Chapter Eleven: My Brother Takes a Siesta in Rite Aid
On the New Jersey side of the tunnel, there were no cars, nor were there any signs of people. That seemed a little odd, but understandable since no one would be able to travel through the tunnel.
Our first indication that something was terribly wrong was when we were walking down Kennedy Boulevard East. It was completely vacant. It was like everyone decided to avoid traveling down that road.
"Do you think everyone is asleep on this side as well?" My brother spoke out loud to no one in particular.
"I think that if they were, their cars would be scattered along this road heading into New York." I responded.
"It's like they purposely were detoured out of the way." Zillah looked mystified.
"Maybe they did, and we just haven't gotten to the road block yet," I shrugged.
The sun beat down on us as we walked up the Boulevard. I frowned as I thought that today was going to be a scorcher.
As if he read my mind, Skylar checked his watch. "Uh... hey, umm... Wow... what time do you think it should be?"
I did the math in my head. "About 6:30, I guess..."
"6:15ish," Zillah pulled the numbers out of thin air.
"It's 11:45."
"What?" Lyra took his wrist and examined his watch. "That's crazy!"
"Time might be flowing differently on this side of the river." My mother frowned as she thought of the possibility.
In the distance the heat waves radiated off the pavement.
"Well at least that explains why it's so hot." I said as I whipped the sweat off of my brow. For the first time I wish I was wearing my sunglasses. At least in the city the buildings blocked the direct sunlight, as opposed to walking in the middle of an asphalt road with no tall trees in sight.
"Explains why I'm so hungry." Trent stated.
"If we see something open, we'll stop along the way." My mother replied, "If not we'll just eat what we packed this morning when we get to the car." She placed her hand on Zillah's shoulder, "You are all welcome to stay with us as long as you like."
"Do you really mean it?" I got extremely excited about that idea and forced my developing sense of heat exhaustion to the back of my mind. I've never been to a slumber party, nor have I ever been good enough friends with anyone to invite them over. When I was a little kid, the other kids' parents thought that either their kid would catch stupid from my family or that we were trash because we live in one of the smaller houses in town. Hence, they never let their kids come over to our place. I don't think my mom thought it was a good idea either because it probably would have been too dangerous for them anyway. The only time I got to go over other people's houses is if I had to work on a project for school.
"We..we were just going to hang out in JC and call our mom to see if she could switch her shift with someone going to Newark." Lyra looked at Skylar.
"We really wouldn't want to impose on you Miss. Glew you've all been really great to us allowing us to tag along and everything..." He sounded like he really wanted to stay with us but was too afraid that we would reject them.
"Kids, don't be so silly. My home is open to all of you. I know how hard it is growing up feeling like there aren't any other people out there like you and that no one understands you. I see it in my kids' faces all the time..."
"Thanks mom..." Trent grumbled.
"I take it that your mom changes her shifts a lot?" My mom asked the twins.
They exchanged looks as if trying to communicate how much information they should diverge.
"Yeah..." Lyra said glumly. "We get in trouble a lot at school, especial when weird stuff happens... Half the time we have to change locations that day in order to escape having criminal charges being thrown at us." A crooked grin crossed her lips. "Other times it's Skylar's fault. The girls follow him around in packs, and even some of the teachers flirt with him too. It tends to cause so many problems especially since the guys tend to get offended and then they start throwing punches at him..."
"I wish they would just leave me alone." Skylar said to himself. "I really don't like the attention. It's all too superficial." He sighed, "as a result we're going to be starting our freshmen year enrolled in private schools in Connecticut."
"It would only get worse. You know that." Lyra said to Skylar as she crossed her arms "Plus, it has an opposite effect for me." She looked over at Zillah and me. "The only boys I talked to in middle school were either my lab partners or group members. Even then they tended to act really weird like they expected Skylar to jump out of thin air and beat the living daylights out of them or something like that."
Skylar covered up a guilty smirk with his hand as he pretended to cough. . "Lyra's going to an all-girl school and I'm going to an all boy school. I really don't like being separated like that. We watch each other's backs, and now… it's just going to be weird."
"Connecticut, that's not too far. Do you normally live in New York City?" My brother asked.
"No, we've been living in Houston for about two months." Lyra sighed. "We've lived everywhere from Oslo with our grandparents, to Warsaw, to Hong Cong, to Topeka, to Vancouver, to Juneau and Anchorage."
"That's the great thing about having a flight attendant for a mom, it's easy to move and it doesn't require her having to find a new job." Skylar added in.
