2

“I still don’t understand why you left me, Corey,” Zenobia said.

Corey stared at the TV. The den was crowded. Watching the 7:00 local news after dinner was a family tradition. Corey’s dad’s parents, aka Papou and Yiayia, sat in matching leather reclining chairs. They lived in the same brownstone. His other grandmother, on his mom’s side, was in a wheelchair, visiting from the elder-care facility on West End Avenue. Mutti didn’t speak much anymore, and sometimes she didn’t know where she was. She moaned and cried a lot, but right now her eyes were glued to the TV screen.

What happened in the subway had caught the attention of the press. When the reporters had gotten there, the train had still been in the station. A crowd of passengers had gathered around the blue-haired girl and the attacker. By that time Zenobia was gone.

Corey had left before her, slipping away when she wasn’t looking to get back to the present. “I left because I heard a siren,” Corey said. It was a lie, and not a very good one. “Like I told you. I followed them down Ninety-Fifth Street. Sorry.”

“You couldn’t have just called nine-one-one?” Zenobia asked.

“Paithi mou, Corey was trying to help,” Papou said.

“I know, I know.” Zenobia took Corey’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. Normally that kind of behavior would have sent Corey away screaming, but he felt numb. It was one thing to save Zenobia. It was a whole other thing to cause a man to fall on a knife, even a bad guy. Corey hoped he hadn’t died. There was nothing about the incident on his news app.

Corey’s phone dinged and he quickly glanced at a text notification.

Leila Sharp

can u meet me RIGHT NOW in the park? u test me for my AP German vocab quiz tmw & ill treat u to mila café

He texted back a quick no. Leila was his best friend. She was also the only thirteen-year-old he knew who was taking AP German. But that was because her dad and mom were descended from Germans and her family spoke the language while she was growing up. Anyway, she would have to wait. Everything would have to wait until he figured this out.

His mind raced. There were options if the guy had died. Corey could do the whole thing again. He could go back even earlier in time and get it right. He could get the police involved in advance. If they were set up for action, waiting at the station, then the masked guy would have to give himself up. The fight wouldn’t happen.

That was the advantage of being a Throwback. You had the power to redo anything. Infinitely. All Corey would need was a chance to get away.

“Mama, is that you?” whispered Mutti, as an urgent-looking woman with beautiful hair appeared on the screen.

“No, Mutti,” Corey’s mom said, taking her hand. “It’s only a newscaster.”

“This is Carla Hasty with breaking news,” the TV woman said. “This afternoon, a potential thief on the C train received a shock, thanks to a young hero named Trilby.”

“Trilby?” Corey said.

The blue-haired girl appeared on the screen, standing on a subway platform and looking very solemn. “I saw it happening as the train was pulling in. This creep, he—he had a knife . . . he was approaching this, like, little girl on the way home from school . . .” Her voice caught and she took a breath.

“Little girl?” Zenobia hopped up from the sofa. “I’m a high school senior!”

Mutti laughed softly. “Hoo, hoo, hoo.”

“Well, that girl is like twenty,” Corey said. “To her, you looked—”

“So . . . so . . .” On the screen, Trilby was in close-up, choking back tears. “So I guess I didn’t care about the danger to me. I didn’t even think. There was a fight. Everything happened so fast. I pulled the guy off to let her escape. And he lost his balance and f-f-fell on his knife.”

“Whaaat? She’s taking all the credit!” Zenobia shouted at the TV. “Corey’s the one who saved me!”

“Sssshhhh.” Papou turned up the volume as Carla Hasty appeared on the screen again. “The attacker, who has not yet been identified, is reported in good condition at Saint Luke’s Hospital with minor lacerations. He is also reported to be wanted in connection with a string of robberies on the Upper West Side. . . .”

“Corey’s a hero, Mutti,” Corey’s mom whispered.

“Like Stanislaw . . .” Mutti muttered.

“Like who?” Corey asked, but no one was paying attention.

“The real story will come out,” Yiayia said, “when Zenobia presses charges.”

Corey let out a sigh of relief and flopped back on the sofa. “Well, I’m glad the guy didn’t die.”

“Yeah, me, too, so I can nail his butt in the courtroom.” Zenobia leaned down and cupped the back of Corey’s head in her hand. “I’m glad you didn’t die. You are my hero, little bro. I will never ever ever say a bad thing to you again.” She gave Corey a hug and then kissed her grandparents one by one. “Papou, Yiayia, Mutti, ’bye, gotta do homework!”

As she ran out of the room, Mutti was calling out names now, in a world of her own. Corey’s mom quietly wheeled her away, just behind Zenobia.

As a commercial started, Yiayia sat back down and sighed. “I still can’t believe what happened, Corey. What are the chances you’d be waiting for an uptown train at the exact moment your sister arrived?”

“It’s like you planned it,” said Papou.

Corey gave the old man a glance. Papou’s left eyebrow was raised sky-high. The message was clear:

We need to talk.

The park’s stone wall was amber gray in the setting sun, as Corey and his grandfather crossed Central Park West. Neither of them said a word. It was a freakishly warm December evening, but Corey zipped his jacket tight. The temperature always seemed to drop the moment they reached the park side of the street.

