Totally Toxic (17 page)

When she was gone, I finished the popcorn and watched about thirty-eight more videos, everything from hip-hop to heavy metal. Evidently, Mom was still really upset about her rally bombing, because normally she would have told me to change the channel somewhere around the third video. (Mom was not a fan of music videos.)

I brought the empty popcorn bowl into the kitchen and found her seated at the table, going over the original notes she'd made about the factory. She was so intent on her task that she didn't even notice me standing there.

I sat down across from her and waited. The front page of the newspaper was on the table; there was a small blurb about the planned protest rally, but the big news was that the Slink, the
diamond thief who'd been plaguing Sweetbriar for weeks, had struck again the night before.

I read the article absently until Mom noticed I was there. When she looked up at me, she seemed defeated, which was not something I was used to. My mom was not the sort to give up.

“You did see it, didn't you, Zoe?” she asked. “You saw the pipe.”

“I saw it.”

“So it
was
there?”

“It was definitely there.”

“I didn't imagine it? The sludge, the foam…”

“Nope. You didn't imagine it,” I said, thinking of the awful soapy taste I'd had in my mouth after I'd landed in the river.

Frustrated, Mom ran her hands through her hair. “So what happened to it? Where did it go?”

I shrugged. “Mitchell must have had it removed somehow.”

“I'm going to get to the bottom of this!” Mom promised.

She bent back over her notes. I decided I might as well get a jump on my homework for the week, so I went upstairs to my room and turned on my computer.

I was greeted with an instant message from Josh.

I flopped back in my chair and dragged my hand through my hair. I couldn't let him go there alone! Who knew what Mitchell might do to a kid like Josh if he caught him snooping around? And what about those two bodybuilding, sunglasses-wearing henchmen of his? I was pretty certain he didn't keep them around for their stimulating conversation. Mitchell had deliberately lied about how he disposed of his hazardous waste. Who knew how far he'd go to keep his secret? I got up from the computer, closed the door of my room, and wrote a note to my parents:

I didn't think my folks would check on me, but I figured they'd freak if they did and found my room empty. Of course, they'd freak even worse if they found the note and believed I was out walking after dark alone, but I didn't have a lot of options at the moment.

I opened the closet and grabbed my superbackpack with my supersuit safely tucked inside. I would have liked to put it on in the privacy of my bedroom, but I couldn't risk running into Josh dressed like a superhero. I could find a place to change at the factory if necessary.

Two seconds later, I was standing on the windowsill with my backpack on my shoulder, looking out over the dusky yard.

“You're superpowered, Zoe,” I whispered to myself. “This would only be a dangerous and unbelievably stupid thing to do if you were just a regular kid.”

Confident of my powers, I sprang off the sill—the superjump took me across the lawn, over the fence that separated my backyard from Howie's, and onto the sidewalk of Brandon Street. From Brandon it was a straight shot to Route 17, which would take me directly to the factory.

“Here goes nothin'.” I took off at top speed. Luckily, no one was out walking on Brandon Street or I'd have been busted big-time!

Boy, did it feel good to run. I'd been struggling so long and hard to keep from using my powers that the sheer relief of letting them take over was amazing. I was born to run like that. My spirit soared as my legs churned. And my mind seemed to be working just as quickly. With every mile I covered, my thoughts about the factory became clearer. All the random hunches and feelings I'd been having seemed to
come together into the shape of something logical. By the time I reached the corner of Brandon and Route 17 (in roughly the blink of an eye), I'd come up with a solid theory about George Mitchell and that oh-so-convenient truckload of cardboard.

theory made perfect sense, I decided, skidding around the corner and kicking up chunks of asphalt. My feet were buzzing, and my hair was whipping out behind me so wildly it made me wish I'd thought to stick a brush in my backpack.

Route 17 was a woodsy, winding access road that led out of town. Nobody used it much, so I didn't think I'd have to worry about getting caught being super… until I saw Josh.

He was way up ahead of me, riding his bike. I could see the red reflectors on his pedals flashing as he pumped them.

If I kept running, I'd blow past him, and even though I was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to tell it was me, I couldn't risk letting him find out there was someone or something bolting around Sweetbriar at warp speed.

I was going too fast to stop short, so I did the next best thing. Still running, I let my knees go soft, then sprang off the pavement like an Olympic hurdler. The jump was amazing—I rose at least
fifty feet in the air and covered a distance of a hundred yards. If Josh sensed anything in the sky above him, he probably thought it was a bird. Or a plane. Hey, that sounded kind of familiar….

