The Last Last-Day-of-Summer Page 12

  “Nonsense, Bug,” said Missus Thunkle.

  “I agree with your mom,” a groggy Sheed said, pushing out of the hedges.

  TimeStar left his hiding place in the shadowy basement doorway and heaved a disappointed breath. “Maybe this was too obvious. If he suspects it’s a trap, why would he come?”

  A long, darkly clothed arm stretched from the basement and tapped TimeStar’s shoulder. He gulped. “Guys.”

  Otto, Sheed, and Petey turned his way. They gulped, too.

  Mr. Flux emerged from behind TimeStar’s shoulder, peered at them all, and said, “The better question is if this was a trap, why would I come alone?”

  Otto yelled, “Petey! The paper!”

  Petey reactivated the traps surrounding Otto, charging the air with static electricity that raised the hairs on Otto’s neck and arms.

  TimeStar spun around, aiming a punch at Mr. Flux’s nose. A hand caught that fist of fury an inch before it connected. It belonged to a very large, very grouchy-looking, very sweaty Clock Watcher. He grabbed TimeStar’s belt and hefted him off the ground.

  Mr. Flux said, “Crunch Time, remove this obstacle.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” TimeStar yelled as he was hurled directly onto a sheet of fly/mole paper. The trapped worked perfectly, cementing TimeStar’s back to it. His arms and legs swiped at the air, like a turtle that couldn’t turn over.

  “Fellas,” TimeStar said, “get out of here.”

  They tried. But all of their escape routes were quickly cut off by more Clock Watchers. All, apparently, on Mr. Flux’s side. Boxed in, with nowhere to go, Sheed eyed the nearby antigravity crates they’d hauled Petey’s equipment in. He grabbed one of the feather-light boxes and told Petey, “Snap your fingers when I tell you.”

  Sheed threw the near weightless crate toward a trio of approaching Clock Watchers. As it sailed over their heads, he shouted, “Now!”

  Petey snapped his fingers, deactivating the gravity dampeners. The now-heavy crate crashed on Clock Watcher heads and shattered, knocking them into a splintery pile. Three down . . . a lot more to go. Several squads of Clock Watchers spilled into the yard.

  Mr. Flux eyed the camera around Otto’s neck and strolled toward him with purpose. He stepped squarely on a sheet of the paper, trapping one foot. He took a long stride with his free foot, and his anchored leg stretched in that rubbery way of his. Recognizing the trap that snagged him, Flux said, “Smart.”

  “Sheed!” Otto and TimeStar yelled at once, their voices perfectly harmonized, almost indistinguishable.

  Sheed raised the camera, planting Mr. Flux squarely in the viewfinder while the villain’s attention was on Otto. Thumb on the shutter, he pressed—​

  —​at the exact moment a child-size Clock Watcher in blue-and-yellow-striped pajamas, a matching floppy hat, and a teddy bear dangling from one hand threw herself at Mr. Flux, knocking him from Sheed’s view. Instead of capturing Flux in the camera’s flash, Sheed caught that Clock Watcher, who froze, still airborne in her tackling pose.

  Mr. Flux told his brave soldier, “Thank you Bed Time! Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

  She yawned. “My time for you, sir!”

  Mr. Flux turned his gaze on Sheed and the real camera. “I believe that’s my property.”

  Sheed went for another shot, but the ground vibrated beneath his feet with such force, it knocked him off balance so he missed his chance. Thunderous footsteps grew louder behind him.

  Otto saw it coming, shouted, “Look out! Platypus!”

  Another Clock Watcher rode a humongous, raging Time Suck straight at Sheed and Petey.

  Sheed went left, Petey right as the thing barreled into the yard. Its massive feet stomping toward the fly/mole paper, where TimeStar was still trapped. Those feet would crush him.

  “Petey, deactivate the paper!” Otto yelled.

  Petey powered down the traps. TimeStar rolled from the path of the beast just in time. Free.

  But so was Mr. Flux, who taunted Otto with his freedom. “Good try. Just not good enough. Night Time!”

  A Clock Watcher whose whole body seemed a shifty cosmos of dark skies, dark clouds, and stars, with a lopsided fingernail moon where most people had faces, raised its arms high and wide. Deep shadow and shade spilled forth from the Clock Watcher’s palms, cresting over Petey’s yard like a tidal wave.

