No Ordinary Thing

by G. Z. Schmidt

  Francine examined the articles. “Nobody will believe this.”

  “They will,” insisted Adam. “Please, Francine.”

  “It’s not that simple. The past can’t be changed. My sharing these with the police won’t make a difference.”

  “What do you mean, the past can’t be changed?” Adam was reminded of what Victor had said. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, Adam. The other time travelers thought it could be, too. They tried to bring back a polio vaccine for Tito but could never get the timing right. There was no cure yet from their time period, you see, only a preventative vaccine, and Tito was already sick each time they visited. They tried to help him, and they tried to help me, too…but they couldn’t.”

  “Help you how?”

  Francine took a deep breath. “The first time the travelers met me, I was very young. It was before my parents passed. I was living in New Jersey at the time. The time travelers warned me that my parents would die at the carnival. They said they had been there—witnessed the whole thing. They wanted to prevent the tragedy.”

  For a moment, the only sound was the wind whistling in their ears.

  “I was scared,” said Francine, her voice quieter. “When the carnival came to town, I begged my parents not to go. And, seeing how upset I was, they didn’t. But on the last day, the carnival invited everyone in for free. We didn’t have a lot of money, you know, so we went. My parents and I went on the carousel. Slow and easy. But it turned out that was the ride that malfunctioned. I survived. Many others did not.” Francine looked at her hands. “I remember the accident as if it were yesterday. I was seven at the time.”

  In the back of Adam’s mind, he saw Francine as a child again. He could imagine her after the accident, numb and confused, same as he had been when he’d heard the news of his parents’ plane crash. She’d likely have been in denial the first few nights, thinking her parents would return home any second with big smiles and saying, “Tricked you! We’re all right!” Fast-forward a few years, Adam saw her selling candles in the cold streets, holding fast to the only family she knew—other lonely children who had suffered similar tragedies.

  “At first, I blamed those adults for telling me,” said Francine. “Most of all, I blamed myself. If I hadn’t warned my parents, they might’ve gone to the carnival a different day, and everything would’ve been fine.” She looked pointedly at Adam. “But then again, maybe it wouldn’t have been. Because when you think about it, the travelers warned me of what was to come—but what was to come had been recorded in history. So there wasn’t any changing it. Not really.”

  A lump grew in Adam’s throat. “Either way, it wasn’t your fault.”

  Francine nodded. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I didn’t understand it for a while, why things happen the way they do. I still don’t. But I’m okay now. I have a loving family and a good job. I’ve been okay for a long time. And one day, you will be too.”

  Anger coursed through Adam’s insides. “No, the past has to be changed,” he said in frustration. “It has to! We can stop accidents. We can even prevent wars, maybe. We can get our parents back!”

  “Even if you can alter the past, something else would happen in its place,” said Francine. “What if you’ll want to change that too? You’ll end up chasing the past until the day you die, without ever treasuring the golden moments of the present.”

  Adam didn’t know what would happen if he managed to prevent the plane crash. Would the months and years after the crash disappear? Would time reset, and take him back to when he was five—back to their house in the suburbs, his parents alive this time?

  But then the last seven years wouldn’t have existed.

  Adam thought of his uncle. He thought of the time he and Uncle Henry tried to make the world’s tallest stack of pancakes in their apartment, and how it toppled just before it reached the ceiling. They had spent the rest of the morning laughing and eating and cleaning up the mess. He thought of every Christmas, when they’d stroll around Manhattan and listen to the holiday music piping from storefronts, until they both grew tired of hearing the tunes. Then they’d go home and Uncle Henry would make a batch of his special homemade cupcakes topped with candy cane sprinkles.

  He thought of the simple days in the winter, when snow fell on everything and the entire city had a hushed feel. He’d stay indoors by the warm heater, playing chess or cards with Uncle Henry, or simply lolling on the floor with a blanket and a good book. He thought of Victor and listening to his brilliant stories out in the sunshine. He thought of the random strangers he’d met on the street, and the time someone dropped a wallet, which he returned.

