“Wait!” The woman pauses, the door open just wide enough so I can see her eyes. “Have you definitely got the right week?” I ask. “They own it the last week of August. Are you just leaving?” My questions don’t make sense, even to me. She can’t be leaving! They’ve already arrived. They got here last night. “Are you staying with them?” I ask, searching my memory to work out who she could be. I’ve met Autumn’s grandma. It’s not her. A friend of the family?
“I’ve told you, dear,” the woman says. “This is my condo, my week. I arrived yesterday; I don’t know anything about your friend.” She smiles again, slightly more woodenly this time. “As I said, I’m ever so sorry I can’t help you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to my needlepoint. Is there anything else?”
“I . . .”
The woman waits a bit longer.
“Well, all right, then,” she says. “I’ll be going. Sorry again, dear. Hope you find your friend.” And with that, she closes the door.
I stare at the number: 210. I trace each digit with my fingers. Two, one, zero. It is their condo. Am I going crazy?
Finally, I turn to go home, walking blindly down the hallway, completely shaken. The old elevator is standing open, waiting for me. I walk into it in a daze, close the outer door, pull the metal gate closed, and hit the button for the first floor. All the way home, I go over what just happened, arguing and reasoning with myself to try to make sense of it. I must have gotten the wrong condo. Maybe they changed it without telling me. They must have. Or I went to the wrong floor by mistake.
By the time I get back to our condo, I’ve just about managed to convince myself that the whole thing was my own stupid mistake. Nothing to worry about at all. I’m not losing my mind. There’ll be a simple explanation. There’s got to be.
Dad’s hunched over the living-room table, writing. “Autumn’s been looking for you,” he says without glancing up.
“What? She’s been here?”
“You just missed her. Left five minutes ago. Maybe ten. Said she’d been looking all over for you. Listen, what d’you think of this? ‘The river raced ruggedly down the hill, falling over itself as though it was in a hurry.’” He looks up. “It’s the opening of my novel.”
“It’s great, Dad. I thought you’d already begun your novel.”
Dad leans back over his notebook. “Starting a new one. I just got a fresh idea. It’s this place — it inspires me. We should come here more often.”
I get some orange juice from the fridge. “Did Autumn say where she was going?”
“Back to their condo.”
“Back to their condo?”
“That’s what I said.”
“And she left ten minutes ago?” I sip my juice.
“Correct.”
“Dad, have they swapped their condo?”
“Good grief, Jen, what’s with the Spanish Inquisition? Not that I know of. Why don’t you ask her when she comes by? She said she’d come back in a bit.”
Of course. I’ll just ask her. There’ll be a simple explanation. “Where’s Mom?” I ask.
“Taken Craig for a swim.”
“Are they —?”
“Look, Jenni, I’m just trying to do some work. No offense, but do you mind . . . ?”
I shake my head as I wash my glass out in the sink. Let him convince himself he’s writing an internationally best-selling blockbuster.
Something catches my eye outside the window and I look up. Autumn. At last! I run to the door to let her in.
“Where’ve you been?” we squeal in unison before I grab her arm and drag her inside.
“Hi, Mr. Green,” she calls through the door. Dad waves a hand absentmindedly in reply. We go upstairs to my room, and I close the door behind us. “I couldn’t find you anywhere — it was like you’d disappeared into thin air!” Autumn says.
“I know! What on earth happened?”
“Spooky!” she says, laughing and pretending to play creepy music on a piano in midair.
“I know. Completely bizarre. I couldn’t make any sense of it at first, but I’ve realized I must have just made a mistake with your condo.”
“My condo?”
“Yeah. When did you change it?”
“Change what?” Autumn tilts her head at me, waiting for me to explain.
“The . . . the . . . your . . . condo?” I falter.
“We haven’t changed it,” Autumn says, screwing up her nose at me.
“And your car,” I add, feeling like an idiot. “It wasn’t there.”
