Edison’s Alley (14 page)

The moment he had turned on the stage lamp, attracting people to his garage sale, he had set something in motion, and it was speeding toward an unseen end. He only hoped he could get there
before the Accelerati did.

The secret society had the clear advantage. They had money and manpower on their side. What did Nick have?

In moments of weakness, he thought it might be best to hand everything over to them, and get out of this deep water before he drowned in it. But then he would think of Jorgenson—that smug,
self-important jackass. Whatever he would use Tesla’s inventions for, it wouldn’t be good.

And there was more driving this rivalry. Maybe it was petty and childish, but Nick just couldn’t let Jorgenson find out about Tesla’s great machine. It was not what Tesla would have
wanted. Nick knew that as certainly as he knew that it was
his
purpose to complete it.

Just when he had finished installing the abacus—sensing instinctively where it went—a voice behind him made him jump.

“Can I be scared yet?”

Nick turned to see his brother at the top of the attic stairs. Nick hadn’t even known he was home. The expression on Danny’s face was more an accusation than a question.

“Huh?”

“You told me a few weeks ago not to be scared by all the weird stuff, because you’d be scared for both of us.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of anymore, Danny,” Nick said. “The asteroid didn’t hit us. Everything’s okay.” Nick was aware that he wasn’t being
very convincing.

Danny eyed the collection of odd objects. “Sometimes I come up to the attic when you’re not here,” he said, “and just look at it.”

Nick couldn’t read his brother’s face. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“And you shouldn’t be getting all this stuff back. There’s something wrong with all of it, and you bringing it here just makes it worse.”

Nick couldn’t deny that. “Maybe it has to get worse before it gets better,” he said.

“Or maybe it just gets worse,” said Danny, the expression on his face harder than Nick had ever seen it. And then he said, “He was nuts, you know.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think? Tesla.”

Hearing Danny say the name was surprising enough to make Nick gasp.

“I might not be as smart as you,” Danny said, “but I’m not stupid. I hear he nearly blew up the whole city, like a hundred years ago or something.”

Nick couldn’t look at his brother. Instead he considered the collection of objects in front of him. “You need to have experiments that don’t work before you get to the ones
that do.”

“I don’t trust a crazy dead scientist,” Danny said. Then he took a deep breath and let it out. “But I trust you.”

Nick felt a huge sense of relief. If Danny trusted him, maybe he was worthy of that trust.

“If you want me to help, I will,” Danny said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just look out for Dad,” Nick told him. “Where is he?”

“Off with Spiderly Webb,” Danny said, using what had become their secret nickname for Beverly. “They went to see Seth in his school’s production of
Scooby-Doo: The
Musical
. I told him I’d rather shove needles in my eyes. Dad gave me his death stare but let me stay home.”

At the sound of a rattle from outside, they looked out the small attic window to see Vince coming up the driveway, hauling the old dryer on a handcart. One more object claimed! The day
hadn’t been a total loss.

“Come on,” Nick said, “let’s help him bring it up.”

Danny put up his hand for a brotherly fist bump, and Nick obliged. As their fists touched, there was a loud electric snap, and something flashed—not just between their hands, but also in
Nick’s mind.

“Ouch!” said Danny, shaking out his hand. “I swear, you can’t touch anything anymore without getting a shock.”

“It’s just static,” Nick told him. “Like the aurora. It’s from the asteroid…” Something had occurred to Nick, setting his mind on fire. His attention flew
back to the center of the room.

“I wish it would stop,” Danny said.

“Maybe we can
make
it stop,” said Nick, never taking his eyes from the machine. “Maybe we’re
supposed
to….”

Caitlin got a text from Nick later that afternoon. All it said was:
Memorial Park. 5:00.

It was the first communication she’d had from him since she had chosen friendship over saliva exchange and then seen him ride off with that crazy-haired girl on a dirt bike.

Why couldn’t boys understand that sometimes “I like you as a friend” means “I like you
more
than a boyfriend” or “I like you too much to ever break up
with you”—because that’s all the boy-crazy girls in school ever seemed to do: find the boy, break up with the boy, hate the boy, find the next boy, rinse and repeat, over and
over.

She had been through the cycle once with Theo, and she wanted off that merry-go-round before the next revolution.

But on the other hand, maybe the way to stop the merry-go-round was to get on with someone you trusted and shut the thing down.

She found it a major triumph that she could understand all this about herself without the insightful playback of the tape recorder. It made her realize that she didn’t need it anymore. For
the short time she’d had it, it had given her exactly what she needed when she needed it.

Maybe it needed to go wrong to bring you to this moment.

And maybe things needed to go wrong between her and Nick to bring her to
this
moment.

She held on to that thought as she left for Memorial Park, ready to say yes to anything Nick asked. She had to trust that the merry-go-round was no match for the two of them.

Shadows were already getting long by the time she arrived. The park was not in her favorite part of town, and she had no idea why Nick wanted to meet there, but she knew it had to
be important. Nick was not a frivolous texter.

People had already started to arrive with blankets and lawn chairs. The same thing was happening in other parks, open fields, and yards. The silent fireworks of the aurora borealis were more
spectacular every night. Flowing colors chased each other across the sky with such brilliance you could barely see the stars anymore.

Finding Nick in the growing crowd was like playing a game of Twenty Text Messages.

When she found him, they gave each other a standard “hey” “hey” greeting that seemed off but not awkward. She was expecting awkward. She didn’t know how to read
“off.”

