Chapter Eight
Midnight Mission
I can hardly think straight through supper that night. Uncle Karl and Eric are having pork chops and green beans and macaroni and cheese, while I’m getting by with the beans and mac and cheese alone. But I’m so distracted they must know something’s wrong. Maybe they’ll just chalk it up to my still being upset about my parents.
That’s pretty much on the mark, actually.
The what-ifs are starting to seem possible. If I can find a way to go through the screen and warn my parents, or even somehow warn myself not to go to Andy’s, then I can save them. They’ll still be alive, and I’ll come back to Uncle Karl’s during our regular summer visit.
As long as I don’t kill anybody along the way.
I can understand what happened to Tough Kid—he didn’t want to listen to me. And it was just a movie, anyway. But Mr. Gordon—I didn’t mean to scare him into a heart attack.
I remember he looked flushed and overweight in the first photo I saw on the news. Maybe he was going to have that heart attack, no matter what. Maybe it was a heart attack that killed him when he was trying to put out the fire.
Maybe I didn’t do anything to cause the heart attack.
And I did save the rest of the family.
Besides, the sight of me won’t scare my parents. I can save them. I just need to figure out how to get there.
And that’s when I remember. There were some family movies in the pit. I didn’t want to think about them earlier, but they were there, some from past summers, but some more recent. I just have to wait until Uncle Karl and Eric are both asleep, and then go through them. Maybe Dad sent Uncle Karl some videos from this spring or something. More maybes and what-ifs....
My uncle and cousin take forever to go to sleep. Uncle Karl works late in his office and keeps criss-crossing the hallways in the house, and Eric is shooting monsters or aliens or just plain human enemies on his Wii. I lie on my bed, fully dressed, going over my plan. Get into the pit. Look through the family movies. Find the most recent. Go through the screen and make sure someone listens to me.
It’s a mark of how much I want to save my parents that I’ve stopped wondering how I can pass through the screen into another time, or another life.
I see Mr. Gordon’s white face and gasping mouth, and I open my eyes fast. I must have fallen asleep. But now the house is silent—no one’s awake to notice me sneaking into the pit.
The family movies are still scattered on the table. I grab the top DVD and shove it into the player. It’s a recent one—Mom won some kind of blue ribbon for her spring bulb garden design, and Dad filmed her looking all happy with her award and her flowers. The video blurs, and I scrub at my eyes angrily. I miss them so much.
This has to work.
I walk forward, trying to keep my breath steady. I reach toward the screen, and my hand passes through smoothly. I swallow, and step through, blinking as the shadows of the pit dissolve into bright sunlight.
But Mom’s not here with her blue ribbon, and Dad’s not behind the camera. I squint in the afternoon light and look around. I’m at our house, but the light’s different from the video. I don’t understand how I could get here at a different time. I should have done more experiments, so I could figure out how this works. I run up to the door and turn the knob, but it’s locked.
“Oh, hello, Mort.”
I spin around. It’s Mrs. Willow, from next door.
“Hi,” I start, but before I can ask her where my parents are, she volunteers, “You must have gotten your signals crossed with your folks, dear. They just left to pick you up at Andy’s.”
I look at her, stunned. It’s the day of the accident, somehow. I’ve got to stop them before they hit that stretch of road. I reach for my cell phone automatically, but it’s not on my belt—it’s on my bedside table at Uncle Karl’s, in a different time.
I wave my thanks and start running.
To drive to Andy’s ranch, you’ve got to go all the way through town before you can turn off on his road. But there’s a shortcut if you don’t have a car. It would be faster if I could take my bike, but that’s locked in the garage. If I’m lucky, and if the lights and the traffic are against my parents, I should be able to run through the back fields and woods, and come up on the road before they get there. Then I can backtrack and catch them. I don’t know what I’ll say, but if I can prevent the accident, it won’t matter.
A stitch sears into my side, but I make myself keep running, grateful for all the things about Dad’s driving that used to frustrate me, like the way he always stops for bikers to cross the street, and slows down at intersections in anticipation that the light might turn yellow. Drive slow, I think at him. Take your time. Maybe even stop to fuel on the way.
I’m into the woods now, and the branches catch at my hair and tear at my sleeves. I must look a mess, but I don’t care. I just keep running, gasping for air, wishing I were on the track team or something so I’d know how to dig down and find my reserves of energy. But I think of having my parents back, alive, and make myself keep going until I finally stagger out of the trees.
I can see the road. I just have to cross the ditch and I’ll be on it. Then I can take my time heading back toward town until I see them. That should give me the chance to catch my breath, not to mention make up some sort of story for when I flag them down.
I hear an engine while I’m in the ditch. For a second I wonder if I should hide, in case it’s someone I know who might stop and ask questions.
Then I realize the engine sounds familiar.
I clamber up the other side of the ditch and lurch out to the road, waving my hands to stop them. For an instant I see myself mirrored in the windshield: a wild boy with twigs in his hair, chest heaving, hands pinwheeling. Then I look through the windshield and see their faces. Dad looks shocked and terrified, and Mom looks like she’s screaming. Then Dad jerks the steering wheel hard to the side, and the truck spins out of control, still going about 60 miles an hour, through the ditch and into the trees near the shortcut I just left.
– End Chapter Eight –
