Mixed Up, page 14
He’d never speak to me again, and I can’t risk that. Reef and I are hard at work on a plan to escape each other’s heads and get our lives back once and for all.
It’s tough to be logical and scientific about something that defies logic and science. But there’s one thing we agree on: Lightning got us into this, and it’s going to take lightning to get us out.
We even know where we’re going to get the lightning. Delgado Middle School was built in the 1920s, and it has an old-fashioned lightning rod on top of its cupola. Its purpose is to attract a lightning bolt away from hitting the building and direct it into the ground, where it fizzles out. But if we attach a metal cable to the main rod, some of that electricity can be directed to us.
We’ve been surfing the internet, researching how to live through a lightning strike. Google says you can’t—or at least it’s pure luck whether or not you do. But as babies, we weren’t struck by lightning either—the hospital was, and our incubator was wired up to the hospital. Incubators are made of acrylic, which doesn’t conduct electricity. That’s probably why two tiny, fragile infants survived so much high voltage.
Reef closes the browser on his computer. “So we need to be in something made of acrylic?”
“It doesn’t have to be acrylic,” I reason. “It just has to be a nonconductor. Plastic, rubber—anything but metal.”
Reef looks thoughtful. “I wonder what a bouncy castle is made of.”
I glare at him. “Be serious.”
“I am. The school has one. They set it up for fairs and field days and stuff like that. It’s plastic, right?”
I picture any bouncy castle I’ve ever seen. Not only are they plastic, but they come with an air compressor that keeps them inflated. That way we’d be off the floor and insulated from anything metal. Even better, it’s already at the school, so all we’d have to do is drag it up to the cupola and find enough extension cords to plug the compressor in somewhere!
“Reef, you’re a genius! The lightning rod sends the electricity to the bouncy castle, where we’re insulated—just like we were in the incubator!”
The bedroom door swings open, revealing Declan standing motionless, a stunned expression on his face.
“This is a joke, right?” he says. “Or a project for school where you make a diorama but it isn’t something you’d actually do?”
Reef and I exchange an agonized glance. We have a decision to make on the fly, and we’re not going to have the chance to discuss it: Can we lie our way out of this, or has Declan already heard too much?
“Come on,” he persists. “I’m no rat, but I have to tell my folks if that’s the only way to keep you guys from getting yourselves killed.”
That does it for Reef. “Listen, Declan, this is going to sound pretty weird, but I swear I’m not pulling your chain. Fact is, something’s been happening to Theo and me.” He goes on to explain about the Phenomenon and how we traced it to that night we were newborns.
It’s the first time we’ve told anybody about our problem and I’m not sure what kind of reaction to expect, especially from Declan, who can be such a jerk. But he listens carefully and waits for Reef to finish before he says anything.
Finally, the verdict comes: “I know you hate me and I know I deserve it. But just how stupid do you think I am?”
“There’s no way we can prove it to you,” I put in evenly. “But do you think we’d be messing with lightning if we weren’t desperate?”
It goes back and forth like that for a while, until I actually start to feel a little sorry for Declan. What we’re asking him to accept is pretty out there. But as we keep on describing the Phenomenon—not just the memory swapping, but how confusing it is to live like this, never knowing for sure if your frame of reference comes from your own life or the other guy’s—we begin to get through to him. I show him the notes on my phone, and Reef rolls up his sleeves and pant legs, revealing how he’s turned himself into a human cheat sheet.
I’m not sure if Declan believes what we’re saying, but he’s starting to accept that we believe it.
“And the only way to undo this is lightning?” he asks in amazement.
“We can’t know if it’ll work,” Reef admits. “But we have to re-create that night in the hospital.”
Declan shakes his head. “I used to lie in bed wishing that something like a lightning bolt would erase you from the face of the earth. But now it feels like I should stop this. It’s not something you let your”—his voice tightens with emotion—“brother do.”
“For what it’s worth,” I reply, “I don’t think we’re going to get killed.”
“You’d better not,” Declan says feelingly. “Because if I’m the one helping you, who do you think is going to get blamed when you idiots end up a pair of toasted marshmallows?” We must look stunned, because he adds, “What—you don’t think I’m going to let you try this alone, do you?”
It’s the first time our plan starts to seem real—the moment when we realize we have a partner.
Who knew that checking the weather has more drama than a Marvel movie?
Planning a picnic? You can grow old waiting for a sunny day. But when your whole future rests on lightning, you can barely scrape up a raindrop.
Kids don’t normally worry about the forecast, but lately, Theo and I have been glued to the weather apps on our phones and tuned to the Weather Channel 24-7. Can’t be sure that redirecting a lightning strike into Delgado’s bouncy castle will undo the Phenomenon, but there’s definitely a chance.
Zero lightning means zero chance.
The only person more weather-obsessed than Theo and me has got to be Declan. Maybe because he’s been such a jerk to me for the past year, he’s determined to make up for it by being the best partner anybody ever had.
“Reef.” One morning, I awaken to him shaking me.
“What time is it?” I mumble. There’s no light sneaking in through the blinds.
“It’s five thirty. But look.” He waves his phone in my face. “There’s a forty percent chance of rain at two p.m.”
