by Barry Lyga
“Leave him alone!” Max was saying. “Dad’s here! We’re gonna get —”
“Tell me how you did it!” Sammy ignored his brother, shaking Danny again. “Tell me!” He started to draw back his free hand, threatening to slap Danny.
But then the door to the cruiser opened and the sheriff stepped out. It was like seeing a fatter version of the Sheriff Monroe of Kyle’s time — this Sheriff Monroe had a similar mustache and way of walking, with his thumbs hooked into his gun belt and a swagger that said he was the Law. Max immediately jumped back and stood straight, like a soldier being inspected by a general. Sammy kept screaming at Danny and was about to haul off and smack him when the sheriff barked:
“Samuel Dennis Monroe! Stand down now!”
As if waking from a dream, Sammy shook himself and released Danny, who stumbled backward and fell down. Sammy stepped back and stood ramrod-stiff like Max.
“What is going on here?” the sheriff demanded, strutting over to where his sons stood. “I got an anonymous call that something was going on out here. Shoulda known it was the two of you. Causing trouble.”
“We weren’t —”
“Zip those lips!” the sheriff barked at Sammy. “I didn’t ask you a question! You don’t open your yap until I give you a reason to!”
Kyle was beginning to see why Sheriff Maxwell Monroe was such a hard case in his own time.
“What’s your business here, squirt?” the sheriff asked, rounding on Danny, who managed to pick himself up off the ground.
“He grabbed us —” Sammy started, and then broke off, swallowing visibly, when his father fixed him with a deathly glare.
“Tell me what’s going on here,” the sheriff said. “You first.” He pointed at Danny.
Danny stammered, but his voice — while shaky — was clear. “Th-they stole my Walkman!”
“Oh, yeah? Well, why don’t we have it, then?” Sammy asked.
The sheriff smoothed his mustache and looked over his sons. “This is true. They don’t have it.”
“Well, neither do I!”
Kyle slipped a hand to his belt, where the Walkman was clipped. Meanwhile, the sheriff looked over Danny and agreed that the Walkman was not in his possession, either.
“They went into Carson Cave,” Danny said. “It’s probably in there.”
“We were just minding our own business,” Sammy lied smoothly, “and then this kid came tearing into the cave and lifted us up —”
“Lifted you up?” The sheriff clearly didn’t believe this, and something in his tone of voice told Kyle that he was used to hearing lies from Sammy.
“Like this.” Sammy mimed the way Kyle had snatched up the Monroes and hoisted them into the air.
The sheriff looked at Danny — so small and weak compared to the older, bigger Monroe boys — and held back a snort of laughter. “Max?”
Max had been silent the whole time, as if hoping that by saying nothing he could avoid punishment. Now he shrugged. “We don’t have the Walkman, Dad. I mean, sir. Simple as that.”
“This kid came flying in —”
“Flying?” the sheriff interrupted. “Sammy, I have warned you about making up stories and playing pranks….”
“But it happened! He came in and —”
“It’s not the same kid,” Max said. “He’s wearing different clothes.”
Something snapped inside Sammy. Maybe it was being disbelieved. Maybe it was being contradicted by his brother. Maybe it was the fear that the smaller Danny Camden would win this fight. Or maybe, Kyle thought, Sammy Monroe had been ready to snap for a long time and today just happened to be the day.
Whatever the reason, the older Monroe brother flew into a rage, screaming and ranting. “So he changed his clothes! He changed them! Big deal!” he bellowed, and charged at Danny, who was too terrified to move. Sammy would have barreled right into Danny and bowled him over, maybe even trampled him into the ground, if the sheriff hadn’t reached out and grabbed his son by the arm, yanking him back.
And then Sammy hit his father.
From Kyle’s angle, it looked like it was possible that it was an accident, that Sammy’s arm just flailed around from being pulled. Or perhaps Sammy was just that angry. Either way, the result was the same, as the sheriff shoved Sammy away so forcefully that even from a distance, Kyle could hear the boy go “Oof!” Sammy grabbed at the air for balance, then fell back and collapsed on the ground. Max ran to his brother’s side.
