Lost in Cyberspace by Richard Peck Page B

in those clothes.”
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    In Linear Decoding, Aaron was sitting across the room from me. We were reading The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, a dead English writer. I didn’t see Aaron in Science or Gym. I didn’t see him at lunch. He’d be diddling his data again.
    This gave me time to get skeptical again. True, he’d vanished before my eyes. But it could have been an ... optical illusion. He could have been messing with my mind.
    After school he turned up and said, “Let’s walk home.”
    â€œWhat about muggers?”
    â€œMuggers, shmuggers,” Aaron said. “I haven’t been outdoors since yesterday morning. I could use some air.”
    As we turned down Fifth Avenue, I decided not to ask him anything. If this whole thing was a scam, I didn’t want to fall for it. Then I couldn’t think of anything to talk about. We trudged along for a few blocks. Aaron sticks his feet out funny when he walks.
    At the Eighty-sixth Street light I said, “We’ve got another O Pear.”
    â€œTell me about it, Josh.” But he was listening with only half an ear.
    â€œShe’s different from Fenella. Way different. Her name’s Feona Foxworthy. She’s okay, I guess. The funny thing is, Heather likes her.”
    Aaron froze. “Heather?” He doesn’t have that much of a relationship with Heather. And she calls him Pencil-Neck.
    â€œFeona got Heather into Camilla Van Allen’s peer group, so Heather likes her. Feona’s horsey.”
    Aaron quivered. He pulled on his chin in a thoughtful, weird way. “Tall girl? Long face? Plenty of teeth? Ponytail? Riding hat?”
    â€œThat’s her. You see her on the elevator or someplace?”
    â€œSomeplace,” he said. “Where are they now?” His hand was closing over my arm.
    â€œHeather and Feona?” I said. “Who knows?”
    â€œYikes,” Aaron said. “This could be the day.” He was so hyper, he was almost doing a dance.
    He started running down Fifth, dragging me along. I didn’t know he could move that fast. He should go out for track instead of always signing himself out of Gym.
    â€œWhere are we going?” I gasped. But he was saving his breath. We almost vaulted the hood of a cab at Eighty-second.
    â€œWhoa,” I said at the light on Seventy-ninth, which has traffic both ways. But he was jogging in place and breathing hard. He was stretching his neck to see down Fifth Avenue.
    He wouldn’t wait for the light to change. He made an end run around a crosstown bus, stopping a van in its tracks. Then we were streaking down the sidewalk again, coming up on my mugging site. Yellow cabs flowed south, and we almost kept up with them.
    Then it was like the world stopped. All the cabs screeched to a halt. So did Aaron. So did I. Cabbies leaned on their horns. Metal crunched from a couple of fender-benders behind us. The cabbies were rolling down their windows and yelling in every language but English.
    â€œToo late,” Aaron said. “And we were this close.”
    The cabs weren’t going anywhere now. He darted out and sprinted between them down Fifth Avenue. Then we got there.
    Two horses—big ones—were in the middle of the street. One was reared up with its hooves fighting the air. Our 0 Pear, Feona Foxworthy, was on it. One of her boots was out of the stirrup. Her riding hat was slipping off. She’d lost the reins and had the horse’s neck in a death grip. “Daddy!” Feona shrieked. “Mummy!”
    The other horse was stamping on Fifth Avenue pavement, and its eyes were rolling. Connected to it by a rein was Heather. She was stretched out in the middle of the street in a new top-of-the-line riding outfit: velvet hard hat, tweed coat, riding pants, and boots. Some gray snow was sticking to her, so she must have been thrown off in the park and dragged here into traffic. You could tell the horse didn’t like