Going Wild (11 page)

“B
ack out in the hallway,” Charlie ordered, glaring at Maria.

They stepped outside the bedroom door, and Maria closed it. She spoke quietly, the clatter of dishes in the background reminding them both of the nearness of grown-ups. “I know you're mad. But listen—”

“No,
you
listen,” Charlie said in a harsh whisper. “What were you thinking? What if he tells other people? My life will be ruined!” Tears stung her eyes, which made her even angrier. “Jeez, Maria—don't you know it's hard enough being new here? Now everyone will know I'm a freak. I thought you were my friend.” She turned away and covered her eyes with her hand, trying to maintain control of herself. But it was hard. She really liked Maria, but now all she wanted was to go back home to Chicago and never see these people again. “What a disaster,” she whispered, slumping against the wall. “I hate it here.”

“Oh, Charlie!” Maria started to reach out her hand to comfort her but then clearly thought the better of it and pulled back. She pursed her lips, her face filled with regret. After waiting respectfully to make sure Charlie was finished speaking, she cleared her
throat. “Charlie,” she said earnestly, “I promise you Mac won't tell anyone. And I only told him about the bracelet and the weird powers because he can help us.”

“Us?” Charlie asked, her voice full of contempt.

“You, I mean, obviously.” Maria shook her head, frustrated with herself. “I'm really sorry I hurt your feelings. And I'm also really sorry I didn't check with you first before talking to Mac. I should have.”

“No kidding,” Charlie muttered.

“I'm totally the worst.”

Charlie hesitated. “Yes. You totally are.”

“I'm worse than a barrel full of peas. Squeaky ones.”

Charlie made a noise. It almost sounded like a laugh, but she quickly snarled to cover it. “Yes, you're much worse than that.”

Maria let out a breath. “Won't you peas forgive me?”

Charlie groaned.

“Because seriously, Mac won't tell anybody. I promise. And we really do need him.”

Charlie was quiet for a long moment. “To get the bracelet off, you mean?”

“Maybe. Or at least figure out what it is and why it has this crazy effect on you. And maybe even try to hack it.”

Charlie peeked at Maria. “Do you think he can?”

She nodded. “He's the best. You've seen him—people pay him to do junk like this. Only of course he'll help you for free.”

Charlie blew out a breath. Maria had a point. “All right,” she said, resigned. “I guess there's nothing we can do about it now. We can't untell him.” She slid her forefingers under her eyes in case any of her tears had leaked out, and sighed. “Let's do this.”

Maria smiled. “You're awesome.” She opened her bedroom door. “Yo, Mac. Come on. We're going out to the shed.”

Without a word, Mac grabbed his iPad, tucked it under his arm, and followed the girls out through the back door to a little shed in the yard.

“Welcome to my hideout,” Maria said. The shed smelled faintly of motor oil. In one corner was an old lawn mower and a gas can with a funnel on the spout. In another, three bikes of various sizes. There was a workbench with several cupboards on the wall above it and a number of tool drawers below, and a tidy desk area with a lamp and a recycled soup can for pencils.

Maria pulled out the desk chair for Mac to sit in, then rummaged around for another item for Charlie to use as a chair.

Mac sat down and laid his iPad on the table as he responded to a text message on his phone. In the awkward silence, Charlie glanced at the tablet. He had the Animal Planet website up and a Dr. Jeff: Rocky Mountain Vet tab open. Another tab read “12 Secret iPhone Hacks.” His search bar had the question “When is Shark Week?” in it. Charlie raised an eyebrow and folded her arms over her chest.

Maria returned with a rectangular wooden crate and set it on
end next to Mac. “Here you go,” she said.

Charlie perched on top of it. Mac set his phone on the desk and looked at the girls.

“Okay,” Maria said. “First of all, Mac, can you please promise that you won't tell anyone about Charlie's bracelet or about the strange things that are happening to her? Or about anything we discuss or discover here today or in the future?”

“Yeah, sure,” Mac said.

“Say it,” Maria prompted.

Mac gave her a slightly annoyed look but turned to Charlie. “I won't tell anybody anything about any of this. I promise. And,” he added, “I think it's actually pretty cool you've got these powers.”

Charlie gave him a hard look, then nodded, satisfied. “Okay. Thanks.”

“You're welcome. Can I see it now?”

“What?”

“The bracelet. I need to see it.”

“Oh,” said Charlie. She stretched out her arm and rested it on the table next to Mac's iPad. He snapped a couple of pictures with it, then pulled out his cell phone and took a few more, zooming in and using features on his camera phone that Charlie had never seen before. “Flip your arm over, will you?” he asked.

