August, 2009
Malibu, California
They sat on the bus bench slurping ice cream cones, three sets of eyes glued to the store across the street.
A seagull squawked from a nearby tree. A guy on a mountain bike pedaled past and smiled. Every few minutes a car cruised by, braking at the stop sign before continuing.
Just another lazy summer day in Malibu.
Everything perfectly normal.
If they just knew what they were looking for.
The store's front door opened. A mother and daughter walked out and headed for the parking lot. The top of a stuffed toy animal stuck out from the little girl's shopping bag. Diana thought it was a giraffe. Jeffrey guessed a snake. Margaret said nothing.
The mom and girl got in their car and drove off. A few stores down, the clock in the window of a mini-market displayed the time: 3:15 p.m.
Jeffrey and Margaret decided to take pictures, maybe they'd be useful later. Tossing what was left of their cones in a trash can, they walked down opposite sides of the street snapping phone shots — the toy store, the parking lot next door, the ice cream shop on the corner, street views up and down the block.
Diana, meanwhile, stayed on the bench sucking liquefied ice cream through the hole she'd made in the bottom of her cone. By the time her friends re-joined her, the market's window clock read 3:28.
Then 3:38.
"Well, Zero Hour is long gone," Margaret noted. "Now what?"
Jeffrey shrugged. "Let's wait a little longer."
So they did, passing the time with jokes and small talk.
When the bird in the tree let loose with three ear-splitting shrieks, Jeffrey flinched, prompting snickers from the girls. The boy from the boonies clearly wasn't used to screaming seagulls.
Then more of nothing. An occasional passing car, a pair of bicyclists, a few customers in and out of the market.
Sudden motion to their left snapped all three heads in that direction — a small dog streaking full speed down the middle of the street directly toward them as a young girl chased after it frantically screaming its name.
The rest came in a wild blur.
A car turned left at the corner directly into the dog's path. The terrified animal froze. The car slammed on its brakes, careened right, jumped the curb, and plowed through the fire hydrant they'd just been standing by, screeching to a stop inches from the toy store's front door as a giant water plume from the broken hydrant exploded into the sky, drenching everything in sight.
And then it was over.
Before anyone could breathe.
Calm to chaos to cascading waterworks in the blink of an eye.
The mini-mart clock read 3:48.
Right time.
The toy store sign showed 2247 Pearl.
Right place.
Both straight from the text.
The one they got ninety minutes ago.
Your Simple Guide to Using Your New Phone.
Ha! Whoever came up with that title had one twisted sense of humor.
I'd been sprawled on my bed for what seemed like days now, reading the owner's manual for my new phone, trying to get my only three contacts — my mom's, my dad's, our landline — into my Contacts Manager.
Easy, right? Three lousy numbers.
Not.
Easier would be learning to fly with my hands duck-taped to my butt.
As you may have guessed, this was my first mobile device. An early birthday present from my mom for my trip. I know, sounds weird — almost thirteen, first phone, twenty-first century. Well, you'd probably understand if you knew me better. For now, though, I needed to get this add-to-contacts function working.
I re-read the page for the millionth time, then carefully tapped each phone number before clicking Save.
Please wait...
The little circle spun, and spun, then...
Sorry, invalid command. Please try again.
Arrgh!
I tossed the stupid manual over by my suitcase. I'd take it with me on my trip. Maybe by some miracle it'd make more sense later. I fell back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what was more pathetic: spending half the night trying to add three contacts to my phone, or only having three to add.
But more about my phone later...
I was all packed and ready for my big end-of-summer trip. With school starting in nine days, this was my last chance for some real action in the otherwise boring life of Jeffrey James. And this time I had high hopes because my lifelong dream was finally coming true. I was going to California!
Me, who'd never been west of the Iowa state line.
Me, who'd never seen the ocean before (I kid you not).
Though considering where I lived — Des Moines, Iowa, practically the bullseye of America — never seeing the ocean shouldn't be all that surprising. The nearest one was a thousand miles east, and the next nearest almost twice that far west.
Even the nearest "non-ocean" with anything close to a beach, Lake Michigan, was five hours away. And I'd been there once, to Lake Michigan, and, yes, it was pretty big, for a lake. But even if you couldn't see all the way across it, you still knew Michigan was on the other side. Not exactly my fantasy destination — no offense, Michigan.
