The Center of Everything (8 page)

You need to help me
, Ruby thinks. “Will you be here tomorrow?” she asks instead.

Nero shoves his phone into his backpack. “Unless I get a time machine. Then, who knows?”

 

The library had taken longer than Ruby wanted, and she has to run back to the theater. She is still breathing hard when she drops into her seat.

“Gingerbread kids!” the director calls. A dozen eight- and nine-year-olds shuffle onto the stage to sing their “Not As Sweet As You Think We Are” song, and the rest of the cast wanders out into the auditorium. Ruby spies her “Be right back” note and has just enough time to hide it in her backpack before Lucy perches on the seat beside her.

“What did you think?” she whispers to Ruby, and then, even more quietly, “What did
you
think? What did you
think?
” This thing she is doing with her play lines has spilled over into her non-Gretel lines too.

“It was good,” Ruby says. “You were good.”

“That's it? What about the oven scene?”

Oven scene? Rats.

“I had to go to the library for a little bit,” Ruby admits. “I missed a few things.”

“What?” Lucy says it loud enough to make one of the assistant directors turn around and stare at them.

“Mind like water,” Ruby whispers.

“Fine,” Lucy whispers back. “But you should have been here. I did this karate move when I knocked the witch into the oven.” She demonstrates, giving a high sideways kick. “The director said it was cool, but maybe not the mood we were going for. Besides, it is kind of hard to kick in a dirndl.”
Kick
in a dirndl. Kick in a
dirndl.
“Anyway, I wish you'd stick around. I feel like I do better when you're here.”

“I'll be here for the rest of rehearsal,” Ruby assures her, but Lucy is still grumpy.

“If you'd
seen
it, though. I mean, Gretel has guts and I thought . . .” Lucy continues.

If Ruby had a time machine, she'd go back and watch that part of the rehearsal. But if she did, would the time she spent watching the rehearsal become the real time? Would it mean that she would not have had her conversation with Nero? Or . . .

“. . . so do you think I should try it?”

“Huh? Try what?”

“Dang, Ruby,” Lucy says. “Even when you're here you're not here.”

Ruby hears her before she sees her. The crack of the board, the
Kiai!
yell. Okeda Martial Arts is making its way around Cornelius Circle.

“Hi-ya!”
says Willow, chopping Ruby in the stomach.

Aunt Rachel grabs hold of Willow's wrist. “We don't hit.”

“I didn't hit. I chopped.”

“We don't chop, either. Now check in with Ruby.”

“Is your belly okay, Ruby?” Willow asks. Her concern is not very convincing.

“Yes,” Ruby says, even though it is not. This is not Willow's fault, however. Ruby's belly was hurting even before her cousin chopped it.

“Kiai!”

Ruby hears the crack of another board. She can see Mr. Fisch's pickup truck now. It is black with
OKEDA MARTIAL ARTS
painted on the door. Just beyond, Ruby can see the glistening bald head of Mr. Fisch as he reaches into the truck bed for another thin square board. Behind him, about ten feet back, walk two rows of
gi
-clad students. One at a time, the students dart ahead of the rest and bow to Mr. Fisch, and then, with a few graceful steps, approach the board Mr. Fisch holds out.
“Kiai!”
A sharp kick and the board is split in half.

Lucy is the youngest of his students in the parade. She is also the fiercest. Ruby has never seen her look so fierce. In past parades Lucy has performed kicks and punches in the air but never attacked a board. This year things are different.

Lucy does not look at Ruby. She looks only at the square of wood, even when it is not her turn. But now it is her turn. She steps forward, her eyes never leaving the board her dad holds.

“Kiai!”
she cries.
Crack!

Lucy bows, then turns and dashes back to her place in line.

If you were Ruby Pepperdine, you might think that was pretty impressive. You might think about calling out your friend Lucy's name and cheering and waving. You might hope that your friend would hear your voice and smile when she sees your face in the crowd.

Or you might wonder if Lucy has already seen your face. If she has been imagining it every time she approaches one of those boards. If she imagines your face and then
Kiai!

