Forty

Finn

Everybody started talking at once.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“How do you know that?”

“He made our lever? Then can he fix it?”

“Lana, why didn’t you tell us about this guy from the very beginning? He can help us!”

But Other–Mr. Gustano was shaking his head, crying out, “No, no, none of that’s true. I’m just an innocent TV sound engineer. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Coins? Levers? They’ve got nothing to do with me. I am a party member in good standing. Blue and orange forever!”

Finn wanted to throw up just hearing the words “blue and orange.” But he also felt a little like giggling. Other–Mr. Gustano was such a bad liar. He was like some kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar trying to say with a straight face, “Cookies? I don’t know anything about cookies!”

“Dude—Gus,” Finn said, because it was easier to call someone a liar when you weren’t addressing him as “Mister.” The other kids nodded, as if they liked the nickname. And they liked Finn calling him out. “We saw you on the security cameras. You dropped a bunch of coins on the ground. And two minutes ago, you and Lana both yelled, ‘Hide them!’”

Gus looked around frantically, like a trapped animal. He had beads of sweat on his forehead.

“Just admit the coins I picked up are yours, and tell us about levers, and I bet we can work together really well,” Kona said.

“Right,” Finn agreed. “We don’t want to yell at you about lying. We just want to figure out how to get back to our families. And how to stop the Mayor once and for all.”

“Don’t say that!” Gus cried. “Don’t say anything bad about the Mayor!”

In one quick motion, Gus put his hand over Finn’s mouth. With his other arm, he grabbed Finn and rolled with him onto the ground. They landed against a black SUV parked near the edge of the blacktop. The lever in the bag Finn was carrying dug into his back.

The other kids shrieked, “What are you doing?” and “Let Finn go!” But Finn could tell by the way Gus cradled Finn’s head that Gus wasn’t trying to hurt him. The man peered frantically around the edge of the back bumper of the SUV.

“If they come for you, say . . . say that wasn’t your voice,” Gus hissed. “Say they must have heard interference in their security feed. That’s all. Because you would never say anything like that about the Mayor, you’re nothing but grateful for all he’s done for the city, you—”

“If nobody came for me when I was on TV, nobody’s coming for me now,” Finn protested, squirming away. “I’m fine, Gus, but you—you’re a nervous wreck.”

This time Finn said “Gus” as if the man were a friend he wanted to help, not someone Finn had just accused of lying.

Gus leaned his head back against the side of the SUV. He gasped for air as if he’d run up and down a football field several times, not just tackled a kid half his size.

“Can’t trust . . . anybody,” Gus murmured. “Can’t tell . . . Can’t speak the words . . . aloud . . .”

“Give me one of his coins,” Lana said to Kona.

Kona tilted her head doubtfully, but she dug into her shorts pocket and handed Lana a coin.

Lana crouched beside Gus.

“Please?” she said, holding out the coin to him.

Was she paying him? Asking him to let her keep the money?

Or should Finn not even be thinking of it as money?

Finn decided not to ask. Everyone was silent, watching Lana and Gus.

Gus groaned and closed his eyes, as if he were too weak to keep them open.

Or too scared.

“You’re my boss’s daughter,” he said. “Does he know about the coins and levers? Did he know you were spreading truth even as he got paid to spread lies?”

Lana shook her head, then seemed to realize Gus still had his eyes closed.

“You know my father would have turned me in,” she said. “You know he was loyal to the party. To the Mayor, to the government, to all the benefits of propping up the people in power. . . . You know he got a lot of money and power from spreading lies.”

Now Gus peeked up at her, his one eye half-cracked open.

“And you say you heard me make the recording for one of my coins—was I that careless?”

“No, I was that sneaky,” Lana corrected. On someone else’s face, her grin would have looked cocky. But she still seemed too frightened for that. “You were in a soundproof recording studio but . . . I was, too. Out of sight. It was how I found out a lot of things my parents and teachers wouldn’t tell me. I hid there all the time. Studio 2-B.”

“That studio,” Gus repeated dreamily. “Such a perfect name. I went there just ‘to be.’ To exist. To reassure myself I was real, and that what I was thinking and feeling was true, no matter how much I had to tell lies everywhere else. Some days, that was the only thing that got me through, thinking about how I could go there and tell the truth. . . .”

