Chapter 14: Rob

“My house,” I said just before noon on Thursday, after I’d had time to think. It would be the perfect taunt to me to tell my parents the truth or break down and try to get the luck from the experiment. But no doubt there would be booby-traps everywhere if I tried to use it, and some humiliation waiting for when I admitted I’d spent my whole life lying.

“Ahh,” said Art. “You’re right. That’s brilliant.”

“Thanks,” I said. I might not have luck, but at least Art could give me props for intelligence.

But he added, “Not you. Laura.”

“You know, maybe you shouldn’t sound like you admire her so much when she’s the one who is wrecking your life, too,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but she’s doing it so cleverly. You have to admire that,” said Art. “Speaking purely theoretically.”

“Art, she’s scary.”

“Right.” He shivered a little. “I need to remember that. If the electricity thing gets out and people start to duplicate it, then that will be the end of any advantage that we have at St. James. A world of people who all have good luck could be coming. Which is almost the same thing as no one with good luck, isn’t it?” said Art.

It was true, but it wouldn’t necessarily be bad for me. For my parents and the rest of my extended family, maybe. For almost everyone at St. James, including even Trudy. But for me, it could be good. After I apologized to Trudy properly, we might be set for life.

Not that Laura had done it for anything other than her own selfish reasons. No doubt she planned to give the plans to Excel Pharmaceutical. Then she and her family would have control of who got the formulas when and how much they sold for. She also had the added bonus of seeing me and Trudy ruined.

“Actually, speaking statistically, the release of either or both of these widely will produce the same effect in the long term. Anarchy,” said Art, nodding his head happily.

“And you think that’s a good thing?” I asked.

“Card-carrying anarchist,” said Art, and he actually pulled a card out of his back pocket and showed it to me. It read, “American Anarchy Association.”

“Triple A?” I said. Only instead of being a backup in an emergency, they caused the emergencies and made them worse. On purpose.

“The irony,” Art pointed out. “That tells you a lot about us, I think.”

I drove back to my house without much regard for speed limits. Art pointed out that this was proof that I was an anarchist at heart, too.

“Don’t take it hard, though. Most people are. They just don’t realize it,” he said.

“Art, I’m not an anarchist. I think there should be speed limits posted. I think people should follow the speed limits. I usually do. I just can’t right now.”

“Anarchy at work. You see? You don’t need the government to impose rules. They are part of your natural thought process. You know that in an emergency, rules have to be changed or suspended. Why do you need a government to tell you when you can do that? By the time you get permission, the emergency is over.”

I hit a big bump and we caught some air. I admit it, I thought we were going to flip over and die. It was not what I wanted to spend my last moments of life doing, listening to Art talk about anarchy. This was definitely proof of my bad luck yet again. I just hoped Art’s good luck canceled out mine and we survived this. Otherwise, Laura was going to win big time.

“Do you think she’s given herself a lot of good luck already?” asked Art. “She could have shocked herself a thousand times in the last twenty-four hours since the lab went missing. Think how much luck she might have. She could be the luckiest woman in the world. If she could stand the pain of all those shocks, that is. But something tells me that if there’s any woman who could do that, it would be Laura Chevely.”

“Shut up Art,” I said.

I think Art muttered something about anarchy at work again. If I hadn’t needed both hands on the wheel I would have used one to strangle him. I swear I would.

Luckily by the time we got to my house, the urge had passed. I’d say that was proof that anarchy hadn’t won, because my sense of rules had returned. I don’t know what Art would have said. He was finally keeping his mouth shut.

“My parents aren’t here, thank goodness,” I said. It was mid-afternoon by now and I could see from the window in the garage that their cars were both missing. I went around the back to my usual entrance, the one closest to my room.

Art grabbed me just in time. I glanced up and saw a brick falling overhead.

It landed on the sidewalk in pieces and I stared down at it, thinking that could have been my head.

I couldn’t decide if it was a booby-trap from Laura or just bad luck. Either one made me really, really nervous.

I used my key to open the door. Art followed me.

“Where do you think she put it all, then?” I asked, closing the door behind us.

“Basement?” said Art.

Another basement. Of course. We had a big racquetball room down there. “Let’s go down and see,” I said. I led the way, turning lights on as we went.

“I can tell it’s here. I can smell it,” said Art, excited.

Sure enough, when we opened the final door, the bright lights of the court hit our eyes, along with the sight of Art’s lab set up neatly on tables that Laura had to have become an expert and setting up and taking down.

“You better check to make sure it’s the real one this time. And that it’s all here,” I said.

Art was leaning against the wall, with his forehead away from me. He kept taking in deep breaths like he was an asthmatic.

“I know how important this is to you,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Look around and make sure it’s all here.”

Art pulled away from the wall and looked around slowly. He picked up a few things, smelled them—I shuddered at that—and then put them down again. After a few minutes, he said, “It’s all here. The real stuff this time.”

I let myself take a breath. Then I tensed again. “It’s too easy,” I said. “She has to have done something else.”

Art kept looking around. “Look, don’t touch anything. Let me double check all the wires.”