“So, let me guess,” Papou said. “You hopped, because something bad happened to your sister?”

Corey had to remind himself that Papou didn’t know exactly what had happened. Changing the past meant that everything was reset, including people’s memories. In Papou’s mind, the robbery and the hospital trip never occurred. But Papou was a time traveler, too. Even though he still had a memory like any other human being, he knew something was up.

Corey had inherited the ability to time-hop from his papou, and they kept no secrets. “Yeah,” Corey said. “I did.”

Papou stopped at the entrance at Ninety-Sixth Street, next to the large stone slab in the wall carved “Gate of All Saints.” His face was lined and dark in the waning sunlight. Their neighbor Walter was approaching with Bailey, who was straining at the leash. “Hi there, we’re late,” said Walter as he passed. “Don’t know if he’s walking me or I’m walking him!”

“Hi, Baileeeeeeeey!” Corey shouted. But Bailey ignored him. It was as if he’d remembered Corey’s snub from earlier by the subway stairs.

Normally Papou would say hi to Walter and crack some lame joke. But his eyes were fixed on Corey. “Was Zenobia badly hurt? Disfigured?”

“No, you saw her,” Corey said.

“I mean, before,” Papou said. “Was that the reason you hopped—she was terribly injured?”

“No,” Corey replied.

“So . . . concussion? Great loss of blood?”

“I don’t think so. She was upset. Mom wanted her to go to the hospital, you know, to rule out anything.”

“Okay. So help me understand the before part, paithi mou,” Papou said. “You went along with your mom to the hospital, and from there you ducked out in order to sneak back into the past and confront this knife wielder yourself? You decided to go it alone, putting your life at risk—even though your sister was shaken up and could have dealt with it the way people in New York deal with things like this?”

Corey didn’t like this line of questioning. It was so matter-of-fact. A scolding. It wasn’t like Papou at all. “She’s your granddaughter! If you could do what I can do, wouldn’t you—”

“Ah, there’s my point, Corey,” Papou said. “We’ve talked about this, yes?”

“I know, I know,” Corey said. “Along with the powers of being a Throwback comes great responsibility.”

“Were you being responsible?” Papou asked. “What if you’d died? Who would go into the past to save you?”

Corey turned away. He knew the answer to that.

No one.

Papou could time-hop. Corey’s best friend, Leila, could, too. The Upper West Side of New York City was headquarters to a group of time travelers called the Knickerbockers, and they were part of a bigger international group. But the rules of time applied to them all. The past was the past. It could not be changed. Period. No matter how many attempts you made, nature interfered. It stopped you in your tracks. You could jump on the back of John Wilkes Booth and he would still shoot Lincoln. You could try to poison Christopher Columbus, but he would still set sail. Corey’s grandmother had died in the World Trade Towers on 9/11, and Papou himself had tried many times to rescue her. Each time he failed and failed again.

The idea of a Throwback, a real, honest-to-goodness history changer, had been a legend among the Knickerbockers. A tall tale.

It took Corey to make it real. He had saved his grandmother. But it wasn’t easy. It took a failed try and a slip back into 1917. And Corey came close to dying there.

“Come with me,” Papou said. “There’s one more thing.”

As he turned into the park, Corey asked, “Where are we going?”

“Into the North Woods,” Papou said. “For a little refresher talk with a friend.”

Which meant, Corey suspected, that they were going to see the mutant talking warthog formerly known as Cosmo deSmiglia. Who smelled something like a fart in a bed of rotten cheese.

“Oh. Come on.” Corey stopped walking, forcing his grandfather to stop. “Smig? Why?”

Papou turned. “You need this. He will talk sense into your head. About ELSTTS.”

“Else?”

“E-L-S-T-T-S,” Papou spelled out. “Excessive life span time travel syndrome.”

This was the flip side of time travel. It was dangerous to go back to a time when you were already alive. It seemed nature didn’t like when two of you existed at the same time. Your body’s genes, in Papou’s scientific analysis, “freak out.” They don’t know how to handle it, something like magnetic poles repelling each other. With each visit, the agitation gets worse, until finally the body revolts. The genes shift and become something else. Something as far from human as possible.

Like Smig.

“Look, I promise, Papou, I’m not like Smig,” Corey pleaded.

“Addiction to time travel is what caused him to be the way he is.”

“I won’t get addicted. I’m different.”

The screech of tires made him stop in his tracks.

And a loud, unearthly scream.

By the time Corey spun around to see what happened, Walter Preston was crouched on the road. A set of black tire tracks led past him to an Uber cab, stopped at a slant halfway onto the grass.

“Oh, Panayia . . .” Papou muttered. He gathered his thumb and first two fingers into the Greek sign of the cross as he stepped closer—touching forehead, chest, right shoulder, heart.

Corey ran closer. Walter was shuddering, sobbing. The Uber driver had left his car and was running back toward the scene, his face creased with dismay. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. He just ran into the road. . . .”

As Walter stood, numb, other cars veered carefully around him. That was when Corey caught a glimpse of the inert figure on the road.

The beautiful Lab who had once been Bailey.