Paint by Magic (10 page)

The bigger girl and the guy my age actually stuck out their hands for me to shake. Betty was a spindly kind of girl about as tall as Crystal. She wore her hair in a short bob, cut to her chin, with thick bangs in front. Homer, who was just my age, had dark hair slicked back from a neat center part. He wore round, wire Harry Potter-type glasses. The youngest kid, Chester, looked like a smaller version of Homer, but without the glasses. He had his hair parted and slicked back, too, and he had. two big front teeth that stuck out a little and made him look like a chipmunk.

The girl called Elsie—she was the shocker. I sucked in my breath, feeling light-headed and strange. I needed to sit down fast in one of the white rocking chairs. I had seen Elsie before.

She was crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue at me. This time she wasn't wearing the gigantic hair bow, but I recognized her just the same. She was the girl from the painting of
Elsie's Party, 1926.

Whether I wanted to believe it or not, somehow I had traveled back in time. It was really 1926, and I was sitting here on the porch of the home of Fitzgerald Cotton, the man who had—somehow—painted so many pictures of my mom.

Okay,
I told myself.
Be brave. There must be a way home again.

I gave Elsie a weak smile, then sipped the lemonade. It was cold and soothing. "Hello," I mumbled.

"Hey, Connor," said Homer. "Where d'you live?"

"
Hay
is for horses, Homer," his big sister said primly. "Right, Gramma?"

"Shaddup, Betty," said Homer. He gave me a look that said,
Sisters!

"Mind your manners, Homer," their grandmother said. "I must tell you, Connor, that I've met our new neighbors on the other block, and the husband is not a geologist at all. He is a professor of literature. He and his wife have no children, as far as I understand. Yet you told Fitz that you're their son?"

"Um, no," I said. "He just sort of came up with that himself. I never told him a thing."

"How odd. So—will you tell us? Where
do
you live?"

"Um..." I thought fast. "San Francisco?"

Betty snorted. "Are you asking us or telling us?"

"Telling you," I said firmly, warming up to the idea of creating a past for myself. Of course I couldn't tell them the truth. They'd never believe me, anyway. "I'm from San Francisco, but, um, my family isn't there now. I mean, I live on my own."

The kids' grandmother looked concerned. "Surely your parents haven't deserted you!"

"Not exactly," I said, trying to think quickly.

Elsie piped up excitedly: "It's just like what happened before! Connor just dropped out of the heavens, Gramma! We can find room for him, too, just like we did for Pammie."

For
Pammie
? It was very weird hearing Elsie say my mom's name like that. So—familiarly. As if she really knew Mom. Fitzgerald Cotton had known Mom's name, too. "
Where is she? Where is my Pamela?
" he had asked upstairs in the studio. What was happening? How could they know anything about my mom?

There had to be some connection between these people here in 1926 and Mom—and me. My mind was totally whirling, trying to get a grip on such bizarre thoughts, when I heard Mrs. Cotton's voice speaking urgently through the fog of my dizziness.

"So your parents have deserted you, Connor? And you are all alone in the world?"

"I—I'm an orphan." I invented hastily, stifling a quick stab of guilt at killing off my parents—even in a lie. "It's not too bad, most of the time. I manage all right." I stared down at the porch floor. "So I've been sort of traveling around looking for a job." Could kids work in this time? Seems to me I learned something once at school about how even little kids used to work in factories and mills and places like that in the olden times. But how old those olden times were, I had no idea.

When I looked up, the grandmother was staring at me. "You mean you actually have no one at all to look after you? No foster family? No guardian?"

"No—ma'am." My thoughts raced ahead. What if she took me to an orphanage or something? I needed to get back up to Fitzgerald Cotton's studio if I was going to figure out how to get home.

"Oh dear," Mrs. Cotton said thoughtfully.

"I would rather live on my own than in an orphanage," I said quickly, trying to sound competent and responsible. "I don't mind sleeping out in the streets—at least nobody's beating me. It's not too bad, really—except when I can't find any food. But I earn money by doing—um—odd jobs for people. Shining shoes and ... um ... running errands. And stuff."

Homer looked impressed. "What did you do when it was pouring rain the other night?"

