Chapter 11

  The Peterson family dinner table was oddly quiet for once. Solomon was usually the center of attention, loud and boisterous, always with a funny story or joke tucked up his sleeve. But tonight, he ate in near-silence, scarfing down his food as if he couldn't wait to finish. Luna picked at her lasagna, pushing and pulling it with her food, but that was normal for her. She was never one with much to say.

  "Are you alright, Luna-bear?" Mr. Peterson asked. "You've barely eaten anything."

  "I'm not hungry," she answered automatically.

  Mrs. Peterson put her fork down and gave her daughter a worried look. "You seem a little off tonight. Did something happen earlier?"

  "No. I'm fine. I just...had a long day." Luna pushed her plate away. "May I please be excused from the table?"

  Mrs. Peterson sighed. "Yes... You can leave your plate there; I'll put it in the fridge for later."

  Luna slunk upstairs. Solomon quickly swallowed his last few bites and stood to leave the table, but a warning look from his mother froze him in his tracks. Noooo! I was so close to making my escape!

  "What do you say?" Mrs. Peterson coaxed him.

  "Uh... can I leave the table?" he guessed.

  His mother raised an eyebrow. "And?"

  Solomon frantically searched his memory for the right words. What more does she want from me? "Thanks for dinner?"

  "It shouldn't be a question, but that's a small detail. You're free to go." Mrs. Peterson waved him out of the dining room.

  Solomon grabbed his plate, silverware, and cup and slipped into the kitchen. he felt like a prisoner who had been released on parole. He was free for now, but who knew how long it would last? Stacking his dishes by the sink - and ignoring the empty dishwasher - he slowly opened the kitchen pantry. Luckily, the door didn't creak, but his mother must've had a sixth sense for snack-seekers.

  "Stay out of the cupboards! No snacks after dinner!" Mrs. Peterson called from the adjacent room.

  "Okay, Mom!" Solomon called back, then grabbed a red bag of Quasi Chips and hid it under his shirt. The bag of chips bulged out conspicuously, but neither of his parents said anything about it as he went through the dining room and back upstairs.

  As he had predicted, Luna was in her room, back at her computer, scrolling through a document filled with scientific mumbo-jumbo. Solomon tried to read the document over his sister's shoulder but gave up after the first sentence. Instead, he brought out the bag of Quasi Chips and put it on Luna's desk as a kind of peace offering. An illustration of Gadgetman, leader of the Quasi Quartet, smiled up at her from the packaging, declaring in bold, chunky letters, "Sour cream and onion chips with an extra PUNCH of flavor!"

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  Luna glanced at the chips, and a rare smile crossed her face. "Thanks. Sour cream and onion is my favorite flavor." She paused her scrolling and ripped open the bag.

  "Yeah, I know." Solomon went into his bedroom just next door and grabbed his own desk chair, pulling it out the door and over into Luna's room. The chair snagged on the carpet a few times, but he managed the task eventually.

  Plopping down in his newly acquired chair, Solomon waited patiently for Luna to finish her chips. She tossed her empty bag into her nearby trash can and turned back to her computer. Five minutes passed before Solomon's patience finally wore out. He was trying to be a good brother, but one could only take so much delay when potential superpowers hung in the balance. "Well?" he asked.

  Luna blinked at him in surprise, as if she had forgotten that he was there. "Well what?"

  "Well, are you going to tell me what's in that document? Does it tell us how to get superpowers?"

  "Oh, that! Yeah, I think it does, actually. Just hold on a sec..." Luna quickly scrolled to the bottom of the document. She glanced over it and then nodded to herself. She spun around to face Solomon, her chair squealing in protest. For a brief moment, Solomon felt as if he was about to be interviewed for a really tough job. The kind that came with a big office and a nice car, while also carrying a lot of responsibility. But then the moment passed, and Solomon was once again your average twelve-year-old boy, sitting across from his twin sister, calm yet excited beyond definition, and hopefully about to hear the best news a kid could hear.

  "I've read through all of the data for the tests they ran on us at that research facility, as well as Dr. Fischer's notes on them, and I think I know how this whole thing works," Luna explained. "If we can somehow get access to a fine-tuned optical cavity and a non-linear optical crystal-"

  "Whoa, slow down a bit!" Solomon interrupted. "Unlike you, I don't read through scientific journals in my free time, and I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

  Luna sighed and put a hand over her face. "If we can find a box with mirrors in it and a special type of crystal, then we can shoot ourselves with an invisible laser made of radioactive light, which our cells will be able to turn into energy and use to power superhuman changes to our sight, hearing, bone structures, muscle density-"

  "So we'll shoot ourselves with a laser and then get superpowers?" Solomon interjected, heading his sister off before she could delve into the scientific details much further.

  "Pretty much. There's just one problem." Luna brought up her web browser and brought up a bunch of pictures. The pictures were all of thick black circles with small glass lenses in their centers.

  "Microscope lens?" Solomon asked, confused.

  "No! There're Beta Barium Borate crystals!" Luna took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself. Evidently, the effort of explaining complex scientific principles to someone who could barely grasp even the basics was wearing down on her. "We need a fifteen-millimeter BBO - Beta Barium Borate - crystal, but as I was saying, there's a big problem."

  "Please just tell me already!” Solomon begged her. "The suspense is killing me!”

  "Okay, fine!" He couldn't tell if Luna wanted to laugh at him or scowl in annoyance. "We need the crystal, except even the cheapest one is over a thousand dollars."

  "Oh." Solomon frowned in concentration. Surely there's some way to get a cheaper crystal! "Can't we buy a used one? Or a smaller one?"

  Luna was shaking her head before he even finished. "Even the 'used' crystals are expensive. If the crystal's smaller, then it won't work quite the same, and I'd have to change a bunch of parameters for the experiment. Plus, the cheaper crystals are more likely to have imperfections or even cracks. We have to get one of the costly ones."

  Solomon thought for a moment. "Well, then I hope you've been saving up, because I spent all of my money on Quasi Quartet figurines."

  Luna shrugged. "And I spent my money on fancy USBs and hacking technology. We have to find some other way through this mess, or we'll never unlock our superpowers."