The lofty architecture of the high school pictured on the winter formal invitation had long since fallen into disrepair and ruin. But it was easy to let my imagination drift back into the past, to a time when the school had been a prominent feature of the city. A proud and noble building.
“Gypseeeeee! S-S-Samsonnnn!” Little Tuck’s cries made me forget about buildings and bricks and barbed wire. His voice sounded small and far away. Was he still a giant? Or had he already shrunk back down?
“There!” one of the veterans shouted. “The boy is over there.” We all turned to see where he was pointing. Tucker was a tiny ball at the base of the high school. His painted-on cat face had lost all nine of its lives, leaving his cheeks a tear-stained mishmash of rainbow colors. One by one, we slipped through a jaggedy hole in the fence.
“Tucker!” Samson cried as he rushed toward our brother. “Are you hurt?”
“What happened?” I said, when I reached him a second later. “Where’s Grandma?”
Tucker looked up at Samson and me as we bent down beside him. He was so upset, at first he didn’t even notice the small army we’d brought with us. He sobbed and hiccupped, hardly able to catch his breath. Then, with a tremendous howl, he cried:
“I lost Cap’n Stormy!”
It took nearly two full minutes—two precious, frightening, tock-ticking minutes—before Tucker calmed down enough to be able to tell us what had happened.
“The lights went out in the apartment, Gypsy.” Tucker snuffled, wiping his nose on my sleeve.
“There was a blackout, Tuck,” I explained, trying to keep my voice calm. “The snow must have knocked out the power.” I gestured toward the darkened city. The electricity was out for miles.
“I-I was okay, Gypsy. Rocket makes the power go out all the time when he comes home to visit.” Tuck sniffled. “I wasn’t scared of the dark. But Grandma was. I opened all the blinds, so she could see better. Then Grandma saw this building out the window, and she said she wanted to come here—”
“So you told her you’d bring her,” I finished for him.
Tucker nodded. He’d made himself big for Grandma. Not because he was upset or angry—but because he loved her and wanted to fix her fears and help her get the thing she wanted most. He’d wanted to make her happy the only way he knew how.
“Grandma had trouble in the snow, Gypsy. So I concentrated really, really hard and got big. Bigger than I’ve ever been before! Big enough to carry Grandma.”
“That’s great, Tuck.” Samson nodded, making his voice as reassuring as possible to keep Tuck talking. “When Momma and Poppa find out,” Samson went on, “I bet they’re going to be super-proud.”
“Really?” Tucker looked up at us with tear-filled eyes.
Samson glanced at me and shrugged. He and I both knew that Momma and Poppa were probably going to be hopping mad at all of us. But we needed little Tuck to be okay, so that he could tell us exactly where Grandma was—and so that he would stay little in front of all the soldiers.
“I got so big,” Tucker went on, “I forgot about Cap’n Stormy. She was in my coat. But she fell out somewhere along the way.” Tucker wailed again, sobbing huge sobs between each word as he said, “I . . . set . . . Grandma . . . down so I could look for my kitten. Then I got scared and small again, and I couldn’t—”
“You set Grandma down?” I interrupted him. “Where, Tuck? Where did you put Grandma?” I had a terrible feeling that I already knew the answer.
Tucker shook his head, like he didn’t want to say. Like he was too afraid to tell us.
“You’re not in trouble, Tuck. We’re not going to get mad.”
Tucker sniffed again. Then, slowly, he pointed up. Straight up, in the direction of the clock tower. I craned my neck, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t see Grandma Pat.
“Do it again, Tuck,” I said. “Get big. Get Grandma back down now!”
“I caaaan’t,” Tucker howled. “I tried, Gypsy. But I just stay small and fart, fart, fart. Grandma will be safe up there, won’t she? There was a really big ledge for her to stand on.”
“Tucker!”
“I have to find Cap’n Stormy!” Tucker disintegrated into a flood of waterworks. Nola took Tucker’s hand, nodding to me and Samson.
“You guys go.” Nola jerked her chin toward the clock tower. “You already knew Mrs. B. would be up there, Gypsy. I’ll help Tucker look for his kitten. He won’t be any help to anyone until he finds his fuzzy friend, and someone needs to look after him. Go! You’re running out of time.”
