Throwback, p.9
Throwback, page 9
16
Leila hated not being able to remember her dreams. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t do it. Ever. Not even one detail.
Most of the time, though, she could tell if they were good dreams or bad. Like that Saturday morning, when she woke up on the floor, screaming.
That was a really bad one.
“Leila, sweetie, did you have a nightmare?”
The first thing Leila saw when her eyes popped open was her mom’s face covered in cucumber facial mud. “I’m having one now,” she said. “My mother turned into a green raccoon.”
Her mom puckered up her face and stuck out her tongue. A piece of cucumber mud flaked off and fell to the floor. “You scared me. You were really screaming.”
Leila shrugged. “Sorry. I’m glad to be awake.”
“Hungry for pancakes?”
“Sure. But if they taste like cucumber, I will barf.”
With a weary laugh, her mom picked up the fallen piece and padded back toward the kitchen.
Leila sat on her bed. Her heart was galloping. She looked at her clock. 8:47. Her alarm was set to go off in thirteen minutes. Usually she loved sleeping late on Saturdays. But she knew she couldn’t go back to sleep now.
Something was very wrong.
Her phone chimed, and she nearly leaped off the bed. Picking it up, she saw a push notification from her calendar: Rachel over for breakfast. 11:00 Drama Club.
“Mom?” she called out. “Can you make enough breakfast for Rachel, too? She’s coming over!”
“I already knew that!” Mom replied.
Sitting back on her bed, Leila picked up her phone and texted Corey.
hey. did it work?
let me know when u get back!!!
i’m worried.
After waiting a moment for a response that didn’t come, she put her phone on her desk.
Leila tried to remember Papou’s rules of time travel. Corey could leave today but arrive at a different date in another year. But no matter what day he traveled to, he’d always have to arrive at the same time of day.
She frowned, trying to burn those rules into her memory.
Date, year—could be different.
Time of day—has to be the same.
Which meant that wherever and whenever he landed, he’d be there around now, 8:47 a.m.
And if he made it to 9/11, he’d be there around the time the big disaster happened.
Leila could hear her mom mixing the pancake batter. She could smell bacon on the griddle. But she wasn’t feeling hungry. She couldn’t help pacing back and forth in her room, thinking about Corey. What if he died? Was it possible to die before you were even born? They never had quite figured that one out.
Or . . .
There was something else they hadn’t figured out. Hadn’t even talked about.
What if he did change the past? How would she even know he did? Wouldn’t her memory instantly change to fit the new past? Like how she always remembered a Frederick Ruggles School—but Corey claimed there never was one, that he was the one who caused it to happen by changing the past.
It seemed that Throwbacks could remember the before and the after. But Leila only knew the after. It was like her memory just . . . adjusted.
Thoughts swirled in her head. Thoughts about Corey’s grandmother. Leila knew she had died, and she knew Corey had gone into the past to save her. Okay, so what if he saved her, right now at 8:49 on that horrible day in 2001? What if he was racing up the West Side Highway with her, alive? Then if Corey changed the past, Leila’s memory would change, too! She would remember that Corey’s grandmother escaped the Twin Towers. She would be thinking that Corey’s grandmother is alive and always has been!
But Leila wasn’t feeling that at all. And that made her panic.
She looked at her phone. No answer from Corey.
She didn’t want to assume anything. Time travel was not intuitive. It was impossible to make perfect sense of it. Maybe the memory adjustment took a while.
Maybe some memories were immune from adjustment.
Maybe if you knew about time travel, you no longer adjusted at all.
Maybe Corey was still in the process of his heroic rescue . . .
Maybe pigs flew . . .
Aaaaghh!
Leila hated going around in mental circles. There was only one way to find out if the old woman was alive. She called Corey’s sister, Zenobia. The phone rang seven times. When Zenobia picked up, there was a long silence. “Hrrrjj . . .”
“Hey, Zenobe, it’s Leila,” she said. “Are you up? Quick question. Um. How’s Corey?”