  Otto pressed his hands into the new night, trying to feel his way through the darkness, anticipating Mr. Flux clutching his neck at any second. The darkness was so deep, Otto couldn’t see his hands, even though they were just a few inches away. Frightened more than he’d ever been, he worried that this darkness might never go away. “Sheed!”

  As quickly as it had come, the new night disappeared. Like a flipped light switch, the day was back. The Clock Watchers were gone. So was Mr. Flux.

  The false camera still dangled around Otto’s neck. The real camera was nowhere in sight.

  Neither was Sheed.

  Mr. Flux had taken him, too.

  27

  Double Take

  “Sheed!”

  It couldn’t be true. Sheed was hiding, or maybe stuck, or maybe tossed in the neighbor’s pool. Otto sprinted over and climbed the plastic steps. The water remained time-frozen, undisturbed. “Sheed!”

  TimeStar joined in, checking the other yard beneath the trampoline. “Sheed!”

  The two of them yelled the missing boy’s name over and over, their voices doubling in the strange harmony that made it impossible to tell them apart. Petey helped search, even going as far as to check the mutant mole hole in his mother’s flower garden. Otto and TimeStar became frantic, their voices and phrases matching each other in ways that drew Petey’s attention. He stared at them, squinting, their words blending as precisely as a well-rehearsed choir.

  “Sheed . . .”

  “. . . where . . .”

  “. . . are . . .”

  “. . . you?”

  Missus Thunkle broke the news none of them wanted to hear. “I’m sorry, boys. If he was here, he would’ve answered by now.”

  Of course she was right. Of course Sheed wasn’t beneath a flowerpot, or in the storm gutters.

  A horrible vision of his lanky cousin frozen in time terrorized Otto. Sheed’s tiny ’fro fixed in a not-quite-perfect halo forever.

  Otto’s lip trembled, his eyes burned. He turned away from TimeStar and Petey, not wanting them to see him cry. As the tears brimmed, TimeStar said, “No! No! Not here. I’m not supposed to lose him here.”

  Otto turned to TimeStar again. “Huh?”

  The time traveler pounded his fist on one of the remaining antigravity crates, seemingly forgetting Otto, Petey, and Missus Thunkle were even around.

  “It doesn’t happen like this. I can’t have messed it up this bad,” he mumbled.

  Otto approached the man cautiously, worried about the panic he was in. “You’re going to hurt your hand if you keep banging on the box like that.”

  TimeStar’s eyes widened, as if surprised he wasn’t alone. “I—​I’m sorry. It’s just, this day, it wasn’t supposed to—”

  Awkward and embarrassed, TimeStar slapped his right hand on the right side of his neck, just behind his ear. At the same moment, Otto did the exact same thing.

  Petey said, “Oh my goodness!”

  “What’s wrong?” Otto and TimeStar said together, harmonizing once more.

  Petey leapt up and down in place, pointing between them. “Oh, oh, oh!”

  Otto couldn’t understand what had Petey so riled up. Were they under attack again? He scanned the area for incoming Clock Watchers. TimeStar plucked his goggles from his face, revealing familiar brown eyes. His chest heaved, and his shoulders slumped, as if expecting something unpleasant.

  Petey, swinging his pointer finger between them, gathered his words. “You’re him. He’s you.”

  Otto still didn’t get it.

  Petey said, “You’re the same person! TimeStar is you, Otto. Grown
up. From the future.”

  For once, there was not a bit of doubt in Petey’s voice.

  28

  The Two of You

  Otto—​a boy who’d faced monsters and ghosts, and who now lived in a frozen eternal day—​understood there was Logan County strange, and then there was too strange. Too weird. Too CRAZY!

  First of all, Otto would’ve noticed if he and TimeStar were the same person. How could he not? He had an extremely observant, deductive mind (despite what Wiki Ellison would have you believe). He’d jotted down notes after their rooftop conversation with TimeStar, recorded TimeStar’s physical characteristics in great detail. Otto flipped his pad open, striking out prior summations and jotting new ones.

