The Twin Powers (10 page)

Maybe the federal agents would want to stop the aliens from destroying both Earths too, if they knew about the Earths. Wasn't that a good thing? Maybe we should be cooperating with them.

I'm so hungry.

Stay strong, Lessi.

I remembered another tip from the No-Diet Workshop.
Think of the food you want most, imagine covering it with something horrible, and you will be free of all craving.

I imagined double-cheese pepperoni pizza.

I imagined Buddy peeing, then pooping, on it.

My hunger disappeared. I felt as if I had just had a huge meal and felt sick.

It worked!

The door opened and Agent Mathison walked in. She was smiling. “How about something to eat, Alessa?”

The hunger whooshed back.

“Double-cheese pizza with pepperoni?” I said. The words just slid out, like pizza out of an oven.

“Whatever you'd like. After you answer a couple of questions.”

I tried to bring back the picture of the poopy pepperoni. It wasn't working.

“We need to find Tom and we need to find him fast,” said Agent Mathison. Her face was hard again. “Millions of lives are at stake. Do you want to be responsible for millions of lives?”

I shook my head.

“Didn't think so. When was the last time you saw Tom?”

“On TV?”

Agent Mathison sat backwards on one of the chairs and tilted it toward me. As her face came closer and closer, it looked more and more like a hatchet. “Last chance, Alessa. When was the last time you saw Tom?”

That was when I made the big mistake. “When he took off after Ronnie?”

“When was that?”

I thought hard. “Yesterday? The day before?” I had lost track of time.

Agent Mathison looked at her notebook. “Did Tom come right back?”

“No.”

“How did he give his speech that afternoon?”

It was Eddie who had given the speech.
OMG.
I was suddenly more scared than hungry. “I don't know.”

“Can't be two places at the same time, can you?”

“No.”

“So you must be lying.” She was pushing her sharp face closer to mine again.

“I'm not.”

“Then explain how you saw Tom give his speech but you know he didn't come back from chasing after Ronnie.” Agent Mathison stood up fast and let her chair clatter across the floor.

I felt panicky.
Cool down, Lessi. Take deep breaths
.

“I guess he came back and I didn't see him.”

“You're lying, Alessa, and millions of people are going to die because you're lying.”

It could be true. If the aliens blew up the Earths, millions—no, billions—of people would die. I felt hungry and scared
and
confused. Whose side were we on?

BRITZKY

SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA

2012

 

A
GENT
Quinn had left all the lights on and turned some awful music on full blast. I couldn't doze with the lights so bright and the music ricocheting off the walls. I didn't even recognize the music, it was so loud. It made my head feel like a punching bag. A little nap was all I needed so I could think.

I kept chanting,
Be strong.
I'd read that prisoners of war did that to keep their spirits up. I knew what the agents were doing to me. Depriving a person of sleep is the most effective torture of all.

I had no idea how much time had passed before Agent Quinn came back into the room with a woman who was also wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, but no tie.

Agent Quinn turned down the sound. “This is Agent Mathison, Todd. She's been talking to Alessa.”

“She okay?” I said.

“She's taking care of herself,” said Agent Mathison. She had a nasty edge to her voice that reminded me of the serrated blade of a bread knife. I'd cut myself once with a bread knife. Stitches. I tried to use the memory of the pain to cut through my fogginess.

“You paying attention?” said Agent Quinn.

I wasn't. I was drifting away, my mind bobbing in the sleepless sea.

“You better start taking care of yourself, Todd,” said Agent Mathison. “She told us all about Tom.”

“What about Tom?”

“I'm asking the questions,” snapped Agent Mathison. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“When he took off after Ronnie.”

“Did you see him when he came back?”

“He didn't come back. At least not before you kidnapped us.”

“It's not a kidnap when federal officers detain you,” said Agent Quinn.

“What kind of federal officers?”

“No time for that. Millions could die.”

“Die? How?”

Agent Mathison turned to Agent Quinn. “Turn up the sound and let's get out of here. Far as I'm concerned, he's a terrorist and can stay in this room until his head explodes.”

“I understand your feelings, Agent Mathison,” said Agent Quinn, “but Todd is a good person who wants to do the right thing. Let's give him a chance.”

Good cop, bad cop.
How old is that?
I thought. But I was glad Agent Quinn was in the room. Agent Mathison scared me.

“Okay,” she said. “One chance.” She turned her sharp face back to me. “Is Tom an alien?”

Don't lie; don't tell the truth.
How did you do that?

“No,” I said. He's a half alien. So I wasn't technically lying.

“I'm done here,” said Agent Mathison. “You can baby-sit him if you like, but he's no good to us.”

“Then let me go.” I hated the whine in my voice.

“Too late for that,” said Agent Mathison.

Agent Quinn looked unhappy. As he followed Agent Mathison out the door, he cranked up the sound.

RONNIE

SOMEWHERE IN NEW JERSEY

2012

 

K
EITH
—the Lump—walked into the warehouse alone.

“Hiya, Ronnie.” I wondered how he knew my name, then remembered being questioned by the agents. That was about all they found out—my name. And Buddy's.

“Hey, Buddy.” Keith waved a greasy bag of McDonald's food in one hand and a bag of dog treats in the other. I had to hold Buddy by the collar to keep him from running over to Keith.

Behind Keith, through the open door, I could see the agents.

Keith had one of those friendly, ugly faces that made you want to like him. He was big and his plaid shirt and jeans were wrinkled. There were tiny bits of food in his red beard. I could see why Tom called him the Lump.

He set the McDonald's bag down next to me. “May I give Buddy a treat?”

I nodded. He held out a cookie shaped like a cat. Buddy took it gently and Keith patted his head.

