Edison’s Alley (11 page)

“I could use this,” Vince said, “to save the puppies…”

The woman was so moved, she gave it to him for free.

N
ick went to school extra early the next day. He told himself it wasn’t for any particular reason, but if he had used the feeling recorder it
would have said, in his own voice, that his reason was very particular indeed.

There was no one he could consult about his predicament. Sure, he could talk to his friends, but they didn’t have any more information than he did. Talking to his father last night had
made it clear that Nick couldn’t share the truth with him. He needed an outside party. Someone kindly and wise, and above all, trustworthy.

So Nick went to school early to talk to Ms. Planck, because Mitch was right—she did know things. But more than that, her advice was always like comfort food.

He found her in the cafeteria, lining up cinnamon buns and croissants on the counter. There were no other cafeteria workers present, as none would ever arrive at such an ungodly hour.

“You’re an early bird today, Nick,” she said when she saw him. “Got a worm to catch?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he told her. “Thought I’d get a jump on the day.” He dug his hands into the carton of cellophane-wrapped pastries and helped line them
up.

Once the pastries were out, Ms. Planck turned to the hot items. She put sausages on an industrial-size grill, poured prescrambled egg mix into a frying pan the size of a hubcap, and started
cutting up fruit. As he watched her, Nick marveled. She seemed like more than a cafeteria worker. The way she juggled all the workstations, she was more like an artist. No—a scientist!
Because there truly was a science to what she did.

Outside, the morning began to brighten. The last traces of the aurora faded from the sky. There was still at least half an hour before anyone else would show up, so Nick had plenty of time to
talk. He didn’t know how to broach the subject…but just standing there watching her work and saying nothing was getting awkward, so he went for it.

“What would you say if I told you a secret society was after me, and my life might be in danger?”

She laughed. “I would say you’ve been watching too much TV.” Then she stopped for a moment, considered, and said, “Does this have anything to do with that garage sale of
yours?”

Nick snapped his eyes to hers. “How did you know about that?”

“You told me, remember? A few days before that awful business with the asteroid.”

“Oh, right.” He cleared his throat. “Well, the thing is, all that stuff from the garage sale…it was a little more important than I let on.”

Ms. Planck heaved a watermelon onto the counter. “How so?”

“It belonged to someone.”

Out of nowhere she produced a big, shiny cleaver. “Belonged to whom?”

“Nikola Tesla.”

In one skilled move, Ms. Planck slammed the cleaver down, splitting the melon in two. “Tesla? That maniac?”

“He was a genius.”

Ms. Planck hacked at the watermelon halves, quartering them. “His experiments melted the town’s generator. Colorado Springs was dark for days.”

“Accidents happen,” Nick said—but the thought didn’t sit well with him. The man who had designed the machine in his attic was precise. He did not leave things to chance.
He was not accident-prone.

Or
was
he?

“Anyway,” Nick said, “I need to get back some of the objects I sold, and my friends seem to think you could help. And I guess I do, too. I mean, you know a lot about what goes
on in town.”

Ms. Planck continued to cut the melon until it was in serving-size pieces. “That’s true. And I belong to an antiquing meet-up group. Its members are always going to garage sales.
I’ll bet some of your missing items might be with them.” She looked at him. “You mentioned a secret society…Do you think someone else is after those objects?” she
asked. “Do you think they might have followed you here?”

Nick glanced over his shoulder reflexively, and then felt silly about it. “No one followed me,” he said. “No one knows I’m here.”

“Good,” she said. “Better safe than sorry.” Then she took a step toward Nick, melon juice dripping from the blade of her cleaver. “Why don’t you make me a
list of all the items you’re missing,” she said with a warm smile, “and I’ll see if I can help you track them down.”

That sounded like a good idea, so Nick reached into his backpack for pen and paper.

In moments of extreme stress, the mind can do very strange things. Such was the case when Nick began his list for Ms. Planck.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his notebook and set it on the counter. As he fished through his backpack for a pen, the edge of the paper, which was too close to the flame under the skillet
of eggs, caught fire. Nick pulled it away, but he only succeeded in moving the burning paper onto the grill, where sausages were sizzling in their own grease. The grease ignited, and flames leaped
toward the stainless-steel vent hood.

And suddenly Nick was somewhere else.

In an instant he was back in Tampa. Almost four months ago. The fire! His mother! It was happening all over again. He knew he was still in the cafeteria kitchen with Ms. Planck, but that
didn’t erase the feeling of absolute dread inside him. The flames were all around them now, on every wall, every surface.

He grabbed Ms. Planck with adrenaline-pumped strength. “We have to get out of here!” He pulled her so hard that the cleaver fell from her hand and embedded itself in the linoleum
floor. “Hurry! While there’s still time!”

But Ms. Planck pulled herself free and walked back into the flames.

“No!” Nick shouted. What was she doing? He could save her! He
had
to save her! It couldn’t happen again!

She went down on her knees, apparently overcome by the smoke, and Nick found himself frozen, unable to do anything but watch…

…as she pulled a small fire extinguisher from a low cabinet, aimed it at the grill, and put out the grease fire with a single blast from the nozzle.

“Well,” she said, “so much for the sausages.”

All at once Nick realized that the flames that had seemed so huge, so all-consuming, were in his mind; they were really confined to just a corner of the grill. The smoke was already
gone—there hadn’t even been enough to set off an alarm. Still his heightened sense of terror remained.

“Now then,” said Ms. Planck, “how about that list?”

Nick found he could barely breathe. He craved fresh air. He needed to clear his thoughts, because, although the fire might be out in the kitchen, it still raged in his brain.

“I gotta go.” He turned and ran, almost tripping on the cleaver on his way out.

Nick ate lunch from the hallway vending machine that day. He did not want to return to the cafeteria and be reminded of the feeling he’d had that morning. Not so much the
panic as the vulnerability.