“Rain isn’t lightning,” I remind him with a yawn.
“It could turn into it.”
“Even if it does, at two o’clock, the school is full of kids and teachers. I can just see us cutting class to drag a bouncy castle up to the roof in a building full of people. And what about Theo? At two o’clock, he’s halfway across town at his own school.”
“Go back to sleep,” Declan mumbles resentfully, like I’m the one who’s ruining everything.
An hour later, he has me awake again. “Look—they’ve moved the rain from two to five. Nobody’s in school then. And Theo will be at Neighborhood Harvest. That’s not too far away.”
I have to admit he has a point. But as the day goes on, the chance of rain drops from forty percent to thirty, and later gets downgraded to “slight.” Around six, the sun pokes out from behind the clouds. It beams in through the dining room window at the Helmer house.
“It turned out to be a beautiful day after all,” Willis comments as we’re having dinner.
Declan slams down his water glass and storms away from the table.
“What’s up with him?” Liam wants to know.
“He said something about getting an early start on his homework,” I say.
“I think that’s great,” Jenna approves. “It’s about time Dec took more of an interest in his education.”
Poor Jenna. If she knew what Declan was really interested in, she’d do a backflip.
For the next three days, a high-pressure system passes overhead. You’ve never seen such blue skies.
Declan takes it personally. “Aw, come on! Is a little bad weather too much to ask for? What happened to the thunderstorms? Aren’t they a thing anymore?”
Even Theo is becoming impatient. “If Ben Franklin had to wait this long for lightning, we’d all be using gas lamps,” he tells me over the phone.
Then, finally, we get our first glimmer of hope in a single-word broadcast over the Weather Channel: “unsettled.”
“Unsettled?” Declan echoes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Our answer comes with the five-day forecast. On Saturday night, thundershowers are expected to pass over the city.
As it turns out, Theo is watching the Weather Channel too. My phone pings: SATURDAY NIGHT!!!!
The plan is on.
Saturday is dreary and overcast, with cold drizzle falling on and off all day.
Declan spends the afternoon hanging out the bedroom window, arm outstretched, palm up. “What kind of storm is this?” he complains, scowling at the clouds. “Get with it, will you?”
“It’s fine,” I soothe, checking the forecast on my phone for at least the twentieth time. “The lightning isn’t supposed to start till eight. We don’t need it now. Plus it’ll be easier to sneak into the school when it’s dark.”
Theo is supposed to come over as soon as he finishes his shift at Neighborhood Harvest, but he’s running late. Declan is nervous about that too, and I have to stop him from running over to the food bank to see what the holdup is. I never knew Declan was such a worrywart.
I’m pretty nervous myself, but in my case, it has nothing to do with the possibility that Theo might be a no-show. It says on the internet that the average lightning bolt packs a wallop of three hundred million volts of electricity. I’m about to take that on, with nothing for protection but an inflatable carnival attraction people put their preschoolers on. Yeah, I’m scared.
Theo finally turns up around six thirty, soaked and chastened. “I got lost,” he admits. “I forgot your street, and I didn’t want to check the notes on my phone because it was raining too hard.”
“My bad,” I tell him. “I’ve been having a lot of biking memories lately. I should have known they were coming from you.”
“Did you hear any thunder?” Declan probes.
“No, but the weather’s closing in,” Theo replies. “It’s definitely going to get stormy.”
We get a ride from Willis—not to the school, but to the Breezeway Multiplex. The theater is no closer to Delgado than home, but we’re stuck with it. Our excuse for tonight is that we’re going to a movie, and Willis doesn’t want us walking in the rain. He and Jenna are so thrilled that Declan and I get along now that they would have driven us to New York to see a Broadway show.
Willis drops us at the theater and we double back toward the school. By now the rain has picked up, and we’re drenched and chilled to the bone. In the distance, thunder rumbles, which means there’s definitely lightning somewhere. We pick up our pace to a jog.
At Delgado, we find the parking lot deserted, which means there are no custodians in the building. That’s good news in a way—we don’t have to worry about getting caught. But it also means the school is locked up tight.
That doesn’t bother Declan. It doesn’t even slow him down. He leads us around the building, tapping and poking every window within reach. Eventually, he finds one unlocked—the girls’ changing room next to the gym. We boost him inside and in a few short minutes, a fire door swings wide to reveal Declan, smiling and beckoning.
Once inside, our next order of business is the bouncy castle, which is kept in the storeroom next to the athletic director’s office. It probably hasn’t been used in a while, because it’s one hundred percent deflated and buried under every football, baseball, basketball, soccer ball, tetherball, badminton racket, lacrosse stick, field hockey stick, and volleyball net the school owns.
It’s a major operation. We start by shoving all the other stuff into the four corners of the room. Then we gather up the miles of bright yellow vinyl material that make up the bouncy castle.
“I didn’t think it would be so heavy,” Theo pants, piling fold after fold over his shoulder.
It’s all connected by a plastic corrugated tube to a compressor about the size of an extra-large suitcase. Its job is to pump up the castle and keep it inflated in spite of all the bouncing that’s going on. Tonight, we won’t be doing any bouncing, but we still need the compressor to keep the castle full under our weight.
