The Left Behinds and the iPhone That Saved George Washington (2 page)

“Away from where?” Brandon says. “This place, or this century?”

You see? I told you Brandon wasn’t so dumb.

M
Y NAME IS
M
EL
. It’s not really Mel, which would be short for Melvin, which is even more old-fashioned than Beverly or Herbert, but that’s what people call me. I’ll tell you this much: It’s my initials.
M
and
E
and
L
. But I’m not going to say my real name. You might have heard of it, because it’s the same name my father has, and I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of
him
. He’s super busy, remember? And successful. So I’ll go by Mel, and let’s leave it at that.

You might have heard of Bev’s mom too. She’s a star of stage and screen. Currently appearing six nights a week and twice on Sundays in a play in Los Angeles. Which means Bev has to stay behind with us, because Mommy Dearest doesn’t want her daughter around when she’s
“performing.” Which, according to Bev, is only morning, noon, and night.

Her father is a famous actor dude from Argentina, but he’s like
completely
out of the picture, and always has been. I found this out after Googling Bev’s mom, but don’t tell anyone, because Googling people behind their backs is so uncool. Everyone does it, though. What’s even more uncool is getting caught.

I know all this about Bev because of Google and because I tend to overhear her when she’s on her cell phone—I mean, it’s not like she talks to
me
at all. Bev, says Bev,
hates
all of it: Broadway, Los Angeles, stardom, paparazzi, TMZ,
ET
, the whole
celebrity
thing. It’s all so totally
pointless
. And now that her mom’s on the downslope of her career—the play’s in
Los Angeles
, after all, not Broadway—there’s less and less paparazzi, TMZ, and
ET
. So her mom is now becoming a
former
celebrity, which is even worse.

If you’re thinking I have a thing for Bev, you would be wrong. She
interests
me is all it is, okay? It’s not like I’m
obsessing
about her or anything. She just happens to be the kind of girl who’s hard
not
to notice.

For example: do I normally pay attention to what girls wear?

I do not.

Except for Bev.

Because you never know what she’s going to come up with. Like her attitude is
clothes?
What could
possibly
be less important?

She’s not
consistent
, is the problem. So it’s tough to get a fix on her. One day she’s Little Miss Preppy. The next, Miss Slobberina. Kind of like she just throws on whatever happens to be handy.

That’s what the guys do, but we always throw on the same old stuff. Like now, I’m wearing jeans, sneakers, some T-shirt I found on the floor of my room, and a jacket. Brandon’s wearing a red hat that has a picture of a snarling wolf on it, with its teeth bared. Brandon will tell you, if you ask, that it’s not a wolf, it’s a
lobo
, which is the Spanish word for
wolf
and happens to be the mascot of the University of New Mexico. Classy, right?

Bev, on the other hand, is wearing some pink jacket and earmuffs. Just in case it was going to be cold, which it isn’t, but that’s Bev: practical. Prepared.

Bev is not about looking good, you have to understand.

Oh no.

That stuff is all just so … so … 
common
.

Gets in the way of her
agenda
. She’s announced that she’s going to be a biochemist one day and find the cure for cancer. That, or save the lives of newborns as a pediatric neurosurgeon. Maybe both. Anything that is useful, practical, and as far away from Hollywood as possible.

And as far away from us.

I know she’s awfully put-upon to have to spend her Christmas holiday with the likes of Brandon and me, but still. You try to talk to her, and it takes maybe three seconds before she cuts you dead and says, “Okay, okay, what’s your point?”

So like right now, Bev doesn’t want to stop and think things through. Or ask any difficult questions, such as, how is it that three kids from the Fredericksville School—or should I say the
prestigious
Fredericksville School, because no one ever lets you forget it—happen to be in a smelly stable standing over the most important guy in our nation’s history? Who happens to be
dead
?

Who, apparently, was shot in the chest like
ten
minutes ago?

And if this is the real George Washington, and not some lame reenactor dude, that would mean what? That we’ve somehow been
transported
to 1776?

