Charlie’s mind started spinning again after seeing Maria’s text message asking for help. Was Maria just being dramatic or was something really wrong? Had the soldiers gone back to her house? The thought was enough to make her bracelet activate. Quickly she unlocked her phone to reply. But as she began typing, the cracked corner of her screen split straight across the bottom of the phone’s face. The lower one-third of the screen no longer responded to Charlie’s fingertips.
“Crap,” she muttered. Her strength ability was completely destroying the thing. Why did it have to happen now? Andy looked over and his eyes widened at the sight of her Frankenphone, but for once he wisely stayed quiet.
Charlie tapped the delicate screen lightly, wondering if maybe the cursor had just frozen momentarily, but soon confirmed that she couldn’t type another letter. The message box was right in the middle of the damage. A second later the screen faded and went black. Now what was she supposed to do?
A flood of anxiety, anger, and frustration washed over her. This whole situation was hard enough without her phone giving her problems. She glanced at her mother, who was still talking to Dr. Sharma. Andy had curled up in the chair with their dog, Jessie, and was talking to her quietly as he petted her.
“Hey,” Charlie said to Andy, going over to him. “Can I borrow your phone? I need to text Maria back and mine’s dead.”
“Mom said not to text our friends.”
“Yeah, but this is an emergency.”
“No,” he said. “Go plug yours in if you need to do it so badly.”
Charlie grimaced. “Come on, please?”
“No. Do you want me to tell Mom on you?”
Charlie sighed and gave up. She went back to the kitchen, spying the landline. Her mom was standing right next to it. She went after it, but when she reached for it, her mother automatically pulled it out of her hands and put it back in the holder, shaking her head and frowning.
Charlie tried to explain that she wasn’t about to tell anyone what was going on—she just needed to check in with Maria. But Mrs. Wilde turned away and plugged her free ear so she could hear what Dr. Sharma was saying.
Out of options, Charlie dropped into a chair and hoped Maria’s “little problem” was just that—little. Her mind turned back to the other urgent situation of the day, which was playing out like a horror movie. She was hardly able to comprehend that her father had been abducted, probably by the same strange, animal-like soldiers she’d fought off hours before. And it was because he had created the bracelet that was stuck on her wrist right now. Her dad. Had made this insanely powerful bracelet. No wonder he’d been abducted! Mr. Dr. Wilde, as her friends called him, was no lowly biologist. He was amazing. And Charlie couldn’t tell anyone. Not even him.
Not that it mattered. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed and exhausted by the bombardment of otherworldly events. School that morning seemed like it had been a week ago. Like Andy, she needed to curl up and process what had just happened.
She hoped the soldiers hadn’t been rough with her dad like they’d been to her. It was a relief to know that Dr. Sharma believed Dr. Gray needed Charles, so he wouldn’t hurt him. But Charlie’s imagination was going crazy after everything she’d experienced, and she couldn’t shake the thought of more terrible things happening to him. What if her father wouldn’t help Dr. Gray? Or worse . . . what if he would? It was a terrible situation no matter what.
Charlie’s mom hung up and came back to the living room. “Quinn assured me that now that Dr. Gray has your father, he won’t need you or your bracelet, Charlie. So you don’t have to worry about them coming after you anymore.” She let out a sigh of relief. “We’re all going to be okay. And we’re going to find him.” She searched Charlie’s face, then checked Andy’s response too, making sure they were both handling the news all right.
Charlie frowned. “Are you sure they won’t come after me? Why would they suddenly not want the bracelet when that was all they wanted earlier today?” She wondered if that meant her friends would be safe too. That would be a big relief.
“Well,” said Mrs. Wilde, a bit of worry creeping back into her voice despite her intentions, “I guess nothing is sure anymore. But they probably found your father sometime after they attacked you. And I guess it makes sense that they’d want him more than the bracelet—your father made that device over ten years ago. With today’s technology, he could make something more advanced now.”
“Maybe one without any glitches,” said Charlie, thinking of how the wrong powers sometimes activated.
Andy sat up. “But I still don’t understand why that Dr. Gray dude kidnapped Dad. Why doesn’t he just make a new device himself? Isn’t he a biologist too?”
“Quinn said that Dad and the other scientists were all creating different types of devices. I imagine Dr. Gray wants to skip all the work that Dad already put into the Mark Five and have him improve on what he’s already done.”
While Charlie absorbed this new information, Andy just shook his head. “I can’t believe our dad can do crazy junk like that. Who knew? And you too, Charlie,” he said, their previous disagreement over the phone apparently forgotten. “You’re pretty cool.”
