My head is pounding and my pulse is racing. What happened to Eli is scary, but that can be blamed on two people—Mr. Frieden and Dr. Bruder. But the Plastics Works is everybody—every adult in town—including Steve and Elizabeth Pritel!
Mom and Dad, who spoil me, who spent a fortune finishing the attic so I could have an art studio! Dad, who calls me Torific, and tells me I’m the princess of his heart! They go to that factory every day and come home and talk about the traffic cone business!
Is it all a lie? “There must be some explanation—”
Malik reads my mind. “Don’t even think about asking your parents! They’re up to their necks in this, just like everybody else. That’s rule number one—no parents!”
Eli regards me kindly. “You can still back out, you know, Tori. We trust you to keep this secret.”
Secrets. Lies. Those used to be dirty words, alien customs of an outside world we don’t have to worry about here. How could so much have changed so quickly? Oh, how I wish I could roll back the last month and erase all this craziness.
But it’s too late for that.
I have one final question for them. “What do you mean ‘back out’? Back out of what?”
Eli mulls this over a moment. “Well, we can’t ask anybody, because we can’t trust anybody. If we want to get to the bottom of this, we’re going to have to do it on our own.”
“Now you’re talking,” Malik approves. “Where do we start?”
They stare at each other, and it’s obvious they’ve thought not an inch beyond deciding to take action.
To my surprise, the voice that breaks the silence is my own. “We start with the one thing we know for sure—the Plastics Works. If they’re not making traffic cones, what are they doing in there?”
11
ELI FRIEDEN
It takes a few days for things to get back to normal around our house. Eventually, though, life resumes its regular boring rhythm. Boring is good. My father likes order and sameness, which makes it hard for him to peek into my room and check on me at all hours of the night. Soon I’m the one checking on him. He sleeps like a baby, and snores like a buzz saw.
That’s when I give the go-ahead to put our plan into action.
Every time I think about what I’m doing, I feel like my head’s going to explode. That’s when I remind myself of what my dad and Dr. Bruder did to me. It’s always good for a surge of courage.
Serenity isn’t the liveliest place in the middle of the day. At night you could safely roll a giant boulder up Amity Avenue without putting anybody in danger. And at two o’clock in the morning, it’s dark and silent as a tomb.
I ease myself out through the back door, convinced that I’m going to be the only one crazy enough to report for this expedition. The kids of Serenity follow the rules 100 percent. The town charter has no provision for sneaking around.
The meeting place is under the big maple tree at the corner of Amity and Fellowship. I’m equal parts amazed and relieved to find Tori there waiting for me. She seems terrified.
“I thought for sure it would be just me,” she says, a slight tremor in her voice.
“Me too. Where’s Malik?” I’m wondering if something went wrong—a medical issue somewhere in town that would have Dr. Bruder awake and about. We have no backup plan. Do we go home or continue on as a twosome? The thought of weaseling out of this is more attractive than I’d like to admit.
But no such luck. I make out a hulking dark figure approaching along Amity.
“Sorry I’m late,” Malik greets us. He may be big and tough, but he looks twice as scared as we are.
The three of us start down the Fellowship hill toward the chimneys of the Plastics Works. It’s a moonless night, so dark that when you step away from somebody, the face disappears almost immediately. We might as well be in deep space.
The factory is absolutely still—a shadow that could just as easily be a small mountain as a building. There are only a handful of lights, none of them much brighter than a bug zapper. Considering this is supposed to be a major manufacturing corporation, it sure looks like nobody’s home.
We don’t see the perimeter fence until we’re almost upon it. It’s eight feet high, and seems even higher in the darkness. We begin to circle the property, looking for a way in. At last, we arrive at the electronic gate. Three traffic cone trucks are parked on the roadway just inside.
“There could be others,” Tori suggests. “You know, out of town making deliveries.”
“You guys want to see Hector’s blood?” Malik offers.
“We’ll take your word for it,” I decide.