  Adam didn’t say anything. Francine reached into her coat and revealed a handful of Bittersweet Bonbons. She handed the bunch to Adam. He brightened momentarily when he saw the delicious candies, but his mood was still cloudy. He kicked a pile of snow at his feet.

  “You’ll get your head around this one day,” said Francine. “You’re a smart kid.” She nodded at the snow globe. “Time to go home.”

  Adam glanced at the empty snow globe on the ground. “Not yet,” he said. “You said I’m here to comfort you about something.”

  “And you have. I have a good life, Adam, but every now and then we all feel a little lonely. You’ve reminded me I’m not alone. And you aren’t alone, either.” Francine stood and put Adam’s file in her briefcase. “I’ll see what I can do. Just for you. I’ll give the town’s fire department a phone call. But you shouldn’t dwell on the past, Adam. You are who you are today because of it.”

  Her gaze fell on the snow globe. “Imagine, such an innocent thing can hold so much power.” She chuckled. “I have a feeling many people would love to get their hands on it—some for far more devious reasons than yours. They’d be disappointed to learn it won’t do much for them.”

  She gently took the snow globe to examine it. Adam lunged forward, but it was too late. He watched in horror as the bright snow confetti swirled inside the glass.

  Instead of vanishing, however, Francine simply stood there. Nothing happened. They both watched the sparkling confetti snowstorm inside the glass.

  “It only works for specific people, I guess,” Francine said, looking relieved.

  A thought occurred to Adam. “The other time travelers, the ones you met in your childhood. They gave you the cassette player.”

  “That’s right. They felt terrible about what happened to my parents. They felt terrible they couldn’t do more, for me and for my friends. They gave us the player on one of their last trips, and as many batteries as they could carry. The other children and I played those tapes till they frayed.”

  Then another thought struck Adam, this time, like a firework. “The couple. Did they…did they look like…?” He was suddenly at a loss for words.

  Francine looked at him curiously. Then she leaned forward, peering at the boy as a great smile crossed her face.

  “Yes, I believe so. Yes, that makes perfect sense.” Francine reached out and grabbed Adam’s hand. “Thanks for being a good friend, Adam. Your parents would be proud of you.”

  Francine placed the swirling snow globe back in Adam’s hands. Before he could reply, Francine and Central Park disappeared.

  Adam was back in his bedroom, the snow globe and Bittersweet Bonbons in his hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DISTINCTIVELY DECEMBER

  Winter is the one time of year when everything slows down, willingly or otherwise. Animals are naturally aware of the season’s lethargic effects and promptly respond by hibernating in a cozy area until warmer weather comes. Humans, strangely enough, tend to ignore the slump altogether by working the same as they always have, if not more. In the northern hemisphere especially, it is strange how deadlines tend to be set for the end of the year, right in the freezing heart of winter, when all you want to do is curl up with a nice, hot cup of cocoa and a warm blanket.

  In the second week of December,
Adam’s school flooded its students with end-of-semester tests. Spelling tests, geography tests, reading tests, test tests, and so on and so forth. Outside of school, Adam was kept busy handling the stream of customers at the bustling bakery. The break-in a few weeks ago was quickly forgotten. With the arrival of the winter holidays, Uncle Henry whipped up piles of deep-fried doughnuts and flaky rugelach for Hanukkah, and took in mounting orders of gingerbread men, snowflake cookies, and fruitcake for Christmas.

  Why anyone liked fruitcake was beyond Adam. But we digress.

  The magic snow globe, the music box, and the pendulum lay quietly inside Adam’s dresser for a week. So it came as a great shock on Sunday evening, long after Adam had fallen asleep, when the music box suddenly went off.

  He sat up in bed. The muffled, eerie melody, which had previously captivated him and inspired a sense of wonder, now filled him with dread. He jumped up to open the drawer. The music magnified in the open air.

