Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab

by Bob Pflugfelder

  After testing their intruder alert light to their satisfaction (Nick’s satisfaction requiring about five more trial runs than Tesla’s), they went around the house and made sure all the windows were closed and locked. Once that was done, Nick could relax. Or try to relax, anyway.

  “I think I’m going to read for a while,” said Nick. “In the bathroom. With the airlock sealed.”

  “I’m going to find Mr. Snugg,” said Tesla.

  “What? We spend an hour making sure we’re safe from the bad guys, then you want to go out in the middle of the night and look for—”

  Nick stopped himself before he could say “the mastermind.” It was embarrassing enough that he’d just said “the bad guys.”

  “—the dude with the funky name,” he said instead.

  “Who said anything about going out?”

  Tesla pointed at a scuffed-up laptop on the kitchen counter.

  “Oh. That kind of looking,” Nick said. “All right. Let’s go.”

  The last Google search anyone had done on the laptop, Nick and Tesla discovered, had been “food kids cheap easy healthy.”

  “At least he included ‘healthy,’ ” Nick said.

  “Maybe that’s how we ended up with fifty gallons of chicken noodle soup,” said Tesla.

  She typed in a search of her own.

  “Snugg Half Moon Bay California.”

  The first hundred or so results were for local hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, all of which claimed to be “snug.”

  “Try an online phone directory,” Nick suggested.

  Tesla quickly found one and searched for anybody named Snugg in Half Moon Bay.

  Nothing.

  She widened the search to anybody named Snugg in Northern California.

  Nothing.

  She widened the search to anybody named Snugg in the whole state.

  Finally, they got a hit.

  “Hey, look at that,” Nick said. “There’s a Mildred A. Snugg in Los Angeles. That’s only … what? Four hundred miles from here? Are you sure the girl didn’t write ‘Ms. Snugg’?”

  Tesla glowered at her brother. “Are you being sarcastic?”

  Nick thought it safer to say “No.” So that’s what he did.

  Tesla tried searching for Siringo Bros. Home Renovators next. A website for the company came up.

  “They’re based in Sacramento,” she said as she and Nick skimmed through the site. “I don’t think that’s very close to here, either.”

  “And I don’t see any mention of a Vince or Frank Siringo.”

  “Well, we don’t know that Vince and Frank are the Siringo brothers. They might just work for them.”

  “Sure,” Nick said. “They’re such nice, charming guys, of course the Siringos would hire them.”

  “They can be mean to us, Nick. Kids don’t get home renovations. Maybe they’re sweet as pie to other grown-ups.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “Maybe.”

  Tesla went back to Google.

  “One more search.…”

  She typed in “Sushami.”

  That had its own website, too, it turned out. The Sushami Corporation was “one of the world’s leading manufacturers of budget-range mobile communications devices.”

  “They make cheap cell phones?” Nick said.

  “Looks like it.”

  “So Frank leaves the Landrigan place at the same time every night so he can drive to a parking lot and jump up and down on a phone?”

  Nick was just being sarcastic again. But to his surprise, Tesla nodded.

  “He did it where no one could see, remember?” she said. “At the edge of the lot so he could throw the biggest pieces into the woods.”

  “And he’d do that because …?”

  “I have no idea.” Tesla rubbed her chin. “I wonder what Occam’s razor would say.”

  “You want the simplest possible explanation?” Nick said. “How about we’re nuts and none of this is actually happening?”

  Tesla kept rubbing her chin. “I’ll consider it.”

  She closed the laptop and started toward the stairs.

  Tesla read in bed. Nick tried to, but he just ended up staring blankly at his book. He was thinking about big black SUVs and big black Rottweilers and big black holes in the ground he didn’t want anyone filling with meddling kids.

  And he was thinking about the girl. There seemed to be a big black void around her, too. Mystery, you could call it. Menace.

  Danger.

