The Time Fetch (12 page)

b. British legislation

1. taxes

2. quartering act

To Edward’s surprise, Feenix said nothing. The rest of the class got bored waiting for the entertainment to begin, and there was a lot of shifting and whispering. Mr. Channer interrupted Elise every other minute or so to make sure Edward got the right stuff on the board. Edward prepared himself for the period to go on into eternity. But then another surprising thing happened.

The end-of-the-period warning bell went off.

Was it possible? Edward didn’t think he’d been up there more than five minutes. They’d only gotten to page 104. Maybe he had arrived later to class than he’d realized. Mr. Channer must have been even later.

But Mr. Channer seemed astounded, too. He looked up at the loudspeaker in confusion, then at the class. “Hold it!” he said angrily to the class. “Hold it. It’s got to be a mistake.”

The second bell went off. Everybody grabbed their books, laughing and shouting, and stampeded from the room.

Science class was next.

Mr. Ross once again took up his investigations into the fascinating world of rock life. Edward put his brain on hold. Now and then, he became aware of Feenix interrupting. But her attempts seemed uninspired and half-hearted, and the class was soothingly boring.

Was it an hour or a second later that he felt the small wet thwack on the side of his head? His attention was aroused briefly, then fell back into nowhere.

Another thwack and then another.

Deeply annoyed, he opened his eyes and looked around.

Danton had just propelled another small wad of wet paper in Edward’s direction, and it hit him on the side of the nose. Edward glared at him, but Danton was clearly all worked up about something new. He jerked his head sharply, trying to get Edward to look at something.

Edward turned sleepily in the direction indicated.

On the table under the windows there was a large pumpkin that Mr. Ross had cut open and placed where everybody could make observations of what happened to it as it began to decay. They were supposed to be keeping journals to sharpen their observation skills. Yesterday, the pumpkin, a handsome orange globe, had just begun to grow a faint, fuzzy mold on its insides. Edward hadn’t looked at it yet today, but what he immediately noticed was that it seemed to be surrounded by a strange flickering sort of mist. No. It wasn’t a mist at all. It was a more like a cloud of glitter or teensy shards of glass. The cloud stayed where it was, but the sparkling things, whatever they were, were in constant motion—darting, dropping, climbing.

Edward shifted his chair closer. He still couldn’t figure out what the sparkly things were, but now he noticed something else. Before his very eyes, like a speeded-up clip on the Nature channel, the pumpkin was falling into an advanced state of decay. Its insides had been entirely taken over by the velvety black mold. The pumpkin softened and sank inward like an old lady’s mouth with her teeth taken out. An unpleasant yellowy liquid leaked out onto the tray and the stench that curled toward his nostrils made him want to gag. In a few moments the pumpkin had collapsed. It lay in a flattened ring of rusty orange. He met Danton’s eyes. Danton shook his head worriedly.

Edward felt resentful. He didn’t want to think about all this. He really needed a break. He turned away and did his best to sink back down into oblivion. But it was no good. In a few minutes, driven by nervous curiosity, he looked back at the pumpkin. What he saw was not possible.

The pumpkin was gone. The stink was gone. The cloud of shivering glitter had vanished, too.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Room 219

Lunchtime. Feenix led the way. Alison and Beatrice came behind. Feenix was still trying very hard to think. She let Alison and Beatrice do the snickering.

Noise filled the room. Two hundred half-baked human beings eating and shouting and banging things without any consideration for the feelings of others. Normally, she liked this noise. It kind of cocooned around you. It made you feel enclosed and protected from the adults who all wanted to suck your blood. But today she wished it would go away. It made it hard to concentrate. And it didn’t sound right somehow. It seemed to her that it kept sort of stopping and catching like a bad CD. Then it would start up again.

She was tired. Her memory of the last few days grew blurrier and blurrier the more she tried to catch hold of it. And if she did manage to catch hold of some little sound or picture, it was very nasty. Much nicer to maybe just let go of the whole thing.

Alison and Beatrice sat down in their usual spot at a table right in the middle of the lunchroom. This was a good spot, because you could see everything and everybody. Alison patted the seat next to her, and Feenix sat down, too.

Feenix batted at the air. “What’s with these flies?”

“What flies?” Beatrice replied, frowning.

Feenix started to point to them, but now they were nowhere to be seen.

Across the room Feenix saw Danton and Brigit, who, for some reason, were actually seated side by side.

“Are those new earrings?” Alison asked her.

Feenix didn’t answer. She was trying to think. They’d come to her rescue last night, hadn’t they—the three of them? It was too bizarre for her to have made it up.

She felt Beatrice and Alison eyeing her curiously.

“What is your problem?” she demanded, irritably.

They shrugged and ate their chips.

“Did you get through that math test?” Alison asked after a pause. “I only finished about two-thirds of it. I’m gonna have to see if I can get Mr. Albers to let me do some extra credit. Did you hear what happened to Fiamma? No? Oh my God—she was late and she was running down the steps to catch the train and she was wearing flip-flops even though it’s only two degrees out because she hadn’t been able to find her shoes and she fell and she broke her nose. She’s gonna have to get surgery.”

