by Richard Peck
“Aaron—”
“But I don’t want to talk about it anymore now. I don’t feel so good.”
“You don’t feel good? I probably need stitches.”
He was already walking off down Fifth. I caught up with him and kept him in my good eye. At Seventy-ninth Street I had to hold him back to keep him from walking against the light. I’m still bleeding down my front, but I have to monitor him. If I hadn’t been hurting so bad, I’d have been mad.
“Look, Aaron, I want to be on the record about something. I don’t believe one word you—”
“I’m not going into the future anymore,” he said. “It’s too big a responsibility.”
When I got home, the apartment felt empty. Aaron had gone on up to the penthouse. He had some major data-mining to do. He has a state-of-the-art, stand-alone microsystem workstation in his bedroom.
Mom wasn’t home from Barnes Ogleby, and I kind of wished she was. I wanted to show her my eye and my nose and maybe cry a little.
Edging out of my backpack, I headed off to my bathroom. At the door I heard a whirring sound. But my head was still whirring anyway. I opened the bathroom door. There was a piercing scream from inside.
Heather. In a bath towel. She’d been standing at my sink. In my mirror she caught a glimpse of my face. She whirled around and dropped her hair dryer, which stopped whirring. “What happened to you?”
“Why are you in my bathroom?” I said. “Why aren’t you in your bathroom?”
“I always wash my hair in your bathroom. I don’t want to get hair in my drain.”
“Why didn’t I know this?”
“You weren’t supposed to. It’s my business. What happened to you?”
“Mugged.”
“What—getting off the school bus?”
“We didn’t take the bus. We walked.”
“You walked? What do you think the bus is for?” Heather smacked her forehead. “You are so immature. What happened to Pencil-Neck?”
Pencil-Neck is her name for Aaron. Don’t ask me why.
“He ... got away.”
Heather tightened her towel and started wringing her hands. “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got to clean you up before Mom gets home. Let me see that eye. Yewww. I’ll get ice. You start washing. What happened to your tie?”
“Boxcutter.”
I peeled out of my blazer and untied my stubby tie. Then I took a chance and looked in the mirror. I was pretty scary. My eye looked like it belonged to a giant frog. My nose had stopped bleeding, but there was a big clot on my lip. I grinned to see if I had all my teeth. I did. The blood came off, but the eye was looking worse. I dabbed around it with a soapy washcloth.
Heather was back with a bowl of ice. “Here, slap some of this on your eye.”
“I’m not slapping anything near that eye.”
“Give me that washcloth.” She folded some cubes into it. “Take off your shirt. I’ll soak it before the blood sets. Do I have to do everything? This is so typical of you, Josh. You never think a minute ahead. The future is a big blank space to you. What if Mom comes home and sees you like this? Think about it. You know how she overreacts. She’ll start carrying on about how we’re latchkey kids and need supervision. She’ll be all over us. She thinks we’re about four years old anyway. She’ll want us in day care. And all because you’re dumb enough to wander around getting mugged. She’ll call Dad.”
I hadn’t thought about that.
“She’ll lay a major guilt trip on him. He’ll probably fly back here from Chicago.” Now she was shaking a bloody shirt in my face.
“That would be okay,” I said.
Heather sighed. “Josh, they’ve just separated. It’s not time for a reconciliation. It’s—premature. Don’t you know anything about relationships? Don’t you ever watch Oprah?”
She was running water to soak my shirt. “Oh, great,” she said. “Your drain’s clogged.
“And another thing. You know how Mom and Dad will see this, don’t you? They’ll think you managed this mugging as a cry for help.”
“I didn’t cry for help,” I said. “They beat me senseless before I could open my mouth.”
“Not that. They’ll think you made this happen because of the separation. Like you’re acting out because you’re being single-parented. Mom’ll take you for counseling. She’ll take me. That eye is so gross.”