Which would not be possible. Right? So there’s absolutely no way, no how, that this dead guy in the stall is the real deal. So that should settle it.

And yet … and yet … why do I keep thinking that he
is
real, and I’m wrong? “All right,” I speak up. “It’s about time we start freaking out. This is, like, a crime scene, and you’re not supposed to mess with anything. Bev? What do you think we should do?”

We all sort of inventory our surroundings. And we notice some deeply weird stuff. Like one, there are no horses in this so-called horse stable. And two, there’s snow outside. And there’s snow on General George Washington’s boots. But not on our own boots and sneakers.

There was absolutely, positively no snow where we came from. We don’t have snowy Christmases anymore. Haven’t you heard about global warming?

So … maybe you can forgive us. For having a little
brain fritz. It’s really … kind of difficult … to process.… Here. There. Now. Then.

Now is here, but there was then, but now is 1776 and then was the twenty-first century?

Huh?

We should stop and think this thing through. Before we do anything stupid.

But then we hear something. Trampling through the snow.

People
.

Coming our way
.

Talking
. Which focuses our minds and stops us from asking ourselves any more dumb questions.

We notice the stable has two entrances—one on the left and one on the right.

It takes us about one-quarter millisecond to decide to go right, one-quarter to start moving, and the rest of the millisecond is all we need to get out of there.

And into nothing but snow. A big, vast expanse of white. Brandon leads the way, like a fullback rushing up the middle of the line, making a path for Bev and me. The talking people start running after us.

We can hear them, trampling around back there. Running through snow, in case you didn’t know, is a pretty
noisy
activity.

And then the people start yelling at us. Yelling, like, really, really loud.

And then I notice something funny. It figures that I
would notice it, since I was the only kid taking German. Bev takes French, Brandon takes Spanish, but I take German, ’cause my dad told me to.

These dudes are yelling, “
Diebe, Diebe! Stoppen Sie sofort! Stoppen Sie sofort!
” Since I’ve been paying attention in German class, this means something like, “Thieves, thieves! Stop at once!”

But we aren’t, so we don’t.

A
S
I
SAID
, I take German ’cause Dad told me to. Last year I complied with one hundred percent of what he said.

This year? Maybe eighty percent. Maybe more like sixty. I know the compliance factor has been sliding downhill, but then my dad is a
demanding
kind of guy.

It’s got him to where he is, which is pretty high up there. And of course he went to the Fredericksville School himself, back in the day. As did his dad, and his dad’s dad.

It’s kind of a family thing.
Legacy
is the term I think I’m supposed to use. So the family legacy is we go to the Fredericksville School, and while there, we rule. I know my dad and my dad’s dad, etc., ruled, because I can see
their names up on the captain’s boards in the Nelson Field House. This place is humongous and must have cost twenty million bucks. It’s designed so as soon as you walk in, you say, “Whoa.” There are pools, ice hockey rinks, basketball courts, and the main field, which is, like, six acres. All indoors. Two floors. And lining the walls are these gorgeous wood boards, with gold lettering, with the names of all the illustrious captains of yesteryear’s teams embossed on them for eternity. My grandfather was captain of the fencing team in 1945. And Dad was captain of the lacrosse team in both 1981
and
1982. He was also in the choir, the jazz band, the art club, and the debate team, and he spent a summer in Mali, which is in Africa, on a mission to help the poor.

When he found out I hadn’t taken his orders, I mean
instructions
, I mean
advice
, to go out for soccer, join no less than three clubs, try to get the lead in the school play, and finagle a position on the school paper to make sure my exploits were duly recorded—when he found out I had done none of it, he blew a cork
and
a gasket.

“Son,” said Dad. “Are you going to be a potted plant, someone who just sits there, for Pete’s sake, or are you going to be somebody? Because it’s one or the other, son. There’s no getting around it. You’re either a potted plant or you’re a somebody. And if you want to be somebody, son, you’re going to have to stand up. Raise your hand. Step forward. Take a chance.
Count
. You want to count for something, don’t you, son? You want to be
somebody
, right? You don’t just want to be a
potted plant
, do you?”

