Read Online The Power of Un by Nancy Etchemendy - Free Book Online Page B

about the wild-haired, limping old man. I thought about the smell of lightning, about how very weird time is and how little we really know about it.
    I’d never again be able to look at time as a straight line with an arrow at one end. What I saw instead wasa maze more tangled than the roots of an ancient tree—a zillion possible wiggly paths taking off from every single thing I’d ever done in the past or might ever do in the future. I knew if I kept thinking about it I’d probably never be brave enough to use the unner again, and I might go crazy besides.
    I wondered why the old guy had gone to the trouble of finding me, Gib Finney, and giving me—of all the millions of people who messed up in any day, in any hour even—a chance to correct my mistake. Maybe in some mysterious way, Roxy’s accident was even more important than it felt. Which was just one more reason to follow my heart and use the unner, no matter how scary it seemed.
    So I said, “I guess it’s better than no choice at all.” And I got down to business. I found a twig, and I smoothed a spot on the ground where I could write with it. Then I began trying to figure out exactly how long ago the accident had happened.
    I’d forgotten to put on my watch when I got up, but Ash was wearing his. It was 9:15 A.M . Neither he nor I knew for sure what time it was when Roxy and the truck’s bumper had had their fateful meeting. But we knew we’d started for the carnival around 7:30.
    Ash ran his fingers through his hair absently and squatted down beside me so he could see my dirt scribbles. “I remember it was about 9:15 when the ambulance left the carnival,” he said.
    “So the accident happened between 7:30 and 9:15 last night,” I replied, chewing at the inside of my cheek. “If we said 8:30, would that be safe?”
    Ash squinted at nothing. “Eight might be safer.”
    “So how long has it been since 8:00 last night?” I felt a little panicky. I hate word problems, and this was the most awesome word problem of all time.
    “I dunno. Count backward?” said Ash, looking like he wasn’t too sure himself. “Let’s see, 8:15 A.M ., 7:15 A.M ….”
    “Wait,” I said. “Twelve hours ago would be 9:15 last night. So 8:15 would have been thirteen hours, and 8:00 would have been thirteen hours and fifteen minutes.”
    Suddenly we heard someone calling from the direction of the street. “
Gi-i-i-b
! Gib, where are you?” My mom!
    “Hurry up!” said Ash.
    I turned on the unner and pressed the HMODE button, but it didn’t light up. “What the! …” I cried. Nothing happened when I pressed any of the number keys.
    “Hurry!” Ash said again. “Try MMODE!”
    “All right, already!” Like I really needed him to remind me I didn’t have much time. It wasn’t helping me think.
    The MMODE light came on when I pressed it. But minutes … how many
minutes
had passed sincethe accident? Sixty minutes in an hour. I scratched rapidly in the dirt. Sixty times thirteen plus fifteen …
    “
Gi-i-i-b
!” came Mom’s voice again, closer this time.
    A trickle of sweat ran into my eyes. I blinked hard. What was six times three? I couldn’t remember. Sixty times thirteen, plus fifteen … My stick raised little poofs of dust as I worked. One thousand four hundred twenty-one? Could that be right? I wished I’d had time to check my work, then thought,
Well, it’s not such a huge problem. If I make a mistake, I can just use the unner to do it over again
. So I keyed in 1421, the largest number we’d tried yet.
    “Wish me luck,” I said to Ash.
    “That looks weird,” he said. “Is the math right?”
    But by the time he finished asking, I’d already hit ORDER . Just before the world slid away, I glimpsed the mangy mutt watching us from among the trees, its mouth in a crazy grin, its tail slapping the ground.

8
WADING THROUGH TIME
    A ll right. I admit it. Math isn’t my best subject. Everybody, including my teachers, keeps telling me I’d be great if