I shook my head. “My Mom will be picking me up out front in a minute. I don’t have time to build today. I have to go home and try to put some kind of science fair project together for tomorrow.”
The day came. Wednesday, the first day of the science fair. I woke up in the morning expecting to be terrified, but I felt okay. I had other things on my mind.
I didn’t get to pursue those things immediately. There was no time to talk in homeroom, and I didn’t catch Ray on the way to Math, and Science was all lecture—most of it about the science fair and how we would set up, which left me drumming my fingers and staring at Claire and Ray, impatient for lunch.
It took its own sweet time, but lunch did arrive. I made myself get a tray of food, but, when I slapped it down on the cafeteria table, I had no interest in it. My eyes were on Ray’s hat. The hat had taunted me since homeroom. It sat low and wide-brimmed and velvety black on his head, matching the black clothes he was still wearing. Another question for the pile, but they all tied together.
I didn’t have to wait for Claire to bring this out. “Fashionably late” today meant thirty seconds. She slid down next to me, folded her hands over the top of her lunchbox, and stared at Ray’s hat, too. Her expression was more affectionately amused than my interrogating stare. Ray’s face remained blankly indifferent, as if we weren’t even there while he chewed away at baby carrots from a little plastic bag.
Might as well go for the kill. “You got super powers from drinking the Serum, didn’t you?” I demanded.
Ray let out a sigh—a relieved sigh. He sagged in his seat like he’d started to deflate through his blissfully wide smile. “Thank goodness. I was praying you’d figure it out. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
I picked a nominal tater tot off of my tray and flung it at his forehead. He caught it before it hit, plucking it out of the air like I’d gently lobbed a softball. “You twit. You lied to me and drank the Serum on purpose, then you tried to hide it from us!”
“He didn’t try very hard,” Claire pointed out. She still had her blandly amused version of a poker face on.
Ray finally looked guilty. Not much, more exasperated than guilty, but he put his hand to his forehead and lowered his face and told us, “I was an idiot for hiding it. At first I wasn’t sure it worked.Then I thought I’d surprise you like we’re going to surprise your parents, then I couldn’t figure out how. I didn’t really want to keep it a secret from you, I was just stupid, stupid, stupid, and I’m sorry.”
I spotted the hole he was talking around. “But you’re not sorry for stealing the Serum.”
He looked up at me, right in the eyes. “Not in the slightest. It worked. I have super powers. My two best friends have super powers, and now I do, too. Would you regret it?”
I clenched my teeth. I scowled. The answer was as obvious as The Machine clamped around my wrist. No, I wouldn’t have regretted it.
“So you really have super powers? How super are we talking?” Claire asked. Now that I’d had to swallow Ray’s apology her detachment had disappeared, and she leaned over the table eagerly to hear.
“I drank twenty times as much Serum as you did, and I got maybe five times the effect. You can’t put numbers on it, but look,” he whispered. Grinning like I would grin, probably did grin, he pressed his thumb against the metal tabletop. Pressed hard. Cafeteria tabletops aren’t the sturdiest metal in the world, but should it have dimpled that much?
He pulled his hand away. He’d left a dent. A deep, obvious dent.
“That is superhuman,” Claire whispered back. She was smiling, too. Oh, criminy. So was I. Ray had me. This was awesome.
Ray glowed with pride. “I’m not sure about superhuman. Maybe extreme end of human. I can’t lift a car, but I can lift the front end.”
I gave up the last bit of resistance and joined in. “I saw how you moved with Marcia. I could hardly believe how fast she could grab, but she couldn’t touch you.”
“I think they’d disqualify me if I tried out for the Olympics. I wouldn’t know where to start telling you all the crazy things I did this weekend. This is, with absolutely no contest, the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he whispered.
“That’s how I felt, too!” Claire and I answered at the same time.
We all stopped. People were staring. They couldn’t hear us, but they knew something was up. Claire flipped open her lunchbox and gave me a carton of real tater tots. “Eat. We have to eat. You know what’s after lunch.”
