Family Reunion (15 page)

The plane was late, of course.

Whenever you're eager to move on to the next phase of your life, the plane is always delayed.

We were waiting in the terminal as if waiting for the dentist. Endless silent staring at the bucket seats opposite, at other people's knees and the backs of their newspapers.

Angus had left his leg in Aunt Maggie's car.

“Don't you want your leg?” she said.

“No, thank you,” said Angus. “I think you can throw it in the trash for me. If you would.”

All this courtesy made Aunt Maggie suspicious. She thought maybe she should have the security people run the
leg through X rays just in case it was something she didn't want around either.

“No, really,” said Angus. “I've outgrown it. You realize I'm going to be thirteen soon. Thanks for a wonderful visit, Aunt Maggie. You made us all feel so welcome.”

“It's me,” said Annette. “I've succeeded where thousands failed. I've taught him manners, propriety and common sense.”

On our way through security, Angus said to Carolyn, “Don't let anybody see you're reading a guidebook to New York.”

“Why not?”

“You don't want anybody thinking you don't know your way around. You want to be cool and experienced.”

“Oh,” said Carolyn. She flattened the book on itself so that the back cover pressed against the front cover and nobody could guess what she was reading. “Other instructions?” she asked Angus.

“I think we're fine now,” said Angus, surveying us carefully.

After we got through security, Daddy bought two newspapers and we trudged to our gate to hear the unwelcome news that we were indefinitely postponed. We sat. We stared. Angus was calm and sober.

Annette began humming softly to herself.

“Annette!” whispered Angus. “Shh. People can hear you.”

“Angus, I have quite a nice hum. I'm on pitch and everything.”

The waiting area was packed. People had filled all the seats and were leaning on walls and sitting on the carpet and on their luggage, looking morose and sullen.

“People will think you're weird,” he said in a low voice.

There was a long silence.

“Angus,” I said, “are you embarrassed in public? Is Annette humiliating you with her behavior?” “

Yes.”

“Angus, this is a happy day in the family calendar. Revenge is at hand.”

Angus looked wary.

“You've been the weird one for twelve years,” I told him. “It's my turn.” I set my book down. I stood up. I stretched my arms and beat on my chest. “I will start by singing opera. I will stand on my chair and entertain these sorry masses until we board. Some of them will be less grateful than others. I will get autographs from those persons who applaud, however.” I cleared my throat. I hummed a pitch to start my aria on.

Angus believed I would do it, because only days ago he would have and loved every minute of it. Today he regarded me with horror. Desperately he looked around for a way to distance himself from this appalling family he seemed to be a member of. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he whispered, and he fled before I made a spectacle of myself.

My stepmother, my cousin, my father and I shared the best thing there is to share.

Love and laughter.

CAROLINE B. COONEY
is the author of many books for young people, including Hit the Road; Code Orange; The Girl Who Invented Romance; Family Reunion; Goddess of Yesterday (an ALA Notable Book); The Ransom of Mercy Carter; Tune In Anytime; Burning Up; The Face on the Milk Carton (an IRA-CBC Children's Choice Book) and its companions, Whatever Happened to Janie? and The Voice on the Radio (each of them an ALA Best Book for Young Adults) as well as What Janie Found; What Child Is This? (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults); Driver's Ed (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a Booklist Editors' Choice); Among Friends; Twenty Pageants Later; and the Time Travel Quartet: Both Sides of Time, Out of Time, Prisoner of Time and For All Time.

Caroline B. Cooney lives in Westbrook, Connecticut, and New York City.

Imagine moving to a different century and making things worse, not better, on both sides of time.

Meet 15—year—old Annie Lockwood, a romantic living in the wrong century. When she travels back 100 years and lands in 1895—a time when privileged young ladies wear magnificent gowns, attend elegant parties, and are courted by handsome gentlemen—Annie at last finds romance.

But Annie is a trespasser in time. Will she choose to stay in the past? And if she does, will she be allowed to stay?

Annie Lockwood exists; everyone admits it. Everyone has seen her. But only Strat insists that Miss Lockwood traveled 100 years back in time to be with them in 1895. Now Strat is paying an enormous price; his father has declared him insane and had him locked away in an asylum.

When Time calls Annie back to save Strat, she does not hesitate, even though her family is falling apart and desperately needs her.

Can Annie save the boy she loves, or are she and Strat and her family back home out of time?

Tod Lockwood has never wanted to be anyone's knight in shining armor. In fact, he wants to avoid having anything to do with girls, at least for the present. But that's before Devonny Stratton steps into his life out of the nineteenth century.

As for sixteen-year-old Devonny, she has no plans for marriage until her father arranges to wed her to the contemptuous but well-connected Lord Winden. Devonny has only one hope: Someone must rescue her. Can Tod Lockwood be Time's answer to her prayers? Life never seems simple to Devonny, but do the solutions to her problems await her in the future? Or will she only become a prisoner of a different time?

Annie Lockwood is testing Time. She asks to travel back a hundred years to 1899, when her beloved Strat is in Cairo. But in what feels like a cruel joke, Annie is transported to ancient Egypt instead, thousands of years before Strat was born.

Meanwhile, in 1899, Strat is photographing the same pyramids that Annie walks among. And while he eagerly awaits Annie's arrival, another visitor appears: his father, the man who once committed Strat to a mental institution.

Powerless, Annie and Strat both look to Time. Can its force, which brought them together once, help them find each other again?