“You could have said something to me at school.”
He looks away. “I was scared, I guess.”
“Of me?” I laugh.
“I wasn’t sure what you…you know…thought of me. After.”
Clearly, I’ve missed something. “After what?”
“The museum.”
I shake my head and he looks at me like I’m the crazy one. He reaches into his back pocket. “I kept the brochure.” But instead of a brochure, he pulls out a wallet and turns it over in his hands. “This isn’t mine.” He crouches down and dumps out the contents on the grass.
Mom sticks her head out the door, startling both of us. “You two need anything?” She sees Danny sorting through the odds and ends, and whispers, “Is he okay?”
“He’s having problems at home,” I whisper back.
“What kind of problems?” We watch him mumbling to himself.
“He’s scared.”
“Of?”
I try to make my face convey the obvious. When Mom doesn’t get my drift, I say, “I don’t think it’s safe for him to go back there.”
“Oh?” she says. Danny looks up at us. His bruised eye appears even worse from this angle.
“Oh,” she says again, but this time it’s in surprise. Then her face changes to resolute. “Take him next door. He’ll stay there tonight. I’ll call your father to let him know.”
I turn so Danny can’t see me, and mouth, Are you crazy?
“It’ll be okay.” She motions me toward him. “Go.”
She is crazy. She’s completely lost her mind this time.
I take several steps backward, still making a face at her, then turn when I get close to Danny. “Come on. We’re going to my dad’s.” He stuffs crumpled money and ID cards into his pockets, and we walk together through the shadows that crisscross the driveway.
“Your dad lives next door?”
“It’s a long story,” I mutter.
Over at her dad’s place, she reaches for the door, but I stop her. “You believe me, right?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she says. “But I do know you shouldn’t have to stay where people give you black eyes.”
She knocks twice and opens the door. I follow her inside. The place is spotless. Like a picture from a magazine. Leather couch and chairs. Glass coffee table. Bookshelves lined with hardcovers. Her dad sits in the far corner under a reading lamp. Thinning hair. Glasses. He stands when he sees me. He wears slippers with business casual.
“Dad?” Eevee says. “This is Danny.”
I extend my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Solomon.”
He gives me a once-over, then shakes my hand. His grip is strong, like a warning. “Call me Sid.”
“Did Mom call?”
He nods. “Danny, will you excuse us for a moment?”
Eevee follows him to the kitchen. I can hear their voices but can’t make out what they’re saying. The books on the shelves are all statistics, statistics and more statistics. There’s one about the brain. And another book on statistics. Finally, they walk back into the room.
“Have a seat, Danny.” He motions to the couch and sits again in the chair in the corner. Eevee sits across from me.
“Are you a friend from school?” he asks.
I clear my throat. “I met her at the—”
“English,” she says. “Danny’s in my English class.”
“Then you’re a sophomore as well?”
My brain is running on empty. Eevee gives a small nod and I stammer, “Y-yeah. Yes, sir. Sophomore.”
He takes a hard look at me. “I’m sorry to hear you’re having trouble at home.” He continues to scrutinize. Deciding if I’m trouble or not.
I sweep the hair out of my eyes. Try not to look like a freak. “Thanks. It’s…uh…”
“No need to divulge.” He holds up a hand. “You’re welcome to stay here. If you can follow the rule. Eve, will you please tell him the rule?”
She angles her body so he can’t see her roll her eyes. Keeps her voice straight, though, and says, “My actions will not have a negative impact on myself or others in this home.”
“Thank you.” Sid leans back, crosses his arms. “Does that sound reasonable, Danny?”
Is this guy for real? “Yes, sir.”
“Then we’re agreed. You may stay in Eve’s room.”
“Oh,” she says. “I thought he’d stay on…” She looks at the couch.
“Most people don’t have the luxury of two bedrooms to call their own.”
She nods.
“Will you show our guest the way?”
She stands, so I stand, too, and follow her past the kitchen to the hallway. She pushes open the first door on the right. “Bathroom.” And the next door on the left. “My room.” She holds it open for me. “I mean, your room.”
