Chapter 1 Boomerang

The camp felt too perfectly awful to be an accident. Joshua sat on the pier, arms wrapped around his legs, watching a satellite drift across the sky. Rehab for late kids—what a concept. Day one was a dumpster fire. Day two was already out there, circling.

Down the beach, his cabin sat in darkness. Miracle of miracles, he had snuck out without waking his cabinmates. Scary bunch. Obsessed with punctuality—the smiling-way-too-much kind of obsessed. Probably had a cave where they sacrificed late kids on an altar.

Two figures in black polos, coming down the beach stairs. Joshua flattened against the pier as light swept across the sand. They muttered something and moved on.

Their beams bobbed away. Joshua sat up and looked for his satellite. Abbey stiffened, a low growl building. “Cool it, they’re gone.” She pressed harder against his leg. He squinted, trying to follow her stare. Well, at least he had protection. Nobody messes with a miniature dachshund.

Then he saw it. A dark, narrow shape stretching toward him, like spilled ink still spreading. A shadow, but where was the person? He blinked. There was no person. He scrambled back until he ran out of pier. The shadow stopped inches short of his sneakers. It just sat there. Abbey continued her low growl. Joshua’s lungs were burning. Finally, the thing retreated, and he remembered to breathe.

Water slapped against the pilings. Joshua tracked the shadow sliding away down the pier. Every part of him said don’t do this. Clown shoes. He pushed to his feet. “Stay close,” he whispered.

The dark shape glided up a narrow trail along the lake. Joshua followed with Abbey a few steps ahead, her black coat disappearing into the darkness. He shivered. This thing shouldn’t exist. Maybe his brain had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

The shadow stopped, and a voice filled his head, like someone stuck headphones on him. Your imagination, huh? I only saw werewolves and goblins. Nothin’ like me.

Joshua froze. This thing can talk? And knows what I’m thinking? He drew back. “You some kind of … runaway shadow?”

I don’t run away from nothing. And the name’s Seber.

The trail led them to an overgrown logging road. Overhead branches chopped moonbeams into pieces across their path. A faint rotten smell hung in the damp air. A shrill whistle. Joshua strained to see into the trees. Probably a bird. Or a guy with an axe.

“Where’s the rest of you?” he asked.

What are you yapping about?

A low-hanging limb jutted out. Joshua pushed it aside. “It’s just that … most of the time, it takes an object blocking light to—”

Who knows. Maybe I jumped in here and forgot how to jump out.

The forest crowded closer. A beefy cedar tree spread a maze of fat roots across their path, like octopus tentacles.

Don’t let “Old Creeper” spook you, she said.

“It has a name?”

That’s what campers call it, she said, sliding across. Whispers to them or something.

Joshua took a generous detour. “Hey Seber, where are we going?”

It’s SEE-ber. We’re almost there.

“Well, it better not be a gingerbread house.” He glanced back at Old Creeper. It hadn’t moved.

A little freaked out, are we? We’re headed for the cliffs. Broken Teapot.

“Wait … we’re going to fix a teapot?”

Wind, water, erosion?

“Okay. A rock formation.”

Just relax, Seber said.

Weird. She sounded like she meant it.

The trees thinned, and the underbrush gave way to exposed stone. The road, now a trail, climbed to open rock. They reached a cliff that dropped down hundreds of feet. Water stretched on forever—clearly not the camp’s lake. Abbey barked and scampered back down the path into the woods. Joshua started after her and stopped. Great. He turned in time to see Seber slip over the edge. “What are you doing?”

Searching for a girl who disappeared from your camp.

Heart thumping, he crept toward the drop. “Well, if she fell from here, you can stop looking.”

I need your help finding her.

“Me? Well, you seriously picked the wrong kid.”

And here I thought you were something special.

He inched a little closer, sending pebbles to their doom. “I am anything but special.”

Then why was everyone whispering your name before you arrived?

ONE MONTH EARLIER…

Joshua locked up his bike. The smell of fresh-cut grass usually cheered him up, but not today. Three weeks since his last boomerang—he was overdue. Lousy things. Just like the real ones, his always came back. And you never saw it coming.

