Reformed

by Justin Weinberger

  Please be good, Mom, I tell her with my brain.

  Do you want Indian food or not, kid? she tells me with hers.

  “Uh, yeah, my mom and dad are just running late. But have fun, you guys!” he says as we duck out the door. “See you when you get back.”

  “Count on it,” I tell Devon.

  The entire ride to the restaurant, Mom’s trying to tell me what’s been going on back home, but I barely hear it. I’m just replaying that video of Devon and Mark over and over again in my mind. If you could measure time in cosmo-flushes, it’d be an impressive number, but that’s the problem with time machines: Keeping track of it all is really hard. Especially when you’re inside of the thing.

  When the car stops in front of the restaurant, the door swings open and this truly amazing smell smacks me in the face—and the joy of being here crashes over me with a wave all at once, like it’s the very first time.

  “I love Indian food,” I say.

  Why do I love Indian food, Tom? There’s the smell, first of all. The heavy, thick smog of goodness that’s hanging in the air from the moment you step in the door. And the sounds! Second of all are the sounds. Nobody’s ever grumbling eating Indian food—everyone makes happy little “mmm” sounds until they turn into huge satisfied moans because they’re so stuffed with good things.

  Third through seventh of all are the big, round, soft pieces of naan I tear off. It’s like having an entire loaf of bread to yourself, and a million things to dip it in. Chicken tikka masala, mushroom saag, mango chutney, and a whole bunch of other things I forget the name of—you’ve just got these huge heaping mounds of goo everywhere.

  “They’re not feeding our son, Kim,” says Dad, somewhere between the fifth and sixth pieces of naan.

  “They’re feeding him,” says Mom. “He’s just stuffing his mouth full so he doesn’t have to answer any of our questions.”

  “Is that right, Ian?”

  My mouth is way too full to answer him.

  “This is clearly a boy who hasn’t seen food in weeks,” says Dad. “And I for one am against an Evil Wacko Camp starving my child.”

  “It isn’t Evil Wacko Camp!” I say, choking down the bread.

  “It’s not?” says Dad.

  “No,” says Mom, “it’s a Wacko Academy.”

  “Mom!”

  “A Wack-ademy,” Dad fires back.

  “Come on,” I say. “We’re not wackos, just normal kids who got into trouble.”

  Dad turns toward Mom and whispers loudly: “Wait, did he say he is a normal kid? Did we accidentally go to the wrong school?”

  Mom makes a surprised face. “Oh, no!” she whispers back. “Is our real son still trapped at Evil Wacko Camp?”

  “Maybe we should go rescue him,” says Dad.

  “Eh, we already ordered. Let’s eat first.”

  I slump back in my chair with a hand over my eyes. “You guys. Do you seriously not understand why I have to join a gang of bullies to avoid getting beat up all the time?”

  “Calm down and eat,” says Dad. “We came to spend time with our son, not some impostor child.”

  “Can I have more naan, please?” I ask.

  “You’ve had plenty, impostor child,” says Mom.

  “I don’t want to eat it, I want to put it in my ears for earplugs so I can’t hear you guys anymore.”

  Mom laughs. “Okay. This might actually be our kid.”

  But dinner’s over way too fast. And when we’re headed back to JANUS, the swirling mess that’s waiting for me feels like it’s twice as heavy as before.

  “Hey listen,” I tell Mom and Dad. “What if, instead of going back, we just … go home right now?”

  Mom and Dad look at each other. “What about your friends?” says Mom.

  “Mark and Devon can take care of themselves.”

  “And Ash?” she asks.

  I feel a sideways lurch. She’s right, I can’t leave Ash.

  “Yeah, I forgot,” I say.

  When I’m back inside, I make a point of avoiding all the places Devon might be waiting to talk to me. I just go right to the one spot where I can be alone.

  I hold my breath until the door on my time machine is closed, but as soon as I exhale, a voice from the stall next to me pipes up:

  “We need to talk, Ian,” says Alva Anonymous. In the boys’ bathroom.

