The Left Behinds and the iPhone That Saved George Washington (3 page)

This guy is butt-ugly. He’s also short, which makes him even uglier. His face is all kind of squashed in, like he ate something sour and can’t get the taste out of his mouth. Plus his nose is crooked. It leans to his right, our left. Someone should have told him to wear a hat to hide his hair, which is scurvy-looking and knotted, like rope. When he leans in to talk to us, we lean back. Like way, way back.

“Dude,” says Brandon. “Chillax, will ya?” And then Brandon wipes the air in front of him, like he’s trying to get rid of a stench.

“You have no business of being here,” the guy says again. “Ve shoot you and kill you if ve vant.”

“You’re not shooting anyone,” Bev says, stepping forward. And she’s got an attitude. Her attitude is this: My mom is a big star, buster. Who the heck are you? “Or should I say you’re not shooting anyone
else
. There happens to be a dead man in the barn back there. Who we have reason to believe happens to be a most important person. Do you know anything about this? If this is your property, then you are most definitely responsible.” Bev pauses, and then points her finger. “Each and every one of you.”

The guy takes a pistol from the pocket of his jacket, lifts the thing up, cocks it, and points it straight at me. But he doesn’t shoot. Instead he starts to notice things. Like our clothes. Our jeans. Our sneakers. The snarling wolf on Brandon’s hat. Bev’s checkered scarf and stylin’
winter jacket. And probably, like, twenty other things. So we watch as the guy tallies them up and comes to some sort of conclusion: we’re
different
.

Like,
way
different.

He says something in German to the others. Too fast for me to catch the words. But I think, by the tone of his voice, he must have said something like this: Guys, let’s be careful here. Very, very careful. Because these kids seem awfully strange.…

T
HE TWO UNIFORMED GUYS
in front of us, and the two nonuniformed guys behind us, all start talking to each other at once. In German. So it’s kind of a standoff for, like, a really, really, really long time. Like for maybe five, ten seconds.

No one knows what to do. They must be thinking we’re way weird, and that’s for sure what we’re thinking about them.

Let’s just take one thing common to us all. Or thirty-two things for each of us, and maybe half that for them. I’m talking about
teeth
. How often do you think about teeth? You think about your own when you floss and brush, and you think about somebody else’s only when you notice something wrong or funny or weird.

Oh yeah, one other thing: if you have braces, like I still do, you think about what a pain in the butt they are and you can’t wait to get them off.

So that’s us: two sets of bright-white smiles, plus me, Mr. Steel Cage Mouth.

Those guys maybe have three good teeth among ’em. The rest are rotten little stubby things. Gray, and full of gunk. And I would bet you five million dollars not one of them has ever swished around a mouthful of Listerine either, though God knows they could use it.

Then we hear a funny little sound. An electronic sound, a micro three-chord melody that the three of us hear a hundred times a day. And think nothing of it.

But a sound the four of them have
never
heard. Never, but never.

It’s my iPhone. Which I’ve been holding this whole entire time.

It’s what we do. It’s probably what you do. You hold the thing in your hand, because you use it so much. God forbid you miss something, right?

It’s the same deal, by the way, with Brandon and Bev. We’re holding on to our iPhones, like they’ll save us. Then Brandon does something unexpected. Brandon’s a funny kid. He’s kind of big, kind of goofy, and I know for a fact that he had long hair—like, down to his shoulders—before he came to school, because I saw a picture of him once. He’s also the only boy I know who wears
bracelets
. You know, on his wrists. Two on
the left and one on the right. I think they’re Native American things, but then Brandon’s from New Mexico, of all places. He’s a Left Behind because his mom went spiritual on him and moved to an ashram, where she’s been trying to get in touch with The Universe. But she sent her boy to the Fredericksville School so he could have a proper East Coast education with all the trimmings. His family has something to do with the oil business, though I think his dad passed away. And while his mom gets to go spiritual, Brandon gets to go to a fancy school. They made him cut his hair, and they made him buy new clothes. New packaging, but same kid. It doesn’t work even if you dress him up with a tie and blue blazer.

