Last Stop (7 page)

“ALAAAAAAAAN!”

My eyes opened. It
was
Mom’s voice. Calling for Dad. From her bedroom.

I sprang out of bed. My dream was still with me.

I shook all over as I tiptoed closer to Mom’s room.

Her door was open a crack.

“Stay…there!” Mom was crying in a sleep-slurred voice. “Don’t fade, Alan! Let me come for you!”

It won’t work if we force it.

The sight will drive him crazy.

Or it will set him free.

“D
O YOU HAVE
ANY
IDEA
what time it is, David?” came Heather’s groggy voice through the receiver.

“Sorry, but I had to call you,” I whispered. “I want to try again.”

“
What
? David, are you, like, talking in your sleep? Because if that’s the reason you interrupted my beauty rest—”

“The phantom station, Heather! I don’t doubt it anymore. Mom and I were having the same dream. Dad is calling to us. She’s still sleeping, but I can’t. I have to go to the station. Meet me in the lobby?”

“Do you know what’s out on the street in Franklin City at this hour?”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“You got it.”

I was there in twelve. Heather was already there, waiting.

We sprinted outside. The city streets were eerily quiet. Our breath made wispy puffs in the air as our footsteps echoed hollowly on the sidewalk.

Once again we bounded down the station steps. This time the place was deserted, except for a sleeping clerk in the fare booth.

Heather was heading for the rotary gate.

“Wait,” I said.

I took two of Anders’s tokens out of my pocket. I gave one to Heather. I’d made sure to leave the third one at home. In plain sight on Mom’s dresser.

Heather and I faced each other across a gate. I inserted my token into the slot. As it dropped, I pushed.

This time, it worked.

I thought Heather’s jaw would hit the ground.

She dropped her token in and followed me through.

“Pinch?” Heather said, holding out her arm.

I did. And she pinched my arm.

We were real.

We were meant to do this. Just as Anders had said.

The train was coming. Clattering closer.

We walked to the edge of the platform.

With a roar made even louder than usual by the empty station, the train pulled in.

We entered. As the door closed behind us, we did not bother to sit.

The train began to move. It picked up speed as it hurtled into the tunnel.

In a moment, it began to slow. Heather squeezed my hand.

Blackness.

A screech of brakes. We were stopping.

And then, the light.

Bright.

Searing.

In my face.

I had to shield my eyes.

“I can’t see!” I shouted.

No answer.

Pain. Hot, ripping pain. “This isn’t like the last time,” I cried out. “Something’s wrong.”

Heather wasn’t moving. She was still facing the door, holding my hand firmly.

The train was now still.

And I heard the whoosh of the opening door.

Now.

I
TRIED TO OPEN
my eyes to the light.

And I began to shake.

Heather’s face was silhouetted. Almost translucent. And she was staring straight ahead.

“Heather, close your eyes!”
I cried.

Smiling. I could now see she was smiling.

And I could see something else, too. A movement, reflected in her deep brown irises.

It was a figure, growing larger.

I turned toward it, but my lids automatically shut.

Run.

My feet were ready. My body was poised.

But I stood there.

And soon my shaking stopped.

I drew slow, deep breaths. And with each one the pain lessened, a little at a time, then more and more until I felt as if I were blowing it away in big gusts.

When it was gone, when my eyes no longer ached, I opened them.

The brightness still remained. But it didn’t hurt. It was only light now. Light without heat. Without hurt.

And I saw the figure I’d spotted in Heather’s eyes. Stepping through the light, his arms reaching out to me.

“Dad?”

His smile put the surrounding brightness to shame. His eyes were slits, as if he’d been sleeping. But he looked healthy. Healthy, like he used to be.

“This is a heck of an hour to do this,” Dad said.

Go. It’s safe.

I leaped at him. I felt as if ten years had stripped away and I was three again, ecstatic that Dad had come home from work.

I’d forgotten how that felt.

This was better. Much better.

I heard the whoosh of the train door again. I turned around.

Heather was inside, looking at us through the glass. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“Heather!” I cried out. “What are you doing?”

She waved, smiling, as the train pulled away.

“It’s all right,” Dad said. “She knows she doesn’t belong here. You do.”

The dresser. The token on Mom’s dresser.

“TELL MY MOM—” I yelled to Heather.

But it was useless. The train’s noise swallowed my words.

Dad put a hand on my shoulder, and I turned toward him again.

This time I took a longer look at his face.

Clean-shaven. Bright-eyed. Sane.

“Dad, are you—okay now?” I began.

Dad nodded. “They can treat my disease here. Unfortunately, we weren’t built to cross over, David. At least not for long periods of time. I learned that the hard way. Our bodies react. I had to come home.”

“So you—you’re
from
this…this world? And Anders—”

“He’s from here, too. He was a brilliant guy, a scholar. No one suspected he was a thief, too.”

“Except you.”

“He knew about the subway station, David—or subrail, as you call it. We crossed over together while I was chasing him. Then, once we were on the other side, what could I do? Arrest him?”

“So you just stayed?”