Then Heather was gone. But she told me not to move. I wouldn’t have minded an aspirin. But I just stood there. Then she was back with a bunch of stuff from Mom’s makeup table.
“What’s that for?”
“Your eye looks like an Easter egg. It won’t heal for ages. I’m going to touch it up a little.”
“Don’t even think about coming near that eye.”
“It’s just a little Max Factor Erace creamy coverup. It’s just a little pressed powder I can brush on.”
But there was still some fight in me, and I fought her off.
That’s when Mom appeared in the bathroom door. It took her a moment to see everything. The bloody shirt floating in the sink. The busted hair dryer on the floor. Heather bath toweled with half-dried hair. Me shirtless and fighting her off as she tried to revise my face with Mom’s own Max Factor and Estée Lauder products.
Then she got a good view of my Easter-egg eye. Mom’s hand clamped over her mouth to stifle a scream.
7
No Seat, No Hands
“All right,” Mom sighed, “let’s try to put our best feet forward.”
We were in a cab again, heading out to JFK Airport. Mom was giving Au Pair Exchange another shot, and we had another plane to meet.
“I can’t be in two places,” Mom said, “and there can’t be two Fenellas.”
A week had passed. Now I just had a black eye. Mom could look at me without bursting into tears.
“Okay,” Heather moaned. “Who’s it going to be this time?”
“Feona,” Mom said, trying to sound confident.
According to the Au Pair Exchange printout, Feona was seventeen, a recent “school leaver,” whose interests werereading
field hockey
gardening
needlework
flower arranging
gourmet cooking
and equitation
“What’s equitation supposed to be?” Heather asked.
“Horseback riding,” Mom said.
There was a dim Xerox picture of Feona in a school uniform and straw hat. It didn’t look too recent and could have been anybody.
There was the usual business about Feona assisting with light household work, food preparation, and child care, twenty hours a week tops.
“I don’t like her already,” Heather said as we pulled up to the British Air terminal. “And if her plane’s late, I’m going home in a cab by myself. Camilla Van Allen might call.”
“She’s never called yet,” I muttered.
“Mo-om,” Heather said, “make Josh put a sock in it or I’ll have to go to boarding school.”
When they announced the flight from London, the first passenger out of the Customs door was this girl. She was pretty tall, with long red cheeks and plenty of teeth. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing a tweed jacket, riding pants, and spit-shined high boots. You couldn’t miss her. She was carrying a saddle.
“Who’s this?” Heather said. “My friend Flicka?”
“Feona?” Mom said, because the girl was looking around, maybe for a horse.
“Actually, yes,” Feona said. “Brilliant to meet you.” She propped her saddle under one arm to shake hands with all three of us. “Absolutely brill.” She had a bone-crusher grip.
“You’d make a super jockey,” she said down to me, “if you don’t get any bigger.”
“I’m Josh,” I said in a short voice. “Want me to carry your saddle?” I hoped not. It was bigger than I was.
“Thanks awfully. I’m never without it. But you’re an absolute poppet to ask,” Feona said.
/>
Fenella had called me Tiny Tim. Feona called me a poppet. It was like a whole different language.
She turned to Heather. Expecting another Fenella, Heather had punked out. She was in total black except her lips, which Mom wouldn’t let her do.
“Feona, actually,” Feona said. She lifted Heather’s hand from her side and gave it a bone-crusher. “How’s your seat?”
“My what?” Heather said.
“No seat, no hands, Daddy always says,” Feona said to Mom.
“Ah,” Mom said. “And what would that mean ... actually?”
Feona stared. “If you don’t sit a horse well, you’ll never handle the reins well. No seat, no hands.”
“Ah,” Mom said.
“I’ve got a pain in my seat,” Heather muttered. “And I know who’s caused it.”
Outside, Heather and I were the last ones into the cab. Heather turned back to me. “She even smells weird. Do you know what it is?”
“Horse,” I said.
