Angus heard the father’s clanking knees approaching the hospital room. The door opened, and the mother’s eyes arrived. There was much parental scolding on the hydrogen-fueled drive home. The mother and father asked for double doses of Calm from the nutrition analyzer, and Angus hurried to AC’s bedroom and waited for Billy and Ivy to arrive.
Ivy sat against the wall hugging her knees to her chest. After all the adventures she’d had with Angus—fighting pirates, swimming in the Puget Sound, battling prehistoric beasts—she was bored and lonely in this hospital room. She pushed open her door a crack to eavesdrop on the nurses in the hallway. A black speck raced into her room. She let out a little scream and jumped to her feet.
“Let me in,” the cockroach said, scuttling past. “Close the door. We haven’t got much time. We have to move quickly.”
“Wait a second. Are you ... a talking cockroach?”
“Looks that way. You might know me as Billy. Billy Roberts. Angus sent me.”
“Angus! You mean AC, right?”
“No, definitely not AC. Some dude who looks like him but uses a World Jumper to get around.”
“Angus? You mean, he followed me here?” Her heart beat so hard in her chest that she was sure the cockroach must be able to hear it.
“Angus says you’ll know what happened to all of us. Nearly the entire class looks like me. Well, not all roaches, some spiders, but all invertebrates.”
“Oh, my gosh! Did I do this?”
“No worries, Ivy. I don’t think anyone’s going to blame you. So ... I’ve got no problem with you wearing that hospital gown if you want, but you might get some stares outside.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“Well, you can stay if you want. If you like being poked with needles. But I need to leave. They’ll squish me if they see me.”
“No, I’ve had enough of being a lab rat. Turn around and close your eyes. I have to get dressed.”
“Ivy, I’m a cockroach. I have compound eyes, not eyelids, so I can’t close them. And I don’t care what you look like in your underwear.”
“You’re still a boy inside that gross exoskeleton. Now turn around, or I’ll squish you myself.”
Obediently, Billy scuttled around and covered his eyes with two of his legs. “Closet,” said Ivy, and the wall opened revealing a fresh set of clothing her mother must have brought when she’d visited. Ivy quickly pulled on a shirt and zipped up her jeans. She tied her sneakers and threw on her jacket.
“How are we going to get out, Billy? The nurses will see me the minute I walk down the hallway.”
Billy scurried across the room. “Window,” he said. The clear surface popped through. “Now, stop wasting time. We have to get out before they come back.”
Ivy peeked out the window. “It’s a long way down, Billy. Unlike you, I don’t have wings.”
“Think of something. I told Angus you’d figure it out,” said the cockroach.
“You’re right. I can do this.” She bit her lip. “There’s a sheet and blanket on the bed. I think I saw a spare in the closet. I’ll tie them together with this hospital gown. I can use it to repel down the wall.”
Ivy grabbed a small vial of blue dye that a nurse had left behind and squirted it on the window. She rubbed it on to the pane, and the window shriveled and melted away.
“But Ivy, you’re probably three stories from the ground. The sheets won’t stretch that far.”
“Billy, there’s polymer everywhere.” She jumped up and down. The floor cushioned her landing. “I could probably jump out of the window without a rope and be totally fine.”
Ivy knotted the sheets and gowns together. She tugged on them and smiled. The makeshift rope was about twenty feet long.
“Good. Now I need something to tie it to. Maybe a hook?” She looked around the room and then loudly said, “Coat hook.”
The wall near the door popped out a gray hook. Ivy grabbed it and twisted. The hook came free with a sucking noise. Ivy placed it on the wall beneath the window opening and pushed. The wall absorbed the hook.
“Coat hook,” said Ivy. The hook protruded from the wall again: this time beneath the window.
Ivy tied the sheet rope around the hook. “You first,” she said.
Billy fluttered out the window and turned to watch. Out the window went Ivy, throwing herself from the wall with abandon. Before she’d reached the end of the rope, she let go and bounced to the ground.
She hooted loudly and twirled in a circle. Billy thought she was the most awesome girl he’d ever seen. Ivy extended her arm and he landed on it. She grinned at the large brown cockroach.
