Do they scream? Will I hear them?
I don’t remember much of the next few moments.
A towline. People climbing into the row-boat.
Arms.
Words.
Motion.
When we reached the dock, I caught sight of Mom, Dad, and Seth. Their faces were raw, their eyes bloodshot. I fell into their arms.
We stood there, holding on to one another, rocking back and forth.
I tried to recall our last family hug. I was eight, I think. I didn’t remember the occasion, only the feeling.
It was just as good at thirteen.
It broke through my numbness, piercing the dam I had built inside. Out spilled happiness and agony and guilt and fear and utter horror, in a cascade of tears that I couldn’t control.
Seth and Mom were crying, too.
Dad was stoic. But when my own tears started to dry, he was the one holding me the tightest.
“We thought …” Dad said, his voice cracking.
“I’m sorry,” I replied.
Mom glanced out to the beach. “The boat?”
“Later.”
Mom didn’t press further.
She knew I couldn’t talk about it yet. She could tell, just by the look on my face.
She’s a mom.
I suppose someday I will tell her something.
What? That I’ve annihilated this island of zombies? And oh, you’ll never guess who gave me the boat, never in a million years …
Even if I did tell her, chances are she’d think it was a dream.
Only two people would believe me. Only two would understand.
And neither one was there.
“Dad, where’s Grandpa Childers?” I asked as we walked into the yacht club. “And that busboy, Colin?”
Dad didn’t get a chance to answer. Everyone who’d been keeping a respectful distance was finally giving up — Uncle Harry, Mr. Havershaw, everyone I knew from Nesconset. I was mobbed with well-wishers. A photographer from the Nesconset Inquirer and Mirror began snapping photos. Lawrence, the Nesconset Yacht Club chef, kept asking what I wanted to eat.
Finally our family physician drove up. Dr. Evans shooed everyone away and ushered me into a quiet, brightly lit corner of the club.
He asked me tons of questions. I don’t remember what I answered, but I mustn’t have made much sense, because he kept scratching his head and saying, “Uh-huh … ” the way you’d talk to a baby.
Everyone had run out to the dock now. I could see them through the bay window, their backs to me, watching a harbor-police boat putter up to the dock.
The sun had risen. The bay was sky blue and clear to the horizon.
No clouds.
No island.
Gone.
Forever.
I scanned the crowd to find Grandpa Childers and —
Colin.
There he was. In his swimsuit, soaking wet.
I wanted to strangle him.
I tried to jump up, but Dr. Evans gently pulled me down. He told me I had traumatic shock or something, and I should sit in the chair until Mom and Dad drove me home, then stay in bed the rest of the day.
Right.
When someone called Dr. Evans out to the dock, I stood up.
Colin was heading inside. Toward me.
We were the only two in the room now.
I spotted my soggy burlap sack, left in a heap near the door. I ran to it and threw it at Colin. “This is yours!”
The white rabbit fell out limply to the floor. Colin’s jaw dropped. “Fluffy? How — ?”
“HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?” I shouted. “HOW COULD YOU TRICK ME INTO IT? WHY DID YOU COME HERE?”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t coming for you. I wanted someone else to go.”
“Who?”
“Your grandfather!”
“Grandpa Childers? You wanted to sacrifice him? Why on earth — ?”
“We were his best friends! His grandfather was on the boat. I figured he’d want to see them. And at his age — with not much time left — why wouldn’t he want to go to Onieron?”
“That’s insane!”
Colin sighed. “Well, that’s about what he said, too. He told me he missed his friends, but it was so far in the past. He’d made peace with it. He said if he had only a minute left to live, he’d rather live it here.”
That’s why he was so rattled.
He’d just met a face from the past. A face that hadn’t changed a bit.
It must have been tempting.
But he rejected the offer.
Because of his family.
Because of me.
“ ‘Better to die among people you love than outlive them all,’ ” I murmured. “That’s what he told me.”
Colin nodded. “So I was stuck. But when I got to know you, I thought you were perfect for Onieron. You hated your life here. I figured if I could just get you there, you’d never want to come back — ”
“HOW CAN YOU THINK THAT?”
“I’ve been there for sixty years. I think like an Onieronian.”
“Wes, Mary Elizabeth, Carbo — they all could have returned. Why didn’t they?”
“At first a few tried. But the old-timers were on them like hawks. Told them about the Law of Onieron. And over time, one by one, we all just … got used to it. The routine. The freedom.”
“But you decided to leave. Why?”
“When I knew the cloud wall was coming, some of the old feelings came back. I took a look at my friends. At what our lives had become — no worries, no problems, every day total perfection. I imagined myself staying there forever. And … I wanted to die.” Colin smiled sadly. “But I knew I couldn’t.”
“So you lied to me, to get me there. And they lied, to keep me.”
“White lies,” Colin said.
“How did you explain my disappearance to my parents? Another white lie? Did you say I’d swum out by myself — that you tried to pull me back, but I just went off on my own?”
Colin didn’t answer.
White lies.
To get what he wanted.
To get me to do the dirty work.
And now the island is gone.
And the destruction is on my hands.
I lunged at him, fists flying. “Are you happy now? You could have gone back yourself, Colin. THEY WERE YOUR FRIENDS — GRANDPA CHILDERS’S FRIENDS. AND YOU KILLED THEM!”
