The Last Last-Day-of-Summer Page 4

  Still low and quiet, the boys crept past the mirror emporium’s display window, catching glimpses of their own reflections dozens of times over in mirrors of various sizes, shapes, and mounts. Past the display window, at the corner, they paused. Otto stayed low, while Sheed stood. They peeked around the corner at the sights. One of which was ordinarily strange, while the other was extraordinarily strange.

  Next to the mirror emporium was what Grandma called “green space.” It was an area that had bushes, and baby trees, and benches, and a neat water fountain. Grandma said it was meant to keep downtown Fry pretty, so people didn’t have to look at just buildings and businesses all the time.

  It wasn’t a large space. Big enough for people to have a seat while eating their lunch, or toss pennies in the fountain for a wish. Also, it was big enough for Missus Nedraw, the owner of the Rorrim Mirror Emporium, to take her favorite mirrors for a walk.

  That was the ordinarily—​meaning common for Logan County/Fry—​strange thing, by the way.

  In the year since Missus Nedraw had opened the emporium, she’d made a daily habit of loading a bunch of mirrors into a red wagon and trucking them along the cobblestone paths of the green space. Everyone noticed it. Whispered about it. The Logan County Gazette even wrote a story about Missus Nedraw’s weird habit. When asked about the routine, Missus Nedraw was quoted as saying, “It keeps everything calm and collected.”

  Not much of an explanation, but enough for the people of Fry and the rest of Logan County.

  The boys were not surprised to see Missus Nedraw with her wagon full of mirrors. They weren’t surprised that she was frozen mid-step, one black-and-white-striped stocking and a black clog shoe stretched ahead, not quite touching the ground. They were surprised by her unfrozen company.

  Two people. Two shiny people.

  Not like when you run and sweat a lot, or when you’re oily from not washing your face good and Grandma tells you to go back upstairs and do it right. These two glowed.

  Their clothes were varying shades of yellow and gold. One wore a suit with pants that looked like fresh butter, the coat like canary feathers, and a tightly knotted neckerchief the color of lemon peels. While the other wore a mustard skirt, her blouse was like a fresh egg’s yolk, and a big floppy hat the shade of sunflowers complemented her gold hoop earrings. Their skin was coppery, the shade and sheen of new pennies.

  They were the extraordinarily strange things.

  They faced each other like two suns at the center of a solar system consisting entirely of hovering hand mirrors. The one in the skirt lifted a new hand mirror from Missus Nedraw’s wagon, inhaled, braced herself, and peered into the glass.

  “Nooooooo.” She flung the mirror aside, where it stuck in the air like a piece of fruit suspended in Jell-O.

  The one in the pants also had a fresh mirror. He raised it to eye level, gasped. “Nooooo.” He flung it away.

  They reached toward the wagon for new mirrors.

  Otto, not bothering to consult Sheed, stepped from his hiding place, holding both hands up. “Wait!”

  The shiny people faced him, sprouting twin smiles. The one in the skirt said, “You can see us?”

  “Yes!”

  The one in the pants said, “Do we look fabulous?”

  “Er, I guess.”

  They rushed forward, brushing aside floating mirrors that reset themselves in the air once the pair were clear of them.

  “Be careful,” said Missus Nedraw in the same ventriloquist style as the other frozen Fry residents. Though no one seemed to be paying her any attention.

  Sheed, for his part, left his hiding place and punched Otto in the shoulder.

  “Ow. What was that for?” Otto asked.

  “For giving away our position without warning me.”

  “They aren’t dangerous.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “But we aren’t dangerous,” said the shiny man in the neckerchief.

  “We’re stylists.” The woman in the skirt thrust forward a flimsy cardboard rectangle. The boys hesitated, looked at each other, then Otto took the object before Sheed could argue. It was a business card, and it said:

  GOLDEN HOUR, A.M.

  “Your Best Look Now”

  That’s all it said.

  Otto flipped the card over. There was no phone number, email address, or website. The one in the neckerchief also offered a card. Sheed took that one. Read it. Compared it to the one in Otto’s hand.

  “It’s the same,” Sheed said.

