by Amy Herrick
“What are you talking about? Give me five minutes.” Edward snuggled deeper under the covers. He was feeling very contented and pleased with himself, but he couldn’t remember why. As he sleepily searched for the answer, she yanked the blanket off of him.
“Don’t you understand? Your five minutes have been stolen right out from under your nose. We’re running out of time. I can feel it.”
“You can’t run out time,” he muttered. “It’s the fourth dimension.”
“Where did you hear such nonsense? Everything runs out eventually. But this is too soon. Doorways open at this time of year. Something’s been set loose that shouldn’t have been. You’d better get up.Your help may be needed.”
“What? Who’s going to need my help?”
“The battle’s going to be terrible this year. I can feel it.”
He was not going to ask her what battle she was referring to. When he was little he’d assumed this was the way everybody’s aunt talked, but now that he could see what a basket case she was, the thought of bringing anybody home after school had become mortifying. According to Aunt Kit, there were beings, forces, and influences messing around in everybody’s business everywhere. Some days there were fairies fiddling with the barometric pressure and making her cakes fall. Another day there were six-armed goddesses interfering with the Stock Exchange. Last month there was a planet in retrograde stirring up hurricanes. And she was always changing her story so he was never sure she was serious about any of it. He was visited again by the terrible vision of Mr. Ross meeting up with her. He’d never be able to show his face in science class again. He sat up with a groan and looked around. She was gone. Where had she got to? He glanced at the clock. It was eight thirty! How was this possible? American History started in twenty minutes, and Mr. Channer had threatened to fail him if he was late again. He was a dead man.
To Edward’s surprise, when he got to class, Mr. Channer wasn’t even there yet. There was an empty seat right near the door and he slid into it with a sigh of relief. He spotted Feenix, but she made no sign that she had seen him. A moment later, Mr. Channer arrived breathless and apologizing. Something had gone wrong with his alarm clock. He was all bent out of shape. How they had fallen so far behind he didn’t know, but in order to complete this section of the curriculum before the holiday break, they would have to move doubletime. For today, he would have to shelve all debate and discussion and simply move them through the material as quickly as possible.
“Please open to page one hundred and three. Elise, would you read the first section out loud and, Edward, in order to ensure that you stay awake today, we’ll have you outline the material at the board as she reads.”
Mr. Channer was a freak about outlining. He claimed it was the number-one most-important skill that you needed to learn to prepare you for college. Usually he just made the students do this at their seats, but every once in a while he selected a victim to experience the special torture of having to do it at the board in front of everyone else. Until today, he had never called on Edward, but Edward’s luck had run out. Edward quickly considered his options. He didn’t see that he had any unless he was willing to lie and claim that he had a sprained wrist, which he wasn’t willing to do. He rose and walked to the front of the room—a man going to his doom. Feenix, he knew, would be without mercy. She would keep up a running peanut gallery commentary about his handwriting, his clothes, and his general nerdiness. It would be worse than those dreams where you found yourself riding the subway without any clothes on. It would be worse because you weren’t going to wake up and the torture would seem to last forever. He steeled himself and picked up the whiteboard marker.
Elise began to read. Edward began to write:
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
I. Causes
a. the French and Indian War
b. British legislation
1. taxes
2. quartering act
To Edward’s surprise, Feenix said nothing. The rest of the class got bored waiting for the entertainment to begin, and there was a lot of shifting and whispering. Mr. Channer interrupted Elise every other minute or so to make sure Edward got the right stuff on the board. Edward prepared himself for the period to go on into eternity. But then another surprising thing happened.
The end-of-the-period warning bell went off.
Was it possible? Edward didn’t think he’d been up there more than five minutes. They’d only gotten to page 104. Maybe he had arrived later to class than he’d realized. Mr. Channer must have been even later.
But Mr. Channer seemed astounded, too. He looked up at the loudspeaker in confusion, then at the class. “Hold it!” he said angrily to the class. “Hold it. It’s got to be a mistake.”
The second bell went off. Everybody grabbed their books, laughing and shouting, and stampeded from the room.
Science class was next.
Mr. Ross once again took up his investigations into the fascinating world of rock life. Edward put his brain on hold. Now and then, he became aware of Feenix interrupting. But her attempts seemed uninspired and half-hearted, and the class was soothingly boring.
Was it an hour or a second later that he felt the small wet thwack on the side of his head? His attention was aroused briefly, then fell back into nowhere.
Another thwack and then another.
Deeply annoyed, he opened his eyes and looked around.
Danton had just propelled another small wad of wet paper in Edward’s direction, and it hit him on the side of the nose. Edward glared at him, but Danton was clearly all worked up about something new. He jerked his head sharply, trying to get Edward to look at something.
Edward turned sleepily in the direction indicated.
