“That’s good to know,” Max said lightly. “Maybe mine’ll develop enough that I’ll stop failing chemistry one of these days.”
I laughed. It felt nice. Nice to talk to Max and to share all this with someone who completely understood — which was probably why I decided to go a step further and tell him about the others.
“So there could be more of us out there,” Max mused. “Any ideas who they might be?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “We think one is Tom.”
“Tom? Tom who?”
“Tom Johnson. He’s in my class. He’s really — ”
I didn’t get any further as Max burst out laughing. “Little geeky math genius? That Tom? With a superpower? That’s funny!”
My cheeks reddened as I felt a surge of loyalty toward Tom — and annoyance toward Max. Why did he have to be such an idiot at times?
Max stopped laughing. “You’re right. I’m an idiot,” he said. “Sorry. OK, who’s the other?”
“Heather Berry.”
Max tried to look uninterested but his eyebrows went up a little, as did the color in his cheeks. Typical. He probably had a crush on her, just like every other boy in our class.
Max glanced at me and folded his arms. “Anyway, moving on,” he said quickly. “So you think they might have powers, too, but you don’t know for sure?”
“Not yet. Izzy and I are hoping to meet them at lunchtime tomorrow. Hey, why don’t you come, too?”
Max burst out laughing. “Yeah, right,” he sneered.
“Oh. Sorry. Of course. You wouldn’t be caught dead spending your lunch break in an art room with a bunch of losers when you could be out playing soccer with your friends.”
Then he probably realized that Heather might be there as he unfolded his arms and shrugged. “I might show up,” he said. “I’ll see.”
Which I took as an “OK, then,” in Max-speak.
“Anyway,” he went on, changing the subject. “It’s even more of a mystery now. I wasn’t born on the same day as you guys. As far as I know, I didn’t get that serum stuff on me — unless my dad secretly gave me some and never told me about it! So why me?”
And I don’t know if it was because we shared something completely crazy or because he was the kind of person I’d rather have as a friend than an enemy, or because I saw something in him that I guessed most people never got to see — a kind of vulnerability. Anyway, whatever it was, before I knew it, my mouth was doing that thing where it lets words come out without asking permission from my brain.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But from now on, we’re in this together, and I’m going to help you find out.”
“Before we do anything else, we need a plan,” I began. “And part one of the plan is that we need to take the crystals back to the lab.”
“You’re not turning me in!” Max said, shaking his head vigorously and folding his arms. “I’ll deny everything. You can’t prove it. I’ll say you’re making it up. I don’t want people to know about this. They’ll just call me a freak. My life’ll be over.”
I held my hands up in self-defense. “Max. Chill. I won’t say anything. Like I said, we’re in this together. We’ve got to trust each other. OK?”
Max gave me a sulky nod. “OK. Whatever.”
“But we do need to put the crystals back. That way, Nancy will stop getting suspicious, and no one needs to know about you. You still have them, don’t you?”
Max nodded.
“Can I see them?”
He paused for a moment, then got up from the table. “Hang on. I’ll go get them.”
A couple of minutes later, he was back with a small bag that he emptied onto the table. A rainbow of colors sparkled and winked as the sunlight hit them from the kitchen window.
I counted nine crystals. Three that looked like shiny pebbles, two that were like jagged pieces of rock — one bright red, the other deep green — two rings, a bracelet, and a pendant on a gold chain.
“I was never planning to keep them,” Max said.
“I didn’t say you were.”
Then I remembered the other thing I’d seen. The bottle that he’d had in his pocket. “Is there anything else?” I asked.
Max looked as if he were about to deny it. Then he frowned. “You saw me, didn’t you?” With a sigh, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the tiny bottle. He put it on the table with the crystals. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s everything.”
I picked up the bottle. “What is this?” I asked.
“I really don’t know, but do you want to know something weird?”
“I’m living in the world of weird, so, yeah, hit me.”
Max picked up the bottle. “OK, so I’d found this at the lab and it intrigued me. The other day, I was sitting at the table here, looking at it, and I opened it up and sniffed it to see what it smelled like. Just as I did that, Spider jumped onto my lap and bumped into the bottle.”
“Your cat? Did it spill?”
“Yeah, about half of it went on the table.”
“So what happened?”
“Before I even realized what was going on, Spider licked it up. Lapped it all up.”
“Yikes.”
Max frowned. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Or words to that effect, anyway.”
“So then what happened?”
“Nothing at first. I watched him like a hawk. I was worried out of my mind in case anything bad happened to him. But he was fine. I didn’t see any change — not till the next day, anyway.”
“What happened the next day?”
“Spider was in a fight with another cat. I heard screeching and yowling and went to the back door to see what was going on. He ran in, fur sticking out like he’d been electrocuted, tail upright and as thick as a tree trunk. It took me a while to calm him down. He’s only two and can be a bit of a bully, but he can be a real baby at times, too. Eventually he calmed down and I checked him over. He had a scratch on his paw, and it was bleeding all over the place.”
