“Roger,” Kyler says. “Kechhhh. Out.” Kyler steps ahead of me to become the lookout, while I spin to cover our rear.
We walk the whole way like this, Kyler checking the map at every cross street, me walking backwards to make sure we aren’t ambushed. We’re pretty much there when I hear Kyler say, “Butt.”
This is one of our games. I’m not sure it fits into Operation Getaceltorix, but I go along with it and say, “Butt cheek.” I wait for Kyler’s reply. He’s supposed to say, “Butt cheek cooties,” or something like that. The aim is to keep adding words until the other guy laughs, but Kyler doesn’t add anything. I shout, “Butt cheek,” again as loud as I can and run into Kyler’s back. I look around to see what’s stopped him in his tracks.
Ryan O’Driscoll is coming out of the park right in front of us. Kyler tugs at my sleeve, but it’s too late. I’ve just shouted, “Butt cheek,” at Ryan O’Driscoll.
Ryan’s the biggest guy in fourth grade. It’s not just that he’s tall. He’s the kid version of a muscle car. He always wears long basketball shorts, and his calves bulge like the turkey legs they sell at county fairs. Fog is still hanging in damp pockets in the hollows of the road, but Ryan is in a short-sleeved basketball shirt, and he hasn’t got one goose bump. He’s carrying a camouflage backpack like mine and has stars and stripes shaved into his crew cut. Mom always tuts disapprovingly when she sees this. “When you’re ten years old, you should be a kid not a fashion statement,” she says, but Kyler and I think his haircut is cool. Our moms would never let us have a cut like that in a million years.
“What did you say?” Ryan asks, blocking our way. I’m never putting Kyler on point again. He’s supposed to look out for danger not walk into it. “What’re you doing here?”
Oh man, this is Ryan all over. In second grade he was fun. We were never good enough friends to go play at his house, but Ryan was a building-brick genius and recess champion at “Squash the Tofu,” a game I made up. Now he just gets mean and moody. I’m not saying Ryan’s a bully. He doesn’t normally pick on people. It’s just that you never know nowadays when he’s going to lose it. Like, he drops the ball in Squash the Tofu, or someone piles on his head, which is half the fun, and he gets red-faced mad really quickly. Just like he’s doing right this minute.
“What’re you doing in my park?” he says again.
It’s a direct question darn it, and I can feel the words forming on the end of my tongue.
“Looking for a—”
Kyler cuts in for once. “It’s not your park. It’s everyone’s. What are you doing?”
Ryan looks surprised then says, “Going for a run, Turtle.”
I groan a double groan. Kyler hates being called “Turtle,” even though he does look like one because he’s so small and his backpack is so big. And I’m so not surprised Ryan O’Driscoll is running while wearing a backpack. He’s probably doing pull-ups every morning and a hundred one-armed push-ups, too.
“You’re jogging?” Kyler says. “Jogging what? Your brains into jelly?”
“Kyler!” I go to pull him away, but it’s too late. Ryan takes a swing. Kyler ducks. I step to one side. Ryan swings at me, too. I run. “Come on!”
Kyler follows me back up the street with Ryan thumping along behind us.
“You’ve done it now,” I shout, wondering if we can outrun him, and, even if we do, what he’ll be like at school after this. Calling Ryan “Butt Cheek” and insulting his brainpower is not a good way to start the day.
Maybe we slow down around the corner without realizing it, because one minute we’re sprinting away from Ryan, up a small street with a laundromat and a grocery store, and the next minute he’s right up close. “Are you spying on me, Turtle?”
I glance over my shoulder to see Ryan yanking at a loose strap hanging from Kyler’s backpack. Kyler spins around on the sidewalk. His arms flail above his head as he wobbles into the gutter. Ryan loosens his grip for a second. I shout, “Run!” like Kyler doesn’t know that already, and then Ryan clamps down on Kyler’s arm.
It all happens so quickly. Ryan wrestles Kyler to the ground. I see panic on Kyler’s face and I wade in to help just as there’s a roar from the alley between the store and the laundromat. All the garbage cans rattle. A cloud of warm steam streams out of the dryer exhausts. A black cat runs down the street hissing. And a man, as big as a bear, leaps out of the fog yelling, “Cuckoolaaand!”