I stop before going in and look at her. Same dark hair. Same eyes. Same girl, but so different. A gazillion thoughts tumble through my brain, everything I should say to her, but all I get out is “Thanks.”
Her head tilts to the right and she smiles. “We can talk more tomorrow.” Her voice sounds tired or sad. Can’t tell which.
“Sounds good.” I walk into her room.
She starts to leave, but turns back. “Don’t touch anything, okay?” I nod. And with that, she’s gone.
Don’t touch anything? There isn’t much in here to touch. The place hardly looks lived in. The bed takes up most of the space. Gray comforter and pillows. Black dresser in the corner. Matching nightstand and silver lamp. A poster of Einstein, which seems unusual for a teenage girl, but whatever. The closet is pretty much empty inside. A couple of shirts on hangers. Jeans folded on a shelf. There’s nothing really her about the room.
I peel off the jacket and toss it on the bed. Kick off the shoes and my feet feel ten pounds lighter. I stretch. Sit on the edge of the mattress and rub my banged-up knee.
What now? If I were home, I’d play some Carnage or hang out with Germ.
Germ. Where was he when all that happened? Did he get hurt, or worse, caught? Is he lost somewhere in this crazy place like me?
I jump to my feet, keyed up all of a sudden, and pace around the room. Feels like the walls are closing in. What if Germ needs help and I’m stuck here? Wherever here is. I can’t just sit around. I need answers.
The nightstand beside the bed has a single drawer. I pull it open. Inside, there’s a journal and a pencil.
Einstein’s eyes are on my back. Don’t touch anything.
The cover has that drawing of a naked guy in a circle with his arms stretched out. What do they call him? Venturian Man? The art makes me think of Eevee. Her red dress and killer heels. Hair up off her shoulders. The way she smiled. The way her body felt against mine.
It’s like she doesn’t remember.
Just as my fingers touch the journal, there’s a knock at the door. The pencil rattles as I slam the drawer shut and I’m off the bed, standing at attention.
“Danny?” Mr. Solomon—Sid—calls through the door. “Would you like something to eat?”
I shake out my hands. Clear my throat. “Yeah. That’d be great.”
Sid and I sit at the kitchen table, eating pita chips with hummus and working on a crossword.
“Five-letter word for ‘meticulous.’ ”
I shove a loaded chip in my mouth and make a thinking face. “Meticulous…meticulous…” Maybe three brain cells are working on the clues. The rest are working out how I got here. Either way, I’m coming up with zilch.
“Fussy.” Sid pencils in the boxes. “F-U-S-S-Y.” Takes a swig of his kale juice. He’s an oddball. Nice. But weird.
“So you have Ms. Fischbach, too?” he asks.
“What?”
“For English. Eve is always complaining about that class.”
I fake it. “Yeah. It’s pretty awful.”
“Well, I’m glad to know she has a friend in there.” He doesn’t sound glad. “Are you good at
English?” He looks at me over his glasses.
“Pretty good.” I don’t have to lie this time.
“Maybe you can help her. English isn’t her strongest subject. I assist as I can, but we usually end up arguing. She can be…” He points to the crossword. “Fussy.”
I think of her hand slinking up the back of my neck. She didn’t even know my name. Not my idea of fussy. “When did she start painting?”
“Painting?” He shakes his head. “Eve doesn’t have time for frivolous distractions.”
“But she’s apprenticed to that famous guy. Bosca?” I load hummus onto a chip and pop it in my mouth.
“You must be mistaken,” Sid says slowly, like I don’t speak the same language. “Eve’s focus is academics. She’s on target for Ivy League. Perhaps even overseas study. I’d be thrilled either way, of course.”
“Well, the Education Panels will make that call, won’t they?”
“Is that how they do things in the remedial track?”
My laugh catches in my throat and I choke. He thinks I’m an idiot. When I finally stop coughing, I open my mouth to argue, but decide to switch subjects instead. “Do you have a city map I can borrow?”
