by Lamar Giles
All in all, Wallace made twelve trips down the Eternal Creek before some folks from Fry fished him out. That was the good news. The bad news: apparently every looping trip had aged him a year.
The Wallace who came out of the creek, drenched in too-short jeans, a too-tight shirt, with shaggy unkempt hair and fingernails that were about two feet long, was twenty-three years old.
Some said it was tragic that he grew up so fast, but Wallace adjusted well. He wasn’t so fun anymore—whenever Otto and Sheed saw him, all he talked about was traffic and weather—but he was the best math student at D. Franklin Middle School (to Leen Ellison’s chagrin), so Mayor Ahmed let him work in the City Hall tax department and “make a pretty good living.” Wallace had bought a condo. Whatever that was.
Grandma called Wallace’s story a “cautionary tale.”
When she said it, Sheed asked, “What’s that mean?”
“It means he was one of the lucky ones, and we should all take heed. People been falling in that creek since I was a little girl. Some of them never got pulled out. They still loopin’ and agin’.”
“Until they”—Otto was hesitant saying it—“die?”
Grandma tilted her chin down, peered at them over the rims of her glasses. “We can only hope.”
The boys somehow found the energy to pedal their bikes into the Gnarled Forest and onto a path leading straight to the creek. They’d used this path to catch the Queen of the Laughing Locusts as she was trying to get away and hatch more of her chuckling children. She’d thought crossing the creek would save her, but this path led to a hill at the creek’s edge—a natural ramp. The boys used it to jump their bikes to the other side, where they eventually captured the Queen Locust.
Now they were counting on the Locust Queen’s plan working better for them than it had for her.
The forest slowed Flux and the beast, as they were forced to knock down the ashen, leafless trees to keep up. It occurred to Otto that the creek might be time frozen. However, as they got closer, he heard the quiet roar of rushing water. Recalling the photo he’d taken, it made sense. The creek ran at the city’s outside edge, so it was likely right outside of the photo’s border. It didn’t get caught in the time-stopping picture.
At the hill leading to the ramp, the boys halted. The path wasn’t wide enough for two at a time.
“You first,” said Otto.
“Why me?”
Sheed had saved him from toppling off his bike when the chase first started; he kind of owed him. Otto didn’t want to admit that, so he said, “Because.”
Then shoved Sheed down the hill.
Knowing better than to hesitate, Sheed pedaled into the descent, doubling his speed. At the bottom of the hill, he pedaled harder, shooting up that earthy incline.
“Arggghhh!” he screamed, going airborne, sailing over those eternally dangerous waters. His front tire tilted high; he imagined wings sprouting from the handlebars and jet fire shooting from his seat as his back tire touched down on the opposite side of the creek. He completed Maneuver #42 in a spectacular wheelie.
Sheed put his bike back on two wheels and spun to face his cousin, ready to cheer him on. That cheer got stuck in his throat. The ramp he’d used to jump the creek—just some dirt and roots over rushing water—was crumbling. The inclined edge, the part that made it such a good ramp, must’ve been weakened since they last used it. Chunky clods dislodged from the creek’s bank and toppled into the water, swept into the loop.
Otto’s neck was craned away, watching for Flux and the Time Suck, so he didn’t see what Sheed saw. He didn’t know the ramp was gone.
Flux and his beast crested the hill, right on top of Otto, who instinctively put his bike in motion, shooting down the path.
“No,” Sheed screamed, too late.
Otto pedaled into the descent. Flux and the beast came down right behind him, fast, handling the hill with great agility; the beast could’ve licked Otto’s back tire. Otto focused on the path ahead, the ramp.
Where is the ramp?! he thought, unable to slow down. Even if he dumped the bike, he’d either tumble into the creek or be caught by Flux. Another of Grandma’s sayings came to mind: stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Maybe I can make it, he thought, rushing to the edge. Then realizing in the moment before leaving the ground that there was no way he’d make it. Not him and the bike.
