“Shut up, woman!” my uncle roared. He grabbed me by my neck and dragged me out of the room.
With my aunt following behind with the candelabrum, he dragged me back down the staircase, through the house, and up to my room. He threw me into it and locked the door.
“Your birthday is canceled!” he shouted through the keyhole. “You are going to stay in your room for the rest of your life, and from this day forward you will have no more birthdays. You are going to stay at the age of twelve forever.”
Fulton later told me that my uncle went and fetched my birthday present from the side table in the dining room. He took it into the entrance hall, where he and my aunt were about to set fire to it on the checkered floor tiles, when there was a knocking at the front door.
It was no ordinary knocking.
I heard it myself, locked in my room upstairs: a great, thunder-like banging on the front door. It was as though cannonballs had been fired at it.
I heard my uncle and aunt shouting.
I heard the sound of the front door being smashed open, and the sound of my uncle and aunt screaming.
I heard great animal shrieks.
And then I heard my uncle and aunt both screaming outside as they fled from the house.
I heard their screams disappear into the depths of the forest.
And then silence.
A short time later Fulton unlocked my door. He was pale and wide-eyed. “Such terrible things I’ve seen,” he said.
“Can you drive the carriage in the dark?” I asked. “With only lantern light to guide you?”
He nodded. “The horses know the way better than I do.”
“Wake them from their sleep. You have not a moment to lose.”
Fulton harnessed the horses, and together we wrapped Mrs. Fulton in blankets and lifted her into the carriage. He rode off for Hertley and a doctor, and I remained at the house to await my uncle’s and aunt’s return.
I waited throughout the night, standing at the front entrance; it looked as though a great force of nature had ripped it open. Every so often, in the distance, I could hear my uncle and aunt screaming.
They never returned.
Fulton arrived back at the house the following morning. He reported that Mrs. Fulton was to stay with the doctor. She had bronchitis. It was expected that she would recover.
I made Fulton a strong cup of coffee and sat him down at the kitchen table. It had been with much eagerness I had awaited his explanation of what had taken place the previous evening, while I had been locked in my room. After some short reflection, he attempted to put it into words.
“We were all in the entrance hall,” he said. “And there was a knocking at the door, of the likes I had never heard. Suddenly, it was as though the door had been torn apart like paper, and into the house came these two giant beasts.”
“What were they?”
“Black, they were, all of seven or eight feet tall, with great black beaks and eyes.”
“What were they?”
“Birds.”
He stared at me. He was still terrified.
“They paid me and Mrs. Fulton no mind, but they went for your uncle and aunt, and no mistake, with a deafening squawk and caw, and they chased them right out of the house.”
It has been many years since my uncle and aunt ran into the night, and I sometimes still hear their screaming. . . . Or maybe it is simply a trick of the wind in the trees; they are full of leaves now, and animals have returned to the forest.
Fulton is still my groundsman, and Mrs. Fulton still cooks and cleans. After the disappearance of my uncle and aunt, and as their only living relative, Chubwitt saw to it that I inherited Abercrumble House, where I have remained and have devoted my life to the study of ornithology (that’s the study of birds).
I have never yet opened my birthday present, and it remains waiting for me on the side table in the dining room (I have always liked a mystery).
And yes, I still feed the birds. They’ve grown quite big now, and they’re very happy.
Come and visit us. Stay for dinner.
The Platform
by Peter Lerangis
I’D NEVER HEARD A SUBWAY train shriek until that night the orange girl fell on the track.
Seriously, imagine the driver when something like that happens. The victim falls. You slam on the brakes. Behind you, ten gigantic metal boxes full of people have been happily hurtling through the tunnel, and now the wheels are like, What, you expect me to stop now? It’s not really a sound. It’s more like someone stabbed you in both ears.