“Let’s go!” she yelled, racing off. “To the lab!”
18
Together Again
“What is it, CATT?” asked Angus.
The cat-dog robot was buzzing at him. It waggled its PVC tail and rotated its mismatched metal ears in lopsided arcs.
“Do you hear something?”
CATT yipped at him and jumped awkwardly at the wall beneath the bedroom window.
Angus poked his head into the window. It stretched outward around his neck and shoulders. He watched a tall figure with short blue hair jog along the street. The person kept looking over his shoulder back at the street, and for good reason, too. Like him, this person had committed the serious offense of neglecting to don a biohazard suit before stepping outside. It was only a matter of time before he was discovered and hauled off to the hospital for testing.
“I think he’s headed this way,” said Angus. “Look. He’s coming up the driveway. We should have a closer look, don’t you think?”
CATT purred in approval. Angus quickly placed his hand on the desk screen to hide the laboratory before opening the wall of the bedroom and running downstairs. AC’s mom and dad were nowhere to be seen. Angus deduced that the low hum coming from one of the open doorways meant that like his parents at home, they were watching TV together. He poked his head around the doorway, trying not to cringe as the metallic father turned his skin face around and smiled.
“Hi, AC. Want to watch this program with us? It’s a documentary about nanotechnology.”
“Oh, no thanks. Spending some time alone in my room,” answered Angus.
“Don’t spend all your time reading history,” said AC’s mother without turning her head away from the TV. Her eyes poked around both sides of her face to regard him. “You’ll rot your brain.”
“Nope. No history,” said Angus.
“Okay, then.” The eyes retracted back to the front of her head.
CATT meowed from the hallway. Angus went looking for the robot. It was scratching at the outside wall.
“You need to go outside?”
The robot purred.
“Door,” said Angus. The knob plopped out.
“Window,” he said.
Before he could look out the pane that had appeared in the top of the door, the flexible window pressed inward. It was molded around a face, the face of the boy with the blue hair. But as it peered through the window at him and blinked its long-lashed eyes, Angus realized with a jolt that it wasn’t a boy.
He pulled open the door, and a tall, thin girl with short, spiky, bright blue hair sprang back and grinned a mouthful of wire at him.
“Who are you?” asked Angus.
“Duh,” said the girl pushing past him. “Who do you think I am?”
“Ummm, excuse me,” Angus said in surprise.
The girl ignored him and started up the stairs toward AC’s room.
“Hello!” he called. “What do you think you’re doing? Where are you going?”
“To the lab. We’ve got work to do.”
Something about this girl was familiar. The self-assurance, the bossiness.
“Is that you, Ivy?”
“You sent Billy to get me, didn’t you? Of course it’s me. Now, hurry.”
Angus had known that Ivy would be a human in this world, but he’d been so used to her in animal
form that her sudden appearance as a girl with bizarre hair stunned him. In his confusion he stumbled over the cat-dog and lost his balance. With a yell and a thump, he landed on the floor, bouncing lightly.
“Is everything okay out there?” called the mother’s voice. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“No, I’m fine!” Angus said quickly. The last thing he needed was for a parent to come and investigate. Ivy was supposed to be in the hospital. What would they say if they knew she was here, the girl who everyone thought had caused an epidemic?
CATT yipped at him and then opened its mouth, vomiting thin rope. Angus picked up the rope and tugged. The moment he touched it, he realized it wasn’t a rope but rather a very long, very thin chain. Angus squinted at it; made of at least fifty individual nanochains braided together, it was remarkably strong.
“What is this for?” asked Angus.
“I think your robot’s trying to help you get up,” said Ivy watching him from the top of the stairs.
Angus blushed deeply. Of course, Ivy had to see him trip and fall. How embarrassing. He ducked his head so she wouldn’t see his face turn red, too.
“Is that right, CATT?” asked Angus. “Am I supposed to grab this?”
CATT made a whirring noise, and the chain slowly retracted, pulling Angus upright. Feeling very self-conscious all of a sudden, he strutted to the stairs. But when he looked up, Ivy was already gone.