  “Not at all,” said the man, “I’m P.M.”

  The woman said, “I’m A.M.”

  Otto reviewed both cards and saw the difference, as slight as it was. “Golden Hour, A.M., and Golden Hour, P.M.”

  Together, the Golden Hours said, “We make anybody look good!”

  Otto said, “That’s really confusing.”

  “Yeah,” Sheed agreed.

  The Golden Hours stroked their chins. The woman said, “Perhaps you have a point. Does it help if I tell you I’m the one in the skirt?”

  She fluffed the garment’s yellow lacy frills.

  “Not really,” said Sheed. “What’s a Golden Hour anyway?”

  “Everyone knows us,” the man said, a bit agitated. “We’re responsible for that special time of the day—”

  “Just around sunrise and sunset—” the woman interjected.

  “When the light is perfect for taking your most gorgeous photos.”

  Otto said, “Does A.M. stand for Ante Meridiem? And P.M. for Post Meridiem? Like a clock?”

  “Absolutely not!” scoffed the woman, “One means ‘Amazingly Magnificent,’ and the other ‘Positively Marvelous’”

  “Wellll,” the man said, stretching the word. “That’s only after we rebranded.”

  “We agreed we’d stick with the new naming convention in front of clients.”

  “I know we did. But since things have gone so haywire, we may need to think beyond our public image until all is sorted out.”

  “If we’re not consistent with our brand, how can we expect the interdimensional community to—”

  Sheed interrupted their bickering. “So Otto was right. Like a clock?”

  Reluctantly, they nodded.

  Sheed bit the inside of his cheek, really thinking it over. He motioned to himself, then Otto, “I’m Rasheed, and he’s Octavius. But people call us Sheed and Otto because it’s just easier. What if we gave you two easier names? Is it okay if we call you A.M. and P.M.?”

  He waited so they could think it over. Grandma said it was respectful to call people what they wanted to be called, and nothing else.

  The Golden Hours turned away, whispered back and forth, came to a decision. “Those names are perfectly fine with us.”

  “Sweet,” Otto said. “A.M., P.M., can you tell us what’s going on around here?”

  P.M. fiddled with his neckerchief. “We don’t really know.”

  Sheed waved toward the path of the destruction on the street behind them. “Do you know what the big, fuzzy duck monster was?”

  A.M.’s skirt swished from a fearful shudder. “Oh, that was a Time Suck.” As if that was all the explanation required.

  “What the heck’s a Time Suck?”

  “Extremely dangerous creatures,” said P.M., his complexion dimming. “If they catch you, they just want to play and wrestle and sometimes step on you then drag your flattened body around like a rag doll so you can’t get anything done. Very inconvenient. Oh”—​his eyes widened, aimed at Otto—​“is that a camera?”

  Otto had forgotten about the camera dangling from his neck. Had grown comfortable with the weight of the device that had messed up the town. That bothered him, but not as much as these quirky strangers noticing it. He took a step back.

  A.M. stepped closer. “Let’s take some pictures. We can make you look amazing.”

  “No!” Sheed said, using his angry outdoor voice. “We’re not taking pictures. Tell us why y
ou’re not frozen like everyone else in town.”

  Frozen Missus Nedraw said, “That’s a very good question.”

  A.M. and P.M. huffed, as if the question were silly.

  A.M. said, “Weren’t we clear? We are Clock Watchers.”

  “Agents of time,” said P.M.

  “And as of some point today, something put us out of a job.”

  Embarrassed heat prickled Otto’s cheeks and forehead. Sheed stared down at the camera.

  Something?

  More like someone.

  9

  nedraW nosirP ehT

  Otto could not face the Golden Hours without feeling guilty. So he focused on the dozen or so hand mirrors levitating just beyond A.M. and P.M. Desperately wanting to change the subject, he said, “Why were you screaming at those mirrors?”

  The beaming smiles on their faces thinned into straight lines. “Because,” A.M. said, “they are so unflattering.”

  Sheed stepped past them, grabbed the handle of the closest mirror. It was small enough that it unstuck immediately.