Testing his own agility, he gripped his handlebars for leverage, then leapt, planting both feet on the bike seat. As the bike reached the creek bank, he released the handlebars and pushed off the seat with all his might, going airborne as his bike tipped and splashed into the water.
Sheed ran to creek’s edge, arms outstretched, a catcher’s stance.
Otto’s legs pinwheeled, arms reaching for Sheed, the camera dangling from his neck. Both boys saw the truth.
He wasn’t going to make it.
As strange as Logan County was, as often as its residents dealt with odd threats and weird occurrences and mysterious happenings, it wasn’t all bad. Sometimes luck showed its hand.
Mr. Flux intended for the Time Suck to jump the creek and land on Sheed’s side. The beast, perhaps recognizing the danger in the water, wasn’t having it. It slid to a stop. Science fanatic Leen Ellison would’ve been happy to explain what happened next in the longest way possible, but it could be summarized by quoting Newton’s First Law of Motion: every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force.
Even though the beast stopped, Mr. Flux remained in motion, flying forward, losing his grip on the tufts of fur, shooting across the stream, colliding with Otto in midair. The impact nudged Otto forward enough to grab Sheed’s forearm. He didn’t clear the creek completely, but fell onto the bank, dragging Sheed flat on his stomach. While Otto’s legs dipped in the rushing water all the way to his calves, Mr. Flux fell in fully, stretching and flopping his limbs against the current.
“Pull me up,” Otto said.
Sheed groaned. “No more Frosty Loops for you, yo!”
Mr. Flux shouted through the rushing current. “This isn’t over, boys!”
Otto dragged his soaked feet from the water, climbing while Sheed pulled. His eyes were on Mr. Flux, still splashing, still threatening. As he was swept away, a pale gray, raisin-wrinkled hand emerged from the creek, and palmed Flux’s face, as if to pull him under. Mr. Flux snarled and began fighting whoever that hand belonged to instead of the current. They both disappeared around a bend.
Otto remembered what Grandma said when he asked if people who never got pulled from the creek looped until they died. We can only hope.
He got himself up and away from that water in a hurry.
Sheed flopped on the creek bank. Eyes skyward, gasping. Across the creek, the duck-billed beast grazed, calm now that it wasn’t at Flux’s mercy.
“I think we gotta lose Maneuver #42,” said Sheed.
Otto said, “Agreed.” Then collapsed beside his cousin.
16
Epic. Fail.
After a much-needed rest, Sheed got his bike upright and said, “We gotta get to town. We ain’t catching Flux now, so we need to find that stranger. He knows way more than we do. He knows maneuvers.”
That had been on Otto’s mind a lot. How the stranger knew their maneuvers was definitely a mystery that needed solving. There was something else, though. Something the stranger said shortly after falling from his portal and getting into a fight with Flux.
Get back to the house. I got this.
He didn’t say, “Run away!” Or, “Get home!”
Get back to the house.
The phrasing, it felt too . . . familiar. As if the stranger knew Grandma’s house somehow, knew it more than a stranger should.
Or maybe Otto was reaching. He jotted down his concern, but didn’t share it. Not yet.
Sheed said, “You ready?”
Otto said, “
I don’t have a bike.”
“What do you think the handlebars are for?”
* * *
Sheed huffed hard, shoving the pedals, peering over Otto’s shoulder at the road.
“You can’t go faster?” Otto said.
“Are you serious?”
Otto wasn’t serious. He allowed himself a little fun, messing with Sheed. There was a serious matter to consider. “What if we can’t find him?”
“We fix this anyway.” Sheed’s certainty—with no plan—was comforting. Otto almost believed him.
They broke free of the Gnarled Forest onto asphalt, an easier effort for Sheed. They were sailing along about a mile from Fry. They passed a couple of frozen cars but saw no one else for most of the trip. A quarter mile from Fry, a couple of human-shaped silhouettes were visible at the forest border. The closer they got, the clearer the details. Was that . . . ?
