The Boy Who Knew Everything (7 page)

“Fly now,” Conrad said. “Get Dr. Bell and bring him back here immediately. Go! GO!”

Looking from Conrad to Betty, and back to Conrad, Piper's confusion was apparent. “But why do we need Dr. Bell?” Suddenly looking out to the farmyard for her father and not seeing him, Piper answered her own question. “Pa…”

“Use the fastest route possible.”

Piper's feet left the ground before the screen door bounced shut.

With Betty's help, Conrad was able to lift Joe onto a small cart and pull him to the house, where they carefully but gently laid him down on the couch. Before they even reached the house, Joe was slipping in and out of consciousness. When he was settled on the couch, Conrad began giving him small doses of aspirin. Joe perked up for a short while and then drifted away again.

Betty ran to gather anything that Conrad might need, but Conrad's mind was cloudy and rusted; he held his forehead as though trying to crank it into movement faster.

Doc Bell walked through the kitchen door right on Piper's heels to find Conrad leaning over Joe, with the heels of both hands over his heart. He pumped rhythmically on his chest with all his strength.

“He needs adrenaline,” Conrad said to Doc Bell, who was temporarily rendered motionless by the scene before him. “STAT!”

Doc Bell roused himself to his task and moved in, pushing Conrad out of the way. “Step aside, son. I'll take over now.”

Conrad followed behind Doc Bell, watching and scrutinizing his every decision. With red eyes, Piper held tightly to Betty's hand, her lips praying the same word over and over again in a silent chant. “Please,” she said, “please, please, please, please…”

Betty, who had sat at her mother's and father's bedsides and at those of many other friends and neighbors in Lowland County at their time of passing, felt a creeping familiarity tickling up from her feet and into her legs. Her normal common-sense manner completely deserted her and she did not do one practical thing, but instead succumbed to every memory and moment that she had spent with Joe over their entire life together: the night of their wedding when he gently held her in his arms and fumbled across the dance floor; the spring when the rains came and the tractor got stuck and Joe spent three days and nights digging it out; the way Joe liked to eat apple pie—real slow, as though he could make it last forever. And the day Joe picked up Piper for the first time and his face lit up as though the sun were rising from inside his head, his hands trembling at her impossible littleness and the whiteness of her skin against his thick, fumbling mitts.

A cool breeze washed over them and Doc Bell said, “There's nothing more I can do.”

Betty's hand came to her heart.

“But there has to be something,” Conrad urged.

“He needs to be in a cardiac unit at a major medical facility.”

“What about—” Conrad stuttered, trying to pull thoughts from his head, thoughts that were slow to come.

“He's been without oxygen for over ten minutes, Conrad. You got his heart started, but it can't maintain.”

Doc Bell took off his stethoscope and wrapped it around his neck absently. Piper let go of her mother's hand and stepped between her father and Doc Bell, as though she were brokering a fight between them.

“But … can't you keep trying?” When Doc Bell looked down at his shoes, Piper looked to Conrad with wild eyes. “Conrad?”

Conrad turned away, grabbing hold of a chunk of his hair and pulling on it as if he could twist the answer out of his brains. “I need to think—think—”

Piper followed him with her eyes, hanging on his every motion, faithfully waiting for him to turn around and give a brilliant plan.

Conrad's mental tentacles reached and stretched, flailing wildly but finding no purchase.

When Piper witnessed Conrad's defeat she did the only thing she could think of. Bending down, she took Joe's hand in hers, and even though she was now eleven her fingers were still impossibly tiny and delicate against his. “Pa? Pa? I'm right here,” Piper whispered to the still and crumpled face. “Don't go. I'm right here.”

Betty came to Piper's side and put her hand over Piper's and the three hands were entwined. Piper's little hand between Betty's on one side and Joe's on the other.

“Shhh,” Betty said.

Piper couldn't stop her pleas and so Betty repeated over and over again, “Shhh,” until Piper's sobs prevented her from forming words.

