Max took out his phone and called 911. “I want to report a break-in at the old train station in Savile. A man and woman vandalizing the station house. Looks like they got themselves locked inside!”
As Max pocketed the phone, Nigel held out his palm. “One last thing, old boy, if you don’t mind.”
Taking the gun from Max’s hand, Nigel emptied it of its bullets and then reared back and tossed it deep into the woods behind the train station. They heard it splash into the nearby creek, and Nigel smiled. “I believe American custom dictates a triumphant collision of fists.”
Max gave him a fist bump, and they both ran down the street.
“Yes? Yes?” Alex cried out.
She, Bitsy, and Smriti were gathered on the Tilts’ porch as Max and Nigel ran up. The old man was out of breath, and his drooping eye seemed lower than usual. “The lad . . . was brilliant!” he said. “Like Batman.”
“We have all the ingredients!” Max shouted.
He did not want to stop. Not for a second. Racing into the house, he ran straight up to his room. His 3D printer had completed a perfect plastic Hulk. Next to it were three crude replicas of Isis hippuris.
As he put down the backpack, the others rushed into the room behind him. “I was so worried Gloria would see through the fake coral, Max,” Alex said, fingering one of the replicas.
“I took the best replica,” Max said. “They’re all pretty low-res. I had to do it for time’s sake. In the dark, it looked pretty real.”
“Oh, the way the plaster shattered—such drama!” Nigel exclaimed. “I nearly had a heart attack myself!”
“Be right back. Nigel will tell you everything.” Max ran downstairs with the Hulk and placed it on his mom’s windowsill. She was fast asleep, holding hands with his dad, who dozed on a chair next to her. He kissed them both on the forehead. Hers felt hot. And wet. Her hair was stringy with sweat, plastered to her head, and her mouth was set in a grimace.
“Did everything work out?” his dad asked hopefully.
Max nodded. He turned and ran back upstairs.
It was time.
As he opened his bedroom door, Alex, Bitsy, and Nigel were laying out all the vials on his desk, along with a big empty mayonnaise jar someone had brought up from the pantry. It was the first time he’d seen all the ingredients together, like the travelogue to an adventure that now seemed like a dream.
The ancient hippo bones from Pirgos Dirou.
The strange glowing coils from the Kozhim River in Russia.
The black turmeric from Kathmandu.
The golf-ball cactus from the Sierra Gorda.
The stream water from the volcanic Antarctic refugio.
“Jet, car, rowboat, motorbike, train, hang glider, yak, balloon, ship, dogsled . . .” Bitsy murmured. “Did all of that actually happen? Our own Around the World adventure?”
“As far as transportation went, we owned Jules Verne and Passepartout!” Alex said. “Except they rode an elephant. We didn’t do that. And I’m kind of glad.”
Max looked at his watch. “We beat eighty days,” he said, “by a long shot.”
“Adjusted for inflation,” Nigel said, “it’s probably about the same.”
Max reached into his closet. He entered the combination on his safe and pulled out the chunk of Isis hippuris. The real one.
He smelled fish, but that was because it smelled like fish.
“I like the name ‘sea fan’ better than Isis hippuris,” Alex said, examining its bulbous but delicate fingerlike tendrils. “Although ‘mutant many-fingered hand’ might be better.”
Max set it on the table. His hands were shaking. “Mom is not looking good. Whatever we’re going to do, let’s do it in a hurry.”
“Keep in mind too, Mummy will be on the loose,” Bitsy said. “She’s no doubt browbeating the police about now. Depending on how much she alienates them, they’ll either be hauling her off for investigation or pulling up here, to question us.” She leaned close to the sea fan. “I propose we break it in half.”
“Why?” Alex asked.
“If we use half of everything,” Bitsy explained, “we’ll have some left over in case anything goes wrong.”
“But what if half isn’t enough?” Max asked. “What if we need twice as much? Or three times as much? How can we be sure?”
“Now we know how my great-great-grandfather Gaston felt,” Nigel said with a sigh.
