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the refrigerator, he put his arm around her. She gave him a surprised look but
not too surprised. "Thanks for listening to me," he told her. "Thank for
putting up with me, you know?"
"No problem," she said. "It works both ways, believe me." She squeezed him
for a second. Then she slipped away."Fizzes."
He drank his in a hurry. It wasn't just like anything in the home timeline,
but it was sweet and cold. It even had caffeine in it. What more could you
want? He wondered if he should try something more with Beckie. Something about
the set of her mouth told him it wouldn't be a good idea right this minute.
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Then her grandmother walked into the kitchen. "Oh," she said."The boy." By
the way she eyedhim, he might have been something she'd just cleaned off the
floor with a wet paper towel.
"Gran!"Beckie said.
"What?" her grandmother said. "It is him, isn't it?"
Oh, yeah, Justin thought. You stick in the knife and then you try to pretend
you didn't mean anything by it. And if he got mad if he told her where to go
and how to get there or even if he showed he was annoyed any way at all she
won. She was a sweet old lady, and he was just a punk kid. The very best he
could do in the game was break even, and the only way he could do that was to
make believe he didn't notice a thing. Kids had had to do stuff like that
since Urk the australopithecine broke an antelope bone over Urk, Junior's,
head for making a monkey out of himself when he shouldn't have. Nope, you
couldn't win.
Beckie's grandmother took a pear out of the fridge, looked at it, breathed
all over it, and then put it back and got out another one. She went away,
munching. You chew with your mouth open, too, Justin thought.
Once her grandmother was gone, Beckie sighed. "I'm sorry," she said. "She's
like that."
"What can you do?" Justin said. "My aunt's a world-class dingbat. People
choose their friends.Your family? You're stuck with your family."
"Stuck with."Beckie looked in the direction her grandmother had gone. "Boy,
you can say that again. I feel like she's my ball and chain."
"Yeah, well. . ." Justin kind of shrugged. "It's not like you're going
anywhere much, not the way things are."
"Tell me about it." Beckie cocked her head to one side, listening. "What's
that? That rumble, I mean?"
"Sounds like more trackforts and stuff," Justin answered. "But that's crazy.
They pulled out to fight the uprising, and now they're coming back? Why would
they do that?" Suddenly he flashed on Mr. Brooks, and he knew just what the
older man would say, right down to his tone of voice. "I bet the right hand
doesn't know what the left hand's doing." He sounded cynical enough to alarm
himself.
He made Beckie blink, too. But she said, "I bet you're right. Either that
or" she looked scared "they're soldiers fromOhio instead."
She probably didn't care aboutVirginia orOhio . She didn't want to get stuck
in the middle of fighting, that was all. Since Justin felt the same way, he
couldn't very well argue with her. Even so, he said, "I don't think they're
Ohioans. The noise is coming from that way, not that way." He pointed first
east, then west.
Beckie listened,then nodded. "It is, isn't it? That's a little better." No,
she didn't care about either side. After a couple of seconds, she remembered
he was supposed to. "I didn't mean "
"Don't worry about it," he said. "To somebody from a rich state on the other
side of the continent, this whole thing probably looks pretty silly."
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"Nothing where you can die from a horrible disease or get blown to pieces
looks silly when you're stuck in the middle of it." Beckie spoke with great
conviction.
"You hit that nail right on the thumb," Justin said gravely.
Beckie started to nod, then gave him a peculiar look. "You come out with the
weirdest stuff sometimes, you know?"
"Thanks," he said. This time, he knew exactly what kind of face she made at
him. Before he could say anything more, he heard rising screeches in the air.
"What's that?" Beckie said again.
He didn't answer. He knocked her flat, and threw himself flat, too, even
while she was squawking. He was dragging both of them toward the kitchen
table get under something, he told himself when the first shells went off.
Something slammed into the kitchen wall, and all at once the house started
leaking air-conditioned air through ahole the size of his head.
"What was that?" Beckie's grandmother called. "Did anything break?"
Justin lost it. There with artillery raining down onElizabeth , he started
laughing like a loon. Half a second later, Beckie was doing the same thing.
They clung to each other. Either they wereboth crazy or they were an island of
sanity in a world gone mad. Part of it, probably, was simple fear of death.
The rest was proof of just how far out of it Beckie's grandmother really was.
The shelling lasted only a few minutes. It sure seemed like forever while it
was going on, though. When it finally stopped, Justin sat up and banged his
head on the underside of the kitchen table. The bombardment hadn't touched
him. Banging his head hurt a lot but only for a little while.
"Wow," he said in place of something stronger, "that was fun."
"Now that you mention it," Beckie said, "no." She wiggled out from under the
table without trying to fracture her skull on it. Then she looked at the hole
in the kitchen wall and slowly shook her head. When she muttered, "Wow," too,
she seemed amazed. "If that hit one ofus, or maybe both of us . . ."
"Yeah," Justin said. "I know."
That hole was about a meter they would say three feet here off the ground.
Beckie looked at it some more. "Thanks for knocking me down," she said. "I
didn't know what you were doing for a second, but thanks. How did you know to
do that?"
For that second, she likely thought he was attacking her. Well, he wasn't,
not like that. "My uncle's a veteran," he answered. "He says you've got to get
fiat if they start shelling. He says a hole in the ground is better, but we
didn't have one handy."
"I was trying to dig a hole in the linoleum for a while there." Beckie looked
at her hands. So did Justin. She'd broken a couple of fingernails. She wasn't
kidding. Justin had wanted to dig a hole and pull it in after himself, too.
"Thanks," Beckie said again. She kissed him half on the cheek, half on the
mouth.
"It's okay." Justin put a hand on her shoulder. "I mean, it's not okay, but I
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was glad to do it. I mean you know."
"I think so." Beckie laughed shakily this time, not the wild laughter that
had kept them both from screaming. "You're all right, Justin.Better than all
right."
"Am I?" He was stuck inElizabeth . He was stuck in this whole alternate. He
was liable to get blasted to hamburger or murdered by a plague. All things
considered ... He patted Beckie. "Could be worse, I guess."
Chapter Nine
MR. SNODGRASS STARED at the hole in the wall. He'd been at the grocery when
the Ohioans shelledElizabeth . The store didn't get a scratch. "You were in
the kitchen, you say?" he asked Beckie.
"That's right," she said. "Justin was over. We were getting fizzes, and . .
." Once terror was past, it didn't seem real. She'd been in a car crash once,
when a drunk rearended her mother. This was like that, only more so.
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