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Allen didn't show his face in school on Tuesday either. I was hoping to ask him to my band concert that night, but I didn't get a chance. His ears were probably better off not encountering the cacophony that we high-schoolers produced when we attempted to make music.
At six in the evening, I returned to school in time to tune up the band. As I played a “C”, my nervousness made me squeak my note, which surprised Mr. Kohn and gave the lower brass their laugh for the week. I soon took my place on stage, and, with a sweep of his baton, Mr. Kohn ushered in my last high school concert.
It was bittersweet, for I’d always enjoyed band, but I was happy that I wouldn’t have to deal with the jeering any longer. When our first piece concluded, I reached over to turn the page and nearly dropped my clarinet as a large, bright moth settled atop my music stand.
“Eww!” My stand partner Michelle recoiled from the otherworldly creature, but I was mesmerized. This had to be a sign of good luck for my solo! It was just like one of those moths I had seen outside my window!
I reached toward it, but it fluttered away.
The next song contained my solo, and I played it with abandon. I experienced that immense, unmerited pride again, but instead of letting it overwhelm me, this time I channeled it, fueling my performance. Like my dreams, I felt like I was soaring above the earth.
“Have you ever dreamed of flying?” Allen’s words floated through my thoughts. I wanted to burst out in song, but I had to settle for “singing” through my clarinet.
Right after the solo, I gazed out into the audience. My parents sat out there, and past them on the other side I saw Allen!
He was here! How had he known to come? I thought back a moment, trying to remember if I had mentioned the concert to him before. Perhaps I had, who knew? The point was, he cared about me and he wanted to see me! With this knowledge, I attacked the rest of the piece with even more vigor.
At the song's conclusion, Mr. Kohn yelled over the applause, “Take a bow, Corinne!” I rose, my eyes meeting with Allen's, and then I commenced to smash my instrument into the music stand.
Horrified, I sat down, gaping at a large chip in my reed. There was no way I could play the last two selections like this, and I didn't have another reed with me on stage. Holding back tears, I had to fake my way through the rest of the night.
When the concert was finished, I happened to look back down at my reed.
It wasn't chipped anymore.
***
AS THE STAGE AND AUDIENCE emptied, I remained in my seat, examining my instrument in shock. The reed was truly unharmed and intact. “I swear, I'm losing my mind...” I rubbed at my eyes, hoping no one would notice the fact that I was nearly crying. It wasn't only the reed that was bothering me. This was just the latest event. There were so many other unanswered questions festering inside of me – my family's weirdness, Uncle Jonas's death certificate, Daniel...
The cumulative events were pushing me over the edge.
“Corinne, we're going for ice cream. Want to come? I'll drop you home after,” Marnie called across the stage.
I tried to sound like I was completely fine. “Sure, sure. Let me tell my mom!” Nearly missing the first step, I bolted down the stage stairs to my parents, who were gathering up their belongings. My focus was on Allen, however, who was inconspicuously indicating to meet him outside. As desperate as I was to run to him, I held myself back, attempting to keep up my “calm” guise. Instead I went and told my parents I'd see them at home.
But Mom was not ready to leave. “You did very nicely,” she said warmly.
“You sure did,” Dad added, with a proud tap on my back.
I paused, deliberating if I should tell them what happened. Or didn't happen...
“I think I'm losing my mind,” I whispered. I couldn't take it anymore.
“You're not,” my mother countered immediately in a firm voice.
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“Corinne!” Marnie yelled. “We're leaving!”
I didn't answer my friend. I needed to know why Mom was so quick to reassure me before I had even told her what happened.
“Marnie's calling you,” she reminded me.
“I'll be right there!” I replied impatiently. Sizing up my mother, I began, “Mom, what–”
“Hurry, Cor! We're leaving!”
“Go with them, Corinne. Trust us,” Dad intoned strongly, echoing Mom’s reassurances but still failing to assuage me. “Have fun. We'll bring home your clarinet.” He took the instrument case from my hand. I forgot I'd been holding it.
I let out a frustrated breath. “We're getting ice cream.”
“We'll see you soon. Be careful.” My parents walked out the side door. They were holding hands. They almost never did that.
I practically exploded out the back entrance, right into Allen's arms.
“Allen, Allen, oh...” I threw my head into his chest, letting the sobs pour out. I couldn't contain them any longer, and Allen's encouraging expression seemed to give me permission to release them.
He touched at my hair affectionately. “Shh. What's wrong?”
I told him, even the part about the reed.
“It changed back to normal?” He appeared flustered, which surprised me.
