There’s no answer. She’s either not there or she doesn’t want to see me. And I just can’t accept that. I need to talk to her, and I need to talk to her now. I pick up a handful of pebbles and throw them against the upstairs window. “Madame Zeynab!”

  Rufus thinks it’s a game. He rushes toward the building to chase the pebbles and is totally freaked out when they bounce off the bricks and fall on him.

  “Mason?” comes a familiar voice behind me.

  I wheel, but I already know who it is. Ava steps out of the fro-yo shop, a large cone in her hand.

  “Oh. Hey,” I say in the dismissive tone I always use with Ava. Mostly, I’m hoping she hasn’t noticed that I’m yelling the town down for a fortune-teller who isn’t even there.

  No such luck. She saw everything. “I never pegged you as the kind of guy who’d go see a psychic.”

  I almost blurt, “She’s my aunt!” but catch myself just in time. It would take Ava about fifteen seconds to confirm with her greatest fan—Ty—that Madame Zeynab is most definitely not my aunt.

  Instead, I go on the offensive. “I suppose New Yorkers are too cool for psychics.”

  “Just the opposite,” Ava replies. “In Greenwich Village alone, there must be fifty little places like this—palms read, tarot cards, crystal ball, soothsayer, séances.” She adds, “You’re the one I thought would be too cool—you know, football player, big man on campus.”

  “Big man on . . .” I echo before my words peter out. Is she serious? Has this girl even met me? Science dweeb? Cofounder of the astronomy club? Spaceman with the stick-up hair?

  That’s when it comes to me. Ava loves science, so the dweeb thing isn’t a negative with her at all. Plus, she’s never known me when I wasn’t on the football team with Dominic, Miggy, and the others. She has no clue that I’m the team punching bag, the backup to the backup to the backup. All she sees is that she tried to be friends with me, and I acted like I was too good for her. And instead of hating my guts—which was the plan—it’s only made her even more curious about me!

  Well, why wouldn’t she be? Ava’s the kind of person who can walk into a room full of strangers and come out with a dozen new friends. She’s nice; she’s confident. Dominic and Miggy instantly tried to rope her into their crowd, and they reject everybody.

  I glance into the fro-yo shop and confirm that she’s here with Emma and Kennedy from homeroom. But she doesn’t just hang out with the popular girls. She and Clarisse are friends too. And Ty says she just joined the recycling club, because she’s big on saving the environment. She’s all over the place. So when she comes up against my get-lost attitude, it probably makes her want to find out why I’m not instantly drawn to her like everybody else.

  Unbelievable! The first time I was twelve, I was in love with her, and she eventually started liking me back. Now I’m treating her badly—and she’s started liking me anyway!

  I gaze at the multicolored sprinkles on her cone and wonder which of my teammates’ grubby germs are on there.

  19

  Twelve Years Old

  OCTOBER 10

  Clarisse and I finally choose our science-fair topic. We’re going to build an infinity mirror to create the optical illusion of LED lights reflected until infinity.

  When I say we choose the topic, I mean Clarisse chooses it. To be honest, I’m actually not complaining. When you’re a super-busy person—like maybe you’re trying to figure out why you’ve ended up five years earlier in time than you’re supposed to be—Clarisse is the ultimate partner for a science fair. Not only did she choose the topic; she’s doing all the research, building the display, writing up our results, and even recording an audio tour for the judges when they visit our project. All I have to do is show up—or maybe not even that. She probably thinks I’ll only get in the way. For all her good qualities, Ty’s right about her. She can be world-class annoying. And he doesn’t even have the information that I do—which is that five years from now, she’s going to be much worse.

  I have to admit I feel a little guilty that my total effort on this project amounts to one big nothingburger. But what choice do I have? No matter what suggestion I make, it’s guaranteed to be wrong. That’s another thing about Clarisse—she’s very clear about what’s right and what’s wrong. And anyway, I justify it all with the fact that, technically, I already did a science-fair project this semester—the twelfth-grade one on time travel that I dropped down the stairs in the altercation with Ty that got me kicked out of school.

