The Last Last-Day-of-Summer Read online

  Old Petey approached Young Petey, who still struggled in Donny O’Doyle’s tight grip. At that moment, a young, camera toting Anna Archie entered the auditorium, wearing a perplexed expression. Both Old Petey and Young Petey became fixed on her. TimeStar intervened, assisting the Peteys by tapping Donny on the shoulder. “Come on, let him go.”

  Not bold enough to challenge an adult, Donny released Young Petey. TimeStar plucked the Turing letter from his hand, passed it to Old Petey, then guided Donny away. At an appropriate point, TimeStar planted a boot in Donny’s coattails and sent the boy flying off the stage. A short yelp and hard thud later, he was sprawled in the floor, his castmates rushing forward to coddle him, leaving Old Petey and Young Petey alone to talk.

  Anna continued down the auditorium aisle. “Petey, are you okay?”

  Old Petey passed Young Petey the letter. And Young Petey told Anna, “I think so.” Then, to his older self, “Thanks, sir.”

  Sheed leaned into Otto, speaking hushed and fast. “That should be it, right? Donny doesn’t call it TURD Institute. No Mr. Flux.”

  “Not exactly.” Otto recognized Sheed knew some version of this story, likely from Mr. Flux himself. But, when crafting this plan, Petey told Otto the rest. Why changing this moment was important, but not enough.

  Old Petey went about his mission. “You may not believe me right now,” he told his young self, “though I think you will the more you consider it. I’m you. From the future.”

  Young Petey stepped backwards, checking the best escape routes for getting away from the crazy people quick, fast, and in a hurry.

  “Don’t get that look in your eye; my friends and I aren’t here to hurt you. If you’re afraid of me, then I’ve already completed half of what I came to do. You should be plenty scared of becoming this.” He jabbed his index finger into his own chest.

  It sounded like Petey’s usual downer talk, though it wasn’t. He was a desperate man, trying to save his own life and the lives of everyone in Fry the only way he knew how, by convincing himself not to give up on . . . himself.

  “I work in Mr. Archie’s hardware store,” said Old Petey.

  At that Anna stiffened and looked ready to object, but Young Petey gave a slight nod and mouthed, We’re fine.

  Old Petey said, “It’s honest work, and I’d be proud to be someone like Mr. Archie. I’m not even that. Today starts a pattern in your—​our—​life where we shy away from anything that seems hard, or scary, or maybe we’ll fail at. Donny was going to tease us and make fun of everything that letter in your hand says. That’s on him. When we believe him and let his idiotic words stop us from chasing our dreams, that’s on us. There will always be Donnys, people who want to tell us no, and can’t, and shouldn’t. I’ve known that for some time but have yet to do anything about it. Now I am. I’m begging you to not become me. Don’t take ten years to figure this out. Don’t let it be Otto, and Sheed, and TimeStar, and Wiki, and Leen, and the Clock Watchers who help you see what you can be. Do you believe me?”

  Young Petey’s eyes brimmed. “Yes. You have the same scar on your eyebrow that I have from—”

  “The propeller of the hovercraft we built when we were six. Will you go to the Turing Institute? Will you promise? Will you promise to keep trying after that? No matter the negative stuff you hear, especially if that negative stuff is coming from you?”

  A crying Young Petey nodded.

  A single slow clap pattered offstage; the drama club director, overwhelmed with feels, applauded. As did his lead actress and the boy playing John Wilkes Booth and, louder than all of them, Anna Archie. Petey, both versions, got the first standing ovation of their life.

  Including Mr. Flux. Unfrozen, somehow.

  He clapped along, shed tears. Otto, Sheed, and TimeStar leapt into defensive positions in case he attacked.

  Otto aimed the camera at him, attempting to freeze him again. The shutter button wouldn’t budge. He shot a panicked look at Sheed, who yelled, “Maneuver—”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Mr. Flux held up a halting hand, a hand that seemed less substantial suddenly. Less there. The time-freezing, Clock-Watcher-dominating, cruel and calculating villain of the day was fading like smoke.

  His hand became see-through; his black suit lightened to gray; from the stage you could see rows and rows of burgundy velvet seats right through him. If you were in those seats, you could see the play’s set and backdrop through an increasingly translucent man shape.