“No,” Zenobia shot back. “That’s the answer to your first question. Which was ‘Are you up?’ And the answer to your second is, Why don’t you text him? I heard him leave this morning. I thought maybe he was eloping with you.”
Leila felt her face turning red. “Anyway, this may seem weird,” she said, ignoring the snarky comment, “but I’m doing . . . um, a genealogy project, and I wanted to ask a question about your grandmother.”
“My grandmother?”
“Yes!” Leila’s blood was pumping. “Like, when was the last time you talked to her?”
“Let’s see . . . ,” she said. “About a week ago?”
This was not the answer Leila had expected. And she nearly screamed with joy. “A w-w-week?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“That’s amazing, Zenobe! That is just so awesome!” She had to sit down on the bed. Corey had done it. He’d succeeded! She thrust her fist in the air and tried not to scream.
“I guess it’s awesome . . . ,” Zenobia said. “If you don’t count the fact that she no longer remembers anyone’s name and lives in a nursing home in Queens.”
Leila sank back into her pillows. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”
“Corey never told you?”
“No. That must be hard on you guys. Especially Papou.”
“Papou?” Zenobia said. “Whoa, sorry. I thought you were talking about my other grandmother. My mom’s mom. The one who’s alive.”
“Alive?” Leila said.
“Leila, you know my yiayia died on nine-eleven, right?” Zenobia scolded. “I always assumed Corey told you that.”
“Right,” Leila said. “Right. I . . . forgot. . . .”
“Are you okay? You sound weird.”
“I—I have to go, Zenobia. Sorry.”
“Wait. That’s all you wanted to ask me?”
“If you see Corey, tell him to . . . to call me.”
“What about your genealogy proj—?”
As Leila pressed the off button, her alarm began to sound. It was 9:00. She shut it and rose off the bed. Her breaths came in ragged gasps. The scheme hadn’t worked. Corey’s grandmother had been gone before Corey left, and she was still gone.
Long gone.
And what about Corey?
She let out a strangled shout. If only she could jump into the past herself, find out where he was. Tears blurred her vision. She told herself not to lose hope. He knew exactly when the planes would come. He wouldn’t stick around past the time.
Would he?
Zenobia’s suggestion to text him made a weird kind of sense. Texts to Corey might be useful. She could remind him about what had happened today, in Central Park. About his brave trip into the past. For now the text would just hang in cyberspace. But if—when—Corey returned, they’d appear on his phone.
And if, by some miracle, he did rescue his grandmother, then Leila’s memory would be adjusted. She wouldn’t even know Corey went into the past. But her texts would be there, and Corey could read them to her. And then she’d know. There would be a record of before. She was dead and then she was alive. Because of Corey.
She picked up her phone and looked at her messages. Still nothing back from Corey. So she began to type:
corey, I’m still worried. just wanted to say, as of 9am u r back in the past & have not returned.
yr grandmother died on 911 but u went 2 try 2 save her. so far that is still a fact.
I hope when u return she will b alive. and if my memory of that is gone I hope this text will stay on yr phone so I can know what a hero u r. but most of all I want to see u again. dont b dead lol. pls write as soon as u can.
Xoxoxox
She sent it, then thought twice and wrote another one.
no matter what happens,
u r still a hero in my book anyway
As she sent that one, she smelled something burning. “Mom?” she called out. “Is everything okay in there?”
“Just murdered a few slices of bacon, sorry!” her mother called back. “I’m useless without you. Want to help me whip some cream?”
Leila pocketed her phone. As she headed for the door, her foot clipped one of Auntie Flora’s boxes. It toppled over, sending the contents sprawling. The lacquer box with the skating scene, still locked tight, landed upside down.
Leila quickly picked it up. It was warm in her hand, even though the morning was chilly. As she gazed at the skating scene, it seemed to grow even warmer.
She nearly dropped it.
Placing the box carefully on her desk, she called out, “Mom, can you give me a couple of minutes?”
17
As Corey awakened, there was only one thought in his mind:
She’s dead.