Time again.
Time, time, time, time, time.
I stood up and turned to face the others. Del’s fists were clenched; he looked ready for action. The four marines and the two veterans looked befuddled.
“Here’s what’s happening—” I said. Talking as fast as I could, I briefed the soldiers. “Tucker’s kitten is missing and our grandmother is stuck up above us on a ledge on the outside of the clock tower. She could fall any minute. I don’t have time to explain how any of this is possible. We have to get up there.” I pointed straight up at the clock tower. “ASAP!”
“Roger that.” Corporal Vasquez nodded, understanding the need to follow orders and act without question. Without another word, Vasquez, Anderson, and their fellow marines went to work on the thick wooden boards that covered the nearest window, prying them loose. Giving us a way into the school.
Nola rousted Tucker from his tears and they began to scan the snow, walking away from the rest of us in ever widening circles, searching for the tiny orange kitten. The two old veterans, worn out from their first heart-pumping adventure in decades, quickly fell in step beside Nola and Tucker. Lending their experienced eyes to the search for Captain Stormalong Fuzzypants.
Corporal Vasquez threw her jacket over the fangs of glass that rimmed the broken window. She sent Private Anderson into the building first. Then Vasquez and the other two marines—Private Casey and Lance Corporal Parker—helped boost the rest of us inside.
“Maybe I should have gone kitten hunting instead,” Samson grumbled, after he’d been unceremoniously dumped inside the building.
It was dark inside the old high school, and creepy. Samson held the flashlight he’d taken from Laverne’s apartment out in front of him, shining it around the dusty old classroom in which we found ourselves. I glimpsed a chalkboard covered with graffiti, piles of trash and dried-up leaves, drooping cobwebs, and a single broken chair turned on its side.
Following the beam of Samson’s flashlight, we moved out of the classroom and down the empty hallway. Our wet boots squeaked against the cracked and dirty floor tiles.
“We have to find the main staircase, then look for access to the tower,” barked Corporal Vasquez. As we neared the school’s lobby, Vasquez stopped short. She raised a tight fist, barely visible in the dark. A signal for the rest of us to halt.
A loud groan, and the sound of a metal bar scraping across the floor, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My first thought was: Ghosts! My second, more rational—more hopeful—thought was: Grandma Pat!
I was wrong on both counts.
IT WASN’T A GHOST or Grandma Pat who haunted the front lobby. It was B-Bug. The soft-spoken bully with fists the size of bricks. The same boy Grandma Pat had mistaken for her beau, Cleavon Dorsey.
“Byron!” Del shouted, pushing his way to the front of the group. B-Bug turned toward us in the dark, gripping a long metal pipe and looking as scary as all get-out. I moved to stand next to Del, ready to stop time if the huge bully lifted the metal pipe and charged.
“Del?” B-Bug raised his hand, shielding his eyes from the flashlight beam Samson leveled in his direction. Byron Berger was covered in dust. His coat was torn.
“Is that you, Del?” B-Bug’s breath puffed out in a cloud in front of him, yet even in the dull light of the electric torch
I could see he was sweating. “I know you probably hate me, Del—hate Tripp and me both—but will you help? Part of the ceiling caved in right after we got here. Now Tripp’s legs are stuck. He’s not hurt . . . I don’t think. But I can’t get him out.”
Corporal Vasquez grabbed the flashlight from Samson. She lowered the beam, scanning the rubble and debris strewn across the lobby, stopping when the light fell across Travis Kaminski the Third’s pale, spotted face.
Pinned to the floor, Tripp looked up at us from beneath a mound of masonry that buried him from the waist down.
“Help me, Del,” cried Tripp. His eyes rolled wildly in the flashlight’s yellow beam. “Help me, and I’ll forget everything. I’ll delete the picture. I’ll leave you alone. I’ll never step foot inside your uncle’s store, or steal anything again, I promise. I’ll even let you give me a makeover every day for a week when we get back to school—in the middle of the cafeteria, during lunchtime—just to make it up to you.”
“Huh! My gran would have considered that a waste of good makeup,” Del muttered at my side.