Max closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Sometimes you can’t be ready to do the things you really need to do. You just do them. And that makes you ready.
He looked closely at the coral until he found a small fault line. Carefully he gripped it on either side and snapped it in two.
It wasn’t exactly half, more like sixty-forty. Max held up the bigger part. “I’ll use this,” he said.
Alex unstoppered the vials, one by one. Max poured out the Greek cave water. Only half. Then half the coil dust–filled Kozhim River water, which was still glowing. After he poured in some of the turmeric water, the solution turned black and began to bubble.
Alex, Bitsy, and Nigel flinched and stepped back.
Max held the golf-ball cactus in his hand. He felt bad about this one. But of all the ingredients, this is the one they had the most of. Some of the specimens still had roots. As soon as this was over, he would get Dad to contact his friends out west. He was determined to help preserve these. Nothing should go extinct because of him.
But for now, he had first to figure out how to add it in.
“Do you just throw one in?” Bitsy asked. “I mean, this was supposed to be all about the water. There was no water on that Mexican mountain. We looked.”
Max shook his head, thinking. Cacti grew where water wasn’t. Because they held their own moisture.
He smiled.
Holding the cactus over the glass jar, he split it open with his fingernails and carefully squeezed. A thin substance dripped in with a soft, repeated sssss.
Last, he poured in the water from the volcanic ice cave.
Alex handed him the Isis hippuris. He held it over the rim of the jar. “This better be good, Grandpa Jules,” he whispered, “or I’m never reading another one of your books again.”
He lowered the coral into the jar. The bubbling and hissing softened, then stopped. The swirling colors, which had become inky black with the Nepali turmeric, now dulled to a gunmetal gray.
“What’s happened?” Alex asked.
Max shook his head. “Nothing.”
“It’s like the sea fan stopped any reaction from happening,” Nigel said. “We don’t have enough information, lad. I believe we are going to have to find the entire manuscript—if such a thing exists!”
Max’s nose was filling with smells, but they were things he didn’t recognize. He didn’t know how to feel. He wanted to stop time, to freeze Mom in exactly the condition she was. Because time was the enemy now. If you let it run away, it would take her and he’d never see her again.
And then it would come back for Evelyn.
He banged on the desk, letting out a cry so low and strange it scared him to hear himself. “Do something!” he shouted. “Do something do something do something do something do somethiiiiiiing!”
“Max . . .” Alex said. “Maybe we should break off some more . . .”
But the jar was moving now. Juddering from side to side. From within the opaque gray liquid, the tendrils of the Isis hippuris pulsed. It was slow and subtle at first, like a snow-covered blinking light, but as they watched, it sped up until it was flashing brightly.
“Do you hear something?” Alex said.
Max nodded. It was a soft, high-pitched eeee, like the whistling of a kettle. The jar began to spin clockwise. The liquid inside churned and spat, and Max quickly jammed the metal top on it to keep the liquid from shooting out.
When it came to a stop, the entire mixture had turned a deep amber color. Max took off the lid, and a sharp, acrid smell blasted upward into the room, like t
he fart of some toxic alien beast.
It caught in Max’s throat, which instantly closed up. He turned away, coughing violently. Nigel darted into the hallway, and Alex began throwing open windows. “Someone is supposed to drink that?” Bitsy said.
Max fought the feeling that this was all wrong. That the whole thing was one big, evil joke concocted by the members of the Reform Club. Or by Gloria Bentham.
Alex touched the glass and drew her hand back. “It’s boiling hot.”
“An exothermic reaction,” Max said with a nod. “I was expecting that.”
“But what exactly are you expecting to do with it?” Nigel asked.
From downstairs, Max heard his mother moan.
“Max?” his dad called up. “What’s that smell?”
“It’s the healing potion, Dad!” Max said.
“What? I think every pet in the neighborhood just dropped dead from that stink.”