After lunch we all filed into the gymnasium. Not for PE this week, or the rest of the semester—as pitifully short a period as that would be. The bleachers and equipment had all been tucked away, and tables lined up in rows for kids to set up their science fair displays.
At least I had something. Claire’s looked nice and smooth and professional, with charts and photos of her mother—sure to please. I’d managed to pretend the experiment was using The Machine to determine raw materials of household items, and set out a small tray of scissors, batteries, crayons, and so forth for people to try themselves, with lists of ingredients that would be produced. We had two hours to set up, and, for most people, it took five minutes, which left everyone wandering around looking at each other’s projects. Intentional, I was sure.
Ray fed a battery to The Machine to watch it separate water, crystalized base, organics, and metals into little bins. I set up the “DO NOT TOUCH” sign over the potassium hydroxide bin as he wandered off to look around. Hopefully, no one would be stupid. The lye was already absorbing water from the air, but I hated to think what it would do to a finger.
I nudged The Machine over; it drank the goo out of the bin and spat out a pellet of dry potassium hydroxide that stayed dry for about a second. Then Ray stepped out of the crowd and grabbed my sleeve. “You have to come see this.” His face and voice were way too flat. What could have crushed his mood already?
He led me around a couple of aisles, and it quickly became clear where we were going, because one display had students and teachers gathered around to gawk at it. When we got around to where I could see, I had to admit that the small metal footlocker and the colored charts glued to a sheet of laminate made a nice display. They didn’t explain the crowd, of course. The glowing super science device sitting on the laminate sheet did.
Blue lines traced over a gray surface that might be ceramic. The device twisted like a bowl, with a purple crystal ball floating just above and another imbedded in the base. Light crawled through the blue lines, making it look alive. The volt meter sitting next to it looked positively pedestrian, except that it registered a circuit attached to a sneaker that glowed faintly blue like the machine.
I looked at the title. “Conduction Of Energy Not Found On Earth” by Marcia Bradley. I felt a distinct urge to swear. She’d somehow borrowed a piece of actual alien technology from the museum, and her project compared how it could be used to charge ordinary elements and random devices. She admitted smugly in her presentation that electrical production could only guess at the real charge, since this energy was not understood and human technology could not directly measure it.
Ray pulled me up next to Claire, who was already glaring at the display.
“There’s no way she just borrowed that. Museums don’t lend out irreplaceable exhibits like that. One of her parents is a superhero,” Ray hissed to us.
“An important superhero. That’s tech from the invasion, the one that officially didn’t happen,” Claire whispered back.
“It doesn’t have to be a parent. A family member, even just a friend of the family. A lot of successful heroes are extravagantly generous,” I argued.
Ray made a little growl in his throat. “They’re still practically outing themselves.”
Claire shook her head. “No villain will follow it up. That would be getting personal.”
I shrugged and tried to look like I meant it. “I don’t care who she knows. I have my own super powers.”
I walked away
from the table, circling back around to my own display. Nobody would try to steal The Machine, but I was having trouble getting used to the feeling of leaving it there for the next couple of weeks. It was so useful in my work, and, unless I was inventing, I kept it wound around my wrist night and day.
There was Mr. Zwelf standing by my display, looking grim. Ah, well, might as well get the bad news.
I walked up and told him immediately, “It’s fine, Mr. Zwelf. I know the experiment involved is pretty flimsy. I wasn’t doing this for a good grade.” He really, really looked grim. “What did I get, a fifty out of a hundred?” I asked.
On his lean, angular face, that frown looked tragically bleak. He seriously felt bad about this. His voice dragged reluctantly as he answered, “Most of the grades aren’t decided yet, but yours has. You’ve been disqualified. Not all of the judges believe you made The Machine yourself. Don’t ask me to tell you who. Because we don’t all agree, you won’t get in trouble for cheating, but you get a zero. I’m sorry.”