“Of course it was, you dope!” Autumn says. Then she half covers her eyes and walks around the room banging into things. “You must have had blinders on.”
She walks into the side of the bed and does this really over-the-top fall onto it, making me laugh. She’s right — it was obviously just me being stupid. I force it out of my mind and convince myself that there’ll be an explanation.
“Hey, I’ve got a present for you,” she says, sitting up and pulling something out of her pocket. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
I do as she says, and she places something on my palm. I close my hand around it.
“Open your eyes!”
It’s a necklace made from some pebbles with wire mesh holding them in place. It’s lovely and unusual: exactly the kind of thing Autumn does — and the kind of thing that makes her so amazing.
“I made it last night,” she says, grinning broadly. “They’re from our place. It’s a friendship necklace.”
I sit down next to her and hug her. “I love it. Thank you.” Autumn watches me as I tie it around my neck.
“You’re welcome,” she says, jumping off the bed. “So — tell me more about the weird stuff. Maybe you weren’t walking around with blinders on after all. Maybe our car was abducted by aliens.”
“What would aliens want with a bright-red Porsche?” I ask, laughing.
“Maybe they’re going to turn it into a spaceship and use it for races between their planet and ours.” She goes over to the French door and opens it up. The river roars loudly past.
“Or maybe they come from a planet where everything’s red,” I say. “Bit by bit, they’re going to steal all the red things from our planet.”
Autumn jumps up and down and claps her hands. “Yeah, that’s it!” she exclaims. “Yay — no more beets!”
“No more tomatoes!”
“Oh.” Autumn slumps back onto the bed, her smile gone.
“What is it?” I ask.
“No more ketchup,” she says glumly. An instant later, she brightens up again. “Oh, well — we’ll just have to hope it’s not the aliens at all and that it was just you not noticing our car.”
I pause for a moment, remembering all the other things that were different. “No, it was more than that,” I say tentatively.
“Like what?” Autumn looks intensely into my eyes. Then she glances around the room. She picks up one of my sneakers and shoves it under the bed. “Lost your shoes as well, did you?” Then she puts on a fake mysterious voice. “Hey,” she says, pointing at the floor, “I’m sure there was a shoe down there before. It’s such a mystery!”
I laugh and shove her onto the bed. “No, really. It was definitely more than that,” I say seriously. “Where were you, anyway?”
Autumn shrugs. “The lake, the weir, at home, looking for you.”
All the same places I’d been. How could we have missed each other at every place?
“Autumn.”
She’s reaching under the bed, fiddling with the arm of one of Craig’s discarded robots. It comes off in her hand. “Uh-huh?”
“It was strange. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Ooh, goody!” Autumn puts down the robot’s arm and crosses her legs. “Come on, then. Tell me more.”
“Only if you promise not to make fun of me.”
Autumn pulls an ultra-serious face. “I promise,” she says solemnly.
So I tell her about g
oing to her condo and about the woman in the floaty dress and how I couldn’t see Autumn or her family anywhere.
“Cool!” she says. “I must have turned invisible!”
“I’m being serious!”
“I’m being serious. What other explanation is there?”
“Autumn, you seriously think you’ve become invisible?”
“Why not? If you can clone people and you can find out your whole life is a TV show, what makes you so convinced you can’t become invisible?”
“Autumn, those were stories!”
“Who says this isn’t?”
I pick up some LEGOs from the floor and throw them onto Craig’s bed. Why does he have to make such a mess? “How come my dad could see you, then?” I ask. “And what about the woman in the condo? And where was your car?”
“I said. It was there all morning,” Autumn says. “You did go to the right place, didn’t you?”
“Building C, number 210. End condo, second floor.”
“Yep, that’s us.” Autumn jumps off the bed and bounds over to the window again. It’s started raining, fat splodges squashing lazily against the glass. She pulls the French door closed and stands looking out. “OK, I can’t explain that,” she says finally.
