“Julian!” his mother called as the first hurried footsteps reached their ears.
“Or not,” Grown-up Julian said.
“Come on. This is our mom. What hasn’t she seen after all these years with Dad? I’m sure she won’t even blink.”
“You think?”
“OK. She might blink. She might even scream. Once. Two, three, ten times, tops. But really, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“Has Dad told you about any of those anti-burglar inventions he came up with yet? Has he even invented them yet? Like the Remote Controlled Nunchucks or the Mace-Laced Pants or—”
“Say no more. What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to hide.”
“Where?”
“Out here.” Grown-up Julian slid open the window and stepped out onto the roof of the front porch.
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
The meter of the footsteps increased to eighty beats per minute.
“Totally,” Grown-up Julian said, sticking his head back in the window.
“How do you know?”
“Because in a few years, you’ll know.”
“I don’t think I want to know.”
“You probably don’t, Young Me.”
“What am I going to tell Mom?”
“You’ll think of something. We’re smart.”
Grown-up Julian gave the thumbs-up and slid the casement back down, barely rustling the curtains in the process. Young Julian suspected that sooner, rather than later, he would develop the same skill. The approaching footsteps now could be mistaken for a tap-dancing recital. Julian dashed across to his desk, deposited himself in the chair, and opened the nearest textbook. Which just happened to be a Spanish book. Last year’s Spanish book, to be more precise. Last year’s Spanish book, upside down, to be exact.
Against—what the smart folks call “contrary to”—the Newcomber house rules, his mom didn’t bother knocking before bursting into the room. Of course, neither had Dylan, which started this whole mess. Her eyes were as big as bigger saucers.
“Hi, Mom,” Julian said coolly. “Is everything OK?”
She wasn’t answering. She was looking.
And looking.
And looking.
“Mom?”
“Your brother said he saw a man in here.”
“A man? In here?”
“Yes. A man. In here.”
“Hmmm. A man, in here,” Julian said as he walked over and stood by her side, following her eyes as they scanned the room. He wanted to be ready with an answer—what the honest folks call “a fabrication”—in case she spotted something unusual. Relatively speaking, that is. “Do you see anyone else in here, Mom?”
Julian assumed she could not see Grown-up Julian outside. But sometimes it seemed as though his mom had super powers. And Superman could see through walls. So, he wasn’t taking any chances.
“No.”
“Good. I don’t either. I think I’ll just get back to my...” he said, taking a small and subtle sidestep toward the desk.
But his mom was not leaving. She was still looking.
And looking.
And looking.
“He was sure, Julian. He didn’t say, ‘I thought I saw.’ He said, ‘I saw.’ Are you certain there’s—”
Julian considered blaming television, too much sugar, and an over-active imagination, a strategy all parents fell back on when they had no better ideas. Instead, he offered up the most convenient and reasonable explanation, fingers crossed, hoping it actually approached plausible.
“Isn’t Dad working on an invention, a toy called Not-Invisible Invisible Friend or something like that?” His dad was not, at least as far as Julian knew. But he knew his mom would not know either.
“A what?”
“A Not-Invisible Invisible Friend.” Julian fought the question mark his brain was trying really hard to add to the end of the sentence.
“I can never be sure,” his mom said, her voice sounding both tired and frustrated—what the smart folks call “exasperated.” Julian suspected her answer would be something along those lines.
“I’m pretty sure he is. That’s probably what Dylan saw.”
“I suppose,” she said, taking one last look around. “I need to have a talk with my husband.”
Julian knew that when his mom called his dad “my husband,” he was in big trouble.
“Well,” his mom continued, “don’t let me be the excuse for your homework not getting done.”
“Never. Bye, Mom.”
Julian knew to not say a word until he heard the footsteps retreating. (Though he had no proof, Julian suspected his mom had asked his dad to invent a highly classified sound-making device which, if it really did exist and had a name, that name would be something like Honest, I’m Walking Away Now.) Apparently, Grown-up Julian suspected it too, as he waited a good minute before stepping back in.
