Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:
1) Find a thirty-foot ladder and try for a window. Flaws: window may be wired to an alarm; impossible to estimate drop to factory floor; no place to hide ladder from Surety patrol. Plus, this is a small town with no tall buildings. If anyone has use for a ladder that big, it would be the Plastics Works themselves. And we obviously can’t ask them if we can borrow it.
2) Splice extensions into the existing alarm wires in order to bypass the door. Flaws: not sure how to cut the wire to splice it without setting off the alarm in the first place. And even if that’s possible, we’d still need to pick the door lock quickly enough to avoid the patrol (not a skill they teach at our school).
3) One of us stows away on the golf cart and is driven inside by the Purple People Eaters themselves. Flaws: golf carts aren’t limousines; there’s no place to hide and very little clearance underneath. Also, we have no evidence that the golf cart ever enters the building.
“In other words, we’ve got nothing,” Eli concludes sadly.
“Not necessarily,” I muse. “What about the roof?”
“The roof?” Malik repeats incredulously. “If we can’t reach the windows, how can we get up to the roof?”
“The windows are harder because they’re exposed,” I explain reasonably. “The patrol can spot us from the golf cart. But once we’re up on the roof, we’re out of sight. And we’ve got all the time in the world to find a way in.”
“We can’t even see the roof,” Hector points out. “How are we going to know if there’s access to the building?”
“No problem,” Malik says sarcastically. “I’ll just ask the Purples if we can borrow their helicopter.”
“He’s got a point,” Eli admits. “There’s not a place in town high enough for a view of the factory roof. Not even the flagpole.”
“What about the online archives?” I wonder. Steve showed me how to access them on my computer. There are all kinds of images of the town and the surrounding area, some of them really cool. “Maybe there’s an aerial photograph.”
“We’ve already checked,” says Malik. “They’ve got pictures and schematics and blueprints of every building in Happy Valley except the Plastics Works.”
Hector speaks up. “Maybe we can get our own aerial photograph.”
Malik snorts. “You got a pet hawk I don’t know about?”
Hector makes a face at him. “Go fly a kite.”
Here’s a tip: never let boys into your studio. They’re all thumbs.
The thin wooden dowel snaps in Malik’s hand when I ask him to hold it; Hector pours quick-drying glue on his shoes; Eli can’t cut through a two-ply plastic garbage bag without shredding it. I end up doing everything myself while those three clods stare at me like I’m spinning straw into gold.
I’m just wrapping the plastic around the frame of the kite to make the sail when I spy Amber outside my house. “Get down!” I hiss.
“Why?” asks Malik. “So we’re here? So what?”
“I’ve been ducking her to work on our plans,” I explain breathlessly. “You want me to have to explain that?”
We sit on the floor away from the window, crouching low as I finish the sail. The doorbell rings . . . once . . . twice. My parents aren’t home so nobody answers.
Eventually, I spy Amber through the window, walking away.
“The coast is clear,” I announce, suddenly feeling like a lousy friend.
The day is sunny and blustery—at least, blustery for around here. Sometimes the prevailing winds are pushed south toward us by the mountains of Colorado. Of course, that information comes from school, so it isn’t necessarily true. For all we know, some mythological wind god blows over Serenity through titanic lips.
But today nobody’s complaining. We’ve got good visibility and enough wind to keep the kite in the air.
I squint up at it, using a hand to shield my eyes from the bright sun. “Do you think we got what we need?”
Eli lets out more string, his hands working deftly on the spool. I built the kite, but he added the most important part—a small wireless webcam fastened to the diamond frame. “Let’s go a little higher. The camera’s pointing straight down. So unless we’re directly over the factory, we could miss it.”
“If the kite’s too far up, we might not be able to see anything,” Hector warns.
Eli is unconcerned. “The camera’s pretty high-res, so we can zoom in without too much loss of sharpness.”
