The Power of Un

by Nancy Etchemendy

  It was a long time before I turned and made my way carefully through the twilight, back to Cherry-wood Drive and a life that would never be the same.

  10

  WHAT IS AND WHAT ISN’T?

  I walked in slow motion, squinting through the twilight at my high tops half hidden in the deep litter of fallen leaves, stepping around rocks and roots whenever I saw them, even if they were small. I kept the unner tucked under my arm in a snug hold, as if it were a football and I were on my way to the end zone in the biggest game ever. All the while, my mind was going a million miles a minute.

  The old man knew my future—and Roxy’s. He had to be from the future. It fit perfectly. If he was a time traveler, all kinds of things about him began to make sense—the display panel on the back of his hand, his strange clothes, his sudden appearances and disappearances, and the fact that he often arrived looking and smelling as if he’d just had a close encounter with enough electricity to light a major city for a week. Most of all, it offered a clue about why he’d given the unner to me rather than to one of the zillion or so other people on the planet who appeared to be much more powerful and important. Some events are a lot more momentous than they seem. I knew that from the spitball incident. Maybe some people are more momentous than they seem, too.

  You’re important in the world, and so is Roxy. Everything depends on you. There was something ominous about the way he’d said it. Something BIG. It was hard to hold onto such a scary idea. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be so important that someone from the future would go to the trouble of inventing the unner and traveling through time to deliver it to me—not once, but twice. And I definitely didn’t want everything to depend on me! What did I know? I was just a kid, after all. I thought Roxy was already saved, but if I still needed the unner, maybe I was mistaken about that. Or maybe Roxy’s accident was the wrong thing to undo. Maybe some other event was the key. How was I supposed to know? I didn’t want to think about it, because it felt like standing on the edge of a cliff. Why hadn’t he just told me what to do?

  Since I wasn’t late for dinner and didn’t have a scraped nose, the whole scene with Mom at the front door just dropped out of existence. I hid the unner in my bedroom, then went straight to the kitchen to eat. Mom was in the bathroom when I arrived, probably putting on makeup or messing around with her sequins. Dad sat with us, whistling and pulling on his cowboy boots while we ate. Roxy talked nonstop.

  “Oh boy, Rainy’s coming over, and it’s going to be so much fun, so much fun, I can hardly wait, she’ll play doggy with me, I know she will because she always does, and Mommy says Rainy’s going to take me to the carnival, so nyah nyah to you, Gib, you’re not the only one who gets to go….”

  “Wha-What?” I croaked and dropped my spoon. Stew splattered everywhere. “What did you say?”

  “Golly, Gib! Watch what you’re doing!” said Dad, clomping to the counter to tear off a paper towel. He’d only succeeded in getting one boot on.

  “I … sorry … I … Roxy, did you say you’re going to the carnival?”

  “Yeah, nyah nyah!” she said, sticking her tongue out between grinning lips.

  “Roxy, stop that. It’s rude. Behave you two!” Dad growled as he handed me the towel. “Clean up the mess you made, my friend.”

  “But, Dad!” I said as I swiped at spilled stew. “She can’t go to the carnival. She just can’t!”

  “What do you mean?” said Dad. “Of course she can. I think it’s wonderful that Lorraine offered to take her.”

  “No. No! You don’t understand. It’s …” A little groan accidentally escaped my throat, along with a couple of sentences I didn’t mean to say aloud. “It’s way too dangerous, don’t you see? Do you want it to happen all over again?”

  Dad froze in the midst of pulling on his second boot. “Want what to happen all over again?”

  “The acci—” I barely stopped myself. My voice trailed off into embarrassed silence. A second passed, then two, while little beads of sweat popped out on my chin. I gulped and tried to start over again. “I mean … she might get hurt. Little kids get hurt all the time at carnivals.” Which sounded pretty lame, even to me. Actually, I’d never heard of a little kid getting hurt at a carnival.

  I guess Dad hadn’t, either. “Gib, what’s this all about?”

  I jammed my hands into my pockets to keep him from seeing how shaky they were. “I dunno. It’s just too dangerous, that’s all.”

