Lost in Cyberspace (5 page)

“You mean everything looked the same?”

“More or less. It was still winter. You weren't here. You were probably someplace else that day. I probably was too. I didn't see us.”

“Then how do you know it wasn't a few days ago instead of a few days
from now?”

Aaron looked really worried. “Because of the accident.”

I try to be skeptical. “Accidents happen every day on Fifth,” I said. “Yesterday, today, tomorrow.”

“Not this accident,” he muttered.

“Like it was really bad? A big pileup or something?”

“It wasn't cars. It wasn't that kind of accident. Anyway, I wasn't there long enough. I was only gone about ninety seconds. What do you want from that, a miniseries?”

This was weird talk, even from Aaron. “So how'd you get back?”

“Well, I still had my laptop with me. I wedged it into that fork in the tree over there. I punched up my formula in reverse. Then I had these shooting pains all over my body. I'd had them before on the way out. That could have been my cells falling into place. Then I was right here on the sidewalk again, and you had a poodle in your ear.”

“Aaron—”

“But I don't want to talk about it anymore now. I don't feel so good.”

“You don't feel good? I probably need stitches.”

He was already walking off down Fifth. I caught up with him and kept him in my good eye. At Seventy-ninth Street I had to hold him back to keep him from walking against the light. I'm still bleeding down my front, but I have to monitor him. If I hadn't been hurting so bad, I'd have been mad.

“Look, Aaron, I want to be on the record about something. I don't believe one word you—”

“I'm not going into the future anymore,” he said. “It's too big a responsibility.”

 

When I got home, the apartment felt empty. Aaron had gone on up to the penthouse. He had some major data-mining to do. He has a state-of-the-art, stand-alone microsystem workstation in his bedroom.

Mom wasn't home from Barnes Ogleby, and I kind of wished she was. I wanted to show her my eye and my nose and maybe cry a little.

Edging out of my backpack, I headed off to my bathroom. At the door I heard a whirring sound. But my head was still whirring anyway. I opened the bathroom door. There was a piercing scream from inside.

Heather. In a bath towel. She'd been standing at my sink. In my mirror she caught a glimpse of my face. She whirled around and dropped her hair dryer, which stopped whirring. “What
happened
to you?”

“Why are you in my bathroom?” I said. “Why aren't you in your bathroom?”

“I always wash my hair in your bathroom. I don't want to get hair in my drain.”

“Why didn't I know this?”

“You weren't supposed to. It's my business. What
happened
to you?”

“Mugged.”

“What—getting off the school bus?”

“We didn't take the bus. We walked.”

“You walked? What do you think the bus is
for?”
Heather smacked her forehead. “You are so immature. What happened to Pencil-Neck?”

Pencil-Neck is her name for Aaron. Don't ask me why.

“He ... got away.”

Heather tightened her towel and started wringing her hands. “Come on,” she said. “We've got to clean you up before Mom gets home. Let me see that eye. Yewww. I'll get ice. You start washing. What happened to your tie?”

“Boxcutter.”

I peeled out of my blazer and untied my stubby tie. Then I took a chance and looked in the mirror. I was pretty scary. My eye looked like it belonged to a giant frog. My nose had stopped bleeding, but there was a big clot on my lip. I grinned to see if I had all my teeth. I did. The blood came off, but the eye was looking worse. I dabbed around it with a soapy washcloth.

Heather was back with a bowl of ice. “Here, slap some of this on your eye.”

“I'm not slapping anything near that eye.”

“Give me that washcloth.” She folded some cubes into it. “Take off your shirt. I'll soak it before the blood sets. Do I have to do everything? This is so typical of you, Josh. You never think a minute ahead. The future is a big blank space to you. What if Mom comes home and sees you like this? Think about it. You know how she overreacts. She'll start carrying on about how we're latchkey kids and need supervision. She'll be all over us. She thinks we're about four years old anyway. She'll want us in
day care.
And all because you're dumb enough to wander around getting mugged. She'll call Dad.”

I hadn't thought about that.

“She'll lay a major guilt trip on him. He'll probably fly back here from Chicago.” Now she was shaking a bloody shirt in my face.

“That would be okay,” I said.

Heather sighed. “Josh, they've just separated. It's not time for a reconciliation. It's—
premature.
Don't you know anything about relationships? Don't you ever watch
Oprah?”

She was running water to soak my shirt. “Oh, great,” she said. “Your drain's clogged.

“And another thing. You know how Mom and Dad will see this, don't you? They'll think you managed this mugging as a cry for help.”

“I didn't cry for help,” I said. “They beat me senseless before I could open my mouth.”

“Not that. They'll think you made this happen because of the separation. Like you're acting out because you're being single-parented. Mom'll take you for counseling. She'll take
me.
That eye is so gross.”

Then Heather was gone. But she told me not to move. I wouldn't have minded an aspirin. But I just stood there. Then she was back with a bunch of stuff from Mom's makeup table.

“What's that for?”

“Your eye looks like an Easter egg. It won't heal for ages. I'm going to touch it up a little.”

“Don't even think about coming near that eye.”

“It's just a little Max Factor Erace creamy coverup. It's just a little pressed powder I can brush on.”

But there was still some fight in me, and I fought her off.

That's when Mom appeared in the bathroom door. It took her a moment to see everything. The bloody shirt floating in the sink. The busted hair dryer on the floor. Heather bath toweled with half-dried hair. Me shirtless and fighting her off as she tried to revise my face with Mom's own Max Factor and Estée Lauder products.

Then she got a good view of my Easter-egg eye. Mom's hand clamped over her mouth to stifle a scream.

“All right,” Mom sighed, “let's try to put our best feet forward.”

We were in a cab again, heading out to JFK Airport. Mom was giving Au Pair Exchange another shot, and we had another plane to meet.