  Eventually, it was time to turn out the light and go to sleep—though Nick expected to spend the night thinking the same big black thoughts while old slices of pizza slowly decomposed beneath him.

  Whoever had been driving that SUV was still out there somewhere. Their first enemy. Not the “She said my hair looked stupid” or “He cut in front of me in the lunch line” kind. A real enemy. The kind who wants to hurt you … or worse.

  Nick wondered if he should be mad at his mom and dad for shipping him off into this mess. After a while, he decided it wasn’t their fault.

  But he’d hate soybeans till the day he died.

  Nick dreamed he was at the North Pole.

  “Rudolph,” he moaned in his sleep. “Stop looking at me like that. I didn’t say you couldn’t play any reindeer games. Really. Come on. Back off. I said, back—”

  Nick’s eyes flew open, and he wasn’t looking at a murderously furious glowing-nosed reindeer anymore. He was looking at a single red light shining out in utter darkness. It took him a moment to grasp what it was: the Christmas light they’d taped to the back of the door before going to bed.

  Suddenly, he was very, very awake.

  “Tez,” he whispered. “Intruder alert.”

  He heard his sister stir … then begin snoring softly again.

  She always was a deeper sleeper.

  “Someone is in the house,” Nick hissed. “Tesla.”

  Nick heard his sister sit up straight and throw off her covers.

  “Let’s do this thing!” she said.

  “Huh? Do what thing?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  A moment of silence passed while Tesla apparently finished waking up.

  “Oh, geez, the intruder light’s on,” she finally said. “Someone’s in the house.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. What do we do now?”

  They’d improvised their own alarm system, but they’d neglected to discuss what to do if it actually went off.

  “Now … well … I guess we do do this thing,” Tesla said.

  “What thing?”

  Nick was hoping it might be: barricade the door and start screaming. But he heard his sister stand and start moving slowly, quietly toward the hallway.

  “Tesla,” Nick whispered. “When the bad guys come to get you, you don’t go meet them halfway. You run and hide.”

  “No one’s going to get us. We’re going to scare them off. But I want to see their faces first.”

  A black shape moved in front of the alarm light.

  “Tesla.”

  She opened the door, tiptoed into the hall, and headed for the stairs.

  “Tez,” Nick said softly. “Tez.”

  She didn’t turn back.

  “Dang,” Nick said.

  He got up and followed her.

  By the time he caught up, she was halfway down the stairs. Below them, moonlight shining through the windows sliced into the darkness of the first floor in long straight lines. Nick couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. There were still plenty of pitch-black shadows to hide in.

  Tesla stopped.

  Nick was more than happy to stop, too. He and his sister stood there for a while listening, watching. Sweating, in Nick’s case.

  “I don’t see anything,” Nick whispered.

  Tesla shushed him, then slowly raised a hand and pointed toward the back of the house.

  Nick looked that way and saw nothing. He finally heard someth
ing, though.

  Floorboards creaking. Footsteps. A door opening? Or was it closing? Or maybe opening and closing at the same time? How could that be unless …?

  Two doors were being opened and/or closed? By two intruders?

  Nick heard a man muttering, the words indistinct but his tone gruff, angry. The voice was suddenly cut off by a thump and a crash and the sound of something heavy—like a body—hitting the floor.

  “Ahhh!” someone cried out.

  Tesla bolted down the stairs. “Come on! Uncle Newt’s in trouble!”

  “Are you sure that was Uncle Newt?”

  It was hard to tell men’s voices apart when they were just screaming, in Nick’s opinion.

  Still, he followed his sister as she whipped around the bottom of the banister and charged up the hall. He did take one precaution, though.

  “Operator? I’d like to report an emergency,” he said loudly, speaking into the nonexistent phone in his hand. “Someone’s broken into our house, and all we have to protect ourselves is our uncle’s shotgun and a flamethrower. Could you send backup?”