The front steps disappeared two at a time beneath him, and he entered the school office. The front desk lady slapped a detention slip into his outstretched hand.

“What, no witty comments?” Joshua asked.

“Most of our twelve-year-olds are looking forward to seventh grade. Witty enough?”

Joshua shoved the note in his pocket and made his way through the hallway. Did she think he tried to be late? Someone whispered “freak” behind him. Fine. Add it to the collection.

Mario was at his open locker in one of Joshua’s old Guns N’ Roses T-shirts. It was a medium—just right for Joshua. Mario was swimming in it.

“You missed the math quiz,” Mario said. “You got issues, late boy.”

Seriously? Of all kids to call him that. They had been best friends since Mario showed up from Switzerland a year ago. His only friend. Then, a three weeks ago, boom. Mario stopped talking to him. Cut him off. No reason.

“Why aren’t both of you in class?” a teacher demanded from a doorway.

Joshua waved his detention slip. “Bathroom pass.”

“I got called to the office,” Mario said, shutting his locker.

“Well, get moving.” The teacher went back into her classroom.

“You in trouble or something?” Joshua said.

“None of your business.”

Joshua grabbed his arm. “Look, it’s been a whole month. What’s going on with you?”

Mario stared. His lips moved, like words were coming, then snapped shut. He jerked away and stalked off. Joshua stood there. What’d I do?

A familiar throbbing filled his head. Ringing in his ears. Oh no, here we go … The overhead lights flickered. Footsteps echoed—like people marching. Walls warped and rippled, and the lockers melted into gleaming puddles. The floor folded in like an accordion.

Everything snapped back into place. Joshua was still in his school hallway. Mario was in front of his locker, shoving in books, but something was off. Mario’s hair was longer. The walls were a different color. Wait—the school was repainted last summer. No way. He’d boomeranged all right. He’d jumped back a whole school year. His legs gave out, right on schedule, and he collapsed in a heap.

“Hey, you all right?” Mario asked.

Joshua pushed himself to a sitting position. “Hey, Mario.”

“How’d you know my name?”

Holy cow. This was the moment they met. He could have replayed it in his sleep. Okay, stick to the script—nothing changes. Bad enough you fell.

“I must have … heard it somewhere. I’m Joshua.”

Mario helped him up just as the hallway filled with students. Joshua’s legs cooperated.

“You’re the first person who’s talked to me,” Mario said, biting into an apple.

“What’s with the accent?”

“I’m from Switzerland. My dad got transferred here by Procter and Gamble. Cincinnati’s the international headquarters.”

Joshua’s mind raced. One wrong word could change everything. The butterfly effect and all. He’d been careful up to now, but a strange thought popped into his head. Maybe one little exception.

“So … French, German, or Italian?” Joshua asked.

“You know our languages.”

Joshua tensed. Step on a bug, a plane crashes in China. He’d never messed with the butterfly effect …  up to now. “I’m half Jewish, half Lebanese, so I’m interested in that stuff.”

This was a terrible idea. But Mario was right here. What if he could lock in their friendship so nothing could undo it?

“Swiss German,” Mario said. “Hey, you the one they call late boy?”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Well, I need help with all this schoolwork,” Mario said. “Swiss people make a lot of clocks, and we’re pretty good at keeping time. Maybe we could help each other.”

Joshua’s heart pounded. Make it unbreakable. He clamped onto Mario’s shoulder and stole a line from his mom’s favorite movie. “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendsh—”

Mario jerked back, pushing off the hand. He glared for a moment, then walked off, his eyes fixed on the floor.

Joshua sagged against the lockers. Oh no.

He wandered through the hall and into a classroom. What have I done?

The dull throbbing and ringing in his ears returned. His ten minutes were up. The lights shook. A scratchy old-time song played over the intercom. Desks and kids melted like sticks of butter. Floor tiles floated up and spun. Faster and faster.

Everything slammed together. An empty school hallway. His school hallway. Whew. His legs gave out, and he hit the floor. His watch read ten after nine—halfway through second period. An hour lost. He hobbled to the boys’ bathroom. Empty as well. One of the stalls would do.

