Time. Roger Reid

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Time - Roger Reid

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      “Robert, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” said my mom.

      “Rachel,” said Dad, “if Carl Morris wanted to find Jason, he would have a lot better chance of finding him here at home than at some obscure fossil site in Alabama.”

      It was the wrong thing to say.

      “What do you mean, if Carl Morris wanted to find Jason?” Mom exclaimed. “Did he threaten him? Did he say something?”

      “No,” said Dad. “No. No one heard him threaten Jason or Leah or the deputy or anyone else. He just wanted us to know—Deputy Pickens just wanted us to know. Morris, if he’s smart, is long gone. He’s probably in Alaska by now.”

      “Smart?” said my mom. “The man’s an idiot. If he were smart, he wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.”

      I had to agree with my mom on that one. “Smart” is not an adjective you would use in connection with Carl Morris.

      The room fell silent again. Funny thing about a room of people not saying anything when every one of them wants to say something: it seems to make time slow down. Maybe my little bedroom was suspended in time. I wanted to take a peek at my watch to see if the second hand was moving. Checking the time, though, might be seen as an attempt to get my parents talking.

      My pocket buzzed again. In my nobody’s-saying-a-word room, we all heard it. Mom and Dad’s eyes turned to me. I shrugged my shoulders. The second hand must have begun to move again.

      “It’s probably Leah wanting to know if Jason’s making the trip,” said my mom.

      “What should he tell her?” asked my dad.

      Strange. I was standing right there, and they were talking about me in the third person—like I was in another room.

      “He’ll be safe?” Mom asked.

      Dad paused.

      I was about to think the clock might stop ticking again when he said, “He’ll be safe.”

      “Maybe I should talk with Deputy Pickens myself,” said Mom.

      “Maybe you should,” Dad agreed. “It would probably make you feel better.”

      “You still want to go?” Mom asked.

      It took a second or two for me to realize she was talking to me.

      “Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

      “You’re sure?” she said.

      “Yes, ma’am,” I said again.

      My pocket buzzed.

      “Tell her you’ll meet her in Birmingham,” said Mom. Then she walked over and gave me a hug. A long hug.

      Dad remained seated on my bed after Mom left the room.

      “There’s something else I discovered when I was talking to Shirley Pickens,” he said.

      I chuckled. Deputy Shirley Pickens is about six-four and well over two hundred pounds. He’s built like a linebacker. He carries a gun. And his name is Shirley. In all my fourteen years, I’d never met a man named Shirley until Deputy Shirley Pickens.

      “If I were you,” said my dad, “I would get that chuckling out of my system before I got to Alabama.”

      “Good idea,” I agreed.

      “Like I was trying to say,” Dad said, “when I was talking with the deputy, I discovered that your host in Alabama is a friend of mine. He’s an astronomer. His name is Curtis Carroll. We always call him C. C., but you should probably call him Dr. Carroll.”

      “An astronomer?” I said. “Why are we staying with an astronomer?”

      “You’ve got something against astronomers?” said my dad the astronomer. I think he was joking.

      “No,” I said. “I’m used to astronomers. I just thought we would be staying with a paleontologist or geologist.”

      “C. C., uh, Dr. Carroll is a professional astronomer and an amateur paleontologist,” said Dad. “Tell him I said hello.”

      I nodded.

      “And,” Dad continued, “ask him to give you and Leah a little bit of his presentation on time.”

      My pocket buzzed again.

      “You should probably answer that before she gets the idea that you’re not going,” said Dad. “And Jason?”

      “Yes?”

      “You do want to go?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      5

       Friends

      ???

      Talking with my parents

      U still going?

      Yes

      C u in bhm

      I’ll text you from the pane

      Pane?

      Plane

      K

      Leah was pretty good at text-talk. Me? Not so much. Most of the time I had rather just make a phone call. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had the phone all that long. Leah hasn’t had her phone all that long either, though. Her dad got it for her after Carl Morris and his brothers chased us through that longleaf forest less than four months ago. Less than four months . . . seems like a lot longer than that.

      I finished packing and set my duffel bag beside the bed. For a moment I stood there not knowing what to do with myself. I had just passed up the perfect opportunity not to make the trip. The truth is I didn’t think Carl Morris was as stupid as everyone thought he was, so I didn’t think he would come looking for me even if I had punched him in the face with an axe.

      And then there’s “the greater truth,” as an old friend of mine would say. The greater truth is that I wanted to see Leah.

      Much as I hate to admit it, my sister was sort-of right: I don’t have a lot of friends around here. It’s not my fault. All of my friends are like a year older than me. That was fine until I got to the eighth grade. Then they all went to high school, and I got left behind.

      There’s something else, too. When I try to tell them around here about being shot at in a longleaf forest and then again on a mountaintop, they look at me like I’m crazy. Can’t blame them. I still have a hard time believing it myself. Anyway, I’ll be in high school this coming year, so, who knows, maybe we’ll be friends again.

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