How Oscar Indigo Broke the Universe (And Put It Back Together Again)

by David Teague

  Oscar, who had fallen into a troubled doze, dreams of tentacled trees writhing around in his brain, opened one eye. He saw an eye looking back at him. He opened his other eye. He saw another eye looking back at him. They both belonged to Lourdes Mangubat, who was leaning close to him.

  “We can escape from these guys,” whispered Lourdes very quietly. “When we get out of the car, I’ll stomp on Mr. Skerritt’s toes and trip Mr. Llimb. You run for the lifeguard.”

  “No whispering in the backseat!” said Mr. Skerritt.

  “Actually,” said Oscar, “I want to see where they’re taking us. I can’t explain everything right now, but I kind of need to find out what’s going on.”

  “That could be cool, too,” said Lourdes.

  “I’m glad you think so,” said Oscar.

  “Do guys in black show up and take you to the beach very often?” she asked.

  “Believe it or not, this is the very first time,” replied Oscar.

  “Oh. Interesting. You know, I’ve never actually been to the beach,” she said thoughtfully. “Usually, I spend the whole summer at Elite Select pro-development baseball camp. This should be fun.”

  “Well, the next time men in suits come to take me for a ride,” said Oscar, “I’ll make sure to call you.”

  Lourdes giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” demanded Mr. Skerritt. “Huh?”

  “Nothing,” replied Oscar.

  “A beautiful day at the seashore!” roared Mr. Llimb, stepping out of the car.

  “Let’s get moving,” said Mr. Skerritt. “Kids, bring the cat. Because we would never leave a pet locked in a vehicle on a summer day.”

  “Last one there is a rotten tomato,” added Mr. Llimb, locking the car behind them. “And you know what happens to rotten tomatoes.”

  “Are you limping?” Mr. Llimb asked Lourdes after a bit. They had crossed the parking lot and were on the sand now. “How come you’re limping?”

  “My toe hurts,” said Lourdes. Oscar glanced at her, embarrassed.

  “Let me have a look at it,” said Mr. Llimb.

  “That’s all right—” began Lourdes.

  “No. Really. Let me have a look at it,” ordered Mr. Llimb.

  “OK,” said Lourdes.

  She sat down and untied her shoe. Mr. Llimb crouched beside her. She slid her foot out and Mr. Llimb had a look. “By golly. It’s dislocated!” he said.

  “That’s my fault,” said Oscar miserably. “I’m really sorry, Lourdes.”

  “We’ll take care of it in a jiffy,” said Mr. Llimb.

  “Really?” asked Oscar.

  “This might smart, Lourdes,” said Mr. Llimb. “Oscar, get out of the way. Mr. Skerritt, grab her.” Mr. Skerritt slid his arms under Lourdes’s and hoisted her off the sand. Mr. Llimb held her toe in his fist and pulled. Oscar could swear he saw it stretch out to twice its length, like it was made of rubber. Then Mr. Llimb let it go. With a popping sound, it snapped back into place.

  “Wow,” whispered Lourdes as Mr. Skerritt lowered her gently to the ground again. “That hurt.”

  “I figured,” said Mr. Llimb. “Lefty Lefkowitz passed out when I performed the procedure on him after the Union Street job. But what was the good in telling you about that beforehand and getting you all worried?”

  “Excellent point,” muttered Lourdes through clenched teeth.

  “Try walking on it now,” said Mr. Llimb.

  Lourdes cautiously put weight on her foot. She raised her eyebrow. She took a step. She took another. She put her shoe on. She ran to the edge of the parking lot and back. She did a cartwheel. With perfect form, of course. “Hardly hurts at all!” she said. Oscar let out the breath he’d been holding. At least these guys were good for something.

  “I got pretty skilled at first aid back in the day,” said Mr. Llimb proudly.

  “Came in handy, really,” added Mr. Skerritt. “What with all the broken bones we encountered.” Before Oscar and Lourdes could think about what that meant, Mr. Llimb set off toward the crowds of beachgoers on the far side of the dune and called, “Come on. Let’s get cracking!”

