Criminal Destiny

by Gordon Korman

  “Sleeping,” Tori replies. “It’s only five thirty.”

  Our plan is to sneak into Serenity, eighty miles away, under cover of darkness. If we show up in broad daylight, the Purples will spot us in a heartbeat. That means we’ve got a lot of hours to pass. A spirited debate is underway: should we check into a motel here in Taos to catch up on our sleep, or is that too risky in a place that’s so much a part of Project Osiris’s orbit?

  “Stop!” Tori shrieks suddenly.

  Malik stomps on the brakes so hard that only our seatbelts keep us from going through the windshield.

  “What?” I ask.

  She points. Across the street, in front of a low-roofed industrial building, sits a faded blue panel truck. On the side, in chipped orange lettering, is painted:

  SPLASH! POOL MAINTENANCE

  TAOS, NM

  We recognize it instantly. Serenity may be tiny, but every single house plus the school has a pool. Splash! serviced and supplied them all.

  “Big deal,” says Malik. “That truck was at my house almost as often as I was.”

  “Exactly!” Tori can barely get the words out fast enough. “That truck is as common around Serenity as the factory ones.”

  “So?”

  “So if we drive it into town, nobody will look twice at it. Or at us.”

  It’s a good idea—a great idea—but Amber pours cold water on it: “We don’t have the keys.”

  “Cars get stolen all the time by guys who don’t have the keys,” Malik reasons. “There has to be a way.”

  I lean over and tap the Google icon on the Bentley’s touch screen. “One thing about the real internet—you can learn how to do anything.”

  Before we know it, a new term has been added to our vocabulary:

  Hot-wire.

  16

  MALIK BRUDER

  Just because our lives are a lie, and the odds of us pulling off what we’re trying to do are, like, a zillion to one, doesn’t mean we can’t have any fun.

  Hot-wiring the truck, for instance.

  Especially with Frieden pulling up instructions from the internet. Seriously, the guy could get anything from a computer. If we needed to sprout wings and fly to Happy Valley, Eli could pull up a list of the top ten places to buy feathers.

  Then there’s Laska, who takes all the information and organizes it like it’s one of her lists. I can almost picture this one: THINGS TO DO TODAY (TRUCK-STEALING EDITION).

  It’s 5:42, but Taos is still asleep and deserted—at least in the area where Splash! is located. It’s all businesses around here—no houses. Which is a good thing because Eli is making a racket whacking away at the padlock on the back of the truck with a rock.

  I hold out my hand. “Let me try.”

  “The metal’s too strong,” he says in consternation.

  “Give it to me.”

  I take the rock, walk around to the side of the truck, and bash a hole in the window. I clear away the sharp shards, reach in, and open the door.

  The other three are staring at me in horror.

  “What?” I ask. “Like stealing a truck is okay, but you can’t break the window that’s attached to it?”

  To their credit, they keep their mouths shut. We know that we have to do some bad stuff, but it’s hard to get past all that honesty, harmony, and contentment that’s been shoved down our throats. It looks like I’m getting there before the others.

  I crawl into the space between the front seats and look around. The back of the truck is filled with hoses and nets and jugs of pool chemicals. There’s a giant industrial-power vacuum, and—my eyes fall on the toolbox. I open it. It has everything you could possibly need for installing and repairing pool heaters. And hot-wiring a truck.

  I take out what we need—screwdriver, wire-cutters, electrical tape, and rubber gloves. It’s funny: this should be the hardest thing in the world, but the instructions Eli gets make it as simple as putting together one of those Lego models Hector used to build. Poor Hector—he would have been better at this than me. He was better at most things—except keeping himself alive.

  I use the screwdriver to pry at the cover of the steering column, and am surprised at how easily it pops off. The gloves are next—can’t risk a shock when messing with electricity. Basically, you just have to find the red power wires and the brown starter wires, rip them out of the ignition, strip the ends, and connect them directly. Once the power is hooked up, the instant I touch the frayed ends of the starter wires, the pool truck roars to life.

