Eighteen

Chess

“Four?” Chess said. “When I was four, my dad died.”

He didn’t realize he’d spoken those words aloud until Natalie gave his shoulder a squeeze. Finn reached out and clutched his hand comfortingly.

Mom stepped closer and put her arm around Chess, too. But she kept peering toward Rocky, her gaze laser-focused.

“Explain,” she said. “Did you find this coin or . . . did your mom?”

“Kind of both, I guess,” Rocky said. “How did you know?”

“Tell us,” Emma said, sounding just as intense as Mom. “Tell us everything.”

Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Even baby Kafi had fallen silent.

Chess felt like he was going to faint.

This is about Dad, he thought. Emma says that’s Dad’s writing on those coins. . . . I’m going to find out something new about Dad.

“It was weird how it happened,” Mrs. Gustano said. Her eyes locked on Mom’s, as if she couldn’t look in any other direction either. “It was Rocky’s fourth birthday.”

Distantly, Chess heard Finn tell Kona, “Chess and Rocky have the same birthday. They’re exactly the same age. So that was Chess’s fourth birthday, too.”

Chess couldn’t remember his fourth birthday. Too much else had happened right afterward.

“Mom was trying to make me take a nap,” Rocky said, rolling his eyes. “Before my birthday party. But I didn’t want to, and Mom put her head down on the pillow to show me how soft it was. I put my hands over her ears—and there it was. This coin was in her right ear.”

“I kept saying, ‘Rocky! You’re a magician!’” Mrs. Gustano said. “But it didn’t make sense. You know how four-year-olds are with magic tricks—they can’t hide anything. And none of us had ever seen that coin before. It really did seem to materialize out of nowhere.”

“You’ve been carrying around that coin since you were four?” Kona asked skeptically.

“No,” Rocky said, rolling his eyes.

“He would have lost it,” Finn Gustano teased. “Rocky always loses things.”

“I never lost this,” Rocky countered, holding the coin up high. It was about the size of a quarter. Chess was having a hard time imagining it coming out of Mrs. Gustano’s ear. “We always called it my lucky coin. And after . . . after being kidnapped, I thought I could use all the luck I could get. I put it in my pocket before we flew back here.”

“That doesn’t have code on it, like the others,” Emma objected. She’d moved in close enough that if she’d blinked, her eyelashes would have brushed the coin. “It has actual words. It says—”

“I know, I know—it says PLEASE LISTEN,” Mrs. Gustano said. “But I swear to you, it did have some bizarre code on it when Rocky first held it out to me.”

“And then you touched it,” Mom said. She almost sounded like she was in a trance. “You touched it, and the code transformed into something you could actually read. . . .”

“Okay, this is too weird,” Mrs. Gustano said. She pulled all three of her kids closer, as if she wanted to protect them against everything odd. “What you’re saying . . . it’s like you were there. But how could you possibly know what happened to Rocky and me eight years ago? When I was in Arizona and you were in Ohio and . . . no, wait, if I’m supposed to believe everything else you told me, back then I was in this world’s version of Arizona and you were in the other world’s version of Ohio, and . . . How can you expect me to believe anything you’ve told me?”

“Because it’s all true,” Mom said. “And because . . . I’m the one who sent you that coin.”

Mrs. Gustano’s expression crumpled and it looked like she was about to cry. She put her hand over her mouth, mirroring Mom.

“We were always connected, weren’t we?” Mrs. Gustano asked, her hand sliding down helplessly. “Even before my kids were kidnapped. Even before I got that coin. Even before I was born, probably. From the moment my parents met—”

“It was probably the exact same moment Mrs. Greystone’s parents met in the other world,” Natalie said from behind Chess. “Don’t blame Mrs. Greystone for any of this. It’s not anyone’s fault. Doubles just are connected. They’re like, the same person in different circumstances. Or the same person, except they’ve made different choices because they’re in different worlds. But they’re still linked, no matter what.”

“I don’t understand these coins yet, but I can promise you—Mom didn’t mean you any harm,” Chess said. Mom still had her arm around his shoulders, but it felt like he should be the one protecting her. “Mom would never want to hurt anyone.”

“Chess is right,” Mom said. “That coin was supposed to be a good thing. . . .” She snorted, and then the snort turned into a giggle. “Can you understand what it’s like for me to find out that that coin actually reached you? For the past eight years, I thought that Andrew and I had failed completely. But you got the coin. You got the coin!”

“Um, Mom, could you back up and explain what that coin was supposed to do?” Emma asked. “And how and why you sent it to Mrs. Gustano eight years ago?”

Practically at the same time, Kona was turning to Joe: “Dad, did you know about any of these coins? When you lived in the other world, were you sending coins to anyone in this one?”

Joe shook his head and gave a perplexed shrug.

“It was a secret,” Mom said. “Everything always had to be secret, even from people we trusted. Because we never knew who would be caught, and what they might be forced to reveal. . . .” A shadow crossed her face. “My husband, Andrew, and I had always worked as journalists. But it became too dangerous to do that publicly, because the people in control of the government only wanted the country to believe lies. We felt like we had to keep doing our jobs—we felt like it was our calling to keep gathering information, and telling people what was really going on. But we had to do that underground, anonymously. And if you can only spread the truth in secret, like gossip, do you know how much it starts sounding like just another lie?”

“Nobody knew what to believe,” Joe said grimly. “So no one believed anything.”

“Andrew and I, we knew we had to do something drastic,” Mom said. A little of her grin came back, and she hugged Chess, Emma, and Finn close. “Would you believe we got our idea for the coins from reading Horton Hears a Who to you kids when you were little?”

