Wood Sprites (39 page)
Authors: Wen Spencer
* * *
First period, they had their final in Math. Louise raced through the questions, scribbling out the work with her stylus. She turned in the test slickie ten minutes into class.
“What? No artwork this time?” Mr. Nakagawa asked. Normally she spent the entire class doodling in the margins when they had a test; it amused her that the software allowed an array of colors and line thicknesses.
“Can we use our tablets?” Jillian joined her at his desk. For some weird reason they weren’t allowed to use their phones at school, but tablets supported the same texting software.
Mr. Nakagawa flicked his fingers, indicating that they could sit down. “No talking.”
Tristan watched them with eyes narrowed, stylus poised over the questions. Surely he was just making a show at struggling with the test. He was old enough to get a doctorate degree. Why was he even taking the test? He’d only been in class for a day!
Mr. Nakagawa tapped on his desk loudly. “Eyes on paper.”
Tristan focused back on his test, answering faster than before.
The twins sat down and Louise texted Jillian what she had figured out.
“Obviously we turn Kessler over to the authorities and let them deal with him,” Jillian texted.
“We need evidence,” Louise texted back.
“We could restore the data and then send it to the police,” Nikola offered.
Louise eyed her tablet. She hadn’t thought it was possible for someone to “overhear” text messages between two people, but the babies were bored. They’d obviously figured it out. “Yes, do that.”
Jillian
eep
ed in surprise, earning a loud knock from Mr. Nakagawa. She pressed her mouth tightly shut on any other exclamations and texted furiously, “If you restore the data, the plans for the magic generator and the decoy Tinker Bell spotlight will also be restored.”
“We need to know if he made more than one trigger,” Louise typed. “There could be a second bomb.”
Jillian flinched as if hit. “Okay, okay, restore the data but don’t send to police!”
“We could delete our stuff back off,” the babies offered.
It seemed like a simple fix, but most likely the FBI would seize the printer and examine it every possible way including under a microscope, because they would need evidence to convict Mr. Kessler. If the twins turned Mr. Kessler in, then the magic generator would be found. Erasing the info would only make them look guilty—guiltier.
Louise shook her head. “We need something else as evidence. Something that ties him to Roycroft or the bomb.”
Jillian leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling a moment before texting, “Maybe we could get him to confess. If he tells the police that he was involved, they don’t need evidence.”
“He’ll never confess,” Louise texted. “He’d be facing the death penalty.”
“New York doesn’t have the death penalty,” Nikola stated.
“It’s an act of terrorism,” Louise texted, while Jillian replied with, “It’s a federal case.”
But perhaps Jillian had the right idea.
“We could send Kessler an anonymous letter saying that if he didn’t confess to creating the trigger to the bomb on his 3D printer, that we—”
Her tablet was suddenly jerked out of her hands. She yelped in surprise as Tristan glanced at the screen and his eyebrow rose.
“Kessler?” He said it like he was only mildly surprised.
Mr. Nakagawa knocked loudly.
Tristan handed back her tablet and went back to his seat.
* * *
Flying Monkey knew.
He’d only glanced at her tablet for a moment. Nikola’s text had scrolled out of view. The babies were safe from him, but Mr. Kessler was a walking dead man.
Maybe. Assuming that Ming didn’t want him to make another bomb.
They had to act faster than Louise wanted to. Tristan had taken his own tablet out and was typing something.
“We need to restore the data on the printer,” Louise texted.
“We’re doing it,” Nikola replied.
“As soon as we get a copy, we need to send it to the FBI so they’ll act now.”
“He got the printer’s memory deep-scrubbed, but the programs were automatically copied to the administration system.”
Louise had assumed that he’d deleted those, too. “He didn’t wipe those?”
“No. He doesn’t have clearance to do that.”
Neither did the twins, but that didn’t stop them. Was Mr. Kessler really so stupid that he couldn’t hack the school’s system? Or did he think that the school board simply wouldn’t understand the code that they were looking at?
