Authors: Courtney Sheinmel
Zacktastic (12 page)
But there's still a problem. The door doesn't have a swipe thing for a key card. There's a
keypad
by the handle, and I guess to open the door you have to type in the right number combination.
Figuring that out would take hoursâdays even. And we don't have that kind of time.
“Now what, genie?” Quinn asks.
“I don't know,” I admit.
“W
ell?” Quinn asks.
“Shh. I'm thinking.”
I sit and think about how much I want the door to openâhow much I
need
it to open. It worked on the creaky doorâsuddenly, just because I was thinking about it, oil appeared. But nothing appears to help me with this.
“Maybe we can climb in through the window,” Quinn says.
I'm about to tell her no wayâI'm a genie, not Spider-Man, and do you know how many people are killed each year trying to scale the sides of
buildings?âwhen Trey's door swings open. Out comes a woman in a maid's uniform, carrying a bucket of cleaning supplies.
“Excuse me, can you hold that?” Quinn asks.
“This is Mr. Twendel's room,” the maid tells her. “No unauthorized admittance.” She pulls the door shut behind her . . . but not before I whip by, quick as a wink, and squeeze in before it clicks shut.
Now that I'm on the other side, I survey things. There's one bed freshly made up with navy sheets and the puffiest comforter I've ever seen. Across the room there's another bed, completely bare. Trey doesn't have anything on the walls, but he does have a flat-screen TV and three different video game consoles.
Best of all: a computer.
There's a soft knock on the door, and then Quinn's voice: “Zack, open up. The coast is clear.”
I open it up, let her in, and close it quickly behind her.
“Ooh, a bed!” Quinn cries. She flops on it, and sighs. “This is the coziest bed I've ever lain on in my life.” Within seconds, her breathing deepens. I'll have to remember to tease her about her snoring habit. But right now there's the task at hand. I sit down at the computer and pull up the Skype page. Uncle Max is probably one of the last people in the worldâor at least in Pinemontâto not have a computer at home. But luckily Skype lets you call actual phones. My fingers fly across the keyboard, punching in the numbers. When I finish dialing, there isn't any ringing. Just an empty kind of swirling sound, like the sound you get when you hold a shell up to your ear to hear the ocean.
Huh. Maybe I dialed wrong. I press to end the call and try again, typing slowly and pressing each of the numbers extra hard, just to make sure. But the same thing happens again. Now I know I've dialed correctly, and I hit the keyboard in frustration. What is going on?
“Huh? What was that?” Quinn asks. She sits up, blinking. “Ugh, I'm still here?” She moans.
“Yeah, and I haven't been able to get through to Uncle Max yet. I think Skype is broken.”
“I'll do it,” she says. She rises from the bed, as if with great effort, and pushes me aside so she can sit in Trey'sâherâdesk chair. I have to tell her Uncle Max's number, since she doesn't know it by heart. For a third time, the other line is just ocean sounds. She clicks to end the call and starts typing again.
“It's not gonna work,” I tell her.
“I'm not calling Uncle Max,” she says. “I'm calling Mom.”
I stand next to her, waiting for ocean sounds again. But the line is ringing, and ringing, and . . .
“Hello?”
“Mom!” Quinn cries. “It's me! I'm in this weird place with Zack andâ”
“It's not my fault!” I yell. I forget about how she probably can't see or hear me.
“Be quiet, Zack,” Quinn says.
“Zack, who's Zack?” Mom says.
“Your son,” Quinn tells her.
“Oh, Quinn,” Mom says. “Enough nonsense.”
Nonsense?
Could Mom really have forgotten my entire existence?
“If you have something to tell me, don't do it over the phone,” Mom continues, to Quinn. “Just walk into the other room.”
“But that's what I'm trying to tell you! I'm not home! I can't walk into the other room!”
“Very funny,” Mom says. “But let me go now. I'm still cleaning up from the partyâunless you and Madeline want to help.”
“I'm not with Madeline!”
“Honey, I can hear you giggling from the other room. I'll talk to you later.”