I didn’t see the girl at first. Instead of going straight home after robotics, I’d gotten off at the Columbus Circle stop, and now I was listening to Christmas carols on the platform. The singers were dressed in lederhosen and peaked caps. They were probably the only group singing “Jingle Bells” with Motown choreography. Honestly, they looked like uncoordinated goatherds who took a wrong turn in Lapland and ended up at 59th Street. This level of dorkiness was normal for kids from New York City’s Vanderdonck High School. They were in good company because next to them was an entire family toting shopping bags and wearing cheese hats, which are definitely not normal in Manhattan.
I would have been laughing my butt off, except that one of the singers was my best friend’s older sister, Lucia Liberatore. Being near her fills me with glad tidings of comfort and joy. Her eyes are as deep as molten chocolate, and her smile is brighter than Christmas lights. As I watched her sing “bells on bobtails,” I felt weirdly weak in the knees.
And then, a moment later, I was weak in the knees. Because Lucia was on top of me.
Actually, so was Jacob Schmendrick, and he’s like a human fire hydrant.
This was due to the fact that a girl with orange hair and orange-framed glasses had plowed into Lucia from behind. Then Lucia plowed into Jacob, who had clomped in front of her when he should have dance-stepped in the other direction. They both lurched forward, landing on me.
The orange girl bounced off us and rammed into the strange tourist family, sending their headgear and shopping bags onto the platform. As she hurtled toward the tracks, a guy in a hoodie tried to grab her. Everyone on the platform screamed, except for a rat that was staring warily at one of the cheese hats.
Then, just like that, she went over. Onto the tracks. It was unbelievable, really. She could have stopped herself. People on the platform were stunned.
“Help her!” sang Lucia Liberatore.
And that was how I, Justin Blonsky, on that gray miserable day during the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, jumped onto the 59th Street tracks.
New Yorkers can feel when a train is coming. It creates a breeze, pushing the air out of the tunnel like a plunger. Well, down there on the tracks, it feels like a tropical wind, if you’re in a part of the tropics that smells like stale pee. The girl had landed on the platform side of the tracks, but her sunglasses were on the inner side, near the electrified third rail. She was on all fours, trying to retrieve them. My second thought was that she was crazy. My first thought was We’re about to become human sushi!
I grabbed her arm, but she shook me off. The headlights were bearing down, ballooning larger. The brakes screeched. I could see the silhouette of a driver through the front window. People were leaning over the platform, shouting. At least a dozen arms reached down toward us. I saw a baseball mitt and realized it was Jacob Schmendrick’s right hand. I tried to push the girl toward salvation. But she wouldn’t go. She seemed more annoyed than panicked. “Get them!” she said, gesturing toward the sunglasses.
Sunglasses!
The shriek of the train’s horn was blotting out all sound. I could see the wheels, locked, sliding toward us along the rails on a bed of sparks. The lead car was emerging from the tunnel into the light of the station. We were smack in the center of the track. The train was maybe four seconds away.
“GO!” I tried to push her toward the platform, toward the outreached arms that could lift us up and out. But now her face
was red, her eyes nearly popping out of her head. She was stronger than me. She pushed me aside and dove across the track bed. I fell in between the two rails. My brain was a panicked thicket of Duh, but I knew enough to lie low. People have survived being run over that way. Staying in the well between the tracks. Letting the train pass over your body. There’s enough clearance. These are things every New Yorker knows.
But the crazy orange girl grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the well.
Into the light.
Into the noise.
Now she was yanking me in the direction of the platform. Now she wanted to be saved—after she’d put on her sunglasses! I wanted to kill her, but a New York City Transit’s R188 was going to take care of that. I reached toward the outstretched hands—but they weren’t there anymore. Even the Good Samaritans didn’t want to die. People were backing off, saving their own lives.
All I could see was the blackness under the platform.
I tried to scream, but it was too late.
I think about death a lot. Partly because I’m a pretty morbid kid. Partly because I’m threatened with it on a daily basis by other classmates from the Five Corners School for the Unconventionally Abled.