He spat out dust. His arm ached, his pants were ripped, and a rat was nibbling on his shoelace.
“Yecchh!” he cried, pulling in his leg.
The critter gave him a steady, disappointed look and then scampered into a hole in the dirt. Corey coughed and blinked the dust from his eyes. He tried to sit up but he was knocked back by the pain all over his body. He blinked and looked upward. Two vertical dirt walls arose on either side of him, maybe twenty feet high, framing a clear sky. The soil below him was wet and smelled foul.
He had no idea what had just happened or where he was. Had he fallen into some ditch that was safe from the World Trade Center debris? Had someone pulled him to a construction site across the highway?
No matter what, he was alone. Which meant he’d been too late. She’d run past him. Up to her office. She’d been in the elevator when it happened. Corey felt like a murderer. What good was being a Throwback if you couldn’t take advantage of the powers? It was an epic fail. A fatal fail. He was alive—somewhere—and she wasn’t.
He heard a low moan, slowly rising to a shout. It took a few seconds to realize that it had come from his own mouth.
“Sounds like a bloody animal,” came a voice from above him. “Madam, is this the young ruffian who attacked you?”
Corey scrambled to his feet. From above the wall, an old man stared down at him through a monocle. He had thick white sideburns and wore a brimmed hat. “What the— Who are you?” Corey blurted out.
“The fascination is mutual, I assure you,” the man said.
He was joined by a woman with thick makeup and dyed red hair that peeked out of the edges of a kerchief. “The kid didn’t attack, he jes’ appeeahed outta nowheah,” she replied, in the thickest New York accent Corey had ever heard. “Fell in, boom. He wuzn’t fresh or nothin’. Say, are yuz okay, young fella?”
Corey didn’t know how to reply. He blinked and looked around in bewilderment. Not far from him were two men lying against the dirt wall in the shadows, surrounded by empty bottles. They stared at him with bleary, half-lidded eyes.
“I think the lady likes ya, Stretch,” one of them called out to Corey in a thick and slurry voice.
“Send ’er to me if she wants a real man,” growled the other guy.
“Send ’er to you if she wants to lose whatever money she has.”
“Ahhhh, yer mudder’s mustache.”
“Ahhhh, yer fadder’s belly button.”
Neither of the men moved a muscle while speaking. Now it looked like they were falling asleep, as if that little conversation was enough work for the day. There were other men behind them. No one seemed to be doing much of anything. Some were standing, some lying down.
The gash of daylight overhead showed a calm, clear sky. No debris, no fires, no dust clouds, no eerie silence. None of the things people described about the 9/11 aftermath. The wall behind Corey was perfectly vertical, supported in places by thick wood planks. It was separated from the parallel wall by about sixty yards of flat, hard-packed dirt floor. Which meant Corey was in a ditch—a roofless tunnel that stretched as far as he could see, lined here and there with rickety ladders.
But . . . where was this?
Corey was seized with panic. The sharp pop of a nearby explosion made him flinch. One of the ditch people let out a hoot, shouting, “Here comes Tin Lizzie! Give her a proper greetin’!”
A group of men lumbered over to a bridge that spanned the ditch overhead, a thick set of wood planks supported by a rickety metal scaffold. Across it, a clunky old black car puttered loudly, making the planks bow dangerously downward. The men jeered and made fart noises, waving their hats and laughing. From inside the car, a proper-looking woman with a powdered-white face stared wide-eyed for a moment and then rolled up her window.
“I say, boy!” called the old man directly above Corey. “Can I get someone to give you a hand and deliver you from these thieving rapscallions?”
“What?” Corey said. “Sure.”
As the man and woman disappeared, Corey slumped against the wall. What had just happened? He was not in 2001, that was clear. But where was he—and when?
Corey spotted his grandmother’s schedule and his ancestor’s passport at his feet, and he stooped to pick them up. The passport was open to the photo. Corey smiled down at the stern old face. The man whose name day brought Maria Harvoulakis Fletcher to the Greek church and almost saved her life. “Worst happy name day ever, huh?” he said grimly, unfolding the cover to close it.
