Fenzy
Page 20
He looked at Dad and Mom, hoping to find in their faces the same commitment he felt, the same sense of purpose. What he saw was more like astonishment. He added, “Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Who’s with me? Who wants to save the world?”
Xander looked at his bloody hand. “What makes you think we can?”
“The guy who made the mess is gone,” David said. “All we have to do is clean it up.”
“All we have to do?” Xander laughed. He turned question-ing eyes on Dad.
Dad nodded. “I believe we can. What do you think, Gee?”
Mom thought about it. “Let’s see,” she said. “Bake sales, Girl Scout meetings, laundry, dishes . . . or harrowing adventures through time.” She smiled. “I always did want to see Genghis Khan in action.”
Toria shook her head and quoted what Dad always said about Mom: “Definitely not a Gertrude.”
“Wait a minute,” Dad said. He looked at the wood in David’s hand, then up at the ceiling. Something on the third floor creaked. He wrapped his arm around Mom and pulled her close. “Don’t you want to . . . rest? Go out to dinner? Have a good night’s sleep?”
“Do I want those things?” Mom said. “Yes . . . yes! I want to sip a cup of tea and watch the sunset with my family. I want to take a hot bath. I want to tuck my children into bed. And I’ll do all that . . . when it’s time. Right now, I want to do what we’re supposed to do. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing? Doesn’t it feel right?” She smiled up at him.
“I’m in,” Keal said. He picked up a broken piece of wood that had fallen from the ceiling.
Nana said, “I don’t know if I ever want to see Genghis Khan . . . again. But I do have some skills that could come in handy, like stitching wounds, setting bones, and screaming.”
“But, Mom,” Dad said, “you can’t stay here, not with Time still after you.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I saw a nice little house in town. That’ll suit me just fine.”
“I’m sure I can find one too,” Jesse said, picking up another length of wood. “Between Nana and me, you’ll practically have an encyclopedia of knowledge about history and time travel.”
“Oh, yeah?” Xander said. “Then how come you didn’t warn us about David’s death when we first met you?”
“What?” Jesse said, looking between Xander and David. ”His death?”
Dad gripped Xander’s shoulder. “He doesn’t know about it, because it never happened, and you never went back to tell him it did. You never wrote the note.”
“Ooooh,” Xander said, thinking it through. He gave Jesse an embarrassed smile. “Sorry.”
“For what it’s worth,” Jesse said, “I always had a sense that you had to visit me while we were building the house. I don’t know why, just a feeling.”
“Your feeling saved Dae’s life,” Xander said. “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” David said. “Thank you.”
“You know,” Jesse said, giving Xander a sly look from the corner of his eye. “The life-saving doesn’t have to stop with David’s.”
Xander took that in, and David could tell his brother was thinking the same thing he was: all the people—children like them, adults like Mom and Dad, Nana, Jesse, and Keal—who would live, who would be spared grief and sorrow and pain, because the Kings lived in this house. Because they did what they were meant to do.
Xander said, “Yeah . . . yeah.” From the floor he selected a short board with nails sticking out of one end. “But I better get some movie ideas out of it.”
The linen closet’s door exploded off its hinges, and they all jumped. The school locker crashed out, falling to its side on the hallway floor. It looked like a metal coffin. The door was facing them, and David could make out the little number plate swinging back and forth by one rivet: 119. The entire locker had been beaten and battered, with dents and dings everywhere. But it had held together, and the door was still closed. A corner of the door had bent out, exposing a tri-angle of blackness. A face appeared in the opening—two eyes blinking at them.
“Phemus,” David said, stunned.
The big man growled. He pounded on the locker, making the metal boom like thunder.
“The pull’s got him,” Jesse said. “Time for him to go home too.”
The locker began trembling. It flipped onto its top and tumbled end-over-end toward them.
“Look out!” Dad said. Everyone leaped out of the center of the hallway, pushing themselves against the wall or the banister overlooking the foyer.
The locker cartwheeled past them, thumping and bumping. David heard Phemus’s deep-throated wail, like a frightened Incredible Hulk on a never-ending roller coaster going way too fast. At the end of the hall, it turned the corner, heading for the portals. It crashed and banged against the walls, then thudded up the third-floor stairs.
David smiled and felt his heart soar at all the smiles his family and Keal returned to him. He took a deep breath and thumped the two-by-four into his palm. Turning to head for the portals, he said, “Let’s do it!”
The end . . . ?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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ROBERT LIPARULO
READING GROUP GUIDE
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