“That was great, Young Me.”
“I hate lying to Mom.”
“I know,” Grown-up Julian mumbled in a way that said—what the smart folks call “conveyed”—he had done it often and regretted it each time.
The two sat in silence for a minute. Finally, Young Julian spoke.
“I’ll try to outgrow the lying to Mom thing as well. OK?”
“OK. Say, Young Me, what time is it?”
“9:00.”
“It’s late,” said Grown-up Julian. “Well, not really. But time travel takes a lot out of you. I’m beat. Dibs on the upper bunk.”
“No way!”
“But I called it. And I’m older.”
“Yeah, but I live here and you don’t. You don’t...do you? Still live here?”
“No. But Mom and Dad do.”
“Really? That has to be some kind of record.”
“Tell me about it. I think Mom’s less-than-subtle suggestion—a.k.a. mandate—that Dad put his lab out in the back yard, instead of the basement, made all the difference in the world.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I really like it here. This house. This town.”
“Whispering Falls is nice. Listen, this really won’t ruin anything. You’re going to make a lot of good friends here. You’ll do fine. Just give yourself some time.”
“Thanks.”
Grown-up Julian then faked—what the smart folks call “feigned”—a great big yawn, followed by a stretch.
“Well, it’s getting late,” he said. “I’ll just...”
“Forget it,” said Young Julian, blocking his path to the ladder. “You can’t have the top bunk.”
“Rock, paper, scissors?”
“Nope.”
“Flip a coin?”
“No. I’m sleeping up top. And that’s final.”
Grown-up Julian snorted a little. “I don’t remember being such a stubborn kid.”
CHAPTER 8
The next morning, after breakfast and before his walk to school, Young Julian felt he had to go over things with Grown-up Julian.
“What are you going to do today? While I’m at school.”
“Maybe I’ll go over to the library, and—It’s still there, right?”
“It is.”
“Of course it is. You were just there, experimenting,” Grown-up Julian said, tapping his temple to emphasize that he still remembered a few details from his youth. “I loved that place. So I’ll go use one of their computers to surf the web. See if I can find something, anything from today that might relate to Cucumium. I think I still remember how to use a keyboard,” Grown-up Julian
“There are no keyboards? At all?”
“Nope, we use—”
“Don’t tell me!”
“Ooh! But there is something I do need to tell you.”
“What?”
“Remember this. It’s important. At least it will be, in the future. You need to—”
“Forget it.” Young Julian grabbed his pillow and wrapped it around his head, muffling Grown-up Julian sa
ying, “Don’t bother asking Darla Bratt to the senior prom. She’ll just spend the night hanging all over Brian Borden. Instead, you should ask Linda Burg. Her dad is going to invent inflatable yogurt, and they’ll be gazillionaires.”
When Grown-up Julian’s lips had stopped moving, Young Julian tossed the pillow back on the bed.
“Are you done?”
“You really need to start listening to me.”
“Not a chance. Oh, and don’t forget. Dad works in the backyard.”
“Oh, right. I suppose I’d better not go for a walk around the yard then. Hmmm. The kitchen might be dangerous as well. After all, he does snack. Do you think maybe, just maybe, before you leave you could...” he said, looking sad—what the smart folks call “pathetic”—and rubbing his stomach.
“I’m late for school.”
“But I’ll be hungry!”
“Better get your replicator to make your lunch. See ya.”
Young Julian walked the half-mile down Washington, then just past Philomethian Street (a name chosen, no doubt, to make spelling tests seem easier in comparison), and turned right on the sandstone sidewalk leading up to the three-story brick school. As he passed some kids on the playground, he remembered his mother’s advice, though based on her tone of voice, Julian took it to be his mandate: “Try to make some friends.”
He would, he promised himself. Soon. Just not today.