She gasped as the log showed that he’d printed three triggers, one day after another, during the first week of March. According to the media, Roycroft’s business had promised to deliver all packages during the next Shutdown. He could only make the guarantee because of a well-exploited loophole in the treaty that let US customs prescreen shipments and then keep them in guarded storage areas prior to Shutdown. The EIA then would do a cursory check on the seals and pass the shipments quickly through the quarantine zone. Using Roycroft’s records, the FBI had tracked all the thinly disguised bomb components to Elfhome. None of them should have gotten past the US customs, as the treaty banned them. In addition to the quarantine zone expansion, the UN was also debating closing the loophole so that all goods would pass through EIA. Since Ming controlled the EIA, he would effectively control everything in and out of Pittsburgh.
What wasn’t clear was how many bombs had been made with the goods sent to Elfhome. The EIA paperwork claimed that Roycroft only transported one crate, but it also claimed that the crate contained a large ironwood chest. Had there been more than one bomb? Where were the other two triggers?
Louise created a temporary e-mail account, making sure it couldn’t be traced back to them. She composed a short message that stated simply that Mr. Kevin Kessler of Perelman School for the Gifted had printed the enclosed program on a 3D printer at the school to create the trigger. She hated that she hesitated at sending the message once she was done; the lives of hundreds of people might be at stake. Still, it was putting Jillian and Nikola and Joy at risk, and it scared her.
Was she doing the right thing? There was no sense of right or wrong. Pure logic said that she had to act, and quickly. Steeling herself, she hit “send.” The message vanished into the Internet and she felt nothing but continued unease.
* * *
Mr. Kessler vanished that afternoon. He’d left his phone on his desk in the annex, rushed down twelve flights of stairs, careened through the seventh-graders returning from lunch, and bolted out of the building. The FBI arrived an hour later with warrants. They started to dismantle the technology annex with frightening thoroughness. When they discovered the triggers in the storage room, school was hastily dismissed.
It was chaos on the street. The bomb squad was assembling outside as teachers herded out the students. Louise kept a firm hold on Tesla’s leash as the twins headed toward the subway. She hoped that they could slip away unnoticed by Tristan, but he fell into step with her before they reached the station. The platform display had Mr. Kessler’s photo; it was captioned:
Police search for teacher bomber; bombs found at private school.
What should Louise say if Tristan asked how they knew that the bomber was Mr. Kessler? Should she admit she contacted the FBI? Did he think that she knew where Mr. Kessler went? Why was he still following them? What did he want?
They rode in strained silence to their station and got off.
As they walked down the steps to the street level, Louise realized there was nothing keeping Tristan from following them the whole way home. That they couldn’t go into their house and keep him out. It scared her, and that made her angry. If he wanted to pretend he was nine years old, she’d act like he was nine years old.
She spun to face him. “Listen, you stupid booger head! You’re making me mad! Are you some kind of pervert?”
“Booger head?” He took a step back, surprised by the attack. “What? I’m not a pervert!”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire!” She gave him a hard push. “You know what they call nasty old men who follow little girls around? Perverts! Just because you’re a little boy doesn’t mean it’s any different when you do it, too! You’re a sick little booger head!”
Jillian gazed at them both in wide-eyed amazement.
“I’m not a pedophile!” Tristan cried.
“Neener, neener, boo, boo, stick your head in doo-doo!” Louise gave him a hard push. “Just go away. Cootie breath! Didn’t your mother teach you not to be mean to little girls? Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
Judging by the way he flinched, Anna would have been upset. Which meant that Anna didn’t know that he was there.
“I’m trying to protect you!” Tristan snapped.
“From what?” Louise cried.
Tristan pointed toward Manhattan and their school. “If you didn’t notice, there was a bomb at school!”
“And you were going to protect us how?” she shouted. “Poop on it?”
“I would have taken care of it!” Did that mean he hadn’t been the one who warned Mr. Kessler?
“By pooping and peeing on it?” Jillian realized what Louise was doing and joined in.
“Don’t be so stupid.” Tristan sounded his forty-some years. “I know you’re smarter than that. How did you know it was Kessler?”
Louise clamped shut her mouth, not sure how to answer.
