Boy 2.0, page 13
Coal pulled up the two videos of himself at the construction site and let them play.
“Whoa,” Hannah said.
“That’s CGI!” Mari said.
“You’ve seen Coal with a computer, Mari,” Aaron said. “That’s not CGI.”
Mari grabbed the phone and let the second video play several more times.
“Better not let anybody see this,” Aaron said. “I don’t know what exactly would happen, but I bet it won’t be good.”
“Yeah, I already found that out,” Coal said. He braced himself for their reaction. “I didn’t go to the library today. I went to Mirror Tech.”
“What?” Door said. “What did you go there for?”
“Dr. Achebe met me after school today and invited me to be an intern. I asked if I could go to the lab,” Coal said.
“Today?” Aaron’s shoulders slumped. “After I left you? He just picked you up off the street? And you went?”
Coal held up his hand. “There’s more. He knows about me. He has proof, too. There are a couple of other videos . . .”
“Seriously?” Door dropped his head in his hands.
“What if he disappeared you into some lab and started chopping you up for samples?” Aaron asked.
Coal pulled up his sleeve and showed them the bandages where Dr. Carroll had taken a sample of his skin and some blood. “Yeah, well, too late.”
“Ew, one of them is still bleeding,” Hannah said.
“This is so bad!” Door said. “So, so bad.”
“I didn’t know how to stop them,” Coal said. “I was in the lab, and they had all the equipment, and I couldn’t say why I didn’t want them to do it. It was all really fast.”
“No,” Door said. “You know the word no right?”
“First of all, you’re a minor,” Aaron said. “You can’t give an adult permission for anything.”
“I didn’t know there were going to be tests!” Coal said. “I thought it was just a tour.”
“You should’ve run,” Hannah said. She mimed running with her sloth.
“Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn,” Mari said. When everyone looked at her, she explained. “When people find themselves in a dangerous situation, they often do one of those. It’s automatic. Your brain goes into self-preservation mode and you don’t make logical decisions.”
“We have to tell Mom and Dad,” Aaron said.
“We can’t!” Coal said.
“He’s a criminal!” Aaron said. “We are for sure notifying somebody.”
“They’ll find out about my invisible thing.”
“And they’ll be able to help,” Aaron said.
“No,” Coal said firmly.
“Now you know the word no?” Door shook his head. “After Mirror Tech has a bunch of your samples locked up in a lab?” He lay all the way back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling, like he was feeling faint. “What if all your bits get handed over to those military guys?”
“There’s military?” Aaron asked.
“There were a bunch of dark SUVs when we took the tour,” Door said. “They talked about engineering high-tech uniforms for them . . . so yeah . . . lots of super-spy soldier stuff.”
“He said he wanted to protect me,” Coal said. “I think he means it. He kept the videos he found away from the police.”
Everyone, even Hannah, raised their eyebrows at him like he was some kind of noob.
“We’ll need more information about those videos,” Mari said.
Coal told them everything. About the chalk. The guy with the rifle. The police. The fabric at Mirror Tech. Everything. Mari frowned like she was trying to get her head around all of it. Hannah’s eyes widened with each new piece of information. By the end, Aaron looked wiped out.
“He’s kept your secret so far,” Mari said. “Otherwise a bunch of secret agents would have scooped you up a while ago. He’s making sure nobody else finds out about you.”
“Like the golden goose,” Hannah said.
“Wasn’t the golden goose locked up in a cage?” Door asked.
“Which is exactly where you’ll end up if you’re not careful,” Aaron said.
Coal hung his head. His entire body felt heavy, like he could sink down to the ground, into it, beneath it, and still keep going.
“No more investigating stuff on your own,” Mari said. “If you hadn’t gone snooping around Mirror Tech, he probably would never have even known about you.”
This truth made Coal wish he really would sink straight down to the center of the earth. He was an entire fool. He’d done it all to himself.
“We have to do something,” Door said.
“What?” Mari asked. “What can we possibly do?”
“Something.” Hannah stamped her foot on the rug. “It’s not fair!”
“Aaron’s right,” Mari said. “We need help.”
Door sat up. “You’re forgetting we have a secret weapon,” he said. “Achebe assumes he can use Coal’s ability against him. What if Coal used it to help himself?”
Everyone turned to Coal, staring at him appraisingly.
“It’s not like I can control it,” he said. “What am I supposed to do? Go to Mirror Tech and hope I get scared enough to trigger my own camo?”
“You never did it just by thinking?” Hannah asked.
“Once. In the bathroom,” Coal said. “I got it to stop. But that’s not the same as getting it to start.”
“Why not?” Hannah asked.
Coal looked at each of them. They all looked back at him with dead-serious faces. “I just did a bunch of breathing,” he said. “I don’t see how that’s going to help.”
“What about the construction site test?” Door asked.
“Every time I go camo I need to be scared I’m about to die?”
Hannah jumped in front of his face and yelled, “Boo!”
“Thanks, Han,” Coal said. “But I don’t think—”
She went around to the back of him and tried louder. “Boo!”