"Well, if you ever find yourselves in the metropolitan area, please feel free to give us a call. You're more than welcome to stay in our home," my mother warmly repeated.
"We'd appreciate that." Skylar looked over his shoulder at her.
"What were you doing in New York?" Zillah had a puzzled look on her face.
"Sightseeing." Lyra shrugged as if they went sightseeing all the time.
"So, you were in the city by yourselves?" Trent asked. He looked like he thought that was the coolest thing ever.
"Yes and no. Mom was working the Houston to LaGuardia route. She got us a room at the West Side YMCA so that we could see the sights together when she had her off time." Lyra's voice sounded like she was disappointed.
I gazed over to my left. The Weehawken Cove peacefully opened to the Hudson River, and beyond that lay New York City. It looked like a post card.
It was hard to imagine that the city was under siege and we ran away like... like cowards... No, I told myself, we weren't trained to be monster fighting heroes. We were just really lucky that everyone survived and that no one was fatally wounded.
We walked west onto 15th street for about a block and then turned south on Willow Avenue. That's when we first started to see life. In the middle of the road were cars scattered in their appropriate directions. People were sitting in stoops; some were standing on the sidewalks or crossing the street. At the gas station were motorists getting full service fill ups or walking up to the service window to buy cigarettes. All of these activities were quite normal for a busy city, but the only problem was that everyone looked like they were still as statues.
Clouds of dirty pollution clumped together as they exited the cars's exhaust pipes, but when they reached a certain height dissipated like normal. The cars seemed to be still running, but they were moving at literally a snail's pace. I bet I would have to stand there watching them for hours before they moved more than a couple of feet.
"This must be some real powerful magic. It's one thing to put a city to sleep, and it's another thing to make it move this slowly." Zillah waved her hand in front of a cop that was standing at the corner. He didn't seem to have any reaction to what she was doing.
"I wonder which one is harder to do?" I wondered out loud.
"My guess is this." Skylar pulled Zillah away from the cop. Then in a very low voice to her. "Just because he's moving slow doesn't mean he won't remember you." Zillah repeated for me at a later time. Who knows if she left something out, but it was enough to make her blush while she repeated it to me.
I slowed my steps down just a little so that I could walk next to my mom. "Okay, so we're either operating outside of standard time, or we're the only ones inside standard time. Either way that's going to be a problem."
"I agree." Her grey eyes were darting in all different directions.
Not wanting to be left out, my brother turned around and started walking backwards. "I don't get it; we'll just hop in our car and... oh..."
"Yeah, it's the same reason why we couldn't drive out of New York. Too many cars, and there is the possibility that the car won't even start."
"Ugh! So, what do we do, walk home?" He looked really upset. "Mom, I'm tired, all I want to do is take a nap and play some Wii, or see if Skylar wants to play mythomagic."
"I know Sweetheart, you've been really great, but we're not out of the woods yet." She pointed down the block. "There's a Rite Aid, we'll find something to drink. That should make you feel a bit better."
Trent pursed his lips while clenching his sword. He turned around and tensely marched toward the Rite Aid. I could tell he was on the verge of a tantrum, but was holding back.
While at the Rite Aid we found plenty of drinks, and junk food. Luckily, we were able to enter the store without any problems. My fear was that we would get to the door and it wouldn't open for us.
The air-conditioning did some wonders to lift our moral. Trent calmed down a bit and took a siesta in the middle of the gardening section. Zillah, Lyra, and I played with the makeup. I saw Skylar in the magazine section, and my mom, on the other hand, went shopping. She found packaging tape and bubbles, paper, a first aid kit, and markers.
After a few hours we left the store. My mom paid for her items with her last twenty. I wondered what she was going to do with all of that stuff. She simply stated that we needed to mail back our swords and daggers to the Met before we left Jersey City.
I was a bit disappointed. I've gotten used to my sword, but perhaps it was for the best. When I asked her how she was going to pay to mail the package to the Met she told me that we were going to use our birthday money. She then quickly stated that she would pay us back as soon as we were able to find an ATM that wasn't operating on slow motion.
It took us about another hour to walk through the rest of Hoboken and Jersey City. When we finally got to our SUV we were ecstatic. Even though we couldn't leave we still celebrated. We reached the car alive. Even better, we hadn't been attacked while in New Jersey.
For the millionth time today, I made a dumb statement. "I wonder why we weren't attacked by any monsters."
"Because they're all in New York." Lyra stated and then rolled her eyes before smiling at me.
"Oh." I felt a bit guilty.
