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PROLOGUE
They fled faster than their hearts could beat. His mother led him to the cave at the top of the mountain, where they huddled panting in the dark and listening for His inevitable footfalls.
“What will He do to me?” The boy’s teeth chattered.
“Shhhhh,” she assured him. She was all he had and he was all she had. They had only been given eleven short years together—not nearly enough.
“Where is Father going to take me?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere that I can’t find you. But He will erase your memory and you won’t remember me or your home. It won’t hurt.”
“It hurts now,” he said. The silence prickled his skin and he itched at it but then fell still again, listening. “But why is He doing this?”
“Your father has lost Himself … He is the Dark One.”
Then they heard His footfalls on the mountain outside the cave. The boy clung to his mother with his life.
She knew these were their last moments together and she wanted to give him something: she chose hope.
“Listen closely and mark my words,” she whispered. “There is a prophecy. It speaks of a girl who can fly and a boy who knows everything. The prophecy says that they have the power to bring about great change. The day will come when they will stop your father and we can be together again.”
“But when will that be?”
“Soon. I hope. Very soon.”
The boy thought about this girl who could fly and this boy who knew everything and he promised to hold them in his heart where He could not make him forget.
“Please,” he prayed. “Please let them come very, very soon.”
Part I
CHAPTER
1
One problem with being a genius—and there are many problems—is that there is an overwhelming need on the part of adults to “assess” you, which is just a tricky way of saying they want to figure out exactly how smart you are and why you are smart and where your smarts come from. (And silently ponder the unspoken question that doesn’t appear on any test but hangs heavy in the air—“For heaven’s sake, why can’t I be as smart as you?”)
Conrad Harrington III was in the middle of his third assessment of that day by yet another ninny, who called herself an expert, and even though he was only seven years old he still had better things to do than answer her silly questions, which not only were boring but took up a lot of his valuable time.
“In a candy store there are two times as many jelly beans as there are gummy bears and four times as many licorice whips as there are jelly beans,” said the ninny. “If there are a hundred and thirty-six lollipops and there is the same number of lollipops as there is licorice, how many jelly beans are there?”
“Thirty-four.”
“You build a house with four square walls each with only southern exposure. A bear shows up. What color is the bear?”
“White.”
“How many of each animal did Abraham take on the ark?”
“None, Noah built the ark.”
“In this number sequence—”
“I don’t know.”
“I haven’t finished the question.”
“I still don’t know.” Conrad slumped back in his chair and glared.
“Complete this number sequence: one, eight, twenty-seven, forty-eight,” the ninny persisted. She introduced herself as Dr. Hilda Hamish and she was short and puckered. At some point in her life, probably when she was five, her face pulled itself into a concerned question mark and it had never managed to free itself in all the time that followed.
“I don’t know,” Conrad repeated, and looked out the window.
The ninny pursed her lips anxiously; she had promised to complete her assessment that evening, but if she couldn’t get the boy to cooperate she would be stuck. He was a scrawny seven-year-old with a head that was too large for his body, serious eyes, and a sad mouth. At that moment he had his arms crossed over his chest and a stormy look on his brow. She considered how to proceed and decided on a different tack.
“Your father told me that you like numbers.”
Conrad turned on the poor woman. “And did you believe my father?”
The ninny was taken aback, but instead of dismissing the question out of hand she actually thought about it. “Your father is a very smart man.”
“No, my father is an important senator and he is powerful in Washington, but that doesn’t make him smart; there is a difference.”
“Oh,” she said nervously, and looked down at her assessment test, trying to figure out which question to ask next and how to get this process back on track.
“Do you know why you are here?” Conrad pressed—he would be the one asking the questions now.
“Of course,” she sputtered. “Your father wants to know how he can better help you grow and learn.”
“Wrong again.” Conrad rolled his eyes at her obtuseness. “Today is my seventh birthday, but my father canceled my party because he’s angry with me.”
She looked at him questioningly and he admitted, “I hacked the Defense Department mainframe and reprogrammed an orbiting satellite. The president found out, and now my father sees me as a threat to his political career.” Conrad leaned forward in his chair and bore down on the flustered woman. “He is using you to help control me.”
The ninny’s face flushed bright red and her mouth puckered into four different questions before giving up completely and turning her eyes back to her forms.
“Perhaps we’d better go back to language comprehension.” She quickly flipped her pages about.
“There is something you should know about my father,” Conrad whispered.
The ninny shifted uncomfortably, her face almost cracking in half as it endeavored to fully transform into the question mark it longed to be. “What is that?” she asked.
“My father has a terrible secret.”
“A secret?” she whispered.
“Yes. He tries to hide it, but I’m going to find out what it is.”
A forest fire of goose bumps exploded up her neck. “What sort of secret?”