Charlie did it. Mac took more photos. He lifted his head and glanced around. “You got any more light in here, Maria? This flash isn't doing it.”

Maria reached for the flexible work lamp from the corner of the desk and brought it as far as its cord would reach. She flipped the switch, and light flooded the area. Mac took a few more pictures, and then he narrowed his eyes and studied the etchings. “What's the pentagon symbol all about?”

“I don't know,” said Charlie.

“It looks like a logo inside. Are those letters? It's like a letter
T
and a . . . a
C
. Or is that an
O
?” Mac twisted Charlie's wrist, holding it to the light. “Maybe it's just a circle,” he muttered.

“Ow,” said Charlie.

“Sorry.” Mac straightened her arm and examined the dark screen, then tapped it. “Does this work?”

“No.”

Mac looked at the buttons on the side. He pressed one, then another, then two at once. Nothing happened. He pushed the remaining buttons in much the same manner, then continued without any pattern at all.

Charlie watched him. “You're just pressing them randomly.”

Mac looked up. “Yeah. So? Did you try that already?”

“Not really,” Charlie admitted.

“Okay then. I don't tell you how to play soccer, now do I? You got me?” He continued.

Charlie made a face.

Maria shrugged. “He really is the most tech-smart person I know,” she said.

“Yeah, he's really something,” Charlie said drily.

Mac ignored them and kept messing with the buttons.

Charlie looked around the shed. “Do you do your homework in here?” she asked Maria. It was kind of cool to have a quiet place like this to go to. It was like a secret little house.

“Sometimes. I've got three stepbrothers, so when they're here, the house gets a little crowded. It's complicated—don't ask.” Maria hopped up on the table nearby.

“They're cool,” Mac said, not looking up from his task. “We hang out.”

Maria nodded. “True. Mac's here practically more than I am.”

“That's nice,” said Charlie. She was getting bored, and it was weird having Mac pawing at her arm and breathing all over it. “I just have a younger brother,” she said. “I hit him with a pillow yesterday. Threw it so hard he flew backward into a stack of boxes.”

“No way,” said Mac. He looked up.

“Seriously?” Maria asked.

“Yeah.” Charlie laughed a little, remembering.

Maria and Mac looked at each other, and Mac raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“Nothing if I can't get this thing to work,” Mac said. He kept pushing buttons, and then he pressed two of them and held them down.

“And what happens if you can?”

Mac didn't answer—he was counting under his breath as he held the buttons. Maria just shrugged, but she looked like she was hiding something.

Charlie frowned, wondering what they were plotting. But she didn't have much time to spend thinking about it, because a moment later, Mac gasped.

“Whoa!” he breathed. “Check it out.” As Maria and Charlie bent toward him to look at the bracelet, he read the message that now scrolled on the screen:

CHIMERA MARK FIVE . . . DEFENSE MODE INITIATED . . . KEY IN ACCESS CODE TO DEACTIVATE.

“W
hat's that supposed to mean?” Charlie asked. “Chimera Mark Five? Defense mode? Access code? What?”

“Mark Five,” mused Maria. “Like Iron Man and his suits! I wonder if that means there's a version four out there somewhere? And a three?”

Charlie didn't know much about Iron Man, but she too wondered why the bracelet would be called a Mark Five. “Yeah—maybe it's like how new versions of phones and programs are named. Like iPhone 7 or Windows 10.”

“So, you think there might be other bracelets out there?” asked Maria, eyes widening.

Charlie thought about it. “Don't people just get rid of their old phones when they get an upgrade?”

Maria shrugged. “I guess.”

“Hmm.” Mac had been studying the phrases as they flashed across the bracelet's screen, and while the girls discussed the meaning of Mark Five, he turned to his tablet, typed “Chimera Mark Five,” and hit Enter, then sat back and frowned as the search engine produced no results. “Nothing? Seriously?” He shrugged
and deleted the last two words, then hit Enter again.

“Chimera,” he said, reading the page in front of him, and then he clicked on the audible pronunciation. “ki-MEER-ah,” it said.

Mac read the description and summarized, “Basically, it's a creature from Greek mythology made up of different animal parts.”

Maria looked horrified. “Different animal parts? Sorry, but that's just gross.”

Mac glanced at her, confused at first. “What? No! Not chopped-off limbs glued together, Maria.”

Charlie laughed out loud as Mac continued. “The parts are, like, naturally grown or whatever. A chimera is a supercreature with the most powerful features of a bunch of—” He stopped abruptly and looked at the bracelet.