“I want to show you something,” Nick told her, and he led her across a field where no sky watchers had set up camp yet. Memorial Park was very big and very flat. Up ahead was Pikes
Peak Avenue, which bordered the northern edge of the park.

“Where are we going?”

“See that street?” He stopped and pointed. “Foote Avenue?”

“Yes…”

“Tesla’s Lab was once up that way. And this field around us—this is probably the field he electrified. He shoved three lightbulbs into the ground, turned on the Tesla coil back
at his lab, and the bulbs actually lit up!”

“Is that why we’re here? To talk about Tesla?”

Nick didn’t pick up on her disappointment and kept going. “He was using the town’s generator to power the coil—but what if he figured out that he didn’t have to?
What if he discovered how to pull power right out of the air?”

Caitlin shook her head. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t understand, it was more that she didn’t want to.

When she didn’t say anything, Nick reached toward her. “What if you could harness
this
?” And he touched her shoulder, delivering a small shock.

“Ow! Stop it.”

“Imagine that, multiplied billions of times! Imagine the aurora pulled from the sky, and into a machine right on Earth!”

And although today’s meeting wasn’t at all what she had expected, she had to admit that she was intrigued. “You mean the F.R.E.E.?”

“That’s what it’s for, Caitlin! There’s all this energy being generated by the asteroid, but it’s being wasted! Tesla figured out a way to harness that free energy.
He figured out how to use it!”

Once Nick said it, she knew it was true—but instead of feeling amazed, she felt troubled. Clearly Nick had become addicted to the idea of completing the machine—if
“addicted” was the right word—and she feared that knowing the machine’s purpose would only intensify his addiction.

She could understand his need to give himself over to something larger than himself; he had just lost his mother. He didn’t speak of the tragedy much anymore, but she knew it colored
everything he did. Obviously the machine provided distraction and relief. But the Accelerati were a ruthless, soulless bunch. The machine could not save him any more than it had saved Tesla from
Edison.

“It’s too big a responsibility, Nick,” she told him. “It’s too much for you to handle.”

“That’s why I need you, Caitlin.” There was desperation in his eyes. Desperation, sincerity, and determination. “What happened last week—me asking you out and
stuff—it doesn’t matter,” he said. “There’s a bigger picture, and we’ve got to work together. We can’t let stupid things come between us.”

Caitlin shrugged, but a shrug wasn’t what she was feeling. The “stupid things,” as Nick called them,
did
matter to her.

“Maybe I do want to go to the movies with you after all.”

Nick shook his head. “We don’t have time for that.” Then he sighed. “There’s something else you need to see.” He led her to a small sign standing alone and
mostly forgotten at the edge of the park. It read:

The wooden posts were almost rotted through, and the small bronze plaque riveted to the weatherworn plywood sign was tarnished, evidencing years of neglect.

It was, to say the least, underwhelming.

“That’s it?” said Caitlin. “That’s all he got?”

“That,” said Nick bitterly, “and the alternative school they named after him.”

Now Caitlin was beginning to understand Nick’s feelings. It was a sad little marker for such a great man—but what she saw as a disappointment, Nick took as an insult. He was
indignant. And angry. She saw that Nick was on the edge of a place she didn’t want him to go.

“Tesla had a vision, and we’re a part of it,” he said. “You and me, we’re the only ones who know about the Far Range Energy Emitter. It’s up to us to make it
a reality. To prove to the world he was right—and complete his life’s work.”

Although part of her could see Nick’s point, another part of her was worried about his increasingly strange behavior. What had begun as a quest had turned into an obsession. A potentially
dangerous one. So she reached out to him, and bearing the shock that came with it, put a hand on his shoulder, gently trying to bring him back from the edge.

“Tesla hid it because he thought the world wasn’t ready for it,” Caitlin reminded him. “Maybe it’s still not.”

Nick looked at Caitlin with a steely intensity that made her shiver.

“I don’t care if the world’s not ready,” he said. “
I’m
ready.”

And up above, the aurora began to shimmer.

T
he following evening, emboldened by their acquisition of the harp, the Accelerati made their move.

It was a rainy Sunday night and Nick was alone in the house. His father had taken Danny out for dinner with the Webbs, or the Hillses, or whatever the plural is for a single mom and her
offspring, but Nick had to avoid being seen by Seth, so he refused to go. Considering his bristly relationship with Spiderly Webb, his father didn’t insist.

“Remind her about the stain remover,” Nick told his dad as he left.

Then, about half an hour later, he microwaved himself up a frozen burrito.

“You want one?” he asked Jorgenson.

“No, thank you,” Jorgenson said. “Maybe after I clean out your attic, but not right now.”

So Nick made only one, and he sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat, pondering his growing sense of purpose and his need to defeat the Accelerati before they defeated him.

“Something to drink, maybe?” he asked Jorgenson. “We’ve got juice and milk, though I think the milk might be expired.”

“Very kind of you,” Jorgenson said. “If I feel dehydrated I’ll let you know.”

In a dim corner of his mind, where the electrical impulses of his brain were currently not able to reach, Nick felt a mild sense of unease. There was something wrong, but he couldn’t quite
figure out what it was.

There was a clatter of heavy footsteps on the stairs as two other men in pastel-colored suits struggled to get the weight machine down from the attic.

“Turn it on,” Nick told them. “It’ll be easier. Just make sure it’s on the lowest setting.”

And when they couldn’t figure out how to turn on the weight machine, he did it for them.