A Home Away From Home and Other Stories

father looked most unfriendly and he quickly pushed the box back on the shelf. 'Hi, I'm Brad and Jarek said I could come and see what you do. I'm really into electronic stuff.'

  His voice trailed away as he saw the look of anger on the man's face. But suddenly he appeared to have a change of heart and a wintry smile creased his face.

  'Well that's a great hobby for a boy to have but I'm afraid I am busy working and I really can't be disturbed. Jarek should have known that.' He glared at his son who looked even more wretched as he nudged Brad towards the door.

  'Sorry, Dad. We'll go now. I was just giving Brad a quick look,' he said nervously.

  'Yeah, thanks,' Brad added quickly as he followed Jarek into the corridor. They walked in silence back to the front lawn.

  'I didn't know you'd get into trouble taking me in there,' Brad said to his friend apologetically.

  Jarek was a trifle pale. 'It doesn't matter. I mean I'm not supposed to take people in there, I knew that. It's just that you were so keen.'

  Brad felt uncomfortable but decided to make the best of things. 'Let’s have some kicking practice. These trees will make a good goal. Do you want first go at being goalie?'

  'Sure. Let me take my jacket off first. It's too hot out here.' Jarek tossed his sweatshirt onto the front steps next to Brad's schoolbag and grinned at his friend.

  The boys spent a happy half-hour kicking the ball. One extra powerful kick from Brad and a spectacular miss from Jarek saw the ball soar over the picket fence and bounce along the street.

  'Race you to it,' yelled Brad, and the boys pounded after the ball. This quickly turned into a scuffling game of shove and kick as they took turns to dribble the ball around lampposts, shrubs and the occasional rubbish bin left by the kerb. At the end of the street they turned around and strolled back, tapping the ball between them.

  'I'd better collect my bag and go to Sarah's house and get Fliss,' Brad sighed. 'Mum will do her nut if I'm not home before dark.'

  'Okay,' his friend agreed.

  After a few minutes, Brad stopped and looked around. 'What number is your house, Jarek? 'He asked. 'I don't see it.'

  Jarek looked up from the ball at his feet and gave a moan.

  'It can't have gone,' he whispered. He patted his pockets frantically. 'I left it in my jacket. Where did I put my jacket?' his voice rose to a shriek.

  'Calm down, you chucked it onto the front steps,' Brad reminded him.

  'I've missed it,' Jarek whimpered. 'They told me never to be without it and I was always careful. Now they've gone.' His voice broke on a sob and he collapsed in an ungainly heap on the footpath.

  Brad was appalled and embarrassed.

  'What are you making such a fuss about? It's only a jacket, for goodness sake. Just tell me where your house is and you can get it.'

  'It's gone,' Jarek muttered, holding his head in his hands.

  'What do you mean, gone? What's gone?'

  'The house of course. It's gone.'

  Brad backed off a couple of steps. Maybe Fliss was right. Jarek was weird and his behavior was getting more peculiar by the minute.

  'Ah, what number is your house?' he asked soothingly.

  'It's 58. But it's gone,' Jarek cried despairingly.

  Brad looked around and started counting the numbers on the letterboxes.

  '52, 54, 56…'he walked along the footpath. 'There's an empty section and there's number 60.. Where's 58?' he looked along the street but there was no house with a picket fence and two camellia trees. 'Are we in the wrong street? Did we turn off somewhere?' he asked.

  'I told you, Jarek insisted, 'the house is gone.'

  'But houses don't go. They can't just disappear,' Brad protested.

  'Yes they can, at least ours can. That's because it was never really properly here. Don't you get it? ' Jarek jumped up and grabbed Brad's arms. 'I'm not from your time. Now my family has left and it's all your fault!'

  Jarek gave a cry of despair and kicked the ball savagely. It bounced against a letterbox and a dog started barking in the distance.

  Brad was bewildered. 'Where has your family gone? I mean, your house. No, I mean both, I guess.'

  'I don't know,' wailed Jarek. 'That's the whole point.' He dropped his face into his hands. 'It's a nightmare,' he moaned.

  Brad looked at him helplessly for a few minutes and wondered what Fliss would do. 'She'd take him home to Mum,' he thought.

  'Look, why don't you come home with me? I'll ask Mum if you can stay for a couple of nights. We'll say we're doing a school project together or something.'

  'I'd rather have my own family,' Jarek muttered.

