“And your father feels about this how?” Mitch asked.
Caitlin hesitated. “Well, he doesn’t know.…”
“So you set your mom up on a date with some dude behind your dad’s back?”
“You’re missing the point, Mitch,” Nick told him. “Her mom’s not going to be there.”
Mitch was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Does she know that?”
Nick gave up. Mitch was grinding more gears than their bus as he tried to get up to speed. However, he had actually brought up a good point, whether he realized it or not. Svedberg did think this was a date, of sorts. Nick turned to Caitlin. “What if he refuses to tell us anything when your mom doesn’t show?”
“You worry too much,” Caitlin replied curtly. “I’ll sweet-talk him. Watch and learn.”
When they got off the bus, one corner from the shop, Nick’s anticipation began to spike. Was it too much to hope that Svedberg’s explanation would encompass not only the Accelerati, but the items in his attic as well?
“Here we are,” Caitlin said as they approached the shop.
It was Nick who first realized that something was very wrong, when he saw a disturbingly familiar green-and-black sign above the entrance. He touched Caitlin’s arm to get her attention. She looked at him, noted the sheer disbelief in his eyes, and then she looked at the shop.
What had been Svedberg & Sons, Fine Jewelers yesterday was now a Starbucks.
“So,” said Mitch, “are we getting Frappuccinos first?”
“This can’t be right,” said Caitlin, the pitch of her voice rising slightly. “It was right here between the bank and the barbershop, remember?”
“Yeah, I do.” If Nick hadn’t seen it for himself, he would have thought she’d lost her mind.
“You guys must be wrong,” said Mitch. “I mean, Starbucks don’t just pop up overnight out of nowhere, do they?”
Nick pushed his way into the store, followed by Caitlin, then Mitch, who was already getting his wallet out for a purchase.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee hit Nick instead of the musty odor of the old jewelry store. The display cases on the right had been replaced by people with drinks and laptops, and the counter to the left was now the barista station.
Nick went straight to the cashier, not caring that he had cut in front of half a dozen people in line.
“Who are you, and what’s going on here?” Nick demanded of the teenage clerk, a girl just a few years older than him. “And don’t you dare tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about.”
To which the clerk replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Svedberg’s jewelry store. It was here exactly…” He looked at his watch. “Twenty hours ago.”
“Don’t know anything about it.” The clerk shrugged. “I work at the Fourth Street store, but they told me to come here today.”
Caitlin, who had been quizzing the barista at the other end of the counter, shook her head toward Nick as if to say, These clowns know nothing.
“Who’s in charge here?” Nick asked the cashier.
“That would be me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are people waiting to order.” Then she turned to the woman standing behind Nick.
Nick took a step back and let the clueless cashier wait on the equally clueless customers.
When Caitlin came to him, she was trembling at this new caffeinated reality.
“So, can I buy you a drink?” Nick asked.
“Cappuccino,” she said. “Make it a double.”
“Guys?”
They both turned to see Mitch, looking about as troubled as they were. “I thought you both were yanking my crank, until I found this in the corner.”
And he held up a diamond ring.
In the end they chose to forget the drinks in favor of getting out of there.
They spent the rest of the afternoon at Beef-O-Rama, and although they ordered, their basket of fries was ignored.
Caitlin was still visibly shaken, avoiding eye contact.
“Listen, there’s a…” Nick began.
Caitlin pounded her fist on the table, dislodging a flurry of fries. “If you say ‘logical explanation,’ I’ll slap you so hard they’ll find your eyes in Denver.”
Nick shifted his baseball cap, a little nervous and a little impressed.
“Guys,” said Mitch, still holding the ring, “I think this diamond is real. Check it out.” He reached over and used the diamond to make a scratch on the window, large enough to be cause for a lawsuit if the owner had seen. “How much do you think it’s worth?”
Caitlin snatched it from him. “It doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to Svedberg. And when we find him, we give it back. Got it?”
Nick took a deep breath, feeling it was his duty to state the obvious. “He’s been disappeared. We have to accept it.”
Caitlin folded her arms and looked out the window rather than at Nick. “I accept nothing!”
“Disappeared by who?” asked Mitch.
But Nick knew it was best not to involve Mitch any deeper than he already was. “You don’t want to know.”
Maybe it was Nick’s tone of voice or the look on his face, but Mitch’s curiosity was shut down as effectively as Svedberg’s jewelry shop. He cast his eyes to the cold, limp, and lonely fries. “What a waste.” But still he didn’t eat.
Caitlin stood up abruptly. “I’m done. I’m going back to my art projects, and my school projects, and my cheerleading projects.”
“And your Theo projects?” Nick asked, regretting it immediately.
Caitlin pursed her lips. “At least I know he won’t be a coffeehouse tomorrow.”
“No,” said Mitch, “but he might be a perko-later.”
Caitlin gave him a flesh-incinerating glare. “That’s not even funny.” Then she turned and stormed toward the restroom.
Nick went after her, and he paced the restroom hallway, not sure what to say to her when she came out. How could he talk her down when he was on the same ledge beside her?
