to meet him, and to thank him for inventing the booby trap!
He read again the passage about Armando’s string of failed inventions. The passage stated—in a rather wry tone, Oliver noted—that Armando Illstrom had been on the cusp of inventing a time machine when World War Two broke out. His factory had ground to a halt. But when the war ended, Armando had never tried to finish his invention. And everyone had ridiculed him for trying in the first place, calling him the “lesser Edison.” Oliver wondered why Armando had stopped. Surely not because of some bully inventors laughing at him?
His interest was piqued. Tomorrow, he decided, he would find the factory. And if Armando Illstrom was still alive, he’d ask him, to his face, what had happened to his time machine.
His parents emerged from around the corner of the kitchen, both covered in food.
“We’re going to bed,” Mom said.
“What about my blankets and things?” Oliver asked, looking at the bare alcove.
Dad sighed. “I suppose you want me to fetch them from the car, do you?”
“It would be nice,” Oliver replied. “I’d like to get a good night’s sleep before school tomorrow.”
The sense of dread he felt about tomorrow was beginning to grow, mirroring the building storm. He could already tell he was going to have the worst day ever. At the very least he’d like to be rested in preparation. He’d had so many horrible first days at new schools he was certain the one tomorrow was going to be another to add to the list.
Dad trudged reluctantly out of the house, a plume of wind roaring through as he opened the front door. He returned a few moments later with a pillow and blanket for Oliver.
“We’ll get a bed in a couple of days,” he said, as he handed the bedding over to Oliver. It was cold from having been in the car all day.
“Thanks,” Oliver replied, grateful for even this level of comfort.
His parents left, turning off the light as they went, plunging Oliver into darkness. Now the only light in the room was from the street lamp outside.
The wind began to roar again and the window panes rattled. Oliver could tell the weather was building, that something odd was in the air. He’d heard on the radio that the storm of a lifetime was coming. He couldn’t help but be excited about it. Most kids would dread a storm but Oliver was only dreading his first day at his new school.
He went over to the window, leaning his elbows against the ledge as he had before. The sky was almost completely dark. A spindly tree blew in the wind, angled sharply to one side. Oliver wondered if it might snap off. He could just picture it now, the thin bark snapping, the tree launching into the air, carried away by the fierce winds.
And that’s when he saw them. Just as he was transitioning into his daydreaming state, he noticed two people standing by the tree. A woman and a man who looked remarkably like him, like they could easily be mistaken for his parents. They had kind faces and they smiled at him as they held one another’s hands.
Oliver jumped back from the window, startled. For the first time, he realized that neither of his parents looked anything like him. They both had dark hair and blue eyes, as did Chris. Oliver, on the other hand, was the rarer combination of blond hair and brown eyes.
Oliver wondered, suddenly, if perhaps his parents weren’t his parents at all. Perhaps that was why they seemed to hate him so much? He looked out the window but the two people were now gone. Just figments of his imagination. But they’d looked so real. And so familiar.
Wishful thinking, Oliver concluded.
Oliver sat back against the cold wall, tucking himself into the alcove that was his new bedroom, pulling the covers up over him. He brought his knees up to his chest and clasped them tightly, and was struck by a sudden strange sensation, a moment of realization, of clarity—that everything was about to change.
CHAPTER TWO
Oliver woke with a sense of trepidation. His whole body ached from sleeping on the hard floor. The blankets hadn’t been thick enough to keep the cold from getting right into his bones. He was surprised he’d slept at all, considering how anxious he was feeling about his first day at school.
The house was very quiet. No one else was awake. Oliver realized he’d actually woken earlier than he needed to thanks to the dull sunrise seeping through the window.
He heaved himself up and peered out the window. The wind had wreaked havoc through the night, blowing down fences and mailboxes, and throwing trash all over the sidewalks. Oliver looked over at the spindly, crooked tree where he’d seen a vision of the friendly couple last night, the ones who had looked like him and made him wonder if perhaps he wasn’t related to the Blues at all. He shook his head. It was just wishful thinking on his part, he reasoned. Anyone with Chris Blue as their older brother would dream they weren’t actually related!
Knowing he had a little bit of time before his family woke up, Oliver turned from the window and went to his suitcase. He opened it up and looked inside at all the cogs and wires and levers and buttons he’d collected for his inventions. He smiled to himself as he looked at the slingshot booby trap that he’d used on Chris yesterday. But it was just one of Oliver’s many inventions and it wasn’t the most important one, not by a long shot. Oliver’s ultimate invention was something a little more complex, and a whole lot more important—because Oliver was attempting to invent a way to make himself invisible.
Theoretically, it was possible. He’d read all about it. There were actually only two necessary components to make an object invisible. The first was bending light around the object so it couldn’t cast a shadow, similar to the way swimming pool water bent light and made the swimmers inside look strangely squat. The second necessary component to invisibility involved eliminating the object’s reflection.
It sounded simple enough on paper, but Oliver knew there was a reason no one had achieved it yet. Still, that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He needed this in order to escape his miserable life, and it didn’t matter how long it took him to get there.
He reached into his case now and took out all the bits of fabric he’d collected in search of something with negative refractive properties. Unfortunately, he hadn’t found the right fabric yet. Then he took out all the coils of thin wire he’d need to make electromagnetic microwaves to bend the light unnaturally. Unfortunately, none of them were thin enough. In order to work, the coils would need to be less than forty nanometers in size, which was an unfeasibly small size for the human mind to comprehend. But Oliver knew that someone, somewhere, someday, would have a machine to make the coils thin enough, and the fabric refractive enough.
Just then, from upstairs, Oliver heard his parents’ alarm clock jingle. He quickly packed away his items, knowing all too well that they’d go and wake Chris up next, and if Chris ever got wind of what he was trying to make, he would destroy all his hard work.
Oliver’s stomach groaned then, reminding him that Chris’s bullying and torment were about to begin anew, and that he’d better get some food in him before they did.
He passed the still broken dining table and went to the kitchen. Most of the cupboards were empty. The family hadn’t yet had the chance to go grocery shopping for the new house. But Oliver found a box of cereal that had come over in the move, and there was fresh milk in the fridge, so he quickly made up a bowl and scarfed it down. Just in time, too. A few moments later, his parents emerged into the kitchen.
“Coffee?”
