The Left Behinds and the iPhone That Saved George Washington (16 page)

Not right
, I think, getting to my feet.
Where’s General Washington?

Daniel?

Bev?

Nothing will be completely right unless I find all of them alive and well.

I
TURN, MAKE A MOVE
to run back to the stable, but I’m restrained.

Physically.

By Continental soldiers.

“You’ll not be going there, lads and lassie,” says a guy who has grabbed me by the collar. “You’ll be in the crossfire. Let us conclude our business, and then we’ll sort things out.”

“My brother’s in there!” cries Elizabeth.

“Bev is in there!” cries Brandon.

“General Washington is in there!” I cry.

“And we’ll get them all out,” the soldier says. Then, to himself, perhaps more grimly than he intends: “One way or another.”

Elizabeth breaks free. Daniel has not yet emerged from the flames.

As she runs toward the burning barn, the soldier holding me by the collar loosens his grip, and I break free as well. I’m more worried about Elizabeth getting shot by one of the Continental soldiers on horseback than I am of her running into fire in search of Daniel.

She runs, I run, two soldiers behind us run after us. Brandon stays put. He’s still trying to figure things out. Maybe he thinks this is still part of some
reenactment
.

Before things get hairy, we are stopped. People, our people, are emerging from the smoking ruins.

“Elizabeth!” I hear Daniel say, before I can see him. “I am not harmed, nor is she!”

Bev emerges next, and she is not only peeved, she is
monumentally
peeved. Embers of burning wood have fallen on her spiffy jacket, her boots are dirty, and, worst of all, some junky stuff has gotten into her
hair
.

But none of that is what’s gotten Bev ticked off. “I’ve had it with that guy!” Bev says. “Who the heck does he think he is?

“That’s General Washington, Bev—is he all right?”

“Ask him yourself,” Bev says. “And tell him that the next time he tells me to be silent, I’m going to kick him in the shins!”

T
HERE
’
S MORE FIRE NOW
in the stable, less smoke—the place is really going up. Then I see a fiery blur, from the far right side of the structure. General George Washington, hatless, hair charred, eyes blazing, emerges from the fire, and walks straight over to Bev and me. “I demand answers!” General Washington says. “Who are you people, in such costume? Have you conspired to kill me? Answer now, or I swear I shall have you hanged!”

I wish I could give him an easy answer. But talking to General Washington when he’s steaming mad and his hair is smoking and his eyes are blazing is positively
scary
. So I say: “Well, General, it’s a … um … ah … er …”

Bev, naturally, isn’t so easily cowed. “You see here,” she says. “You have no business talking to us like that!”

General Washington and Bev, I’m beginning to sense, are not going to be best pals anytime soon. General Washington literally grits his teeth—his
fake
teeth, that is—like he almost can’t stop himself from saying something really foul to Bev. But she’s just a kid, right? And a girl. So whatever he was thinking of saying, he doesn’t.

Instead he looks at our hands. At what we’re holding in our hands. And that sets him off on a brand-new topic.

“What,” he says, “are those … boxes? Why are you holding them thusly?”

Brandon walks up and says, “It’s a phone, dude. Whaddya think it is? And you better put your hair out, ’cause it’s going to, like, light up any minute now.”

This is not really the proper way to address General George Washington.

This does not go over well.

The general pats his hair down, to put out any fires, and then I think he’s just about ready to smite Brandon with the back of his hand when one of the Continental soldiers comes up to him. “Two dead, Excellency,” he says. “Two Hessian soldiers.”

“Only two?” I say. “What happened to the other one? The guy holding the torch?”

General Washington redirects his wrath from Brandon to me. “Silence!” he says. “You will not speak unless spoken to!” Then he turns to the soldier and says, “And what of the other? The one who held the torch?”

“That’s Kramm,” I say. “He must be found, General Washington! At all costs!”

“I said, silence!” General Washington explodes. “Another word and I’ll have your tongue! Find him,” he says to the soldier. “And bring him to me. He shall be questioned. And then he shall be hanged.”

B
EV AND
B
RANDON
, I see, are about to short-circuit.

