forward hand found a grip on the frame and I pulled myself out, feeling like I was climbing out of a mountain of slush.
I collapsed, curled and shivering with the transit. I had never felt such cold. It went beyond skin, beyond lungs, bone, teeth. My memories, my thoughts, my whole life was freezing, clenched into a shuddering ball. The excitement of time travel drained out of me. It would be good to sleep here. Maybe if I could do that, I’d wake up and it would all be over. My mother would have more hot chocolate. My dad would tell me to take a day off school.
In the end, I only got up because of that rational inner voice, the one that had told me I didn’t want to come out here and be disappointed.
There was also the kiss still freezing on my cheek. That was worth getting moving for.
By the time I got into bed, my clock showed almost four. I had never been up this late in my life. Before I gave in to sleep, I thought ahead enough to take a final look around my room and make sure any signs of my nighttime journey were gone, my clothes scattered in their usual way, the note and the list back under my mattress.
Next thing I knew my mother was shaking me and telling me I was going to be late.
For a second day, though for different reasons, I went through the motions of school, mechanical and uninspired. Whenever I could, I replayed parts of last night. Nintendo. Welcome to the future. Nintendo. The feeling of pressing my hand onto an unyielding surface only to have it melt away. Luka. Nintendo. If I closed my eyes, I could still see Mario running and jumping through castles and fields.
And feel that kiss.
At eleven that night, I sat by my window, wishing it faced the carriage house. It was an odd-numbered day now, so if the note from future me was for real, nobody should be coming through. But didn’t that mean this “Jimmy Hayes, 1967” might be waiting for me ten years back? Did he even know about the mirror? Had he already gone to 1957?
Luka had done it. She had just stepped through the mirror and into my time. Melissa and Keisha as well. And there was a note, two now, asking for our help. I had to go, didn’t I?
But ten years. No one in the world would know me. I would be a four-year-old out there. What if I got caught? What if Luka was wrong and the mirror broke? Why didn’t any of these other stupid kids on the list have these fears? What kind of idiots were they?
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t.
At eleven thirty, I crept down to the first floor and spent fifteen minutes assembling the most complete survival-in-the-past backpack I could think of. Two flashlights, a handful of chocolate bar, a half bottle of juice, and all the quarters I could find so at least I’d have some money. Some of them had post-1967 dates, but I figured they’d still be more convincing than paper money, which I’d checked and found all marked 1972.
Two minutes before midnight.
I put my hand on the mirror and pushed.
Either I was getting used to the resistance, or it was getting easier. The cold was still there, worse than any January wind on bare skin, but I pushed through faster this time, got my hand on the other side, braced it on the mirror in the past, then pulled my head and shoulders after it.
For all my caution, I misjudged my balance. I got a look at a flickering light, and maybe two figures near it, then I tumbled out, the mirror loosening its grip on me, and fell onto the floor of the carriage house.
“There he is,” said a voice from below. “Get him!”
Five
The Rules
5. The mirror only picks one kid every decade. It never picks anyone older than sixteen.
Boots thumped up the stairs, and before I could get on my feet, someone grabbed me. Two someones. They grasped my arms, pulled me up, and marched me down the stairs. I slipped once and cracked my knee, but they didn’t let go.
The flickering came from a Coleman stove. The bigger of the two kids holding me turned me toward him. “Well,” he said. “If it isn’t the kid from the future. What’ve you got for us, H. G. Wells?”
He was bigger than me, seventeen or eighteen maybe. “Here,” he said, “let’s have a look at the backpack.” He took it from me. I held my hands at my sides and shivered. The hand warmers helped, as did the flickering flame of the Coleman stove, but I was still almost incapacitated by the chill of time travel. “I’m Rick,” he said, opening my backpack and looking at my thermos, wrapped coins, spare batteries, pen, paper, and Hershey bars. “No smokes? What’s your name, kid?”
“Kenny Maxwell.”
“Well, Kenneth Maxwell,” he said, “welcome to the past. Have a seat.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and I let myself be guided down. He sat too, and waved to the other kid to do the same. “Listen, Rick,” the other kid said. “Maybe I should go. We don’t want my folks to wake up.”
Now that I could see him, this other kid was only an inch taller than me. He had a mess of sandy hair and looked nervous.
“Sit down, Jimmy,” said Rick. “You got no curiosity? Kid’s from 1977. Isn’t that right, H. G. Wells?” I nodded. They had seen me come out of the mirror and seemed to know what was going on. Why deny it? “So, what’s happened in the future, Kenneth? We’ve been waiting a while for you. We were beginning to think you’d had a nuclear war up there and you weren’t coming. You look kind of good for a mutant monster, though. Did the Ruskies attack?”
“No,” I said. “Not even in 1987 or 1997 or 2007.” Instantly, I knew I had said too much.
Rick leaned forward. “Really? Time traveler knows a lot. Who you been talking to, H. G?”
“A girl. She came back from 1987. She told me about the other ones.” I tried to think about what Luka had said. You were only allowed to go forward if you were going with someone from the future. Maybe Rick didn’t know that.
Rick took my things out of the backpack, giving Jimmy a running commentary. “Nice flashlight. Bet I can get a buck or two for that. Chocolate’s always good. What’s this? Trying to make a black jack?” He took my quarters out of the socks and as soon as he saw what they were, vanished the money into his pockets. The Hershey bars he shared around, even handing one to me and insisting that I eat it. “Come on. We’re all in this together, right?” He looked at Jimmy, who nodded reluctantly.
As Rick did all this, I studied him. His head was covered in a cloud of black curls and his face still troubled with acne. His hands were huge, but his shoulders weren’t as wide as I had thought at first. Once he had finished with the backpack, he made me turn out my empty pockets. He took my hat and gloves and gave them to Jimmy.
“What’s your story, Kenneth Maxwell?” Rick said. “How’d you find out about my little mirror here?”
His mirror?
Thinking as fast as I could, I told him an edited version of the facts. My encounters with Luka, my journey into the future. He was interested to hear that the mirror was still in the carriage house in my time, and even more interested that the place itself was gone ten years later. He wanted to know if I knew who my dad had bought the house from. I told him nobody had lived in it for a few years, and I didn’t know who was there before. “Hear anything about the Beech family? No?”
He didn’t ask about the other kid’s family. Jimmy sat looking miserable.
“You ever think about what you could do with this?” Rick said. “Friend of my dad’s deals in old stuff. This one time, I helped some old lady clean out her attic after her husband died. I found these boxes of old magazines and comic books. The old lady paid me a dollar to take it to the dump, then my dad’s buddy paid me twenty bucks