“I have warned you again and again,” the sheriff said with barely controlled rage, “about lying, about stealing, about all of it. And you are making me a laughingstock in this town. The lawman with a hoodlum for a son! You’ve had your last warning. You’re going off to military school.”
Max gasped. “Dad! Sir! You can’t send him —”
“You want to join him?” the sheriff asked. “He’s been practically begging for this for years. Get him in the car.”
Max helped Sammy get up and make his way over to the sheriff’s car. Together, they managed to get in the back. “I don’t have time for your nonsense,” the sheriff went on. “Someone broke into my office last night and stole the town’s time capsule! Another headache I don’t need on top of all the other ones. You picked the wrong day to screw up, Sammy.”
“What about my Walkman?” Danny asked timidly.
“Don’t push your luck,” the sheriff threatened, jabbing a stubby finger in Danny’s direction. “If you’re out here, you must be up to no good just like them. Just consider yourself lucky I’m not hauling you in.”
Danny stood in shocked silence as the sheriff climbed into his cruiser, barking to Max to shut the door. Then the cruiser backed onto the dirt road, turned, and drove away.
Kyle waited a few moments to be sure the sheriff’s cruiser wasn’t going to come back, then jogged down the hill to where his father waited. “Hey, Danny! Hey, look!” He held up the Walkman like a trophy.
Danny turned slowly and didn’t move as Kyle came over to him and placed the Walkman in his hands. Kyle watched as his father examined the Walkman as though seeing it for the first time.
“Dore …” he said after a moment. “Dore, can you … can you fly?”
Kyle cleared his throat. “No. Of course not. No one can fly.” He thought of Mairi, of the lies he’d had to tell her, too. And how those lies led to wiping her memory. Why did he have to lie people? Why was he always in this position? Would he always have to lie and hurt people?
“How did you —”
“I went into the cave,” Kyle said, falsehoods easily flowing from his tongue, “and the Monroes were leaving. I was in a shadowy part; they didn’t see me. I found your Walkingman —”
“Walkman.”
“— Walkman in the cave and came out another way.” He paused. “Is the sheriff really going to send them to military school?”
Danny shrugged. “Probably. Well, maybe just Sammy. He’s the really bad one. He’s strong and he’s actually really smart, so he thinks that makes it okay to treat other people badly. Max just goes along with him.”
Kyle grimaced. Was it his fault Sammy Monroe would end up at military school? Sure, Sammy had done other bad things over the years, but it seemed as though his description (his true description!) of Kyle’s actions in the cave had pushed the sheriff over the edge.
Had Kyle changed history? Was Sammy never supposed to go away? Then again, in Kyle’s own time, he’d never known that Sheriff Maxwell Monroe had a brother — maybe Sammy was always destined to go away.
Kyle’s head started to hurt.
“Kyle,” Erasmus whispered in his ear. “Kyle, my battery power is now at —”
Oh, no. Distracted by the siren, Kyle had forgotten to turn Erasmus off.
“What’s that in your ear?” Danny asked, noticing.
“That’s my, uh, hearing aid. I have bad hearing.”
“You have to do something,” Erasmus said urgently.
“I need some wire,” K
yle told Danny. “Do you know where I can get some?”
“Well … Dad probably has some in the basement…. He has all kinds of stuff down there.”
“That’ll do. Let’s go.”
Soon, they were back at Kyle’s grandparents’ house. Kyle almost didn’t want to go in — the memory of Gramps haranguing Danny to the point of tears was still fresh. Too fresh.
But he needed to charge up Erasmus.
“I’m home!” Danny yelled to his parents as they entered. “Me and Dore are going downstairs!”
The basement looked almost exactly the way it did in Kyle’s time; that was sort of weird. Same old TV in one corner; same old photos on the walls; same old sofa. Except none of it was old right now — it was all brand-new. Kyle’s grandparents wouldn’t do much with the basement room in decades. Wow.
