“I didn’t fall asleep. I’m telling you this phone is, like, magic or something,” Rahim said.

  “Magic is just science we don’t understand. I still think you fell asleep. I mean, I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

  “I’m bringing it back. I’ll be right there.”

  “Now hold on. Let’s do a little experiment. Do a search for my address. No, I tell you what, do a search for a place you’ve always wanted to go. Let’s see what happens.”

  “Uh, nope. I’m just bringing this thing back,” Rahim said.

  “Look, you’re telling me I accidentally invented a teleporter. I think you’re having a hallucination.”

  “This ain’t a hallucination, Kasia! When I typed in the address for the library, my parents were out getting food. I come back to the house, and they say they been home for an hour. This is X-ray glasses all over again,” Rahim said.

  “Okay, just calm down. I mean, on the one hand, you might really have teleported. But on the other hand, if you are . . . making a mistake, we can figure it out. And if you’re right, what’s the worst that happens?”

  Rahim pulled the phone from his ear and peered at it. Was it possible he had imagined the whole thing? If he was imagining it and he ended up at Kasia’s, that wouldn’t be that bad, would it?

  “Hold on.”

  Rahim typed in the place he wanted to go to more than any other. A place he had dreamed about going. A place that was literally impossible for him to go to unless Kasia’s phone was a teleporter and a time machine.

  The green light began to flicker as the screen began to glow.

  “What’s happening?” Kasia asked.

  “The green light is blinking and the screen is glowing,” Rahim said.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What do you mean ‘uh-oh’? Kasia, what is uh-oh?”

  “It means the power source I used might be a . . . little bit unstable.”

  “What should I do?” Rahim yelled.

  Before Kasia could answer, the swimming sensation overwhelmed him as bright white light filled his field of vision. The world around him seemed to fade away in bits and pieces as he began to float into that white light.

  “RAHIM!” KASIA YELLED INTO her mic. “Rahim, are you all right?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  As the light from the phone receded, Rahim became aware of several things all at once. One, he was hot. He was wearing a long-sleeved fleece hoodie over a black T-shirt, and he could feel himself starting to sweat through both of them. Two, he was not in his room. Three, well, three was the most unbelievable part of all.

  “Are you at home?” Kasia asked.

  “No. I am definitely not at home.” Rahim took a step back and raised his head. He was standing in front of an old-timey-looking box office. Above the entrance was a marquee. Rahim took another step back.

  “Oh man. Oh man,” he warbled.

  The marquee was advertising tomorrow night’s show.

  “Where are you? What did you type in the search bar?” Kasia demanded.

  “I was just fooling around. I didn’t think it would really work. I was starting to think you were right and I had just imagined everything.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I always wanted to see Four the Hard Way in concert,” Rahim said.

  “Rahim, they broke up before we were alive. How were you gonna see them in . . . Uh-oh,” Kasia said.

  “I hate it when you say uh-oh,” he said.

  “You searched for their last concert in 2000, didn’t you?”

  “No. Worse. I typed in ‘Four the Hard Way first show in Philadelphia.’ ” Rahim heard Kasia’s fingers fly over her keyboard.

  “Rahim, that was in June 1997.”

  “No duh,” he said.

  “Are you sure that’s where you are?” she asked.

  “I’m standing right in front of the place. Their name is on the sign. The show is tomorrow night. Everyone is wearing FUBU and Cross Colours. FUBU, Kasia. That’s what my uncle is wearing in all his old high school pictures.” He paused. “Kasia, I would like to come back home now,” Rahim said. Sweat trickled into his eyes, stinging them.

  “Okay, I guess I tapped into something stronger than a regular communications satellite. All right, we can fix this. I can fix this. Is the green light on?”

  “Yes,” Rahim said. Cars rolled by him blasting songs by Jay-Z, Wu-Tang, Das EFX. All the great classics of hip-hop were rumbling from radios that pushed enough bass to make his chest hurt. A Jeep drove by playing Biggie Smalls.

  Biggie never got to perform with Four the Hard Way, Rahim thought. A quiet sadness joined the terrifying fear slowly taking over his mind.

  “Okay, um . . . if you really are in the past, all you need to do is type in your address and the year and you should just come back home,” Kasia said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Pretty sure.”

  “O-o-kay,” Rahim said. He typed in his home address and the year and pressed send. The green light began to flicker. The screen began to glow.

  Then it winked like a candle caught in the wind. The red light began to blink weakly.

  “The red light came on. Should I shake it?” Rahim said.

  “I think it’s more than that,” Kasia said softly.

  “What do you mean? You built this thing. What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it. But—”

  “No, no buts,” Rahim said. Two kids about his age walked by him. They were both sporting flattops and wearing classic Jordans.

  They’re not classics yet, Rahim thought. He could hear Kasia typing furiously.

  “Okay, so I used three satellites that technically belong to the US government so you wouldn’t have to pay a bill. I thought I was just breaking into some high-level government network, but it looks like it was way more than that.”

  “Kasia, I would very much like to go home now,” Rahim said.

  “It appears one of them was some sort of temporal flexibility generator. The other one must be a subatomic teleportation initializer.”