Colin grabbed my arms. “Rachel, they’re not dead!”
What?
I pulled away. “So … they were lying about that, too.”
“No,” Colin said softly.
“You’re here, Colin. I’m here. No one else could have — ”
The rest of the sentence choked in my throat.
And I knew. I knew right away.
Colin nodded slowly.
“But … why?”
“To rescue you,” Colin replied. “And to save the others.”
“A sacrifice.”
“One out, one in. The Law of Onieron.”
I ran out to the dock. I scanned the horizon. For a patch of cloud, maybe. A chance the channel might be open. A chance to say a proper good-bye, at least.
Not a wisp.
And I heard my father saying to the harbor police: “He was seventy-five today … ”
WATCHERS
Case File: 7003
Name: Rachel Childers
Age: 13
First contact: 58.65.07
Acceptance: REJECTED
WATCHERS
Case File: 7004
Name: Clemson Childers
Age: 75
First contact: 58.65.07
Acceptance: YES
A Biography of Peter Lerangis
Peter Lerangis (b. 1955) is a bestselling author of young adult fiction; his novels have sold more than four million copies worldwide. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Lerangis began writing in elementary school, inventing stories during math class—after finishing the problems, h
e claims. His first piece of published writing was an anonymous humor article for the April Fools’ Day edition of his high school newspaper. Seeing the other students laughing in the corridors as they read it, planted the idea in his head that he could be a writer. After high school he attended Harvard University, where he majored in biochemistry and sang in an a cappella group, the Harvard Krokodiloes. Intending to go on to law school, Lerangis took a job as a paralegal post-graduation. But after a summer job as a singing waiter, he changed his path and became a musical theater actor.
Lerangis found theatrical work on Broadway, appearing in They’re Playing Our Song, and he toured the country in such shows as Cabaret, West Side Story, and Fiddler on the Roof, acting alongside theatrical greats such as Jack Lemmon, John Lithgow, Jane Powell, John Raitt, and Victor Garber. During these years, Lerangis met his future wife, Tina deVaron, and began editing fiction, a job that would eventually lead him to writing novels of his own.
Lerangis got his start writing novelizations under the penname A. L. Singer, as well as installments of long-running series, such as the Hardy Boys and the Baby-sitters Club. He eventually began writing under his own name with 1994’s The Yearbook and Driver’s Dead, two high-school horror novels that are part of the Point Horror series of young-adult thrillers.
In 1998, Lerangis debuted Watchers, a six-novel sci-fi series, which won Children’s Choice and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers awards. The first book in the Abracadabra series, Poof! Rabbits Everywhere (2002), introduced Max, an aspiring magician who struggles to keep a lid on the supernatural happenings at his school. Lerangis followed that eight-book series with the immensely popular Spy X novels, about a pair of twins drawn into international espionage.
The stand-alone novel Smiler’s Bones (2005), based on the true story of an Eskimo brought to New York City in 1897, won critical acclaim and a number of awards. Most recently, Lerangis has collaborated with a group of high-profile children’s authors on Scholastic’s the 39 Clues, a sprawling ten-novel adventure series.
At times, Lerangis’s life has been as thrilling as one of his stories. He has run a marathon, rock-climbed during an earthquake, gone on-stage as a last-minute replacement for Broadway legend Alan Jay Lerner, and visited Russia as part of a literary delegation that included First Lady Laura Bush. He lives with his family in New York City, not far from Central Park.
In an apartment in Brooklyn, shortly after giving birth, Mary Lerangis urges her first-born son to become a writer.
In Prospect Park, Nicholas Lerangis entertains a son so obsessed with books that, by sixteen months, he had yet to learn to walk.
Lerangis, stylish even at four years old.
Lerangis (in back) with his younger sister and brother. He promised them that if they learned to play well enough, the little man on the piano would start to dance. . . . They are still practicing.
To this day, Lerangis refuses to admit that this early work was created during sixth-grade math class.
Lerangis as a freshman at Freeport High School in 1970. Here, he shows off his writing style and his mustache, both of which were to develop quite a bit in the future.
Lerangis (standing, second from left) at the Charles River with his a cappella singing group, the Harvard Krokodiloes. The group still performs to this day.
Lerangis promptly retired his ruffled shirt after this performance at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater in 1976.
Lerangis with his soon-to-be wife, Tina deVaron, at their rehearsal dinner in Boston in 1983.
Lerangis with his sons, Nick and Joseph, in 1991. He remarks that, although this was a comfortable pose at the time, any attempt to recreate it today would be painful.
In 2003, Lerangis was invited by the White House to accompany First Lady Laura Bush to Moscow to represent the United States at the first Russian Book Festival. From left to right: R. L. Stine, Lerangis, Marc Brown, Cherie Blair QC, and First Lady Laura Bush.
The Lerangis/deVaron family in 2005 at the Gates exhibition in Central Park— just a hop, skip, and a jump from their home on the Upper West Side. (Image courtesy of Ellen Dubin Photography.)
A welcome reception during an author visit in Solana Beach, California, in 2009.
Lerangis connects with his audience after a school visit in Chappaqua, New York, in 2012.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1999 by Peter Lerangis
cover design by Angela Goddard
978-1-4532-4824-9
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY PETER LERANGIS
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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