  Entry #55

  The stranger from the portal:

  —Has dreadlocks Has stupid dreadlocks, like Sheed wants, not me.

  —Is skinny Is TOO skinny. It’s as if donuts don’t exist in the future (preposterous) and I love donuts. So there.

  —Has a beard Has an itchy-looking carpet on his face, and I would never, ever want that.

  —In his late 20s? Is old as dirt and, just, NOPE!

  DEDUCTION:Inconclusive. Petey is WRONG!

  “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.” Otto said. “Right?”

  Except . . . TimeStar wasn’t saying wrong. He wasn’t saying anything. Shouldn’t he see how stupid this was and speak up?

  With no word from TimeStar, Petey traveled down his usual path of self-doubt. “Or, maybe not.”

  Before Otto could agree, TimeStar said, “You’re right, Petey. It’s time to come clean.”

  “No,” said Otto. “He’s not right. I don’t want to be clean. You aren’t me.”

  “Ask me something only we would know.”

  “Don’t say we.”

  “Just ask me something.”

  Otto was tempted to storm away. It was a foolish waste of time playing this game. They needed to find Sheed.

  “Anything,” TimeStar insisted. “At all.”

  Huffing, Otto said, “Fine. What grade did I get on the last math test of the year?”

  “Oh, come on, Otto. That was a long time ago. It can’t be that specific.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. It was only three months ago. You said anything, and you failed. See, Petey? He’s not me.”

  A patient TimeStar said, “Okay. I’ll tell you something only we could know.”

  “Stop saying we.”

  “I know what happened that time Grandma’s kitchen blew up in a ball of green fire.”

  Otto gulped. The official story was a gas leak. A green gas leak. The unofficial and true story involved a Bog Monster following him and Sheed home after they uncovered an eldritch patch of swamp deep in the Gnarled Forest.

  “Even if you do know something other than what the fire chief put in his official report,” Otto said, “you claimed all of our adventures were documented in the future. You could be getting the information from your historians.”

  “There are no historians. I made that up because there are rules to time travel, rules about what you can say or do because it can affect the future. I’ve made an illegal trip, but I still need to be careful. I didn’t want you knowing all I’d lied about, so it wouldn’t change things about the past.” He stared intensely at Otto. “Do you understand?”

  Otto shook his head, refusing to believe. He flipped to a page in his notepad. “You’re from 2211. That’s almost two hundred years from now.”

  “Otto, flip the numbers. Not 2211, but 1122. Sound familiar?”

  It did. 1122. As in November 22.

  Otto’s birthday.

  Wiki Ellison would’ve figure that out easy.

  TimeStar said, “I’m really from twenty years in the future, Otto. Not two hundred. I’m you at the age of thirty-one.”

  “You’re a liar!” Otto screamed, more mad than he’d ever been, not wanting to believe. “The bog monster, my birthday, could all be in your records. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “When Witching Hour said the ‘two of you’ had secrets, she was talking about me and you, Otto. Get it?”

  The two. Of you.

  “You know my secret now, and I know yours,” TimeStar said. “You’re jealous of Sheed sometimes.”

  Otto’s eyes burned.

  “You think he’s better at sports and more people like him. You’re even jealous of Leen Ellison’s crush on him because you don’t think girls will ever like you. You think your Logan County fame and these adventures are all you have, so you chase them with everything in you.”

  TimeStar’s voice sped up, deepened, almost like he wasn’t talking to Otto, but some unseen audience. Someone important and far away. “You think without them you’re a nobody, so you write down every little detail you can, and you read those notes at night with a flashlight when Sheed’s snoring in his bed. They’re better than comic books to you. Those Keys to the City from Mayor Ahmed are your prized possessions—​you consider them yours, even though Sheed’s name is on them too. Deep down, you tell yourself that you could’ve gotten them without his help, that you’re the reason the Alston Boys are legendary.” His intense gaze flicked away, and his voice softened. “You’re wrong, though. About all of it. You’ll come to regret all those thoughts. Guess you wouldn’t know that part yet.”

  Petey stepped in then, grabbed TimeStar by the arm. “I think he gets it.”

  Tears streamed down Otto’s cheeks. He sniveled, crying in a way that hadn’t been acceptable since he was a real little kid. The embarrassing kind of crying. Ugly, snotting crying.

