The Twin Powers (2 page)

Stay in the now, Tom,
thought Hercules.

That's what Grandpa says when he wants total attention. Was Hercules making fun of me or giving me advice?

I heard a low hum, like air conditioning or a distant airplane, and I could feel waves banging against me like a dry surf. Hercules was building a little tornado to knock me down.

If he can do it, so can I,
I thought.

You think?

I turned off every other thought in my head until all my energy was focused on churning the air around me, beating it with propeller blades, shaping it into a funnel.

Then I sent the tornado right at Hercules.

It took so much effort that I stopped breathing and blacked out for an instant. When I came to, I was swaying on my feet and Hercules was flying backwards into the drama table. Those actors shrieked as their trays flew. They were pelted with airborne food. There was screaming and cheering throughout the cafeteria, teachers bellowing for the nurse, kids standing on tables.

Hercules stood up slowly. He was smiling. One of his bright green eyes winked.

He thought,
As Mark Twain said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
He turned and marched out of the cafeteria.

I was trembling so hard that Alessa and Britzky had to hold my arms to keep me from collapsing. But I felt great.

I said what we all knew. “It's finally happening. They're back.”

TOM

NEARMONT, N.J.

2012

 

I
WAS
still beat from the battle with Hercules when I dragged myself out to the backyard garden that evening. I waited a long time for the clouds to move and the double star to double-blink, our signal. I've talked to Eddie like this since back when I thought he was imaginary. Eddie transmitted first.

'Sup, bro?

You have to talk like that?

Like what?

After he'd visited my planet, Eddie had started trying to sound like a twenty-first-century rapper instead of the 1958 Boy Scout that he is. Sometimes it bugged me.

Never mind. They're back, Eddie. One of them showed up at school today.

What happened?

We had a fight.

You okay?

Yeah. It'll be on YouTube.

YouTube hasn't been invented here yet.

Right. Sorry.

What was the fight about, Tom?

It was a test of my powers.

What powers?

I'm starting to find out, Eddie. You're supposed to be working on yours.

I know. Ronnie and I talk about it all the time.

So what have you done?

Oh, man, there's so much going on, with Boy Scouts, basketball—we won conference—now baseball practice . . .

We have to do something, Eddie. Dad's still a prisoner and we haven't done squat.

I know. But like what?

We're half alien, right? We're supposed to have special powers.

But what are they, Tommy?

He said we have to use imagination.

Who said?

The alien. Eddie, are you listening?

How do you use imagination?

Imagine what you want to happen until it happens.

What does that mean, Tommy?

Everything has to be spelled out for Eddie.

The way I figure it, Eddie, we've got to imagine what we want to happen, not what we think will happen or what we're afraid will happen.

That's a lot of stuff to think about.

I lost it then. Sometimes it's really hard to get through to my brother.
I gotta go.

No, Tommy, wait . . .

Mom just came outside.

Okey-doke. See you later, alligator.

I had lied about my stepmom coming outside. As usual, she was away, traveling for her job. I just didn't want to talk to Eddie anymore. He's my twin and I love him, but sometimes he can be such a dumb jock that it makes my teeth hurt.

EDDIE

NEARMONT, N.J.

1958

 

A
T
baseball practice, the fellas were talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Last season, most of us had rooted for either the Dodgers or the Giants, but then both teams had walked out on us, moving to California. We were ticked off. How could we live in New Jersey and root for the Los Angeles Dodgers or the San Francisco Giants?

I'm team captain, so I had to come up with a way to get my players' minds back on
our
games. I said, “Let's root for the New York Yankees because they stayed!”

There were grumbles and boos, but I could tell that they would at least think about it. I reminded them that the Yankees were a great team
—
they had Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford
—
which seemed like a pretty smart thing to say. I thought it was the kind of thing Tom would have come up with. I know that Tom is smarter than me, and it's okay. I love my brother even though I can tell that sometimes he gets annoyed with me for not being smarter than I am. That hurts. It isn't as though I ever point out that Tom can barely catch a ball.

The coach was late, so I divided the team for batting and fielding practice. “Enough about the Dodgers and Giants, fellas. The only team that really matters is the Nearmont Raiders.”

I got a cheer out of that. “Raiders rule!” The players trotted out to the field or lined up behind the plate.

When the coach finally showed up, he had a guy with him. Coach yelled, “Listen up, Raiders. I want you to meet Hercules.”

Somebody laughed and shouted, “Can he hold up the world?” because we were studying mythology in English class. But we all shut up when we got a good look at him. He was weird
—
short and skinny, with greasy black hair that stood up. Even though it was a chilly spring day, Hercules wore a sleeveless undershirt, gym shorts, and rubber shower sandals. And aviator shades. Coach would never let any of us come to practice like that. What was special about this guy? What position did he play?

Hercules walked right up to me. I didn't think I'd ever seen him before but there was something familiar about his face. He peeked over the tops of his shades. His bright green eyes gave me a chill. Alien eyes.

“The great Eddie Tudor, Captain All-Sports,” said Hercules in a sarcastic voice that also seemed familiar. He picked up a bat and ball and pointed to shortstop, my regular position when I wasn't pitching. “Let's see what you got.”

I didn't like being ordered around like that. I looked at Coach. He grinned and nodded. He looked as if he was in some kind of a trance. An alien could do that. Tom had said they were back.

I punched my glove and trotted to short. This was my territory. I felt sure of myself here.

Hercules twirled the bat overhead, threw the ball so far up into the air that it disappeared for a moment, then slapped an easy grounder right at me.
Too easy,
I thought as I sidestepped into its path. Just as the ball was about to skip into my glove, it popped straight up in the air, then blooped over my head into center field.

“Bad bounce, Eddie,” said Hercules in a fake-friendly voice. “Try this.”

