She took a breath and held it.
“What?” I asked.
“And this.”
She let out her breath and punched me in the stomach. Wow. Pain and surprise. I made a noise like huggh.
“I’m scared,” she said. “Even though I love seeing Dad, I’m scared. And that makes me mad—mad at myself for being scared when I should be happy to be with Dad. And mad at you for bringing me here. I could be at home, watching TV and feeling sad. So I’m—I don’t know—I’m…”
She walked into the darkness of the hill.
I watched a little longer. Our dragon was still up there, shooting fire in all directions. She reminded me of Casey barking under a tree with a squirrel in it. That was us—we were the squirrels. Two smaller dragons flew around with her. The three of them flew in front of our cave entrance in a line, first the big black one, and then the two smaller ones. I saw them outlined clearly against the nearly full moon. A couple of minutes later I felt the ground shake. A dragon—probably our big one—had landed nearby. I waited for her to take off again. She didn’t. She was mounting guard.
Well, maybe she’d get bored and go away after a while. Casey did when he was barking at squirrels. Meanwhile, we were safe.
I walked back the way Izzy had gone. After a few steps, the cave widened into a room. The air was dry and hot and the smoke smell was strong. There was a narrow sideways slit in one rocky wall. Flickering light came from there, like a fireplace.
Izzy and Dad sat against a cave wall. I sat on the other side of Dad. I didn’t trust my sister not to hit me again. The wall had lots of sharp bumps that dug into my back. I didn’t mind. I was warm enough and as tired as three people.
“Freddie?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Did you have a—a—good day at school?”
—
I swallowed nothing—that piece of nothing that gets stuck in your throat. We were in a cave guarded by dragons, having escaped a volcano by luck and inches, and Dad wanted to talk about regular things. Okay then.
His smell was all around me, the way Casey’s was when I hugged him. I thought—this is why I came. This is what I wanted.
“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “I had a good day. I presented my science project.”
“Tell me about it.”
Lisa Wu’s zippered jumpsuit made her look like a mechanic. Her hair was spiked and she had a huge grin on her face. She stood at the front of the class and clapped her hands for attention and told everyone that we were going to demonstrate the water cycle right there in Room 6D.
“This was all Fred’s idea,” Lisa said, “and I think it’s absolutely brilliant!”
I stood beside her, red-faced. I didn’t deserve the credit. It wasn’t my idea—it was Freddie’s. But I couldn’t explain that.
The plan was to get everyone in the class to do jumping jacks until they started to sweat, then have them wipe their faces, collect the sweaty Kleenex, and wring them out into a glass. We wouldn’t get much sweat, but we’d get some. Then we’d boil it in a covered beaker, collect the steam and condense it back into water. Not bad, eh? Kind of gross, but cool too. Freddie and I had run the experiment successfully at his place, with just the two of us, a teacup and a microwave oven.
His own in-class presentation was a disaster, he told me. Velma, his partner, had been horrified when told of the plan at the last minute. She’d refused to collect sweat-stained Kleenex from the girls, thrown her written work at Freddie and run from the room.
But Lisa was totally on board. She got the class up and jumping. Miss Pullteeth was doing it too. The problem was, it wasn’t working. Freddie and I had practically killed ourselves to make enough sweat, and the class wasn’t that enthusiastic. They jumped and panted a bit, but the Kleenex were barely damp. The experiment looked like a failure. And then—of all people—Velma saved us.
Like her upside-down counterpart, my Velma refused to participate in the experiment. She stood beside her desk and folded her arms. She called the project gross, me a moron and Lisa a loud-mouthed Yankee. Velma went to sit down, but someone had moved her chair back and she missed it, falling right to the floor. Boom. Her legs flew up in the air and she burst into tears. With astounding presence of mind, Lisa ran over with the beaker and Kleenex and wiped the tears off of Velma’s cheeks.
People laughed. Velma screamed and cried harder. Lisa wiped some more. I smiled wider than my face, and called out to everyone to keep jumping.
