time to get organized.”
Jason sat at his desk, with his laptop and the quincunx in front of him. Although I knew the quincunx was alive, I didn’t worry that it would sprout legs and run off. It may sound dumb, but I almost had a feeling the quincunx was happy to be there. Even so, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Was it breathing? What kind of temperatures did the quincunx like? Did I need to water it or something?
Meanwhile, Jason made a simple chart on his screen.
What We Don’t Know
The quincunx was lost.
It lets Noah shoot ice.
The quincunx is alive.
Only Noah can use this thing.
Coby and Mrs. Sanchez know about it.
What We Know
WHO lost it?
Does it do anything else?
What? HOW?
☹ Total rip-off!
So now what?
We stared at the questions for a moment. Then we looked at the quincunx.
“We can’t answer any of these,” Jenny said.
“We’re just gathering information,” said Jason. “Noah, let’s start with you. When you dial ICE, how do you feel? Besides being cold, I mean.”
I thought back. First, I froze the backyard pool. Then a pitcher of water and the overflowing fire hydrant. And then earlier today in the bathroom—
“The cold feeling is stronger if I’m near water,” I said. “So ICE gets boosted by anything that can be turned into, uh, ice.”
We talked about how long the different connections had lasted, and how I’d held the quincunx each time. Jason typed in this information while Jenny tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Okay, we’re getting somewhere. I’ll bet the next time you use this thing, it’ll be less crazy. Now, what about the other words you see in its menu? Do you think the same things apply to them?”
I shrugged. Lifting the quincunx, I tapped the oval screen and scrolled. As before, ICE was there, but it was no longer in dark letters. Now it joined the other menu choices, which were all written in a hazy light gray and sliding in and out of the list.
