The Twin Powers Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-one

  Fifty-two

  Fifty-three

  Fifty-four

  Fifty-five

  Sample Chapter from THE TWINNING PROJECT

  Buy the Book

  About the Author

  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South

  New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2014 by Robert Lipsyte

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Lipsyte, Robert.

  The twin powers / by Robert Lipsyte.

  pages cm. — (The Twinning project ; book 2)

  Summary: Identical twins and mirror opposites Tom and Eddie share a “road trip” between planets and risk everything to save their father from the alien scientists.

  ISBN 978-0-547-97335-7 (hardcover)

  [1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Twins—Fiction. 3. Brothers—Fiction. 4. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 5. Ability—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L67Tv 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013043951

  eISBN 978-0-547-97452-1

  v1.1014

  For Dinah Stevenson,

  a star on any planet

  Your sons are fine boys, John, but they are only thirteen years old.

  They’re our only chance, Dr. Traum.

  That’s an emotional response, John. Primary People like us are supposed to be rational. The boys are half human. They don’t understand why their Earths must be destroyed.

  Neither do I.

  That’s why you’re my prisoner.

  Give them a chance to find their powers and save their planets.

  Why?

  You owe it to them, Dr. Traum. For what you’ve put them through and for what they are going to have to do now.

  One

  TOM

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2012

  THE aliens came back in the spring, just when I was beginning to think I’d never see Dad or my identical twin brother, Eddie, again. For years I had thought Eddie was imaginary, a voice in my head. When he came to Earth, a real live brother, it was one of the best days of my life. I thought we’d find Dad together and crack the mystery of just who we were.

  It had been six months since we’d watched Dad disappear into the belly of the aliens’ spaceship. I hadn’t talked to Eddie in weeks. What was there to talk about? We were stuck on different planets—him on EarthTwo in 1958 and me on EarthOne in 2012—and nothing much had been happening on either one.

  The day it all started again, I was ghosting through my morning classes, feeling down. Even Mrs. Rupp, the dumb history teacher with her boring timeline, couldn’t get my juices going. She was on a topic that should have been interesting—nuclear energy—but Mrs. Rupp made us waste our time memorizing dates instead of learning stories that could explain why things happened. Usually I interrupt her because I’m bad, a troublemaker who likes to shake things up. I can’t stand bullies or know-it-alls, even if they’re teachers. But that day I kept my mouth shut. That’s how down I felt. My best friends, Alessa and Britzky, thought I was sick.

  At lunch, I hesitated before sitting at our regular table in the far corner of the cafeteria by the garbage cans, what I called the rebel table, because we dared to be different. I didn’t want to be around Alessa and Britzky. They reminded me of everything I had hoped would happen but hadn’t yet—my dream that the three of us, along with Eddie and his sidekick, Ronnie, plus Dad and Grandpa would set off again on our mission to save the Earths. If the Earths didn’t destroy themselves by nuclear explosions or extreme weather, then the aliens would wipe us out because they were sure that the Earths would destabilize the entire universe and destroy them!

  What made it even more complicated was that Dad and Grandpa were aliens themselves and Eddie and I were half alien, maybe the world’s only halfies.

  Could be time to get thrown out of school again, I thought. I could start my fourth middle school! I wondered if that would be a Guinness World Record.

  When I did sit down, Britzky poked me and said, “Check out this dude.”

  The chatter and clatter of the cafeteria had faded away. Teachers had stopped talking on their phones. The kids at the jock, fashion, drama, digital, social, thug, and toasted tables were silent.

  The only sound was the clop of boots as a short, skinny kid in a long black raincoat that flapped against his black jeans marched slowly toward us.

  There was no expression on his pale face. He reminded me of someone. Who? I thought he was looking directly at me but I couldn’t be sure because of the old-fashioned aviator shades he was wearing.

  I whispered to Alessa and Britzky, “I thought you’re not allowed to wear dark glasses in school.”

  “He’s new,” said Alessa, who worked in the school secretary’s office. “His records are sealed.”

  “That means he just got out of juvie,” said Britzky, his usually loud voice soft. “Or he’s a government informer.”

  I thought of a third possibility. I wondered if they were thinking it, too.

  Alessa said, “His name is Hercules.”

  “What kind of name is that?” I said.

  Britzky whispered, “That could mean something. In the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the guy who hits the hero over the head is nicknamed Hercules. And you know how the aliens love books by Mark Twain.”

  So Britzky was thinking about what I was thinking about. Aliens!