You might decide it is better not to say anything at all.

There are two schools of thought about the secrecy of wishes. One is that you should always tell, because you never know who might be able to help you get what you wished for. People who believe this often appear on talk shows. Share your dreams with the Universe, they say.

The other school holds the birthday candle philosophy: to tell a wish is to ruin its chances of happening.

Ever since she became Essay Girl, Ruby has thought of her wish as the birthday candle sort, but now, as she swirls her spoon in her morning Cheerios, she is beginning to reconsider her position. She is surprised to discover that talking to Nero about time travel has actually made her feel a little better, even though she isn't any closer to understanding what it is she is supposed to do. What if telling somebody the truth about her wish would help her figure it out?

What kind of wish is a Captain Bunning wish?
she wonders.
Would telling—or not telling—ruin things?

“No, Maurice, I will
not
be in the service center tomorrow,” Ruby's dad says into his phone. “Tomorrow is Bunning Day, remember? The parade?”

Once again Ruby is careful not to wish for a sign of what she is supposed to do. But, she tells the Universe, if a sign just happened to come her way, she wouldn't mind a bit.

That is when her phone rings.

“Ruby?”

It is Lucy. Thank you, Universe! Clearly, she is supposed to tell her wish to Lucy.

“Can I come over early today?” Ruby says.

“
Exactly
what I was going to ask,” says Lucy.

A sign for sure
, Ruby thinks. But later, when Aunt Rachel drops her off at Okeda Martial Arts, Lucy drags Ruby into her dad's office, pushes her into a desk chair, and drops the
Hansel and Gretel
script into her lap.

“I am
so
glad you're here. I need to go through the second act,” she says. She looks pajama-party tired, but she is talking quickly, like people do on game shows and 911 calls. “Hansel starts.” Lucy points to a line at the top of the page. “Say, ‘Oh, Gretel, I wish we were back home.'”

Clearly, the Universe thinks Ruby needs to wait a bit before engaging in wish talk. Fine, she can wait. A little while, anyway.

“Oh, Gretel. I wish we were back home.”

Lucy bites her bottom lip. “What's my line?”

“‘Do not fret' . . .” Ruby reads.

“Stop. I got it.” Lucy puts on her Inner Gretel voice. “Do not fret, brother. I am
working
on a plan. Working on a
plan
. . . Which is better?”

Ruby is not sure, but it doesn't matter. Lucy has moved on. Inner Gretel is telling Hansel that he must keep his chin up, that he must trust her, that all will be well.

Of course all will be well
, Ruby thinks. This is a play. There's a whole script here. As long as everyone says the right lines, the play will move on, page by page, scene by scene, straight through to the happy ending. Just like it is supposed to.

“Ruby. It's your turn.”

“Sorry.” Ruby turns a page and finds Hansel's next line. “No, sister. Run away. Save yourself.”

“Shhh, Hansel—she's coming!”
She's
coming.

For more than an hour, Ruby sits at Mr. Fisch's desk, reading through the second act, being Hansel. Being the witch. Singing gingerbread songs.

“I feel better now,” Lucy says, flopping onto the couch Mr. Fisch keeps for karate people who get kicked too hard and need to lie down for a minute. “I mean, I'm still forgetting some things, but I know I'm improving. Maybe you could take some notes at rehearsal and we can go over them afterward?” An alarm sounds on Lucy's phone. “Yikes!” she says, leaping from the couch. “We'd better hurry up! This director is a total stickler about being late.”

Ruby swings her backpack over her shoulder and follows her friend out to the sidewalk. It is a five-minute walk to the theater. Plenty of time to explain about her wish and Gigi and everything.
Now
, Ruby thinks.
I will tell Lucy about my wish now.
But Lucy keeps talking.

“So when the witch is coming after me, do you think I ought to be more scared or more angry?” Lucy asks. “I think maybe I should start out all panicky and then . . .”

Ruby only half listens as she follows Lucy down the street, past the hardware store, past the stationery shop, past Delish, which is so full of customers that Ruby cannot see if Nero is inside.