“Han, stop,” Aaron said.
“I’m helping to scare him!” she said.
“Let’s try the breathing thing.” Aaron pulled up a focus app on his phone. “I use this one for concentration. We can start there.” The app played a mellow set of chimes and a soft voice welcomed them to Student Focus. “And not to put any pressure on you or anything, but you probably want to master this thing fast before Dr. Jerkface sells your cells to the military for cloning.”
Coal shivered. An entire army of boys who looked just like him, bred specifically so they could camouflage and go behind enemy lines. Each one of them disposable, because they had the cells to make more indefinitely.
Next to him, Door also shuddered.
“Are you picturing an invisible clone army?” Coal asked.
“No, I’m picturing hundreds of your hideous mug menacing the entire world,” Door said. “It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever thought of!”
19.
“Staring at me is not going to make this go any faster,” Coal said. He was several minutes into the focus app and not getting any closer to controlling his ability. “I mean the plan has to have at least one other step, doesn’t it?”
“We’ll work on that,” Aaron said. “But no plan is going to work unless you can get into the building.”
Coal’s eyes widened. “Alone?”
Mari grunted. “You could never do this alone.” She added an eye roll and Han snickered.
“There’s security in the lobby with gates and stuff,” Door said. “We got in with a tour last Saturday.”
“We can’t count on there being a tour when we go,” Aaron said. “Plus, we’re going to have to get inside the lab where Coal’s samples are. That’s gotta be locked up.”
“The guides used a digital card to unlock the lab,” Door said. “Where’s your goody bag, Coal?”
“What goody bag?”
“The one from the tour,” Door said.
“I threw that out.”
“Without looking inside?” Door scrambled to his feet. “Where did you throw it?”
“In the bathroom upstairs.”
Door ran up the stairs. A minute later, he bounded back down with something in his hand.
“What’s that?” Aaron asked.
“I swiped the key card from Coal’s friend, the intern,” Door said. “I thought it would be a nice souvenir for my guy here, since he had a crush on her and all.” He passed the card to Aaron.
“I do not have a crush!”
“It’s happening!” Hannah shrieked. “Your skin is changing!”
Everyone stopped to look at Coal. He looked down at his hands, but nothing was happening. He did feel hot, though.
“Are you blushing?” Aaron asked.
“W-what?” Coal said. “No? I am not blushing.”
Door peered at him. “You’re turning red, and you’re hella dark, so that’s not an easy feat.”
“Isadora Blake,” Aaron read. “That’s your crush?”
“That isn’t . . . I’m not . . . I can’t believe you stole that,” Coal sputtered.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mari said. “It’s exactly what we need. You’re a genius, Door!”
Door grinned.
Hannah wriggled a little.
“This’ll probably get Coal into the lab, but there’s still the problem of security on the ground floor,” Mari continued.
“Only if it’s still working,” Aaron said. “It might be deactivated.”
“She said she is only there on Saturdays and Wednesdays,” Door offered. “Hopefully nobody’s noticed it’s gone yet.”
Hannah continued to wriggle.
“If you need to go to the potty, just go,” Mari told her sister.
“I want to hear the plan!” Hannah said. “And the crush!”
“Do you also want to pee your pants?” Mari asked.
“Nobody say anything until I get back!” Hannah ran off.
Mari continued as soon as the bathroom door slammed. “Assuming the key card works, we still need to get security to open the gates into the lab area.”
“We?” Aaron said. “You’re not going with us.”
“What?” Mari asked. “Why?”
Aaron looked at her like she was joking. “It’s dangerous. That’s why.”
“Okay, so what’s your big idea for getting inside?” She stared at him with her arms folded. “Well?”
“I’m thinking,” he said.
Hannah returned with her sloth. “Okay, what did I miss?”
“We need to get past security,” Door said. “Know any cute little-girl tricks that can do that?”
“Yes,” Hannah said.
Everyone stared at her.
“You do?” Coal said.
“People let me inside to pee all the time,” Hannah said. “Just tell them I need to go potty.”
“That’s a great idea,” Door said.
Mari chuckled. “Guess we’re all going. Unless you have a better plan.”
Aaron sighed. “Fine. Let’s check the bus schedule. How are you coming with that invisibility thing?”
Coal gave him a thumbs-up and a smirk that was meant to indicate he was getting nowhere and could everyone please not ask about it.
Mari exited the focus app and looked up an online yogi who talked their followers through breathing and control exercises. She sat crisscross opposite Coal with the phone propped up on the coffee table, and, like Doc, did all the exercises with him.
After a few more minutes, Coal heaved a sigh. “This is stupid. I can’t do it.”
“You’re too stressed,” Mari said. “You have to relax.”
“But that’s the opposite of how it’s happened before,” Coal said. “Every time I changed, I wasn’t relaxed at all. I was scared sh . . . stiff.”
Door laughed. “Shstiff.”
The front door opened and the McKays breezed in. “Hello,” Doc said to Door.
“Hi,” Door said. “I’m Coal’s best friend. Theodore.”
