The Tesla Legacy Read online

  “You promise?”

  A vise twisted her heart. Lucy needed more time. Once she had figured out what was happening to her, she’d tell her friend everything.

  “I promise,” said Lucy, and she hoped it was a promise she could keep.

  “Good.”

  The tension broke as Claudia grinned, although it lacked some of her usual vigor. “Is there anything else I should know? Have you and Cole kissed and made up?”

  “More or less.” Lucy plunged a hand into the book bag at her feet, knowing Claudia wasn’t blind to her evasion tactics. “Look!” She twirled the poker chips in the air. “A very sweet apology. Want one?”

  Her friend extended an open palm. “Hit me.” As Lucy pressed a green-and-black chip into her hand, Claudia mused, “I don’t know what Cole would do without you.”

  Lucy pursed her lips.

  “What? He’d never win a hand.”

  “That’s not tr—”

  “He might actually have to pay a mechanic to fix his Jeep when it breaks down,” Claudia continued.

  “I like fixing his Jeep.” Lucy plunked a piece of chocolate in her mouth as an act of protest. She had strategically learned everything she could about cars in the hopes that her parents might let her drive one someday. Not happening. But she enjoyed putting her skills to good use.

  Claudia graced her with a half eye-roll. “I know, I know. It relaxes you.”

  “It does!”

  “Anyway, enough boy talk,” announced her friend, grabbing another poker chip. “There are more pressing matters at hand.”

  Truer words had never been spoken. “Hear, hear.”

  “We need to discuss the lighting for prom. Is your iPad handy?”

  Internally, Lucy groaned. Prom was still a sore subject. Regardless of her feelings, however, she’d agreed to run the lighting and sound system. Letting Claudia down wasn’t an option.

  The student council had chosen the Roaring Twenties for the theme and put the stage crew in charge of the decorations. As themes go, it wasn’t bad. Lucy needed to design a lighting scheme to show off the backdrops Claudia was creating.

  Lucy had been roped into stage crew when the spotlight blew halfway through the fall musical a year earlier. She’d been in the audience to admire Claudia’s set design and saved the day with duct tape and ingenuity.

  She passed her friend the iPad as cheerily as possible.

  “I had a few thoughts,” Claudia said, starting to swipe at the screen. A deep V formed on the bridge of her nose. She always got this intense look on her face when she was thinking about art. “Me and Stew and Cate want to transform the gym into a speakeasy.”

  Stew and Cate were the other two-thirds of the set-design triumvirate and the only other people at Eaton who made Lucy feel truly welcome.

  “So we’re thinking dark, moody lighting,” her friend said.

  Lucy rested her shoulder against Claudia’s so she could hold the iPad while Claudia swiped through a clipboard of images. Lots of gangsters in pinstripe suits hefting tommy guns, DO THE CHARLESTON! posters, feather boas, and the Empire State Building under construction.

  “Could the budget stretch to a smoke machine?” Claudia asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to run the numbers. Dry ice would probably be cheaper—and just as effective.”

  “You’re a genius, Lucy Phelps!”

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far bu—” She paused mid-thought as her eye snagged on a small black-and-white photo at the edge of the digital board. “Can you make that bigger? Zoom in?” There was a rough edge to her voice.

  As Claudia complied, Lucy cringed. She touched the screen with her forefinger, not believing what she was seeing.

  In the center of a white-tie affair in some Art Deco ballroom, dressed exceedingly dapper, stood Nikola Tesla. In his hand was a tiny, oval-shaped object. A speck. You wouldn’t notice it unless you knew what you were looking for. It was the same shape as the object in Lucy’s backpack.

  And if you squinted hard enough you’d see that the egg wasn’t in Tesla’s hand—it was floating above it.

  Hot chills blistered beneath Lucy’s skin and adrenaline tightened every muscle in her body. The iPad scorched her hands like burning embers and the screen blipped to black. Yelping, she dropped the device onto the wooden floor. The screen cracked as smoke rose from the top.

  “Damn,” exclaimed Claudia. “Hope you’ve got a warranty on that thing.” She poked at the smoking ruins. “Must be faulty wiring.”

  “Must be,” Lucy agreed, but she wasn’t listening. She was transfixed, like a deer in headlights.