  He looked at me as if I’d announced that saving the rain forests wasn’t worth the trouble. “It sounds to me like you don’t want your sister to go and you’re having difficulty thinking up good reasons for it. Wouldn’t you say that’s just a little bit selfish?”

  “That’s not it at all! You don’t understand.” I wished I were on the far side of the galaxy.

  Luckily, Mom walked into the kitchen just then. She was in the process of putting on a pair of armadillo-shaped earrings by feel, and she seemed a little distracted. “Gib’s just worried, honey. That’s not selfish. In fact, it’s kind of sweet.” She planted a kiss on my cheek, then said, “Darn lipstick,” and rubbed the spot with licked fingers while I squirmed. “Don’t worry, kiddo. Rainy won’t let anything happen. Roxy’s completely safe with her. If Dad and I weren’t certain of it, we wouldn’t let her go.”

  Roxy watched all this with interest, then grinned at me and said, “Nyah nyah,” again.

  “Behave!” Dad repeated.

  The doorbell rang, and there stood Rainy, her arms full of schoolbooks. Even though it was Friday night, she’d be doing homework as soon as Roxy went to bed. I wondered if she ever gave herself a break.

  “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Finney. Hi, Roxy.” She smiled at me, looked at the floor, and added, “Hi, Gib.”

  It didn’t exactly take mighty powers of observation to see what she was thinking—with big hearts over both i‘s. I stopped myself from groaning just in time. It would have been idiotic, especially in front of Mom and Dad. More to the point, there was still plenty of room for things to go wrong if Rainy got mad at me again. Somehow I was going to have to stay on her good side without making her think I liked her.

  I mumbled, “Hi, how’re you?” while I panicked inside.

  Dad helped Mom into her fringed, sequined jacket, and she picked up her red-white-and-blue purse. Major d$eAj$aG vu.

  “Bye, kids,” she said, blowing us kisses. “Have a wonderful time.”

  Dad, all smiles again, said, “Roxy, behave for Lorraine. Gib, make sure you’re in by ten. And don’t worry so much. Everything’ll be fine.” He slapped me on the shoulder, which meant I was forgiven and all was well. But he didn’t know the future.

  When I’d closed the front door behind them, I turned to Rainy. “Um … so you’re thinking of taking Roxy to the carnival.”

  “Yeah, I thought it might be fun,” she said. She smiled in Roxy’s direction, and her face got soft and happy. It came to me that she really liked my sister. Roxy can be such a pain, I guess it hadn’t occurred to me that Lorraine might baby-sit her because she actually enjoyed spending time with her.

  “Could you come out to the living room?” I asked.

  Roxy looked up from her stew. “I’m coming, too!”

  In days of yore, I would have just told her no and commanded her to stay there and finish her dinner. But after the accident, bossing her around wasn’t much fun anymore. So instead I said, “If you finish your stew, I’ll try to win a stuffed dog for you at the carnival. Deal?”

  Roxy’s eyes went wide. “Deal!” she said, and she got busy with her spoon. One more crisis averted.

  I looked at Rainy. “Please? I have to talk to you about something … in private.”

  Rainy’s cheeks got red, and she stared at the floor again. “Oh, you mean that note?” she mumbled.

  My own cheeks got hot as I realized I’d just made a strategic error. I floundered around, trying to think of something I could say that was true but not too insulting: I only acted like
a dimwit in shining armor because I had to? No, I totally do not want to talk about that dumb note?

  Desperation set in.

  I heard myself say, “Oh. Well, thank you for the note. Um, it’s nice to know you think I’m nice.”

  Rainy’s face lit up like a birthday cake. “It was so great what you did, I mean, getting me out of trouble like that, even though you had to take the blame unfairly.”

  “Well … thanks, but …” I scratched around the neck of my T-shirt, which suddenly itched and felt way too hot. “You know, it probably wasn’t as great as it seemed.” That was pretty much the understatement of the year.

