FROM WHATSHISFACE
All at once, the phone emits a sound like a truck with bad brakes and vibrates its way out of his hand, dropping to the carpeted floor. By the time Cooper stoops to pick it up, the image on the screen has dissolved into a whirlwind of particles.
“Not again.” The GX-4000 is dark, but after a few seconds, it lights back up, the screen dancing with color, morphing in and out of elusive shapes.
Then the phone does something new and unexpected. It speaks.
“Is anyone there?”
Cooper freezes. What now? Is someone Skyping him? Video chatting? Nothing rang, and Cooper never answered any call.
He says the first thing that comes to mind, not realizing how stupid it sounds until the words are already out. “I think you have the wrong number.”
“Number?” the voice asks. “Who speaketh thus?”
Cooper frowns. Someone is crank calling him—probably Brock or Aiden or one of those jerks, putting on a fancy British accent and talking like Shakespeare. They’re trying to make him look even stupider than he looked at the audition.
“I speaketh thus!” Cooper growls. “How did you get this number?”
“Show thyself, stranger, that I might look upon thee.”
“Now, listen, you—”
Cooper’s breath catches in his throat. He watches dumbstruck as the swirling snow on the screen slowly collects in the center.
A man—no, a kid. A boy not much older than Cooper.
But this is no ordinary kid. He looks—wrong. He wears a dingy white shirt with puffy sleeves, patched at the elbows and held in place by a tight-fitting vest laced down to his waist. His hair is a mass of fair curls topped by a strange hat—almost like a baseball cap with no brim, only softer, velvety. Instead of pants, he wears what look like bloomers that end midthigh. His legs are clad in tights. His shoes are more like slippers, made of some kind of soft leather.
“What are you supposed to be—Robin Hood?” Cooper asks.
The boy is clearly annoyed. “Waste not my time with thy silly jests! I demand to know the nature of this place!”
“Hey, hey, back up!” Cooper retorts. “You called me, remember?”
“You would have done the same,” the boy states firmly. “So long in darkness, surrounded by this featureless ether. So many unfamiliar sounds, nearby yet unseen. And then a window opens and I behold thee. A stranger sight these eyes have never seen.”
“I’m strange? Have you looked in the mirror lately? I’m hanging up now!” Cooper taps the phone, but the end-call option does not appear. This isn’t Skype or any app like that. Come to think of it, in order for this kid’s whole body to be on-screen, he has to be standing at least ten feet away from his phone or computer, or whatever he’s calling on. In that case, though, wouldn’t Cooper be able to see the room around him?
The stranger is totally visible, from the string that ties his collarless shirt at his throat to the stripes on his pantaloons. But there’s nothing around him—not a lamp, not a table, not a picture on a wall, or even a wall itself.
Cooper thinks of the boy’s words—featureless ether. This is no crank call, and this kid is no dimwit like Brock, putting on his Halloween costume to pull Whatshisface’s chain. The person on the screen seems to be telling the truth—or at least the truth as he understands it.
Of all the messed-up things the GX-4000 has done, this one is top of the list.
Cooper asks the million-dollar question: “Who are you?”
“Roderick Barnabas Northrop, printer’s apprentice. Thou mayest call me Roddy, if it pleaseth thee. And thou art . . . ?”
“Cooper Vega. Uh—seventh grader.”
“The seventh grade of what?” Roddy inquires. “What is thy apprenticeship?”
“I’m not an apprentice. I’m in middle school.”
Roddy’s brow furrows under his fringe of curls. “Thy words are peculiar to mine ears. As I suspect my words are to thine.”
Cooper sighs. “Tell me about it.”
“I have just done thus,” Roddy says in surprise. “Thy manner of speaking is unusual. What part of England art thou from?”
“No part of England,” Cooper replies. “I’m an American.”
Roddy’s eyes open wide. “The Americas—the New World! How is it that I can see thee? What is this miracle?”