  Hercules kept coming toward us. I wondered what he was covering up under his raincoat. Seventh-graders didn’t carry automatic weapons into school. Not yet, anyway.

  As usual, I was ready to rumble. That’s the way I am. I felt for my Extreme-Temperature Narrow-Beam Climate Simulators. I had never used them in combat. They were two Sharpie-size nano composite rods. Scientists had invented them as part of the battle against global warming, but the army was interested in using them as weapons. So was I. I’d hacked the data and built them myself. T
hey were my new favorite personal weapons. The data claimed either rod could stop a water buffalo. Together they could stop a herd. This might be a chance to see what the rods could do.

  Hercules halted a few feet from the table. His voice was familiar. “Which one of you freaks is Tom Canty?”

  Britzky jumped up and got between us. “What do you want with Tom?” He was in his old bodyguard mode. “You’ll have to deal with me first.”

  “Ah, the paranoid loudmouth Britzky,” said Hercules. How did he know about Britzky? “As Mark Twain said, ‘It’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.’”

  The pimples on Britzky’s forehead went neon, the way they always do when he’s mad. He lowered his head but kept his eyes on Hercules and charged.

  Hercules lifted his shades and stared at him with bright green eyes. We had seen such eyes before. They were alien eyes. Britzky froze, then turned around and walked back to his seat.

  Hercules lowered his shades and turned to me. “So you must be the famous Tom Canty.”

  I stood up. “I’m Tom Canty.”

  Hercules smiled. “The YouTube star himself?”

  The YouTube clip had gotten me kicked out of my second middle school. I had put a bully on his butt in the cafeteria with a blast from my TPT GreaseShot, my favorite weapon the year before. Someone had recorded the action with an iPhone and it was all over the Internet in seconds.

  “Are you the Tom Canty who people mistakenly think founded Tech Off! Day?”

  Mistakenly? How could he know that? It was my twin, Eddie, who’d come up with Tech Off! Day, in which everybody was supposed to switch off all electronic devices for one day and get to know other people face-to-face. This had been last fall, when Eddie was on my planet pretending to be me and I was on his planet pretending to be him. Being Eddie wasn’t easy for me. He’s a nice guy.

  But only the seven of us—me, Eddie, Alessa, Britzky, Ronnie, Grandpa, and Dad—plus the aliens—knew about the switch. Why had the aliens sent down this creepy guy? His glittery green eyes probably meant he was an alien, too.

  “What do you want, Hercules?” I showed him some attitude. All around the cafeteria, kids were pointing their phones and tablets at us.

  “I hear you think you’re bad,” said Hercules. “I’ve come to find out how bad.”

  Two

  TOM

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2012

  BAD enough!

  I didn’t say it out loud, yet Hercules nodded as if I had said it out loud.

  But I didn’t.

  And he heard me.

  I thought I could feel his eyes burning into me through his shades. I thought I heard an unspoken message from him. This is a test, Tommy.

  I wondered if this was real or if I was going crazy.

  You may be crazy, Tommy, but this is real.

  I slipped both climate-stimulator rods out of my pockets.

  Ahhh, Tommy and his toys.

  I crouched and fired a blistering burst from the heat rod at the middle of Hercules’s chest.

  Feels like a taste of summer, Tom. What else do you have?

  I fired a bitter burst from the cold rod.

  A little autumn chill.

  I thumbed both switches to maximum discharge and let him have the double blast between the eyes. No creature of this planet could stand up to that.

  Of this planet . . .

  Remarkable, Tom. At those temperatures, extreme heat and extreme cold feel about the same. Is that all you’ve got?

  I thought, What do you want?

  I’m disappointed. He actually sounded disappointed. You and Eddie were supposed to find your powers, remember? To use them to save the Earths from destroying themselves.

  How?

  By using your imagination.

  I thought, Imagination? What does that mean? Make up what I want to happen?

  That’s a beginning, Tom. Something like this.

  Hercules stared at my feet until a gassy whirl of atoms circled my ankles like a lasso. But if they were atoms, how was I able to see them? Was that one of my powers? The lasso tightened and pulled. I fell down hard on my butt.

  Hercules laughed. The atoms disappeared. He reached out his arms, and a stream of liquid molecules sprang from his hands and began thrashing its way toward me.

  Think of something, Tom! I said to myself.

  I imagined as hard as I could. I focused my mind on creating a wall of neutralizing ions that would repel the stream of molecules.

  The stream slapped against my wall, fell away, and disappeared.

  Good job, thought Hercules.