He was. Obviously, whoever thought I was trying to pass off one of my Dad’s inventions as mine, it wasn’t him. I could find out who the other judges were, maybe guess which of the five did this to me, but it wasn’t worth the stress. I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. No, it just wasn’t worth the stress. “Don’t worry about it. I knew what could happen, and I don’t regret it. My grades are good enough I should still get an A.”
“A B+ at worst,” he promised me.
“I’m fine with that. Go on. You’ve got a lot of grading to do,” I told him.
“I’m sorry, Penelope,” he repeated and walked off. He’d really wanted that to be over. Fair enough; so did I.
My heart sat heavy in my chest, but that would clear. I was fine. A cracking sound told me Ray wasn’t. He’d squeezed the edge of the table so hard, the wood broke.
I had absolutely never seen this expression on him. Pink lined the whites of his eyes, like he was about to cry, and his eyes glared stonily through the lenses of his glasses.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s fine, Ray.”
The wood started to crack under his other hand. His head sank another inch. “No, it’s not,” he whispered back. “It’s not fair. I had enough trouble swallowing that you wouldn’t get a good grade. This is disgusting.”
“It’s not the right kind of science, Ray. I knew I wouldn’t get a good grade just for showing off an invention.” His shoulder shook under my fingers. This really had infuriated him.
He lurched up straight, and his voice rasped as he demanded, “But do you know who’s getting a good grade? Look around, Penny. Who’s getting a hundred and winning the science fair? Can you tell at a glance?”
“Why do you care what grade Marcia gets, Ray?” Claire asked. I was glad she asked it. She could make her voice sound gentle, not accusing.
“Because the only reason she’ll win is that alien device. She’ll be treated as if she made it, but she only got lucky enough to borrow it. Penny made hers, actually made it herself, and she’s getting a zero,” he rasped.
He was so mad. My own eyes stung with sympathy as I tried to reassure him. “I’m fine with it, Ray, honestly. We’re both getting zeroes. Mine doesn’t bother me any more than yours.” It did, but not much. Not like this.
“I didn’t try,” he snapped back. “I earned my zero. You earned a celebration in your honor, but you’re getting a zero and the real cheat is being treated like a genius. I can’t stand it.” His fists balled up at his sides, quivering with effort. It was a wonder he didn’t hurt himself, with that strength.
I wanted to tell him it just happens, but he didn’t give me a chance. Pointing straight across at Marcia’s display, he growled at me, “And the worst part is, some superhero is an accessory to this. They gave her that thing so she could crush kids better than her in a competition.”
I got a peek of tears running down his cheeks, and more than a peek of clenched teeth, but he twisted aside and stomped away from me, heading straight for the gymnasium door and barging his way outside.
I shared a look with Claire. Should we follow him? A teacher was already headed for the door. He’d just cut school early, after all. But they couldn’t possibly catch him, and neither could we.
When the bell rang and school let out, I still couldn’t see any sign of Ray. Now that he had super powers, he could be anywhere. Claire and I trooped solemnly over to the elevator and took it down into my lab.
“Ray?” I called out as the gate swung open. My voice echoed. No luck. No one else was here.
A guilty suspicion nagged at me. “Do you think the Serum did this? It wouldn’t be the first time something that gave someone super powers made them crazy.”
“No, I think this really means a lot to him,” Claire answered in a quiet but confident voice. Maybe she knew him better than I did after all.
“If I’d known—” I started, but Claire put her fingers over my mouth. It was a sweet gesture, the touch against my lips calming, and her smile made her face glow with gentle kindness. She was using her powers on me, but I didn’t care. It helped soothe my own heart.
“You’re not going to worry about that now. You’re going to invent something and remind yourself that you have super powers, and so does Ray, and so do I, and those are going to change our lives so much we won’t even remember what grades we got in the science fair.” My shoulders sagged. She gave me a small, quirky grin and an immaculately raised eyebrow. I shuffled into the other room and pulled off my shirt and skirt and pulled on my jumpsuit.
