Fifty-Eight

Finn

Finn ran over and hugged Emma.

“You’re safe!” he cried. “I was afraid the Mayor had gotten you!”

Emma absent-mindedly wrapped an arm around his shoulder. But her face said, Uh, Finn? Don’t you get it? We’re not exactly safe right now. Not when we’re standing in front of the Mayor and all his guards and police and soldiers.

Out in the stadium, though, a collective sigh rose from the crowd, an adoring, “Awww . . .”

From the corner of his eye, Finn could see how he and Emma looked on the giant screen: an eight-year-old boy still wearing his Lego Batman pajamas, hugging his older sister in her math club T-shirt and gym shorts. Both of them still had coins masking-taped to their wrists. His hair stuck up at the back and hers stuck up at the front—Well, sorry, he thought, we’ve been a little too busy this morning for either one of us to hunt down a comb.

But people thought they were cute.

Finn was used to that. What he wasn’t used to was thinking, So we use that. “Cute” is our weapon.

He turned back toward the Mayor.

“Could you answer my sister’s question?” he asked. He held his eyes wide and hoped his face looked the same as it did when he was begging his mom for ice cream. “We just want to know where our mom is. And Kona’s dad and Rocky’s mom and brother and sister. Because . . . you attacked them. It was so scary.”

Finn wasn’t acting now. The Mayor and his stink grenades had been scary. It was still nightmarish, standing before this horrible man who had so much power.

If it weren’t for Emma’s arm around Finn’s shoulder, he wasn’t even sure he could keep from crying.

Maybe it would be okay to cry.

“I feel so sorry for these little children,” the Mayor said. He gazed out toward the crowd as if he actually wanted all their sympathy for himself. As if he wanted to use Finn’s cuteness weapon for his own cause. “I hate to break it to you, little boy, but your mother—these other children’s parents, too—they’re all criminals. Rebels. Outlaws. Enemies of the people.” He seemed to be trying out insults, trying to see which would make the crowd hate Finn’s mother the most. “Kate Greystone and Joe Deweese have been conspiring with our enemies for years, spreading lies and fomenting revolution. They’re the ones who enlisted the warmongers from the other world to attack us. Warmongers like the entire Gustano family. So of course we had to arrest them. Of course we will need to punish them, to sentence them once and for all. That’s how we keep our world safe.”

“But that’s not true!” Finn exploded. He heard Emma and Kona protest along with him; across the stage, he could see Chess, Rocky, and Natalie objecting, too.

“Isn’t it?” the Mayor sneered. “Weren’t your mother and Joe trying to overthrow the government? Didn’t they criticize everything we did?”

Wait a minute—that part was true. How had the Mayor managed to twist everything around so completely?

“You’re making it sound bad that they wanted your world to be a better place!” Emma complained.

“They weren’t trying to hurt anyone,” Kona added. “They were trying to help!”

“Yeah!” Finn agreed. But the word came out too weakly.

The Mayor patted Finn, Emma, and Kona on their heads.

“You’re too young to understand now,” he said, in the smarmiest voice ever. “But when you’re older, I’m sure you’ll want to make up for your parents’ crimes by swearing your allegiance and undying loyalty to our government. And serving the cause faithfully, every day for the rest of your lives.”

Finn had never felt so much like punching anybody. But that wouldn’t help.

Desperately, he gazed across the stage toward Gus and Mr. Gustano, the Judge and Ms. Morales. They were grown-ups. Why weren’t they helping?

Gus looked as sweaty and panicked as he had practically since Finn had met him. Mr. Gustano and Rocky were bent over him, as though they were trying to calm him down.

Okay, no help there, Finn thought.

The Judge and Ms. Morales had matching stony expressions, staring daggers into the Mayor’s back.

“Judge Morales!” Finn cried. “You tell the crowd! You know the Mayor’s a liar!”

The Judge clenched her jaw. Lana and Other-Lana turned their cameras toward her, and her beautiful, magnified face appeared on the screen behind the Mayor.

“Judges . . . must be impartial,” the Judge said. “I might be asked to preside over the trial of one of these . . . defendants. So I can’t comment publicly on this matter.”

Now Finn wanted to stare daggers at her.

But you hate the Mayor! he wanted to protest. You want the government to change, too! You’ve been secretly working with my mom for years! The Mayor tried to kill you!

“She must not think we can win,” Emma whispered in Finn’s ear. “She must think she still has to keep her true views secret. So she can continue to have power to keep working for good behind the scenes.”

Ms. Morales put her arm around the Judge, as if she, like Mr. Gustano, thought she needed to comfort her double. But she also hitched her head slightly to the right, as if she was trying to tell the Lanas to put Finn and Emma back up on the screen.

This was ridiculous. The grown-ups were useless.

Or . . . was Ms. Morales just saying that the crowd would listen better to Finn and Emma than they would to the Judge?

The audience fell completely silent. Everyone seemed to be waiting for what came next.

This reminded him of the moment when Mom and Mrs. Gustano were staring each other down back at the Greystones’ house. Each of them had seemed completely stuck, until Finn suggested going to the Cuckoo Clock.

So what’s the Cuckoo Clock solution now? he wondered.

It really shouldn’t all be up to him.

The coins were supposed to work, he thought. Me talking on TV was supposed to work. Having the doubles come back was supposed to work.

But everything had failed.

Or, no—everything had seemed to help . . . but only for a moment or two.

Finn thought about Mom and Gus saying it had taken all sorts of little, bad decisions to ruin this world.

Maybe it also took a lot of little, good decisions to make everything better.

What’s the next thing that can help? Finn wondered. After the coins, after the levers, after the coin-wands, after the doubles . . . the doubles of the people who wanted their double here, anyway . . .

And then he knew.

“You know,” he said to the Mayor, “you have a double in the other world, too.” He peered out at the crowd—past all the guards, soldiers, and police officers to the rows and rows of people who had sought help from their doubles, and the doubles who had answered their pleas. “You all know how a double can understand a person. Can see what they’re really like. I don’t have an exact double myself, but I have other people around me who love me and understand me really, really well.” He darted a glance at Emma, at Chess, at Natalie. Somehow the glance included Kona, Rocky, and Kafi, too—all the other kids who had been through so much with him. “Don’t you think it would help to bring Mayor Mayhew’s double up here on stage? Don’t you think he would be able to tell us if the Mayor is lying or not? Don’t you want to hear what he has to say?”

For an instant, the entire stadium remained silent. Then a whisper began at the back of the stadium. Quickly, it built into a roaring chant: “Bring! The Mayor’s! Double! Bring! The Mayor’s! Double!”

The Mayor’s face went pale. He turned to the Judge, as if he expected her to tell him what to do. As if he thought she’d prop him up, as she’d always done.

But the Judge shouted out toward the guards and soldiers and police at the front of the crowd. “Didn’t you see the Mayor give the order?” she called, even though he hadn’t. “Go!”

“Yes, ma’am! Yes, sir!” someone yelled back. “We’ll go and get your double from the other world immediately!”

They were lying, too—pretending to follow an imaginary order. Or . . . were they siding with the Judge instead of the Mayor?

A huge clump of people in blue uniforms broke off and began running back toward the Cuckoo Clock building.

Maybe this wasn’t so much like lying, anymore.

Maybe they were just doing exactly what they wanted.