“I’m from the law firm of Able and Stone,” I heard her say. “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“Only if you have the key to this door,” one of the police officers growled.
She kept going. “I’ve spoken with the school secretary. I understand you want to talk to a student by the name of Marcus Heilbroner.”
“Yeah.”
“Mr. Heilbroner, as you certainly know, is a minor. We can use the principal’s office for a few minutes so that you can brief me about whatever allegations have been made. But of course you can’t speak with Mr. Heilbroner himself until his parents have been notified. Would you follow me, please?”
One of the police officers swore, but the other one said, “Might as well. We aren’t getting anything done standing in this hallway.” And they all walked away.
“Thank God.” The dentist let out a long breath. Marcus stood up, but the dentist said, “Sit down. She hasn’t gotten rid of them yet.”
Another fifteen minutes went by while Marcus looked at the floor, the dentist paced, and I stared out the window. Finally we heard Mom coming back down the hall.
“They’re gone,” she called, “open up.” I yanked the door open, and there she was with her hair pulled back, wearing a gray wool skirt and a matching blazer.
I flew at her and grabbed her around her tiny middle, almost knocking her down.
I felt her hand on my head. “Let’s try to figure this mess out. Who wants to talk first?”
Things You Line Up
It turned out that Belle was the one who had reported Marcus to the police. She’d seen the whole thing from her store window and thought that Marcus had chased Sal into the street on purpose. So Mom was able to get things sorted out. She got a statement from Sal, who had to sign it with his left hand because of his cast, and one from me, and one from Belle, and by the following week, the police had dropped the whole thing and Mom had dressed like a grown-up for three days in a row.
“You know, you look darn good in a suit,” Richard told her.
I figured she would give him some kind of lecture, but Mom took his hand and said, “Thanks. That means a lot coming from you, Mr. Perfect.” She looked happy, and it seemed so obvious at that moment that they should get married. But she still hadn’t even given him a key.
And then Mom hung up her suit, and I put all your notes in the box under my bed and didn’t look at them anymore. Annemarie had her birthday party with two cakes, an awful one that Julia and I made for her and a really good one her dad made.
Time passed. Annemarie and Julia helped me install my playground on Main Street, and Julia’s UFO finally got approved by Jay Stringer. I became Alice Evans’s regular bathroom partner—we worked out a secret signal so that she wouldn’t have to do the Mexican hat dance anymore. Marcus and I waved hello to each other, and we sometimes talked a little, except when he didn’t notice I was there, which was about half the time. In early March, we started rehearsing songs for graduation. I kissed Colin a few more times, and I suspected that Jay Stringer was working up the nerve to kiss Annemarie. I don’t think anyone dared to kiss Julia.
Sal’s cast came off and he started playing basketball in the alley again. A couple of times I waved at him from the window, and once he yelled up to say hi and ask if I wanted to check out his three-point shot, which he lined up for about five minutes and then missed. I clapped anyway, and he took a bow.
I tried to forget about the laughing man. I mean, I tried to forget about you. But it didn’t work. There was something left over: the letter I was supposed to write.
This is the story I need you to tell.
Please deliver your letter by hand. You know where to find me.
Trying to forget really doesn’t work. In fact, it’s pretty much the same as remembering. But I tried to forget anyway, and to ignore the fact that I was remembering you all the time.
And then, three weeks ago, Mom’s postcard came from The $20,000 Pyramid.
April 27th: Studio TV-15. The last proof.
That’s when I officially gave up the forgetting and started doing all this thinking. I have the story laid out in my mind now, as straight as it’s ever going to be.
And now I’m wondering if I should just write the letter, even though you’re dead and most likely buried on that island. I wonder if I should write it anyway, if maybe then I’ll be able to stop thinking about you, once and for all.
The $20,000 Pyramid
Richard, Louisa, and Sal are coming with us to ABC Studio TV-15 on West Fifty-eighth Street to see Mom try to win twenty thousand dollars.