Caitlin came out a moment later, but she wasn’t angry anymore. She was in tears. She looked up to see him there. He thought she might try to hide her face, but she didn’t.
“Abnormal things don’t happen to me,” she told Nick through her tears. “I happen to them.”
And although Nick had no idea what that meant, he knew exactly how she felt, and he found himself putting his arms around her.
“It’s not the end of the world,” he told her.
“I know,” she said, “it’s just…” But she never finished her thought because Mitch had arrived, and he was putting his arms around both of them.
“Good idea,” said Mitch. “Group hug.”
And they stood there like that until somebody needed to get past them to use the restroom.
Nick went straight up to his room when he arrived home. He pulled the attic trapdoor closed behind him and slipped beneath his covers, determined to escape into unconsciousness. For ten minutes he tossed and turned, unable to get warm, and too wired on his own adrenaline to find relief. He couldn’t tell how much of his exhaustion was physical and how much was emotional. He wished there was a device from his attic that could make him forget any of this had happened. But if a blissful ignorance machine had ever been in his attic, it had been sold for a bargain at his garage sale.
He sat up, thinking he might try getting on his computer to über-Google Tesla again, and find out things even Petula didn’t know. It was then that he noticed his dirty clothes were gathered in the center of the attic once more, and his bed and desk had moved away from the walls again. Not only that, but the original attic items that he had retrieved seemed to be frozen in mid-migration toward the center of the room.
He reached beneath his mattress and pulled out the baseball mitt, just to make sure it was where he had left it. Then he stood up and approached the center of the room. He could no longer deny that there was some sort of gravity pulling things to the cen
ter of his attic.
He could feel heat emanating from the spot. It was directly beneath the skylight, so perhaps it had been warmed by the sun. But it shouldn’t still be warm now that it was twilight.…
Nick lay down on his back amid the laundry, using the baseball glove as a pillow, and soaked in the warmth. It was more than just warmth, however. As he lay there he had an undeniable sense of…connection. That was the only way he could describe it. He thought about all the items that had been in his attic. He had no idea where they were or how they were being used, yet somehow he felt them out there, just as clearly as he could feel his fingers and toes. They were a part of him—or more accurately, he was a part of them. It was a deeply satisfying sensation. So satisfying that his whole body relaxed, and he drifted off into a contented sleep.
Danny shook him awake.
“You were hiding up here all along! I knew it!”
Nick took a moment to gather his wits. He was still beneath the skylight, only now the twilight sky had given way to night.
“I wasn’t hiding,” Nick told his brother. “I just took a nap.”
“Dad thinks you didn’t come home, that you stayed away on purpose.” There was a sadness to Danny’s voice that didn’t seem right. “What are you doing with my glove? I thought they took it.”
“Yeah,” said Nick, “they thought they took it, too.” He was worried that Danny might make a big deal out of it, but he didn’t. Again, that seemed odd.
“You missed dinner,” Danny told him. “Dad cooked a roast, but it burned, so he called it Cajun Blackened Beef.”
Nick could not recall a single instance when his father had used a kitchen appliance. “Why? What’s the occasion?”
Danny just stared at him, then started to get red in the face. “Nothing,” he said. “I guess it doesn’t matter.” Then he left. A few moments later Nick heard him slam his bedroom door one floor below.
When it hit Nick, it hit him with such a wave of misery and regret, he almost doubled over in pain—but the pain wasn’t just in his gut, it was everywhere.
Today was his mother’s birthday.
It wasn’t like they spoke of it. Nick’s father certainly hadn’t mentioned it—and the weight of her absence was such a constant, their day-to-day lives gave no hint that a dark milestone was looming on the calendar.
How could he have forgotten his mother’s birthday? What kind of person was he? He could almost see her shaking her head at him. “Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, where is your head?” She was the only one he had allowed to call him Nicky. Now no one was allowed to call him that, and no one ever would be.
He left his room, practically falling down the attic ladder, which retreated back into the ceiling, its springs activated by his final bound.
Down in the living room, his father had hooked up a video recorder to the TV. He was watching an old baseball game. Although the figures on the field were too far away for Nick to be able to see their faces, he could tell by the number on the pitcher’s jersey, and the way he moved, that it was a younger version of his father.
Mr. Slate took a quick look at him, and then his eyes went back to the TV. “This was one game before I blew out my elbow. Almost a no-hitter.”
Nick watched his father throw a perfect pitch. It was ten years ago, but it felt like it could have been a hundred.
“Dad, I’m sorry—”
“Shhhh,” his father said. Then he added, “Nothing to be sorry about.”
Nick sat beside him on the sofa. It was only a few minutes in when Nick realized why his Dad was watching the video. His father had always been the one to man the camera—but this time he was on the field. Which meant someone else was holding it.
“Nicky, stop squirming!” he heard his mother say. The image jostled and went momentarily skyward before refocusing. He heard his younger self complaining about being thirsty and cold, and wanting a hot dog. He must have been what, four? Danny hadn’t even been born yet.
“Nicky, watch Daddy.”
