Time Castaways #1

by Liesl Shurtliff

  Matt tried to think. Had he? His dad had told him so much about the Mets and had described so many games, it was hard to remember which ones he had actually been to. But he would have remembered his dad being at Game Six! It was the game. “He must have,” said Matt. “I guess I just don’t remember him telling me. It won’t matter though, right, Captain? It’s not like he recognized us or anything, and it’s years before we were born, so it won’t cause any problems with the timeline, will it?”

  The captain shrugged. “Who knows? Even small things like that can cause a ripple or a glitch. We’ll just have to see.” He brushed a hand through his hair and frowned. Matt thought he was maybe a bit angry they hadn’t known his dad was at this game. Maybe he wouldn’t have brought them if he had known.

  When they sat down again the Mets were at bat at the bottom of the fourth. They all watched happily, eating their hot dogs and treats. Santiago scurried around their feet, picking up their mess. He seemed more concerned with keeping their area clean than eating their leftovers, but he did nibble on some of Matt’s spilled Cracker Jack and seemed to like it quite a bit, until it started to rain. Santiago quickly gathered up the rest of the Cracker Jack in his paws and scurried up into the captain’s jacket.

  “It rained in Game Six?” Corey asked.

  Matt shrugged. “Apparently.” He didn’t remember that detail, but it must not have been noteworthy. It was only a drizzle. They certainly didn’t cancel the game over it, and it didn’t seem to change anything. Boston didn’t score in the top of the fifth. As the Mets came up to bat, Matt geared up for the two runs that would come. Strawberry walked. Then Knight was up to bat.

  “Now watch this,” said Matt. “Strawberry’s going to steal second on this next pitch.”

  “Don’t tell me!” said Jia.

  “Sorry!” said Matt, smiling. Jia was on the edge of her seat, watching.

  The pitcher wound up and threw and . . .

  “Hey, you trickster, you said he was going to steal second!” said Jia.

  Matt’s face fell. He stared, dumbfounded.

  “Apparently not,” said Jia. “It’s not so important, is it?”

  But it was important. Without Strawberry stealing second, he didn’t score on Knight’s single. He scored on the next play, when Wilson singled, but then Knight didn’t score a run on Heep’s double play.

  “This is a disaster,” said Matt. “We were supposed to score two runs. We only scored one.”

  “Maybe you’re getting the plays mixed up,” said Corey.

  “No,” said Matt.

  Matt knew that wasn’t right. His dad had replayed this game a hundred times for him. He’d watched recordings of the game at least a dozen times. He knew exactly what runs happened in which innings.

  “Captain, could, uh, running into our dad have changed the game?” Matt asked.

  Captain Vincent shrugged. “Certainly. I told you something like that could cause a small ripple or a glitch. Small changes, but nothing catastrophic.”

  Nothing catastrophic? “I think we changed the game,” said Matt.

  “What?” said Corey.

  Matt swallowed. His throat was dry. He could barely speak the words. “I think we may have messed it up somehow.”

  “So the Mets are going to lose the World Series just because you knocked into Dad?” said Ruby. “Some good-luck charm you are.”

  Albert snorted, but Matt couldn’t muster the will to shoot him a dirty look.

  He felt sick. He wished they hadn’t come. “Can we turn back time and not come to the game?” he asked.

  “No, no,” said Captain Vincent. “What’s done is done. A ripple in the timeline has been created and going back won’t change that. You’re here now, and from now on, moving both forward and backward, you will always have been here. No, we can only go on I’m afraid, and hope for the best.”

  Matt felt a pit in his stomach, and it only got bigger as the game went on. It played out much as he remembered, but that one change of Strawberry not stealing second messed up everything. In the bottom of the eighth the Mets scored a run, as they should have, but the score was only 3–2, not 3–3, as it should have been. Unless the Mets scored an unanticipated run in the bottom of the ninth, they were going to lose Game Six. And the entire series. Matt started to nervously rub his thumb over the stone of his bracelet.

  The Red Sox didn’t score in the top of the ninth. Finally, in the bottom of the ninth the Mets scored a run to tie the game 3–3 and send it to extra innings.

