Backwards. Part 17

He smirked. "So? You think we have it?"

"No. I thought you might be able to help me."

The guy chuckled and looked at his friend, as if to say, Can you believe this freak? Seeing a skinny white kid running around the neighborhood with a bright-red gas can probably wasn't normal.

"You check the lost and found?" asked his friend.

Both guys snickered. Talking to them started to seem like a dumb idea.

"What's the big fuss?" asked the tank-top guy. "It's just a car. You probably lose them all the time."

"I really need to find it," I said.

"I think you're lost, cabron," he replied. "You shouldn't be here."

"That's right. You need to go to the help desk," joked his friend.

The guy working on the truck straightened up. I couldn't see his face, but I immediately recognized his stocky, triangular frame.

Waster!

I could have hugged him, except the other guys were there, so I settled for an enthusiastic nod instead.

Waster nodded back. "It's okay," he called to the guys on the steps. "I know this guy." He wiped his hand on a rag and came over to talk with me. "You go to Jefferson, right?"

"Yeah," I said, unable to stop grinning.

"Me, too," he said. "I think I've seen you there before."

No kidding, I almost replied, but I figured TR wanted to play it cool in front of the guys on the steps.

"What you up to?" I asked, throwing in a wink for good measure.

"Fixing my truck." He tucked the rag into his back pocket. "I'm Terc," he said, thrusting out his hand.

I shook his hand and winked again, but he didn't wink back or pick his nose or do anything strange. "Terc? That's an odd name," I said. "Anyone ever call you TR?"

"No. Just Terc," he said. "It's short for Tercio. It means warrior. Actually, it's a whole legion of warriors. My dad was ambitious, you know?"

I thought he might be speaking in code, trying to tell me something. "So what are you a warrior for?"

"f.u.c.k if I know." Half his mouth curled up in a goofy, lopsided grin. It was exactly the sort of expression TR would make before he jumped off a bridge or stepped in front of a semi.

I scratched my nose and tugged my ear, hoping TR would give me some signal back. But Terc just stood there, watching my odd behavior. "You okay, dude?" he asked.

The sound of a car approaching, its windows rattling with loud music, interrupted our talk. Terc looked past me as the car stopped in front of the house. Its chrome rims shined in the late-morning sun. The two guys from the steps sauntered over to talk with the driver. Once the music was turned down, Terc glanced back at me.

"TR?" I said.

He frowned. "Dude, I told you - it's just Terc."

A little kid, maybe three or four years old, teetered down the steps and ran over to us. He must have been playing on the porch behind the two guys. In his hand, he clutched a bright-green plastic action figure. He darted around Terc, grabbing his pant leg.

Terc looked embarra.s.sed. "This is Mateo," he said, shifting to keep his pants from falling down. "My cousin's kid. She's out right now."

Mateo peered at me from behind Terc. I thought of the funeral TR had mentioned - the one Waster's mom had made him attend. The one with the small, fancy coffin. Kid-sized.

"You going to burn something down?" Terc asked.

The question startled me until I realized he was referring to the gas can.

"My car ran out of gas," I said, shaking the can. "It's somewhere around here, but I can't remember where."

"Dude, I thought I had a bad memory." He flashed his goofy, lopsided grin again. Other than that, there was no trace of TR. Terc didn't even act like Waster anymore. He wasn't stoned or drunk, and he seemed more awake than I'd ever seen him. If not for the grin, I would have thought I had the wrong guy.

"You should be careful walking around here," Terc said.

The car honked. "Terc! You coming?" called the driver. Both guys from the porch had gotten in.

Terc started to move, but Mateo still clung to his leg, nearly tripping him. "I can't," he shouted back. "I got to watch the kid until my cousin comes home."

"Put him inside," called the tank-top guy. "We won't be gone long."

Terc looked at the house, then back at the car.

"You can turn on the TV," the guy urged. "He'll be fine."

"Sorry, man," Terc answered. "I'm supposed to stay here."

Supposed to stay here. Terc's words sounded ordinary enough, but they stuck with me.