Conrad held her gaze. “He’s—”
Suddenly the door to the room flung open, causing Dr. Hamish to jump out of her skin. Standing in the doorway was Senator Harrington. He was a man who’d been packaged to perfection—tall, blond, athletic, and topped with a walloping serving of charm and charisma. He was John F. Kennedy crossed with Brad Pitt, and when he smiled, he dazzled.
“Thank you, Dr. Hamish, that will be all for today,” said the senator, smiling.
“Oh, Senator Harrington?” The ninny scrambled to her feet, even more flustered than before. “You surprised me.”
“He was listening the whole time,” said Conrad. “He does that.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
“It’s been a long day.” Senator Harrington took D
r. Hamish’s hand and guided her toward the door. “My assistant will show you the way out.”
“But the assessment…?”
Before Dr. Hamish knew what was happening she was escorted out of the mansion and deposited, with all conceivable politeness and charm, of course, onto the sidewalk of their Washington, D.C., brownstone. From his playroom window Conrad could see her still shuffling her papers on the street and suddenly found himself feeling sorry that she was gone and sad that he would never see her again: there was an honesty about Dr. Hilda Hamish that he was thirsty for. With his father looming over him he had little time to consider this, though.
Folding his arms across his chest, Senator Harrington leveled Conrad with a hard stare. “There is a woman downstairs. Her name’s Dr. Letitia Hellion and she wants to take you away to her school. She says that she can help you—make you better.”
“Mother won’t let you send me away.”
“Because you’re my son, I’m going to give you a choice,” the senator continued. “You can go with this Dr. Hellion right now, or you can come with me and I’ll take you to the president. You will tell the president that you didn’t reprogram that satellite and that it’s all been a big mistake.”
“But Father, that satellite was falling out of its orbit,” Conrad explained for what he knew was the third time. “If I hadn’t reprogrammed it, it would have crashed over Seattle.”
“I will provide the president with credible evidence that someone else was responsible and that they used you as a patsy. You’ll act like a normal seven-year-old boy and make him believe it.”
“You mean act stupid.”
Once again Senator Harrington completely ignored Conrad’s remark and pressed his own agenda. “From now on you will do as I say, when I say, and stop this.” He pointed to his head.
“Just stop?” Conrad repeated, thinking about how he would stop thinking.
To Conrad’s surprise Senator Harrington suddenly softened, reaching forward and taking his young son’s hand. “Connie,” he said gently, and smiled encouragingly, and his smile dazzled: it said “you’re my guy” and “come be on my team” and “you and I share a special secret” and also a little bit of “agree with me and everything will be okay.”
“I can help you. But you have to work with me, not against me. I forbid you from ever interfering like that again. You have to understand: bad things happen and no one wants your help. Who cares if the satellite crashed? They’re called accidents for a reason. Why make it into a problem?”
Conrad sat back in his chair and looked at his father with amazement. “But if people get hurt doesn’t that make it wrong?”
“Why don’t you let me decide what’s wrong?” The senator’s smile now coaxed. “Don’t you want to have your birthday party?”
Conrad looked at his father and for one glorious moment thought that he would let him decide, would stand at his side and be his best buddy and grow in the warmth of his companionship and approval. He would go to the president, and while his father lied about what happened to the satellite he would play with a small truck, making loud engine noises; he would look the other way and act as his father told him to. He would get his big birthday party.
The moment passed.
“I guess I’m too old for birthday parties now,” Conrad said finally.
Senator Harrington’s smile melted into a hard line and he got to his feet. A pain began bubbling in the back of his head and he pushed it with the fingers on his right hand. “There’s a reason these things happen, reasons you don’t understand,” he barked with a strange, angry voice. “No one wants you to get involved.”
“You mean someone wanted that satellite to crash?”
“No! No.” The senator’s composure was slipping and with effort he took himself in hand by straightening his tie and brushing the creases from his pants.
“You leave me no choice, Conrad.” Senator Harrington turned away. “I’m sending Dr. Hellion up now.”
“But Father…”
Senator Harrington walked out of the room and out of Conrad’s life without missing a beat. As Conrad stood alone and helpless, despite the vast resources his genius provided him, he wondered what he was going to do without a father to father him.
CHAPTER
2
Conrad had four long, agonizing years to consider and reconsider his conversation with his father while he suffered under the control of Dr. Letitia Hellion. Dr. Hellion had taken it upon herself to collect all things exceptional and under the guise of “helping” was systematically eradicating the world of anything that she deemed to be abnormal. In her opinion, Conrad’s extreme intelligence was definitely abnormal and thus a threat to society as a whole and to Conrad as an individual. Day in and day out, year after year, Dr. Hellion used every means at her disposal (and her arsenal was indomitable) to force Conrad to relinquish his intelligence and embrace normalcy.
