Against the Odds Read online

  “Nick,” said a bodiless voice.

  “GAAAAH!” Nick immediately teleported three times in rapid succession, stopping only when he’d smacked his head on a low branch and fell to the ground. He felt a hand around his wrist but saw no one.

  “I’m sorry.” The bus driver’s voice was close to him. “I’m very, very sorry. I did not mean to frighten you.”

  “You. Are. Invisible.” Nick said, trying not to hyperventilate. “Do we need to put a bell on you or something?”

  “It’s not a terrible idea,” Ed said, helping Nick up. “That’s quite the . . . talent you have.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it a talent,” Nick said, brushing the dirt and leaves off his clothes. “Playing the guitar well is a talent. I’m a freak.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “At least no one sees you being a freak.”

  Ed sighed. “True enough. Look, is there nothing I can do to convince you to come to Philadelphia with us?”

  Nick thought about what Farshad had said. On the one hand, they hardly knew Ed—Nick didn’t even know his last name, and he wanted to take them all to some random doctor forty miles away from Muellersville. The whole thing sounded shady. On the other hand, two days ago he’d watched Ms. Zelle go all ninja badass and work with guys in hazmat suits to take Mr. Friend away, and no one had heard from him since. Nick was pretty sure he couldn’t trust anyone.

  “Look, man,” he said in the general direction of where he thought Ed was. “My mom just got out of the hospital. She needs me. I’m not going to go to Philadelphia.” He picked up his bag. “I’m sorry you’re all invisible and that’s got to be frustrating, but I just can’t go.”

  “Dude. That dude is talking to himself.” Paul Yoder and Sam Stoltzfus were walking through the trees toward Nick.

  “Oh,” Nick said. “Hi guys.”

  “Hey, lardo,” Sam said. Of all the Farm Kids, Sam was the one Nick liked the least. Not that he liked any of them, but Sam had always been mean. One time he’d grabbed Jay and shoved his head into the toilet in the boys’ room and flushed it repeatedly. He’d stopped because Jay kept laughing and yelling, “Again! Again!” but it was still a nasty thing to do.

  Nick felt Ed’s hand on his arm again, gently guiding him away from the Farm Kids. As he turned, a clump of dirt hit the side of his head. “Hey, lardbutt, I was talking to you!” Sam yelled.

  Nick had always taken great pains to avoid dealing with the Farm Kids (as well as the Auxano Company Kids—it was better to just let them fight each other). He always figured that if he kept his head down and didn’t annoy anyone he’d be fine. Sure, being Jay Carpenter’s best friend made that difficult, but it was usually Jay who got noticed, Jay who had his head shoved into a toilet, and Jay who completely didn’t care. No one really ever noticed Nick when Jay was around.

  What would Jay do? Nick thought frantically. Jay would probably say something like “Hello my stout fellow, are we throwing earth now? Jolly good!” and gotten his butt kicked in a dirt-throwing fight.

  “Just go,” Nick heard Ed whisper. “I’ll deal with them.”

  As Nick began to run, he heard Sam yelp, “Who threw that? Who threw that?”

  Nick jerked his head back to see Paul getting a face full of dirt; Ed must have been throwing it at them from only a few feet away. Nick kept running until he reached the edge of the woods.

  So what now? Did he owe Ed something for sticking up for him? But the Farm Kids would never have picked on him in the first place if he hadn’t looked like he was talking to himself in the woods like a crazy person. So in a way, Ed owed it to Nick to have his back against those jerks. Right? Maybe?

  Nick got to Molly and Jilly’s house and dug his key out of his pocket. “Hey, sweaty!” Jilly said as he walked through the front door. “Your mom is sleeping. Want some juice or something?” She waddled to the fridge as Nick slumped into a stool at the breakfast bar. “We have . . . we have water. And seltzer.”

  “Water’s fine,” Nick wheezed, trying, somehow, to sweat less. Jilly brought him a glass and started to pour the water. Nick felt bad. “You really shouldn’t be getting me stuff,” he said. “I should be getting you stuff.”

  Jilly laughed. “I’m pregnant, not ill,” she said, putting the pitcher back into the fridge.