  “Please be careful with the mirrors,” Missus Nedraw pleaded.

  Sheed twisted and turned the mirror, stuck out his tongue, picked his ’fro. He thought he looked fine. “I don’t get it.”

  He turned the mirror around so A.M. and P.M. could see the glass.

  “Nooooo,” they shouted.

  Their sudden scream startled Sheed, and he dropped the hand mirror. It smacked the ground face-down, a small thunder crack. Missus Nedraw wheezed.

  “Seven years bad luck,” Otto said.

  “Oh boy.” Missus Nedraw’s voice trembled. “It’s quite a bit worse than that.”

  No one really paid attention to Missus Nedraw because the Golden Hours were making so much noise with their whimpering and despair. Otto followed Sheed’s example and grabbed another hand mirror from the air, positioning it so he could see what A.M. and P.M. saw.

  “Nooooo,” they screamed.

  Otto said, “There’s really nothing wrong with how you look, you know.”

  Missus Nedraw said, “Boys.”

  A.M. refused to peek at the mirror. “This midmorning light is terrible for us. My pores.”

  “Boys,” said Missus Nedraw.

  P.M. recoiled. “You can barely detect the definition in my cheekbones.”

  “BOYS! EYES ON ME RIGHT NOW!”

  All heads turned.

  “Don’t make any sudden movements. Very slowly, very carefully, I want one of you to pick up that mirror you dropped, then place it under the water in the fountain.”

  The fountain she spoke of rested in the center of the green space and was also frozen. Its shimmering waterspouts looked more like fancy glass sculptures than liquid. Since he and Otto could unstick small things from the time freeze, Sheed supposed he could put the mirror under the fountain’s surface; water was just a bunch of tiny drops put together. But why?

  “Is there a reason, Missus Nedraw?” he asked.

  “Because water can also be a mirror. I’m sure you’ve looked at your reflection in a pond, or even that very fountain. So if you hurry, we can use the water in the fountain as a cage until . . . well, until we figure out something else.”

  Otto wondered if he’d misheard her. “It sounds like you said something about a cage.”

  “I did.”

  Sheed’s face puckered. “Why you need a cage?”

  “Because tranquilizer darts won’t work on this one.”

  The boys didn’t move. Unsure what to do or say.

  She sighed. “I’m not supposed to talk about this, but I don’t sell mirrors. I store them. For safekeeping.”

  “Like an antique collector?” Otto asked. Grandma watched shows about antique collectors, so he knew the importance of properly storing things like bronze spoons from the 1700s.

  Missus Nedraw said, “No. More like a prison warden. Now please go collect that mirror before it gets away.”

  Sheed was totally confused. Missus Nedraw sounded real upset, and he wanted to help her feel better, so he looked at the spot where he’d dropped the mirror. A few tiny glittering shards of broken glass remained, though the mirror was now five feet from where it had landed. Maybe he’d kicked it aside without knowing it.

  He strolled over, knelt, reached for it.

  The mirror slid away from his grasp.

  “What?” Sheed reached again.

  The mirror flipped like a tossed coin, and where cracked glass should’ve been there was a fat green tentacle, tapering down to a tip the width of a carrot and whipping about. The cold, slimy thing grazed Sheed’s thumb, causing him to recoil and squeal. He hated tentacles.

  Unfortunately, when he leapt backwards, he collided with several of the stuck hand mirrors. At his touch they rained to the ground in quick succession of thunderous cracks. More tentacles sprouted from the shattered surfaces, like roots searching for earth. There were ten or twelve of the thick, octopus-like arms uncoiling from the ornate bronze, and silver, and gold mirror frames. They hopped about randomly for an instant before twitching with recognition of one another and arranging themselves into two even rows. They moved in rhythm, like the legs of centipede but without the actual centipede body. Just a bunch of hand mirrors resting on top of a bunch of tentacle stumps that shuffled around the corner together, out of sight. A prison break.

  “Now you’ve done it!” Missus Nedraw said.

  Otto, Sheed, and the Golden Hours were too busy shuddering with disgust and holding each other in a group hug to do anything about the tentacle-mirror-prisoner-thingy.