After finding out that Velma wasn’t hurt, Miss Pullteeth said that maybe we’d all learned something. Laughter filled the room, and Lisa’s high five stung all the way to lunchtime.
—
Talking about my school day, while Dad chuckled and Izzy shook her head, reminded me of sitting around the dinner table. Warm memories. Also, I couldn’t help thinking back to something Ralph Brody told us at the assembly. A story can’t be sad all the time, he said. You have to give people a break.
Okay then.
Dad was still chuckling. “You always make me laugh,” he said. “Right, Puddin’? Isn’t our Freddie a riot?”
Izzy looked past him at me.
“Oh yeah, he’s a hoot and a holler,” she said.
—
I made my way to the opening of our cave. Could we sneak out? The full-ish moon was high. I looked up, down, around. The dragon was over my left shoulder, maybe twenty feet away, lighter colored and smaller than the one who’d carried the car.
Forget about Casey under a tree. The dragons were cats by a mouse hole, and we were the mice.
I was hungry and I sort of had to go to the bathroom. Not much chance either way. I went back inside.
Izzy was sobbing, shaking her head. Dad was on his feet.
“Sorry, Puddin’,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
She shook her head some more.
Dad explained. “I was talking about next month’s dance—the Spring Sadie Hawkins. Remember how excited she was when she asked Handsome Harry and he said yes?”
“He didn’t,” she sobbed. “He didn’t say yes. He said he’d think about it. What a dork!”
“That’s not what you told us last week. Doesn’t matter now. I’m sorry, Puddin’.”
He yawned and stretched his arms up. Then he did his wake-up thing, twisting his head quickly left and right so the small bones in his neck crackled. Man, did that take me back.
“Well, kids,” he said. “It’s late. We’ve had a bit of a rest. Don’t you think we should be getting out of here? Your mom might be worried.”
“There’s a dragon outside this cave,” I said. “We can’t go yet.”
Dad looked puzzled again.
“But it’s not our time,” he said. “I thought it was before, but I was wrong. We didn’t end up in the mountain. And if it’s not our time, the dragon will leave us alone.”
“No,” I said.
“Yes she will. Come on, Freddie, we all know this. The dragon took us yesterday by mistake. It wasn’t our time. I don’t know how the mix-up happened. I’ve never heard of such a thing. But here we are, safe, so we should go home. Don’t worry about the dragon. If it’s not our time, she’ll leave us alone.”
He made it all sound like the weather. So it’s your time—so it’s raining. So what?
He started to walk away.
“No,” I said again, grabbing him by the arm.
“You don’t understand,” I said.
“What don’t I understand, Buddy?”
“I—I—”
Sheesh. I couldn’t think how to put it. Dad was alive because we weren’t his real kids. But if he found this out, he’d—he might not—he wouldn’t care as—wouldn’t love us as—oh, I didn’t know what I could say that wouldn’t wreck everything.
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
“I can,” said Izzy. She’d stopped crying.
“No!”
“Yes. We have to do it, Fred. You know that. This is Dad.”
�
�I—I—don’t know. Okay,” I said. I waved my hand like, Enough already. “Okay, Izzy. You tell him.”
Dad stared at me. “She called you Fred. No one calls you Fred.”
“Yeah, about that,” I said.
Izzy told him everything. She laid it all out—my time with Casey and Freddie, and her and my adventures today. I guess she was right to tell him. Of course she was. Living a lie with someone you love, someone you miss—with your dad—is wrong. I could live a lie with Casey because, well, because I wasn’t lying. Casey was a dog. He couldn’t tell me from Freddie. He’d wag his tail for anyone who gave him a snack. He’d chase a ball that anyone threw.
Dad was different.
Still, she was braver than me. I’d never have done it. There was too much risk of bad feeling—he’d resent us, he’d feel we had cheated him, he’d feel sad, maybe angry.