“Poor thing.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I took him into the kitchen to look for something to stop the bleeding. I grabbed a wad of paper towels, and I was going to wrap it around his paw.” Max hesitated.
“So did it work?” I asked. “Did you manage to stop it?”
“That’s just it. It wasn’t bleeding anymore.”
“Oh! Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Mmm, I guess.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
Max leaned in and lowered his voice. “The cut, right? It was big and pumping out blood like a tap. But when I went to wrap it in the paper towels, it was gone. Disappeared, like it had never been there. And I mean at all. There was no cut and no sign that there had ever been one. The only way I knew I hadn’t imagined the whole thing was that there were still spots of blood on the floor from where Spider had run into the house.”
I tried to think. “Are you saying you think the serum had something to do with this?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. See, I’ve been thinking about it, a lot,” Max went on. “And I think I’ve got it figured out.”
“Go on.”
“OK, so the second time I went to the lab, I saw some sheets with names of crystals and notes on them. Most of them were full of question marks in the ‘properties’ column. But then I had a thought. I looked for a sheet that had any information on rubies.”
“Why rubies?”
Max pointed at the cat. “Spider’s got this ridiculously bling collar. He used to belong to my grandmother, who was a bit eccentric, extremely rich, and loved cats, especially Spider. The collar has an actual ruby on it. Just a tiny one, but it’s real.”
“So you thought that the ruby on the collar could have interacted with the serum?”
“Exactly.”
“And? Did you find anything about rubies at the lab?”
“Yup.”
“What did it say?”
Max looked me straight
in the eye. “Heals wounds.”
I stared at him as the breath whistled out of me.
“Wow!” I said quietly. “I mean, a cat . . .”
“I know. Hard to get your head around, isn’t it?” Max said. “Thing is, Spider gets into scrapes with the cats in this neighborhood fairly often. He comes home with scratches and bites on him at least once or twice a month, and the first time any of them have ever healed this quickly was the day after he’d drunk the serum. It has to have something to do with it.”
My head was spinning. I barely knew what to think. “Max. Please, come tomorrow at lunchtime. If Tom and Heather are like us, that’s two more people to help us figure all of this out. And even if they don’t come, Izzy will be there, and she always comes up with good suggestions.”
Max nodded. “OK,” he agreed. Then he gestured at the crystals. “What about these?”
“We’ll take them back together, OK? How about tomorrow night? Mom and Dad both go out on Wednesday evenings. I’ll tell my neighbor I have to go out for a bit. She won’t mind.”
Max stifled a laugh. “You’ll tell your neighbor?
I made a face. “I know. She checks in on me when my parents are out. Anyway, all she ever does is watch TV. She’ll hardly notice I’m gone. So we take the crystals back tomorrow night, yes?”
Max clutched the cord on his neck. “I’m not parting with this one,” he said. “Not now.”
“I’m sure they won’t notice if just one of the crystals is still missing,” I said, compromising. “But we take all the others back. Maybe put them somewhere different — scatter them on the floor or something — so Nancy will just think they dropped them and didn’t notice. They probably won’t worry about yours too much as long as they’ve got all the others.”
Max scowled. “Really? You think that’ll work?”
“Have you got a better idea?”
Max shook his head. “OK.” Then he smiled at me. “Thanks,” he said.
I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t too awful-looking when he smiled.
“Sometimes it’s fun reading people’s minds,” he added shyly, and I felt my cheeks heat up.
We headed for the hallway. “What’s your cell phone number?” Max asked. He got his phone out and punched my number in as I gave it to him, putting in my name as “J.” I guess he didn’t want his tough-guy friends to tease him about being friends with a girl.
“I’ll text you if I can’t make it to lunch tomorrow, but I will try,” Max promised.
“OK,” I said. As I turned toward the door, I noticed a photo on the mantelpiece of a woman with a baby. “Is that your mom?”
Max looked at his feet. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
“Aww, cute,” I said, smiling. “Don’t tell me that’s you! I can’t believe you were ever a sweet little chubby-cheeked baby!”
Max didn’t reply. When he looked up, his face had clouded over. “I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?” he said.
“Oh, OK, right,” I faltered.
I stepped outside and turned to say good-bye, but he’d already shut the door.
And just when I’d been on the verge of thinking that Max Malone wasn’t too bad after all.
I scarfed my snack as quickly as I could and went up to my room to call Izzy. She listened in silence to the whole story.
“That is totally awesome!” she said when I’d finished.
“Which part? The mind-reading boy, the self-healing cat, or the fact that Max Malone had a conversation with another human being that involved actual sentences and not just grunts?”
“All of it! This just gets better and better. And guess what! I finally pinned Tom down and made him talk to me. He says he’ll come tomorrow at lunchtime.”
“Great! How’s he doing? Is he feeling any better about it all?”
“He’s getting there. He said he’s decided to treat it like an algebraic equation.”
“How on earth does that work?” I asked.
