Time Snatchers (38 page)

“Well, it’s one of those expressions that can mean more than one thing,” I say. “It could mean that Nassim is going off to start a new life for himself. Or it could mean that he’s going to the racetrack to do some betting on the horses. Either way, it’s his way of saying good-bye.”

And he’s free. Uncle can’t trace him because his records have been purged from the system.

Zach looks up at me. The expression on his face reminds me of a passing storm. Cloudy one moment and clear the next. He grabs my arm and almost yanks it out of the socket.

“C’mon. We gotta go,” he says.

“All right, where to?” I ask. I already know the answer, but I want to hear him say it.

“Home! To my house!” Zach shouts.

Moments later, we’re standing on Zach’s doorstep. It’s cold and dark, and I’m exhausted. I’ve had very little sleep in the last two days. I have
no idea what time it is, but judging from the darkness and the fact that we’ve seen no cars on the street since we arrived, I’m guessing it must be close to midnight or even past.

The rain continues to pelt down, but the small overhang of the front porch shields us from the worst of it. Zach stands next to me, shivering in a T-shirt and shorts.

I ring the doorbell and it chimes inside the house.

No one comes to the door.

I press it again.

For a moment, I wonder if this is the right house. But then I dismiss the thought. I’ve been here before. Plus Zach knows his own house.

But what if I really botched things and this is 1969 or 1970 or some other year in Zach’s future? Maybe Jim and Diane have long since moved away and somebody else is living here. I try to reassure myself that, even programming Nassim’s time patch, I couldn’t have messed up that badly. Maybe a few hours off. Or a few days at worst. But years? Never. Besides, doesn’t Abbie finding me in the park mean I didn’t mess up?

Just then, the porch light comes on.

I
nstinctively, I take a half step back.

The squeal of a lock being pulled back. The door opens a crack.

“Who’s there?” says a man’s voice.

“Daddy, it’s me!” cries Zach.

I look over at Zach. He’s soaking, and his wet hair is matted to his head. But his eyes are shining.

The door opens as far as the chain will allow. I almost don’t recognize Jim. His face is pale and drawn, and his hair, mussed by an interrupted sleep, is gray at the fringes.

“Zach?” Jim says.

“It’s me, Daddy … and Caylid too.” Zach pushes me forward as if to make his point.

Jim stares at the two of us. I can’t imagine what’s going through his mind. I take that back, I can actually imagine very well. I’ll bet he’s wondering what I, Caleb of no fixed last name (and now of no fixed address), had to do with the disappearance of his son. He’s probably asking himself if it was me who kidnapped him.

We’re in a standoff. Jim continues to stare at us and we at him. Then, without taking his eyes off Zach, he shouts, “Di!”

I hear feet on the stairs, and Diane appears. She has the same drawn and tired look as Jim. But when she sees Zach standing there, something changes in her face. It’s like she was in a prison cell with
no windows and has just come out into the light. She gazes at Zach with an expression of total disbelief.

“Mom!” Zach shouts.

“Z … Zach?” says Diane.

She flings the door open, and for a moment, we all stand there looking at each other. Then Diane reaches out toward Zach, slowly, tentatively. Her fingers are on his face now, gently exploring his forehead, then cheeks, then mouth as if to make sure that he’s real.

“Zach!” she says again. But this time there’s no hesitation. She wraps her arms around her son and hugs him fiercely. Jim reaches out and embraces both of them.

A feeling of great contentment washes over me. Zach is home with his family!

I want to cheer, to dance in the street, to wake up everyone in the neighborhood—heck, everyone in the year 1967—and tell them the good news.

But I can’t for one simple reason.

I’m being invited to join the hug.

Hours later, I’m lying in a bed in the Rushtons’ spare bedroom with a light sheet pulled all the way up to my nose.

I’m having trouble falling asleep.

Will they believe me if I tell them the whole story? Or will they think I’m one proton short of a full atom and put me in a place with white walls where they feed you Jell-O and take away your shoelaces? Or maybe they’ll call the police, who will come and lead me away in handcuffs.

Even though it wasn’t part of my and Abbie’s original plan, I wanted to tell Jim and Diane everything as soon as Zach and I walked in the door. Just lay it all out.
True Confessions of a Time Snatcher
.
And I could tell from Jim’s face that he had plenty of questions to ask me and not just for the sake of pleasant conversation, either. But after a little huddle with Zach and Diane in the kitchen, they came back out.

“Tell us all about it in the morning, Caleb,” Diane had said. “We could all use some sleep.”

So here I am, waiting for the morning to come. And believe me, I’ve seen whole centuries pass a lot quicker than this.

I snuggle deeper into the bed. Maybe if I tell them, it’ll be all right. Why shouldn’t they believe me? After all, in a couple of years they’re going to put a man on the moon. Surely, the idea of someone traveling through time shouldn’t be that tough to swallow. But if I told them the whole story, the real true whole story, would they ever believe that Zach is safe?

An itch near my wrist triggers a whole bunch of new thoughts. One of which is: without time travel, the only way I’m ever going to leave 1967 is the same way as everyone else—by growing older.

I reach across to the bedside table, turn on the lamp and take my driftwood carving into my hands, running my fingers along its surface. For a long time I didn’t know whose face I was carving. But now I know.

