Alex and the Amazing Time Machine by Rich Cohen

Author:Rich Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2012-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

10

PARADISE ALLEY

“Where did I blow it?” Alex kept asking himself.

He had gone back to the books and filled pages with numbers, but could not find the answer. He skipped several days of school. All he wanted to do was sit and think. On some nights, he wrote long e-mails to Dr. Shaprut. He wanted to tell her what had happened, what he found, and where he was stuck. He stared and stared at these messages without pressing Send. He remembered his mother telling him about prosecutions in which the government intercepted and read a fugitive’s e-mail.

What if Carl and Little Davy read my e-mail? he asked himself. Won’t this letter convince those jerks that I’m working on the dingus?

In the end, he always hit Delete, and this made him feel like a fugitive himself, the only person on a lonely planet.

Then, late one night, as he was at his desk, he heard a tap on his window, a pebble clinking off the glass. Then another. He opened the blind and looked out.

Todd was out there in the dark, calling up, “Come down! We need to talk.”

Alex pulled on some clothes and headed outside. They walked in the backyard, Scout sniffing the grass behind them. “What’s this garbage, skipping school, shutting yourself in like a lunatic?” Todd asked.

“I can’t figure out where we went wrong,” said Alex. “It’s making me nuts.”

“If you’d come to school, I could’ve told you where we went wrong.”

“But you don’t believe it’s even possible.”

“I didn’t at first, but you changed my mind,” Todd said. “Did you see that penny, how it sort of wavered, appeared and disappeared? We were close!”

“I know,” said Alex, “but how do we get over the hump?”

“It’s like my dad says: if a little doesn’t work, how about a lot?”

“A lot of what?” asked Alex.

“Power,” said Todd. “The machine’s like a car. It looks cool on the outside, but the engine is too small. That’s where I can help. You’re good at numbers and big stuff, but when it comes to get up and go, you head to the Johnston house.”

The Johnstons lived in a ramshackle house on the west side of town, as far as you could get from the lake and still call it Glencoe. To get there, the friends walked through deserted streets, then cut across subdivisions, where house was followed by identical house, where every blind was drawn and every light was out.

The Johnston house was dark, too, but there was a dirt lane behind the house, and it was full of life. This lane was bounded by garages, each with its door open, revealing another grease monkey working after hours on his or her dream machine. To locals, this stretch of late-night car-building activity was known as Paradise Alley.

Alex was in awe of the Johnstons’ garage, this cathedral, where Todd’s big sister, Frankie (she must’ve been seventeen) worked on her cars. Her great love was vintage automobiles. Frankie was tall and blond with big brown eyes, honestly the most beautiful person Alex had ever seen.

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