Twenty

Emma, at the Same Time

Emma just wanted to keep thinking about the coins.

But she could hear Joe muttering beside her as he put Kafi down and snatched up a laptop: “All the security cameras I set up around this house—they’re being jammed! Somehow they’re looping all our old footage again and again . . . that’s how I didn’t see Roger Mayhew coming. We’re flying blind here!”

She could see Kona dashing back up the stairs to peer out the only uncovered window.

“I can see!” Kona cried. “This neighborhood is crawling with police cars! Or—fake ones!”

Emma whirled around, and now she could also see Chess and Natalie and Finn trying to shove Mr. Mayhew out the front door.

No, that’s Other–Mr. Mayhew, Emma realized. The Mayor. He must have used that fake cop we saw before as his scout. Or as a decoy, to throw us off from the real danger. So what we should do now is . . .

The first tendrils of odor from the Mayor’s boxes reached Emma’s nose. The tendrils whispered, Don’t think. Don’t listen. Don’t look. Just smell . . . Smell, and think what I want you to think. Hear what I want you to hear. See what I want you to see. . . .

Emma clamped her mouth shut and shifted all the coins she was holding into one hand so she could pinch her nose shut.

“That’s poison!” Emma screamed through gritted teeth. “They’re poisoning our air! Hold your breath, everyone! Open the windows!”

She started to bolt toward the nearest window, but Mom grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her in the other direction.

“Run!” Mom yelled. “All you kids—escape! And, Emma, you guard this. . . . Keep it safe. . . .”

Mom thrust something into Emma’s arms. It was the bat bag containing the lever.

And then Mom slumped down toward the floor.

Emma shouldered the bat bag but tugged on Mom’s arm, too.

“Mom! Run away with us!”

“Can’t,” Mom murmured. “Need to stay . . . and fight. Should have stayed . . . and fought . . . back home. . . .”

She means back in the other world, Emma thought.

Mom didn’t even think of home the same way Emma did. What if Emma couldn’t even trust her own mother?

Emma realized she’d accidentally taken a tiny breath of air. That was why she’d had a moment of distrusting her mother.

“Mom!” Emma dropped her coins and tried to shake her mother out of her stupor. Dimly, she realized that the other moms, Natalie, Joe, and Finn Gustano were also sinking toward the floor. Emma’s brothers, Other-Emma, Kona, and Rocky were all still standing, but only barely.

If Mom gets back up, the others will, too, Emma thought. I’m sure of it.

“Save . . . ,” Mom murmured. “Rescue . . .”

Emma was starting to feel a little dizzy herself. Her mind screamed, Air! Air! You need to breathe! But she resolutely locked her jaw and clenched her teeth and avoided the instinct to inhale deeply. Swaying slightly, she sprinted toward the front door. Natalie, Chess, and Finn had almost succeeded in closing it behind the Mayor. But Emma yanked it back open and gulped in the sweet, precious, untainted air from outside.

Only then did she realize that the Mayor was still on the porch. Except, he looked like a monster now.

Oh. He’d slipped a gas mask over his face.

“And I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, Emma,” he chuckled, his voice distorted because of the mask. “Thanks for bringing me exactly what I wanted.”

He began yanking the bag containing the lever directly from Emma’s shoulder.

“Get away from me!” Emma screamed, pulling back on the bag.

But the Mayor was a strong man who played sports a lot, and she was a ten-year-old who’d been on the verge of oxygen deprivation a moment ago. If it was just a battle of the muscles, Emma was never going to win.

So use your brain, she told herself.

The last time the kids had encountered the Mayor, they’d used his own allergies against him. Now the gas mask protected him against that, too. But . . .

She reached up and tugged off the Mayor’s gas mask.

“Stop that, you little brat!” the Mayor gasped, quickly yanking it back into place.

But he reeled and his grasp on the lever bag weakened, as if he’d breathed some of the contaminated air flowing out of the house, too.

“Chess, Finn, Natalie—help me!” Emma screamed.

She filled her lungs with as much of the outdoor air as she could, jerked away from the Mayor, and struggled to slam the door again. Belatedly, Finn and Chess sprang up to shove against the door, too. Natalie spun the lock at the top of the door—the deadbolt.

“Let’s hope . . . he doesn’t . . . have a key . . . to that . . . ,” she murmured.

But with each word—and without any more fresh air—she began sliding toward the floor again.

“The bagel and doughnut boxes actually held . . . stink bombs?” Other-Emma whispered. She was valiantly trying to pull her younger brother away from the boxes on the floor. She dropped the last coin from her hands to get a better grip on Other-Finn’s shirt. Emma didn’t dare take another whiff, but she could tell by the way Other-Emma and Other-Finn grimaced that the boxes were still leaking their foul odor.

We’ve got to have fresh air to be able to think, Emma told herself.

She stepped toward the nearest window. Because she felt herself starting to black out, she allowed herself one small sip of air.

The window latch looked incredibly complicated—too complicated for Emma to figure out. This was hopeless.

“Break the window!” Finn shouted behind her. “Use the lever and break it!”

Oh yeah. That would work.

Emma swung the lever bag toward the window. But having so little air made her weak. The lever bag crashed into the blinds and warped them, but did no damage to the window.

Emma had just yanked the lever bag back for another swing at the window when she heard the crash of breaking glass above her.

“Oh, thanks!” she cried, jumping back from the little shards of glass raining down on her. She also had to avoid the now-broken blinds swinging back and threatening to stab her. She took a deep breath of the sudden fresh air. “Who figured out you could just throw something through the window? Chess? Kona? Emma? Nat—”

The fresh air she was suddenly swimming in woke up her brain. It made her realize that if someone had thrown a vase or paperweight or something equally heavy from inside the house, the little bits of shattered glass from the broken window wouldn’t have fallen toward Emma. They wouldn’t have landed in her hair and on her shoulders. They would have been carried out of the house along with the vase or paperweight or whatever had been thrown.

And the broken blinds would be out on the porch, not sagging toward Emma.

So someone threw something into the house? Emma wondered, shaking bits of glass out of her hair. But what? And why?

The fresh air she was breathing stopped seeming so fresh. The smell of death and despair and fire and fear rose around her even as another window shattered and more falling glass crashed to the floor.

And then another window broke.

And another.

And another.

And another.

“They’re attacking everywhere!” Emma screamed, because the others had to know. She had to make them understand. “Everything’s poison now!”