The Keepers (16 page)

Chloe's relaxed manner, so sure of everything, somehow only made Horace more nervous. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, trying to think of something to say.

“I didn't know if you'd make it,” he said. “I thought the rain might stop you.”

“Nah.” Chloe waved the thought away. “I don't get wet much if I don't want to.”

Horace had to think before he understood. “The rain goes through you?”

“Well, I go through the rain. Do you have anything to eat?”

“Um, no. Sorry. Not in here. What do you mean, you go through the rain?”

“Stuff can't actually go through me. I go through stuff. Man, I'm starving.”

“I don't understand.”

“It means hungry.”

Horace frowned.

“Okay, sorry, jeez. Here, grab the pillow. Come here.” She patted the floor. Horace slid off the bed, pillow in hand.
“Now hold it up like a shield, and I'll go thin.” When Horace gave her a quizzical look, she explained. “That's what I call it when I do it. When I get all ghosty. I mean, technically what I become is ‘incorporeal.' But that doesn't really roll off the tongue.”

“Oh.”

“It's weird to do this in front of somebody. To show them, I mean. I keep it secret. I don't even let my sister see.”

“But I already know,” Horace offered.

“Yeah, but the only reason you know is because you have that.” She pointed at the box. “I'm usually really careful not to be seen, but how am I supposed to know if you're watching me through time? Plus it's only because you have it that I'm here at all. Just so we're clear. I'm here because if you're the only octopus in an aquarium, and then one day you spot another octopus, it seems like a conversation should happen.”

“You've never met anyone else like us?”

“Maybe? I've seen this one girl. She plays an instrument, a flute. It sounds weird. She plays it, and sometimes she finds me. But I always get away.”

Horace wondered what it was about the flute girl that made Chloe want to get away. Or maybe a better question: Why was Chloe here with him now?

Chloe grasped the dragonfly lightly by the tail. “Look, do you want to see this, or not?”

“I do, yeah.”

Horace startled as the dragonfly's delicate white wings
began to vibrate silently, so fast they became an almost invisible blur. “You see that?” Chloe asked. Horace nodded, fascinated. Chloe reached out toward the pillow in Horace's hands. Her fingertips passed right into it, as though it wasn't there. Then her palm. Horace looked closely at the seam where her skin met the pillow, but there was nothing to see. They were just . . . joined.

All at once, Chloe lunged forward and her hand popped clean through the pillow, right in Horace's face. She jabbed two fingers toward his eyes. He jumped, and Chloe fell back laughing quietly, her hand sliding back through the pillow and out. Loki glared at them both, unimpressed.

“What did you do that for?”

“Your face, you just—you're so shockable. It's hard to resist.” She grinned at him. “But okay, now watch. Throw the pillow at me.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.” She closed her eyes and stretched out her arms. The dragonfly's wings were still vibrating.

Horace tossed the pillow at her. He expected the pillow to pass right through her, but instead it hit her in the face and fell into her lap.

“See? I can pass through stuff, but stuff can't pass through me. So I'm not like, bulletproof or whatever. But in the rain, if I move fast, it's more me hitting the raindrops than the raindrops hitting me. I don't know. It's weird.” Suddenly she seemed awkward, plucking at the pillow in her lap. The
dragonfly's wings had gone still. “That was kind of a wussy throw, by the way.”

“Yeah, well. I didn't want to hurt you.”

Chloe snorted and rolled her eyes. “As if.” From her pocket, she produced a ragged roll of wintergreen mints. She popped one into her mouth and offered them to Horace. He shook his head. They were probably stolen. And anyway, he was distracted, trying to imagine how the dragonfly worked. He knew that solid matter was actually mostly empty space, once you got down to the microscopic level of atoms. Maybe the dragonfly made it possible for Chloe to move the molecules of her body between the molecules of other objects? Was that even possible?

“I've been thinking about that box of yours,” Chloe said, weirdly mirroring Horace's own thoughts. “It sounds like a headache.”

Horace glanced at the box. If it was a headache, it was one he wanted to have. “It's tricky, but . . . I'm figuring it out.”