  'Well, yes, but we need to figure out where they are. Besides, I'm starving. It's nearly dinnertime so why not come and eat with us anyway. We can ask Fliss if she know what to do.'

  Brad sounded more confident than he felt but there was certainly something very odd happening. Jarek's house had definitely disappeared. As that fact sank in, Brad began to get excited.

  'What did you mean about being from another time? Are you from the future? ' he asked eagerly, as he led the way towards his house. 'You look just like normal people.'

  'I am normal, Jarek protested. 'And I'm not from the future. Well, I suppose I am in a sort of a way, but I'm really from the past as well.'

  Brad looked at him blankly.

  Jarek sighed. 'I'm not supposed to talk about this to anyone but I guess I have to. You have to think of time as a being like a river with a current flowing in it and everything gets carried downstream. The current is too strong to go back. But every now and then the river branches out and forms an inlet and sometimes an island grows in that inlet. The people who go and live on the island are not part of normal time; they are sort of separate. Oh, I know that I'm not explaining this very well. There are all sorts of theories and scientific formula to explain it but it's so boring I never bothered learning it properly. But anyway, I grew up on one of the islands – there is a whole town of us and it makes us a bit special. It means we can go up or down the river, so to speak, as far as we like. It's not a real river, you understand, that's just how it was explained to us.'

  'So what do you do?' Brad asked with shining eyes. 'Is your house a time travelling machine, or what?'

  'Yes, no, it's complicated. When we go to a new place a space is created for us that fits the right pattern. That's why we had a house like all the rest of the street. The hardest part for us is having to get the right sort of clothes and making sure we fit in so people don't realise where we are from when we leave the house.'

  Brad nodded. That explained why Jarek's mother looked so weird. 'That's why Fliss said your clothes weren't quite right,' he said. 'But why can't people know?'

  'Because of the problems with the time potentials. Some people would want to know what is going to happen so they can make bets or investments or else they might do something to deliberately change the future.'

  'Would that be so bad?'

  Jarek shuddered. 'It could be tragic. One time a girl met a guy she liked and told him about where she was from and he persuaded her to change just some small thing and two whole time islands vanished completely. Poof! Just like that.' Jarek snapped his fingers.

  'But how do you actually go, I mean move around in time? Who decides it and how does it work?' Brad asked.

  Jarek made a face. 'Like I say, it's really complicated with formulas and things. But there are Time Trackers and my Dad is one of those. He gets sent to different times and he has to make adjustments there so that everything flows normally, then when his work is finished we move on. We all got Chronocallers. They're about this big,' he pointed to the palm of his hand, 'and we have to keep them on us at all times. They start beeping when it's nearly time to go and we have to get back to the base, that was our house in this time frame. Mine was in my jacket, which is why I missed hearing it. Dad will kill me – at least he would if I ever saw him again. He even warned me it was coming up and I knew we'd had the twenty-four hour call
already. That's why I thought it wouldn't matter if I took you home as it was going to be the last time I ever saw you.'

  'Wow! That is so awesome.' Brad was bursting with questions but the sight of Jarek's gloomy face made him reluctant to ask any more.

  They collected Fliss from her friend Sarah's house. Brad would have liked to ask her advice, and began, 'Hey Fliss, Jarek's family are…'

  He stopped as Jarek gave an anguished yelp and fixed him with an appealing look.

  'Don't tell her,' he hissed.'

  'Tell me what? ' Fliss asked vaguely. She and Sarah had been having a comfortable gossip about one of their friends and she wasn't paying much attention to the boys.

  'Oh, nothing important. Forget it,' Brad told her.

  'Whatever,' Fliss shrugged.

  Brad's mother was surprised that her son had invited a friend to stay without asking first, but made Jarek welcome.

  'You can sleep in the spare bed in Brad's room,' she smiled.

  When dinner was finished, the boys retreated to the bedroom where they sprawled on the beds. After a chatting for some time, Brad turned to Jarek.

  'We have to tell Fliss,' he insisted. 'She is always full of ideas.'

  'What, you mean she'll know how to get me back to my family? I don't think so,' Jarek said rudely.

  'We have to do something. Sitting around here isn't getting us anywhere'.

  Jarek glared at him but grudgingly agreed he was right.

  'I'll get her,' Brad said briskly.

  He marched into his sister's room and after a brief argument Fliss followed him back.

  'What a mess,' she said scornfully. 'I don't know how