The Portal

by Richard Bowker

  Dad always tries to look interested when Matthew gets going, but after a few minutes of that sort of thing, even he starts to fade. I just zoned out until the usual fight started because Cassie left the table without asking to be excused, and who did she think she was? And she started screaming about how she hated this food and this family and her entire life, and why couldn't everyone just leave her alone?

  When the Cassie storm blew over, Dad asked Matthew and me if we wanted to go outside and play catch after supper, but we didn't, so he just stared at his plate like we'd kicked him in the teeth. He seems to think playing catch is such a great thing, but Matthew and I don't like to play catch. It's boring. Baseball is boring. I'd actually rather practice the piano. So after supper I did, just long enough to get my parents off my back. Then I knocked off the rest of my homework, watched some TV, and went to bed.

  Matthew was already in bed, but he wasn't asleep, so of course he wanted to talk. "Larry?"

  "What?"

  "I don't like it when we all yell at each other."

  "Me neither."

  "How come we can't get along better?"

  "I don't know. How come you won't stop playing my videogames without permission?"

  "I'll stop, really I will."

  "Okay." He really meant it, too. For now.

  He paused, and I thought maybe he'd given up. But then he said, "Larry?"

  Give it up, I thought. "What?"

  "I don't know what Cassie gets so mad about. Life is okay, don't you think?"

  "If you say so, Matthew."

  And that was it—at least, that's all I remember. Life is okay. Sometimes Matthew could be surprising.

  The last thing I thought about before falling asleep was not Nora Lally's smile, but that long-haired man in the park, and the way his glittering eyes fixed on me.

  This world is not only stranger than you imagine, it is stranger than you can imagine.

  That portal back in the woods had certainly turned my world strange.

  Eventually I drifted off to sleep, and a bunch of strange dreams. And before I knew it, it was time to get up and go to The Gross again.

  Chapter 4

  I was stuck sitting in front of Stinky again on the bus. He still seemed puzzled about what happened in the woods. "Hey," he said to me. "I wanna know how you did that."

  I didn't answer.

  "Come on," he said. "You were there, and then you weren't. How'd you do that?"

  "Your eyes weren't fast enough to keep up with me," I answered without turning around. "Leave me alone."

  And you know what? He did.

  At school, Kevin came up to me in homeroom. "So what do you think, huh? Are we gonna do it?"

  I was feeling a little less sure than I'd been yesterday. "I don't know, Kevin."

  "Look," he said. "You don't have to go, if you're scared. Just show me where it is, and I'll go by myself."

  "I'm not scared," I protested. "I'm—prudent." That's the word my mother always uses. A prudent person doesn't ride roller coasters, or pet strange dogs, or enter portals to parallel universes.

  "Okay, fine, you've already been there—you can afford to be prudent," Kevin argued. "But I haven't had my chance yet. And if you don't show me the thing, I'll never have a chance."

  I gave up. "All right all right," I said. "Come on over. But you gotta promise to be careful."

  Kevin grinned and gave me a high-five. "Of course I'll be careful," he said. "And prudent."

  School took forever. In English class, Nora just sat there next to me, and I started thinking: Wouldn't it be great to see that smile of hers again in the Burger Queen world? And there was lots of other stuff to check out. Who was president in that world? Did The Gross exist?

  Did I exist? Thinking back on what happened yesterday, I wasn't really sure if Nora or Stinky had recognized me. Maybe Nora smiled at me because she knew me from school, and I looked so strange in my clothes.

  What would happen if I met myself? Would we both explode or something? I should ask Kevin; he was bound to have a theory.

  Anyway, the more I thought about going back there with Kevin, the more excited I got. Just be cool and don't get into any trouble, and everything would be fine.

  Stinky stayed away from me on the bus ride home. I was beginning to think I had really spooked him. Anyway, when I got home, Mom was on the computer. She has a part-time job writing grant proposals for Glanbury College, and she does a lot of her work in the downstairs study. "Don't forget your piano lesson this afternoon," she said as I walked past.

