I FELT a hundred pounds lighter, which seemed goofy for someone who doesn’t even weigh a hundred pounds. Just getting those words out—“I’m a girl”—was like turning on the light in a dark basement. It wasn’t a secret anymore. I didn’t have to feel so scared someone would find out.
And the expression on Tom’s face was so cool. He was smiling. He’s not mean-looking when he smiles. I was feeling good, remembering him saying, “I think you’re a good, brave guy,” until I also remembered him saying, “We might not make it.”
Big whoop, as Eddie would say. So now I could be who I really am. Only dead.
“Maybe not,” said Tom.
I had felt the tickle in my brain. “Stop that.”
“If you don’t want me in your mind, then close it down like you’ve been doing,” said Tom.
“I don’t want to be like that anymore,” I said. “I want to feel normal.”
Tom nodded. “Okay. I won’t try to pick your brain anymore.”
I wanted to believe that, but Tom’s Tom.
I was about to ask him how he felt about my being a girl when the radio crackled again. “This is Security Fleet Two. Come in, Friendship One.”
The black rockets were tightening up around us. “Respond or we’ll commence firing.”
I said, “What do we do now?”
“We have two choices,” said Tom, “neither of them so great. We could give up and let them guide us back to EarthOne, or we could try to break away.”
“Where would we go?”
“Back into space? Maybe we could find Homeplace.”
“Do we have enough gas? Do you know how to get there?”
Tom shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He sounded so sorry I felt bad for him.
“Don’t be sorry—you’ve been great.”
“Not great enough. If we go back to EarthOne, we’ll be in big trouble.”
“What can they do to thirteen-year-old kids?” I said.
“You’re thinking 1958 on EarthTwo. It’s 2012 on EarthOne, and everybody’s cranked up about the war on terror. They put people in jail for years.”
“This is Security Fleet Two,” came from the radio. “We will commence firing in thirty seconds.”
“It’s me they’re after,” said Tom. “I can say you’re a hostage. You’ll be okay.” He opened his microphone.
“What are you going to do?”
“Surrender. Follow them in.”
“What about EarthTwo?” I said. “There’s got to be a way to get there, like maybe a rip in the sky somewhere.”
“A rip?
“Yeah. Like the place we slip through. A hole. A door.”
The radio again: “Ten seconds before we commence firing.”
“Let’s find it,” said Tom.
I twisted the controls hard and steered Friendship One between two of the black rockets. They pulled out of the way.
Tom shut off the microphone. “You’re a great driver,” he said, laughing. “For a girl.”
That was pretty funny. I felt relaxed, even though I was focusing hard. The black rockets could be bluffing about shooting us. How could they be so sure the director wasn’t on board? Had to take that chance.
I swung left hard, right at a black rocket. It got out of my way.
“More speed,” I said.
Tom turned his dials.
All five rockets were behind us now and Earth was growing in the front screen. But which Earth?
“That’s EarthOne,” said Tom. He must have picked my brain again but I let it go for now.
“How do you know?” It was just a blue-green ball to me.
“I can see the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa.”
“The what?”
“It was built about ten years ago. In Dubai.”
EarthOne was coming up fast.
“We’ve got to find that rip, get to EarthTwo,” said Tom.
“Federal agents are looking for me and Eddie on EarthTwo. Maybe this isn’t so smart,” I said.
“Yeah, but EarthTwo in 1958 doesn’t have the kind of technology that can track you down in minutes.”
Far off to the left, in the darkness of space, I thought I saw a thin gray line.
“Where would we land if we got to EarthTwo?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Any ideas?”
I remembered something. “Grandpa was planning a vacation to New Mexico, someplace where he said something important had happened. Something to do with alien spaceships and nuclear testing.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
The gray line became a scar in the sky.
“Try to remember, Ronnie. We’ll only have a few minutes once we’re in EarthTwo’s atmosphere.”
The gray line was coming up fast. Could that be the rip in space that would lead back to my planet?
“Let’s take a chance and go for it,” said Tom.
He was definitely in my head. “If we make it, Tom, I’m going to make you sorry for doing that again.”
“Let’s hope you get the chance, Ronnie.”
I yanked on the steering controls, flipping Friendship One on its side. I drove it straight toward the narrow gray rip in the sky.
Forty-eight
TOM
EN ROUTE TO ROSWELL, N.M.
1958
I DIDN’T want to tell Ronnie what really worried me: How would we land? The pilot and the crew had taken off with the landing capsule, which usually splashes down in an ocean somewhere and gets picked up by NASA divers. Then the rocket ship crashes somewhere else in the ocean and gets fished out. But that wouldn’t happen in 1958 when they barely even had a space program.
But maybe we were flying on a new kind of state-of-the-art rocket that could eject its landing capsule and still land itself. Otherwise, I could picture us smashing nose first into the ground and exploding. Whatever was left would become a secret, just a UFO to the government. And we would be toast. Really toast. That’s funny, Tom. Glad you still have your nasty sense of humor.
Actually, that made me feel a little better.