  “Oh yes, it was. You’re a really good person, Gib.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. It feels pretty terrific when somebody tells you you’re a good person and means it as absolutely as she did at that moment.

  A second later, though, she ruined the whole thing. Taking me completely by surprise, she darted in as fast as an attacking bat and kissed me on the cheek!

  We both stood there for a couple of seconds, stunned. I reached up and started to rub it off, then stopped myself. Rubbing off the kiss might make her mad. I nearly groaned again and had to stop myself from doing that, too. Things had gone from sticky to hideous.

  Rainy was no longer looking at me. She stared hard at the floor again, but I could still see that her cheeks were red as Atomic Fire Balls. I was pretty sure mine were, too.

  I cleared my throat. It seemed like a good time to change the subject to what I’d been wanting to talk to her about all along: Roxy, the carnival, and the Truck of Terror. The problem was, what exactly could I say? The Great and Powerful Gib knows all, sees all, Roxy is in great danger tonight?

  I took a deep breath. “Look, I … this is going to sound really weird, but … well … I need your help tonight.”

  “My help?” said Rainy. To her credit, the look on her face wasn’t lovesick. It was somewhere between puzzled and suspicious, which seemed sort of like progress and gave me hope.

  “It’s … it’s about the carnival. If you take Roxy over there, please, whatever you do, don’t let go of her. Not even for a second.”

  “What?” Rainy wrinkled her nose. “She’s not a two-year-old. How’s she supposed to play a game or have fun on the rides if I can’t let go of her? What’s this all about?”

  I scratched my neck so hard she probably wondered if I had fleas. “This is hard to explain. Don’t ask me how I know, because you wouldn’t believe me even if I could tell you. But Roxy’s in terrible danger. There’s this stray dog at the carnival. Roxy loves dogs, and she might run after it, right into the street …” I stopped because Rainy was staring at me with her eyebrows up and her mouth slightly open.

  Finally she said slowly and carefully, as if I might be too sick to hear her, “I’m supposed to hold on to your sister like a prison guard because she might run after a dog? Do you feel all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine!”

  She didn’t reply. She just stood there looking at me. I could tell she was trying to figure out what in the world was going on in my head, and nothing she’d thought of made any sense. Not that I could blame her.

  I sighed and scratched my neck some more. “O.K., then, it doesn’t matter why. Just … just don’t let Roxy run into the street. It’s really, really important.”

  This turned out to be the wrong thing to say.

  Rainy threw her books on the couch and planted her hands on her hips, her shyness and embarrassment suddenly sizzling into storm clouds. “Do you think I’m an idiot? I’m not going to let her anywhere near the street. You think I would let a six-year-old run into the street?”

  The look she gave me was so angry I put my hands up to shield myself from it. So much for pink notes and hearts!

  “No! That’s not what I meant at all,” I said, and this time I did groan, because the look on her face didn’t change even a little. I’d managed to get her mad in spite of myself, and trying to fix it was only making it worse. “Forget it,” I said. “I know you’ll take good care of her. My mistake.”

  I probably should have added something polite, like have a nice night, or see you at the carnival. But the whole situation had begun to feel like standing inside a beehive. So I turned without another word and walked to my bedroom. I slid the unner into the pocket of my baseball jacket and ran out the front door. My warning still might make Rainy extra careful, I thought. If it didn’t, I’d just have to come up with a different way to solve the problem. I took a huge breath of cool, dark air and headed down the street toward Ash’s house.

  I knocked on the Jensens’ front door and felt weird when Ash’s dad answered it. I half expected him to ask me if I was feeling better now, because the last time I’d seen him was the night of Roxy’s accident. But of course none of that had ever happened as far as he knew. It was just an ordinary Friday night to him, and I was just the ordinary neighbor kid from a perfectly ordinary, happy family. I stood in the entryway a few minutes waiting for Ash, peeking toward the living room and a scene so cheery it looked like a calendar painting. Ash’s parents were playing Scrabble at a low table in front of the wood stove and laughing a lot.

