The Deceivers Read online

  “Are you asking if she’s a Cavs fan, too?” Mr. Mayhew said. He slid down in his chair. “Or are you asking if she’d be down here with me or upstairs texting in her room like she probably is right now?”

  “Teenagers do that,” Finn said, as though hanging out with Natalie made him an expert.

  Mr. Mayhew gave a sad laugh. “Well then . . . how about you stay and watch the game with me?” He winked. “We’ll pretend it isn’t past your bedtime.”

  “Thanks, but . . . I’d fall asleep,” Finn said. He faked a huge yawn. “Then you might have to miss a big play, carrying me up to bed.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Mr. Mayhew said. He winked again. Or maybe he was blinking back tears. “Who’s the grown-up here, and who’s the kid?” He waved his hand in a way that was probably supposed to look cheerful. “Go on, get your drink of water. Then it’s off to bed for you, young man!”

  Finn kind of did want to stay with Mr. Mayhew now, to cheer him up.

  But when we get Mom and Ms. Morales back, that will cheer up everybody, he told himself. That will fix everything. So that’s what we have to focus on.

  He watched Mr. Mayhew spin his chair back toward the TV. Then Finn sprinted for the kitchen, grabbed the baking soda, and raced back up the stairs.

  The other three kids had unfrozen enough that they’d assembled paintbrushes, Scotch tape, and black construction paper.

  “This says we sprinkle the baking soda on, brush it off as gently as possible, and if there are fingerprints, we’ll see them outlined in white,” Natalie explained, reading directions from her phone. “We put tape over each distinct fingerprint, pull the tape off, and then move the tape to the black paper. That preserves the image.”

  “And I say we start on this flat section in the middle,” Emma said, pointing. “I’m pretty sure I only touched the edges, and Chess says he only touched the edges on one end when he pulled on the lever, opening and shutting the tunnel. . . .”

  Finn saw how the edges of the lever were raised higher than the midsection.

  “Hey, does anybody else think this looks like a big Pez?” he asked.

  “A what?” Natalie said.

  “A Pez—you know? The little white candy you get from a Pez dispenser?” Finn said. “The candy doesn’t taste like much, but it’s fun because the dispensers can be shaped like Darth Vader heads or frogs or Batman or . . . whatever . . . and so eating Pez is like eating Batman’s tongue, or Darth Vader’s, or . . . didn’t they have Pez dispensers when you were my age, Natalie?”

  “Finn, I’m only five years older than you!” Natalie protested. “Of course we had Pez and Pez dispensers when I was in second grade!”

  But Finn saw he’d gotten Natalie to laugh. Finn counted that as a victory.

  “Yeah, see, you just need to put the letters P-E-Z right there on that lever, and it’d be, like, Pez for giants!” Finn said.

  He pointed, and Emma grabbed his hand.

  “Don’t touch!” she reminded him.

  “Here,” Chess said, opening the box of baking soda in Finn’s other hand. “How about you start pouring this?”

  Finn let the baking soda rain down onto the lever. His aim wasn’t great—some heaped over the edge onto his old shirt, which the others had kept under the lever.

  “It’s snowing!” Finn called, because even if this didn’t work, he was determined to cheer up the others by making this fun. He grabbed a paintbrush. “And now I’m painting with snow. . . .”

  “Gently, remember?” Emma said.

  Finn had just speared a particularly large clump of baking soda, and he’d been about to yell, Hi-YAH! He decided not to do that. For a moment, all four kids silently bent over the lever, brushing baking soda in from the edges, toward the hollowed-out part.

  No matter how hard he tried, Finn just could not go as slowly as the others. His brush caught on something. He squinted down at the lever.

  “I’m looking for lines, right?” he asked. “But little wavy ones, not thick ones?” He shoved his brush forward, and inched around to the lever’s other side to squint again at what he’d found. Everyone else was staring down at their own space; nobody was looking at his area of the lever.

  “What if someone had a tattoo on their fingertips?” Finn asked. “Like, of some word? Would that show up as letters instead of fingerprints?”