Oh yeah, and there’s another thing about Brandon. Besides nearly failing every class, he doesn’t like to follow orders. I’m sure he squawked about the haircut. He gives all his teachers a hard time whenever he can. And right now, he decides to mess around with Mr. Butt-Ugly and Company. He holds up his iPhone. Then he points it at Butt-Ugly and snaps off a picture.

The German guys—soldiers and farmers alike—aren’t sure what this is all about, but they don’t seem to like it. They kind of take a step back.

Maybe we’re on to something. Maybe
we’re
armed and dangerous, because each one of us has an iPhone of our very own. There’s just one thing. “I hope this isn’t going to be a problem,” I say, looking down at my cell phone.
Of course, I didn’t bother to recharge it anytime recently. “But I’m running low on power. I’m, like, at ten percent. When did that happen?”

Which leads directly to my next question: any chance of outlets, here in 1776?

T
HE GUY WHO SPEAKS
English, Mr. Butt-Ugly—who’s the same guy holding his pistol straight at my head—asks a question. Probably the first thing that came to his mind, and all things considered, it’s not such a dumb question.

“Vhat,” he says, nodding to the iPhone in Brandon’s hand, “is dis?”

Brandon turns his iPhone around and shows the dude the picture he just took.

If you’ve never seen a grown man spooked before—I mean, like, totally, completely, one hundred percent freaked—then you’ve got to go someplace and find a guy who’s not only never seen a photo before, but never even knew of the
existence
of such a thing. The dude completely
loses it. First his eyes pop a socket. Next his mouth gapes open. Then he lowers his arm, the one holding the pistol, and takes five steps backward, like he’s propelled by some force and can’t help himself.

His other arm flails around—in midair—as if trying to wave something away.

Brandon points his iPhone at the other farmer, who has seen what it did to Butt-Ugly. This guy doesn’t wait to see the results—he just turns and starts running back to the stable.

“
Teufel!
” the guy screams. “
Teufel!
”

Now, I can’t say I’ve heard the word before, but I think I know what it means. It means, I’m pretty sure, “devil.”

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s kind of cool to have somebody call me a devil.

And then run away from me as fast as they possibly can.

It gives me this weird kind of feeling, like I actually have some
power
.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a gun, a musket, a bazooka, or a flamethrower.

What I do have is a
belief
. Not mine, but theirs. Which just shows you which one is stronger: a belief or a gun. We’re the Apple Artillery. Two black ones, one white. We hold them aloft like they’re death ray guns and watch as all the German dudes scatter.

It’s almost funny, till I notice on mine that I have a message. A text.

Which doesn’t compute for a second, because how
could a text … you know … from now to then … I mean, from then to now … be sent? Or received?

It’s from my teacher. Mr. Hart. American History.

And then I start to remember a couple of things. It’s like a fog starting to break up. Like: isn’t this whole … expedition … part of some lame school trip? For us Left Behinds? And isn’t Mr. Hart our sorry teacher who got stuck with us for the Christmas holidays, because maybe he himself had nothing better to do either?

And didn’t Mr. Hart say, this very morning, “Kids, today we’re going to the reenactment of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, which they do every Christmas at Washington Crossing State Park.”

Bev and Brandon rolled their eyes. Me? I was kind of into it, if you want to know the truth. I have no defense. I’m a history nerd, which is only totally uncool.

“What’s the matter, Mel?” Brandon says. “See something funny?”

“I got a text,” I say. “From Mr. Hart.”

“Yeah? What does he want?”

I read it myself first.

Where R U?
it says.

I read the message aloud, and all of us stop and puzzle over it.

And then I get another one. The same three-chord micro melody.

R U lost?

I read this one aloud, too. We take a glance around. I guess the answer would be yes and no.

“You have to tell him something,” Bev says. “He might be worried about us.”

“What should I say?”

“Tell him we’ve taken a little detour,” Brandon says. “The scenic route.”

“I think I’ll tell him we’ll be right back,” I say.

“Will we?” says Bev. She’s worried all of a sudden. Which isn’t something you see from Bev very often. She’s always so sure of herself. Her being worried gets me worried.

