Caleb managed to hook his fingers around Farley’s collar as the dog made another pass. Simon picked up their father’s beat-up old rake that had been left carelessly on the sidewalk.
“Caleb, get your cell phone out,” Simon said. “Punch in nine-one-one, but don’t press dial. Just be ready to. Stay out here and get Farley to shut up. Abbey, you follow me in, but stay back. Caleb, if anything happens, run and dial.”
Caleb pressed the numbers, which glowed green and ominous on the small screen. He’d lost his iPhone so many times he’d been forced to adopt his mother’s old Motorola. Farley dropped into the down position but continued to growl.
Simon pulled out his key, slipped it into the lock and turned. The door popped open with its familiar click, and warm furnace air and the smell of roasting meat floated out.
Simon stepped inside, clenching the rake. Abbey followed, expecting at any second to be at gunpoint, or, worse, to feel the pierce of a bullet through her skin. Simon stopped dead just past the threshold.
“Holy crap!” he said. “Mom got new furniture.”
Abbey stared at the glossy brown leather furniture that sat in place of the tarnished old chintz sofas. A guttural groan came from the living room. Abbey’s heart started to pound so fast it hurt. She and Simon peered around the entranceway wall into the living room.
Farley’s bed sat against the wall as always. But on it lay a grizzled, old, brown dog, stretching out its forepaws and yawning as it attempted to lurch into a standing position, its tail thumping the bed, a gleam of recognition in its rheumy eyes.
Abbey felt the hot tears coursing down her cheeks before her mind had quite come to its final conclusion. Simon seemed frozen beside her. She sank to her knees. “Farley?” she said, her voice a quaver. The tail wagged harder, the old dog apparently having given up trying to force its stiff bones upright. Abbey took the large brown head with the white muzzle in her hands and buried her face in the wiry fur, her throat tight and scratchy.
Simon walked across the living room to study the pictures on the mantel. Everything else was in the right place—the dining room table, their baby pictures on the wall, their dad’s blue and white Sundance golf umbrella in the umbrella stand.
“We have to get out of here,” Simon said. He’d gone to look out the picture window in the living room. “I see the van coming up the hill.” He crossed the room in a flash. “Go downstairs,” he ordered. “We’ll have to go out the crypt door.”
“Run!” he yelled out the front door to Caleb, who was still sitting across the yard with young Farley. “Take Farley back to the stones as fast as you can. Now!” Simon yelled, his voice jumping startlingly into the low pitch of a man. “We’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
Simon closed the door and locked it from the inside. He and Abbey dashed down the stairs. She almost doubled over with tears to see the old Farley watch them go. They were out the basement door and racing up the back lane a few seconds later.
They ran up the hill in the quickening dark.
“We have to go back through,” said Simon to Caleb, who stood by the stones looking quizzical, Farley still freaking out on the end of the leash. But Caleb didn’t argue. They stepped on the stones again, pushing and pulling Farley with them. There was the whoosh and they were standing in the forest again.
Abbey sank to the forest floor and wrapped her arms around Farley’s neck. Farley thumped his tail obligingly and leaned into her. “Farley,” she whispered. “Why can’t you be an elephant?”
Chapter 7
A Light in the Dark
“What are you talking about? Elephants? What the heck just happened?” asked Caleb.
Abbey frowned to contain her tears. “I just wish Farley had the lifespan of an elephant, that’s all.”
“We went to the future, the near future,” said Simon. “Judging from Farley, I’d say ten years in the future. There were photos of us on the mantel, photos of us older. It was creepy.”
“What do you mean, judging from Farley?” Caleb asked.
“There was an old Farley there.” Abbey managed to choke out the words. “Really old. That’s why young Farley was barking, I think. He sensed himself in there.”
“That is so cool,” said Caleb. “What else did you see? Why did we have to run out of there so fast?”
“Because the van was coming up the drive and I can’t imagine Mom or Dad would react well to seeing younger versions of us wandering around the house. I can’t believe they were still driving the blue bullet. The only thing they changed is the couches.”
