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listless, he looked like all the most helpless parts of a small kid and an old man. For all his vaunted athletic power, CR could be brought to his knees by his dad so easily.
    It really wasn’t fair. After the fateful day at the House, CR had transformed from the awkward, homeschooled new kid in town into that rarest of middle school creatures: a very kind, popular guy. It would have been easy for him to stop saving Benji and Zeeko seats every lunch period at the Cool Kids’ Table, but he never did, not even after enough time had passed for him to learn about the social food chain. Eventually, a couple of guys insisted Benji and Zeeko sit elsewhere. “Yeah, that’s hilarious, ’cause I think so, too,” CR had said. He picked up his tray and led Benji and Zeeko to the only available seats, which were at a small table where kids with special needs sat with their aides. CR ate lunch there with Benji and Zeeko that day and every day for the rest of middle school. Occasionally, some of the nicer cool kids visited there, too. Almost unconsciously, CR had issued the edict that being an asshat was not synonymous with being awesome. He was like a hyperactive superhero who used his powers for good—for mischief, sometimes, but mostly for good. And it always broke Benji’s heart a little when his best friend got a dose of Kryptonite.
    â€œLet’s travel through time for a second,” Benji said. “A year from now, will you give a crap what your dad thinks?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWill what he says matter? Will anything from Bedford Falls matter?”
    CR didn’t smile, but he came close. “No.”
    â€œ Hell no,” Benji said. “’Cause we’re getting out of here.”
    â€œRight,” CR said. “ Adios , I’m getting out. Thanks, Banjo. You know just what to say to make a girl feel better.” He clapped Benji on the shoulder.
    Watching CR clamber up the shore, Benji stood still, feeling a pang of resentment he didn’t like. I said we’re getting out of here , he thought.
    What a weird night.
    He didn’t mean anything by it.
    What a weirdly depressing night.
    A gust of wind pulled past Benji, moving his shadow as it stirred the sky. He cast a last glance toward the lake, looking up to watch the moon glow through the patchwork clouds, in that lovely way it always does.
    But the sky’s reaction was wrong.
    The clouds in front of the moon hadn’t turned white. They’d become green.
    â€œBanjo?” CR called. “What’s up?”
    â€œGood question,” Benji murmured.
    And then, while Benji watched, a cluster of clouds separated from the rest. The cluster was high in the heavens, thousands of feet above him, but now it began to descend, like the clouds were in a controlled dive, piloting themselves toward the quarry.
    Benji’s brain jabbered a string of explanations, but only for a moment before his whole head was filled with silence.
    The green light saturating the detached cluster intensified. By the time it was a few hundred feet above Earth, the color neared neon. In the perfect center of the clouds was a nucleus, brighter than everything around it. Witchy veins of light webbed outward from it.
    It looks like an eye , Benji thought, and remembered seeing something similar outside the field house. Like an eye, opening up.
    He was conscious of Ellie, and Zeeko and CR, sounding surprised and concerned up on the embankment. But they were far away, voices at the other end of a tunnel. Benji was just watching the sky, mesmerized by that cloud and whatever was inside it—
    The beach chair on the shore beside him levitated.
    He let out a shocked shout. The chair rose up in the windless air, then whiplashed forward as if wrenched by an imperceptible tether. It shot end over end across the lake like a stone, skipping on ice with sparks of frost, then dematerialized into the cloud, which had now journeyed