CHAPTER 9

After math class came science. He shuffled down to the lab, and wondered whether Mr. Nitro would simply lecture, or truly entertain them with some wacky demonstration. In that sense—what the smart folks call “regard”—Mr. Nitro reminded Julian of his father, though as far as Julian knew, Mr. Nitro never blew up a school and had to move across several state lines to find a new job. He and Dad should get together some time and chat, Julian thought, immediately discarding the idea upon noticing that Mr. Nitro’s hair looked a little frizzier today, perhaps due to an earlier experiment gone wrong.

“Good morning, young scientists” Mr. Nitro began. (Mr. Nitro always referred to them as young scientists.) “Today we will continue our exploration of the periodic table with an in-depth look at...” The ever-enthusiastic teacher threw a bunch of pennies on the Money Magnifier (one of his fickle gizmos) casting the images of an equal number of manhole-cover-sized cents on the ceiling. “—Oops. My aim is a little off—” He adjusted the projector to point at the front wall. “...an in-depth look at copper! Copper is one of only four metals that, in its natural, elemental form, is a color other than gray or silver. Your lone homework assignment for the rest of the semester is to name the other three.”

Twenty-five pencils began scribbling quickly—what the smart folks call “furiously.”

“JUST KIDDING!”

Twenty-five voices said, “AWWW!”

“But I will give you ten bonus points on your next test—whenever that may be—if you name them. Where were we? Oh yes! Copper. Atomic number twenty-nine. Its symbol is...” He pointed to the proper square on the large periodic table behind him. “…Cu.”

Cu?! Julian thought, and nearly yelled. “Cu,” he said slightly aloud, as a choir of angelic voices washed through his ears. (Of course, Mr. Nitro’s class was next to the music room. So no surprise that Julian often heard singing in there.)

Mr. Nitro’s lips continued to move. But Julian heard no words. Just two letters:

Cu.

Cu.

Cu! Cu! Cu! Cu!

Julian felt fairly certain Mr. Nitro was not repeating himself, nor “stuck in a groove,” like those funny black, round plates that his dad still somehow made music come out of sometimes did.

Julian tried to listen carefully to Mr. Nitro’s lesson. But his brain kept saying, Cu...Cucumium...Cu...Cucumium...Angels singing. It’s a sign.

He wrestled with—and lost to—temptation. He had to know.

Julian pulled the eTab from his backpack, rolled it open, and set it in his lab book. He had just called up the search engine when an ominous hand eclipsed the screen.

“Thank you,” Mr. Nitro said, relieving Julian of the eTab. Luckily it had a snap-flat feature, so when laid out it looked like most other tablets. Otherwise, Mr. Nitro, ever curious, might have tried to take it apart.

A whole boatload of emotions—sadness, embarrassment, panic—washed over Julian as Mr. Nitro carried the eTab to the front of the room. That boatload capsized and quickly sank when Mr. Nitro placed it in his desk drawer, locked it, and pocketed the key.

Julian spent the next thirty-two minutes working on a deep, sincere apology and the exact words he would use to ask Mr. Nitro to give back the eTab, hoping a good job on the former would make the latter not necessary.

Why thirty-two minutes?

Because with three minutes left to go before the bell, Mr. Nitro sneezed. At first, it was a small achoo. The next was a little louder. The third actually made the overhead light fixtures sway in the breeze. He followed up this trio of nose explosions with a tremendous honk into his plaid handkerchief.

After another honk, he looked at the class with watery eyes and wheezed, “I’m sorry—” ACHOO! “—young scientists, but I’m afraid my—” Honk! “—allergies are acting up. Class dismissed.”

ACH-HONK!

Mr. Nitro hurried out the door.

Twenty-four voices yelled, “YAAAY!”

One did not.

Could this day get any worse? Julian wondered.

The English paper that somehow failed to upload from Google Docs, the overdue library book he’d forgotten at home, the mystery meat at lunch that Julian swore crawled off his tray when he wasn’t looking, and the body check Biff somehow managed to work into the rope climb during gym class answered the question. So all in all the day turned out just peachy.