Danny led Kyle through a door, beyond which Kyle knew lay what his grandmother called “Gramps’s workshop.” It was a dusty, scary, dark place, filled with cobwebs and the smell of rust.
Or, rather, it would be a dusty, scary, dark place. Unlike the other basement room, the workshop in 1987 was completely different than in Kyle’s time. Bright, clean, and well-organized. Tools that, in Kyle’s time, were piled in jumbles on tables and benches instead hung in perfect order on pegboards in 1987.
“Excellent,” Kyle whispered.
“What do you need wire for?” Danny asked, sliding open a drawer to reveal a spool of beautiful copper wire.
Kyle’s imagination chose that moment to poop out; he couldn’t think of a single good, convincing lie.
“Look, Danny, I hate to ask this, but I need another favor from you, all right?”
Danny nodded.
“I got back your Walkman, right? And I know you really wanted that back. Because your father would be pretty upset if you lost it.”
Kyle felt bad saying it; Danny didn’t know Kyle had witnessed the argument with Gramps. Still, it had the desired effect, as Danny unconsciously glanced away, ashamed. “Yeah, he would be ticked off.”
“So, I did that favor for you. Now I need you to do one for me. I need you to leave me alone down here for a little while.”
Danny’s eyes bugged out. “What are you going to do? What are you building?”
“Don’t worry; I’m not a terrorist.”
Danny laughed. “Terrorists are just in movies.”
“Well, anyway, I’m not one. I just need to do something and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“I thought you needed to see the school computer?”
Oh, right. Kyle had so much going on, he couldn’t keep track of it all! “Right. Later. For now, I just need —”
“All right. Don’t worry. I’ll get us some lunch.”
Once he was alone, Kyle slid Erasmus out of his pocket and put him on the workbench. “Here we go.”
“Be careful,” Erasmus warned. “There are thirty pins in my dock connector. The ones for power are —”
“I remember,” Kyle insisted, cutting off a length of wire. The wire was too thick, so he unwound it and selected only two thin strands, one for each of the pins connected to Erasmus’s power supply. “I can’t build an actual connector,” Kyle said. “I’m going to have to solder the wire in place.”
“No way! I won’t let you go near me with a hot soldering iron!”
“How do you think I built you in the first place?”
“If you solder the wire into place, you won’t be able to use the regular charger when we get home.”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens,” Kyle said.
“But —”
“No buts. You don’t have a choice. And since you don’t have any way of stopping me, I’m just gonna do it.” He heated up the soldering iron and then — very, very carefully — soldered the wire into place. “How’s that?”
“It might work,” Erasmus admitted grumpily. “But until we plug into some power, we won’t know.”
That was true. Kyle scrounged around and found an old desk lamp under the workbench. He snipped off the plug, then soldered that to the wire attached to Erasmus. It wasn’t a pretty sight at all: The sleek, cool lines of the iPod (decked out in Kyle’s custom blue-flame paint job) melding into the naked copper wire, which then merged in a blob of silver solder into the black-coated wire of the plug. But it should work.
Should.
Kyle crawled under the workbench and found an electrical outlet. “Ready?” he asked.
“Let’s just hope this doesn’t blow my circuits out,” Erasmus said. Kyle took that as a yes.
He plugged Erasmus in, squeezing his eyes shut at the same time.
A long moment passed.
And then he heard the familiar and very welcome sound of the chime that meant Erasmus was charging.
Whew!
“It’s working, Kyle!” Erasmus said excitedly. “It’s working!”
“But slowly,” Kyle said, noticing the progress bar on Erasmus’s screen. “I’m going to give you a little juice now and then top you off when we get into the school. You can charge while I hack into the computer.”
“Why not finish me off now?”
“Because Danny will be back any —”
“Hey, Dore!”
Kyle looked out from under the workbench. Danny stood in the doorway, holding two plates. “Are you hungry?”
Kyle realized he was completely famished. “Yeah, I am.”
He pushed Erasmus into a dark corner and left him there to charge while he went to eat lunch with his father.