  She had done this. Her adrenaline had spiked. It was her fault.

  Was Lucy actually dangerous? Could she have hurt Claudia?

  Before Lucy could react, her best friend was on the ground, trying in vain to collect the jagged shards of the shattered screen. Out of nowhere, the Heron girl dropped to her knees beside the sofa.

  “Let me help,” she said, eyeing Claudia eagerly. Guess she’d found her conversation starter. Lucy would have smiled if she weren’t so petrified.

  The skin turned rosy beneath her friend’s freckles. “It’s cool. I work here.”

  “I don’t mind,” the girl replied. “Pay it forward, you know.”

  Claudia’s eyes did a swift lap of the deserted café.

  “If you insist.” A coy smile. “The dustpan is behind the muffin display.”

  “On it,” the girl said with an equally coy smile.

  “Thanks, um—”

  “Jessica—Jess.” The Heron girl held Claudia’s gaze for a moment before launching herself toward the register. Right. Now that Lucy’s heartbeat was returning to a steady rhythm, she realized, “I should go.”

  “What? No.”

  Lucy tilted her chin in Jess’s direction. “Yes. Don’t want to salt your game.”

  “There’s no game.” Her friend slapped her playfully. “She’s a customer.”

  “I believe the lady doth protest too much.”

  Claudia couldn’t conceal her delight. “But … what about your iPad?”

  “Toss it. It’s toast.”

  “Literally.” They shared a grin. “I still have another hour on my shift, though,” Claudia said, frowning. “How are you gonna get home?”

  “I can call Cole.”

  Claudia was about to say something else when Jess returned, dustpan in hand, flashing her an inviting grin. Lucy chugged the remnants of her latte and grabbed her book bag.

  “Text me later!” Claudia called after her.

  The door to the café clicked shut and, to her chagrin, Lucy realized she couldn’t text Cole even if she wanted to because she was still phoneless. But Lucy didn’t want to. Not after she’d nuked her iPad. She could use the long walk home to devise an excuse for how another expensive piece of technology had bitten the dust.

  The breeze outside was summerlike but she hugged her jacket closer.

  How long before Lucy short-circuited herself?

  A PETER PARKER EXPERIENCE

  Classical music filtered down from the attic as Lucy opened the front door to her house. That could only mean one thing: her mom was elbow-deep in writing her book. While Lucy and her dad were jazz connoisseurs—“Take Five” was known to blare from his office—her mom, predictably, hardly ever listened to anything composed after the invention of the automobile. Vivaldi if her research was going well; Beethoven if it wasn’t. Sounded like his Ninth Symphony. Uh-oh.

  Schrödinger perched on the bottom step and assessed Lucy warily.

  “Had a manic Monday too?” she teased, approaching him with unfamiliar trepidation. Lucy dropped her book bag to the carpet and stooped down to stroke him. As her hand hovered above his mottled black-and-auburn fur, it began to stand on end. Schrödinger emitted a low-frequency growl that escalated to a full-fledged howl when Lucy’s hand made contact.

  A spray of bright, white sparks traveled from his head to his tail. Ala
rmed, she lurched backward, tiny pops bristling along her skin. The cat launched himself at her, claws extended for mortal combat. Lucy ducked and he crashed into the brass umbrella stand beside the doormat.

  I’m sorry, she mouthed because she couldn’t get the words out. Lucy’s breaths came in short bursts. Schrödinger recovered quickly and dashed into her father’s office, still hissing.

  The percussion of kettledrums and vigorous violins came to an abrupt halt.

  “Lucy? Is that you?”

  Gulping down a lungful of air, Lucy rasped out, “It’s me,” because she didn’t want her mother to think there was an intruder in the house. Even if Lucy had recently added breaking and entering to her résumé.

  “Can you come up here?”

  Tremors pulsed through Lucy’s body. Not seizure tremors, she didn’t think. Standard-issue freaked-out-to-the-nth-degree tremors.

  Lucy crept up the stairs like she was walking the plank. She tried to divide the incidents into some sort of order. Categories. Classes. Schemas. That was what a scientist would do.

  The sparks she’d produced petting Schrödinger were attributable to static electricity. As was hugging Claudia the other night. If it weren’t for everything else, she’d be able to laugh it off.