He hurried to his room. “Umm, which Ivy are you? Is this your world? Or are you the Ivy I travel with ... umm ... who was a cat the last time I saw her?”
“Yup, both. They’re both me.” She closed the door behind him. “Top secret. No parents,” she said.
“So, you’re my Ivy, but this is your world and that is your real body?”
“Yup,” she said.
Angus snuck looks at the strange girl in the room with him. She wore red jeans, a tiger-print t-shirt under a leopard-print lab coat, and silver sneakers. Her short blue hair and braces had confused him, but now that he really looked at her, she had the same intelligent brown eyes, the same delicately curved eyebrows, the same full pink lips as his Ivy at home.
“I can see you looking at me, Angus. Just stare and get it over with.”
Angus felt his face go hot again. “You don’t look a lot like the Ivy from my world.”
“Sure I do. But I made a few improvements.” Ivy spiked her short blue hair up higher. “Months of lying on my back flattened my hair though.”
“So, this is your world? This is where you started? Where you lost your body?” asked Angus.
“That’s what I said.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. Just like I don’t know what happened to those other kids.”
“Didn’t Billy tell you?”
“Billy!” Ivy’s face went pale. “I forgot about Billy! Where is he?”
She patted the pockets of her lab coat.
“Luckily, I’m not in there, or you’d squish me.” The voice came from the top of Ivy’s head.
“AAAAH! GET IT OFF!” Ivy shrieked, jumped around the room, and scrubbed her head with frantic fingers.
Billy fluttered calmly to Angus’s shoulder and chirp-laughed. The joy that he’d found Ivy alive and human mixed with strange butterflies in his stomach and the silliness of her bug dance, and he laughed with a weird hilarity. Ivy glared at him.
“Both of you are jerks,” she said crossing her arms, jutting her chin out, and stomping one foot. Now she was beginning to resemble the Ivy back home. Angus stopped laughing, but somehow he couldn’t get the smile to leave his face. It felt good to be with her again.
“I like your hair,” he said. She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering whether he was being serious. “Cool color,” he said, trying to sound convincing.
“Thanks. Maybe we can do something with yours. I’ve been wanting to give you some color ever since I met you.”
Angus brushed his hair back with a hand and simpered, “I’ve always thought I’d look good in green.”
Billy snorted, “How about pink? With glitter?”
Angus looked out of the corner of his eye at the cockroach on his shoulder. He menaced it with a finger. “You know, it wouldn’t take much effort to flick you across the room.”
“Ha, dude. Very funny. Maybe you can run experiments on me, too.”
“Oh yeah, experiments! Billy, did you tell Ivy what we found out? About AC’s experiments?” asked Angus.
“No, we didn’t get to it,” said Billy.
Ivy placed her palm on the screen and the laboratory rolled out.
“What? You have access?” asked Angus.
“I wasn’t sure I could still get in, but it looks like AC hasn’t changed his security. We used to be lab partners.”
“You mean, you helped him with his bug experiments?” asked Billy.
“No, nothing like that. He told me about them, but that wasn’t my kind of thing. We were lab partners at school.”
“Did you know he kept records? They’re all stored in there.” Angus waved at the screen.
“That sounds like him. He’s very organized. Annoyingly so,” said Ivy.
“Another example of the differences between alters,” said Angus. His mother was always telling him to clean up his room, organize his backpack, and remember to do his homework. She probably preferred the organized AC. “You need to read about his last experiment. You were in the hospital then. I mean, your body was in the hospital. You were probably with me.”
Ivy touched the screen and found the location of the experiment files. She thumbed through them until she came to the one labeled Ivy.
“This one?” she asked. Angus nodded.
Ivy began to read.
19
Camping
“Angus, hand me that mallet, would you?”
It had been explained to AC that the family would be sleeping outside. Mr. Clark had used adjectives like fun, relaxing, and peaceful. Mrs. Clark had remained silent with a sour expression on her face.
