Against the Odds Read online

  “That was weird,” Addison commented.

  “Sometimes Emma can be such a little freak,” Claire scoffed.

  “Where were you yesterday anyway?” Addison asked.

  Cookie was ready. Keep it simple. “Ugh, I lost my phone when we were running out of the school yesterday and then my mom wouldn’t let me leave the house to look for it. Some kid found it and called my mom on it last night.” Cookie knew that there was a pretty good chance that Nick or one of the others (probably Jay Carpenter, please not Jay Carpenter) would try to talk to her at school. If Addison or Claire saw them then she could just say it was about returning her phone.

  You had to think of these things ahead of time—the last thing Cookie needed was to be caught unawares. She’d dealt with enough of that recently, thank you very much.

  For a moment Cookie considered feeling bad about making Emma Lee out to be some sort of racist crazy person, but really, the fact was that the only reason Emma had mentioned seeing Cookie with Martina and Farshad was to embarrass her in front of her friends. And that wasn’t nice. And in Cookie’s book it was okay to be not nice to not-nice people who were out to get her.

  Addison and Claire started debating about inviting Emma to their upcoming study group, even though she was acting weird. She always took copious notes and performed really well on exams, and they’d already asked her to join them . . . they chattered on and Cookie felt drained. She’d only slept a few hours the night before, unable to stop her brain from recalling everything that had happened on Abe Zook’s farm. The terrifying ride in the horse-drawn buggy. The invisible bus driver that only Martina could see. Mr. Friend, looking completely unhinged. Ms. Zelle, the fight, the fire, the barnyard animals calmly following Abe through the fire to safety. JUMPING OUT OF THE SECOND FLOOR OF A BURNING BARN. Hearing everyone’s stupid thoughts.

  Cookie splashed some water on her face and leaned her forehead against the bathroom mirror. It took her a moment to realize that Addison and Claire had stopped talking.

  “Hey, Cooks, are you okay?” Addison asked gingerly.

  Not even close to being okay, Cookie thought. “Yeah,” she said, “my head still hurts a little.”

  “Oh!” Addison and Claire said together, and immediately giggled over having the exact same reaction. “Well, your hair is still super cute,” Addison said.

  “Thank goodness for that,” Cookie said, smiling. Claire linked her arm with Cookie’s. “Let’s go to class,” she said.

  Exit the bathroom. Make a left away from the classroom. Head down the hall. Make a right and go into the stairwell. Go under the steps.

  Cookie heard Martina’s voice as if she were whispering directly into her ear. It was overwhelming, and she had to clench her teeth to keep from screaming at Martina (wherever she was) to get out of her head, because there was no way that the freaky-eyed girl wasn’t deliberately sending her a message.

  Exit the bathroom. Make a left away from the classroom. Head down the hall . . .

  “I think I’m going to hit up the nurse for an aspirin or something,” Cookie said, slipping her arm out of Claire’s.

  “Do you want us to go with you?” Addison asked with a concerned look.

  “I don’t know,” Cookie said. “Aspirin are pretty heavy, but I think I might be able to handle it. How about I text you if it’s too much for me.” She rolled her eyes dramatically and Addison and Claire laughed and headed to class.

  Cookie turned left away from their classroom and headed down the hall until she made a right to get to the stairwell. Underneath stood Martina, looking very pleased with herself.

  “You heard me!” Martina said, her blue eyes shining. “That’s extraordinary.”

  “Yes, I heard you,” Cookie hissed angrily. “Now NEVER. DO. THAT. AGAIN.” She rubbed her temples and slumped against the wall of the Understeps. “You don’t know how disturbing it is to have someone else’s voice in your head.”

  “I apologize, I asked her to do it,” a male voice said.

  Cookie froze. “Martina,” she whispered, panicked, grabbing the girl’s arm, “I’m hearing someone else and they’re not thinking about directions! It’s like they’re talking right to me.”

  “Oh, that’s Ed,” Martina said, patting Cookie’s hand awkwardly. “Sorry, I should have told you that he was standing next to you.”