Kyle was surprised to find that the sandwich was tuna made with a little bit of relish, just the way his grandmother made them. Then he remembered that his grandmother had, in fact, made this very sandwich.
“Did you finish what you needed to finish?” Danny asked.
Kyle noticed how his father avoided asking exactly what Kyle had been up to. He appreciated that. “Yeah, I’m done. I just need to clean up in there.” He jerked his head toward the door to the workshop — he and Danny had come into the basement room to eat. “Then we can go break into the school. You’re not going to change your mind, are you?”
Danny shook his head fiercely. “No way. You got back my Walkman. You saved me, Dore. You’re, like, my hero.”
Kyle was so shocked he stopped chewing. My hero. He’d been called a villain so much that Kyle had never in a million years thought he would hear those words from anyone. Much less from the mouth of his own twelve-year-old father. It had an effect on him that he couldn’t have anticipated. His brain whirled; his heart pounded; his chest expanded.
Pride. He felt proud.
I am a hero, he thought. And when I get back to my own time, I’m going to make sure I’m the most heroic person there is.
“Let’s get going,” Kyle said, polishing off his sandwich.
Soon (after Kyle retrieved a now partially charged Erasmus from the workshop), he and Danny made their way to the school. Kyle was surprised to find themselves walking down Freeman Road, toward Bouring Elementary School.
But although the building at the end of the road looked exactly (if a bit more new) like the elementary school Kyle had attended, the sign out front was different, reading instead BOURING JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL.
“This is …” Kyle began.
“Where I go to school,” Danny finished. “Well, for another year. Then I’ll go to the new middle school they’re building. And my dad said this is going to be turned into —”
“— an elementary school.” This time Kyle did the finishing honors.
“Yeah.” Danny looked around. “Okay, we’re lucky it’s Saturday. No one’s around.”
“You can go now,” Kyle said. “No point in you getting in trouble if I’m caught.” Kyle would never be caught, of course — with his superspeed, he could get away from any situation. Danny wouldn’t be so lucky.
“No way,” Danny said staunchly. “You helped me and I’m helping you. A deal’s a deal. You need me to show you whe
re the computer is.”
That was true. Kyle knew where the computers were in Bouring Elementary School decades from now, but who knew what the layout of today’s junior high was like?
“All right. But once you show me the computer, you have to beat it.”
“Okay.”
First they tried the front door, just in case. But it was definitely locked and Kyle noticed chains looped through the handles on the inside. He was amazed that the doors were entirely made of glass — he could see right into the school. In his own time, the doors to every school he’d ever visited were made of heavy steel, with small, reinforced windows.
They went around back. More glass double doors; more chains.
“This is hopeless,” Danny said.
“No, it’s not. If they have the doors chained from the inside, then there has to be a door somewhere that isn’t chained. Because otherwise no one could get inside to unchain the other doors.”
“Well, yeah, that’s true …” Danny said.
“You look over there,” Kyle said, pointing, “and I’ll check over here.”
Kyle had already spotted what looked like a maintenance door, a dull green slab of metal with a shiny knob set into it. He knew it would be locked, but he wouldn’t let that stop him. He couldn’t have Danny around, though.
Danny went off on his own and Kyle quickly dashed to the door. As he’d suspected, it was locked, but so what? He applied a little bit of superstrength to the knob and it came off in his hand. Then he craned his neck to examine the inside of the lock, tripped some tumblers, and presto! The door was open.
“Hey, Danny!” he called. “It’s open!”
Danny came running, breathing hard when he slowed to a stop at the door. “Whoa! What luck!”
“Yep. Luck,” Kyle agreed, holding the door so that his hand blocked the broken knob. “Let’s go.” He held the door open and ushered Danny in, then tossed the useless knob far out into the football field behind the school.
Inside, they found themselves in exactly what Kyle had imagined — a maintenance room of some sort. It was dark and gloomy, and it became darker and gloomier as Kyle eased the door shut.
“Hang on …” Danny said. “Ah-ha!” A moment later, the room lit up as Danny flicked the light switch. Kyle closed the door all the way.