Charlie shrugged. Seeing Andy able to let some of this intense stuff fly right over his head was a relief—she didn’t want him freaking out inside like she had been. But hearing her mom explain things made her feel a lot better. Maybe that had helped Andy, too.
“So . . . what do we do now?” Charlie asked her mother. She inched toward the landline phone again, growing more and more anxious to reach Maria and find out what was going on with her.
“We sit tight and wait for Quinn to arrive. She’s going to give us further instructions once she reaches her government contact.”
“Do we get to stay home from school?” asked Andy.
“I think that would be best, at least for tomorrow. Even if Quinn is right about her theory, I’m not confident enough to let you two out of my sight quite yet.”
“I have tests coming up,” Charlie murmured automatically, knowing at least two of her teachers were planning them at the end of this week before spring break began. She hadn’t had much time to prepare with everything that had happened. But tests seemed so much less important now.
“Well, I guess that’s pretty cool,” said Andy. “A day off tomorrow, then only two more days of school.” He looked up with a consternated expression. “Oh, Mom, I forgot. Juan asked me at school today if I could go camping with his family on break. But . . . I guess I should say no.”
Charlie’s mother blinked. “What? Who?”
“Juan is one of Andy’s new school friends,” Charlie reminded her. “He’s been over a few times but maybe not when you’ve been here.” Diana Wilde had been working extreme hours since the move to Arizona a month ago, and Charlie was getting used to having to fill her mother in on everything.
“Oh, of course I remember him,” said Mrs. Wilde, distracted. “I drove him home once and met his mom. Nice family. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.” She looked at Andy and trailed off, lost in thought. “Do you want to go?”
“Well, I mean I did. But with Dad missing, I don’t know.” His face screwed up and he buried it in Jessie’s fur.
“Actually . . . ,” Mrs. Wilde began, then shook her head, looking overwhelmed. “I can’t handle one more thing to think about right now. I’m sorry, buddy. Let’s figure this out later.”
Andy lifted his head and nodded solemnly. Everything was up in the air, their mom was trying to deal, and Charlie knew Andy didn’t handle this kind of stress very well. She thought distraction might be good for him. “Hey. I have the second Ms. Marvel for you,” she said quietly. “You want it?”
Andy breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, sure.”
When Charlie returned with the comic, she caught her mother’s grateful gaze and returned it with a solemn, brave one of her own. A certain, unusual kind of energy passed between them. A bond of trust, perhaps, or a deep sense of understanding. It felt like one of those looks between two adults when there were children in the room—and this time Charlie wasn’t the child. She’d seen it dozens of times between teachers at school. Between her parents across the dinner table. All sorts of unsaid things passing through the air. It was Charlie’s first experience being on the receiving end of it, and it made her feel like she was in on a special secret. Like her mom was silently asking Charlie if she wanted to be a member of the secret looks club. And if she was ready for the responsibility that went along with that.
Charlie was. She thought so, anyway. She swallowed hard and nodded slightly.
Her mom’s eyes grew shiny. She leaned in and embraced Charlie in a long, tight hug, and stroked her hair. “Let’s try to keep things light for Andy’s sake, okay?” she whispered.
“Okay.”
“Atta girl.” Mrs. Wilde released Charlie and gave her a half-smile, and then reached for Andy to hug him too.
Charlie’s phone vibrated again, jolting her back to Maria’s problem. She looked at the screen to find another text message. “Seriously, Chuck,” it read. “Help needed pronto. I think you’re the only one who can help me at this point.”
“Maria!” Charlie murmured, tapping and swiping desperately on the alert to try and open the message, but it soon faded. She had to find out what was going on. She stood up quickly and excused herself to the bathroom, grabbing the landline phone on her way. But once in the bathroom she realized she had no idea what Maria’s phone number was and she couldn’t look it up. This was so frustrating. She had to do something about her phone—what if her father tried to call and she couldn’t answer him? What if Maria was really in danger? What if the soldiers came back and she couldn’t let her mom know?
This was a terrible time to throw one more problem on the pile, right when her mother had so much else on her mind. But Charlie knew it was the right thing to do. As she went back to the living room to confess about her broken cell phone, she wondered if she could recall Maria’s number from memory. But she’d barely looked at it—she’d just added Maria as a contact. She hadn’t written it down anywhere else. Just then she remembered she’d seen it one other place. It was on the soccer team roster on Charlie’s bulletin board in her room. Maria Torres’s name and contact information were at the top of it. She made a detour to her bedroom.
But when Charlie tried calling Maria from the landline, the phone rang five times and went to voice mail. Why didn’t she answer?