  “See?” said Corey. “It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”

  But Matt couldn’t rest so easy. Things were different. Nothing was for certain.

  The Red Sox scored two runs in the top of the tenth: 5–3 Red Sox.

  It was the bottom of the tenth inning. The Mets were supposed to win here, but would they? The Mets should never have won this game in the first place. Everyone knew that. They only did because of a crazy error on the part of the Red Sox, where Bill Buckner lets a grounder go right through his legs. It was one of the most famous moments in all of baseball history, but what if it didn’t happen tonight?

  Backman hit a pop fly to left. Out.

  Hernandez hit a fly to center. Out.

  The Red Sox were one out away from winning the World Series.

  Carter hit a single to left field, then Mitchell singled. Two men on base. Knight was the next batter up. The first pitch was called a strike. He fouled the next pitch into the stands.

  Schiraldi wound up, pitched, and Knight hit a line drive to center field. Carter scored, and Mitchell ran to third! 5–4 Red Sox!

  “Now here comes the wild pitch,” said Matt. The Red Sox replaced Schiraldi with Bob Stanley, who threw a wild pitch, allowing Mitchell to score and tie the game.

  The crowd went wild. Matt and Corey were jumping up and down screaming. Even Ruby was up from her seat, clapping and shouting, “Go, Mets!”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to go!” said Corey. “All we need is Buckner to miss the ball when Wilson grounds to first and we’re golden!”

  Yes! That was all that was needed! Just for the inevitable to happen!

  Foul.

  Ball.

  Ball.

  Foul.

  There was a time-out from the Red Sox. The Boston coach went to the mound to talk to Stanley, the pitcher.

  “It’s okay,” said Corey. “We’ve still got one more.”

  But Matt’s heart was hammering in his chest now. His head began to throb. He could barely breathe. His thumb was raw from rubbing his bracelet so much. He started twisting the stone. He pulled at it so hard it broke off of his wrist. He clutched it in his fist.

  The coach left the mound and then Stanley dug his feet into the dirt, turning the ball over in his hand. He wiped sweat off his forehead, looking toward the batter at home plate.

  “Come on,” said Matt. The pitcher wound up. He threw. Wilson swung.

  Crack! The ball rolled toward first.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Matt pumped his fist in the air as Wilson ran for first. And then everything started to slow. The whole stadium seemed to tilt.

  No, thought Matt. Not now!

  The shouts of the crowd dulled to a low roar. The players, everyone around Matt, all seemed to go into slow motion. Matt braced himself on the seat in front of him. He couldn’t miss this moment because of a stupid seizure! He forced himself to look toward the field, even though it appeared to be sideways.

  The ball bounced and rolled right to first. Bill Buckner was there, his glove on the ground. He was definitely going to catch the ball and get the batter out, but suddenly there was a shudder, a slight tremor in the ground. The stadium lights dimmed just for a moment, and Matt could have sworn he saw the air around him pulse and flicker, almost like a television screen with bad reception. It might have all been mistaken for flashing cameras, but Matt knew it wasn’t that. It was as if the whole field had shifted a few inches to the left, right beneath the player�
��s feet. The ball seemed to realign itself, just to the left of Buckner’s glove. It rolled right through his legs.

  And then, as though someone had pressed the play button on a remote, everything clicked back to normal speed. The volume was turned up. Matt collapsed in his seat as the entire stadium exploded, screaming, jumping up and down, waving their arms. Wilson made it safe to first, and Knight ran from third to score the winning run.

  “Mets win!” Corey pumped his fists in the air and jumped onto his seat. The people in front of Matt were hugging each other, pouring beer over each other’s heads. The team tackled each other on the field. Even Ruby was standing and clapping her hands, her cheeks flushed. No one could resist getting caught up in the excitement.

  But Matt barely noticed any of it. He barely heard anything going on around him. Everything seemed to be checkered, like a pixelated screen.

  “Dude,” said Corey. “Are you okay?”

  “What?” Matt looked up and blinked at his brother. His face sort of looked like a Minecraft character.

