The Lost Celt. A. E. Conran
because the moment she’s done with the “helpers,” she says, “And now it’s your favorite Monday morning moment: what does Monday morning mean?”
“Math!” the class shouts.
“Yep, it’s quiz time!”
Everyone cheers and then, remembering they’re supposed to be upset, they groan. Casey Rubens, sitting across from me, pretends to barf into her pencil case.
“Oh, come on! You love it!” Miss O’Brien shakes the candy jar on her desk. “And today’s special question will be…” She takes two dice from her desk drawer and rolls them while everyone tries to guess the number. “Number nine,” she says, to a mixture of groans and cheers. In the “Monday Morning Means Math” quiz, Miss O’Brien randomly picks one math question before we start. If you get that question right you get a candy, even if you get all the other questions wrong. Everyone loves it.
We grab our pencils and math books. I try to catch Kyler’s eye before Miss O’Brien gets started, but Kyler is a serious quiz-taker. His head is already down. Miss O’Brien launches straight into the questions. Now I’m going to have to tell him without making her nose quiver. This is not easy. Miss O’Brien’s a great teacher, and she’s really fun, but she can be strict too. She doesn’t like anything messing up her Monday Morning Means Math quiz, that’s for sure. The warning sign: she repeats herself for a second time, and then her nose begins to quiver.
As she turns to write on the board, I nudge Kyler. He shakes his head as if I’m a gnat buzzing around his ear.
“Kyler,” I whisper. He swats me away. Five questions later, I finally get his attention. He’s ahead on the quiz and looking around to see how he’s doing compared to everyone else. “I saw a Celtic warrior last night. A real Celt in the VA,” I whisper.
Miss O’Brien looks around. Kyler makes a face. It’s an “I don’t believe you, and why don’t you shut up before Miss O’Brien moves our behavior pegs to orange” kind of face.
“Mikey,” Miss O’Brien points to my math book then returns to writing on the board.
I whisper again.
Miss O’Brien turns back to me. “Mikey, eyes on your work, please.”
I try to tell Kyler one more time and Miss O’Brien twitches her nose. I shouldn’t ignore the sign, but if I don’t tell him now I’m going to burst. And then it’s like some Celtic god has sent a thunderbolt from the sky. The classroom phone rings, and Miss O’Brien is distracted by someone in the office wanting to know whether Naomi Huang has gone to the dentist.
“He was up on one of those wheelie beds,” I whisper. “Red hair, red mustache, torc, tattoos, ripping off his hospital gown, and yelling, ‘Cuckoolaaand!’” I must have said that one word louder than I intended because all of a sudden Casey Rubens is singing, “Cuckooland, Cuckooland, Mikey’s in cloud Cuckooland,” in her chipmunk voice, and everyone’s giggling and making whacko expressions at me.
Miss O’Brien puts the phone down. “What is going on? This is the Monday Morning Means Math quiz, and I should be able to talk on the telephone without pandemonium breaking loose. Pandemonium means lots of noise and goofing off.”
She puts Casey’s and my peg down to orange. Casey points at me as if it is my fault. I make a “too bad” face and shrug. I’m not worried. I’ll get my peg back up again before the end of the day. She won’t be so lucky. She never shuts up.
Kyler seems to get back to his math, but a few seconds later he nudges me and shows me the side of his scratch paper. Red hair? Tattoos? he writes. I nod crazily. Ripped off his shirt? War cries?? He’s really thinking it over now. TORC???? I nod again.
No way, he writes.
Yes way, I write back. I grab a crayon from my pencil box and add some blood splatters and a puddle of red underneath to show I’m serious.
He thinks for a moment. I can tell he is thinking because his mouth hangs open, which is the way Kyler always thinks. Then he grins.
AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! He writes exclamation marks across the page until his pencil lead breaks.
At recess, I sit him down at one of the lunch tables, as far as we can get from other kids, and tell him everything while he pulls out his snacks. Kyler’s the smallest, skinniest guy in our grade, but he’s big on snacks.
“You should have seen him, Kyler. He was up on the bed, yelling, fierce as anything, and the look he had in his eyes…”
Kyler groans as if he’s in pain and interrupts with stuff like, “I can’t believe it. Why didn’t Dad take me to the ER with you? This is killing me, Mikey, killing me!” But he doesn’t doubt me, not once.
That’s the great thing about Kyler. He’s seen every time-travel documentary he can find, and he loves books where people are called “Zethos” and “Mildar” and live on planets where you can fall off the edge and every animal has two heads and six rows of teeth. So, a real live Celt in California doesn’t come as too much of a shock.
I’m just getting to the truly amazing part, when Kyler interrupts. “So, he wore a torc and was covered in tattoos?”
“Yep,” I say.
“And he freaked out, like he’d never seen modern stuff before—”
“That’s it! So I took a picture to show you—”
“You got a picture?”
“No, but I tried, and that’s when he pointed right at me. He spoke in a foreign language, and then he said, ‘Not this time!’ He knew he was in the wrong time, Kyler!”
“Wow!” Kyler throws his arms back and splays his legs out, as if he’s just collapsed. “Wow,” he says again.
“I know!” I feel myself break into an emoticon grin. Life doesn’t get any better than this. “So, I guess he’d just traveled here, or got transported or whatever, which is why he was freaking out—”
“But he spoke English,” Kyler says, pulling a chocolate milk from his bag.
“And another language, too.”
“Yeah, but he spoke English and the Celts didn’t.”
I can’t believe Kyler’s worrying about this right now. “So, the guy was speaking English. So what?”
“So…if he’s learned some English…then he must have been here for a long time or maybe it’s not the first time he’s traveled here?”
“Oh man, you’re right, that’s kind of what your mom said.”
“Mom?” Kyler sits bolt upright. “My mom was there? In the room?”
“Yeah, didn’t I say?” I feel kind of sick. I can’t make myself look Kyler in the face, so I look at the ground instead. It feels awkward, but it’s a lot less awkward than telling Kyler I think his mom is part of a conspiracy to hush up time travel. Doesn’t that make her a bad guy? “She was awesome, by the way,” I mumble.
“So? What did she say?”
There’s something about direct questions that I hate. I think it’s that millisecond of thinking I could lie and then knowing I can’t. “She took me aside, Kyler. Told me it was a big secret, but it’s been happening for years.” Just saying it out loud makes my voice crack with the sense of how awesome this is. “They come on certain nights. He’s not the only one, and sometimes the same guys keep coming back.”
“Wow!” Kyler leans forward and shakes his head. “So, you think this guy has been here before and that my mom is…like…in on it?”
“I don’t know,”