  “What do you mean?” Emma asked, turning her head.

  Finn pointed.

  “Isn’t that the letter U?” he asked. Maybe he was just fooling himself, because he’d been talking about letters on a Pez.

  Emma hopped over the lever to Finn’s side. She dumped more baking soda beside Finn’s area, and swiped her own paintbrush across that zone.

  The letters S and E appeared beside the U.

  “Use,” Finn read. “It’s the word ‘use.’”

  Emma threw her arms around Finn’s shoulders.

  “Finn! You’re amazing! Thank you for making us check for fingerprints! You’ve found another code!”

  Eleven

  Emma

  “I have?” Finn said blankly. “But ‘use’ is a real word. What if it’s not another code but—”

  “Instructions!” Emma yelled. “You’re right! Maybe you’ve found instructions!”

  She picked up the baking soda box again, then changed her mind.

  “The letters are carved so lightly we can’t see them, so . . . I think this will go faster if we do something like a tombstone rubbing,” Emma said. “Natalie, now we need white paper and a pencil. Where’s . . .”

  She didn’t wait for Natalie to answer. She just stood up, walked over to Natalie’s desk, and pulled out the supplies she needed.

  “What’s a tombstone rubbing?” Finn asked.

  “Oh, I know what you mean, Emma,” Natalie said. “Did you have Mrs. Creveau for third grade, too? Finn, maybe you’ll do this next year. Tombstone rubbings are for when the letters have worn off a gravestone over centuries, so you can’t read it anymore—sometimes, you can’t even see that there are words there—so you use pencil and paper to . . . well, it’s exactly what Emma’s doing now.”

  Emma was glad Natalie had answered Finn. Emma was too busy shaking the baking soda away and then laying the paper down carefully over the middle section of the lever. She had to bend it a little, since there was such a gully in the lever. Then she pressed the pencil point sideways against the paper and began running it back and forth.

  “I did that in third grade, too,” Chess said. “But do you think this lever is hundreds of years old, like the tombstones?”

  “I don’t think the words on this lever wore away over time,” Emma said. “I think this message was designed to be impossible to read unless you know it’s there. Unless you know to do a tombstone rubbing and look for it.”

  “Okay,” Natalie said. “What does—”

  But Emma was already holding up the first sheet of paper:

  USE IN A

  EXISTS IN

  Silently, Chess handed her a second sheet of paper.

  Emma placed it on the next section of the lever and began rubbing the pencil back and forth again.

  Then she dropped both sheets of paper to the floor, side by side.

  USE IN A SPOT THAT

  EXISTS IN BOTH (WORLDS)

  “It is instructions!” Emma exulted. “And I was right about the lever all along! Just not totally, one hundred percent right!”

  “Were you ninety-eight percent right?” Finn asked. “Ninety-five percent?”

  “Oh, who cares about the numbers!” Emma said, grabbing her brother by the shoulders again and swinging him back and forth. “I was right enough that we can go rescue Mom!”

  Twelve

  Chess

  Chess watched Finn, Emma, and Natalie hugging and congratulating each other. Then Finn switched to fist-bumping everyone.

  “We’re the best team ever!” he crowed. “We all worked together! Now let’s go!”

 
“Go where?” Chess asked quietly.

  “Somewhere we know exists in both worlds! That’s where the lever will work!” Emma said. “That has to be what this means!”

  “So you’re saying . . . the only reason the lever didn’t work here in my room is . . . doesn’t this room exist in the other world?” Natalie asked. “Are you saying Dad’s whole house might not exist in the other world?”

  “I guess not!” Emma said, shrugging. “That’ll teach me to consider all the possible variables the next time!”

  Natalie scooted back against the wall. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  “Dad had this house custom-built after Mom said she wanted a divorce,” Natalie said. “He said he wasn’t going to be one of those sad-sack divorced dads living in an empty condo and getting all depressed about losing everything. He said . . . he said he’d show Mom he was fine without her.” She tilted her head back to gaze toward the ceiling. A dreaminess settled over her face. “If this house doesn’t exist in the other world, what does that mean?”