When the bell rang, Julian pretended it was his alarm clock waking him from the horrible dream this day had been. He mentally put on his comfy robe and his fuzzy slippers and trudged down the hall, hoping a nice breakfast would be waiting for him.

Neither eggs nor oatmeal greeted him as he stepped outside. On a positive note, neither did Biff.

Julian knew he probably should have gone straight home. Too much unexpected, unexplainable, out-of-the-ordinary, bizarre stuff had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and none of it the usual kind of unexpected, unexplainable, out-of-the-ordinary, bizarre stuff he had grown accustomed to. He needed a break from it all, and his new favorite after-school spot called out to him. (It didn’t really call out to him, in the echoing-through-the-schoolyard sense; that’s just what the smart folks say when speaking of something alluring, enticing, or one of several other words smart folks use.) At the end of the walkway he veered right, toward town, rather than steering left, up the hill toward his home.

Several weeks prior, Julian had learned of Main Street Cupcakes and their after-school special: a cup of hot cocoa and a cupcake. All for three dollars. A lot of kids from the school went there, and Julian hoped that if he went they might invite him to sit with them.

Plus, the cupcakes were really good.

He had gotten about halfway there when someone snuck up from behind.

“Greetings, Young Me!” Grown-up Julian said.

“GAH!” Julian yelled, jumping not quite out of his skin, but nearly out of his shoes. What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I could ask the same thing of you,” Grown-up Julian said in a snooty tone of voice. “Shouldn’t you be heading home? To check on me? To make sure I’m not getting into trouble?”

“I know how to stay out of trouble right now. So, I just assumed the future me would know how to as well.”

“And yet here I am.”

“Are you referring to this street? Or this decade?”

“Heh-heh. That’s pretty funny, Young Me. Listen. You have a good sense of humor. In our family, it’s a necessity—what the smart folks call a ‘prerequisite.’ Use it. Keep being funny. It’s something that will come to define you. It will become your ‘thing.’ One of several, actually. But your sense of humor will be the main thing the other kids come to like about you.”

“The main thing? You mean there are actually multiple things about me kids will like?”

“More than you know. But to say any more would risk—”

“Polluting the natural timeline. Got it. I so got it, get it? But, thanks. For the encouragement. Getting back to my original question, what are you doing here?”

“Guess what I figured out!” Grown-up Julian’s excited tone gave Young Julian hope their problems would soon be over, ignoring for now the locked-away—what the smart folks call “confiscated”—eTab.

“What Cucumium is?”

“No. No luck there. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. That’s Spanish. But I did figure out that if I can tell you the winning lottery numbers for tonight, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

“Not now!”

“Later?”

“Maybe.”

“Yes!” Grown-up Julian said, pumping his fist “We are going to be so rich!”

“So really, Grown-up Me, what are you doing here?”

“I got tired of sitting in our...your room.” He laughed a little. “You know, it really isn’t my room anymore. I mean, when I come home during breaks, I stay there. I sleep in the same bed. The top bunk,” he added emphatically. “But it’s not really my space anymore. And it used to seem so big to me. Now, not so much. I could say the same thing about Whispering Falls. Even though it’s a small town, when we first moved here I remember thinking it was so big. I suppose that’s because this is the first place we ever lived where I had the freedom to go. To be on my own. I was old enough, and I guess Mom and Dad thought it was safe enough.”

Just outside downtown Grown-up Julian stopped, conveniently—what the smart folks call “serendipitously”—beneath the sign for Gronkowski’s Groceries & Greetings, where Mr. and/or Mrs. Gronkowski always managed to greet the customers.

“Do you remember the first time Mom said, ‘Julian, could you run to the supermarket for me?’” Grown-up Julian continued. “Of course you do. I still remember it. I remember feeling excited and terrified, all at the same time. I knew how to find the store and acted like I totally knew the way. ‘Mom! Please! I go out the driveway, and down Washington, then turn right by the bank.’ I was so casual about it. But when I actually did it, it felt like miles.”

