Doppelganger Danger, page 12
Zoey sighed, looking defeated. “Fine. Except we might get in big trouble with Principal Brant if we ditch school,” she pointed out. “We can’t risk a detention or suspension, not with regionals coming up. Only students in good standing get to compete.”
“Are you scared or something?” Tessa asked.
“No,” Zoey shot back defensively. She bit her lip. “I’m definitely not scared.”
Tessa arched an eyebrow. “Then why does it seem like you’re making so many excuses?”
“I’m just being responsible,” Zoey snapped. “You should try it sometime, sis.”
Maeve held up a hand. “Time out, you two! I’m glad you’re concerned about school and the marching band, Zoey. But the leader of the multiverse trumps a middle school principal, too. At least this time.”
“Especially since time is of the essence,” Tessa added, tapping her eChron watch for emphasis.
Zoey gave her twin an irritated look.
“We need to get the Serger and repair the Rips,” Dev explained. He wasn’t used to seeing the sisters argue and he wanted to make both of them happy. “If we work quickly, we might even make it back to school by fifth period.”
“Save the world, ace the quiz! That sounds like a win-win,” Lewis mused. “Or a Wyn-Wyn. Get it?”
“Wait!” Isaiah gasped, suddenly realizing a gaping hole in their plan. “Ignatia never told us where in Conroy the Rips are.”
“Oh, snap.” Lewis’s face fell. “That does seem like an important detail.”
“Let’s try calling her back,” Tessa suggested. “The kazoo can send messages directly to the Station, after all.”
Dev still had the kazoo case in his left hand. He offered it to Maeve. She waved him away.
“You keep it,” she said, her voice brittle, like it was on the verge of breaking. “We don’t need to call Ignatia.”
“Why not?” Isaiah asked.
Maeve took a deep breath. She removed her dark sunglasses. She squinted into the light. “Because I know where the Rips are,” she said, trying to keep her voice as steady as possible.
They all stared at her.
“You do?” Isaiah asked, his gray eyes wide with surprise.
She nodded and exhaled. “They’re not far from my home, in the hills between the quarry and the dairy farm.”
“Umm, how do you know that?” Zoey asked, frowning.
Maeve swallowed, trying to muster courage and fight off the barrage of unanswered questions growing louder and louder inside her head. “I know because . . . I was there when they formed. I think I may have accidentally created them.”
CHAPTER 21
A Few Minutes Before The First Period Bell Rang, Lewis finished retrieving all of the Serger parts—fifteen bolts, gears, and baubles in all—from the Station Snaximus vending machine while Maeve stood watch. Lewis could often be spotted emptying the cafeteria vending machines of chips and candy bars, so the cadets decided he was best suited for the job and the least likely to raise any sort of suspicion if their classmates or any teachers passed by.
Once the shining silver and copper parts were stowed in his backpack, he and Maeve met up with the other cadets behind the school gymnasium. Dev joined them a few minutes later, his own backpack heavy with an assortment of wrenches, clamps, and screwdrivers that he’d borrowed from the school’s STEM lab, in case they needed tools to help assemble the Serger. They waited until the coast was clear, then set off toward the Rips on foot, following Maeve’s directions. She opted for a winding route of back roads and footpaths to avoid being seen.
“Do you think we should’ve told our parents about all this?” Zoey asked Dev while they walked.
“Maybe,” he replied, clearly torn. “I know my dad and your mom would want to help. At the same time, I’m worried they’d tell us not to get involved. Or they’d try to stop us.” He loosened the straps on his backpack and trudged along the trail. “Honestly, I’m not sure my dad can handle more stress right now. He’s still so frazzled and upset about the field trip going wrong. I think it’s best if we fix this quickly by ourselves and move on. What they don’t know can’t hurt them, right?”
Zoey nodded reluctantly. “I guess. According to that Ignatia lady, this should be an easy fix.”
Isaiah, who had been walking beside them, mumbled, “Famous last words . . .”
“Hey, that reminds me,” Tessa said, slowing her pace. “Maeve, did you call the school office and make up an excuse about us being absent today? The last thing we need is our parents getting a phone call saying we’re missing. Again.”