  I had in fact forgotten about the stupid lesson. "But Kevin is coming over," I said.

  "Tell him to come tomorrow," she said. "He'll live."

  Kevin would go nuts if he had to wait another day, I thought.

  "What if he goes home when we have to leave?" I asked.

  Mom sighed. "I suppose. But don't go disappearing in the woods."

  "Huh?"

  "You heard me. I want you back in the house, ready for your lesson, at quarter to four."

  "Oh. Sure thing." I headed upstairs.

  "And Larry—how was school?" Mom called out.

  "Oh, you know. The usual."

  In my room, I switched out of my cargo shorts into some regular khakis. I should have told Kevin not to wear anything weird, but it was too late now. He was probably already on his way to my house. His mother lets him ride his bike across town—without a helmet—which is something I wouldn't even bother asking my mom to let me do.

  I went downstairs to the kitchen to have some cookies and milk while I waited for him. As I ate my Oreos I started to get nervous. I didn't really like lying to my mother. And this was my last chance to back out.

  I didn't have long to think about it. Kevin showed up a few minutes later, breathless and excited. "Ready?" he said.

  "Want some Oreos?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "Who can think about Oreos at a time like this?" he said. "Let's go."

  "Okay, but we have to be back by quarter to four. I've got a piano lesson."

  "Sure, fine. I've got my watch. So let's go."

  Obviously Kevin didn't want to chat.

  I put the milk away and we left the house. It was another beautiful day—the kind you hate to spend inside. Kevin had parked his bike by the garage. We went through the yard and into the woods. Kevin kept running on ahead of me, then waiting impatiently for me to catch up.

  Kevin is shorter than I am, and he has this weird combination of freckles and black hair, which is always flopping onto his forehead. He looks younger than most seventh-graders, I think, but actually he's a couple of months older than I am. He was wearing jeans, an Old Navy t-shirt, and a Red Sox cap. I sure hoped those kids wouldn't be hanging out at the Burger Queen. "How much further?" he asked. "Are we almost there?"

  "Calm down. It's near the army buildings. We're getting there."

  "Okay, c'mon."

  "I'm coming." In a few minutes we reached the army buildings. They looked empty—no Stinky this time. Now I had to figure out exactly where the portal was. I'd been running from Stinky—which way? It took me a couple more minutes to find the clearing and the oak tree, with Kevin making impatient noises behind me. "Over there," I said. "That's where it was." I looked around. We were alone.

  Kevin took a step forward and held his hand out. He looked like he was searching for a light switch in the dark. Nothing happened at first. What if the thing had gone away? Should I be relieved or disappointed? Then he took another step, and suddenly his hand disappeared. "Awesome," he whispered.

  He took his hand out, then put it back in again, just the way I had done. Then he did something I hadn't thought of—he walked around the portal with his hand outstretched, seeing how big it was. Not that big. "I think the two of us can just barely fit in it at the same time," he said. "I wonder what happens if, like, half your heart is in this world and the other half is in the other."

  That made me more nervous. "Kevin, give it a rest
," I said.

  "All right," he said. "Just thinking out loud. It can't be man-made, right? I mean—there's no structure to it. It's not like somebody built this."

  "If you say so."

  "Maybe they built it in the other universe—but you said they didn't look all that advanced—they had big cell phones and everything."

  "That's right. And if they built it, why would they put it, you know, behind a strip mall?"

  Kevin nodded. "Could've been aliens, like you said. Or maybe it comes from some other universe altogether. What if we ended up there?"

  Hard to believe, but that was the first time it occurred to me that the portal might not take us back to the world I'd visited the day before. That didn't help calm my nerves.

  "This is just so great," Kevin went on, as he continued to stare at the thing—or, really, at the thin air where the thing was. "It's totally strange, but totally real." He looked at me. "You ready, Larry?"

  "Well," I said, "I'm really not sure if I—"

  Kevin looked at his watch. "C'mon, Larry. We don't have that long before we have to get back."

  "All right, all right," I said. "I'll come."