“And the way these coins work—you thought you were sending them to my dad?” Rocky asked. His face twisted as if he were still about to cry. “It didn’t happen. My dad never got any of your coins.”

“No, no, I was too much of a coward for that,” Gus said, shaking his head sadly. “Pathetic, isn’t it? I saw others being brave, but . . . I never tried to send any of my own coins. Not until . . . until . . . just now. . . .” He gritted his teeth. “Here,” he told Lana. “I’ll do it.”

He reached out and pressed one shaking, sweaty thumb against the coin in Lana’s hand. When he pulled his thumb back, Finn saw that the coded message on its surface had transformed into three words: TELL OUR STORIES.

Gus pressed his thumb against the coin a second time. Now his voice came out of the coin, rich and strong: “Here’s something else I have to tell you . . .”

“Oh, right,” Chess whispered. “You have to hit it twice to hear the message.”

“And you can activate your own message?” Emma asked. “It’s not just your double in the other world who can do that?”

“Shh!” Finn hissed at them both.

“This story’s about one of the bravest things I ever did,” Gus’s voice continued, coming from the coin. “I heard through back channels that the Mayor and his people had stolen the lever Kate Greystone had in her basement in the other world. I knew she was in prison then, and there was nothing I could do for her directly. But I thought it would help her kids if I stole the lever back and returned it to her basement. And then I spread the rumor that the Mayor himself had wanted that to happen. I used the Mayor’s own lies against him.”

“You really did help us!” Emma gasped. “We did need that lever, and that was how we were able to rescue Mom!”

The last time, Finn thought. The only time we succeeded. And then we just lost her again. . . .

But that was something else he didn’t say.

Gus stared directly up at Rocky.

“I never dreamed my fingerprints in that basement would get your father into trouble,” Gus apologized. “I thought of your world as perfect—I didn’t think anything bad could happen there.”

Rocky flinched.

“You sound just like my dad in that coin-recording,” he muttered. “His voice, it’s good and true like that and . . . he isn’t perfect, and our world isn’t perfect. But he tries. And he’s kind, and . . .”

Rocky turned his head to the side, as if he didn’t want anyone to see his face just then.

“Can we hear another coin?” Kona asked. “Or can you just tell us . . .”

Gus motioned for her to dig out another coin.

“There’s another story the Greystone kids would probably really like,” he said.

Kona held out another coin. When Gus touched this one, the code on its surface transformed into the words HEAR US. Gus touched it again, bringing forth his voice sounding stronger than ever, saying, “I never met Kate or Andrew Greystone. Eight years ago, I could have walked right past them on the street and never known who they were. But they were heroes to me, even way back then. I was friends with a physicist—let’s just call her Gina, because she still has family around. There are still people who could be endangered if the government knew her connection to the coins. Do you understand how awful this is, for all of us who want good things for our evil world? That we have to hide, even from one another? Gina was the only person I was ever honest with. Well, Gina, and now . . . you. Gina told me about this brave, crazy young couple who came to see her. They wanted to tell their story—our world’s story—to the people they thought were most likely to listen: their own doubles in the better world Gina had discovered. They thought storytelling would help. When Gina told me that the first time . . . I laughed. This crazy couple thought stories were important, when our leaders had guns? And mind control?”

“You thought we’d like this story?” Finn interrupted, his voice shaking. “You thought we’d want to hear you make fun of our parents?”

“Not this part,” Gus whispered back. “What’s coming.”

Gus’s voice kept streaming from the coin: “Andrew and Kate had three children. Really little ones. And they told Gina they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they didn’t do everything they could to make the world a better place for their children. Gina invented the coins for them. They made Gina brave, too. She recorded her own story on her own coins. And she told me about it, and I started recording my story, too. And then there was a whisper campaign. People acted in public like they didn’t have a brain of their own, like they just did what the leaders told them. Like they worshipped their leaders unquestioningly. But behind closed doors, in secret, I’m convinced practically everyone except the leaders have been making their own story-coins. I see them sometimes, when I’m out doing my job: a coin dropped here, a coin dropped there. And I’m convinced the coins help fight back against the poisonous odors the leaders developed to control us all. I think we could overthrow the leaders once and for all, if everyone would just stand up and send their coins out into the other world all at the same time.”