There was no doubt in Conrad’s mind that his father would have left him at the mercy of Dr. Hellion indefinitely had Piper McCloud not arrived. Like Conrad, Piper was exceptional: she had the ability to fly. With her long brown hair and sky-blue eyes Piper was like a well-meaning tornado stuffed into a china teacup. Thanks to Piper and her flying, Conrad was able to finally plan an escape that not only set the two of them free, but all the other kids under Dr. Hellion’s control too.
But of course the price of his freedom was the reminder that he had no home to return to: his father wouldn’t take him back. Once again Piper stepped in and saved the day by offering up her home and family. Betty and Joe McCloud lived on a humble farm in remote Lowland County and, like Piper, they were honest and good-hearted country folk. They soon came to love Conrad like their own son and Conrad adjusted to the pace of life on the farm and began to flourish. He built a laboratory in the old barn and got to work on his pet “time travel” project; he helped Joe with the farm work and ate up every last bite of Betty’s amazing country cooking. All of a sudden Conrad was smack dab in the middle of a real family; he had loving adults looking out for him and over him, and he had the company of his good friend Piper, who could always be counted on to come up with some crazy scheme.
For instance, that very day Piper had happened to uncover a fabulous secret that Conrad was trying to keep from everyone: it was his twelfth birthday. Not only had Piper discovered this, but she had planned a surprise birthday party for him. With the greatest care she had secretly invited all of their friends and had planned everything so that at just the right moment they would leap out on her unsuspecting friend and yell—
“SURPRISE!” Piper mouthed the words, not allowing sound to escape.
Before the sun had touched the clouds that morning, Piper had slipped from her bed, tingling with excitement. Conrad had the little bedroom next to hers, and she was careful to be very quiet when she opened her bedroom window. As soon as her feet lifted off the ground, the thrill of taking to the morning sky made her soar.
It was the beginning of November and the air was crisp and she flew fast and far over the forest. They had enjoyed an Indian summer that kept the leaves on the trees late that year, and the foliage burned red, yellow, brown, and orange in hues so bright and vivid it took Piper’s breath away. The wind picked at the leaves and tossed them about in passionate tangos. Piper swooped down over the trees and went low, as low as she dared, and dodged this way and that through the festival of color.
Piper allowed the twists and turns of Clothespin Creek to lead her back to home and family. It contented Piper to fly over the simple farms of her neighbors, where she could see the sheep and cattle grazing and hear the roosters crowing.
When Piper reached her farm she circled above it. It still amazed her to see all that had changed on the farm. When Conrad had first arrived at the McClouds’ they had twenty rocky acres of farmland and not much else. No sooner had Conrad moved in than he began urging Piper’s father to adopt revolutionary farming techniques, which had lifted his crop yiel
d from poor to overabundant. As the money came in, Conrad advised Joe McCloud to buy the hundred acres of swampland that bordered their south field. It was with amazement that Millie Mae Miller, the town gossip, reported to her sewing circle that somehow Joe had devised a way to irrigate the swamp, drain the water into a reservoir, and then plant crop after bountiful crop. In no time flat the McClouds had gone from subsistence rock farmers to the most prosperous landowners in the county. Joe now had a shed stocked full of the most up-to-date farming equipment of every description, the herd of cattle had tripled in number, and the sheep were bursting from the fields.
The simple clapboard farmhouse had undergone its own Cinderella-like transformation. The peeling, eroding structure had been revived with a splashy coat of bright blue paint. White shutters and flower boxes had been added around the windows and a flowering vine danced up through lattice.
Circling one last time, Piper quickly dove down and landed on the roof of the old barn. Wiggling through a hole in the cupola, she arrived in the hayloft to find Myrtle waiting for her.
After Piper and Conrad had escaped from Dr. Hellion’s evil institute, all of their exceptional friends had gone their separate ways. It was quite a task getting the word out quietly about Conrad’s surprise party that morning.
Myrtle, a painfully shy beanpole of a girl, was the first to arrive. Of course, Myrtle would be first since she could run faster than the speed of light. She was sitting on top of a large rafter, her feet dangling impatiently.
“Myrtle! You’re a sight for sore eyes!” Piper swooped down and settled next to her. “I can’t wait to see the look on Conrad’s face when he sees you all here.”
“You sure he doesn’t know?” Myrtle was very shy and she spoke softly and tilted her head downward in an effort to hide beneath her thick brown hair.
“Nope.” Piper shook her head with certainty as she crossed her heart with solemnity. “My lips are sealed.”
Piper showed Myrtle where she had stowed boxes of decorations and the girls began to decorate the hayloft with streamers, bright signs, and balloons. No sooner had they begun than Nalen and Ahmed Mustafa, mischievous identical twins and weather changers, arrived, followed soon after by Daisy and Jasper. Piper was particularly happy to see her good friend Violet, who could shrink to the size of a teacup. Violet, with flashing brown eyes and a dark complexion, was soft-spoken but fiercely loyal and surprisingly courageous.