AC cowered beneath an umbrella in the driving rain and watched Mr. Clark squish stakes into the mud surrounding the tent. Mr. Clark had sited two adjoining tents beneath the boughs of a large Douglas fir tree. The tree sheltered the larger of the two tents, the one in which Mr. and Mrs. Clark would sleep. While Mr. Clark had assembled it, Mrs. Clark had erected an outdoor cooking shelter and was now attempting to light a fire with little success. The wet logs were smoking.
The smaller of the two tents, though technically beneath the tree, was under the portion where the limbs had long since died. Rain pelted out of the sky on to the canvas, undeterred by foliage.
Mr. Clark shook his head, sending water droplets flying in all directions.
He turned his wet face to AC and said, “It would be more helpful if you held the umbrella over my head. Mallet please.” He pointed at a green gear bag. “Over there.”
AC tiptoed gingerly through the mud: There was no telling what kind of bacteria bred in this wild place. He readjusted his surgical gloves, bent, and picked up the heavy rubber hammer. He tiptoed back to Mr. Clark.
Mr. Clark stood, wiped his dripping face with a flannel shirt tail and took the mallet.
“I pitched the tent for you. All you need to do is hammer these stakes into the ground ... here ... and here. Got it?” He grabbed the umbrella from AC and put the hammer into his hand. “Your tent, your turn. Be sure to stake down the sides also. It looks like we’re going to get some wind tonight. I’m going to put on some dry clothes.”
Mr. Clark hurried to the larger of the two tents, unzipped the door flap and clambered in.
“Don’t track mud inside!” Mrs. Clark hollered over the sound of beating rain.
AC tied his hood tighter around his head and shivered. He bent to hammer in the stakes as Mr. Clark had advised, but he couldn’t bring himself to kneel in the mud, so he half-heartedly tapped at them from a bending position before wandering over to the cooking shelter. Mrs. Clark
was blowing through a long hollow wooden tube on to the smoldering logs.
“What is that?” asked AC.
Mrs. Clark held out the wooden tube for him to examine. The two-foot long stick was smooth; someone had whittled the bark from it. It appeared to have been made from one large tree limb and the remnant of a smaller twig was still attached. A hole had been bored through the center of the limb from end to end creating a tube.
“It’s called a bouffadou,” said Mrs. Clark. “Hold the notch at the top and blow through it. It will concentrate the oxygen of your breath on to the embers.”
AC brought the blow pipe to his mouth and blew on a smoldering log. The smoke blew away, leaving a red glow on the log’s surface.
“Again,” said Mrs. Clark. “You’ll get a flame with a few blows. Why don’t you get the fire started while I work on dinner?”
AC drew in a fresh breath and blew again. The surface of the log glowed brighter. A few more blows, and a small flame appeared. AC blew once more, and the flame went out at first but reappeared with gusto. He moved around to the other side of the campfire circle and worked on those logs next.
By the time Mr. Clark crawled out of his tent wearing clean dry clothes, the rain had stopped and AC and Mrs. Clark were roasting weenies on sticks over a blazing fire. The hot dogs crackled and spit in the heat, their juices sizzling when they dropped into the flames. Mrs. Clark stood and stirred the baked beans warming on the camp stove.
“Have you got one for me?” asked Mr. Clark. AC handed him the hot dog he was cooking before stabbing another one with his camping fork. “When was the last time we did this? Anyone remember?”
“Golly, Angus must’ve been six or seven. It’s been a while,” said Mrs. Clark.
“Too long,” said Mr. Clark.
The smell of the roasting meat had AC’s mouth watering again. Mrs. Clark handed him a hot dog bun and reminded him to take care not to burn his tongue.
“Mustard and relish, right?” she asked before squeezing a yellow sauce over the top of his hot dog. She spooned the beans on to his plate and gave him a spoon.
AC bit into the colorful sandwich and groaned with delight. The mustard and relish squeezed out of the bun and ran down his arm. He didn’t even care that his fleece jacket was now stained yellow. He scooped the sweet, warm beans on to the spoon. The sticky brown sauce dribbled off of the spoon and landed on his pants as he brought it to his mouth.
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