  Uncle Henry’s snores broke off in the living room.

  “What’s that sound?” Adam heard his uncle mumble sleepily.

  Adam tried to close the music box. The lid wouldn’t shut.

  The melody continued to play, conjuring bleak images that made Adam more panicked with each passing second. He pushed on the lid with all his strength, but it was stuck. He tried turning the box over and pushing from the bottom, but it was no use.

  That was when Adam saw that the initials on the bottom of the box no longer read JCW, but ALT.

  Adam Lee Tripp.

  Uncle Henry entered the room just as the melody finally faded.

  “Adam? Everything all right in here? It’s two in the morning.”

  Adam trembled. He couldn’t speak.

  “Adam?”

  “Uncle Henry…” Adam swallowed and looked down at the music box in his hands. “Something bad is going to happen.”

  “What? Oh. I see.” Uncle Henry gave an understanding nod. “You had a nightmare. Don’t worry, boy, bad dreams can’t hurt you.” He glanced at the music box, and had he not been in such a sleepy state, he might have wondered where his nephew had gotten it. “Music does help soothe the mind after a nightmare, but I’m not sure that particular melody helps.”

  “No, you don’t understand! Someone is going to die!”

  Adam tried to explain how the music box was bad luck. But he couldn’t tell the full story unless he explained how he found Jack’s letter through the traveling snow globe, and the last time he’d tried to explain the snow globe’s powers to his uncle, it hadn’t gone so well. Then again, he reasoned, this was a matter of life and death. So he told Uncle Henry the truth. Again.

  His version sounded jumbled, even to himself, and seemed as if he’d made everything up. A nightmare certainly was the easier explanation. Worried, Uncle Henry coaxed him back to bed and said they’d talk about it in the morning. The next day, he secretly made a call to Adam’s school counselor.

  Now, as much as Ms. Ginger prided herself on finding an easy solution to every problem, her true joy came from whipping kids into shape, one way or another. You could take a pair of troublemakers to her, and she’d mold them right into little angels, with a few minor scars.

  What kind of scars, you ask? About seven months ago, the then-infamous fifth grader Roger Daly had been sent to Ms. Ginger’s office for disrupting class one too many times. Nobody knew what had happened behind the closed door, but Roger emerged from the room clutching his ears and moaning, “Too much talking, too much talking.” From that day on, whenever he saw Ms. Ginger in the hallway, he’d duck, cover his ears, and run off in the other direction.

  As stated before, Adam’s shyness had always been of particular interest to the school counselor. He was not a troublemaker, but his teachers all agreed the boy was much too quiet. Ms. Ginger firmly believed only she could wheedle Adam out of his shell and transform him into a sociable boy, like her own darling sons.

  On the day of Adam’s appointment, she sat in her office with her back straight and her pencils sharpened. Her red suit matched her lipstick, and her flaming red hair was tied back in an orderly bun. Hung against the wall behind her desk were various plaques and awards, each of enormous pride for Ms. Ginger:

  • Perfect Attendance Award

  • Ninth-Place Speed Reader in the Manhattan Women’s Book Club for Impressive School Guidance Counselors Aged 30–35 [1]

  • Fourth-to-Last-Place Finisher of the Central Park Mile Race

  • Runner-Up to the Employee of the Month Award, March 1990

  • What looked like a framed letter from an editor at a short stories magazine that read, “Although we appreciate your unusual and slightly confusing tale about a guidance counselor with superpowers who turns bratty children into snakes, we unfortunately must decline your submission.” [2]

  When Adam entered, Ms. Ginger gave him a bright red, falsely cheery smile. Adam did not return the smile. He had been to Ms. Ginger’s office several times before, and each time, the school counselor had given him the same useless advice—“Join an after-school club!”—without thinking about Adam’s limited time and resources. Not to mention the guidance counselor tended to ramble with doting stories about her two sons, one of whom was in the same class as Adam and had stolen Adam’s favorite pen in the fourth grade.