My school is an official Zero Tolerance for Bullies Zone. But the zone unofficially ends about a block and a half away, just beyond the cheap sunglasses racks at the S&W Hardware and Deli. There, hidden from the school, is a battleground of wedgies, punches, lunch-money larceny, and black eyes.
If you’re nerdy, unathletic, or short, you suffer. If you’re all three, like I am, a walk to school is an exercise in mortal fear. In my imagination, death was an eternity of harassment, dumb insults, and ignorance.
I didn’t imagine it would smell like lilacs and fresh-cut grass.
Squinting up into a bright light, I saw the outline of a girl leaning over me. “You are the luckiest little numbskull in history,” came a tart, high-pitched voice.
“So, you’re . . . an angel?” I said. That sounded really dumb. But I was lying on a bed of grass in a breezy field under the sun with no subway in sight. The combination of those two things made me start laughing uncontrollably.
“Not funny. There’s nothing funny about what you did. I trained hard for this. You could have killed us both!” She was holding her sunglasses, shaking them at me. “Do you think these grow on trees?”
I sat up. My arms ached, my clothes were blackened by subway soot, and the left side of my jeans was covered in some disgusting goo that included the corner of a Snickers wrapper. Which meant I was alive, and this was all real. I had nearly died. Somehow, I was miles away now. And none of this was funny.
“Wait.” I was starting to shake. It was all I could do to keep my cool. “First of all, I tried to pull you to safety. Second, those are sunglasses. Which you don’t need in a subway. Especially when you’re about to be bisected by a C train! And third, what just happened?”
She looked at me, like I was a kid reciting my times table all wrong. “Sorry, Justin. You really don’t know, do you?”
“How do you know my name?”
With an exasperated sigh, she said, “Follow me.”
Calm down, I told myself. Chill.
I thought of Lucia’s face and took a deep breath. The grass beneath me was thick and cool to the touch. As I stood it sprang right back up into place. A field formed a wide circle about the length of a football field. A straight path of cedar chips ran down the center. Surrounding us were gardens erupting with flowers, their colors impossibly deep, their massive petals like a sea of hands eager for a shake. To the right I could hear a stream burbling in the woods beyond the gardens. In the distance straight ahead, a waterfall raged downward from a rocky peak, and giant hawk-like birds circled lazily overhead.
Stepping toward the path I heard a gentle voice to my right proclaim, “Clear, please, for everyone’s safety.”
I nearly fell back onto the grass. A group of seated people, maybe eighteen of them, was floating toward me in midair. As they drew closer I realized they weren’t traveling of their own power but in an open vehicle made of some clear, glassy substance. It had seats, a floor, and side panels about shoulder height. And it was stopping in front of us.
“Geeeah!” I cried out. “What the heck is that?”
“A hoverbus.” The orange girl turned and began climbing aboard. “This will save some time.”
“Where is this place?” I demanded. “And who are you?”
“Right now we are at the Winged Victory statue, where West Fifty-Ninth Street bends around to meet Central Park West,” she replied, standing on a clear platform in front of the passengers. “Just to our right would be the hotel with the great big globe. And in a moment we’ll pass through the statue of Christopher Columbus. And I’m Hadron.”
“But—but—” The passengers all smiled with a kind of bored indulgence, like I’d just performed a long, mediocre clarinet solo in the school talent show. “The future. Right? You took me through a time warp into the future. So this is where Fifty-Ninth Street used to be?”
Hadron laughed. So did some of the passengers. “It’s a long story,” she said.
As I stepped up and took a seat next to her, I realized the vehicle had no driver. A shoulder belt made of some clear material rose out of the seat and snapped itself shut around me. We accelerated smoothly. But instead of peaking at seventy miles an hour or whatever, we kept going. I felt my facial skin pressing back against my skull. The scenery became a wash of changing colors. I glanced at Hadron, who looked like a zombie in a wind tunnel. “Whirrrr!” she cried out, which I think was “Wheeee!” with a locked jaw.
