I checked the readout inside my face mask. “A little less than two hours.”
“You ready to talk about the plan?”
“Whenever you are.”
“Good, because we’ve got a lot to cover.” Lug pointed at the diagram, indicating the base of Zooey’s brain. “Now there are two main arteries into the brain, here and here. We’ll take the CSF through the cerebral aqueduct and come up here, the median eminence of the hypothalamus. Security-wise it’s our best bet. I’ve got a couple of good adrenaline molecules, Twitch and Surge, that can handle crowd control on this end. But once we breach the BBB...”—his expression darkened—“things start getting a little dicey. Brain’s got all kinds of defense mechanisms to guard against the slightest increase in osmolality in the plasma. If we trip any of the osmoreceptors in the hypothalamus, ADH production is going to go absolutely berserk.”
“Sounds like a tough maneuver,” I said.
“Oh, that’s not even the hard part.” He glanced over at me to make sure I was still following him. “Your pal Astro tells me this is an emotional mission, so that means we need to get you into the third ventricle, here ...”—he traced our route along the diagram—“to the limbic system.” He looked at me and grinned. “That’s where things get really tricky.”
“Tricky how?”
“How well do you know the terrain up there?”
“I studied the cranial nerves last year in science.” I’d actually audited a college-level class on neural anatomy, but now didn’t seem like a good time to be trumpeting my academics. “I picked up a few things.”
“Good,” Lug said. “Then you already know there’s a hundred billion cells up there, and the whole area is wired for sound. We’re talking millions of electrical signals traveling about three hundred miles an hour, which means they’re crossing the entire body in something like a hundredth of a second, giving us zero response time if things go south.” He turned back to the diagram. “At the center you’ve got the pituitary, the master gland, the sympathetic and parasympathetic centers, plus the paraventricular nucleus here, spitting out oxytocin on anything that moves. Basically, the whole thing is one big alarm system. And we’ve somehow got to move you through all of that without tripping any of these wires, and get up into hypothalamus. And that’s not even figuring in our exit strategy.”
“Exit strategy?”
“You’re not exactly sneaking in.” Lug waited while I digested this assessment of the situation. “If you haven’t already rung every bell in the place, that’s definitely going to do it.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Oh, yeah. We’ll be fine.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, safe for her. Us being up there like that.”
Lug just looked at me, then over at Astro, and both of them gave a shrug. “I don’t know, chief. It’s your rodeo.”
I took a step back, trying to get some perspective. The blood-brain barrier was there for a reason. It was Zooey’s most critical protection, her last line of defense, and we were about to punch a hole through it. Up till now I’d been swept along by sheer momentum of the operation, but after this, there would be no turning back. What if I did something to her that couldn’t be reversed? I needed some advice from somebody even smarter than I was, and that was a pretty short list.
“Hold on,” I told Lug. “I need to make a phone call.”
Before he could argue, I tapped a button on speed dial, waiting while it rang and rang.
They won’t answer. He’s busy. He won’t take your call. You made him mad, and now he’s just going to ignore you and—
Then a voice picked up.
“Hello?”
“Dad?” I said. “It’s me.” I swallowed hard. “It’s Lenny.”
There was a long pause.
“Dad, can you hear me?”
“Oh, I can hear you just fine, Lenny,” he said, and even though the connection wasn’t the best, I could hear the coldness running through his voice. “Where are you right now? The mall? Because we’ve already established that you’re certainly not in school.”
I sighed. Just the fact that he thought I would ever go to the mall made me realize how little he really knew me. “Dad, listen. I need to ask you something. It’s really important.”
“Let me ask you something first, Lenny. How do you think it makes your mother feel when you put us through something like this? You think it’s funny? You think it’s all a big laugh?”
“Dad, what are you talking about?” I turned around and saw Lug and the other molecules jostling around impatiently, eager to get started. “I already proved to you that I made the miniaturization process work, I shrank myself down, and I’m outside the brainstem of Zooey Andrews.”
“The Brainstem? What’s that, the name of some new video arcade?” There was a rustling noise as he covered the mouthpiece and spoke to my mom. “It’s Lenny. He’s claims that he’s calling from outside the Brainstem.”
“Dad, listen, okay? This is important. I’m about to go through the blood-brain barrier, and I need to know—”
“Don’t waste your breath,” Dad said. “Harlan already told us the truth.”
“What?”
“He let us in on the joke. You haven’t shrunken yourself down to the microscopic level any more than you’ve flown to the moon.” He gave a dry, humorless chuckle that came out more like a snort. “Frankly I can’t believe I ever fell for that in the first place. Serves me right for thinking you could do it, I suppose. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Dad—”
“I’m only going to say this once, Lenny. Wherever you are, you’d better drop what you’re doing and get your rear end back home right now. We are extremely disappointed in you.”
“You...” I looked around again at the molecules and vessels, taking in a view of the human body that nobody else in the history of science had ever seen with his own eyes. “You’re disappointed?”
“Honestly, what did you expect? When you indulge in this kind of juvenile behavior, it only confirms our decision.”
