your dumb big brother cannot get the girl. Again.”
“No, no, that’s not it at all! You said that bookstore is called ‘Gateway Books.’ Think about it. That name must be significant.”
Jodie—Jo—likes using both big words and bad grammar. It can be very confusing! I squinted at her. “What do you mean?”
“You said the books in the store have strange, made-up histories in them, like something out of scientification—only not written like a scientification book,” she said as I wrinkled my nose in disgust, “but like a genuine, boring, academic history book. Right?”
“Yes?”
“Well then,” she said, folding her arms and smirking.
“Well what? So what?”
“So, why would a scientification author go to all the trouble of writing one of those silly books full of things like heavier-than-air travel to other planets but in such a boring way?”
“Why indeed?”
“And if someone was dumb enough to write an imaginary book that way, no-one would publish it! Unless it wasn’t fiction in the first place!”
“I do not follow you.” Not for the first time.
“It isn’t fiction, big brother, in some other world!”
My mouth fell open. “You mean that Gateway Books is a doorway to other planets?”
“More amazing even than that, big brother! Think of that letter Teresa wrote you. What’s a ‘cell phone?’”
“I asked her that myself, in my letter back to her.”
“You see? She’s from somewhere else,” Jo said in as dramatic a voice as possible. “Maybe she’s a ghost of some kind. A ghost from another version of Earth, an impossible one!”
“Ghosts cannot write letters,” I pointed out.
“Sure they can. I read a story by E.A. Poe once, ‘The Spectral Letter,’ which was about that exactly.”
“Well I am certain that E.A. Poe, whoever he is, is a great expert on ghosts.”
“Was. He was a great expert. He lived in the nineteenth century. You’re supposed to be the literature person.”
I sniffed. “Some trashy Gothic writer? I never heard of him. Anyway, I do not believe in spooks.”
“Listen to you. ‘I do not believe in spooks.’ You sound like the Fraidy Lion in ‘Dorothy, The Witch of Oz.’”
“Oo! I do believe in spooks, I do I do I do I do I do,” I imitated, making her giggle. We both love that kinetoflick.
I met Judy Garland once, when I was little, before Jo was born, and Mum and Dad took me on a trip to Hollywood. She was an old lady by then of course, living in a huge old mansion outside town on Lake Michigan, and we ran into her going for a walk on the promenade. But I remember how she smiled down at me when I asked if she had lived happily ever after with Auntie Em on that farm in Indiana.
“Well, regardless, I think the only way you’re going to meet this Teresa of yours is back in that old haunted bookstore,” Jo insisted.
“You may be right,” I sighed, more to shut her up than for any other reason.
“So let’s go there together tomorrow.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Any girl mad enough to want to go out with my big brother that bad, or at all, I just have to meet!”
That was too much. I grabbed for her but she skipped out of the way, and I was the one who went headfirst into the fountain.
* * * *
“It’s Jodie’s fault!” I spluttered as my mother stood with her arms folded and shook her head slowly back and forth. “She provoked me!”
“Are you five years old?” Dad snapped, grabbing me by the arm. “Do I have to put you over my knee and spank you?”
Little sister, of course, was laughing so hard her eyes were streaming and she could only make little squeaky noises. And of course I was the one who was confined to the room, with nothing but the kinetoscope for company, and I had already seen all the flip-pictures the hotel had, while that rotter Jodie went out for gelato and a walk along Boathouse Row with Mum and Dad.
And yet the next morning, while Mum and Dad were still sleeping, she woke me up in typical charming fashion by flicking my earlobes and putting her hand over my mouth so I could not protest.
“Shh! We have to go to Gloria’s Gateway Books so we can find your girlfriend, remember?”
“She is not my girlfriend. I have never even met her! She may not even be real!” I said in a furious whisper. “And you have a lot of nerve, after what you did yesterday!”
“Quiet, you’ll wake Mum and Dad,” she said. “I already wrote them a note that you’re taking me to the Franklin Institute to see Sir Ben’s inventions. You know, bifocals, the glass harmonica, the carriage battery—”
“The little sister strangulation device,” I said. “All right, fine. But dress warmly. It is a long walk from here.”
I was not about to admit to her that I did not actually remember where the bookstore was located. She figured it out soon enough anyway. We headed south and east, in the general direction of Parliament Plaza. Soon we were lost in an unfamiliar, deserted part of town. There were neither moving carriages nor street signs. But after two visits to the bookstore one would expect a familiar sight. I looked around with increasing nervousness for some kind of landmark.
“You don’t know where we are, do you, Tom?” Jo asked. She pressed herself against me.
I put my arm around her. “It’s all right, Sis, we shall find it,” I said, trying to sound more certain than I was. Although the sun had been shining when we left, the sky was now covered with a seamless layer of blank grey clouds the shade of the suit my father had worn to Granny’s funeral.
I shivered as the wind got under my coat collar, and, though most of my classmates would have mocked me for it, I tried to remember the prayers the pastor had taught us for times of trouble. But nothing came to me, and I found myself whispering a lullaby Mum used to sing. The lyrics were written by the father of a friend of hers back in Liverpool—Paul something. McCurry, maybe?
Courage, lad
You’ll need courage for the road ahead
For the road full of dread…
“There it is!” Jo exclaimed, pointing.
I rubbed my eyes. The friendly, dusty plate-glass window was patrolled once again by Tiferet, who meowed as we opened the door and walked in.
“I am sorry, Tiferet,” I said, reaching down and ruffling the short soft fur on top of her head, “I came as soon as I could.”
She trotted away toward the back.
“That is where I found the notes from Teresa,” I said, pointing where the cat had run towards the secret back room, “but first we should check the countertop.”
“Check for what?” Jo asked, adding in a squeal, “Peppermint tea! My favourite!” And there was my favourite Ceylon tea, in a mug right beside it. I picked up the note that the two mugs had weighed down. Jo peered over my shoulder.
“Do you mind? It is for me!” I said, snatching it away.
“Not just you. See, it says ‘Welcome Jo’ right there.”
And so it did.
Welcome, Jo. Tom, it’s good to have you back. I think this time, you need not take anything with you, except of course for the note from Teresa. Jo, when you find