“Miranda, can you get me my sweater with the little buttons?” Mom asks. She’s nervous, and her voice sounds too high. “If it’s chilly in there I won’t be able to concentrate.”
“Mom, it’s seventy degrees out,” I say.
“Exactly. They might have the air-conditioning on. I’m always too cold in air-conditioning.”
I get the sweater and check myself out again in Mom’s closet mirror. I have on new jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with flowers embroidered on the sleeves that I borrowed from Julia. Richard has even polished my shoes for me with his special shoe brush. I try to fluff my hair, but my brain says, “What in the world are you fluffing your hair for? You know your hair doesn’t fluff!” and I stop.
Richard buzzes from the lobby. Mom rushes to the intercom and yells, “We’ll be right down! And happy birthday!” We walk downstairs and stop at Sal and Louisa’s door, which flies open as if they’ve been standing right inside waiting for us.
“The big day!” Louisa says. “Big day, big day, big day!” She seems even more nervous than Mom.
I look at Sal, and he shrugs and says, “She’s been like this all morning.”
We are very quiet on the subway.
There are people in red blazers by the studio doors.
“Contestants to the left,” one of them says. “Audience to the right.” And suddenly I realize it’s time to say goodbye to Mom. She’s standing there looking terrified and holding on to her bag with her sweater and her extra clothes and her barrettes. I go over and hug her while Richard gives her a kiss and Louisa says “We love you” and Sal looks at the floor and says good luck.
“You’re going to win,” I say. “I know it.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Mom says, and then we watch her disappear behind a door.
We walk into the studio, which is like a theater with all the $20,000 Pyramid stuff up on the stage: Dick Clark’s podium is there, and the word screens that swivel back and forth during the speed round, and two empty chairs facing each other in the Winner’s Circle. Everything looks artificial and kind of gloomy in the dim light. I’m thinking that one good shove could probably knock the whole thing over.
There are a lot of people in the theater already, and we get seats about halfway back. They are red velvety seats, the kind you have to fold down before you sit on them.
A guy with headphones comes out and talks to the audience about when to clap and when to be quiet. He points to these metal boxes attached to the ceiling that light up like exit signs, only they say Applause instead of Exit. He explains that the signs will blink on and off to help us remember when to clap and when to stop. We have to practice with him: Clap, stop. Clap, clap, stop. It’s a little silly, but Louisa and Richard are taking it very seriously. Sal and I laugh and dare each other to clap at the wrong time.
The stage lights come on, and suddenly the whole set is glowing like July at the beach. Much more cheerful. Richard takes my hand. Dick Clark comes out and says hi to the audience and Louisa starts talking about how she has always liked Dick Clark, how he has always seemed like one of the nicest people on television, and how now that she’s seen him, she thinks she likes him even more. Isn’t it amazing, she asks, how he never seems to age? He looks just the same today as he did back in 1956. She says she might ask him for some autographs after the show for the old people at her nursing home, because she’s sure t
hey would get a big kick out of that. Louisa is talking even faster than Mrs. Bindocker at the monthly tenant meeting. And then suddenly she is quiet. I look at her and see that she’s biting her lips.
Everything starts to happen very fast. There is music. Dick Clark makes a funny face like he’s afraid he might be late, and he hops over to his podium. The celebrities take the stage. I’ve never heard of either one of them. The next thing I know, Mom is coming out with her hair clamped back in barrettes, looking smaller than ever.
But she’s wonderful. The speed round is a thing of beauty. Mom gets seven words out of seven every time, and wins the cash bonus. Her celebrity is not as dumb as a bag of hair. In fact, her celebrity is not remotely dumb.
The other contestant is good, but his celebrity speaks too slowly and says the word bat while giving clues for the word batter, an amateur’s mistake. They lose that point and a couple of others. Before I know it, Dick Clark is leading Mom over to the Winner’s Circle.