“Well, 'changed back' is probably not the right phrase. It's more like maybe I'm imagining things?”
He continued to stroke my hair as I wailed, but now his actions were almost robotic, and through my tears I could see him shaking his head and frowning. “Are you going with your friends for ice cream?” he asked.
“You know what? No. I can't bear the thought of sitting with them and talking about stupid stuff. I can't believe I just faked half the concert when I didn't need to...or...? What is wrong with me?”
Allen stopped smoothing my hair. He put a hand on each of my shoulders. “There is nothing wrong with you at all. Get your things, tell your friends you're not going, and let's take a walk.”
***
WHEN I WAS FINISHED “dismissing” my friends, I came out to find Allen exactly where I had left him, but he was holding an ice cream cone in each hand.
“One for you, one for me. This way you can't tell your parents you didn't get ice cream.” He slurped at his, leaving a slight white film around his lips. “I love this stuff, truly an amazing invention,” he added, tapping at his midsection. “So good!”
Accepting the other cone, I scanned the area around me. No ice cream trucks, no food vendors... There was nothing but school grounds, the woods, and people returning to their cars from the concert.
Gazing at Allen in suspicion, I sampled the treat. The vanilla soft-serve was the sweetest, creamiest ice cream I had ever had, and Allen watched me as I consumed it eagerly.
“Did I do well?” he queried.
“Do well? Where'd you get this? It's amazing!”
“If I told you that, then everyone would be after it, and it wouldn't be special anymore,” he winked.
What was that supposed to mean? Had he gotten it from the cafeteria? He wouldn't have had the time, and it was also closed! Plus, our cafeteria couldn't possibly have anything that tasted this good!
Someone had to have given the ice cream to him.
I tried to purge my mind of this newest and more disturbing exchange as we walked from the school parking lot and past the woods. Finally, he spoke.
“There's nothing wrong with you,” he repeated. His tone was low and soothing, like a mother attempting to lull her baby to sleep.
And that bothered me. I was eighteen, and I deserved to be treated that way. “Everyone says that! Why do you say that?” I nearly shouted.
“Because I know.”
“What do you know?”
“Well–”
He was faltering, and I could see by his expression that I was close to forcing him to open up. I continued my attack mercilessly. “And you said 'all things are revealed in time'. What things? That you can make ice cream appear from nowhere?”
He laughed, but I did not return even the faintest smile. I was sick and tired of everyone’s secrets, and I was intent on learning his. “What do you want to share with me that's so scary? Because I'll tell you, after tonight, nothing will scare me! I mean, I could probably use a scare to knock my mind back into reality!”
Allen paused, shuffling his feet in the dirt. “I really don't want to scare you.”
“I dare you to try!”
“Well...”
“What's wrong? Is the time still not right? Am I too delicate to deal with your scariness?” I goaded.
“My scariness is world-changing, Corinne.”
I blew a raspberry. “You're a magic ice cream man, right? You couldn't scare me if you tried, Allen. I'm going home.”
“Wait!” Roughly, Allen pulled me into the woods. “You want scary? And I’m warning you, this is your last chance to say no and turn back.”
Something about his tone sounded darker this time, and I shivered slightly despite what until now had seemed like flirtatious banter. Either he was playing with me, or maybe I would actually learn something about what was going on. Perhaps naively, I trusted that he wouldn’t really hurt me.
“Definitely,” I answered, mustering all my confidence into that single word.
He backed up a step. “You can't tell a soul about this.”
“Never. I wouldn't dream of it.” I rolled my eyes, shaking my head in annoyance. What was he preparing to do? Dance for me?
“You promise you won't tell?”
His serious demeanor stirred a seed of doubt inside of me. I was quivering now, half-worried that he was going to do something awful to me, hoping my faith in him wasn’t misplaced. My fight-or-flight responses were all revved up to go.
“I promise.”
“Fine. Prepare yourself,” Allen intoned, deadly seriously. “I'm going to become your worst nightmare!” He stepped to the side, threw his head back in deep concentration, and suddenly he was glowing.
I shrieked as the light around him intensified so quickly that it soon surrounded his entire body in a fiery orb. Then it swelled massively and changed shape, stretching taller and taller until it towered over the treetops, illuminating the ground below in brilliant radiance.
Rooted to the ground in absolute panic, I grew hoarse from my screams. “Stop it! Stop it!” I begged, sobbing and shaking, but the spectacle had only begun. The stretched fireball started to dim, but rather than fade away, it seemed to be regaining solid form.
But this form was enormous, and it was not remotely human.