  “Hurry!” Missus Nedraw said. “You all need to unfreeze me right now.”

  “How?” said Sheed, peeling himself from his cousin’s embrace.

  Otto’s last deduction bounced around his brain. He and Sheed could unfreeze things, but people weren’t things. “We can’t unstick you, Missus Nedraw.”

  Missus Nedraw apparently thought different. She huffed. “Of course you can! With the help of the Shiny Brights over there.”

  The Golden Hours pointed at themselves. “Us?”

  “You Shinys touch me at the same time as you boys,” Missus Nedraw said. “The combination of their strangeness and your not-strangeness should reverse the effects of this magical nonsense.”

  Otto, always in need of more information, said, “How do you know that?”

  “I trap monsters in mirrors! I know a lot of things! Now hop to!”

  If the Legendary Alston Boys had learned anything during their many Logan County outings, it was that there was a time to think and a time to do. This was do time.

  Everyone circled Missus Nedraw. The Golden Hours grabbed her shoulders, and she sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut. When Otto and Sheed touched her too, she rocketed into the air, twisting into a somersault that propelled her clean over the boys’ heads. She landed in a crouch, unfrozen and determined, then sprinted after the tentacle mirrors. The boys, their mouths gaping, watched her turn the corner faster than any Fry Flamingos basketball player.

  Sheed turned to the Golden Hours. “Did you two know that would work?”

  There was no response.

  The Golden Hours were gone too.

  10

  The Highest Court in the Land

  “No way.” Sheed looked left, right, and even up for any sign of the shiny pair.

  Otto did not help, too busy recording all they’d just learned.

  Entry #43

  A.M. and P.M. claim to be “Clock Watchers”—​agents of time—​whatever that means. They appear to be creatures of supernatural origin. Their touch, combined with a touch from me and/or Sheed, can unstick a person, permanently freeing them from their frozen state. An ability previously unavailable to us.

  DEDUCTION: We need to find them and start unfreezing more townspeople. We can use all the help we can get.

  Sheed jogged off a bit, his eyes flicking down. “Otto!”

  Otto continued his notations.


  Sheed clapped his hands. “Otto! There’s a trail.”

  Otto peeled his eyes from his pad and noticed two sets of glittering gold footprints tracing a path from where A.M. and P.M. once stood. Easy enough to follow.

  “Get your bike!” Sheed shouted, already running for his.

  Grabbing their supplies and stuffing them into Otto’s backpack, they darted to where they’d laid their bikes in the street. Mounting them, they pumped the pedals, tracking the golden footprints. It was an easy trail to follow, though A.M. and P.M. must have been moving fast because the cousins saw no sign of them. They rode through familiar streets, all the way across Fry, past its many frozen residents. The general direction of the tracks seemed to be taking them to a place they knew well from so many cool football, basketball, and baseball games. Fry High School, home of the Fighting Flamingos.

  Because it was the high school, it sat at the highest point in town, on top of the hill that rose up like a tent’s peak. Riding the bikes up the incline was strenuous work, even for boys who ran everywhere and sometimes jumped for no reason at all. By the time they reached the school, they were both gasping mightily. Sheed most of all.

  The boys couldn’t figure any reason why the Golden Hours would go there. Like their middle school, the high school wouldn’t open until tomorrow. If tomorrow ever came.

  They dropped their bikes and gear, took a moment to catch their breath. Sheed removed the length of rope from Otto’s bag and hefted it on his shoulder. “I’m so tying them up.”

  “Maybe we won’t have to,” said Otto. “A.M. and P.M. seemed nice enough.”

  “Before they ran away.”

  “If we find them and we think they’re going to run again, we could maybe tackle them.”

  “Then tie them up.”

  “If that makes you happy.”

  The school’s front doors weren’t locked, or even there. They’d been pushed inward with such force that they’d come off the hinges and were simply propped against the walls of the school’s main corridor. The golden sparkly tracks continued inside, but the boys didn’t need them. Deep in the heart of the school, they heard a pair of familiar voices screaming, “Nooooo!”