"Rick, this is George Nordgren," Augusta introduced the boy. "He's interested in psychiatry. George, this is Dr. Rick Portinari." Feeling rather bashful, George reached up and cautiously shook the man's hand. Both he and Augusta were wearing shorts and casual shirts for the spring weather.
"What do you know about psychiatry, George?" asked Portinari as the moose boy seated himself on the bench between the two adults.
"Um, a psychiatrist is a doctor who helps crazy people," replied George.
Portinari chuckled. "That's a common misconception. Not everyone who sees a psychiatrist is crazy. I've had only a few patients whom I would describe as crazy. Most of my patients are normal people who happen to have problems."
"Tell me about the crazy ones," George urged him.
"Hmm...okay," said Portinari with a hint of impatience. "There was one fellow who had four different personalities, and they were The Beatles." George started to laugh. "And a woman who claimed to be a 2,000-year-old vampire. And a man who couldn't look at a sneeze shield without sneezing. Well, he was more obsessive-compulsive than crazy. And a woman who was convinced that our world was really a cartoon show on TV. And a man who thought he was surrounded by space aliens disguised as humans." George suddenly stopped laughing. "But I should warn you--if you become a psychiatrist, you won't meet very many people like that. But that's good, because a lot of those people can't be helped, and have to be institutionalized."
"You mean locked up in the looney bin?"
Portinari grinned, grabbed one of George's antlers, and wiggled it. "Yes, that's what I mean. But the whole purpose of psychiatry is to avoid having to do that to people."
"Hmm..." George mused disappointedly.
"Do you still want to be a psychiatrist?" Portinari asked him.
"I'll think about it," replied George in a noncommital tone. "I gotta go now."
As he watched the moose boy jog away through the trees, Portinari smiled with satisfaction. "Yet another child cured of romantic notions about psychiatry," he remarked just before Augusta leaped on him.
George ran all the way to his house, his mouth hanging open. He had never before imagined that a grownup who believed in alien invaders might be committed to an institution. He had to call Buster and tell him that Portinari was all right, that the rabbit boy's insistence on having seen aliens would put him in danger...
In the park, Augusta and Portinari were embracing and kissing as if the end of the world were at hand. Augusta knew she would never go back to her previous existence now, were it possible or not. It was becoming obvious to her that the magical gift allowed her to experience love on a more profound level than other women. She was in paradise.
For what seemed like hours they alternated between rapturous passion and brief conversations, in the course of which they seemed to understand each other perfectly and effortlessly. The surrounding rows of trees made it difficult for passers-by to spy on them--except for one.
Still invisible through the aid of the stone in her palm, April stopped only a moment to watch the display of affection. It deeply troubled her. She wandered away, struggling to make sense of this development.
This shouldn't be happening, she thought while walking unseen along the sidewalk. Future Augusta told me all about her love life, and how she never felt right, and how the good men rejected her because of what she was. And now Dr. Portinari falls out of the blue, and they're perfect for each other. I know I've changed her future by coming back in time, but this just doesn't...
Her train of thought was abruptly cut off when a dark green Volvo, its driver seeing right through her, rolled down the residential driveway in which she stood. She had no time to jump out of its path...
----
The furnishings in the Crosswires' new condominium were few and modest; their more lavish possessions--statues, paintings, huge-screen TVs, Muffy's miniature yet operational replica of the Titanic--had either been sold, or were in storage. But her friends didn't seem to care, as what remained easily matched their own houses for comfort and leisure.
George had reunited with the group after trying unsuccessfully to reach Buster in Chicago and leaving a message on his voice mail. Now he was enjoying snacks provided by Mrs. Crosswire (from the supermarket, by Muffy's insistence) along with Arthur, Prunella, Beat, Alan, Fern, Francine, Binky, and Mavis.
Their topic of discussion was the two issues of the Spongebrain Smartypants comic that had come out to date. "Your cartoons are a riot," Francine commended Binky and Mavis as she held hands with Arthur. "Where did you get those ideas?"
Mavis pointed at her curly, bespectacled noggin. "It all comes out of here," she boasted.
"I sure hope your well of imagination doesn't run dry," said Arthur. "I want to see more."
"You will, on Monday," Binky told him.
"And we're thinking of sending them to the Elwood Times," Mavis added.
As the kids socialized and ate, Beat's sensitive rabbit ears picked up a faraway sound. "Do you hear that?" she asked the others.
