his momâs business trips, about her tenant in the house. He just found out that your birth mom died.â
âI knew that years ago.â
âYou seemed ready. He didnât.â
âYou donât think heâs scared?â
âHe just shows it in a different way.â
âHow am I going to learn all those machines?â
âTheyâre not hard. Every idiot on EarthOne has a phone stuck to his face. Every old lady in my nursing home is texting her grandkids. Theyâre on Facebook . . .â
âWhatâs a facebook?â Eddie looked worried. âSee? How can I make people think Iâm Tom?â
âDonât worry. Just be yourself. People will believe youâve turned into a different person because youâre taking special pills to help you lose your bad attitude.â
âThey have pills like that?â
âPeople here on EarthOne have been gobbling them by the handful for fifty years. Tomâs mom helps to sell them. Theyâre just starting to get big on EarthTwo.â
âI donât have to really take them, do I?â
âNo. But you have to say you do. And hereâs the good part. The cover story is that these pills have side effects. They give you amnesia for a while, so you forget names, where classrooms are, songs everybodyâs listening to, TV shows. Itâs so bad, you canât even play the violin or use your computer.â
âThatâll be easy to prove.â
Grandpa laughed. âAny problems, just come on over to the nursing home.â
âYouâll be with Tom, too, right? That means youâll be in two places at the same time. Like the monitors.â
âThatâs right.â
âBut you were a scientist, you told me,â said Eddie.
Grandpa nodded. âIâm glad you remembered. The head scientists decided that the Earths were unstable, that they could blow themselves up and wreck the universe. They wanted to destroy them. Your dad and I were part of the group that wanted to save the Earths.â
âWas Dad a scientist, too?â
âYour dad was a monitor,â said Grandpa. âWe both became rebels against our own planet.â
âAnd now Tom and me are rebels, too.â
âWeâre counting on you boys.â Grandpa knuckled Eddieâs head. âNow go get some sleep. Tomorrowâs a big day.â
He handed Eddie a key to the front door, got back on his bike, and pedaled away.
THIRTY-ONE
NEARMONT, N.J.
2011
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E DDIE tiptoed up the stairs and into Tomâs room. He planned to look it over carefully, but once he sat down on Tomâs bed, he decided he needed to stretch out for a few minutes first. That was it. As usual, whenever he was worried, he fell right to sleep.
He awoke early. Tomâs house was noisier than his, alarms and machines humming and clicking. Because it was a big old house, it made creaky, grinding sounds. The groaning of the refrigerator downstairs almost drowned out Keithâs snoring in the bedroom across the hall.
Eddie had slept in the chinos and blue shirt he was wearing when he left EarthTwo. They were wrinkled and a little stinky, but he kept them on because he felt shy about wearing Tomâs clothes, which were mostly T-shirts with pictures and words on them and denim pants that looked more stylish than the dungarees he wore back home. He wasnât allowed to wear dungarees to school.
The kitchen was huge, like the kitchen in a restaurant, shiny metal and polished wood. He opened the refrigerator. It looked like a grocery store back home: boxes of berries, a cooked chicken in a plastic box, different kinds of milk and yogurt, bags of lettuce. There was a bag of green leaves marked âbaby arugula.â What was that? Soda, beer, soy milk. What was soy milk? Were there soy cows?
In the freezer there were various brands and flavors of ice cream, even cones and pops. Pizzas, Chinese food,