“WITH ANY LUCK,” Jeremy said in a low voice, “it’ll be Mom, home from her Parents Without Partners meeting.”
“And without any luck?” I wondered.
“It’ll be my sister.” He spoke in a grave voice and wrung his hands. “What am I going to do with you?”
He sized me up again, though he’d been staring holes in me ever since I . . . arrived. “Quick,” he said, “get over by my Darth Vader.”
“Your what?”
“That plastic thing.” He pointed at the artificial monster. “Stand over by it, and don’t move. Hold your pose. Freeze.”
Just as the doorknob rattled, I lifted my skirts and took a giant leap, landing next to the Darth doll. It was staring out at the room, and suddenly so was I. Me and it stood cheek to cheek. The door banged back.
Somehow Jeremy made it to his chair. Looking up with a casual air, he said, “Hi, Tiffany. What are you doing home? Did the mall close?”
An overfed girl of sixteen or so shambled into the room. Without shifting my eyeballs, I caught a terrifying glimpse of her.
She’d cut her skirt in two, for it hit her well above two large and naked knees. Over her big chest she wore a flimsy shirt with some small animal stitched to the left side, possibly an alligator.
Her face was made up for some dreadful stage drama, purple at the lips and green along the lids. But her hair was worse. It was plucked half out of her head and chopped off. Wisps at the side were dyed pink. She wore earphones like a telephone company operator.
“HEY, TIFFANY,” Jeremy roared, “HOW ABOUT GETTING OUT OF MY ROOM?”
She was a slow girl and possibly deaf. She pulled the plug from one of her ears. Like my mama, she pierced her ears. But . . . Tiffany had pierced hers three times on each side. Gaudy bangles hung down from her lobes.
“Just shut up for like one minute, you little space cadet,” she remarked to Jeremy. “I’m totally into Billy Joel’s ‘The Nylon Curtain.’” She was tapping one large foot in a rhythm, and so she may have been getting music from out of her earplugs, or thought she was. “‘Combat Rock’ with Clash is coming up.”
“Just . . . get . . . outta . . . my . . . room, okay?” Jeremy said to her. “Please.”
“Chill out, nerd,” she responded. “Have a Dorito.” She slouched across the room and offered a cellophane sack of something to Jeremy. I could have reached out and touched her, but I never moved. She smelled unpleasantly of perfume and tobacco, both stale.
“Did I get any calls?”
Jeremy shook his head.
“I can’t handle it,” Tiffany said. “Mom home yet?”
Again Jeremy shook his head and pretended to press several keys on his machine.
“Awesome,” she remarked. “Then I’m like the boss here, you know? Hey, look!” Her hand swept out to point at the broken window on Jeremy’s machine, scattering the Dorito things all over. “You totaled your screen, you little airhead. Like don’t even consider borrowing my Sony.”
The very thought of anybody borrowing her . . . Sony seemed to turn Tiffany into a raging beast. She whirled my way and punched Darth Vader beside me. It hit the wall and bounced back. If she had another punch to deliver, I’d take it full in the face. Still, I never moved or even blinked.
“Like, aren’t you a little old for dolls?” she sneered at Jeremy. “Ew, these are super skanky.” She gestured at me and Darth. “Like Barf City. Gross me out. Totally.”
“Just . . . get . . . outta . . . my room, Tiffany,” Jeremy said hopelessly.
“Who needs you, honker?” Tiffany slumped from the room and banged the door behind her. I’d never heard tell of a girl named for a lamp before, though this one was none too bright.
Jeremy wiped small beads of sweat off his forehead. He blinked at me like I might not come to life again. I blinked back, glad for the chance, and stepped out of my pose.
“That is one bad-tempered girl,” I remarked. “What’s put her in such a mean mood?”
“Tiffany?” Jeremy said. “Oh, that’s as good as she gets. Basically I guess it’s because we’re from a broken home.”
I scanned the room again. It looked all right to me. “The roof fell in on me and Mama once,” I said. “And the porch has fallen off the house a couple times.”
Jeremy stared. “Not that kind of broken home,” he explained. “I mean our mom and dad don’t live together anymore. Dad’s living in a singles condo complex out on the Airport Highway.”
