Six (3 page)

And to be fair, thought Parker, Jenna
was
kind of annoying.

“I shouldn't have said anything about your accent,” continued Aaron. “I just came over to apologize.”

“Okay. Well, thanks,” said Parker, shrugging.

Aaron looked relieved. He smiled. “So, what was the word they were getting you to say?”

He hesitated for a moment and then decided to give Aaron the benefit of the doubt. “Water?” he asked.

Aaron's smile widened into an unpleasant grin. “Sure,” he replied.

*  *  *  *  *  *

In Parker's mind, the events of the next few seconds felt like they played out in slow motion:

Aaron swinging his right arm out from behind his back.

Parker looking down and seeing the full cup of water in Aaron's hand.

Parker realizing what was about to happen.

Parker also realizing that it was too late to do anything about it.

Parker's eyes following the arc of Aaron's arm as the contents of the cup were flung forward, directly into his face.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Someone screamed.

Parker stood, frozen, his mouth open in shock as the water ran down his face. In front of him, Aaron burst into laughter just as a voice from behind called out.

“Aaron, are you
crazy
?!”

Parker turned and saw Becky running toward them, her face red with what looked like a mixture of concern and fury.

“I was just kidding,” said Aaron, a wide grin still on his face. “It was a joke. No hard feelings, right?” he said, turning to Parker. He gave Parker a playful punch on the arm.

Parker looked down at where the punch had landed and then slowly up to Aaron as his shock began to turn to anger. His hand began to curl up into a fist. In twelve years, he had never once punched anybody but, he thought, if there was going to be a first time . . .

Aaron looked down at Parker's fist and the smile vanished.

“Whoa! Calm down. It was just a joke. Don't get so weird about it.”

Parker's mouth dropped open. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. He had done nothing to this boy. Nothing! Now Aaron had thrown water in his face and
he
had the nerve to call
him
weird.

It was the last straw.

“Weird?” he shouted. Aaron jumped back in surprise. “You think
I'm
the one being weird? What is wrong with you? All I said was ‘water' . . .”

As soon as Parker said the word, Aaron's eyes turned to the cart next to him. In that split second, Parker knew exactly what Aaron was going to do. As Aaron grabbed another cup and swung it in Parker's direction, Parker was already jumping out of the way. He was quick enough to avoid a second soaking but, in his haste, he forgot about the pool of spilt water already at his feet.

Parker's eyes widened in shock as he felt his foot slip out from under him. There was nothing he could do to stop it. With every person in the cafeteria watching, Parker flew up into the air and then, with an enormous thud, he landed on the floor faceup.

This time, nobody laughed. Not even Aaron. There was complete silence. If there was any pain, Parker's body hadn't yet registered it. Too shocked to move, he lay on the floor as water seeped in through his clothes, wishing only that he could close his eyes and make everything disappear.

And then Parker's wrist began to vibrate.

Parker knew exactly why it was happening, and he knew, even before she forced her way through the crowd, that the cause of it was his sister.

Emma was
not
going to see him like this.

The thought sent a jolt of furious determination through him. He jumped up and found himself once again face-to-face with a now nervous-looking Aaron. Maybe it was the expression on Parker's face—thunderous, his jaw clenched tight—or maybe it was the fact that his little prank had suddenly turned more serious than he had expected.

“Hey,” said Aaron, holding his hands up. “I'm sor—”

Parker didn't want to hear it. Before Aaron had a chance to react, Parker rushed forward and slammed into him. Aaron stumbled backward into the crowd that had gathered. He may have fallen, but Parker didn't turn to see. Instead he grabbed his now wet schoolbag by his feet and then, with his wrist still vibrating, Parker ran out of the cafeteria.

As Parker raced the corridors of his school, sweating, frantically searching for somewhere to disappear to, his father—in complete contrast—was sitting utterly still at the desk of his laboratory, his eyes fixed on the equally static page of numbers lying on the desk in front of him.

Where am I going wrong?
he thought, his frustration building.

Dr. Banks squinted, and the stark, sharp black numbers dissolved into a pool of gray haze. When his eyes refocused, the small illogical part of his mind—the part that he relied on only in desperation—was disappointed to find that the numbers had not somehow managed to rearrange themselves into a different conclusion. Everything that Dr. Banks had always loved about numbers—their certainty, their total reliability—was what he hated them for now. No matter how much he wanted it, deep down he knew that there was nothing he could do; the numbers would not be changing, and the rat lying on the counter behind him would not be coming back to life.

“Dr. Banks?”

Lina's voice was hesitant—not because she was worried about how he might react to being interrupted, but because she seemed to have an uncanny ability to understand the way he worked. Though only a year out of graduate school, she was possibly the most competent and intuitive of any assistant that Dr. Banks had ever had. And, though she had been his assistant for only three weeks, he already trusted her completely. It was a good thing, too—there was no way he was going to be able to carry out what he needed to do without being able to confide in her.

Dr. Banks looked up and saw that Lina's eyes were fixed on the rat behind him.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“I just don't know what I'm overlooking,” said Dr. Banks. “It shouldn't be this hard.”

“That's what people have been saying for thirty years,” replied Lina.

“I know,” said Dr. Banks, “but those people didn't have as much to lose as I do.”

Lina didn't say anything. She walked over to the lifeless body of the rat, picked it up carefully, and gently stroked its head.

“Do you want me to get you another?” she asked.

Dr. Banks shook his head. “Maybe later. I can't bring myself to do that again right now.”

Lina nodded. She, like him, hated this part of the job. In the past some of Dr. Banks's colleagues had teased him for being too soft about testing procedures on animals.

A small sacrifice for the greater good,
they'd said.

