by David Lubar
“Yeah, all fixed,” I said as I handed the phone back to him.
He glanced at the screen, with the open calendar. “Thank you.”
I almost said any time. But I didn’t want to encourage Death to be a regular visitor. So I just nodded and said, “No problem.”
He slipped away, as silent going out as he’d been coming in, except for the creak of the door. The instant he was gone I grabbed my phone and called Mr. Cutgreve. I wanted to warn him to get out of the house. The phone rang, unanswered, until the voicemail message cut in. I pictured Mr. Cutgreve in his bed, eyes open but seeing nothing.
“You work fast,” I said. I guess Death didn’t travel like the rest of us.
I wasn’t able to fall back to sleep that night.
The next day, I heard the bad news I knew was coming. Mr. Cutgreve was dead. That’s what I’d expected, and what I’d braced myself for. Mr. Vishner had stopped by in the morning, and gotten worried when nobody answered his knock. He’d called the police after looking through the window and seeing the body on the floor. That part, I hadn’t expected. Mr. Cutgreve hadn’t died in his bed. He’d died after he’d fallen down the stairs in the middle of the night. They didn’t know why.
I did. He’d left his phone downstairs.
He’d stumbled in the dark when he’d tried to answer my call.
The words I’d heard in my room last night came back to me: Sometimes, even Death needs a little help.
I’d been used for more than just fixing a phone. Death had called on me. And I had called my neighbor to his death.
2D OR NOT 2D
There’s a mad scientist in my neighborhood. I found that out when I knocked on his door, in search of more customers. It took him a long time to come to the door. I was about to give up and move on when he opened it. The scientist part was the first half of mad scientist I figured out. It wasn’t hard. He was wearing a lab coat and holding a beaker. The mad part showed up soon enough. Though highly enthusiastic might be more accurate, and less judgmental.
“Want your lawn mowed?” I asked, pointing at the mess of weeds and grasses on his front yard. “I can give you a good price.”
“Why bother? It will just grow back. But you’re hired! Come on. There’s a lot of work to do.”
He grabbed my arm and yanked me inside the house. A lifetime of training about not getting into dangerous situations almost made me break free of his grip. But he let go as soon as we were inside, and said, “Do you know how to alphabetize?”
“Uh, yeah.…” I wasn’t expecting that sort of question. “Why?”
“I have book, magazines, and journals that need to be arranged. I’ve no time for that. I’ll pay you.” He mentioned an hourly rate. It was a lot more than I’d get for cutting grass. Did I mention it was ninety-seven degrees outside, and wonderfully cool in the house?
“Deal,” I said. “Where are the books?”
“Pick a room,” he said, waving at various doors and corridors that led from the hallway. “Do the books by author, and the magazines by title, sorted by publication date, of course.”
“Got it.” I picked a room. It might have been a living room, but it was hard to tell. There were a lot of books overflowing from boxes. And there were plenty of bookcases and magazine holders.
I got to work. The books were on all sorts of sciences. So were the magazines. Who would have ever guessed there’d be a Journal of Nanotechnology and a Nanotechnology Weekly? After two hours of hard work, I figured I’d take a break. I also wanted to see whether he was planning to pay me each day, or at the end of the week.
He wasn’t in any of the rooms on the first floor. But I was happy to see there was enough work to last me a good part of the summer.
I followed a zapping electronic sound up to the second floor, and found him in a room where two walls were lined with worktables. A device in the center of the room looked like the world’s largest microscope. The bottom lens perched over a table. He stood next to it, fiddling with a series of dials on the side of the device.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He spun, and seemed startled by my voice. I guess he’d been deep in thought. But he recovered quickly, and let out a yelp of joy. “I’ll show you!”
He waved me over.
“Everyone is exploring three-D,” he said. “Movies, printers, lots of applications. But do you know how to make the greatest discoveries?”
I wasn’t even going to try to guess at an answer. “How?”
“Go the other way!” He shouted that like it was the punchline of the best joke in the world.
“Uh, okay.…” I waited for a bit more of an explanation.
“I’m working on making things two dimensional!”
“Why?”
“Why?” He seemed shocked by the question. “There are a thousand reasons. Think for yourself.”
I thought for myself. Then, I thought some more. He seemed ready to wait as long as it took. This was summer, school was out, and I figured I was on a break from thinking, but I really didn’t want to let him down. He reminded me of my uncle.
“Stuff would be smaller,” I said.
“Yes! That’s a good one.” He seemed delighted at my answer. Now, he reminded me of some of my teachers. “For example, you could carry an entire first aid kit in your shirt pocket.”
“But would it work?” I asked.
“That’s the catch,” he said. “Sometimes, it does. Sometimes, it doesn’t. But I’ve had an encouraging number of great successes.”
He went to a table, pulled open a drawer, and handed me a flat piece of plastic about the size of a playing card. It seemed familiar, but it took me a second to realize what it was.
“A water pistol?” I asked.
“Exactly.” He tapped his chest. “Try it.”
I pointed it at him and pulled the trigger. A flat stream of water shot out. “How?” I asked.
“Atoms and molecules are mostly empty space,” he said. “I’m just gently flattening them.”
