“What happened, A.B.?” I asked, when I’d loaded my groceries.
He was sitting in the storage area under the back windshield, contentedly removing the blood from his coat. “That monstrous boy-child came at me with a tire iron. Really, Human, I can’t see how you stand these people!”
“What, Jace? Jace tried to hit you?”
“They both did, actually.”
“You cowards,” I said aloud. “Attacking an innocent pussycat!”
Jace looked shaken. “Innocent! That thing’s Beelzebub in disguise.”
“You thought he was just a cat, Jace. No matter what I told you, you still thought he was a regular kitty-cat, maybe with a few tricks. Otherwise, you’d have left him alone. I just want to tell you—” I struggled to figure out how to put it.
“Yeah?” he sneered. “You want to tell me what?”
“I am just so majorly, completely, totally disappointed in both of you.” I kind of hated the way I sounded, sort of like Mom and Dad when they were mad at me. But it was true. “Disappointed” was the only word I could think of to describe the way I felt.
I wasn’t even particularly mad. I just wanted to cry. And I sure wanted to get rid of them. It was tempting just to send them on their way when we got back home but I needed them to help me unload the chocolate. We took it up to the bedroom, where we found Tabitha asleep with Rosebud, apparently not having done anything stupid or violent. That made me like her better.
“Okay,” I said. “You three can go. I’m keeping your cell phones, just in case. Just get out of my parents’ house and out of my sight. Rosebud, see them out, will you? And thanks for all your help.”
“Mrrowww!” said the gray cat, and she ran down the stairs, the three humans clattering at her heels.
I was pretty sure what they’d do next, so I moved fast. I had the perfect carrying-case for the chocolate— a multi-colored Guatemalan duffle that Mom had gotten in Los Angeles. The designs on it may or may not have been Mayan, but they were close enough. You could really pack a lot in there, and I started by visiting the pantry and rounding up a bottle of chocolate liqueur, and some brandy to mix with it; then some tequila I saw. The Beast didn’t know everything: I really couldn’t believe that in eleven hundred years, distilling techniques hadn’t improved.
I nestled Willie Wonka’s entire chocolate factory around the bottles and, just as I was zipping up, I happened to notice the flashlight the wannabe burglars had left in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. How cool would that be at midnight in a Mayan city? I threw it in, along with one other thing, and then the knock came. I looked out the window.
Uh-huh. Two police cars had arrived with no lights and no sirens— with or without cell phones, my ex-friends had ratted me out. “Let’s go, A.B.,” I said through clenched teeth— and this time the clenching had nothing to do with the discomfort of time travel.
Wisely— now and then the Fiend actually can be wise— A.B. said nothing until we’d completed the second leg of the trip back to Bad Girl School.
The first ended in a cottage of the type the Mayans have been building for centuries and possibly millennia, except without the thatched roof. And there were other clues that this one was contemporary. One was the length of this leg of the trip (barely noticeable); another was the presence of a large flat-screen television. “Leave the bag on the floor,” A.B. ordered. “It’ll be fine here.”
“Where,” I asked, “is here?”
“Later. I need to get you home.”
And indeed we were back in the Rangers meeting room in about a second. Everyone was still packing up and the Curly dog, which was beginning to give me the creeps, was back on its shelf. The only difference was, I had two new things in my pocket— the brooch, which I hadn’t wanted to leave in some stranger’s house, and Morgan’s cell phone.
I thought the phone might come in handy— and so might Morgan.
***
Later, when we were in bed, A.B. said, “You handled yourself well, Traveler. With one small exception, which can wait till tomorrow. Even the Alpha Beast was impressed.”
“Thanks.” I tried to give him a friendly cuddle, but he resisted. “You know what I was worried about? I was afraid you were going to kill them.”
For the first time since I’d known him, he laughed. I didn’t even know he could do it. “Kill them? Pah! They’re a grain of sand on the beach of crime— why the devil would I kill them?”
