I looked up and down the street to see if any of my neighbors were walking around. The place seemed deserted. How long had the house been a graveyard? I needed to change it back, but how? I’d transformed things before, but I’d never reversed somebody else’s transformation. Could I actually do that? I had no idea.
Only one way to find out. I cleared my head and closed my eyes. Then I pictured the rental property the way it used to look, in extremely vivid and precise detail. I concentrated on the image from the past.
Seconds later, I popped open my eyes.
I winced and groaned out loud. The cemetery was gone, but the building I’d created was a replica of the one I’d lived in when I was in Portland. Worse, the two cops from the Runaway Juvenile Unit were standing outside. They called out, “Daniel! C’mere, Daniel! We want to talk to you, buddy. Where’s your crazy mom and dad?”
I clamped my eyes shut, concentrated, and tried again. Very slowly, I opened my eyes.
Yes! It had worked. The house was back to normal, at least it looked that way. Just a little reorganization of atoms and molecules, that’s all.
I immediately turned around and left the way I’d come. My home base was officially compromised.
Much worse, I was officially compromised.
Chapter 39
BASICALLY, I WENT INTO HIDING for the rest of the day. Hiding and worrying.
When it was dark, I cut through a lot of backyards until I got to Phoebe’s house.
I wanted to talk to her about her sister and a few other monumentally troubling things, but mostly I just felt comfortable around Phoebe. She was my first human friend.
I stopped myself as I was about to ring her front doorbell. Hold up! It was past eleven at night. How was this going to work? Oh, hi, Mr. or Mrs. Cook. I’m Daniel, your daughter’s alien friend. Could I talk to her a sec?
I was trying to figure out something clever when I saw a light blink on in an upstairs bedroom toward the rear of the house. Then I caught a quick glimpse of Phoebe. So I jogged along the hedge-lined driveway.
I was down on my knees, searching for something to toss up at the window, when I heard a growl at the back of my neck. Not good! Not a sound I like to hear.
I turned and was suddenly face to jowl with somebody’s angry Rottweiler.
Emma, I thought, and concentrated fiercely. Emma! Help! Right this instant!
And there she was in all her glory. “Hey, Daniel,” Emma said, flipping a French braid over her shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Hello?” I whispered, pointing at the monstrous dog. “Dog! Teeth! Froth on chin!”
Emma immediately wrapped the massive thing in a playful headlock, making it coo like a newborn as she scratched under its sharklike jaw.
“This cutie?” she asked, wiping away the drool with her finger, then flicking it at me.
“You rule, Emma,” I said as I backed away from her and the Rot. “I owe you one.”
“I owe you. Thanks for thinking me here. I just love doggies.”
Chapter 40
FOR THE NEXT half minute or so, I searched for something to get me up to the brightly lit second-story window without alerting Phoebe’s parents. The best I could find was a backyard trampoline. A quick test bounce showed that it wasn’t quite the catapult I was looking for.
I scampered up onto the roof of the toolshed. From there I jumped onto the trampoline and actually made it to the half-porch on the second floor. Phoebe was at her laptop behind an open window. When she saw me, she nearly fell out of her swivel chair.
“Daniel? Is that you? What are you doing here?”
“Sorry. I wasn’t sure if it was cool to ring the doorbell this late. I got into a major blowout with my parents. I didn’t know where else to go,” I sputtered. “I should just leave, right?”
“No, it’s okay, I guess,” Phoebe said, still looking puzzled, and who could blame her? “Just be really, really quiet. And hey-it’s nice to see you. I was thinking about you before.”
“Anything new on Allison?” I asked once I was safely inside her room.
“Nothing,” Phoebe said, and shook her head sadly. “But I’m glad you’re here. I was thinking that maybe we could skip school and go to Malibu tomorrow. To look for Allison.”
Chapter 41
GO TO THE BEACH with Phoebe instead of school? I thought. I could certainly handle that.
A few minutes later Phoebe took down a chess set from her shelf, and for the next hour, we gorged ourselves on microwave popcorn and played. Phoebe was really good. I’ve played IBM’s Deep Blue program, so I’m a pretty fair judge of talent.
“I thought you said you only played a little,” I said as she took my second knight. “I think I’m being hustled. You think I wouldn’t notice that totally obscure Konstantino-polsky opening? Who taught you that? Kasparov?”
“Hey, I told you I was a closet geek,” she said, smiling. Which was weird, because when I looked up about two seconds later, a tear was running down Phoebe’s cheek.
“Hey, don’t do that. Aren’t you supposed to cry if you’re losing?”
“It’s not that,” Phoebe said, wiping her eyes. “I’m actually happy. Can’t you tell?”
“And that’s why you’re crying?”
“It’s just… I was so bummed out that first day of school, and then I turned around and there you were. Now you’re trying to help me find Allison. It’s like fate or something, you know, Daniel? You’re like my guardian angel. I don’t mean to be corny, but -”
“Phoebe?” a man’s voice called from the hall. “Are you still awake? C’mon, sweetheart. Lights out. You have school in the morning.”
I was at the window, about to dive for the bushes, when Phoebe grabbed me. And held me against her body, which was kind of nice, I must say.
“It’s okay, Daniel. He’s gone. Let me fix a place for you to sleep.”
I stood there watching Phoebe arrange pillows and sheets. She isn’t thinking that I… I mean, she doesn’t think that she and I would… WHAT?
A pillow hit me square in the face.
“You sleep in the closet here, Daniel. In case my mom or dad opens the door, okay? See you in the morning.”
“Oh yeah. The closet. Perfect,” I said.
“Night, Daniel,” said Phoebe.
“Night, Phoebe,” I said.
From the closet.
Not so terrible, actually.
Safe anyway.
Chapter 42
MY DREAMS that night were as vivid as ever, six hours of full 1080p resolution. Which would have been really great if every dream hadn’t been a soul-sucking, bloodcurdling nightmare that no one in their right mind would watch after dark.
In the worst one, The Prayer was chasing me through my house with a couple of bloody scythes. As I ran into the kitchen, the floor gave way under my feet, and I fell face-first through a moldering coffin onto the chest of a decomposed corpse in a wedding dress. I stared into empty eye sockets as peeling, blackened lips pursed themselves together, ready to give me a kiss. The corpse was Phoebe!
Shoe boxes in the closet went flying as I woke up, flailing. I wiped my sweat-drenched face with a sleeve before I poked my head out the closet door.
Phoebe wasn’t in her bed. That was funny. Funny odd. The room was dark. The alarm clock on the desk said it was 6:51. Had she gotten up already?
I listened for the sound of a shower.
Nothing.
The alarm clock clicked to 6:52 as I glanced over at the open window above her unmade bed. A bad feeling started in the pit of my stomach. This was weird. Where was she?