by Bart King
I was touched that, even in all that craziness, Jenny was so protective of me.
“Easy, sister,” said Jason, happily tucking the money into his pocket. “Sometimes you get a little too hung up on getting revenge.”
“We’ll just see about that!” Jenny snapped.
“Oh, man.” That was me, looking at Coby. Remember when you imagined the Visible Man? Now try picturing him becoming un-visible. It happened really fast—first, his bones disappeared, then his slimy organs. (Was that gray thing a spleen? Or his liver?) And then I just had to look away. I’m telling you, it was unspeakable!
A moment later, Jason said, “It’s safe now, Noah.” I looked back around, to see Coby seated on the sidewalk in front of us. He looked exactly the same as before, except now he didn’t appear cocky at all. Not even a little.
I pointed to the puddle of barf on the sidewalk. “Who had the blackberry waffles?”
Jason raised his hand and hiccupped.
As for Coby, he lifted his head up from his hands. “I don’t feel very good,” he groaned. Then he looked up at me. “And you’re going to be sorry when I tell my brothers about this.”
“Why?” protested Jason. “What did Noah do?”
Then, to my amazement, Jenny leaned down and touched Coby’s arm. “We should get you to the nurse’s office.”
I guess she sees through his “tough guy” act, I thought. But Coby didn’t move. Neither did I. Because I was still wondering about something: How’d Coby read my quincunx?
Oh, and one more thing—remember when I passed the quincunx on the sidewalk, just before Anemona tried to steal it a second time? I forgot to tell you what was flashing on its screen. It was the Adeptness command that Coby had chosen.
He hadn’t picked ICE at all. The screen read:
ICK
ICK
ICK
THE BELL RANG. HOMEROOM HAD OFFICIALLY STARTED.
What a lousy morning, I thought. My first tardy!
Jason looked toward the school. “I guess we should just go to class now?”
Nobody had a better idea, so we left Coby, sitting on the pavement by himself next to Jason’s blackberry barf. He looked so miserable, I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
The only things stopping me were two little details. You know, robbery and attempted murder.
* * *
By third period, it was time for Science, and that meant Mrs. Sanchez. And it was going to be awkward. After all, I’d basically sprinted out of her classroom the day before.
As usual, Mrs. Sanchez was standing outside her classroom door, greeting students. As I passed by trying to act normal, she just gave me a little nod.
Inside the classroom, the lights were off. A green map of North America was projected from a laptop onto a screen at the front of the classroom. As the bell rang, Mrs. Sanchez closed the door and we all quieted down. “Today we’re going to begin a lab experiment about causes and effects,” she said. “But first, please take a look at this map. The green shows how much wild habitat there was in North America back in 1775. As you can see, there was a lot of it.”
With a remote control, Mrs. Sanchez clicked through to other maps from 1800, 1825, 1850, and 1875. With each new slide, the green shrank more and more.
Next, a big picture of a bird appeared on the screen. It looked like a mix between a dove and a robin.
“Ectopistes migratorius!” I whispered in surprise.
Mrs. Sanchez continued. “This is a passenger pigeon. In 1775, there were billions of these birds in North America.”
A new slide now, of a huge flock of the pigeons flying over a prairie. There were so many birds, they blotted out the clouds, the sun—practically the whole sky.
“That’s Photoshopped!” said Mindy Grimsley.
“It looks unbelievable, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Sanchez shook her head.
Now another photo, this one showing men with shotguns posing by what looked like huge mounds of clothing. It took a moment for us to realize these were piles of dead passenger pigeons.
“I’ll spare you the details,” continued Mrs. Sanchez, “but the story of the passenger pigeon is not a happy one. Because the birds always stuck together, they were easy targets for hunters. By 1896, there was only one last remaining flock of wild passenger pigeons. Word spread, and people traveled from near and far to take that last opportunity to hunt the birds.
“And in a single day, nearly every bird in that flock was shot.”
“Whoa,” said Nick Stomp. “How many were there?”