“This is it,” I hear Richard whisper to himself. “Ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand dollars,” my brain says. “Ten thousand dollars.”
Mom’s celebrity looks determined. Mom looks scared. Dick Clark is smiling. He’s the only one who looks relaxed. He’s chatting with Mom for a minute, and I know Mom is trying to focus, to lift a corner of her veil so that she’ll be able to see the big things. So she can see the thread.
Dick Clark is still talking, and I realize: we never practiced the chatting. I am suddenly afraid. I am hearing the ocean. How can Mom lift her veil and see the magic thread with Dick Clark talking to her about her stupid job? I focus on Mom and try to help her concentrate. Louisa is getting nervous again, and she starts whispering about Dick Clark, “He doesn’t age, I tell you. Dick Clark simply does not age. It’s amazing.” I’m chanting to myself, “Magic thread, magic thread,” and I’m staring at Mom so hard that my eyes are almost aching.
Finally, Dick Clark is done chatting. “Here is your first subject,” he says. “Go.”
Then the strangest thing happens.
Magic Thread
Mom is jumping up and down, and I hear the sound of hundreds of people cheering and clapping, lifting me like a wave and carrying me. I am out of my seat, I am floating down the aisle, people are patting me on the back or reaching out to squeeze my arm, and then the stage is in front of me, I am going up some steps, and then light is everywhere, too bright, and it’s hot.
Mom is still leaping around. She’s hugging her celebrity, she’s hugging Dick Clark. One of her barrettes is down by the side of her face, hanging on for dear life and banging against her cheek. She hugs me, and my head is pulled up and down as she jumps, so that I am forced to jump with her.
I feel happy. I smile and grab Mom’s hands and jump up and down with her. I let go of her and raise my arms over my head and feel the audience roar louder.
I am not thinking of the wall-to-wall carpet, or the camera, or the trip to China.
I am jumping up and down because at the very moment Dick Clark said the word “Go,” it was like an invisible hand reached out and snatched away my veil. And for almost a minute, I understood everything. When that veil isn’t hanging down right in front of a person’s face, a minute is long enough to realize a lot of things.
I realized that when you took our key from the fire hose, when you left me the notes, when you stole Richard’s shoes and Jimmy’s Fred Flintstone bank, you had already read my letter. You had read it many times, even though I have not yet written it.
That’s how you knew where the key was, even before you asked. That’s how you knew everything. I will tell you, in my letter. The letter you asked me to write.
“But that’s impossible!” my brain squawked. “You’re saying the laughing man read a letter that you haven’t even written yet! It makes no sense!”
Common sense is just a name for the way we’re used to thinking.
Time travel is possible.
You came to save Sal. And finally—finally!—I understood.
Dick Clark never ages. I thought of what Marcus had said about going to the movies in my time machine, that if I didn’t leave until I was sixty-two, the ticket guy wouldn’t recognize me.
I might not even recognize myself.
Maybe Dick Clark never ages. But the rest of us will. I will. Sal will, thanks to you. And Marcus will, too.
Please deliver your letter by hand, your note said. You know where to find me.
I thought of the beat-up metal door next to the garage, and I thought, “Yes, I do.” Because you are still here after all, to read my letter. Marcus is here. And when he reads the letter, he’ll realize that he has seen himself arrive, before he left. That’s what my letter is for.
And then, in who-knows-what year—the year of the burn scale, the year of the dome—Marcus will come back. You will come back. You will come back with a mouth full of paper. You won’t be yourself when you reach me but you will get the job done. You will save Sal. You already have.
Marcus is the magic thread. You are the laughing man. You are Marcus. Marcus is the laughing man. Or he will be, when he’s old.
“None of it makes sense!” my brain yelled.
“But all of it is true,” I answered.
Like I said, it lasted just under a minute. It lasted fifty-five seconds, to be precise. Which is how long it took Mom to guess six categories and win ten thousand dollars.
