by Bill Myers
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Must be allergies or something,” he said.
More nodding and more swiping.
“Come on, Your Babe-ness,” Herby whispered beside her. “Say something.”
But there was no way TJ could talk. They’d both gone through the exact same thing. Together, but separately. Unbelievable. She wiped her eyes again. And then, just when she thought of blurting out what really happened, telling him about Tuna and Herby, pouring out her heart (and explaining how utterly and completely perfect they were for each other), she heard a very familiar and very unwelcome voice:
“Hey, Chad, there you are!”
She looked up to see Elizabeth standing with her hands on her very slim and very perfect hips.
“Hesper’s waiting for you up the beach.”
Chad nodded. He glanced up the beach, then looked back to TJ. “Listen, maybe we can get something to eat sometime. You know, just to talk.”
If TJ’s heart was in her throat before, it had now leaped out of her mouth.
“Talk?” she repeated in her best Kermit the Frog voice.
“Yeah. I mean, that’s what friends do, right? . . . Talk?”
TJ nodded, also hoping “friends” would call the paramedics, bring in the life-support systems, and jump-start her heart, which had not only leaped out of her mouth but was now flopping around all over the sand.
“Chad,” Elizabeth said, “are you coming or what?”
He ignored her and continued speaking to TJ. “I can understand if you don’t want to—I mean, with me being such a creep and all, wanting to cheat and everything like that.”
“But you didn’t cheat,” TJ croaked.
Chad looked at her, thought a moment, then slowly started to nod. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I didn’t, did I?” He thought another moment, then chuckled.
Somehow she was able to hold his gaze.
“But only ’cause of that dream I had about you and your sister.”
That was it. That was all she could stand. She felt her ears starting to burn and looked away.
He gave another chuckle. “See what a positive influence you are on me?”
Forget the burning ears; now her entire face was on fire.
“Even when I sleep.”
And forget about those paramedics—it was time to call out the fire engines.
“Chad,” Elizabeth demanded, “you know how Hesper hates waiting.”
Chad sighed heavily. “Well, give it some thought. Getting something to eat, I mean.” Then without a word, he finally turned and started hobbling back up the beach toward Hesper and her beauty queens.
TJ looked on, staring with amazement. The moment had been unbelievable . . . perfect. Well, almost perfect. There was still the little problem of Elizabeth. Once Chad was out of earshot, the girl immediately moved in and gave TJ a piece of her mind.
“You’re not fooling anyone, you know.”
“I’m sorry?”
“With your spells or alien mumbo jumbo or whatever.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Making everyone have the same dream last night. I mean, honestly, did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
TJ only stared.
“But just so you know, I’m still going to expose you. I’m gonna make sure everyone knows exactly who or what you are.”
“Not from the bottom of the sea you won’t,” Herby said, reaching for his knife.
“What did you say?” Elizabeth asked in surprise.
“No, Herby!” TJ cried. “Don’t!”
But she was too late. Suddenly
Elizabeth was gone.
“What have you done?!” TJ shouted. “Where is she?”
Tuna guessed, “Doing a little whale watching, is she?”
“That’s right, dude,” Herby chuckled. “Up real close and personal.”
“You can’t do that!” TJ cried. “She’ll drown.”
Herby frowned. “Oh yeah.” Then, reaching for the knife, he said, “Guess we’ll have to morph her some
gills and fish fins.”
“Herby!”
He pouted. “Well . . . all right. I guess we don’t wanna scare the whales.” With that he
Elizabeth back out of the water and onto the beach to join Hesper and all her friends . . . who suddenly broke out into a bad case of
and a whole lot of
“Now what did you do?” TJ demanded.
Herby shrugged. “I might have forgotten to remove her gills and fins.”
“Herby!”
“Oh, all right,” he sighed. Once again he reached for his Swiss Army Knife.
And as Herby prepared to turn everything back to normal, TJ somehow feared—no, she somehow knew—that normal would not be something she would be experiencing for a very long time. Until then, TJ Finkelstein would be your average, run-of-the-mill seventh grader plagued by two very sweet but very clueless time stumblers from the 23rd century.
CHAPTER ONE
Beginnings . . .
TIME TRAVEL LOG:
Malibu, California, November 2
Begin Transmission:
All-school bully from the future stopped by. Despite his disguise, Tuna and I are positive it’s Bruce Bruiseabone, winner of the Worst Breath in the World Contest. We fear he could really zwork things up for our subject (who, by the way, is still smoot to the max).
End Transmission
Thelma Jean Finkelstein, better known as TJ to her friends (all four of them—unless you leave out her goldfish and pet hamster, which brings it down to two friends), ran through the empty cafeteria, screaming her lungs out.
And when she wasn’t
she was yelling,
Now, you might call her behavior a little weird (which may be why she has only two friends). But weirder than that weirdness is that the HE in her little screamfest just happened to be an African elephant the size of a Chevy pickup who, unlike a Chevy pickup, had some very bad breath.
Weirder than that weirdness was that the African elephant (complete with large tusks and a crummy mood) was shouting in a very bad British accent,
“Excuse me, miss. If you don’t mind, I should like to speak with you a moment!”
Weirder than that weird weirdness was the US TJ happened to be screaming about. And who, exactly, was the US ?
Actually, they were nobody. (Unless you counted the two invisible teenagers from the 23rd century who were running beside her.)
First, there was Thomas Uriah Norman Alphonso the Third. Or for those who don’t enjoy spraining their tongues, Tuna. On TJ’s other side ran Herby, a tall surfer dude with long blond bangs and the exact same number of brain cells as TJ had friends (after you subtract the goldfish and hamster).
The boys had traveled back in time to do a history report on TJ because, believe it or not, someday when she was through screaming her lungs out and being chased by African elephants through school cafeterias, TJ would become a great world leader.
But until then, she had other things on her mind like:
“No worries, Your Dude-ness,” Herby shouted. “I’ll transport us home!” With that he pulled out his trusty Swiss Army Knife (sold at 23rd-century time-travel stores everywhere), opened its Transporter Beam Blade and
The good news was Herby transported them out of the cafeteria.
The bad news was he missed TJ’s house (unless she had moved to the top of Mount Everest).
The top of Mount Everest! you say?
Yeah, that’s what TJ was saying too. Only more like:
“How odd!” Tuna yelled over the howling wind.
“That we’re on Mount Everest?” Herby shouted. “Or that the elephant is still behind us?”
“Actually, I’m talking about the end of the giant glacier we’re approaching.”
“What end?” Herby shouted. “What glacier?”
“The end we’ve just reached and the glacier we are now jumping
<
br /> Wanting to be part of the conversation, TJ threw in her own comment—the always clever and very appropriate
And refusing to be left out, the elephant, who was falling beside them, added,
But thanks to Herby’s great thinking (and accidental good luck), he tried the Transporter Beam Blade again and
instead of hitting the ground, they
back to school and were running down the hallway toward the auditorium.
That was the good news. But as you may recall, every time TJ gets a little good news, she gets a ton of bad. In this case, it came in the form of one African elephant (whose breath had not improved) who was still running after them. And (since we’re having a two-for-one special in TJ’s bad luck department) there was the added problem of Hesper Breakahart, star of her own TV series on the Dizzy Channel (and the richest, most gorgeous, most spoiled 13-year-old in the entire civilized world—and maybe Texas, too). At the moment she was inside that very auditorium holding auditions for her TV show.