5
I walked back down the hill slowly, because my legs were trembling. Hell, my mind was trembling. I was climbing my own front porch steps before realizing that I was also hungry. Ravenous, in fact.
Radar was waiting to greet me, but not in the frantic way I expected; just a happy wag, a few bounces, and a head-rub against my thigh before heading back to her rug. I realized I’d expected frantic because it felt like I’d been gone a long time. In reality it had been less than three hours. A lot had happened in those hours—life-changing stuff. I thought of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol saying The spirits have done it all in one night.
There was leftover meatloaf in the fridge, and I made a couple of thick sandwiches, going heavy on the ketchup. I needed to fuel up, because my day was only beginning. I had a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow. I would not be going back to school, and my dad might—probably would—be coming home to an empty house. I was going to try to find the sundial Mr. Bowditch had spoken of. I no longer doubted that it was there, and I no longer doubted it could turn back time for the elderly German Shepherd currently snoozing on her rug in the living room. I was less sure that I could get her down those winding steps, and I had no idea how I was supposed to get her forty （or fifty, or sixty） miles to the city. The one thing I was sure of: I couldn’t afford to wait.
6
As I ate, I thought. If I was going to be gone, and with Radar, I had to lay a false trail that would lead in some direction other than to Mr. Bowditch’s house. An idea came to me while I was going out to the garage, and I thought it would serve. It would have to.
I got my dad’s wheelbarrow, and a bonus. On one of the shelves was a bag of calcium hydroxide, more commonly known as quicklime. And why did Dad have that? You guessed it: roaches. Some in our basement, some in the garage. I put the bag in the wheelbarrow, then went into the house and showed Radar her leash.
“If I take you to the top of the hill, will you be good?”
She assured me with her eyes that she would, so I hooked her up and we walked to 1 Sycamore, me pushing the wheelbarrow and she walking beside it. Mrs. Richland was back at her usual post, and I half-expected her to ask what all the rumpus had been about earlier. She didn’t, just asked if I was planning to do some more work around the place. I said I was.
“You’re very good to do it. I suppose his estate will be putting it up for sale, won’t they? Maybe the estate will even pay you, but I wouldn’t count on it. Lawyers are stingy. I hope the new owners don’t tear it down, it looks so much nicer now. Do you know who inherited?”
I said I didn’t.
“Well, if you happen to find out the asking price, let me know. We’ve been thinking about selling, ourselves.”
We suggested there was a Mr. Richland. Who knew?
I said I would be sure to do that （in a pig’s eye）， and rolled the wheelbarrow around back with the end of Radar’s leash looped over my wrist. The old girl was moving well, but it wasn’t a particularly long walk up the hill. Miles to the abandoned city, though? She’d never make it.
Radar was calmer this time, but as soon as I unhooked her leash she went straight to the sofa bed in the living room, sniffed it over from end to end, and laid down beside it. I brought her a bowl of water, then went out to the shed with the bag of quicklime. I shook it over the remains of the cockroach and watched with some amazement as the decay sped up to a sprint. There was a hissing, bubbling sound. Vapor rose from the remains, which would soon be nothing but a puddle of lime-slime.
I picked up the revolver, took it back into the house, and put it in the safe. I saw a couple of pellets that had rolled away into a corner and dropped them into the bucket with the rest of the gold. When I went downstairs, Radar was fast asleep.
Good, I thought. Get all the sleep you can, because tomorrow is going to be a busy day for you, girl.
This was already a busy one for me, and that was also good. It didn’t keep me from thinking about the other world—the red poppies flanking the path, the shoe-woman with almost no face, the glassy towers of the city—but staying busy probably kept me from having a delayed reaction to my close call with Christopher Polley. And it had been close. Very.
The little bastard hadn’t bothered with the stacks of reading matter in the hall between the kitchen and the back door in his hunt for the gold. I didn’t bother with the books, but I spent an hour wheelbarrowing stacks of magazines—conveniently done up in hayrope—out to the shed. I stacked some over the remains of the roach. I piled most of them near the well of the worlds. When I went down the next time—when we went down—I’d put the stacks on the boards and try to cover the opening entirely.