  I sit very still.

  “Ian, you can’t just ignore me.”

  “I’m not ignoring you, Alva.”

  “False,” she says.

  “Look, you’re not allowed in here, and I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “And I’m not?” she asks.

  “If you’re so busy, why are you hanging out in the boys’ bathroom and—were you waiting for me?”

  “You’ve been hard to get to on your own,” she says.

  I sigh. “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you. Was that not obvious?”

  “No, I got it.”

  I can hear the door of her stall open and feel my teeth vibrate from the impact as it closes.

  “Please come out,” she says.

  I know that time moves differently inside my time machine: Even though I’m not changing, the world around me is … and, what if, the next thing I know, Alva’s gone! Disappeared forever? I better hurry if I want one last chance. Or so the Freak tells me.

  “Hold on,” I say.

  I pretend like I’m actually using the toilet: With a flush and a huge Freakish smile, I open the door.

  And there’s Alva, arms folded. “Nice acting. I totally believed you were pooping, Ian.”

  “Ha ha ha,” I say. Like, the actual words. Don’t mistake it for a laugh. “Sometimes it’s just nice to have the feeling of not wearing pants, ya know?”

  She doesn’t skip a beat. “So. It took me a while. But I finally figured out what’s been going on with you and Ash.”

  As Alva looks at me and waits for my reaction, Cole Harper stumbles into the bathroom and gets his zipper halfway down before skidding to a stop face-to-face with Alva. He looks from her to me and back to her.

  “No. Turn around,” says Alva, pointing him toward the door.

  “But I need to—”

  “Bye bye,” she says, shoving him into the hall.

  And then Alva and I are just standing there. Staring at each other.

  “So,” she says. “Let’s talk about your little deal.”

  “My little deal?” I ask her.

  “Yeah. Mark told me all about the brilliant bargain you made with him. You know … the one where you and Ash promised to stop spending time with me and in return Miranda and Devon wouldn’t try to get me sent to the Village?”

  “Oh,” I say. “Right.” I make to go wash my hands.

  “Yeah. Oh right.” She pulls me back. “Is that really what Ash thinks of me? That I’m too weak to fight my own battles?”

  “No, that isn’t … we didn’t mean—we were just trying to protect you, Alva.”

  She folds her arms.

  “Ash didn’t want to see you get hurt the way our friend Max did.”

  “I’m not some helpless little kid. And you aren’t, either,” she adds with a pointed look.

  I swallow hard. “I know.”

  “And, honestly, I’m tired of treating you like one—even if you seem perfectly cool to let everyone else do it.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” I say.

  “Me too, dude.”

  Before I know it, she’s squeezing me in a tight hug.

  “Is this some new form of argument that I don’t understand?” I ask her.

  By the way she laughs it feels like I did something right. I’m not totally sure what it is though.

  “We’re hugging it out, Ian.”

  “Oh.”

  “It was nice of you to be worried about me, I guess,” she says. “Just don’t ever do it again.”

  “It won’t happen again,” I tell her, which is a
very meaningful promise, coming from a time traveler. Then something she said comes back to me: “Wait. Hold on. Did you say Mark told you about all this?”

  She nods. “I guess he didn’t realize how bad you guys would mope around. He thought maybe as long as the four of us kept hidden from Devon and Miranda …”

  “Then we could still secretly get along?” I glance up at her, barely daring to believe.

  “Having secrets is sort of cool,” she says with a smile.

  “It is,” I agree.

  Which is exactly why I decide to tell her about the video Jeremy showed me.

  “Oh, man,” she says after I explain. “Now I know why you’re hiding in here.”

  “I may never leave.”

  “How’s Ash?”

  “Haven’t told him yet.”

  She raises her eyebrows.

  “I know …”

  “Well?” She flicks her head to the door with a smile. “No time like the present.”

  Deep inside me, the Freak totally agrees.

  “Oh man. Family is the worst, right?” Devon throws himself on his bed.

  “Did something weird happen at your family dinner?” says Mark.

