by David Potter
When he found out I hadn’t taken his orders, I mean instructions, I mean advice, to go out for soccer, join no less than three clubs, try to get the lead in the school play, and finagle a position on the school paper to make sure my exploits were duly recorded—when he found out I had done none of it, he blew a cork and a gasket.
“Son,” said Dad. “Are you going to be a potted plant, someone who just sits there, for Pete’s sake, or are you going to be somebody? Because it’s one or the other, son. There’s no getting around it. You’re either a potted plant or you’re a somebody. And if you want to be somebody, son, you’re going to have to stand up. Raise your hand. Step forward. Take a chance. Count. You want to count for something, don’t you, son? You want to be somebody, right? You don’t just want to be a potted plant, do you?”
“No, Dad,” I said. “No, I do not want to be a potted plant.”
He continued fuming and spewing until he was called away by Something Important. That’s the thing about Dad and his tirades. They never go on too long because he’s got people always tugging on his shirt to get his attention onto something else. Which is usually okay by me. You see, my dad just happens to be one of those guys who’s a little bit much, you know what I mean? My mom says he gets in your grill, which is to say he likes to stand about two inches from your face, like he’s arguing a call with an umpire.
It puts some people off. After a while, it even put my mom off, which is why they got divorced last year.
She did tell me not to take it personally, though, because, she said, it had nothing to do with me. Then she decided to take a trip. A two-year trip, up, down, and around the world.
So this is why, if you really want to know, we weren’t having a family Christmas this year, and why I was staying at the Fredericksville School with the Left Behinds. Okay? It really wasn’t because Dad is so busy, or so important. It’s because just the two of us, with some sad little Christmas tree, would have seemed so Loser City. And the last thing Dad was going to let me witness was him losing at anything.
See, Dad is a well-known guy, like I said. In certain circles. He’s been on the covers of magazines, on the front page of the New York Times one time. He’s not an everyday People magazine celebrity like Bev’s mom, but he is known, all right.
My dad’s the guy who lost a billion bucks.
Or maybe it was ten billion.
He used to work for one of those big investment banks. You know, the ones that are too big to fail.
Which is exactly what he did.
I don’t know all the particulars. If I knew them, I wouldn’t understand anyway. But somehow his desk placed all these bets and then they got burned. And whatever this desk thing was, he was in charge of it.
He was held up as an example of everything that was wrong with Wall Street, the financial system, and the American way. If you Google him, he’ll come up, like, about two million times. And he’s a guy who used to think he was the biggest winner that ever walked upon the planet Earth. So he’s having a tough time adjusting.
To losing anything, let alone his own wife. But he’s still chock-full of advice, whenever he does get a chance to speak to me. Though at the moment, I’m not sure what he’d tell me to do: keep running, or Stoppen Sie sofort.
Since he can’t weigh in, we’re running.
Brandon takes a hard right, and we follow. He had been going straight into woods, where the snow is, like, three feet high, but he must have seen where it leveled out to the right, and thataway he went.
It does level out. We come to kind of a path. There are other buildings around—a stone farmhouse, another smaller stone building next to that. And right in front of us, two men in spiffy blue uniforms. Did you hear what I said?
Spiffy blue uniforms.
Soldiers, in other words.
Real ones. Not reenactor dudes.
It’s not hard to tell the difference. They smell, for one thing. Two, they’ve got snow on their boots. Not new snow like us. Frozen stuff. Like they’ve been out here for days.
Three, they have large white sashes across their chests, epaulets on their shoulders, and weird gold cone things on their heads. I know right away who they are: Hessians. German soldiers for hire, who rented themselves out to the British. I know who they are because I’ve read about them. I never expected to see any Hessians for myself, though. Especially not up close and personal.
They don’t look overfriendly, these Hessian dudes.
They ain’t smiling, for one thing.
And two, they’ve got muskets, which are raised, ready, and pointed straight at us.
FOUR
WE STOP. BEHIND US, the guys who’ve been shouting, who followed the same swath Brandon made in the snow, catch up. There are two of them, but they’re not wearing uniforms. Just regular eighteenth-century farmer clothes.
You know that time travel idea I had? Which I said was impossible?
Guess what. Maybe I’m wrong.
One of the guys dressed as a farmer speaks up. In English, but with a super-thick German accent. “You are trespassing,” this guy says. The first thing I think is, He sounds exactly like Arnold You-Know-Who in The Terminator. “This is private property. You have no business of being here.”
This guy is butt-ugly. He’s also short, which makes him even uglier. His face is all kind of squashed in, like he ate something sour and can’t get the taste out of his mouth. Plus his nose is crooked. It leans to his right, our left. Someone should have told him to wear a hat to hide his hair, which is scurvy-looking and knotted, like rope. When he leans in to talk to us, we lean back. Like way, way back.
“Dude,” says Brandon. “Chillax, will ya?” And then Brandon wipes the air in front of him, like he’s trying to get rid of a stench.
