Lizard People by Charlie Price Page B

so … what if he had gone somewhere in his mind and couldn’t come back now?

Strings and Wormholes
    After school the next day, I drove by Marco’s house to ask him what he thought he was doing, to confront him. Make him tell me the truth about that story. He wasn’t home.
    Back at my place, I was sitting in the living room, planning, while Mom was napping in her bedroom. I would wait for midnight, until she was down for the night, and then I’d go motel hunting again. Bars would be closed, and Dad would have sacked for the night. Dad’s sneaky but he’s lazy. I didn’t think he’d be farther than ten miles from the bar where I found him earlier.
    I called Hubie, who had most of the same classes I did, to see if I could get some back homework.
    â€œWhat all have you been doing?” He sounded like he was eating.
    â€œUh, some family stuff came up and I’ve been trying to take care of it.”
    â€œYour mom again? Tough.”
    â€œHey, could you tell me any homework I missed early in the week?” I didn’t want to talk about Mom.
    Hubie filled me in.
    â€œIf you want to come over, I’ll copy the stuff.”
    â€œThanks, but I can’t tonight.”
    â€œOkay. They’ll let you hand them in next week. What else do you have? Chem with Sarah, right? You could call her and she’d tell you the work. Anything else?” he asked.
    â€œHistory, but we’re just reading Zinn and discussing it.”
    â€œCool. Hey, you want to come eat with us?”
    â€œHey, Hube, I’d like to. Tomorrow maybe.”
    â€œWell, if there’s anything else you need, call,” Hubie said. “You want me to call Sarah about the Chemistry assignments?”
    â€œNo thanks. I’ll get it later … but there is one more thing. Uh, what do you know about wormholes?”
    â€œI thought you only fly-fished.”
    â€œNo, I mean like in physics. Something that connects two places in space-time? Or even one universe to another?”
    â€œAre you writing a paper of some kind?”
    â€œNo. Uh, a friend mentioned the idea, and I wasn’t sure I understood about them. Can you … could a person go from one time to another, if they found one?”
    â€œWow. I don’t think even Stephen Hawking can answer that question. They’re just theoretical, you know. Einstein’s relativity, or maybe Witten’s string theory, suggests it, I think. And there are a zillion unanswered questions about how they would even work. Like, could information pass through and maintain its integrity?”
    â€œWhoa! Whoa. I just want to know could they jump through time?”
    â€œWell, jump is probably a misnomer.”
    â€œHubie!”
    â€œOkay. Okay. Theoretically, uh, maybe. I have to get through my post-doc at MIT before I can really answer that question.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, “that’s good enough for a start.”
    â€œYou should be asking Kaitlin about this space stuff,” he said. “I think she went lunar several years ago.”
    Hubie knew I had a thing for his sister. He put up with it. Barely. He never called her Z like she wanted. I bet that made for some fights.

Drug Dealer?
    I woke up at the kitchen table about midnight, Trig problems and sheets of scratch paper in a mess around me. I checked on Mom. She was snoring. I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t sleepy. I was ready to find Dad.
    Before I got in the car, I stood on the porch and closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to get a feeling about where Dad might be, like I had before with the bar. Out of plain sight, I thought, so neither Mom nor Charlene would be likely to run into him. Cheap, but somehow a good deal, like maybe it had refrigerators in the rooms. Close enough so he wouldn’t have to drive too far drunk at closing time. He might switch bars since I’d found him, but I didn’t think he’d move to