Why did these things keep happening? He rubbed his face. The Mario disaster was bad enough, but what if someone saw him reappear? He’d been lucky so far. But how long before men in black suits and sunglasses hauled him away to a secret lab thirty floors below the Lincoln Memorial?

Joshua slapped the roll of toilet paper, sending it spinning. Eight months of these things. His tumor was probably the cause, but he’d combed through medical journals from Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins. Nothing.

Mario would have been the person to confide in. His fist slammed against the stall. Too hard. Carefully, he eased open the door and stepped out. Still empty. He splashed cold water against his face and looked in the mirror. A few inches behind his nose sat the culprit: his pituitary adenoma. A tumor no bigger than a pea. Oh, there was no cancer, and other kids had them, but his doctor had seemed puzzled by the MRI images.

His annoying bangs fell into his eyes again. He shoved them aside and rubbed his forearm. Light brown, like it should be. Where were the dark splotches, a common side effect? His tumor wasn’t playing by the rules.

Joshua splashed more water on his face. The boomerangs began soon after the adenoma arrived. Sherlock Holmes didn’t believe in coincidences. Neither did he.

He glanced at his watch. Ugh. He ran down the hallway and tried to slide into science class unnoticed. No dice. Tardy slip. Joshua put on his lab apron and joined his table. Small canisters of salts and granular mixtures were set around a large dish of ethyl alcohol. “Cool, the rainbow experiment.”

Olivia, a particularly snotty girl, glared at him. “We’ll handle this.”

Joshua glared back and picked up the canister of lithium chloride. “Simple reaction. Heat changes the energy levels of electrons. They get all fired up, combine, and form compounds. Voilà—pretty colors.”

“Put it down,” Olivia ordered.

Joshua sprinkled lithium chloride crystals into the ethyl alcohol.

“Stop it!” Olivia said. “You missed the safety briefing.”

Joshua lit the mixture with a butane lighter. “We should see a reddish-orange color.”

The ethyl alcohol ignited, along with the vapor cloud that had amassed above it. The air burst into flames and smoke, catching Olivia’s blouse on fire. Joshua threw his lab apron over her. Kids screamed and shouted. The teacher rushed over with an extinguisher as the school’s fire alarm blared out.

An hour later, Joshua sat outside the assistant principal’s office, leaning back in his chair, adding to the dent in the wall he’d been working on for two years. This stunt topped everything, even the aquarium. He couldn’t decide what was worse: facing the woman in the next room or his mom. Soon he’d have his perp walk in the hallway, with students pointing and whispering his name.

The ceiling offered no answers. Well, they already called him a freak. Telling Mr. Mapleton about his boomerangs—what was he thinking? Of all the teachers to trust. All it got him was a bunch of ink blot tests and weekly sessions with a shrink. Then the word got out. Oh, the fun just kept coming. “Find out who built Stonehenge.” “Go see who killed Tupac.” Mario had stuck by him—no one else did. So why did Mario turn on him a month ago?

“Joshua!”

His chair returned to the floor with a thud. His mother stood in her gray sweatshirt and lime-green tights, hands on her hips. “Subs who can teach my aerobic classes don’t grow on trees.”

They sat across from Mrs. Ralisch, her horn-rimmed glasses dangling from a gold chain. A frilly sign behind her read, Teach children to love learning. She straightened a stack of papers. “I’ll get straight to the point, Mrs. Shaheen.”

“From what I was told … this was an accident.”

Mrs. Ralisch leaned forward. “Your son missed a safety briefing by arriving late to class. Fortunately, the girl suffered only minor burns.”

His mom tapped on her phone. “But I understand this involved something called the rainbow experiment. It’s been banned in most states.”

“Well, no one has banned punctuality. Joshua is an enigma if I ever saw one. Despite his endless reading, he is barely passing. Too many fantasy books in my opinion. A bright mind utterly wasted, mostly due to tardiness.”