“I don’t know what I’m going to create,” I grumped as I emerged. My heart felt a lot heavier after being out of the room and away from her power. “I’m not feeling very inspired.”
Unruffled, even wryly playful, Claire put her hand on her hip. “I know what you’re going to invent. You’re going to invent an air conditioner. Have you noticed how warm it is down here? It’s winter. Imagine when June Gloom hits, and it’s ninety degrees and overcast and wet outside every day. This metal cave will become an oven.”
I could imagine that. The soft plastic of my jumpsuit kept me nicely temperate and dry of perspiration, but I could still feel the warmth on my face. I wouldn’t want to set foot down here in summer.
“An air conditioner isn’t exciting enough for my super power,” I argued lamely.
“I have faith in you,” Claire answered, completely unmoved.
“I don’t know how I’d even make a good one. I’m scared to open the air vents yet, and without better circulation you’d need to chill the air without displacing heat, which—” My complaint solved itself. My super power seized on the challenge, and I watched a design take shape in the back of my head. That was some crazy circuitry, but not too small to build by hand. The way it worked was almost like The Machine. Almost. Not as good.
My hands started working while I admired the schematic in my head. That was fine. I just wanted to feel my hands work, laying out circuits in concentric circles, firing ceramic tubes out of the smelter, burying one of the larger batteries in the middle. The system was wonderfully efficient. It just needed a jolt to get it started.
Finally, I set the box on the floor, closed the telescoping projector until it looked like a regular fan, and turned it on. Just a little power on the fan, about two thirds of the way up the refrigeration slide. It could heat, too, but that drew more power.
Wonderfully icy air poured out over me, filling the room with a gentle wind.
“Feel better?” Claire asked
“I do,” I admitted, taking off my helmet and lifting up the fan to steam cold air through my hair. I extended the tube to make it more directional, and my hair flew around behind me in the strong gusts.
Claire stepped up next to me, tilting her head to look at the telescoping tube from one side and the other. “It looks like a gun,” she commented whimsically.
Tesla’s Electrified Elephant. “It is a gun!” Understanding washed over me. I cou
ld still remember just enough of my inspiration about how it worked. “I guess it was because I had Ray being mad at superheroes on the brain. You get so many supervillains who have a minor power and turn an already advanced refrigeration system into a freeze ray, something like that. That’s all the super power they really had. My brain clicked and made an air conditioner cannon without asking.” I telescoped what I now knew was the barrel all the way out. I couldn’t freeze or burn well, but if I turned the force all the way up the blast of air would hit like a real cannon. It even had fasteners for the arm and back of my jumpsuit. My super power had wanted a cannon, all right.
“It’ll be a good toy to show your parents. Very superhero,” Claire pointed out.
I smirked. “More like supervillain. The guys who make these things are all crazed on revenge.”
Understanding hit me again. I saw the same revelation in Claire’s expression of growing horror. Desperately, I told her, “Claire, we have to do something. Ray’s a superhero now. He’s so mad, he’ll destroy the science fair and think it’s a good deed.”
“Not until after dark. Too many staff hanging around until then. We’ll come back after dark. We can talk sense into him. If not… well, we have powers, too,” Claire answered.
got home. Mom noticed me staring out the window, of course. “Something happen at school?” she asked as we drove up. The school is so close I can walk if I’m patient, but the short drive took forever. Ray was out there planning something nuts.
Not actually lying had worked so far. I made sure to grumble, which didn’t require any faking. “I put The Machine up for the science fair, and now I’m reaping what I sowed.”
Mom is too good at reading people for her own good. Since I didn’t want to talk about it, she let it drop.
Now I had cover to trudge into the house and straight into my room and lock the door behind me. Those audible but unintelligible voices would be Mom telling Dad I had to work it out for myself. Right? That was what Mom would do?
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