“But, Momâ”
The line goes dead and a message pops up on-screen: Call Ended.
“How can I be there and here at the same
time?” Quinn asks.
“How can Mom not remember that she has a son?”
“Maybe she blocked it out,” Quinn tells me. “It's not like I blame her.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you're not even the real Quinn,” I say. “Maybe you're just a copy and I don't even have to worry about getting you home.”
“Zack, I'm me and I can prove it!” she says. “I know that it took you a year longer than me to be potty trained. And I know that you threw up through your nose on the first day of kindergarten. And I know you couldn't go to sleep without Ralphie, your stuffed rabbit, until you were nine. Now tell me why this is happening!”
I shrug. “Uncle Max would know.”
“Well, we can't ask him, can we?” she says. “Because his phone doesn't work. Even a fake uncle should have a working phone at a time like this!”
“He's not a fake,” I tell her. “He just let us believe we weren't related because it was easier, since . . .” Quinn's glaring at me. “Never mind. It doesn't matter. The point is, I bet the phone not working is something similar, an Official Genie Decision.”
Quinn has taken up the keyboard again and is dialing. “Who are you calling now?” I ask.
“Not that it's any of your business, but I'm calling Bella. Maybe she can get a message to Mom.”
“Mom's not going to listen to Bella,” I say. “She thinks you're home safe and sound right now.”
For a second Quinn's eyes look shiny. But she blinks and recovers quickly. “Fine, then. I'll tell her to get a message to Uncle Max. I don't care who she gets the message to, as long as we get out of here.” She pauses. “Or at least I get out of here. You can stay here if you'd like.”
“You think I want to be here?” I ask. “I want to leave as much as you doâmore even.”
“Doubtful.”
“Do you think Bella will actually call Uncle Max without checking with Mom first?” I ask. “I mean, it does sound pretty crazyâ
Hey, it's me, Quinn, and pay no attention to the fact there's another Quinn
. . .”
“Well, that's just great,” Quinn says. Her voice is thick, and the tears start falling, thick ones, plop plop. My bionic genie eyes see the little splashes they make on the carpet.
“Aw, Quinn,” I say, and I reach a hand out, but she bats me away. “Okay,” I say. “You're mad. But I have another idea. What do you do when you NEED to talk to someone but you can't get him on the phone?”
“Am I supposed to answer?”
“You go to his house, that's what.”
“You're saying we're going to walk from here to Uncle Max's?” She looks down at my feet. “Don't you think it might be too far? Plus, you don't even have shoes.”
That reminds me: I should borrow a pair
of Trey's. “It's definitely too far to walk,” I say. “We're in California, remember? We need to buy plane tickets. TreyâI mean youâyou've got to have money for those things. Where do you keep it?”
“How would I know?” Quinn asks. But then she opens the desk drawer, and right on top is a black walletâa really thick one. Quinn unfolds it and there's a flash of green. She pulls out a stack of twenty-dollar bills and starts counting. “Twenty. Forty. Sixty. Eighty.” And on, and on. I've never actually seen so much money in one place.
“Oh my god, it's a hundred-dollar bill!” she squeals.
I've never seen a hundred-dollar bill before, either.
Quinn opens another compartment in the wallet and pulls out a credit card. I didn't know kids could have credit cards. “We could buy so much stuff with this,” Quinn says. She's already punching the computer keys. Two tickets from
California to Pennsylvania. “Do you know what airport we're closest to? Do you know what airline is best?”
I shake my head.
She clicks some more keys. “We should definitely fly first class, as long as we have to fly anyway. I saw something on TV once about flying first classâyou get big, comfy seats, and you can recline them back so they turn into beds. Plus, the food is really good, and you can watch all the movies you want for free.” She pauses to take a breath. “Aren't you excited?”
“This isn't exciting. This is an emergency.”
“Sometimes they're the same thing.”
I grab the credit card from her. She lunges to grab it back, but now I'm holding it over my head and out of her reach. Seven minutes older, and about seven hundredths of an inch taller.
“Zack! Come on! Give it back! It's my credit card, not yours.”