“So, where is he?”

“Who?”
I've got to stall as long as I can,
I thought,
so Tom can figure out how to get away.

“For his sake, Ronnie, tell me where he is. You know what those agents are like. The guys outside want to tear-gas the place. I don't want Tom to get hurt.”

“Since when?”

“I've always liked him. He was the one who didn't like me. He thought I was his stepmom's boyfriend.”

“You weren't?”

“I was just a tenant, helping her pay the mortgage after her husband died.” He smiled at me. His teeth were yellow and crooked.

“That's not true, Keith.”

“You're pretty smart, Ronnie.” He got so close that I could smell french fries on his breath. He was looking at me so carefully, I got nervous.

“You're some kind of cop.”

“True. I work for a federal agency that searches for extraterrestrial life. I monitor interplanetary chatter. I was in Tom's house because I knew he was in contact with another planet.”

“Really? Tom?” I pretended to be surprised.
I've got to keep him talking,
I thought. I remembered that Eddie had liked Keith. They had watched baseball together. “Tom said he watched baseball with you.”

“He remembered that? Yeah, it was a good time. He seemed different.”

No kidding, Sherlock.
That had been Eddie, not Tom. “Like how?”

Keith pushed his red whiskers even closer. “You ever get the feeling he's two different people?”

“Like a split personality?”

“Exactly.”

I heard a voice in my head that sounded like Tom's.
Don't let him know we're twins.

When I nodded at Keith, I almost brushed his whiskers because he was leaning in so close. “I heard he had to take some pills for his behavior. Maybe that made him act different.”

Keith pulled back and scratched his whiskers. “That might do it. By the way, where did you hear that?”

I felt a fluttering in my stomach. Uh-oh. Had to be careful here. “I don't know.”

“Kids in school?”

“Could be.”

“How could that be, Ronnie? You never went to Tom's school.”

I just shrugged.

“So who are you, Ronnie? While we had you, we ran your prints and pictures. It's like you don't exist on this planet.”

When you're lying, it always helps to tell a little bit of the truth. “I'm a runaway. Homeless.”

Keith smiled. “Even a homeless kid leaves some kind of footprint on his planet.”

Tom's voice again in my head.
Careful. He's closing in.

I liked the idea that Tom was still looking out for me.

“How'd you smash those windows and escape?” said Keith.

“What do you think?” Still stalling. It wasn't the coolest thing to say.

“I think whoever we're looking for sent you down to make contact with Tom. But why?”

I shrugged.

I'm coming back,
I heard in my mind.
You can't face this alone.

“We need to find that out, Ronnie. By any means possible.”

I felt chilled. Eventually, they were going to find out the truth about everything. I started to panic.

“Where is Tom?” Keith asked again.

“Right behind you, Lump,” said Tom.

Keith smiled and turned around. “As expected, the hero returns.”

EDDIE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

2012

 

I
FELT
like a prisoner. It was my own fault. I had let it happen. I remembered when Hercules had said that my elevator didn't go to the top floor. It had stung, but then I'd flushed it out of my head, like the memory of an intercepted pass. Coach always says you can't dwell on the negative because that will drag you down.

Coach says. Coach says.
It was always
somebody else says,
somebody else telling me what to do. Coach. Dad. Grandpa. Tom. Erin. I had thought it was a good thing to be coachable, good that I listened to people and let them help me improve. Wasn't it? A lot of players insist on doing things their way, and most of the time they don't improve on their own. They drop off the team.

Tom isn't coachable—he's always talking back, questioning, doing everything his way as though he knows better. Maybe he does know better. At least he isn't a puppet.

What would Tom do in my place now?

What a joke.
They think you're Tom, but they want you to act like Eddie. You want to act like Tom, but you're still Eddie.
Maybe it was time to be the Eddie whose elevator goes to the top.

When Erin showed up that morning to take me to an interview, I told her I wanted to see Grandpa and my friends.

She sighed and shook her head. “It's not a good time to hang out at the wagon.”

“Why can't they come visit me here?”

“They all went home. They were uncomfortable in the wagon.”

“So get them hotel rooms too,” I said.

Erin sighed more deeply. “I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but they're jealous of you getting all the attention.”

“So let them come on stage with me. I'd like that.”

“The truth is,” said Erin, “they were homesick and bored of the tour. They wanted to get back to school, to their lives. They really weren't committed to the tour.”

Too many different answers. I wondered what was true. I wished I could look into her mind.

Could I? I stared at Erin's forehead as if I were looking for a hole between blitzing linebackers. Nothing. I remembered a TV show where the cops slipped a skinny wire with a tiny TV camera at its tip under a door and got to see what was going on in the bad guy's room.

I imagined slipping a tiny microphone up Erin's nose and into her brain.

I heard static!

And then,
This nimbot is getting to be a pain. Where is Keith?

Her phone rang and she turned away. “There you are. We're ready . . . That long?”

She turned back to me and gave me a phony smile. “Someone's coming—an old friend of yours.”

Keith? The guy Tom called the Lump! Tom thought he might be some kind of government agent—when the Lump had been living in Tom's house, he'd always been working on computers in the basement. I'd gotten along with him because we were both Yankees fans, but if he came here, he might figure out that there are two of us.

“Old friend? Groovy,” I said. I made myself smile at Erin. “Who?”

“A surprise.”

I could blow up the TV like I had done back on EarthTwo, bust out of the room and try to escape, but there were all those Browns out there and everyone knew who I was. I needed Hercules. But I was on my own.

I got the microphone back up her nose. This time, I tried to push a thought into her mind.
Erin is sooo nice.

She smiled at me. I thought I heard
So sweet and pathetically dumb.

Think so? I'm sooo hungry.