Joshua dug his fingernails into his jeans. Blah, blah, blah. Like he hadn’t heard it all before. His mom said the first time he was late was when he was born three weeks past his due date. Like that was his fault. Okay, there was his birthday party last year. Fair enough. She still could have saved him a piece of cake. And as for being late to his own funeral? What was she going to do? Ground him? Time just got away from him—like it had somewhere better to be.

“We’re trying some new strategies,” his mom said.

Mrs. Ralisch tapped on her desk. “This was not an isolated incident. We had to remove him from physical education because he never dressed on time. And need I remind you what happened to our sixty-gallon aquarium? Racing through the foyer to catch the bus?”

Joshua’s mother scrubbed her face.

Mrs. Ralisch pressed her fingertips together. “The school has tried to be supportive. We provided counselors and mentors, but nothing has worked.” She tapped the stack of papers on her desk. “I’m suspending Joshua for the remaining two weeks of school.”

His mom choked. “Suspending him?”

“Readmission next fall will depend on a new psychological evaluation and further counseling.”

“No way I’m seeing another shrink,” Joshua muttered.

Joshua’s mother sat a little straighter. “I may have to consult a lawyer. I know a good one. I’m pretty sure she got her license back.”

Mrs. Ralisch picked up a pamphlet. “There … is another option. I had a chance meeting with the Director of Camp Anishinaabe.”

His mom hesitated, then took the brochure. “Camp Anish …?”

“Anishinaabe. They specialize in treating tardy children. Their success rate is quite impressive.”

His mom sat back and read. “Located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Set on a pristine lake surrounded by old-growth forest. Privately funded.” She raised her eyebrows. “Campers stay at no cost to their family.”

Mrs. Ralisch straightened her papers. “If Joshua completes the summer term, I’ll reinstate him next fall.” She returned to her work.

Joshua trudged out of the school and took a seat in their Subaru. His mom put the key in the ignition, then leaned back, staring into space.

“Do I have to see a shrink again?” Joshua finally asked.

She glared at him. “Do you understand what just happened? I can’t afford a lawyer, and my insurance won’t cover this new testing.”

Joshua squirmed.

“How many times have I told you? Think before you act.” She started the car and drove out of the parking lot. “If only your father were here.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have thrown him out of the house.”

“You know better than that. We came to an agreement.”

Joshua shoved his hands against the padded dash. “Like you agreed to stick me with a Jewish first name to go with an Arabic last name? And you wonder why I’m so screwed up?”

“Well, you are half Jewish. And we thought the two together represented peace.”

“More like chaos.”

She stopped at a traffic light. “They’ve cut back my hours; I’ll have to find a second job.”

Joshua looked out his window. “I’m pretty sure lawn mowing still exists.”

“Have you forgotten how you lost all your jobs last summer? All the complaints because you were never—”

“I know why I lost them.”

A horn blared. She rolled their car forward. “I’m doing my best to keep our little family afloat.”

A billboard slid by. Ohio’s finest bratwursts. “You didn’t exactly win the lottery when you got me.”

She shot him a look. “I won big time.”

Joshua lost their staring contest. “This camp—I’d be gone the whole summer?”

“That’s what the brochure said.”

Their car pulled into the drive-thru at Biggby. He’d get his caffè mocha. Bribery, pure and simple. “They’ll make me dig holes in the desert while getting stung by scorpions.”

“Scorpions?”

“I’ve read about places they send juvenile delinquents.”

“Michigan has beaches and sand dunes. First I’ve heard of a desert.” She waited behind a line of waiting cars. “I won’t force you to go to this camp; I promise.”

Joshua watched a dog tugging at its leash. What if the shrink ordered new brain scans and handed him over to the suits in the dark glasses?

The scene came into focus.

He was strapped down on a gurney in a dungeon-like laboratory. A hunched figure in a lab coat and goggles hovered over him. Racks of equipment crowded the walls with glowing dials and levers. Tesla coils sizzled and sparked. Jacob’s ladders shot arcs of light high in the air. Electricity crackled through cables attached to electrodes—electrodes sticking out of Joshua’s neck.

He blinked hard and blew out his cheeks. “I’ll  g