Luckily, Jillian had something prepared. “Mr. Kessler hates us because we keep blowing his curve; he used to tease us during class. When we started working on the play, we had to go through him to use the printer in the annex.”
“Through?” Tristan mimed a ramming motion. “Like a plow through a snowbank?”
“Somewhat,” Jillian admitted. “He slipped once or twice and ranted in class about how much he hated elves. Once the FBI released the news about the trigger, Mr. Kessler was the first person we thought of.”
All mostly the truth. Convincing Tristan that they were still just normal fifth-graders was probably the wisest thing to do. Louise took up the thread and started to weave out a more elaborate fabrication. “I was in the annex on the morning of the bombing. I saw him come in and trigger the bomb; I just didn’t realize it until later. After the bombing, he was really nice to us. Super nice. It made us suspicious.”
Jillian tied off the loose ends. “Then we found out he’d scrubbed the memory of the printer.”
“So you told the FBI.”
“No, that wasn’t us,” Jillian lied. “We think it was Mr. Howe. We’ve been dropping hints to all our teachers over the last week and a half, but we didn’t think any of them took us seriously.”
Louise wrapped up the story in a neat bow. “That’s what we were debating this morning: what to do since no one seemed to believe us.”
And he believed it. Tristan’s eyes widened as he calculated the vectors of their made-up activities. Homeroom. Art. Music. Library. French. Math. In the course of a week, they had over a dozen teachers. Any of them knew Mr. Kessler well enough to make the leap that Tristan had failed to make.
Of course that left the question of how Mr. Kessler had known that he had to flee.
“Are they here yet?” Jillian whispered as Louise checked her video screens.
“No.” Louise could see the two empty seats beside Nikola. Aunt Kitty hadn’t been able to change her business meeting in California when the date of the play had been moved. The babies desperately wanted to see the play, so the twins used Aunt Kitty’s ticket for Nikola. Louise had settled him into the seat next to Zahara’s little brother and explained to Zahara’s mother that their nanny-bot was going to film everything for their aunt. They’d spent dinner break stuffing Joy with tuna fish sandwiches. Last Louise checked, the baby dragon was deep asleep in Nikola’s storage chamber.
The babies seemed fine, but where were Mom and Dad?
Louise scanned the crowd filtering in through the doors at the back of the theater. Their parents were driving in to the city so that they wouldn’t have to brave the subway after the play and the celebratory dinner. Their mother hadn’t been able to get off work early but promised to be there well before the curtain went up. Anything could be holding them up, from their mother’s boss wanting “one more minute” of her time to them running into a talkative parent in the lobby.
The sense that everything was about to go horribly wrong echoed through Louise, making her focus tightly on the control board. Between the large sets needing to be lowered from the ceiling, four of the cast members on flying wires, and a sword fight, there was so much that could go wrong. The FBI still hadn’t found Mr. Kessler, but Louise wasn’t sure that he was still alive.
The clock on Louise’s console indicated that it was nearly time to cue the overture music. She scanned her sound levels, and made sure everything was reset back to base. She moved her finger to the play button and waited for the time to change.
“I wish they had gotten front seats.” Jillian bit her bottom lip to keep it from quivering. “I hope they don’t come in so late that they end up standing in the back.”
Louise glanced at Jillian, surprised. Jillian had never cared before where their parents sat. She supposed it was because this was the first time that Jillian was playing the hero instead of the villain. “They’ll be able to see more of the stage. If they’re right up front, they might miss something you do because they’re looking at Elle or Iggy.”
Jillian gave her the little frown that said she knew full well that Louise was trying to cheer her up.
The clock hit start time, and Louise tapped the play button and clicked her first timer to start the countdown. The overture started with the upbeat “To Neverland” song that Louise had written for the production. The rustle of people finding their seats grew louder. Louise started to slowly dim the house lights and bringing up the curtain lights. There was a gasp from all the other kids as they realized it was time.
“Jillian!” Mr. Howe whispered loudly and waved at Jillian to come get into the flying harness.
Jillian flung her arms around Louise.