"I slept under a parked car," I said, trying to look brave and needy at the same time.

It must have worked, because Chester, the youngest one, piped up, tugging on the woman's arm. "Gramma, we got room, don't we?"

The woman looked me over consideringly. "Yes, we can make the room. Connor? Would you like to stay here with us for a spell? Just until we work something out, of course—not the orphanage, don't worry. We'll find you someplace to stay."

"Oh yes, ma'am," I replied. "That would be really nice of you."

"You can sleep with Homer and Chester. We'll set up a camp bed."

"I sleep on a camp bed in my room with Mama and Betty," Elsie informed me, "and it's perfectly cozy and comfortable. And Pammie slept with us when she was here."

Pammie again! This was stranger than strange, but somehow I was starting to understand. I was in 1926. Mom had been here, too! But when? How could she have time-traveled and not had us notice she was gone? A trip to the past was something so weird, it would have to change a person in some way. I felt changed already, and I'd only just
arrived
here.

Then I remembered how different Mom was now. How much she'd changed.

She might have been here for a long time—and we'd never noticed. Because ... how did time travel work?

Maybe she had been here and gone back—right to the very same moment she'd left. And so we never knew she'd been away! I could do the same thing—if only I figured out how to do it.

I felt I was holding some of the missing puzzle pieces in my hand. Things were weirder than ever, but somehow they were starting to make a little more sense.

"Will a camp bed be all right with you, dear?" pressed Mrs. Cotton.

"A camp bed will be great," I replied firmly.
I can do this,
I thought with a quick surge of excitement. I could take things as they came, and deal with them—and make it all up as I went along, with no one to arrange things for me. Sure, I was still scarfed. But—me! A time traveler!

I felt exhilarated and triumphant, like I was Doug's dad and had just scaled Mount Everest.

Betty was looking at me with thoughtful eyes. She looked at me like she could see right into my head. "What?" I said.

She made me nervous—and when she finally opened her mouth, I stiffened, expecting a challenge ... something that might knock me off Mount Everest. But all she said was: "Nothing, really. It's just—you look so familiar. Like I've seen you before."

"Well, you haven't," I said firmly. But I knew I looked like Mom. Everybody said so. Should I tell her Pamela was my mother?

A voice inside me whispered,
Better wait.
So I decided I'd better take things slowly. Try to feel my way around until I could get home again.

The boys were setting up a board game on the big wicker footstool. "Want to play?" Homer asked me.

"Sure," I said. I mean, I figured if I could eventually return home to the same moment I left, then what was the hurry? Why not stay and
play
? "How do you play?"

They all stared at me as if I'd sprouted antlers or something. "Remember, he's an orphan," Elsie hissed.

"Ah, yes, our poor orphan," muttered Betty, meeting my eyes. I felt myself flushing red, and tensed again for a fight. But then she just shrugged and started explaining the rules.

Our game was called Snakes and Ladders. You moved your piece along the board and went up ladders if you were lucky. If you were unlucky you slid down slides (the snakes), then you had to basically start over. I had to start over three times, and Elsie thought that was hilarious. I hate losing games, but there was something fun, anyway, about sitting around on a nice afternoon with these kids. Only Chester wasn't playing. He was down in the grass doing something with a metal truck. Sometimes we heard him making soft
vrooom
noises.

"Hey, how come you guys aren't in school?" I asked them.

"Hay is for horses," said Betty sternly. She wasn't so different from Crystal after all.

"It's Easter vacation," Homer told me. "We get off all next week, too. Don't you go to school?"

I remembered my status as orphan on the run, and shrugged. "From time to time," I said airily. I glanced over to the kids' grandmother, hoping she wasn't listening. I really didn't want her thinking she had to contact the authorities or something. But she was smiling at another woman who was just coming up the path.

"Mama!" shouted Chester, and he jumped to his feet.

The kids' mom was a pretty woman, tall and slim, wearing a light green dress with beads shimmering on the skirt in the same style Mom had worn the day I first saw her with that art book. Even though the day was warm, this woman was wearing a hat. She took it off as she climbed the porch steps, and I saw she wore her dark hair curling softly against her cheeks like the girls did—and Mom did. Obviously this was a really trendy style, because only the grandmother wore hers differently, pulled back in a perfect old-lady bun. It's not like I go around noticing what people wear and what sort of hair they have—not usually, I mean. But here and now everything seemed worth noticing.