“That’s the first syllable,” Heather said.
The saddle had to go into the trunk, which Feona wasn’t too happy about. The four of us were bunched in the backseat. I was practically on the floor. It was dark, but you could see that every time Feona moved, her ponytail swatted Heather in the face. Heather was bobbing and weaving, trying to keep hair out of her mouth.
“... I hope you’ll be—comfortable with us,” Mom said. I could read her mind. At least Feona wasn’t another Fenella.
“Oh, I’m quite comfortable anywhere,” Feona said. “My school didn’t have heat.”
“Ah,” Mom said. “I suppose that would be boarding school?”
Feona twitched her tail. “We go away to school when we’re seven. It’s super, really. You meet such a lot of jolly girls. And it lets your parents get on with their marriage.”
“Ah,” Mom said.
“Actually, at school, I slept most nights with Cheeky Bob in the stables.”
“Cheeky Bob?” Mom said doubtfully.
“My horse, of course. We’re about to put him out at stud. All the mares are mad for him.”
Heather looked around her at me.
“I’m really just a bumper in the saddle,” Feona confided. “And I’m better on the flat than at the fence. But I’m dead keen. And it’s brill being here. I’m only missing the first of the point-to-points. Absolutely riveting, but filthy weather for it.”
“Point-to-point?” Mom said.
Feona stared again. “It’s a race like a steeplechase. But the jumps are six inches lower. Surely you have them? Mummy brings a hamper and we have picnics. Absolutely br—”
“Then it’s not a hunt,” Mom said. “You don’t kill animals.”
“No,” Feona explained. “That’s later in the season.”
Now the whole cab smelled like a stable. Up front, the cabby was spraying his area with an aerosol can.
We gunned along the expressway. It was another one of those nights when you get that great view of the city. Twinkling towers, chains of lights on the bridges. That type of thing.
Feona leaned forward, whisking Heather. “Whatever is that?” She pointed through the bullet-proof Plexiglas and over the cabby’s shoulder.
“That’s Manhattan,” I told her. “The Big Apple.”
Feona blinked. “But whyever is it getting nearer and nearer?”
“We live there,” Heather said.
Feona fell back in the seat. “There’s been some mistake,” she said to Mom. “Au Pair Exchange said you lived in the country. They said you kept horses. They said you were deeply committed to stalking and shooting. They said you had some jolly good coverts.”
“Coverts?” Mom murmured.
Feona sighed. “Places where the fox hides.”
“There’s a lot of stalking and shooting in Manhattan,” I said. “But we don’t do it.”
Mom was tensing up. “Au Pair Exchange said you liked flower arranging,” she said to Feona.
“Me? You mean weeds and grasses in pots? Mummy does that.”
Mom clutched her purse with both hands. “I’ll kill those Au Pair Exchange people,” she said. “I’ll find out who they are. I’ll get a gun. I’ll track them down. I’ll flush them out of their coverts. And I’ll kill them.”
8
Alone In the Black Hole
School’s not that much fun without your best friend. Aaron had made himself scarce ever since my mugging day. For over a week he’d been signing himself out of classes to work at the terminals in the Black Hole. He went in early and stayed after school, so I didn’t see him on the bus. He was in there at lunch.
Then, whenever I did run into him, he’d say, “I’m still diddling my data.” And he’d be off to the Black Hole again like he didn’t have time for me.
At first I thought he might be mad. He knew I didn’t believe he’d time-warped himself up a tree for my mugging. I try to be skeptical, but this time it might have hurt his feelings.
Then one day in the school lunchroom I was down at the end of a table eating a lonely burrito. Aaron comes in, scanning around to see where I am.
Huckley School is built in a row of four old houses put together. They flattened one roof and fenced it in for the lower-school playground. Otherwise they’ve tried to keep the houses pretty much the way they were. They even named them for the families who lived in them years ago. The lunchroom is the old dining room of Havemeyer House. It’s decorated with hockey sticks and pictures of past lacrosse teams and old Havemeyers.