I can’t blame them. The last fifteen minutes have been kind of on the hairy side. And before that, the only thing they had to worry about was getting through the Christmas dinner the school was going to have for us.

I grab both of them by the arm and tug them away. I figure all I need is a few minutes to explain things.

Bev’s angry, and Brandon’s confused. They start asking questions at the same time. They pipe down for a half second to give me a chance to answer, but then they start right in again. I put my hands up and out in protest. “Let me explain!” I say. “Will you all just shut up, please, so I can tell you what’s what?”

Finally they do. “All right,” says Bev. “You seem to
know so much, Mel. What’s going on? You know how much trouble we’re in? I’m telling you, they might use this as an excuse to throw us out of school!”

“Let me explain,” I say. “Now, do you remember, back in the basement of the Taylorsville General Store? Brandon was fooling around with a MacBook?”

“Of course we remember,” Bev says. “That was, like, fifteen minutes ago.”

“Well, for you, maybe it was fifteen minutes ago, but not for me.”

“You’re losing me, dude,” says Brandon. “Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes.”

“Sometimes it isn’t,” I say. “If you remember, Brandon was fooling around with this MacBook, and then our iPhones started going haywire. It was because we were all downloading a new app. It’s called iTime. And believe it or not, it zapped us back here. Which is
not
a reenactment. This is the real deal, guys. It actually
is
Christmas Day, 1776. And that guy you were just yelling at, Brandon? He’s no reenactor. He’s General George Washington himself. And one thing he has never seen in his life is an iPhone, which is why he was asking you about it.”

Brandon blinks.

So does Bev.

Then Brandon snaps his fingers. “I get it—we traveled back in time! Now it all fits! I was trying to talk to one of those soldier dudes and, like, he really smelled! I was thinking, Man, these reenactor dudes really put a lot of effort into, you know, making themselves seem realistic!
But they’re not reenactors—they’re real Continental Army dudes! How cool is that?”

“Get out of here, Brandon,” says Bev. “There’s no such thing as time travel. This is a massive screwup. A Revolutionary War reenactment that went way, way wrong. There’s going to be lawsuits, Mel. When my mother finds out about this, watch out.”

“If my mother finds out,” Brandon says, “she’ll think it’s totally cool. She’ll think maybe I should stick around.”

“Boys,” says Bev. “Let’s think this through here. Mel—if what you say is true—and I’m not sure what’s true and what isn’t at this point—then the question is, how do we get out of here? Back to where we belong?”

“It’s simple,” I say. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—I’ve figured it out. I was here before—the same time, really—but things happened differently. Washington was actually shot and killed. And you guys were taken prisoner by the Hessians. So I went to Philadelphia and with Dr. Franklin’s help recharged my iPhone and then we figured out this iTime app. All we have to do is reprogram it. And it will put us right back where we belong.”

“Dr. Franklin?” says Brandon. “Who’s Dr. Franklin?”

“Benjamin Franklin,” I say. “You know:
the
Benjamin Franklin. Now check your phone, and you’ll see the app I’m telling you about. iTime. It wasn’t there before, but it’s there now.”

Sure enough, we all have the app called iTime. We press the icons, and we get the same messages as before.

Welcome to iTime
.

Brought to You by T.G.W., Inc
.

The Aim Is to Play
.

To Mess About
.

Who Says Things Have to Be This Way and Not Another?

Who Says Things Wouldn’t Be Better if a Different Road Had Been Taken?

Catch Us if You Can
.

K
.

We read this, and as we do the message fizzles away and disappears. A new screen appears. Five large boxes with a place to put the day, the month, the year, the time, and the place.

All this is just like last time. Except now I know exactly what to do. I’m about to have us all reprogram our phones to bring us home—to bring us to
our
time, that is—when a phalanx of Continental soldiers surrounds us.

“Arrest them!” yells General Washington, pointing an accusatory finger at us, then at Daniel and Elizabeth. “Arrest all of these infernal children! And confiscate those—those—those boxes they hold in their hands!”

