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  As he tried to snap the locket shut again, he caught a glimpse of the faded portrait. Now he could make out a smile. The woman didn’t seem so dolphin-like anymore. Her eyebrows were thick and her cheek was adorned with a dark mole. Her hair bunched up unevenly where it was pulled back by a ribbon.

  With his free hand, he rubbed his eyes. Now he was able to see the ridge of her nose and the lace on her collar. The face was becoming clearer, the background whiter.

  “Hello! You there!”

  A booming voice made him nearly drop the chain. He looked up. A man with a handlebar mustache and a thick woolen uniform was riding a horse toward him. It was a different horse from the one he’d just seen, thicker chested and not nearly as shiny. The other horse and its handlers were gone, and this guy did not look happy.

  Corey knew that expression. He’d seen one of the movie people with that same look the day before. It usually meant they were about to film a scene and they wanted everyone out of sight.

  “Shhorry, you’re shooting, right?” Corey said, his voice thick with the blood pack that was still in his mouth.

  “Well, not yet, unless I have a reason to.” It was an odd thing to say, and the guy gave an odd chuckle. “Say, perhaps you can help us.”

  “Help you?” Corey’s heart sped up with anticipation. He thought about what had happened to Emma Gruber from number 36. SAG card, potential stardom! “Sure! I—I’ve had shhhome on-camera experiensh!” he blurted. “Once I washh in the audience of Shhaturday Night Live. I can do accentsh and stuff. I go to George Washington Carver Middle School, but the adminishtration gave Emma permission to be in the film. You know, that’ssh the girl you hired yeshterday? Shho they’ll be cool with me doing it, too. Will I get a Shhhag card?”

  The guy stared blankly. “All I want you to do is answer a few questions, big fella.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket, unfolding it as he showed it to Corey. It was a pencil portrait of a young guy with a wispy beard, an evil grin, and beady eyes. Printed over the portrait were the words WANTED FOR THE CRIME OF DESERTION, and under it the name FREDERICK RUGGLES. “Do you know the whereabouts of this young man?”

  Corey grinned as it dawned on him what was happening—an audition. He wished he hadn’t had the pack in his mouth, but spitting it out would look too weird. “Ohhhh, duh, of coursssh!” he replied. “Shhhorry.”

  “Haw! Well then, aren’t you one peculiar boy!” The guy cocked his head and gave a muffled laugh. He was good. He was a professional and was not going to break character. That’s just what actors did. “You know, son, you will get quite a substantial reward for information leading to a capture. How does . . . two dollars sound to you?”

  “Gadzooksh, ’tissh a fortune, I thinks!” Corey said, furrowing his brow as he examined the old portrait. “But, land shakesh and dagnabbit, shir, I have never sheen this man in my life!”

  The guy nodded. “Hmmm . . .”

  Was anyone shooting video of this? Corey snuck a look around for signs of any crew. But all he saw was one man halfway up the block, with raggedy pants hiked up over his waist.

  He was walking a goat.

  Corey blinked hard. It wasn’t the goat that caught his eye. The guy was in front of number 36, Emma’s address. In the place where the apartment building had always stood was . . . nothing. Just a battered wooden fence strung together with wire and what looked like a small shack with a dirt yard.

  “Sorry . . . shhorry, going off character now,” Corey said, tucking the blood pack as far back into his mouth as he could. “What happened to that house?”

  The man, who had begun to turn his horse around, stopped. “Excuse me?”

  “Emma Gruber? She lives there. She’s in the movie. This doesn’t make sense. Did you guys knock down a building overnight?”

  “Young man, I’m afraid very little of what you’ve said makes sense to me,” the man replied, his face tight with concern. “By the by, may I ask where your parents are?”

  This was a dream. It had to be a dream.

  Corey began pinching himself. It hurt, a lot. He was not waking up. And nothing was changing.

  Now the guy was dismounting, walking toward Corey. “Are you all right, young man? Shall I take you to your mama and papa? Do your mama and papa know you are outside? Do you know your address?”

  He was talking to Corey as if he were four years old. Or as if he were just plain loony tunes.

  Maybe he was loony tunes.