And then Mom and I are on the stage together, jumping up and down until they make us get off.
Things That Open
We take the bus home because we think it’ll be so much fun to take the bus home, knowing that we are rich now and can take a cab anytime we want. And it is fun. Sal and I don’t talk much, but we lean into the turns the way we used to when we were little and actually believed that we could make the bus tip over.
After Mom won her ten thousand dollars, she played another speed round. But this time she had to be partners with the other celebrity.
“He wasn’t as dumb as a bag of hair,” Mom says on the bus, “but he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer either.” They lost. But Mom gets to keep her ten thousand dollars, and her twenty-one-hundred-dollar cash bonus. “Not bad for a day’s work,” she says, smiling at me. “Not bad at all.”
When we get to the lobby, Louisa has to change into her uniform for work.
“Want to watch some TV?” Sal asks me.
I tell him I would love to. Another time.
Upstairs, Mom puts on a record, and she and Richard dance for a while in the living room while I sit on the couch and grin, just watching them.
Then I go to my room, shut my door, and pull the box out from under my bed. Right on top of everything is a big envelope for Mom—Richard gave it to me a week ago for safekeeping. And underneath it is Richard’s birthday present.
Mom is in the kitchen, making birthday tacos and a box cake. Every once in a while she yells, “Whoo-hoo! We’re rich!”
I write on Mom’s envelope with a marker: I personally do not care about wall-to-wall carpeting. Louisa says carpets are full of dust mites anyway.
I make an origami frog for Richard and put it on top of his box.
I make an origami frog for Mom and put it on top of her envelope.
I can’t get enough of these origami frogs.
It’s time for dinner. We eat the tacos. We sing. We cut the cake.
I give Mom her envelope. “What’s this?” she says. “It’s not my birthday!”
She admires her frog. She reads my note about the carpeting and the dust mites and gives me a funny look. She opens the envelope, which is full of applications for law school.
She looks at them. “But—I can’t…” Then she sits back in her chair and says, “Wow.”
This was our secret plan all along. Mine and Richard’s.
I give Richard his present. He admires his frog and puts it on the table next to Moms frog so that their little frog feet are touching.
He opens the box. Inside are two keys, one for the lobby door and one for the apartment. I made a key ring for them—it’s a sailor’s knot, two strands, pulled tight. He knows how to untie it, of course, but I don’t think he will.
Things That Blow Away
The next morning, I wake up early, cut myself a big piece of Richard’s birthday cake for breakfast, and start writing the letter. I’m writing it in the journal with the clouds on the cover that Mom gave me for Christmas. I’m at the top of the second page when it dawns on me that this letter I’m writing is kind of a horrible burden. And I start feeling really sorry for Marcus.
It’s not a letter that most people would want to get. I know it will be a big relief to know that he didn’t accidentally cause the laughing man’s death—your death—after all. That’s a good thing. But at the same time, he’ll understand that he saw his own death, which I have to think is a very hard thing. And he’ll also realize that he’s going to discover the secret of traveling through time, which is a thing so incredible that most people would consider it a miracle. Of course, he’s the total hero of the story. But there isn’t a happy ending for him.
I start at the very beginning, when you first showed up in the fall, and I’m thinking about everything you did—the spot on the corner where you stood, your kicking practice, the way you muttered to yourself. “Book, bag, pocket, shoe.” There was a reason for all of it.
Except for one thing. I don’t understand why you used to lie on the ground with your head under the mailbox. Why? It must have been annoying the way kids were always banging on it.
I raise my head slowly from the journal. Then I get dressed in a hurry, pulling a sweater on over my pajama top. I leave a note on the kitchen table, grab my keys, and slip out of the apartment before Mom and Richard wake up.
It’s an almost-warm morning. No one is on the corner, which is good, because I probably look pretty strange lying faceup on the sidewalk and inching myself under the mailbox. It isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.
Rebecca Stead Page 12