“I don’t exactly know what your standards are.”
“Whatever they are, Student, I can assure I wouldn’t kill your friends in your parents’ house in front of you. What kind of fiend would do a thing like that?”
He cracked me up. But all the same, I felt my teeth unclench as well as a few odd stomach muscles when I realized I could ask about something I’d been really concerned about. Smiling, I said, “I’m glad to hear it kitty-muffin. I suppose that means you wouldn’t—”
“Kill Julia’s mother? Or Kara’s? No, I would not. But only because of you. Student, do you understand that? No doubt they deserve it by my ‘standards’, as you call them. However, you’d feel guilty for the rest of your life if I did. I would never permit my servant to suffer.”
“Thanks so much, your majesty.”
“Nonsense. It’s simply inefficient.”
I got in a little ear-scratch before he could jerk away. “What a little sweetums kitty is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR—COUNTDOWN
The next morning I woke up feeling clobbered, but nothing like when I traveled five hundred years. If I’d been at home I’d probably have stayed in bed, but I had things to do and anyway, I knew I was going to be out of it for a week after the trip to Uxmal, so I didn’t want to miss any more time than I already had. The point here was to get points, and I couldn’t do it in bed.
So I got dragged myself out of bed, whipped up a glamour while I was grooming, put it on the brooch, and slipped it into the back of my top drawer. I was kind of dreading breakfast because I knew the Beast would be there, and I knew exactly what he was going to say, but there was really no avoiding him. As he’d pointed out on so many occasions, that was the beauty of being a cat; you could come and go as you pleased and no one even noticed.
I was safe during gym, I was pretty sure of that. He hadn’t shown up on the field since the incident of the kitty-rocket. I thought it was because of the bad memories, but after what he’d told me the night before, I thought it might actually be because he felt bad for Lola.
Imagine! He wouldn’t kill my friends in my mom’s house in front of me! Is that the sweetest thing? For him, it was like sending a valentine. So I’d begun to think he might have something resembling feelings, but I still knew he was going to give me a hard time that morning.
He didn’t look up from lapping milk. But then he never did.
“You’re mad at me, right? About making up the alien thing?”
“Naturally, I was going to ask you what the very devil you thought you were doing. If you must lie, Student— and face it, sometimes we must— then the best lie is the easy lie. Why on Earth did you have to go into all that gobbledygook?”
I was ready for him. I had a really good reason. “You know how I’ve known Jace all my life? When he was a little kid, he was a UFO freak. He probably barely remembers it now, but grown-ups never forget.”
“How, exactly, does that apply?”
“You just have to trust me, kitty-kiss. I had my reasons.”
“Very well,” he said, and bounced off the table.
As usual, he turned his retreating tail into a question mark. I was getting kind of used to it. If you want to know the truth, I was actually starting to think it was cute.
***
Dad called from San Francisco that night, just like I knew he would. Because once Jace and Morgan had called the cops on me, I figured they weren’t going to stop there.
“Reeno, I just had to make sure you were okay,” he said. “Your buddy Jace called today and sai
d he saw you in Von’s last night.”
“Dad! You know that’s crazy. I’m here, not there. How could I be two places at once?”
“He swore it was true. He said you told him some crazy story involving secret missions and extraterrestrials. He thought you’d escaped and gotten on drugs.”
“You know I don’t do drugs.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“And you know I’m here.”
“Umm, I—”
“So why would you believe Jace? You know he’s always had that UFO thing going. When you really think about it, who has more access to drugs, me or Jace? And by the way, why would I be in Von’s and not at the hospital? If I ran away from this place, it would be for one reason only.”
“I’m sorry for doubting you, Reeno. I just had to check it out.”
“How’s Mom?”
“Cranky. I just talked to her. That’s probably…”
I interrupted him. “Dad! I just thought of something. Jace is a burglar, you know?”
“You never admitted that.”
