The Twin Powers Read Online Free PDF

can’t walk around here in your underwear.” They all laughed.
    I remembered I was still wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts. I was barefoot.
    â€œI’m a long-distance runner,” I said. Good answer. Something Tom would have thought of, if he knew anything about sports. I grinned at them, friendly-like. I didn’t feel scared because it seemed like a tryout for a team. Hercules wanted to see what I could do. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. Would he?
    â€œLong-distance runner? Barefoot? You goofin’ on me?” The first kid looked angry. “Gonna cost you to be here in my park. You gotta pay a admission charge.”
    All of the guys laughed again.
    Remember,
said Hercules’s voice,
as Mark Twain said, ‘Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.
’
    I was getting pretty sick of Mark Twain.
    The circle around me got tighter. “You deaf?” The kid who had been doing all the talking began slapping his baseball bat into his palm. The others picked up the rhythm.
Smack, smack, smack-smack, smack.
    The circle was so close now, I could hear them breathing along with their smacks.
Hunh, hunh, hunh-hunh, hunh.
    Don’t be such a dummy. Imagine something.
    What if the baseball bats turned into real bats, flapping their little black wings? But bats weren’t really scary. We’d caught some at Scout camp and turned them loose.
    Smack-smack, hunh-hunh.
    The bats were still baseball bats and they were coming closer.
    What if the baseball bats turned into . . . snakes? Just thinking about that made my knees freeze. I was ashamed, a Boy Scout afraid of snakes.
    I focused hard on the baseball bats, using my fear to make a terrible picture in my head of wriggling snakes, flashing their fangs.
    â€œYeeeoow!” One of the kids dropped his bat.
    I felt a rush of home-run joy. I focused harder, pouring more fear and energy into my imagination. The fangs started dripping venom!
    Kids were screaming, dropping their bats, and running. One kid was crying.
    I raised my arms and yelled, “Raiders rule!”
    One by one, howling, the guys took off into the trees. Their bats were scattered around me. Plain old baseball bats.
    By the time I collapsed into the grass, exhausted, all the guys were gone.
    â€œNot bad,” said Hercules, reappearing.
    â€œNot bad? That was the grooviest.”
    Hercules offered a hand and hoisted me up. “Those were baby steps, making a bunch of wannabe gangsters think their bats were snakes. Your powers are more powerful that that. Eddie, you’re not groovy yet. You’re just a newbie boobie with a lot to learn.”

Ten
    BRITZKY
    NEARMONT, N.J.
    2012
    Â 
    W E hugged and jumped and yelled—even Ronnie, who was usually pretty quiet. Alessa cried. Buddy ran around Grandpa’s kitchen, licking everybody except Tom, who growled back at him. Eddie and I punched each other’s shoulders. In six months, I’d gotten used to Tom again, but now I remembered how much I liked Eddie, a nice, regular guy.
    Ronnie looked pale from the trip. Slipping between the Earths is a lousy ride. Galactically speaking, the distance is infinitesimal, but since time as well as space is involved—Eddie’s EarthTwo is fifty-four years younger than EarthOne—the trip lasts several hours and beats up your body. You feel as if you’re coming down with the flu—headache, chills, nausea, a stuffed nose. The symptoms disappear as soon as you land.
    After we quieted down, Grandpa spooned ice cream into bowls and passed around a plate of cookies. We ate and just sort of looked at one another, grinning. Eddie had borrowed some of Tom’s clothes, which were tight on him. When he’d showed up on EarthOne at the landing spot in the woods near the house, he’d been in his underwear. What a great story that was! Grandpa had Eddie, Ronnie, and Buddy hiding in the back of his SUV, under blankets, and he drove into