Twelve

Chess

Joe darted his gaze around, as if seeing danger everywhere. Then he clenched his jaw and told the girl in the van, “No. The rest is only speculation and reckless theories. We need more data. And a safer place to talk. And . . . you’re right. Let’s deal with the diaper first, shall we?”

After that, Mom and Mrs. Gustano insisted that all the kids needed to go back into the restaurant and actually eat the food they’d ordered. Joe joined in, saying it was dinnertime for his kids, too. He made hasty introductions: His daughters were Kona, who was eleven, and Kafi, who was just a week shy of her first birthday.

One time when Chess was younger, he’d gone with a friend to a company picnic for his friend’s parents. All the grown-ups had made happy chatter: “Who wants more popcorn?” “The relay races are coming up next!” But in the background they’d been muttering about falling stock prices and missed promotions, and none of them seemed truly happy.

Now Mom, Mrs. Gustano, and Joe were acting just like the adults at that picnic. Chess sidled up beside Mom when they got back to the table and wanted to ask, What’s going on? Can’t you and Joe talk privately? Or—you and Joe and me? After he gets back from buying diapers? But Mom was dividing up fish sticks and chicken fingers so there’d be some for Kona and Kafi, too; she was telling Mrs. Gustano, “Oh, yes, I asked them to bring ketchup for the fries. . . .”

Finn and Other-Finn kept the whole table entertained biting their chicken fingers into various shapes—no one seemed to mind that Finn’s “dinosaur” and Other-Finn’s “rocket ship” looked virtually identical. And baby Kafi cracked everyone up by suddenly roaring, “More!” during the one moment of silence. And then, a second later, “Pees?”

In big crowds, Chess often felt himself growing quieter and quieter, and this felt like a big crowd now. He wanted to whisper with Emma about what she might have figured out about the coin that had come from the angel carving—but, no, the coin was still in his own pocket, and since she’d ended up on the other side of the table, he couldn’t slip it to her secretly.

He couldn’t even catch her eye, because she was staring off into space.

The rest of the evening went like that, too. The grown-ups decided that the Gustanos and Joe and his girls would spend the night at Ms. Morales’s house along with the Greystones—Ms. Morales had enough room as long as each set of kids stayed in the same room as their parent. And then there was such a rush of finding sleeping bags and pillows and air mattresses that Chess didn’t even have a chance to say anything to Natalie.

Maybe after the younger kids are asleep, Chess thought. Maybe then . . .

He pictured some solemn gathering of the grown-ups and him and Natalie—okay, maybe Rocky, too. Maybe then the grown-ups would stop talking about fish sticks and ketchup and say to Chess, Natalie, and Rocky, “You three are old enough to know everything. . . .”

At bedtime, Mom finally whispered something for Chess alone—but all she said was, “I need you to make sure Emma and Finn really do go to sleep instead of trying to sneak out or anything. . . . Everyone’s going to need sleep if we have any hope of coping with the next few days.”

There wasn’t even time to tell Mom about the coin they’d found, before Ms. Morales was summoning Mom back into the hallway with a question about Natalie’s grandmother, who was still in the hospital.

Only that really isn’t Natalie’s grandmother; it’s Other-Natalie’s grandmother from the other world. . . .

Chess watched as Emma fell asleep in the midst of fingering the coin they’d found and muttering theories to explain it. He listened as Finn fell asleep asking how much he and Other-Finn would be alike: Half and half? More? Less? Chess waited long after they both stopped talking, to make sure Emma’s and Finn’s breathing kept the slow and steady rhythm of sleep. How long should he wait before getting up to search for Mom? Or should he just wait until she came back?

Maybe, even if he didn’t exactly sleep, he did zone out for a while. Because he suddenly found himself jerking back to attention. Had there been the softest sound of someone tiptoeing out in the hallway? Or just someone besides Emma and Finn breathing nearby?

Chess sat up and listened. The sound—if there’d even been a sound—was gone now. He could see a digital clock over on the nightstand. It was midnight. And the bed beside the nightstand was still empty.

So Mom hadn’t come back yet. It hadn’t been her tiptoeing around.

“Emma?” Chess whispered, peering over at the sleeping bags stretched out beside his own. But both Emma and Finn were just lumps in their sleeping bags; neither of them stirred.

Chess sighed and eased out of his sleeping bag. He tiptoed to the door of the bedroom and out into the hall. He hesitated for a second outside Natalie’s door, wanting another chance to talk to her. Then he remembered that she’d given her room to the Gustanos. He didn’t know where she was sleeping that night.