  Corey backpedaled. He nearly tripped over a metal pole sticking up from the sidewalk. A brick sidewalk.

  “Those are bricks, not cement,” Corey said. “They’re supposed to be cement. And that’s a hitching post.”

  “Yes, it is,” the guy said in a soothing voice. “Of course it is. . . .” He was coming closer, reaching behind him for something Corey couldn’t see.

  Corey looked down into the little patio just below the stairs that led to his apartment door. The windows revealed a living room with rocking chairs and a wooden table—none of which he had ever seen before. “Wait—that’s my house. I was just in there. Where’s all our stuff?”

  The man was holding a cord now, a leather strap. With a sudden lunge, he raised his arms and reached behind Corey with the cord. He pulled it tight, pinning Corey’s arms to his side. “There’s a good boy. . . .”

  “Hey!” Corey cried out.

  “Just stay put,” the man said through gritted teeth. “This is for your own safety. A little trip to the sheriff.”

  Corey could smell the tobacco on the man’s putrid breath. He struggled to move his arms, but the guy was already tying a knot.

  So he shifted the blood pack from the back of his mouth to his teeth and bit down, hard.

  A gush of red goop splattered into the man’s face. He cried out, staggering backward.

  Corey turned on his heels and started to run. The half-tied knot quickly loosened, and the cord fell. Above him, someone let out a yell and threw a bucket of slop from a fourth-floor window that splashed to the curb and doused his ankles.

  At the sight of Central Park West, Corey’s knees buckled. The high-rise at the end of the block was gone, replaced by a small brick building. On Central Park West itself, a horse-drawn trolley passed from right to left.

  Corey kept his balance and ran. Thunder blasted again, with a sound so loud it seemed to shake the buildings themselves. The burning sensation in his hand grew sharper and he almost dropped the locket.

  “Leiiiilaaaaaaa!” he screamed, sprinting as fast as he could.

  4

  On a day like this, Corey was jealous of Leila Sharp. Ever since her dad left her family, she had been seeing a shrink once a week. He did not envy the dad part, only the shrink part. He wished he were seeing one, too. “I think I’m losing it,” he said, pacing back and forth in front of her building on Central Park West.

  “Stop moving,” Leila said, dabbing Corey’s face and shirt with wet wipes. “I think biting the blood pack traumatized you.”

  “You didn’t hear any thunder?” Corey asked. “Or horses?”

  “Just a second.” Leila pulled back, scrutinizing his face. She had soft greenish-blue eyes in a field of freckles as red as her hair. She had a way of being annoying but also making Corey feel calmer. “There. All clean. Nope, no thunder. No horses. But no biggie either, okay? You have a very active imagination, that’s all.”

  “I hate when people say that,” Corey snapped. “Everyone tells me that.”

  “Dude, how long have I known you? You’ve always been this way. You’re just being Corey.”

  “It was as real as you are, Leila! Everything changed. This guy on a horse tried to tie me up. Emma’s house was gone. A man was walking a goat. Somebody threw a pail of pee out the window. This locket got super hot, and I could see every detail of the face of the lady inside. Look at her now!”

  Corey held out his hand and snapped open the locket. The lady’s face was nothing more than two vague eyes in a faded oval out
line.

  “Okay, you do need a shrink.” Leila checked her watch. “I’m seeing mine tomorrow. But I can call her after school and before the Halloween party, and I’ll tell her you’re looking.”

  “There’s a Halloween party tonight?” Corey asked, snapping the locket shut.

  “Sorry for the confusion, Mr. Time Traveler, but today is still October thirty-first, and you told me you’d be my date. So to refresh your memory, we are going to school without costumes because costumes have been forbidden this year. Then you’re coming to my house for pizza after school and we’re going to the Halloween party together, in costume. That last part is nonnegotiable.” Leila picked up her backpack from the sidewalk and hooked it over her shoulders. “Now let’s go or we’ll be late.”

  “It’s not a date,” Corey grumbled. “Parties aren’t dates.”

  But Leila had already started off.

  With a weary sigh, Corey followed. He felt numb. He liked the idea of going to a psychologist, but it seemed weird. His family didn’t do stuff like that. None of them needed to. They were too normal.

