Candy Shop War (38 page)

“What day?”

The voice chuckled. “Thursday.”

“I mean what date?”

“September thirteenth.”

Nate stepped out of the bar. Almost three on a school day. He should be walking home down Greenway! That wasn’t far!

Nate rushed along Main, his head hurting, his equilibrium off. He pushed onward, determined to overcome the uncomfortable aftereffects of time travel. He cut down a side street. Looking up ahead, he saw several kids walking along Greenway, including a familiar foursome.

“Summer, Trevor, Pidge, Nate! Hold up! You have to listen to me.”

His friends and his past self looked startled, and started murmuring to each other. Nate continued toward them, trying to ignore the pounding in his head.

“Stay away from Sweet Tooth,” Nate warned, stumbling slightly. “You can’t trust Mrs. White. She’s dangerous. You can’t trust anyone!”

“That’s close enough,” his past self demanded.

Nate halted. Although the scene was becoming eerily familiar, he persisted. “You have to let me explain. Nate, it’s me. I’m you! I’m from the future!”

“Right,” his past self said. “You don’t look anything like me. How do you know my name?”

Mr. Stott had warned him that he would not be able to change the past. He had explained that everything he did would be something that had already happened. Which meant that trying to convince his friends he was a time traveler would be a dead end. He had already failed! With less than an hour to burn, he had to make the most of his time.

“I have no time,” Nate said, plunging his hands into his wild hair. He looked at his past self. “What was I thinking? I forgot that you weren’t going to believe me. I guess you guys don’t want to come with me so I can fill you in on some things?”

“Sorry, we’re not going anywhere with you,” Summer said. It felt strange having her look at him coldly, like a dangerous stranger. It felt strange being so much taller than his friends. It felt strange looking down on himself from the perspective of another person.

“This guy harassing you?” the crossing guard called, approaching from down the street.

“I think he’s drunk,” Pigeon said.

Nate had a clear memory of this moment, thinking what a psycho the stranger must be, thinking how there was no way he would ever look like that slovenly bum. He remembered that the crossing guard had considered calling the police.

Nate threw up his hands, backing away. “No problem here, sorry to bother you kids.” The stranger had predicted something that would happen. What had he said? Oh, yeah. “Keep in mind, robbing graves isn’t right. I have things to do.”

Nate dashed away down Greenway, in the same direction the homeless stranger had run. What had been the man’s destination? How could he best use his time in the past? He could confront Mrs. White, but her henchmen were there and could certainly handle him, especially if he were alone, unarmed, and without candy. Besides, if he had succeeded doing something to Mrs. White, it would have already happened, right?

He considered his needs in the present. He was stranded in a field miles from town, with no houses around. If he was going to make a difference in the present, he needed a way back into town.

And suddenly it was clear what he needed to do. Of course! It was something he had already done. He just hoped it was something he had succeeded in doing. He would have to hurry.

Nate ran down a side street. He needed to double back, cross Main, and get into his neighborhood. But he couldn’t use Greenway or he would spook the crossing guard and his past self.

He dashed along the nearest street that paralleled Greenway, raced across Main, and entered Summer’s neighborhood. Racing through the middle-class development, he reached the creek. The rainstorm had not happened yet, so it was pretty low. He crossed the stream at a narrow point, managing to hop on rocks and avoid dousing his shoes.

Panting, Nate charged up the slope to the jogging path and trotted to Monroe Circle. He was getting so sweaty and nauseated that he walked up Monroe to his house. Pausing on the sidewalk, he stared at the front door. He knew just where his mom kept the keys, on the hook in the entry hall.

Still he hesitated. He remembered how this had traumatized his mom, and hated the thought of frightening her, but this was an emergency, and he knew the Explorer could handle the terrain where the ice cream truck was stranded. The SUV was an automatic, his dad had let him drive it short distances a couple of times, and he knew he could successfully steal it on short notice. He needed to do it! In fact, he felt certain that, in a sense, he already had.

Nate walked up to his front door and found it unlocked. Easing the door open, he heard his mom in the kitchen using the sink. He quietly closed the door and took the Explorer keys from the hook. He slunk over to the door to the garage and passed through it silently.

Sliding into the driver’s seat, Nate rubbed his eyes. They felt itchy and sore back behind the eyeballs. In the rearview mirror he saw that they were bloodshot. He found it very unsettling to look in a mirror and see somebody else staring back.

He started the engine and clicked the garage-door opener at the same time. He gently pressed on the accelerator as the door went up. The engine revved but the Explorer did not move. He was still in park. He tried to shift to reverse, but the gear stick would not move. He pressed down the brake, and that did the trick. Shifting into reverse, he backed out of the garage, clicking the button to close the door behind him.

Switching into drive, Nate accelerated up Monroe and turned toward Mayflower. It was nice that he could comfortably reach the pedals. In fact, the seat was a little too close to the steering wheel, so he backed it up a few inches.

Now that he was under way, driving felt easier, although he didn’t brake soon enough at Mayflower and ended up screeching several yards past the stop sign. He tried to use the turn signal and instead switched on the windshield wipers.

The stop sign at Main was approaching. He considered running it as John Dart had, but chickened out. It proved to be fortunate that he had hesitated, since he would have plowed into the side of a school bus. After a car honked to inform him it was his turn, Nate pulled out onto Main.