“She wouldn’t use wires. It would be something else.” Something creative. And really bad. I wasn’t so much afraid of being blown to bits as I was of being blown out of my clothes. And then having pictures taken of me for the school yearbook. Or the national press.

“What about your parents?” asked Art.

“They’re both busy today,” I said. At least, I thought they were. My parents were always busy.

But then the doorbell rang. Who could it be? I ended up looking at my cell phone and realizing that there were a bunch of messages from Trudy. Maybe she had decided to forgive me and was excited to tell me so she had come over here to find me. I went upstairs and opened the door eagerly, but it wasn’t Trudy outside.

In fact, all I saw at first were camera flashes. Then I was blind and stumbling for a minute or two. When I could see again, my head was pounding like crazy and my mouth tasted like I had just eaten a pile of very dry, iron-filled dirt. And also, my eyes stung. But I saw this guy in a suit standing in front of me holding a giant check like the ones they do for that magazine sale. Or whatever it is. With the host who wears a toupee.

This wasn’t him, but all I could think was that maybe the camera flashes had acted like lightning and I had turned out lucky, after all.

“Mr. Robert Chiltern?” he asked.

“I don’t understand. What’s this for?” I asked, waving a hand at the check. If I looked at it closely, I could see that it had a name written on it. It took me a few seconds to puzzle out that it was my name.

“This is for the proof that you sent in about your experiments on luck. We’re from Excel Pharmaceutical and we’ve been looking for a way to change luck for twenty years. The whole world has been looking, in fact. And now you found it while doing a science fair project for your school. You have won our hundred thousand dollar prize.”

One hundred thousand dollars for Art’s project? That didn’t seem like a fair prize at all, considering the implications of what he had found out. It was all confusing because they thought it was my project, which was obviously Laura’s hand in things.

Laura. She had given Art his lab back, but not before she had made it completely useless by sending all the information to Excel Pharmaceutical, her family’s company. This was the last piece of the puzzle. Now it made sense. While Art and I had spent the last day running around looking for the physical laboratory, Laura had been stealing everything that mattered about it virtually.

“I didn’t enter any contest,” I said, without much hope that it would help. “I don’t want your prize and you can leave right now.”

“Of course you did.” Another camera flashed in my face. “It’s right here. Your entry. Your signature.”

I looked down and saw that it was my signature. Maybe faked, but maybe not. Laura could have gotten it if she’d waved something at me in student government that I had to sign. I couldn’t even remember it happening, but that didn’t mean it didn’t.

“I don’t want it,” I said. “Take back the money. I just want control over the information from the experiment.”

“Oh, that’s impossible. When you entered the contest, you contracted with us that your results are now ours, and that you would be willing to answer questions and do promotions for the contest.”

Art came out behind me. “What’s going on?” he said.

“Something about a contest and Excel Pharmaceutical. The Chevely’s company.”

He stared at the cameras and at the check.

“And before you think that I had anything to do with this—” I started.

“But Rob—if they have all the results, it hardly matters. They can synthesize everything in their own labs.” Art looked gray.

“It’s yours,” I said out loud. “No one should be able to take that away from you. No one, no matter how big the company or how much luck the people who own it have.”

“It looks like they already have,” said Art glumly.

Soon after, Trudy showed up. She ran over to me and threw her arms around me like I’d just been released from some hostage situation. Then she started crying and kissing me at the same time. Hey, I wasn’t about to stop her. I was glad that whatever had happened, we were together again.

The cameraman looked like he’d just died and gone to heaven. He was snapping shots all over the place.

“You’re OK,” Trudy got out, when she was finally making words with her mouth instead of incoherent sobs.

“Of course I’m OK.” What in the world had she thought? And when she found out the truth, would she still be this glad to see me?

“You, too, Art?” she said, glancing up at him.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“What happened?”

“You’ve been missing for two days. Your parents are terrified. The police are trying to find you. And they all think that I had something to do with it,” said Trudy.

It was the wrong thing for her to say in front of the publicity team here. Someone had quickly gotten out a tape recorder and turned it on, holding it up to Trudy.

“It’s just a mistake,” I said. “Art and I were just out having fun all night. Boys’ night and all that. We skipped school, but no big deal. We were celebrating. Because of the Excel contest.” I did not want to bring up Laura at a time like this.

“Having fun?” said Trudy. “Rob, do you know what happened to me while you were gone? Do you know where I’ve just come from?”

This was the part where she stopped forgiving me. “Uh—” I said.

Then a reporter stepped forward. “Do you have something to say about this, Mr. Chiltern?” he asked. “Is having your girlfriend arrested part of a publicity campaign?”

Arrested? I gaped at Trudy. “You were arrested?” I asked. And she wasn’t hitting me instead of hugging and kissing me?

“For stealing Art’s lab and for having something to do with you and him disappearing. They handcuffed me and brought me to the station. They were going to put me in jail,” said Trudy tearfully.

“What happened? I mean, how did you get out?”

“I—” Trudy started to say.

But at that moment, the police showed up, sirens blaring. I guess that was my answer, right there.