“What decision?”
He cleared his throat. “Your mother and I are sending you to Brixton Academy.”
“What? When?”
“Immediately after the break. We’ve already spoken with the dean, and they’ve made a spot for you starting in January.”
“That school’s in Connecticut!” I was shouting now, but I didn’t care. “When am I going to see Harlan and Zooey?”
“You won’t,” Dad said. “That’s the point. After this little stunt, removing yourself from their influence seems like exactly what you need to apply yourself properly to your studies.”
“Apply myself? You don’t think that I apply myself?”
“I think that’s safe to say, yes.”
I paused and tried to calm myself down. “When I did this, I thought you’d be proud of me. I thought you’d realize that I’ve done everything you’d ever wanted me to.”
“Lying, skipping school, and pulling infantile pranks isn’t exactly living up to your potential,” Dad said. “Now, what was so important that you decided to finally call us?”
I held my breath for a second, unable to speak. My heart was thumping hard, and I could feel it throughout my entire body.
“Forget it,” I said, and hung up the phone, turning back to Lug and the others, who were crowding closer to me than ever.
“Well?” Lug asked.
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
THIRTY-TWO: HARLAN
With the snow blowing and drifting across the road, it took me forty-five minutes to get from school to Zooey’s house by bike, not counting the time I got lost in the wrong neighborhood and couldn’t find her house. I’d never been over to her subdivision before, and I had to look up her address online—it was a little white two-story gingerbread at the end of the street with a white picket fence and a red, white, and blue mailbox.
Before I could think too hard about the
stupidity of this mission, I dumped my bike in her driveway, ran up to the front porch, and hit the doorbell. Nobody answered. I put my ear to the door and listened. Somewhere inside I could hear music playing, the bass booming, turned up loud. I hesitated for a second, trying to decide what to do, but it didn’t take me long to make up my mind.
I turned the knob and stepped inside.
It’s always weird going in somebody’s house for the first time. You never knew what it would smell like, or if they have a dog, or if, like my Uncle Karl’s house, there were going to be creepy clown paintings hanging everywhere.
Zooey’s house was spotless. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a house this clean. Everything gleamed. The only pictures on the walls were photos of Zooey and her parents. There was a Christmas tree in the living room, decked out with lights and ornaments with a bunch of presents underneath. Over by the fireplace, I saw three stockings hanging from the chimney.
Upstairs, the music kept blasting loud enough to rattle the dishes in the cupboard.
“Zooey?” I shouted. I didn’t want to startle her, but there was definitely no way she was going to hear me over the noise. I climbed the stairs, got to the top, and turned the corner, looking down the hallway to the bedroom on the right, where the music was coming from. I walked down the hall, feeling the beat of the bass and drums shaking the walls. The door was open just a crack, and I stopped and looked inside.
It took me a second to believe what I was seeing.
Zooey was standing with her back toward me, leaning over her desk. Spread out in front of her was a scale model of the North Pole set for Escape Claus. It was incredibly detailed, big enough to fill the entire desk, complete with little hand-painted miniatures representing each of the actors, and desk lamps to simulate the different types and angles of lighting. From here she looked less like a director working on a play and more like a general getting her troops ready for war. She was busily cutting a hole in the background, singing along with the music.
“Holy crap,” I said aloud. “Did you just build that?”
That was when she turned around and saw me.
And screamed.
“It’s okay!” I said, holding up my hands. “Zooey, relax, it’s just me!”
“Harlan?” She stumbled backwards, caught herself, and managed to keep from knocking over the miniature cardboard set. “What are you doing here? How did you get in? How long have you been standing there? Were you spying on me?”
“Zooey, relax. Just calm down, okay?”
She took in a deep breath and blinked at me. “Why are you here?”
“I was worried about you,” I said, talking loud enough so she could hear me over the iPod docking station blasting from her dresser. “You mind if I turn this down for a second?”
“What?”
“Can I turn the music down?”
She picked up a remote and muted the iPod. The sudden silence rang through the room around us, echoing into empty space, and I could hear us both breathing in the wide-open recesses of it.
“Zooey,” I said, “what are you doing?”
“I might ask you the same question.”
“I asked you first.”
For a second she looked like she was going to argue the point, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, and another flood of words came bursting out. “I got back to the house and all of a sudden I started to remember things. Like, all this stuff that I hadn’t thought of in forever just started popping into my brain.”
“Just slow down,” I said. “I can’t listen that fast.”
She managed a slightly bedraggled smile. “Okay, this is the thing, I was on my way home when I got this crazy burst of energy. Then...I started remembering things. Like all these details from when I was young, about my mom and dad. I remember my first day of kindergarten, the way I cried until the teachers gave me a set of scented markers to play with and a little boy in purple corduroy pants with an American flag patch on one knee shared his glue with me and—”
“Zooey—”
“It’s the craziest thing.” When her eyes flashed back to me, I saw how vivid they were, all that blue leaping out at me like something inside her was switched up to its maximum brightness. “Harlan, it sounds crazy, but I think I can remember every single thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.”