“It's not yours, either.”
“It is too mine. I'm Trey. Or he's me. Whatever. Just give it back.”
“Ha!” I say. “You believe me now, that I'm a genie and I turned Trey into you. Admit it!”
“Never,” Quinn says.
She jumps to grab the card from me, and I push her back with my free hand. “Wait, did you hear that?”
“I don't hear anything. Don't try to distract me. Just give it back.”
Knock, knock, knock.
This time we both hear it.
Quinn and I look at the door. There's no peephole.
Knock, knock, knock
. “Don't answer it,” I whisper to her.
“I won't, she says.
But then there's the unmistakable sound of someone punching numbers in the keypad, and a click when the combination is right and the door unlocks. We watch as the handle turns, almost in slow motion, and then the door swings open. On
the other side are two very serious-looking adults, a man and a woman. I quickly shove Trey's credit card into my pocket.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” the man asks Quinn.
“I can't answer that for fear of incriminating myself,” Quinn tells him. “I need a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” I ask. “We're just kids. We're too young to have lawyers.”
“I saw it on TV,” Quinn explains.
“I don't think there's a lawyer who can help with this sort of thing,” I say.
“Forget what you saw on TV,” the man tells her. “You're going to have to come with us.”
“No. I can't go with strangers,” Quinn tells him.
“Well, then I'll introduce myself. I'm Mr. Hayden. I'm Trey's history teacher.” He points to the woman. “This is Ms. Lucas.”
“English department,” she says.
“Trey didn't show up to either of our classes
today. Dawson said he saw a girl acting strangely and inquiring about Trey's belongings when he was cleaning the chapel. Now you're trespassing in his room, and I think that's something the authorities will be interested in.”
“The authorities?” I squeak out. “The police?”
“The police?” Quinn repeats. “But you can't arrest me. This is all my brother's fault.”
“Come on, now,” the woman says. “Don't make this more difficult than it has to be.”
Ms. Lucas reaches for Quinn's hand, but Quinn jerks it away. I grab it, and Quinn grabs back, supertight. For a second I can't tell where my hand ends and hers begins. But then Mr. Hayden and Ms. Lucas each start pulling on one of Quinn's arms, and her hand seems to go right through mine. We're separate again.
“Where are you taking her?” I shout. Of course they don't answer.
“Zack!”
“Don't you worry, Quinn,” I say. “I'll get
back to Pennsylvania on my own. And when I get there, I'll make sure Uncle Max gets you back to real life.”
“You better hurry, Zack,” Quinn says as she's hustled out the door. The door closes behind the three of them, leaving me alone to fix everything.
“W
eren't you scared?” I imagine Drew Listerman asking me, because of course he'll want to interview me about all this for the Channel 7 news:
A Day in the Life of a Ten-Year-Old Genie
. I see myself shaking my head as the camera pans in super close.
“There was no time to be scared, Drew,” I tell him in my most serious voice. “There was too much work to do.”
But in real life, I am terrified. I'm alone again, and I have no idea where Mr. Hayden and Ms. Lucas have taken my sister. No one can see or
hear me. I can't get in touch with Uncle Max, and I don't know where the closest airport is, or the phone number of a cab company to get me there.
And if I figured out where I was going, and I found a cab company to take me there, I couldn't make a phone call to a cab company because the dispatcher wouldn't be able to hear my voice. And let's say I made a reservation online. Even then, when the driver came to pick me up, he wouldn't be able to see me get into his car, so he certainly wouldn't take me where I was going. He'd just turn around and go back to the cab company and wait for instructions to take someone else somewhere else.
I suppose I could just get into a random cab and hope it eventually picked up another passenger who had to go to the airport. But that could take all day. That could take all week!
New idea: I'll take the bus. Buses have to make all their stops, whether they can see and hear their passengers or not.
I sit down in front of Trey's computer and type “Millings Academy” into Google. Apparently it's located in Grovestand, California. A little more googling, and I find out the closest airport is Orange County International, and that there's a flight to Pennsylvania leaving in three hours. Plenty of time.