Charlie leaned over his shoulder and read the tablet screen. “The most powerful features of a bunch of animals,” she finished softly. The shed was dead silent.

Maria's eyes widened. “Oh. You mean like the speed of one animal.”

“And the strength of another,” Mac said slowly, looking at Maria.

“And the healing power of one too,” Maria said. The two turned to stare at Charlie.

“That's insane,” Charlie said. Her heart raced, and a wave of panic moved through her. “
Really
insane.” She stood up and shook
her arm in front of Mac's face. “You have to get this thing off me. Now.”

“I can't,” Mac said. “Like the message says, we need a code to do that. Did it come with a code? Any instructions? Anything?”

“No, I didn't see any code. Nothing like that,” Charlie said. “Just a note.” She scrambled to produce it and held it out to Maria. “Here.”

Maria unfolded it and read aloud: “‘Charlie, it's time. You know what to do.'” She turned it over, saw that side was blank, and looked at Mac. “There's no signature. No code. Nothing. That's it.”

“I thought it was about soccer,” Charlie said, agitated. “But now I'm sure I don't have a clue what to do.” She pulled her arm away, but Mac grabbed it.

“Hang on,” he said. He tapped on the screen, and a number keypad came up. Below the numbers was a Shift key and a space bar. He pushed the Shift key, and a new keypad came up, this time with the first half of the alphabet. Once again Mac pushed the Shift key, and the second half of the alphabet appeared.

He hit the Enter key.

An ERROR screen popped up, then disappeared, returning him to the scrolling words asking for an access code.

“Okay,” he muttered. “But how many characters?”

Charlie gave Maria a tortured look.

Mac let go and turned to his iPad and started a new search.
“I'm going to need time to figure out this code. It could be all numbers, all letters, or a combination. And I can't figure out how long it is.”

“How much time?” Charlie asked anxiously.

“I don't know. Since we have no idea who sent it, we can't start with the usual common passwords: family and pet names, birth dates, and stuff like that.” He looked at Charlie. “Can I see it again?”

Charlie held out her arm, and he tried entering a few random combinations and hitting the Enter key. All of them resulted in the ERROR screen, giving him no further indication of how many characters the ID code had. When he let go, Charlie got up and started pacing.
A chimera bracelet?
Thinking about it was really unsettling.

Maria hopped off the table and went to Charlie's side. “It's going to be okay, Charlie. Nothing has changed—you just know more about it now. I get that it's stuck on you, but you've been surviving all right with it on you this long, so maybe take a few deep breaths, okay? And
you're
not a chimera, or whatever that thing is. You just have the powers of some animals, right? Which is actually extremely cool, if you think about it.”

“It's still creepy.” Charlie took a deep breath, almost afraid to let it out in case fire burst from her mouth or something, but nothing happened. She felt human, like always.

“You look totally normal,” Maria assured her.

“Except for your fangs,” Mac added.

“Fangs?” Charlie cried, her hand flying to her mouth.

“Mac!” Maria said. “Not cool. Can't you see Charlie is freaking out?” She looked at Charlie. “You don't have fangs. You look the same as you did your first day of school. And seriously, you have great powers. I mean, think about it.”

Charlie glared at the back of Mac's head, but he was looking at his phone, flipping through his code-hacking apps. After a minute she relaxed a little. “Maybe it's not so bad,” she conceded. Mac's joke was kind of funny. And having these powers didn't actually make her an animal.

“Not so bad?” Mac said. “What are you talking about? It's terrific.” He sounded a bit envious.

Charlie pursed her lips. “Maybe. I'd like it a lot more if I could take it off when I wanted to, though.”

“Mac will figure that out,” Maria said. “Don't worry.”

“Yeah,” warned Mac, “I hope so anyway. I've got to let these programs run and see what codes they come up with. And then I'll have to enter them one at a time, since there's no way to hook the bracelet up to my tablet. So it'll take a while.”

“That sounds . . . exciting,” said Charlie with zero enthusiasm.

“Hmm,” said Maria, an impish smile playing at her lips. “Maybe it's time for the fun part.”

Mac shrugged, then nodded.

Charlie eyed Maria suspiciously. “What fun part?”

“You'll see. Come with me.” Maria smiled and put her hands on Charlie's shoulders, turned her in the direction of the door, and gently pushed her toward it. Mac, still working on his phone, got up, grabbed his iPad, and followed them.

“Where are we going?” Charlie asked. She stooped to pick up her soccer ball as they went.

“To the soccer field.”

Charlie stopped and frowned. “Why?”

Maria's eyes twinkled. “Because, my friend, I think it's time to see exactly what this sweet bracelet can do.”