He headed for the stairs. He didn’t know Natalie’s house as well as his own, so he wasn’t sure which steps here might creak, or which to skip. So he settled for descending very slowly, stopping on every step to listen. The house stayed completely silent and dark. He wasn’t sure if it was just a moonless night, or if Ms. Morales had done something to the windows to block out every hint of light from outside.

And then, halfway down the stairs, his bare foot brushed something.

No, someone.

Someone’s . . . arm?

Chess opened his mouth to whisper, Who’s there? But he’d barely puckered his lips for the Who’s . . . ? before he felt a hand on his face. The hand covered his mouth.

“Don’t make any noise!” someone hissed in his ear.

Girl’s voice, Chess thought frantically. Not Emma, not Natalie, not Other-Emma . . .

It was Joe’s daughter. Kona.

Chess shoved her hand aside and whispered back, “Why are you standing in the middle of the stairs in the middle of the night?” His mind put together the sequence of his foot brushing her arm, and then her hand wrapping around his face. “Were you sitting in the middle of the stairs? Are you trying to trip people?”

Kona tugged on his arm, pulling him down to sit with her.

“We’re less visible, sitting,” she whispered. “Come on. Keep me company. Sit lookout with me.”

“Lookout?” Chess echoed. “Are you kidding? I can’t see a thing!”

Kona slipped something over his head. The darkness around him turned greenish and almost eerily illuminated. Now he could make out shapes of furniture in the living room down below. He tilted his head back and could see the chandelier hanging from the ceiling above. He looked back at Kona, who had something like a mask covering her eyes and the top part of her dark hair.

“Oh . . . night-vision goggles,” he said. “Are you—what’s it called?—‘monitoring the perimeter’ again? Acting as lookout for your dad?”

“I’m acting as lookout for myself,” Kona muttered.

Chess wasn’t sure what to say to that. It wasn’t just because he was sitting in the dark wearing night-vision goggles in the middle of the night with a girl he’d just met. He rarely knew what to say to girls anyhow. It’d taken him two trips to the other world to rescue a total of seven people—or eight, depending on how you counted it—to get to the point where he was comfortable talking to Natalie. And he really, really liked Natalie, and knew her well now.

Kona was a complete mystery.

“You’re Chess, right?” Kona whispered beside him. “Not Rocky? The oldest Greystone, not the oldest Gustano?”

“Uh, right,” Chess said.

Maybe Kona’s night-vision goggles didn’t work as well as his—Chess and Rocky were so different. Chess was tall and thin and awkward, and Rocky was shorter and more muscular. And Rocky seemed to move through the world like a football player—like someone who could tackle everyone in his way.

Anyone looking at Chess should be able to see that he was the kid more likely to be tackled.

But Kona had never met any of the Greystone or Gustano kids before tonight, so maybe it made sense that she would be confused.

“So what are the jokes?” Kona asked.

“Jokes?” Chess repeated uncertainly.

Kona gently bumped his shoulder with hers.

“You know, with your name,” Kona said. “I know how it goes. Back in kindergarten, one kid said my last name should be ‘ice cream,’ so my name would be like ‘Cone of Ice Cream.’ That was fun. Then in fourth grade, because my last name is Deweese, a few mean kids tried to get everyone to start calling me ‘Cone of Weasels.’ But it didn’t catch on. So I like hearing what other kids with unusual names deal with. We’ve got solidarity. We can fight ignorant comments from small-minded people together.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Chess said. “Got it. I wouldn’t ever call you Cone of Weasels. Or let anyone else do that. But . . . I guess I’ve been lucky. People don’t really make fun of my name.” Chess almost let himself explain that other kids were more likely to ignore him than make fun of him, but that seemed truly pitiful.

And yet, he didn’t actually mind being ignored.

Beside him, Kona suddenly stiffened.

“Here,” she said. “You should listen to this, too.”

Now she pressed something into his ear—an earbud. And then Chess heard Joe saying, “We’ve got to figure this out!”

“You’re spying on your dad,” Chess breathed. “Eavesdropping. No—you’re spying on all the grown-ups.”

He added the last because he heard Mom’s voice next, saying, “Joe, we’ll work through this. Maybe we already have all the data we need, and we just need to . . . to think.”

Or maybe it was Mrs. Gustano saying that. It was so weird how Chess couldn’t tell the difference between Mrs. Gustano’s voice and his own mother’s.

“They all went into that room together,” Kona whispered, pointing toward the door to Ms. Morales’s office. Her soundproof office. “All the adults and that one girl. Ms. Morales’s daughter. Natalie?”

Chess remembered imagining the adults and Natalie and him conferring together, figuring things out away from the younger kids. Evidently that was happening now—only without Chess.