And, with regard to the majority of the work that Dr. Banks had carried out over the course of his career, this may have been true. Nevertheless—perhaps influenced by his wife and now his daughter—the taking of a life, even a rat's, was not something that had ever sat easily with him. So much so that, as soon as he had enough authority to demand it, Dr. Banks had refused to work with any more living animals. This, for the first time in years, was the exception—and only because he had truly believed that he would not be doing any killing. Unfortunately, it turned out that his perception of his own ability had been misguided.

Lina gently placed the rat into a small white plastic box and then turned to face Dr. Banks.

“I came in to let you know that the shipments go out this afternoon. I'm going to go to the terminal in about an hour.”

“What did you tell them?” asked Dr. Banks.

“Just that you're very particular about who handles your work and you want me to ensure it gets sent fine. They all think that everybody who works in this department is odd anyway, so nobody questioned it.”

Dr. Banks shrugged. “Better odd than suspicious, I suppose. Good work.”

He leaned down, reached into the open briefcase at his feet, and pulled out a small black memory stick. As Lina looked, he opened the long desk drawer and pulled out a small bottle of Wite-Out. Then, on the body of the memory stick, he began to carefully brush a simple outline of a diamond with a smiley face inside it. When he had finished, he replaced the lid of the Wite-Out bottle and blew on the glistening white lines.

“It'll need a bit longer to dry,” he said as he carefully handed the stick to Lina.

“Is it . . .” Lina paused, as if unsure whether to finish the question.

“Yes?”

“Is it the letter you told me about?”

“Yes,” replied Dr. Banks. He bit his lip. “But also, I asked Parker and Emma to write letters too.”

“They know?” asked Lina.

“No, they don't know. I told them it was for something else.”

Lina nodded. “So I just put it with the others?” she asked. She was looking at the memory stick.

“Yes. But it really shouldn't arouse any suspicion, even if they were to look at its contents—I disguised it all well enough.” He gave a small laugh. “I can't tell you how long it took—Emma got a bit carried away.”

“You should have asked me—you have enough to think about. I can do it next time, if you'd like.”

Dr. Banks considered the offer for a moment.

“It's just that . . . ,” he began.

Lina raised her hand to stop him. “No need to explain. I completely understand. I'm sorry—forget I mentioned it.”

Dr. Banks pursed his lips in a tight smile. “Don't apologize, Lina. Perhaps I'm being too hasty—it
would
be helpful.”

“All you have to do is ask,” replied Lina.

“I'll have to show you the code, but it's very simple.”

“I'm sure I can pick it up.”

“I have no doubt,” said Dr. Banks. “And you . . . well, you wouldn't say anything, not to anybody?”

“Of course not.”

There was a pause, and Lina, perhaps sensing it was time for her to leave, picked up the plastic box containing the dead rat and crossed the room without another word. She was about to turn the handle of the door when Dr. Banks interrupted her.

“Is it wrong to do this?” he asked.

Lina stopped and turned to face him. She shook her head. “No. I don't think so.”

“If Parker and Emma knew, they'd never forgive me.”

“They would if they knew why you were doing it.”

Dr. Banks gave Lina a grateful smile, then turned his attention back to the page of numbers.

He hoped she was right.

With the door closed, the technology storeroom—the room that Parker had decided to hide in—was almost pitch-black but for a tiny sliver of light sneaking its way in through a thin vent high up on the wall. Parker sat on the worn carpet-tiled floor with his back against the far wall and his knees pulled up to his chest. He was well hidden—tucked in behind a wooden cart that was missing a wheel and surrounded by crates overflowing with tangled cables and broken keyboards. Even if somebody were to walk in, which seemed unlikely given how the room seemed only to serve as a dumping ground for defective equipment, they wouldn't have seen him. It would have been the perfect place for Parker to forget about the outside world—if only for a moment—had it not been for the persistent vibration in his left arm.

Effie could be so annoying.

Parker looked down at the two tiny dots of orange light on either side of his wrist. This was Effie—rather, E. F. E., “Ears for Emma,” a device his father had invented not long after Emma was diagnosed as being deaf. Effie translated electrical impulses created by thoughts into audible speech for Parker and his parents to hear through an implanted microphone, and into subtitles that Emma could read using specially designed glasses.

In short, Effie was much like a cell phone, only that it transmitted thoughts instead of voices.

The light on the left of Parker's wrist was the link to his father, the one on the right—the one that had been flashing almost continuously since he'd run out of the cafeteria—the link to Emma. There had once been another light in the center of the two, but that had turned off the day his mother flew out of range on her business trip. She had been due to return four days later, but just a few hours before she should have been boarding her flight, they had received the call about her accident. Her light had never come back on.

*  *  *  *  *  *

As far as Parker was aware, only three people in the world now knew about Effie. His parents had asked him and Emma to keep it a secret and, though he had to admit that there'd been a couple of times he'd considered telling his friends, in all it really hadn't been too difficult. Both Parker and his sister enjoyed what they liked to think of as their secret superpower, even though they rarely used it for anything very important. (Notable exception: the time Parker saved his sister's life by warning her about a speeding car. He liked to remind Emma of that.) It also helped that nobody had ever asked them any awkward questions about it. This was because in daylight Effie's lights looked like nothing more than tiny marks on the skin, and in darkness she and Parker wore watches or long sleeves to hide the faint glow. Nevertheless, over the four years that they had been using it, both Parker and Emma had questioned their father about the reasons for keeping his invention a secret. After all, if Effie could allow Emma to communicate with her family and vice versa, then surely it could help other families in their same situation.

Every time they had brought it up, however, Parker's father said the same thing: that there were people in the world who would always find a way to turn an invention for good into one for evil. Until he could make sure Effie could be used only for what he intended it to be used for, it was to remain a secret. Before their mother died, his father had been working on doing just this. After she died, he had never discussed working on it again. For the time being at least, Effie was their family secret.