Max raced down to the kitchen, took two pot holders from a drawer, and brought them back, taking two stairs at a time. Cautiously he pressed the pot holders against the sides of the jar and lifted.
Alex, Bitsy, and Nigel proceeded to the stairs, backward and single file, ready to catch Max if he lurched forward and fell. He made it safely to the bottom and veered into the back room.
Dad was holding Mom’s hand. She was still asleep, and tears were running down his cheek. “You know, I never liked exploring, and I nearly flunked chemistry and biology,” he said. “I’m just a lawyer. And a husband and a dad. Those are the only things I know how to do. I love those things. And I don’t want to lose what I love. So I have to tell you, I don’t really care how it smells. Do you have faith that it will work? Because I don’t know that we have a lot of other options at this point.”
“I don’t have faith it’ll work,” Max said. “But I have less faith it won’t.”
Dad smiled for the first time since Max got home. He leaned over and whispered into his wife’s ear, “Michele . . . Max is back.”
Her eyelids slowly lifted. “Max? Hi!”
“He and Alex and their friends found what they were looking for,” Dad said. “They would like you to try some.”
She struggled to rise from the bed, then sank back. “Try again . . .” Dad said. “Come on, Michele, sit up.”
He turned her on her back and tried to lift her into a sitting position, but it wasn’t working.
Max set the jar on the table. It had cooled off. He didn’t know whether that was good or bad. It still smelled, but not nearly as strong. He didn’t know whether that was good or bad either.
Or how much to give her.
Dad was shaking. He held out a clean paper cup but had to balance the bottom on the night table. Carefully Max poured some of the amber liquid into the cup. It was completely uniform—no fragments, no pieces of Isis hippuris, no swirls of black. Nigel, Alex, and Bitsy stared at it in utter shock.
Dad’s face was wet with tears now, and Max tried not to look. He needed his own vision to be clear and his hands to be steady. “Mom,” he said, “remember when I was little and didn’t want to eat? You would hold up my spoon and say, ‘Heeeere comes a rocket ship!’ And I loved rockets so much I would open up even if I hated the food?”
No response.
“Well, OK then, here comes a rocket ship! Bzzzzzz!” Max guided the cup toward her lips. Even though her eyelids had shut, her lips and teeth separated ever so slightly. Max tilted the cup and slowly let the liquid pour. It came dribbling out of the side of her mouth and onto the sheets. But some was going in, he could tell.
Mom gagged and coughed, then closed her mouth and seemed to swallow. But she wasn’t turning colors or throwing up, so he tried another cup. Pools of amber liquid were gathering on either side of her on the bed sheets and on her pajamas. “Is any of it getting in?” Dad asked.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Max said. “I think she likes it.”
When the third cup went down, Max sat back in his chair. Alex came to stand at his side. He wrapped his arms around her leg and waited.
And waited.
Mom’s breaths were raspy now. Her lips moved once or twice, as if she wanted to say something. The fingers of her right hand twitched. Max watched the rising and falling of her chest get shallower and shallower.
And then, as her head lolled to the side, her breathing stopped.
Max sat upright in his chair. It wasn’t working. It should be working by now. “It was a lie . . .” he murmured.
“Oh, Max,” Alex said, reaching out to him.
She was crying. He lurched away. He didn’t want touch. Or tears.
The serum was a total lie. His trip around the world was the dumbest thing anyone had ever done in history. Everything was swirling. The Hulk seemed to be dancing on the windowsill. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the priest entering the room. He rocked back in his chair so hard the wood cracked.
As he toppled over, he let out a scream that came from the bottom of his toes.
46
“OHHH, that was a bit loud, Max, wasn’t it?”
Now Max was hearing her voice. It was cruel that his mind could do that. He let his cry exhaust every bit of oxygen in his body until he was doubled over and light-headed. Then he sucked it in again and stood up next to the broken chair.
But the next cry caught in his throat.
Everything in the room had changed.
Mom was sitting up.