I touched down on the dark street, taking a few scrambling steps to come to a complete stop. Then I turned and waited for Josh to catch up. It was only a few seconds before he reached me.

“Hey, Josh!”

He hit his brakes and came screeching to a stop, then looked over his shoulder. “Zoe, is that you?”

“Yep, it's me.”

I noticed that he was looking at me a little strangely. Then I realized that my hair must have looked like a crazy, wild explosion. I reached up to smooth it.

“New hairstyle, huh?”

“Urn…”

He smiled. “Looks great!”

“Oh.” I felt my superpowered knees turn to ice cream. “Thanks.”

“So … what are you doing here?”

“Well, uh… well, see… I was coming to meet you at the factory. But, um, one of the tires on my bike blew out, so I had to leave it.” I motioned over his shoulder into the distance. “Didn't you see it back there on the side of the road?” Before he could answer, I barreled on. “I guess you were going too fast to notice it. Anyway, I was going to walk the rest of the way, but now that you're here, maybe you can give me a ride on the handlebars?”

Josh frowned, thinking. I knew as well as he did that riding with someone on your handlebars was stupid and dangerous. What he didn't know was that his passenger was pretty much indestructible. I would never have suggested it otherwise.

“Okay,” he said at last. “But only because it would be more dangerous to leave you out here stranded on Route Seventeen in the dark by yourself.”

“Right.”

I hooked my backpack onto the back of his bike (I was grateful that he didn't ask what was in it; I guess he was too worried about the whole handlebar-riding thing), then settled myself as best I could on the handlebars.

As we rode to the factory, I knew my hair was blowing into Josh's face and I could feel his breath puffing in my ear as he pedaled, and I couldn't help sighing. After all, if my bike really
had
blown a tire, and Josh
had
come along to rescue me, it would have been very romantic, in a fairy-tale sort of way.

When we reached the factory, I sprang off the handlebars and hurried to the gate while Josh was busy parking his bike out of sight. I took hold of the padlock, closed my hand around it, and with only the slightest effort, crushed it into a fistful of metal rubble.

“Look at this!” I said, quickly brushing the metallic powder from my hands. “No lock.”

“Lucky for us,” said Josh, joining me at the gate. He handed me my backpack and we slipped inside, keeping to the shadows of trees as we made our way across the grounds toward the factory.

“Listen,” I said as we walked. “I have a theory. About Mitchell and everything.”

“Yeah?” Josh slid me an interested glance. “What is it?”

“That truck we saw today—it was a decoy! I think Mitchell must have arranged for a truck full of recyclable cardboard to just happen to drive by.”

Josh considered the idea. “Now that you mention it, that
Charlie guy seemed a little freaked out. And the stuff he said about the factory being environmentally conscious sounded pretty stiff.”

“Like someone told him what to say,” I said, glad that Josh saw the logic of my theory. “Right?”

“Exactly like that,” he agreed. “It sure made Mitchell look good in front of the protesters.”

“Yep. And now that Mitchell has had to remove the waste pipe, he's got to have a different way to get the waste to the river. You know, like a plan B.”

“I was thinking that, too,” said Josh. “That's what I was coming here to find.” He gave me a shrug. “But that was as far as I got. I didn't know what I was looking for, I just sort of hoped I'd know it when I saw it.”

That was one of the things I liked about Josh. He wasn't afraid to admit he was stumped. Most of the boys in our grade went around pretending they knew everything!

“Well, I think we should start by checking out the trucks,” I suggested. “Now that the people in town think the trucks are used to transport cardboard, Mitchell has a good cover. He can load them up with toxic junk and people won't even bother to question him.”

“You're probably right!” Josh stopped walking and turned to give me a huge smile. “You're really smart, Zoe.”

Ice cream knees again. I grinned. “Thank you.”

We hurried toward the factory, which was completely dark. Not a glimmer of light in the whole building. Even though I knew the factory was closed for the night, it still felt kind of creepy.

“C'mon,” said Josh. “Let's check the loading dock.”

He led me around back, and when we reached the place
where the company trucks and vans pulled up to be loaded and unloaded, we both gasped.

This
part of the factory was lit up like a football stadium! And even though it was after hours, the loading dock was definitely open for business, five men were hustling back and forth, shouting instructions to one another. But they weren't wearing Mitchell Enterprises work shirts like Charlie had been; these men were decked out in rubbery-looking hooded jumpsuits, gloves, and protective goggles. The whole scene was really creepy.