“Zooey, listen—” I drew in a deep breath. “I have to tell you something, okay?”
“Not yet, I’m not finished.” She looked back at the miniature set. “See, I figured it out.”
“What?”
“Your entrance. The choreography—I’ve got it all worked out. I know how to make it work.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“It is.” She nodded, a little wildly. “It is great. Isn’t it?”
“Um, sure.” I waited a second, letting it sink in, so she could see that I actually agreed with her. “I still have to tell you something, though.”
“Okay. All right. I’m all ears.” She just looked at me. Man, those eyes were blue. That was the first time that I realized how pretty she was. How had I not seen it before?
Whoa.
I forced myself to get a grip. Was I seriously crushing on Zooey Andrews? And how was Lenny going react if he found out?
“Harlan? What did you want to tell me?”
I took in a deep breath. If I really liked Zooey the way I thought I did, then I owed her the truth, the whole truth, no matter how messed up it was. “Okay, look. This is gonna sound really crazy, and you’ll probably want to call the cops on me before I’m done, but just do me a favor and try to let me finish before you dial 911.”
She nodded. “Okay. Just make it fast, all right? I have to get back to the school and fix the sets.”
“Okay. So, this morning before first period, Lenny and I—”
Downstairs I heard the front door swing open. There was a thump-thump-thump of someone stomping the snow off of his boots.
“Zooey?” a man’s voice shouted from downstairs. “Whose bike is lying in the middle of our driveway?”
“Oh no.” Zooey stared at me. “That’s my dad.”
I glanced at the clock. It was 1:35. “Isn’t he supposed to be at work or something?”
“Not today. He took the afternoon off to come see the play.” She turned back to me. “He must have come home to change. You left your bike in my driveway?”
“I didn’t know your—”
“Zooey?” Now the voice sounded more urgent, and I could hear boots marching up the stairs: whomp-whomp-whomp. I looked around, but there was nowhere to run. I’d heard rumors about Zooey’s father, a former U.S. Marine who’d started his own successful home security business, and by all accounts he was not a guy to mess with. Kids at school said that he was the only parent who Shovelhead was afraid of, and the one time that Zooey’s dad had gone into gym class to talk to him, Shovelhead looked as if he’d swallowed his tongue.
“Zooey?” He was at the top of the stairs now, rounding the corner and coming down the hallway. “Is there someone up here with you?”
“Get in the closet,” Zooey hissed. “Hurry.” She grabbed me by the forearm, hard, and swung me across the floor, where I somehow kept from falling over, landing on a pile of her clothes inside the closet, just before a shadow fell into the doorway somewhere off to my right.
“What’s going on here?” Zooey’s dad said. From where I was crouched, holding my breath and peering out, all I could see was the left side of his body, his shoulder and arm as he stood there. “What are you doing home from school? Are you sick?”
“No,” Zooey said. “I mean, I was, a little, but now—”
“Whose bicycle did I almost run over in the driveway?”
“It’s mine. I mean, it’s not really mine—I had an accident at school and came home to change. One of my friends loaned me his bike so I could get back here.”
“What kind of accident?”
“Nothing big,” sh
e said. “I’m fine now.”
“Oh. Well...” There was a short silence. “Well, you shouldn’t have been riding a bike in the snow. And you’re lucky I didn’t run over it. You would have owed your friend a new bike.”
“I think he would have understood.”
“You give people too much credit, Zooey. I’ve always said that.”
“I know, Daddy, but—”
“Your Christmas play starts at three o’clock, doesn’t it?”
“Three thirty,” she said. “But I need to get there early. Is Mom coming?”
“I just talked to her,” her father said. “She’s on her way.”
They both turned and began walking out of the room, and I was just starting to relax when my cell phone went off: “She Blinded Me with Science.”
Zooey’s dad froze in his tracks, and then, in what felt like slow motion, I saw him turn around to the closet until he was staring right at me.
THIRTY-THREE: LENNY
“Come on, man, answer, answer.” I paced across the long, desolate boardwalk of the epithelium, looking past the waves of dead lymph cells washing up like Styrofoam cups and debris along the vessel’s retaining wall, waiting while the phone rang and rang.
“Yo, man,” Astro said, “I don’t mean to rush you...”—lowering his voice, he glanced nervously back at Lug and the group of former steroids, now caffeine molecules, that had started milling restlessly behind us—“but I don’t think these dudes are gonna wait around forever.”
“I have to get in touch with Harlan.” I clicked off and tried again, hoping I could at least leave a message. Lug’s plan was risky, and I needed to make sure Zooey was in a safe place when it happened.
Basically we’ll have to short out her temporal lobes, Lug said. Just a little extra electrical current for a second or two, just long enough for you to get out. As long as she’s sitting down somewhere, she won’t get hurt. She won’t even know it happened.
But how was I supposed to know if she was sitting down or not?
Lenny Cyrus, School Virus (9780547893167) Page 12