It was the girl who could fly.
Bella trembled at the sight of the girl, overjoyed and self-righteous all at the same time; she knew it, she’d known it all along. Finally she had proof.
Like a gunslinger in a Western she whipped her iPhone from her back pocket and clicked pictures and took video. There was a growing movement of Seekers just like her, and these pictures would feed them like manna from heaven.
Even after the girl who could fly and all the birds were long gone Bella kept her eyes on the sky. She wished she could go with them, that she could be part of whatever was happening.
Sighing, Bella holstered her iPhone and reluctantly drew her gaze down. No sooner had her eyes lowered than she gasped and started, unable to believe what she saw. Bella was suddenly standing in a garden that was in full bloom! While Bella had been distracted her dead plants had come back to life; the flowers had bloomed and the vines were bursting with ripe fruit and vegetables.
Bella’s skin tingled. How could this have happened? What made my garden transform?
Bella had no answers, only questions bubbling inside her, and throughout the rest of her day everything she came into contact with began to blossom. That night she uploaded her pictures and videos onto the web. All across the nation Seekers feverishly drank in every pixel and watched the footage over and over. They wrote about it too.
The time has come. The future is here. Rise up. Rise up.
CHAPTER
49
He had no shoes, no water, no identification, and no memory. On a day when the temperatures hovered above 130º he had been discarded like a dirty candy wrapper on a lonely stretch of Nevada’s Highway 93. By the time Officer Felt picked him up his skin was flaming a deep angry red and flowering with blisters.
“What’s your name?” Officer Felt badgered, like he was accusing him of stealing.
The boy looked at Felt with endless confusion. Everything startled him—the car, the doors, even the way Officer Felt spoke.
“Where ya from? Vegas?” Felt waited for the boy to answer. “You get lost or something?”
The boy had no answer.
The precinct in Wells, Nevada, was so small it consisted of nothing more than a small office and a holding cell. They placed him in the cell with an old man who was sprawled haphazardly on the floor, snoring loudly. He had to gingerly step over him and huddle in the corner.
The woman who came for him introduced herself as a social worker from Child Protective Services. She asked a lot of questions he couldn’t answer.
“What’s your name?”
He shrugged.
“Where are you from?”
He looked away.
“Who are your parents?”
He had no answer.
He was shivering from dehydration so she gave him some water. He said no more.
No sooner had the social worker completed her assessment than Peter Harrington walked into the small Wells police station and approached the front desk.
Ever since he’d been woken by the kids in Xanthia and learned that Conrad’s body had not been recovered, Harrington had been filled with hope. It wasn’t a hope he wanted to share with the kids because he didn’t want to create false expectations that might or might not come true, and frankly, when you are dealing with someone like Max there’s no certainty whatsoever. All the same Harrington knew that Max was a creature of habit and had a thirst for symmetry, as well as a twisted delight in having fun. Nothing would tickle Max quite so much as having history repeat itself again, thanks to him.
It made Harrington feel queasy to see that the precinct hadn’t changed in the forty years since the day they had brought him in off the side of the road. The police officer by the front desk lumbered to his feet when he approached.
“Afternoon,” said Officer Felt. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” Harrington said, smiling. “I am—”
Before he could continue Officer Felt put his hand up in surprise. “Hey, anyone ever tell you how much you look like President Harrington? God rest his soul.”
Harrington nodded and shrugged it off good-naturedly. “Yes, I’ve heard that before, but my name is Peter.”
“It’s like you’re twins. Got the same eyes, same hair.”
“As I said,” said Peter, “it’s a coincidence.”
Officer Felt instantly accepted the explanation and felt no need to think on it further: like a thought had been placed inside his head that wasn’t his own.
“I understand that you picked up a boy today,” Peter said, and smiled. He’d been monitoring the police frequencies for weeks waiting to hear the call.
“Yeah,” said Officer Felt, wiping the sweat from his brow and leaning against the desk. He knew better than to give out information, but there was just something about this Peter guy that was so friendly he couldn’t help himself. “I gotta tell you it was the darnedest thing. I was driving down ninety-three and I sees him wandering around like a stray dog. It was hotter than Hades out there and this kid is burnt to a crisp. Heck if I know how long he’s been out there. So I pulls over and talks to him and he can’t put two words together. Doesn’t even know his name. A mess, I tell ya. I got Child Services on the line pronto.”
Peter nodded and smiled. “I’ll take a look at him.”
The idea wormed itself into Officer Felt’s brain, but he resisted. “Well, now, that ain’t protocol.…”
“Of course,” Peter said understandingly. “It would be a big help, though.”
Officer Felt’s face was suspicious, but Peter’s words washed the lines off his forehead. He smiled affably and shrugged.
“Guess it couldn’t hurt. Right?”
“No, it wouldn’t hurt at all,” Peter agreed.
“Right this way.”
Officer Felt led Peter through the office and into the holding area.
The memory of the place almost knocked Peter off his feet. The boy huddled in the corner of the room, burned and shaking, looking but not seeing with vacant blue eyes.
“I guess you have work to do,” Peter said to Officer Felt.
“You bet I do,” Officer Felt agreed, even though there was exactly nothing that he needed to do. Still, he turned and left the room.