“I didn’t mean to. I figured I’d wait Anders out, until he got homesick or something, then take him back in handcuffs. But I kind of liked being a new person in a new place. And Anders and I became buddies. Odd how that happens. We moved into Wiggins Street…and then I met your mom.”

“And had me.”

“And never regretted a minute of it,” Dad said.

“So…your childhood…your parents…”

“I lied to you. I’m sorry. It wasn’t a very convincing story, I know. But it’s the first one I thought of, and I had to stick to it. And you do have grandparents. I’ll introduce you, when the time is right.”

“So…you just left them…and then you left us.”

Dad smiled sadly. “Sometimes you have to lose a world to gain your soul.”

“I’ve heard something like that.” I thought back. “Anders said it!”

Dad’s smile vanished. “Actually, it’s from the New Testament. Anders often quoted from it—and from Shakespeare and a thousand others. The sickness hit poor Anders a lot earlier than it did me. He didn’t want to return, though, not with a bounty on his head. But when
I
started to lose it, I knew I had to come back. I tried to tell Mom, but she wasn’t ready to hear.”

“I left a token on her dresser,” I blurted out. “But Heather doesn’t know—”

“You did the right thing, David. We’ve been working on Mom, too, you know.”

“We?”

“I mean,
I.
Between the two of us, we’ll get her here.”

“So…this is it? We’ll all be living…here?”

“We’ll just have to figure that one out, won’t we?” Dad sighed and put his arm around my shoulders.

As we walked away from the track, I was noticing the station around me. The gray cement floors. The tiled walls. The strange ads.

A new world.

“It’s not bad here,” Dad said confidently. “You may like it.”

“What about school? Am I going to have to learn about all that stuff Anders talked about? What’s World War Two?”

“Where you come from is a good place, David,” Dad said with a laugh, “but I think ours is more interesting.”

“They sure have more signs in the subrails here.” I pointed to one I’d noticed before. “Why does that say ‘us open’?”

“That’s U.S.,” Dad replied. “It stands for United States—the name of your new country. The U.S. Open is a sports event. Tennis.”

“ ‘New York City’…‘Bronx’…weird names.”

“To be honest, those places don’t look much different than Franklin City. I mean, they do occupy the same space, sort of.”

“What do you call the planet?”

“Earth.”

I shivered. So much was going to be different. “You’ve got to be kidding. Sounds like a burp noise.”

Dad burst out laughing. “Believe me, David, you get used to it.”

He sounded so sure.

I wasn’t.

I had a feeling I hadn’t even begun to understand what had happened to me.

Congratulations.

Congratulate him.

In due time.

Case File: 3583

Name: David Moore

Age: 13

First contact: 33.35.67

Acceptance: YES

Peter Lerangis (b. 1955) is a bestselling author of young adult fiction; his novels have sold more than four million copies worldwide. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Lerangis began writing in elementary school, inventing stories during math class—after finishing the problems, he claims. His first piece of published writing was an anonymous humor article for the April Fools’ Day edition of his high school newspaper. Seeing the other students laughing in the corridors as they read it, planted the idea in his head that he could be a writer. After high school he attended Harvard University, where he majored in biochemistry and sang in an a cappella group, the Harvard Krokodiloes. Intending to go on to law school, Lerangis took a job as a paralegal post-graduation. But after a summer job as a singing waiter, he changed his path and became a musical theater actor.

Lerangis found theatrical work on Broadway, appearing in
They’re Playing Our
Song, and he toured the country in such shows as
Cabaret
,
West Side Story
, and
Fiddler on the Roof
, acting alongside theatrical greats such as Jack Lemmon, John Lithgow, Jane Powell, John Raitt, and Victor Garber. During these years, Lerangis met his future wife, Tina deVaron, and began editing fiction, a job that would eventually lead him to writing novels of his own.

Lerangis got his start writing novelizations under the penname A. L. Singer, as well as installments of long-running series, such as the Hardy Boys and the Baby-sitters Club. He eventually began writing under his own name with 1994’s
The Yearbook
and
Driver’s Dead
, two high-school horror novels that are part of the Point Horror series of young-adult thrillers.

In 1998, Lerangis debuted Watchers, a six-novel sci-fi series, which won Children’s Choice and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers awards. The first book in the Abracadabra series,
Poof! Rabbits Everywhere
(2002), introduced Max, an aspiring magician who struggles to keep a lid on the supernatural happenings at his school. Lerangis followed that eight-book series with the immensely popular Spy X novels, about a pair of twins drawn into international espionage.

The stand-alone novel
Smiler’s Bones
(2005), based on the true story of an Eskimo brought to New York City in 1897, won critical acclaim and a number of awards. Most recently, Lerangis has collaborated with a group of high-profile children’s authors on Scholastic’s the 39 Clues, a sprawling ten-novel adventure series.

At times, Lerangis’s life has been as thrilling as one of his stories. He has run a marathon, rock-climbed during an earthquake, gone on-stage as a last-minute replacement for Broadway legend Alan Jay Lerner, and visited Russia as part of a literary delegation that included First Lady Laura Bush. He lives with his family in New York City, not far from Central Park.