“You’re kidding, right? Like on my head?”
“Not kidding,” he says. He rifles through the pile of parts he’s collected on his bench until he finds two suction cups with little metal coils on the ends. He licks them each once, then sticks them on either side of my forehead, just beside my eyes, feeding the wires to them.
“Ew. That was your spit,” I say. Then I see him reaching for the button on the box that is currently resting on the metal bowl on top of my skull. I instinctively grab his hands in protest.
“No, no, no, no,” I say. “Not until you tell me what it does.” I’ve been in this chair before. I need to know what I’m getting myself into.
Dad smiles his innocent smile. “It’s an amplifier . . . basically. It captures a person’s brainwaves and intensifies them, increasing them both in terms of power and range. Or at least it’s supposed to, though it’s still in its infancy. But don’t worry,” he tells me. “It’s perfectly safe. The red button isn’t even activated yet.”
“It’s not the red button I’m worried about!” I say. He would never hurt me on purpose, I know, but this isn’t the first trial run I’ve been a part of. “Remember the time you tried to give us both X-ray vision?”
My father shrugs it off. “A minor setback.”
“We couldn’t see for two hours!”
“You’re exaggerating,” he says. “It was thirty minutes. Forty, tops. Besides. This is not like that. I promise. This doesn’t do anything you can’t do already. It just does it better. Hopefully. Maybe. As long as everything works perfectly for a change, and your head doesn’t explode.”
I give him bug eyes. He says he’s only kidding.
Then, before I can offer up more examples in protest, Dad reaches over and presses something. I hear the box above me hum and feel the colander on my head start to vibrate. I brace myself for the electric shock. Wait for my brains to be scrambled or my hair to catch fire, or my tongue to go numb, but nothing else happens. I don’t feel any different at all, save for a little more idiotic now that I have a vibrating metal bowl on my head. My father checks a few things on the computer screen beside him, columns of numbers that I can’t even begin to understand, then turns back to me and says, in all earnestness, “All right, Son. Tell me to pee my pants.”
“What?”
“Go ahead,” he prods. “Make me pee my pants.”
I can’t help it. I look down at the front of my father’s khakis, then back up at him. His face is completely earnest. This is stupid. “Do you want to pee your pants?” I ask. I feel like I’m talking to a three-year-old.
“I most definitely do not want to pee my pants,” he says emphatically.
I shake my buzzing head. There are so many things wrong with this scenario already. For starters, we have a rule that I’m not supposed to use my power on him. And he knows that I have a hard time convincing people to do things they aren’t at least somewhat open to. Plus he knows it’s coming. He’s prepared himself against it. There’s no way it will work.
“Dad, I really don’t feel comfortable . . . ,” I start to say.
“That’s the whole point. Just look in my eyes and tell me to spend the penny.”
Spend the penny? Now I don’t even know what he’s talking about. I reach up and rub the suction cup on my forehead, which is starting to itch. The colander is still humming. I look at my father, meet his eyes.
Fine, I think, if it will get this over with. I stare back into his eyes.
“Pee your pants,” I say halfheartedly.
“No,” Dad says immediately. “With gumption.”
I’m not sure I have any gumption, and if I did, I’m guessing I wouldn’t use it to make my father wet himself. “Fine. Pee your pants, please.”
My father looks back at the screen. Shakes his head, then turns back to me. He puts both hands on my cheeks. His hands are freezing.
“Concentrate,” he says.
“Seriously, Dad? There’s a humming metal bowl on my head and these suction thingies are uncomfortable, and you,” I say, sniffing, “really need a shower.”
“Just do it. For me. Just one more time.”
“Fine,” I say, exasperated, fixing him with my gaze, latching onto those sparkling jades, trying to ignore the buzzing. “Pee your stupid pants!” I command him.
The colander suddenly hums louder, and I instinctively look at the front of Dad’s pleated slacks, waiting for the bloom.
But nothing happens. On the screen, all the numbers suddenly disappear and the box on top of my head powers down. Dad frowns. Slumps. Shakes his head. Then he reaches over and takes the colander off my head, and I can see a little wisp of smoke escaping from the top of the box.
