David Lomax: Backward Glass

She shrugged. “We don’t know. In 1997? They have this thing—it’s like all of the computers in the world connected together. They call it the Internet.”

“Can you talk to it?”

Another eye roll. “No. But you can type in things and search for them. Melissa and Keisha think maybe it has something to do with your house.”

“So you really met them?” I said.

Her shrug was minimal, cool. “Sure. I guess I almost had a heart attack when Melissa first came through. Eleven o’clock at night, this girl just steps out of my mirror. Keisha came to her a few days later.”

“What about the one further up from her? Initials C.M.?”

That stopped her. “How do you know anything about way up in 2017?”

“So you haven’t met C.M.?” Oh, this was good. I knew something she didn’t.

“Of course not. Think about how hard that would be. Melissa can only come back to see me on odd-numbered days. I’d have to get her to take me with her to her time, then wait a day until Keisha could pull us up to 2007, and another one for that other kid, whatever his name is, to come back to Keisha’s time. I’d be gone for three days. My mom would kill me.”

I pursed my lips. “So we can’t ever go far from our own times?”

“We’re working on it. Sleepovers. Lies to the parents. We’ll think of something. We have a whole year, right? That’s what the note said.”

I rubbed my neck. “Yeah. But a year for what?”

Luka looked right at me, and an electric moment of communication passed between us. I had never had that with anyone before, but I knew that I knew what she was thinking, and I knew she knew I was thinking it, too. A year for what? Just for having fun, for doing something no one else on earth could do? A year for seeing the world stuttered ten years back and forth? A year for seeing that there never were any jetpacks or flying cars? Or a year for something more?

“What are you getting at?” she said.

“The dead baby,” I said. “The girl that went missing.” From my pocket, I took out the list I had found on my first day in the new house, the paper that had fallen away from the tiny, blackened corpse. I spread it in front of her and aimed my flashlight at it.

She stared at it long enough to read the words three or four times. Then she ran her forefinger over the writing at the bottom, the message to me. “So it really is about you and me,” she said.

“What do you mean, you and me?”

Luka pursed her lips. “I should have shown you before,” she said. “I just—I got so used to keeping it a secret. I never showed anyone. Since we moved in.”

Without another word, she stood up, walked to the dresser, and pulled out its top drawer. She brought it back and lay it upside down, the beam of my flashlight revealing the rough, scratched letters.

Luka, help Kenny. Trust John Wald. Kenny says he is the auby one. Save the baby.

“Okay,” I said after a long, long silence.

“I found it years ago,” Luka said. “What’s that mean, an auby one? Did they misspell Aubrey? How is that even pronounced? Is it aw-bee or oh-bee? Or oh-bye?”

“No idea. But that’s our names.”

“I know.” She grinned and so did I. “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened in the world. I mean—it’s really you. There’s really a Kenny.”

“Hey!” came a voice from the hallway. I heard a door open. “You on the phone with your stupid father again? Hell’s the matter with you?”

Luka’s eyes grew wide, and she snapped off the light. “Go,” she whispered, pushing me to the dresser. “Remember, it’ll be cold.” I was already pressing my hand on the glass. Just as I felt it give, she leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “For luck,” she said, and was gone like a shot to her bedroom door, opening it and charging out to meet her mother. “I’m not talking to anyone,” she said. “You were having some drunk dream.”

The last thing I heard in 1987, before I shoved my face into iced molasses, sounded like a slap.

Luka wasn’t kidding about the cold. It touched every part of your skin, no matter how much clothing you wore. And it held on. I closed my eyes as I pushed through. The journey didn’t seem so long this time, maybe because I had done it before, maybe just because I was coming home. No matter what reassurances Luka had given me, a part of me had been terrified of being trapped.

I took a large step through the bone-chilling cold of the mirror and felt the air of the carriage house. My 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.

Help me make it not happen, Kenny.

Help me make it not happen.

Kenny.

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.