  Part of Otto found this horrifying. How Flux was all there a moment ago, and slowly, surely, wasn’t. When he pulled his eyes away from Mr. Flux to Sheed, he didn’t feel better, all too aware that the fate TimeStar described for his cousin wasn’t so different.

  Sheed did not see the horrors Otto witnessed. He saw resolve. Mr. Flux, whom he’d spent a little time with, wasn’t being snatched painfully from the world. It seemed easy; he accepted it. Maybe that was why he smiled.

  The Peteys seemed to recognize some grand new beginning in the disappearance of Mr. Flux. A whole new world of possibilities. So only Otto freaked out when Old Petey began to fade, along with the troublemaking camera in his hands.

  All the trouble Old Petey’s missed opportunity had caused was being erased from existence.

  Otto let the disappearing camera fall, now so light and insubstantial, it arced back and forth slowly, like an autumn leaf released from a tree branch, before it touched the stage lightly. The device was not his primary concern. “Petey, no! Not you.”

  “It’s okay,” Old Petey said, his disappearance speeding up. “This is what we came here for.”

  Otto’s head whipped to an almost completely faded Mr. Flux, who grinned and agreed. “I never wanted to be the bad guy, Octavius.”

  In an instant, the camera, Old Petey, and Mr. Flux vanished.

  The auditorium doors crashed open as Principal Prince—​who was still Fry High’s principal in modern times—​burst in with one of Young Petey’s fellow stagehands, who’d apparently run for help when Otto, Sheed, and friends appeared from nowhere.

  “That’s our cue,” TimeStar said, adjusting his time device for forward motion. That it now worked, allowing travel into the future, was a good sign.

  Sheed asked the obvious question, though. “How do we know what we’re going back to?”

  TimeStar and Otto spoke at once, in an eerie harmony that raised goose flesh on Sheed’s arms. “Only one way to find out.”

  The blazing time door yawned opened. The three of them jumped through, into the unknown.

  They did not look back.

  39

  UFO

  Otto was first, then Sheed, then TimeStar, the brilliant blue portal snapping shut behind him. Stepping onto the stage of the empty auditorium, it was hard to tell if they’d come back to the right day, year, or century.

  “Where are A.M. and P.M.?” asked Sheed.

  There were no telltale golden footprints anywhere.

  TimeStar shrugged, rechecking the digital display on his device. “Says we’re in the right time.”

  The auditorium doors were intact—​no stampeding Time Suck damage. The three of them pushed through into the empty outer corridor. Then outside of the school—​which was also not damaged. The entire building looked whole and unscathed.

  The day remained hot and incredibly still. Descending the Fry High hill, Otto’s stomach flip-flopped. Had they failed?

  A familiar, old-timey red car—​last seen upside down near Mr. Archie’s store—​motored by. Its driver, the car collector Mr. Green, gave a short horn blurt and a wave.

  Otto, Sheed, and TimeStar followed the car’s path to the intersection; it stopped while other unfrozen cars passed, then turned into traffic.

  The three of them erupted into cheers. They hopped up and down, high-fived, danced. Time was as they’d always known it to be before Mr. Flux came to town.

  Or so they thought.

  * * *

  Main Street was ali
ve with Fry citizens bustling on about their day. All the lampposts stood upright. All the cars sat on their tires. No debris was frozen in midair. Sheed and Otto were ecstatic about another successful adventure.

  TimeStar said, “When Petey stopped his younger self from creating Mr. Flux, it must have sent a ripple through time so none of the terrible things we left behind ever happened.”

  Otto leapt onto the curb when some little kids kicked scooters past him. “Grandma’s not frozen, then?”

  “She shouldn’t be. No one should be.”

  “What about Petey?” Sheed said. “Why’d he disappear like that? Where did he go?”

  Otto pointed up the street. “Let’s go where we usually find him.”

  The door chimes at Archie’s Hardware signaled their entrance, and they were greeted by a young, pimply-faced clerk they’d only ever seen in a yearbook photo. His orange apron said SYLVESTER. He asked, “Can I help you?”

