by Lisa McMann
Maria nodded.
Charlie cringed.
Mac counted. “One, two, thr—”
“Wait. STOP!” Maria cried.
Mac stopped. Charlie peered through her fingers at them. They both looked at Maria.
“We can’t do this,” Maria said. “What if her powers do actually fail? This thing could kill her!”
Mac’s mouth opened and closed. Charlie clutched her heart, trying to breathe as the absurdity of what they were about to do became clear to all of them. She sank to her knees in a daze.
“You’re right,” Mac said reluctantly. “Let’s pull it back.”
Maria let out a breath and nodded.
“Ready?” said Mac. “Go.”
They both pulled hard on the beam, but the metal plate attached to Mac’s end caught firmly on the edge of the roof. Mac’s hands slipped off, and he went tumbling backward. Maria lunged to try to hang on, but she couldn’t control the unwieldy beam by herself. It teetered on the edge of the roof for an eternal second, then dropped over the side.
“CHARLIE!” screamed Maria.
CHAPTER 25
Healing
When Charlie heard Maria’s screams she looked up and saw the big hunk of wood hurtling toward her. There was no time to get up or roll out of the way. She put her hands in the air as the beam made impact. An instant later she was on her back, holding the thing above her face. The bracelet pulsed with heat on her arm.
She stared, trying to make sense of what had happened as Maria and Mac scrambled to the edge of the rooftop and peered over, their faces horrified. “Charlie!” Maria yelled again.
“I’m okay,” Charlie called.
The two gaped down at Charlie, holding the beam above her face.
“Whew,” said Mac. “We’re coming down.” They disappeared.
Charlie, still stunned, noticed the dents her fingers had made in the wood. She grimaced and threw the beam into the grass next to her, then looked at her hands. Amazingly she was unscathed, except for a few tiny splinters in her fingers. She rolled to all fours and got up, then began dusting herself off as Maria and Mac made their way down to the ground.
“¡Lo siento!” Maria cried, running to Charlie’s side. “I’m so sorry. It was an accident. The metal caught and threw everything off balance.”
“Yeah, sorry,” said Mac, breathing hard and wheezing a little from the exertion. He pulled an inhaler from his pocket and used it.
“It’s okay,” Charlie said, rattled. “I’m glad you screamed, Maria.” She looked at the long hunk of wood, then tentatively bent down and picked it up. It felt as lightweight as her backpack. She moved away from the building, holding it like a giant javelin, and tossed it as carefully as possible onto the roof. It banged and thumped and settled out of sight.
“Wow,” Mac said. He couldn’t help staring at Charlie. “That was pretty amazing.”
“Thanks,” said Charlie.
“Is the bracelet warm?”
“Yes.” She showed him.
“And . . . you’re not hurt or anything, right?”
“No, I’m fine.” Charlie narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
Mac shrugged innocently. “I just thought you might want to see how much you can actually lift now that you’ve got the thing activated.” He looked pointedly at the Dumpster.
“Oh yes!” said Maria. “Now’s a great time to do that.” She faltered, searching Charlie’s face. “I mean, if you’re up to it.”
Charlie let out a deep, ragged sigh. She shoved the warm bracelet back up her forearm and pulled her sleeve over it, then wiped her hands on her jeans and flexed her fingers a few times. She walked over to the Dumpster.
Silently Mac got his camera cued up.
Charlie rested her hands on the bar and closed her eyes, and then she strained with all her might to lift it.
When she heard a distant sound of yelling, Charlie opened her eyes. Maria and Mac were both exclaiming unintelligible things next to her. She looked up and nearly gasped, for she was holding the Dumpster above her head, and loose pieces of trash were tumbling out. “Whoa,” she said as a bag of something hot and slimy hit her in the face and fell to the ground. “Blech!”
Totally grossed out, Charlie dropped the container, which made the ground shake and the asphalt crack below it.
“Yikes,” she said. She stepped back and looked at her hands. It really was possible.