  “You aren’t me!” he shouted, and ran from the yard, wanting nothing else to do with TimeStar, or Petey, or Mr. Flux. It was all too much, and he was alone. Up the hill he ran, snatching Sheed’s discarded bike, and he pedaled toward town with no particular destination in mind, half blind from searing tears. There was a horrid ache in his chest from TimeStar’s sharp confession and his own keen deductions. Despite what he wanted to believe, he couldn’t convince himself that the man wasn’t telling the truth.

  For all their differences in hair, and height, and weight, they shared the same eyes.

  Otto swiped at his face, riding so fast that the tears he didn’t mop away were seized by the breeze he created as he pushed the bike through the frozen Fry streets and past the stuck Fry citizens. Almost instinctively, he set a course for Butler Park. Specifically, the playground that used to be his and Sheed’s favorite destination in all of Logan.

  Through the open park gates he rode, shooting between the twisty slide and swing set. Little kids were frozen mid-stride between one fun apparatus and another.

  A smoky scent hung in the air, along with an unmoving haze that had drifted from the open field where big kids sometimes played touch football, or tossed Frisbees. Otto slowed his pedaling.

  Only a few people occupied the vast lawn. A couple of picnic blankets were spread out beneath frozen families enjoying the perfect day. Off to the side, another familiar Fry resident was stuck in front of an oversize grill and a potbellied smoker. Mr. James, the local barbecue pit master, had brought all his equipment, coolers full of meat, and a big gallon jug of lava-colored hot sauce with the pump nozzle, ready for what would’ve been an epic cookout to close the summer.

  On more than one occasion, Otto, Sheed, and Grandma had had the opportunity to enjoy hamburgers with the scorch lines; fat, just-burnt-enough hot dogs; sausages that squirted juice when you bit them; and Otto’s favorite, sweet saucy ribs. All specialties of Mr. James. He always fed people until he ran out, and he never asked for money, though Fry residents were happy to pay him for such good food in spite of his resistance. He always said, “We look out for each other in Logan County. That’s a bit of our strangeness I hope rubs off on the rest of this big, normal world.”

  All of Otto’s Mr. James memories were good ones. He wanted to be reminded of good memories now, so he dropped his bike and gave in to the pull of the grill.

 
“Hey, Mr. James.”

  “Heyyyyy, Otto Alston. You can move!”

  “Yeah, I didn’t get stuck like everyone else.” He glanced at the useless fake camera hanging against his chest. “You being stuck is kind of my fault.”

  “I have a hard time believing that. Even if that was the case, you weren’t trying to make it so I couldn’t move. Were you?”

  “It’s not just you, sir. It’s all of Fry.”

  “Well. That is a mess. Still, you didn’t mean it, did you?”

  He was tired of not being honest. If TimeStar was really him, and he’d been lying to Otto all day, that made lying to himself truly distasteful now. “Maybe. I wanted summer to be longer.”

  “Everyone wants that!” Mr. James laughed through his unmoving lips. “Summer’s the best time for cooking outside. The smells make everyone come and talk to me. I make people happiest in summer. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that feeling to last.”

  “You still think that? Even being stuck at your grill?”

  “Sure. Wanting something, and what you do about it, is two different things, young man. Knowing you and Sheed, I bet y’all doing all you can to fix it. Where is Sheed, by the way? I got them sausages he like.”

  Suddenly, talking to Mr. James, and being all honest, didn’t feel so good. “I—​I need to go find him.”

  “Don’t let me hold you. I ain’t going nowhere.” A big belly laugh that time. “Tell you what, you two go on and get this day fixed, and once I can move again, I’mma make a plate for you, Sheed, and your grandma. Make sure you get some ribs. You dang near cleaned the bones last time!”

  “Yes sir. I appreciate that, sir.”

  Otto turned away, bothered by something Mr. James had said. Something the reward of a big ole plate of ribs couldn’t make him feel better about.

  Where is Sheed, by the way?

  Grabbing the bike, he put some distance between him and the delicious smells suspended around Mr. James’s grill. He found a fairly isolated bench and sat down, consulted his notes, and scribbled some new thoughts.