The Shimmers in the Night (2 page)

Hayley wasn't stuck up; she just knew what she wanted. Anyone could do it, she said. It was a matter of willpower. And luck.

Currently, however, her plans for fame were being flouted. In fact, she didn't personally “live on the internet” at all. Her mom wouldn't even let her onto basic social networking sites due to their being the
gateway
, as she put it, to molesters, abductors, and general perverts.

“Oh, fine,” sighed Hayley finally, and stooped down to hold the trash can steady on its side so that Cara could rake the leaves in. “But after this, seriously. Let's go to my room, and I'll do a runway walk for you. You can rate my outfits.”

“Big thrills.”

That night dinner was just Cara, Max, and her dad, and Max was fifteen minutes late. He came banging through the front door and when he sat down at the table Cara could see he had a hickey on his neck.

Gross.

Or, as Jax would say, because he talked like their dad, “unsavory.”

She
did
like Zee, but the thought of how the mark got there was disgusting anyway. How did Zee not get grossed out by Max, too? He picked the wax from his ears right in public. And scrutinized it.

She glanced at her dad to see if he'd noticed. But luckily for her older brother, it wasn't the kind of thing their dad would ever pay attention to.

“Tardy again, Max,” he said, and lifted his wine glass. “This is becoming a habit.”

“Sorry,” said Max, and reached for a roll. Recently most of their dinners were prepared by Lolly, an older lady who often brought her toddler grandson along; tonight she'd served the square dinner rolls you bought unbaked in white cardboard trays at the Stop & Shop. Max could eat about eight of them in a row, so it was fortunate they came by the dozen.

“Next time make sure you're here at six on the dot,” said their dad sternly.

“Yes, sir,” said Max, only half joking.

“So, Cara,” said her father. “I understand you're getting on a bus tomorrow morning with the swim team. You'll be away through Tuesday?”

“We're coming back Wednesday morning,” said Cara. “Then we go to school for the rest of the day like usual. So I'll be home Wednesday night.”

“Zee's going, too,” said Max to their dad. “She's one of the best on the team at the hundred I.M.”

“I.M.,” mused their dad, lifting his fork to his mouth and looking preoccupied. The way he said it, it sounded like he thought it was a foreign language.

“Individual medley?” said Cara.

“Ah,” said their dad, and nodded sagely to suggest he'd already known.

Cara remembered watching the Beijing Olympics a few years back; her dad had put his feet up in an armchair nearby and buried his nose in a thick book about the trial of Joan of Arc. He'd grumbled that spectator sports were “… primitive rituals. In the days of the Roman empire, in the games at the Coliseum, tens of thousands watched greedily as slaves tore each other limb from limb.”

She wasn't sure what that had to do with Michael Phelps.

“So what's your event, Car?” asked Max.

“I'm just on a relay, is all,” said Cara. She wasn't a star swimmer or anything; she just liked being in the water, which always made her feel calm. “Hayley's doing one of the big races, though. She qualified for freestyle.”

“Huh. Who knew,” said Max.

Hayley didn't practice too hard, but she had natural speed. Freestyle was the most competitive of all.

“And who'll be chaperoning?” asked their dad.

Ever since Max had his car accident while their dad was away at a conference, he worried more than he used to about adult supervision. Although the other kids knew it hadn't been Max's fault at all.

“Hayley's mom's taking time off the hair salon so she can go with us.”

Hayley had
not
been happy about that.
Anyone
else's parent was a better option, according to her, even Mr. Abboud, who thought girls shouldn't go out of their houses without scarves covering their heads. Hayley's mom was divorced and, since Hayley was an only child, tended to focus on her a lot. Hayley had made her promise not to hover.

“Don't be a smother mother,” she'd said severely, right in front of Cara.

Her mom smiled brightly, flecks of fuchsia-colored lipstick on her teeth.

“Don't stress, honeypie,” she said. “If you want to
flirt
with the
boys
, I won't get in your way. As long as there's no
kissing
and you stick to the
curfew
, I'll be practically
invisible.”

Hayley cringed visibly at the word
kissing.
“You better,” she said darkly.

Later she told Cara, “Just her
saying
flirt and kiss makes me want to
actually vom.”

Now Cara looked over at her dad, who was just putting down his fork.

“And is Jaye going, too?” he asked.

“Yeah, she's an alternate,” said Cara.

“Good, good. Nice girl.”

Parents always liked Jaye; they rolled their eyes at Hayley, but Jaye, who had good grades and a neat, polite way about her, got smiles and pats on the back.

“So, Max, you're on dish duty,” he went on, pushing his plate away and looking at his watch. “It's time for me to check in with your brother.”

They skyped Jax at the Institute at the same time every night to make sure he was OK. It had taken a lot of cajoling from the Institute people to persuade her dad to let Jax go there in the first place, especially during the school year.

“I'll make the call,” said Cara.

She often emailed Jax, but she hadn't checked her inbox today and anyway it would be good to see him.

A few minutes later she was in front of the laptop in her bedroom, an old one of Jax's that he'd set up for her. Her dad didn't bother with computers except when he had to, so he pulled up a chair as she clicked on Jax's name and waited for him to answer.

