The Tell-Tale Start (17 page)

The police chief handed the phone to the twins.

Edgar held it to his ear. After a moment, he said, “Thanks for the kind words, Mr. Governor, but why would we want to support your reelection campaign when we’ve never even met you?”

Edgar listened to the governor’s answer.

“We can have power and influence?” he repeated, turning to his brother.

Allan shook his head no to the governor’s offer. “We’ve had quite enough of ruthless ambition,” he observed.

Edgar agreed. He tapped a secret string of numbers into the cell phone keyboard. Surely, a few hundred volts delivered through the earpiece would settle the issue.

The governor’s startled scream was audible over the phone line.

Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith groaned.

Edgar handed the phone back to the mayor. “The governor’s had his say.”

The press shouted more questions. Cameras flashed all around. News trucks beamed the boys’ video images across the nation.

Edgar and Allan happily took it all in.

“And there’s one more thing,” Edgar said into the microphone.

Allan moved beside his brother. “We couldn’t have
done any of this without our aunt and uncle, who’ve not only taken us into their home but also into their hearts.”

Uncle Jack beamed. Aunt Judith wiped her eyes.

The boys had surprised themselves. They’d managed to say aloud what they really felt—and in front of witnesses.

That night, after a celebratory banquet, grateful city officials awarded the triumphant Poe family a two-bedroom suite at the Deluxe Motor Lodge near the edge of town. It had been an exhilarating day, so when Edgar and Allan claimed to be tired and asked to be excused to their room to spend time with Roderick (for whom the motel made a special exception in its no-pets policy), Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith naturally assumed the boys would be asleep before long.

Of course, this wasn’t the case.

Instead, the boys sprawled fully dressed for hours on their queen-size beds, neither of which they even bothered to test as trampolines. They were too distracted by questions to jump up and down. So they each just gazed up at the motel ceiling, speculating aloud about Professor
Perry’s nefarious but oddly insightful theories regarding their unusual connectedness. No one else had ever quite figured them out so completely.

“So why are we the way we are?” asked Allan.

“Well, in a quantum universe unusual things, like us, happen from time to time,” suggested Edgar.

“And that’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing.”

“Right, it’s just an unlikely thing.”

“And we’re still free to be whatever we choose to be.”

“Sure, like everyone else.”

“That is, so long as we’re always…”

The boys stopped, searching for the right word.

“Alike,” they pronounced in unison.

Of course the boys benefited from their unusual connection. Still, they had to admit that sometimes being two boys with one mind could be a little frustrating. For example, they could never play chess with each other, as each always knew what the other was thinking. Additionally, they couldn’t help wondering if some things, even their least favorite things like health class or gossipy talk shows, might be more interesting if they were able to see them differently from each other, to disagree once in a while.

“Of course, it’s nice never being alone,” Allan observed.

Edgar agreed (naturally), but gave voice to what his brother was also thinking: “Or, being like one boy, are we actually alone even when we’re together?”

“You mean, the way your thoughts are also my thoughts?”

“And vice versa.”

“Well, there are times…” Allan started.

Edgar finished the sentence: “When it’d be great to share our secrets with somebody other than each other, somebody who doesn’t already know them.”

“Yes, but who?”

Not Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith. And not Stevie “The Hulk” or any of the boys’ other classmates, none of whom would ever believe that Edgar and Allan were not just identical but actually interchangeable. It was just too strange. And Edgar and Allan had learned from unnerving recent experience that scientists who
might
understand the connection were not to be trusted.

A chime in the tower of the nearby City Hall marked the hourly passing of the night.

Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock.

At last, the boys realized there
was
someone they could tell.

At midnight, with Roderick sauntering beside them,
they slipped out of their room, closing the motel door carefully so as not to wake their aunt and uncle in the next room. The night was chilly and the sky clear—perfect for their purposes. They crept through the silent motel parking lot and dashed across the deserted, two-lane highway to where the vast Kansas cornfields began.

Were they looking for more trouble?

No, they were looking for a tiny light in the sky.

It was a snap for the boys to calculate that at this latitude and longitude the satellite launched years before with their unfortunate mother and father accidentally aboard would be visible as a glimmering, orbiting star in the northeast skies from 12:11 to 12:36 a.m. In the almost complete darkness of the cornfields, it would be easy to pick it out among all the ordinary constellations.

“There it is!” Allan observed.

“Mom and Dad, you won’t believe all the stuff that happened today,” they said in unison to the sky.

And they told their parents the whole story.

“A big studio wants the boys to be in a movie?” Uncle Jack asked Aunt Judith the next morning as the family
pulled out of the motel parking lot on their way to the local Pancake House for breakfast.

“Yes,” she answered excitedly as she put away her cell phone. “A movie producer just saw the boys on TV and wants them to play the young Edgar Allan Poe in his current project. Isn’t that fantastic? Edgar and Allan, movie actors!”

“Not so fast, Aunt Judith,” the twins said from the backseat, which they shared with Roderick. They were anxious to get back to Baltimore and to celebrate their overnight fame with their friends—surely the school district would reenroll them now that they were national figures. Then again, being in a movie could be fun. “We’ll think it over.”

“When do they want the boys to start?” Uncle Jack asked his wife.

“Ten days.”

“So soon?” Uncle Jack said.

“They’re starting production,” she explained.

“In Hollywood?”

She shook her head. “They’re shooting the boys’ parts in New Orleans.”

“Is the pay good?” Jack whispered to her.

“Naturally,” she said.

“Well, in that case…” he murmured.

Still, the boys weren’t certain. There seemed only one place to go for help with their decision.

“How about some Chinese food?” they suggested.

An hour later in a booth at the dimly lit Bamboo Garden, the boys anxiously read their respective fortunes.

And:

Astonished, Edgar looked at his brother. “They’re
different
?”

“And they’re stupid,” Allan whispered. “Not even fortunes. Useless.”

“They’re the same as Uncle Jack and Aunt Judith got,” Edgar said, looking over his uncle’s shoulder.

“What did you boys get?” Aunt Judith asked.

They crumpled their fortunes into tiny balls and tossed them onto the table. “Nothing helpful.”

It seemed they were going to have to make decisions on their own from now on.

“If we do the movie, would there be a part for Roderick Usher?” Allan asked his aunt.

“He could play ‘The Black Cat,’” Edgar suggested.

“Good idea,” Aunt Judith said, removing her cell phone from her purse. “I’ll call the producer and ask him.”

“Don’t ask him,
tell
him,” Edgar said.

“No cat, no Poes,” Allan added as Aunt Judith dialed the producer’s number.

“The boys have one demand,” she said into the phone.

The next day, Uncle Jack drove the Volvo wagon south toward New Orleans along the flat, open road that runs out of Kansas and into the hill country of Oklahoma.

“I hope you two are learning something about geography from all this driving around,” Aunt Judith said from the front seat. “After all, there is supposed to be some schooling going on.”