She set down her two large shopping bags and hugged Chester. "Hello, my pet. I see we've got company." Homer and Betty jumped up from the game and went to help carry the bags. They didn't even have to be asked, which was kind of weird but impressive. You wouldn't see that happening at my house—but then again, Mrs. White does all the food shopping, and part of her job is to bring the stuff in from the van and put it all away in the kitchen. Then I remembered, we
used
to have Mrs. White. I'd probably be doing a lot of fetching and carrying from now on. That is, when I went back.

"I'm Joanna Cotton," the woman introduced herself, holding out her hand to me. "I see you've met my brood of chicks."

"Hello," I mumbled, shaking her hand. Looking closer, I thought I recognized her from one of the paintings in the old art book, but I wasn't sure. "Yes, I've met everybody." I felt sort of tongue-tied. I remembered reading something about Fitzgerald Cotton's brother getting killed in some war. This must be his widow, and she and their children lived in the grandparents' house.

While Joanna and Mrs. Cotton went into the house with the groceries, the kids took me on a tour around the yard. Elsie hung on my hand and skipped along, dragging me with her. "Are you gonna stay forever, Connor? Are you gonna be our new brother?"

"No," I told her. "But I'll stay for a while."

Things seemed so fresh and comfortable, I had to be careful—otherwise I might get to feel too welcome here. I might forget I needed to find a way home.

The sketch was the key. I knew this instinctively. And Fitzgerald Cotton knew something about it. I would wait till tomorrow and ask him then—and search the studio, somehow. Nine o'clock sharp.

The kids showed me around their property. As far as I could tell, their house was on the exact same piece of land ours was built on—but it had a much larger yard than we had, and was all full of lemon trees. That field was, I guessed, the space where Doug's house would one day be built next door. It was an unsettling notion, really, that my house didn't even exist—that nobody in my whole family had been born yet—and here I was, walking right over the spot where a fire would rage—and where Doug and I would one day in the future be hanging out, playing PlayStation.

A rickety white picket fence surrounded the Cottons' property, and behind the house there was an old stable, but no horses. Homer told me he was hoping they'd get an
automobile
someday, and they would keep it in the stable. In the backyard there was a humongous vegetable garden in one corner. They'd planted all sorts of early crops, and I could see lettuces and cabbages and other stuff I didn't even recognize.
Our
vegetables came nicely trimmed, labeled, and wrapped in plastic.

All the kids were just standing there, looking at me as if they could tell I wasn't from around here.

"What?" I said. They made me nervous, staring like that.

"Where'd you get those duds?"

"What duds?" What
are
duds?

The kids all laughed—especially Homer. He was the one I'd heard laughing from upstairs, the one who sounded like a maniac goblin.

"Guess they have other words for clothing over in San Francisco," said Betty with a smirk. But she gave me a long look like maybe she suspected I wasn't really from San Francisco at all. Which of course I wasn't. "Your shoes—well. Never mind," she said.

I just shrugged. Back in my own time these shoes were the coolest thing in the whole middle school. But it wasn't worth discussing my
duds.
There were more pressing things on my mind. "Um, about your uncle," I said.

"You've met him? Where?" Betty's eyes were wide.

"Um—up in his studio," I stammered.

"He never lets
us
up there." Her voice was challenging.

"I was posing for a portrait," I said. "But he got really ... weird. Mean."

"Mama says he's a hot-blooded, hotheaded artist," said Homer. "As if that's any excuse. He's just plain grumpy."

Betty sighed. "He is grumpy these days," she agreed. "But he wasn't always like that. You kids don't remember him any other way, but I do. He takes things hard, Mama says. For years he felt guilty that our father died in the war." She sank down onto the grass near the garden and stared up at the blue sky. "Uncle Fitzy was ex- 'empted from battle because he had rheumatic fever as a child and it weakened his heart," she told me. "He's not supposed to exert himself or he could die."