  Still. What happened this morning was not normal.

  They turned right onto Ninety-Fourth Street, in the direction of George Washington Carver Middle School. Leila was walking at her usual warp speed. But after what had just happened, Corey was wary. He eyed the block carefully. No horses. No weird weather. Just like every morning, yellow buses were double-parked in front of school. Just like every morning, angry drivers were stuck behind them, bumper-to-bumper. Corey had never in his life been so happy to hear the honking of twenty-first-century car horns. He quickened his pace and caught up with Leila at the base of the school steps.

  A zombie, holding a severed human arm, greeted him and Leila at the front door. “Shake,” he said.

  Corey nearly hurled his breakfast but Leila burst out laughing. It took him a moment to realize the zombie was Mr. Skiptunis, the assistant principal. Just behind him in the lobby, a group of kids from Ms. Lee’s history class were shooting questions at Wonder Woman . . . who looked suspiciously like Ms. Lee. Marching in and out of the school office were two overweight Batmen, a five-foot-two Supergirl, a not-so-Incredible Hulk, and a King Kong who was bossing people around in a muffled version of the principal’s voice.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to wear costumes to school,” Corey said to Zombie Skiptunis. “You told us to wear normal clothes today.”

  “Those were yooour rules, not oooours, bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” said the assistant principal with a ridiculous evil laugh. “Surprise!”

  “They tricked us,” Leila said, pulling Corey through the door.

  “Halloween for teachers only is a very lame idea,” Corey said.

  “Is that why you came to school as Grumpy?” Leila asked.

  Inside, teachers in costume were acting like kids, and kids were screaming and posing for selfies. But the strangest thing was a team of people with professional-looking cameras roaming around, recording it all. Leila let out a joyous squeal. Instantly a guy with a thick beard and man bun darted over with a mic, followed by a woman carrying a big camera that said NY-2 Local News. “So, kids, what do you think of NYC Pop-up Halloween?” the guy said in a voice that was one part too loud and three parts too jolly.

  “Wait, what?” Corey said.

  The guy chuckled. “It’s a thing. All over the city this year. But this is the first time a group of teachers have done it! Are you surprised?”

  “It’s awesome!” Leila cried.

  As they asked her a few more questions, Corey slunk away. He quickly pulled out his phone and searched for NYC Pop-up Halloween. Instantly he saw images of all kinds of costumed people walking the streets of Manhattan. A guy dressed as Thor on the East Side. A team of pirates called the ARGHHH Society in the West Village, complete with parrots on their shoulders. A snake charmer floating down Broadway on a realistic-looking flying carpet.

  His mind was flying with thoughts. A guy with a big mustache and a horse . . . a goat farmer . . .

  “Ohhhhh . . . !” Corey felt like a fool. This morning’s ridiculousness all made some kind of crazy sense now. He put away the phone and smacked himself in the head. “I am such a dummy.”

  “I could have told you that,” said Leila. She was walking toward him, away from the wandering TV team.

  “No, I mean about all my weirdness this morning.” Corey held up his phone. “Sorry. All that stuff I was freaking about—it must have been one of those pop-up things. Some of them are really elaborate. Right now, somebody’s probably posting a YouTube clip of me spitting fake blood on that guy.”

  “So you’re not out of your mind after all,” Leila said.

  “Nope,” Corey replied. “Well, not completely. But maybe I’m close to not-out-of-my-mindness. There were still some things I can’t explain.”

  Leila raised an eyebrow. “Like, missing buildings? Thunder that never happened?”

  Corey nodded. “So yeah, maybe you should call your shrink for me.”

  “Just stay sane enough to go to the party tonight,” Leila replied.

  As they shared a fist bump, the bell echoed through the hall. Together they raced to homeroom.

  That afternoon, the first thing Corey noticed in Leila’s extremely neat bedroom was an extremely messy stack of cardboard boxes marked Toxic by the door. The second thing was a photo she had propped up in her window. He kept his eyes on the photo intently, not wavering his gaze. This was mainly because Leila was busy clearing away all the underwear she had left on her bed. And those were the last things Corey wanted to see.