On the table under the windows there was a large pumpkin that Mr. Ross had cut open and placed where everybody could make observations of what happened to it as it began to decay. They were supposed to be keeping journals to sharpen their observation skills. Yesterday, the pumpkin, a handsome orange globe, had just begun to grow a faint, fuzzy mold on its insides. Edward hadn’t looked at it yet today, but what he immediately noticed was that it seemed to be surrounded by a strange flickering sort of mist. No. It wasn’t a mist at all. It was a more like a cloud of glitter or teensy shards of glass. The cloud stayed where it was, but the sparkling things, whatever they were, were in constant motion—darting, dropping, climbing.
Edward shifted his chair closer. He still couldn’t figure out what the sparkly things were, but now he noticed something else. Before his very eyes, like a speeded-up clip on the Nature channel, the pumpkin was falling into an advanced state of decay. Its insides had been entirely taken over by the velvety black mold. The pumpkin softened and sank inward like an old lady’s mouth with her teeth taken out. An unpleasant yellowy liquid leaked out onto the tray and the stench that curled toward his nostrils made him want to gag. In a few moments the pumpkin had collapsed. It lay in a flattened ring of rusty orange. He met Danton’s eyes. Danton shook his head worriedly.
Edward felt resentful. He didn’t want to think about all this. He really needed a break. He turned away and did his best to sink back down into oblivion. But it was no good. In a few minutes, driven by nervous curiosity, he looked back at the pumpkin. What he saw was not possible.
The pumpkin was gone. The stink was gone. The cloud of shivering glitter had vanished, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Room 219
Lunchtime. Feenix led the way. Alison and Beatrice came behind. Feenix was still trying very hard to think. She let Alison and Beatrice do the snickering.
Noise filled the room. Two hundred half-baked human beings eating and shouting and banging things without any consideration for the feelings of others. Normally, she liked this noise. It kind of cocooned around you. It made you feel enclosed and protected from the adults who all wanted to suck your blood. But today she wished it would go away. It made it hard to concentrate. And it didn’t sound right somehow. It seemed to her
that it kept sort of stopping and catching like a bad CD. Then it would start up again.
She was tired. Her memory of the last few days grew blurrier and blurrier the more she tried to catch hold of it. And if she did manage to catch hold of some little sound or picture, it was very nasty. Much nicer to maybe just let go of the whole thing.
Alison and Beatrice sat down in their usual spot at a table right in the middle of the lunchroom. This was a good spot, because you could see everything and everybody. Alison patted the seat next to her, and Feenix sat down, too.
Feenix batted at the air. “What’s with these flies?”
“What flies?” Beatrice replied, frowning.
Feenix started to point to them, but now they were nowhere to be seen.
Across the room Feenix saw Danton and Brigit, who, for some reason, were actually seated side by side.
“Are those new earrings?” Alison asked her.
Feenix didn’t answer. She was trying to think. They’d come to her rescue last night, hadn’t they—the three of them? It was too bizarre for her to have made it up.
She felt Beatrice and Alison eyeing her curiously.
“What is your problem?” she demanded, irritably.
They shrugged and ate their chips.
“Did you get through that math test?” Alison asked after a pause. “I only finished about two-thirds of it. I’m gonna have to see if I can get Mr. Albers to let me do some extra credit. Did you hear what happened to Fiamma? No? Oh my God—she was late and she was running down the steps to catch the train and she was wearing flip-flops even though it’s only two degrees out because she hadn’t been able to find her shoes and she fell and she broke her nose. She’s gonna have to get surgery.”
“Well, it’s a golden opportunity,” Beatrice said. “That nose could certainly use some work.” Beatrice nudged Alison in the ribs. “Look at that,” she said loudly, pointing to a girl at the next table. “Look at that sweater. Did you ever see anything so old?”
Feenix looked at the sweater. It was blue and it looked like it might have been hand-knitted by somebody. Actually, she thought, it was kind of amazing looking.
“Yeah, and look at the skirt,” Alison fake-whispered.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Feenix found herself saying. “I mean, don’t you get bored with that stuff?”
The two girls stared at her. “What’s with you, today?” Beatrice asked. “You okay?”
From the corner of her eye, Feenix saw Danton stand up and wave at somebody. It was Dweebo. You could see that Dweebo was thinking about turning and running, but Danton waved at him insistently. Dweebo moved slowly toward Danton and Brigit.
At this moment the loudspeaker crackled on again, and Ms. Riccio in the front office made a long announcement about some period changes. Feenix did not pay much attention. She had taken out her little jewel-encrusted mirror and snapped it open. She studied herself, then snapped the mirror shut.
“Did you hear that?” Alison asked in a tone of jubilation. “No eighth period!”
There were those tiny green gnats again. Where could they be coming from? “What’s with these little buzzy things all over the place?” Feenix said again.
“What buzzy things?” Beatrice looked around, puzzled. “I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t see that?” Feenix pointed at the glittering cloud.
She remembered, suddenly, two little green sparks. Where had she seen them? Didn’t they look just like these things? Then she knew.
“Are you all right, Fee? You’re so pale.”
When Feenix looked again, the cloud was gone.
She pushed her chair back and stood.
“Where are you going?” both girls asked, but she didn’t answer.
