Thirty-Nine

Chess

Chess felt more sorry for Rocky than ever before.

The other boy was already sprinting out the door, screaming, “Dad! Dad! Dad! You came! You found me! I knew you’d rescue me!”

“No, no, Rocky—that’s just going to be the version of your dad from this world,” Chess called after him.

Rocky kept running.

Outside, the man turned to face Rocky full-on. Chess had only ever seen Rocky’s dad on televised news reports—the ones broadcast after Rocky and his brother and sister were kidnapped. This man certainly looked like Rocky’s dad had then. He had the same mussed dark hair, the same saggy jowls, the same worried eyes.

So he looks like a terrified man who doesn’t know where his kids are—not someone seeing his missing son for the first time in days, Chess thought.

“Rocky!” Chess screamed, chasing after him. “Be careful!”

Emma, Finn, Kona, and Lana ran, too, crashing through the door with Chess. Kafi straddled the duffel bag of coins on Lana’s shoulder as if it were a toy horse. She shrieked, “Faz-er!”

Right, Kafi, Chess thought. Faster! We’ve got to get to Rocky before . . .

Chess was three long strides behind Rocky when Rocky leaped, launching himself toward the man and throwing his arms around him in a joyous hug.

The man didn’t wrap his arms around Rocky in response. He just stood there, stiff and stunned and silent.

“That’s Other–Mr. Gustano!” Emma shouted. “Your dad’s double! The one the police say was in our basement—the one who might have been involved in your kidnapping!”

“Kidnapping?” the man said in a panicky voice. “I didn’t have anything to do with any kidnapping!”

Rocky peered up at the man’s face in horror.

“You’re not my dad!” he screamed. And then he crumpled to the ground, hitting the dirt hard and burying his face in his hands. “It’s not fair that you look like him! Oh . . . what if I never see my dad again? Or Mom or my Emma and Finn . . . what if I’m stuck here forever?”

This was worse than watching the fake battles on TV, worse than the stink grenades plunging everyone into despair. Rocky’s despair was real.

And it matched Chess’s despair almost exactly.

But . . . didn’t that mean that Chess might know how to comfort Rocky?

Chess closed the distance between him and Rocky and immediately knelt beside him.

“Rocky, it’s okay,” he said, patting the other boy’s back, as if Rocky were as young as Finn. Or maybe Kafi. “I know how you feel.”

A memory hit Chess, full force. Not long after his dad died, Chess had been at the grocery store with his mom. Chess couldn’t be sure which world they’d been in then, but it didn’t matter. He was sad, regardless. Then Chess had spotted a tall man in the checkout line ahead of them. At four, Chess was more used to seeing adults’ knees than their faces. And somehow that man’s blue jeans–covered knees had looked like Chess’s dad’s. Chess had wrapped his arms as tight as he could around the man’s knees and squealed, “Daddy!”

And of course it hadn’t been Dad. When the man crouched down, Chess discovered he had red hair and freckles and a full beard—nothing at all like Chess’s dad.

Probably that wasn’t a good memory to share. Because Chess hadn’t ever seen his dad again.

But Rocky’s dad wasn’t dead. There was still hope for him.

And for Rocky.

“Our friend Natalie went through this the last time we were in this world,” Chess told Rocky. “It was awful for her to see her parents’ doubles here. But she made it home to her real parents again.”

“And now she’s just endangered in her own world,” Rocky moaned.

Finn ran over beside Chess and patted Rocky’s shoulder, too. But Finn faced Other–Mr. Gustano.

“If you’re some evil kidnapper, don’t even think about bothering Rocky again,” Finn snarled, sounding as fierce as Chess had ever heard him. “Or any of us!”

“And if you’ve got coins because you’re a bad guy stealing them, not a good guy helping out, hand them over right now,” Kona said, grabbing for Other–Mr. Gustano’s closed fists.

“There are seven of us and only one of you—you are totally outnumbered,” Emma added, joining Chess and Finn by Rocky’s side.

Chess wasn’t sure it was fair to count Kafi—though she had been good at unplugging the first TV they’d encountered.

Or maybe it was Lana’s loyalty he should doubt. She hovered indecisively behind the kids huddled around Rocky. She seemed to be trying to stay out of Other–Mr. Gustano’s line of sight. She crouched down to lower Kafi and the duffel bag of coins toward the ground, but said nothing.

“This guy doesn’t have any coins, unless he’s hiding them really well,” Kona reported, even as she patted the pockets of Other–Mr. Gustano’s hoodie.

The man’s gaze darted toward the ground, then back at all the kids.

“There!” Chess said, following the line of the man’s quick glance. Chess pointed, and Kona plucked a few shiny coins from a clump of grass. She held them high in the air.

“Hide those!” Lana and Other–Mr. Gustano screamed, almost as one.

Other–Mr. Gustano reached out, but Kona was too fast for him. She palmed the coins and slid them into her own pocket.

“Unh-uh,” she chided him. “I’m not giving those back until you explain what’s going on. Why you had them in the first place. How you’re still out here when all your coworkers went back inside. Who you really are.”

Other–Mr. Gustano looked frantically back and forth between the Greystones, Rocky, and Kona. Chess noticed that Lana still seemed to be hiding behind the duffel bag, just watching.

“You could get me in so much trouble . . . ,” Other–Mr. Gustano moaned. “But . . . you said ‘this world.’ You said ‘doubles.’ . . .” His gaze lingered on Rocky. “You look like I did when I was a kid, and you really seemed to think I was your dad, even though I don’t have any children. . . . But most of all, you’re not afraid. None of you are. You’re standing out in the open in sight of three security cameras and you’re shouting all sorts of things. . . . Where are you from? How did you get here?”

Chess stood up and held out his arms as if he could protect all the other kids.

“Nope,” he said. His knees trembled, but his voice came out steady and strong. “That’s not how this works. You explain yourself to us first.”

Emma pulled herself up alongside Chess.

“What were you doing with those coins?” she demanded.

“Why were your fingerprints in a basement in the other world?” Kona added.

“That really does make him seem like a bad guy,” Finn agreed, popping up to stand with the others.

“He’s not,” Lana said, finally straightening up and stepping forward.

“How do you know that, Lana?” Rocky growled. “It’s like this guy was impersonating my dad in my world—he might as well have framed my dad. That sounds bad to me!”

Lana winced, practically withering under Rocky’s glare.

“None of you understand . . . ,” she whispered. “How afraid we all are, how long we’ve had to stay silent. . . .”

“You can tell us, Lana,” Chess said softly. “You saw for yourself, nobody was watching or listening to the security footage from out here.” He started to add, You’re safe, but he couldn’t really promise that. So he settled for something he was more certain of: “It’s worth the risk to tell.”

Lana gulped. She darted her glance toward a light pole by the parking lot that probably did contain a security camera. Then she trained her gaze again on the other kids.

“I know we can trust this man,” Lana began, “because I heard him making recordings for his coins. He’s the reason I found out about the coins, and started smuggling them into the other world.”

That was enough to make Chess feel better, but Lana went on: “And . . . I’m pretty sure he’s the one who made your lever.”