“About a quarter-million,” said Mrs. Sanchez. “Four years later, the very last wild passenger pigeon was shot in Ohio by a teenager. He hoped this would get his name in the newspaper. It did.”
“But how is that even l-l-legal?” asked Ronnie.
“It’s hard to understand today,” Mrs. Sanchez said, “but it wasn’t against the law to kill the last wild passenger pigeon. In fact, there was glory in it. The idea of protecting an endangered species wasn’t common.” She glanced at me. “Back then, even bird-watchers shot birds to study them.”
A few students eyed me suspiciously.
“So, to sum up—although passenger pigeons were once plentiful, a brief period of overhunting caused a permanent effect.”
Then she clicked to another map, this one with just a fraction of green color. “This is how much wildlife habitat we have in North America today.”
Up in the front row, Shannon Hayes raised her hand. “Wait, most of the forests are gone now. So would the passenger pigeon have gone extinct even if it hadn’t been hunted?”
Mrs. Sanchez turned on the classroom lights. “Now that’s a very interesting question. And it makes for a perfect lead-in to the experiment we’re going to start today….”
A strong feeling came over me. No, not love for Mrs. Sanchez (no matter what Jenny says!). It was determination. There was no way I was going to let my black swift end up like the passenger pigeon.
At lunch, Jenny, Jason, and I leaned our heads together over a cafetorium table. I’d just told them about the ICK I’d seen at the scene of the slime.
Jenny tapped the table with her fork. “Maybe ICK is a useful choice.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jason. “Like if you needed to gross out your enemies or something!”
“Or maybe Coby knew that i-c-k isn’t how you spell ice,” said Jenny, “but he chose it anyway because he thought the programmers entered it wrong.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, but neither of you can read the quincunx’s screen. So why could Coby?”
Jason had an idea. “The quincunx is alive, right? So maybe it was actually protecting you. See, the quincunx knew Coby was a threat—so it sort of disabled him.”
Just then, I noticed Coby in the lunch line. He was queasily looking at the slices of pizza under the heat lamps. “Looks like he’s feeling better,” I said, pointing with my chin.
And then I felt a jolt of shame as I remembered how I’d run off, leaving the twins to face Coby alone. I’m such a chicken. Before I could apologize for my flight instinct, Ronnie Ramirez popped up next to Jason, holding a food tray.
“I just h-heard something that you guys sh-should know,” he said, glancing nervously at Jenny.
“Ronnie, how do you always know what’s going on?” asked Jason. “You must have your fingers in, like, fifteen pies at a time.”
Ronnie looked down at his hands. “Th-that’s impossible,” he objected. “Anyway, someone was t-talking about something cool that Noah has.”
“And who was it?” demanded Jenny, making Ronnie practically flinch. (Her outspoken personality flusters him.)
“Um…” he said.
“Was it Coby?” I asked.
“H-h-h—,” gulped Ronnie.
“Maybe it was Coby?” prompted Jason.
“It-it-it—” Ronnie was starting to sweat.
Jenny couldn’t stand it anymore. “It was Coby, wasn’t it?!”
Ronnie nearly jumped out of his skin “Y-yes! Yes! It was Coby!”
“Really?” I asked. One minute Coby’s a wreck, the next minute he’s planning a comeback.
“N-no, wait. Not really,” said Ronnie. “It was uh-uh-Anemona.” His shoulders slumped in relief.
Anemona? I looked across the cafetorium—and I spotted her in line for the cashier, right behind Mindy and Beth. As I watched, Anemona stepped around them and walked right past the cashier as if she’d already paid.
But she hadn’t.
As Anemona casually approached her usual table, her cold green eyes met mine. Then, very slowly, she winked.
* * *
After lunch was Social Studies with Mr. Feely. I barely had time to sit down before an office aide came in and handed the teacher a call slip.
“Noah?” Mr. Feely said, handing me the note. It read:
Please send Noah over at your earliest convenience. M. Sanchez
I took the note and then sat back down at my desk. Mr. Feely gave me a surprised look. “Noah,” he said, “I think she means now.”
