by Paul Noth
I blink-blink-blinked until my eyes stopped burning. Squeep! crouched on my bedspread staring up at me.
“Hey listen,” I said. “Alice is after you. That’s not good. You need to lie low, buddy, until the heat’s off.”
He flicked his tail to his face and handed me a seashell from out of nowhere.
“What! How do you keep doing that?” I said.
He did it again, but this time he moved so slowly that I could see the whole process, his tail curling around in slow motion until he looked like a question mark, and then farther, until his body formed a perfect circle. As the tip of his tail came to his face, his mouth bit down on it.
He vanished.
I said, “Whaaaaat?”
He reappeared, still in the perfect circular shape but holding a seashell. I shuddered, realizing how much he now looked like Grandma’s ring, the snake biting its own tail. What had Eliza called it?
The Ouroboros, symbol of the eternal return.
Dropping the shell, Squeep! stayed circular with his mouth open over his tail-tip, ready to bite down again and vanish into the Doorganizer.
Then, looking up at me, he reached his flipper toward my hand, as though he wanted to pull me in there with him.
“No way!” I said, yanking my hand out of reach. “I’m not going back in there. Not ever again.”
He beckoned me with his flipper.
“Come on,” he seemed to be saying. “Time to go.”
My heart pounded. It felt as if I were standing at the edge of the highest high dive in the world—a tiny voice in my mind saying, Jump!
“No, that’s not gonna happen,” I said, laughing nervously. “That place is the worst.”
Come on, said my tiny inner voice. It will make a great science project.
I pictured how the triptych would look at the science fair:
I laughed, imagining Felix’s reaction.
Dad would be pretty astonished too. He hated to be proved wrong. But I remembered my last trip into the Doorganizer all too well. I never wanted to experience that again.
“For the last time, no!” I said to Squeep!
Mom knocked on the door and yelled, “Happy! You’re late!”
I jumped out of bed and began pulling on my school clothes. Then I ran to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I didn’t have time to shave, but I always carried a portable razor and shaving cream in my backpack. So I could take care of that in the school bathroom before class.
I jogged back into the bedroom to grab my backpack. It felt heavier than usual. Looking inside, I saw why. I had a reptilian stowaway.
Squeep!, curled in a perfect Ouroboros circle atop textbooks, held out his flipper.
“Get out of there!” I said. “I can’t take you to school.”
He wouldn’t budge. I dared not reach in and grab him either, out of fear he would pull me into the Doorganizer.
With Alice after him, maybe he’d be safer with me today. I zipped it almost closed but left a little opening so he could breathe.
I ran from my room to the kitchen, where Mom stood, Baby Lu in one arm, the other holding out a piece of grape-jellied toast for me.
“Everybody waiting for you outside,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said, munching into the toast. “Bye, guys!”
I hurried down our apartment building’s steps. Mom liked us all to walk together in the morning. We went to three different schools—Acorn Lane Elementary, Wonder Street Middle, and Central High—but they were all in the same direction.
Beth, Kayla, and Eliza had already started walking, but Alice stood outside our door waiting for me.
“Where’s the lizard?” she demanded.
At the sound of her voice, I felt Squeep! leap inside my backpack.
“Haven’t seen him,” I said. “Not since last night. Whenever he disappears like that, he usually stays away for days.”
“Find him and bring him to me,” she said.
“Right,” I said, walking faster to get away from her.
“You have one hour,” she said.
“Of course,” I mumbled.
I hurried ahead and fell in beside my eldest sister.
Eliza ambled along, smiling down at her hand, closely admiring the silver ring. Then she raised it to her mouth and … was she whispering to it? Yes, she was talking to the ring.
“What’s that!” barked Alice, catching up to us.
“Nothing,” said Eliza, plunging her hand into her pocket.
“Where did you get that ring?” said Alice.
“None of your business,” said Eliza.
“That’s my ring,” said Alice.
“No it’s not,” said Eliza. “It’s Grandma’s.”
Not wanting any part of this conversation, I hurried ahead of them.
Kayla strolled along staring down at an old issue of Life magazine full of photos taken by the Hubble telescope. She studied it whenever there was too much daylight to see outer space through her own little scope.
I could tell, from a minuscule twitching in her face, that she was talking to Alphonso—the two of them probably hot on the trail of a future asteroid or something.
“Kayla,” I whispered. “Alice is going to come after me today. I need to know what she’s planning and when. Please tell me.”
Kayla ignored me, her face twitching down at a picture of stars.
“What? Are you still mad at me?” I said.
No response.
“Look, I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said. “Please … this will only take two seconds. Just tell me what Alice is planning so I can take evasive action. All I need is a head start, Kayla. Just a little bit of time.”
Kayla gave me the coldest of shoulders. Her bitter expression reminded me of the way she had looked yesterday, right before she juked me.
Remembering that made me angry too.
Rising up with the anger came a thought.
You don’t need Kayla to predict things anymore.
“Why not?” I asked myself.
Because, dummy, you have Squeep!
“Squeep! can’t predict the future,” I thought.
You don’t need to know the future. You can pause the present!