  “Are you done yet?” he asked, trying to keep his face from turning red.

  “Almost.”

  The photo was practically burning itself into his eyes now. It was sitting on Leila’s old windowsill, which was chipped and cracked. Each of those cracks revealed several layers of paint. You could tell the age of the building with those layers, like rings of a tree. But the photo was frozen in time, black-and-white and maybe five inches by seven.

  It was a New York City street scene. In the foreground was a dirt road with telegraph poles. To the far left, a small team of men was building a stone wall along that road. In the background, a hilly, treeless landscape stretched to the horizon. Here and there were signs of a construction project, like a team of horses pulling an enormous boulder on a flatbed cart. At the right was a wood-frame contraption about two stories tall, with a system of pulleys.

  It was pretty blurry, but there was something both eerie and familiar about the image. He picked it up off the window to look closer. “Leila,” he said, “what’s this—?”

  “Ta-da!” Leila’s voice interrupted his question. “Which one should I wear?”

  Corey turned around. Leila was holding up a Catwoman and a Wonder Woman costume. “Whichever fits, I guess,” he replied. “I like them both.”

  Leila sighed. “You are such a boy. Okay, get out of here while I change. And don’t steal my auntie Flora’s photo.”

  “I met her, right?” Corey asked. “She brought that weird musical instrument to your Christmas party—the dirigible?”

  “Didgeridoo. Made from a bamboo pole. Yes. She finds stuff like that. She disappears for days or weeks at a time and never says where she’s been. She also says she talks to dead people. Mostly you have to tune her out. Those boxes stacked by my door? Her stuff.”

  “And this photo?” Corey asked. “Is it—?”

  “A view of Central Park? Yeah. Auntie Flora finds old photos that she feels some kind of weird mystical connection to. She thinks that one was probably taken in this exact room back in the 1860s, when they were constructing the park. That’s why there are no trees. This apartment building was new then.”

  “Wow . . . ,” Corey said. “She sounds awesome.”

  Leila shrugged. “Well, she left my uncle Lazslo months ago, no explanation. None of us knew where she went. When she finally wrote my uncle, she said she couldn’t come back. ‘Ju
st know that I love you, I love you all,’ she wrote. He’s devastated and angry, and he wanted to toss all her junk. That’s why he wrote Toxic on it. It’s not really toxic. Anyway, my mom thinks they’ll work it out. She claims Lazslo and Flora have a healthier relationship than she and Dad did. So she told my uncle not to throw it out. ‘I know—let’s store it in Leila’s room!’ she said. Imagine my surprise. Grrrrr. You want any of it?”

  “Your aunt’s old-lady stuff? I don’t think so.” Corey eyed the boxes, which were sealed except the top one. It had been opened roughly and the side was torn. An old framed photograph had fallen out, so Corey stooped to pick it up. As he tried to place it back in, he stopped.

  The image was odd. At first glance it was just a group of about twelve people in stiff, old-fashioned clothing. Most of them were staring unsmilingly at the camera. But among them were a fluffy polar bear, a kangaroo, and a small triceratops. All looking very civilized.

  Printed across the bottom of the photo was a title:

  KNICKERBOCKERS

  APRIL 1914

  “I guess people had strange senses of humor back then,” Corey said. “Those are really convincing costumes. What was her mystical connection to this photo?”

  “What?” Leila said.

  “You told me she had connections to all her photos.”

  “Oh.” Leila peered at it briefly. “I think she collected this one because one of the old ladies in the picture looks like her.”

  “Maybe it is her.” Corey shoved the framed photo back in the box.

  “In 1914?”

  Corey shrugged. “Maybe she left your uncle because she’s dating a man her age—two hundred years old.”

  “Are you dissing my aunt, Corey Fletcher?” Leila snapped.

  As Corey slipped out the door, giggling, he caught a Catwoman mask in the back of his head. “I’m having second thoughts about being your date tonight!” Leila shouted.

  “It’s not a date!” Corey shouted back.

  Still holding on to the black-and-white photo, he ducked into the bathroom next to Leila’s room. The window, which overlooked Central Park, was slightly open.