The Ables

by Jeremy Scott

  Ooph!

  We arrived at the corner of Maple and Grant, and we were too late. Way, way too late. The team from the plaza with the ugly green uniforms was standing between us and the action along with two other tardy teams—a group of high school girls in shiny silver get-ups and a team of kids our own age called the Cowboys. They were all wearing western garb, which made about as much sense to me as going nude, but whatever.

  Beyond them, we could see Steve Travers’ team, with two criminals in custody. In the few seconds we were standing there taking it all in, two more teams arrived, only to find disappointment.

  “Hey,” Bentley said, “at least we know we can trust Phillip’s hearing, right? You pretty much nailed the spot, just like that,” he added, snapping his fingers. “Come on, everyone, the night is still young.” He was a natural optimist, and I wondered if he might even end up making a fine leader for our little crime-fighting unit. We’d need one soon enough, and none of us really fit the typical mold, if you know what I mean.

  “Where should we go now?” James inquired.

  “Yeah,” Henry said, a touch of sarcasm in his words, “I don’t hear any more screams.”

  The other teams were moving off—two of them disappeared into thin air, traveling by teleporter like we did.

  “Where are they even going?” I asked. What do they know that we don’t?

  “Well,” Bentley began, “it’s a fair bet, just on basic mathematics, that there won’t be any crimes anywhere in this direct vicinity since we just had one, right? So … we should definitely go … somewhere.”

  Another scream suddenly broke through the quiet night air, this time more of a yell. It was definitely a male voice.

  I turned in Henry’s general direction and thought some deliberate thoughts, hoping he’d be listening. What was that you were saying about hearing more screams? I smiled.

  “Well, where was it, genius?” He shot back aloud, trying to conceal a slight grin.

  I snapped into business mode. “Closer this time. James, center. Seventh and Haywood. Let’s go, everyone!” My adrenaline was pumping.

  Everyone scurried into our little circle, putting a hand on James’ shoulder or jacket.

  “Go!” I whispered.

  Ooph!

  Haywood Lane ran parallel to Grant Avenue, so we really only moved one block over and two blocks west. We were much earlier in relation to the crime but still too late. The Vipers beat us again and had already apprehended the bad guy—it was Mr. Henderson, one of the school’s guidance counselors. He’d apparently been robbing the bank on the corner.

  “Crap,” Henry said. “Too late again.”

  “We’re never going to apprehend a criminal by waiting for sounds and reacting,” Bentley said.

  “Why not?” I asked defensively. “With James’ teleporting abilities, why can’t we be just as fast on the draw as any other team?”

  “Because there’s already a team there, Phillip,” he explained sadly, “causing the screaming in the first place. Think about it. A criminal’s not going to go stand out in the street and scream or yell and draw attention to himself. A victim might scream, sure, but a lot of the sounds we’re going to hear tonight are going to mean another team is already there. We’re too late as soon as we hear it, you see?” He delivered it like bad news, because it was. He was right.

  “Well then how the heck are we supposed to find the crimes?” I asked, challenging the universe as much as Bentley’s logic. “How are all these other teams doing it?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I can think of a hundred methods to use, but all of them require some kind of preparation or planning—or equipment. Without all that, we’re just guessing.”

  We all stood around with slumped shoulders for a few seconds.

  “You’re a pretty smart guy, though, right?” I said. “We’re all pretty smart, but you’re a freaking genius.”

  “Yeah,” he said, waiting for the other shoe to drop, perhaps expecting an insult.

  “So your guesses are probably better than most people’s well-thought-out plans, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s right,” Henry chimed in. “If your brain can’t unlock a way to find some criminals, then no one’s can.”

  “Think about this town, Bentley. Think about common crimes or cliché master plans.” I was on a roll. Bentley’s brain worked like a supercomputer when his powers were activated; I just needed to remind him. “Think about the types of places crimes happen. Think about the school and the board officials and what their desire for education might do to impact the kinds of crimes they choose to portray. Throw all that into that computer of a head of yours, and spit me out some options.”

  “Yeah,” Henry cheered, like a fired-up athlete after a halftime pep talk.

  “Let’s brainstorm, which, for a guy like you, should be a brain hurricane,” I said, smiling.

  “Okay, okay,” Bentley said, waving his hands in surrender. “All right. Give me a moment, okay?”

  He closed his eyes to concentrate. We held our tongues and our breath while he put his powers to work. For several moments, it was completely silent. Everyone was staring at him expectantly; even I was staring, in my own way. Seeing through Henry’s perspective sometimes impacted my body’s natural movement. If he was leaning forward to see or hear something more clearly, I sometimes found myself mimicking the same body language without even realizing it.

  Finally, Bentley opened his eyes and rattled off a rapid-fire list of information. “The Freepoint Bank—east location, Waveland; Dave’s Diamond Outlet, Main Street; Boyle Chevrolet on Baily Boulevard; the Freepoint Teleportation Office, Wayne Drive; and City Hall, Main Street.”

  He’d thrown them all at us so quickly, I’d missed most of them after the bank. “Slower, slower,” I pleaded.