  Careful, Otto said, “Mr. Archie around?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s shelving some glue guns in the back.”

  They moved into the depths of the store and found Mr. Archie doing just as Sylvester said, shelving new, shiny aluminum glue guns next to carpet shampooers.

  Sheed said, “Yo, Mr. Archie?”

  He turned, and he wasn’t the jolly, rosy-cheeked man who always greeted them with a smile. Same face, same height, a bit more bulge to his belly. Not cheery, though, not the guy who loved elephants. Something was wrong here. “Otto and Sheed. What can I help you with?”

  “Uh . . .” Otto couldn’t find his words. The change in the man was so apparent and disturbing.

  “Well,” said Sheed, shaken by this new, sadder Mr. Archie.

  TimeStar stepped in and shook Mr. Archie’s hand vigorously. “How you do, Mr. Archie? I’m Otto and Sheed’s older cousin, and I was telling them I used to be friendly with some kids who went to Fry High back in the day. Guy named Petey was one of them, and the boys said they thought he worked here sometimes.”

  Mr. Archie’s face crinkled. “Peter Thunkle? Work here? Otto and Sheed, you know better than that. I wouldn’t trust that thief with a single nail in this store. Not after what he done.” He snatched a dusty handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at his eyes. “Excuse me, I got a shipment of plungers I need to unpack.”

  Disappearing into the back room, his diminishing sniffles trailing, Mr. Archie left them among the empty guns. Glueless and clueless.

  “A thief?” said Otto.

  Maybe the new Petey wasn’t the improvement they’d hoped for.

  * * *

  After a quick call home to check on Grandma (“I’m fine boys! Why wouldn’t I be?”), they spent the last day of summer wandering around town. Sheed was still in his black suit, though the stovepipe hat had gotten lost somewhere in time. No one questioned this new, formal look of his. Everyone in Fry had seen stranger things.

  They got some barbecue from Mr. James, petted some puppies at Dr. Medina’s. Tossed a Frisbee with some Fry High kids until they were tired and gasping. TimeStar let them lead, Otto noticing how he’d sneak glances at Sheed any and every chance he got.

  Without a word, and no outward sign of agreement, they stuck to safe, normal, unlegendary activities. After the Mr. Archie surprise, they feared what else may have changed due to their time meddling, so they seized onto every recognizable thing they could, lest they be surprised by some other drastic unexplained shift in some once-familiar person’s looks, speech, or anything, really.

  All that wandering wore them out something terrible, though. With no bikes, they began the long walk back to Grandma’s.

  The street they strolled had sparse, country-lazy traffic that never exceeded the speed limit. Every passing car startled starlings into flight. The clouds meandered, the sun slid across the sky. A dog barked somewhere far away.

  Their bright yellow house in the middle of green wavy grass appeared on the horizon like a sunrise. TimeStar said, “I should probably return to Harkness Hill. See about getting back to my own time. Wouldn’t be good if Grandma saw me.”

  Sheed cocked his head. TimeStar’s mention of Grandma had been a little too casual.

  “Your grandma,” TimeStar said. “Yours. She’d probably think my clothes were weird.”

  Sheed squinted, scrutinized TimeStar’s face. Otto leapt between the two of them. “That’s probably a good idea. We’ll walk with you. You lead the way.”

  The whole march up Harkness, Otto made a point of positioning himself between Sheed and TimeStar, hoping to prevent what would be catastrophic recognition. For surely if Sheed recognized a grown-up Otto, he’d also recognize his adult self’s suspicious absence.

  Guarding Sheed from the truth presented a different problem for Otto. He wanted one last, private, desperate word with TimeStar. Something he couldn’t do with Sheed on his heels. Sadly, he could think of no maneuver to change the situation.

  On top of Harkness, where they’d first met Mr. Flux, TimeStar peered over the county with longing. “It doesn’t look like this in my time.”

  Otto would’ve asked how Logan County had changed, despite warnings of knowing too much about the future. But, a whiny, chopping sound unlike anything he’d ever heard snatched his attention.

  Sheed shielded his eyes from the sun as a triangular silhouette unlike anything he’d ever seen hovered closer.

  TimeStar took a protective stance. “Get behind me boys.”