  “Sorry,” Invisible Ed said.

  “I hate you both so much, you have no idea,” Cookie growled, letting Martina go.

  “I’m really very sorry,” Ed said again. He sounded like he was a few feet away. “But I need to speak to you. To all of you. We need to discuss our . . . situation. Will you help to get the others together?”

  “Sure,” Cookie said, taking her phone out of her pocket. “I will use this handy modern communication device to contact them without having to invade anyone’s personal private brainspace.” She pressed the icon to access her email account.

  “No!” Ed put his invisible hand on Cookie’s and she instinctively jerked away, immediately befuddled by her inability to shoot an angry look at him because she didn’t quite know where he was.

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t use modern communication devices to discuss these things,” Ed explained. “They could be monitoring our accounts.”

  “They?” Cookie asked. “Who are they? You sound like a crazy person.”

  Ed sighed. “Being invisible is crazy. Being able to read minds is crazy. Whatever she can do”—Cookie looked over to where Martina was happily scribbling in her sketchbook—“is crazy. And yet here we are. Please trust me just long enough to get everyone together so we can talk this out and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “How do I know you’re not just getting us together to put us in a lab or something and do experiments because we’re all great big freaks now?” Cookie crossed her arms and glared in the general direction of Ed’s voice.

  “Actually, that’s what I want to do.” Ed said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh.” Cookie was at a loss.

  “I’ll get Nick and Farshad!” Jay Carpenter popped his head out from the stairway above them.

  “GAAAH!” Cookie yelped and heard Ed gasp “What the—” under his breath before falling silent.

  Even Martina looked slightly disturbed by Jay’s sudden appearance. “How long have you been listening in?” she asked Jay, who scrambled down the remaining stairs to join them.

  “Long enough to know that you’re both talking to an invisible bus driver.” Jay bowed toward a wall. “Hello, good see-through sir, I am Jay Carpenter and it is an honor to make your acquaintance.” He held out his hand to shake and got nothing. Cookie rubbed her temples.

  “Oh, Daniesha,” Jay started, “I do apologize for giving you a fright, but . . .”

  “Shut. It.” Cookie said without looking up.

  “How many people know about this?” Ed asked from her right side. He sounded very nervous.

  “Just us and Jay,” Cookie said, at a loss to explain exactly why this little freak show knew so much about their situation.

  “And have no fear, my dear transparent new friend, I am the soul of discretion,” Jay said, finally putting down his unshaken hand. “I will adjourn to the classrooms and gather our compatriots. And I will do so with subtlety and stealth!” The little freak show dashed off.

  “Can he be trusted?” Ed asked.

  “Yes,” Martina said at the same time that Cookie said, “Not as far as I can throw him.” Cookie shot a look to Martina, who smiled back and continued drawing in her book.

  “This is going to be another weird day, isn’t it?” Cookie asked to no one in particular.

  “Oh yes,” Martina said never raising her eyes from her drawing. “I’d say we’re in for a lot more of those.”

  Nick was a little surprised at how fast Cookie agreed to go to Philadelphia to meet up with some random scientist that an invisible guy had recommended. Martina was up for the trip, although in the short time he had known Ma
rtina she seemed amenable to pretty much everything. Nothing seemed to rattle her. Jay, of course, was chomping at the bit to go to the lab in Philadelphia, although no one had really invited him.

  Farshad had remained mostly silent throughout Ed’s proposal, occasionally glancing down at his hands. Nick wondered what he was thinking.

  “I can drive you to Philadelphia on Saturday,” Ed promised. “We’ll go, we’ll talk to my brother, and be back in just a few hours. I really think he can give us some answers and help us to get through this.”

  “I can’t just up and go to Philadelphia,” Nick said. “My mom is getting out of the hospital, and my house is full of smoke damage. My family needs me and they are going to notice if I just disappear for a day.”

  “Oh please,” Cookie said with a dismissive wave of her arm, “just tell them that you need to go to a study group or that you’re hanging out with this little freak.” She gestured to Jay, who blew her a kiss.