“And sometimes it still feels like I’m running through a maze now. Which is why you shouldn’t be wandering around. You might get lost,” Young Julian said.

“What are you talking about? I know this town better than you do. I know places you won’t discover until...high school in some cases.”

“Like what?” Julian said excitedly.

“Can’t. Timeline, remember?”

“Sure. You’re more than happy to spoil the secrets you want me to know. But when I ask a question, you clam up like a...clam,” said Young Julian, dejected—what the cool folks call “bummed.”

“OK, so the future you is fickle, too. Hey, do you think you can spot me three bucks?” Grown-up Julian asked.

“What for?”

“The cocoa and cupcake. Duh.”

“How did you know about—Never mind.”

Young Julian frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s like you know everything about me.”

“I’ll repeat myself. Duh. The bottom line is, if you know it, I know it. Or at least I knew it at one time. Though I do have a good memory. We get that from Mom, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“She doesn’t forget anything.”

“No, she does not. Keep that in mind when you try to lie your way out of gluing Dylan to the wall by saying you were nowhere near the garage. She’ll retrace your steps for you with pinpoint—what I call ‘scary’—accuracy.”

“Hey! No polluting!”

“Sorry. Forewarned is forearmed. But if you belay that one ill-advised prank, you won’t get grounded and miss out on your first school dance and, by extension, your first slow dance.”

“My first—”

“What do you know, there it is.”

They reached the town square—in reality a triangle bounded by Washington, Main, and North Franklin Streets—turned right on Main, and headed past Whispering Falls S&L (which Julian assumed stood for Savings & Lollipops, since they always gave the latter out), Fallgreen’s Drugstore, and Mr. Wiggles Slinky Shoppe. After dutifully looking both ways they crossed Main, pausing in the center of the triangle. Grown-up Julian looked appreciatively at the row of century-old two-story brick buildings lining North Franklin. Their flat roofs. Their arched second-floor windows. Their colorful awnings.

“What? What’s wrong?” Young Julian asked.

“Nothing is wrong. Just take a look at the buildings. Each the same, yet at the same time, different. As a child, I barely noticed the architecture. But now I’m enjoying just standing and looking at it.

“It’s good to be home, Young Me. When you’re away at college, never pass up an opportunity to come back, even if it’s just for a day. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Let’s go. I’m buying.”

“I thought you said you needed to borrow three dollars. I thought you didn’t have any money.”

“I was just fooling with you. The truth is, I already did borrow a few dollars.” Grown-up Julian lowered his voice. “From Dad’s wallet.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Dad never pays attention to things like money, or matching socks. But, word of advice, don’t go dipping from that well too often. Promise again?”

“Promise again. And I assume I should never dip from Mom’s well?”

“Only if you want her to tell you how many bills are missing, and their serial numbers, before demanding that you empty your pockets, where she will then find them.”

“Voice of experience?”

“No comment.”

They continued their quest, completing the last leg by crossing over to North Franklin Street which, Julian realized for the first time, made Main Street Cupcakes an ironic name—what the smart folks call “moniker.”

The Julians ordered the same thing, not surprisingly. Dark chocolate hot cocoa. No whipped cream (so the cup could be filled to the top with the delicious dark brew). And the Double Down, Double Trouble, Double Chocolate-Chip Cupcake. They took a table near the front, turned their chairs slightly, and leaned back against the rough, but cool, brick wall.

“I have so many good memories of this place,” Grown-up Julian said.

“You do? We do? What kinds of good memories?” Young Julian asked.

“Why are you here?”

“Because these cupcakes rock!”

“They do. But you could get one to go. So why are you here?”

Young Julian knew he could not lie to his older self.

“Because other kids are.”

“Indeed they are. And in due time, you will be sitting with someone other than your future self. At least, I hope I won’t be back.”

“You’re sure? You’re really sure about this whole making friends thing.”