It’s all Greek to me. Eli’s the tech guy. I’m just the kite-maker.
“As your doctor,” comes a deep, sarcastic voice, “it’s my medical opinion that flying a kite from the middle of a public street can be hazardous to your health.”
We wheel. It’s Dr. Bruder, beaming over a red bow tie, amused (and maybe a little too curious?).
“Right, Dad,” Malik replies. “Like the traffic’s really heavy today. If we’re still here at rush hour, we might even see a car.”
“It only takes one. Or one of the trucks from the factory. I don’t see why you have to be here. There’s plenty of open space at the park.”
We started in the park. The wind kept taking the kite (and the webcam) away from the Plastics Works. Aerial photographs of the rocks outside of town might look beautiful in my studio, but they’re not going to show us the roof of the factory.
Obviously, that isn’t an explanation we can give Dr. Bruder.
We’re all tongue-tied, and it crosses my mind that this is more dangerous than it appears to be on the surface. If the adults suspect that something’s up (even if they can’t figure out what) they might start watching us a little more closely. You don’t have much chance of breaking into a factory if you can’t make it past your own front door.
Hector bails us out. “Too many trees at the park. Our kite kept getting tangled in branches.”
It sounds so reasonable we almost believe it ourselves.
“I suppose,” Dr. Bruder concedes. “But cars could come at any time, so please be careful.” And he’s on his way.
“Nice save,” Malik compliments Hector once the coast is clear. “Don’t let me catch you lying to me like that.”
“Don’t worry,” Hector grins. “If it happens, you’ll never know.”
I peer up at the kite, which flutters above the tallest of the smokestacks. “Surely we’ve got a good picture by now.”
Eli begins to reel in the line. “We’ll find out tonight.”
“Tonight?” Malik echoes. “Why not now?”
“I set the camera to upload to a website,” Eli explains, still winding. “That’s on the real internet, not the watered-down bag of lies we get here. We’ll have to check it from the factory grounds.”
I brace myself for another midnight sneak-out.
I’m almost late. Steve gets wrapped up in a West Coast baseball game that goes into extra innings. Until someone finally scores, I’m trapped in my room, with my arms wrapped around my knees, rocking and waiting. This whole thing is completely freaking me out.
I make it, though, and meet Eli under the big maple tree. Malik and Hector, who are neighbors, arrive together, bickering about something, but quietly.
“Ready for round two?” Eli asks.
We retrace our steps toward the Plastics Works. It’s even scarier this time around, because we know there are Purples prowling the grounds.
Then we get a break. As we approach the base of the Fellowship hill, Eli’s iPad suddenly picks up a faint Wi-Fi signal from the Plastics Works. This is huge. It means we’ll be able to get the real internet without having to trespass on factory grounds. We duck into some tall grass just outside the perimeter fence and crowd around Eli.
Something bothers me. “If the town went to all the trouble to create a fake internet, it’s because they don’t want us to see the real thing, right? So how come they didn’t make it harder to find?”
Hector has a theory. “If the real Wi-Fi works in the factory and the
fake Wi-Fi works in our houses, maybe no one thought to check where one stops and the other starts.”
“Figures,” Malik mumbles. “It’s like buying three giant trucks and driving them all over the place, but never bothering to dust off the cones so they’ll look new.”
“We need to remember that,” Eli puts in. “The people we’re up against aren’t always as thorough as they could be.”
“‘The people we’re up against’?” Malik challenges. “Why can’t you admit the truth? Those ‘people’ are our own parents.”
“Not necessarily everybody,” I say, tight-lipped.
“Dream on, Torific—”
“I’ve got it,” Eli announces suddenly, his fingers just a blur on his iPad’s touch screen.
He holds the tablet out to us. I squint at what appears to be a series of black-and-white images of town. There are big beautiful homes, kidney-shaped and rectangular pools, immaculate landscaping. How could anything be wrong in such a perfect place?
Now we know it’s only perfect from the air.
