Any Which Wall (19 page)

Meanwhile, back on the subway platform, Roy and Emma sat calmly, thinking that surely Henry and Susan would come back for them. Roy read a newspaper he found on the bench beside him while Emma wandered over to a snack counter, where a very nice man with an accent tried to sell her a gigantic cookie half frosted with chocolate icing and half with vanilla.

Emma didn’t have any money, so she left the counter and tried to strike up a conversation with a nice-looking lady sitting on a bench and reading a book. But the lady must have been at a very interesting place in the story, because she simply ignored Emma and scooted over farther on the bench.

This drew the attentions of a second lady, who bustled over and called Emma “You poor little thing” before offering to “report” her. Emma wasn’t sure what this meant exactly, but it didn’t sound very nice, so she backed away from the woman and returned to Roy on the bench.

As she climbed up beside him, Roy set down his paper and looked at Emma. “I don’t think they’re coming back for us,” he said. “I think we need to go.”

“Where?” asked Emma.

“Somewhere,” said Roy.

Emma nodded silently.

“Let’s think a minute,” he said, scratching his head.

Emma nodded. “Okay.” She tried to think very hard, and scratched her head too.

This was tricky, as both Roy and Emma were used to being bossed around. Although both of them were perfectly capable, smart, and resourceful, neither was accustomed to taking the lead. Still, Roy enjoyed problem solving, and this was an interesting conundrum. Emma’s rapt attention spurred him on.

“Let’s consider all our options,” he said, “since we only have a few. We can take the train, we can go aboveground, or we can use the wall. I’m going to suggest that we not go aboveground, since that’s the one place in New York we know Henry and Susan are not.”

This made good sense to Emma. She nodded.

“In that case, we can either take the train or the wall,” continued Roy. “If we take the train, we’re headed in the right direction, but we don’t know where to get off. If we take the wall, we might leave the others behind if they do come back. Hmm.” He pondered the choice.

“We have to take the wall,” Emma said, “because if we don’t take it with us, it’ll get stranded here, and we’ll all be stuck in New York. Forever!”

“Huh!” said Roy. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Also,” said Emma, “it’s faster, and we can just go
home for a minute and then wish ourselves to wherever Henry and Susan are!”

“Hey, that’s right,” said Roy. “Good use of logic, Em! We can do what you did in Camelot, can’t we?”

Emma nodded proudly.

So they headed back over to the tile wall and touched it gingerly (it was very dirty), and Roy said, “Home, please!”

Although the lady reading the book was still sitting nearby on the platform as they blinked away, she didn’t notice a thing. It must have been a very good book!

Emma and Roy were greatly relieved to find themselves back in the familiar field, with a gentle summer breeze blowing across their faces and the sun shining hot on their heads, but they didn’t have time to enjoy it. They kept their hands on the wall, and Emma said right away, without thinking, “Okay, Mister Wall. Now we’d like to go to where Susan and Henry are, please! To the train.”

But nothing happened.

Roy wasn’t surprised. “Honestly, I didn’t think it would count as a building,” he said. “We’ll have to think of another way.”

Emma frowned. “Like what?”

“Hmm. We don’t know where they’re going, so we
can’t go to wherever that is and wait for them to get there. But maybe—could we wish to be where they’re going … in the future? The same way we went to Quiet Falls in the past? Could we wish to be with them in an hour? Let’s try!”

Emma nodded, and they both touched the wall as Roy said, “We want to be with Susan and Henry, in the building they’re in, at lunchtime today!”

And sure enough, there they were! In a place that smelled more like hot dogs than either of them thought possible. A few feet away, Tish sat staring at them, with a hot dog in her mouth. She almost choked. She pointed and made a sound like glachgh!

Henry and Susan whipped around, ran over, and hugged them with hot dogs in their hands.

“All riiiight!” shouted Henry, slapping Roy on the back. “You did it!”

