Chapter Eleven

We were rousted out of our room soon after that. It’s policy. Unless you’re sick, you’re not allowed to hole up in your room for too long—God knows what you might get up to there. Sunday dragged by, like Sundays always do in shitholes like Medlar House. Jacob had pretty much reverted to his usual silent self. Chaz mounted a one-man charm offensive in an effort to get him talking, but Jacob was having none of that. It must have been more frustrating than ever for Chaz: before, you never knew whether Jacob was actually hearing you. Now you knew he was, because he would actually answer questions, but only with his new mantra: “That I do not remember.”

Paddy was never far away, watching and listening, and his smirk grew more pronounced every time Jacob professed amnesia. He obviously figured that he was safe, that Jacob wasn’t going to finger him for the beating.

One interesting twist was that Matt was definitely keeping his distance from Paddy. If anything, he seemed to be trying to stay close to me. I hoped I was imagining that; another lame duck was the last thing I needed.

It was hard to fill the time. I pretended to read, but my brain was preoccupied with how to get Jacob back to what he called his “real place.” I was stumped. I needed to talk to him again. My chance finally came in the late afternoon. It had been snowing on and off for most of the day. At about 4:00 p.m. it stopped, and the bitingly cold wind died down. Someone suggested going out to build a snowman and the idea was taken up en masse. Jacob obviously wanted no part of this. He had spent the afternoon sitting alone at a table in the common room; unusually, he was actually doing something today. I don’t know where he got them from, but he had a pencil and some paper and had been scribbling furiously, covering the sheets protectively with his arm if anyone came within ten feet of him. Luce was going out to supervise the snow antics and stopped to ask if I was coming.

“Nah, I’ll stay here, keep an eye on him,” I said, nodding toward Jacob.

Luce smiled. “Careful, Mike,” she said, “you’ll be getting a reputation as a softie.”

I didn’t dignify that with a reply.

As soon as everyone was outside, I went over to Jacob. Without looking up, he said, “You have thought of a way for me to return to the real place.” His voice implied absolute certainty. Great.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Not yet. I don’t get what you mean by ‘you pushed.’”

Jacob’s pencil stopped moving. He became very still. When he finally spoke, there was a tiny pause between each of his words, as if he was weighing them carefully. “Caspar was my brother, but he was also my only friend for so many years. I felt the same love for him as you do for your Jon. When I felt . . .”—there was a much longer pause here, and Jacob’s voice wavered—“his life end, when I felt what Foda had done . . . part of me ended, too.” He put his face in his hands for a moment. “Kat was safe, which was good, but without Caspar by my side everything in my world was black. I did not want to be there. It was like a wind, a huge wind in my head. I let it grow until it was all I could feel. Then I used that wind. I let it blow me away without caring where it would take me. I wanted so badly to be gone.” Tears were forming in Jacob’s eyes. He dashed them away. “Only now that I am here, I don’t want to be. I want to be with Kat. I want it so badly, but I cannot make that strong wind come, only a little breeze.” He looked hopefully at me.

“I think I get it,” I said, “but I’m going to have to think about it some more. How to get that wind feeling back. It’s not like I can beat you up, is it?” He smiled a little at that. “Anyway, if that were all it took, you would have gone back when Paddy and his thugs jumped you. Can you remember anything else, anything at all?”

“Eggs,” Jacob said, “the smell of bad eggs that have been left too long in the chicken house. It came from the water. I did not drink it even though I was thirsty.”

There was a commotion then in the hallway, a voice wailing about a snowball being thrown too hard, one of the littler boys crying, Luce’s voice soothing.

Jacob almost seemed glad of the distraction, but he shifted his arm so that I could see the paper he had been scribbling on. Only it wasn’t scribbling; it was a drawing, an amazing one, so good that it looked almost like a photograph. It showed a little girl, a toddler almost. She had long hair that had been messily braided, and wore a smock-like dress. Her feet were bare. One hand was reaching up to a larger, disembodied hand that was grasping hers tightly. It’s difficult to describe the look on her face. I want to say hopeful, but there was more to it than that: concentrated, desperate, fervent. I could go on. Jacob was a brilliant artist. My spine tingled a little as I recalled the pamphlet: Kat had written that The Prophet drew likenesses of the dead.

“This is Kat,” he said, “and that is my hand.”

I wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this, and the hubbub in the hallway was growing as more kids trooped inside.

“Perhaps,” he said, “it will help for us to see Kat, help us take my body back to her.”

The whole thing was so bizarre: I didn’t see that it could hurt. “Who knows, Jacob?” was all I had time to say before the others piled into the room.

I’ll admit I was stymied.

Adam came over to us, cheeks pink and eyes shining. “We built a snowman.” In his excitement, he sounded so much younger than he usually did. “I’ve never played in the snow like that before!” He dropped his voice and looked around like an actor in a bad spy movie. “Did Jacob say anything else? Do you know how we can get him back?”

“Yeah, a bit. I got him to try and explain this ‘pushing’ thing, and I think I get it. It’s like he used his sadness, or his pain, as a wind to blow him away.” Even as I said this I realized how far-fetched it sounded, but Adam was nodding like it made total sense to him.