“All right, so show me.”

So Horace showed her. He was surprised to find that he wanted to. Chloe was both fascinated and respectful, never moving to touch the box. Instead she had him hold it while she looked through it. To Horace's relief, she saw nothing unusual; just today, slightly smudgy and blue.

“Tell me what
you
see,” she said.

Horace warned her, “There won't be much.” And there wasn't. “I see my bed. And myself, sleeping. It's dark.”

“Am I there?” Her face wrinkled in confusion. “Or . . . here, tomorrow?”

“Why would you be?”

“I don't know. But if I
were
here, you could tell me what I'd be doing. Right?”

He explained to her how lots of the things he saw never ended up happening, and how the box could be clear or fuzzy. He described his failure with the lottery. When Chloe said it sounded like the box was wrong a lot, he frowned. “Not a lot,” he said. “And I usually know.”

“Prove it,” Chloe said.

“Prove it how?”

“Let me test you.”

“No, that's stupid.”

“Stupid, or scary? Afraid it won't work?”

“No,” he said, but he was. He realized he very much wanted to impress this girl.

“Then show me. Be a show-off, Horace. I'm guessing that doesn't come naturally to you, but come on . . . you've got a
time machine
.”

“What kind of test would you even do?”

Chloe looked slyly around the room. After several moments, she said, “I got it. But you can't look.” She flapped a hand at him.

Reluctantly Horace turned around. He desperately hoped the box would be clear this time. He listened as Chloe began to rummage through his desk drawer.

After a moment she said, “I feel like I should confess I've been in here before.”

“What?” Horace wasn't sure he was hearing correctly.

“I came into your room. One night when you and your folks went out. Sorry . . . it's a habit. I needed to find out who you were after I saw you on the bus that day.”

Horace should've been angry—right? But he wasn't. Instead he felt embarrassed, flattered . . . weirdly thrilled. “Did you look through my stuff?”

“Oh, sure. Rummaged through your underwear drawer, read your diary.”

She was kidding. Horace didn't even have a diary.

“No, seriously,” she said. “I just wanted to find out your name, where you went to school. I was only here a minute or two. It won't happen again.” Another rustle, footsteps. “Give me a second. Don't peek.” A very faint squeaking sound, and a few moments later: “Okay. You can turn around.”

Horace opened his eyes. Chloe knelt beneath the window, one hand pressed flat against the wall. In her other hand she held a black marker.

“What did you do?”

“I wrote a message on your wall.”

“Oh, man!” Horace groaned. “With marker? That's permanent—how am I going to get that off? I'm going to get busted for that.”

“Look, this is the test. The box should let you see what I wrote, right? Through my hand. Tomorrow the message will
still be here, but my hand will be gone. So you should be able to read it with your box right now. Am I right?”

“First you break in, now you write on my wall. This is not cool.”

“Oh my god, stop being a baby and just look. Come on, I wrote it small.”

Reluctantly, Horace lifted the box—
his bedroom, his nightstand, no Chloe; the wall beneath the window—blank?—or no, a gray patch, fuzzy and blurred, right there
.

“I don't know. It's blurry.”

Chloe kept her hand against the wall. “I already wrote it—why would it be blurry?”

“Usually that means the box isn't sure if it'll be there or not. Or maybe you're smudging it or something.”

“I'm not smudging it. And it's there. Why can't you see?”

“I told you, it usually works. Usually isn't always. Man, I can't believe you did that.”

Chloe furrowed her brow. “Wait a minute—are you going to clean this off?”

“You
wrote
on my
wall
.”

“Right, but you're going to clean it. As soon as I leave, probably.”

“Yeah, so my dad doesn't see it.”

Chloe nodded at him. “Right, right. But now promise you
won't
try to clean it off.”

Understanding slowly dawned on Horace. “Oh, holy cow,” he said.

“Promise you won't clean the wall,” Chloe said. “Don't just say it. Mean it. Even if you get in trouble.”