Hector indicates the top of the screen, which reads Ohio Lollipop Festival. “Why is it called that?”
Eli shrugs. “I figured our parents might be checking the internet for anything about the Serenity Plastics Works. But no way will they be looking out for a lollipop festival.”
(There it is again—our parents as the enemy.)
Malik is unimpressed. “These may as well be pictures of lollipops if they don’t show us a way into the factory. Can you see anything? I sure can’t.”
Eli manipulates the screen. “Let me get us a better view.” He selects the clearest of the images and zooms in on the roof.
From above, the Plastics Works resembles a gigantic rectangular birthday cake with grainy gray icing and three smokestack candles.
Hector points. “What’s that dark part over there?”
We lean in.
“It looks like a separate section,” Malik notes, “walled off from the rest of the roof.”
Hector frowns. “Not separate, lower. See? It’s in the shadow of the rest of the building.”
“Like a halfway point!” I exclaim. “We can use it as a stepping-stone—climb from the ground to there, and then from there to the roof.”
“But how do we get inside?” asks Eli.
Malik’s brow furrows. “There must be roof access. You know, so if the air-conditioning breaks, they don’t have to hoist the repair guy up by crane.”
And then I have it. “See that dark square underneath the compressor? I think it’s a trapdoor. That could be our way in.”
“Could be?” Malik challenges. “I’m not a big fan of climbing giant buildings for nothing.”
“I know it’s risky,” Eli decides. “But the choice is between doing this and doing nothing. And doing nothing isn’t an option.”
13
MALIK BRUDER
My greatest fear used to be that I’d be stuck in Happy Valley forever, busting my butt at some dead-end job at the plastics factory.
But that’s been looking better to me lately. Steady job, steady pay, no falling off roofs and scrambling your brains on the ground below.
And now I can’t even look forward to that. The factory is as screwy as the town, and instead of working in it, I’ll be invading the place.
The time is set: Tuesday, 1:00 a.m.
I’m not the only one who’s nervous. Frieden says he can’t sleep. Little Miss Torific has been having nightmares about her parents in Purple People Eater outfits. It’s pretty funny, but dark circles under her eyes confirm that bad dreams have been keeping her up at night. Hector keeps telling me how calm he is, and the fact that he won’t shut up about it says exactly the opposite. The poor wimp is so afraid of being left out that he signed on to this without a sensible thought. Maybe he really is “special.”
What freaks me out most of all is the part we won’t be able to know until we’re face-to-face with it: What’s inside the factory? Is it crawling with Purples? And if they aren’t making traffic cones, what are they doing? I want to know, but I’m afraid of what I might find out.
And there’s one other thing I’ll bet none of the others has considered. What if we break in and discover . . . nothing? No explanation of “something screwy,” but also nothing to put our minds to rest?
If that happens, I think I’ll lose it for sure.
9:25 p.m. A geyser of water explodes from the kitchen faucet, striking my dad full in the chest, just below the bow tie. He drops like a sack of flour, and the jet shoots across the room, soaking the microwave, which shorts out in a shower of sparks.
All I can think is why tonight? Nothing ever happens in Happy Valley, and our sink has to turn into Niagara Falls the one night we’ve got something going on!
Miraculously, the house is not burning down, but it might as well be, if you go by my mother’s reaction. “Malik, get Peter Amani! Henry, shut the water off before the kitchen is flooded!”
It’s a little late for that. We’re already up to our ankles. To be honest, I don’t care if the house floats downstream to Arizona and ends up in the Colorado River. My concern is the plan. I want a calm evening, everything nice and dull. The last thing we need is a crisis with my parents and Hector’s dad up in the air, frantic and possibly sleepless.
The Amanis live two doors away, so I run over there, rather than calling. It’s easier to ignore a ringing telephone than someone pounding on the door screaming, “Flood!”
Hector answers the door, and I bark, “Get your dad! We’ve got a plumbing emergency!”