“It should have worked,” he says.
“Maybe you just need more coffee,” I say.
He looks at me, still scowling at his failure, but the coffee comment gets him, and soon he is snorting. And then we are both laughing, leaning back in our chairs. The mad scientist and his son, secreted away in their hideout, trying to make a tinkle.
“I guess it was pretty ridiculous,” Dad says in between breaths. We let the laughter peter out in a series of coughs and sighs. Dad recovers with a shuddering breath, wiping his eyes, and then stares across the room at the calendar pinned to the wall. Each month showcases a famous scientist or inventor. June is Sir Isaac Newton month, a guy who got famous just for watching stuff fall out of the sky. My dad could so kick Sir Isaac Newton’s dad’s butt in a science fair any day of the month, even if all his inventions don’t work right the first time.
Dad mumbles the date to himself. His face goes white for a moment, and then he smiles.
“What?” I say. “Do you think you really have to go this time?”
The mad scientist turns and gives me a wink.
“Yes,” he says. “Let’s go.”
An hour later I am staring at a baboon’s shiny pink butt.
How my father went from not peeing his pants to going and watching other animals whiz wherever they wanted to is beyond me. But as soon as the idea hit him, he was sold on it. We had to visit the New Liberty Zoo.
“Yeah. See. I’m not sure that’s such a great idea now that there’s a masked vigilante crimefighter on the loose,” I remind him, but he dismisses the thought and tells me to grab my sunglasses; we will go incognito. He even pulls on his only non-Hawaiian-themed shirt, a muted green polo I bought him one year for his birthday under the stipulation that he try to wear it whenever we were seen together in public. With his hair mostly brushed and shoes on his feet, he looks almost ordinary.
“To the Edsonmobile,” he cries, pointing one finger in the air, stopping to put the Scrambler in his pocket. We are going incognito, but there’s no sense getting our faces on security cameras if we can help it.
The New Liberty Zoo is exceptionally crowded, it seems. Last night’s rain cooled things off, and the animals are prowling. All around us, soccer moms drag their broods from cage to cage, buying their happiness with promises of face paint and overpriced souvenirs. The carousel screams an accordion waltz. Escaped balloons ride the wind, strings fluttering beneath them.
It feels weird. Being here. Part of the crowd. But it’s a good kind of weird. Dad looks content for once, the normally furrowed brow of concentration finally ironed out, his hands stuffed into his pockets, whistling arias to himself as he walks. He looks carefree. Or careless. Maybe there isn’t much difference.
I, on the other hand, find myself glancing over my shoulder every ten steps.
“Michael. Look how busy it is. Do you think any of these people are afraid of a blue man coming out of nowhere and beating them up?”
“I don’t think these people are wanted criminals building bombs in their basements,” I whisper back.
“I’m not building bombs,” Dad replies. “I have never built a bomb . . . unless you count the self-destruct mechanisms, in which case I guess I’ve built several.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s fine. May
be I’m just being paranoid.
“Besides,” my father adds, “aren’t you always saying I should pull my head out of the box and go appreciate nature?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Well, there you have it,” he says, “What could be more natural than visiting wild animals trapped in artificial replications of the environments they were ripped out of to be put on public display?” The baboon in front of us scratches his hindquarters. “Just try to relax and have a good time.”
So I try. I decrease the over-the-shoulder glances to every minute, then every five, and then I forget completely. Dad’s right. We are unknowns. Not like Tony, who would part the crowd like Moses if he were here. We can blend if we need to.
We say good-bye to the baboons and then make our way through the other ecosystems, traipsing through jungles and oceans, trying to ignore the aroma of elephants that settles over the plains. My father feeds the giraffes and mimics the lions. In a moment of wild abandon, he takes off his sunglasses and tells me to do the same. We are safe, he says. He gives a short lecture on the evolutionary link between primates and human beings. He hoots when the gibbons start howling at each other. He buys us both cotton candy, huge tufts that come apart in soft, feathery wisps that threaten to fly away. I let him ruffle my hair without smirking.