  Oscar had a feeling that, like a lot of things he’d witnessed lately, two men in black suits and black hats with their pants rolled up to their knees and their fish-white feet bare amid the splashers, swimmers, Frisbee tossers, and surfers of Pickwick Island Seashore was a sight never before seen by human eyes.

  You rarely run across guys dressed like morticians at the beach, and even when you do, they’re never passing an orange cat back and forth with a couple of kids and constantly saying “Bless you! Bless you!” to one of them, who is sneezing.

  But if Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt stuck out, they hardly seemed to notice the stares, and they sure didn’t care. They just trudged through the sand wearing their black felt hats, sweating like coal miners, plowing furrows in the beach among the blankets with their big feet.

  But two giant men in black weren’t the only questionable spectacle on the beach. Oscar noted uncomfortably that things felt slightly off. The laughter of kids and moms and dads darting in and out of the surf rang against the blue sky like the echoes of an alarm bell. The screams of excitement uttered by wave riders fluttered on the edge of hysteria. Arctic terns shrieked as they dove at sandwiches held by toddlers. Unruly clouds seethed overhead as waves churned against one another, and all the while, high-pitched wails echoed against the sky. Oscar wondered what was going on. Maybe the last inscription he’d seen on the watch had been right. Maybe time was out of joint. And maybe these people were starting to feel it.

  Slowly, the noise and activity began to die down. A strange hush settled over the beach. The waves calmed until the surface of the ocean lay as smooth as glass. Beachgoers stopped what they were doing and turned to look. And then, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, the sea drew away from the shore several feet and then several more, and then more and more and more, until it seemed as if the salt water would recede all the way to Portugal, leaving the ocean floor bare to the horizon.

  “Clear the beach!” cried the lifeguards, blowing their whistles frantically.

  But there was no time.

  Because now the water had stopped retreating. And it was rolling toward the dunes in one giant wave. It moved faster and towered higher as it came. The line of surfers who’d been left stranded started to run. Kids with boogie boards scrambled toward high ground. The mothers and the fathers of the toddlers in floaties grabbed their babies and tried to flee.

  But it was happening too fast.

  “Oscar, Lourdes, Mr. Skerritt, hold on to me!” cried Mr. Llimb. They did. Luckily, Mr. Llimb was quite large and there was plenty to grab: sleeves, lapels, long black tie.

  Just as they all clambered onto Mr. Llimb, the rogue wave crashed across the beach. When it hit, it was six feet high, but it spread out as it rolled in, so soon it was five feet high, and then four, and then three, and then knee-deep, carrying with it folding chairs and umbrellas and ice chests and paperback books and decks of cards and sunglasses and hats and paddleball paddles and skim boards and sunscreen and Mountain Dew bottles and, tumbling over the sand here and there, people. It rolled everything up into a giant froth and washed its load over the dune and across the boardwalk through the changing house and dumped it in the parking lot.

  The beach lay deserted in its wake, and Mr. Llimb towered like an oak in the middle of it all, unmoved, with Lourdes, Oscar, Mr. Skerritt, and Dr. Soul clinging to his suit. The water slid back to the ocean placidly.

  Oscar let go of Mr. Llimb and breathed a sigh of relief, because even though a few babies howled, nobody seemed seriously hurt. But he wondered: Had this wave happened because time was out of joint? And was time out of joint because he’d stopped the watch? Could this mayhem be his fault, too?

  “Phew, close one! We’d better get this young man to the boss,” said Mr. Llimb, wringing the water out of his pants cuffs. “Pronto. Things are changing faster than we thought.”
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br />   They set off north along the shore.

  “Where are we going?” asked Lourdes twenty minutes later as they struggled through the endless sand. “When will we get there?”

  “Look. I think that’s where we’re headed,” said Oscar, pointing at a speck in the distance.

  Mr. Llimb, Mr. Skerritt, and Lourdes squinted.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Lourdes.

  “That man standing by himself on the beach, staring at the waves,” said Oscar. “Near the abandoned submarine watchtower.”

  Silently, the others scanned the sand. Finally, Lourdes said, “I see him. A speck on the shore.”

  “Gee willikers,” said Mr. Skerritt. “Your friend has good eyes.”

  “When they’re open,” tossed in Lourdes.