  Before long Ash and I were walking side by side through the autumn night toward Lafferty Park and the carnival. Ash was so excited he could hardly stop talking. “Oh man, I hear the people on the rides! Smell the popcorn? Hey, Gib, what should we do first? How about the Devil’s Elevator!”

  It’s hard to describe how much I wanted to feel just the way Ash did—bursting with joy at the prospect of so much fun right around the corner. But I’d done it once already, and it had ended in blood and tears. It was impossible to forget, and I wouldn’t have wanted to forget it anyway. If I forgot about it, how could I stop it from happening again? There was also the fact, like a constant itch in the back of my brain, that the unner sat right there in my pocket. I had this incredible device that Ash had helped me learn to use. But now he knew absolutely nothing about it. I couldn’t stand it another second.

  “Ash, look, stop a minute,” I said. “I have to tell you something.”

  He stood still and really looked at me for the first time that evening. “What’s wrong?”

  I sighed and took the unner out of my pocket.

  The scene that followed was eerily similar to the one in the forest that had happened … when? Well, the scene that might have happened the next morning in some other life. As I showed Ash the unner, I felt that strange pressure that meant I was changing the way things had originally happened. And I wondered again whether I, or anyone else, had a right to do such a thing. There didn’t seem to be an answer.

  We sat in silence on the curb while dead leaves whirled along the pavement in a breeze that came and went.

  “This is very weird,” said Ash.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “You mean, if you hadn’t stood up and taken the blame for Frogner’s spitball this afternoon, Roxy would be run over by a truck tonight?”

  I nodded. “The thing is, I’m not sure that really fixed it. I think something bad is still going to happen. Otherwise, why would the old guy have brought me the unner again and given me those warnings? I mean, Take the unner with you tonight, don’t drop it in the leaves, and most important of all, don’t use it unless you have to. Why would he do and say all that if he didn’t know there was more bad stuff to come?”

  Ash shook his head, gazing at something faraway and invisible. “You think he was from the future?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  He looked at me. “You wanna know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think he’s you. I think the old man is you visiting yourself from the future.”

  “What?” I said again, stupidly, because I felt as if somebody had suddenly turned on a light in a dark room, and everything looked completely different from what I expected.

  “He’s you. Think about it. That’s how
he knows so much about you and Roxy. That’s how he knew you’d be in the woods.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of it before? It explained everything. But … “How could he be me?” I said. “I mean, he’s so … so old. And shriveled. And weird!”

  “I think it’s pretty cool, myself, if it’s true,” said Ash. “My best friend is the guy who invents time travel. So what if you turn out weird? Big surprise.” He flashed a grin.

  I punched him, and he punched me back, and we both laughed. I still couldn’t quite believe it, though. I just couldn’t imagine myself being like that when I got old.

  Ash stood up and dusted off his hands. “Come on, we’d better get over to the carnival fast,” he said. “That way, you and me and Rainy can all keep an eye on Roxy. And if anything bad happens, we’ll be right there with the unner to fix it again.”

  “Yeah, but how do we know? I mean, how will I ever be sure I’m fixing the right thing? What if Roxy’s accident is supposed to happen?”

  “Get serious,” said Ash. “Roxy’s accident is not supposed to happen. Bad things are never supposed to happen to kids.”

  I wanted to believe him. I really did. But I thought about stories I’d read in the newspaper and about Roxy and the truck. Bad things did happen to kids. They happened all the time to people who didn’t seem to deserve them. I couldn’t even start to figure out what it meant to say they weren’t supposed to happen. How could anybody ever be sure about that?

  “Come on!” said Ash. “We might as well have some fun while we’re keeping watch!”

  He ran toward Lafferty Park, and I jogged along beside him, hoping with all my might that he was right, that Roxy’s accident wasn’t supposed to happen.

  11

  LOSERS WIN, WINNERS LOSE

  There it was, the whole scene all over again—the frantically moving colored lights, the clowns, the vendors swaggering past with big trays on their shoulders, shouting, “Peanuts, popcorn, cotton can-deee.” Only this time, instead of filling me with excitement, it made my stomach ache and my mouth go dry.