Boy 2.0, page 12
“Not much,” Dr. Achebe said.
“You’re lying,” Coal said. “You already knew who I was. You had all this information on me. You came to my school to find me. I bet you were going to find some way to get me into this lab even if I didn’t want to be here.”
Dr. Achebe blew out a quick breath, like someone who was busted. Then he smiled.
“Did you rehearse what you were going to say to get me here?” Coal moved behind the desk. Dr. Carroll tried to stop him, but Dr. Achebe held up his hand, gesturing for her to back off. Coal scrolled through the files, but angry tears blurred his vision. He pounded his fist on the table. It made a satisfying thunk and the photo with the young Dr. Achebe enlarged. This time, Coal’s eyes focused on the man next to him. It was Tom.
Coal stared at the picture. Tom’s hair was black instead of gray, but it was him. He was sure.
“You know Tom?”
“Dr. Goreau was on my team,” Dr. Achebe said. “He was one of the top geneticists on the Snow White Project.”
Coal felt dizzy. He clasped the edge of the table. He had so many questions, but he was afraid to ask them. “What happened to Tom?” he asked instead.
“I know he’s under care at a psychiatric hospital.”
Coal punched the desk again. This time he felt a thin sharpness, like the faint beginnings of a crack in its touch-screen glass. A few of the digital files slid away from his fist. “I mean what did you have to do with what happened to him?”
“Careful, kid,” Dr. Carroll said.
Coal turned on her. “You be careful! I didn’t consent to any of this. You did it all against my will. Think that’s going to look good in court?”
Dr. Carroll blanched, but Dr. Achebe only sighed. “First of all, I didn’t do anything to Tom. Second, you’re not going to tell anyone about this.”
Coal scoffed. “The minute I leave this building, I’m going to the police.”
Dr. Achebe cleared his throat. “Amma, pull up the lab three security video, file Keegan one.” Video footage of the lab from a security camera started playing on the desktop. Saturday’s group tour was moving through looking at some of the projects. Door and Coal, along with Isadora watched the fabric sample change colors. When Coal touched the fabric, it darkened to the color of his skin. The camera caught it all.
Coal’s skin began to tingle.
“That was pretty curious, wasn’t it?” Dr. Achebe said. “It certainly made me curious.”
“You’re going to blackmail me?” Coal asked.
“You’re jumping to conclusions without all the information,” Dr. Achebe said. “A good scientist waits for all the facts. Amma, play first watch security file nine-eighteen.” Another video began.
Coal recognized the spot instantly. It was the parking lot where he had camouflaged for the first time. The camera was pointed at the few cars leading up to the dumpster. He watched himself try to squeeze behind the dumpster unsuccessfully. He saw the panic in his face as the police drew closer, and he watched his body slowly blend into the background and disappear entirely. In the grainy video, he was completely indistinguishable from the ground and wall he was pinned against.
“This one was a little harder to find, and required a lot of expense,” Dr. Achebe said. “But lucky you, I managed to keep it away from the police.” He folded his arms and relaxed back against a table. “I imagine them finding it would make things a bit difficult for you.”
“People will come looking for me if I go missing,” Coal said, knowing it wasn’t remotely true.
“You’re not going missing, Coal,” Dr. Achebe said. “I promised to take you back home once we were done here, didn’t I?”
“Why couldn’t you just tell me you knew all of this when you came to the school? Why lie?”
“I admit the way I got you here was a bit underhanded, but I didn’t want to risk you refusing. You’re important, Coal. This is important. You have to see that.”
“But you did it without my consent,” Coal said. He said it loudly, while looking around the room for cameras. “Anything else you do without people’s consent?”
Anger flashed across Dr. Achebe’s face. “I work very hard to run an ethical operation,” he said. “But sometimes we have to bend our ethics a little for the greater good. We’re going to study your samples. Learn who you are. Isn’t that what you want? I am the one person in the world with the unique capability to figure out how you work, Coal. You and I were meant to do this together.”
Dr. Carroll put a second sample into the microscope. The cells appeared on the desk’s screen and several lines of data populated on the right-hand side. Coal couldn’t understand any of it.
“What you’re able to do is incredible,” Dr. Achebe continued. “Right now, the question is how are you able to do it? Why?” His face was filled with excitement. “I promise that whatever I find out I’ll share it with you. No more secrets.”
Dr. Carroll made a low growl of frustration. She glanced at Dr. Achebe, shook her head, and then bent over the microscope again. He put his hand on the desk screen and twisted his palm. The data flipped to face him. He looked at the information and frowned.
Somehow, knowing that they were unhappy made Coal feel better. “Not getting what you’re looking for, huh?” he said. “So what was the plan? To clone me? To figure out how I work so you can make billions, I’m guessing?”
“I only want to understand you,” Dr. Achebe said.
“You don’t, though,” Coal said. “Not really. My DNA. My skin. That’s what you want to understand. My cells don’t make me who I am.”