“Yup.” Maeve cleared her throat, got into character, and performed her best Coach Diaz impression, lowering her voice several octaves. “Hello, Judy? Yes, it’s Raul Diaz. Hi, good morning. I’m just calling to let you know that the following students will be out today helping me with some band-related activities.” She listed off all their names. “Yes, yes. They have parental permission. Thanks so much. Buh-bye.” She flashed a wide smile and pretended to hang up a telephone.
Lewis clapped. “An Oscar-worthy performance!”
Maeve curtseyed proudly. Her impression had been pretty convincing. She often hoped that acting might eventually lead her to a bigger, brighter life beyond Conroy, but for now, she was grateful her skills could at least get her and her friends out of school for the day.
“I don’t see anything unusual here,” Tessa remarked, when they finally arrived at the fields beyond the trailer park.
In the distance, they spotted the dusty, gray swathes of the quarry’s gravel pits and an old railroad station. Telephone poles and power lines crisscrossed the sky. To the east, they could see the MegaAg soy crops and a small dairy farm, with a tall silo and several black-and-white cows dotting the landscape.
“This way,” Maeve said, leading them up and over a set of rolling hills scattered with clumps of thorny shrubs, overgrown weeds, and old apple and plum trees, most of which no longer produced fruit due to the collapsing pollinator population. “Just a little farther.”
The grass here was mottled, anemic green and brown. Not the lush, verdant fields Maeve remembered from her childhood. The MAC had promised to help repair Earth’s damaged environment, but regeneration would take time, and the citizens of Earth would need to pitch in and take ownership of their actions if they truly wanted to save their ailing planet.
Suddenly, atop the crest of the nearest hill, three portals came into view. From afar, they were hardly visible, unless you knew what to look for. In the daylight, the Rips glowed and hummed faintly. The patches of iridescence were mostly see-through, with a faint sheen of marbleized color. One was about six feet tall and just as wide, while the other two were slightly smaller and more oblong in shape. It was impossible to tell where each portal led; whatever worlds lay beyond were completely obscured. The cadets climbed the hill, their hearts pounding in their chests from exertion and excitement.
Isaiah approached one of the smaller Rips. The air felt charged, electric. Enticing.
“Watch out,” Maeve scolded, tugging him back by the sleeve. “You could fall through one of those if you’re not careful.”
“You’re right,” he said softly. He moved away, casting a long look over his shoulder.
“Everyone, come over here and help,” Dev called. He set up a makeshift camp a safe distance from the openings. He spread his sweatshirt on the grass beneath a crooked tree and laid out each tool. One by one, Lewis emptied his own backpack, removing the parts and pieces from the vending machine.
Unlike the potato radio they’d attempted to construct on Station Liminus, the Membrane Serger came together quickly. The finished object was roughly the length of Lewis’s forearm, curved and tapered like a sleek-looking boomerang, gleaming copper and silver. A fuel cube roughly the size of a gumdrop could be connected to the Serger’s center to activate the device.
“How do you suppose we use it?” Isaiah asked, intrigued.
“In the holovid demo, the Serger flew through the air, zigzagging back and forth, stitching up a gaping Rip, before returning to the thrower,” Dev said.
“Cool. I say we chuck it toward one of the portals and see what happens.” Lewis stood and stretched his body, limbering up. “I’ll do it,” he offered, reaching for the Serger. He aimed it at one of the glimmering portals. “I bet I could hit it from here. I’ve got a great arm. Part of my highly athletic Wynner genes, ya know?”
“No way.” Maeve leaped up and pried the Serger from Lewis’s well-intentioned but seriously clumsy hands. “What if it sails through one of the openings and disappears forever? Then what?”
“Then we’re doomed,” Isaiah said, matter-of-factly.
Lewis sat back down on the ground, sulking. “No one ever appreciates my talents.”
“It’s just that your so-called talents often land us in even bigger trouble,” Maeve replied, returning the Serger to Dev and giving Lewis’s back a pat.
“Hey!” Lewis balked. “Did I blast Gage this morning in your defense? Why, yes I did.”