  “It means we have to go somewhere else to use the lever and go back to the other world!” Finn said, as if that should be obvious to everyone.

  Chess made himself stop gazing at Natalie.

  “We shouldn’t try our house either,” Chess said. “Not just because the tunnel in the basement collapsed, and maybe that closes off the whole house as a place to travel from. But also . . . the authorities in the other world know where we were traveling back and forth before. Don’t you think they’re probably guarding the house on the other side?”

  “So maybe we go to a neighbor’s house?” Finn asked. “Or . . . can we find somewhere to put the lever beside the pond back in our neighborhood? We know the pond exists in both worlds!”

  “I don’t think we should cross into the other world outdoors, where anyone could see us,” Chess said. He tried not to let his voice tremble, so no one would hear how much that idea terrified him. “And what would we tell our neighbors about why we want to hang out in their house? How could we say, ‘Oh, just leave us alone and don’t worry if we disappear’?”

  “Natalie’s mother’s house,” Emma said firmly, as if she was settling an argument. “That’s where we try the lever next. We skip school and do it first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “We don’t know for sure that Mom’s house exists in the other world, either,” Natalie objected. “Not the same house in the same place. We never saw it when we were there before.”

  “But if it does—and if that’s where you and your mom live in the other world—then it’s the safest place to go back,” Emma said. “A place where you, at least, would look like you belong, Natalie. So that’s what we try first.”

  Slowly, Natalie nodded. Chess wanted more time to think through everything.

  When they’d been in the other world the last time, they’d seen the other-world version of Natalie’s mom, but not Natalie or her dad. But they knew those other-world versions existed, and it had helped a lot to have Natalie pretend to be the other Natalie.

  But what if it’s extra dangerous to be in a place where this world’s Natalie could easily run into that world’s Natalie? Chess wondered. At her mom’s house, wouldn’t it also be more likely that she’d run into the other world’s version of her mom? And wouldn’t the other world’s version of Ms. Morales see right away that our Natalie is different from the Natalie there?

  Would the other world’s Natalie really be that different from this world’s? Or would she be someone else who could help them?

  But what if the other world’s Ms. Morales saw Finn, Emma, and me? Chess wondered, panic rising in his chest. What if she figured out we’re connected to Mom? That world’s Ms. Morales was a judge! The judge who tried to make Mom seem guilty!

  Chess’s brain hurt thinking of all the things that could go wrong. But he couldn’t tell the others it was a terrible idea to cross over at Ms. Morales’s house.

  Because wasn’t it actually just a terrible idea to cross over, period?

  “Wait, go back a little,” Finn said. “Did you really say, ‘skip school’? We get to skip school?”

  “Do you want to wait a moment longer than you have to, to go rescue Mom?” Emma asked.

  “No,” Finn said, shaking his head so emphatically his hair flopped around. “So why don’t we go right now?”

  Chess thought about what it would be like to sneak out in the dark. He thought about arriving in the strange, awful other world at nighttime, when they couldn’t even see the dangers around them.

  “We need time to prepare,” he said. To his surprise, his voice came out sounding firm and certain. “We need to take supplies—like, food, even—in case we have to hide out for a while. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some of the tools and electronic gadgets Joe carried with him. Last time we went to the other world, we didn’t know what we were getting into, and we were lucky we managed to escape. This time we need to be ready.”

  Emma and Natalie nodded, backing him up.

  “And I want to solve the rest of Mom’s coded message before we go,” Emma said. “I’m sure it’ll tell us more about what went wrong in the other world, and how it became such an awful place. Maybe if I stay up all night working on it, by morning I’ll know . . .”

  “That you’re too tired to think straight?” Chess finished for her. “Emma, we’ve been working on that message for two weeks! An extra twelve hours isn’t going to make a difference!”

  “Nine hours,” Natalie said, checking the time on her phone. “We leave in nine hours. We should leave when I’d normally catch the bus—I’ll come up with some excuse for Dad about why you three have to leave with me.”