I looked over at Ronnie, zoned in on steering the ship, her hands clenched on the sticks, her blue eyes staring at the main forward screen, her lower lip caught between her teeth. She looked different now that I knew she was a girl. Was that just in my mind? She made more sense as a girl. Why hadn’t I figured it out?
I had so many questions for Ronnie. I felt a little shy with her.
No time now.
The black rockets hadn’t followed us. They were heading toward EarthOne, out of our rear-camera range.
There was a bump as we slipped through the gray rip. We entered EarthTwo’s atmosphere. We didn’t have much time. I was just going to have to hope the rocket could land and that Ronnie and I could figure out how to do it.
I imagined reeling back to the trip from EarthOne to Riverboat, when I’d been sitting in a seat behind the pilot, drilling into his mind for his knowledge about driving Friendship One. Then, I had imagined my mind a thumb drive plugged into the computer of his mind, copying everything from what I imagined was a pilot’s manual. There had been humming and whizzing digits. Now I opened that thumb drive in my mind. There were instructions on how to land but nothing about where to land.
We couldn’t go back to Nearmont, New Jersey, and land behind the middle school in this baby. And no oceans, please, and no jungles.
Think. Hard. Rewind your mind.
I suddenly remembered something I had blurted out in Mrs. Rupp’s history class. “May 12, 1958. A thermonuclear explosion in New Mexico.”
“Ronnie, just what did Grandpa say happened in that place in New Mexico?”
“He wouldn’t tell us anything except there’d been some rumors. I think he was afraid we’d say something in school. But he made Eddie memorize the name of the town and the coordinate numbers.”
“Hold us steady.”
I tried to tune Eddie in. He hadn’t responded bef
ore, and I wasn’t even sure he was okay. I held my breath and put all my energy into reaching through the universe for my brother. He tuned in pretty fast. Phew.
That you, bro? Where are you?
Looking for a landing site on EarthTwo. I’m so glad you’re okay. But I’m in a hurry—you remember where Grandpa wanted to go on vacation in New Mexico?
It had a Spanish name.
Some clue.
It was on a map.
Did you see the map, Eddie?
Yeah.
So tell me where.
I don’t have the map with me.
You don’t need it. We have powers, Eddie. Rewind your mind back to the day you saw that map.
You kidding, Tom?
Just do it. We’re going to crash.
Man, this is hard . . . got to focus . . . like a dream . . . my head hurts . . .
You can do it, Cap’n Eddie.
I could hear sounds—groaning maybe, and my head hurt as well. Twin-sense. It went on for a while. Then Eddie yelped.
Tom! I see Culebra de Cascabel. It’s in a valley in the desert. The coordinate numbers are 106:06W and 34:19N.
Way to go! See you later, alligator.
“Ronnie,” I said, “I just put some numbers on the GPS grid. Take us down.”
Forty-nine
ALESSA
HOMEPLACE
OUTSIDE TIME
EVERYBODY on this planet was thin. Or at least they weren’t fat. As soon as I realized this, I felt self-conscious. I thought, I got to get me one of those loose shirts they wear, but in a superbig size so you can’t tell what’s underneath. And then I suddenly stopped feeling self-conscious because I had this rageous thought: If I am the only fat person on this planet, then I am not fat—I am special. Out of the ordinary, which is extraordinary.
Think of it this way, Lessi: Back on EarthOne, EarthTwo, all the Earths if there are even more, there are tons (no pun intended) of fat people. Some are fatter than me, some aren’t as fat, but we are all still fat. We are all in the fat group.
But here on Homeplace, I’m in a group called Alessa.
Oh, Lessi, there must be some weird air in this place to make you think stuff like this.
I woke up.
I was in a see-through cage. Four walls of glass. Thin people in white coats walked past. There was a row of glass cages. The director, the Lump, the four soldiers, Britzky, and Buddy: each of them was in a separate glass cage. We were all wearing white gowns, like tents. Even Buddy. You couldn’t tell anybody’s size.
Britzky waved. We were too far away to talk.
“How are you doing, Alessa?” It was Dr. Traum in front of my cage. “We’re just waiting for some tests to come back. Make sure you’re not carrying anything that can infect the Primary People.”
“What if we are?”
“We have medicine that can knock out most Earth viruses and bacteria,” he said.
“Really? Like, I mean, the superhorrible diseases—the flu and smallpox, even AIDS?”
“Yes.” He looked right at me because I guess he knew what I was going to say next.
“So how come you haven’t wiped out those diseases on the Earths?”
“That’s what Tom and Eddie’s father asks the Council all the time.” He started to walk away.
“Wait a minute, Dr. Traum. John Canty told us how you guys messed up your own planet, so why don’t you want to help us? Some of it is your fault anyway.”
He turned and came back. “You’re a smart, bold girl, Alessa. I was impressed the way you pulled that Tech Off! Day tour together. But this is way over your head. Sometimes the Primary People move in mysterious ways.”
“What’s mysterious about wanting to destroy us instead of help us?” I felt angry. It felt good. Better than feeling like a helpless prisoner in a glass cage.
“We have the entire universe to think of, not just two little planets.”
“Two little planets that you didn’t take care of like you were supposed to.”