The fear that had been echoing faintly leapt forward, and Louise clung hard to her twin, suddenly afraid. “Be careful.”
Jillian laughed nervously. “What could possibly happen? It’s not like I’m going to be flying around twenty feet above—ow!”
Louise had pulled Jillian’s hair hard enough to hurt. “I’m serious.” She considered adding that she had a bad feeling but decided that Jillian was already nervous enough. “Just be careful.”
“Jillian!” Mr. Howe hissed louder.
Jillian squeezed her once and then darted away.
The seats beside Nikola stayed empty. The rustle from the audience died to an expectant hush. The overture ran five minutes and three seconds. At a minute and a half, Louise killed the house lights completely. Where were their parents?
Louise watched everyone scurry into place, her hands over the keys of the console as her timer counted down. Giselle and Renata in a two-person dog suit were sprawled out in the middle of the Darling nursery floor. They were jointly playing the nanny dog, Nana. Carlos and Darius, who played the Darling boys, jittered beside Louise. Elle stood poised as Wendy, no nerves showing. Across the stage, Ava waited in the wings. She looked nearly adult in Mrs. Darling’s evening dress and high heels, wringing her hands in nervousness.
Flying harness hooked up, Jillian bounded from the wings to the nursery window stage-center and stepped through to the back of the set.
Everyone in place. Louise spared another glance at the monitor on the now darkened theater. Had their parents slipped in after she dimmed down the lights? She couldn’t make out Nikola to check the empty seats beside him.
Louise tensed as the timer counted down the last few moments of music and, at zero she danced her fingers over the console, opening up the curtains, bringing up the spotlight on Nana, and hitting the sound effect of the nursery clock chiming nine o’clock.
Nana leapt up and the play was officially started. Louise took a deep breath. It felt like she’d started a massive boulder rolling and now had to watch it trundle forward, too large to be safely stopped. She waited with her hands poised over the control panel. Onstage, Mr. and Mrs. Darling tucked their children in, happy despite the fact they were poor and struggling. In a few minutes, they would leave for a rare evening out, thinking their children were safe in bed, but they would be wrong. A powerful stranger had been watching from a distance, jealous of what they had. He was about to swoop in and steal away the Darlings’ happiness for his own selfish gain. Blind to the danger, the children wouldn’t even understand enough to fight their abduction.
Louise grew aware of someone on her right, watching her, not the play. She spared a glance. Tristan stood beside her in his Lost Boy costume. He had an odd stunned look on his face, like someone had just told him bad news and he wasn’t sure how to react to it.
Louise’s stomach churned sickeningly. What did he know? All afternoon she had felt as though something horrible was going to happen. Had something happened with Mr. Kessler? It had been over a week and the police hadn’t found any trace of him after he fled the school.
Louise realized that the next section of play was about to begin, and she needed to focus. Mrs. Darling was turning off the nursery’s lamps, leaving on only dim night-lights. An earlier glimpse of Peter Pan at the window, though, had filled Mrs. Darling with fear for her children. Louise felt the trembling echo of that unease.
“Dear night-lights that protect my sleeping babes.” Mrs. Darling spoke her last line before her children flew away from their safe little house. “Burn clear and steadfast to-night.”
And then Mrs. Darling was gone, exiting stage right, disappearing into the darkness. Louise felt the burn of tears suddenly and blinked rapidly. Why was she crying?
* * *
Act One ended with Peter and the Darling children flying out the nursery window to thunderous applause.
Louise closed the curtains as she dimmed the lights and cued the intermission music. Tapping her timer, she sent the walls of the nursery up into the rafters and brought the forests of Neverland down. “Get the beds offstage,” she whispered once she stopped moving the big sets around. “Move the rocks on.”
A square of light in the back of the darkened theater caught her attention. For a moment, the figure of a man in uniform stood there, outlined in brilliance from the lobby. Was that a police officer?
She brought up the house lights slightly to verify that it was a policeman in blue, cap on his head.