Sheed said, “Oh . . .”
“Snap!” said Otto. Then, “Keep going. We can’t do anything for them.”
“No way.”
Of course Sheed wasn’t going to pass them. Or, rather, her.
They coasted to a stop a few feet from the pair. Otto hopped off the handlebars, and Sheed let the bike fall at his feet.
“I thought the day couldn’t get any worse,” said a frozen Victoria “Wiki” Ellison, one half of Otto and Sheed’s (but mostly Otto’s) local rivals.
Wiki was dark brown, with her glistening black hair cinched in a stiff ponytail. She wore a red and black plaid shirt, denim jeans cuffed at her calves, and Air Jordans. Always Air Jordans. Stuck a few paces behind her, with close-cropped hair, dark crescents of motor oil under her fingernails, in a flowery orange dress, with a loaded tool belt looped tight around her waist, was Wiki’s twin sister, Evangeleen.
The Epic Ellison Girls.
The Ellisons were frozen mid-stride, on the run, Wiki’s trusty bulging satchel cinched over her shoulder and trailing behind her. Evangeleen was stuck looking over her shoulder, a long wrench gripped in one fist. As usual, Sheed was drawn directly to her like a bee to a dandelion. “Hey, Leen.”
“Hey, Sheed.”
Otto rolled his eyes so hard, his head nearly tipped off his shoulders. “Heyyyyy, Leen!”
Sheed clenched his fists and gave Otto the evil eye, but did not stray from Evangeleen’s side. Yuck.
“You two did this. Didn’t you?” Wiki sniped, somehow making her voice sneer—her favorite expression—because her face couldn’t.
“That doesn’t seem very scientific, Wiki,” Otto sneered back. “Where’s your evidence?”
“That camera around your neck. And that you’re not frozen.”
That knocked Otto speechless. He struggled for an appropriate comeback.
Wiki said, “Please, stop trying to figure a way to outwit me. You can’t. I know there’s something off about that camera because it’s put together wrong.”
Sheed and Leen, somehow always in sync said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s supposed to look like a six-hundred-series instant camera, from Polaroid’s most popular line. From a distance, yeah, it would pass, but up close it’s obviously a bad facsimile.”
That right there was part of the reason she was known as Wiki and why Otto kind of hated her. Rumor had it she read Wikipedia articles for fun. Otto and Sheed had crossed paths, and butted heads, with the Ellisons enough times to know that was only half of the story.
Wiki kept going. “There are no seams, no screws; the flash is on the wrong side. I would ask if the thing even works, but you’re lugging it around when you don’t have your own bike. Tells me it’s of some importance. Given that everything seems to be frozen but you two, I bet that camera’s got something to do with what’s happening. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Otto wanted nothing more than to tell her she was wrong. For once. It was so unfair. She wasn’t a deductive mastermind like him.
She was a deductive mastermind, he supposed, but her gift wasn’t honed from training her mind for acute observation. She was born with a computer-like brain.
Wiki Ellison never forgot anything. Ever.
Not those Wikipedia articles she combed through, not anything she ever saw.
There was a word for it. Idyllic? No. Not idiotic (he’d love to toss that one at Wiki, though.)
“Eidetic,” she said.
Otto’s breathing quickened. Could she read minds, too? “How did . . . I didn’t . . .”
“Your facial expression. It’s like reading a book. You had the precise look from when I first told you about my memory. The left side of your mouth twitched up. Your eyes flicked to the right. It’s your jealous tick.”
“I am not jealous.”
“Your eyes just flicked left, and you’re frowning. That’s your liar tick.”
Otto sidestepped from her line of sight so she couldn’t analyze his face anymore.
Wiki said, “Rude.”
Sheed somehow managed to pull his eyes from Leen and followed her gaze. She was stuck looking behind them, far back into the Gnarled Forest where a pair of gleaming red lenses flared ten feet above the forest floor. They were set in a huge, dark, shadowy something that Sheed couldn’t—and didn’t want to—see. “What is that?”