We stopped on a wide, winding street of packed dirt. I guess you don’t need pavement when vehicles hover. We were way past the gardens and the field. I could not keep my eyes off the buildings on either side of us. They rose about fifty stories, but it wasn’t really the height that made me gawp. They were constructed of rectangular windowed blocks, like giant Lego castles stretching to the horizon. Where you would expect a cross street, instead vaulted archways had been constructed into the buildings at ground level. They spewed a steady stream of hovering vehicles, big and small, all traveling at breakneck speed without colliding. I realized the buildings themselves were moving too. Some of the blocks were turning slowly, their tenants standing at the windows to take in the view. Other blocks had detached and were rising upward into the air, heading for another section of the building.
“Welcome to your humble château,” Hadron said.
Our seat belts were unbuckling. A deep, soothing voice called out: “The New York Transit Authority wishes Hadron and Justin a pleasant evening in Plum Hollow Ridge.”
I felt numb, and a little sick from the traveling. Hadron and I climbed off the hoverbus, which whisked away into the swarm of vehicles. “This is not New York,” I said. “There is no Plum Hollow Ridge in New York City.”
Hadron furrowed her brow. “I think you would call this area Flushing. That’s much worse.”
As we walked toward the building, a solid wall that seemed to be made of brown Play-Doh began to melt. That’s the only way I can describe it. An opening formed, just large enough for us to walk through. I grabbed Hadron’s hand. She scared me, but a dissolving wall scared me more.
We walked through into a vast atrium. It rose above us in tiered balconies, with skylights letting in prisms of afternoon sun. On all floors, people were eating in cafés and chatting. Thick clusters of pipes snaked along the floors and up the walls. My eyes were drawn to what I thought were birds flying overhead, but they were kids flitting in midair, playing games that looked like a broomless Quidditch. Hadron was saying hi to people left and right. She stopped near a sign on a wall that said “Elevator.” I didn’t see any doors, just a down and up button. She stared at them and blinked. The up button glowed, and we began to rise.
As I screamed, Hadron smiled patiently and rapped her fingers three times in the air. I heard three solid knocks. “See?
We’re enclosed,” she said. “Don’t worry. Enjoy the view.”
I didn’t. In fact, I was shaking when she led me out onto a balcony on an upper floor. A door appeared in the middle of the wall with my name on a plaque over the top. “Welcome, Justin!” a cheerful mechanical voice greeted me.
“Thanks, Door,” I muttered.
Hadron beckoned me inside. We entered a big room with pure white walls and a gigantic window looking out toward a peaceful body of water. “Long Island Sound,” she said. “And if you get bored with that . . .”
She nodded at a set of buttons on the wall, and they lit up. Silently, things began sliding out of the walls—shelves full of games and books, a flat-screen TV, a big comfy-looking sofa, a trampoline, and a cabinet stocked with candy and chips.
With a deliriously happy yap, a little cocker spaniel puppy leaped up from the sofa and landed at my feet, wagging its tail. “Bruno!” Hadron said. “Say hi to Justin!”
“His name is Bruno?” I said.
“And he’s yours,” Hadron replied.
I knelt down, and Bruno began tickling my face with his tongue. He was the cutest dog I’d ever seen. He reminded me of my own dog, Pluto, who had died a month earlier. And that made me want to cry and laugh at the same time. I sat on the floor, propping my back against the sofa as Bruno whimpered and yipped and licked, like it was the best day of his whole life.
“My mom will love him,” I said.
Hadron’s smile disappeared. She took off her sunglasses and put them down on a snack bar, then sank down next to me. “I’m afraid,” she said, “we have a lot to discuss.”
I wasn’t going home.
I couldn’t go even if I wanted to.
From what I could understand, home would come to me. Maybe.
Hadron had explained it all, but I didn’t understand a word. So she stared at a set of shelves, which vanished back into the wall. In the blank space an image appeared:
No projector, nothing.
I gasped in shock. Bruno, who had fallen asleep at my feet, let out a tiny yip and resettled.