CHAPTER 10
DIMITRIUS
The moment I realized it, I wished I hadn’t.
When Squeep! held up that flipper, he had offered me all the terrifying powers of the Doorganizer … if I only had the courage to use them. And the uses were endless. An unclosable door had opened in my mind, and uninvited schemes crowded through.
Next time Mr. Jamneky unexpectedly called on me in pre-algebra, I could slip out of that moment, figure out the answer in the Doorganizer, and slip back in again without anyone noticing I had gone. I could keep my textbooks in there during tests! I would never have to study or do homework again. No wonder Alice wanted it back so badly.
She would never stop until she had Squeep!
Wait, did I still have Squeep!? I reached behind me and felt the side of my backpack. Yes, there he was, breathing contentedly. Then I noticed Alice about ten yards back watching me, her eyes going wide with realization.
She nudged Eliza and said something.
Pretending I had just been scratching my side below the backpack, I turned away and walked a little faster, ahead of Kayla, then faster, until I fell in beside my sister Beth.
I glanced back and saw that Alice hadn’t followed. She walked twenty yards behind me now and conversed with Eliza.
“What’s your deal?” said Beth, eyeing me strangely.
“Huh?” I said. “Oh, nothing. What’s going on with you? You look tired.”
“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I barely slept at all last night.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “You’re not having Night-Morphs again, are you?”
Night-Morphs, a lingering side-effect of Grandma’s experiments on Beth, caused her to transform while she slept into people or things that she dreamed about.
“N
o, thank heaven,” said Beth. “I haven’t had one of those in months. Not since I started the treatment. I was just up late studying for my exam.”
“That’s a relief,” I said.
Beth’s Night-Morphs had been an awful ordeal for the entire family, until Dad developed the treatment. Every night Beth had to drink this unpleasant-smelling tea and hypnotize herself before she fell asleep.
Beth and I were silent for the next half a block. Then Kayla, still focused on her magazine, peeled away from the group toward the elementary school. Now I noticed that Alice had left the group as well.
“Where’s Alice?” I yelled back at Eliza.
Eliza smiled knowingly and shrugged.
Oh no, I thought.
Alice had slipped away unnoticed to ambush me, I felt certain.
If she came after me, would I dare to hide in the Doorganizer?
No, I needed a better plan.
The twins headed toward the high school. Across from it stood the huge three-story brick box of Wonder Street Middle School.
Alice would expect me to enter as I always did through the double doors on Carnegie Avenue. So, instead, I sprinted toward the line of buses on Wonder Street, where I slipped into the stream of bus kids.
I snuck into the building at the center of a big crowd. Then, hanging a left, I made for the west stairwell and hurried up to the second floor.
I reached room 275, my homeroom, with three minutes to spare. Then realized I still hadn’t shaved. So I kept moving down the corridor to the closest second-floor boys’ bathroom.
I pushed open the door and headed toward the sinks. Long arms reached down on either side of me. Giant hands clutched my shoulders.
Number 07 from the football team hoisted me high into the air.
“Whoa!” I said. “Hey! What are you … Is this about your wallet? I never wanted it! I took it to the office. I didn’t take any money, I swear.”
“It’s not about the wallet,” he said, in a shockingly deep voice. Then he yelled out, “I got him!”
I looked around to see who he had yelled to, but we were alone.
The door swung open, and Alice walked into the boys’ bathroom.
“Get his backpack, Dimitrius,” she said. “And give it to me.”
07 peeled the pack from my back like a banana skin. He tossed it to her.
Alice unzipped it and peered inside. Flipping it upside down, she dumped all my books and folders and papers onto the tile floor. There was no sign of Squeep! Alice shook the bag and then crumpled it up.
Spotting something on the tiles, she bent over and picked up … another green kazoo. Or maybe the same green kazoo.
She looked furious.
“He comes and goes when he wants to,” I said.
“He’s stealing from me,” she said. “So you’re stealing from me.”
“I have no control over Squeep!”
“Dunk him in the toilet,” she said.
07 lifted me across the room.
“No, wait!” I yelled.
Behind Alice, the door swung open.
An adult!
Never had I been so glad to see a teacher. It was my favorite one too, Mr. Stanley, who taught music. He was everyone’s favorite. Always super funny and nice. He had us call him “Stan the Man” instead of Mr. Stanley.
“What the heck’s going on in here?” he yelled, seeing the football player holding me so high in the air. “You put him down right now! What on earth do you think yo—”
The word died in his open mouth as Alice rounded to face him.
“Mr. Stanley,” she said. “You were never here.”
“Okeydoke,” he said.
He turned and walked out of the bathroom.
“No, wait!” I cried. “Mr. Stanley, wait! WAIT!”
The door swung shut behind him.
“Stan the Man!” I yelled.
Alice, turning back around, grinned up at me.
“Is it starting to sink in yet?” she said.
CHAPTER 11
ROLL CALL
“There’s nowhere you can hide,” said Alice. “And no one to protect you. I’ll give you ten more minutes to produce the lizard.”
She gave 07 a look, and he dropped me.