“Okay, okay,” said Caleb, combing his fingers through his hair. “This is a really important breakthrough. We know we’re going to the future. We just don’t know where or how far.”
“Do we know that?” asked Abbey.
“Yes. We absolutely do.” Caleb held up his hand with one finger raised. “Clue one is that we definitely went to the future this time. Clue two is that ALICE is a fuel that does exist and will power ships that can go into space—but not until the future—and we were clearly on Earth… I mean, it looked like Earth, people spoke English. Clue three is that your cell phone worked, so we had to have been on Earth.” Caleb waved his arms in the air in his usual ‘ta-dah’ fashion.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Abbey. “How could that have been possible? Don’t you have to have a cell phone plan for your phone to work?”
“Maybe in the future they’ll have free cell service just like they have free wireless in some places,” said Caleb.
“But then my cell phone had to have the right chip in it or something, right?”
“They could probably make it recognize any chip in the future, if someone wanted to provide free cell service,” answered Simon.
“See? That proves my theory,” Caleb announced, with a second sweep of his arms through the air and a victory smile.
“Good grief,” said Abbey squinting at Caleb. “Don’t you knuckleheads ever pay attention in science? That doesn’t prove anything. You don’t have a theory. You have a hypothesis that you have to empirically test before you can even begin to assume it might be true.”
“Just to be clear,” Simon said. “I did not claim to have proved anything.”
“All right, Miss Smarty-Pants, let’s go ask Mark if our theory is correct.” Caleb turned and marched down the hill.
Simon rolled his eyes but followed.
“You mean your hypothesis,” muttered Abbey, huffing through her nose. She snapped Farley’s leash onto his collar and trudged down the hill after the boys.
The afternoon had drifted into autumn darkness and there was the barest whisper of winter chill. Abbey zipped up her hoodie and stuffed her hands into her pockets. The digital numbers on her watch read 4:46. Their parents would be home by eight o’clock, after dinner with the environmental advocacy organizations that their mother was involved in. The usual lights were on in the Forrester house. The porch light was also on, which wasn’t customary, as Mrs. Forrester preferred the dark when she sat outside with her pipe. The moths fluttered and scattered as Caleb walked purposefully up the front steps and rapped on the door.
They waited, but nobody came to the door. Caleb knocked again, louder this time, the bones of his knuckles echoing against the old pressed-wood door. The house remained silent.
“That’s weird,” said Caleb. “They never go out at night.” He banged a third time, and then placed his hand on the doorknob. Before Abbey could say anything, he turned it slowly and pushed the door open. A patch of yellow light from the kitchen appeared and expanded on the porch. The heavy scents of garlic and cooking oil followed. Caleb leaned his head in.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
The door swung inward with a groan. A cutting board with sliced carrots, broccoli, and peppers sat on the countertop. The paring knife lay beside the tidy piles of vegetables. A pot and a frying pan perched on the stove burners, the lidless bottle of soy sauce between them.
No answers came to Caleb’s greetings, so he and Simon stepped gingerly across the threshold. Abbey slunk into the kitchen behind them, Farley’s claws skittering on the linoleum. Cooked chicken remained in the frying pan and the pot contained rice that still had the vague suggestion of warmth. Two half-full glasses containing amber liquid sat on the table.
“Looks like they left in a hurry,” said Simon.
Caleb smelled the contents of the glasses and made a face. “Hard alcohol. Do you think Mark drinks? Or do you think someone else was here?”
“I don’t know,” Abbey said, backing toward the door. “But we better get out of here.”
Simon followed her to the porch while Caleb did a final tour of the kitchen. He spent a few minutes inspecting the rotary phone on the wall, and then suddenly disappeared down the hall.
“Caleb!” Abbey called. “What are you doing?”
There was no reply. Abbey prepared to launch through the doorway after Caleb, but Simon grabbed her arm and shook his head slightly. She let out a yip of impatience. A few seconds later, Caleb came back into the kitchen. He reached into the recycling bin, withdrew two jars, and poured a small amount of the liquid from the glasses into each. Then he joined them on the porch, carrying the two jars. They closed the door and scurried away to stand on their side of the road by the hedge, just outside the moon-like circle cast by the streetlight.