  Nick hoped to hear something like “Let’s get outta here!” from up ahead, but no such luck. He burst into the kitchen behind Tesla, expecting to find the nefarious Mr. Snugg waiting for them with half a dozen knuckle-cracking thugs.

  Instead, when Tesla flipped on the light they found their uncle on the floor, half buried under cans of Beefaroni.

  “I have a shotgun?” he said.

  When he saw that Nick’s hands were empty, he grinned and shook a finger at him.

  “Nice bluff!”

  “Where are they? Where are they?” said Tesla. She hurried to the back door—which was firmly closed—and peered out through the glass. “Did you fight them off? How many of them were there?”

  “There were about three hundred of them,” Uncle Newt said. He started sweeping Beefaroni cans off his chest and legs. “And I didn’t fight them off. They just fell on me.”

  Nick bent down next to his uncle and helped him dig himself out.

  “You mean … you haven’t seen anyone?” Tesla said.

  “Our alarm light came on,” Nick explained. “We got an intruder alert.”

  “ ‘An intruder alert’? I love it! It’s like we’re in an episode of Star Trek.” Uncle Newt pushed himself to his feet and then squinted down at Nick. “Do you guys know what Star Trek is?”

  “We know,” Nick said.

  “But we heard voices,” Tesla protested. “Right before the big crash.”

  “Oh, that was just me talking to myself,” Uncle Newt said. “I got steamed because I’m hung up on this bioluminescent Christmas tree I’ve been tinkering with. The needles keep wanting to glow brown. I mean, come on! Is there a less Christmas-y color? I was so cheesed I forgot I had all this stuff piled up in here. When I came up to go to bed, I walked smack into a stack of Beefaroni.”

  “Did you open the back door before you fell?” Tesla asked. “To let the cat out or something?”

  “Oh, no. Eureka’s been strictly an indoor cat ever since his fur fell out. Don’t get me started on that debacle. Sandy Paws, the Christmas kitty litter that glows red and green … and makes your cat go bald by Christmas Eve. Oops. Bioluminescents are really not my strong suit.”

  “But, Uncle Newt—the alarm light was on,” Tesla said. “Someone opened this door.”

  Uncle Newt looked around the kitchen, his eyes wide. “Who, Tesla? I don’t see anybody. It must have been a nightmare.”

  “We both saw the light,” Nick pointed out.

  Uncle Newt shrugged. “A short circuit, then.”

  Tesla’s expression darkened. It was one thing to tell her she was imagining things. But tell her she’d screwed up her circuitry? Watch out.

  Uncle Newt didn’t seem to notice. He just spread his arms wide and started shooing Nick and Tesla toward the hall.

  “Come on. Back to bed. It’s the middle of the night, and don’t kids need, like, twenty hours of sleep a day?”

  “I think that’s dogs,” said Nick.

  Tesla just crossed her arms over her chest, stuck out her chin, and allowed herself to be herded up the stairs.

  “I know you guys are a little on edge after what happened with that SUV,” Uncle Newt said as Nick and Tesla got back in bed. “But really, you have nothing to worry about. You’re safe as can be here. Truly. Now good night.”

  “Good night,” said Nick.

  Tesla simply grunted.

  Uncle Newt turned out the light and left.

  “You’ve got to admit,” Nick said. “It could have been a short circuit.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Well, there’s not much we can do about it now, unless you want to go back downstairs and check … the … oh, man.”

  “What?”

  Nick made himself get out of bed.

  “Would you come with me, please?” he said to his sister. “And not let me turn around and run back and hide under the covers?”

  “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

  “No! Geez, Tez! I have to go back to the kitchen.”

  “Why?”

  Nick swallowed. Hard.

  “I know how we can prove it wasn’t a short circuit.”

  Tesla was instantly on her feet.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Nick wanted to be wrong. He wanted Tesla to be wrong. He wanted the alarm to have short-circuited. Better to have made a mistake, in this case, than to be right.

  He crossed the kitchen with slow, hesitant steps that would have been even more slow and hesitant—or fast and certain, but in the opposite direction—if Tesla hadn’t been behind him.