“Well, it’s a golden opportunity,” Beatrice said. “That nose could certainly use some work.” Beatrice nudged Alison in the ribs. “Look at that,” she said loudly, pointing to a girl at the next table. “Look at that sweater. Did you ever see anything so old?”

Feenix looked at the sweater. It was blue and it looked like it might have been hand-knitted by somebody. Actually, she thought, it was kind of amazing looking.

“Yeah, and look at the skirt,” Alison fake-whispered.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Feenix found herself saying. “I mean, don’t you get bored with that stuff?”

The two girls stared at her. “What’s with you, today?” Beatrice asked. “You okay?”

From the corner of her eye, Feenix saw Danton stand up and wave at somebody. It was Dweebo. You could see that Dweebo was thinking about turning and running, but Danton waved at him insistently. Dweebo moved slowly toward Danton and Brigit.

At this moment the loudspeaker crackled on again, and Ms. Riccio in the front office made a long announcement about some period changes. Feenix did not pay much attention. She had taken out her little jewel-encrusted mirror and snapped it open. She studied herself, then snapped the mirror shut.

“Did you hear that?” Alison asked in a tone of jubilation. “No eighth period!”

There were those tiny green gnats again. Where could they be coming from? “What’s with these little buzzy things all over the place?” Feenix said again.

“What buzzy things?” Beatrice looked around, puzzled. “I don’t see anything.”

“You don’t see that?” Feenix pointed at the glittering cloud.

She remembered, suddenly, two little green sparks. Where had she seen them? Didn’t they look just like these things? Then she knew.

“Are you all right, Fee? You’re so pale.”

When Feenix looked again, the cloud was gone.

She pushed her chair back and stood.

“Where are you going?” both girls asked, but she didn’t answer.

When Edward arrived in the lunchroom, Danton immediately waved him over. There was no sense in Edward’s trying to pretend he didn’t see this. Danton was an inescapable force of nature. But Edward moved as slowly as he could. By the time he reached the table, Danton had resumed eating. “Slow as rust,” he said, his mouth full of fish sandwich.

Although Brigit was sitting right next to him, she seemed, as always, a little ways apart, sort of camouflaged, like a bird hiding in the leaves. But she nodded at Edward. He gave her as tiny and nonthreatening a nod as possible in return.

“You’re not actually eating that?” he said to Danton.

Danton swallowed. “Listen,” he said. “Did you see what happened in science—” He was interrupted by a voice over the loudspeaker.

“Attention, please. Because of unexpected scheduling conflicts, the holiday singing performance has been moved forward to this evening at seven o’clock. Eighth period today is canceled. All band members, chorus performers, and stage crew will report for rehearsal during this time. Any exams scheduled for eighth period will be given Monday morning at seven thirty.”

As far as Edward could tell, this made no sense, but since not making sense was certainly nothing new at this school, and since he wasn’t in the holiday performance and had no exams during eighth period, he just rode right over it like he would ride a little wave at the beach. He sat back, watching the rest of the lunchroom acting confused and delighted.

Danton put his sandwich down. He gave Brigit a quick look. He looked at Edward. “So what do you think?”

“I don’t want to think. I want to be left in peace.”

“But that pumpkin . . .”

Edward shook his head. “Just some weird kind of mutating mold. Who knows? This is the twenty-first century. Everything mutates fast in the twenty-first century.”

“No. There’s something going on with time. I’m telling you, it’s not working right. The bells are going off too fast. History couldn’t have lasted more than ten minutes. And now there’s this business with the holiday performance being moved to tonight and last period cancelled.”

“It’s the holiday season. Everybody gets weird at this time of year.”

“Oh yeah? Then what about this?” Danton was holding up the last remnant of his sandwich and waving it around.

Edward stared at him.

“Don’t you see? Fish sandwich! Fish sandwich is only ever served on Friday. It’s a leftover from holier times. Somehow it’s gotten to be Friday already.”

Was this true? Edward really didn’t know. But he was fairly sure that when he’d gotten up this morning it was Wednesday.

“I didn’t dream it, did I? It was actually you last night, wasn’t it?”

It took Edward a few seconds to realize who had said this. He turned around and there she was. Feenix. Looming over him.

Edward knew enough to neither flinch nor blink. He met the enemy’s eyes straight on. She stared at him and then looked at the other two and nodded.

Edward was deeply distressed to see her actually pull out a chair and sit down. He looked at Danton and Brigit to see what they made of this. They were both watching Feenix as if hypnotized.

“It was that stupid stone you picked up, you know. If you’d gone into the park to find one the way we were supposed to do, this would never have happened. Where’d you get it from, anyway?”

“What are you talking about?” Edward asked.

“The stone. It’s what’s messing everything up.”

“That’s what
I
said!” Danton interrupted. “That’s what I said yesterday when we were trying to figure out why nobody else remembered you! I said it had to have something to do with that rock.”

“Come on,” Edward said. “It was just an old rock.”

Danton didn’t seem to hear him. He was staring at Feenix. “All right. What happened to you? Where did you disappear to the last few days? It’s time to tell us.”

Feenix didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she said, “Yes. I’d better tell you. I’ve been having a hard time getting it all together in my mind. But I think I’ve got most of the pieces straight now.”