The next grounder was a sharp grass-cutter to my left, the kind of hit I usually gobbled up. I moved over quickly and stretched out my arm so my glove would block the ball. Two inches from my glove, the ball snaked left and into the outfield.

“Keep your eye on the ball,” said Hercules.

That frosted me but I didn't let it show.

The third hit off Hercules's bat was a line drive right at me. I braced myself. When the ball smacked into my glove, I clapped my right hand over it. But once in my glove, the ball picked up speed and power. It drove me backwards. I lost my balance and fell on my can.

Hercules laughed. So did the coach and the team. I kept a poker face.
Never let them know they got to you.

Then I heard the high voice of my little sidekick, Ronnie, from the bleachers. “You caught it, Eddie
—
that's all that counts.”

I gave him a little nod. Ronnie was a good guy, always trying to encourage me. We mostly talked about the past now. Waiting for the aliens to return had made us buggy. At least I had my teams. Ronnie didn't seem to have a life. I was getting tired of Ronnie's shaggy blond hair flapping next to me, his face always so serious.
He'll really be excited when I tell him the aliens are back,
I thought.

I hopped up off the ground and fired the ball right at Hercules's head.
Let's see what
you
got.

Hercules didn't budge. Just before the ball smashed into his puss, he reached out and plucked it from the air like an apple off a tree. He tossed it back to me. I grabbed at it as if it might fly off again, but it was just a regular easy toss. Hercules grinned. He had gotten to me.

“I hear you think you're a pitcher, Captain Eddie,” he said. He strutted to home plate.

I marched out to the mound.
Give him some heat, then the curve.
I didn't bother to warm up, just reared back and fired the fastball.

Hercules slammed it so far, it would have been a home run in Yankee Stadium. The team cheered.

“Is that your best pitch?” said Hercules. “Don't you have any imagination?”

Imagination?
I thought.

You heard me.

It was as if Hercules had picked the question right out of my mind. Then he sent another message back.
As Mark Twain said, “Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”

I remembered that Tom had told me to use my imagination. I was beginning to understand what he'd meant.

I waved Hercules back into the batter's box. Then I reared back as if I were going to throw another fastball, but I switched my grip in mid-wind-up and tossed the curve. Just as the pitch reached Hercules, I imagined that it dropped suddenly and spun left. I concentrated as hard as I could, focusing all my energy on the drop and the spin.

Hercules swung and missed so hard that he wrapped himself into a pretzel.

The team cheered me this time. Ronnie let loose his shrill whistle.

Hercules straightened himself out and nodded.
Good start, Eddie. Now practice hard. Next time, it won't be practice.

He marched off the field
.

RONNIE

NEARMONT, N.J.

1958

 

I
HAD
to grip the grandstand seat to keep myself from running out to Eddie on the mound. The waiting was over. No question. The aliens were back! I hoped Eddie understood that. He was the greatest guy in the world, but sometimes it took him a little while to figure things out.

When practice was over, I hung around the locker-room door waiting for Eddie. He was surrounded by his teammates, who were slapping his back and saying things like “Way to go, Cap'n Eddie.” I trailed them by a few feet, feeling like a fifth wheel. Eddie didn't seem to want me around so much nowadays. Eddie and his grandpa had given me a place to stay so I wasn't homeless anymore, but I was wondering if it was time to hit the road again.

Finally, Eddie was alone.

“He's one of them, Ronnie,” he whispered.

“I think so too.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“To get you working on your powers, Eddie.”

“Why would they want that? They're our enemies.”

“Not all of them. Not your dad. Or Grandpa.”

Eddie stopped. He screwed up his face and cocked his head the way he does when he's thinking hard. “You're right. You think Dad could have sent Hercules?”

“Maybe.” I didn't really think so—Dad was Dr. Traum's prisoner—but I wanted to keep the conversation going since Eddie and I hadn't been talking much lately. “It was like he was pushing you to be better, Eddie. The way a coach does. Or a good teacher.”

Eddie nodded. “First thing, I thought Coach brought him to light a fire under me for the season. But those green eyes. And he looked familiar.”

“Like Dr. Traum,” I said.

“That's it!” Eddie whacked my shoulder. It hurt but it felt good, as if we were a team again.

We looked at each other and shivered. Dr. Traum scared us. He had suddenly appeared in our school six months ago and taken over the jobs of both the football coach and the school psychologist. Very unusual. Later we found out that at the same time, he'd showed up at Tom's school on EarthOne and taken over the jobs of guidance counselor and music teacher. Aliens could be in two places at the same time. Grandpa said Dr. Traum was using those green eyes to transmit back to the alien planet, Homeplace.

In those days, Dr. Traum had been hunting Tom and Eddie's dad, John Canty. Mr. Canty was the leader of the alien underground, trying to help human beings save their planets—either from self-destruction or, we'd found out later, from the aliens led by Dr. Traum.

Dr. Traum had used Tom and Eddie as bait to find their dad. It had worked. Mr. Canty gave himself up so Tom and Eddie and the rest of us could go free.

After Tom and Eddie's dad was captured, Dr. Traum disappeared from both schools. So why would Dr. Traum send someone down to us now? What was he plotting?

Everything was a mess.

When the twins had switched identities the year before, Eddie slipping to EarthOne in the year 2011 and Tom slipping to my planet, EarthTwo, in the year 1957, I'd had no idea what was going on. All I knew was what I was told—the best friend I knew as Eddie Tudor had hit his head in a fall at Scout camp and couldn't remember anything. He needed me to be like his guide dog in school. I liked that
—
I liked doing something for Eddie for a change. I didn't always like the way that Eddie acted, though. I'd figured it was because of the accident, but it was because Eddie was really Tom pretending to be Eddie! It's confusing.