“I must have gotten it wrong,” I say. “Had a brain drain. I did. I went to the wrong condo — I’m sure of it now.” I don’t know who I’m more determined to convince — Autumn or myself. Autumn seems happy enough with my conclusion — even if I’m not so sure. Seeing as I don’t have a better explanation, I decide to ignore the bit of my brain that’s silently trying to argue against my words.
“Well, that’s that, then,” Autumn says, turning around. “And I suppose we probably just kept missing each other. I guess I didn’t turn invisible after all.”
“I guess.”
“Shame.”
“Yeah.”
The front door bangs. “We’re home!” Mom calls.
Autumn jumps off the bed and glances at her watch. “I need to go home for lunch. Come by at two, OK?”
“OK.”
Autumn pokes her head into the living room as we pass. “Hi, Mrs. Green.”
“Hi, Autumn,” Mom replies as she hangs Craig’s towel over the radiator.
“Did you swim?” I ask.
Mom smiles and pats her stomach. “With this? It’d be like a blue whale getting in the pool!”
“We saw workmen with a digger and they talked to us, and Mom said I can go back and watch them work tomorrow, didn’t you, Mom?” Craig tells us eagerly.
Mom ruffles his wet hair. “Yes, darling.”
“I’ll see you later?” Autumn says, glancing at the clock. “I gotta go.”
I walk her to the door. “See ya!” she says. And with that, she dances down the sidewalk, pausing just before she goes out of sight to wave and blow me her usual flamboyant kiss. “We’re leaving at two on the dot,” she calls. “Don’t be late.”
“I won’t.”
“Condo 210!”
“Yes, don’t worry. I’ll come to the right place this time.” I force a laugh.
Once she’s out of sight, I turn back to go inside, closing the door behind me.
“Jenni, set the table for your mom,” Dad says. He’s still sitting at the table.
“You’ll have to move, then.”
“In a minute. Can’t stop when it’s flowing. You’ve heard of the person from Porlock, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Dad. We’ve all heard of the person from Porlock.”
He tells us this story about once a week. Some guy was writing a poem or something, and he was interrupted by someone at the door: the person from Porlock. And that was the end of that. His inspiration was broken, and the poem was never completed. It would have been a brilliant work of genius, and he never finished it. Great story. It’s basically Dad’s way of getting out of doing anything around the house.
“OK, lunch.” Mom brings a tray of sandwiches to the table as I get the plates.
Dad leans across to kiss her. She touches the back of his head, holding him close to her. When they move apart, they smile at each other. He kisses her cheek. “Fifteen years. Who’d have thought it, Mrs. Green?” Dad says.
Mom smiles and leans down to rest her head on his shoulder. Then Dad gets up to clear away his notebooks. “Come on, Craig.” Craig’s in front of the TV again. “Lunch.”
Normality. Thank goodness for that. For a moment, I forget all about the weird things and almost manage to convince myself that they didn’t happen. Life is calm and peaceful again, as it should be. As it always is. The normal, predictable Green family household — just how we like it.
As I go into Autumn’s building, the old elevator is standing open. I’m sure I closed it behind me. It’s as though it saw me coming and opened especially for me.
The other one doesn’t come when I call it, so I step inside the old one and go up to the second floor. With the slightest jitter in my stomach, I stand outside number 210, staring at the door. Definitely Autumn’s condo! I straighten my clothes. My top feels tight. Maybe I shouldn’t have had a whole bag of potato chips with my lunch.
I knock on the door.
“Who is it?”
Oh, no! It’s her again! But it can’t be! This is the right place; I checked and double-checked. What is going on?
The door opens a fraction.
“I’m sorry. I . . .”
The woman stares blankly at me for a split second and then registers recognition. “You again,” she says quietly. “What do you want with me now?” She’s not as friendly as last time. Her voice has an edge to it that could just be irritation but almost sounds scared.
“I’m just looking for Autumn,” I say.