“You recorded this before you knew about the mind-control TVs, right?” Rocky asked sarcastically. “Why does this even matter now?”

“Shh!”

Finn couldn’t even tell how many of the other kids said that—maybe it was everyone except Rocky.

The voice coming from the coin turned sad: “I cannot force you to come and help me. The way things are in my world, that would have been my instinct: If it’d been up to me, I’d have designed a coin to make you think you had to travel here and assist me. But Kate and Andrew Greystone had more faith in humanity than I did. Than I do. Or, maybe they just had more faith and hope, period. They believed people from your world would help of their own accord, as soon as they knew our world’s story.

“Maybe you have already listened to one of my other coins, when I tell what happened to the Greystones, and to Gina. Two dead—Gina and Andrew. Four in danger—Kate and her kids. Gina was the first one killed. The first martyr. And I was in despair. But she must have known it was coming, because she had mailed me instructions. She had predicted that upon her death, all her coins—which she hadn’t even sent out yet—could be turned into a different type of bridge between the worlds. It’s almost like they were designed to . . . mature. Gina told me how to fuse her coins together to make a lever of sorts, that could open a temporary pathway between the worlds. And anyone could travel through that pathway. Not just people with a double in the other world, but anyone, from either world. It was like her bravery, her courageous example—that fused everyone together.

“So I followed Gina’s instructions. And then I left the lever on Kate Greystone’s doorstep one dark night when all the security cameras in the area were conveniently down for service. . . .”

Finn couldn’t help himself: He threw his arms around Gus’s shoulders.

“You saved us!” he cried. “Eight years ago, you were the one who gave Mom the lever to begin with! That’s why you wanted us to hear that coin!”

Gus looked embarrassed.

“Oh—no!” he said. “I just wanted you to know what heroes your parents were. What they started. And how everything they did, everything they risked—it was always for you and your brother and sister.”

Finn reached out and touched the coin they’d been listening to. He thought about how Emma had the math scrawlings that had once belonged to their dad, and Chess had a picture he treasured. But Finn had nothing that had come from their father. He’d never wanted it before, because he didn’t even remember Dad.

“Could I . . . ,” he began. “Could I keep this coin? Since you weren’t able to send it to the other world, anyhow?”

Gus swiped his thumb across the coin, and the words translated back to code.

“I’ve got another one just like it,” Gus said, sounding a little choked up. “Or . . . she does.” He pointed at Kona. “I made multiple copies, because I heard how much trouble Gina had when she started sending out coins, before perfecting her system. And before everyone else working with Lana . . . and me . . . before we made our own improvements. You know the lettering on the coins, it’s always your dad’s writing, in tribute to him. But there were so, so many other people who worked on this.”

Finn felt dizzy thinking about all those people. If only they’d been able to come out into the open and say, “Hey, do you want better leaders? Leaders who don’t lie and try to make us afraid? So do I!” And then everything would have changed.

Or maybe they would have been killed, too. Just like my dad and Gina, Finn thought, with a shiver.

Kona was digging into her pocket.

“Actually, the only other coin of yours I picked up looks like the first one we heard, not the second,” Kona said.

“No, I dropped five coins,” Gus said. “And I’m sure that two of them—”

“I only picked up three,” Kona told him.

Gus jolted back, almost clunking his head against the SUV. Then he scrambled to his feet and rushed to the spot where he’d been standing when the kids first saw him.

“You’re not hiding any of the coins from me?” Gus asked Kona, even as he knelt down to search in the grass. “You didn’t knock any to the side, or—”

“I picked up everything I saw!” Kona assured him.

Now all the kids ran over to Gus and started feeling around in the grass. The grass was cropped short, newly mown, and dense enough that any coin would have shown up clearly.

“Gus!” Lana exclaimed. “Two of your coins fell through all the way to the other world! The pathways must have opened again!”

The others began exclaiming, “Is it true?” “Does that mean . . . ?” “If it works for coins, then . . .”

Finn didn’t wait for anyone to answer. He just snatched the lever from the bag he still held looped over his shoulder.

And then he slammed the lever as hard as he could against the ground.