“You’re right,” Dr. Achebe said. “Your cells are only part of the story of who you are. But we live in a society where people look at you and instantly think they know your story. We’ve built whole narratives about who a person is based on what they look like. Tall, thick, dark, able-bodied. There’s a story attached to every one of these descriptions. Based on cells. Something none of us can control.” He leaned forward and smiled. “But here you come . . .”
Coal considered this. What did controlling his skin cells mean? That maybe there was the possibility that everyone could control their bodies? Remake themselves? Into what? What would people choose to be? And what did Tom have to do with any of it? With Coal? Was that why no one ever came to visit? Was he part of an elaborate experiment?
“Was Tom still working for you when he became my foster parent?” Coal asked. “Was I in some kind of real-world lab?”
“I don’t know how Tom became your guardian,” Dr. Achebe said. “Tom hadn’t worked here in years.”
“Why did he stop working for you, then? Can you answer that?”
“Tom’s mental health has always been a struggle. Sometimes he can’t square fantasy with reality. It could make things dangerous on his projects, and it ruined all his relationships. He was on medication for a long time and that seemed to help. When he left the project, he was planning to live quietly on his own. Early retirement. He had enough money. I hadn’t heard from him until just a couple of weeks ago.”
“What did he want?”
“He knows we have access to some experimental medications, and he hoped . . .”
“You could hook him up?”
“Something like that.”
“But you didn’t,” Coal said.
“I couldn’t,” Dr. Achebe said. “They’re not approved yet. They haven’t gone through all levels of review. It wouldn’t have been safe.”
“But now he’s gone, and I’m the one who isn’t safe,” Coal said.
“I can see how that could look suspicious,” Dr. Achebe said.
The desk screen updated and the words RESULTS INCONCLUSIVE flashed in red.
“That’s unfortunate,” Dr. Achebe said.
Coal stepped back. “You’re not getting any more samples.”
“No, no,” Dr. Achebe said. “I don’t need anything more. I need to figure out what we’ve got.” He looked at Coal but clearly wasn’t really seeing him.
“I’d like to leave now,” Coal said.
“I’ve really screwed this up, haven’t I?” Dr. Achebe said. “I’d like you to trust me. I’d like us to work together.”
Coal grunted. “You have everything you want,” he said. “Seems like you played it just right for yourself. What do you need me for?”
“Amma, unlock the lab,” Dr. Achebe said.
Coal stepped toward the door, and this time, it opened. He walked briskly through the lab to the elevator. Dr. Achebe followed him quietly down to the lobby and through the front doors. “This car will take you home,” he said.
A man got out of a shiny black sedan and opened the back door for him. His backpack was already inside. Coal hesitated. The bus was just across the street. But the car would have him home in twenty minutes.
“I know you don’t have any reason to trust me right now,” Dr. Achebe said. “But if I wanted to hurt you, or keep you, I could have.”
Coal looked at the bus stop again, but he didn’t want to give the McKays anything more to worry about. He slid into the car and hugged his backpack to his chest.
“Put on your seat belt, Coal,” Dr. Achebe said. “I want you to be safe. I know it doesn’t seem like that right now, but it’s true.”
The driver closed the door and a moment later, Coal watched Mirror Tech slide away from view.
17.
On the one hand, there was someone who knew about his ability, who could help figure out what it was, how it worked, why it was happening, and maybe even how to control it. On the other hand, he had no idea what Dr. Achebe would do with that information.
As he looked at New Jersey slipping past the car window, Coal tried to process everything. Memories from that afternoon hit him in waves, breaking against his body again and again in a barrage of information that he knew was just a small part of the story. Was it ever possible to know the whole story about someone? Even yourself?
His mind worked its way to Tom. What was Tom’s real story? Was Tom a spy? A cartoonlike villain scientist? Did Tom make him in a test tube and then abandon him at a fire station? Were there others like Coal? A whole series of clone Coals?
All of it was ridiculous, really, but any of the stories he was making up about himself and where he’d come from were just as likely as boy turns invisible—a headline he imagined splashed across a chyron on the evening news.
By the time he got home to the usual cacophony of the McKay house, Coal was exhausted in every possible way. He felt like he’d run flat-out from Mirror Tech to the McKays’ and like his mind had been stretched to its limit.
“Oh good, you’re here,” Mari said.
“Why you so late?” Hannah asked.
“I told you he was studying,” Aaron said.
“Are you kidding?” Door said. “He never studies!”
Coal looked into the living room where Door sat with a game controller. “Why are you here?”
“Came to hang out,” he said. “Figured something was up when you were ignoring all my messages.”
“Game!” Mari yelled.
Door’s attention whipped back to the screen. “Cheater! I was distracted. You saw I was distracted. That is foul play.”
“Don’t be a sore loser,” Mari said. “I beat you fair and square.” Her digital fighter, clad in white karate gear, did a victory dance on the screen while Door’s was sprawled out on the ground.
“She did beat you,” Hannah cheered. “She beat your pants off.”
“You’re next, toothless,” Door said.
Hannah giggled. She pulled something closer to her that Coal immediately recognized. It was the quilt. His quilt. The thing he’d had the longest. Something someone who loved him had given to him.