“It’s not just being sad, though, is it?” Adam was looking very serious now. “If it was that, he’d be long gone, because he must be really sad here, and when they beat him up especially.” With a snort, he continued. “I wish it was that easy, because everyone who’s sad or hurt could be somewhere else, right? Only . . .” He paused, shaking his head sadly. “I don’t know where else I could go.”

There was something in what he said that nagged at me, but I couldn’t tease it out. Not then, anyway.

The rest of Sunday was uneventful. Jacob kept to himself, drawing and being secretive about what he was doing, although no one was interested in it. I didn’t bother him, just watched to make sure no one else did either. Adam was obviously still shit scared of Paddy, because he stayed close to me all day. He inveigled me into a game of chess, which at least stopped him talking all the time about his mother or, worse, asking me about mine. He got me thinking, though. I suspected that over time my mother would visit me less and less—it was too much effort for her, and I was too troublesome to her version of things —and I was okay with that. Once I aged out of the system, I wouldn’t have to see her again, and I wouldn’t. I didn’t need her, not really. It made me think about how the three of us, Jacob, Adam and I, were all sad in our different ways for reasons having to do with our mothers. Jacob’s mother loved him but died. Adam’s mother loved him too much, and I had to wonder just what had caused that and what damage it had done to him, and mine, mine had not been cruel but she was careless in her love of Jon and me. Heavy stuff.

Adam beat me, not because I was distracted but because he was really good at chess. With all the thoughts of family and mothers roiling around in my head, I also kept wondering why Adam’s take on Jacob’s “pushing” bothered me. There was something I was missing.

After dinner that night, when most of the others were watching TV and Jacob had gone up to our room, I sat down with Adam and set up the chessboard again, but really I just wanted to talk to him.

“Adam, you know how you said that Jacob’s emotions must not be enough to let him ‘push’ through time. What else was there, do you think?”

As he toyed with the pawns, moving them around and then putting them back on their proper squares, Adam scrunched his face up. “My mummy read this book to me . . .”

I sighed. I really didn’t want to hear any more about Mummy.

“It was about kids who time-traveled. They had to go to a special place. It was a place where there was a kind of hole.”

“You mean they went into an actual hole, like a tunnel?” That wouldn’t work, not from the description of the place where Jacob had been found.

“No, silly!” Adam was amused by what he obviously considered my stupidity. “They went to a place in the forest where it was like there was a hole in time itself!”

I wanted to punch the air, because it sounded like this might be it. Jacob had tried and tried to go back to his real place since arriving at Medlar House, but it never worked. Could it be that he had to be back at the same place where he first came through?

“You’re from around here, aren’t you?” I asked Adam, who looked puzzled at the change of subject.

“Yes, for the last two years anyway. We were somewhere else before but we had to move away quickly. Why?”

“Did your mother ever take you to the conservation area in Dundas?” It was a long shot, but Adam had mentioned that she took him to places that were free.

“Yeah. We went to the railway station they have there. It’s like a museum. And we walked on some of the trails.”

It was hard to keep my excitement under wraps. “Did you go anywhere where there was a sulphur spring? Where it smelled really bad?” I was holding my breath.

Adam nodded furiously. “There’s a place where a road crosses one of the trails and there’s a brick thing with a water pipe coming out of it. Pee-yew! It’s stinky and there’s yellow stuff where the water hits the bricks and the ground. Mummy said I shouldn’t touch it, but when she was looking at the trail map I stuck my finger in and tasted it. It was gross!”

I stopped him there. “That’s where Jacob was found. I think you’ve nailed it. We have to get him back there somehow! At least we can try and see if it works.”

“I bet it will!” Adam’s voice was rising.

I put my finger to my lips to get him to tone it down. We didn’t need anyone overhearing this.

“Apart from the brick thing, I bet it’s just like it was in Jacob’s time. The road isn’t even paved, just dirt.” Adam was running with the idea and it gave me hope. “Let’s tell him!”

“Not now, Adam. I’ll see what he thinks tonight, okay? And no sneaking into our room. We can’t do anything that might cause trouble.”

He pouted a bit at that, but eventually nodded.

I went up to our room early and found Jacob sitting on the edge of his bed just staring into space. Looking up, he said, “You will get me back to Kat, yes?”

I had to respect his single-mindedness. “Maybe.” I didn’t want to promise something that I couldn’t deliver. All I had was an idea. “Adam and I were talking about your ‘pushing.’ He thinks you might have to be back at the place where it first happened, by the sulphur spring.”

I watched him closely as he thought about this. He smiled then, a huge, happy grin. “Yes,” he said simply. “That could be.” He lay down then, still smiling. “I just have to wait. Mutt will get me to the real place. Adam helped. Jon said this is how it would be.”

He was smart. He’d pushed the right buttons. I thought I would have difficulty sleeping, given everything that had happened, but, no, it was like the events of the last few days had caught up with me. I was out like a light—no dreams, nothing—until morning.

Jacob had slept well, too, I could tell. His bruises were fading from thundercloud purple to yellow, and despite them, he looked better than I had ever seen him. He had lost that closed-off, haunted look, and, for the first time, he seemed to be taking in his surroundings, watching everything and everyone, touching objects like he was seeing them for the first time. When it was time for the rest of us to head off to school, he was actually sitting in front of the TV, watching something, although what he was going to make of talking aardvarks, God only knew.