“I know you think I’m crazy, and I’m making all this up,” I whispered. “But you’re my best friend and I have nobody else to turn to. I was texting with Houdini again, and he’s out of control. He wants to do another Metamorphosis.”
“Huh?” Zeke asked. “A what? What are you talking about?”
“He wants to switch places with me again…but this time permanently!”
“So tell him no,” Zeke replied. “Problem solved.”
“I did! He doesn’t care! He’s just going to do it”—I glanced at the clock on the wall—“in fifty-six minutes, whether I want to or not!”
I told Zeke the story as quickly as I could and asked him what I should do. He thought it over for a few seconds. It seemed like he had shaken off the fog of sleep.
“Okay,” he said. “Meet me at Riverside Park as soon as you can get there.”
“Where in Riverside Park?” I asked.
“The Freedom Tunnel,” he replied. “And bring the phone.”
I grabbed a flashlight from a drawer and snuck out of the house, closing the front door as quietly as possible. My mother would be furious if she discovered that I went out in the middle of the night without her permission. But I had no other choice.
The street was empty except for a homeless guy sleeping on a bench near the corner of 113th Street. I looked both ways before crossing the street. All I needed was to get hit by a bike or electric scooter in the middle of the night.
I wasn’t going to risk climbing up all those steps through Morningside Park in the dark. It would be too dangerous. Instead, I walked a few blocks out of my way to take the longer route along 110th Street. That ate up valuable time, but 110th is a major street and there are lights there.
I rushed across Broadway and then Riverside Drive to get to Riverside Park. It took a few more minutes to find the entrance we had used to get to the Freedom Tunnel.
Zeke wasn’t there yet. I checked the time on the cell phone. It was 11:20. I only had forty minutes left until Houdini was going to do the Metamorphosis to me.
“Where is he?” I muttered to myself. I was sweating all over.
Finally Zeke showed up, all out of breath. He was still in his pajamas.
“I didn’t have time to put on pants,” he explained. “Do you have the phone?”
I took it out of my pocket.
“There’s only one solution to your problem,” he said. “We’ve got to destroy this thing. Not just destroy it. We’ve gotta bust it up so badly that it’s beyond repair. Render it inoperable. So he’ll never be able to contact you again. Are you gonna be okay with that?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I have no other choice.”
I went to pull open the big gate, but Zeke stopped me.
“Wait,” he said.
“What?”
“Tuck your laces inside your sneakers,” Zeke said, “so they won’t get caught on the track this time.”
Good thinking. While I retied my shoes, Zeke went over to the gate and yanked it open. Luckily, nobody had put a lock on since the last time we were there.
We went inside the tunnel. It smelled bad. Probably a squirrel or some other animal had died in there. Or for all I knew it was a live animal. Either way, it stunk. And it was creepy. I was glad I had a flashlight.
Zeke put his ear against the track.
“I don’t hear anything,” he said.
“The trains probably don’t run very frequently at this time of night,” I told him. “What if a train doesn’t come until after midnight?”
“Then this was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done,” Zeke replied. “How much time do you have left?”
I checked the flip phone. “Thirty-five minutes.”
Zeke sat down on the track and pulled out his cell phone.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Checking the train schedule,” he replied. “I should have done this before I told you to come here.”
It took him a couple of minutes to get online and pull up the train schedule. I paced back and forth nervously.
“We may be in luck,” he finally reported. “It says there’s a train leaving Penn Station at 11:45. It should take about ten minutes to get here. That’s 11:55.”
We would be cutting it close. But there was nothing else we could do at this point. I sat down on the track next to Zeke and waited. It felt like forever.
“So,” I said, “do you believe me? About Houdini, I mean?”
“Of course I believe you,” he replied. “He sounds like a strange guy.”
“He was so nice to me,” I said. “At least in the beginning. Then he showed what he was really like. That’s when I realized what he really wanted.”
“What did he want?” Zeke asked.
“He wanted to pull off the ultimate escape,” I said. “He wanted to escape from his own death.”
Zeke shook his head.
“The problem was,” I continued, “he wanted to use me to do it. But I’m happy where I am. I don’t want to go to his time and live there forever.”
“You’re not going to,” Zeke assured me. He checked his cell phone. It was ten minutes until midnight.
“The train should have already left Penn Station,” I said.
“It may be running late,” Zeke said as he got off the rail and put his ear to the track again. “I didn’t think about that.”
Sweat was starting to accumulate on my forehead. I wiped it away with my sleeve.
“Wait a minute!” Zeke said suddenly. “I think I feel something.”
I put my ear against the track too. I could feel a faint vibration, but I didn’t know if that was normal.
“I hear it!” Zeke said. “Quick! It’s coming. Put the phone on the track!”
I could hear it too. I put the flashlight on the ground and placed the phone on the track. But it slid off. The phone was so much bigger than the coins we had flattened the first time, and the