There were limbs, but there was also a long neck, a snout, a tail, wings... “Oh my God!” I screeched in terror, staggering backwards into the shrubs. “No...no...”
A magnificent dragon now stood before me. It stretched its wings out, felling leaves and branches, then made a booming roar which echoed through the woods.
“No, please...Allen, it's me,” I whispered. “Please, don't...” My whole body was quaking; sweat flowed from every pore...
Then the behemoth craned its neck to the side and pumped a wave of fire from its mouth.
“Allen! Please! Stop!”
While moaning like a child, I watched the flames rain from the monster's throat and set several trees ablaze. I could not accept that this frightening, demonic creature had recently been the man I was growing obsessed with. I finally found my footing and turned away to run, but the dragon blocked my path with a single step. It leaned over and stuck its scaly face into mine.
And it winked at me.
“Allen?” I squeaked, barely managing to get the name out of my throat.
It nodded.
“You won't hurt me?”
It shook its head no, and something resembling a smile played over its immense face.
Hesitantly, I reached out and touched the scales. They were warm. This dragon was very real.
Clasping my hands over my eyes, I entreated him, “Please be yourself again. Please. I beg you.”
Even through my hands I could see the intense light, and when I finally uncovered my eyes, a self-satisfied Allen stood in the dragon's place.
Speechless, I ran at him, burying my face in his shirt. I had never experienced such extreme fear as this, and it felt like something had broken deep within me. “Please tell me you didn't turn into a dragon. Please.”
“I turned into a dragon, Corinne. Calm down. I won't hurt you. I'd never hurt any of you.” He glanced over at the patch of trees that was burning. “However, I wasn't intending to start a forest fire with my little 'display', so brace yourself for another change.”
Before I could speak, he had dislodged himself from me and started to glow again. “This'll be fun. Don't take your eyes off me,” instructed the radiant pillar before me. I could only nod as it rose into the air, a fluid mass of gold. Lengthening and traveling far above the flames, it disintegrated into a sparkling cloud. It hovered there for a moment, then cascaded over the flames as ton after ton of water, putting out the trees and flooding the forest.
Then all was still.
Very slowly, I crept over to the charred area. I stared down at the ground, which was flooded with...Allen. Without warning, the puddles coalesced. All the water began to glow, forming into a bright ball in the middle of the ashes, and became human Allen once more.
And the soil was now dry.
Shaking the dirt from his legs, Allen stepped from the blackened remains and approached me. He still had the sheepish look on his face, and, as he had previously instructed, I really couldn't take my eyes off of him.
“Well?” he said with a grin.
Finally, I managed, “Holy...God...”
He chuckled. “Was I scary enough?”
“I hope you didn't kill anything,” I exclaimed. “Look at the destruc-tion...” My anger at the mess he made kept me from focusing on the fact that he had turned into a dragon and then tons of water. It just...helped me cope.
“You set so much on fire. I wish I could make all the trees and bushes come back in this area.” I regarded the charred underbrush sadly as he led me from the woods. I think I was still trembling.
Pulling me away from the devastation left my mind free to ponder Allen's apparent transformations. “So you're a dragon that can turn to water,” I breathed, barely any sound issuing from my lips.
He snorted. “No, I’m human, but I can be far more than just dragons and water.”
These words only heightened my fear, which I didn't think was possible. “Please don't become anything else,” I whimpered, extracting my hand from his. My eyes remained on his fingers, however, as I recalled how enormous and clawed they’d just been.
If he was hurt by my pleading, he didn't let on. “I won't change. Unless you want me to.”
We came to the edge of the woods, and I gathered up the strength and the nerve to ask the questions I knew he was waiting patiently to answer.
“What are you?” I didn't want his response, because it couldn't be anything good, but I knew that I would get it anyway. He'd shared his secret with me, and I was in it for the long haul now.
“I'm a changer,” he said softly.
“A changer?” This didn't mean anything to me. “What's a changer?”
“Well, like a shape-shifter, but I can change anything I want. Not just me.”
I gulped. “Like...me?”
He smiled. “If you want.”
“Uh...” Why did the whole idea bother me? I guess everyone at one point has imagined what it would be like to be something else, but the idea of it actually happening – especially when it was at someone else's mercy? No.
“You don't have to, but you don't know what you're missing.”
What was he, crazy? “Uh...well, I'll think about it,” I stuttered, trying not to insult him. The last thing I wanted to do now was get him angry. I could end up as a garbage can – or worse.
Haltingly, we wandered down the street. The streetlights cast an eerie, permanent glow over Allen, which persisted even when we were in the dark. The brightness he'd emitted before had probably damaged my eyes. I hoped it was temporary.