“The Dr. Seuss book?” Finn asked. “Was it from the ‘A person’s a person no matter how small’ part or the ‘Yopp!’ part?”

“I bet it was the part about seeking help from a different world,” Emma said. She was practically jumping up and down with excitement now. Chess could tell that she, at least, loved this story.

“Right,” Mom said. “Our world had become so grim. It wasn’t just one thing or just one leader making the changes—it was a thousand tiny decisions over the years, everyone acting out of fear and distrust and hate, until no one had any freedom. No one could speak the truth openly. No one was even allowed to ask questions of our leaders.”

“And if the leaders said, ‘The sky is green and the grass is blue,’ everyone had to agree, ‘Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right,’” Joe added. “Nobody was allowed to say, ‘Are you kidding? I have eyes of my own, and that’s not what I see!’”

Mom reached out and gripped Joe’s shoulder, linking the two of them.

“Can you understand now why Andrew and I had to keep everything secret?” she asked beseechingly. “But the two of us, we were friends with a physicist who had told us about the possibility of other worlds outside our own. We worked with her to figure out how to send a message between worlds. I couldn’t explain the science of it then, and I can’t now, either. But our friend knew what metal to use, how to design the tiny electronics inside the coin, why we should use the thumbprint authentication to make sure a voice-coin from one person only went to his or her double in the other world. . . . Andrew and I decided to put codes on the coins in his handwriting—just to keep track—and I would record the first message. We decided to send the first one out on Chess’s fourth birthday.” She flashed Mrs. Gustano and Rocky a significant look. “Then, if it was safe, we planned to send out a second a week later, a third the week after that. . . .”

“I never got any other coins,” Mrs. Gustano said. “Neither did Rocky or my Emma or Finn. Or my husband.”

Mom let go of Chess, Emma, and Finn. It fell to Chess to mutter, “Everything changed. Our dad was killed five days after my birthday.”

“So was our physicist friend,” Mom whispered. “And then the kids and I moved to this world, and I shifted to trying to make sure no one in my family crossed paths with anyone in yours. Before Andrew died, I thought you could be a help to me in my world. But once I was here, I believed I could only be a danger to you in yours.”

And that’s what happened, Chess thought with a pang. It’s because of us Greystones that the Gustano kids were kidnapped. And even though we rescued them, we messed up their lives. They don’t have their dad with them right now, either. This whole world is in danger from the other world.

Was that the Greystones’ fault, too?

“But what did you think when you heard my message—when you got the coin originally?” Mom asked Mrs. Gustano. “Could you tell my voice was the same as yours? Did you have even a moment of thinking, ‘I need to go rescue her’?”

Bewilderment spread over Mrs. Gustano’s face.

“Kate, I’m sorry,” she said. “I never heard your voice or any sound at all coming from your coin. Rocky, did you—?”

But Rocky was shaking his head, too.

“So the coin did the hardest thing—traveling between the worlds—but it failed to even work like a simple recorder?” Mom asked.

She sagged down onto the bed, as if having hope—and then losing it again—had taken too much out of her.

“But, Mom, now we have these coins, too,” Emma said, holding her hand up again. “Maybe we just need the right person to press them. Maybe the technology improved in the last eight years.”

She began passing the coins around, letting everyone in the room finger them. When the coins circled around to Chess, they just felt cold and fake in his hand, not even as valuable as a penny. The numbers and symbols on the surface stayed indecipherable.

Chess handed the coins on to Kona and Emma, and they each slid one into a pocket. Rocky did the same with the coin that proclaimed, PLEASE LISTEN.

“Maybe . . . maybe we’ll figure out more about the coins later,” Chess said, because everyone had fallen back into grimness.

“Right,” Mom said. “Maybe if we take a break and eat breakfast, we’ll think of a solution.”

Chess thought probably even baby Kafi could hear the fakeness in Mom’s voice. They all seemed stuck again. Chess felt Natalie’s hand slip off his shoulder, and he turned.

Natalie wasn’t even looking toward him. She had her head tilted back, watching something fall from the ceiling.

At first, Chess saw only a streak of golden light. Natalie stuck out her hand and caught it. She flattened her palm, and Chess saw what lay in the center: a coin that looked like the ones Kona and Emma had pocketed, covered with indecipherable code.

“This one was meant for me,” Natalie said, her voice ringing with confidence. “I can feel it.”

Emma asked, “What do you mean by that?” and Emma Gustano asked, “Can you describe that feeling more precisely?” But everyone else began shouting, “Your thumb!” and “See if your thumbprint matches!”

Natalie lowered her thumb toward the coin as if she were taking part in a sacred ceremony. She raised her thumb again and breathed, “It’s words now! It says FIND US!”

“Press it again,” Mom said breathlessly. “It’s the second touch that activates—”

And then she stopped, because Natalie was already doing that. And Natalie’s voice flowed from the coin.

No, Chess thought. That’s not Natalie’s voice, even though it sounds the same. We’re hearing her double in the other world. Other-Natalie, who’s just like our Natalie.

He saw the excitement burst over Emma’s face, the excitement and pride and hope springing back to life on Mom’s. Chess could tell what Mom was thinking: that the idea she and Dad had come up with eight years ago actually worked.

Finn bounced joyfully up and down. Chess wanted to throw his arms around Natalie.

Then it registered what Other-Natalie’s voice was saying:

“This is a warning. We’re all in danger now. I need your help. You need mine.”