Surprised, he sets down the crossword. “Yes. Just a moment.”
He disappears to another room while I slam a few more hummus chips, a plan forming in my mind.
“Here you go,” he says when he returns. He hands me a folded map with PHOENIX in blazing red letters across the front.
“Thanks. I’ll only need it for an hour or so.”
“Take your time.” He returns his attention to the crossword.
I push away from the table. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll call it a night. Thanks again for letting me crash here.”
“You’re welcome. If you need anything else, let me know.”
I tap the map against my palm as I walk down the hall to Eevee’s room. Once inside, I unfold it and spread it across the bed, fish through my pockets for a scrap piece of paper and grab the pencil from the drawer.
First task: find my house. Second task: find Germ.
My eyes scan the map, searching out anything familiar in the minuscule street names. Takes me forever to find Eevee’s street. This feels impossible. I roll onto my back, overwhelmed.
“What am I going to do?”
Einstein stares down at me. He doesn’t have a clue either.
Saturday morning, the sun hazes through the bedroom window, pulling me from sleep. I turn over and cover my eyes, but a thought bubbles up through the fog in my brain. Something I need to remember. It nags at me, bobbing at the edge of my—
The knock at my door startles it away. I crawl out of bed and shuffle to the door where Mom, still in her nightgown, holds out the phone. “Your father.”
And then I remember: there’s a strange boy sleeping next door.
It’s Saturday. I’m geocaching with Warren at ten. Better warn him about Danny. “What time is it?”
Mom shakes her head and pushes the phone into my hands. I wait for her to leave. “Hello?”
“I found a note on the table this morning.” Dad sounds happy, like he does when he’s completed a challenging statistical diagram. “It says Off to find answers. Thanks for everything. Danny.”
“You mean he’s gone?”
“Looks like it.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“Last night he asked to borrow a map, but he left it here beside the note.”
Where did he go? To the foster home? I don’t know what to think. Should I be worried?
“It’s better this way,” Dad says. “You don’t need the distraction. Not with midterms coming up.”
“Midterms,” I mumble, my mind spinning.
“See you Sunday for dinner?”
“Dinner. Sunday.”
And like that, everything goes back to normal.
I meet Warren at our usual spot: the lava rock in his front yard. He stands on top of his tiny mountain, watching the sky through a pair of binoculars.
“See anything good up there?”
“Ducks. A 747.” He looks at me, jumps back like he’s seen something horrific and stumbles off the rock. “Oh.” He clutches his chest. “It’s just you, Solomon.”
“Hilarious. Are you ready to go or what?”
“Affirmative. How was the ballet?”
I follow him inside his house, relieved I don’t have to tell him about Danny. Those two have a volatile past, to put it mildly. “Last night was bizarro.”
“It’s ballet. What did you expect?” He pushes open the door. “Mom! Departure imminent!”
Mrs. Fletcher drives us to the mall, where we suck down milk shakes, search for geocaches tucked away in storefronts and planters, avoid security guards and debate the finer points of superheroes.
“Superman versus Wolverine.”
“Easy.” Warren steps one foot in front of the other along a line of tile, as if he’s walking a tightrope. “Wolverine has healing factor. Batman versus Daleks.”
“Batman could just run them over with the Batmobile.”
“Nah. They’d zap him before he got close enough. Plus, they can fly.”
“Send a memo to Alfred. Tell him to get to work on an anti-extermination gadget.”
Warren takes off through the mall doing his best Dalek impersonation. “Exterminate! Exterminate!” Soccer moms and store clerks gape at the begoggled nerd boy, but Warren is unfazed.
We find our final geocache (a magnetic minicache stuck in a pipe valve) by Java’s Last Stand. We take turns adding our names to the log and using Warren’s smartphone to track our find on the geocaching website. Warren holds out the phone for me to see. “Three o’clock. Time to go to Mac’s.”