  “Your uncle tells me you’ve been having nightmares,” said Ms. Ginger as she opened her spiral notebook to a blank page. “Why don’t you tell me about them?”

  Adam sucked in his breath, then exhaled. He might as well try. “I have this music box,” he began. “It—”

  “A music box?” interrupted Ms. Ginger. “Children older than five should not play with music boxes, in my opinion. Ridiculous toys with silly melodies. Weakens the mind. My sons stopped playing with toys when they were three years old.” The guidance counselor tutted to herself and scribbled down some notes. “Go on.”

  “The music box,” Adam began again, “is bad luck. I think whenever it plays…someone dies.”

  Ms. Ginger dismissed this. “Now, Adam, as a professionally licensed counselor, with two darling sons of my own, I know exactly how children think,” she said. “Kids make up these superstitions and let their imagination carry them into the wild. That is why I personally don’t allow my own children to read fiction books. Fills up their heads with nonsense. If it were up to me, I’d fire the idiotic school librarian and replace the fiction stacks with good old textbooks.”

  Adam had heard this same tirade before. Ms. Ginger cleared her throat and patted her bun to make sure it was securely in place.

  “Now, Adam,” she said again. She leaned forward in her seat and clasped her hands together. “I am going to recommend you let go of anything silly that’s floating about in your head. There is no room in this life for ridiculous whims.”

  Normally, Adam would nod and mumble, “Yes, ma’am.” But over the past two months, something had changed in the twelve-year-old. He looked up at the stern grown-up and said firmly, surprising even himself, “There are many possibilities in life, Ms. Ginger.”

  Ms. Ginger was taken aback as well. “I beg your pardon?”

  “We don’t know the answer to everything,” said Adam, growing more courageous. “There could be magic hidden in places we didn’t think of before.”

  The guidance counselor scrunched her eyebrows and studied Adam as if trying to figure out whether the boy was making fun of her.

  “Adam, magic is not real,” Ms. Ginger said slowly, each syllable drawn out as if she were speaking to a toddler.

  “You don’t know that!” argued Adam. “It’s real. I know it is. And I know someone’s going to die!”

  Two things happened later that day. The first was Ms. Ginger’s happy reassurance that Adam was fine. “It was the first time I’ve seen Adam speak up,” she reported to Uncle Henry. “You’re very welcome! I’d say it was the proudest moment of my career—aside from the time I met the governor’s pet poodle; did you know I was featured in
the newspaper with that pooch? My name was in there, right in the caption. Anyhoo, you’re welcome again, and please do call with anything you need in the future!”

  The second thing that happened was a bit darker. The music box predicted correctly—there was indeed a death that night.

  After school, Adam ran straight for the shelter. He didn’t stop running until he hurried inside the building and panted, “Victor!”

  Victor and two women were chopping up cabbages in the kitchen for that night’s dinner. When the old man saw Adam, he waved and gave his usual toothless grin.

  “Hello, fellow!” he replied. “Good to see—”

  “Victor, I have to talk to you in private,” interrupted Adam. “It’s urgent.”

  The two women exchanged curious glances. Victor nodded and scooted across the room in his wheelchair. “I’ll be right back, ladies,” he told them before escorting Adam down the hallway to his room in the back.

  “What is it, sonny?” asked Victor after he shut the door.

  “Remember the music box? The one I found in Candlewick with Jack’s letter? The one that predicts death.”

  “Ah yes, I remember.”

  “It played last night, Victor. Someone is going to die.”

  Victor wrinkled his nose. “Not necessarily,” he began, but Adam shook his head.

  “I’m positive,” insisted Adam. “Jack told me.” He recounted how the music box had played for Jack before his dog, grandmother, and father died. He mentioned how his own initials mysteriously replaced JCW’s on the bottom of the box. “It’s magic. I don’t know when, or how, but someone I know is going to die.” His lip trembled.

  Adam didn’t say aloud who it might be, but he didn’t need to. Victor understood.