He showed me several other objects he’d converted. They were all pretty cool.
“I have to get back to work,” he said. “But feel free to look around. There are plenty more examples in the drawers.”
“Thanks.” I snooped around for a little. Then, I spotted something that looked like a scrapbook. On the cover, he’d written Errors, Mistakes, Glitches, and Bugs. I guess those were his notes on things that had gone wrong. I was curious what the errors might look like.
Small tabs sticking from the book were labeled for each section. I flipped to errors, and discovered a wonderfully bizarre collection of distorted and mangled objects. I guess it wasn’t easy to get things into a two-dimensional form.
“It’s sort of like putting a globe on a flat map,” I said.
“Very true,” he said. “That’s an excellent analogy.” He didn’t look up. He was still fiddling with dials and adjusting levers.
Flipping past the errors, I looked at the mistakes. Most of them were unrecognizable. I moved to the next section. The glitches seemed to be things that were almost right, except for one small flaw.
I was eager to see the bugs, which I had assumed were caused by programming errors. I figured they’d be wonderfully weird. Right before I flipped the page, he said, “I really need to find a safer place for the bugs and other insects. Especially the dangerous ones.”
I was just a little bit slow figuring out what he was talking about. By the time the meaning of bugs and other insects sunk in, I was staring down at a page holding three scorpions.
The flat scorpions scuttled off the page. One of them ran onto my hand. I screamed and flung the scorpion away. The book slipped from my hand. Scads of insects emerged as the book tumbled through the air and hit the wall. A fair number of them flew or scurried right at me, like they blamed me for their imprisonment.
I swatted at myself, smacking a red ant that was climbing up my leg, and discovered the worst part about two-dimension
al bugs.
You can’t squash them.
I’d rather not describe the next ten minutes in detail. I’d actually rather not ever think about them again. But we managed to capture most of the bugs, and slip them back into the pages of the book. Many of them had acquired little bits of my flesh to feast on during their brief period of freedom.
It’s a good think I’m not allergic to bee stings or bug bites. Still, I was pretty well bitten up. As I stared at my arms, I had a thought. “A hive could hold a whole lot of flat bees, right?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“And that would help pollinate things.” I remembered there’d been a shortage of bees a while ago.
“Brilliant!” he said.
I kicked out a couple other uses for flat insects.
He grabbed another journal, and opened it.
I flinched, but it was just filled with written notes. As he jotted my ideas down, he said, “You aren’t quitting, are you?”
“No way. I’m sticking around. We have tons of work to do.”
I realized it was a lot of fun coming up with ideas, and even more fun brainstorming with someone who shared my enthusiasm. I liked the way it felt. I guess I’d been bitten by the science bug.
MUMMY MISSES YOU
I’m pretty lucky I didn’t lose my eyes. I guess I flinched right when the explosion happened, and closed them tight enough to save my vision. I wasn’t so lucky about the rest of my face. That got burned pretty badly. So did my hands. I’m all bandaged up. I learned my lesson. It’s really a bad idea to try to make your own fireworks. It’s an especially bad idea to try to make your own fireworks when you get the instructions from the Internet.
Never again. I promise.
At least I was able to go back to school in time for the class trip. There’s a science museum just across the county line, in Freeburg. I love science. I guess that’s sort of obvious. Not just fireworks and things that go bang, but atoms and stars and electric motors. Anything you can experiment with or learn about.
It wasn’t too long a bus ride. And I sat with my friend, Chester. He was being super nice. Which was weird. Because Chester is basically a jerk. But he’s my kind of jerk. He loves to make fun of me. Which is fine, because I love to make fun of him. But ever since I nearly blew my head off, he’s been nice. Everyone has.
I hadn’t been to the museum in a while. I forgot how awesome it was. They have a wooly mammoth right in the entrance, next to an electric car. We started in the Elements and Minerals room, and then went to the Amphibians display.
The trouble began when we went to the Ancient Civilizations wing. There was a mummy behind a display window, standing in an open and upright sarcophagus. The sign said it was a female, from around three thousand years ago. Everyone jumped when she moved.
“Pretty cool,” Chester said. “I didn’t think they’d do stuff like that.”
Neither did I. I expected everything to be serious. But having someone dressed as a mummy, just to scare kids, was sort of fun.
Well, it was fun until the mummy smashed the glass.
“I don’t think this is a joke,” I said to Chester. Actually, I said it to the empty pocket of space that had recently been occupied by my friend before he fled from the room, ahead of the pack. Everyone was screaming and fleeing.
I stifled my scream as quickly as I could. It hurt my healing face to yell. And I tried to escape with my classmates. But the mummy grabbed me from behind in a bear hug.
For ancient, long-dead, withered muscles, her arms had an iron grip. I expected that grip to shift to my neck, or maybe just snap me in half. Most of what I knew about mummies that came to life, I learned from horror movies. All of it, actually.
Instead of throttling me, the mummy turned me so I faced her. Then, she knelt, her knees crackling like a dead leaf you pull off a branch—the stubborn last leaf that refuses to fall, even after the first snow. She pulled me so close I could smell the dust and must of ages.
