The Return: Disney Lands (26 page)

“What subject? I haven’t said anything.”

“This is a stupid game.”

Jess shrugged.

“Switched off? Why? Is it because the OTs are back?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jess said. “We’re
done
here, all right?”

“Done?” Amanda’s face expressed surprise so strong it bordered on outrage. “We’re done.” Her voice quieted again as the meaning sank in. “No.
They’re
done. Finn? Philby?”

“We’ve got
five
great friends.”

“All of them! You want me to contact all
of them. They’re in trouble?”

“They’re always in trouble,” Jess said, shrugging and reaching for the desk lamp. But she didn’t turn it off, not yet.

“Time is running out,” Amanda whispered.

“Who can stop it?”

“Their time is limited. Someone’s going to stop something. I need to tell everyone.” Amanda looked as if she might jump out of her bed and run out the door.

From her position
by the desk, Jess sighed, releasing a flood of pent-up tension. She hung her head like a marathoner at the end of a long race. “It’s good to be talking
again,” she said, stepping forward across the laundry-strewn floor and grinning as Amanda accepted her hand.

“W
E CAN
’
T TELL ANYONE
,” Philby said.
He spoke
with biting authority. “Not our parents, not Wanda, not Joe. No one.”

The five Keepers had come together in a video chat room. On the screen, each face was roughly the size of a playing card.

“The clothes are important,” Finn said. “Thrift stores. Costume shops. There isn’t a lot of time.”

“What exactly is the rush?” Charlene sounded peeved. She’d missed a fancy party to
attend the conference, and was still sulking about it.

“We don’t know, but we’ve been warned,” Philby said. “Amanda was very clear. She thinks maybe something’s being shut down. One of the parks? The DHIs? Who
knows? For maintenance? Security? It doesn’t really matter. The point is to get across, find Walt’s pen, and get it where it needs to be.”

“What Philby means is...or, I should
say, what it’s important we all understand,” Willa addressed the group as a whole, “is that if whatever’s going on includes
shutting down the projectors, it’s probably going to be a day or two or more until we return.”

“My show’s on hiatus for ten days,” Charlene said, reminding them for the fourth time. “It sucks, you guys. I wanted to get back home and be with you all. But I’ll
tell
my mother I have to do some looping, that it’s going to be another day or two. Any more than that, she’s going to freak.”

“Ten days! Look,” Philby said, “the whole idea is that we do this quickly. That’s why the five of us have to go together.”

“Right,” Charlene said. Her face had become more expressive as her acting career blossomed. Right now, it expressed her contempt for everything
Finn claimed was true about time
travel.

“It’s worth a try, don’t you think?” Maybeck said, pleading with Charlene. “Plus, hey, we get to hang out.”

Finn suppressed a smile. Clearly, Maybeck didn’t mean the Keepers as a whole. He meant he’d get time with his girlfriend.

“I’m just saying,” Charlene said. “We can’t put off trying to return. And if it doesn’t work, we keep trying. We
can’t get stuck, you guys.”

“Of course not!” Philby said, waving a hand as if to brush Charlene’s objections away. “To be safe, we’re bringing two Returns. I made one that works off
transistors.” He held the new device up to the video camera on his laptop. It was about the size of a box of butter, much clunkier than the key fob to which the Keepers were accustomed.
“I won’t bother you
with the details. But it runs off the radio spectrum in use back then.”

Charlene sighed, slumped her head into her hands. “God, this time travel nonsense...Willa and I have to wear skirts? Seriously?”

“Stop whining, Charlene. We have to wear chinos and button-down shirts, or work clothes.”

“Philby’s talking to me, Charlie,” Maybeck said. “Look, I’m not thrilled, either. African-Americans
were called ‘coloreds’ back where we’re going.
If I’m going to be in the park, it’ll have to be as a worker.”

“That’s awful!” Willa said, crinkling her brow.

“That’s America in the fifties,” Finn said. “Land of the free. Home of the brave.”

“I can handle it.” On the screen, though, Maybeck winced visibly. “Just remember, you guys can’t be too friendly with me. Polite, but not chummy.
Especially you,
Charlie.”

They all complained as one, but after a minute Philby called them to order. “Maybeck brings up a good point. If it really is back then and not now—and I believe you, Finn—but
if it is, we have to be super careful about expressions: how we talk, how we act. Everything was different in the nineteen fifties. Half the stuff we have today, from plastic to GPS to our
phones,
didn’t exist or looked a lot different. Air conditioners weren’t that common. The running shoe hadn’t evolved. That’s why we’ll wear leather shoes or white Keds
sneakers when we cross over. There’s no spandex or Sharpies. The peanut M&M is only a couple years old, and it just comes in the tan color.” Gasps all around.

