Now That You're Here (Duplexity, Part I) (5 page)

“Maybe you can help her. English isn't her strongest subject. I assist as I can, but we usually end up arguing. She can be…” He points to the crossword. “Fussy.”

I think of her hand slinking up the back of my neck. She didn't even know my name. Not my idea of fussy. “When did she start painting?”

“Painting?” He shakes his head. “Eve doesn't have time for frivolous distractions.”

“But she's apprenticed to that famous guy. Bosca?” I load hummus onto a chip and pop it in my mouth.

“You must be mistaken,” Sid says slowly, like I don't speak the same language. “Eve's focus is academics. She's on target for Ivy League. Perhaps even overseas study. I'd be thrilled either way, of course.”

“Well, the Education Panels will make that call, won't they?”

“Is that how they do things in the remedial track?”

My laugh catches in my throat and I choke. He thinks I'm an idiot. When I finally stop coughing, I open my mouth to argue, but decide to switch subjects instead. “Do you have a city map I can borrow?”

Surprised, he sets down the crossword. “Yes. Just a moment.”

He disappears to another room while I slam a few more hummus chips, a plan forming in my mind.

“Here you go,” he says when he returns. He hands me a folded map with
PHOENIX
in blazing red letters across the front.

“Thanks. I'll only need it for an hour or so.”

“Take your time.” He returns his attention to the crossword.

I push away from the table. “If you don't mind, I think I'll call it a night. Thanks again for letting me crash here.”

“You're welcome. If you need anything else, let me know.”

I tap the map against my palm as I walk down the hall to Eevee's room. Once inside, I unfold it and spread it across the bed, fish through my pockets for a scrap piece of paper and grab the pencil from the drawer.

First task: find my house. Second task: find Germ.

My eyes scan the map, searching out anything familiar in the minuscule street names. Takes me forever to find Eevee's street. This feels impossible. I roll onto my back, overwhelmed.

“What am I going to do?”

Einstein stares down at me. He doesn't have a clue either.

Saturday morning, the sun hazes through the bedroom window, pulling me from sleep. I turn over and cover my eyes, but a thought bubbles up through the fog in my brain. Something I need to remember. It nags at me, bobbing at the edge of my—

The knock at my door startles it away. I crawl out of bed and shuffle to the door where Mom, still in her nightgown, holds out the phone. “Your father.”

And then I remember: there's a strange boy sleeping next door.

It's Saturday. I'm geocaching with Warren at ten. Better warn him about Danny. “What time is it?”

Mom shakes her head and pushes the phone into my hands. I wait for her to leave. “Hello?”

“I found a note on the table this morning.” Dad sounds happy, like he does when he's completed a challenging statistical diagram. “It says
Off to find answers. Thanks for everything. Danny.
”

“You mean he's gone?”

“Looks like it.”

“He didn't say where he was going?”

“Last night he asked to borrow a map, but he left it here beside the note.”

Where did he go? To the foster home? I don't know what to think. Should I be worried?

“It's better this way,” Dad says. “You don't need the distraction. Not with midterms coming up.”

“Midterms,” I mumble, my mind spinning.

“See you Sunday for dinner?”

“Dinner. Sunday.”

And like that, everything goes back to normal.

I meet Warren at our usual spot: the lava rock in his front yard. He stands on top of his tiny mountain, watching the sky through a pair of binoculars.

“See anything good up there?”

“Ducks. A 747.” He looks at me, jumps back like he's seen something horrific and stumbles off the rock. “Oh.” He clutches his chest. “It's just you, Solomon.”

“Hilarious. Are you ready to go or what?”

“Affirmative. How was the ballet?”

I follow him inside his house, relieved I don't have to tell him about Danny. Those two have a volatile past, to put it mildly. “Last night was bizarro.”

“It's ballet. What did you expect?” He pushes open the door. “Mom! Departure imminent!”

Mrs. Fletcher drives us to the mall, where we suck down milk shakes, search for geocaches tucked away in storefronts and planters, avoid security guards and debate the finer points of superheroes.

“Superman versus Wolverine.”

“Easy.” Warren steps one foot in front of the other along a line of tile, as if he's walking a tightrope. “Wolverine has healing factor. Batman versus Daleks.”

“Batman could just run them over with the Batmobile.”

“Nah. They'd zap him before he got close enough. Plus, they can fly.”

“Send a memo to Alfred. Tell him to get to work on an anti-extermination gadget.”

