The Twinning Project (12 page)

Poor guy,
I thought,
he really loves Eddie.

I waited until the laughter died down. “Thank you for cleaning my head, Merlyn, so I can play better.” I opened my pack and took out my violin. People gasped.

I took my time tuning up, thinking of what to play. Then I remembered the song Alessa's mom had been playing in the car. “Let me dedicate this song to Merlyn the Magician.”

I faced her as I played and sang:

 

Tough girlz, think you're cruel.

Tough girlz, too cool for school.

Tough girlz, you just foolz.

Tough girlz, tough girlz.

 

The cafeteria went crazy. I got a standing O. Clapping and stomping and cheering. For me. For
Tom.
It felt great. I hoped Eddie was feeling some of the chilly happy fingers playing up and down my spine.

One of the teachers held a vote. By applause, I won the open talent show by a landslide. I thought about Mrs. Rupp's Timeline. How many years to go until the song “Tough Girlz” gets written? I looked at Merlyn. She winked.

What's her game?

NEARMONT, N.J.

1957

 

You didn't tell me Alessa was a Negro.

Is that a problem for you, Eddie?

No, but I never knew one before.

Just like us only darker. Didn't Dad or Grandpa talk about that?

Grandpa talked about Jackie all the time. He loved Jackie.

Who's Jackie?

You kidding? Jackie Robinson.

The baseball player?

The first Negro player in the major leagues, April 15, 1947.

Timeline Rupp's gonna love you.

I liked that timeline, Tom, especially the stuff that happened after my time.

We could bet on the World Series.

What do you mean?

You could Google who wins the Series in 1957, and I could bet on it.

That would be wrong.

Don't be such a Boy Scout, Eddie. By the way, we don't say Negro anymore, we say African American.

This kid Britzky . . .

The kid I bombed. He picks on Alessa.

That's going to be okay.

How come?

I can make him a friend.

Some friend. What's the deal with Ronnie?

He's my little pal. Yours now.

You pick him out of a Dumpster?

A what?

The garbage.

That's not nice.

The way he dresses. He smells bad. And he looks like a girl.

He's a stand-up guy. You can count on him.

I gave him half my lunch.

I always do that. I don't think he lives anywhere.

He's homeless?

He won't talk about it. Hey, how's Buddy? I really miss him.

He knows. He growls at me.

Give him treats.

He tries to bite me.

We'd better stop. Grandpa said not to talk more than five minutes at a time, the monitors could be trying to tune in.

Eddie . . . ?

NEARMONT, N.J.

1957

 

T
HE
stars blinked off. They looked just like the ones in the backyard on my planet. I went back into the house. Grandpa was watching TV on a black-and-white set. He kept jiggling the two tall silver antennas on top of the set and still got lousy reception. No dish or cable here yet. Or color. He had to keep getting up to adjust the sound. No remote.

“It's on,” he said.

An announcer in a suit and tie appeared on the screen and said, “Here he is: the one, the only . . . ,” and the studio audience screamed, “Groucho!” A funny-looking guy with a mustache who walked like a duck came out. And then a wooden duck came down from the ceiling with a hundred-dollar bill in its mouth and the announcer said that tonight's secret word was
space
.

The show was called
You Bet Your Life,
and it wasn't too lame. Groucho made jokes with his guests, who had to answer questions to win up to $10,000. Chump change. Grandpa loved the show. He laughed every time Groucho wiggled his eyebrows or waggled his cigar. By the time the show was over, Grandpa had tears in his eyes from laughing so much.

I guess I must have been looking at him weirdly because he said, “Not a ton of real smart stuff back here in 1957.”

“At least you got all your marbles in 1957, Grandpa.”

He laughed. “That's the kind of crack your dad would make.”

I took a breath. “Grandpa, do you think he could be alive?”

“Why do you ask that?”

When adults answer your question with a question, they're stalling for time. I felt an excitement deep in my stomach come up into my chest. “He's alive, isn't he? He's hiding from the monitors.”

“You're a smart boy.” He gave me a hug. “Now go to bed.”

I could tell he wasn't going to say anything else, so I went upstairs. I wondered if I'd be able to go to sleep.

I felt funny using Eddie's toothbrush. Instead, I just put toothpaste on my finger and rubbed it over my teeth. I got into bed in my underwear.

Dad
had
to be alive. The monitors were hunting the rebel leader. What could I do in the fight against the monitors?

I remembered that in one of the Mark Twain books Grandpa and I read,
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,
the hero beat the evil magician Merlin because he knew there was going to be an eclipse of the sun on a certain date.

Had anything like that happened in 1957? Would I remember if it had? I was dead without Google. If only I could get online here.

I dug my phone out of the violin bag. No signal. And it was running out of juice. I had a charger, but so what? I plugged it in anyway and charged the phone. Old habit.

Eddie had a marked-up calendar on the wall. Today was Thursday, October 3, 1957. I needed Google, Mrs. Rupp's Timeline, something.

You Bet Your Life
.

The magic word was
space
.

Something really important was hiding in a fold of my brain. Just when I thought I was getting close, I fell asleep.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

E
DDIE
persuaded Alessa to take the school bus with him by telling her it would be good for the campaign. They'd meet more kids every day, get to know them. Her mom wasn't sure it was a good idea, but she trusted him to protect Alessa. Eddie didn't like riding in their big truck of a car. He was used to riding in buses with a bunch of kids, fooling around, making friends.

Alessa was staring at her little screen. Her lips were trembling.

“What's up, pup?”

She handed him her telephone. The words on the screen were:

 

KISS YR PIZZA BUTT BYBY.