  “Yeah, but you’re enormous,” Nick said, holding the cold glass of water to his sweaty forehead.

  “You’ve been through all manner of trauma lately, so I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say that,” Jilly told him.

  “Sorry,” Nick said sheepishly. “Has Mom been asleep long?”

  “Nah, she’s been up and down,” Jilly said, pouring herself a glass of water. “Although I don’t think it’s because she’s sick, mind you, I think she’s just living the dream of napping as often as she’d like.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Totally.” Nick smiled. Jilly had been complaining about being too big to sleep properly for months. “So,” she continued, “how are you holding up?”

  “Fine.”

  “Ugh, you really are becoming a teenager. That was the most teenagery answer you could have possibly given.” Jilly took some Girl Scout cookies out of the freezer. She and Molly froze everything. “I’m going to eat a bunch of these and say it’s because the baby needs to eat Thin Mints, and if you want any you’re going to tell me how you’re really doing after you were in a major bus accident and then your house caught on fire. Mmmmmm. Minty. Chocolatey . . .”

  “Okay!” Nick said, laughing and grabbing a cookie out of the cold sleeve. “I’m a little spacey,” he admitted. “I kind of don’t know what to do with myself. Everyone seems to expect me to act normal, like nothing happened, but I keep thinking about everything that happened.”

  “That is normal,” Jilly said.

  “I guess.”

  “So how do you want people to act?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just confused by why all this stuff happened to me.” Nick couldn’t help thinking about his dad, and he felt a lump forming in his throat. It made swallowing the cookie difficult. “I mean, enough already, right?”

  Jilly put her hand on his. “Right.”

  “But then there are kids whose homes have been bombed and they’re refugees and all they’ve ever known is gone, so I should really just deal, right?”

  “Oh honey,” Jilly said, “you’re not really being fair to yourself. It’s nice to have perspective but not if it shuts down the part of yourself that allows you to feel things.”

  “Are you finishing the Thin Mints?” Molly asked, entering the kitchen and staring at the half-empty box. “I thought I hid those.”

  “The baby wanted them!” Jilly exclaimed. Molly rolled her eyes.

  “And I’m going through a bunch of stuff,” Nick said.

  “Ugh, you two are the worst. Is Angela still sleeping? We’re supposed to meet with the insurance guy at the house in half an hour.” Molly headed up the stairs to the guest room.

  Jilly looked at Nick. “Never feel bad about feeling bad, okay? You’re having an exceptionally crummy week. It’s okay to let yourself feel rotten for a little while. And it’s a great excuse to order pizza tonight and watch old Buffy episodes and make Molly get stuff for us because she feels bad.”

  Nick smiled and shook his head. “You’re diabolical.”

  “Whatever. If she wants to be the one who gets pregnant the next time I’m sure that I’ll be running around taking care of everything. Come on.” Jilly waddled around the breakfast bar and stretched out her arms. “Hugs!”

  Nick leaned in awkwardly and felt the baby kick him through Jilly’s extended torso. “Hey!” he yelped.

  “Your cousin looooooves you!”

  Nick’s mom came down the stairs with Molly. She looked tired and pale. “Hey, sweetie.” She leaned in for a hug. “Do you have a lot of homework?”

  “Not too much. I can go with you to the house.”

  “You’ve g
ot the exam to study for.” Nick’s mom picked up her purse and looked around. “Where’s Jay?”

  “Mom, he doesn’t go everywhere with me.” Jilly and Molly snorted in unison and the doorbell rang.

  “My dearest Angela!” Jay exclaimed, bounding into the house and giving Nick’s mom a fervent hug. That guy’s timing never failed to astound.

  “Hi, Jay. Okay, we’re out. You two study, okay?”

  “Oh yes,” Jay said conspiratorially. “The old man and I have much to discuss.”

  While Cookie did not know Philadelphia like the back of her hand, she knew that the area of West Philadelphia where Dr. Gabriel Deery worked was not a particularly nice one. For one, it was underneath an elevated train track. Two, it was between two boarded-up storefronts. Three, it was in a boarded-up storefront that used to be a halal butcher shop.