Warren takes off through the mall doing his best Dalek impersonation. “Exterminate! Exterminate!” Soccer moms and store clerks gape at the begoggled nerd boy, but Warren is unfazed.

We find our final geocache (a magnetic minicache stuck in a pipe valve) by Java's Last Stand. We take turns adding our names to the log and using Warren's smartphone to track our find on the geocaching website. Warren holds out the phone for me to see. “Three o'clock. Time to go to Mac's.”

Marcus McAllister is the most brilliant teacher at Palo Brea, if not the world. We had him last year for biology; this year we're in his honors chemistry class, as well as his advanced study in theoretical physics. Only a few students test into the program, and Warren and I took top placement. It means we take multiple science classes each semester, but it's so worth it. Mac has become more than a teacher to us. He's a mentor. I'd even go so far as to call him a friend. My parents love this, of course. Someone with major credentials will write my college recommendation letters. What could be better?

Warren and I spend as much time as we can at Mac's shop, helping him with projects and listening to his stories about when he worked with Boeing and NASA. Rumor has it he's associated with a lot of alphabet agencies, but whenever Warren and I start asking too many questions, he just smiles or shrugs. His greatest accomplish
ment, he says, is having kept his Van Halen
1984
concert shirt in mint condition.

We find Mac lying on the floor of the shop, the hangar-like structure he built next to his house, where he does his fabrication work. His mask is pulled down over his face and he's welding the base of an enormous cage that reaches halfway to the ceiling. The Beatles echo through the air.
Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

“What is that, a pet carrier for mountain lions?” I ask.

He lifts the welding mask. “Close. Support frame for an entertainment center. It's for a custom home up in Cave Creek.”

You'd think a brilliant guy like Mac wouldn't have to supplement his income building staircases and entertainment centers and stuff, but apparently teaching doesn't pay very well.

He slides out from under the structure and hobbles a bit when he stands. “You guys ready to work? Get your gear.”

We walk together over to the supply shelves at the far side of the shop. As I reach for a pair of gloves, something catches my eye. The door to the shop's back room—usually closed—stands open, offering a glimpse of some huge piece of equipment draped in blue tarps. I elbow Warren and nod toward whatever it is.

We inch over for a closer look, but Mac's voice from behind stops us. “Given any more thought to the science fair?” He closes the door.

“We're still debating.” I pull on the gloves as we follow him back to the other side of the shop. Mac hands me a length of angle iron, and I clamp it in place according to the blueprint spread out on the floor. If I completely fail at science, at least I can get a job welding. Dad would be thrilled.

“What's to debate?” Mac places the nozzle of the welder to the edge of the iron, squeezes the trigger and stitches a perfect seam. Flipping up the helmet, he blows on the lingering glow. “You come up with an idea, do the work, win the fair. No big deal. This is your year.” He flips down the mask again and his voice sounds hollow. “Trust me.”

I wait for him to finish the next weld, the liquid metal sizzling like bacon. “Warren wants to study bugs.”

He stops the torch. “Bugs?”

“No I don't!” Warren makes a face. “I said asteroids.”

We bicker as we work. Mac suggests different projects, but none of them stick. Nothing feels right. I don't understand why we're having such a hard time agreeing on a topic. Last year was so easy. Practical applications of carbonite cryonics. We would have won, too, if it hadn't been for Centennial High's team and their solar kit for standard combustion engines. Classic pandering to the eco crowd.

Soon the conversation turns from the science fair to the Large Hadron Collider, which naturally leads to black holes and time travel. One way or another, we always eventually end up talking about black holes and time travel.

“If only we had a time machine,” Warren says. “Then we could travel to
after
the science fair and find out what our entry was.”

“Except you can't—”

“I know, I know.” Warren waves off Mac's correction. “You can't travel to the future because it hasn't happened yet. But what if you could?”

He launches into an excited monologue on all the things he'd do if he could travel into the future, most of which are unethical, not to mention the chaos he'd create, spawning paradox after paradox.

A lightning flash of a thought strikes me: what if the Danny on my doorstep is from the far-distant future? Mac and Warren's banter fades to white noise as the train of logic chugs through my brain, gathering steam.

It could explain why he was so disoriented. Why nothing here was familiar to him. Why he expected to see things
unfamiliar
to me, like Spectrum—w
hatever that is—and heightened security. But if Danny is from the future…

Logic derails and crashes to a halt.