BRAINDEAD CAN'T SAVE YOU.

 

“Who's it from?”

“Britzky,” she said. “He's a cyberbully.”

“Cyberbully?'

“Maybe you
are
brain dead.” She was very upset. “Sorry. It's not you. It's your pills.”

The bus pulled up at the school.

Eddie looked at the big stone fountain on the sidewalk outside the school. At his junior high school, the after-school fights were held by the fountain. They were called showdowns. Eddie didn't fight much. A jock rarely had to. But if you did fight, the whole team showed up to cover your back.

“You should report it,” said Eddie.

“I can't prove it's him.”

He gave her back the phone and jumped off the bus. “I'll think of something,” he said. He was feeling more confident since sinking those baskets. He felt more like himself instead of a fake Tom. He bounced his rubber ball a few times.

He followed Alessa to a wall of lockers. Before he even asked, she told him his combination. There was a pink slip of paper inside his locker. It read:
You're so gay.
Eddie laughed. It was true, he was feeling pretty good. He wondered if it was from Merlyn. He always got notes like that from girls in his old school.

“You think that's funny?” said Alessa, who had read the note over his shoulder.

She was starting to get on his nerves. “Don't be jealous.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“It means I'm, you know, in a good mood, happy.”

She just stared at him. “It's from Britzky. He'd text you if you had a phone. It's a bias crime to write that. It's not allowed.”

“To call someone happy?”

“Is it really the pills, or are you trying to punk everybody out?”

“What?”

She gave off a big sigh. It was like the air rushing out of a blow-up mattress at Scout camp. “‘Gay' means homosexual.”

Eddie wasn't really sure what “homosexual” meant. He did know it wasn't considered nice to use the word back home. “So what's the big deal? ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me.' Ever hear that?”

“Sure they can hurt you. People use words and names to scare you, to bully you, to turn people against you.”

“So maybe I should report it.”

“You can't. It would be wimpy. You would lose your YouTube cred.”

It took him a moment to figure that out. She was talking about Tom's reputation for being tough.
But I've got a reputation, too. I'm Captain Eddie, a leader. I don't run for help. People run to
me
for help.

Cyberbullies. Hurting people you hardly know over the airwaves.
It'll come to my planet in fifty years.

An idea began to form.

He followed Alessa to history. Mrs. Rupp made her computer do its thing, and a chart of dates went up on the wall. One of them was October 4, 1957. That was tomorrow. The chart was moving, and all he could see was something about a spaceship. Mrs. Rupp said the wrong people conquered space. The aliens? Mrs. Rupp glared at Eddie a few times, but she never called on him.

Tom needed to know about the spaceship tomorrow, Eddie thought. But meanwhile, his idea grew into a plan, filled his head. It was hard to keep two things spinning in his brain at the same time.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

I've got to tell you something, Tom.

What?

Something big's going to happen tomorrow.

You're telling me!

Right. A showdown with Britzky. And I've got this plan to . . .

No. Here, Eddie. On EarthTwo.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, Tom. A spaceship. Mrs. Rupp said the wrong people conquered space.

That's it! Sputnik.

Tom? Tom?

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

G
RANDPA
was pedaling hard on a stationary bike when Eddie arrived. He was the only person in the assisted living facility's little gym. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat. Eddie could hear music howling out of the little white things in his ears. Ear buds, Alessa had called them.

He started right off telling Grandpa about his plan.

“What?” Grandpa pulled out the buds. “I'm listening to ‘Welcome to the Jungle.' Guns N' Roses. Really gets your blood boiling.”

He swung off the bike and walked to a rack of weights. “I believe in lighter poundage, more reps. How about you?”

“More weight for football, less for basketball and baseball.”

Grandpa started pumping his biceps. “So, how's it going?”

“Pretty good. I'm going to run for class president. And I've got this idea . . .”

“Excellent. Give you a chance to eyeball for more monitors.”

“What do they look like?”

Grandpa stopped pumping and lowered his voice. “Like humans. They have bright green eyes that allow them to transmit video back to Homeplace.”

“Homeplace?”

“That's what we call our planet.”

“Is that where you and Dad are from?”

He nodded.

“What's it like?”

Two old ladies came into the gym and stood near Grandpa. They bent over and touched their toes and peeked at him. He started pumping again and grinned at them.

Grandpa winked at Eddie and said loudly, “Thanks for coming, sonny, whoever you are.” He started talking to the old ladies. It was as if Eddie had disappeared.

Eddie got lost on the ride home. His mind felt as fuddled as it had during the slip. He'd wanted to run his idea past Grandpa. Now he really had to talk to Tom.

He tried for an hour in the backyard. He might have stayed out all night if Keith hadn't heard him shouting in the garden and told him to come in and watch the game.

NEARMONT, N.J.

2011

 

O
N
the school bus, Eddie said to Alessa, “Do me a favor? Send Britzky a whaddyacallit. Tell him to meet me at the fountain at three.”

“What for?”

“A showdown. It's like
High Noon, Shane, 3:10 to Yuma
. You see that?”

“With Russell Crowe?”

“No, it was Glenn Ford,” Eddie said. “Can you send it?”

“Get serious, Tom. You're on probation. And you're running for office. Fighting's not allowed.”

“Who says I'm going to fight him?”

“Oh, right. You're calling him out for a
poetry slam
.” She sounded sarcastic. “Like you can make a rhyme at any time.”

Eddie laughed. “I'm a poet and you don't know it. Please. Trust me. Just send it. And send it to a few other people.”

“Why?”

“So he can't back out.”

By the time he got off the bus, he
could feel the pressure building, like before a big game.