“Well, he said that in algebra, you have to equalize two sides of an equation by matching up the quantities of the variables — or something.”
“So he just has to establish how to match up potentially having a superpower with his fear of being even more different?” I mused.
“Exactly. Now that he’s approaching it like a math problem, I think he’ll be a hundred percent on board soon.”
“That’s a relief. I hated seeing him upset.”
“Yeah, me too,” Izzy agreed.
“Tomorrow at lunchtime, then,” I said as my stomach did a couple of cartwheels and a backward flip. One day from now, exactly how much deeper into this crazy stuff were we all going to be?
On Wednesday at lunchtime, Izzy, Max, and I sat in silence in the art room. Max said he was there because he’d had nothing better to do. I didn’t really care what he said; I was just glad he’d turned up.
I looked at my watch for the millionth time. Twenty-five to one. Five minutes into lunch.
Max pushed back his chair and stood up. “They’re not coming, are they?” he said. “We’re wasting our time.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but something stopped me — a knock on the door, followed by a face peeking around it. Heather!
“You came!” I burst out before I could check myself and act cool.
She smiled shyly. “Can I come in?”
“Of course!” I shuffled up to make space beside me and pulled another chair in.
I must have been right that Heather had already discovered that she had a power of some kind — I was sure of it now. Why else would she have agreed to spend time with someone she’d looked down her nose at for the last two years?
A moment later, there was another rap on the door. Tom stuck his head around and came in. “Sorry I’m late. I had to grab some lunch.” He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he shut the door behind him and grabbed a chair. I guessed he was still feeling unsettled by it all. But he’d come, and that was what counted.
This was it, then. We were all here. It was time to get started.
While I was trying to figure out where to begin, Max got up and shoved a chair against the door handle. “So we don’t get disturbed,” he mumbled by way of explanation. Then he looked at me. As did the others.
I cleared my throat. “Um. OK, so thanks for coming,” I said nervously. “Some of you might be wondering what this is about.”
Tom looked down at his feet. Izzy smiled encouragingly. Heather’s face didn’t give anything away. Max tapped his fingers on his knee.
“OK, so, well, the thing is . . .” My voice trailed away. How on earth was I supposed to say all of this?
Max saved me. “Look, there’s no point in beating around the bush,” he said. And before I had time for one last change of mind about leaping into the unknown quite so spectacularly, he went on. “There’s some weird stuff going on. It’s top secret, and if you don’t want to know about it or don’t think it applies to you, then feel free to leave now.”
No one moved.
“If you stay, you have to promise not to breathe a word outside this room,” Izzy added. “Whatever is said from here on in is top secret. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Max and I said.
“Agreed,” echoed Tom and Heather a little nervously.
“Good. All right.” Izzy looked at me. “Back to you, then, Jess.”
I paused while I tried to summon up the nerve. Then I decided we were halfway there already and so I might as well go ahead and jump off the cliff.
“OK, see, the thing is, we wanted to talk to you about some stuff,” I began. “Weird stuff. Right now, it’s only weird for me and Max — as far as we know.” I paused for a moment and looked from Tom to Heather. “But we think that it might be weird for you, too. We think you’re like us . . .”
Before I could say any more, Heather had gotten up from her chair.
“Wait! You’re leaving?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m going to make this easier for you.
There is something weird going on with me. I don’t really know how to put it into words.” She walked over to the corner of the room, turned back, and looked at us all. “So I’ll show you instead.”
She opened the door to a walk-in closet, full of paints, brushes, canvases, and crayons, went inside, and shut the door.
I looked around at the others. They were all staring at the closet door.
And then Heather came back into the room and the four of us gaped, openmouthed. See, there was one weird thing about the way she came back in.
She didn’t open the door.
She walked through the wall.
I stared at Heather. Then I stared at Max and Izzy. Then I allowed myself a glance at Tom, who seemed to have stopped looking awkward and nervous and instead was looking completely stunned. His mouth was so wide-open, I was concerned he might dislocate his jaw.
Max was the first to recover. I say “recover,” but that might be an exaggeration.
“That — that . . . you . . .” was what he actually said.
Heather crossed the room and sat back down. She fiddled nervously with the edge of her sweater, then looked up at me. “You said something the other day that made me think you might be able to do this, too,” she said. “Can you? Please tell me I’m not the only one. Tell me you’ve got some sort of explanation.”
“You’re not the only one,” I said.
“Well, you’re the only one who can do that,” Max put in. “That is a seriously awesome power!”
“So I am the only one?” Heather asked in a high-pitched voice.
I shot Max a look, then turned to Heather. “No. You’re not.” Then I took a huge breath and added, “We’ve asked you guys here because we think we all might have some kind of superpower.”
“Well, not all of us,” Max said, looking pointedly at Izzy.
Izzy blushed and looked down.
“OK, maybe not all of us,” I agreed. “But Izzy is my best friend and she knows everything that’s going on, and she’s part of this, OK?”
Why was he being so difficult? As if this weren’t hard enough already!