  “So . . . this is gross and we’re going to be murdered,” Cookie observed.

  Martina looked up at the building, her eyes a deep blue. “No, it’s going to be okay.”

  She always spoke as if she knew things that the rest of them didn’t know. It was disconcerting, but at the same time oddly calming. In a way it was nice that someone wasn’t freaking out, because Abe looked like he was about to have a panic attack. Some men hanging out at the bottom of the stairs to the train platform were looking at them, and Cookie was pretty sure that if the men took one step toward them Abe was going to pass out.

  Ed knocked on the door to the butcher shop. After a moment a man appeared from inside to let them in.

  Dr. Deery led them through the abandoned butcher shop to a flight of stairs, and Cookie felt a sudden urge to hold someone’s hand. Abe would probably flinch so hard that he’d fall down the stairs or barf or spontaneously combust. Martina, as usual, had her hands full with her sketchbook and pen. If Nick had come along Cookie could have held on to him under the guise of keeping him safe; that would have been good. Farshad probably wouldn’t have wanted her touching him—he’d made it pretty clear that she wasn’t his favorite person. Cookie swallowed hard and followed the scientist down the stairs.

  Cookie had been to her mom’s office at Auxano plenty of times. Of course her mom worked in the accounting department, and not in one of the labs, but based on what Cookie had seen of the company headquarters she could easily imagine that their labs were well-lit, clean, sleek, organized, and pretty much everything that Dr. Deery’s lab wasn’t.

  There were a few bolted-down metal tables in the center of a large room with low ceilings. Were they tables that had been used to butcher animals? Cookie tried to keep her disgust from showing on her face.

  In the corner of the room were several cages with white rats in them. The lab smelled like a combination of chemicals and a cat-hoarder’s kitchen.

  “I’m sorry it’s such a mess,” Dr. Deery said, eyeing them warily. “Ed, I don’t know where I’m supposed to look.”

  “I’m right here,” Ed’s voice sounded from near the rat cages.

  “Extraordinary,” Dr. Deery said, and turned to look at Cookie. “You must be Daniesha Parker. And you,” he said, turning to Martina, “are Martina Saltis.” Martina’s eyes turned a silvery gray. Dr. Deery ran his hand through his messy hair, tugging it a little in the back like a nervous tic. “Simply astonishing.”

  “And you,” he continued, looking at Abe. “You, too, have been affected?”

  “I’m not sure,” Abe said nervously.

  “Yes, you are,” Cookie said. “Go show him.” She pointed to the cages of rats.

  Abe looked at her with a mixture of irritation, curiosity, and fear. She glared back, and he moved toward the rat cages. The rodents turned to look at him. “Please lay down,” he told them, and all at once they flopped onto their sides. Dr. Deery rushed to the cages.

  “Are they alive?” he asked breathlessly.

  “Yes, of course,” Abe said. “It’s okay to get back up if you want,” he said to the rats, who got back up and watched him expectantly.

  “Can you make them jump?” Martina asked.

  “Probably,” Abe said, “but that seems sort of rude. They probably don’t want to jump.”

  Cookie snorted. “Well, we wouldn’t want to be rude.”

  “Can they talk to you?” Dr. Deery asked.

  “No, they’re rats,” Abe said, looking at the scientist as if his question was completely absurd.

  Cookie pressed her fingers to her temples. She could hear the sounds of people outside thinking about how to get up to the train platform and it was making it hard for her to have her own thoughts. She took a deep breath. “Dr. Deery. Please tell us what’s going on. And what we can do to make it stop.”

  “Of course, of course,” Dr. Deery said, and gestured to a beat-up sofa near the rat cages. It looked as if he’d been using it to sleep on. “Please sit down.

  “It started a few years ago when I was working at the Auxano labs,” he began as they sat down (after making certain that no one accidentally squished Ed). “I was in charge of a project that involved the artificial chemical enhancement of leporidae mental capacity.”

  “Say what now?” Cookie asked.

  “They were trying to make bunnies smarter.” Ed explained.

  “Why? Why would anyone do that?” Abe asked.

  “We were working on creating a drug, phlebotinum, that would help humans with borderline IQs to improve their cognitive functions. That was the idea.” Dr. Deery said. “And we were using rabbits as test subjects.”

