D. MacHale - Raven Rise

The computer said, “What exactly does that mean?”

Courtney shot a look at the screen and barked, “Hey, mind your own business.”

“Turn off,” Mark said to the computer.

“Good-bye,” the computer responded as the screen winked to black.

Mark looked at Courtney with surprise. “Wow, that was easy.”

Courtney plopped down onto Mark’s bed, thinking. “This is bad,” she said. “Being gone for so long, I mean. If the flume sent us back to when we’d left, like it did when we went to Eelong, we could just pick up like nothing happened. But now we’re going to have to answer questions. Everybody here still thinks your parents were killed when that plane crashed. You’d have to deal with that.”

“It’s true,” Mark said, rubbing his eyes. “My relatives would be all over me. They’d probably make me go live with my aunt in Maryland. I can’t go to Maryland.”

“And I can’t go home. What would I tell my parents?”

“And how do we explain Patrick?”

“As wrong as this sounds, we can’t go back to our regular lives,” Courtney concluded, glum.

“Agreed. It’ll prevent us from figuring out how things have changed and what Saint Dane is up to.”

The two fell silent. Then, “Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“How exactly are we going to do that?”

“I have no idea.”

They decided that whatever they were going to do, it wouldn’t be that night. They had to get their internal clocks set to local time. They each found a bed and settled in for a few hours of sleep. Mark was in his own bed, Patrick took the Dimonds’ room, and Courtney claimed the couch downstairs. All three of them lay awake, staring at the ceiling, unable to nod off.

Finally, at nearly six, Courtney poked her head into Mark’s bedroom and announced, “Stop pretending like you’re asleep. I’m hungry.”

When they hit the kitchen, they discovered that Patrick was already there, sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the torn book cover he’d brought from Third Earth.

“Hey, you all right?” Courtney asked.

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” Patrick answered wearily.

Courtney gave Mark a nervous look.

Mark went for the refrigerator to find it mostly empty. “Cupboard’s bare,” he announced.

“Check the freezer,” Courtney suggested.

In the freezer Mark found orange juice and Eggo waffles. He tossed the frozen juice to Courtney and grabbed the box of waffles.

“Better than nothing,” he declared, and walked to the counter. There he stopped and looked around with confusion. “Uh, the toaster’s gone.”

“Put ‘em in the oven,” Courtney suggested.

Mark opened the oven and put a layer of frozen waffles on the top rack, but when he tried to turn the oven on, he was lost.

“There aren’t any buttons,” he said with dismay. “This isn’t our oven.”

“Sure it is,” Courtney said patiently. “It’s just improved, remember? Try telling it what to do.”

“Yeah, right,” Mark scoffed. He looked at the oven and said, “Cook the waffles.”

Instantly, the oven light went on and the coil began to heat.

“Whoa” was all Mark could gasp.

Patrick asked, “That isn’t normal?”

“Uh, no,” Mark answered.

“But it is,” Courtney interjected. “At least the new normal after Mark brought Forge to First Earth. Mostly things look the same, but there are small differences with technology. Just be lucky you don’t have any pets. That would really make your head spin.”

Patrick added, “What about that house over the flume?”

Courtney frowned. “That’s different. No way somebody moved in and made all those changes so fast.”

“That means even more things have changed since we left,” Mark added. “Which means something else must have happened in the past besides Forge.”

“We’ve got to figure out what that was,” Courtney said.

Patrick lifted the torn book cover from the table and added, “And find out why people seem to know about this.”

Mark and Courtney looked at the cover.

“Ravinia,” Mark whispered, reading the cracked word on the cover.

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Courtney offered hopefully as she mixed the orange juice in a pitcher.

Patrick winced. “You wouldn’t think that if you saw what happened to Third Earth.”

“Oh. Right,” Courtney said, embarrassed. “That.”

“I think our first step is to look around and see what things are different,” Mark declared. “We might find something we can trace back to First Earth.”

“How?” Courtney asked.

Mark pointed to Patrick’s Traveler ring. “We’ve got a hotline to the past. If we find anything suspicious, we can send a message to Dodger.”

“You sure?” Courtney asked.

Mark grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Put the ring on the table,” he said to Patrick as he folded the note in half.

Patrick took off his ring and placed it next to the pitcher of orange juice.

“Let’s give it a shot,” Mark said. He cleared his throat and spoke distinctly to the ring. “First Earth.”

The ring came alive. The relief in everyone’s face was obvious. They may not have been able to communicate with Bobby, but at least the rings still worked. The circle opened up, spewing light and music. When it reached its full size, Mark dropped the note into the hole, after which the ring immediately shrank back, ending the event.

Courtney picked up the ring and examined it. “Do you think we’re ever going to figure out how this works?”

“How do we know it worked?” Patrick asked.

“Oh, it worked,” Courtney answered for Mark. “But did it go to

Dodger, or Nevva?” Mark shot a surprised look at Courtney. “She has your ring, Mark. And if she’s still on First Earth…” She didn’t have to complete the thought.

“We’ll know in a couple of hours” was Mark’s answer. “When the bank opens.”

Patrick frowned and looked to Courtney. Courtney shrugged. Neither knew what Mark was talking about. Then it hit Courtney and she brightened.

“Hey, you asked them to put something in the safe-deposit box!” she declared.

“No,” Mark answered, pouring orange juice. “I want them to open an account and make a deposit at the bank. If we’re going to be here awhile, we’re going to need money. They’ve got the KEM money from Forge.”

“Will that work?” Patrick asked. “They can deposit money back on First Earth and it will be in the account today?”

“Should,” Mark answered. “I gave them the number of our safe-deposit box and told them to put the deposit slip inside.”

“Amazing,” Patrick gasped.

“It’s ironic,” Mark said thoughtfully. “We’re going to try to stop Saint Dane by using money from the company he got me to sell Forge to, and that we tried to stop from giving me that money in the first place, so they wouldn’t create the dados and change the future of Halla.”

“Excuse me?” Patrick said, totally lost.

Courtney laughed. “I actually understood that.”

“Then please explain it to me,” Patrick pleaded.

“No problem,” Courtney answered. “If you’re going to be part of this, you’re going to have to get up to speed fast.”

A voice called to them from across the room, saying, “Your waffles are ready.”

Everyone looked at the oven.

Mark said, “I’m not going to get used to this.”

The plan was for Courtney and Patrick to stay at the house while Mark went to the bank. Courtney’s job was to fill Patrick in on all that had happened with KEM and DADO and Forge, while searching the house for clothes that would help them blend in on Second Earth. Mark put on some of his own clothes. He chose jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of old running shoes. Mark never went running. He just liked the way they felt. He decided to leave his hair combed back in the style from First Earth in case anybody might recognize him. It helped that he wore a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses he got on First Earth and put on a navy blue, short golf jacket of his father’s. That completed the transformation from Mark, to not-Mark. He looked in the mirror and barely recognized himself.