  Chess could tell Natalie was figuring out logistics. Emma stuck out her lower lip, like she was mad that Chess didn’t think she could solve Mom’s code in the next twelve hours. Or nine.

  “Emma . . . ,” Chess said.

  “I know, I know—sleep is important!” Emma said. This was something their mother said all the time; hearing Emma say it made Chess’s eyes tear up. He had to turn his head to the side so Emma and Finn wouldn’t see. “But doesn’t it seem dangerous to go back without knowing everything we possibly can?”

  “Yeah,” Chess muttered. “But what else can we do?”

  The next few hours passed in a blur. Chess, Emma, and Natalie stayed up past midnight making lists and packing backpacks, then double-checking lists and backpacks and cramming in “just one more thing that could save our lives.” Finn tried to stay up, too, but early on Chess turned to ask Finn a question and discovered his brother curled up and snoring on the floor beside the lever. Chess crouched down beside him, planning to pick him up and carry him to his own bed. Then he felt Natalie’s hair tickle his arm. She leaned close.

  “Would it be so terrible,” she began, peering down at Finn, “if we left him here tomorrow morning? Just let him keep sleeping? He’d stay safe that way. And he could keep Dad company if . . . if . . . He could explain everything if . . .”

  Chess knew exactly what Natalie wasn’t saying: . . . if we never make it back from the other world.

  Watching the smile play over Finn’s face—leave it to Finn to smile even in his sleep, even the night before heading into danger—Chess understood exactly why Natalie wanted to keep Finn safe. Chess wanted that, too. But as he slid his arms under Finn’s neck and knees, Chess made his voice gruff, almost scolding, as he told Natalie, “We promised Finn we’d take him with us. I’m not breaking any promises to Finn.”

  And then somehow, though Chess could have sworn he got no sleep himself, it was Friday morning, and Emma was cramming their mother’s computer with the coded message into her backpack; Chess was helping Finn button his shirt as Finn excitedly chattered, “Mom always said this is her favorite shirt of mine—she’ll like that I’m wearing her favorite shirt, won’t she?” And then all three Greystones clustered around Natalie at the top of the stairs. Natalie took a de
ep breath.

  “Let me handle Dad when we go down to the kitchen, okay?” she muttered.

  All four kids descended the stairs, maybe for the last time.

  Natalie sped into the kitchen, grabbed a box of Pop-Tarts, and made a big show of tossing it to Chess. He added it to his backpack.

  “You remember Megan’s mom is taking me to school this morning, right?” she asked her dad, who was sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over a cup of coffee. “And then, because she works close by, she’ll drop off the Greystone kids at the elementary, too. ’Kay?”

  Mr. Mayhew blinked groggily. He wasn’t a morning person.

  “So . . . you all need a ride to Megan’s?” he asked.

  “No, Dad,” Natalie said, with an exasperated eye roll. “Megan’s the one who lives in this neighborhood. Like, a block away. I don’t need a ride.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Mayhew said. “I thought . . . You know I have to work late this afternoon, so . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ll be fine. We’ll order pizza or Chinese for dinner. See you later!”

  Natalie brushed a kiss past the top of her father’s head, on the spot where his hair was a little thin.

  “Bye, Mr. Mayhew!” Finn chirped. Chess and Emma waved, but Chess could tell that Mr. Mayhew barely noticed, because he was watching Natalie vanish around the corner.

  The kids made it out to the garage, and Natalie sagged against the handles of her bike.

  “He’ll know I forgave him for last night, right?” she muttered to Chess. “Because I kissed him on his bald spot? He’ll remember that if . . . if . . .”

  Once again, Chess knew what Natalie wasn’t saying.

  “Helmets,” he reminded Finn and Emma, even though it seemed crazy to worry about bike helmets when they would be riding toward so much danger.

  Natalie still stood there frozen. Chess handed her a helmet, too.

  “You’re not worried about getting your friend Megan or her mom in trouble?” Chess asked. “You know, if we’re . . . gone for a while?”