Marcus McAllister is the most brilliant teacher at Palo Brea, if not the world. We had him last year for biology; this year we’re in his honors chemistry class, as well as his advanced study in theoretical physics. Only a few students test into the program, and Warren and I took top placement. It means we take multiple science classes each semester, but it’s so worth it. Mac has become more than a teacher to us. He’s a mentor. I’d even go so far as to call him a friend. My parents love this, of course. Someone with major credentials will write my college recommendation letters. What could be better?
Warren and I spend as much time as we can at Mac’s shop, helping him with projects and listening to his stories about when he worked with Boeing and NASA. Rumor has it he’s associated with a lot of alphabet agencies, but whenever Warren and I start asking too many questions, he just smiles or shrugs. His greatest accomplishment, he says, is having kept his Van Halen 1984 concert shirt in mint condition.
We find Mac lying on the floor of the shop, the hangar-like structure he built next to his house, where he does his fabrication work. His mask is pulled down over his face and he’s welding the base of an enormous cage that reaches halfway to the ceiling. The Beatles echo through the air. Lucy in the sky with diamonds.
“What is that, a pet carrier for mountain lions?” I ask.
He lifts the welding mask. “Close. Support frame for an entertainment center. It’s for a custom home up in Cave Creek.”
You’d think a brilliant guy like Mac wouldn’t have to supplement his income building staircases and entertainment centers and stuff, but apparently teaching doesn’t pay very well.
He slides out from under the structure and hobbles a bit when he stands. “You guys ready to work? Get your gear.”
We walk together over to the supply shelves at the far side of the shop. As I reach for a pair of gloves, something catches my eye. The door to the shop’s back room—usually closed—stands open, offering a glimpse of some huge piece of equipment draped in blue tarps. I elbow Warren and nod toward whatever it is.
We inch over for a closer look, but Mac’s voice from behind stops us. “Given any more thought to the science fair?” He closes the door.
“We’re still debating.”
I pull on the gloves as we follow him back to the other side of the shop. Mac hands me a length of angle iron, and I clamp it in place according to the blueprint spread out on the floor. If I completely fail at science, at least I can get a job welding. Dad would be thrilled.
“What’s to debate?” Mac places the nozzle of the welder to the edge of the iron, squeezes the trigger and stitches a perfect seam. Flipping up the helmet, he blows on the lingering glow. “You come up with an idea, do the work, win the fair. No big deal. This is your year.” He flips down the mask again and his voice sounds hollow. “Trust me.”
I wait for him to finish the next weld, the liquid metal sizzling like bacon. “Warren wants to study bugs.”
He stops the torch. “Bugs?”
“No I don’t!” Warren makes a face. “I said asteroids.”
We bicker as we work. Mac suggests different projects, but none of them stick. Nothing feels right. I don’t understand why we’re having such a hard time agreeing on a topic. Last year was so easy. Practical applications of carbonite cryonics. We would have won, too, if it hadn’t been for Centennial High’s team and their solar kit for standard combustion engines. Classic pandering to the eco crowd.
Soon the conversation turns from the science fair to the Large Hadron Collider, which naturally leads to black holes and time travel. One way or another, we always eventually end up talking about black holes and time travel.
“If only we had a time machine,” Warren says. “Then we could travel to after the science fair and find out what our entry was.”
“Except you can’t—”
“I know, I know.” Warren waves off Mac’s correction. “You can’t travel to the future because it hasn’t happened yet. But what if you could?”
He launches into an excited monologue on all the things he’d do if he could travel into the future, most of which are unethical, not to mention the chaos he’d create, spawning paradox after paradox.
A lightning flash of a thought strikes me: what if the Danny on my doorstep is from the far-distant future? Mac and Warren’s banter fades to white noise as the train of logic chugs through my brain, gathering steam.
It could explain why he was so disoriented. Why nothing here was familiar to him. Why he expected to see things unfamiliar to me, like Spectrum—whatever that is—and heightened security. But if Danny is from the future…
Now That You're Here (Duplexity, Part I) Page 3