She paused and looked around at them all. “I warn you, it’s going to be hard to believe.”

“Try us,” Danton said impatiently.

“You have to promise to keep your minds way open.”

“C’mon,” said Edward. “You’re not really going to sit here and seriously listen to whatever nutjob line she’s going to try to feed us, are you?”

Feenix glared at him. “You can always leave. It’s a free country.”

Edward sighed. He looked at the other two. They didn’t move. He stayed where he was, too.

Feenix began her story.

As he listened, Edward found himself more and more troubled. He knew it wasn’t the kind of story you would invent to make fools out of other people. It was too unbelievable. If you wanted to make fools out of other people, you had to make up a story that seemed possible. This wasn’t possible. But then, again, the way she had disappeared last week wasn’t possible, either. He wondered if maybe they’d all gone crazy, if maybe something had gotten into the water supply—mushrooms perhaps, or maybe terrorists had dropped some kind of hallucinogen into the cafeteria food.

She finished with how she’d tricked the pig-faced witch into getting shrunk down into a baby, and then how she got herself to the bridge and picked up the bracelet. “And then you guys showed up and rescued me, which I don’t think was a coincidence. I somehow think you were meant to find me.”

Edward saw how the other two were watching her, fascinated. Feenix was pale with excitement. Her eyes glittered. The diamond stud in her nose caught the light from overhead.

“Why you three of all people, I have no clue. But now we’re in it together.”

“In
what
together?” Edward asked sharply.

“In this mess that we’ve made.”

“What mess?” Danton persisted.

“Those little flies all over the place—haven’t you seen them?”

They all stared at her. “Yes,” Danton said uncertainly. “Do you know what they are?”

“Unfortunately, I think I do.”

They waited. But before she could spit it out, whatever it was, the end-of-lunch bell went off.

A great wave of noise rolled across the lunchroom—outrage, swearing, and laughter. Nobody was ready. It seemed much too soon. But that was nothing new, Edward argued to himself. Lunch period always seemed shorter than the others.

Feenix looked around in frustration and shouted, “MEET ME—” But wherever it was that she wanted them to meet, the words were lost in the thunder and racket of youths rushing and pushing each other down in their eagerness to get educated.

Edward knew this might be his last chance to escape. He gathered up his books and allowed himself to be carried off by the crowd.

He felt that he needed to think. His next class was a study hall, but he was too disturbed to sit still. As his fellow students settled themselves into their classrooms, he found himself wandering along the second floor hallway. He did not see Mr. Pomerance as he was emerging from his room. They almost bumped into each other.

“Ahh. Edward. Just the man I need. Would you be so kind as to deliver this to Ms. Granger in room 219?” Mr. Pomerance held out a folded piece of paper.

Edward began explaining that he’d already had a very rough day and that any further unnecessary activity was probably not a good idea, but Mr. Pomerance cut him off.

“Unless you’ve got a doctor’s note, get moving.”

Edward sighed and took the folded piece of paper and headed down the hallway, looking at the room numbers as he went: 201, 203, 205 . . . He thought he knew who Miss Granger was—wasn’t she that little round French teacher with the braid? He certainly hoped that Mr. Pomerance wasn’t using him to carry any hanky-panky love letters. Room 219 was probably down there around the corner where that singing was coming from. It must be the school chorus practicing. They were singing something that sounded like Latin, maybe. His aunt was always listening to old hymns and things in Latin. He couldn’t recognize any of the words. He turned and ambled down to the end of the corridor. Room 215. Room 217. The singing had stopped. There was a big window here and, to his alarm, he saw another swarm of the flickering gnats hovering in its wintry light. Edward swatted his hand at them and they were gone.

He had reached the end of the hallway. He had been sure that it turned right here and that were some more rooms around the corner. But he must have been mistaken.

He looked around himself uneasily. Where had that other hallway gotten to? This was very confusing. He had noticed before that whoever had numbered these rooms had apparently been dropped on his head when he was a baby. He headed back in the other direction, thinking that perhaps 219 had somehow made its way around to the beginning somewhere.

But when he got to the beginning of the hallway, there was no 219 there, either.

He decided that under the circumstances, he had done all he could do. He trudged slowly back to Mr. Pomerance’s class. Mr. Pomerance sat at his desk in an empty classroom. He appeared to be marking papers and he looked like he was doing it in a great hurry.

“Uh, Mr. Pomerance?”

The teacher looked up from his labors irritably. “Yes? Make it snappy. I’ve got another class in a few minutes.”

“Well, uh, there doesn’t seem to be any room 219.” Edward fished in his pocket for the note. He pulled out a stub of a pencil and a shoelace, his MetroCard, a piece of orange peel, and a Canadian quarter. “Ah . . . gee . . . sorry. I think I may have dropped it.”

Mr. Pomerance watched this whole performance with a look of wondering impatience. “Dropped what?”

“Well . . . uh, you know, the note you gave me for room 219.”

Mr. Pomerance frowned at something invisible in the air just beyond Edward’s shoulder. Then he gave his head a quick shake as if to clear it and returned his gaze to Edward.