“What were you doing?” Abbey hissed.
“Checking for their car,” said Caleb. “It’s there. Wherever they went, they either walked or someone else drove, and judging from the temperature of the rice, they must have just left. Do you think we should we go look for them?”
Simon looked ghostly in the near-darkness, like a wraith, his hood casting a shadow over his face. “No, we shouldn’t. They could be just fine. We could be jumping to conclusions.”
“We should go home and do our homework and eat,” Abbey said. She wanted to feel the safety of the walls of their house around her. “We can watch and see when they get home.” If they weren’t kidnapped, she added silently in her mind. Or murdered.
Caleb thrust the jars at Simon, pulled out the list, and flipped it over to write on the back. Abbey wondered if Caleb was writing ‘missing Forresters’ amongst the other clues.
Caleb twirled the pencil in his fingers. “Before you go inside and stick your head in a book, Ab, we need to think this through. We must’ve jumped further into the future the first two times. We know when we went to New L.A. it was 2036. And if we’re guessing we just jumped ahead about ten years, we know in ten years Mom and Dad will still be driving the van, and it didn’t look like there was space travel or people living in bubbles. So, I’m guessing the Bubble City was also further in the future. So, what was different about last time? Why didn’t we go as far? Is it just random?”
Simon sprawled his long limbs onto the curb and set the jars down next to him. Abbey studied her shoelaces and looked up at the stars that were beginning to appear. She wondered if she would ever fly Twinkle-Free Air. She returned her gaze to the pink stitching in her green sneakers and debated whether or not to say anything. She wanted to go inside. But then she gave in. “The difference is Farley went first.”
“So?” Caleb lifted an eyebrow.
“So…” Abbey ground her sneaker into the mottled pavement. “Simon went first over the stones the first time, and I did the second time. When we were in the Bubble City, there were moments when I felt as crazy as Farley was acting when we walked down to the house. I can’t describe it, but when we were in Bubble City, it was like I knew too much, and everything had meaning for me. That was my favorite periodic table on the door of that office…and that tree seemed familiar…and I felt like I’d designed that maze myself.”
Caleb looked blank, but Simon nodded slowly. “That’s how I felt in the spaceship. Every programmer has their own style and tics—and when I was looking at that computer code, it was like it was so identical to something I could have written that I felt like I might have actually written it.”
Abbey jumped in. “And that explains how the computer had your retinal scan in the database and knew your name, and why the code password system matched the password system you use.”
Caleb glared at them both. “Could someone please explain what you’re talking about?”
“The future is determined by who goes through first, I think…” Abbey said. “The first time was Simon’s future, the second time was my future and the last time was Farley’s future. We could only jump ten years ahead in Farley’s future because that’s probably all he’ll live.” Abbey’s voice got all twitchy again at the thought of the old and lonely Farley in the future. The Farley of the present licked her hand. “Except, I guess that kid was the first through when we went to Simon’s future. Maybe he and Simon have the same future. I don’t know.”
Caleb looked from Abbey to Simon and back again.
“I know,” said Abbey. “It doesn’t make any sense scientifically. But I could just feel it the whole time.”
Caleb cocked his head. “Feel what?”
“I don’t know. I really can’t explain it. Familiarity. Like there was weird truth in it somehow. Is that how you felt, Si?”
Simon nodded. “Sort of. It felt like I knew what I was doing, like I had all the right answers and understood how that computer system was structured, the logic behind it.”
Caleb stood for a few minutes with his lips pursed before pulling a freckled hand through his crown of unruly orange hair. “There’s only one thing to do then. We need to go back through, and I need to go first.”
Abbey jerked her head up. She had allowed herself to stray too far from the scientific method, and now she was foundering in an abyss of half-baked hunches. “Wait. No. I don’t think you should act based on a feeling. I was just about to say that feelings are often wrong. We need more evidence. We should ignore everything Simon and I just said. It’s crazy-talk.”