As it turned out, Dad didn’t feel bad. His expression started puzzled and stayed that way. A couple of times he looked like he was going to smile, but he never quite did. He nodded.
When she was done, he held up his hand like a traffic cop.
“Let me get this right,” he said. “You two look exactly like my kids, but you aren’t them. You come from the other side of the world through a sewer drain—a world that is this one, only upside down. Your dad—me—died in a traffic accident in your world. You two missed him enough to come down here to seek me out. You saved me from my parallel accident on Highway 7. We were taken by a dragon because our time was up—only we escaped, and now we’re in a cave on Dragon Mountain. Is that it?”
“The worlds aren’t exactly the same,” I said. “Casey died in our world, a few months ago. My name is Fred, not Freddie.”
“And there are dragons here!” said Izzy. “We don’t have any at home.”
“But apart from that, yes,” I said.
Dad nodded. Nobody said anything. And then, after about a few seconds, he burst out laughing.
“What?”
“What a hilarious story,” he said. “Sorry, I’d love to keep going along with it, but I don’t believe it for a second. I can’t look at you and listen to you and think you’re strangers. You’re my kids. I remember your birthdays, your diapers, your measles, your report cards. Remember learning to ride your bike, Puddin’? Wearing a helmet that made you look like a purple martian? Me pushing you across the playground, and you screaming and lifting your legs off the pedals?”
Izzy kind of melted. She opened and closed her mouth, and then turned away to wipe her eyes.
Sharing a memory makes the feeling stronger. And Dad was right here.
“The worlds are really alike,” I said. “Freddie and I are the same height and weight, and we both like black licorice. But we aren’t the same person.”
“But you’re Freddie,” said Dad. “I even recognize your green sweatshirt.”
“Yeah, the hoodie is his—I borrowed it. But the shirt underneath isn’t.” I unzipped. “See? And Freddie can do stuff I can’t do, like draw. He’s really good. Oh, and his water project was with Velma. It went badly. Mine was with Lisa Wu.”
Dad was shaking his head. “You really are pushing this thing, Buddy,” he said. “I wish you’d stop, both of you. We should go home now. Mom will be pleased to see you. She must think it’s your time.”
He was so calm about her. If my real mom didn’t know where we were, she’d be hysterical, dragons or no dragons. That was another difference between the worlds. Hardly anyone worried down here. Freddie, Mom, Linda Mae—everyone had a smile.
“Is the dragon still outside?” I said. “I don’t want to walk right into her.”
“Why do you call them her?” Izzy interrupted to ask me. “You’ve done it all day.”
“They’re all girls,” I said. “Freddie told me.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. How come there are dragons at all? None of it makes sense.”
Dad shook his head.
“If it’s not our time, she’s not—”
“I’ll check,” Izzy interrupted. “If the dragon’s gone, we’ll go too. Okay, Daddy?”
He smiled and said sure, going along with a kid’s wish—Can I bring my stuffed animal? Can we put on my radio station? That kind of thing.
She walked off.
“I thought you got rid of those shoes,” Dad called after her. “They’re falling apart.”
The cave got brighter—like a power surge that makes the lights brighter—a flash from the volcano on the other side of the stone wall. Dad jumped into focus for a second. Clear enough to have a shadow. I saw details about him I thought I’d forgotten—the way his hair grew out in little wings over his ears, the lines at the side of his nose, his bony wrists poking out from his shirt cuffs. His Adam’s apple that dipped like a fishing bobber when he swallowed.
The surge of brightness ended and he went back into shadow.
“Has anyone ever tried to shoot down a dragon?” I asked.
“What?”
“Like the air force or something? If they’re dangerous, wouldn’t the government want to stop them?”
“Buddy? What are you getting at? Is this some kind of school assignment? Who says dragons are dangerous?”
“Well, they take people. That’s dangerous, isn’t it?”
“But taking is natural. You might as well say that slipping on the ice is dangerous. Or getting sick.”
I didn’t get this. I totally did not.
