“It’s true,” I said. “In September. It’s—everyone in the neighborhood knows by my time. It was in the newspapers and everything. September first. They never found you.”
“Never did, eh?”
A long moment passed. She smoked. I looked at my sandwich.
I tried another way. “Jimmy Hayes said Anthony said he talked to you about it already, and you didn’t want to talk about it.”
She waved a hand. “It’s 1947, kid. Anthony’s just ten years up. That was the first thing he talked to me about. His folks bought the place from my dad.”
“So … what’s going to happen?”
She shrugged. “Whatever it is, it’s going to happen.” She turned and looked right at me. “Kid, some things aren’t for you to worry about. If I’m going missing, that’s my bees-wax. I know you and the Nancy Drews up in the future think we’re some kind of charity case in the past, some sort of adventure mystery for you to come and solve, but we’re not, okay? We have our own lives, our own ideas, and our own plans.” She reached forward and stubbed her cigarette out on my sandwich plate. “I’m not your summer project, Kenny. Think about your own problems.”
With that, she got up and walked down the stairs and out of the carriage house.
Even with my new determination not to end up like Wald, my burning need to just
Lilly used a doorstop to come forward that night, then took it out in time for Anthony to come backward from his time. Peggy’s mother had come back home that day, and her parents were loudly drunk, so it was no problem for her to sneak a feast out to us in the carriage house.
After dinner, Wald took Lilly and me out to instruct us on the making of owl calls, though I guess his real purpose was to give Peg some time with Anthony. None of it came as a surprise to Wald. I guess he must have seen his share of through-the-mirror first loves over his uptime centuries.
Our first clue that something was wrong came in the form of sobs as we approached the carriage house. In the noisy summer dark, Anthony’s crying rang out above the crickets and the nightjars, inconsolable and, well, embarrassing.
I tensed at first, fearing a return of the crazy gunman, but Wald put a reassuring hand on my shoulder and told me it was only the “cracking a’ that confracted heart.”
We waited a few minutes in the dark, but when we saw a light in the main house, we hurried in and Lilly broke the news that Anthony would have to be quieter or else duck through to another time. We turned Peggy’s kerosene lamp low and stood in an uncomfortable silence.
“Fine then,” Anthony said, his voice dripping with bitterness. “I’ll just go back into that mirror and never come out again. I’ll stay in my year. I won’t ever come back. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? That’s what you want.”
Peggy murmured that she wanted no such thing. She just thought they ought to “cool it a little.”
“Look,” she said, in as gentle a tone as I had heard her use. “In your time I’m in my twenties. Probably married. I’ll be thirty when you’re done school. Ask John if he ever sees anything like this work out. I … I just don’t want you to get hurt. Is that so bad?”
Anthony looked up at the rest of us. “What about you? Were you just laughing at me, is that it?”
“Nobody’s laughing at you, Anthony,” said Lilly.
Wald ran a hand through his hair. “Mayhaps, ’twere best to bide this pair alone. I wouldnay—”
He was interrupted by a call from the main house. By now we all knew Peggy’s father’s voice.
“Hush now, all of you,” she said, and doused the lamp the rest of the way. “I’ll duck around and come up from the creek, but there’s going to be words for me in there.” In the thin moonlight, I could see her turn to Anthony. “Buck up, AC. This was going to happen sooner or later.”
We stood and waited, silent and uncomfortable, until Peggy made her way around to the far side of the house and apologized to her furious father. When the door slammed, Wald spoke up. “I’ll hie out,” he said. “’Tis a fine night for walking. Goodnight to all.”
Lilly relit the lamp, but kept it shrouded.
“Did you know about this?” said Anthony, more to her, I guess, than me.
Lilly sat down. I couldn’t see her face from this angle, but I could imagine her sympathetic expression. She was always the one who wanted to make things okay. “Peg never told me anything,” she said. “But that’s not what you mean, is it? Oh, Anthony, didn’t you know there was something coming? She was getting cool, wasn’t she? I haven’t seen her let you hold her hand in weeks.”
“I thought … I thought it was just her dad and mom and all that,” he said.
“Maybe she’ll change her mind,” I put in. “Maybe if you … give her time.” The words sounded stupid the moment they came out of my mouth. I don’t know what I had been thinking. I didn’t know about how girls made up their minds in the first place, much less about how they changed them.
He stood up. “Forget it,” he said. “I’m finished. Why should I keep sneaking out for you people? You know how much trouble I got in when I came back muddy and half starved from a week in that madman’s stupid cave? But did any of you ask? Time? I’m taking some time, all right,” he said. “I’m taking it all. I’m going home and getting rid of that stupid mirror.” He turned to me. “Better figure out something to do, pal, because you’ve been hanging around long enough.”
“That’s hardly fair,” said Lilly. “Kenny is trapped with us. You can’t—”
“You’re right, he’s trapped.” He turned to me. “You’re trapped, Kenny. Might as well face it. They’re not saying it, but they’re tired of nursemaiding you here and there. If I were you, I’d just pick a decade. You’re an orphan boy now, kid, a hobo. Better get used to it.”
He stomped upstairs and thrust himself into the mirror.
“Oh, Kenny,” said Lilly after a few breaths of stunned silence. “It’s not true, what he said. We feel for you very much, Peg and I. And Anthony. He just isn’t himself right now.”
“He’s kind of right, though,” I said. “I can’t go on this way. I have to get home or—something.”
She didn’t have much to say to that, and just stood for a moment pursing her lips. “I suppose I’d better be going. It’s late. You should sleep, Kenny. Everything will seem different in the morning.”
Despite her advice, I didn’t get much sleep, but she was right. In the morning, everything was different.
Two
That night, I stayed up late and killed two sets of flashlight batteries finishing my letter to Luka.
At five in the morning in the predawn light, I wrote my last line and began to pack up. I don’t know where I thought I was going. Wald’s lean-to? Ten years on? Ten years back? As I folded up the few extra clothes I had come with, and which I had been rotating through as Peggy sneaked them into her laundry, I tried to run through my choices. Lilly’s family sounded the nicest. In the middle of the Great Depression, they didn’t have much, but of all the mirror kids, she seemed the happiest. She was an only child whose parents had always wanted another. Maybe they’d adopt me.
Stupid. Never work. And I didn’t think I could keep going without television.
Staying with Peggy was out. Even without Anthony’s blow-up I had sensed my welcome wearing thin. Her mother and father had been in a constant battle ever since the war, each skirmish usually resulting in her mother taking off for her sister’s place for a week, leaving her father to drink, shout, and punch the wall.
Hanging out in Anthony’s time was the least appealing idea of all, but at least I’d be closest to home. I could keep checking out the mirror and hope that it would end up on dry land before my year was over.
My watch showed almost six by the time I had erased all signs of my presence. I had twenty minutes before Lilly poked her head through the mirror to see me on her way to her morning chores. I headed out across