“What do you mean, looking for autumn? How do you lose a season?”
As she says this, her face suddenly drains of all color. She pushes the door farther closed — her eyes big and shocked against her suddenly gray face. When she talks again, it’s as though she’s looking straight through me and talking to a ghost.
“You’re trying to make a fool of me, aren’t you?” she says. “You know! But how? It’s impossible. No one knows — no one ever knew. Only me. Always lost.”
What’s she talking about? “I — I don’t know what you mean,” I say, trying to sound as reasonable and unthreatening as I possibly can. “I’m not trying to do anything bad. I just want to find Autumn. We’re going out in a minute.”
The woman has stopped staring beyond me and seems to have remembered I’m here. “Look.” She reaches a thin arm through the crack and points to the numbers on the door. “My condo — 210. My week. How many times do you need to be told?”
I can feel my eyes sting. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know how many times I need to be told. All I know is that it doesn’t make sense!”
The woman stares at me, holding my gaze for so long that I want to turn away, but the link between us feels so strong, it’s like a magnet and I can’t move a muscle. “What doesn’t make sense?” she asks eventually.
“This is Autumn’s condo. I’m sure it is. They’ve been here for the last three years. I saw her an hour ago!”
She stares a bit longer, as though she’s trying to read my mind. That’s when I realize — it’s a joke! She’s going to tell me, any second. It’s Autumn messing with me. I should have known she’d do something like this. She loves pranks!
“This is a joke, isn’t it?” I say, feeling my body relax with relief as I smile at her.
“I thought as much,” the woman says. “Look, I don’t know where you got your facts, but it’s not funny.”
“No —” I try to backtrack. “I mean — I thought you were playing a joke on me.”
The woman lets out a harsh laugh. “Me playing a joke on you?” she snaps. Then she shakes her head. “You need to go now,” she says. “Or I’m calling the police.”
And with that, she closes the door.
I try knocking again. br />
“I mean it,” she shouts through the door, her voice shaking. “I’ll phone them. You’ll be in trouble.”
I can’t stay here; things are just going from bad to worse. I check my watch. Past two o’clock. They’re going to leave without me.
A man I vaguely recognize is going into a condo at the end of the hallway. I think he’s a friend of Mr. Leonard’s.
“Excuse me!” I call. He turns around, and I run to catch up with him. “I’m looking for Autumn,” I say.
“Autumn?”
“The Leonards, you know. Autumn and Mikey and their parents. They have a condo in this building. Don’t you know her dad?”
“Well, yes. I do. But . . .” The man gives me a really weird look. As though I’m stupid and shouldn’t be allowed to wander around on my own. He fiddles with the strap of his bag and slings it over his shoulder.
“Have you seen them?” I ask, a little impatiently. Any second now, I’m going to be too late. They’ve probably gone without me already. It’s nearly quarter past two.
“Well, I haven’t seen them up here,” he says. “Have you tried their condo?”
“I’ve just been there!” I cry, frustration burning into my throat. “They’re not there. There’s just this woman I’ve never seen before. Didn’t you just see me in the hallway?”
“How could I have seen you?” He laughs. “I haven’t been downstairs.”
“Huh? But we were there a second ago. Just over there.” I point down the hallway. Why is everyone talking in riddles to me today? What’s going on here?
The man takes his bag off his shoulder and puts it down. He draws in a breath, then kind of puffs his cheeks out and looks away.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Have you seen the family recently?” His face is grim.
“Yes!” I scream. “I was with Autumn an hour ago, and we’re supposed to be going out together. I’ve probably missed them now. Where are they? Do you know?”
“Listen. Why don’t you just try their condo again?”
“But I’ve just been there! I keep telling you! No one’s come or gone since we’ve been standing here!”
“How do you know?”
“Because we’d have seen them!” What is this man’s problem? “Look, thanks for your help,” I say, walking away. “I’m sure I’ll find her.”