“But that’s—” I wanted to say stupid. “That’s wrong,” I said. “Yeah, anybody can slip and fall—but they can stop themselves from falling by being careful or hanging on to something. When people get sick, they go to the doctor. You make dragons sound different from anything else. Like there’s nothing to be done about them. Why is that? That’s not natural at all. Why not fight the dragons, or at least run away? If you get taken, Dad, people will miss you.”
He looked at me like my lips were moving, but all that was coming out was blblblblblblblblblblblblblblbl.
“But…Buddy.” He spoke slowly, as though I was learning challenged and this might help me understand. “If…it’s…your…time—”
“Fight,” I interrupted. “Fight against it. Run away from it. It doesn’t have to be your time. If the dragon wants to take you now, I won’t let it.”
He looked at me like I’d just said a really bad word. Really, he was way more shocked now than when the dragon picked up the car.
“Buddy,” he said. “What’s happened to you? You’re a—you sound like a stranger. I can almost believe what your sister said about another world.”
Izzy came rushing back.
“They’re gone,” she said.
“You sure?” I said. “You went outside, looked uphill and down? Sometimes dragons can be hard to spot.”
Izzy gave a big sigh—hhhahh—the way she does, and rolled her eyes.
“I know what dragons look like, Fred. Gigantic flying lizards, right? Didn’t see any. I looked all around, waited a minute and looked again. I went outside myself to make sure. There’s no dragon around.”
Dad insisted on going back up the hill to the car. He wanted his phone and jacket from the front passenger seat.
“We’re fifty miles from anywhere,” he said. “There’s no traffic at this time of night. I’ll call a cab to pick us up on the highway. And pay for it. I need my wallet and phone.”
Which made some sense. Izzy and I looked at each other.
“I’ll get your stuff,” I said. “I’m faster than you, and I know where the car is.”
“Are you really faster?” said Dad. “You’re a kid, Freddie. I’m a grown-up.”
We were in a narrow rocky gully. Down a ways the gully filled in and the going looked easier. Much farther down was a solid line of forest.
“Follow this gully,” I said. “I should catch up to you before it ends, but if I don’t, aim for that tall skinny tree that sticks up above the rest. Wait for me there. Okay,
Izzy?”
She nodded, took Dad’s arm.
He said, “I don’t know how fast you think you can go, Freddie, but—”
That was all I heard. I was racing uphill, bounding through the night air.
—
I found the hole easily enough. It was at the top of Dragon Mountain and there was steam coming out. I stood on the edge for a second, peering down. Red fire. I thought of the game I’d play as a kid, leaping around the living room furniture, avoiding the floor because it was lava. Here was the real thing.
Weird to think of volcanoes in southern Ontario. Iceland, Japan, Mexico—yes. Hawaii, Italy—okay. But not here.
Weirder to think that I came to this place, and went home again, through the center of the earth that was bubbling down there.
So much for weird.
Now, where was the car? I ran around the top of the mountain, looking downhill. There was the boulder we’d crashed into. Right? I ran down to check.
I caught up to Dad and Izzy quicker than I thought. They were working their way down the gully carefully, Dad in the lead and Izzy following.
Dad didn’t believe I’d been to the top of the mountain and back.
“You’ve only been gone a couple of minutes,” he said.
I showed him what I’d found by the big boulder.
“Huh,” he said. “That’s my hubcap, all right.”
“It’s all that was left,” I said. “The car’s gone. The dragon must have come back for it. Maybe it was the car’s time,” I said.
I was making a joke—How can it be a thing’s time?—but Dad nodded seriously.
“I guess so,” he said, and set off again.
Izzy and I shrugged at each other.
“How are we going to get him back home?” she whispered to me.
“What about your phone?”
“It’s in my pocket. It didn’t work, remember. Uhhh—yeah, still no signal. And no power, either. We’ll need to borrow someone else’e phone.”
Shadow.
I looked up as something bulky and shapeless and metallic clattered to the ground just below us. What the—
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