Natalie, at thirteen, was grouped with the adults. But Chess was being treated just like baby Kafi and eight-year-old Finn and Other-Finn. And, well, ten-year-old Emma and Other-Emma, and eleven-year-old Kona, and twelve-year-old Rocky. But still.

The dividing line between who was and wasn’t old enough to know things shouldn’t run between him and Natalie.

Chess didn’t often get angry, but he was furious now.

And he was as mad at Natalie as he was at the grown-ups. Why didn’t she stick up for him? Why didn’t she say he deserved to know everything, too?

Through the earbud, he heard Natalie say, “I’ve already told you how I felt in the other world. You should ask Chess or Emma or Finn if you want more information. More data.”

Oh. Natalie was sticking up for him. And for Emma and Finn.

All Chess’s anger ebbed away so quickly that his spine went weak, and he had to catch himself from toppling forward and falling down the steps.

“I’ll go knock on that door,” Chess told Kona beside him. “You and me both—we should be in there, too. They’ll want to hear what I have to say, and you can . . . you can . . .”

Kona put her hand on Chess’s arm.

“Wait,” she said. “You didn’t hear what they said before, about how—”

She broke off, undoubtedly because her dad was talking now.

“We can’t tell any of the other kids they’re being targeted in particular, until we know how to protect them,” Joe said.

“We wouldn’t have even let you in, Natalie, if you hadn’t forced your way in,” Ms. Morales said ruefully.

Oh. Natalie had done exactly what Chess wanted to.

But rather than standing up and stomping toward the office, Chess turned to Kona and repeated weakly, “Targeted in particular?”

Kona shook her head warningly.

In the office, Mom was saying, “We know the Gustano kids were taken in the first place because the kidnappers were trying to trap me. Because they thought the Gustano kids were mine. Maybe these ‘scientific experiments’ you’re talking about were just . . . random. Meaningless.”

“Our spies told us it was very clear,” Joe said. “The kidnappers had control groups and everything. They wanted to know: How did the Gustano kids react to mind control? Was it the same or different than the reactions of kids who’d only ever lived in the other world? The fact that they wanted to know that . . . the fact that the mind control worked on the Gustano kids . . . that means this world isn’t a safe place anymore, either. Not for any of our kids. Not for any of us.”

This world, the other world . . . , Chess thought dizzily.

He leaned toward Kona again and asked, “What about you? Where are you from? Originally, I mean. You’re Joe’s daughter, so . . .”

“Don’t you know you should never ask someone like me ‘Where are you from originally?’” Kona said. “Because my dad’s Black and my mom’s Filipina, and—”

“Oh no!” Chess said. “I’m sorry!” He was horrified that his question had come out sounding so rude. “I didn’t mean—”

Kona patted his leg.

“I forgive you,” she said. “This time. But it’s funny. My whole life I’ve known I was both of my parents’ races. But I didn’t know until we were driving here today that I’m a mix of two worlds, too. My dad’s from the other world. My mom’s completely from this one. So what am I?”

“You’re . . . you,” Chess said weakly.

He felt an odd pang of jealousy. Ever since he’d found out that he and his family were from the other world—and that it was such an awful place—he’d wanted someone to pop up and say, Oops! We made a mistake! Just a mix-up . . . We had things backward—it’s the Greystones who are from the good world, and the Gustanos who actually belong in the bad one. . . .

But if she wanted to, Kona could ignore her other-world background and just focus on being from this world, and . . .

And Kona was sitting in a stranger’s house in the middle of the night wearing night-vision goggles and an earbud to eavesdrop on her dad and other grown-ups who were in a locked, soundproof room talking about the other world.

Kona couldn’t ignore her other-world connections any more than Chess could.

“No, really,” Kona said. “I’m like both my parents in a lot of ways. I’m good with gadgets like my dad, and good at sports like Mom. What did I get from each of their worlds? What did you get from being from the other world?”

Fear, Chess wanted to say. Sorrow and grief, because the other world killed my dad. Secrets hanging over me my whole life. Secrets I still don’t completely understand.

But a different word came out when he opened his mouth: “Responsibility.”

“Wh-What?” Kona sputtered.

“I mean, I have a duty,” Chess said. The words spilled out of him now. He started talking so fast, he could have been mistaken for a chatterbox like Emma and Finn. “A purpose. A meaning for my life. My brother and sister and me—and our mom—we all know we want to fix things in the other world. Natalie and her mom, they feel that, too. We’re going to make things right.”

Kona turned to stare at him. Through the night-vision goggles, she looked as green as everything else around them.

“Then,” she said, “I have that responsibility, too.”