“Where did you get that?” Coal rushed at Hannah and grabbed it from her. Her face registered a second of surprise, then crumpled into bawling.
“Why did you do that?” Aaron asked.
“She has my stuff!”
“She’s seven!” Aaron said. He was standing now, and Hannah was collapsed on the floor, sobbing against the leg of his jeans.
Coal noticed Han’s stuffed animal was face down on a chair, ignored. “That doesn’t mean she can just take my things.” Coal kicked the leg of the coffee table. “Why does everybody think they can just push me around?”
“Hey,” Aaron said, a little more gently. He had his palms up, hands wide like he was trying to approach a wild animal. “No one is trying to push you around. Hannah found it when she was putting laundry on your bed, and showed it to Mari, and—”
“We thought it was cool,” Mari said. “It’s where you got your name. Your nickname, I mean. Coal.”
Coal squeezed the quilt in his hands. It was soft under his fingers. He knew every stitch, every threadbare patch by feel. After every move, after every change, after every adult who told him what was best for him and what was going to happen to him without bothering to ask his opinion, this blanket was the one thing he could be sure of. This one thing was his, no matter what. The one thing that never took from him. Only gave.
Coal sat on the coffee table, still clutching the quilt to his chest. He leaned into it, buried his face in it, and started to cry. He felt a small hand on his knee and opened his eyes to Hannah’s own tear-stained face looking up at him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”
Coal’s throat was too tight to squeeze a single word out, so he nodded instead.
“It’s my fault it’s down here,” Mari said. “It’s just, I’ve never seen a science-y baby quilt before. It’s cool. It’s a baby quilt, right?”
Coal nodded again.
“How come I’ve never seen this thing?” Door asked. “I’m your best friend. Your oldest friend. Your only friend. Doesn’t seem right. Can we see it?”
If there was anyone who could snap Coal back to reality, it was Door. Coal took a deep breath and blew it out. Hard. Trying to send everything that had happened that afternoon away with it. Then he took another breath and unfurled the quilt over the coffee table. The background fabric was made of a tessellated pattern of triangles in shades of gray and blue. On top of the triangles, someone had used silver thread to embroider a series of connected hexagons with letter combinations around some of them. The thread sparkled in the afternoon light. On the bottom, in the same silver thread, was a letter and number combination that read C191H173O21S5N3.
Door shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a chemical structure for coal,” Mari said. “I looked it up. That’s how I know it’s his name.”
“It looks like someone doesn’t know how to spell chosen,” Door said.
Coal looked at the familiar letters and numbers again. He had never thought of them that way before.
“That doesn’t say chosen.” Mari rolled her eyes. Then she looked at it again. “Although . . . it does kind of look like that.”
“What are the numbers inside the chosen for?” Hannah asked.
“It’s not . . .” Mari took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“That’s how scientists describe things,” Aaron said. “It’s made up of this many carbon molecules, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and nitrogen.”
“And what’s the picture for?” Hannah asked. She pointed to a joined set of hexagons embroidered above the composition.
“The hexagons?” Aaron asked.
“What’s a hexagon?” she asked.
Coal took her finger and traced one of the six-sided figures.
“Ohh,” she said.
“That’s how all those different molecules join together to make a structure,” Aaron continued.
“I like it,” Hannah said. “It’s like writing your name with a picture.”
Coal smiled. That was exactly how he thought of it.
“More like writing your name with a formula,” Mari said.
“I like that it sort of says chosen,” Hannah said. “It’s nice.” She crawled into Coal’s lap and looked at the quilt from there. Then she rubbed her wet nose on his sweatshirt.
“How long have you had this?” Aaron asked.
“I’ve never not had it.”
“It’s from your parents, then,” Aaron said. “Scientists, obviously.”
“Who studied the composition of things,” Coal added, locking eyes with Door. “Like someone might do if they’re trying to construct something out of chemical elements.”
“But this is chemistry, not biology,” Mari said.
“It’s just that my chemical composition is not exactly . . .”
“Oh no,” Door said. “Do not.”
“. . . exactly like you guys,” Coal finished.
“This is a mistake,” Door said. “Huge mistake.”
“What’s a huge mistake?” Mari asked.
“I smell a secret!” Hannah said.
“Do not tell them,” Door said.
“Just tell us already!” Mari said.
Coal took a deep breath and blew it out. “I can turn invisible.”
18.
Aaron burst out laughing.
Mari stared at Coal and then turned to Door, who was nodding, and looked back at Coal.
Hannah’s entire face screwed up in disbelief, but then her mouth slowly hung open.
Finally, Mari broke the silence. “That is not possible!”
“Lemme see!” Hannah said.
“I can’t just do it,” Coal said.
“Because it’s not possible,” Mari said.
“It’s true,” Door said.
“You’ve seen him do it?” Mari asked.
“He wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
“You believe him with no proof?”
“He’s my guy!” Door said. “But yeah, I absolutely made sure he got some proof.”