  They did as told—​Otto feeling extra strange being protected by himself—​and watched a sleek, metallic vehicle descend quickly over the grass before them, then hovering just feet from the ground before making a gentle touchdown.

  It was something like a helicopter, painted a metallic gray-black like the photos of a stealth bomber in Otto’s airplane encyclopedia. Angular nose, wide middle that narrowed into an aerodynamic tail. It had no visible propeller, though blue light similar to TimeStar’s device gleamed beneath it. The dark tinted windshield prevented a view of the pilots. Stenciled on the side was a stylish logo, a red circle around yellow letters: PT.

  A side door jutted forward, breaking some kind of seal with a pressurized hiss, then slid aside giving them a view of plush leather seats occupied by two almost familiar people.

  Popping his chrome safety harness, a barely recognizable Petey Thunkle leapt nimbly from the cabin. “Hi there, fellas! Long time no see.”

  40

  The Last Deduction of Summer

  The same way that Mr. Archie was unexpectedly down, Petey, in his tailored gray suit, fancy haircut, and eyeglasses that looked cooler than eyeglasses should, was unexpectedly up! He was perky, and bright, and excited.

  Was that what messing with time did? Made people you know switch personalities?

  Sheed, happy to see Petey and happier to see such a weirdly neat vehicle, couldn’t keep away. He flung himself at Petey, and Otto followed suit, nearly tackling the changed man.

  Through the rough and welcome hugs, Petey snaked a hand free for a shake from TimeStar, who asked, “What happened to you?”

  Petey glanced over his shoulder. There was another passenger in the vehicle, their face hidden by shadow. He leaned forward, whispering, “I listened to me. Old me. Went to the Turing Institute. Then MIT. Then built some prototype engines that would go on to revolutionize daily travel leading to the Interstate Skyway System, then—”

  Sheed formed a T with his hands. “Time-out. What’s a skyway?”

  Petey laughed. “It hasn’t expanded this far out yet, but by the time you two take flyer’s ed and get flyer’s licenses, there should be several hover lanes operational in this part of the country.”

  Otto felt lightheaded. “Are you saying you invented flying cars?”

  “Not exactly. The engine. Not the car. Well, they’re not really cars. Lev-Ports is the technical name. No need to split hairs.”

  Sheed gasped, possibly hyperventilating. “YOU INVENTED FLYING CARS!”

  The passenger
in Petey’s . . . Lev-Port, spoke up. “Darling, are you okay out there?”

  There was something about that voice.

  Petey waved with his left hand, a silver band on his left ring finger, like TimeStar’s. “I’m fine, dumpling. Chatting with friends.” To Sheed, “Yes. If we’re keeping it simple, flying cars are a product of my company PeteyTech. Though that’s nothing compared to my greatest invention.”

  He motioned to the time travel device dangling from TimeStar’s belt. “Haven’t quite figured it out yet, but I’m close. Obviously, I succeed. Or none of us would be here.”

  “About that,” Otto said, referring to his notes. “How are we here like this? You disappeared, and the world changed. Why do we remember Mr. Flux and the Clock Watchers?”

  Petey shrugged. “I could get into a lot of dense theories on space and time. Could explain that since we were all disjointed from the time freeze for such a long period, the time-changing ripple effect hit us differently than everyone else. Or I could give you the best, though not particularly scientific explanation. Logan County makes everything weird.”

  Otto chewed his pencil. How to document that?

  Entry #80

  Logan = Weird (always).

  Sheed traced a finger over the PeteyTech logo. “Why’d Mr. Archie tell us you’re a thief? He used to love you like a son.”

  Petey gave a mighty eye roll. “He still loves me like a son. He has to. He’s cranky because, well . . . Anna, could you come here a sec, honey?”

  Anna Archie (or was it Thunkle now?) stepped from the Lev-Port in a shimmering gown, with large diamonds strung like ice cubes on her necklace, the stones winking sunlight. Though none of them compared to the boulder weighing down her left hand.

  “Hi, everyone.” She didn’t seem to recognize Otto and Sheed. That stung, but Logan = Weird (always). She looked healthy and happy. Her smile hadn’t changed a bit.