His face filled the screen, peering at them. It was blurry and a little fish-eyed.

“Good Lord, Jackson, move
back,”
said her dad irritably. “You're far too close.”

Their father took technology as a personal offense. Occasionally he consented to use it, but then, when it wasn't perfect, he acted like it was basically
their
fault. As far as he was concerned, they'd personally invented the microchip.

Jax moved back a little; there was a delay and his image blurred. Still, Cara could see right away that something was wrong.

“So how's it going?” asked their dad.

“OK, I guess,” said Jax, and started to drone on instantly about some programming they were having him do, glitches in software, blah blah blah. Cara's dad nodded but was already distracted; Cara noticed he checked his watch in record time. If there was anything the professor enjoyed less than using technology, it was hearing people talk about it.

And then she realized: this was Jax's crafty way of getting rid of him.

“Mm-hmm, sounds good, sounds good,” said their dad when there was a pause in Jax's monologue. “And how are the meals going? Did they feed you that boring oatmeal again today?”

Jax shrugged, nodded, and kept talking so tediously about computers that Cara was impressed. Even she had no idea what he was saying; she figured she had to wait it out.

“Well, sorry, kids,” said their dad in a fake regretful tone after about another minute of this. “I think I need to get back to the flagellants. You two go ahead though,” he said generously, flapping his hand as he stood up. “Talk for as long as you want.”

“Er, yeah, thanks, Dad,” said Cara.

He didn't get that Skype was free.

“Jackson—same time tomorrow?”

“Sure, Dad,” said Jax, and nodded with an impatience Cara thought had to be obvious.

But their dad didn't notice, just tipped an imaginary hat at the computer and closed Cara's bedroom door behind him.

“Smooth, Jax,” said Cara.

“Listen,” he said, and as he looked around, his image moved slowly, then froze before it started to move again. His voice dropped to a whisper. “There's something wrong here.”

“I can't really hear you,” said Cara. “If you're worried about someone hearing you, can you just email me or text or something?”

Jax's ESP wasn't a long-distance talent. He had to be near you to know what you were thinking.

“I can't
read
them,” he went on, stage-whispering. “That's the first thing. I mean, the other kids, I can. They're normal kids, basically. Smart but normal. But not the people in charge. I can't read them at
all.”

“So—so what does that mean?” asked Cara.

“There are only two people I've met before that I couldn't really read,” said Jax. “One's Mom. The other was…
him
.”

He meant the Pouring Man—the elemental, as their mother had called him, who had come after them.

“You think the people there are—”

“No. They're not like him,” said Jax. He was forgetting to whisper now. “They don't feel dead, or whatever that was—non-living. They're human and all, but I just can't read them. It's like there's a barrier there. I can't trust them, Cara.
I don't trust them”

“Well, then come
homer
!” said Cara, and felt pumped. She imagined their house with more lamps on, more talking, the warmth of company. “Tell Dad you want to! He'll drive right over the bridge after class tomorrow and get you.”

“But that's the other thing,” said Jax. “I found out something. And I think I have to stay a while longer. Because I need to find out more.”

“What?
What'd you find out?”

Behind Jax, in the rectangular field that was covered by his laptop's camera, a door opened in stop-action slow motion.

“Jax? …ight meeting…rec room,” said the small, dark head of another kid. It was too far away for the mic to pick up. Then the door closed again, and the head was gone.

“Remember that research material of Mom's?” Jax asked. “On how the oceans are turning more acid? You know—her data that got stolen? I was doing some investigating. I mean, I don't have the information itself or anything, but I was looking at some old work emails of hers. I got them off her iPad. And I found a conversation she was having with another scientist that suggested her info wasn't just the pH-level data other researchers have. What it looked like to me was, Mom found a
major unknown source.”

“Source of what?”

“Greenhouse gas,” whispered Jax.
“Shooting into the ocean.
That's what makes the seawater acid, right? Our factories spew all those gases into the air, and they go into the ocean, among other places, and the ocean stores them. But the problem is, the more of those global-warming gases the ocean stores, the more acid the water is getting. See?”

“Sort of.”

“Most of the pollution comes from cars and planes and power plants, right? Us burning coal and oil and gas. But the point is: Mom found another source. A source that isn't any of those.
Another place the gases are coming from.”

The door opened behind him again. This time the head that stuck through the crack was larger and higher off the ground. An adult. It wore black-framed glasses.

“Jax! We're waiting,” said the head.

“OK,” said Jax cheerfully. “Just talking to my big sister!”

“Talk later,” said the head sternly, and disappeared. But the door stayed open.

“Gotta go,” said Jax, dropping his cute-kid smile and sinking back to a stage whisper. “The key is this, Car: I think she
did
discover something unique. Something that's not widely known. This
source.
And I need to find out what it is. And where.”

“OK. Well, so—but why do you have to do it
there?”

“Better computing power. Faster connections, more access. I
have
to. Trust me. OK. Oops, gotta book.”

And then he was gone, replaced by a small icon on Cara's empty screen.