had to move out here to Hicksville, the reason Mom and Dad had given her and Arnold that long, long talk about how “we all have to keep our heads down” so no one would bother Dad in his new job as a technical writer at the Wallops Island Fusion Plant.
Nobody wanted to be the cause of discord that threatened the Cosmic Harmony. Even Dad hadn’t wanted to do that with those articles he wrote back when he was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, not really, not when the High Ones had brought peace and prosperity and cures for cancer and a bunch of other diseases and clean, cheap energy with them from Gliese 581d, twenty light-years away. Dad had just wanted to do his job, he said: making sure the Office of Interstellar Liaison within the State Department was doing its job right and making good use of taxpayer money. The High Ones were always saying they wanted to improve inefficient human ways of doing things, weren’t they? So what could be more harmonious, and patriotic, too, than helping achieve that goal? But the newspaper’s editors hadn’t seen it that way. By that time Mom was already too sick to work, so they had a desperate couple of months until Dad found the tech writing job at Wallops and they moved out to Chincoteague.
The cloudy afternoon sky seemed to lower itself slowly over Alison’s head as she hurried home after Mr. Wright finally dismissed her. Arnold should have been waiting for her, she was so late, but the house was empty. She ran out again, the cold air tearing at her throat as she crossed Main Street, heading back to school. But the main doors were locked and the hall lights were out. Circling around the building, she saw a light on in the library. Once again she found the emergency exit was unlocked. Pretty ironic, considering all the trouble Arnold is in for—whatever he did at security.
“Hello?” she called as she entered.
This time Gloria straightened up immediately from behind the counter, smiling when she saw who it was. Today she was wearing a bright orange, sequin-spangled blouse. How on Earth does she get away with that? But there were more important questions that needed answering.
“Where’s Arnold?”
“Not here.”
“I can see that. But where is he? He got in big trouble today.”
A sigh. “I know.”
“You do? Then you know they called my father at work.”
“Yes. Poor Jerry. He’s such a nice man to suffer such tsuris.”
Alison gave her a long, hard look. She hadn’t heard anyone use the Yiddish word for trouble since her grandfather died five years ago.
Could she be baiting me? Aloud, she said only, “So, where are they?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They both needed a break after what they went through, so I helped them over to Jo’s Chincoteague.” Her green eyes were wide, innocent. “That’s okay, isn’t it? I just put them there now—if you hurry, you can catch up with them in time to see the dragon.”
CHAPTER 6
Arnold had never heard a girl talk so much in all his life as this Jo person, but it was sometimes a bit hard to understand her since she talked really fast and had a funny accent, a cross between British and Eastern Shore.
From the moment he and Dad had stepped out into the bookstore in this strange new version of Chincoteague, Jo had kept up a steady stream of chatter, pointing out and explaining everything they ran across, including things that needed no explaining, like seagulls and street signs.
The streets, Arnold finally interrupted her to say, mostly had the same names as back home. Some of the people looked familiar, too, though nobody seemed to recognize him or Dad. Arnold ducked behind a tree when he saw Matt Walters, but the bully wasn’t with his usual gang. He was better dressed than usual and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts.
There were way more people out in the streets than there had been at home, which was odd considering that it was even colder here, but Jo explained that it was a holiday called Union Day, “when we celebrate the unification of all the colonies under the Crown.”
“What does that mean?” It was the first question Dad had asked. He’d been quiet and wide-eyed the whole time, like a little kid on his first visit to Mars. Arnold’s memory of that very moment in his own life was vivid in every detail—he could reproduce on paper every detail of the rusty-red planetscape wheeling by far below, and he did so often, especially when class got too boring. But this strangely altered Chincoteague was even more amazing than Mars!
“Oh, that was part of the dirty deal Sir Ben Franklin worked out with the king—actually, with William Pitt,” Jo said. “They make us learn all about it in school. It’s how the colonies first got representation in Parliament—lucky for Parliament and even for batty old George III, or they’d have had nowhere to go when Bone-a-fart invaded the Home Islands.”
“I see,” said Dad, the way people did when they meant they didn’t understand at all. He shook his head. “I can’t believe all those might-have-beens are real somewhere. It’s like a fairy tale.”
“I think it’s fun!” Jo exclaimed. “I mean, travel to other worlds might seem pretty boring to you two blokes, but we just invented mechods last year.”
“Mechods?” Dad said.
Jo rolled her eyes. Arnold thought they were her best feature, brown and lively, with sparkling green flecks. “Don’t tell me you’re another one like Mom, always correcting people when they use contractions! Fine, mechanical dragons, are you happy? Heavier-than-air craft. My Dad helped design the British ones,” Jo said with unmistakable pride, “and he got a lot of inspiration of course from our real dragon. There he is now!”
Dad started and Arnold felt his heart speed up. “Who, the dragon?” Dad said.
“My dad, of course. Our dragon is a girl. People call her Assateague Ashley, though her real name is Ir’befunzu.” She pronounced Assateague as if it were two words. “There’s my dad, on top of the bandstand.”
They had been walking down Maddox Boulevard toward Assateague Island. At the same spot where, back in the real world, a McDonald’s marred the view of Assateague Lighthouse across Assateague Channel, an old-fashioned wooden bandstand had been set up and draped with patriotic red-white-and-blue-bunting (though the flags, when Arnold got a close look at them, were unfamiliar, looking like a cross between the Union Jack and the Confederate battle flag).
The man Jo had indicated stood before a bulky microphone, which he tested by rapping on it with his knuckles. He was a little above average height, with messy, sandy hair, and was wearing blue jeans and a black windbreaker. His face was ruddy and there were smile lines at the corners of his mouth.
A crowd milled around in the grassy space in front of the bandstand, talking loudly and laughing. Many of them were casually swigging from beer bottles—even middle-school-age kids, Arnold was amazed to note. Dad tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Don’t get any ideas.” The bright orange sun was still shedding plenty of light although it was nearing the western horizon, far off to the right in the direction of the mainland.
Jo’s dad cleared his throat and asked for quiet. “Welcome, everyone, to the first-ever Union Day air show!” There were cheers. His voice was deep, resonant, and accented like Jo’s. “As most of you know, I am Michael Purnell, the chief ranger at His Royal Majesty’s Dragon Refuge on Assateague Island, home of our very own Assateague Ashley.”
The applause was dying down when someone shoved Arnold so hard from behind that he almost fell onto the person in front of him. He spun around, expecting to see that even in another world, an alien version of Matt Walters couldn’t just leave him alone, but instead it was his big sister, who was panting hard.
“Sorry,” Alison whispered, “I had to run to get here. What did I miss?”
“Nothing yet. That’s Jo’s dad on the platform,” Arnold explained. So many people shushed him, it sounded like a windstorm had started.
“—the discovery that a few people have the ability to mindspeak with