Hello There, Do You Still Know Me?. Laurie B. Arnold
watched as the cloud evaporated into the night sky.
We settled into our room. Noah laid down on his futon on the floor. I crawled into bed, and after Violet switched off the lamp, she sailed in next to me. She could barely contain herself. “So what you’re saying is, if we had the magic TV, we could travel to the past? How awesome would that be?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Except I don’t even know if it works with a videotape. Or how we’d get the TV back.”
“Can you track down the guy who delivered it the first time?” Noah asked.
“Mike? I have no clue where he is. Or even where he came from.”
We whispered in the dark until I heard my friends’ soft breathing and Leroy’s snores. I tried to sleep, but a slew of thoughts ping-ponged through my head. I kept thinking about Florida, my mom, and my baby announcement. I switched on the reading light and stared at the photo. At last I had proof in a picture that my dad had looked happy to be my dad.
I dug out my drawing book and got to work. I loved to draw. Sometimes I did it to entertain myself. Other times it helped me to make sense of things, and that’s what I did tonight. I sketched my family, hoping it would be a small way to reunite the three of us in pencil and etch the image into my memory.
I was adding the final shading to my drawing when I heard a curious screech. Leroy barked and leaped off the bed.
“Lee-roy, shush,” groaned Violet.
“Yeah, go back to sleep, buddy,” Noah yawned.
Leroy whined.
A funny feeling came over me. A tickle in my gut that I couldn’t ignore.
“Guys, I’ll be right back. I need to check something out,” I whispered.
“I’m up now. Might as well come with you.” Violet slipped on her flip-flops.
“Me too.” Noah rubbed his eyes.
The three of us tiptoed down the breezeway in our PJs, into the darkened lobby. Two headlight beams sliced through the front window, lighting up the room like a soccer field at night.
When I opened the front door you could have knocked me over with a tropical breeze. The Miracle Movers delivery truck, dents and all, was parked outside. Mike got out, checked his clipboard, and scratched his scruffy red beard.
“Hello, Squirt! Your MegaPix 6000 has arrived!” Then he winked.
The magic TV was back!
Had my mom heard me ask for the MegaPix? It wasn’t the only time she’d helped Mike deliver a little magic. Last summer after he’d picked up the TV from our house in Truth or Consequences, he told me he could sense what my mom wanted by reading her messages in the clouds. OK, maybe that sounds a little bit eerie, but it was definitely awesome.
“Hey, can you kids give me a hand?” Mike asked. “I’m traveling solo tonight.”
The three of us helped him haul the enormous flat screen MegaPix 6000 into the lobby of La Posada Encantada. Violet volunteered to get the videotape player.
“Not so fast, Short Stuff. It won’t do you a bit of good,” Mike told Violet. “We’ve got a slight hitch. The last fellow who used this gadget teleported himself from New York City into a National Geographic documentary. He had a close encounter with a lion who mistook the remote control for dinner. Swallowed it whole. Now the poor man is stuck in Africa, maybe forever.”
Last year, when I’d first told Rosalie Claire about the MegaPix, she’d warned me about the dangers of magic. At the time, I couldn’t imagine what could possibly be so risky, but after nearly dying in the Amazon and now hearing about this guy stuck in Africa, I understood.
“So the bottom line, Squirt? We’re down to zero remotes.”
OK, here’s the thing. I was kind of responsible for the first missing remote control. When I’d zapped into Stranded in the Amazon, the TV host took it from me. He’d stuffed it into the pocket of his safari jacket. Then he’d hung it on a tree branch. I’d tried to retrieve it, although I wasn’t fast enough. A spider monkey got to the jacket first and hurled it, remote control and all, into the Amazon River.
Without a remote control, the MegaPix 6000 was useless.
“So, here’s the deal. Before you can help your grandma, you’re going to have to find that remote you left back in the rainforest.”
OK, magic or no magic, it was still a little weird that he knew my grandmother needed help.
“It’s probably at the bottom of the river. Or in the belly of some crocodile,” I said. How in the world would we find it?
“Wait a minute. If you’re magic, can’t you just, you know, poof us another one?” Violet pretended to wave an invisible magic wand through the air.
Mike stared at her as if she’d asked him if gravity was something he’d just made up. “It doesn’t work that way. First of all, wands are only in fairy tales. And second of all, you can’t just magic everything out of thin air. It took a lot of engineering along with a little magic to make those remote controls. Oh, speaking of magical engineering, I did bring along this handy-dandy gizmo.”
He presented us with a shiny black high-tech gadget, about the size of a cellphone.
“The GammaRay Particle Scanner. GPS for short. Use this baby to track down the remote. If it’s around, the GPS will find it. Even if it’s stuck in the guts of a crocodile.”
Oh boy, I hoped we weren’t destined for a spine-chilling round of crocodile wrestling.
“But it was lost in Brazil,” said Noah. “Which is approximately 2,000 miles from here. How do we get there?”
“You kids’ll figure it out. I have confidence in you.” Mike winked again.
“Has anyone ever used a videotape with the MegaPix to zap back in time?” I asked.
“Not so far, although there’s a first time for everything. Sign here, Madison. Then I’ll be on my way.”
He handed me two copies of the contract. They looked like the ones Florida had signed without reading when Mike had delivered the TV to us in Truth or Consequences. I made sure to read every single word.
“Basically, it means we have to be super careful and the MegaPix people aren’t responsible for anything, right?”
“It’s always good to read the fine print.” Mike grinned.
I signed my name on the dotted line beside the big black “X”. One copy I handed to Mike, and the other I kept for myself.
“Well campers, safe travels!” With a wink and a salute, Mike headed out to his rattletrap truck.
Violet, Noah, and I ran outside to watch the Miracle Movers truck bounce down the potholed road. Just as it had back home, the truck screeched, backfired, and then shimmered in the night. We watched as it dissolved into wavy lines, finally disappearing into thin air.
Violet bounced with excitement. “Holy guacamole, that was seriously cool!”
“Not to mention a screaming fast way to commute from New York City. Or wherever the heck he came from. How does he do that, anyway?” Noah ran his fingers through his floppy brown hair.
As much as I would have liked to know the same thing, we didn’t have a spare second to think about it. We had something more important to figure out. How to get ourselves back to the Amazon Rainforest.