  “The game!” he said. “We won! Just like it was supposed to be.”

  “Oh, yeah. Amazing,” he said. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision and mind. Had he just had a seizure? Or was he about to have one? He wasn’t sure.

  “I am afraid we may have exhausted Mateo with so much excitement,” said Captain Vincent.

  “Oh, Matt, you look pale,” said Ruby. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I think maybe I ate a little too much junk as medicine.” He tried to laugh.

  “Let’s get back to the Vermillion,” said Captain Vincent. “Brocco will be waiting for us.”

  “If he didn’t get himself arrested,” Jia whispered to Matt.

  “Has that happened before?”

  “Oh yes,” said Jia. “The captain has to bail him out regularly.”

  When they got to the street, the limo was at the curb right where it had dropped them off. Brocco honked the horn at them, then got out and opened the doors for them all to get inside. When they were all seated, Brocco drove away, speeding and swerving in and out of traffic and pedestrians. A police car flashed its lights and turned on its siren briefly, but the captain had already begun to turn the dials of the compass. The pedestrians and lights blurred outside their window, and a moment later the limo started to transform, the floor stretching, the seats melding from leather to wood and fabric, until the Vermillion was a ship again, back to Nowhere in No Time.

  “That was the best night ever,” said Corey.

  “I quite enjoyed it as well,” said the captain. “Such a delightful game!”

  “The captain just called baseball delightful,” Corey whispered in Matt’s ear. Matt laughed, then realized he was still clutching his broken bracelet. He stuffed it in his pocket and forgot about it.

  “I love baseball!” said Jia. “We should have a victory dance, shouldn’t we?”

  “Oh yes!” said Brocco. “I’ll get my fiddle!”

  Brocco was a pretty awful musician, but that almost made it all the more fun as none of the Hudsons were very good dancers, so they felt perfectly fine stomping and swinging around to his scratchy, off-key playing. Matt hooked elbows with Jia, and they swung around each other, stomping their feet while Corey and Ruby did somersaults over each other’s backs. Wiley, however, delighted them all with his dancing. He was the absolute worst dancer in the very best way. As off-key as Brocco was on the violin, Wiley was off-rhythm, awkward and wacky in his movements. He tapped his feet and swung his arms all over the place with his eyes closed, so the others had to frequently duck and dodge his flailing limbs.

  “Dancin’ is poetry of the body,” he said, smiling with his pipe bouncing between his teeth.

  Matt looked around to see if the captain would be a good dancer or just as awful, but he wasn’t dancing at all. Matt saw him slipping into his cabin, Santiago perched on his shoulder. Maybe he didn’t care for music or dancing.

  After they were all sweaty and tired from dancing they decided to go above deck for some fresh air. Matt gazed out at the ocean, so smooth and glassy it mirrored the waning gibbous moon and the stars. There were so many stars, and they were so much brighter than Matt could ever recall seeing in New York. It was like he had been looking at the sky his entire life with a great screen over it, and now the screen had been removed to reveal a vibrant, majestic night sky.

  “What a night,” said Corey.

  “Can you believe we saw Dad?” said Ruby. “He couldn’t have been more than fifteen.”

  “Sixteen,” said Matt. “He was born in 1970.”

  “I cannot wait to tease him about his hair!” said Corey. “Did you see that thing? It almost looked alive!”

  “Do you think he’ll remember us?” Ruby asked.

  “Probably not,” said Corey. “He was probably too distracted by the game. That last play . . . so cool to see it in person. I almost thought Bill Buckner was really going to catch the ball, and then there it went, right between his legs.”

  Matt replayed that particular moment in his mind again and again. What had happened, exactly? That’s what everyone had always asked about that game. It was one of the plays that made it so famous. Not even Bill Buckner, the Red Sox first baseman who didn’t field the ball, could fully explain it. He’d said in an interview that it had something to do with his glove, that he wasn’t used to it, but now Matt had a different theory. No one else had seemed to notice the strange slowing of time, the slight shift in space. Was it because they were there at the same time as their dad? Had the captain accidentally jostled the compass somehow, causing some kind of glitch in the space-time continuum?