  It’s one of the most satisfying sounds I’ve ever heard.

  I smirk at them though the hole in the broken window. “Last call for the Happy Valley Express. You snooze, you lose. Have your tickets ready.”

  The girls climb into the back, making themselves as comfortable as possible amid the buckets and bug-dippers.

  Eli holds back. “What about the Bentley?”

  I shrug. “Who needs a quarter-million-dollar classic when you’ve got a rickety piece of junk like this?”

  “Think,” Eli persists. “If a car registered to a famous billionaire is found abandoned in Taos, it’s going to make the papers. My dad calls his old partner, and she tells him we stole her car. He’ll know we’re headed back to Serenity, and I don’t want him rolling out the welcome wagon.”

  “We could drive it into the river,” Amber suggests.

  I’m sure I turn pale. “Don’t wreck it. It’s just so awesome.”

  “If it gets us caught,” she returns, “it’s not awesome. It’s a liability.”

  “It doesn’t have to disappear forever,” Tori reasons. “We just need the time to sneak into Serenity, get what we need, and sneak back out again.”

  We make an interesting parade around the quiet streets of Taos—a billionaire’s limo followed by a rusty old pool truck. We finally find a small storm-shuttered ski chalet flying a tattered Chicago Bears flag, and leave the Bentley behind the house, out of view of the road. With any luck, these Bears fans won’t find it until they come back during ski season, several months away.

  Eli leaves a note on the dashboard—like that makes everything okay:

  Sorry, Ms. Dunleavy, but if you won’t help us, we have to help ourselves.

  I nod wisely. “Like, for instance, we helped ourselves to her car.”

  “Just because we’re cloned from crooks doesn’t mean we have to act like them,” he lectures.

  We jump into the truck, and we’re finally on our way. 6:10.

  Happy Valley or bust.

  When the road out of Taos comes to Old County Six, the shudder that goes through the four of us shakes the rickety old truck. We’re feeling everything all at once: triumph that we’ve found it; relief that this un-place we come from isn’t a figment of our imaginations; and plain fear that we’re putting our hard-won freedom at risk by going back there.

  We’ve been on a lot of lonely, lousy roads but Old County Six beats them all hands down. Remember, the aim of Project Osiris was to put their clone farm in an out-of-the-way place, and they really hit the jackpot on that score. The Splash! truck bounces and rattles over every bump and rut.

  The ride is misery, but we wish it was a whole lot longer, knowing what comes at the end of it. There are no signs telling us how far away Serenity is, but we’ve been in the truck at least an hour and a half, so we know we must be close.

  “Look!” Eli is white as a ghost.

  Up ahead, the road curves sharply, and a large section of railing has been torn away. It can only be the place where the cone truck went flying over the side into the valley below.

  I stop and nobody needs to ask why. Amber and Tori crawl up from the back to peer out the window. It’s the first definite sign of Serenity, but it’s much more than that. This is the place Hector died.

  I don’t cry, or barf, or lose control of the truck, or anything like that. But I wasn’t sure until this minute that I wasn’t going to.

  Tori is the first to speak. “This spot
should be in the middle of the invisible barrier, and we’re all okay.”

  Eli nods. “We were right about those chips in our necks. That’s what was making us get sick.”

  “It also means we’re almost there,” I add.

  Eli climbs into the back with the girls, and Tori hands me a baseball cap and cheap sunglasses.

  I’m the pool guy who’s there nearly every day. Nobody’s going to notice me.

  I put the truck in gear, and we climb the next rise. Suddenly, there it is—not just a glimpse of it, but the whole town. Serenity, New Mexico, from the smokestacks of the Plastics Works to the perfect houses with their perfect pools.

  It always looked dinky to me; it looks dinkier now. The entire street grid would fit easily inside the little Denver neighborhood where the Campanellas live. A pimple on the landscape. Home sweet home.

  For nearly fourteen years, this was my entire universe. I hated it, not only for its dinkiness, but also for the wider world it was keeping me from. Of course, that wasn’t half as much as I hated it when I learned about Project Osiris.