“You have no business of being here,” the guy says again. “Ve shoot you and kill you if ve vant.”
“You’re not shooting anyone,” Bev says, stepping forward. And she’s got an attitude. Her attitude is this: My mom is a big star, buster. Who the heck are you? “Or should I say you’re not shooting anyone else. There happens to be a dead man in the barn back there. Who we have reason to believe happens to be a most important person. Do you know anything about this? If this is your property, then you are most definitely responsible.” Bev pauses, and then points her finger. “Each and every one of you.”
The guy takes a pistol from the pocket of his jacket, lifts the thing up, cocks it, and points it straight at me. But he doesn’t shoot. Instead he starts to notice things. Like our clothes. Our jeans. Our sneakers. The snarling wolf on Brandon’s hat. Bev’s checkered scarf and stylin’ winter jacket. And probably, like, twenty other things. So we watch as the guy tallies them up and comes to some sort of conclusion: we’re different.
Like, way different.
He says something in German to the others. Too fast for me to catch the words. But I think, by the tone of his voice, he must have said something like this: Guys, let’s be careful here. Very, very careful. Because these kids seem awfully strange.…
FIVE
THE TWO UNIFORMED GUYS in front of us, and the two nonuniformed guys behind us, all start talking to each other at once. In German. So it’s kind of a standoff for, like, a really, really, really long time. Like for maybe five, ten seconds.
No one knows what to do. They must be thinking we’re way weird, and that’s for sure what we’re thinking about them.
Let’s just take one thing common to us all. Or thirty-two things for each of us, and maybe half that for them. I’m talking about teeth. How often do you think about teeth? You think about your own when you floss and brush, and you think about somebody else’s only when you notice something wrong or funny or weird.
Oh yeah, one other thing: if you have braces, like I still do, you think about what a pain in the butt they are and you can’t wait to get them off.
So that’s us: two sets of bright-white smiles, plus me, Mr. Steel Cage Mouth.
Those guys m
aybe have three good teeth among ’em. The rest are rotten little stubby things. Gray, and full of gunk. And I would bet you five million dollars not one of them has ever swished around a mouthful of Listerine either, though God knows they could use it.
Then we hear a funny little sound. An electronic sound, a micro three-chord melody that the three of us hear a hundred times a day. And think nothing of it.
But a sound the four of them have never heard. Never, but never.
It’s my iPhone. Which I’ve been holding this whole entire time.
It’s what we do. It’s probably what you do. You hold the thing in your hand, because you use it so much. God forbid you miss something, right?
It’s the same deal, by the way, with Brandon and Bev. We’re holding on to our iPhones, like they’ll save us. Then Brandon does something unexpected. Brandon’s a funny kid. He’s kind of big, kind of goofy, and I know for a fact that he had long hair—like, down to his shoulders—before he came to school, because I saw a picture of him once. He’s also the only boy I know who wears bracelets. You know, on his wrists. Two on the left and one on the right. I think they’re Native American things, but then Brandon’s from New Mexico, of all places. He’s a Left Behind because his mom went spiritual on him and moved to an ashram, where she’s been trying to get in touch with The Universe. But she sent her boy to the Fredericksville School so he could have a proper East Coast education with all the trimmings. His family has something to do with the oil business, though I think his dad passed away. And while his mom gets to go spiritual, Brandon gets to go to a fancy school. They made him cut his hair, and they made him buy new clothes. New packaging, but same kid. It doesn’t work even if you dress him up with a tie and blue blazer.
Oh yeah, and there’s another thing about Brandon. Besides nearly failing every class, he doesn’t like to follow orders. I’m sure he squawked about the haircut. He gives all his teachers a hard time whenever he can. And right now, he decides to mess around with Mr. Butt-Ugly and Company. He holds up his iPhone. Then he points it at Butt-Ugly and snaps off a picture.
The German guys—soldiers and farmers alike—aren’t sure what this is all about, but they don’t seem to like it. They kind of take a step back.
Maybe we’re on to something. Maybe we’re armed and dangerous, because each one of us has an iPhone of our very own. There’s just one thing. “I hope this isn’t going to be a problem,” I say, looking down at my cell phone. Of course, I didn’t bother to recharge it anytime recently. “But I’m running low on power. I’m, like, at ten percent. When did that happen?”
Which leads directly to my next question: any chance of outlets, here in 1776?
SIX
THE GUY WHO SPEAKS English, Mr. Butt-Ugly—who’s the same guy holding his pistol straight at my head—asks a question. Probably the first thing that came to his mind, and all things considered, it’s not such a dumb question.
“Vhat,” he says, nodding to the iPhone in Brandon’s hand, “is dis?”
Brandon turns his iPhone around and shows the dude the picture he just took.
If you’ve never seen a grown man spooked before—I mean, like, totally, completely, one hundred percent freaked—then you’ve got to go someplace and find a guy who’s not only never seen a photo before, but never even knew of the existence of such a thing. The dude completely loses it. First his eyes pop a socket. Next his mouth gapes open. Then he lowers his arm, the one holding the pistol, and takes five steps backward, like he’s propelled by some force and can’t help himself.