  Kevin grinned. "Attaboy."

  I don't know why I agreed, really. Now that the moment had arrived, stepping back into the thing didn't seem like that great an idea. On the other hand, I pictured myself being prudent, hanging around in the woods like Stinky, waiting for Kevin to reappear, and the image just seemed sort of... pitiful. If Kevin was going, I had to go, too.

  "So what do we do," Kevin asked. "Just walk into it?"

  "Yeah. It'll be all kind of foggy, but just keep going. I think there are some sort of instruments on the sides, but I couldn't quite make them out. Just a couple of steps, and you're out the other side."

  "Cool. Want me to go first?"

  "Okay. I'll be right behind you."

  Kevin grinned. "All right," he said. "Here goes." He stepped inside. I watched him disappear, and it really was weird, seeing him vanish right in front of me. No wonder Stinky had been so freaked. I took a deep breath, and then I followed.

  I was inside the thing. Same clouds, same vague shapes off to the sides. Everything seemed kind of out of focus, like you needed special glasses to see things clearly. I blinked a few times, but nothing changed. "You there, Larry?" Kevin said.

  The sound of his voice was reassuring. "Right behind you. Keep on going."

  I kept my eye on Kevin's back as he moved forward.

  But it was more than a couple of steps this time, and still the clouds didn't go away. Instead it started feeling cold and damp—like real fog. And then I heard shouts and what sounded like footsteps.

  Uh-oh, I thought. "Um, Kevin?"

  As my eyes adjusted, I could make out trees through the fog. I looked around for the dumpster, but it wasn't where it had been yesterday. Nothing was where it had been yesterday.

  I saw two men coming towards us. One of them shouted at us. It sounded like Spanish, but I couldn't understand it.

  "Let's go back, Kevin," I said.

  But where was the portal? I had lost my bearings in the fog. The men were wearing blue uniforms and carrying rifles. They were soldiers, I realized. They raised the rifles and pointed them at us.

  Kevin took off through the trees, and I followed.

  I heard rifle shots and tensed, expecting a bullet in the back. But the shots missed; one of them screamed as it ricocheted off a rock or something. I was having a hard time keeping up with Kevin. A branch whacked me in the face. There was more shouting. "C'mon!" Kevin shouted back at me.

  The trees petered out suddenly and we found ourselves on a road. And now we heard hoofbeats and saw a wagon bearing down on us through the fog.

  "Samuel, stop!" a woman's voice called out.

  The wagon slowed. We stepped back.

  There were more rifle shots.

  The man driving the wagon peered down at us suspiciously.

  "Get in! Quickly!" the woman sitting beside him said.

  We hesitated. Kevin looked at me, his eyes wide with fright.

  "Now!" the man ordered. "Before the blasted Portuguese send all of us to our Maker!"

  Portuguese?

  More shouts, from close behind us now. We scrambled into the wagon and the man drove off. Behind us in the fog we saw the Portuguese soldiers come out of the trees and aim at us again. But the fog closed in around them before they could shoot.

  I looked at Kevin again. He was shaking. I felt as if I was ready to cry.

  The wagon picked up speed. And every second that passed, it took us further away from the portal, and from home.

  Chapter 5

  The wagon was piled high with clothes and furniture, which swayed as the wagon rattled along the bumpy road. Two small children—a boy and a girl—huddled in one corner, staring at us. The woman had twisted around to look at us, too. She was wearing a long coat and a bonnet. "How did you come to be in those woods, lads?" she asked. Her accent was a little strange—not quite American, not quite English.

  "It's, um, a long story," I said. What was I supposed to say?

  "You talk funny," the little girl piped up.

  "Hush, Rachel," the mother said. "Are you from Glanbury?" she asked us.

  "Yes, we are."

  "Listen," Kevin interrupted, "can you stop the wagon? We have to go back."

  The man pulled on the reins to slow the horse and turned around to look at us, too. "Why?" he asked.

  "Their clothes are funny," the girl said.

  "Could you please just stop the wagon?" Kevin pleaded.