Julian joined the crowd—what the smart folks call “the throng”—milling around the front door. He moved strategically, maneuvering to the base of the stone steps. When the “bussers” arrived and began streaming across the playground, the front doors swung open, and the mass moved inside. Experience had taught Julian that he needed to be near some other sixth graders when the inward surge started. Otherwise, he might find himself swept up to the third floor with the fourth graders, unable to swim free of the tide of preteen humanity.
Julian just managed to catch the railing at Floor Two and pull himself from the upward flow. He deposited the textbooks for his afternoon classes in his locker and took his seat in homeroom. Looking around, he watched his classmates and felt a slight sense of jealousy. Every one of them was engaged in a conversation. Some juggled two. He studied their faces. They were happy, carefree. Julian took comfort—what the smart folks call “solace”—in the words his future self had said last night: “You’re going to make a lot of good friends here. You’ll do fine.”
Unfortunately, today he could not be happy. And the concept of carefree felt miles away.
“Class, please put away your books, and take out a pencil,” Mrs. Stern said. “We are having a pop quiz.”
Hearing the groans, you would have thought she had said, “You will all be getting flu shots, then force-fed brussels sprouts.”
Julian accepted the page that Lisa Honey...something, the girl who sat at the desk ahead of his, handed him. He thought for a happy second she might have, possibly, perhaps, maybe, smiled at him. A little bit. Even better, he was fairly certain he successfully smiled back.
He dove into the quiz and began working the problems. Math was one of his best subjects. Truth be told, he enjoyed most of them. Except for gym, since Biff clearly thought of Julian as his personal moving dodgeball target. And Biff could fling a ball with the best of them. Julian was fairly certain the marks dotting the gym wall—perfect six-inch circles where the paint had been knocked off—were Biff’s work. (They reminded Julian of crop circles, those rural oddities—what the smart folks call “phenomena”—thought to be the work of aliens, and later discovered to be the work of teenagers bored with cow-tipping.) I wonder if Dad could invent invisible body armor for me to wear under my gym uniform, Julian thought with a shudder as he imagined the menacing scowl Biff always sported during dodgeball. I’ll have to ask Dad about it at dinner to—
“All right, class. Put your pencils down, and hand your tests forward.”
Just as Julian let go of his page, he noticed every answer was the same: 199.
Julian sighed and put his head down on the desk.
CHAPTER 9
After math class came science. He shuffled down to the lab, and wondered whether Mr. Nitro would simply lecture, or truly entertain them with some wacky demonstration. In that sense—what the smart folks call “regard”—Mr. Nitro reminded Julian of his father, though as far as Julian knew, Mr. Nitro never blew up a school and had to move across several state lines to find a new job. He and Dad should get together some time and chat, Julian thought, immediately discarding the idea upon noticing that Mr. Nitro’s hair looked a little frizzier today, perhaps due to an earlier experiment gone wrong.
“Good morning, young scientists” Mr. Nitro began. (Mr. Nitro always referred to them as young scientists.) “Today we will continue our exploration of the periodic table with an in-depth look at...” The ever-enthusiastic teacher threw a bunch of pennies on the Money Magnifier (one of his fickle gizmos) casting the images of an equal number of manhole-cover-sized cents on the ceiling. “—Oops. My aim is a little off—” He adjusted the projector to point at the front wall. “...an in-depth look at copper! Copper is one of only four metals that, in its natural, elemental form, is a color other than gray or silver. Your lone homework assignment for the rest of the semester is to name the other three.”
Twenty-five pencils began scribbling quickly—what the smart folks call “furiously.”
“JUST KIDDING!”
Twenty-five voices said, “AWWW!”
“But I will give you ten bonus points on your next test—whenever that may be—if you name them. Where were we? Oh yes! Copper. Atomic number twenty-nine. Its symbol is...” He pointed to the proper square on the large periodic table behind him. “…Cu.”
Cu?! Julian thought, and nearly yelled. “Cu,” he said slightly aloud, as a choir of angelic voices washed through his ears. (Of course, Mr. Nitro’s class was next to the music room. So no surprise that Julian often heard singing in there.)