Cooper’s head has been spinning throughout this impossible encounter. He knows he has to ground himself—find some connection between this weirdness and reality. When the next question forms on his tongue, he realizes it’s the one he should have asked first.
“Roddy—what year is this?”
Roddy answers immediately. “Why, it is the year of our Lord 1596, of course.”
“No way!” Cooper blurts. “It’s 2018!”
“Dost thou think me an idiot?”
“Look!” Cooper holds the phone screen up to the school calendar hanging on his wall.
“October 2018!” Roddy reads the date in astonishment. “What is this deceit? What harm have I done thee that I am treated thus?”
“It’s the truth! You think I printed up a fake calendar on the off chance that some weirdo from 1596 might show up on my phone?”
“I know not this ‘phone’!” Roddy tells him in growing agitation. “Explain thyself!”
“It’s this, uh, machine I carry around.” Cooper struggles to find words that might make sense to Roddy. “Everybody has phones in 2018. You talk to people on them—that’s how I’m talking to you right now. And I can see you—I mean, not the real you. More like your image.”
“Impossible,” Roddy declares firmly. “I have never sat for any portrait.”
“It’s not the same thing. There’s a camera—” He cuts off the explanation. If you’ve never heard of a phone, you probably don’t know what a camera is either.
There’s a knock at the door, and Mrs. Vega leans into the room. “It’s getting kind of late, Coop. Don’t you think you can talk to your friend tomorrow?”
Cooper quickly places the GX-4000 facedown on his bedspread. “Okay, Mom,” he mumbles, not at all sure if there will be a tomorrow with this particular “friend.” He isn’t totally convinced it’s happening now.
“All right, honey, sleep well.”
Cooper waits until her footsteps recede down the hall before turning the phone over again. “Sorry, that was just my mom—”
He’s talking to a blank screen. “You can come out now, Roddy. The coast is clear.” He tries again, “Uh—thy coast is clearest.” Nothing.
He presses the home button, but the only thing to appear is the array of apps.
He speaks into the voice command. “Dial the most recent caller.”
The number that appears on the screen is his mom’s. Cooper hangs up, determined to reach Roddy again. But how? As far as Cooper knows, Roddy doesn’t have a phone number. He doesn’t even understand what a phone is. How do you dial into the past? Long distance? How about long ago?
Feeling foolish, Cooper brings up the keypad and taps in 1-5-9-6.
“Your call cannot be completed as dialed . . .”
Cooper knows it can’t. The question is: How was it completed the first time around?
He lies on his back, staring at the darkened phone. How many hours has he spent over the past few days trying to will this miserable piece of junk to shut up, to cut out the blurping, buzzing, chiming, and vibrating that keeps him up night after night? Well, now he has his wish. The thing is totally quiet. Somehow, though, he understands that he’ll get even less sleep tonight, tossing and turning, wondering if he’s losing his mind.
Did he really just have a conversation with a kid who lived hundreds of years ago? How? Buggy phones are pretty common. They’ll definitely drive you nuts. What they won’t dois communicate with past centuries.
And yet there’s the evidence of Cooper’s own eyes and ears. Roddy—the things he said and the way he said them. The accent. The words that sound like Shakespeare’s plays. Even Roddy’s strange clothing seems familiar, as if Cooper has seen it before. And he has—when Mr. Marchese showed everybody the school’s wardrobe room on audition day.
Or did I hallucinate the whole thing?
That’s possible too. In fact, it’s probably true.
The longer he lies awake, waiting for his dormant phone to burst to life, the more convinced he becomes that the entire “conversation” was a figment of his imagination, the result of a stressful move to a town full of jerks. Plus, he has Shakespeare on the brain, thanks to Romeo and Juliet.
He changes into pajamas and climbs into bed. It’s settled, then. There’s no Roddy Northrop, and there never was.
Cooper pulls the covers to his chin. That solves one problem and opens up another.
The fact that I’m probably going crazy.