It’s my warrior with his clumpy red hair and his mustache dripping fog. Spit sprays out of his mouth in a big arc like a lawn sprinkler. Whoa. He’s every bit as amazing as in the VA, but more scary. Way more scary because he’s outside, on his own, with no adults around to help, and he’s mad at us. Like really mad. And suddenly, even though we came looking for him, I am terrified.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ryan launches forward as if he’s going to attack the guy. I can’t believe it. What’s he thinking? Fighting a Celt? He’ll be torn apart!
“Stop!” I thrust my whole body sideways into Ryan, pushing him out of the way, so I can put myself in front of the Celt. I hold both my hands out as if I’m stopping traffic. “I was at the VA. I’m a friend.” Crud, I hope he remembers or he’s going to cream me.
The Celt staggers back as if he’s more surprised than I am. Then Ryan’s stumbling over to the wall of the laundromat, sobbing, “No! Just go!” His nose is running snot. I don’t know whether he’s talking to us or to the Celt, but I don’t get the chance to find out because Kyler’s dragging me along the sidewalk, yelling, “Come on!”
“Wait!” I try to shake Kyler’s grip, all the while twisting to keep the Celt in sight. “It’s OK, he’s a friend,” I cry, but Kyler’s got momentum and, although he’s small, he’s impossible to fight off.
“Geez,” he keeps saying, over and over, “geez.” He’s already pulled me past the laundromat when I finally decide to sit down in the gutter. That stops him. Kyler loses his balance and falls back into me.
“Quit pulling me. That’s him!” I say.
“What?”
“We found him, on the very first day!” I slap the sidewalk with my hand.
“Oh man! I was so freaked, and now we’re gonna lose him again—where did he go?”
“Down the—”
I don’t have time to finish my sentence. Kyler’s on his feet and we’re both running toward the laundromat and its clouds of steam. Ryan’s collapsed against the wall by the front door, one shoulder leaning against it, his legs spaghetti twisted, as he stares down the alley. He’s weirded out, I guess, because he’s as pale as noodles and shaking. As I run past, he turns his face into the bricks.
“Sorry, Ryan,” I mutter. Ryan doesn’t say a thing.
Because of the dryer exhausts, the alley feels twenty degrees warmer than the street, even though the sun hasn’t risen high enough to peek down here yet. It’s all fog, trash, and grafitti. There are detergent boxes spilling out of trash bags next to the back door of the laundromat, and a bunch of grocery cartons from the store with chip and beef jerky logos on them.
“Can you see him?” Kyler whispers.
“No.” I creep along, weaving between the dumpsters. Kyler follows.
“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispers, and he’s right. Mom will kill me if she finds out. Big time screen ban. No TV, minimum. But this is a Celt we’re talking about.
Behind the dumpsters, people have laid sheets of cardboard to sleep on. There are blankets too, dirty coats and plastic bags piled high against the grimy black walls. Torn strips of paper and cardboard stick to the ground in dirty brown wads, reminding me of the collages Kyler’s little brother makes. They always end up brown. There are puddles of dark water in every dip in the bricks, and the alley smells of pee.
Kyler overtakes me, hurrying to look behind the final cluster of garbage cans, about three quarters of the way down. My heart slams a few extra beats when he sticks his head up.
“Found him?” I call.
Kyler shakes his head. “He’s gone!”
I catch up with him. He’s right. The Celt is nowhere to be seen.
“It’s all my fault,” Kyler groans. “That was insane. Never saw anyone so scary in my life. But he was just like you said, Mikey. A Celt! Awesome!”
“Awesome,” I agree. “But where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
We high five in the dark stink of the alley because even though we’ve lost him this time, we have a real live Celtic warrior in our town. A shiver runs down my back. It’s only when we walk a few extra feet and we’re out on the other side of the alley that we start to laugh.
“You should have seen your face,” I say. The smell of fresh hot doughnuts drifts across the street. My mouth waters, and I feel good again right away. I push Kyler, and he pushes me back.