“I think I was there for it. So, yeah, really sure.”

“Who? Who will I become friends with?”

“Well, let me think.”

At that moment a floorboard squeaked, which floorboards that have been trod upon for a hundred years or so are inclined do.

“Stand up!” Grown-up Julian commanded. “Stand up and get ready to catch.”

“What? Why?”

“Don’t argue. Just...Sheesh!”

Grown-up Julian, much stronger than his younger self, grabbed ninety-two-pound Young Julian, brought him to his feet, wheeled him around, and extended his arms just as a boy fell into them. Young Julian’s natural reflexes, sharpened from years of dodging his dad’s misfires, helped him keep the boy and his hot chocolate-cupcake combo upright and off the floor.

“Great catch, Julian,” Grown-up Julian said.

“Yeah, thanks,” said the boy.

“You’re welcome,” said Young Julian, sort of recognizing him. “Say, aren’t you in my grade?”

“I think so. My name is Tim. Tim Towers. I’m in Mr. Santayana’s class.”

“Yeah, I go to him for history. I’m in Mrs. Stern’s class.”

“I thought so. I thought I’ve seen you in the halls. You’re new this year, right?”

“Right.”

The boys stood in silence, unsure of what to do next.

Grown-up Julian spoke. “Well, maybe you two wild guys will see each other in here again sometime.”

“Maybe,” they said, together.

“Nice meeting you,” they said, again, together.

Tim took his still-intact after-school snack and found an empty table near the back of the store.

“Well, that was a productive two minutes,” Grown-up Julian said, plopping himself down, Young Julian following suit. Or seat, as it were.

“I have to ask. How did you know?”

“That’s a broad question.”

“How did you know to stand me up and make me do the arm thing?”

“Simple. Because I remembered. I heard the floorboard creak, and it triggered a memory of this day. This day, eight years ago, from my perspective. Today, from yours.”

“Wow. You’re amazing.”

“You too, Young Me. Actually, you did a better job. I let a few drops of his cocoa spill.”

“Still, the fact that your brain still works at such an advanced age speaks to...I don’t know. Genetics, or maybe the proper lifestyle choices I will make.”

Young Julian had no clue that no 20-year-old saw himself as “advanced” in age. As such, the clipped tone painting “Advanced” Julian’s voice went over his head.

“Thanks, Young Me. Apparently they still haven’t fixed that loose floorboard.”

“What do you mean, still?”

“It’s been loose forever.”

“Yeah, but if you remember it being loose this day—and obviously you did remember it—then it couldn’t be fixed. At least not yet.”

“Oh yeah. Wow. This is getting more and more complicated.”

“And now I get to say, DUH!”

“You got me, Funny Guy.”

“Yeah, I’m a funny guy. It will be my ‘thing.’ I just can’t wait until that whole kids liking me thing you talked about happens. Any day now would be fine.”

“Well, you can start tomorrow by sitting back there when you come in,” Grown-up Julian said.

“Why?”

“Because that’s where he likes to sit. He’s kind of shy.”

“Who?”

“Your first best friend, that’s who.”

“Him?”

“Yup. Timmy Towers will be your first best friend. Kind of sad, when you think about it. You didn’t have a best friend until age twelve.”

“We moved a lot. Remember?”

“Yes, I remember. Still, you could have done more to make friends at the other schools.”

“You could have, too.”

“Touché.”

“He’s kind of small.”

“Who?”

“That Tim guy.”

“Heh-heh. Just you wait. In a year or two ‘that Tim guy’ will have a growth spurt. In fact, they’ll become an annual occurrence. He’ll play center for the basketball team and be Mr. Popular. He’ll be a good friend to have.”

“Him?”

Grown-up Julian simply nodded.

“If you insist.”

“You’re not convinced. Look, I totally understand what you’re going through. Literally, I do. I did. Thinking you don’t belong. What the smart folks call being ‘ostracized.’ Feeling like an oddball—what the smart folks call an ‘outcast.’”