  “Weird?” he says with bitter amusement. “Nope. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “LIGHTS OUT, BOYS!” the warning comes from the hall.

  “Wait. Jeremy’s not back,” says Cole, looking at Jeremy’s empty bunk.

  “You think he got sent to the Village?” says Devon.

  “No way,” says Mark. “He’s too smart to get sent there.”

  Ash and I exchange a glance across the room. We didn’t get a chance to talk since he got back from dinner—because Devon wouldn’t let me out of his sight—and now’s not the safest time to tell him everything, not with all these bullies surrounding us. Plus, the Freak won’t shut up in my head long enough for me to think. It’s Devon the Freak wants me to talk to now.

  This is your chance to confront him, it urges. He’s messing with ASH!

  I look down at Devon, and the blood pumps in my ears.

  Just say SOMETHING.

  But my lungs won’t fill. It’s like gravity just quadrupled. Like a two-ton barbell is pressing down on me—

  And then I see that I’m not at JANUS: I’m sitting in the cafeteria at East Huron Elementary School, and I’m chewing yet one more peanut butter sandwich in an endless stream of them.

  As I take the last bite, I realize that it’s not Max who is allergic to peanut butter … it’s me.

  It’s always been me.

  And I’m eating this sandwich—I just keep eating it, even though I shouldn’t—and my airway is closing, and it’s my own fault.

  But the allergy attack feels like a jolt of electricity running through my bones and muscles. Preventing my brain from sending the message to breathe. My brain is shouting it over and over, but it sounds like a burbling creek’s whisper and the electricity is a giant whitewater churn …

  And I’m swept away.

  For a minute, I can hear colors and the last day of elementary school is happening all over again but in reverse. And I come up with an amazing joke about how many Thomas Edisons it takes to screw in a lightbulb—but just when I’m about to tell it, my dog Scarlet rips past and steals my joke and gulps it down and runs away … and I’m chasing after her, and I’m stumbling right into the middle of JANUS orientation … and my uniform gets tighter and tighter and starts strangling me.

  I know I’m having a nightmare—but I can’t wake up; it’s more real than being awake.

  The more I fight, the worse it gets. Like quicksand. I wriggle and sink under the floor, and underneath is a murky, frigid river. I sink the whole way to the bottom—way, way down—and when I do, I find out I’m actually on my street in East Huron, only the air is replaced with water, and there’s a boy in bronze clothing standing there right by my side.

  Well, it’s a statue of a boy, I guess. A twelve-year-old hero, preserved in metal and made into a monument of what all twelve-year-old boys should be.

  Thomas Edison, you’re such a jerk. A perfect, bronze little jerk.

  The statue turns its head to look straight at me. “Come on, Ian,” it says. And its voice is full of crackles, like a radio station that’s not quite in tune. “I never claimed to be perfect.”

  That’s what they taught us, though. You were awesome.

  “Seriously, do you even know anything about me? I did some pretty bully-tastic stuff, and you’d know that if you bothered to look it up.”

  I haven’t exactly had spare time, you know.

  “You have had a lot churning around in your brain, I guess,” says Edison. And as soon as he reminds me: FLUSH—we’re back at JANUS, walking down an empty hallway.

  “So what are you gonna do about Devon and everything, Ian?” Tom Edison asks me, and about five giant security cameras swing around and pin me in their unblinking gaze. Examining me. So I freeze, too scared I’ll make the wrong choice. Because I don’t want to be turned into a statue.

  I’m not perfect, and I’m never going to be. I don’t even want to be, I realize—and that’s when I notice I’m not the only one being examined. JANUS is gone now, and I’m in a big, white doctor’s office.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your son, Mr. Edison,” says the doctor, tapping the statue of twelve-year-old Thomas Edison with a hollow, lifeless Bong! Bong! that vibrates along the floor.

  “Then why does he think he’s in the year two thousand and whatever, and he’s stuck being some dumb kid’s imaginary friend?” says Tom’s dad. “Also why is he made out of metal? I’m pretty sure he wasn’t always like that.”