“Fine,” she relented. “Sometimes your talents come in very handy.”
Lewis folded his arms across his chest and smiled smugly. “Thank you.”
“I don’t think we should use the Serger until we read the instructions, or at least understand what we’re working with,” Dev said, tinkering with the controls and tightening a few last screws. “Maeve, could you hand me the kazoo?” he asked, setting his tools down and inspecting the completed contraption. “I want to pull up that 3D diagram Ignatia showed us. Maybe it will tell us how to operate this thing.”
Maeve squinted, her forehead wrinkling. “I don’t have the kazoo,” she said. “I told you to keep it this morning, remember?”
Dev looked up at her, his brown eyes perplexed. “Yes, I remember. But then you came and found me in the STEM lab and asked for it back. So I gave it to you.”
“That didn’t happen,” she said definitively.
The others fell silent, listening.
“It couldn’t have been her,” Lewis added. “Maeve and I were at Station Snaximus the whole time. She helped me get all the Serger parts.”
“Aw, quit joking around you two.” Dev laughed nervously.
“We’re not joking,” Lewis said. He was uncharacteristically serious, no puckish grin or cheek dimple to be found. “That’s the truth.”
“No, no.” Dev shook his head, frustrated. “It was you, Maeve! I’m sure of it. I asked why you’d changed into that basketball uniform and you claimed a bottle of soda from the vending machine had burst and sprayed all over your clothes, so you had to borrow something from the gym. Remember?”
Maeve blinked. “I’m not wearing a basketball uniform now,” she pointed out, her heart quickening. “I never was. I swear.”
“And you never should.” Tessa cringed. “Green-and-yellow polyester mesh shorts are no one’s friend.”
Dev looked Maeve up and down, as though seeing her with new eyes. She was wearing the same outfit he’d seen her in at the playground earlier that morning—a violet long-sleeved tee, patched jeans, and an olive-green wind-breaker. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun. Her clothes weren’t stained or dampened with anything that resembled soda. “So, you really don’t have the kazoo?” he asked, his mouth dry.
Her lips formed a tight line. She shook her head. Strands of reddish hair came loose from her bun, falling like a curtain across her eyes.
“But . . . how . . . ?”
Maeve brushed her hair from her eyes, trying to see more clearly. And then with a terrible rush, everything became striking clear. “I think . . . I think this is all my fault.” Hot tears threatened to spill from her eyes, but she held them back. She’d done enough crying. She needed to focus. There was too much at stake.
“How? You just said you didn’t take the kazoo back from Dev.” Zoey shook her head in confusion.
“I didn’t,” Maeve replied.
The cadets stared at one another, dumbfounded.
“But someone who looks and sounds and acts like me did. Someone who trailed us through the Other-Earth portal, undetected. Someone who followed me to this exact spot late last night, tearing open those Rips.”
A realization crystallized: They’d been duped by a doppelganger. The kazoo was gone. And Maeve’s malevolent look-alike had escaped with it.
CHAPTER 22
“I know I sound like a broken record here,” Isaiah said while the others paced around, wringing their hands, trying to figure out what to do. “But I think we might actually be doomed. For real this time.”
“Not helping!” Tessa shot back.
“Seriously,” Zoey said, agreeing with her sister for the first time all day.
“After she scammed you out of a highly valuable comm device, where do you think Fake-Maeve went?” Lewis asked like an investigator in some crime show. He meandered around the base of the hill where they’d set up their makeshift workshop, poking between scrubby bushes and drought-parched trees, searching for clues.
Dev finished packing all the tools into his navy-blue nylon backpack, his face distraught. “I don’t know. I think she turned left down the hallway after leaving the STEM lab. But I wasn’t really paying attention. I wanted to get everything we might need to build the Serger before anyone else came into the lab. It didn’t ever occur to me that I might be talking to a Fake-Maeve. She was so convincing!”
“For the record,” Maeve interrupted, “I prefer the term Other-Maeve. Or maybe Alt-Maeve. Or Maeve 2.0. Or even Wannabe-Maeve. Fake-Maeve has a really negative vibe.”