As far as I know, no kid has ever been inside the Plastics Works. The plant is off-limits except to employees, and there are no open houses or take-your-children-to-work days. That’s what makes the next step so difficult. Once past that gate, there’s no pleading innocence or playing dumb. Everybody knows it’s forbidden territory. Worse, the plant is Purple People Eater country. We may make fun of their big teeth and photosynthesis, but nobody wants to tangle with them.
The gate is a little shorter than the fence—perhaps seven feet. Climbing over it feels like passing a point of no return. When we jump to the ground, the impact of our shoes on the gravel resounds like fireworks, and we scramble to the dirt path as quickly as we can.
Another crunch—a footstep? Is somebody there? A hand squeezes my wrist. It’s Tori, her face ghostly white.
I count silently—ten seconds, then twenty.
“False alarm,” I whisper.
We scamper toward the building itself, taking a quick inventory of all doors and windows. Our plan is simple: Find a window, look inside. Are they making traffic cones? What else are they doing? If we can’t see anything in the first window, we move on to the next, and so on.
But the closer we get, the more it becomes apparent that the windows are a lot farther up than they appear from the road. There’s no way we could boost one of us high enough to get a look in there, not even standing on each other’s shoulders. And anyway, we’re not circus performers.
There’s a loading bay, but the heavy folding door is padlocked shut.
“What about this?” suggests Malik. He reaches for the handle of the only other way in on this side of the building, a metal door marked Keep Out.
“Freeze!” Tori rasps.
“I doubt it’s open,” I put in.
Tori points to the top corner of the doorframe. Two tiny strands of color run from the brick into the metal. “It’s wired for an alarm. There might even be a sensor on the knob itself.”
We stare at her. Where did that come from? I mean, I’m grateful that she saved us from a potential mistake, but how did she see it? People don’t even lock their doors in Serenity. What gave Tori the eagle eyes to spot an inch and a half of alarm wire?
“We can’t touch anything,” I decide.
“Great,” grumbles Malik. “So we risked a heap of trouble to come here and do what? Nothing.”
None of us has an answer for that. We’re standing there like idiots, when the noise reaches us—a soft electric motor. The thought of Purple People Eaters jolts us into action. There’s only one place to go—a low stand of shrubbery against the wall of the factory. We practically trample each other, scrambling into shelter just as a golf cart makes the turn around the corner of the factory and comes into view.
Flashlight beams crisscross the ground in a rhythmic pattern. My eyes follow the cones of light to their source on the cart—the indigo uniforms of the Surety.
Nobody breathes. Trembling, we crouch amid the scratchy branches as the beams sweep over us. The tension is like a fog surrounding us. I recognize one of the Purples’ faces—Screaming Mimi. And the other—I squint to see past the brightness of the bulb—Alexander the Grape.
What difference does it make which ones they are? If they catch us, it’s the end of the world!
In my mind, we’re impossible to overlook—three clumsy bodies trying to disappe
ar behind a few brambles.
And then the flashlights move on past. The patrol continues to parallel the wall and disappears around the far end of the complex.
It’s only when the sound of the cart’s motor has completely faded that we muster the courage to emerge from the bush, one figure at a time—one . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .
Four?!
Frantic, I identify Tori and Malik. Someone else is here too! I can see him in silhouette.
Were we so worried about the Purples in the cart that we didn’t notice the one hiding three feet away from us?
Tori and I stand frozen, but Malik doesn’t freeze so easily. Like a panther, he lunges at the stranger, hauling him up by the scruff of the neck.
“Ow, Malik, that hurts!”
Hector.
Malik is furious. “Where do you get off following us here?”
Hector stands up to him. “I didn’t follow them; I followed you! Why are you leaving me out?”
“You think this is some kind of game?” Malik demands.
Hector spreads his arms wide. “Whatever it is, I can help you guys!”