Mr. Nitro’s lips continued to move. But Julian heard no words. Just two letters:
Cu.
Cu.
Cu! Cu! Cu! Cu!
Julian felt fairly certain Mr. Nitro was not repeating himself, nor “stuck in a groove,” like those funny black, round plates that his dad still somehow made music come out of sometimes did.
Julian tried to listen carefully to Mr. Nitro’s lesson. But his brain kept saying, Cu...Cucumium...Cu...Cucumium...Angels singing. It’s a sign.
He wrestled with—and lost to—temptation. He had to know.
Julian pulled the eTab from his backpack, rolled it open, and set it in his lab book. He had just called up the search engine when an ominous hand eclipsed the screen.
“Thank you,” Mr. Nitro said, relieving Julian of the eTab. Luckily it had a snap-flat feature, so when laid out it looked like most other tablets. Otherwise, Mr. Nitro, ever curious, might have tried to take it apart.
A whole boatload of emotions—sadness, embarrassment, panic—washed over Julian as Mr. Nitro carried the eTab to the front of the room. That boatload capsized and quickly sank when Mr. Nitro placed it in his desk drawer, locked it, and pocketed the key.
Julian spent the next thirty-two minutes working on a deep, sincere apology and the exact words he would use to ask Mr. Nitro to give back the eTab, hoping a good job on the former would make the latter not necessary.
Why thirty-two minutes?
Because with three minutes left to go before the bell, Mr. Nitro sneezed. At first, it was a small achoo. The next was a little louder. The third actually made the overhead light fixtures sway in the breeze. He followed up this trio of nose explosions with a tremendous honk into his plaid handkerchief.
After another honk, he looked at the class with watery eyes and wheezed, “I’m sorry—” ACHOO! “—young scientists, but I’m afraid my—” Honk! “—allergies are acting up. Class dismissed.”
ACH-HONK!
Mr. Nitro hurried out the door.
Twent
y-four voices yelled, “YAAAY!”
One did not.
Could this day get any worse? Julian wondered.
The English paper that somehow failed to upload from Google Docs, the overdue library book he’d forgotten at home, the mystery meat at lunch that Julian swore crawled off his tray when he wasn’t looking, and the body check Biff somehow managed to work into the rope climb during gym class answered the question. So all in all the day turned out just peachy.
When the bell rang, Julian pretended it was his alarm clock waking him from the horrible dream this day had been. He mentally put on his comfy robe and his fuzzy slippers and trudged down the hall, hoping a nice breakfast would be waiting for him.
Neither eggs nor oatmeal greeted him as he stepped outside. On a positive note, neither did Biff.
Julian knew he probably should have gone straight home. Too much unexpected, unexplainable, out-of-the-ordinary, bizarre stuff had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and none of it the usual kind of unexpected, unexplainable, out-of-the-ordinary, bizarre stuff he had grown accustomed to. He needed a break from it all, and his new favorite after-school spot called out to him. (It didn’t really call out to him, in the echoing-through-the-schoolyard sense; that’s just what the smart folks say when speaking of something alluring, enticing, or one of several other words smart folks use.) At the end of the walkway he veered right, toward town, rather than steering left, up the hill toward his home.
Several weeks prior, Julian had learned of Main Street Cupcakes and their after-school special: a cup of hot cocoa and a cupcake. All for three dollars. A lot of kids from the school went there, and Julian hoped that if he went they might invite him to sit with them.
Plus, the cupcakes were really good.
He had gotten about halfway there when someone snuck up from behind.
“Greetings, Young Me!” Grown-up Julian said.
“GAH!” Julian yelled, jumping not quite out of his skin, but nearly out of his shoes. What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I could ask the same thing of you,” Grown-up Julian said in a snooty tone of voice. “Shouldn’t you be heading home? To check on me? To make sure I’m not getting into trouble?”
The Extraordinary eTab of Julian Newcomber Page 6