Standing here with Maria and Mac witnessing everything made the powers seem more real. Charlie tried to comprehend the strange predicament she was in. These crazy things were really happening. These powers belonged to her and her alone, whether she wanted them or not. As long as the bracelet was stuck on her wrist, Charlie had a choice. She could tiptoe around telling herself the bracelet was bad, dreading the next time something happened. Or she could accept the fact that these abilities were hers to use and, in using them, try to learn how to control them—at least a little, she hoped. They’d already learned so much today. But it had opened up even more questions, like who could create a device that would do this . . . and why?
As she stood there, Maria and Mac having an excited conversation in the background, a tiny thrill raced through Charlie, conflicting her thoughts. As much as she wanted to get the thing off her arm, part of her couldn’t wait to see what else she could do.
“Gorilla, maybe,” Mac said as they picked up the trash and threw it back into the Dumpster. “Nah—whale. Hmm. Or maybe an ox?”
Maria and Charlie exchanged an amused glance as Mac carried on the conversation with himself, but they, too, wondered which animal’s strength Charlie had adopted. Once they went back to Maria’s shed, Mac researched the weight of different Dumpsters, and factoring the trash inside, he thought that Charlie had probably lifted more than six hundred pounds.
“Sheesh,” Charlie murmured. “I’m amazing . . . but only when necessary.”
“Amazing when necessary,” quipped Maria. “That should be your motto.”
Charlie laughed. “I like it.”
But Mac wouldn’t be distracted. “We still have one more experiment to do.”
Charlie narrowed her eyes. “We do?”
“Yeah. The healing one.”
“And just how are we supposed to test that?” Charlie asked warily.
“Well, I was hoping you’d get hurt by the falling beam, actually,” Mac said.
“What a nice thing to say,” Charlie said drily.
“Sorry. But since you didn’t,” he said, back to business, “I was thinking we could start with a cut, like on your arm or something. Somewhere that your parents won’t notice—”
“Absolutely not,” said Charlie.
“And then move on to breaking a bone. Just a small one, like a toe—”
“I don’t think you heard me.”
“And if we’re really daring,” Mac went on excitedly, “we could try cutting off a limb to see if you can regenerate—”
“Stop. Talking. Now,” Charlie said, with an eerie calmness in her voice.
Mac stopped. “What?”
“Um, I’m not really interested in hurting myself, much less cutting off a limb, just to see how fast I can heal. Thanks anyway.”
“But—but animals!” Mac said. “Here. Look what they can do.” He searched “animal healing ability” on his iPad and started showing Charlie the various pages. “See? Lizards can regenerate limbs. And starfish—you won’t even believe this, but some starfish can regenerate almost entire new bodies!”
Mac seemed way too excited about cutting off Charlie’s body parts. And testing this ability was one thing she wasn’t going to give in to, that was for sure. She already knew she could heal fast based on how she’d recovered from the soccer injury. That was enough information as far as she was concerned.
“Not happening, Mac,” Charlie said once he’d exhausted his resources. “Sorry. Actually, not sorry. And since you’re starting to sound a little bit crazy with all of this, I think we might ne
ed to call a time-out.” She got up to leave. “Maybe you can go back to actually finding out what the secret code is to deactivate this thing,” she said, shoving up her sleeve and shaking her arm. “Remember? That was the plan.”
“I have a program gathering a list of the most frequently used passwords as we speak,” Mac said. “Once I’ve got them all, we’ll start trying them.”
Charlie stopped midshake and glanced at the bracelet, frowning. “Hey,” she said. “Look at this. The screen is different.”
Maria and Mac crowded around to see it. Instead of the red words declaring DEFENSE MODE scrolling across the screen, there was a gray-circle graphic sliced like a pie into five sections, each containing a strange line drawing. Three of the drawings were animated, like GIFs. The other two didn’t move.
“How did you get to this screen?” Mac demanded.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said.