“Oh, well, shoot,” I responded. “I’m in a similar situation myself. The last time we saw my paw, he was hopping a freight for Centralia.”
Jeremy poked his spectacles higher on his nose. “You mean in olden times you people had divorce?”
“Well, I don’t know about divorce,” I said. “That sounds expensive.”
“I thought that all you did was pop corn and bake bread and sit around the fire telling stories and laughing a lot. It’s on all the Christmas cards.”
I decided not to try to explain to him about Mama.
I spent a restless night, though it gave me time to ponder. There were a couple of beds, one stacked upon the other. Jeremy sent me up a ladder to the top one. I was to sleep up there flat against the wall where nobody could see me.
I may have dozed, for I seemed to dream of pages fluttering off a calendar decorated with rocket ships. I dreamed, too, of Alexander Armsworth holding his lantern aloft in the immense distance. Waking once, I sensed some newcomer in the room. It must have been Jeremy’s mama. Light from the hall slanted across the room, and a figure approached to check on him. But when she went away, she eased the door shut with care, so it couldn’t have been Tiffany.
Toward morning I was awake again. “Jeremy?” I said quietly.
“Yes?” He was as awake as me.
“I’ve been giving this entire mess some thought. It couldn’t have been the storm and your machines that brought me here. Not entirely. My particular Gift works in a different way. Seems like I’m drawn out of my time to those in need.”
There was silence in the bed below.
“Do you follow this line of thought?” I inquired.
“Yes,” he said. “Need. I’m going to need some replacement parts. The screen, of course, and all the circuitry governing the editing function and error detection. We’re talking in the neighborhood of a couple hundred bucks over the warranty just to get even. But I can cover it.”
I sighed. “If you’re talking about your machines, Jeremy, that’s not quite the kind of need I meant.”
Then, while I was resting my eyes, it was suddenly daylight in the room. A shock of red hair and two eyes appeared by my pillow. Jeremy hooked his spectacles over his ears and gave me more close looks. We were about nose to nose, but still he stared. He even studied Mama’s old fur piece around my neck like it might be growing on me.
“You’re still . . . here,” he said quietly. “I guess we better consider your . . . bodily functions.”
“Whoa!” says I. “Listen, where I come from we don’t discuss that type thing in mixed company.”
“Well, my bathroom’s right through that door if you need it, and . . . do you eat?”
What did he take me for? I gave him a disgusted look, and he decided to check out the house, darting for the door in a pair of pajamas printed all over with moons and airships.
As I was climbing down the ladder from my so-called bed, Jeremy ran into his sister in the hall outside. I froze to hear her greet him in her rude way. She called him both nerd and honker and invited him to bag his face. Then she lumbered off down the stairs. The house rocked as Tiffany banged out the front door.
Jeremy popped back into the room. “The coast is clear,” he announced. “I heard Mom’s Trans Am tool out of the garage before I got up. She’s an interior decorator.”
Though this meant little to me, it seemed to calm him. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s find some breakfast.”
I hung back, not scared exactly, but a little uncertain.
“It’s okay,” he said, but still, I was far from sure. He walked over to where I stood, digging my toe into the carpet. “Don’t worry.” A little shy himself, he put out a hand and took mine.
It was quiet then, but for the cheeping of a bird or two outside the window. At least they haven’t done away with birds, I thought.
Jeremy peered at me in his thoughtful way. “I guess you’d be a real old lady now if you . . . I mean, you know what I mean.”
I nodded. “I guess I’d be a real old lady or . . . out of the picture entirely.” I pointed to the ceiling. In the mornings I tend to be moody.
“Well, anyway,” said Jeremy, “come on. We can’t hang around up here all day. I don’t have a chance of sending you back till I can give my equipment a little TLC. We’ve got to go to school.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“School? I’m a fugitive from 1914, Jeremy. They’d drop a net over me and put me in a sideshow!”
“Oh, just chill out on that, Blossom,” he said. “I got that part all programmed. You can leave that to me.”
So having little choice, I followed him out into his world, though my spirits were not high. There was more trouble ahead. It stood to reason.