  Those were the first electricity-related phenomena to occur since Lucy discovered Tesla’s secret lab.

  The second kind were the tingly sensations provoked by Cole, Claudia, and the Brit. Kissing Cole was equivalent to sticking her stomach in a centrifuge, whereas contact with Claudia and Ravi had been warm, pleasant—ticklish, even. It wasn’t strictly electricity-related but definitely a result of her experience in the Tesla Suite.

  The more disquieting phenomena were Lucy’s seeming ability to magnetize metallic objects, cause them to levitate, interfere with radio transmissions, and electrocute iPads. The first three in the list suggested that Lucy possessed an electromagnetic field and should therefore be classified together, while the latter suggested that Lucy transformed that field into electricity.

  Megan was right. Lucy was four different kinds of freak.

  As for the Tesla Egg, it didn’t seem to be a power source in and of itself. The expression on Tesla’s face in the photograph had been one of smug mastery. He’d been in complete control. Lucy suspected he’d been aping—in a suave manner—for the camera. Daring people to notice. The way it’d been levitating made her think of a maglev train. Was Tesla’s magnetic field that powerful?

  Her pulse kicked up. Would that happen to Lucy too?

  She reached the second-floor landing and wiped her sweaty palms against her jean skirt. A ladder had been lowered from a trapdoor in the ceiling leading up to the attic, and buttery light shone down, illuminating the dusk-darkened hallway. Lucy had always viewed it as a place of mystery. For years she hadn’t been allowed to climb the ladder to her mom’s study in case she injured herself. Now that she could, it retained the allure in Lucy’s mind.

  There was a combination of irritation and concern as her mother repeated, “Lucy?” Evidently she still worried her daughter couldn’t handle the ladder.

  In this instance, she might just be right.

  Her mom swiveled in her desk chair to greet Lucy as she emerged through the trapdoor. As always her mother sat with prima-ballerina posture, silhouetted in the tangerine haze of a Tiffany lamp, although her French knot was slightly askew. The aroma of her one daily cigarette lingered in the air. Odd. As a rule, she saved it for after dinner.

  “How was your day?” her mom asked, distracted, glancing back at an enormous leather volume open on the desk. “Picked up a new phone for you.” She gestured at a shopping bag but her gaze remained fixed on the book.

  “Thanks. And, uneventful,” Lucy lied with a shrug, her eyes shifting toward the tome preoccupying her mom. Drawing closer, she could tell it was actually a facsimile of some old manuscript too valuable to remove from a library. Greek alphabet letters that she recognized were sprinkled among strange symbols and pictographs that looked like an archaic version of emoticons.

  “Translating?” Lucy surmised.

  Her mom gave a tired laugh. “Translating would be generous.” She pulled the clip from her hair before hastily rearranging it into a tighter knot. “I need to stick at it, though. Hope you don’t mind eating alone. There’s an organic squash and roast-chicken salad in the fridge.”

  “Sure.” Lucy had zero appetite. She hadn’t even been able to bring herself to finish the chocolate poker chips on her walk home.

  She bent over to collect the shopping bag from where it rested by her mom’s feet and heard a gasp.

  “Oh, honey. What happened?”

  Lucy’s mom smoothed the Wonder Woman Band-Aid over her eye. Instantly, she tensed—then, nothing. Only the reassuring touch of the woman who had soothed hundreds of her bruises over the years.

  “It’s no biggie. Had a fight with my locker.”

  Their eyes met. “Lucinda,” her mom said, low, a warning tone.

  “Really.” Lucy fiddled with the handle of the bag because she couldn’t lie while staring her mom in the eye.

  “Maybe I should call Dr. Rosen? I’m sure he’d fit you in.”

  “I don’t need to see Dr. Rosen!” So much for making up for snapping at her this morning. In a more appeasing tone, Lucy said, “The school nurse already looked at it. I’m good to go.”

  Her mother exhaled a long breath.

  “All right. But you haven’t skipped your pills, have you?”

  “Of course not,” she replied automatically. Then it hit her.

  Lucy had forgotten to take her meds. All weekend. A fleeting hope kindled inside her. Could that be it? She wanted to believe the solution could be that easy. Take her medication and all her freaky abilities would vanish.