  He obliged, breathing a bit more heavily between statements, as though using his power had tired him out a bit. “The Freepoint Bank—east location, Waveland. Dave’s Diamond Outlet, Main Street. Boyle Chevrolet on Baily Boulevard. The Freepoint Teleportation Office, Wayne Drive. And City Hall, Main Street.”

  He’d repeated the entire list word-for-word, and I wondered if anyone else noticed. His power, whatever it was and however it worked, was pretty awe-inspiring.

  “Okay,” I said, buying my brain a few seconds to process. Bentley had provided a pretty darn good list of possible targets for criminal activity in this community. “Are those in any particular order?”

  “No,” Bentley replied, sounding surprised. “You asked for brainstorming, not a weighted list.” He was almost insulted, largely because he could easily have given them to me in order if he’d known that’s what I wanted.

  “That’s fine. Really, it’s okay, Bentley,” I assured him. “You did an amazing job. Just tell me which one you think is the most likely target of all of them.”

  “I guess the bank, because the score,” he made air quotes with his fingers—something I’d never known about before, though I instantly understood its meaning, “is the largest at the bank with all that money. But honestly, logic suggests someone has already beaten us to it, simply because it’s one of the larger targets. Same with the jewelry store. Other teams would think of those, probably, just by thinking about robbery possibilities.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” I said. “What about the others, then?”

  “I guess maybe the Teleportation Office,” he concluded. “If you think about it, that place would be an attractive target to a real-world criminal.”

  He had a good point. The Teleportation Office and its staff would be a great asset in the hands of a criminal invading Freepoint, providing instant access to the city from literally anywhere on the planet, assuming any prisoner teleporters would cooperate.

  “All right, then. It’s settled.” I decided for everyone, not stopping to wonder if that was selfish. “We’re headed to my mom’s workplace, which probably won’t be awkward at all,” I
added with a gallon of sarcasm.

  Everyone moved in closer together, without the rush, and made contact with James somehow.

  “You know where it is, James?” I asked.

  “You’re asking a teleporter if he knows where the Teleportation Office is?” he challenged playfully.

  “Right. Duh. Sorry. Everyone ready? Let’s go, James.”

  Ooph!

  We arrived on the street outside my mother’s workplace. All the active custodians in town who needed to travel around the world for their work came to this building every morning for Mom or one of her coworkers to do the honors of playing instant cabdriver.

  Henry looked around, taking in the scenery. Whether it was for my benefit or his own, I did not know.

  This was the first time I’d ever seen the building, though I’d been inside several times. It was fairly nondescript. A two-story office building, with a few medium-sized trees around every corner. More impressive than the building was the parking lot, which was easily four or five times the size of the structure itself. It made sense to me, I figured, since it was essentially an airport of sorts—few employees and tons of customers who need to leave a car somewhere while they went to perform their work in another city.

  We started walking toward the parking lot’s entrance, when suddenly, Mrs. Foster, the school nurse, dropped in out of the sky. As a flier, she was a natural choice to fill the role of one of the SuperSim referees since her power enabled her to hover above the town and see a lot of the action at once.

  “Sorry, children,” she cooed like Glinda the Good Witch. “That building is off limits and not part of the SuperSim competition.”

  “What?!” Henry screeched, the way that all kids do when they’re suddenly disappointed.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Foster said again, with no change in the cheeriness of her tone. “There aren’t any SuperSim crimes and criminals in there. The Teleportation Office is a twenty-four hour operation, so we aren’t able to use it.”

  “Well, there goes another one,” I muttered, thinking about the two locations left on Bentley’s list: City Hall and the Chevy dealership. “Are there any other locations like this that are off limits?”

  “Yes,” she said, pausing to smile. For a moment I thought she might not continue. “City Hall—”

  “Crap!” Henry bellowed in the background. His field of view shook wildly with his head, making me a little dizzy.

  “Don’t mind him. Please continue,” I asked, not wanting to get on her bad side while she was giving away free SuperSim information.

  “City Hall, the school, the public library, residential homes, and a handful of other locations that are guarded but that I can’t mention.”

  She’d just made our decision for us. “I guess we know where we’re going, then, eh, boys?”

  A round of dejected affirmatives came back. We all started moving back toward the street as Mrs. Foster floated lightly back up into the sky without a noise. “Good luck,” she called softly as she went.

  “So we come up with a killer list of amazing possible targets, and from that list of five, we’re already down to one?” Henry wheeled toward James as the rest of us moved in as well.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up,” I confirmed.

  “That sucks!”

  “Okay, James.”

  Ooph!

  We arrived at the Chevy dealership to find it deserted. Bright lights shone all around from above, illuminating the flashy vehicles in case that random late-night car buyer should come by. You could hear the hum of the lights, but nothing else.

  “It’s empty,” Bentley declared, dejected. “I thought for sure there’d be a criminal here.”

  “Maybe there was,” Henry said, “only they already got caught.”

  “I don’t see any signs of that kind of thing,” Bentley said. Henry glanced at him, which allowed me to see how intently Bentley was looking around.

  “Maybe we should hide,” Freddie suggested with a bit of excitement.