Mac took a short video of the screen and then randomly pushed a few buttons on the bracelet. The screen went back to the scrolling message, reminding them that defense mode was in place and asking for a deactivation code. He pushed more buttons and, after a few tries, discovered that if he held down the two buttons on the side of the bracelet nearest Charlie’s hand for two seconds, the screen flipped to the chart.
“Maybe it happened when you caught the beam, or when you were lifting the Dumpster,” Maria guessed.
“Hmm.” Mac let go of Charlie’s arm, typed a few notes into his phone, and studied the photo of the chart, zooming in on the individual pie pieces. “So what’s the chart for? The drawings look like vines floating through the air or something.”
“Or worms.” Maria shrugged, stumped. “And why aren’t those two animated?”
Charlie squinted at the device screen. After a bit she looked up. “It’s a chart of the bracelet’s abilities. Look at this first one.” She held out her arm to Maria.
“All I can see is a bunch of swirly lines being blown side to side in the wind,” Maria said.
Charlie smiled. “Focus on it. It’s a cheetah running—do you see it? Here’s the head.”
Maria looked again. All at once her face lit up. “Oooh,” she said. “I see it now!”
“Show me,” said Mac, yanking Charlie’s arm closer.
“Screw your eyes up a little,” Charlie said. “It’ll come into focus.”
After a minute, Mac’s face changed. “Whoa, I got you now. Cool.” He squinted and said, “What are the other ones?”
All three of them stared. Charlie’s arm began to ache from being held up. The second pie slice had darker-gray vine lines moving in an up-and-down pattern.
“Elephant!” Mac cried. “Darn it, I should have guessed. He’s standing on his back legs and facing us. But what the heck is he doing?”
Maria tilted her head. “He’s lifting a log up and down. Do you see it, Charlie? Ha! A bodybuilder elephant.”
No matter what Charlie did, she couldn’t see what Mac and Maria were seeing. She looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and then looked back at the bracelet. The elephant shape finally came into focus. “Oh!” she said, giggling. “I see it now. I think I was trying too hard before.”
Mac pointed to the screen. “What’s the third one?”
The third animated drawing was made up of lines that all met and twirled around like a pinwheel. The outer edges of the lines rolled up and then stretched out as they rotated in a circle.
“Sweet,” said Maria, looking up. “This one’s my favorite.”
Mac looked harder.
“What is it?” asked Charlie. “A flower? The sun? No, it’s got to be another animal.”
“Oh, it’s a starfish!” exclaimed Mac.
“Starfish are very cool,” said Maria.
As soon as they figured it out, Charlie could see the third drawing was a starfish too. She turned to Mac, her eyes like slits. “Don’t get any crazy ideas.”
He rubbed his hands together eagerly.
“I mean it, Mac,” said Charlie. “You’d better keep the pointy objects away from me!”
Maria looked at all three wedges. “So each wedge shows an animal that is part of the chimera. You have the speed of a cheetah, the strength of an elephant, and the healing ability of the starfish?”
“I guess so,” Charlie said. She turned back to the bracelet. “What about these two sections that aren’t animated?”
“More abilities?” Mac guessed. “Maybe they become animated once you activate them.”
“I’ll bet that’s it,” said Maria. She squeezed Charlie’s forearm. “How exciting!”
Charlie’s eyes widened, and she glanced back at the chart. “More?” she echoed.
“I sure hope so,” said Mac, his grin growing wider by the minute.
“Whoa,” Charlie said under her breath. There were two more abilities that she hadn’t activated yet. She had no idea what they could be.
CHAPTER 26
Unknown Powers
The three tried to guess what the other two abilities could be by studying the wedges. One of the drawings had a tiny circle in the middle with four lines going out from it.
“Clearly that’s a bow tie,” said Maria, “so you must have penguin abilities.”
Mac wrinkled his nose. “What?”
“Get it? You wear a bow tie with a tuxedo.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie, nodding, a grin spreading over her face. “Tuxedo. Looks like a penguin suit. I get it. So my special ability is . . . what? Holding an egg on my feet for like two months?”
“What are you talking about?” said Mac.