His other arm flails around—in midair—as if trying to wave something away.
Brandon points his iPhone at the other farmer, who has seen what it did to Butt-Ugly. This guy doesn’t wait to see the results—he just turns and starts running back to the stable.
“Teufel!” the guy screams. “Teufel!”
Now, I can’t say I’ve heard the word before, but I think I know what it means. It means, I’m pretty sure, “devil.”
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s kind of cool to have somebody call me a devil.
And then run away from me as fast as they possibly can.
It gives me this weird kind of feeling, like I actually have some power.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a gun, a musket, a bazooka, or a flamethrower.
What I do have is a belief. Not mine, but theirs. Which just shows you which one is stronger: a belief or a gun. We’re the Apple Artillery. Two black ones, one white. We hold them aloft like they’re death ray guns and watch as all the German dudes scatter.
It’s almost funny, till I notice on mine that I have a message. A text.
Which doesn’t compute for a second, because how could a text … you know … from now to then … I mean, from then to now … be sent? Or received?
It’s from my teacher. Mr. Hart. American History.
And then I start to remember a couple of things. It’s like a fog starting to break up. Like: isn’t this whole … expedition … part of some lame school trip? For us Left Behinds? And isn’t Mr. Hart our sorry teacher who got stuck with us for the Christmas holidays, because maybe he himself had nothing better to do either?
And didn’t Mr. Hart say, this very morning, “Kids, today we’re going to the reenactment of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, which they do every Christmas at Washington Crossing State Park.”
Bev and Brandon rolled their eyes. Me? I was kind of into it, if you want to know the truth. I have no defense. I’m a history nerd, which is only totally uncool.
“What’s the matter, Mel?” Brandon says. “See something funny?”
“I got a text,” I say. “From Mr. Hart.”
“Yeah? What does he want?”
I read it myself first.
Where R U? it says.
I read the message aloud, and all of us stop and puzzle over it.
And then I get another one. The same three-chord micro melody.
R U lost?
I read this one aloud, too. We take a glance around. I guess the answer would be yes and no.
“You have to tell him something,” Bev says. “He might be worried about us.”
“What should I say?”
“Tell him we’ve taken a little detour,” Brandon says. “The scenic route.”
“I think I’ll tell him we’ll be right back,” I say.
“Will we?” says Bev. She’s worried all of a sudden. Which isn’t something you see from Bev very often. She’s always so sure of herself. Her being worried gets me worried.
“Let’s hope so,” I say, and type it in. I notice that I’m down to nine percent power.
But we have other things to think about at the moment. Immediate, like, issues. They’ve run, the Germans have, but they haven’t left. They’ve taken positions. To the left of us, and to the right of us. Muskets at the ready. They’re maybe seventy or eighty yards away. They’ve fallen back to a secure line.
It’s easy to throw around military terms when you’ve learned a few. I used to tell people I was playing Xbox when I was really watching the History Channel.
“Boys,” Bev says. “Behind us is nothing but woods.”
“And in front of us,” Brandon says, “is nothing but muskets.”
“That one guy,” I say. “The guy who speaks English. He’s looking at us. Through a telescope … Spyglass? Whatever they call those things.”
“He’s curious,” Bev says. “He wants to know what our phones are all about.”
“Maybe,” I say, “he wants one for himself.”
“For what?” says Brandon. “So he can take pictures?”
“Everybody,” I say, “wants to get their hands on an iPhone. It’s just natural.”
“Boys,” Bev says again. “What’s the plan here? Backward? Forward? Left, right? ’Cause I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting cold. My feet are, like, frozen solid.”
“Maybe,” says Brandon, “we should go back to the stab
le. It was a lot warmer in there.”
That’s Brandon for you. He’s always for the easiest way, but not necessarily the best way.
“The stable’s a dumb idea, Brandon,” says Bev. “They’ll corner us in that place. Then what?”
“Then I don’t know,” Brandon says. “Mel, what do you think?”
“I think these guys,” I say, nodding to the Germans still arrayed in front of us, “must be the guys who killed Washington.” It occurs to me—and probably to Bev and to Brandon—that if these are the guys who killed George Washington, they probably have it in them to kill us as well.
“Maybe they did,” Bev says. “So do we stay here? Do we run for it? Plus, I have something else on my mind. If you have to know.”
“Which is what?” I say.
“Um. I’m wondering if there’s a bathroom anywhere nearby,” Bev says.
Brandon gives her the bad news. “There aren’t any, Bev,” he says. “Bathrooms with flush toilets haven’t been invented yet. They use outhouses.”
“Or pots and pans,” I say. “Next to the bed.”
“Terrific,” Bev says. “Just terrific. Can someone tell me what we’re doing here? And how do we get back?”
No one can. But then our English-speaking, spyglass-holding German friend starts waving a flag. A white one.