“Let’s hope so,” I say, and type it in. I notice that I’m down to nine percent power.

But we have other things to think about at the moment. Immediate, like, issues. They’ve run, the Germans have, but they haven’t left. They’ve
taken positions
. To the left of us, and to the right of us. Muskets at the ready. They’re maybe seventy or eighty yards away. They’ve
fallen back
to a
secure line
.

It’s easy to throw around military terms when you’ve learned a few. I used to tell people I was playing Xbox when I was really watching the History Channel.

“Boys,” Bev says. “Behind us is nothing but woods.”

“And in front of us,” Brandon says, “is nothing but muskets.”

“That one guy,” I say. “The guy who speaks English. He’s looking at us. Through a telescope … Spyglass? Whatever they call those things.”

“He’s curious,” Bev says. “He wants to know what our phones are all about.”

“Maybe,” I say, “he wants one for himself.”

“For what?” says Brandon. “So he can take pictures?”

“Everybody,” I say, “wants to get their hands on an iPhone. It’s just natural.”

“Boys,” Bev says again. “What’s the plan here? Backward? Forward? Left, right? ’Cause I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting cold. My feet are, like, frozen solid.”

“Maybe,” says Brandon, “we should go back to the stable. It was a lot warmer in there.”

That’s Brandon for you. He’s always for the easiest way, but not necessarily the best way.

“The stable’s a dumb idea, Brandon,” says Bev. “They’ll corner us in that place. Then what?”

“Then I don’t know,” Brandon says. “Mel, what do you think?”

“I think these guys,” I say, nodding to the Germans still arrayed in front of us, “must be the guys who killed Washington.” It occurs to me—and probably to Bev and to Brandon—that if these are the guys who killed George Washington, they probably have it in them to kill us as well.

“Maybe they did,” Bev says. “So do we stay here? Do we run for it? Plus, I have something else on my mind. If you have to know.”

“Which is what?” I say.

“Um. I’m wondering if there’s a bathroom anywhere nearby,” Bev says.

Brandon gives her the bad news. “There aren’t any, Bev,” he says. “Bathrooms with flush toilets haven’t been invented yet. They use outhouses.”

“Or pots and pans,” I say. “Next to the bed.”

“Terrific,” Bev says. “Just terrific. Can someone tell me what we’re doing here? And how do we get back?”

No one can. But then our English-speaking, spyglass-holding German friend starts waving a flag. A white one.

As if
those guys
are surrendering to
us
.

N
OW SOME OF THIS
is starting to come back to me. Our school closes down for the Christmas holiday from December 22 to January 2. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the kids go home—or go someplace, anyway—for the holidays.

Every year—so we’re told—a handful of kids can’t go home. ’Cause their parents are, you know, too
busy
. Too
successful
. So they make
arrangements
. To have the school take care of the kids from December 22 to January 2.

They didn’t tell me who else was going to be left behind—and I sure as heck didn’t ask anyone—so when the big day came, for a while I thought I was going to be the only one. Parents came and got their kids, and
everyone was so Christmassy with hearty good cheer and season’s tidings, it made me want to puke.

I was told to wait in my room.

Then—after the place cleared out, so no one would notice—I was told to go to the Dining Hall.

And there was Bev.

Somewhat
peeved
, as usual. In a theatrical kind of way. Because Bev can’t just sit there and be peeved like anyone else, you see. The whole
world
has to know. And thanks to her mom, and her gene pool, Bev is a complete natural when it comes to letting the world know how she feels about something.

But—to be completely honest here—seeing that Bev was a Left Behind sort of … sort of … sparked things up a bit, at least from my point of view.

I mean, like,
everyone
at school knows who Bev is. She hadn’t so much as said two words to me all year, though. We weren’t in any of the same classes. Though I kind of was aware of her schedule. I mean, when I had English, Bev had math. When I had American history, she had biology. Look, I just happened to know this, so don’t start reading into it. I have a good memory, all right? And I’m a guy who notices stuff.

But I will say that when I saw Bev in the Dining Hall, I wasn’t a hundred percent disappointed.