Soon though, I'd be splashing around in the biggest of them all: The Glorious Pacific! Thousands of miles wide, with all kinds of exotic places on the other side.
Jeopardy! Alert: The Pacific Ocean is the largest body of water in the world, covering nearly one-third of the Earth's surface and holding more than half its total water supply.
Sorry about that. The Jeopardy!-Jedi strikes again. Sometimes it's hard to control.
Anyway, I was on my way to visit my cousin in LA. Yep, Los Angeles, California. The City of Angels. Home to all the calendar photos hanging in my room. Surfers surfing, bodies baking, sunsets blazing. For the past two months that's all I could think about. White sand, pounding waves, palm trees galore.
Well, except for last night when I dreamed I was sitting in the front row of Jeopardy!, filmed (of course) in Los Angeles, California.
In case you missed it, I'm Jeffrey James. Yeah, the boy with two first names — as if I hadn't been teased about that since forever, even though that's totally my parents' fault.
Also as mentioned, I'm almost thirteen — three weeks shy of entering the Wonderful World of Teendom.
So why was this Jeopardy!-crazed, phone-challenged kid from Middle America so pumped about turning the big One-Three, visiting a cousin he'd never met, and traveling to a far-off state to dip his toes in saltwater?
Well, let's just say these first twelve-point-nine years of pre-teen life hadn't exactly been a fun-fest. True, there was that trip to Lake Michigan. Also, the day my dad taught me to ride a bike and we rode around for hours. But other than that, fun for me has basically come from books.
Pathetic, I know. But true.
Oh, and while on the subject of reading, I read somewhere that the Pacific Ocean was so big you could fit two-thousand-eight-hundred Lake Michigans inside it. You heard right. Twenty-eight hundred giant lakes, each about the size of West Virginia (I checked), into one humongous ocean.
Now that's big. And a perfect example of the things you learn from reading.
Also, a great way to prep for the "Lakes and Oceans" category on Jeopardy!
Hey Alex, let's make it a true Daily Double!
Boy, I really needed this vacation.
Margaret watched the lighted numbers on her nightstand clock click to 10:31 p.m. — the earliest she'd been to bed all summer.
Usually, when school was out she never hit the pillow before midnight. But tomorrow she and her mom were picking up her cousin at the airport, and though they were close in age (she was six months older), they'd never actually met, just exchanged a few birthday greetings by phone. Which meant it was going to be weird, and Margaret figured the best way to prep for weird was at least getting a decent night's sleep.
Jeffrey's parents — Uncle Eddie and Aunt Karen (her mom's sister) — were getting divorced and shipping him out for this last week of summer vacation. They were calling it his early birthday present but Margaret knew better. Nothing says "birthday present" like getting shoved off for a week in Burbank with distant relatives so you'll forget your parents are splitting up and throwing you to the wolves.
Making matters worse, Margaret wasn't what you'd call a people person. More of a no-people person. Something she totally blamed on her first name which she'd hated since birth. Because when you start life hating what everyone calls you, it's only a matter of time before you start hating everyone who calls you that.
In fact, until she was six she couldn't even say her own name, at least not so you'd recognize it. It always came out more like Naagit, which actually sounded a whole lot better than Margaret anyway.
And the "standard" nicknames weren't any better. Margie? Maggie? Margo? Seriously? Picking one of those was like having to pick which eye to poke out.
Then right before school ended, some idiot in her algebra class started calling her Maggots. Great. Another one to flush down the toilet. Her best hope was that, with high school starting soon, the name-calling might stop. Though probably not. As a lifelong Margaret, she knew firsthand classmates rarely stopped being mean because they got older. They just got sneakier — less in your face, more behind your back.
All of which summed up why Margaret was a loner, always had been, always would be, and proud of it. Ever since her dad died when she was four it had been just her and her mom. Which was fine, mostly, though sometimes a tad boring, adding yet another reason she hoped Jeffrey wasn't too weird.
Quirky, she could handle.
Freakishly creepy, not so much.
Unfortunately, he already had three strikes against him — a tweener, she'd never met, from Iowa — so she wasn't holding her breath.
Though at least she'd have company for a while.
Sometimes even loners needed that.