“I’ve been trying to free Tripp for hours, Del.” B-Bug shook his head. “But I haven’t been able to. Not by myself. I’m strong. But not strong enough. Maybe you and your friends could help?” B-Bug squinted into the light again. I wondered if he could see exactly what kind of friends Del had brought with him. I doubted Tripp or B-Bug had expected Del to appear flanked by a platoon of United States Marines.
Why were Tripp and B-Bug here? How had they known Del was going to be at the high school? Not even Del had known he’d be coming here when he left the bus station with me. He thought he was taking me as far as Aardman’s Flowers. Tripp had sent that text, telling Del they were coming for him. But Del thought the message was only meant to scare him.
Next to me, Del said nothing. I could tell he was just as baffled as I was by the appearance of the bullies at the high school. Vasquez moved closer to Tripp and B-Bug. The other soldiers followed, stepping out of the shadows.
“Who . . . who are you?” B-Bug demanded, his eyes widening in surprise. He raised his metal pipe defensively, looking like a baseball player coming up to bat, ready to swing at the strangers in front of him. But as Vasquez drew closer, B-Bug dropped the pipe and said, “Have you guys come to help?” As soon as he said it, I remembered why I was there.
Drat and dragonflies! I was wasting time. I had to get to the clock tower. I had to reach Grandma Pat.
Chuffing out my breath, I pushed past the others, heading in the direction of a wide concrete staircase I’d seen when Samson’s flashlight beam passed over it. I adjusted my glasses. Already, my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. It wasn’t completely pitch-black on the stairway; moonlight peeked in through the dozens of broken windows above, dappling the steps with jagged shards of dim light. Samson and Del were right behind me.
“Hey, wait! I don’t want you kids going up there on your own,” Vasquez called after us. I ignored her. There was no way I was going to risk my grandmother’s life to help rescue a thieving bully like Tripp. There were four strapping marines who could do that without me.
“Anderson, Parker, Casey!” The echo of Corporal Vasquez’s voice followed Samson, Del, and me up the stairs. “You three stay down here and get this kid out of the rubble. I’ll go up to the tower to help look for the old lady.” The corporal’s boots were on the steps behind us a second later.
Vasquez left the flashlight in the lobby with the other three soldiers, giving them a light to see by while they worked to free Tripp. I didn’t have any more time to waste wondering how Tripp and B-Bug had come to be here. My only thoughts were for Grandma Pat. My vision was coming to pass, but I still didn’t know how it would end.
I glanced down at my red coat sleeves. Would I have the strength to catch Grandma and hold on to her? Only time would tell.
I took the stairs two at a time for the first three flights. When I stumbled at the top of the fourth flight, breathing hard, Del caught my arm, keeping me from falling.
“You good, Specs?”
“I’m good,” I said, relieved to see a crooked spiral staircase right in front of us—a listing, twisting iron ladder that led straight into the heart of the clock tower.
Corporal Vasquez may have been a United States Marine, but I was still the first one on the stairs. My boots clang-clang-clanged up the rusted metal steps as fast as my feet could go. I was heedless to the way the staircase swayed. I was deaf to the way the rickety metal fittings creaked and groaned. The others couldn’t match my speed.
I counted the steps the same way I counted heartbeats whenever I stopped time: Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty-three . . . forty-seven . . . fifty.
Fifty steps up, I found myself standing in the small square room that housed the clock machinery. Rods and beams jutted here and there, leading from a large wooden gear box in the center of the room to the four separate faces of the clock. One face for each direction. North, south, east, and west.
The room glowed, drenched in filtered moonlight. Cobwebs hung like party streamers. Powdery gray grime was thick upon the floor, like forgotten stores of fairy dust. Grandma Pat was outside, hugging the V shape of the Roman numeral five, balancing precariously on the ledge that ringed the tower. All I could see of her was her silhouette, a shadow puppet of a time-forgotten Cinderella swaying against the glass of the southern clock face. The clock’s giant hands both pointed heavenward above her, forever stuck at 11:58 as if it were always just a hairsbreadth away from pumpkin hour. The hour when magic failed.