  “Hmm,” says the doctor. “Maybe we should pump him full of electricity and see if it helps.”

  “Is that really the best idea?” says Tom’s dad.

  “I dunno, but it sure sounds like fun,” says the doctor, and when he smiles, I suddenly recognize that it’s Devon—and then electricity screams through the young inventor’s bronze body, and I’m ripped out of my dream and wake up shivering in my sweat-soaked pajamas.

  “Yuck,” I say, peeling back my sheets and feeling like I’ve been turned inside-out.

  I look out the window for any hint of sun in the sky but it’s way too early still.

  “You okay, Ian?” Devon’s voice floats up from below. “Sounds like a rough night up there.”

  “Yeah, weird dreams,” I say.

  “Least you can sleep,” says Devon. “I can’t sleep at all.”

  “Sorry,” I say, though I’m not very.

  I roll over toward the edge of the bed, where it’s not soaked with sweat. And I see Devon down below. For a head-spinning second, it feels like the nightmare was real and I’m still in it.

  But then I get ahold of myself and remember that I can breathe. I’m so relieved I feel like I can do anything.

  “Hey, Devon, can I ask you something?” I hear myself say.

  “I know what you’re gonna say,” he tells me after a pause.

  “You do?”

  “Come on, Ian, it’s kinda obvious you’re mad at me. Is this still about Alva? Because Mark’s pretty sure she’s the one who wrecked Ash’s dad’s book.”

  “Pretty sure she didn’t,” I say, the last of my hesitation falling away with his lie.

  “You need to trust me that she’s screwed up, okay? She’s damaged. You don’t see it, ’cause you like her, but eventually you’re gonna thank me for keeping you from making a fool of yourself.”

  “You think I’m gonna thank you?”

  “I know it,” says Devon.

  “For keeping me from making a fool of myself?” I’m getting a bit too loud for a room full of sleeping bullies now.

  “Someday, Ian, when you see things better,” Devon says, “when you understand the way things work in the real world—”

  “In the real world”—I spit the words out like rotten food—“people who treat people the way you treat people don’t get to
keep their friends. You have to stop being a bully.” A couple other kids stir under their blankets.

  I feel the bunk shift as Devon shoots out of bed and gets right up in my face. “Oh, because you’re such a good friend, Ian? The way I recall it, when Max had that accident, it was your peanut butter sandwich.”

  “Devon—”

  “And you let us take all the blame. And we didn’t give you a hard time at all, did we?”

  “Dev—”

  “And then you didn’t talk to any of us for a week. Remember that?”

  He pauses, and I keep quiet.

  “And then everything this summer—all I’ve done to stand up for you—and still, still I’m not meeting your standards?”

  In the back of my mind I’m vaguely aware that about half the dorm is now listening to every word.

  “You know, would it really kill you to just be grateful, Ian?”

  “Grateful? You think I’m not grateful?”

  “Yes.”

  An unfamiliar heat sears through my neck, and I can feel it like a warm, red coal burning in the middle of my back. The place where the Freak calls home.

  “Devon,” I rumble. “I’ve tried everything to make excuses for all the horrible things you do. Because I convinced myself you were really, deep down, good.”

  He sneers back. “Seriously, Ian, how do you even survive being such a little baby? Oh right! Because I bail you out whenever you get in trouble.”

  “Yeah, all right. I’ll admit it: You do bail me out, Dev. You’re my friend. And if you’d just treat other people like you treat us, then they’d see you like your friends see you.”

  He pauses for a second, and just when I think I’m getting through, I hear two words come out of Devon’s mouth that he’s never said to me before: “You’re right. I am treating you different than everybody else. And it should stop.”

  My smile vanishes before it reaches my lips.

  “From now on, I’ll treat you just like the rest of them, Hart.” He starts to back away from my bunk.

  “Hold on …” I say.

  “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Guys?” says Mark.

  “Too late,” says Devon. “We’re finished—aren’t we, Ian?”