He drags me over to the ice-cream stand. “Dad. Really. I think this is all a little much.”
“Nonsense,” he says, ordering us two cones full of tornadoed soft serve. “It’s a special occasion.” And it takes a moment before I realize what the occasion is. Just this. Just him and me. Out. Together.
We finish our dessert on our way to the desert, passing a zoo security guard who is obviously more interested in a group of college girls by the cougar cage than he is in us. The girls are cute but way too old for me. Besides, every girl I see just reminds me of yesterday. And then almost everything does. The pizza crusts in the trash bins. The soda straws on the ground. Every short-haired brunette I walk behind looks like it could be her, and I find myself walking faster sometimes just to get an angle, just to take a peek, just to make sure it’s not.
It’s not.
Inside the desert pavilion, I crouch down to watch a pair of lizards chasing after each other. My father crouches next to me, arm around my shoulders.
“Which one is the boy?” he asks.
I can’t be sure, but I’ve seen enough nature shows to know that the male is usually the one doing the chasing.
“Wrong,” he says.
It was fifty-fifty. I point again.
“It’s a trick question. There is no boy.”
I look again. They look like your typical desert lizards to me. Beady black eyes. Dry scales. Beige and brown spots running in a pattern along their leathery little bodies. Only their tails seem unusually long, thrashing quickly back and forth as they skitter among the rocks.
“They are all females,” Dad explains. “They are whiptail lizards. There are no males of this species. They are capable of reproducing asexually, essentially creating clones of themselves.”
“Oh,” I reply. Now I’m thinking about men in silver masks.
“They aren’t the only ones. Komodo dragons can do it as well. And hammerhead sharks. Then there are pond snails. Fascinating creatures.” I try to think of the last time I heard anyone talk about a pond snail with such esteem. “Of course this kind of reproduction is probably not good in the long term,” Dad continues. “Doesn’t do much to promote diversity. Plus you’d have to grow up without a father.”
“Could be worse,” I say, and I hear his sharp intake of breath. Dad looks at me with an odd expression, as if I’ve just said something completely profound when I was only pointing out the obvious. He settles on his haunches, hands folded in his lap. The crowd moves around us, oblivious. “I didn’t mean you. I just meant . . .”
“I know what you meant,” he says. Behind the glass, the lizards crawl over each other. Insulation. Safety in numbers. “You don’t remember anything about him.”
It’s not a question. He’s asked me before. More than once. The answer is always the same. I was less than a year old when St. Mary’s got her hands on me. No birth records. No ID. Even a DNA test didn’t match any of the records the local authorities had on file. I was completely disconnected. A free soul, Sister Katheryn said.
“I know he was a jerk,” I say. After all, what kind of man leaves his kid in the corner of a White Castle? I mean it as kind of a joke. You know, how absurd it all is. But Dad frowns, his face darkening.
“There are some choices that are made for us.” He takes a deep breath, then stands up. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go see the llamas.”
We leave the desert and head toward the petting zoo in the back. I walk a step ahead of him, his shadow mixing with mine, still thinking about Viola and the Comet, but now also thinking about llamas and cloning and White Castles, and lizards who are just like their moms and kids who never knew their moms, and how I should be thankful to have a father, and not just any father, but a certifiable genius who can explain the laws of thermodynamics but will also sit and laugh at your stupid jokes, who thinks snails are fascinating and insists that dessert is not a sometimes thing.
I turn my head, ready to thank him for bringing us, for all of this, and walk straight into the back of a stranger. A man in a gray sport coat, a touch formal for a trip to the zoo. I take a step back, tucking myself back beneath my father’s arm. Insulated.
“Sorry,” I mumble as the man turns and looks at us. Dark haired, wearing a white button-down shirt and a pair of black jeans. He looks very well put together, tucked in, trim, and smooth. His eyes are gray to match his coat. People I’ve seen with gray eyes usually have a hint of another color, flecks of bright blue or green. But his are gray as a rain cloud.