“Okay, whatever,” Dev said, growing increasingly agitated. “I’m sorry, but I have no clue where Other-Maeve may have gone.”
“Well, you’re all in luck,” Lewis announced. “Because I figured out exactly where she went.”
The others wheeled around.
“Care to share with the group?” Tessa asked.
Lewis pointed toward the three portals, several yards away. The faint iridescent patches hummed and shimmered. “I’m fairly certain she traveled through one of those Rips.”
“What makes you think that?” Dev asked, perking up.
Lewis gestured to a trail of footprints pressed into the ground leading directly up the hillside. “My dad and brothers like to go deer hunting. Sometimes they make me go with them, even though I’ve always hated the whole idea of it. Although, I guess learning how to track animals—or, in this case, a runaway doppelganger—finally came in handy.” He bent and touched the ground, which was soft and still slightly damp with morning dew. “It’s pretty clear someone came up here. And not too long ago either. These footsteps are fresh.”
“That’s because we made those footprints, genius.” Maeve sighed, exasperated. “We literally just climbed that hill, before Dev built the Serger.”
Lewis looked crestfallen. His eyes darted back and forth. Then he spotted something behind a nearby tree. He held up a finger, pausing for dramatic effect. “Wait a minute. Aha!” He strode over to the tree. “I present to the jury . . . evidence!” He reached behind the trunk and produced a pair of green polyester shorts with bright yellow stripes running down the sides. He waved them in the air victoriously.
“Eww.” Tessa recoiled. “Sweaty gym shorts?”
“Yes!” Dev jumped up triumphantly. “Maeve was wearing those shorts this morning when she swiped the kazoo!”
“Correction: Not me. Other-Maeve.” Maeve frowned, then blushed. “Hold on, does this mean my doppelganger is running around the multiverse . . . in her underpants?”
Zoey stifled a laugh.
“Ugh! So embarrassing!” Maeve stomped her feet. “What if someone sees her and thinks she’s me?” She moaned miserably, envisioning her look-alike streaking through the streets of Conroy or down the halls at Station Liminus. “I am officially experiencing vicarious mortification.”
“Relax,” Tessa said, coming to Maeve’s side. “I bet she changed into some other outfit. Ditching those butt-ugly wedgie shorts shows that your doppel has good fashion sense. She may be off causing multiverse mayhem, but I bet she’s doing it in style.”
“As amusing as this is, I think we’re all missing the point here,” Lewis said.
“Which is?” Maeve asked warily.
“That I was right,” Lewis replied haughtily, tossing the green shorts onto a tree branch, where they flapped in the breeze like a flag. “This discarded article of clothing provides clear evidence that your doppelganger came this way today. Given the tree’s close vicinity to the hilltop, it’s only logical to assume that she escaped through one of the portals.”
“But which one?” Zoey asked, eyeing the three Rips from afar.
The cadets climbed back up the hill together. Lewis knelt down to inspect the grass, looking for tracks, but the ground was firmer here and the pattern of footprints impossible to follow.
“So, Sherlock? What now?” Maeve asked.
He stood and looked at her. “She’s your doppelganger, Greene. Which portal would you have chosen? Door number one?” Lewis wiggled his hips and waved his arm like a gameshow host. “Door number two? Or perhaps door number three?”
“I really have no idea.” Maeve huffed. “But if the kazoo falls into the wrong hands, the Empyrean One could infiltrate the Multiverse Allied Council.”
“That would be catastrophic. And we’d be the ones to blame,” Tessa added.
“Oh, man.” Isaiah hung his head. “We are so dead. Beyond dead. The deadest.”
“Hold on. Don’t go full-doom on us just yet,” Dev said. “We can still fix this.”
“How exactly do you plan on doing that?” Zoey asked, twisting one of her braids anxiously.
Dev stood tall. “We find the thief and take back the kazoo.”
“That would mean breaking one of the MAC’s new laws. Interdimensional travel is henceforth banned!” Lewis croaked in his best Secretary Leapkeene impression.
“I’m sure she’ll understand,” Maeve said, hoping for a chance to redeem herself. “I agree with Dev. The fate of the multiverse is in our hands, after all.”