  And now I hate it for something new—the stomach-churning dread I feel as we roll toward it.

  The clock tower issues a single chime, signifying eight thirty a.m.

  “School must be starting,” says Amber, whose mother was our teacher.

  “My parents are just getting to the factory,” adds Tori in a trembling voice.

  We’re all thinking about our families, and the fact that we’re as physically close to them as we’ve been since we took off on Serenity Day. It’s impossible not to blame them for what they did to us, but they’re the nearest thing to parents we’re ever going to have. Here we are, hiding in our pool truck, when our gut impulse is run home and hug them. Or in Eli’s case, shake hands with his dad.

  Or maybe not. A glance over my shoulder reveals that Eli is the only one of us who is stone-faced and cold.

  I picture my own father with his goofy bow tie, opening his little clinic, wondering if anyone’s going to be sick today, providing an audience for his corny jokes. And my mother, the ballet instructor, who lost her one and only student when Laska blew out of town. She’s probably been using the extra time to work on her cooking, which was pretty awesome to begin with. I haven’t had a decent meal since—except maybe McDonald’s.

  I pass the sign at the city limits.

  WELCOME TO SERENITY

  AMERICA’S IDEAL COMMUNITY

  “Ideal,” I mutter. “Yeah, right. Ideal for clones—until they figure out what’s going on and blow this Popsicle stand.”

  “What do you see?” Tori urges. With the three of them in the back of the windowless truck, I’m the only one with a view of the town.

  “Nothing,” I reply. “It’s Happy Valley. What’s to see?”

  The fact is, though, I’m practically blown away by how nice everything is. I never noticed it when I lived here, since I had nothing to compare it to. But now that I’ve lived in the outside world, I can appreciate how flawless this place is. Old County Six is suddenly smooth as glass. And when I turn onto Harmony Street, all the houses look like they were painted yesterday, without a single untrimmed bush or a blade of grass out of place. The basketball hoops stand ramrod-straight, their posts perpendicular to the driveways.

  When I see Hector’s house, I have to fight down an impulse to run in there and apologize to his parents for not looking after him well enough. Then again, Hector got the worst parents of any of us, so they probably don’t even care.

  Next comes my own house, three driveways down. The door is open at least three inches, and I know Mom’s not going to be happy about that. One of her favorite lectures is “We’re not paying to air-condition the entire state of New Mexico . . .” Dad’s going to catch some flak over this.

  I give them a mumbled play-by-play. “There’s your place, Frieden . . . and yours, Torific. You left the light on in your studio in the attic . . . hey, Laska, did I ever tell you your curtains are ugly?”

  “Is there anybody out there?” Tori asks eagerly.

  “No one.”

  That’s when it dawns on me. I haven’t seen a single human being so far. No one watering flowers or pushing a baby carriage or even a hint of movement through a window. At the park, I gaze beyond the Serenity Cup in its Plexiglas case to the kids’ playground. Not a soul.

  I turn to face the others. “There’s nobody here.”

  “They’re all at school or at work,” Eli reasons.

  “You don’t get it,” I persist. “It’s a ghost town—I mean more than the usual level of nothing. And the cars seem to be gone too.”

  We try the school, which should be a busy place this time of day. Silent, dark, and empty. Ditto the general store and restaurant, the town hall, and my dad’s clinic.

  “I was right!” Amber exclaims. “Project Osiris is so evil that our parents couldn’t risk getting caught. When the Purple People Eaters couldn’t capture us, they had to shut down the whole experiment and disappear.”

  “Or,” Eli adds in a worried tone, “this is a trap, and that’s exactly what they want us to think.”

  “If that was true,” Tori reasons, “we’d be surrounded by Purples right now.”

  “Unless they’re hiding somewhere, waiting for us to get out of the truck,” I add nervously. That would be just like our loving families. Home is where the double cross is.

  It’s an anxious moment. We’re all pretty sure there’s nobody around. But if we’re stepping into their trap, that’s a move we can’t take back. In the end, there’s only one way to find out for sure. We have to go to the Plastics Works.

