The Gift (22 page)

“Your magic… I think… it can sort of… rub off. I think I have some small degree of your power now that can rejoin with yours…
and become… like, greater than the sum.”

Wisty pauses, trying to absorb this latest bizarre info dump. I expect her to drop a bomb, but she’s actually listening. “Like…
maybe I’ve… given you a kind of… electrical charge?” I can’t believe she’s starting to regurgitate Onespeak.

“Maybe. I don’t quite know. Here, let me show you. Quick. I need both of you to take a hand—we need to be touching.”

“If this is just a ploy to hold my hand, B., you’re dead,” Wisty says.

“Concentrate on the food,” Byron orders. “Dream of what you want. Wisty, say something.”

“Um…” She whispers something under her breath, and I have a pretty good idea of what it might be.

I still can’t
see
anything, but in a matter of seconds, I
smell
something unmistakable. Cheeseburgers, onion rings, and—I think—black-and-white milk shakes. It’s strong enough to make my
knees feel weak.

“How’d you
do
that?” I ask Byron.

“Remember the prophecies?” he says. “Have you ever wondered how an army of kids might possibly prevail against the New Order’s
army of soldiers—with their guns, their tanks, planes, and ships? What I’ve started to understand at this place is that, unlike
New Order soldiers, we’re overflowing with ideas and creativity and potential.”

Once again Wisty surprises me with how she seems to get where Byron is going. As much as she hates the guy, they do seem to
have some weird connection. I felt it when
they were onstage making music together. I’d never tell her that, though.

“The One Who Is The One is scared to death of us and our potential. Our
energy.
That’s what all the schools and prisons for kids are about.” Byron’s voice picks up volume with excitement, and he has to
quiet himself down. “He wants to figure out how to steal it, which is what this place is for. Failing that, he wants to remove
the threat.”

“How can you steal somebody’s potential?” I wonder aloud, not expecting an answer.

“That’s what he’s trying to figure out. He wants to unite with Wisty —”

“Ew,” my sister interjects. “Ew, ew, ew, ew!”

“Silence!”
screams ERSA suddenly, and she’s sounding quite a bit more human—and stressed-out—than I’ve ever heard her. “If there is
any more nonessential speech, you will spend the remainder of your time gagged and shackled!”

Wisty

BYRON IMMEDIATELY RELEASES his sweaty hand from mine. Or maybe it’s my hand that’s sweaty. After all, death is really close now.
Really
close.

“ERSA,” Byron calls out, proceeding from our dark dining corner to a slightly less dim area of the basement, “the condemned
have requested use of a proper bathroom. One last time… before the execution. I’ve refused the request, but they’ve been insistent.
What should I do?”

I’ve heard about last meals, but last potty breaks?

“They may not leave the basement,” says ERSA, but then I swear I hear her sigh.
Can a machine sigh?
“There is a toilet behind door B12. I will release it for five minutes.”

“Yes, ERSA. I’ll accompany the prisoners to make certain they’re…”

Byron trails off as a door in the wall clicks open. “Compliant.”

Next, Byron sweeps us into a room about the size of an old-fashioned telephone booth. “Quick. We need to hold hands,” he says.

“But I haven’t gone yet,” I protest. I actually do need to use the toilet. As you might imagine, I’d been avoiding crouching
in a corner. With no toilet paper.

“You don’t have time to go. We need to use your magic ASAP.”

“And why would it be working now?” Whit asks. “We’ve been trying to use magic since we got here.”

“You saw what happened with the food. I haven’t figured it all out yet, but there’s something about the power that was transferred
through Wisty to me, I think.”
Great. I turn the guy into a weasel, and he gets the ego of a lion.
“Maybe it’s like evolution. Each generation develops new characteristics to cope with new forces in nature —”

“Generation? Cripes, Byron, it’s not like we had a
baby
together —”

“Just be quiet and hold me, Wisty. This is serious.”

Talk about evolution… is this really Byron Swain coming to the rescue—again? He’s changed. He clutches my hand, and his feels
warm and confident.

Byron turns to my brother. “Whit, do you believe me?”

“I hate to say it, but what choice do I have? Sure, Byron. Do what you can.”

“You two have nothing to lose. And neither do I—I’m dead regardless. Quickly now, look for a spell. Something about… water.”

Whit opens his journal and flips through a few pages. He finds an entry he likes.

Although you hide in the ebb and flow

Of the pale tide when the moon has set

And here’s the weirdest thing: the air is kind of hurting my lungs a little; it’s too dry or something —

The people of coming days will know

About the casting out of my net

Whit’s face—I don’t know how to describe it—it’s gotten pointy, and his lips seem oversize and —

And how you have leaped times out of mind

Over the little silver cords

Byron grabs the journal out of Whit’s hands, and I gasp. My brother’s skin has gone silvery, and something bizarre is going
on with his neck. It’s as if he has… scales?