S
TRONG, ROUGH HANDS GRAB
us by the neck and shoulders. The hand around my own neck is big. The guy could, if he wanted, choke me to death with just a smidgen more pressure.

Bev hisses and says, “Keep your hands off me,” to no avail.

Brandon says, “Yo, easy, dudes.”

Daniel and Elizabeth fare no better. They are grabbed separately and bound together; no one listens when they shout that they live on this farm and their parents are expecting them back right this minute.

And they have taken our iPhones. In my case, with one giant hand around my throat and one holding my upper left arm, there isn’t much I can do about it. Same
with the others. The guys who grabbed our phones pass them along to the next guys, like a bucket drill, and they are then passed up the line, and finally given to a very short officer who stands next to General Washington.

“This I say once and once only,” the general begins. He is not talking to us at the moment, but rather to his men. Besides the officer next to him, who has our iPhones, there aren’t that many regular soldiers—a dozen perhaps. They must have been ordered to follow the general as he went about his horse-purchasing operation, just in case.

“I repeat,” says General Washington. “I shall say this once and once only: none of you shall ever speak of this day. None of you shall ever mention, in your tents to your comrades, or in letters home, or in idle chat to common passersby, anything at all about the events that have transpired on this farm. Never! Posterity must not know, and shall not know, a single word about any of this
whatsoever
. The penalty for violating this injunction shall be immediate death by firing squad. Do I make myself clear? Not—one—single—word—ever!” The general holds up his right forefinger and points at each man as he looks him in the eye.

There are no dissenters.

Each soldier gulps as the general stares him down.

Then Washington turns to the officer beside him—the short man who is now in possession of our phones. “Captain Hamilton,” he says. “I want these children brought back to camp. I care not if they have parents or guardians—they have inserted themselves most obstreperously
into a military campaign and therefore they shall abide by military rules. They shall be interrogated one by one. If we find evidence of espionage, treachery, or traitorous actions of any kind, they shall be executed. By the rope.” He then walks over to our group. He points a long, thick finger at my nose. “We shall start with this one,” he says. “Observe the iron on his teeth. One lie from him and he shall hang before midnight.”

We are bound and blindfolded; then they hoist each of us upon a horse. Not solo, of course, but behind a soldier. Our hands are bound in front of us, not behind, so at least we can try to hold on. We gallop away; if any of us falls off, I suspect they’ll just leave us, and consider any damage our due.

It’s hard to tell how long we ride—a half hour, maybe longer—but finally we stop. They haul us off our horses, then remove our blindfolds and the ropes around our wrists.

Before us is a rather stately pale-yellow mansion. General Washington and Captain Hamilton are on the front steps of the house, conferring with a group of officers.

“ ’Tis the general’s headquarters,” Daniel whispers. “The finest house within twenty miles.”

“Nothing but the best,” I say. We are led inside. The ceilings are low and the floors are wood, but there are paintings on the walls, and one room is even set for tea. All of which tells us that we have entered, comparatively speaking, the heights of luxury. But none of it is for us.

Upstairs, where they take us, is even fancier. What
were bedrooms weeks before are now command centers: maps are spread upon tables, officers huddle around speaking in low murmurs, notes are being jotted down with quill pens. In the back is a very small room, with two very small beds, and into it we are shoved, all five of us, and the door is shut behind us.

Five voices talk at once. No one can possibly understand what anyone else is saying. Then the door to the room is opened and an angry officer tells us to shut up, and then he slams the door.

No one except me does.

The door is opened again, and this time the officer scowls. Then he points a finger at me and says: “You. Come now.” He waits until I step forward, grabs my shoulder, and slams the door behind me.

“The general wants a word,” he says. “By the by, the general’s mood is most foul. If you value your neck, you’d best make double sure every word you give him be true.”

We walk to the end of the hall, where two soldiers stand guard outside a closed door.

My escort knocks twice. The door is opened, and he shoves me in.

G
ENERAL
G
EORGE
W
ASHINGTON IS
sitting regally behind a large oak desk. There’s nothing on the desk except a map, a piece of paper, a quill pen, and an inkwell. And three iPhones, lined up very neatly.