  "There's nothing to go back to," the woman explained. "The Portuguese army is destroying nigh everything. If you're separated from your parents, best stay with us till we get you to Boston. You can find them there."

  "Along with everyone else in New England," the man muttered.

  "Are you in the navy?" the little girl asked Kevin. She was pointing at his Old Navy t-shirt.

  "What should we do?" Kevin asked me.

  "I don't know. This was all your idea."

  Kevin glared at me. We heard gunfire in the distance.

  My parents would know what to do. But we had left them far, far behind. "We won't be able to get to it," I murmured. And then I asked the woman, "Will we be safe in Boston?"

  "As safe as anywhere," she replied, "with the soldiers from New Portugal on one side of us and the Canadians on the other."

  "Maybe we should go to Boston," I said to Kevin. "We can come back when—when—"

  When?

  "What if it's gone?" he said. "What if we can't find it?"

  What if we find it, I thought, and it doesn't take us home?

  "I don't know," I said. "I don't know."

  Kevin slumped down in the wagon. I slumped down next to him. The man flicked the reins and the horse sped up. "I bet I know what the 'B' on your hat stands for," the little girl said to Kevin.

  I thought the woman might press us about why we were in those woods, but she didn't. She and her husband started arguing about why he had waited till the last minute to leave their farm and how all their neighbors were safe in Boston by now, and here they were, barely outracing the Portuguese and endangering their children. He said he couldn't care less about their neighbors, he wasn't going to give in so easily, he just hoped the cowardly government didn't surrender without putting up a fight.

  Kevin's face was scrunched up, an expression he gets when he's thinking hard. Or maybe he was just trying to keep from crying. We had screwed up so bad. This was a totally different universe. There was a Glanbury and a Boston, but who were the "New Portuguese"? And where were the cars? Where were the buildings? And now that we'd landed here, would we ever be able to get back?

  The wagon continued along the road to Boston, and the gunfire faded behind us. My family drives to Boston a lot, but I didn't know exactly how far it was from Glanbury. I don't think it took very long, except when there was a lot of traffic. How long was it going t
o take by horse? The road wasn't that great, and we kept getting knocked around in the back of the wagon. My back hurt, and I started to get seasick.

  "What time is it?" I whispered to Kevin after a while.

  He looked at his watch. "Four o'clock," he said.

  Late for my piano lesson. I thought about Mom, probably standing on our deck and looking out into the woods for me, worried and angry at the same time, and I got a lump in my throat. Pretty soon everyone would start looking for us, and we'd be gone—just gone, without a trace. Mom always read those stories about missing children in the paper. She'd figure this had something to do with that guy lurking by school buses in Rhode Island. But she'd never know where I went, if I was okay...

  When they started searching they'd be bound to find the portal, I thought, and then they'd figure it out and come after us.

  But that wouldn't work, I realized. If there were a kazillion universes, who knew which one they'd end up in?

  I should never have come, I thought. How could I have been so stupid? It was all Kevin's fault...

  "Larry, do you have any of those Oreos?" Kevin asked.

  I shook my head, suddenly getting hungry myself. Probably no Oreos in this world, I thought. No Coke, no pizza, no Burger King—or Burger Queen.

  The fog faded away as we rode. Occasionally a man on horseback passed us on the way to Boston. No one was heading in the opposite direction, south towards Glanbury. The riders would slow down and exchange news with us, then speed up until they disappeared up ahead. There were some houses along the road, and a few inns and shops that looked like they came out of an old movie. All of them appeared deserted.

  We stopped once to give the horse some food and water, and we all went to the bathroom in the woods; it was gross, but the family didn't seem to mind.

  "What's that?" the little boy asked, pointing at Kevin's watch.

  He shrugged. "A watch," he said.

  "My papa has a watch, but he keeps it in his pocket."

  Kevin shrugged again.

  "Don't be frightened," the boy went on. "We're going to stay with Uncle John, and he'll take care of us. He has a big house in the city, and that's where all the army is, so the Portuguese won't be able to get us."