Byron finishes the spell:

And think that you were hard and unkind,

And blame you with many bitter words.

We’re turning into fish! What good will that do, ending up as fish on the bathroom floor?

Have I trusted Byron one too many times?

And why is he so huge all of a sudden?

Then there’s this unusual popping sound, and… the two of us are resting in Byron’s outstretched hands, looking up at his giant
face.

We’ve apparently turned ourselves into guppies. And now we’re 100 percent relying on Byron to go find us a fish tank?

“Wisty,” Byron’s voice seems to boom inside my head. “I meant what I wrote. I love you. I know you think it’s the worst thing
you’ve ever heard. But I can’t help it. You’re everything I always wished I could be. Funny, relaxed, strong. Smart, rebellious,
and you don’t care what others think—unless it’s your family. You know what’s important. You’re perfect.”

I’d love to say
Thanks, B.,
but I’m seriously drying out here. My skin, my mouth, my
gills
… they’re all stinging like mad.

“You and Whit are on your own now,” he continues. “I know I won’t make it out of here alive. Not when The One finds out what
I’ve done.”

Suddenly we’re moving away from his face and toward a white porcelain bowl.

“Good-bye, Allgoods,” Byron says. “What I do now, I do for love!”

Whit

PLOP!

Plop!

Terrific. We’ve just been dumped headfirst into a toilet—and a gross one, too.

And before Wisty and I even have a sec to take a lap around our “wading pool,” up through the refracting surface of the water
I see Byron reaching for the toilet handle.

God, no! That traitor isn’t going to
—

But he is. And when you think about it, considering the downward spiral we’ve been on lately, getting flushed down the toilet
really may just be the ultimate poetic justice. I still can’t figure out if the creep is saving our lives or just getting
a kick out of flushing down the pipes his former nemesis and the girl who’d so often rejected him.

But when the full force hits, none of it matters anyway. After the shock of the initial crash of water, which comes close
to knocking me senseless against the sides of the
pipes, it’s one dark and scary shot straight out of the school building. The water power is so strong I can’t even twist my
head far enough to see if Wisty’s behind me. It’s killing me not to know if she made it.

I’d been a champion swimmer in school, so the sensation of being a fish isn’t as odd for me as I might have thought. But this
is like trying to do laps in an ocean during a
hurricane,
so no, I’ve never trained for it. And I’m worried about how Wisty’s handling it… until I remember that she’s done time as
a rodent in a gutter.

Wisty, hang in there,
I’m thinking.
Just remember to breathe.

The pipes are getting wider and wider, which doesn’t offer much relief since there’s these waterfall noises that keep getting
louder—and the too-gross-for-words stuff coming down the pipe with us is getting thicker and thicker. Just the thought of
it makes me nearly suffocate.

Just remember to breathe, Whit,
I say to myself. Which is actually pretty good advice, because when I do, I realize that my sense of smell isn’t on a human
scale.

So I breathe even more deeply, and I catch sight of Wisty. At least, I assume it’s her and not some other guppy busting out
of “prison” via the sewer.

We make eye contact, and I think,
Follow me,
hoping that the message somehow comes through in my face. I’m glad we’ve spent so much of our lives understanding each other
without saying a thing.

We’re going faster and faster—a real raging river—
until suddenly we find ourselves in still water: a storm sewer. From there we make our way downstream and into a maze of lazy
subterranean canals under the city.

Before long Wisty and I see something we haven’t seen in a long time—light! Real, honest-to-God daylight! We stare at it,
mesmerized as it grows and grows. We start to see blues and greens and yellows and —

Why is the light growing so quickly when we’re not even swimming hard? And what’s that almost deafening, roaring sound?

“Swim back!”
I try to scream. But I can’t. I’m a fish.

And it’s too late anyway.

Whit

YOU KNOW THOSE NIGHTMARES where you’re falling and you’re entirely helpless and you wake up with a start? This rush is kind of like that, but not.

It’s
not,
because it’s
not ending.

There’s no control. There’s nobody to help. I can’t even hope to see Wisty in this powerful, downward-spiraling torrent. All
I know is that I’m lodged inside a
roar
with nothing to hold on to but my useless panic.

Faster, louder, faster, louder, and then—
bang.

And then—
uhh.

My guppy brain feels as if it’s come unattached from the inside of my tiny little fish skull. I think I just did sixty to
zero in point two seconds.

And then all is calm.

Calm… and
sunlit?

I’m outside?

In one piece?
I think so.

Why am I not surprised that the environmentally unfriendly New Order has a sewer that goes directly into a river without any
filters or processing facilities that would grind two innocent little guppies into crop fertilizer?