“No!” Malik rasps. “You’ll treat this like a club you want to join. And then you’ll get scared—”
“I won’t! I swear! I’m a part of this!”
Malik is beside himself. “If you don’t know what it is, how do you know you’re a part of it?”
I have a thought. “Randy’s note said some of us are special. It could be Hector as much as any of us.”
“Yeah, I’m special,” Hector says, pleased. “Special how?”
“We’ll explain later,” Tori assures him. “Let’s get out of here.”
From my jacket pocket I pull out my iPad, and snap pictures of the loading bay, the Keep Out door, and the high windows. “Maybe we’ll notice something that we missed,” I explain.
I’m about to slide the tablet back into my jacket when I see something that makes me frown. Along the bottom of my screen, right beside the battery indicator, I spot the icon for Wi-Fi. Why would I have Wi-Fi? I’m too far from home where our router is, and there are no other houses here, so I can’t be piggybacking on someone else’s network. This Wi-Fi has to be coming from the factory!
I open the browser, and a pop-up appears, asking for a security code.
I’m a little surprised, since we don’t use passwords a lot in Serenity. We know what they are—our parents order things from online stores from time to time. But I’ve never seen the internet itself protected by a PIN.
The others gather around, offering suggestions. “Try Serenity,” Malik supplies. “Around here, every toilet is stuffed up with that name.”
I type it in. ACCESS DENIED.
“How about plastic?” Hector puts in. “Or plastics works?”
ACCESS DENIED.
“Maybe Honesty?” Tori offers. “Harmony? Contentment?”
We test them all—every word or phrase we’ve ever heard associated with our town—Serenity Cup, Pax, traffic cones, factory, and the last names of every town official. No luck.
Then I notice something. The sign-in page isn’t all that different from the screen that’s on display when I hack into my Xbox. If Randy and I can exploit glitches in our video games . . .
A few taps later, I’m probing into the actual HTML coding of the web page. Most of it’s gibberish—long strings of letters, numbers, and symbols. But in the middle of all that programming stew is a single word I recognize: Hammerstrom.
“Hammerstrom?” Malik repeats. “What’s that?”
“One of the Purples,” I reply. “But if he’s the guy who set up the portal, maybe he used his own name as a PIN.”
I backtrack out of the coding until I see the password page again. My hands are trembling as I type the letters into the field: HAMMERSTROM.
We hear a beep, and there’s the Google home page. We’re in!
The whirr of the golf cart is audible again. It’s the patrol coming around to make another pass. The others duck back into the bush, but I’m frozen to the spot, tapping the virtual keyboard.
“What are you doing, man?” Malik hisses. “Get down! We’ve got company!”
I’m still typing as if my fingers are moving on their own: BOSTON TEA PARTY.
Malik reaches out and drags me backward into the bushes just as the golf cart rounds the corner. Tori smacks the tablet against my chest, dousing the glow of the screen. We suspend breathing. Bushes don’t breathe.
The crisscrossing flashlight beams swing over us. The Purple People Eaters move on again.
“You idiot!” Malik rages in an undertone. “What was so important to see on there? Are you checking your fantasy football team?”
I pull the iPad out and show it to them.
THE BOSTON TEA PARTY
The Boston Tea Party was a protest against taxation without representation by the Sons of Liberty against the British government . . .
“This website came up for me during the storm!” I explain to them. “Compare this with what they taught us—that the colonists and the British drank tea and decided to form a new country.”
“I don’t care!” Malik is still angry. “You almost got us caught!”
Light dawns on Hector first. “They’re tampering with our internet!”
“Who’s ‘they’?” asks Tori. “The Purple People Eaters?”
“They’re just the enforcers,” I reply.
“Mrs. Laska!” Hector breathes. He turns to me. “And your dad!”
“It’s worse than that,” I tell him. “The Purples, everybody who works at the school, or the factory—”
“Our parents!” moans Tori.
“It’s the whole lot of them,” Malik adds angrily. “Every adult in Happy Valley.”