I landed in a crouch on the tiles.
“Ten minutes,” said Alice. “Or else. Come on, Dimitrius.”
07, aka Dimitrius, followed her out of the bathroom.
I gathered my books and papers as fast as I could. I grabbed the empty backpack, which felt heavier than it should. I saw that Squeep! had already reappeared inside. He was circular and beckoning me with his flipper.
The homeroom bell rang.
I scooped up my books and papers, set the backpack on top, and carried the whole mess out the door and back to room 275.
There were no assigned seats for homeroom, so I grabbed a spot in the back row, just as Ms. York reached my name in the roll call.
“Conklin, Happy.”
“Here!” I said.
I began reorganizing all my folders and sliding them into the backpack, carefully, so as to avoid touching Squeep!’s flipper. Ms. York went on calling the roll. I had everything repacked by the time she got to:
“Melman, Doug.”
“Here!” said Doug.
Someone dropped into the seat next to mine.
“I’m here!” said Nev Everly.
She looked out of breath, like she had run to be on time.
Nev had bright-blue eyes. She wore a dress that looked both brand-new and out of a thirty-year-old fashion magazine.
Near her, I always felt two contradictory things: the urgent need to say something and the inability to form words with my brain.
“Mosley, Dana,” continued Ms. York.
“Everly, Nevada!” said Nev. “Present!”
Ms. York looked up over her reading glasses.
“Everly, Nevada,” said Ms. York. “Tardy.”
“Oh please, Ms. York!” said Nev. “You’re still calling roll. You’re only on the Ms. It’s not my fault my last name starts with an E.”
“But it is your fault that you’re tardy,” said Ms. York.
“How come you never start with Zs and move in the other direction?” said Nev. “Mixing it up would be more fair.”
Some of the kids laughed. I decided that this would be a good moment to say something funny, like …
I couldn’t think of anything.
I looked at my desk. Squeep!’s flipper was poking out of my backpack, reaching for me.
I moved my hand toward the flipper.
The moment before my finger touched it, I thought of something funny to say.
“She’s on their side,” I could say. “Ms. York begins with a Y.”
Not hilarious, but funny enough to say.
Only I didn’t say it, because I wasn’t in the classroom anymore.
I was back in the worst place I’d ever been, having a catastrophic breakdown.
CHAPTER 12
OWL-HEADED CRYSTAL MONSTERS
Mentally, I knew the trick of surviving in the Doorganizer: take deep breaths and stay calm.
So I told myself, “Don’t panic. It’s okay.”
But when your body knows it SHOULD panic, your mind saying not to only makes matters worse.
Body: “Everything’s gone crazy! Panic! Panic!”
Mind: “Don’t panic. It’s okay.”
Body: “Great, the mind’s gone crazy too! PANIC! PANIC! PANIC!”
Dad had been right about one thing. Just because I’d been in extra-dimensional space-time didn’t mean I understood it. And “fear of the unknown” is a picnic compared to the terror of the incomprehensible.
I looked down at the mountain of junk beneath my feet: kids’ desks, teachers’ desks, blackboards, audio/visual equipment, globes, wastebaskets, pencil sharpeners, industrial-size cafeteria equipment, and thousands of other things Alice had stolen from the school throughout her sixth- and seventh-grade years.<
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I noticed Squeep! floating somehow in midair beside me, his body still circular, his flipper reaching toward me.
I reached out and touched it, hoping he meant to take me back out of this place.
But he didn’t bite down on the tip of his tail. Instead, his circular body started rotating clockwise, moving us both through time.
Of all the awful creepy feelings in the Doorganizer, time travel was the worst. It could so easily lead to catastrophe.
If you went backward, the months and years could fly by until you actually saw Alice stealing things in reverse. You could watch millions of blur-fast Alices buzzing around the junk piles like bees, dismantling the place until there was nothing left but a single baby Alice hiding the first thing she ever stole: one of Grandma’s cookies.
But we weren’t moving toward the past. Instead, Squeep! pulled me into the future. I know now that he would have had to rotate counterclockwise to go backward. He wasn’t taking me to the birth of the Doorganizer. He meant to show me its death.
I had no idea how far or fast we moved forward through time—seconds? days? years?—because I couldn’t see any variation at all in our surroundings.
Until everything changed at once.
The lights went out. They came back on in flashing strobes as I heard enormous sounds of destruction all around me.
I looked up into the darkness to see hundreds of pieces of paper drifting down through mobile beams of light.
Searchlights. I didn’t like the look of them—something about how they moved and bobbed …
I snatched one of the drifting papers from the air. Upon it, I saw maybe the last thing I expected. A picture of Grandma and me.
Shoving the paper into my pocket, I heard a massive:
CRUNCH!
An enormous crystal foot slammed into the ground. A barrel-hinged ankle turned and then hoisted the foot back up.
I lifted my gaze and saw a huge portal, opening onto another world.
Then I heard another crunching foot-slam.
Tilting my head farther back, I looked up a tower of crystal legs, past its torso, and into the monster’s blinding single eye. Its head looked like a giant cycloptic owl perched on its crystal torso.