Principal Wiley had noticed the lights go up and glanced about in confusion and spotted the officer. He hurried over to the policeman, and the two exchanged greetings. The officer said something and Principal Wiley reacted with visible shock and dismay. Hand over mouth, he looked toward the stage.
Louise whimpered. She’d never seen an adult look so distraught. It was terrifying. What could have caused Principal Wiley to look that way?
“Louise!” Mr. Howe murmured. “The music ended.”
She lowered the house lights. Just as the theater went dark, the back doors opened again, highlighting that the police officer and principal were leaving together.
Something had happened. Something horrible. Something related to the play or someone in the play.
She took out her phone and typed in a text with shaking hands. “Are Mom and Dad with you?”
“No.” Nikola responded. “They never showed up.”
She dialed her mother. After six rings, the phone went to voice mail. Her father’s phone simply stated that the user couldn’t be reached. What did that mean? She tried her mother again, but it went straight to voice mail.
“Louise! The act is ending!” Mr. Howe paused with his fingers over the console, obviously wanting to push buttons but not sure which ones. “Close the curtain!”
“Yes, I’m getting it.” She tucked away her phone and stabbed the correct button. As the wall of curtains rolled shut, she triggered the intermission music. What else? What was she supposed to do? Everyone was offstage, waiting for the big backdrop of the mermaid lagoon to be lowered from the rafters. She used the sliders to carefully set them into place and then flicked on the holographic projectors, covering the stage with rolling surf.
Jillian was across the stage, helping to move Marooner’s Rock into place, watching her with worry. “What?” Jillian mouthed.
“Later.” Louise motioned for her to focus on the play. She could barely think past the flood of worry. One of them had to stay clearheaded. Why weren’t their parents answering their phones? Why hadn’t they texted to say why they were late? Why was the policeman here? What had the cop told Principal Wiley?
The timer on the intermission music was nearly over.
She triggered the holograph of the mermaid perched on the rock and opened the curtains back up. Her duties fulfilled, she pulled her phone back out.
She couldn’t bring up her father’s location. His phone had to be dead for nothing to register. She checked the GPS on her mother’s phone. It gave an address Louise didn’t recognize. As she zoomed in tight on the map, she gasped. It was a hospital. “Oh, no. No.”
What should she do? Was that why the policeman was here? Because their parents were in an accident and had been taken to a hospital?
* * *
The rest of the play was a blur. The massive boulder rolled on, crushing her underneath it. And then the play was over and whatever was coming next was sweeping toward them. The applause was loud and warm, but Louise felt hollow and that the sound was echoing through her. Zahara pulled her out onto the stage for the bow, and Jillian caught her hand and squeezed it tight. Jillian was shimmering with the excitement of being the star. Louise wanted to protect Jillian from the looming disaster, but she also wanted someone to lean on, to be strong.
Everyone poured down into the audience to be claimed by their parents.
Out of the crowd of adults came Principal Wiley, the policeman, and Miss Hamilton. Tears were streaming down Miss Hamilton’s face.
Jillian looked up at the adults and caught Louise’s hand like a lifeline. “What’s going on?”
“Oh!” Miss Hamilton cried. “Oh girls!”
She dropped to her knees in front of them and gathered them into her arms. Her lilac perfume was overpoweringly sweet.
“What’s wrong?” Jillian shouted.
“You’re scaring us.” Louise tried to push Miss Hamilton back. She wanted someone to cling to, someone to be strong for both her and Jillian, not this weeping person who mistook weakness for comforting.
The police officer crouched down beside them. He was big and scary, but at least he wasn’t crying. “I’m afraid your mommy and daddy were in a really bad accident. Their car was hit by a big truck.”
Jillian started to wail.
Louise reached for the police officer and caught tight to his shirt. “Are—are they—are they dead?”
“No!” Jillian howled. “No!”
The officer flinched at Jillian’s cry but nodded solemnly. Louise pulled Jillian between them and clung to his strength. Jillian burrowed tight into Louise, wailing, refusing to take comfort from the man.
Principal Wiley said something about going to the office and pulling their records to call their emergency contact. “Your grandmother is on her way. She was at a charity event nearby.”