  “They need me. My mom needs me right now.” Nick was getting angry. He felt himself inadvertently teleport four inches to his left.

  “It’s all right, old boy, it’s all right.” Jay said, resting his hand on Nick’s arm. “Does he really need to be there?”

  “I’d like to get all of you there,” Ed said as the second-period bell rang.

  “We should go to class,” Farshad said, ducking his head to get out of the Understeps.

  “Will you be able to come to Philadelphia?” Ed asked.

  “We’re going to be late,” Farshad said, heading down the hallway. Nick shook Jay off his arm and followed Farshad. They turned down a hall and were alone.

  “So—are you going?” Nick had to work to keep up with Farshad. The guy had long legs.

  “I don’t think so,” Farshad said. “The exam is next week and I need to study.”

  “Really?” Nick stopped walking. “That’s your reason?”

  “What, am I supposed to fail out of school?” Farshad asked.

  “No?” Nick asked, suddenly finding himself four inches to his left. It happened as fast as a blink. Farshad reached out to grab Nick’s arm. Nick was grateful for the anchor. If someone was holding on to him he wouldn’t disappear, that much had been made terribly clear when he’d tried to teleport his mother out of their burning house. Farshad steered Nick into an empty classroom.

  “Look,” he said, “I just don’t know if we can trust the bus driver.”

  “Ed.”

  “Whatever. He’s the one who was using a school bus full of kids to transport what turned out to be highly dangerous chemicals. He’s the one who was keeping a guy who can light fires with his mind in a highly flammable barn. Ed has not shown himself to be a guy with particularly good judgment.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Nick asked, trying not to sound like a panicky whiner.

  Farshad looked at his hands. “I don’t know. Nothing. The last time we tried to ‘do something’ we ended up in the middle of Amish country in a burning barn. We’re lucky to be alive. Let’s just learn how to control our . . . abilities, keep our heads down, and act like all this never happened.”

  Nick liked the idea. Go home, help his aunts to clean up his house, take care of his mom while she recovered. Pretend he’d never been in an accident. Maybe after a while it would all just turn into a story he’d tell nonchalantly, Oh yeah, I was in a bus accident once time, but I was fine, it was no big deal. I didn’t develop the freakish ability to teleport myself four inches to the left or potentially much farther if I’m feeling stressed . . .

  But would it really work? “I don’t know, man,” he said. “I don’t think this is the sort of thing we can just ignore.”

  “Okay,” Farshad said, “then I’ll just spend all my time thinking about that time we nearly died and coming up with new and exciting ways to put myself in harm’s way by doing dangerous and stupid things. That seems like a good use of my time.”

  “I mean, we’d just be going to Philadelphia . . .”

  The bell rang again. They were late for class. “Would you rather just fail out of school?” Farshad asked, his voice rising. “There are very few things in this world that we can control and how we do academically is one of them. I’m going to class.” He left the room.

  Nick sat for another minute. He’d been in a bus accident, and his house had caught on fire. His English teacher would probably be okay with him being a little late, and he had to calm down before he left the room so that he wouldn’t accidentally teleport himself into a locker on his way to class.

  Cookie had agreed to go to Philadelphia, not because, as Jay said, they needed her “street smarts.” “Oh,” she said, “so you think because I’m black that I naturally have street smarts?”

  “Oh no,” Jay said, “Oh no no no no no, I just mean that you know which streets to take because you moved here from Philadelphia.”

  Of course. She was always going to be the girl from Philly, even though she had moved to Muellersville when she was five. The truth was that she couldn’t navigate her way across Philadelphia without looking at her phone (something that had been made painfully clear by her inability to find the jewelry store while she and Claire were playing hooky during the class field trip). But she had always liked being thought of as a Philly girl, a city kid who was smarter and quicker and savvier than the dumb-dumb country mice of Muellersville. It was the reason people liked her. She knew things they didn’t know, like where to find the coolest jewelry in Philadelphia.