Peter looked at the sad offering of a boy before him and shook his head in disbelief. The boy’s blond hair was full of sand and dust and his clothes were nothing more than shredded rags.
Peter walked slowly to the middle of the room and sat down opposite the boy, crossing his legs. The boy watched him with curiosity.
“My name is Peter, and I have been waiting for you,” he told him.
“For me?” The boy’s lips were cracked and bleeding and his voice was hoarse.
“Yes. For you.”
“D-d-do you know me?” The boy’s face created a painful picture of hope.
“I know everything about you. I know where you come from and where you are going. More than that, I know what is in you.”
The boy let out a long shaky breath of relief. “Really?”
“Your name is Conrad and today is your birthday.”
“My birthday?”
“Yes, you are thirteen years old today. And you are very, very smart.”
“But … I don’t know anything.”
“Then I will help you remember again.”
Conrad nodded, satisfied and relieved by Peter’s calm assurance.
“Peter?”
“Yes.”
Conrad struggled to arrange his thoughts. “Who are you?”
“I am your father. I am here to claim you and take you home. Okay?”
“Okay.”
For some reason that he would never be able to explain to Child Protective Services, Officer Felt let Peter take the boy away without so much as showing a single piece of identification.
All Peter said was, “It’s probably best that the boy comes with me.”
The minute Peter said it, it seemed like the most natural and mos
t reasonable course of action in the world to Officer Felt. “Sure thing,” he said, and waved them out of the station.
Conrad’s body was stiff and sore and he had a hard time walking to where his father had parked the car. Peter slowed his pace and patiently walked next to him. Suddenly they both stopped, arrested by the sound of a thousand birds passing overhead. As they looked up at the sky it began to fill with birds, and leading the birds was a girl.
Conrad’s burned and tired face tried to understand this flying girl but couldn’t. “Who’s that, Dad?”
“That, my son, is the start of a revolution. And you and that flying girl started it just like the prophecy said you would.”
This didn’t make any sense to Conrad so he just watched the flying girl and the birds and then let his father take him to the car. When they reached the car, Peter opened the back door and Conrad was surprised to see a boy already sitting in the backseat. Next to the boy was the strangest and probably ugliest creature Conrad had ever seen. At the sight of Conrad the creature started to bob up and down with excitement and jostle excitedly to get at him.
“This is Jasper,” Peter explained to Conrad. “And Fido.” Peter scooped Fido up to stop him from jumping all over Conrad.
“Oh,” said Conrad blankly.
Conrad got into the car and sat down. He watched with quiet wonder as Jasper began to rub his hands together and blow into them.
Before Jasper put his hands on Conrad he said, “This w-w-won’t hurt.”
Conrad didn’t flinch when the healing light traveled up and down his body. He only gasped when the synapses in his brain caught fire and his memories slammed into place like a tractor trailer hitting a concrete wall. When it was over Conrad knew he was Conrad and saw his father—saw him completely for who he was.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Dad.”
Peter released Fido and he threw himself at Conrad and licked his face with passionate slurps. Conrad hugged and petted him.
Peter started the engine. “It’s time to go home, son.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am brimming with gratitude for those who helped me through the long, long journey of this book. At the very beginning, Jean Feiwel wouldn’t let me turn her offer down and had faith in me regardless of the fact that I didn’t have faith in myself. Jodi Reamer stayed in my corner through the thick and thin of it all (she is an agent-extraordinaire with strange and marvelous powers). At the very end, Liz Szabla was the bright star that guided the book home. Never have I met a more talented and generous soul; no doubt about it, this book was lost without her. In addition to these, I received daily bolstering from an assorted cast of friends and family who believed and believed—but none so much as my sister, Kim; Frances Doel; and my best friend, Marta Anderson, who always cheers the loudest and the longest.
While I was writing The Boy Who Knew Everything, I learned that there are real boys (and girls) who do know everything. I can tell you this truly because I have met them. They work silently and often without recognition, but because of them, this world is changed utterly. Here is a short and incomplete list of their names:
Dr. Jean-Nicolas Vauthey, Surgical Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Scott Kopetz, Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Steven Applebaum, Oncologist, UCLA
Dr. James Yoo, Surgeon, UCLA
Saskia de Koomen, RN, UCLA
Ryanne Coulson, PA, MD Anderson Cancer Center
If you start looking for these boys and girls, then you will find them too, or maybe, just maybe, you can become one yourself.…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Victoria Forester is the author of The Girl Who Could Fly, a Booklist Editor’s Choice and Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year. She is also a successful screenwriter, and originally wrote The Girl Who Could Fly for film. She liked the story so much that she decided to expand it into her first book. Victoria grew up on a remote farm in Ontario, Canada, and graduated from the University of Toronto. She now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and cat. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Prologue
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part 2
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An Imprint of Macmillan
THE BOY WHO KNEW EVERYTHING. Copyright © 2015 by Victoria Forester. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
ISBN: 978-0-312-62600-6 (hardcover) / 978-1-250-08021-9 (ebook)
978-1-250-08930-4 (international edition)
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
First Edition: 2015
macteenbooks.com
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