“Well, I’m admitting it now. He knows you guys are gone, right? Because he’s taking care of Curly.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Well, the house is sitting empty and everything. It’s a perfect target.”
“It’s funny you should mention that. The police got a call about a prowler there last night.”
“I hope nobody got in.”
“I’ll get Clarice to check it out.” The next door neighbor. Rosebud’s mom.
“Oh, good,” I said, but I wasn’t too happy about it. Because I’d suddenly remembered I’d left Jace and Tabitha’s cell phones on the bed in Mom and Dad’s room. They’d be traced, and the two of them would go down. It was as simple as that.
I got off the phone fast, kind of sobered by the idea that I might have just sent my best friend and some strange girl to jail. Okay, neither Jace nor Morgan were my best friends any more. For one thing they’d burgled our house— and they’d tried to get me thrown in jail— but I sure wasn’t happy about it. I could have been happy that Morgan was out of it, but I didn’t know for sure she would be— one of the others might rat her out.
One thing, it made me think about how easy it was to get busted.
Did you ever hear adults sit around and talk about the totally dangerous things they did as kids? How they drove drunk or stoned or went home with a guy they didn’t know or hitchhiked in Afghanistan? This is the kind of thing your parents hope you won’t hear, of course, but sometimes you do. Sometimes they think you’re asleep.
Or maybe they’re not your parents and you’re in the next booth at a restaurant; or maybe it’s even on television. They say what they did and then they take a quick sip of their drink and cover their face and they sometimes turn red, and say, “Omigod, what was I thinking? How on Earth could I have ever been so stupid?”
And you think, “You got away with it— what’s the problem?”
Well, that was the way I was beginning to think about my life of crime. Like I was my parents. Like I couldn’t believe I’d been so dumb and gotten away with it. By the time I got back to my room, I felt like I was getting old before my time.
Like I was completely losing my nerve.
Jabba the Cat was lounging in the doorway. “Risks are what makes a hero, Student. Just not stupid risks.”
“Hero,” I said. “I like the sound of that. Isn’t it time I got promoted again?”
He galloped down the hall, sounding like a herd of buffalo.
And for some reason, I realized that, for the first time, my dad had called me “Reeno” instead of “Deb.”
***
At the Rangers meeting that night, Cooper, having temporary custody of someone else’s iPhone, reported on Manny Diaz’s schedule. “It turns out he’s one of those general sportscasters, meaning he doesn’t cover just baseball, which is lucky for us, since it isn’t baseball season. Right now he’s covering the Lakers, whose schedule—” he held out the phone so we could all see— “is posted online. How cool is that? All we have to get is get to a Lakers game, and we’ve got him.”
“After Uxmal,” A.B. said, twitching his tail to let everyone know he was talking.
“A.B. says after Uxmal,” I told them.
“Roger,” Julia said. “And now— LET’S RIDE THE OZONE!”
For the next few days— until Uxmal— we had two main chores: practicing moving Cursed Curly with our psyches; strengthening its shield; and sending energy to Haley, which would also be practice for what the group had to do while I was in Uxmal.
First, we floated the dog down from its shelf, but rather than submit to our collective will, it dropped in little stutter-steps, sometimes resisting. It felt heavier somehow.
And then when we actually had it on the table, we could see that it was starting to look worn, it’s white plush turning slightly gray. Or was that me? I asked them.
“Hey, is this thing a different color or not?”
Puzzled looks all around.
I felt a weird prickling at the back of my neck. “Guys, I hate to tell you this, but I think that thing’s developing an aura.”
“Yow!” said Carlos. “What do you think that means?”
“Could mean the curse gettin’ stronger,” Sonya said. “Maybe ’cause we compressed it.”
“I think it might mean it’s trying to get out,” Julia added. “And maybe about to succeed.”
Neither was a good option. So we went into the dog itself and compressed the curse yet again. Then we built a second shield for it— within the dog. And after that, we reinforced the outside shield.