  “If you’re talking about his batting technique,” said Mr. Llimb, “I have to agree.”

  As they approached the man, Oscar could see he was thin and tanned. From behind a cascade of long, blond bangs, his eyes pondered the waves. He studied each one intently as it broke over the sand. He watched them all crash, and swirl together, and combine into small rivers that flowed back to the sea, and then pull apart and re-form and break again, over and over and over. From time to time, the man smiled a little at what he saw. He seemed to be observing something spectacular in the never-repeating patterns of ocean waves.

  “Oscar and Lourdes, allow me to introduce Dr. T. Buffington Smiley,” said Mr. Llimb.

  “Professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Gloucester County Institute of Technology,” added Mr. Skerritt.

  “Our boss,” concluded Mr. Llimb.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said T. Buffington Smiley, pulling his blue eyes away from the water to gaze kindly at Oscar and Lourdes.

  “Why are we here?” Lourdes demanded.

  T. Buffington Smiley blinked at the bluntness of her question. “Mr. Llimb, did I ask you to bring this delightful young woman?” he asked. It didn’t sound like he was being a jerk. It sounded like he really wanted to know. It seemed like he honestly couldn’t remember if he’d requested Lourdes’s presence.

  “She kind of invited herself,” said Mr. Llimb.

  “Under circumstances beyond our control,” added Mr. Skerritt.

  T. Buffington Smiley turned his face back toward the ocean. He never lost his smile. “How about if we take a moment to contemplate the waves?” he said.

  “Maybe,” said Lourdes, pointing with a quivering hand to a two-hundred-year-old warship under full sail, carrying men wearing red coats, who peered glumly over the rail as they cruised by, “we should contemplate that antique boat full of British soldiers.”

  Oscar gazed at the ship in fascination and in dread. It seemed to have sailed in straight from the Revolutionary War. Time must be way, way out of joint, he realized.

  Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt observed the ship and exchanged a rueful glance.

  “Right,” said T. Buffington Smiley solemnly, as the ship sailed out of sight. “You’re exactly right. Things are getting weird. And they’re going to get weirder.”

  “What do you mean? Do you know why these things are happening?” asked Oscar. Fear crept into his voice, though he tried to keep it out.

  “I do,” said T. Buffington Smiley. “I am a cosmologist. Which means I study the workings of the universe. When I first started, I performed my computations with a pencil and paper. And then I graduated to what is known as a slide rule. Next, to find answers, I punched calculator buttons. And for a while there, when I worked at NASA, I enjoyed using one of the most powerful computers known to man.”

  “What happened to all your stuff?” asked Oscar.

  “Left it at the office when I moved to the beach,” said T. Buffington Smiley. “Now I consult the waves, and I draw my conclusions from the unpredictable but meaningful interactions of their swirls.”

  “Is that a new technique?” asked Lourdes dubiously.

  “Yes,” replied T. Buffington Smiley. “I am the first and only scientist in the world to use it. So far. But it could catch on.” A breaker crashed near their feet. It shot up the sand further than the one before. “A new sun,” said T. Buffington Smiley finally, “is lifting the tides. More every day.”

  “What new sun?” asked Lourdes.

  “A rogue star out there,” said Professor Smiley, waving at the heavens. “Caught in the gravitational field of our solar system. I can see its influence in the patterns of the waves. I calculate that it came within nineteen seconds of passing us safely by. But last night, there was a glitch in time, and nineteen seconds went missing at exactly the wrong moment. Now the star is caught in our solar system’s pull and approaching us. Soon, astronomers will detect it, and after that, it will become a second sun in our sky.”

  “How do you know about the rogue star, if astronomers haven’t detected it yet?” asked Oscar, his unease growing, especially at the mention of the nineteen-second glitch, which he was pretty sure he was responsible for, since who else had caused a nineteen-second hiccup in time except for him?

  “I have observed the star’s pull on the sea,” said T. Buffington Smiley, gesturing at the endless waves. “I have traced the movements of the waves and the tides all the way into to space, to confirm the rogue star’s existence.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Oscar.

  T. Buffington Smiley raised one finger and observed the sea as it ebbed away again. “I, personally, will do what I always do, which is watch for the wave that tells me the answer.”