“It wasn’t so hard,” said Roy. “It just took a little figuring out.”

“I used logic,” said Emma proudly. “Roy’s teaching me!”

Susan beamed and patted their heads, Tish wrapped both of them in a big bear hug, and Rebecca the babysitter and her equally beautiful friend didn’t notice a thing. They weren’t really paying attention, which is the way it is sometimes with teenagers.

After Susan, Henry, and Tish told Emma and Roy about the things they’d missed (which included a wooden roller coaster that had made Susan’s head hurt), Roy and Emma explained how they’d found the group by going slightly—just slightly—into the future.

“Wow. This is the future?” said Henry, remembering the liquid-looking walls of the high-security bank vault he’d visited with Sam. He looked around and said, “It looks pretty much the same to me. Does it feel any different to you?” Then a thought struck him. “Wait, do you need to go back?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Roy. “Do we, Emma?”

Emma shrugged.

“I mean, if we all went back in time,” said Roy, “we’d just be stuck in the subway again, and if we went further back, then this morning would never have happened. I think it’s better to just stay where we are.”

“But does that mean you lost two hours of your life?” asked Tish.

Emma was horrified by this idea until Susan pointed out that they regularly lost hours of their lives: whenever they took naps, or watched really, really, really bad T V. This made the missing time seem less frightening, so they finished up their hot dogs and headed out to the boardwalk.

P
erhaps you’ve noticed in books like this one that every wish seems to result in a chase or a fire, or an important and potentially disastrous event or discovery of some other kind. And perhaps you’ve thought to yourself (because you are clever), “Yeesh! If I found a magic talisman, I’d avoid all that mess and just go to Disney World!”

Well, there is something you need to understand. For some reason, writers like to leave out the regular parts of a magical tale, probably because plain old good fun is not especially dramatic or exciting. This is silly, but it’s just something writers do
.

Most writers are show-offs and they like lots of drama. Even me
.

But in the name of absolute honesty, I’m now going to tell you something that I might otherwise have left out. I’m going to share with you that the four kids did, in fact, have a fabulous time with Tish on the boardwalk. They had fun because there
were lots of new things to see and interesting people to stare at. There were bumper cars and a tattooed lady who walked past carrying an enormous snake. There was a one-man band, and a group of fire-eaters and jugglers, and they found postcards to buy and ridiculous hats to try on. They had fun because it was an adventure, they were on their own, the magic had brought them, and because Tish, who had been lonely for a year, was very, very glad to see her best friend again
.

They walked down by the water too, where Susan and Tish helped Emma built a sand castle while Rebecca and her friend sat on the beach and looked beautiful. And when the blond boy from Susan’s vision just happened to walk by with a pack of friends, and he just happened to drop his sunglasses at Rebecca’s feet, and then he just happened to strike up a conversation with Rebecca, Susan didn’t mind a bit
.

They ate funnel cakes, drank lemonade, and played Skee-Ball (which the blond boy—whose name turned out to be Gavin—was very good at, though winning isn’t really the point of Skee-Ball), and at last the day was over and Susan and Tish hugged and whispered promises to see each other again soon and to e-mail and call. And then it was time to go home
.

Which they did
.

Yes, they all made it back safely, without even the most minor of minor mishaps
.

They had been gone for hours, and nobody had chased
them, except a seagull who wanted a bite of Emma’s funnel cake. They hadn’t gotten lost, frightened, or caught. They hadn’t been separated again, and they found the wall right where they had left it, in the room full of hot dogs
.

They made it back to the field safely, locked the wall for the night, and were home in time for dinner. With seconds to spare
.

No, nothing bad happened at all. It was a fun afternoon and free of all disaster, and it didn’t affect anything that happened afterward, not even a little. In fact, I wouldn’t bother to include this particular adventure in the book since it doesn’t matter much to the story
.