“Right,” I agree. “And if they control our internet, and they control our school, and they control our town, then we can’t trust anything we think we know about our lives!”
There’s dead silence as this sinks in.
Hector has a question. “But if our internet is phony, how come it isn’t phony here?”
I’m guessing at the answer, but it makes perfect sense. “Because this is the factory’s internet, leaking out through the walls. They want the real thing in there. Whatever’s going on in Serenity, I’ll bet it’s being controlled from inside this building.”
On a whim, I tap two more words into the search field: McNALLY ACADEMY.
McNally Academy is a private coeducational boarding school located outside the town of Pueblo, Colorado. Founded in 1954 . . .
“Randy,” Tori whispers. “He was telling the truth.”
There’s no way my absent friend could hear me, yet somehow it feels important that I say it aloud. “I never should have doubted you, man.”
Malik slaps the bricks of the Plastics Works. “We have to find a way to get in there.”
It’s funny—we’ve snuck out, trespassed on factory property, hunkered down like criminals, hidden from the Surety. Yet Malik’s words scare me more than anything else that’s happened tonight.
It doesn’t make sense. The risky part is almost over. Why am I suddenly unable to control my runaway breathing?
Maybe it’s this: nothing is over.
This is just the beginning.
12
TORI PRITEL
The instant I step inside the house, the projectile strikes me dead center in the forehead, landing on the tiles at my feet.
“Steve—” My mother’s voice is exasperated.
“Shhh!” Dad hisses urgently. “This is a delicate operation. It requires the utmost concentration . . .” Another shot is coming toward me. I open my mouth to catch it, but it bounces off my chin and hits the floor beside the first miss.
When I reach down to pick them up, my father stops me with a wagging finger. “Uh-uh-uh. There’s an art to this. An artist like you should understand that.” He takes another piece of caramel popcorn from the bowl and tosses it in my direction.
>
It’s a good throw, but it bounces off my teeth as I try to snap it out of the air.
“You’ll attract every bug in New Mexico,” Mom warns, but she’s smiling.
Dad’s next attempt is wide to my left, but I’m able to catch it with my mouth. We celebrate (“. . . another Torific reception . . . !”) and Mom doesn’t even say anything when I scarf down the first three missed attempts. (Our house is so clean you really can eat off the floor.)
“Where were you, honey?” she asks.
“Oh, just at the park.”
“Who with?” Dad probes.
“Eli and Malik,” I reply carefully. “Hector was there too.”
“Amber stopped by, looking for you,” Mom informs me. “I’d assumed you were with her.”
I try to sound casual. “No, not this time.”
This is the hardest part—not that I’m plotting to break every rule of the only place I’ve ever known, but that I don’t dare tell my closest friend.
Amber suspects something’s up, and it really hurts not to be able to confide in her. But I don’t dare, and not just because I promised the guys. What we learned at the factory the other night is something she could never accept.
So I can’t tell her—not until I have real proof. The problem is: proof of what? We know that things are being kept from us, and our internet’s different, and the factory isn’t exactly what it’s supposed to be. But that’s not the same as understanding why. Yes, we’re being deceived, but what’s the purpose of the deception? What is the “something screwy” Randy warned us about?
“What about our project?” Amber demands. “How are we ever going to get it finished by Serenity Day?”
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “Once I get the faces right, the rest of the mural should be a breeze.”
She obviously notices that I’m not around as much, but I don’t think she suspects who I’m with instead. And the fact that the four of us are planning a break-in—well, that’s something she can’t ever know.
It goes without saying that we’re not experts. (In Serenity, the only thing we learn about breaking and entering is that it’s someone else’s problem, somewhere far, far away.) I draw a map of the entire town, detailing every single building, house, and flagpole. We walk, bike, scooter, skateboard, Rollerblade, and even pogo stick every inch of the place in search of a fresh view of the Plastics Works that might reveal a way in that we haven’t thought of yet.
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