“I can't be in two places,” Mom said, “and there can't be two Fenellas.”

A week had passed. Now I just had a black eye. Mom could look at me without bursting into tears.

“Okay,” Heather moaned. “Who's it going to be this time?”

“Feona,” Mom said, trying to sound confident.

According to the Au Pair Exchange printout, Feona was seventeen, a recent “school leaver,” whose interests were

“What's equitation supposed to be?” Heather asked.

“Horseback riding,” Mom said.

There was a dim Xerox picture of Feona in a school uniform and straw hat. It didn't look too recent and could have been anybody.

There was the usual business about Feona assisting with light household work, food preparation, and child care, twenty hours a week tops.

“I don't like her already,” Heather said as we pulled up to the British Air terminal. “And if her plane's late, I'm going home in a cab by myself. Camilla Van Allen might call.”

“She's never called yet,” I muttered.

“Mo-om,” Heather said, “make Josh put a sock in it or I'll have to go to boarding school.”

When they announced the flight from London, the first passenger out of the Customs door was this girl. She was pretty tall, with long red cheeks and plenty of teeth. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing a tweed jacket, riding pants, and spit-shined high boots. You couldn't miss her. She was carrying a saddle.

“Who's this?” Heather said. “My friend Flicka?”

“Feona?” Mom said, because the girl was looking around, maybe for a horse.

“Actually, yes,” Feona said. “Brilliant to meet you.” She propped her saddle under one arm to shake hands with all three of us. “Absolutely brill.” She had a bone-crusher grip.

“You'd make a super jockey,” she said down to me, “if you don't get any bigger.”

“I'm Josh,” I said in a short voice. “Want me to carry your saddle?” I hoped not. It was bigger than I was.

“Thanks awfully. I'm never without it. But you're an absolute poppet to ask,” Feona said.

Fenella had called me Tiny Tim. Feona called me a poppet. It was like a whole different language.

She turned to Heather. Expecting another Fenella, Heather had punked out. She was in total black except her lips, which Mom wouldn't let her do.

“Feona, actually,” Feona said. She lifted Heather's hand from her side and gave it a bone-crusher. “How's your seat?”

“My
what?”
Heather said.

“No seat, no hands, Daddy always says,” Feona said to Mom.

“Ah,” Mom said. “And what would that mean ... actually?”

Feona stared. “If you don't sit a horse well, you'll never handle the reins well. No seat, no hands.”

“Ah,” Mom said.

“I've got a pain in my seat,” Heather muttered. “And I know who's caused it.”

Outside, Heather and I were the last ones into the cab. Heather turned back to me. “She even smells weird. Do you know what it is?”

“Horse,” I said.

“That's the first syllable,” Heather said.

 

The saddle had to go into the trunk, which Feona wasn't too happy about. The four of us were bunched in the backseat. I was practically on the floor. It was dark, but you could see that every time Feona moved, her ponytail swatted Heather in the face. Heather was bobbing and weaving, trying to keep hair out of her mouth.

“... I hope you'll be—comfortable with us,” Mom said. I could read her mind. At least Feona wasn't another Fenella.

“Oh, I'm quite comfortable anywhere,” Feona said. “My school didn't have heat.”

“Ah,” Mom said. “I suppose that would be boarding school?”

Feona twitched her tail. “We go away to school when we're seven. It's super, really. You meet such a lot of jolly girls. And it lets your parents get on with their marriage.”

“Ah,” Mom said.

“Actually, at school, I slept most nights with Cheeky Bob in the stables.”

“Cheeky Bob?” Mom said doubtfully.

“My horse, of course. We're about to put him out at stud. All the mares are mad for him.”

Heather looked around her at me.

“I'm really just a bumper in the saddle,” Feona confided. “And I'm better on the flat than at the fence. But I'm dead keen. And it's brill being here. I'm only missing the first of the point-to-points. Absolutely riveting, but filthy weather for it.”

“Point-to-point?” Mom said.

Feona stared again. “It's a race like a steeplechase. But the jumps are six inches lower. Surely you have them? Mummy brings a hamper and we have picnics. Absolutely br—”

“Then it's not a hunt,” Mom said. “You don't kill animals.”

“No,” Feona explained. “That's later in the season.”

Now the whole cab smelled like a stable. Up front, the cabby was spraying his area with an aerosol can.

We gunned along the expressway. It was another one of those nights when you get that great view of the city. Twinkling towers, chains of lights on the bridges. That type of thing.

Feona leaned forward, whisking Heather. “Whatever is that?” She pointed through the bullet-proof Plexiglas and over the cabby's shoulder.

“That's Manhattan,” I told her. “The Big Apple.”

Feona blinked. “But whyever is it getting nearer and nearer?”

“We
live
there,” Heather said.

Feona fell back in the seat. “There's been some mistake,” she said to Mom. “Au Pair Exchange said you lived in the country. They said you kept horses. They said you were deeply committed to stalking and shooting. They said you had some jolly good coverts.”

“Coverts?” Mom murmured.

Feona sighed. “Places where the fox hides.”

“There's a lot of stalking and shooting in Manhattan,” I said. “But we don't do it.”

Mom was tensing up. “Au Pair Exchange said you liked flower arranging,” she said to Feona.

“Me? You mean weeds and grasses in pots? Mummy does that.”

Mom clutched her purse with both hands. “I'll kill those Au Pair Exchange people,” she said. “I'll find out who they are. I'll get a gun. I'll track them down. I'll flush them out of their coverts. And I'll kill them.”

School's not that much fun without your best friend. Aaron had made himself scarce ever since my mugging day. For over a week he'd been signing himself out of classes to work at the terminals in the Black Hole. He went in early and stayed after school, so I didn't see him on the bus. He was in there at lunch.