  “So you were trying to make dumb people smart,” Cookie said.

  “No, no. I was trying to make rabbits smart,” Dr. Deery said. “If the drugs had worked we might have tried to develop them for people who had been mentally incapacitated by accidents or birth defects or childhood lead poisoning . . . but I was years away from that sort of practical application. We were just doing tests on rabbits.”

  “Did the rabbits become very smart?” Martina asked. She was drawing a rabbit with glasses and a pipe. Cookie started to ask her why a smart rabbit would be smoking a pipe, but thought better of it.

  “That’s very clever,” Dr. Deery said, looking at Martina’s sketchbook. She looked up at him, her eyes changing from brown to an icy blue. He took a step back, clearly unnerved. “I’m so sorry about what’s happened to you all,” he said.

  “And what exactly happened to us?” Cookie asked.

  Dr. Deery composed himself. “The experiments on the rabbits weren’t going well—none of my formulas seemed to garner any results. One time I thought that a rabbit was getting smarter, but I suspect that it was just a smarter rabbit to begin with. Then one night I was working by myself when one of my overhead lights went out.

  “I should have called maintenance, but I thought I could just replace the fluorescent bulb without having to bother anyone. Long story short, I accidentally electrocuted the rabbit enclosure.”

  “You killed the bunnies?”

  “No! No, they seemed fine.” Dr. Deery sat on a stool and eyed the rats. “But they had changed.”

  “Were they like us?” Martina asked.

  “No, not exactly. Their eyes didn’t change color, there was no teleportation, none of them turned invisible . . .” Dr. Deery’s voice trailed off and he looked pale. “At least, I don’t think any of them turned invisible . . .”

  “What happened to them?” Cookie steeled herself for possible horrible bunny fates. “Did they explode? Eat each other?”

  “They got really loud.”

  Cookie looked at Abe, who seemed confused, and then at Martina, who had a skeptical look on her face. “Loud?” she asked.

  “Yes, loud. But really loud. They started screaming and burst my lab assistant’s eardrums,” Dr. Deery explained. “It was unbearably loud. We had to evacuate the floor and outfit ourselves with noise-cancelling headphones before we could return to the lab and take care of the rabbits.”

  “Take care of them?” Cookie asked with raised eyebrows. “Did you kil
l them?”

  Dr. Deery shook his head vigorously. “No, no, we merely sedated them and began to take blood samples for further study. We knew that we had stumbled onto something major, we just didn’t know what.

  “Unfortunately,” he went on, “shutting down the entire floor until we were able to get the rabbits under control got the attention of the Auxano administrators. They were fascinated with the potential practical applications of my work with phlebotinum.”

  “Practical applications?” Cookie asked.

  “We’d taken normal, everyday rabbits and—accidentally, it should be noted—given them abilities far beyond anything that normal rabbits would be able to do.”

  “Rabbits don’t usually scream,” Abe said knowingly.

  “No, they don’t, and they certainly don’t scream loud enough to injure anyone. Humans aren’t able to scream loud enough to truly injure someone. We’d stumbled upon something huge, and the higher-ups at Auxano knew it.

  “For months we ran tests on the rabbits, and the data we collected was fascinating.” Dr. Deery looked wistful. “I could have studied those rabbits for the rest of my professional career. But we were getting pressure from the administrators to recreate the circumstances that enhanced the rabbits in the first place.”

  “They wanted more screaming bunnies?” Cookie asked.

  “They wanted to move the process forward to human subjects.”

  Martina stopped drawing to look up at Dr. Deery. Her eyes flashed from gray to blue to brown to a lighter blue before settling back on gray. Cookie wondered for the hundredth time what it was that triggered the changes in Martina’s eye color. Was she upset? Angry? Was it all just random? Cookie stood up from her place on the sofa, moved to Martina, and put her arms around her. In the short time that they’d known each other, Cookie had gotten the impression that the strange girl wasn’t really a hugger, but Cookie needed to feel grounded.

  Martina leaned in, ever so slightly, to Cookie’s hug. Whatever was going on, they were in it together.