zone. I wiped my eyes. Maybe there was a street map behind the counter. I searched the counter and tried to lift the cash register. Maybe a street map was hidden under it. It was heavy, too heavy to lift, but I caught sight of a narrow slot under the mirror.
When you find what you need, you will know what it is worth and what you must leave in exchange.
Did I have what I needed? What I really needed right now was a map, but all I had was that impossible Beatles reunion album. And my useless phone. I shoved my phone into the slot.
Wait! What had I done? I tried to shove my fingers through the slot and retrieve my phone. Hopeless. I wiped away more tears. Mom was going to kill me. I slouched out of the bookstore. Guess I’d have to find my own way home.
The streets had turned bright orange with the light reflected off a new blanket of snow. Where had all this snow come from? It was already half an inch deep on the sidewalks. Flakes as big as my thumbnail were drifting down thick and fast. I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets, the album cradled under my left arm, and began walking as quickly as I could. Although my socks instantly got soaked, somehow the air seemed warmer than before.
I soon found myself on familiar streets, walking past saggy rowhouses with their weed-grown front yards. Be grateful you have a place to live, that’s what Mom always says, and I am grateful. Even though home is half of a century-old duplex, and you reach it through a shrieking gate in a chain-link fence, and the Peruzzos’ dogs start howling every time you walk by. Mom stood at the door, wearing the ratty old sweatsuit she uses for pajamas. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard my braces almost came loose.
“Where were you? Do you know how late it is? I was so worried, and then it started to snow…”
On and on as we went inside, ending with “You lost your cell phone? Again?” And the usual tearful hug in the dark little kitchen with its hot plate and its dorm-size refrigerator the size of normal people’s TV sets, the TV set the size of normal people’s toasters, the table set with two chipped bowls covered with chipped salad plates to keep the macaroni and cheese warm. Because of course Mom couldn’t choke down her food when I was late, could she? What a mess. But at least I kept my head enough to toss the record album into the corner by my bedroom, putting my backpack down on top before Mom noticed it.
At last she calmed down, brushed graying hair out of her eyes and sat down to eat. I gulped my own food and headed to my room, scooping up my backpack and the album. My unmade bed was barely visible beneath piles of books, sort-of clean clothes, and electronic junk. I nudged aside an old computer monitor and flopped onto the gritty sheets. Despite my exhaustion I lay wide awake listening to Mom moving around the house, talking to herself, the words too low to make out. Eventually she went upstairs to her bedroom and the house grew still.
I waited what seemed like forever to make sure she was really asleep before tiptoeing out of my room. The coat closet by the front door was full of all kinds of old junk. A heap of old clothes, a blue raincoat and pink rubbers I had worn when I was in second grade, old cell phones, bits of plastic, a vacuum cleaner missing its hose… Finally! I lifted the bulky greenish-blue case and dragged it back to my room. Nana’s old record player. I opened it up, plugged it in, and blew the dust off the turntable and needle arm. Then I carefully removed a shiny black disk from the Beatles reunion album, and put it on the turntable.
A pop and crackle. The needle arm nodded slightly. A hiss. Then music. Some of the songs were the old ones Nana had taught me, sometimes in different versions; “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “Octopus’s Garden” were as bouncy and cheerful as ever, but “Eleanor Rigby” sounded more haunting than in the original version, with unfamiliar little guitar riffs running through it.
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Between and around and under each song was a faint crackling like static and a much louder drumming. Like rain with a hint of something harder in it, maybe sleet or hail? No. The sound of a huge mass of people applauding.
“Thank you, thank you,” said a nasal voice in that Liverpool accent. A wise voice with undertones of sad laughter. I shivered.
John Lennon.
“Now we’d like to play a new song, something Paul and I wrote specially for this concert. It’s dedicated to my little daughter, Rosie—she’s two—” Another cheer. “It’s called ‘Courage.’” Applause rose, then died back to a near whisper.
Courage, girl
You’ll need courage for the road ahead
For the road full of dread
I’d give you more, girl
For this cold old world,
But all I can give you, girl,
Is your heart that’s oaken
Even when it’s broken
You’ll have your courage…
When the song was done and the applause had swelled and faded, the needle arm slid out of the grooves and bounced gently. I carefully lifted it and replaced it on the armrest. A single tear rolled off my cheek and fell on the label, staining it a darker orange. I lay down on my bed and looked at the ceiling. I’d just heard the impossible. There was another of Nana’s favorite Beatles songs, one of their early tunes, “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” a fun little song about a guy who’s just met a girl and is falling in love with her. There’s a line in it: “Had it been another day, I might have looked the other way, and I’d have never been aware, but as it is, I’ll dream of her tonight…” What if both things could be true? That the guy did glance her way and fall in love at first sight, but in some other place just as real, he did not glance her way and fell in love with someone else instead?
This idea made my head hurt. It was more incredible than magic, which I didn’t believe in. Magic was something that only happened in books, to fairy-tale people. But what else could explain my finding a bookstore that I’d never seen before in my own neighborhood, one that had a Beatles reunion album in it and the lost diary of a guy too perfect to be real? I know, I’m a fairy changeling, and my mean old mom isn’t really my mom! But now my fairy people have found me, and they’re going to take me away from here, so I never have to take a math test or look at Kylie’s sneering face again!
Little did I know that my first idea, the head-hurting one about “parallel worlds,” would turn out to be right.
Chapter 2
I hurried through the darkening streets of a wintry Philadelphia afternoon, annoyed at first at my inability to find Gloria’s Gateway Books and Records, and then increasingly alarmed as I realized I was lost.
I had soon discovered there were pages missing from my diary. In fact, I realized it as soon as I returned to my room. I clutched at my throat, trying not to vomit. If Adams and his clique found my “sensitive” musings, they would torment me forever. Or blackmail me, and I have no funds, since I am a scholarship student from the sticks who’s only in St. George’s in the first place thanks to my so-called brilliance.
I took a deep breath and scanned the pages again. It was not that bad. I had only misplaced what I had written while actually in the bookstore, as well as a number of blank pages. There was not much they could do with that even if they did find it. Anyway, I certainly lacked the time to go out again and look for the missing pages. As it was, I had barely returned before curfew,