  Of course, I have no proof of that, so when Ms. Alexander approaches me after homeroom on Tuesday, I’m worried that I’m about to get chewed out for letting Clarisse do all the work.

  But the teacher doesn’t seem to be angry at all. In fact, I get the impression that she’s pretty uncomfortable about something. She keeps glancing over her shoulder to make sure every single kid is out of the room besides me.

  “I should probably get going too,” I tell her. “First period is starting.”

  “Not yet.” She shuts the door and turns to face me. “There’s a new teacher in the music department.”

  “I’m not in music this semester—”

  “His name is Mr. Nekomis,” she interrupts. “Remember the night of the Orionid meteor shower? You called me Mrs. Nekomis!”

  “Well, I was pretty out of it back then,” I manage, inventing rapidly. “Plus, I had a mouthful of hydrogen peroxide, so everything was kind of garbled.”

  “It wasn’t garbled. It was Mrs. Nekomis,” she counters. “And when I asked, ‘Who’s that?’ your answer was ‘You are.’ And weeks later, along comes this new teacher with exactly that name.”

  Yikes, this is so not ideal. I’m not scared of getting in trouble. In the end, all I have to do is play dumb. But did I just change the future by putting Mr. Nekomis on her radar screen? What if she thinks he’s a creepy guy who scouted out one of her students to talk him up to her? They might never get married because of me. This is the kind of time-travel problem that Ty and I used to talk about for hours. What if one of their kids was destined to be president or cure a terrible disease, but now that kid never even gets a chance to be born? All that would be because of me!

  It makes me really self-conscious, because lately I’ve been messing with the future a million different ways—by being mean to Ava, training Rufus to avoid Roto-Rooter trucks, and working on Mom and Dad to try to save their marriage. But who knows what damage I’m doing to the course of history without realizing it?

  Very briefly, I toy with the idea of confessing the whole thing to Ms. Alexander. She’s a science teacher. Maybe she’ll be able to help with my situation. But more likely, she’ll get worried about me and call my folks. Or she’ll assume I’m being a jerk and pulling her chain, and I’ll end up expelled five years earlier than last time.

  So I tell her, “Maybe I got woken up in the middle of a dream, and I said something from the dream that sounded like Nekomis. So when you met the new teacher . . .”

  “I suppose,” she muses. But even her frown is frowning.

  “I hear he’s a nice guy, though,” I offer. “Mr. Nekomis, I mean. The music kids like him.”

  I have no idea if I’ve gotten Ms. Alexander and Mr. Nekomis back on track. But for the time being, my parents are still married, so I’m doing what I can to keep them from getting on each other’s nerves.

  Mostly that involves picking up after my father, since that’s the only part of their problems I can have an effect on. I can’t do much about the big stuff—like when Dad forgets to pay the mortgage. Basically, Mom doesn’t think he’s a responsible grown-up. I don’t even really disagree with her, but I don’t want my parents to split. I love my father, and my seventeen-year-old self remembers how painful the time of the divorce was.

  So I put the toilet seat down—much to Rufus’s dismay—and hang up all the towels Dad just tosses aside. Outside, I make sure the hose is rolled up after Dad waters the garden. He’s okay at yard work, but he’s cleaning-challenged, so there are always rakes, shovels, and shears strewn around the property. Mom once got a rake in the face just walking across the grass.

  The sad part about the whole thing is that he’s a really great dad—both before the split and after. He always has time for Serena and me, and he’s a hundred percent supportive of our interests—no matter how strange they may seem to him. Even after the divorce, he and Mom still get along okay.

  I join Mom at the front window one rainy afternoon. “Dad did a good job, right?” As soon as I saw the weather report on my phone, I spent twenty minutes getting everything put away in the garage. One of Mom’s pet peeves is “the things we spend our hard-earned money on lying around getting muddy and rusty.”

  “We need the rain,” she comments absently. “We really don’t water enough.”