  The plant is on the “far” edge of town. But remember: nothing can be considered very far in this pimple on the hairy butt of the southwest, where an eight-minute walk gets you from one side to the other. I ride the brakes down the Fellowship hill, feeling my stomach begin to clench. The Plastics Works is Purple People Eater territory, and our pool service cover won’t hold up in an area where there are no houses or pools. If we’re going to run into trouble, it’ll be here.

  I stop at the gate we used to use to sneak onto factory property. The two remaining cone trucks are parked on the other side of the fence. No people, purple or otherwise.

  “Try the front entrance,” Eli suggests.

  I hesitate. “What if the whole town is gathered on the steps, arguing over what to do about us?”

  “Then be ready to stomp on the gas and get us out of there,” Tori supplies.

  “Are you kidding? This bucket of bolts couldn’t outrun a tricycle. Now, if we had my Bentley—”

  “We don’t,” Amber says impatiently. “Just do it.”

  If this hunk of junk had a decent muffler, we’d be able to hear our hearts pounding as we round the corner to the main entrance.

  Nothing. No parents. No Purples. No sign of life at all.

  17

  ELI FRIEDEN

  It’s too weird. How come Serenity is deserted?

  Tori’s nervousness bubbles over. “Where is everybody?”

  “You’d prefer a platoon of Purples surrounding the truck?” inquires Malik.

  I think it over. “Just because there’s no one around doesn’t mean the factory’s empty. Remember, Osiris headquarters is in there, and also the desk where they monitor all the security cameras around town.”

  We park the truck behind a tall stand of sagebrush, disconnecting the power and starter wires to turn off the motor. We’re now totally exposed. If this is a trap, we’re done.

  Lead in our feet, we straggle across the road toward the factory entrance. This is uncharted territory. The Plastics Works is off-limits to nonemployees. There are never any holiday parties, open houses, or take-your-kid-to-work days. The one time we did go inside, we scaled the back wall, climbed up on the roof, and entered through the air-conditioning vent.

  But here it is, a glassed-in entrance under the big sign: Serenity Plastics Works. There’s no one at the rec
eption desk. I look down and see a pathetic bundle of feathers lying on the front steps. By its crest and its coloring, I know it’s a mountain blue jay—they’re common in Serenity. Flies buzz around the body, so it’s been dead a while.

  Tori notices it too. “It must have crashed into the glass and broken its neck. Poor thing.”

  “Doesn’t seem very Serenity,” Malik comments. “You know, having to wade through bird guts just to get to their precious factory.”

  Amber makes a face. “Does everything have to be gross with you?”

  “I’m making a point,” he says patiently. “You know this town—you drop a gum wrapper and someone’s got it in a trash can before it even hits the ground. If there are dead birds around the Plastics Works, it takes the happy out of Happy Valley. It means there’s nobody home.”

  I’m wondering how to get inside, yet the minute I step in front of the door, it slides open. We look at each other—this seems too easy. Still, there’s nothing to do but walk right in.

  The acrid smell hits us almost immediately. Smoke—not dense, billowing clouds, but a light gray haze in the air.

  “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” says Amber.

  “Or there was,” Tori amends. “I don’t think anything’s burning now.”

  Malik throws open a massive steel door that leads to the vast plant floor. Tori and I have seen it once before, from a ventilation grate about forty feet up. The point of view is different, yet the reality is the same: no machinery, no raw materials, just a few hundred orange traffic cones in case they have to pretend that this is a real operation and they’re making something here. Besides that, a forklift, a riding lawnmower, a few random pieces of furniture and shelving. That’s it.

  “So this is what an un-factory looks like,” Malik observes.

  “My dad spent every day in this place!” Amber says bitterly. “He worked overtime! He complained about shipping problems, and rush orders that needed filling!”

  The rest of us nod. Even when we know the truth, it’s jarring to see Serenity’s pride and joy laid bare as an empty shell.