  Before them, the ocean heaved forward, and a towering swell sped toward the sand, lifting the gray surface of the water like the back of an enormous beast, until it reared, tipped, and broke with a roar, darting in a foamy sheet up the beach to inundate their feet. “That one was almost as big as the one that wiped out all the picnic blankets,” observed Mr. Skerritt.

  As the wave receded, with flecks of quartz and pearlescent shells flashing in its wake, the next roller tripped over it, thudding onto the sand, causing the whole beach to reverberate like a hollow floor pounded by a thousand boot heels. It slid back down shore, only to be devoured by the next wave.

  And something about this enormous breaker snapped T. Buffington Smiley out of his reverie. He turned to Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt. “Maybe you two can take the cat for a walk. Lourdes, too.”

  “I’b allergic to cats,” said Lourdes, sneezing at the mere mention of a stroll with Dr. Soul.

  “No,” said T. Buffington Smiley, regarding her thoughtfully. “You’re not. Cats just make you nervous. Take a deep breath. Relax. Visualize Dr. Soul’s silky orange fur and his mesmerizing green eyes. Ponder the mystery that is the cat.”

  Lourdes cocked an eyebrow as if to say I know this won’t make me stop sneezing, but she didn’t protest. Dr. Soul picked his way across the damp sand and rubbed himself around her ankles.

  “How do you feel?” asked T. Buffington Smiley.

  “About the sabe, so far,” replied Lourdes doubtfully, but she followed Dr. Soul, Mr. Llimb, and Mr. Skerritt along the beach anyway.

  “Now,” said T. Buffington Smiley, turning his attention to Oscar when the others were out of earshot, “we need to talk about the watch.”

  “I—I know,” said Oscar.

  “Many very powerful people want that watch back where it belongs,” said T. Buffington Smiley. “They have enlisted me and my friends Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt to help. I do most of the thinking. Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt knock on doors and track down leads.”

  “Who wants the watch back, Professor Smiley?” asked Oscar.

  “The FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and the Veeder-Klamm Thimble and Handheld Timepiece Museum of Mt. Etna,” said T. Buffington Smiley. “For starters.”

  “Wow. Those places are all pretty good at finding things. Why did they need your help?” asked
Oscar.

  “Because I’m even better at locating lost items than they are,” said T. Buffington Smiley. “Partly because I have colleagues like Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt, who are skilled at searching door to door. Partly because I know the right questions to ask. And now, I have to ask you one of those questions. And I hope you will answer honestly. Do you have the watch hidden where Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt can’t find it?”

  “No,” said Oscar.

  “Did you have the watch?” asked T. Buffington Smiley.

  “Yes!” said Oscar. Just admitting this made him feel a million times better.

  “Would you mind telling me how you got it?” asked T. Buffington Smiley.

  “My neighbor gave it to me,” said Oscar. “Miss Ellington.”

  “Does she by any chance ride a giant tricycle?” asked T. Buffington Smiley. “Because Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt have been searching Mt. Etna for the rider of a giant tricycle who was caught on security camera footage around the time the watch disappeared from its tamperproof, fireproof, bombproof vault in the basement of the Veeder-Klamm Thimble and Handheld Timepiece Museum, which for years has been its rightful home.”

  “She does have a trike like that,” said Oscar. “But Miss Ellington would never steal anything. I don’t know how the watch got on her kitchen table. She said I could have it as a token of appreciation for helping water her tomatoes. Which was weird. Because she never gives me a token of appreciation for helping water her tomatoes . . . except for maybe some hot chocolate.” When he finished, Oscar felt like he could breathe for the first time since he’d fabricated his homer. He hadn’t realized how badly he needed to tell somebody about everything that’d happened. “Men were knocking on her door—Mr. Llimb and Mr. Skerritt, even though I didn’t know who they were at the time. I guess Miss Ellington wanted to get the watch out the back of the house before they came in the front. But after she gave it to me, I think I made a mistake.”

  “Which was?” asked T. Buffington Smiley.

  “I used it to stop time. So I could hit a home run,” said Oscar, staring at his feet in the sand.

  “I see. And how long did you keep time stopped?” asked T. Buffington Smiley.