Without pausing another moment to think—or to wait for Del, then Samson, then Corporal Vasquez to reach the top of the spiral staircase, one after the next—I raced across the small room at the top of the tower, tripping over a riffraff of fallen clockwork parts. I pressed my hands against the inside of the clock face. I could see no trapdoors or any other openings in the glass in front of me. No way to pull Grandma Pat safely inside.
A metal rod rolled away from me as I kicked it, making a ringing, clanging sound. I hunted at my feet, searching for something I could use to break the glass. Finding just the right piece of metal—a solid tube of steel short enough for me to wield, yet heavy enough to do some damage—I called out to my grandmother. I spoke softly at first, not wanting to startle her and be the one to make her fall.
“Grandma! It’s me, Gypsy. Or . . . or Nettie Arbuckle. Or whoever you need me to be. Just hold on tight and don’t be scared. Stay right where you are. I’m going to break the glass so you can come in from the cold. Try to hang on!”
I braced myself and pulled back my arm. Then, with every bit of strength I had, I struck the thick glass with the metal rod. My first blow only cracked it. A fine line ran across the entire pie-shaped wedge between the six and the nine. I kicked as hard as I could at the glass below the Roman numeral seven, then I struck again with the pipe . . . once . . . twice . . . three times, until the entire wedge-shaped pane shattered outward, raining down into the deep drifts of snow, six stories below.
“I think I’d like to go home now,” I heard Grandma say in a shaking voice.
As the others raced toward me, I peeked out of the hole I’d made in the clock face. I watched Grandma turn to look at me, the glitter gel making her own face sparkle and glow in the moonlight. I saw her boot slip and her shimmering hands reach out to grab . . . nothing.
Nothing but air.
It happened exactly like my vision. Grandma’s mouth opened in a surprised O. Her tiara flew off as her milkweed curls floated up around her face. Her skirts flew up too, exposing her skinny legs.
When I’d had my premonition, staring into the mirror in the church bathroom, this was the moment I’d closed my eyes. From this split second onward, Grandma Pat’s fate was a mystery to me.
I reached, reached, reached for Grandma. And in the best and bravest moment of my life, without a though
t for the sixty-foot drop below me, I made a leap of faith.
Or a leap of sheer stupidity.
Throwing myself out of the hole in the clock face, I scrabbled to catch hold of Grandma. My fingers found her wrists and held on tight. Only then did I realize that I was now falling too.
If only my switched-up savvy had given me the wings I’d longed for, or the power to levitate. Those abilities would have been much more useful.
Then I felt hands wrap around the ankle of my right boot. Breaking my fall. Jerking my body to a painful stop and making me feel as though I was being ripped in two. Even as thin and frail as she was, Grandma Pat’s weight threatened to pull my arms out of their sockets as she and I dangled below the clock.
“Uff!” The wordless sound puffed from my lungs as I hung on to Grandma with all my might. I refused to look down. I didn’t want to see how far away the ground was.
“I’ve got you, Specs.” Del’s voice sounded strained. For the first time that night, I was thankful my snow boots were so snug. If my right boot had been any looser, Grandma and I would’ve already fallen.
“If you’ve got me, who’s got you?” I called up to Del.
“Me—I do!” Samson’s voice came from somewhere above Del. “I can’t hang on much longer, though, my shoulder’s killing me. Corporal Vasquez!” Samson cried. “I need your help.”
Turned out, Samson was holding on to the back of Del’s belt with his one good hand, leaning backward with his feet braced against the clockworks. Del was halfway out of the clock himself, having thrown himself against the ledge to grab my ankle.
“I’ve got you covered, kid,” came a woman’s voice. Then I felt myself being slowly lifted up. I gripped Grandma Pat’s wrists with renewed resolve, knowing that Corporal Vasquez was helping now. Grandma made a whimpering noise that nearly broke my heart.
“It’s going to be okay, Grandma,” I told her. “We’re not alone. You’ll never be alone again, I promise.” But as my palms began to sweat, and my fingers began to slip, I knew the others were going to be too late. They might be able to rescue me, but I couldn’t hold on to Grandma by myself much longer. After everything we’d been through, in the end, Grandma Pat was still going to fall.