He had kept his head in much worse situations. Even when Vince dropped dead in Beverly Webb’s foyer, Nick had managed to stay relatively calm and knew what he had to do. But this morning
had revealed a massive chink in his emotional armor—and if he was prone to irrational fear, there was a chance he could freak at the absolute wrong moment. All could be lost.

He tried not to dwell on it. School was, for once, a welcome distraction. He kept his mind on his schoolwork and his teachers’ lessons. In history class, he inadvertently glanced over at
Caitlin, who offered him a slim, possibly apologetic grin. It was the same grin she’d been offering him for days.

He wasn’t sure what it meant. He doubted she even knew. It was awkward, and Nick didn’t have the time or patience for awkward anymore. That would change when…well, it would
change when it would change. He couldn’t spend his time worrying about that now. Not when he had so much more on his mind.

Thoughts of his mom, and the fire, and the life he had lost before he moved to Colorado peeked around every unguarded corner of his brain. They threatened to overwhelm him, but by last period he
had managed to smother the fire and regain, if not peace, then at least stability.

The effort had exhausted him, but his day was still not over. After school he went to Mitch’s house, because they had to track down a phone number for the harpist.

Mitch’s little sister opened the door, and when she saw him, she said, “You’re the one who gave my brother the toy that said funny things. It’s broken now.”

“I know,” said Nick. “Can I come in?”

She seriously considered the request, then chose to allow him entry.

This was the first time Nick had been in Mitch’s house. It looked normal on the surface, but the walls seemed to breathe the absence of Mitch’s father. Or maybe that was just
Nick’s imagination.

Mitch’s room was a pigsty—and Nick sensed it was a pretty accurate reflection of Mitch’s mental space as well. He hadn’t known Mitch before Mr. Murló went to
prison, and maybe his friend was a slob before all that, but Nick sensed that this current state of disarray was a direct result of the state of his family. It was as if Mitch’s life had spun
into a tornado that left its debris scattered around his room.

“I got it!” Mitch said, almost camouflaged within the mess. He waved a piece of paper at Nick. “I called the coffeehouse where the harp lady is performing—I told them I
was taking harp lessons and lost her number.”

“And they gave it to you?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t believe it, ’cause I’m, like, the worst liar in the world.”

“Did you call her?”

He handed Nick the slip of paper. “I figured I’d leave that to you.”

But Nick put the phone on speaker—after all, Mitch had tracked down her number; he shouldn’t be shut out of the call.

“Hello, Ms.…Devereaux?” Nick read the name off the flyer, certain he had mispronounced it.

“Speaking,” the woman said.

“Uh…I had a garage sale a few weeks back?” he said, his voice unintentionally questioning. “You bought a harp?”

“Ah! You’ll be wanting it back, I imagine,” she said immediately. She didn’t seem surprised or concerned, which both surprised and concerned Nick.

“Can we come by in the morning?” Mitch blurted out. “To talk about it?”

She instantly agreed. Nine o’clock sharp. After they hung up, Nick turned to Mitch. “Did that seem weird to you?”

“Compared to what?” Mitch asked. He had a point; any yardstick they had for measuring weirdness had been pulverized into sawdust over the past few weeks. Nick could only hope that
whatever awaited him tomorrow would be less bruising than his encounter with the weightless guy.

In the meantime he looked forward to getting home so he could just hurl himself onto the living room sofa and make the world go away for a while.

Unfortunately, the world had staked a claim in Nick’s living room today.

When he opened the door, his father was sitting on the couch. And sitting across from him was none other than Beverly Webb.

The situation was crystal clear to Nick. Her son, having recovered from his pizza issues, had identified him, and she and his father were waiting to ambush him with an accusation of breaking and
entering.

His first instinct was to shout
It wasn’t me!
His second instinct was to turn and run. But instead he simply held his tongue and waited for the ax to come down.

“Nick,” his father said sternly.

“Uh…yeah?”

“As you can see, Beverly’s here. With Seth…”

Nick prepared himself for the worst. But then his father said:

“Seth’s helping Danny with his fielding.”

Nick took a deep breath and released it. “Fielding,” he said. “Right.”

Beverly looked at him, all warmth and understanding. “Nick, I want you to know there are no hard feelings about the other day.”

“Thanks,” said Nick, taking another deep breath. “So…where’s Seth now?”

“Out back, with your brother,” his father said. “Beverly and Seth will be staying for dinner. And before you say anything—it was my idea. They had a break-in recently, so
I thought it best if they spent the evening with friends.”

“Wow,” said Nick, not sure how convincing he sounded. “Did they take anything?”

Beverly shook her head. “No—we came home and that scared them away. But Seth got a good look at one of them. Big guy. Scary.”

“Probably just some pathetic lowlifes,” Nick’s father offered. “I’m sure they won’t come back.”

His father had called in an order of Chinese, since pizza was currently out of the question. Nick imagined how the dinner scene might go with Seth sitting at the table with him, then erased the
scene from his mind.

“You know what? I have lots of homework,” he said. “I think I’ll skip dinner tonight.”

His father started to protest, but Beverly stopped him. “It’s okay, Wayne, really.” The fact that she thought Nick was just being rude allowed him to actually
be
rude,
so he brushed past her without saying good-bye and went into the kitchen to get a drink. On the way, he inconspicuously grabbed off the hallway wall the one family photo saved from the fire, and he
slipped it beneath his jacket—so that Seth had no chance of seeing Nick’s face.

Had Seth been more observant, he might have recognized this house as the one where he had bought the stain remover—and he might have remembered that the kid who sold it to him had just
broken into his home. But it seemed that Nick had lucked out, and as long as he stayed out of Seth’s line of sight, he figured he was safe.