“No, Dad,” I said. “No, I do not want to be a potted plant.”

He continued fuming and spewing until he was called away by Something Important. That’s the thing about Dad and his tirades. They never go on too long because he’s got people always tugging on his shirt to get his attention onto something else. Which is usually okay by me. You see, my dad just happens to be one of those guys who’s a little bit
much
, you know what I mean? My mom says he gets in your grill, which is to say he likes to stand about two inches from your face, like he’s arguing a call with an umpire.

It puts some people off. After a while, it even put my mom off, which is why they got divorced last year.

She did tell me not to take it personally, though, because, she said,
it had nothing to do with me
. Then she decided to take a trip. A two-year trip, up, down, and around the world.

So this is why, if you really want to know, we weren’t having a family Christmas this year, and why I was staying at the Fredericksville School with the Left Behinds. Okay? It really wasn’t because Dad is so busy, or so important. It’s because just the two of us, with some sad little Christmas tree, would have seemed so Loser City. And the last thing Dad was going to let me witness was him losing at anything.

See, Dad is a well-known guy, like I said. In certain
circles. He’s been on the covers of magazines, on the front page of the
New York Times
one time. He’s not an everyday
People
magazine celebrity like Bev’s mom, but he is
known
, all right.

My dad’s the guy who lost a billion bucks.

Or maybe it was ten billion.

He used to work for one of those big investment banks. You know, the ones that are too big to
fail
.

Which is exactly what he did.

I don’t know all the particulars. If I knew them, I wouldn’t understand anyway. But somehow his
desk
placed all these
bets
and then they got
burned
. And whatever this desk thing was, he was in charge of it.

He was held up as an example of
everything
that was wrong with Wall Street, the financial system, and the American way. If you Google him, he’ll come up, like, about two
million
times. And he’s a guy who used to think he was the biggest winner that ever walked upon the planet Earth. So he’s having a tough time
adjusting
.

To losing anything, let alone his own wife. But he’s still chock-full of advice, whenever he does get a chance to speak to me. Though at the moment, I’m not sure what he’d tell me to do: keep running, or
Stoppen Sie sofort
.

Since he can’t weigh in, we’re running.

Brandon takes a hard right, and we follow. He had been going straight into woods, where the snow is, like, three feet high, but he must have seen where it leveled out to the right, and thataway he went.

It does level out. We come to kind of a path. There
are other buildings around—a stone farmhouse, another smaller stone building next to that. And right in front of us, two men in spiffy blue uniforms. Did you hear what I said?

Spiffy blue uniforms
.

Soldiers, in other words.

Real ones. Not reenactor dudes.

It’s not hard to tell the difference. They
smell
, for one thing. Two, they’ve got snow on their boots. Not new snow like us. Frozen stuff. Like they’ve been out here for days.

Three, they have large white sashes across their chests, epaulets on their shoulders, and weird gold cone things on their heads. I know right away who they are: Hessians. German soldiers for hire, who rented themselves out to the British. I know who they are because I’ve read about them. I never expected to see any Hessians for myself, though. Especially not up close and personal.

They don’t look overfriendly, these Hessian dudes.

They ain’t smiling, for one thing.

And two, they’ve got muskets, which are raised, ready, and pointed straight at us.

W
E STOP
. B
EHIND US
, the guys who’ve been shouting, who followed the same swath Brandon made in the snow, catch up. There are two of them, but they’re not wearing uniforms. Just regular eighteenth-century farmer clothes.

You know that time travel idea I had? Which I said was impossible?

Guess what. Maybe I’m wrong.

One of the guys dressed as a farmer speaks up. In English, but with a super-thick German accent. “You are trespassing,” this guy says. The first thing I think is,
He sounds
exactly
like Arnold You-Know-Who in
The Terminator. “This is private property. You have no business of being here.”