Horace nodded slowly. She'd shown off her dragonfly, hadn't she? “Okay, I promise.”

“Okay, then. Now check.”

Horace checked the box again, thinking of a future where he chose not to clean the wall—not for twenty-four hours, at least. He tried to convince himself that he felt good about the choice. In fact, the choice had already been made. And now, through the box:
same wall, no Chloe, dark with the lights out, but there—four tiny scribbles of black
. “I see it,” Horace said thickly.

“This. Is so. Wicked.”

“I can't read it, though. It's tiny.”

“I told you I wrote small.”

Horace walked forward on his knees until he was just a foot or two away—
tiny words in four lines, impossibly neat, written in black
.

“‘Dear Horace,'” Horace read aloud. “‘I hope this doesn't get you in trouble. Your friend, Chloe.'”

Chloe pulled her hand away and drummed her palms against the carpet in excitement. Loki jolted to his feet, then sauntered coolly away. “Yes, yes, yes!” Chloe hissed. She sat back and pointed both index fingers at the box. “That was sweet. That thing is crazy.”

Horace was still absorbing what had happened. He looked again at the tiny message. He doubted his parents would notice it.

Chloe said slowly, “Okay, so . . . you couldn't see it at first because you were planning to clean it off right away. Which meant that by this time tomorrow night, it wouldn't be there anymore. Or it would be smudged, at least.”

“Yeah,” said Horace.

“But then when you told yourself you
wouldn't
clean it off, you could see it.”

“Yeah.”

“Man, that thing is
crazy
,” Chloe said again. “Oh, and I meant what I said.” She squinted at the wall. “I did write really small—do you think your parents will even see it?”

“Probably not,” Horace admitted. He wondered if she also meant the part about being his friend, but he was afraid to ask. He wasn't sure he wanted to be friends yet with this girl—she broke into places, stole things, snooped through people's stuff. Still, it was a rush, and a relief, to be able to talk about the box with somebody. And as reckless as she was, he had to admit Chloe was unusually brave. Plus she seemed very smart. This test she'd come up with was clever.

“Let's do another one,” Chloe said, clapping her hands silently together.

Horace hesitated. “I'd rather not. The box . . . it's like it needs rest, or something. Or like it doesn't want to do that trick too often. I don't know. That probably sounds stupid.”

“Hmm,” Chloe said. “I don't think it's like that for me. When I first got the dragonfly, I used it all the time—I was thin more often than not. For no reason, even. I've slowed
down a lot, but I don't know. It feels wrong not to use it. Like leaving a horse in the stable.”

“Well,” Horace said, smiling. “There is another thing the box can do. An easier thing, for some reason.”

Chloe raised an eyebrow, her own crooked grin spreading slowly across her face. “Is it also awesome?”

Chloe was practically giddy when she learned the box could send objects into the future. They spent several minutes dropping objects inside and closing the lid. Some marbles, a Matchbox car, a yo-yo—which was about the biggest thing the box could take. They sent a few pennies from Chloe's pocket, plus her last wintergreen mint.

“Where do they go?” Chloe wanted to know. “Before they come back, I mean.”

“I don't know, they're just . . . traveling, I guess.”

“Traveling, right,” she echoed dreamily.

As a consolation for not being there tomorrow night when the stuff reemerged, Chloe wanted to send a burp through the box. “So you'll smell it in your sleep,” she said. Horace refused. He also refused to let her send a lit match through the box, even though it was a fascinating idea—one he should've thought of himself. When he told her it was too dangerous, she scoffed and said, “Yeah, and looking at your own future is
totally
safe.”

Horace looked at little clusters of thin, slashing marks around her throat. “Speaking of danger,” he said, gesturing. “Are these—?”

She gave him a quick, one-shouldered shrug. “I get a little sloppy sometimes. Sometimes I'm not paying attention to what's thin and what's not, and the cord or something gets into my skin without me realizing it and if I go solid again while it's still in there . . . yeah.”

“So stuff is like . . . trying to occupy the same space as you are.” Horace tried to imagine what that must feel like. “Does it hurt?”