  “Maybe Dad thinks there’s a big storm coming,” I put in eagerly. That could earn him points a few weeks from now when half the town blows away during Harvest Festival. “And the newspaper’s been nice and neat these days, too, right?” I jam my hands in my pockets so she won’t see that I’m covered in newsprint black.

  She sighs. “Mason, your job is to go to school and get an education. You don’t have to be a cheerleader for your dad.”

  And when I mention to my father that he and Mom aren’t getting into so many arguments over household stuff, he looks at me like that never would have occurred to him in a million years.

  20

  Twelve Years Old

  OCTOBER 12

  Ty and I are still friends—best friends even. But Ava has opened up a big chasm between us.

  I don’t really blame him for that. He can’t understand why I’m not being nicer to Ava, and I definitely can’t explain it to him. And now that they’re all in on their science-fair project, there’s a big chunk of Ty’s life that I can’t be a part of.

  They go to school early every morning to work on the project, which means Ty and I don’t walk together anymore. I’m not complaining. That gives me the chance to head into town to see if Madame Zeynab is in her tea shop. She never is. I always get there before she opens. But by the time I run over there after football practice, she’s already closed. She may be a good fortune-teller, but I have to question her business model a little. How’s she supposed to make money if her shop is never open for customers?

  As proud science dweebs, Ty and I don’t believe in the supernatural. Everything that happens must have some explanation in physics, chemistry, or mathematics. Even the weirdness that I’m going through now must follow some logical rules of cause and effect. I just don’t know what they are yet.

  That’s why I need Madame Zeynab. She knows about me—I saw it in her eyes. But her words didn’t make any sense. “Two futures, two paths.” What was that about? I have to find out what she meant.

  Without Madame Zeynab, there’s not much else I can do to try to understand what’s happening to me. I did a Google search for car accident knocked me back in time without much success. There are plenty of people who think they’re in the past after a traumatic event, like a car accident or a brick falling on their heads, but they’re really in the here and now. One lady who fell out of a tree is convinced she’s a handmaiden to Queen Hatshepsut in ancient Egypt. That’s not my situation at all. She isn’t in ancient Egypt, plain and simple. I’m definitely in the past, five years before I started out.

  In sheer desperation, I ask Ty if I can see his and Ava’s project on time travel. Not that they know any more on the subject than I do—I’m living it and I still know nothing. But they’ve been researching this twenty-four/seven, and I can’t rule out the possibility that some random fact they’ve dug up might ring a bell with me.

  Ty sounds suspicious when I call him up. “I don’t think we should let you see our research. You might steal it for your own project.”

  The mere fact that he could suspect me of that makes me wonder how damaged our friendship is already.

  “Why would we steal it?” I reason. “We’re building an infinity mirror. At least Clarisse is. I haven’t had much to do with it.”

  He laughs. “Serves you right. That’s what happens when you partner with a tyrant.”

  “So can I see it?”

  He hesitates. “Maybe I should ask Ava.”

  “Who’s under the thumb of what tyrant?” I needle him.

  “All right,” he agrees. “Come on over. Some of the stuff’s at Ava’s house, but you can check out whatever’s here.”

  Ty’s mom greets me at the door. “Prince Mason! Haven’t seen you for a while.”

  And you still haven’t, I think, since the real me is five years in the future. But I take her point. Mrs. Ehrlich used to be like my second mother. I mean that literally—back in the day, her name appeared even before Dad’s on the list of people who were authorized to pick me up from school. She’s used to seeing me at least as often as her own son. The prince thing started with Ty’s father. He said I was a prince because I was the only person polite enough to laugh at his corny jokes. I feel a twinge of regret that the need to stay away from Ava is also keeping me not just from my best friend, but also my adopted family.

  Ty takes me down to the basement, which is dominated by the cracked terrarium that used to hold the ant farm we created in fourth grade—a rare failure for us.

  Ty catches me grinning at it and laughs. “How were we supposed to know we filled it with the only ants in the insect world that didn’t like sugar?”