"I don't hear anything," replied Prunella between mouthfuls of popcorn.
Everyone fell silent. "Oh, wait, I hear it now," said Fern, raising her ears slightly.
Gazing out the window in the direction of the sound, they saw an ambulance with flashing lights speed through an intersection a block away.
"Someone's hurt!" exclaimed Muffy.
"I wonder if it's anyone we know," said Alan.
"I'll check it out," Beat offered, and she hurried through the condominium door.
Running after the siren, the rabbit-aardvark girl covered four blocks before reaching the location where the ambulance had pulled to the side of the street. At the mouth of a driveway, two paramedics were tending to a fallen girl while a panicked-looking bear man stood next to a Volvo and watched the drama unfold.
Upon drawing close enough to see the face of the injured girl, Beat gasped in shock. It was April Murphy, the curly hair on the left side of her head stained with blood. Her eyes were opened and blinking, but seemed unfocused, and a large bruise was present on her right arm.
Beat had never seen a person hit by a car before, and wasn't sure what to do, other than stay out of the way of emergency personnel. Approaching the man who apparently had driven the car, she asked, "What happened, sir?"
"She...she came out of nowhere," stammered the hapless man. "I couldn't...I couldn't stop in time."
While she picked up her cell phone to call Muffy's number, Beat could hear April's weak voice mumbling behind her. "The stone...the stone..."
It took only minutes for Beat's friends to gather at the accident site, by which time the paramedics were lifting April into the ambulance bay on a stretcher. They murmured to each other, wondering how they could help.
"I'll call Augusta," said Muffy. She dialed the number and raised her phone to her ear.
Five blocks away in the middle of the park, Augusta was locked in a passionate embrace with Portinari when her cell phone rang. "Oh, I should have turned that off," she grumbled, reaching down to hit the phone's power button.
Muffy folded up her phone. "She's not answering," she said in discouragement.
"So what now?" Prunella wondered as the ambulance's siren started to wail again.
"I don't know who else we can call," said Francine. "Her parents are dead."
"And the Armstrongs don't live here anymore," Arthur added.
The bear man, meanwhile, was relating his side of the story to George. "It's like she materialized in front of the car. I'll never forget the terror on her face...but it was too late." As they spoke, the ambulance rushed down the street and through an intersection.
"April said something about a stone before they took her," Beat informed her friends.
Alan looked at Prunella. "This doesn't sound good," he remarked. The rat girl nodded knowingly.
Then Fern stooped down and plucked something out of the gutter. "Here's a pretty stone," she said, holding an object that resembled an inflated red marble in her fingers. "Maybe this is what she was talking about."
Alan peered at the stone, but saw nothing remarkable about it.
"Maybe it's a magic stone that makes you invisible," suggested George, who had returned from talking with the driver. "That would explain why he didn't see her in time."
"The only thing invisible here is your brain, George," Beat criticized him.
Fern's eyes widened when she recalled the vanishing indentations she had seen in the grass next to what had been the Crosswire mansion.
"It must belong to April," said Muffy. "Let me take it, Fern. I'll give it back to her when she gets out of the hospital."
"No," replied Fern in a tone that hinted at a sudden epiphany. "I'll do it."
Muffy shrugged. "Whatever."
Fern tossed the stone up, caught it in her palm, and motioned to Alan and George. "Come on, let's go to my place and have a look at it."
"Hmph!" grunted Muffy as she watched the two boys walk away with Fern. "April may be dead for the rest of her life, and all they care about is that stupid rock."
Halfway down the block, Fern was expressing her opinions about the mysterious stone to George and Alan. "You may be right, George. Today when we were at the mansion, I saw what looked like footprints in the grass. I looked again a little later, and they were gone. I think April may have been spying on us."
"If we can figure out how it works, maybe we can use it to spy on her," Alan suggested. "I mean, once she's out of the hospital."
"Think what you could do with a real stone of invisibility," George mused. "You could sneak into the girls' locker room. I mean, unless you're a girl. Then you wouldn't need to sneak."
Fern rolled her eyes and wondered if inviting the moose boy along had been a good idea.
"I wonder if the person who stole the Los Cactos crystal had a stone of invisibility," George went on.
"The what?" was Alan's response.
"It's a special crystal that was created at Los Cactos National Laboratory. Binky and Mavis told us all about it in their science report. Someone got past the motion sensors and stole it. I think you'd have to be invisible to do that."
"I remember it," said Fern. "How could I forget that day?"
TBC