TR had always teased me for claiming to know what I was supposed to do. Yet all along, maybe he'd wanted to know what he was supposed to do. So was this his purpose - to stay with the kid and keep him from wandering into the street and getting hit by a car? Had TR found the thing he needed to fix?

The guys teased Terc, but he wouldn't back down. After a few minutes, they cursed and drove off.

I studied Terc, sensing once again that Waster was different. My attention must have made him nervous, though, because he went back to the truck. Mateo darted around his legs, begging to hold a screwdriver. "Good luck finding your car, man," he said.

"Thanks," I replied. "Take care, TR."

He laughed and shook his head. "It's just Terc."

I found Dan's car two streets over and poured in the gas. The engine sputtered, coming to life on the fourth try. After filling up at a gas station, I raced home.

"Teagan!" I called the moment I entered. "When's your eye appointment?"

"Half an hour ago," she replied, squinting at the TV. A bowl of cereal rested in her lap.

"Did you go?"

She clanked her spoon against the bowl and frowned. "How could I? You were supposed to drive me."

"I had to find my car."

"Nice hat," said Teagan.

I tugged Dan's hat down over his forehead. The brim of it grated the wound, jabbing me with pain.

"Mom's going to be p.i.s.sed."

"I know," I said. "Believe me, I know."

I checked on Teagan first. She was huddled on the floor of her bedroom, messing around on Facebook. It wasn't only her light-brown hair that made her look younger. It was that her features held no trace of the storm to come, the way the sky could be clear and calm hours before a tornado touched down. In a few days, she'd defend her brother, then hate him, then find him bleeding to death in the tub - a cruel sequence of events that would tear her apart.

On the other side of her bedroom wall, Dan's mom lay in bed with a cookbook, dog-earing recipes. Whatever would happen the next day wasn't just about Cat. The fates of countless others hung in the balance - Teagan's, their mom's, Tricia's, Trent's, Finn's - one action echoing through hundreds of lives. If I failed to set things right, I'd let them all down.

I went to Terc's place after that. There was still no sign of TR. Mateo lay curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor in front of the TV, clutching his green action figure, while "just Terc" slept on the couch. One of Terc's arms dangled over the edge so his thick hand rested protectively on Mateo's shoulder.

Terc might not have looked anything like TR, yet something about the expression on his sleeping face made me think of my friend. So was he in there still? Or had he sacrificed himself to make things right? Mateo was alive and well. He hadn't wandered into the road and gotten killed by a car. I wished I could congratulate TR on changing things. Mostly, though, I just missed my friend.

I searched for Cat last. She wasn't at the Coffee Spot or her secret house or her room.

I found her sitting on the floor of her dad's closet, sketching the self-portrait I'd seen her take down the first day I'd met her. Only now the portrait wasn't complete. The version of herself as Alice sat at the head of the table, bold and confident, but that was all she'd drawn. As I watched, she added the March Hare to the foreground - a frightened, animalistic counterpoint to Alice's poise. Then she drew herself as the little Dormouse in the teapot, appearing half drowned and smaller than I remembered. Finally, she sketched the Mad Hatter. This was the figure she seemed to struggle the most with drawing.

Her eyes welled up and her hand trembled as she outlined the Mad Hatter's top hat, making it so big it nearly swallowed her head and cast a shadow across half her face. The smile she gave herself looked overly cheerful, to the point of being deranged. And the eyes she drew seemed more angry than happy. The Hatter stared intently at a teacup, which she depicted as overflowing, even while the Hatter's hand tilted to pour more cream in.

Above the whole scene, she sketched the horizontal crescent moon of the Cheshire Cat's grin. Before, I'd seen the grin in an optimistic light, but now it appeared menacing - a pendulum about to slice the table in half.

So which one was Cat? Would she be the scared March Hare? The sad little Dormouse? The deranged Mad Hatter? Or the bold girl who falls into a hole?