  “And were too lazy to tunnel,” I add.

  It’s a bittersweet reminder of the days when even messing up big-time was fun, because we were doing it together. Man, Mr. Ehrlich was mad when he had to call an exterminator to get the ants out of the basement.

  I turn my attention to the time-travel project, which is under construction on the old Ping-Pong table. Another memory—Ty and I never got good enough to play much of a game, so we repurposed the table as our laboratory and makerspace.

  I survey their progress. Ty and Ava have the corrugated cardboard display built, but there’s no decoration, and none of the material has been mounted yet.

  “Ava ordered this wallpaper of spinning clock hands,” he explains. “We’re going to cover the box with that.”

  “Nice,” I say, not really meaning it. What do I care if he and Ava win the science fair? I’m an infinity-mirror guy—not that I had much choice.

  I skim through their research. It’s good stuff, but it’s nothing new. Printouts from the chronometers aboard the Apollo missions in the sixties and seventies. Einstein’s theories and explanations of what happens to time near black holes.

  “We’re working on a section about time travel in books, TV shows, and movies, but we’re not done yet,” he tells me.

  “Awesome.”

  The nose-wrinkle frown has never been more pronounced. “I know you, man. You don’t think it’s awesome. Why would you worm your way into my basement to see our project? So you can dump on it? Does that make you feel good about blowing us off to work with Clarisse?”

  “That’s not it at all,” I try to explain. “I wanted to see your project! And it’s good! It’s just that—”

  He cuts me off. “What’s with you, Mason? Ever since that sleepover, you’ve been weird. You won’t work with me on the project. You’re a jerk to Ava. You go out for football, which you hate! You’re my best friend, and I don’t even know you anymore!”

  “That’s because—” I bite my tongue. How can I tell him? If he thinks I’m weird now, what will he think when he hears the truth?

  “I think you should go,” Ty says in a quiet tone.

  I back up a step. Mason Rolle, high school senior, is used to not being friends with Ty. That’s the way it’s been for five solid years. Still, in this twelve-year-old moment, this is shocking. Neither of us has ever kicked the other out of one of our houses before. I suddenly feel really sad.

  Ty’s voice is a little louder now. “I want you to leave.”

  The only good thing about what’s happening is being friends with Ty again. And if I don’t do something drastic, our friendship will be gone even sooner than it’s supposed to be.

  So I open my big mouth and it all comes pouring out. “The reason you don’t know me is—it’s not really me.”

  He snorts. “Yeah, right.”

  “I mean, it’s me,” I clarify, babbling a little. “But I’m not the same me. I’m me from the future.”

  He just stares.

  “I time traveled! Not the way we always talked about, where you go back centuries. I’m seventeen years old. You’re there too—everybody is, only older. We’re high school seniors. I can’t explain exactly how it happened, but I got into a really bad car wreck. And the next thing I knew, I was twelve again, waking up at that sleepover in the lab.”

  Anger suffuses his cheeks. “Is this supposed to be funny?”

  “It sounds crazy, but you have to believe me!” I plead. “Everything we’re doing, I did already, five years ago. Not exactly the same way, but a lot of it. How do you think I knew it was Dominic and Miggy who attacked us at the sleepover?”

  He folds his arms in front of him. “So tell me about the future, since you’ve already been there. Are there flying cars? Do we live in a bio-dome on Pluto?”

  “It’s only five years, man. Things aren’t that different.”

  He sticks out his jaw belligerently. “Tell me, future boy!”

  I think hard. “You know that new app, TikTok—the one that’s like YouTube, only too limited and nobody’s ever going to use it? Well, by senior year, it’s the biggest thing around.”

  “Thank goodness the future of humanity is safe,” he comments sarcastically.

  I go on. “Kobe Bryant is going to die in a freak helicopter crash in California. And a disease called coronavirus is going to shut down the whole world for over a year.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Too bad there’s no way for me to check on any of this—or maybe that’s the whole point.”

 

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