  “She’s going to come with us because she doesn’t want to hear people thinking about directions anymore,” Martina said without looking up from her book. She didn’t talk much, but Cookie was beginning to notice that when she did talk, whatever she said was extremely accurate. She was almost the complete opposite of Claire and Addison.

  “Piffle,” Jay said. “Why on earth would someone not want powers? That’s ridiculous, you all just need a little help in harnessing them. But have no fear, I am here to help . . .”

  The bell rang. “We’d better go,” Cookie said and turned to Jay. “Try to get Nick to come.”

  Cookie headed to the science lab, which was the last class that she wanted to be late to. Everyone was seated and Ms. Zelle gave Cookie a quizzical look as she slipped into the classroom.

  “Sorry,” Cookie muttered.

  “Your friends said that you weren’t feeling well,” Ms. Zelle said.

  “I’m okay now,” Cookie said. Be cool, girl. Act like you haven’t seen her going all martial arts on an invisible man. Everything is normal. Just go to your seat.

  Emma Lee was in her seat. HER seat. Cookie always sat between Addison and Claire. Cookie could feel everyone in the class watching her. She held her head up high and headed for the only other empty seat in the room, which was in the back with the Farm Kids. Paul Yoder eyed her suspiciously as she sat down next to him. This was so humiliating. She was going to have to deal with Emma later.

  Claire turned around and mouthed Sorry! to Cookie. But apparently not sorry enough to save her a seat. Cookie fumed as Ms. Zelle began to speak.

  “Okay everybody, we all know what’s happening next week!”

  “The exam,” the class droned in unison. Izaak Marcus rolled his eyes and pretended to fall asleep.

  “Don’t sound too excited. So we all know that they are the national exams, and not the statewide exams, right? Can anyone tell me the difference?”

  Cookie took out her notebook and pretended to take notes on whatever Ms. Zelle was saying. She could feel the weight of her cell phone in her pocket and itched to take it out so she could compose a thoughtful text to Addison and Claire on the importance of loyalty in a friendship and how apparently they were loyal to Emma Lee now, and have fun with that, maybe she’d make friends with a damp gym towel and have exactly the same experience . . . of course Cookie would never actually send a text like that. No, she was just going to ignore them until they were bending over backward to be nice to her.


  Years ago Cookie and her mom had been in Philadelphia visiting with her cousins. Zakiya and Nadijah had been dancing to some music, and when Cookie didn’t recognize the song, they’d made fun of her. “I guess they don’t have black people music in Amish country,” Nadijah had said.

  “Do you just listen to country music?” Zakiya laughed.

  “Do you know how to square dance?” Nadijah said, and they had practically fallen over laughing at their jokes. Cookie had burst into tears and run to find her mother, which just made her older cousins laugh more.

  “Oh, Cookie,” her mom had said after she’d calmed down. “Never let anyone see that they’ve upset you. If people know that they’ve hurt your feelings, that gives them power over you.”

  So of course Cookie wasn’t going to let Addison and Claire know that they’d pretty much stabbed her with a million little knives while she was already down! RECOVERING FROM A MAJOR ACCIDENT.

  Cookie felt eyes on her. Sam Stoltzfus was staring at her. She glared back at him.

  “Ooo, ooo,” he said under his breath, making the monkey noise while bending his elbow to scratch his own armpit and contorting his face. “Ooo.”

  Izaak turned around and looked at Cookie. “Is that inbred messing with you?”

  “Mind your business, jungle fever,” Sam growled at him.

  “Mr. Stoltzfus, Mr. Marcus, is this something that’s pertinent to next week’s exam?” Ms. Zelle asked from the front of the class. Izaak sat up straight and smiled as though he hadn’t said anything. Sam glowered. Ms. Zelle gave them a stern look and continued writing on the board.

  Cookie looked back down at her notebook. Never let them see that they’ve upset you.

  Nick managed to avoid everyone for the rest of the day. (Except Jay. It was impossible to avoid Jay.) After his last class he gathered up his things and walked to the shortcut through the woods to get to his aunts’ house.