“Nice to meet you, Theodore,” Doc said.
“You staying for dinner?” Jackson asked. “We got takeout.”
Door’s face brightened. “Chinese?”
“Yup,” Jackson said.
“I’ll text my mom,” Door said.
“Great!” Jackson moved into the dining room. “I’ll start getting it all set up.” He paused at a bunch of crayon-drawn maps on the table. “What’s all this? You guys planning a heist?”
“Actually,” Aaron said, “we were talking about going to the silent protest tomorrow for Allana Hastings. A lot of schools around the country are doing them.”
Coal, Door, Mari, and Hannah looked at him.
“Yes, the superintendent emailed about that,” Doc said. “As long as it stays peaceful, I don’t mind if you participate.”
“The girls want to come to the one on my campus,” Aaron continued. “I can pick them up after school and bring them over.”
“We’re going, too,” Coal jumped in.
Doc looked at the girls. “Do you know why this is happening?”
“We know,” Mari said. She held Hannah’s hand. “It’s important.”
Doc and Jackson exchanged a glance. “I want to talk more about this,” she said. “But yes, you can go. Stay together and walk home once it’s over.” She tilted her head at the phone in Mari’s hand. “Is that Sundiata?”
“You really hooked me on yoga,” Coal said. “I thought I’d try some on my own.”
Doc smiled. She lowered her voice a bit. “It usually helps to not have an audience and so much noise around.”
“Right,” Coal said.
Doc looked both suspicious and impressed. She went into the kitchen to help get out the plates and forks.
Mari mouthed a very excited wow at Aaron, and Door slapped him on the back. Coal gave him a thumbs-up.
“You still need to practice,” Mari whispered at Coal.
Coal got back to work, taking a long, deep breath in and then blowing it out just as slowly. He thought transparent thoughts.
“Coal!” Mari said excitedly.
He opened his eyes. “What?”
“Do that again,” Mari said.
“I didn’t do anything yet!” he said.
“You did something,” she said. “Look!” His hands were turning the same dark orange as the rug.
Door, Aaron, and Hannah stared. His skin started to darken to its usual shade.
“Don’t think too hard,” Mari said. “Think the same amount of thinking you were doing before.”
Coal closed his eyes again. He took another long, deep breath. This time he held it for eight seconds before blowing it out for the same length, and then holding it a second time. He thought more transparent thoughts: Sea breeze. Water. Cellophane.
“It’s working,” Mari whispered.
This time Coal didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to break his concentration. He continued. Glass. Bubbles.
“You’re doing it,” Aaron said.
Coal opened his eyes to Door and the McKay kids standing around him, looking at where he was sitting, but none of them were looking at his face.
“You’re just clothes,” Aaron said.
“Okay,” Door said. “Maybe this is kind of cool.”
“Are you guys coming to eat?” Jackson called.
“Change back!” Mari whispered.
Coal wasn’t sure what to do. He looked at himself. At the places he was but wasn’t. He tried to will his skin to be his skin again, to be charcoal dark and smooth. Nothing was working. Not breathing slow. Or fast for that matter.
Jackson looked in from the dining room. “What are you all gathered around like that for?”
Coal pulled the quilt over himself. He breathed in its familiar scent as he waited for Jackson to leave.
“You guys are being really weird,” Jackson said. “More than usual. Cool quilt, Coal. Where’d you get that?”
“I’ve had it since I was a baby,” he said from underneath.
“That must be really comforting,” he said. He came closer and picked up the edge of the quilt. It fell away from Coal’s face. “It’s really interesting, too,” Jackson said.
Coal looked at Jackson. Jackson was smiling at him. Because he was there. Visible. Which meant that whatever he’d done had worked. “Yeah,” Coal said. “I guess it is.”
Doc stepped up behind them. She looked at the quilt in Coal’s hands and gasped. Coal checked his body to make sure he was all there, and he was.
“That . . . it’s gorgeous,” Doc said.
“Thanks.” Coal smiled at her, relieved.
Doc took a shaky breath and looked over at Door. “You’re sure your parents are okay with you staying for dinner, Theodore?”
Door gave her a thumbs-up.
“Great,” Jackson said. “Let’s eat.”
After dinner, Doc and Jackson took over the living room to watch a show where people brought their attic and garage junk for collectors to get help fixing them up. There were alternating rounds of yelling at the screen and laughing, and sighing and oohing. Coal and the gang huddled up on the porch to finish planning as they waited for Mrs. Guzman to pick up Door.
Coal was fixated on all the ways their plan could go wrong. They might not get into the building. If they did, the key card might not work. Even if the key card did work, it might not have access to every floor, or that inner lab where Dr. Achebe and Dr. Carroll had taken samples from him. They could trip a hidden alarm. Then there would be security. Or police. Maybe even those military guys. He could imagine no end of worst-case scenarios. But the worst of all was if it was too late. If the samples were already being used somehow. But he needed to focus on what was possible. “We haven’t factored in the time it’s going to get the files,” he said.
