The Book That Proves Time Travel Happens
Ilost my best friend, Tom Xui, twice. The first time, I simply wasn’t paying attention. Everything had been going wrong that afternoon. First, my locker wouldn’t lock. Then the crossing guard turned out to be Cautious Carl, who doesn’t let you cross if there are leaves blowing down the street. And then Tom vanished. It was like a conspiracy to keep me from getting to the carnival. Tom had been running next to me only moments before. I looked down—remembering that he’d once, during the summer, fallen into an open road-repair ditch—and then I looked back. There was Tom, hiding behind a mailbox. “What?” I asked, not getting it. “My mom!” he whispered fiercely, pointing at the street. We were on Hartnell Road, which starts at the Freedom Falls fire station, runs the length of the town, and ends down near the river at the fairgrounds. A blue Ford Focus was passing us, and although the woman driving it had black hair and Tom’s mother’s determined look, she wasn’t Chinese.