“That’s why we need to go back through, and I need to go first. To get evidence,” Caleb said.
Abbey studied her brother. She could not let him go back across the stones. “There are all sorts of problems with our hypotheses. How did we get home from the Bubble City? Why did that set of stones appear just outside the lab building? Are there two sets of stones? Or did they move? There are just too many variables.”
Caleb’s face became impassive for a few seconds. Then he cocked his head to one side, drew his eyebrows together and grinned at her. “I think you’re just trying to lead us astray with your variable talk. Isn’t it best to solve multi-variable equations by picking off one variable at a time? In this case, the question of whether the future we go to is determined by who goes first?”
Abbey ground her teeth together. “Maybe.”
“So, let’s go!” Caleb turned to head back up the hill, his eyes bright.
“Right now?”
“Yes, why not?”
“Because I’m hungry, that’s why.” She didn’t add that she was also scared. Abbey looked pleadingly at Simon, who had his arms crossed over his chest and a noncommittal expression on his face.
Caleb wheeled back around wearing the big-eyed look that worked famously with the girls at Coventry High. “Come on, guys. It’s the last night Mom and Dad will be out late. Tomorrow night we have to be at Mom’s dumb campaign party. We have to do it.” He widened his eyes further.
“We have to eat, too,” said Abbey.
“So, we go pack a sandwich or two and take it with us. Come on, Ab…please. For me? So I can understand. To help us figure this out. We don’t have to stay long. We can just go through and see how I feel and then turn right around and come back.”
Simon cocked his head. “All right. I’m in.” Without waiting for Abbey’s answer, the two boys headed toward their house. Simon carried the jars of liquid.
Abbey followed behind, dragging Farley, who’d spotted a neighborhood cat and decided he’d prefer to stay out and about. Her mind scro
lled through all the things that could go wrong.
“I don’t want to go,” she announced when they reached the house. “This is getting too dangerous. The Forresters are missing, some creepy guy named Mantis seems to be after someone named Sinclair, we have no idea who Fly Kid is, or where he is, and we have no idea what we’re doing.”
“You don’t have to go,” said Caleb. “We’ll go alone. We won’t be long. We promise.”
Abbey sank onto the kitchen nook bench silently. Salami, cheese, and mustard sandwiches were made with more speed than she’d ever seen her brothers dispatch in the kitchen. Three sandwiches, she noted. She thumbed through her chemistry textbook at the table. Her heart clunked around in her chest like the rusty piston of an old steam engine as her brothers packed the sandwiches into a backpack. Simon tossed in a bag of chips, pears, and some juice boxes, while Caleb returned with his arms full of stuff—their father’s hunting knife, a compass, flashlights, a desktop atlas, a pen and paper, scissors, twine, hats, and sunglasses.
“Looks like you’re going for a month, not fifteen minutes,” Abbey said.
“This is all just in case, Ab. This should be our standard gear when using the stones,” said Caleb.
Caleb and Simon donned hoodies and shoved their feet into sneakers.
Abbey pouted. She couldn’t believe they seemed so willing to leave her behind and alone in the house, but she ignored them. As the door closed and their footfalls retreated from the porch and driveway, she walked to the living room window that overlooked Coventry City. The shadows had slipped up the sides of the house in the last fifteen minutes as evening proper descended. The streetlights in the city below connected the avenues like a pearl necklace. Where were the Forresters? What had happened to them? She wanted to run up the hill after her brothers. To the stones.
She’d almost convinced herself to retreat to her room to do her chemistry lab when she heard the quiet squeal of a high-performance car engine accelerating. The car lights flooded up the road as the silvery blue jag wheeled to a stop in front of the Forrester house. Abbey dropped to her knees in the window as a tall figure in a trench coat stepped out of the vehicle and slunk up the Forrester’s walk. Abbey ran, half-crouched, to the top of the stairs. She slid her fingers under Farley’s collar. Her legs wobbled as she descended the stairs into the basement, pulling the large dog with her, straining to listen for the sound of their front door opening over the hammering of her heart.
A Pair of Docks Page 10