“Are you an alien?” I blurted out.
“An alien?” he chortled. “Why?”
“People can't do this. It's physically impossible. How did you get so big?”
“I can get small too.”
“How small?”
“Oh, you've seen me get pretty tiny. That moth you saw?”
The image of the beautiful moth on my music stand popped into my head, and my mouth fell open. “That was you?”
He smiled yet again.
“But...but...”
“I was at your window as a moth too. You saw me.”
I gasped, and then quickly grew annoyed. “Why were you at my window?”
“I missed you?”
“Don't spy on me!”
“I wasn't! I'm just making sure you're okay. I was that fly that landed on your clarinet too.”
That was how he had heard me play! Okay, now things were getting creepy. “How is that possible? Doesn't it hurt you? How do you get so perfect, and then come back to yourself so perfect?”
He blinked at the near-nonsense I spouted, but I think he understood what I was attempting to say. “Well, I can't tell you the exact process of transforming. Apparently I become pure energy, then I convert back into a mass with a different form. I retain some kind of energy signature that helps me get back to my original shape.”
The science here was making my head spin. Normally I loved learning how the world worked, but this was not the time for lessons. “So you figured this out yourself?”
“Oh, no. This is physics, which is a bit beyond my schooling. Jonas explained it to me. He’s been studying it for years.”
Uncle Jonas! I knew he was aware of far more than he let on, and resentment began to well up deep inside me. “You know Uncle Jonas?”
“Yes, I met him recently.”
“So he knows about people like you?”
“Well, there are very few people like me– it's a very rare talent to have, unlike some.”
What was he talking about? “Some talents? There are others?”
He studied me a moment. “You really have no idea?”
I narrowed my eyes. “About what?”
We were approaching my house now, but so much more needed to be said. My frustration mounted as Allen was once again avoiding answer-ing my questions.
“They haven't told you anything,” he stated, nonplussed.
“They?” Why did I have the urge to break into tears again? Or punch someone...
He took both of my hands, and we stopped. “Look, now they'll have to tell you, but let me begin first by saying I've done nothing wrong. I'm grateful beyond words to be here in this country, and I beg you to get them to let me stay.”
“Who, Allen? Who?”
“Your family.”
What did my family have to do with anything? “But, other than Jonas, my family doesn’t know about you!”
“They know.”
How would they know about him? Did he mean they knew of his ability? “Well, they don't know that I know you, do they?”
“No, and it's better that you don't tell them.”
I found myself marveling at the deep blue color of his eyes, and I suddenly remembered seeing them looking back at me from the woods. “You're the mountain lion!” I exclaimed.
He seemed surprised by my comment. “Yes.”
“Who was the other one behind you?”
“Daniel.”
“My brother can turn into an animal?” I was completely floored. How could Daniel possibly keep something like this to himself? “I can't believe he didn't tell me!” I seethed.
“No, he's not a changer. I transformed him. He loves it. I do it to him whenever he asks me to, to thank him for his help. Although I have a feeling I won’t be changing him much more.”
“Thank him? For what? Did he cure some fatal disease you had or something?” For some reason, Jack came to mind.
“Daniel?” he paused for a moment, seeming to contemplate his next words very carefully. “No, no. He doesn’t do that. I wasn't ill. See, he rescued me from...a long time ago.”
“What does that mean?”
“Corinne, your brother is a time traveler.”
***
MY PARENTS WERE ASLEEP when I got in. As much as I wanted to wake them and barrage them with questions, I knew they would want to know where I was and how I came by all this information. Two o'clock in the morning was not a good time for this. So I forced myself past their bedroom and into my own room. Despite the hour, I grabbed up my cell phone and hit Daniel's number. Him I could bother. He was probably awake anyway.
As I counted the rings, I only grew angrier. “Pick up, Daniel, you lying jerk! I hate you! So that's the secret! I can't believe you didn't tell me any of this–”
“'Hey, it's Daniel. Leave a message!'”
“I need to talk to you!” I screamed into the phone and slammed it down. Then, after taking a deep breath, I picked it back up and texted him, “When can I call you tomorrow?”
I put on my pajamas and got into bed, waiting and praying for an answer from my brother. Time travelers, people transforming... My safe, mundane world had been completely overturned into a bizarre fantasy, and I couldn't even begin to unravel any of it. I still wasn’t sure I was completely sane, and it weighed heavily on my mind. Thankfully I was so tired, however, that I quickly fell into a long, blessedly dreamless sleep.