“Did you see Ryan’s face? He looked like he’d seen a ghost,” Kyler says.
“He saw our Celt. A real time-traveled Celt! That’s better than a ghost.”
Then Kyler throws himself against the door of a store and blubs, “No, just go!” It’s a pretty bad imitation of Ryan, but I know what he means, and we double over laughing. When I look up trying to catch my breath, I catch sight of the clock in the doughnut shop.
“We are so late!” I adjust my backpack.
“Oh no, just go!” Kyler flings his arms in the air and fake sobs again. He wants us to keep laughing, but we’ve got to hurry. I start back down the alley, but it feels too creepy, so we end up running down the street we’re already on. At the intersection, we join up with the red route we planned this morning.
“He just appeared…” Kyler shouts as he runs beside me, “in all that fog and steam, and then disappeared again. Like magic.”
“Not science?” I ask, thinking how much Kyler loves his physics.
“Maybe science and magic are the same thing…if you’re a Celt.”
I hadn’t thought of it like that, but now that Kyler says it I can’t help wondering if it’s true. This is the greatest thing ever. First day, and we found him. No. Even more spooky, he found us. “He remembered me. He protected us from Ryan.” I’m gasping for breath now as we get near school. “How did he even know where we were?”
“Maybe he’s following us?”
“You think?”
“You said it yourself, Mikey, you’re his only friend. Maybe he needs help? We’ve got to be open to all possibilities,” Kyler says. “We have to be governed by the evidence.” Kyler can run and say “governed by the evidence,” without panting. That’s a brown belt for you.
The school bell goes off. The last three tetherball guys slide into their classrooms. We’re still way over on the other side of the blacktop, officially late, but I don’t care.
“We’ve found a Celtic warrior!” I yell to Kyler.
“This is the best day ever!” Kyler shouts back.
“Epic!” And it doesn’t even occur to me to worry about leaving Ryan behind.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Miss O’Brien’s already finishing roll call when we hit the classroom. I manage to get my backpack in my cubby and sit down before she calls me. That’s one good thing about having a last name near the end of the alphabet. Kyler’s name has already been called out. She waits until she’s called everyone else before she goes back to him. She gives us a look. I’m sure she’s going to send us to the office. Then I notice Sawyer Bradstone isn’t here yet. Thank you, Sawyer. He’s always late. He doesn’t come in for another ten minutes, which makes us look like angels.
Miss O’Brien isn’t mad when Sawyer arrives, but she makes him go to the office because she’s already emailed her class numbers.
“What was it today, Sawyer?” she asks when he gets back. He’s got a huge smile on his face, and we all know we’re in for a story.
“Justine pooped right when Mom was buckling her in. It squirted down her leg and all over the car seat. Massive pool of yellow poop.”
“Ewwwww!” The whole class groans. A few kids hold their noses and pretend to gag. Babies are gross like that, especially Sawyer’s new twin sisters.
“Thank you, class,” Miss O’Brien says. “Your mom did well to get you here at all, Sawyer. Twins are hard work.”
I think Miss O’Brien knows when Sawyer’s going to gross us out, and she lets him speak anyway. It brightens our day. Miss O’Brien likes us laughing, as long as we’re not too wild.
It’s only after we get started on Language Arts, which I dread, that I wonder about Ryan. He’s not here yet. I pass Kyler a note. “Where’s Ryan?” I write.
Kyler replies with “Oooooh, nooooo, just goooooo!” in jiggly writing that would be squeaky if it could speak.
The rest of the lesson Kyler keeps his head down over his work. He fills in his worksheet in double-quick time, which means he has time to do the harder worksheet for “fun.” The annoying thing is, he does seem to find it fun. It takes me nearly the whole class to do the first one, so I only have a few minutes to think about how amazing it was to find the Celt…or for him to find us, as Kyler suggested. That gets me thinking. Kyler said something about science and magic…magic and science. The idea plays around in my head. I remember some of the sidebars in my military history book about how the Celts didn’t believe in death, which is what made them so scary on the battlefield, and I don’t have to crunch anything. My neurons are popping on their own today! I draw a jack-o’-lantern on my scratch paper. It has the biggest grin ever because that’s how I’m feeling right now.