“Oh!” I blushed and looked at the note again. “Why didn’t she say so?” I grabbed my backpack and hustled out.
Moments later, Mrs. Sanchez looked up from her desk. “Hello, Noah. Please close the door. Now, we need to talk some more about your quincunx. Did you happen to bring it with you to school today?”
I paused. She must’ve found out what happened to Coby.
“Yes.” (What can I say? I’m an honest person.)
Mrs. Sanchez nodded like she’d already known. “Noah, I’ve had time to think about the quincunx—and it’s important. VERY important. For starters, we know that it’s made from a substance that’s alive. Do you know what that means? It represents a turning point for science. The technology used to make it is…it’s mind-boggling.”
She glanced at the whiteboard, and something she’d written there caught my eye: “The Drake Equation.”
Well, THAT’S weird! Why was a teacher quoting my own science project back to me a whole year later? I mean, sure it’d been good, but was it that good?
But then I looked at what Mrs. Sanchez had written underneath “The Drake Equation”—and I couldn’t see what wood ducks had to do with this:
N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L
Mrs. Sanchez moved to the board. “Noah, have you heard of the Drake Equation?” she asked.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I thought I invented it!”
She gave me a dry look that said This isn’t the time for humor. “I see. Regardless, this equation is named for the astronomer Frank Drake. His work led to this formula for estimating how many other intelligent species might be in our galaxy.
“The N represents the number of civilizations that we might be able to communicate with. The other symbols represent a number of determining factors, like the number of stars and planets. And using the Drake Equation, N can equal about ten thousand. In other words, Drake concluded that there could be as many as ten thousand alien civilizations in the Milky Way alone.”
“So no ducks are involved?” I asked, wanting to be sure.
“Not unless they’re intelligent ducks from another star,” she said. “Noah, let’s talk about your quincunx. Of course, it’s a man-made device, not one from outer space. But the Drake Equation is useful for getting us to think about all of life’s possibilities.
“Your device shows an incredible new form of technology—the kind of thing we used to think could only exist in a science-fiction story. But where did the quincunx come from?”
I held up my hand. (Hey, I was in science class, after all.) “Jenny Bright thinks it’s a prototype for some new handheld device,” I said. “And Jason thinks…well, never mind what Jason thinks.”
“Yes, but what is your theory, Noah?”
Of course, I’d thought about this quite a bit. But I wasn’t going to tell my science teacher that one possibility was that the quincunx was magic. “I really don’t know where the quincunx came from,” I admitted. “But I am pretty sure that my having it is an accident.”
Mrs. Sanchez gazed out the window with a faraway look in her eyes. “Our challenge is to answer these questions and discover the device’s true nature. Noah, working together, we can experiment on your quincunx using the kinds of scientific inquiry we talk about in class. Together, we’ll learn as much as we can. Together is the best way to make sensible decisions for everyone.”
That was quite a speech, I thought. Did she practice it?
“Plus, you can even earn extra-credit points for helping us. Not that you need extra credit.”
Okay, something was wrong—very wrong. Mrs. Sanchez never gave extra credit!
“Uh, who is ‘us’?” I asked.
Mrs. Sanchez blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Well, you said ‘we can experiment’ and ‘you can help us.’ Is that you and me?”
She nodded absently. “Yes, just you and me, and perhaps a few of my scientist colleagues.”
I got a sinking sensation. “Mrs. Sanchez, have you told anyone else about the quincunx?”
She reached her hands out to me. “Noah,” she said, “the secrets your device contains can be used for the greater good. It’s too important for us to keep to ourselves. For example, maybe the quincunx can even help prevent the next bird species from going extinct. Do you see?”
I said I saw. (But really? I didn’t.)
Mrs. Sanchez reached her hands out even farther. “And now, may I have the quincunx, please?”
I stepped back. Almost by reflex, my hand touched my scar. “I…I’d rather not.”
Mrs. Sanchez’s face hardened. “Noah,” she said. “The school handbook clearly spells out the district policy on students and electronic devices. When a teacher requests a student’s device, the student is obligated to turn it over.”