I stayed with Cat until she put away the portrait and went to sleep. I still didn't know exactly what would happen or what I should do to fix things. I just knew that tomorrow - Dan's yesterday - was my last chance to set things right. The day of the party.

The day I had to change.

The wall was blank. I pulled the calendar off its nail, thinking I must have missed something. Where the messages had been, not a scratch remained.

I checked the other walls, pulling back Dan's posters and looking behind his closet door, desperate to find something that would tell me what to do. Beneath the clutter, all I found were sterile, mute barriers. I was on my own.

The message wasn't the only thing that had vanished. When I went to the bathroom, I discovered that the wound on the zombie's forehead had disappeared as well. Not so much as a scar or bruise marked where it had been. I spent a good ten minutes in the shower, reveling in the warm patter of water against my face.

After shaving and dressing, I returned to the problem of the blank wall in a much better mood. The calendar sat on Dan's bed. It had been flipped to October, not November, so the picture at the top differed from the one I'd gotten used to seeing. The new photo depicted a salmon swimming up a waterfall, launching itself into the waiting jaws of a grizzly bear. PERSEVERANCE, read the caption. Some succeed by sticking with it. Others meet their end this way.

I switched the calendar back to November, preferring the comparatively upbeat photo of the gazelle jumping over the crocodile.

"You still thinking about Thanksgiving?" asked Teagan from the doorway. She nodded to the calendar.

I shrugged.

"If it worries you so much, don't go," she said.

I noticed the dates outlined in pen with visit Dad written across them. It was the only thing marked in November, but Dan wouldn't make it that far.

"Don't go," she repeated. "Spend the week with us. It's not like Dad will care."

"That's it!" I said. "Teagan, you're a genius!"

She scowled, probably thinking I was being sarcastic. "I'm only trying to help," she said. "You don't have to be a jerk about it."

As soon as she left, I rifled through the drawer of Dan's desk for his pocket knife. Then I carved two words deep into the wall so they couldn't be erased.

I stepped back to admire my work. It's hard to explain how much those words comforted me. When the wall had been blank, I'd been lost - a ship without a rudder. But with something there, I had purpose. Direction. The fact that I'd carved the words into the wall myself seemed negligible. After all, who's to say something larger wasn't working through me, using my hand to send me the messages? And it wasn't like I'd thought up the words myself. Teagan had. I'd merely recognized their significance.

DON'T GO! was the perfect solution. I knew Dan had been at the party - several people had seen him there. So if I kept the zombie from going tonight, then Dan couldn't possibly hurt Cat. There was no way around that fact. And no way to misinterpret such a simple, blunt message. Even if a blow to the zombie's head scrambled my memory, or if Cat wanted to meet Dan somewhere else, the words I'd carved into the wall would stop me from going. All I had to do was follow this one simple message - DON'T GO! - and things would change. They had to.

I put the calendar back and skipped into the kitchen to eat breakfast. Midway through a surprisingly pleasing bowl of cornflakes, Dan's cell phone vibrated with a text from Finn.

Pick me up in ten.

I stared at the text, trying to decipher its meaning. It was Friday, October 31. Maybe Dan gave Finn a ride to school on Fridays. But then why send a text reminding him? Besides, the tone of the text seemed imperative, suggesting that something important was taking place.

I hurried to finish breakfast and brush my teeth. Then I grabbed Dan's backpack and headed out.

"Where are you going?" called Dan's mom.

"School," I said.

"Aren't you taking Teagan?"

Hearing her name, Teagan drifted into the kitchen. She'd just showered and her hair dripped water onto her shirt.

"I can't," I said. "I have to pick up Finn."

Their mom set her coffee mug down and put her hands on her hips. "Stick her in the backseat, then," she said. "There's room."

"I'm not luggage," protested Teagan.

"I said the back, honey. Not the trunk."

Dan's phone vibrated again. Another text from Finn.

"I'm late. I have to go now," I said.

"Then how's Teagan going to get to school?"

Teagan gave her mom an annoyed look.

"She's your daughter," I said. "You'll find a way."