Theo and I manage to get hold of all the material that will fill with air and become the vinyl structure. Declan hefts the compressor.
“Thanks for being here, man,” I tell him sincerely. “There’s no way we could pull this off without you.”
Outside, we hear the rumble of thunder. “Let’s get up there before we miss all the good lightning,” Declan urges.
Delgado has an elevator, but you need a key to operate it. So we have to drag the bouncy castle and compressor up the flight of steps to the second floor and halfway across the building to the upstairs maintenance office. There, amid the industrial vacuums, floor polishers, and cleaning supplies, is the roof access—a thin metal circular stairway. Getting everything up these narrow, steep steps is like trying to cram a golf ball through a straw. It takes all three of us, grunting, gasping, and sweating, to inch up those stairs, struggling to keep the piles of vinyl from getting away from us.
At the very top, there’s a trapdoor. I have to open it with one hand to avoid dropping my share of the bouncy castle and wiping out Theo and Declan. I open the hatch on its hinges and climb up a short ladder to the cupola on the roof.
The cupola looks gigantic from the street, but there’s really not that much room here. It’s round and about the size of a very small bedroom. A decorative roof overhead offers some protection, but gusty rain is blowing in through the open sides, soaking a mix of gravel, dirt, and dead leaves. It’s pretty obvious that no one’s been up here for a long time.
It takes some doing to get first Theo and then Declan to join me in the cupola along with the rest of the bouncy castle and the compressor.
“So this is the cupola,” Theo says to me with a goofy grin. “If it wasn’t for this place, I never would have been able to track you down through your memories.”
“Is the bouncy castle even going to fit?” Declan asks anxiously.
He has a point. Even flat as a pancake, the folds of vinyl castle fill up most of the floor of the structure, so there’s barely anywhere for us to stand.
“Only one way to find out,” I reply.
There’s no electrical outlet in the cupola, so we have to plug in the compressor in the maintenance office below us. Luckily, one thing custodians have a lot of is extension cords. We leave the unit by the trapdoor and hit inflate.
The compressor is loud. I mean really loud—the kind of noise where you have to shout at each other just to be heard.
“I can’t hear the storm anymore,” Declan protests. “We could be missing a lot of lightning.”
I point straight up. “The lightning rod is right on top of that roof. If it gets hit, trust me, we’ll know.”
Theo takes off his backpack, unzips it, and pulls out six shiny clothes hangers.
Declan stares at him. “What—you want to have a fashion show up here?”
“They’re pure copper,” Theo explains. “It’s the best electrical conductor in the world. We’ll open them up and use them to connect the lightning rod to the bouncy castle.”
Speaking of the bouncy castle … it’s starting to take shape all around us and under our feet as the vinyl fills with air from the compressor. As the “turrets” begin to form, they press up against the cupola walls, bending inward toward the domed ceiling.
Theo unwinds the copper hangers and ties them together into a cable. He connects one end to the ground wire leading down from the lightning rod. The other he extends out over the bouncy castle, resting it on one of the walls. The inflatable playhouse is full now, if a little squeezed. The corners of the square base rise up the rounded walls of the cupola. Doesn’t look much like the incubator we were confined in twelve and a half years ago, but it should serve the same purpose.
“There,” Theo announces when the job is done. “We’re ready.”
That means there’s nothing left for us to do except climb on there and wait to be zapped.
“Take your belts off first,” Declan advises. “The buckles are metal, and that could get you toasted.”
“Good idea,” Theo decides.
We heave ourselves up onto the springy plastic base and toss our belts to Declan.
He hesitates, worried. “What about your jeans? They could have metal studs that conduct electricity.”
“If I get killed tonight, I don’t want the fire department to find me in my underwear,” Theo retorts.
“True that,” I add.
Declan’s face twists. “Yeah, but don’t get killed.”
I wish I could say something comforting to him, but I can’t think of what. I have no reason to expect we’ll survive this except for the fact that we did survive it as babies all those years go.
Declan retreats down the spiral ladder, closing the trapdoor behind him. We’re alone with the storm.
Theo reclines on the vinyl base, propped up on his elbows. “If this goes bad …” He falls silent.
I know what he means. If we’re wrong about this and the great-granddaddy of all lightning bolts is about to blast us into oblivion, there won’t be time to say goodbye.
“You’re a good guy, Basket Case,” I mumble around the lump in my throat. And I actually know he’s a good guy, because a lot of his life is parked in my brain. I was so ticked off about losing my memories of Mom that I never gave Theo a chance. I’m still ticked off. He deserves better than that, even if it comes now, in what might be our final conversation. When you share something so personal as memories with someone, the word friend doesn’t even come close to describing the connection between you. Even brother falls short.
A flash of lightning makes us both jump, and I tense all over, waiting to be fricasseed.
Theo’s sheepish smile tells me he did the same. “If you see the flash, it already missed us.”
He has a point. That’s another thing about Theo. He’s smart.
I angle myself on the castle’s spongy base so I can peer out the opening in the cupola. I don’t see any more lightning, just a few flickers way off in the distance. In fact, I think the rain is starting to slacken.