Dr. Traum sighed. “That is one way to look at it.” His smile was sad. “We were not able to save ourselves. I am not sure we can save anyone else. Our bodies disintegrated along with our planet. We managed to preserve our rational minds, and we learned to take shapes, as you see, aided by machines. But we lost our powers to imagine and to empathize. We lost our humanity. That is why Tom and Eddie and their friends are so important to us.”
“Important? The way you treat us?”
“We have been testing you, preparing you.”
“For what?”
“For what happens next.” He touched a switch on the wall, and the glass cages opened.
“What happens next?” I said.
“You and Todd will be slipping to EarthTwo. Tom and Ronnie are on their way. Eddie will be heading there soon. You will all meet in a terrible place called Culebra de Cascabel.”
“Why?”
“A terrible thing happened there on EarthOne and must not happen on EarthTwo.”
“What happened?”
“The Primary People had a chance to alter the course of the universe and we did not. We could not. We still cannot. But you give a second chance.”
Just before he turned to walk away, I thought I saw tears in his green eyes.
Fifty
TOM
CULEBRA DE CASCABEL, N.M.
1958
I CONCENTRATED on the landing instructions in the manual that the pilot had memorized and that I had scanned out of his head. Landing was one of the few things that Friendship One did not do automatically. There were buttons to push and levers to pull and commands to relay to Ronnie.
I was yelling, “Lift the nose,” when we crashed.
Friendship One hit the desert sand and bounced up and settled back down with the sound of metal screaming like a humongous cat.
Then the plane shuddered. And was still.
I looked at Ronnie. She gave me a thumbs-up. I gave one back. If we’d been closer, we would have high-fived or bumped fists.
“Good job,” she said. “For a boy.”
Then we started giggling.
After a while, I said, “We should get out of here before people come.”
“We need to find food and flashlights and stuff,” she said, unbuckling her safety harness.
She was all business. I could see how she’d survived on her own, pretending to be a boy, living on the street. I didn’t mind following her around even if she was a girl.
We found a supply closet with backpacks marked NASA. Inside were medical kits, water bottles, ready-to-eat food, flashlights, flares, a tent, and blankets. I found a pistol in the closet, but Ronnie and I looked at each other and shook our heads. We didn’t know how to use it, and we weren’t going to shoot anybody anyway. We opened a hatch. A plastic slide dropped out and we slid down into the desert.
It was late afternoon. The sun was going down and I could already feel chilliness in the air.
It was beautiful in an eerie kind of way. White clouds shaped like mythological animals hung in the darkening blue sky, and I thought I heard a distant singing, which was probably the wind. There were mountains in the distance. They seemed to be moving, coming closer. Mirages.
“It’s beautiful,” said Ronnie. “Weird.”
“We should get away from the plane. People may have seen it come down.”
“Which way?”
I pointed to the sun dropping behind the mountains to my left. “That’s west, so”—I turned halfway to the right—“that must be north. That’s where Culebra de Cascabel is.”
“How do you know?”
“It was in Eddie’s mind.”
“Do you know everything that’s in his mind?”
In what was left of the light, I could see that Ronnie’s face was scrunched up, as if she was worried about something. “I don’t know for sure. Why?”
“Well, if it goes both ways, then he knows what’s in your mind.”
I understood wha
t she was getting at, and I was glad. Maybe I’m more sensitive than people give me credit for. “You’re worried about whether he knows you’re a girl.”
“I’d like to tell him myself.”
“I’ll try not to think about it. Let’s go north.”
“One more thing,” she said. “I guess you didn’t take Spanish in school.”
“French. Why?”
“Culebra de Cascabel means ‘rattlesnake.’”
“You think I’m afraid of snakes?”
We hoisted the backpacks and walked north until it got dark. I’d read about how night falls on the desert like a lid slamming down on a pot, but I’d always thought it was just a writer being fancy. And then bang! One minute there was light in the sky; the next minute it was totally black. I dug out a flashlight, mostly to scare away snakes.
Ronnie and I didn’t talk. We were both too tired. We were stumbling along, almost too tired to stop, if that makes any sense. We almost walked into a mountain. Or maybe it was just a little hill. Suddenly, there was a wall of rock and dirt in front of us.
“Here,” I said. It was all I could say.
We spread two blankets on the ground and wrapped them around us. It was cold. We were too tired to make a fire. We drank water. Ronnie took out one of the ready-to-eat packages. “It’s meatloaf,” she said.
“Anything else?”
“An energy bar.” She broke it in half and handed me a piece.
We ate the bar and fell asleep shivering.
In my dream, I wasn’t cold.
There was a fire, bright and hot, and when I sat up, I saw shapes around the fire. They looked like the Council members we had seen on the grandstand in Riverboat.
“Why am I here?” I asked.
“To stop the atomic explosion. Tomorrow, May 12, 1958, there will be an atomic explosion that will convince the U.S. government to continue testing nuclear bombs. It must be stopped.”
“Why can’t you stop it?”
“The Primary People will never intervene in the affairs of an Earth.”
“I’m a Primary Person.”
“You’re a halfie. You can do anything you want.”
The Twin Powers Page 13