“March of the Penguins—haven’t you ever seen it?” asked Charlie. “My dad is a freak for that movie.” She shook her head in mock disgust. “Biologists.”
“Parents are weird,” said Mac. “My dad cries every time we watch Toy Story 3. But back to the symbol,” he said, tapping the device, “I think it obviously represents a sneeze. Try sneezing, Charlie. Everybody stand back.”
“Ha-ha,” said Charlie. “Very funny. But it’s not a sneeze. It’s an old TV antenna. My dad has one stashed away in the garage just in case the world ends and cable goes out. With our luck, we’d probably only be able to get PBS.”
“Great,” Maria groaned. “So your fourth ability is broadcasting baby TV shows on public television.”
“Easy, now,” muttered Mac. “PBS isn’t just for babies. And there’s nothing wrong with the occasional Odd Squad when you’re killing time.” He sniffed. “I’m just saying.”
Maria stared at him. “My little stepbrothers watch that. Since when do you watch Odd Squad?”
Mac looked defensive. “I watch it with them when I’m waiting for you to come home from practice. It’s kind of like I’m babysitting. Your parents should pay me, actually.”
“You know,” said Maria, “You could come to practice once, and then you’d know when I’m done.”
“Forget that,” said Mac. “No Wi-Fi on the field. And your mom counts on me to try her after-school snacks to make sure they taste good.”
“You don’t really fall for that, do you?” asked Maria, incredulous.
“Hey,” said Mac, “this dude does what it takes to live the good life. If that means I have to suffer watching Odd Squad with free Wi-Fi and a cookie in hand while I wait for you, then that’s the price I have to pay.”
Charlie laughed and shook her head, watching them. “Excuse me, people, but what about this last drawing?”
Mac and Maria turned back to look at the bracelet. The fifth wedge had several vine-type lines to it with absolutely no distinct detail to focus on. It was just an oval-shaped blob with some lines sticking out.
Everyone was silent for a long moment.
“It’s a . . . campfire?” ventured Maria.
“Definitely Bigfoot,” said Mac.
“I was thinking mud puddle and sticks,” said Charlie. She scratched her head and looked at her friends.
They both shook their heads. With a
growing sense of dread, Charlie began to wonder what would have to happen for this latest mystery to be solved.
CHAPTER 27
Powers, Activate!
Whenever Charlie was alone over the following week, she tried triggering her abilities. She knew now that the powers would only work when necessary, like when she was on the defensive or in danger. But how did the bracelet know? Was it her heart rate and pulse that activated it? Or her sense of fear? Just imagining danger wasn’t enough. But she wondered if there were other ways she could trick the bracelet into believing she was in danger. So she decided to do a few experiments of her own.
In first period she purposely waited for the bell to ring before running to her desk, hoping to trigger speed like she’d done early on. But by now Charlie knew her teacher was usually late coming into class, so she wasn’t actually worried about getting in trouble. It didn’t work.
She tried to get it to turn on during soccer practice that week, but the team only worked on drills and ran short plays. They didn’t split into teams to scrimmage, so without an opponent hunting her down, that didn’t work either.
After school on Friday she ran all the way home, thinking that maybe if she elevated her heart rate for a long enough time, it might indicate to the bracelet that she needed help. When she got home, she went into the garage and tried lifting the extra freezer they kept there, but she couldn’t even move it an inch.
“There has to be a way,” she texted Maria. “Parents both working until late, brother at a sleepover, so I’m home alone tonight. Gonna try the horror-movie thing.”
“I’ve got a great one!” replied Maria. “Have you seen Cringe 3 yet?”
“OMG no way too scary.”
“Then it’s perfect. I’ll bring it over!”
Charlie’s heart was already racing in anticipation. “Yikes—OK. Is Mac coming?”
“Nah, I’ll send him home. He’ll just make fun of us if we scream. See you in 15!”
“OK!”
Maria arrived with the movie and a copy of the first Ms. Marvel comic. “As promised,” she said. “I thought you’d like this one first.”