It’s my face. The face of my new beginning.

I run my fingers over it; first the chin, next the cheekbones, then the nose. I stop at the eyes. They’re still there. Exactly where I placed them. One in each eye socket. I pluck them out and hold them in my hand. Two small silver pills. Nassim’s words come back to me: “Take two of these and, within a couple of minutes, you won’t remember anything that happened before dinner last night.”

I glance at the clock on the table. 4:03
A.M.
There’s really no reason to put this off any longer. Abbie is safe.

I gaze at the pills in my hand. They’re so small. It’s hard to believe that something that tiny can have such a devastating effect.

“You’ll need to take both of them,” Abbie had said. “One isn’t going to be enough. And don’t wait for me to take them.”

She had made me promise. And so far I’ve really only broken one part: the bit about not waiting. But since I’m on a roll maybe I should break the rest of my promise and not take the pills at all.

“I don’t want to forget you,” I had told her.

“You won’t have to. I’m coming with you, remember?”

“No, I mean once I take them you’ll be a complete stranger to me. We won’t know each other.”

“We won’t be strangers for long. We’ll get to know each other just like new friends do. Besides, if something goes really wrong … I’ll get the antidote.”

I place one of the pills on my tongue.

“You have a chance that most people never get, Cale,” she had said.

Abbie’s right. I have a chance to do what I’ve always dreamed of. To start over. To live a normal life, with a real family. This is exactly what I want.

I close my mouth and swallow.

I don’t feel a thing.

Then I pop the other one in my mouth. Down the hatch with that one too.

I’m starting to feel sleepy. One pleasant thought should do it. Well, how’s this one, then:

Zach is safe
.

I
t’s not even noon, and already it’s been a full day. I spent most of the morning at the Child Welfare Office. The people there were nice enough, but it was clear that they had no idea what to do with a kid who had no ID and didn’t know his own last name. As soon as Diane mentioned that she thought I might be Canadian on account of the fact that once she heard me say “ay” instead of “huh,” the Child Welfare people were all over it, which meant I got to spend two hours in a waiting room playing Etch A Sketch while they called around to a dozen different Canadian Government offices to see if there had been any recent reports of runaways.

After Child Welfare, Diane took me to the police station to meet with the policeman assigned to Zach’s case, Detective Portelli, a roly-poly kind of guy with a crew cut. At first, he did all the talking, confiding that he was trying to lose weight but couldn’t stand eating the carrot sticks his wife packed in his lunch, so he’d sneak out to Hamburger Haven for a burger and fries, which in his opinion was still a diet lunch on account of the fact that he said hold the ketchup. But when it came to my turn to talk and I couldn’t tell him a single thing about what had happened to Zach or even what I was doing with him at the park late at night, he frowned and reached for his desk drawer, where he kept his stash of Oreos.

Now I’m at the doctor’s office, sitting on a bed in the examining
room, waiting for the doctor to barge through the door. This is my fourth medical visit this week. All of these doctors must use the same interior designer because the décor hasn’t changed from one examining room to the next: narrow bed, scale, eye chart and a poster of the inside of an ear. By now I’m an expert on cochlear fluid and earwax. I’ve also memorized the tiny letters on the bottom line of the eye chart—which, when I think about it, won’t do me any good. I mean, what’s the point of cheating on your own eye exam?

I cross my legs, and the paper underneath me crunches. It’s hard to get comfortable wearing nothing but underwear, white socks and a sky blue hospital gown that no matter how much I tug doesn’t come down far enough.

A short, middle-aged man strides in flanked by two young men and a woman. Everyone except me is wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard. His name tag says
DR. WINTON
, and the tagalongs I figure to be his medical students. The doctor’s stethoscope swings as he turns toward me. Which is another thing that I don’t get. Even though I have absolutely no recollection of a big chunk of my life, somehow I still know a bunch of stuff, like what a stethoscope is.

“Good morning, Caleb. How are we today?” he asks. When he says this, a vein in his neck does the tango, and for a moment, I feel the edge of a memory poking through. But when I try to grab it, I can’t.

“Good morning, doctor. I’m fine,” I say, which, except for the empty parking lot in my brain, is the truth.

“Are we getting any of our memories back yet?” he asks. That
we
is starting to grate on me. Almost as irritating is the fact that the medical students are eyeing me like a piece of gum they just discovered under their shoes.

“I get flashes of parts of things,” I say, “but they don’t make any sense.”

Dr. Winton smiles. The medical students follow suit. I get the feeling they want me to keep talking, so I do.

“They’re all jumbled together,” I say. “Snapping turtles and a pie tin spinning through the air and a cave and a yellow kimono.”

The students are jotting notes like crazy. I’m tempted to say rhinoceros droppings and see if they write that down too.

Dr. Winton leans in and shines a light in my eyes. I smell onions on his breath. The students edge closer, taking up positions on either side of me.

“Look to the left,” he says, and I comply dutifully.

“Look to the right,” he continues. “And now, straight ahead.”

I do as I’m told.

The doctor pauses for a moment and turns to face the students. “The patient is suffering from profound amnesia. Etiology?”

“Physical trauma to the brain?” asks the female student.

“His X-rays aren’t consistent with trauma,” answers Dr. Winton.