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kiss.
    At eleven that night, I sat by my window, wishing it faced the carriage house. It was an odd-numbered day now, so if the note from future me was for real, nobody should be coming through. But didn’t that mean this “Jimmy Hayes, 1967” might be waiting for me ten years back? Did he even know about the mirror? Had he already gone to 1957?
    Luka had done it. She had just stepped through the mirror and into my time. Melissa and Keisha as well. And there was a note, two now, asking for our help. I had to go, didn’t I?
    But ten years. No one in the world would know me. I would be a four-year-old out there. What if I got caught? What if Luka was wrong and the mirror broke? Why didn’t any of these other stupid kids on the list have these fears? What kind of idiots were they?
    I couldn’t do this.
    I couldn’t.
    At eleven thirty, I crept down to the first floor and spent fifteen minutes assembling the most complete survival-in-the-past backpack I could think of. Two flashlights, a handful of chocolate bar, a half bottle of juice, and all the quarters I could find so at least I’d have some money. Some of them had post-1967 dates, but I figured they’d still be more convincing than paper money, which I’d checked and found all marked 1972.
    Two minutes before midnight.
    Help me make it not happen, Kenny.
    Help me make it not happen.
    Kenny.
    I put my hand on the mirror and pushed.
    Either I was getting used to the resistance, or it was getting easier. The cold was still there, worse than any January wind on bare skin, but I pushed through faster this time, got my hand on the other side, braced it on the mirror in the past, then pulled my head and shoulders after it.
    For all my caution, I misjudged my balance. I got a look at a flickering light, and maybe two figures near it, then I tumbled out, the mirror loosening its grip on me, and fell onto the floor of the carriage house.
    “There he is,” said a voice from below. “Get him!”

Five
    The Rules
    5. The mirror only picks one kid every decade. It never picks anyone older than sixteen.
    Boots thumped up the stairs, and before I could get on my feet, someone grabbed me. Two someones. They grasped my arms, pulled me up, and marched me down the stairs. I slipped once and cracked my knee, but they didn’t let go.
    The flickering came from a Coleman stove. The bigger of the two kids holding me turned me toward him. “Well,” he said. “If it isn’t the kid from the future. What’ve you got for us, H. G. Wells?”
    He was bigger than me, seventeen or eighteen maybe. “Here,” he said, “let’s have a look at the backpack.” He took it from me. I held my hands at my sides and shivered. The hand warmers helped, as did the flickering flame of the Coleman stove, but I was still almost incapacitated by the chill of time travel. “I’m Rick,” he said, opening my backpack and looking at my thermos, wrapped coins, spare batteries, pen, paper, and Hershey bars. “No smokes? What’s your name, kid?”
    “Kenny Maxwell.”
    “Well, Kenneth Maxwell,” he said, “welcome to the past. Have a seat.”
    He put a hand on my shoulder and I let myself be guided down. He sat too, and waved to the other kid to do the same. “Listen, Rick,” the other kid said. “Maybe I should go. We don’t want my folks to wake up.”
    Now that I could see him, this other kid was only an inch taller than me. He had a mess of sandy hair and looked nervous.
    “Sit down, Jimmy,” said Rick. “You got no curiosity? Kid’s from 1977. Isn’t that right, H. G. Wells?” I nodded. They had seen me come out of the mirror and seemed to know what was going on. Why deny it? “So, what’s happened in the future, Kenneth? We’ve been waiting a while for you. We were beginning to think you’d had a nuclear war up there and you weren’t coming. You look kind of good for a mutant monster, though. Did the Ruskies attack?”
    “No,” I said. “Not even in 1987 or 1997 or 2007.”