A moment later, the old man and the red-haired woman reappeared above him. With them was a guy in a cap, overalls, and a striped shirt who looked like a younger version of Popeye. He tipped his cap at Corey, lay flat on his torso, and reached a hand down. “Alley-oop, pal! Grab one of them ladders that ain’t broken.”
Corey did as he was told, and a moment later he was scrabbling over the edge of the ditch. “Atta boy,” the guy said. “Name’s Rusty.”
“I’m Mildred but everybody calls me Millie,” the woman said. She curtsied awkwardly, her dress flouncing left and right.
“I’m Filcher,” the old man said.
Corey looked around in bafflement. He was surrounded by four-story brick buildings, but it looked like someone had bulldozed a wide path right through them to make the ditch. Piles of construction rubble were everywhere, and some of the buildings were even missing corners, like they’d been sliced. Apartment interiors showed through the broken walls, their flowered wallpaper making them look like giant abandoned dollhouses. “I’m Corey.”
“What the heck were you doin’ down there with them rummies, kid?” Rusty said.
“He fell in, Einstein, whaddya think?” said Millie. “A lotta people fall in.”
The old man shook his head. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a white card, and handed it to Corey. “Outrageous! This foolish subway construction is the height of negligence. They evict good citizens from their homes, destroy the buildings, take their merry time building their track, and then—surprise! The war effort requires steel, so construction is halted. And what’s left? A public hole! A breeding ground for vermin and immorality! A death trap after dark! And for what—to lay down tracks and extend the subway into Brooklyn? Who on earth wants to go to Brooklyn in a tube under the river? Who will ever need that?”
“Me, for one,” Rusty said. “I live there.”
As the two men bickered, Corey peered behind the big man, at a sign that had been pasted to a brick wall:
!!ATTENTION!!
NEIGHBORS! FRIENDS!!!
WHEREAS, the corrupt City Government has decided without Consult to extend the Seventh Avenue Subway below 14th Street and into the City of Brooklyn, and
WHEREAS, the need for Steel to provide Ammunition for our heroic Troops in the Great War has halted Construction, and
WHEREAS, the dastardly Gash that mars our Village has been allowed to remain open like a Festering Wound due to the Bribes and Extortion paid to the Fat Cats of Tammany, and
WHEREAS, the good People of Greenwich Village have lost their Lives due to Falls & the attendant Cracked Skulls, THEN
LET IT BE RESOLVED that we the Suffering shall RISE UP to rectify this Injustice!!! Join us!!!
UNION SQUARE
6:00 P.M.
JUNE 15, 1917
“Wait,” Corey said. “Are you serious? It’s 1917? How the heck did that happen?”
His head was throbbing. This made no sense.
“Whot, whot?” the old man said. “Disorientation, memory loss—these indicate brain injury! Once again, industrial progress claims an innocent victim! But you, young fellow, are in luck, for I am an attorney! I represent the concerns of the good citizens of Greater Greenwich Village, who have suffered from this godforsaken construction project. And I am, humbly, at your service.”
Corey read the man’s card:
HORACE P. FILCHER, ESQUIRE
ATTORNEY AT LARGE
345 ½ HUDSON STREET
NEW YORK 4, NEW YORK
THOUGHTFUL • THOROUGH • THRIFTY
“Thanks,” Corey said.
“Young man, I instruct you to clean yourself up,” Filcher replied. “I will expect to see you in my offices as soon as you can. It will be to our mutual financial benefit, I assure you. And whom shall I expect? The full name is Corey . . .”
“Fletcher,” Corey replied.
The man extended a bony hand. “Fletcher, I’m Filcher. Haa! That’s a good omen. Visit anytime from nine to five. Except from twelve thirty to two thirty, when I have my postprandial detour into the arms of Morpheus.”
“Sounds illegal,” Rusty said.
“It means he’s napping,” Millie piped up. “Such a fancy pants.”
Tipping his hat, the old man walked away. “Good day, all.”