She was thin and pale, looking around in bewilderment. She lifted her hands and stared at the gross, sticky liquid that had dripped all over her fingers. “What is that? Did I throw this up?”
“Mo-o-o-o-o-om!” Max cried out. If Alex hadn’t grabbed him by the shoulders he would have jumped on his mother and maybe crushed her. “It worked! I can’t believe it worked!”
“What worked?” Mom said, looking from face to face.
“Honey, how are you feeling?” Dad asked, kneeling by the other side of her bed.
“Like I just had the worst sleep in my life,” she said. “Some horrible dreams. But you know, I feel pretty good now. Except for this foul-smelling stuff.”
“What. Just. Happened?” Alex said.
She was weeping. Bitsy was weeping. Nigel was blowing his nose into a paper towel. Dad leaned over and gave Mom a kiss on the mouth.
“That is so gross,” Max said.
“Then I’ll do it again,” Dad said.
Mom’s body was shaking with laughter. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
Max took a deep breath and told her everything that had happened—the confrontation with Gloria, the mixing of the chemicals. She listened, shaking her head in amazement. “I can’t quite believe I’m not dreaming.”
“You’re not,” Max said.
“Definitely not,” Bitsy said.
“Nope,” Alex piped up.
Honk, went Nigel’s nose in the paper towel.
“Well, I’m also starving. Please, George, can you clean me up? Whatever was in that potion is absolutely foul.”
Max’s dad stood and pointed to the doorway. “Out, everyone! I will prepare the patient for a homecoming party that will last until the first person says ‘uncle’!”
For the first time since he’d been home, Max felt fine leaving his mom in the room. He ran out to the kitchen and jumped on a chair, screaming.
Alex turned on Sonos and blasted music. She and Bitsy danced into the living room. Nigel seemed to be intensely stomping on insects until Max realized he was doing a jig.
“We did it, Max!” Alex cried out. “I can’t believe we did it!”
Max began singing along with the playlist. He didn’t really know the words, but he didn’t care. He could make up better ones. Mom was well. She really was. That was the most important thing ever. And they still had enough left to give Evelyn. She would walk again. Together, she and he would fly. And someday, some supersmart people would figure out how it all worked and make more of this stuff. Fo
r everyone.
Yes.
Max jumped off the chair onto the carpet. From that spot in the kitchen he could see the portrait of Jules Verne they’d rescued from the attic and hung in the living room. He ran to it and gave it a quick salute. “Thanks, dude,” he said. Stepping on the sofa, he gave it a kiss on its face. Kissing a painting was easier than kissing a person.
Being a painting, it didn’t react. But Max could swear it looked ten years younger.
He laughed and began to spin around like the snows of Antarctica, like the rotation of the Earth. As he spun he laughed, and he thought just maybe he would never stop.
47
MAX was going to get the chocolate cupcakes right if it killed him.
“I promise I will not set the stove above three-fifty,” he said. More to himself than anyone, but both Alex and Smriti found it very funny. They were sitting at the kitchen table trying to do a crossword puzzle.
He greased the cupcake tins like he had the first time. He sealed up the chocolate-chip bag. He opened and closed the refrigerator and looked out the window. “When do you think Dad and Bitsy will be back with the milk?”
“It was more than milk,” Alex said. “Your mom gave them a long shopping list. Dude, we can’t start until they get back. So chill.”
Max nodded. But he kept pacing. Upstairs, Mom was taking a bath. He could hear her singing softly. Later a bunch of neighbors was going to come over. Just close friends. Mom wouldn’t be 100 percent for a while.
They’d all agreed to keep the potion a secret for now. That was the advice of Dad and his lawyer friends. Best to wait until it was looked at by scientists and a strategy had been devised for mass production. Then they would roll out the news in a planned, organized way.
Which was fine with Max. The publicity for their previous adventure had only just died down, and the quiet felt good.
Outside Max heard the thunk of a car door closing. He raced to the front door, with Alex and Smriti right behind him. The Lopez family car was parked out front, and the rear passenger door opened.