“Like atoms with the potential to attract or repel,” Ling said. “To create energy.”
At the word attract, Evie glanced sidelong at Jericho where he leaned against the wall, arms folded across his broad chest, head tilted slightly back so that he could look down at everything from under those somewhat sleepy eyelids, remote, like a god from on high. The curve of his throat was inviting. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him there.
“Do you like science, Ling?” Sister Walker asked, mercifully pulling Evie’s attention back to the group.
“Science is what she lives for,” Henry said.
A smile lit up Sister Walker’s face. “Then you’ll have to let me know your thoughts as we proceed. Here. Take this for making notes.” She handed Ling a small leather-bound book and a pencil.
“Thank you,” Ling said, blushing.
“Don’t thank me yet. I’ll expect things from you,” Sister Walker said.
“Ooh. Teacher’s pet,” Henry whispered.
“Not all of us get expelled from prep school,” she shot back.
Henry nodded appreciatively. “Touché.”
Ling cracked open the notebook, inhaling the scent of good leather and of the possibilities lurking in all those blank pages. She was embarrassingly proud of the attention from Sister Walker. Back on Mott Street, everyone knew that Ling could walk in dreams and speak to the dead, but no one really understood her love of science or how those worlds could coexist when to Ling they were simply different sides of the same coin, the exploration of equal mysteries. Sister Walker had the same two passions. Ling sensed in her a kindred spirit. The notebook was acknowledgment: I see you. I know you.
Isaiah was bored. Sister Walker said they’d test powers, but so far it was just a bunch of talking. He’d never been in a place as fascinating as the museum, and he wanted to explore everything in it. While Sister Walker and Will asked the others a series of questions, Isaiah wandered over to the fat chest between the windows so he could get a closer look at the instrument sitting on top of it: a small wooden box with a hand crank on the side and, on its face, a needle that measured in tens from zero to eighty. It looked as if someone had tried to make a cuckoo clock with a speedometer. Isaiah ran a finger across the dark filament of the bulb in the instrument’s center. Then he turned the crank, and it flared briefly, the needle tipping up the scale to thirty with an electric scratching sound. Isaiah jumped back, and the machine calmed.
Isaiah put up his hands. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Careful,” Will said, marching toward Isaiah.
Now that Isaiah knew he wasn’t in trouble, his curiosity took over. “What is it?”
“It’s called a Metaphysickometer,” Will said.
Isaiah shrugged, unimpressed. “Doesn’t seem like much.”
“Just wait till we start working, and you generate energy. Then that needle will bounce around like an excited puppy. It’s one of Jake Marlowe’s finest early inventions,” Will said.
“Jake Marlowe built this?” Ling said, drawing closer.
“Yes. When we worked together. In the United States Department of Paranormal,” Sister Walker explained.
“Ling’s his greatest admirer. She met him at his Future of America Exhibition announcement. He’s promised her tickets to the exhibit’s opening day,” Henry explained.
“Jake Marlowe.” Mabel practically spat his name like a curse word. “Did you know his miners are striking?”
“Now you’ve done it,” Evie said under her breath.
“They’re living in tents with their families. They’re cold and hungry. But the newspapers refuse to report it,” Mabel continued.
“Then they should show up for work and not complain,” Ling said.
Mabel’s voice grew even more heated. “The conditions at his mine are terrible! They’ve been mining uranium twelve, thirteen hours a day, and getting awfully sick from it.”
“Why does Jake Marlowe need so much uranium?” Ling wondered aloud.
“I don’t know,” Mabel said. She’d never really stopped to think about it before.
Ling scoffed. “We all have to work hard,” she said, returning to the argument. “I know people in Chinatown who work seventeen hours a day. My parents never take a day off. I feel like a bad daughter being here and not there, helping them. As for your unions, I don’t see them sticking up for Chinese workers.”
Henry managed a strained smile. “I love this play. I can’t wait till it comes to Broadway next month,” he said, trying to smooth things over.
Ling knew Henry was kidding and she knew it was because he hated to see people fight. But it bothered her anyway, the way he slid around anything too uncomfortable. Ling didn’t have that luxury. She was an outsider among outsiders—a half-Chinese, half-Irish, partially paralyzed girl living in Chinatown. She could not escape the looks of pity and discomfort she garnered when she struggled into a room on her crutches. All those eyes on her, then all those eyes looking away out of a fear that they could catch the bad luck of her. It had taught her to be blunt, to lash out first. Better to frighten people a little and keep them at a distance than to suffer the eventual disappointment of them. Better to wound a little than to hurt a lot. Even Ling’s gift made people uncomfortable. The messages she carried back from the ancestor spirits she spoke to during her dream walks weren’t always what the relatives who’d hired her wanted to hear. When that happened, they often took it out on the messenger: Ling. Only in the scientific world, among the beauty of theories and observations, equations and atoms, did Ling feel she truly belonged. And in dreams, where she could do anything, even walk. Even run.
Ling turned her attention to the Metaphysickometer. It was cruder than Marlowe’s sleeker, newer inventions, and it encouraged her to know that everyone, even Jake Marlowe, had to start somewhere.
“What does it do?” she asked, examining its many dials.
“It measures electromagnetic radiation. Both ghosts and Diviners seem to emit much more of it than the rest of the population. In theory, Diviners together can disrupt or create energy fields.” Will flipped a switch on the box’s side and turned the crank a few times until a pleasant hum warmed the machine. The needle tipped up and down like a conductor’s baton. “Quite a bit of it in this room right now.” Will switched it off and the needle dropped like a fainting ingenue. “Mr. Marlowe was quite interested in what could be made from that energy—whole industries might be powered from it.”
“I thought Jake Marlowe hated Diviners,” Theta said. “He’s always running ’em down.”
“How come he does that if he used to be one of you, Sister?” Isaiah said, flipping the switch on the Metaphysickometer on and off until Sister Walker stopped him.
“Yes, what happened? Did one of the Diviners pick out the wrong Christmas present for him?” Evie said.
“Socks,” Sam agreed. “It’s always socks.”