  I glanced around. The cafeteria was buzzing as students and teachers jostled one another to get good angles for their cameras. Pictures of Hercules and me would be all over the Internet in seconds, if they weren’t already.

  Stay in the now, Tom, thought Hercules.

  That’s what Grandpa says when he wants total attention. Was Hercules making fun of me or giving me advice?

  I heard a low hum, like air conditioning or a distant airplane, and I could feel waves banging against me like a dry surf. Hercules was building a little tornado to knock me down.

  If he can do it, so can I, I thought.

  You think?

  I turned off every other thought in my head until all my energy was focused on churning the air around me, beating it with propeller blades, shaping it into a funnel.

  Then I sent the tornado right at Hercules.

  It took so much effort that I stopped breathing and blacked out for an instant. When I came to, I was swaying on my feet and Hercules was flying backwards into the drama table. Those actors shrieked as their trays flew. They were pelted with airborne food. There was screaming and cheering throughout the cafeteria, teachers bellowing for the nurse, kids standing on tables.

  Hercules stood up slowly. He was smiling. One of his bright green eyes winked.

  He thought, As Mark Twain said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” He turned and marched out of the cafeteria.

  I was trembling so hard that Alessa and Britzky had to hold my arms to keep me from collapsing. But I felt great.

  I said what we all knew. “It’s finally happening. They’re back.”

  Three

  TOM

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  2012

  I WAS still beat from the battle with Hercules when I dragged myself out to the backyard garden that evening. I waited a long time for the clouds to move and the double star to double-blink, our signal. I’ve talked to Eddie like this since back when I thought he was imaginary. Eddie transmitted first.

  ’Sup, bro?

  You have to talk like that?

  Like what?

  After he’d visited my planet, Eddie had started trying to sound like a twenty-first-century rapper instead of the 1958 Boy Scout that he is. Sometimes it bugged me.

  Never mind. They’re back, Eddie. One of them showed up at school today.

  What happened?

  We had a fight.

  You okay?

  Yeah. It’ll be on YouTube.

  YouTube hasn’t been invented here yet.

  Right. Sorry.

  What was the fight about, Tom?

  It was a test of my powers.

  What powers?

  I’m starting to find out, Eddie. You’re supposed to be working on yours.

  I know. Ronnie and I talk about it all the time.

  So what have you done?

  Oh, man, there’s so much going on, with Boy Scouts, basketball—we won conference—now baseball practice . . .

  We have to do something, Eddie. Dad’s still a prisoner and we haven’t done squat.

  I know. But like what?

  We’re half alien, right? We’re supposed to have special powers.

  But what are they, Tommy?

  He said we have to use imagination.

  Who said?

  The alien. Eddie, ar
e you listening?

  How do you use imagination?

  Imagine what you want to happen until it happens.

  What does that mean, Tommy?

  Everything has to be spelled out for Eddie.

  The way I figure it, Eddie, we’ve got to imagine what we want to happen, not what we think will happen or what we’re afraid will happen.

  That’s a lot of stuff to think about.

  I lost it then. Sometimes it’s really hard to get through to my brother. I gotta go.

  No, Tommy, wait . . .

  Mom just came outside.

  Okey-doke. See you later, alligator.

  I had lied about my stepmom coming outside. As usual, she was away, traveling for her job. I just didn’t want to talk to Eddie anymore. He’s my twin and I love him, but sometimes he can be such a dumb jock that it makes my teeth hurt.

  Four

  EDDIE

  NEARMONT, N.J.

  1958

  AT baseball practice, the fellas were talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Last season, most of us had rooted for either the Dodgers or the Giants, but then both teams had walked out on us, moving to California. We were ticked off. How could we live in New Jersey and root for the Los Angeles Dodgers or the San Francisco Giants?

  I’m team captain, so I had to come up with a way to get my players’ minds back on our games. I said, “Let’s root for the New York Yankees because they stayed!”

  There were grumbles and boos, but I could tell that they would at least think about it. I reminded them that the Yankees were a great team—they had Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford—which seemed like a pretty smart thing to say. I thought it was the kind of thing Tom would have come up with. I know that Tom is smarter than me, and it’s okay. I love my brother even though I can tell that sometimes he gets annoyed with me for not being smarter than I am. That hurts. It isn’t as though I ever point out that Tom can barely catch a ball.

  The coach was late, so I divided the team for batting and fielding practice. “Enough about the Dodgers and Giants, fellas. The only team that really matters is the Nearmont Raiders.”