Except that it does. Because fun does matter. It matters a lot
.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, Henry, Emma, Susan, and Roy woke to the sound of rain. And while rain is a wonderful sound to wake to (far pleasanter than an alarm clock or your mother yelling that breakfast is getting cold), each of them, in their separate beds in their separate rooms, groaned aloud and went back to sleep in hopes of a sunny afternoon.

If the rain had come a few days earlier, they might have climbed out of bed anyway and biked to the wall in the storm, but now, spoiled by a number of magical adventures, slightly sunburned, and filled with pleasant memories of Coney Island, they were willing to wait for sunshine.

This is why Susan and Roy were still in bed when the phone rang at 10:07 a.m. and why they were still in bed when it rang again, and kept ringing, at 10:17 a.m.
Roy finally got up to answer it on about the twentieth ring. He groaned, “Hello?”

“Come over, now,” Henry said, and he hung up just as Roy was opening his mouth to ask why.

Roy woke Susan and they brushed their teeth hurriedly, tossed on some clothes, and ran next door. They were in such a rush that despite the torrential downpour, they didn’t bother with umbrellas. But even so, they couldn’t miss seeing the incredible car parked out in front of the O’Dells’ house. It looked like a small schoolbus had gotten mixed up with a coffee table. It was something called a woodie (though the kids didn’t know to call it that), and it was cool!

They burst through the front door, shaking off water and yelping. Roy shouted out, “Did you see that car!” before they noticed Lily and Bernice in the living room. Lily was sitting on the couch in a startling bright turquoise slicker with pink polka dots. Bernice looked like a furry mountain at her feet.

“So, you like my car?” asked Lily brightly. “I like it too! Maybe you’ll come for a ride later.”

“Lily!” said Susan. “We were going to come over today to see you and Bernice. I promise! But it rained and—”

“Yes,” said Lily. “Mmmmhmmm. Rain does make
for good snoozing. I forgive you. But when I didn’t see you guys yesterday, I figured I’d pop by today and check in. Bernice wanted to say hello. She’s such a friendly girl.”

When Bernice heard her name, she looked up and grinned … or panted. It was hard to tell which.

Lily reached over and patted her head. “Such a good, good girl,” she crooned.

Susan flashed Henry a look, and he grinned back. Everything was coming together just as they’d hoped it would.

“She
is
a good girl.” Emma beamed. “Don’t you just love her so much?”

“Yes, I do. She’s wonderful. But as wonderful as she is, I have to go out of town in a few days, so we need to figure out what to do with her.”

“What do you mean?” asked Henry. “Aren’t you going to keep her?”

“Why would I want to keep her?” asked Lily, sounding taken aback.

“Yeah,” said Emma, who had not been privy to Henry and Susan’s conversation on the train, “why would Lily keep her? She’s my dog, and just as soon as Mom and Dad—”

“It’s never going to happen,” said Henry in his
kindest, most good-brother voice. “You have to understand that, Emma, and Lily might be the best chance Bernice has!”

Lily shook her usually chirky head in a sad way.

“But dogs are good for protection?” suggested Roy. He got down on his knees and crawled across the floor to look Bernice in the eyes. “And walking her will be really good exercise.” He tousled the dog’s head and looked up at Lily.

“Yes, that’s all true,” admitted Lily, “but still—I only said I’d watch her for a day or two while you came up with a plan. Heavens, I can’t keep her for good!”

“Are you allergic?” asked Roy. “My mom is allergic, and that’s why we can’t have a dog. Or at least, that’s what she says.” Roy considered thoughtfully that he had never actually seen his mother sneeze, wheeze, or itch in the presence of a dog. He’d have to ask about that.

“Nope,” said Lily. “I’m not allergic to Bernice at all. I’m just too busy.”

Emma looked confused. Although she didn’t want Lily to keep Bernice forever, she knew deep in her heart that Henry was probably right, and in any case, she thought the librarian should
want
to keep Bernice. “But you love dogs!”