“My newest robot.” Leen was the tinkerer of the pair. The boys had seen her build fantastic—sometimes frightening—things. Some people in Logan thought Evangeleen Ellison was a junior mad scientist. Sheed always found her happy and pleasant. A glad scientist.
Though her inventions were known to get loose from time to time.
This one was bigger than most, with the jagged angles and uneven limbs that were Leen’s signature, since she built most of her machines out of whatever found junk she got her hands on. This particular invention lunged with one arm stretched toward the girls; it seemed to be chasing the Ellisons.
Sheed asked, “Uhhhhh, what happened here?”
Leen said, “I’ve been working on some new artificial intelligence protocols. Specifically, tag. As in ‘tag, you’re it.’ I was able to program the rules of the game well enough, but I didn’t account for the robot’s strength.”
Otto said, “So . . . ?”
“Whatever the robot tags, the robot destroys,” said Wiki, her words sharp. “And we’re ‘it.’”
“You don’t have to sound like that,” said Leen. “I can hear the judgment in your voice.”
Wiki cut her off. “We can talk about it some other time, sis. Otto, sweetie, since today’s biggest problem isn’t the robot that wants to crush me and my shortsighted sibling, please tell me you’re close to figuring out the frozen time thing.”
Making sure she couldn’t see his face, he said, “We are.”
“Uh-huh. So, you got a way to unfreeze me and Leen?”
Unfreezing people required the assistance of a Clock Watcher, and since none were present, Otto said, “Not at the moment.”
“As I suspected. It’s really too bad. I’m certain you could use our help on this. Or we could just do it for you. Maybe grab our fourth Key to the City in the process.”
That jab stung Otto to his very core.
Wiki said, “Are you making your jealous face again?”
“Girl, bye! Sheed, let’s go.” Otto stomped back to the bike, while Sheed made his final googly eyes.
“Bye, Sheed,” said Leen.
“Bye, Leen.” His fingertips grazed her hand.
Otto threw up in his mouth a little.
“Sheed! Let’s go find the stranger.” And definitely grab a third Key to the City in the process.
He could go back to living with a tie. For now.
17
Your Mama Named You That?
“You know”—Sheed worked the pedals easily now, like he’d gotten a boost of unexpected energy—“the girls might be able to help. They’re pretty good with Logan County weirdness.”
“They can’t move, so they can’t help. Drop it.”
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“I’m just saying, Wiki and Leen see things differently than us. It’s not like we never teamed up before.”
Otto, scowling, twisted on his handlebar seat, rocking the bike.
“Hey.” Sheed fought to maintain their balance. “Stop moving.”
“We didn’t team up with the Ellisons. You invited Leen because you want her to be your girlfriend and left me dealing with Wiki getting in the way.”
Bashful, Sheed said, “That’s not the way I remember it.”
“We don’t need their help. We’re legends. Legends are better than epics.”
“Actually, they’re kind of like synonyms. I checked the thesaurus.”
“Shut up.”
They spoke of the Epic Ellisons no more as they sailed back into Fry—same scene, different angle. All frozen everything. They went to the building where the stranger had yelled their own maneuver at them. Big Apple Bakery, named so because Miss Remica, the owner, was from New York City and used really big apples in her tarts and pies and turnovers that Otto loved more than any sweet treat around (don’t tell Grandma!). Climbing the fire escape to the roof, they found no stranger and no clue of where he might’ve gone. From this high view, they looked over the unmoving city under a fixed bright sun and wondered what they could possibly do next.
“We don’t know where to even begin to look.” Sheed flopped on his butt, dog-tired.
Otto reviewed his notes. “Maybe we go back to Harkness Hill. Check the area where the stranger’s portal appeared. There might be evidence.”
“I’m going to need a break first.” Sheed said, breathing hard.
He looked more tired than Otto had ever seen him. The double-bike ride must have worn him down.