He stares at me. “Tonight?”
“Yeah, I did it on purpose just to tick you off! Hurry!”
Soon, Mr. Amani is on his way, with Hector and me bringing up the rear. The word around Happy Valley is that Hector’s dad breaks as many pipes as he repairs, but he is the only plumber in town—also electrician and general handyman. If he can’t fix it, you’re looking at Taos. I breathe a silent prayer as he splashes into our kitchen, wielding a very destructive-looking wrench. My father’s there to greet him. Dad’s put on a dry bow tie for the crisis, like that’s what it says in Plumbing 101.
“I hope you’ve brought your scuba gear, Pete.” Dad’s jokes aren’t just for the kids in town. He’s an equal opportunity doofus.
Hearts sinking as the water level rises, Hector and I watch Mr. Amani get to work.
“What if it’s a long job?” Hector worries in a whisper.
“It won’t be,” I say firmly. There’s absolutely no basis in fact for my opinion. It’s strictly hope.
“Yeah, but what I mean is—”
“I know what you mean, stupid! And if you don’t shut up, everyone’s going to know!”
It’s after eleven by the time the sink is fixed. That turns out to be the easy part. Cleaning up the water is a lot harder. Hector and I drag over these big drying fans, which have to run for twenty-four hours. Each one sounds like a leaf blower with a large stone rattling around inside it. I figure we’ll have to scrap the mission. No way are my parents going to be able to sleep through that racket. It’s enough to wake the dead.
Hector shares my concern. He lingers even after his father has headed home. “What are we going to do?”
I think it over, the fans roaring in my ears. Tonight is a big deal—not just putting together the plan, but also getting ourselves psyched up to do it. If we cancel now, who knows how long it’ll take to get ourselves to recharge again.
“It’s almost eleven thirty,” I tell him. “If my folks aren’t asleep by midnight, we call everything off. You’ll just go to the meeting place and tell Eli and Tori.”
“Why me?”
“Because if I could do it, there’d be no reason to cancel, would there?”
Miracle of miracles, both my parents are dead to the world within twenty minutes of crawling into bed. Go figure. Those fans are so droning and monotonous that I almost drop off myself. Wouldn’t that be classic—to snooze through
my own break-in?
I don’t even have to tiptoe as I slip out of the house. My folks wouldn’t hear it if I left on horseback at the head of a brass band.
The drill is becoming familiar: meet Hector first, then Eli and Tori. She’s brought ropes, courtesy of Mr. Pritel, who used to be a rock climber. Then on to the factory.
I’m waiting my turn to scale the gate when Hector freezes halfway up.
“Sometime tonight would be nice,” I stage-whisper. “What’s the problem?”
“My pants are stuck,” he calls down.
“Get them unstuck!” I hiss.
He flounders. “I can’t!”
Muttering under my breath, I climb the fence to Hector, and Eli and Tori, who are already over, clamber up the other side. Hector’s right—he really is caught. Somehow, a strand of chain link pierced the denim of his jeans, and all his efforts to free himself only tangled him even further.
“Take off your pants,” Tori orders.
He’s horrified. “I’m not breaking into the factory in my underwear!”
“It’ll be easier to get them off the fence if you’re not in them,” she explains. “Obviously, you’ll put them on again afterward.”
“Like it matters what we’re wearing if the Purples bust us,” I add, rolling my eyes.
Hector sets his jaw. “No.”
“What do you mean no?” I demand. “What choice is there?”
Hector points at Tori. “Not with her watching.”
She eases herself down a few handholds and jumps to the ground. “How’s this?” she asks, turning her back.
She’s the best climber of the four of us, and we could probably use her help. But after much protesting and whining Eli and I manage to get Hector separated from his jeans and over the gate. At least he has the grace to look embarrassed as he gets dressed again. It’s comic relief, but it’s also a reminder: Things can—and do—go wrong.