“. . . except every time Fiona cackles, she, like, totally covers up my lines, you know? Maybe we could practice that part while we're walking?”

At the corner they cut across Cornelius Circle to Memorial Park. Lucy flips through the script pages, looking for the “Chasing Gretel” scene. She finds it just as they reach the statue of Captain Bunning. He stands tall at the edge of the park, looking up through the hole in his famous donut. The sun gleams on his coat buttons.

This is it
, Ruby thinks.
I'm going to tell her now.

“I wanted to—” Ruby says, but she is interrupted by the buzz of her cell phone.
DELISH
it says on the screen. “Go on ahead. I'll catch up,” she tells Lucy.

Lucy frowns. “I guess I can go over my songs. But hurry, okay?” She walks ahead, singing about searching for crumbs and losing one's way.

“Hello?”

“The Grand Canyon,” says Nero.

“What?”

“I was seven. My whole family went on vacation to the Grand Canyon. If I could wish myself back to any time, it would be then. Not a donut for miles. Now what about you? What's your wish?”

Maybe
this
is the sign. Maybe she's supposed to tell
Nero
her wish. But how can she know for sure?

“You sound like a genie,” says Ruby, stalling. She hopes he will go off on one of his question tangents, asking why genies were always stuck in bottles and lamps but never in cans or packing crates, but he does not.

“Is it embarrassing?”

“It's private.”

“Oh.”

“Wait. It's not that I don't want to tell you. It's just that . . .” Ruby thinks carefully. She does not want to mess this up. “My quarter went through Captain Bunning's donut,” she says. “On my birthday.”

“Whoa,” says Nero. “Did you wish for something good?”

“Something important.”

“A time travel thing?”

“Maybe. I don't know.”

“How can you not know?”

“I wished . . . I wished that something had been different. In the past.”

“Which is why you care about homeomorphism,” said Nero.

“What?”

“I have mad Google skills, Ruby Tuesday. I read about tori and homeomorphism and time and all that,” Nero says.

There is a connection between donuts and time? Maybe this is the sign. “What did you learn?” Ruby says.

“I have mad
Google
skills, Ruby. Not mad physics skills. I didn't really get it. But you get it, right?”

“No,” she says. “I didn't even know about the time thing. I just want to—” She stops herself. “I just want my wish to come true.”

“Your quarter went through the donut, right? I'd say you're good.”

“But I'm not good.” How is she supposed to explain this? “I don't feel good. You know how when you're solving a story problem in math and you have an answer but it doesn't feel quite done yet? Like you're missing something? I have a missing-something feeling.”

“You sure it's because of your wish?” says Nero. “What if you're missing something else?”

She is missing something else. Someone else. But so is her dad, and her mom, and all the rest of the Pepperdine family, and they're just fine. No, it has to be about her wish. And once she figures everything out, she'll feel fine too. “I'm not missing anything else,” Ruby says. “Except whatever was on that website.”

“Meet me at the library. If you want. You don't have to tell me what you wished for or anything, but, you know, we could look at the site together. I could help.”

It would be good to have Nero's help. “Two heads are better than one,” Ruby says.

“Not always,” says Nero. “Like if you were at the store trying to buy a shirt, it would be hard to fit two heads through a regular neck hole. Or if—”

Ruby's phone buzzes. It's a text from Lucy.

Where r u?!!!

 

By the time Ruby gets to the theater, Lucy is already onstage.

“How could we have forgotten . . .” Inner Gretel stops. “Ugh. What's the line?”

“‘How could we have forgotten about those pesky birds,'” says the director.

“Right. Okay. Those pesky birds. Those
pesky
birds,” Lucy says. “Those pesky
birds.
”

Ruby sits in the second row from the back, where she always does. She looks toward the stage, but she doesn't see it. Not really. She is thinking. About wishes and signs and homeomorphisms. She finds a scrap paper in her backpack and writes a note.

 

Dropping off book at library.

Back in a flash! Promise!