When Edward arrived in the lunchroom, Danton immediately waved him over. There was no sense in Edward’s trying to pretend he didn’t see this. Danton was an inescapable force of nature. But Edward moved as slowly as he could. By the time he reached the table, Danton had resumed eating. “Slow as rust,” he said, his mouth full of fish sandwich.
Although Brigit was sitting right next to him, she seemed, as always, a little ways apart, sort of camouflaged, like a bird hiding in the leaves. But she nodded at Edward. He gave her as tiny and nonthreatening a nod as possible in return.
“You’re not actually eating that?” he said to Danton.
Danton swallowed. “Listen,” he said. “Did you see what happened in science—” He was interrupted by a voice over the loudspeaker.
“Attention, please. Because of unexpected scheduling conflicts, the holiday singing performance has been moved forward to this evening at seven o’clock. Eighth period today is canceled. All band members, chorus performers, and stage crew will report for rehearsal during this time. Any exams scheduled for eighth period will be given Monday morning at seven thirty.”
As far as Edward could tell, this made no sense, but since not making sense was certainly nothing new at this school, and since he wasn’t in the holiday performance and had no exams during eighth period, he just rode right over it like he would ride a little wave at the beach. He sat back, watching the rest of the lunchroom acting confused and delighted.
Danton put his sandwich down. He gave Brigit a quick look. He looked at Edward. “So what do you think?”
“I don’t want to think. I want to be left in peace.”
“But that pumpkin . . .”
Edward shook his head. “Just some weird kind of mutating mold. Who knows? This is the twenty-first century. Everything mutates fast in the twenty-first century.”
“No. There’s something going on with time. I’m telling you, it’s not working right. The bells are going off too fast. History couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes. And now there’s this business with the holiday performance being moved to tonight and last period cancelled.”
“It’s the holiday season. Everybody gets weird at this time of year.”
“Oh yeah? Then what about this?” Danton was holding up the last remnant of his sandwich and waving it around.
Edward stared at him.
“Don’t you see? Fish sandwich! Fish sandwich is only ever served on Friday. It’s a leftover from holier times. Somehow it’s gotten to be Friday already.”
Was this true? Edward really didn’t know. But he was fairly sure that when he’d gotten up this morning it was Wednesday.
“I didn’t dream it, did I? It was actually you last night, wasn’t it?”
It took Edward a few seconds to realize who had said this. He turned around and there she was. Feenix. Looming over him.
Edward knew enough to neither flinch nor blink. He met the enemy’s eyes straight on. She stared at him and then looked at the other two and nodded.
Edward was deeply distressed to see her actually pull out a chair and sit down. He looked at Danton and Brigit to see what they made of this. They were both watching Feenix as if hypnotized.
“It was that stupid stone you picked up, you know. If you’d gone into the park to find one the way we were supposed to do, this would never have happened. Where’d you get it from, anyway?”
“What are you talking about?” Edward asked.
“The stone. It’s what’s messing everything up.”
“That’s what I said!” Danton interrupted. “That’s what I said yesterday when we were trying to figure out why nobody else remembered you! I said it had to have something to do with that rock.”
“Come on,” Edward said. “It was just an old rock.”
Danton didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring at Feenix. “All right. What happened to you? Where did you disappear to the last few days? It’s time to tell us.”
Feenix didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she said, “Yes. I’d better tell you. I’ve been having a hard time getting it all together in my mind. But I think I’ve got most of the pieces straight now.”
She paused and looked around at them all. “I warn you, i
t’s going to be hard to believe.”
“Try us,” Danton said impatiently.
“You have to promise to keep your minds way open.”
“C’mon,” said Edward. “You’re not really going to sit here and seriously listen to whatever nutjob line she’s going to try to feed us, are you?”
Feenix glared at him. “You can always leave. It’s a free country.”
Edward sighed. He looked at the other two. They didn’t move. He stayed where he was, too.
Feenix began her story.
As he listened, Edward found himself more and more troubled. He knew it wasn’t the kind of story you would invent to make fools out of other people. It was too unbelievable. If you wanted to make fools out of other people, you had to make up a story that seemed possible. This wasn’t possible. But then, again, the way she had disappeared last week wasn’t possible, either. He wondered if maybe they’d all gone crazy, if maybe something had gotten into the water supply—mushrooms perhaps, or maybe terrorists had dropped some kind of hallucinogen into the cafeteria food.
She finished with how she’d tricked the pig-faced witch into getting shrunk down into a baby, and then how she got herself to the bridge and picked up the bracelet. “And then you guys showed up and rescued me, which I don’t think was a coincidence. I somehow think you were meant to find me.”
Edward saw how the other two were watching her, fascinated. Feenix was pale with excitement. Her eyes glittered. The diamond stud in her nose caught the light from overhead.
“Why you three of all people, I have no clue. But now we’re in it together.”
“In what together?” Edward asked sharply.
“In this mess that we’ve made.”
“What mess?” Danton persisted.
“Those little flies all over the place—haven’t you seen them?”