“It’s all right,” the man says. “It’s crowded today.” He curls his lips into a polite smile, then squints at my father, head cocked. “Hold on a sec, do I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” my dad says curtly, furrowing and squinting back. I chance to look at the man’s waist. Looking for a badge or a gun, any sign of danger, but the slim black belt is empty.
“You look familiar, though. Maybe I’ve seen your picture somewhere. In the paper, perhaps?”
My father shakes his head; I can sense him tensing, winding up. Our pictures have never been in the paper. Dad makes sure of it. I wonder if we are about to make a run for it. Wonder if I should step on this man’s toes or pull his shirt up over his head or something.
Or maybe just ask him to leave us alone. The way only I can.
The man with the gray eyes turns to me.
“Is this your son?” he asks.
“No,” my father says immediately. I make the mistake of turning and looking up at Dad, but then quickly turn back to face the man. “This is my nephew, James.”
“Hello, James,” the man says. “Nice to meet you.”
I don’t reach out to shake the man’s hand. We don’t shake hands with strangers. We don’t tell anyone our names. We don’t fill out forms. We don’t use credit cards. We don’t go places like the zoo. For this very reason.
“James,” my father says softly, “we’ve never met this man before, have we?”
I shake my head. I catch the look in my father’s eye, and I realize he’s giving me permission. I turn back toward the stranger. I take a long, hard look into those frozen gray pools, watching his pupils stretch.
“We have never met,” I say, moving even closer so that I can smell peppermint on his breath. “You don’t know us at all.”
I can’t be sure if it takes or not, but the man nods, then looks at me—a little foggy, as if he’s just remembered something long forgotten. Or the other way round.
“Excuse me. So sorry,” he says, giving one last odd little smile. “Enjoy your day,” he says.
“No problem,” Dad says, then reaches down to my shirt and pulls off my sunglasses, opening them and handin
g them to me—my cue to put them on as he steers me by the shoulders around the gray-eyed man, walking in measured steps past the desert pavilion and the ice-cream stand, staying on the edge of the crowd, up against the wall.
“Do you know that guy?” I ask, glancing back over my shoulder to see if we are being followed, though it doesn’t appear that we are.
My father shakes his head. “No idea,” he says. “But I think that’s enough appreciating nature for one day.”
In our study sits a game table of sorts, gouged cherry in need of restaining, inherited from one ancestor or another. After dinner—Chinese night—Dad invites me to a game of chess. I lose for the fortieth time in a row, though I at least make a battle of it, capturing his queen and leaving a bloody field of crippled pawns before I’m cornered. Never am I more tempted to use my powers on Dad than when we are playing chess. “I think you’d rather move here,” I’d say, setting his king up for the kill. But I don’t. So I lose. Again. We shake hands, as gentlemen do; then he retires to his bedroom, book in hand. Something on neurophysics. Even thicker than Crime and Punishment.
He pauses at the door.
“Don’t stay up too late,” he says. “I may need your help tomorrow.”
I nod and he turns, but before he can shut the door, I stop him.
“Dad?”
He peeks his furry orange head out through the crack, looks at me with his liquid eyes. I feel a weight, a pressure to say it all, everything I’m thinking. Like a logjam in my head. But it’s too much for today. So instead I just say, “I had a really good time today.”
“Me too,” he says, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing. We look at each other for a moment, but neither of us wants to be the one to go first. So he just waves and shuts his door, and I tiptoe to the living room and flip on the television, keeping the volume down.
Breaking New Liberty news. The men in the metal masks have struck again. And again. And again.
Three banks, all at once, according to the grave-faced news anchor on Channel Five. Apparently there are more of them than originally thought—these men with the black uniforms and permanent expressions. They struck in force, using explosives to breach the doors and more explosives to breach the vaults. They didn’t worry about the alarms—happy to trigger them, it seemed. Dad says there are a dozen ways to rob a bank, and most of them don’t require bombs or guns, but these men took the direct route. They broke in and loaded their bags, disdainfully flashing their hollow metal grins at the security cameras as they strolled past. Save for the differences in build, they seemed identical. Whiptailed lizards in black suits.
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