“Something else about that dog,” Carlos said. “I don’t like it any more. It doesn’t seem like a cuddly kids’ toy. To tell you the truth, it’s creeping me out.”
“Yeah,” Cooper said. “I kind of get why nobody could stand me when I had that thing on me.”
There was something sad and sweet about the way he said that— like remembering innocence lost the hard way. I can stand you now, I thought. And hoped he couldn’t read my mind like A.B.
After we’d done the shielding we noticed the toy was much easier to steer— at first— but then after a few minutes all our work seemed to get worn down.
Julia said, “The thing is definitely getting stronger. Wonder when we can go, anyhow?”
Cooper checked online with his liberated iPhone. “There’s a Lakers’ meeting Thursday. Think we could aim for that?” He looked at A.B. as if expecting the Beast to speak to him. Like that was gonna happen.
A.B. was silent. Big surprise.
“I just thought of something,” Cooper continued. “How are we going to do this, anyhow?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “I think I can get us a ride. But we might need Lakers tickets. How do we do that?”
Julia said, “Why don’t we steal a credit card and buy them online?”
“We can’t,” Sonya said. “That would be immoral!”
Julia, who almost never lost it, sighed in exasperation. “Sonya,” she said. “did it ever occur to you you’re a prude? What the hell did you do to get in this school, anyhow?”
Sonya shrugged. “Same as y’all. ’Cept instead of seein’ things, I heard voices. They thought I was crazy.”
“Why didn’t they send you to a shrink instead?”
“Uh…” Sonya smiled mischievously. “Could be all those drugs I did ’cause I felt so bad about bein’ crazy.”
“To get back to the matter at hand,” Carlos said, “I think we could do that credit card thing. Because the person whose card we used would just report it stolen— and then he wouldn’t have to pay for the tickets.”
“But somebody would,” Sonya said.
“You know what?” I said. “I’ve already got really bad morals. Why don’t I just do it and…”
“Wait,” said Cooper. “They didn’t confiscate my checkbook.” He grinned evilly. “Guess they
thought there was no one place to use it. Why don’t I just get someone in the dorm to do it and then reimburse them with a check?”
“Problem solved,” Julia said. “Moving right along— how do we get out of here without being seen?”
“Easy,” I said. “We make ourselves invisibility cloaks. Only not exactly like Harry Potter’s. There’s this thing called a ‘glamour’…” Quickly, I explained the concept and taught them how to do it. By the end of the evening, we hardly noticed each other.
(Okay, kidding, but we made a lot of progress.)
***
I was desperate to get to Uxmal, but I couldn’t get a word out of A.B. Nor did Dad call with news of Haley, which I took to be a good sign. At least as good as we could hope for.
Another day went by and nothing happened except that I continued to feel better, a fact A.B. must have noticed. Finally, at the meeting that night, The Great One spoke:
“We leave tomorrow. From this room. Tell them to gather at the usual time— with plenty of food and drink— and be ready to seal themselves in here for at least two days.”
I told them.
“Huh,” said Carlos.
“Double huh,” Sonya said.
“What is it?”
“Well, if we gon’ send you energy for two days, and you come back a split second after you leave, then when the two days come in?”
“Yeah,” Carlos added, “how would that work?”
“A.B.?” I said aloud. All was quiet as he answered.
“This time, of course, we’ll return on their schedule. In other words, if it takes us two days in ‘real’ time, we’ll come back in two days. If two weeks, then at the end of the two weeks.”
I relayed the info.
“Damn,” Carlos said. “Damn damn damn! I thought we were going to find something out about how time travel works.”
I thought about it. Pretty clever of A.B. to deflect that one. I guess we’d all hoped that. Because, after all, I was about to steal a book to break a curse that wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t already stolen the book several centuries ago and couldn’t be broken unless I did it in the near future. It was the kind of thing that would keep you awake if you let it.
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