“If we slip up on that stuff, we’re going to stick out. And
we’re already going to stick out.” His mouth twisted. “Being black-and-white, I mean.”

“Wayne asked for two days,” Finn said. “We’ve given him that. Maybe we won’t be black–and-white. Maybe he managed to fix it.”

“Some of us could have messed-up memory,” Willa said. “Like what happened to Maybeck, and Finn, the first time they traveled. We’ve got to go with whatever Finn
says.” She aimed
this directly at Philby, though she didn’t use his name. “Dell will find a way to return us. One day, maybe two, and then we’re back.”

“Our parents are going to freak,” Philby said.

“Especially when they see how we’re dressed,” Maybeck added.

“But at least they’ve been through it before,” Finn said. “They’ll know what’s going on.”

“Not my roommate,” Charlene said. “I mean, she
knows about us, but I’m not going to tell her what we’re doing.”

“Tell her you’re exhausted,” Philby said. “I’ll return you before the rest of us if we have to.”

Charlene nodded, though she didn’t look at all convinced.

“All good?” Finn said. No one complained. “Pleasant dreams, you guys. See you on the other side.”

E
XPLOSIONS CRACKED THE AIR
and shook
the earth. Philby sat up quickly, struggling to
collect himself.

A crowd. Children and families, laughing and clapping. Music. Fireworks.

“Disneyland,” Philby mumbled.

“No place better!” A complete stranger said back to him. The exceptionally hairy man wore a sleeveless undershirt with a sweat-stained image of Bob Parr from
The Incredibles
on the front. He eyed Philby’s outfit. “
Newsies
? Am I right?”

Philby remembered Finn’s description of 1950s Wayne, how he’d made the same comparison. “Right as rain, sir!” An expression he’d learned from his grandparents. The
man smiled and nodded.

Central Plaza teemed with thousands of onlookers. Orchestral music swelled; cymbals crashed. As planned, most people were looking up, not down at the ground where Philby had materialized.
As
always, it took him a minute to fully inhabit his DHI, to establish his surroundings and make the mission real in his mind. He looked around for the others, only realizing belatedly that they could
be three yards from him and he still wouldn’t see them.

No time to waste. Now came the tricky part: moving through the crowd as a DHI without passing
through
people.

He closed his eyes,
concentrating. It didn’t take a lot of thinking to get fear and anxiety to overtake him. All Philby had to do was consider the possibility that he was about to time
travel. It bothered him that losing memory was critical to his well-being. He didn’t want to forget one second of what was about to happen. But he accepted his fate.

Lost in thought, Philby bumped shoulders with a small woman.
He apologized, but hid a smile: a good sign; he’d lost some of his hologram already.

He was on the front end of Central Plaza, past the Partners statue, when he first spotted the Dapper Dan stalking him. The Cast Member was a good twenty yards away, standing on the sidewalk, but
Philby felt the almost palpable existence of a string connecting the two of them. Moving precisely, the Dapper
Dan matched his progress nearly stride for stride.

To Philby’s left, Jack Skellington and Sally walked away from the castle, tracking him and the Dapper Dan. It wasn’t as if they were the only ones heading down Main Street toward
Town Square, but once again they seemed invisibly connected to Philby, pacing along with his every step.

“Dell!” Willa’s voice, coming from behind him. He didn’t
want to bring her into this. Jack Skellington gave Philby the creeps, and Sally was no looker, either. If they
were Overtakers, not Cast Members, he was in trouble. For one thing: if Jack was already dead, could he be hurt or killed? How could you fight the already dead?

Philby raised a closed fist—the Keepers’ hand signal for
stop
. Hopefully Willa would get the message.

He took it as
his responsibility to distract his stalkers. No matter what, the rest of the Keepers had to make it to Walt’s apartment as quickly as possible. The park was closing. They had
only a brief window in which to start the music box and reach the carousel before their presence would invite security.

Distract.
Was a good defense the best offense, or the other way around? He couldn’t remember! Philby
turned abruptly and ran through the crowd, heading straight for Jack
Skellington. As he did, he pushed all fear away.

Willa saw Philby’s raised fist and stopped. A few heartbeats later, she spotted the Dapper Dan, a man who seemed curiously out of place and awkwardly alone, despite being
situated in the heart of Disneyland. She moved onto the same sidewalk, staying behind him, making sure
he stayed in sight and ahead of her.

She didn’t know whether to trust him or not. As Cast Members in decidedly human form, the Dappers walked a line between fantasy and reality. Worse, they were adults.