  Her scientific mind couldn’t accept that hypothesis. Either way, Lucy wouldn’t miss any more doses. She needed her brain as stable as possible at a time like this.

  Lucy circled her gaze around the study. It was a total contrast to her dad’s. Neat rows of IKEA bookcases were stacked against the walls, the titles organized by subject and then in alphabetical order. Atop the filing cabinets were neatly arranged figurines, reproductions of ancient Greek and Roman statues: the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Elgin marbles, the Venus de Milo, as well as an Egyptian scarab.

  Finally she dragged her eyes back to her mother. Her careworn face made Lucy ache. “You don’t have to worry, Mom. I’m okay.”

  “I’m your mother—it comes with job.” She squeezed Lucy’s elbow. “Don’t forget to eat something with your pills.”

  “I won’t.” Lucy pivoted in the direction of the trapdoor.

  “And Lucy?”

  She craned her neck over her shoulder.

  “Try not to break the phone. It’s your third since school started.”

  Lucy swallowed. “Okay,” she said, beginning to descend. Definitely not the best time to mention the French-fried iPad. Oh. She paused midstep.

  Oh no. Lucy gripped the ladder for dear life as her mother’s words replayed in her head.

  She could blame the latest busted phone on the acne-prone skater boy, but the one before that had mysteriously died. Kaput. Refused to turn on one day—the day Lucy first slept with Cole. She’d nearly jumped out of her skin in anticipation. Surely that resulted in a surge of adrenaline.

  Was it possible she’d seared her phone like she had the iPad?

  But that was months ago. Lucy felt the distinct yank of a rug being pulled out from underneath her. Again.

  She also had yet to formulate an adequate explanation for the reaction of the plasma Tesla lamp. It fell under the fourth category of freakiness she’d established, but it occurred before Lucy found the egg or the lab.

  She was willing to—maybe—accept that she’d had a Peter Parker radioactive-spider experience in Tesla’s lab. She was unwilling to entertain the idea that she’d possessed any of these abilities prior to entering the room.
r />   Fisting her hands, Lucy dismissed any further speculation.

  Time to put on her virtual lab coat.

  Tonight, she would put her theories to the test.

  SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!

  The last time Lucy had poked around the kitchen, Cole’s misguided financing of prom night was her biggest problem. Ah, to be young again. Was it only Friday?

  Squash and chicken salad definitely didn’t appeal.

  When she’d activated her new phone, all of Cole’s messages from the past weekend came flooding in. He must have sent the first right after her phone smashed.

  I miss you. Followed a couple hours later by: I want to hear your voice.

  Nothing on Saturday night, but the texts on Sunday grew progressively more frustrated and sad, ending with: This has been the worst weekend of my life.

  Hers too.

  Lucy had hoped he would text her this evening. So far, nothing. She hadn’t texted him either, though. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell Cole why she was acting so distant and she had reached her daily quota of lies. The only messages she’d received were from Claudia, brimming with excitement that Jess had asked for her number. Lucy was glad that at least Claudia’s love life wasn’t in free fall.

  She slammed the fridge door with more force than necessary and huffed. Not even ice cream—sugar-free and organic, obviously—tempted her. Lucy grabbed a package of Jiffy Pop from the cabinet above the sink but didn’t plan on eating it. The instant popcorn was for experimental purposes only.

  Lucy’s dad wasn’t nearly as health conscious as her mom and he said making popcorn on the stovetop reminded him of his college days when he survived on ramen and nearly set his fraternity house on fire with his culinary pyrotechnics. This didn’t convince her mother as to the logic of stovetop popcorn, but she’d relented.

  Removing the paper wrapper, Lucy listened for the it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night chord progressions of Beethoven.

  Check. Safe to proceed.

  When Lucy was eight, her dad had turned his unhealthy eating habits into a science lesson. The popcorn kernels came in a frying-pan-shaped aluminum container filled with oil. When heated on the stove, the aluminum conducted the energy necessary to cook the kernels. Leave it too long and the expanding aluminum explodes. Lucy’s dad would do that sometimes because she liked it and her mom would complain about the mess while nibbling on the end product.