And standing with his back against the wall, Conrad broke. He didn't sob or cry; indeed he was unable to move. It wasn't his cells but the atoms in his cells that separated and went riot over the pain of their existence. Conrad knew that if he moved even a fraction of a moment, he would disintegrate, and so he carefully kept from spilling out and shattering against the wood floor.

How, Conrad wondered to himself, could he live in a world that didn't hold Joe McCloud?

And the answer that Conrad had to that question was that he couldn't live without Joe. Joe McCloud was essential. Being a logical person, Conrad quickly realized that everyone was essential. And that included himself—he, Conrad, was essential and important and … not dead.

But if everyone was essential, Conrad understood, that changed everything. And suddenly, as though a dark cloud was blown free from the path of bright sunlight, his thoughts became brilliant and true again and then Conrad knew exactly what to do.

*   *   *

There was no rush now.

Conrad walked slowly to the barn, where his makeshift laboratory was coated in dust. Sitting on wood planks that he had made into a table was TiTI.

In a safe in the floor he'd locked away the eyedropper of plutonium. On the top of the egg was a place for him to insert his finger, and when his finger slid into it and his identity was verified, a compartment on the side opened. He carefully worked through the procedures and watched the plutonium settle into the receiving chamber at the core of the egg.

As he slid everything back into place, a small humming sound vibrated out of TiTI. Conrad programmed a digital timer and then placed his hands on either side of the egg, gripping it lightly and making sure that all ten fingers made contact.

For many miles around, a strobing light could be seen detonating outward from the McCloud barn. That same light then hung suspended for an extended moment, as though time itself suddenly went into slow motion, and then a split second later the light was sucked back to its source, leaving everything in its wake strangely scrambled. The inhabitants of Lowland County were left to rearrange themselves back to their normal state and wonder if what had just happened was real or imagined. Most folks in Lowland County, being sensible people, chose to believe the latter.

 

CHAPTER

9

W
EDNESDAY
, A
PRIL
14, 6:13
A.M.

On that Wednesday in April, Piper woke feeling defeated after a fitful night. Today was the day that Conrad was leaving. She never would have thought that things would end like this and Conrad would just pack up and go away. As hard as she tried, she couldn't think of a way to persuade him to stay, and all her arguments fell on deaf ears. Once Conrad made a decision there was no swaying him.

Turning over in her bed, Piper almost jumped out of her skin. Sitting pressed up against her bed was Conrad! With shining eyes and a strangely joyful face, he was perched on her small wooden chair, waiting for her to wake up. As soon as he saw that she was awake, he leapt forward and seized her hand.

“Piper, you're right. You are absolutely right.”

“What the heck, Conrad! You almost scared me half to death.” Piper's heart was jumping about like a terrified jackrabbit.

“Piper, I've got to start doing things differently!”

“What are you talking about?” Piper drew back from Conrad. He was acting weird and his clothes looked strange—as if he'd been wearing them for weeks and weeks. She saw that parts of them were ripped and stained with some strange substance. But last night when she had seen him in them, they were pressed and clean. What had he been up to for the last few hours?

“What I'm talking about is that we have incredible abilities and we've been wasting them! Look at you! You can fly!
Fly!
And what are you doing with it?” Conrad jumped to his feet and began pacing back and forth in a feverish excitement. “We can't waste any more time. Not one second!”

“Really?” Even though this was exactly what Piper wanted to hear, and how she felt, she never thought in a million years that she would hear it coming out of Conrad's mouth. Piper rationally knew that there was no possible way that Conrad could have changed so radically in the course of a few hours.

“What happened to you?” She monitored him closely.

“I can think again,” Conrad said, holding his temples. “I understand and I care. I care like you care. And I know what I have to do.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because, because it's the only rational thing to do!”

“But you said there was no point. You said—”

“You kept telling me that it was wrong not to use our blessings as a blessing. You said we had to help people in the ways that only we were able. I couldn't see the point until I could. I see it now.”