“I’m watching, but he’s not watching me.”
“That’s because he’s watching the batter.”
“But he just looked away.”
“Because he’s checking the runner.”
“So he doesn’t steal?”
“That’s right!”
Then his father struck out the batter, and the fielders came running in to thunderous applause.
Nick knew there were plenty of videos of his mother, but he also knew why his father had chosen this one. If he saw her—if he watched her smile at the camera, and do the casual, everyday things a person does, it would be too much to bear. But hearing her, that was something he could handle.
“She would be happy you were out with your friends today,” Nick’s father told him. “She’d be glad to know you’re getting along so well in a new—” He choked up before he could finish.
Nick could feel his own tears threatening to become volcanic, but he couldn’t let it happen. When one of them cried, the other two remained strong. That’s the way they kept one another afloat. So Nick leaned into his father as he had when he was little. “Can you start it over, Dad?” he asked. “I want to see the whole game.”
“Sure thing, Nick.”
His father rewound the tape to the beginning, and together they listened to Nick’s mother try to keep little Nicky content for the better part of two hours.
It wasn’t until after the video had ended that they realized Danny had vanished from the house.
Nick’s first thought was that Jorgenson had taken Danny. That he had figured out the glove was a fake and he’d come back for vengeance. But if that were the case, Nick would have heard something. Plus, Danny’s jacket was gone, which meant he had left the house on his own. Where he had gone, and why, was anyone’s guess.
“Your brother barely knows this town!” his father raved. The man was already an emotional wreck tonight; he didn’t need this. “Where could he possibly go?”
“It’s good that he doesn’t know the area—that means there aren’t many places he knows to go,” Nick told his father.
They drove to his school and walked the perimeter, looking for signs of Danny. They went to the ice cream shop they had already been to twice since moving in. It was just as Mr. Slate was getting ready to dial 911 that a bright flash in the sky caught their attention.
“Was that—” But before Nick could finish the thought, something else streaked brightly down from the heavens, landing somewhere nearby. By the time the third one came, they were back in the car, speeding toward the sports complex.
They arrived in time to see yet another shooting star rocket down and smack into Danny’s glove, giving off a sound like a tiny sonic boom. He was thrown back and dragged through the dirt, leaving a trench, just as he had the first time. Only this time there were multiple trenches around him.
“Danny!” called their father, sprinting across the field toward him. Danny was already up again, raising his mitt, assuming a ready position.
“Go away!” he yelled, keeping his eyes fixed on the sky. “I gotta do this! I gotta do this.”
Before their father could get to him, another meteorite came plunging out of nowhere, drawn toward Danny’s glove.
“Dad!” yelled Nick.
His father turned just in time to see it and dive out of the way. A flaming meteorite dragged Danny even farther than before. And yet, in an instant, Danny dropped the smoking wad of iron to the ground and got up again.
“For the love of God, what’s going on?” their dad yelled.
Nick reached Danny before he could put the mitt up once more, but Danny struggled against him as if his life depended on catching just one more flaming fly ball.
“There’s got to be something to it, Nick,” Danny said desperately. “There’s got to be.”
“What are you talking about?”
Danny’s eyes, wide and pleading, glistened with tears. “Wishing on falling stars. They’re falling for a reason, an
d I know why.” Fighting Nick, he thrust his gloved hand into the air again. “To make the wish come true. To bring Mom back.”
Suddenly the night sky looked brighter than daytime. When Nick turned, he saw a huge fireball roughly the size of a washing machine hurtling toward them. Nick ripped the glove from his brother’s hand, hurled it into the air, and threw himself and his brother into one of the ditches to get out of the way.
With the roar of a bullet train bearing down on them, the huge meteor hit the glove and just kept on going, shaking the earth around them.
When the thunder subsided and Nick looked up, he saw a trench at least ten feet deep. It had torn a huge hole in the right-field fence and taken down several trees. He could see the angry piece of sky lying at the end of the ditch, white-hot, slowly smoldering to red as it cooled. The glove had somehow protected his brother from the other meteorites, but he doubted it would have saved him from this one.
And there, lying in the ditch with him, his eyes closed tightly, Danny muttered, “I wish she was back. I wish she was back,” pleading with a field full of shooting stars to grant him his heart’s desire.
Then his words faded into gentle sobs.
“It’s all right, Danny. It’s all going to be all right.”
Nick turned to see their father coming up to them, his eyes filled with a kind of numb disbelief, but it didn’t stop him from reaching down, grabbing Danny in his strong arms, and carrying him off the field with Nick close behind.
Danny fell asleep even before they reached the car, going limp in his father’s arms, and Nick and his father were silent on the way home, for what was there to be said? His father knew that the questions he would ask Nick couldn’t be answered.
It was only after Danny was tucked in that Nick’s father, leaning against the door frame of Danny’s room as if he needed it to hold him up, looked at Nick and said, “I think your brother’s through with baseball.”
Nick thought he might say more, but instead he just gave Nick a hug, told him he had school tomorrow, and went off to bed himself, apparently preferring the madness of dreams to the current madness of reality.