When Miss O’Brien lets us out for recess, I can hardly wait for Kyler to find his snack bag. “Come on, Kyler, let’s go to the bushes. I have an idea.”
We’re running across the blacktop with Kyler fake-swinging his snack bag at me when we notice a whole group of kids clustered around a boy from another class. He’s talking loudly and looking toward the school office, saying something like, “The guy was freaked!” We exchange glances and run over to listen.
“No seriously, Ryan O’Driscoll was attacked! Guy jumped out at him from an alley.”
“How do you know?” someone asks.
“I told you, he was in the office when I went for a bandage.”
“Did he get mugged?”
“No, but the lady from the laundromat found him. She said he refused to go home, so she brought him to school.”
“He wanted to come to school instead of going home? That’s weird,” another kid jokes.
“I heard them talking. Then they sent him to see Miss Wendy.”
Miss Wendy is the school counselor. She comes into our class to talk about bullying and being fair on the playground, things like that. Kyler nudges me. We make for the bushes, but some other kids have already snagged them, so we hide behind the Lost and Found rack instead.
“What are we gonna do?” he says. “Do you think the laundromat lady saw us, too? Do you think Ryan’ll say we were with him?”
“If he does, our moms will find out we were on the wrong street, not the mom-approved route. They’ll be really mad,” I say. We look at each other.
“What can we do?” Kyler asks.
I shrug. “I suppose we should come clean and tell Miss Wendy we saw everything. But we’ll be in real trouble. We shouldn’t have left Ryan behind.”
Kyler ignores my last comment. “Tell Miss Wendy about our Celt? No way!”
“Keep your voice down. He’s our secret. Remember? No one knows except us.”
“And Ryan,” Kyler says.
“Ryan saw him, but he doesn’t know he’s a Celt. Only we know that. Even you didn’t recognize him at first.”
“Don’t remind me. I totally blew it.” Kyler hammers on his head with a fist. “I’m so dumb. We had the chance to talk to him, actually talk to him, and find out how this whole thing works, and I ran away. If he’s gone back to his own time now, I’ll—”
“Maybe he can’t get back yet,” I interrupt, feeling myself grin like a dopey dog while I wait for Kyler’s reaction
.
“What do you mean?”
“You said science and magic were the same thing for Celts.” Kyler looks a bit surprised, like he can’t even remember saying that. “Pure genius! I did some reading last night, and, get this, the Celts believed in a place called the Otherworld.”
“What’s that?”
“The place you went when you died.”
“So you think our Celt is a ghost?” Kyler waits a second. “Then Ryan was right to go white when he saw him!”
I can tell he’s about to do another imitation of Ryan. I shut him up quick. “No, he’s not a ghost. I saw him in the ER. Ghosts can’t have IVs stuck in them. But Celts weren’t ghosts when they were in the Otherworld. You still had a body. It was just like earth, except better. You stayed there until you died in the Otherworld. Then you were reborn on earth again. Then you died on earth—”
“OK, I get it. You had a yo-yo body and soul.” Kyler really surprises me sometimes.
“Yeah! Totally, and that’s why the Celts were so scary. They didn’t believe in death. They knew they would live in the Otherworld and return to earth, often with other people they knew, time and time again.”
Kyler wobbles his head. “Hippy,” he says. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”
“You didn’t have to be dead to get to the Otherworld, either. There were times and places when the skin between the Otherworld and this world was thin. People could cross between them in special places like lakes and rivers—wet places, foggy places. Celts were big into fog.”
“But we aren’t near a lake or a river.”
“The Celt appeared near a laundromat, Kyler. Think about it. Lots of water in a laundromat.”
“You have to be kidding.”
“Times change. And there was fog,” I say. “Tons of fog this morning, and all those dryer exhausts.”
By the look on his face, Kyler’s not buying it. So I reach for the big guns. “And if a living person crossed into the Otherworld, they could live there for what seemed like a day, but when they crossed back to their normal lives something like five hundred years could have gone by.”
The Lost Celt Page 4