Piper watched Conrad's frantic, excited pace as he went back and forth across her room. He was himself again, the amazing Conrad she knew and loved.

Conrad held up a file and dropped it next to Piper. She immediately recognized it as the one J. had given him on his birthday.

“And I read this,” Conrad said. “My father has been keeping secrets from me for too long. And those secrets are my business, and I'm going to find out once and for all what they are.”

Conrad pulled back the curtains and threw open Piper's window.

“My father wants me to stop thinking.” He pointed to his head. “When I wouldn't stop he wanted me dead. But I get to decide what I'm going to do with my thoughts and my life, and he can't stop me. He thinks he can, but he's wrong—again. And I'm going to show him exactly how wrong he is.”

A smile hit the corners of his mouth and then it turned into a laugh. Reeling around, Conrad grabbed Piper's hands, pulled her out of bed, and started to jump up and down.

“You've lost your mind.”

“No, I've found it.” Conrad couldn't stop laughing and, despite the fact that it was clear her dear friend had entirely lost his marbles, Piper started to laugh too.

“Let's do it!” Conrad yelled.

“Let's do it!” Piper repeated.

“Stop that racket, you two!” Betty called up from the kitchen. “Breakfast is on.”

Conrad stopped dead and looked at Piper as if he were hearing Betty's voice for the first time.

“Where's your father?” Conrad said urgently.

“I don't know.”

“I have to see him.” Conrad rushed to the window and threw it open. He craned his neck to look out in the direction of the barn. “He should be on his way back for breakfast by now. I can't see him. Where is he?”

“Uh, I don't know,” Piper repeated.

Conrad turned around and bolted from her room. Piper could hear him thunder down the stairs, and she dropped out the window and onto the porch. She opened the screen door and came into the kitchen at the same moment that Conrad came down from the stairs. She was in the perfect spot to see his face upon discovering Joe McCloud sitting quietly, as ever, in his chair and drinking his morning cup of coffee.

Piper could have sworn that tears came to Conrad's eyes. He walked with reverence to Joe and put his hand ever so softly on Joe's sleeve, as though to assure himself that Joe was really there.

Oblivious to the strangeness of the scene taking place in her kitchen that morning, Betty was consumed with the tasks before her. As was often the case at meal times, Fido was nosing about under her feet, hoping to catch any stray scraps that might fall. To keep him from pestering her further Betty tossed him a generous crust of bread, whereupon he happily flew to the top of the sideboard and sat munching on it loudly. Wiping the crumbs off her hands, Betty next gathered several prescription bottles off the window ledge and took them to the table, where she began doling out specific numbers of pills from each one.

Startled to see so much medication, Piper came to the table. “What's that for, Ma?”

“Oh, it's nothing.” Betty waved away Piper's concern. “A few weeks back Doc Bell showed up out of the blue, saying that Conrad had told him to come and take a look at your pa's heart. Sure enough, just like Conrad said, there was a problem.”

Piper noticed that Conrad was nodding as Betty spoke.

“But how come I didn't know?” Despite what Betty said, Piper was worried.

“I thought you did,” Betty said evasively, as though she couldn't quite recall why Piper was not part of this. She shrugged and immediately dismissed the matter. “Of course, Doc Bell says that if we hadn't caught it in time, it could have been a nasty business.”

Joe patted Piper's hand reassuringly.

“As long as he takes his pills, the doctors say that his heart is stronger than an eighteen-year-old's.” Betty finished with the bottles and put them away to get to her next task. “We just thank our lucky stars that Doc Bell caught it in time. You know your pa, he'd as soon go to the doctor as a hen party. Can't say I even remember the last time he went to have Doc Bell take a look at him. It was providence, I tell you, providence plain and simple that Doc Bell came when he did.”

As Piper looked between Conrad and her father, a shiver ran up and down the small hairs on her neck. Last night her father had looked tired—his shoulders were bent over and there was a gray tone to his skin—yet as she looked at him this morning, he looked as if he'd grown ten years younger overnight.