Then Mrs. Sanchez gave me a gaze that could have melted steel. “I’m officially requesting that you give me that cellular device.”
She held her hand out for the final time.
YES, I GAVE MRS. SANCHEZ THE QUINCUNX. (What else was I going to do? Run out of the classroom again?)
“Thank you, Noah,” she said, taking the quincunx and setting it on her desk. “You did the right thing. Now we can show this to an expert.”
“You know an expert on quincunxes?”
“No,” Mrs. Sanchez said. “But this device came from somewhere, so there must be someone who knows about it.”
“Well, I’ve been using the quincunx for three days,” I pointed out. “So right now, that sort of makes me an expert.”
Mrs. Sanchez’s eyes lit up. “Good point.” She moved her laptop in front of her. “Noah, how exactly did you use it?”
I was confused. Did she just trick me, Anemona-style?
But I trusted Mrs. Sanchez…more than Anemona, anyway. This was, after all, a scientific mystery that needed solving. So I started talking. At first, I just meant to tell her about freezing the swimming pool. But from there, I went to the broken fire hydrant, and the next thing you know, I sang like a canary.
In other words, I told Mrs. Sanchez everything. As I talked, she typed rapidly on her computer. And when I finally finished talking, I felt a lot better.
Mrs. Sanchez looked up at me from her laptop. It’s actually a relief to tell all this to an adult, I thought. But what will she make of all this?
* * *
The inside of the school psychologist’s office was painted a cheery light blue. There, behind his desk, Mr. Gillespie peered at me.
MR. CHIP GILLESPIE (Psychologae gnoma)
APPEARANCE: Very short. Glossy, helmetlike hair; thick, bushy beard.
VOICE: Nonthreatening. Poses sentences like a question?
PLUMAGE: Red-framed glasses. Often wears cargo shorts with a dress shirt.
RANGE: School-wide.
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR: Typically spotted trying to empower students.
STATUS: High-ish, due to
his popular therapy dog companion—a black Lab named Spencer.
Mr. Gillespie’s office windows looked out on our school’s front lawn. There, gulls cawed and dive-bombed a garbage can, hoping to find food.
The psychologist watched me watching the birds. “Those seagulls make quite a racket, don’t they, Noah?”
“There’s actually many kinds of gulls,” I said. “Those ones are Californian gulls, but they have a wide geographic range.” (I almost added They’re even the official state bird of Utah, but I didn’t want to seem like a show-off.)
A flurry of gull calls rang out—kyow kyow kyow!
“That almost sounds like laughter, doesn’t it?” asked Mr. Gillespie. I nodded cautiously. “If you had to guess, would you say those gulls are laughing at anything in particular?”
That would be me, I thought grimly. But I didn’t say anything. Talking too much was why I’d been sent here in the first place.
Mr. Gillespie leaned forward and patted Spencer, who was lying on a cushion near his chair. Spencer, the school’s therapy dog, roams the hallways getting petted by everyone and listening to baby talk (lots of baby talk). But somehow, Spencer keeps his dignity—even with the bright-pink Hello Kitty bandanna tied around his neck.
Mr. Gillespie studied his computer screen. “Mrs. Sanchez says that you’ve been having quite the adventure. Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”
Oh, great. He thinks I’m losing it.
“No,” I said firmly. “I never had any adventures until a couple of days ago.”
A few moments passed. Mr. Gillespie looked at me with an expectant expression, stroking his beard.
“And that’s when you found your magic device?” he finally said.
“It’s not magic!” I said, frustrated. Then I realized something: maybe the quincunx really IS magic. “It’s just—there’s nothing I can say about it that will make sense.”
Mr. Gillespie nodded. “Look, you’re a smart young man, so let me be honest with you. The way I see it, these are the possibilities.”
He began ticking points off on his fingers. “One, you’re lying to me. Two, you’re lying to yourself. Three, you’ve received a head injury that makes you think the device you found has supernatural powers. Or four, you’re suffering from a neurological condition that makes you believe this.”