  When he reached the back door, he looked down at the coins and wires taped to the floor. The little piece of paper that had separated the coins wasn’t between them anymore. Instead, it was about four inches away.

  Maybe Uncle Newt had pulled it out accidentally, his foot scuffing over the coins as he walked through the kitchen in the dark. There was one way to find out.

  Nick wrapped a sweaty hand around the doorknob, turned, and pushed.

  The door opened.

  It was unlocked.

  Nick quickly pulled the door shut again. Then he locked it … for all the good that would do.

  He’d locked it—and double-checked and triple-checked that he’d locked it—before he and Tesla had first gone upstairs to bed.

  “That means someone picked the lock and got inside, but got scared off when Uncle Newt came up from the lab,” Tesla said. “And because they were in a hurry to get away—”

  “They didn’t have time to relock the door,” Nick said.

  His voice was trembling, and it bothered him. Tesla always sounded so confident when she finished his sentences for him.

  He cleared his throat and took a big step away from the door.

  “So,” he said, his voice strong and steady. Or a little stronger and steadier, anyway. He hoped. “What do we do now?”

  “Step one,” Tesla said.

  She walked off to the living room, then returned with one of the dusty chairs their uncle had retrieved from his garage earlier that evening. (Tesla had announced that eating “astronaut style” wasn’t going to work for her. Ever.) She took the chair to the door and wedged it up under the knob, turning it into a crude but effective brace.

  “Sometimes the old-fashioned ways are best,” she said, looking extremely pleased with herself.

  “What’s step two?” Nick asked.

  “That should be obvious,” Tesla told him. “We end this.”

  The next morning, Tesla and Nick outlined their plan to Silas and DeMarco. They were all hiding out in Uncle Newt’s backyard at the time, partially to avoid the black SUV and/or Mr. Snugg, partially to avoid DeMarco’s little sister Elesha. (The girl had vowed to make Nick pay for crashing her bicycle, and it wasn’t clear whether she meant “pay” with money or pain. DeMarco was of the opinion that it would probably b
e both.)

  “So, after getting threatened and chased and almost torn apart by dogs the size of dinosaurs,” Silas said, “you not only want go back to the old Landrigan place, you want to go inside?”

  Nick just nodded. When Silas put it like that, it was hard to work up much enthusiasm.

  Tesla managed it, though.

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “Did you tell your parents about the weirdness going on there? About the girl and her message?”

  Silas and DeMarco nodded.

  “And did they do anything?” Tesla asked.

  “They just said she was probably Vince’s or Frank’s daughter,” said Silas.

  “Or some rich, snooty Landrigan kid,” said DeMarco.

  “See?” Tesla said to Nick. “Occam’s razor again.”

  “Whoa!” Silas blurted out. “Who’s got a razor?”

  “It’s just an expression,” Nick said. “It describes a way of thinking. Avoiding overly complicated explanations. Usually it’s helpful, but—”

  “What if the truth is complicated?” Tesla cut in. “And what if that girl really is in trouble? Someone’s got to find out.”

  “And that someone is you?” DeMarco asked.

  “Who else?” Tesla said.

  There was a loud thump and the ground shook and the kids could hear the muffled sound of coughing and cursing.

  Uncle Newt was still having trouble with his kiln. It was all he’d been able to talk about that morning.

  Silas and DeMarco turned to look at each other as little wisps of smoke curled out around Uncle Newt’s back door.

  “Going back to the Landrigan place? With those dogs there and that SUV prowling around?” Silas said. “Sounds like suicide.”

  “Totally,” said DeMarco. “But then again … what else were we gonna do today?”

  Silas shrugged. “Just ride around.”

  They faced Nick and Tesla again.

  “We’re in,” they said.

  Silas’s job would be distracting the dogs.

  “We can build you something that’ll help,” Tesla said. “We’ll only need an hour or so.”