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “You know, in case the criminals haven’t been here yet, so we can jump out and catch them when they show up.”

  “That’s a great plan,” came the expected sarcastic response from Henry. “Let’s spend the rest of this stupid SuperSim, in which we’ve accomplished nothing, hiding behind some cars and waiting!” By the end of his rant, he was nearly yelling. It was probably a step or two too far.

  “Hey,” I shot at Henry. “Take it easy.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just … a really dumb idea.”

  “I said, take it easy!”

  “You take it easy,” he called back.

  “Guys …” Bentley tried to step in.

  “Why do you have to be such a jerk all the time?”

  “Guys.” Bentley tried again, a bit louder.

  “Why do you have to be so stupid all the time?” Henry had perfected a high-pitched imitation voice.

  “That’s really mature, Henry.”

  “Guys!”

  “You wanna see mature?”

  My vision suddenly disappeared. “What?” It took a moment for my brain to recover from the shock of losing it, but then I knew instantly what had happened. “Yep,” I said angrily, “you were right. That was even more mature. You want a diaper change now, too?”

  “Don’t think I won’t kick your ass just because you’re blind.”

  “Don’t think I won’t just push you down a big hill just because you’re in a wheelchair.”

  “Will you shut up?!” I didn’t know Bentley had that kind of power in his voice, but that was a certified shout. And it worked. Both Henry and I instantly clammed up, stammering in surprise.

  Before anyone could speak another word, we heard a muffled crash somewhere in the distance. Instinctively, we all scurried behind the nearest car we could find to hide. Whether he realized it or not, Henry started sending me images again, so I got to piggyback on his vision when he leaned around the back of the car to take a look down the street.

  I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I saw a couple houses, a vacant lot, and down at the end of the block … the Freepoint Library. Henry looked to his right, at me and the rest of the gang. “What was that?” he whispered.

  I shrugged, and so did Bentley.

  “Was it a car crash?”

  “I didn’t hear any squealing tires or anything like that,” I said.

  “Quiet,” Bentley barked. “It might happen again.”

  For several seconds, each of us peeked over and around the mid-size red Chevy sedan, straining to see and hear something we weren’t even sure was coming. But then, just as I was about to give up, another crash.

  This time, since we’d been paying attention, we could tell it was coming from the library. There’d even been a quick flash of light along the southwest windows right when the crash occurred, and the sound had definitely come from that direction.

  “That’s not right,” I said.

  “That came from the library, didn’t it?” James inquired.

  “It did,” Bentley confirmed.

  “That’s not right,” I repeated. “That shouldn’t be happening, right?”

  “I think the library is off limits too, guys.” Henry said. “Whatever’s going on in there, it’s not part of the SuperSim, okay?”

  My reply was admittedly simple. “So?”

  “So, what,” Henry retorted. “We can’t score any points in there, man; it’s a dead end, like everything else we’ve investigated tonight.”

  “Who cares about scoring points? What if there’s really something shady going on in there?” I was intrigued by the possibility of an actual crime being committed. I wasn’t scared by it, though I probably should have been.

  “Even more reason to go the opposite direction, Phillip. Are you crazy? We’re not crime-fighters. If there’s an honest-to-God villain in there, he’d have a tougher time facing an army of kittens.”

  “All the adults are wr
apped up in the SuperSim. If someone’s in there stealing something or whatever, they’ll never know about it.”

  “Phillip, in case you haven’t noticed, we can’t even catch a pretend criminal. We suck. We’re little freaking kids! The SuperSim was one thing, but now you want to try and fight actual crime?”

  “I have to side with Henry on this one,” Bentley said, somewhat reluctantly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. Firstly, it’s against the rules to go in there. Secondly, there’s probably not a crime … the janitor probably just spilled his mop bucket or something silly, and then we’d get in even more trouble for going in.”

  “I’m not talking about fighting crime or catching any criminals or anything. I’m just talking about … investigating. Checking it out a little … seeing if we can learn more information about whatever might be going on. You gotta admit you’re curious, aren’t you? Imagine how we’d look if we brought back a lead on a real crime in progress instead of a bunch of teachers in costumes.”

  In a bit of perfect timing from the universe, another loud crash sounded out, along with another flash of light.

  I turned to Bentley to plead my case. “That ain’t no mop bucket, Bentley.”

  He turned to Henry, then back to me. “We’re not going over there, Phillip. It’s a very, very bad idea.”

  Chapter 13: Book Thief

  “Shh. Be quiet,” I mouthed, pointing at my teammate’s shoes. The huge marble hallways would echo any sound we made.

  It was only James, Henry, and me. I would have gone alone, but I needed James to get me inside without using the front door and Henry to let me see where I was going once I got there.

  This is a very, very bad idea, Phillip. Henry had taken more arm-twisting than James, mostly because he was a big baby.

  Shut up. I can’t concentrate on listening if you’re going to be prattling on in my head.

  The hallway was empty, with a series of dim orange lights around the edge of where the ceiling met the walls. At the end of the great hallway was a door, partly ajar, with a small light shining through the crack. The building seemed a few degrees warmer than it should be, which I assumed meant they had the thermostat set higher for the overnight hours.