“Even though I always appreciate learning new words, you really don’t need to teach me every synonym for loser.”

“The point, Young Me, is that all kids your age feel that way. Heck, most grown-ups do.”

“Really?”

“Really. The trick is just learning to overcome it. Or just hiding it. But believe me when I tell you, even when you’re…me, there will be situations which bring you right back here. To the insecurity and self-doubt of age twelve.”

“Great,” Young Julian said in a tone that indicated he found the news to be anything but. The two Julians took simultaneous final swigs from the mugs monogrammed with MSC. “Well, on that happy note.”

“Shall we, Young Me?”

“Yeah, let’s go. So, you really, truly, cross-your-heart promise everything will turn out fine? That I won’t spend the rest of my life as an outcast? That I’ll be—”

In addition to the family dinner table rules, another basic tenet of good manners Mrs. Newcomber insisted upon was to always look at someone as you are speaking to him or her. So ingrained was her mandate that Julian had not yet come to terms with the idea of suspending the practice when performing a challenging simultaneous task, such as flying an airplane or walking. As such, the inwardly swinging door barely missed him. But the soft voice certainly connected.

“Hi, Julian.”

“Oh, hi. You’re...”

“I’m Lisa. I sit in front of you.”

“I know. You pass papers back to me. Then I hand them up to you. You write left handed. You swing your feet a lot. And you twist your hair around your finger when you’re thinking,” he said, immediately fearing he had crossed the line between noticing her quirks and cataloging them.

Grown-up Julian, who had been watching the conversation’ cleared his throat.

“Say, Julian. Aren’t you going to introduce me to this very nice young lady?”

“Sorry. Lisa, this is—”

“Brad,” Grown-up Julian said, breaking in—what the smart folks call “interjecting.”

“Brad. He’s my—”

“Older cousin.”

“Older cousin.”

“So you sit in front of Julian? In Mrs. Stern’s class?”

“Yes,” she said.

“She teaches math, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.”

Now came Young Julian’s turn to watch the exchange and wonder when he might be able to get back into it.

“You really rock in that class, don’t you, Julian?”

“Sort of...Kind of...I guess so,” said Young Julian.

“Math is your best subject, isn’t it?”

“Sort of…Kind of…I guess so.”

“Really?” Lisa asked. “Because I’m having trouble with it.”

“Then you need a friend like Julian here. Maybe some time he could—”

“—help you study,” Young Julian said, regaining some measure of control over the conversation.

“I’d like that,” Lisa said.

“Great,” Young Julian said.

“Yeah, great,” Grown-up Julian said.

“Well, I’d better get in line before they’re all sold out. The best cupcakes tend to go quickly after school lets out. Are you leaving?”

“Yeah. We had ours. And we need to get home.”

“Oh. OK. It was good seeing you, Julian,” she said, stepping into the queue and casting a quick glance back in his direction.

“Same here,” he said, waving, then sighing audibly, puppy-dog eyes following her every move.

“What was that, Young Me?” Grown-up Julian asked, his tone more than a touch cloying.

“Nothing.”

“Say it.”

“OK. She is cute. A little. Maybe”

“And was it just me, or did she seem disappointed to hear you needed to leave?”

Young Julian didn’t know where to go with that and quickly changed the subject. “Oh, and Brad?”

“It’s as good a name as any. After all, what guy doesn’t want to be Brad Pitt?”

“Who?”

“He’s an actor.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He’s the voice of Metro Man.”

“Oh. Him.”

“Let’s get out of here. I’m sure we have work to do. At the very least, you have homework to do,” Grown-up (and responsible) Julian said.

“When did you become Mom?”

“When I got smart.”

“I suppose there’s an insult in there somewhere.”

“Young Me, Young Me, let us not dwell on petty putdowns. We should instead revel in the successes of this glorious afternoon. We, no, you earned friendship points with Timmy Towers and Lisa Honeywell. Could this day get any better?”

Young Julian hated to pop this bubble of joy. But sooner or later he would have to.

“Well...”