  Matt slumped into his hammock that night, exhausted but happy. He absentmindedly reached for his bracelet, and then remembered it was in his pocket. He pulled it out and brushed his finger over the stone, studying the marks and grooves. It did look like a Chinese character, he realized. He’d have to figure out what it meant. Later. He tied the twine back together, slid the bracelet on his wrist, and fell asleep.

  12

  The Eyes Hold the Key

  Matt woke in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroom. That’s why he’d woken up, he realized. He flopped out of his hammock and padded quietly down the dark hall. He opened the door he thought was the bathroom, only to have a bunch of baseballs, bats, gloves, and hats tumble out on him. He scrambled to snatch up the baseballs before they all rolled away. The rooms had apparently changed after their last transformation from limo back to ship. Matt gazed around, trying to guess where the bathroom might be now.

  Only a small lantern gave any light. He didn’t want to just start opening doors.

  He came to the bottom of the stairs leading to the upper deck, where the dining hall and the captain’s quarters were. He noticed a faint glow spilling over the floor. He went up the steps and peered into the dining hall. The captain’s door was slightly ajar, and the weak light of a lantern shone through the gap. If the captain were awake he’d tell him where the bathroom was.

  Matt tiptoed quietly to the door and peeked around the frame. He had a much better view of the room this time. There was the row of red Converse and the art easel with the sword leaning against it. What he hadn’t noticed before was the hundreds of paintings and drawings both hanging on the walls and layered in piles on the floor. Matt could only vaguely tell what some of the paintings were, as most of them had a series of slashes through them, but after a moment he realized that most of them were portraits of women, or the same woman, perhaps. It was difficult to tell. They all appeared to have long black hair, but most of them had their eyes gouged out, or faces slashed or stabbed in several places.

  Captain Vincent was standing in front of the art easel that held the Mona Lisa. He was looking at her very closely through a magnifying glass. He appeared to be alone, except for Santiago, who sat on his shoulder, squeaking in his ear.

  “Yes, I know, Santiago. This was our Bonbon’
s favorite painting. Do you remember? She said it was a masterpiece beyond compare, but I must say I never quite understood her fascination with it. I always thought my own paintings of our Bonbon were much better, but she never thought so. She said I never got the eyes right. The eyes . . . the eyes . . . the eyes hold the key . . .” The captain took a knife out of his jacket, a small dagger, the blade thin and pointy. Matt let out an involuntary, strangled gasp. He covered his mouth, but too late. Santiago looked right at him with his red eyes and hissed.

  Matt stepped away from the door. He wanted to run back to his hammock, but before he knew what was happening the door flew open and a hand grabbed him by the collar and pulled him inside the room. Captain Vincent shoved Matt against the desk and pointed the knife right at his throat.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Matt shrieked. He closed his eyes, waiting for the knife to sink into his neck. But it didn’t. Matt dared to open his eyes. The captain’s snarl softened.

  “No. It is I who am sorry, Mateo.” The captain relaxed and dropped the knife on the desk. “I’m afraid you caught me off guard.” He released Matt, then helped him up, straightening his shirt. The captain smiled a little, but Santiago hopped down from his shoulder and squeaked and hissed right in Matt’s face.

  “You needn’t reprimand him, Santiago,” said the captain. “I’m sure Mateo has a very good explanation for why he came to see us.” Captain Vincent looked at Matt expectantly, clearly waiting for him to explain himself.

  Matt swallowed. Somehow saying he’d gotten lost while looking for the bathroom seemed a very pitiful excuse in this situation. “I . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “Spy?” said the captain.

  Matt flinched. He had been spying, hadn’t he?

  “Don’t be frightened,” said the captain. “I’m not angry.”

  “You’re not?”

  The captain smiled gently. “A little spying can be a valuable skill for a time pirate. We might need to work on your technique, though.”

  Matt looked away, and then his gaze fell on the Mona Lisa. “I just thought you were going to . . . you know.” He looked at the knife, now sitting on the captain’s desk, and glanced at all the other ruined paintings.