Cruising down the street, Nate found it troublesome to maintain a constant speed—he pushed the accelerator either too hard or too softly. Through experimentation he got better. By the time he turned onto Gold Coast Drive, he was feeling confident. He even used his blinker correctly!

The hills looked browner and drier than when he had driven this way with Mr. Stott. He saw no wildflowers. That rain had really freshened up the fields. The speed limit was 55, and he tried not to go over. At this point, getting pulled over for speeding would prove disastrous.

He watched for Orchard Lane, remembering that the road had been small and the sign not particularly obvious. He still felt a little unstable, and his head ached, but he managed to keep the wheel steady. He saw Orchard coming, put on his blinker, and turned.

The dirt road seemed to be in better repair than when he had traveled it with Mr. Stott. It was hard to be sure whether that was truly the case, or if the Explorer just handled the ruts a lot easier than the Candy Wagon had. He had lost all track of time, and began to worry he might skip back to the present at any moment.

Finally he reached the area where the ice cream truck had been ambushed. He saw the oak trees, the bushes, the dry creek with the little bridge. He drove through the dry brush on the opposite side of the road from where the Hummer had been hiding, heading for some voluminous bushes behind a bent oak tree.

Coming around to the back of the bushes, he found he could pull the Explorer into them some distance, screening the vehicle from view on three sides. He got out and locked the doors. The ground was firm and on a slight slope, so he hoped it would be a good place for the deserted Explorer to weather the rains.

Nate stuffed the keys a short ways into the tailpipe and ran off. With his remaining time, he wanted to put some distance between himself and the Explorer, so the man he was inhabiting would not discover the SUV when he regained his senses.

Feeling rested after the drive, he started out at an ambitious sprint, feeling the texture of the dirt road through the thin soles of his shoes. Soon Nate flagged to a brisk walk, throbbing pain hammering inside his forehead. He continued forward in spite of his weariness and discomfort.

Nate was well out of sight of where he had hidden the SUV when the fringes of his vision began to darken. He became so dizzy that he had to sit down. The darkness encroached from all sides until it seemed like he was peering at the world through a narrow tube.

The world spun and he swooned, soaring up into nothingness.

Chapter Nineteen

Red

Nate came to himself seated in the overturned ice cream truck. “I’m back,” he said to the coyote. “The headache is gone—what a relief!”

“To me it seemed you never left,” the coyote said. “It happened in a twinkling. Hurry, use the red sand.”

Nate unscrewed the other end of the hourglass. “I stashed a car nearby,” Nate reported.

“Good thinking.”

“Hope it’s still there. Off I go!” He poured the sand into his mouth, swooned, and soared.

*****

Nate opened his eyes. He was lying on a couch in front of a television, head cushioned on a decorative pillow. On the TV a judge was dispensing advice to a woman with poofy red hair, who was nodding reluctantly.

Nate sat up. His arms were pudgy and he had long nails. He could feel rolls of fat on his waist and chest. He was a woman!

Hustling to the kitchen, he found a clock. Instead of numbers, it had the hours represented by different species of bird. According to the clock, it was about blue jay past goldfinch. Which meant 3:25. Daylight flooded in through the open blinds, throwing shadow stripes on the kitchen floor, so he knew it was afternoon.

Nate noticed a set of keys on the counter. He grabbed them and headed for the door, pausing to take a look at himself in the bathroom mirror. His brown hair was tied up in a scarf. The face was chubby and friendly, a woman in her forties wearing too much makeup.

One of the keys was electronic. Scuttling out the door, Nate tapped the unlock button twice. He heard the locks click inside the silver Sentra parked in the driveway. Turning in a circle, Nate recognized the neighborhood—he wasn’t far from the cemetery.

Nate tugged open the door of the car and got behind the wheel. Relieved that the car was an automatic, he started it up and backed out of the driveway. Mr. Stott had said the red sand would take him one or two days into the future. Whichever it was, at this time of day, his best bet would be Pigeon’s house. Judging from the phone call before the ambush at Gary Haag’s, Pigeon was his one friend who had not yet been captured. Hopefully that was still true.

Driving cautiously, Nate found the streets abnormally empty. He wound his way down to Mayflower and followed it to the Presidential Estates. Turning down Monroe, he parked alongside the curb where Pigeon lived.

He got out of the car and walked up to the door, fascinated by the feel of his softer, flabbier body. Nate rang the doorbell, waited, and rang it again. An old man opened the door who looked so much like Pigeon that Nate almost laughed. It had to be his grandfather, or maybe even great-grandfather.

“Can I help you?” the old man asked in a frail voice.

“I’m looking for Pigeon?” Nate said. His own voice surprised him. It was so feminine! He would have to get sprayed for cooties when he got back to normal.

The old man looked him up and down. “Do you know him?”

“Yes, this is really important.”

The old man stared at Nate suspiciously. “How do you know him?”

“He’s a really good friend of my son,” Nate tried.

“What friend?”

“Nate Sutter.”

The old man shook his head. “You’re not Nate’s mom. What is this? Who are you really?”

“Who are
you?
” Nate countered. “Pigeon never mentioned he had a grandpa living with him. How do you even know what Nate’s mom looks like?”