  “English, Kasia. English.”

  “One is a time-fluctuation facilitator and the other one is a quantum-transportation device.”

  Rahim didn’t respond.

  “One takes you into the past; the other one moves you from place to place within the current timeline,” Kasia said.

  “Okay, so why isn’t it working?” Rahim asked.

  “It looks like they may have locked us out of the system.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Don’t freak out. I can hack it again. It’s just gonna take me a little while. Might have to route it through a system in Beijing.”

  “All right, well, when can I come home?” Rahim asked.

  “I don’t know just yet, but I’ll get you back.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have took this phone,” Rahim moaned.

  “Hey, I was trying to do something nice for you,” Kasia said.

  “You sent me back in time!”

  “Technically, you sent yourself back in time.”

  “Kasia . . . ,” Rahim said.

  “I’m working on it right now.”

  * * *

  As Kasia pounded the keys, the doorbell rang. She ignored it and kept attacking the new and improved firewall that had been installed on the communication satellite’s system. Or, more accurately, the system that controlled the time-fluctuation facilitator. Kasia pushed a curl out of her face. When she had first found the secret government network, she’d just been playing around. Getting into the system had been more of an accident than anything else. Now she was trying to get into the network on purpose.

  That was a little bit scary.

  “Kasia, can you come downstairs, please?” her mom hollered from the ground floor.

  “Kinda busy, Mom,” Kasia yelled back.

  “That wasn’t a request, young lady,” came an unfamiliar deep, rumbling voice. Kasia froze. She got up from her stool and crept over to the staircase. Standing at the bottom step were two huge men in identical gray suits and black sunglasses. Kasia went back to her computer.

  “Rahim, I gotta go.”

  “Go? Go where? What are you talking about? You have to get me HOME,” Rahim said.

  “I know, but I think the people who own the satellite are here. Look, I’ll handle things on this end. You make sure you get somewhere safe, and whatever you do, don’t interact with anyone. The smallest change in past events could have terrible consequences.”

  “How am I supposed to not interact with anyone?”

  “Just stay away from people.”

  “I’m on the street. It’s nothing but people!”

  “Young lady, we need to speak with you. Now,” came a different deep, rumbling voice.

  “I gotta go, Rahim. I’ll be right back.” Kasia hit the esc key and all her monitors and computers completely shut down.

  * * *

  Rahim stared at the phone. The line had gone dead. He turned in a lazy circle.

  “This can’t be happening,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s happening all right,” said a homeless man in a Hawaiian shirt pushing his shopping cart. A brother pulling what appeared to be a stand-up bass in a black nylon storage bag sidestepped the homeless man. The bag had the initials c.m. embroidered on the back.

  Rahim looked at the phone one more time before shoving it in the pocket of his jeans. This was so much worse than the X-ray glasses.

  There was a part of him that didn’t believe any of this was real. Maybe Kasia had been right. Maybe he was stretched out across his bed, drooling on his pillow. Yeah, maybe that was what was happening.

  Except . . .

  Everything felt so real. The cars driving that looked brand-new but also incredibly dated to him. The people walking by in ridiculously out-of-date clothing. Rahim was never going to be called the most stylish kid in the seventh grade, but even he knew baggy jeans and oversize white T-shirts were not in style. One kid passed with pants that were so baggy, Rahim thought if a breeze caught him just right, they would puff up like a parachute and take him away.

  Kasia had said for him to stay away from people, but that was impossible. Kasia was smart. She was the smartest person he knew, but staying away from people in the middle of the summer in Philly was like trying to dive in a pool and not get wet.

  Maybe if I just walk around and don’t talk to anybody. That should be good, Rahim thought. He took off his fleece pullover and tied it around his waist. That helped a little, but he was still sweating through his shirt. He started walking down the street, doing his best not to bump into anyone. There was a little voice in the back of his head whispering that this was all a dream. That in reality he was safe at home in his bed waiting on his mother or father to knock on his door and wake him up for dinner.

  Every step he took made that seem less and less likely. He passed a newsstand. He stopped, turned around, and grabbed a magazine off the rack.

  “Don’t pick it up if you ain’t gonna buy it,” the man running the newsstand said. Rahim put it back, but not before noting the date and the year. June 1997. He wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t dreaming. This was really happening. Rahim felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. He started walking again. He took quick steps as he wandered the streets. If Kasia couldn’t get this stupid phone fixed, what was he going to do? How would he find something to eat? Would he have to sleep on the street?

  He turned left at the corner and kept walking. Street vendors were hawking portraits of Allen Iverson on velvet, Sixers and Eagles jerseys, watches, heavy gold chains, and pagers.

  “Hey, my man, you want that new Bahamadia joint? How about Philly’s finest!” a man yelled at Rahim.

  Rahim stopped and looked at the man’s stand. He had dozens of small plastic squares lined up on top of a table covered with a red velvet cloth. Each plastic square was covered in artwork and photos.

  “CDs! You selling CDs!” Rahim said. Most of the kids in his class didn’t know what CDs were. A lot of them had never even seen one in real life. But Rahim had studied all the cover art for Four the Hard Way’s three studio albums and their three mixtapes. He didn’t own any CDs, but he knew what they were.