My son, she said, whispering the words directly into my mind and burying her head against my chest.
“No.” I barely managed to speak the word. My mind screamed for me to break free and run. My body didn’t seem able to move.
I’ve waited centuries. I knew you’d find me.
“Look at me,” I said. I reached up and peeled the bandages from my face. It wasn’t easy. But it was necessary. “I’m not like you.”
She turned her face up toward me. I stared into antiquity. She stared back, silently, into the present, and into disappointment.
The grip fell slack. She edged away, and tried to return to the display. The ledge was too high for her wrapped body to navigate.
I helped her in, fearing my own bandaged fingers would puncture her ancient wrappings. But I managed to return her to the display without doing any harm to her body. Any physical harm, at least. She got back into the same position as before. Except for the shattered glass, it looked just like she had never moved at all.
Thank you.
“I hope he finds you,” I said.
I will wait.
I wound the bandages back around my face, then went off to find my classmates. It was going to be fun watching what happened when everyone claimed the mummy had chased them. Eventually, they’d decide something else broke the glass, and that the rest of it was all just their imagination. There really was no other explanation they’d accept.
I’m glad I knew better. I’m glad I knew the truth, as painful as it was. I’m glad I knew my own pain would heal. And I’m glad it wouldn’t take centuries.
SEEING RED
Seriously, how long does it take to write a report? An hour? Maybe two, if you goof off too much and get distracted. Mom is constantly bugging me to do my school work as soon as I get an assignment. “Emma,” she’s always saying, “plan ahead.” But that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why should I spoil a perfectly good afternoon on one of those rare evenings when I don’t have any homework due the next day?
I guess this is the long way of explaining why I was running out the front door right after dinner in search of, as my language arts teacher, Mr. Fisher, put it, an interesting character in your neighborhood. I’d asked if I could write about my dog, Frodo. Mr. Fisher was pretty firm about the character being human, since the assignment included an interview. So that also ruled out the owl I sometimes hear at night, the frisky squirrels that like to scamper through our trees, and the garden slugs that like to eat Dad’s tomatoes. (My geeky nerd big brother, Drake, insists the owl is actually a hungry alien hunting for food by trying to lure curious kids out of their houses. He has no theories about the squirrels. I have a theory one of the slugs is responsible for laying the slimy egg from which Drake hatched. I guess that rules Drake out as an interview subject, too.)
“Did you finish your homework?” Mom called after me as I stepped onto the porch.
“Almost,” I said. “I just have one more little thing to do.”
I reached the sidewalk, looked left and right in search of a good subject, and asked myself, “Who?”
I had to laugh when I realized I was acting just like the owl. I said, “Who?” a couple more times, varying the pitch and volume, just for fun, then reminded myself that this wasn’t getting me any closer to a finished paper.
I spent the next half hour discovering that nobody in the neighborhood had the time to let me ask some questions. Or if they had the time, they didn’t have the interest. I circled my whole block in search of a subject, and then I tried the next block over. Finally, as I walked back toward my house, I saw Mrs. Muscatello across the street, a block and a half away, sweeping her sidewalk with a straw broom.
“Interesting character,” I said. Nobody else in our neighborhood uses a broom. Everyone has leaf blowers, which are also perfectly suited for sweeping all sorts of debris beside leaves from sidewalks, driveways, and porches. As I got closer, I noticed her walkway wasn’t all that much in need of sweeping. There was a scattering o
f leaves, a few twigs, and some stray grass clippings. That was good. She was probably just sweeping to kill time, which would mean she’d be happy to take a break from that chore and let me interview her.
“Hi, Mrs. Muscatello,” I said, when I got close enough for her to hear me.
“Hello, Emma.” She stopped sweeping.
I figured I’d get right to the point. That way, I wouldn’t waste any time if she said no. “I need to interview someone for a school project. Are you busy? Can I ask you some questions?”
“You just did,” she said.
I got it. That was a joke.
“Can I ask more questions?”
“It sure looks like you can,” she said.
“Seriously…,” I paused, trying to figure out the best way to ask a question that didn’t leave much room for smart answers.
“Of course you can ask me some questions.” She pointed toward a pair of rocking chairs that stood side by side on her porch. “Let’s go sit.”
As we took our seats, she asked, “Is this for school?”
I wanted to say No, it’s my new hobby. I walk around doing interviews because it’s more fun than collecting stamps or building models of famous ships. But I didn’t want to risk having her change her mind, so I just said, “Yeah. For language arts.”
“When is it due?” she asked.
“You sound like my mom.”
“I am a mom.”
“Where are your kids?”
“Is this the interview, or the nosy neighbor?” she asked.
“Both, I guess.” I opened my notebook and started writing as she answered my first question.
“My children are all grown up and have children of their own.”
I asked more questions, and took notes. It was actually sort of fun. “Thank you so much,” I said when I’d gotten enough material for my paper.
“You’re welcome.”
I closed my notebook, took out my phone, and snapped her picture.
“You should always ask permission first,” she said.
The comment was so strange and unexpected, it took me a moment to realize she was talking about the photo. That was weird. Everyone was taking photos of everything all the time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. I need it for my paper. Do you want me to delete it?”