Aaron spotted me. He worked his way through the crowd, carrying a lunch off the salad bar. He dropped down beside me.
“Getting there,” he said like the old Aaron. So maybe he wasn’t mad at me. He probably wasn’t. “Like I said, I was off on my numbers. Also, I can do better work on the terminals here at school. How far did I think I was going to get on a one-chip laptop? And at school I can work on two computers. This could be the evolutionary reason why we have two hands. With two on-line databases, you can practically conduct a symphony.”
So it was definitely the old Aaron.
“I’m making progress,” he said, “but it’s not all a matter of direct data entry.”
“Wouldn’t be,” I said.
“There’s the Emotional Component.”
“After all, the human brain is the ultimate computer,” I reminded him.
“But if it means scaring myself into some other time,” Aaron said, “I’m up for it. I’ll jump that fence when I come to it.”
Jumping fences reminded me of horses. Horses reminded me of you know who.
“We’ve got another O Pear,” I said.
But Aaron wasn’t listening. For once he didn’t have his one-chip laptop with him. But the fingers of his left hand were punching up something on the bare wood of the lunch table. Once in a while his fork would come up, and he’d stuff lettuce in his mouth. But his eyes were unfocused, and his mind was way off somewhere. There was a blob of Thousand Island dressing on his nose.
This began to make me mad. It happens a lot. Right after you think your best friend is mad at you, and then you find he isn’t, you get mad at him. Aaron was taking himself too seriously. He was getting weirder. He was beginning to buy his own theories. I thought about turning him in to the counseling office. He wouldn’t even notice if I got up and walked away.
Then he got up and walked away. He wandered through the lunchroom crowd, returned his empty salad bowl, and left in the direction of the media center.
I had a little bit of burrito left but didn’t even feel like eating it.
After school I was getting on the bus with the rest of the backpackers. I was going with the flow. Then I turned around and went back into school. Having to find a new best friend at my age is just too big a deal.
The media center is in Vanderwhitney House, a couple of buildings over from Havemeyer House. It was probably the personal library of the Vanderwhitney family in the olden days. Some of the shelves are rea
l wood built into the walls.
The front part of it still has some books. Mrs. Newbery, the media specialist, was giving a story hour there to a bunch of preschoolers in miniature dress code. The back part is walled off with a door in it, and that’s the Black Hole where the computer workstations are.
Aaron was in there, positioned between two terminals. He was keeping them busy with both hands. All the compartments of his brain were fully engaged.
I just stood there. What are you going to do with a kid like that? I couldn’t see his face, but I knew his lips were moving. Then I got this idea. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. If Aaron’s so sure he can be scared into another time frame, let’s find out.
I closed the door behind me to keep Mrs. Newbery from being involved. Then I made a dead run for Aaron. I came pounding up on his blind side.
“Aaron, look out! Buster Brewster’s got a gun, and he’s heading this way!”
Aaron froze. Then he yelled, “Yikes!” His hands flew up. He was surrendering or something. Then his hands dropped down on both keyboards. His fingers flew. The entire Black Hole seemed to give out a glow. It was like a power surge.
Then the scariest thing that ever happened, happened.
Something was happening to Aaron. He was beginning to ... dim. He was like somebody fading into the distance, except he was right here—a reach away. I didn’t know whether to touch him or not, but I put one hand out on his bony shoulder. It was changing under my hand. It felt like a Baggie full of bees. This could have been his cells reorganizing themselves. I think I even heard buzzing, but that could have been the terminals.
Then my hand was just there, hanging in space. I was standing behind an empty chair. Aaron was lost in cyberspace.
I panicked. Who wouldn’t? I checked under the terminals, in the corners, even. But I was alone in the Black Hole. Through the wall I could hear the drone of Mrs. Newbery’s voice, summing up a story.