David Lomax: Backward Glass

I continued the argument I had been having with myself for hours, one voice insisting that there was a rational explanation for all of this, the other pointing out all the irrational and unexplainable elements. Whenever that hopeful voice, the one that wanted something magical in the carriage house, finished with its best arguments, rational me would simply shrug his shoulders and say, Then why aren’t you out there? It’s because you don’t want to be disappointed, isn’t it?

And that was it. All these weeks I had been keeping the list secret, telling myself stories about what it was, how I fit into it all. I didn’t believe in ghosts that needed to be saved or set free, but I wanted to. If I went out there, and nothing happened, my ticket into the story I had been living in my head would turn out to be a forgery I had made myself. But if I stayed here, I would always have the ticket to look at.

I stayed.

Eventually I fell asleep.

School the next day was hell. Every moment irritated me. Normally, I just did as I was told, and tried to finish my work quickly.

But not today. I failed a math quiz, fumbled at marking another kid’s when we were supposed to take it up, stumbled when I was called on, and actually grumbled slightly when Mrs. Bains told us to take out our grammar exercise books. Why hadn’t I gone out there? An odd-numbered night. It takes you backward. It opens for you.

Once home, I had time to myself. My mother got off work at five, and my dad after that.

I dropped off my backpack and squeezed through the hedges. There were no new footprints. The door was still unlocked. I spent my hour and a half of freedom rummaging through the old furniture, but there was nothing there. When I figured I was in danger of Mom getting home, I took some balled-up newspapers from the wall and headed up to my room.

Nothing interesting. It was amazing how few pictures they had in those old newspapers, and how long they took to say anything. One of them had a variation on the local Prince Harming skipping rhymes scratched in faded pencil in a margin: “Lover sweet, bloody feet, running down the silver street. Leave tomorrow when you’re called, hear the wisdom in the walls. Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hunger’s fed.” I tore that part of the paper off and stuck it under my mattress. Why did it matter to me? Why did I shiver every time I heard that name? The kids at school had thought it all had something to do with my house, but for them it was just a game. They didn’t have a note signed, Your friend for all time, Kenny Maxwell.

A call for supper. Interrogation about my day. Merciful escape back to my room. Homework. My dad calling lights out. Tossing. Turning. Sleep.

Tink. Clatter.

I looked to the ceiling and rubbed my eyes.

Something hitting one of my skylight windows and falling down the roof.

I went to the window and opened it. “Hello? Who’s throwing that?”

A figure came into sight. “Who do you think, retard? Where’s my hat?”

My mouth hung open. “You’re a girl.” The hat had hidden a huge mane of curly hair, and she wasn’t trying to disguise her voice now.

She folded her arms. “And you’re an airhead. Are you going to give me my hat, or what?”

“Who are you?” I said.

“I’m Luka.”

I frowned. “Luka?” It didn’t even sound like a real name.

Luka threw up her hands in annoyance. “My real name’s Lucy, but my mom took me to Star Wars on my seventh birthday, and I kind of made her change it. It’s not my fault. I was a spazzy kid. Go figure. Are you coming down or what?”

I had no idea what she was talking about, no idea what half of her words even meant. Airhead. Go figure. Spazzy. Star Wars . But one thing she said stood out. “Lucy?” I said. “Lucy Branson?” She nodded. “I’ll give you your hat if you tell me where you disappeared to,” I said.

That stopped her. “But—didn’t you say you’re Kenny? Didn’t you—oh, I get it. You didn’t do it yet.”

“Do what?”

“Write the note, genius. Okay, fine. Come down. I’ll explain. But you’ll never believe it.”

The Rules

3. Once you’ve gone back, you have to wait until midnight. After that, you can go home again anytime.

Getting downstairs was easy. If I was careful and stuck to the floorboards my dad had fixed, I could blend in with the creaks and pops of the old house settling down for the night.

I surrendered the hat as soon as I got outside and Luka put it on.

It couldn’t have been more than a couple degrees below freezing, and there wasn’t much wind. We stood for a long moment.

“Who are you?” I said, but before she spoke, I added, “Not just your name. What’s going on?” When I asked that, something stiffened in my spine. I was still scared, not of this kid, but of something out there in the night. But that didn’t matter. That was my name on the note I had found. Someone was asking me for help.

She dropped her hands to her sides and looked at me directly. “My name is Luka Branson. I was born October 12, 1970. I live at 428 Larkfield Drive. I’m sixteen years old.”

My heart thudded painfully. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know. We’re just starting to figure it out. It goes every ten years. A few days ago I met the girl from 1997, ten years up from my time. She got those rules from you.” I opened my mouth, but she held up her hand. “Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”

She grabbed the shoulder of my coat and pulled. I let myself be dragged through the hedge.

“See that?” she said, pointing to the winter-brittle tangle of tall weeds that choked the carriage house’s tiny front yard. “That’s a swimming pool. And right there?” She pointed to the far corner of the hedge. “That’s where Larkfield curves out to Manse Creek Road.”

“There’s no Larkfield going onto Manse Creek,” I said.

She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Don’t you get it? Time travel. I’m from 1987.”

I shook my head.

She looked into my eyes. “Come on,” she said. “I really thought you’d know more stuff than this.”

As she dragged me farther from my house, I looked back, worried.

She must have read my mind. “Look, if you got out okay, you’re not going to get caught now. Even if you do, just say you went out for a walk.”

I couldn’t imagine just how badly that would go, but I figured she was right about the first part, so I let her take me down to the creek.

“This used to be a bridge,” she said, pointing to a bend where both banks were about eight feet high. “I mean, it will be. It’s confusing, right? I keep thinking I’m in one of those Mad Max movies, you know? After the world’s been destroyed. I go to these places, and some of the trees look the same. Like that one. Tom Berditti’s dad put a tire swing on it a couple of years ago. But now it’s not there. Yet, I mean.”

She walked me down the creek, pointing to things I couldn’t see, things that wouldn’t be here for years—a whole subdivision, paths to and from the creek, bus stops for routes I had never heard of, and things she called “super mailboxes.”

She was entranced with the world of the past. I was more interested in her.

“How did you get here?” I asked as we walked out onto Lawrence.

“You know that,” she said. “The mirror.”

“But how?”

“That bus stop looks so new! In my time, it’s all beat up. When did they put it in?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. It was here when we moved in. Look, how did you know about the mirror? Does it just take you back? Does it go forward as well? How does this work? I don’t care about this stuff about the neighborhood. I want to go to the mirror.”