  “Yeah, I got you, son. What you looking for?” the man asked. Before he knew it, Rahim was talking to the vendor. He knew what Kasia had said, but she had to be exaggerating a little bit.

  “You got any Four the Hard Way?” Rahim asked. The man flipped through his CDs and pulled out one with a black-and-white photo of the four members on the cover. It was a simple picture that was at odds with their larger-than-life personalities. Just the four of them standing under a streetlamp.

  “Wow, this a classic,” Rahim said.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. It just came out last week,” the vendor said.

  Rahim blinked. “Oh yeah. It’s not a classic . . . yet,” he said. He put the CD back on the table. Even if he bought it and got it home, he didn’t have a way to play it.

  “You know this new kid DJ Drama? He just dropped a Native Tongues mixtape.”

  “Nah, I’m good,” Rahim said. He kept walking down the street. He knew the performance venue wasn’t that far from his house. Or where his house would be in the future. Maybe he should head over to his neighborhood and see if someone could help him. He didn’t really have a logical reason why he thought this, but this wasn’t a logical situation. If he was being honest, he really just wanted to see some familiar surroundings.

  He crossed the street and headed for home. Or what was going to eventually be his home.

  After cutting through some alleyways and across some busy streets with more potholes than he remembered, he took a right turn and found himself one street away from home. A deep sense of sadness fell over him like a heavy coat. Nothing here looked familiar at all. Mr. Daniels’s corner store was a video store. Mrs. Rollins’s used bookstore was a flower shop. He didn’t even see Mr. Carlson’s sandwich shop.

  Rahim sat down on the sidewalk in front of the flower shop. He didn’t seem to have the energy to take another step. He was in trouble. More trouble than he had ever been in in his whole life. He was lost in his own city in a time and a place that he didn’t understand at all. He felt hot stinging tears well up in the corner of his eyes. He rubbed at them with the back of his hand and took a long, deep breath.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Rahim raised his head and saw a girl about his own age standing over him. She had long braids that hung down her back.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m . . . I’m kinda lost, that’s all,” Rahim said.

  “You wanna come in and use our phone? Call somebody?” the girl asked.

  “Nah. I’m good. I got turned around. That’s all. There was a bookstore here once, but I guess that was a different time,” Rahim said.

  “That’s creepy,” the girl said.

  “Why you say that?”

  “Well, because I’d like to open a bookstore one day. I told my dad when he retires I’m gonna turn the flower shop into a bookshop. We’ll sell used and rare books by Black authors and we’ll sell doughnuts. He hates when I say that,” the girl said with a smile. Rahim looked at her. Really looked at her. If you gave her a touch of gray in her braids and added a couple of inches to her height, she’d be the spitting image of Mrs. Rollins.

  “Of course. It’s 1997,” Rahim mumbled.

  “All year,” the girl that would one day be Mrs. Rollins said.

  “I guess I should get going.”

  “You sure you don’t want to come in and use the phone?”

  “No, thank you. I need to get somewhere and think.”

  “You know, when I want to think, I go to the library. It’s quiet. No one bothers you, and they have air-conditioning.”

  “That’s actually a good idea. Yeah, I’ll go hang out at the library until this all gets straight. Thanks,” Rahim said. He got up off the sidewalk and brushed the dirt off his pants. He was halfway down the street when the girl yelled to him.

  “Hey, what’s your name?”

  “Ra—Ronald. My name is Ronald,” Rahim said. He thought about what Kasia had said. It probably wasn’t a good idea to tell Mrs. Rollins his real name.

  “See you around, Ronald,” she said. Rahim waved at her and crossed the street.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, he was standing at the base of the steps to one of the larger branches of the Philadelphia Library. Rahim thought the building looked like a castle that someone had dropped in the middle of the city. As he started up the steps, he heard a voice that froze him in place.

  “Reynolds, didn’t I tell you to have my money or a new pair of sneakers next time I saw you?”

  Rahim held his breath. Whether he was dreaming or actually in the past, he couldn’t seem to escape Man Man. He closed his eyes and prepared himself for the headlock that he knew was on its way. That was when another voice piped up.

  “I’ve told you I don’t have any money and I don’t wear sneakers!”

  Rahim turned to his right. He saw three bigger kids surrounding a smaller kid wearing glasses and a short-sleeve shirt and necktie. The kid in the necktie was trying to balance a tall stack of books as the bigger kids pushed and shoved him.

  Who wore a necktie in the middle of summer if they didn’t have to?

  “I don’t care about that, cornball. That’s not my problem. I told you next time I see you and you didn’t have my money or my sneakers, I was gonna fold you up and put you in a mailbox,” the biggest kid said. He and his two friends were wearing baggy jean shorts and oversized Phillies baseball jerseys and high-top sneakers. Each of them had on a backward snap-brim baseball hat. They took turns pushing and shoving the kid in the tie. The kid was trying to hold his own, but Rahim could see the fear building in his eyes. This wasn’t the first time he’d been pushed around, and it wasn’t going to be the last. Rahim knew that feeling.