He’d learned that on these missions he sometimes had to run.

  A lot.

  “Man, it’s hot,” Rahim said.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” A Polynesian man, big and tall and with a tattoo that stretched past his shirtsleeves, was the one who gave him the weather report and a kind of military salute. Rahim started to answer, but the guy wasn’t talking to him, not really—he walked right on past.

  “Well, let me find this rock,” Rahim said softly. He took out the phone and typed in the words Diamond Head State Monument. This was where their future selves told him the rock was going to be. They hadn’t specified one particular rock, just one type of rock.

  A map appeared on the screen. Rahim studied it for a second. He’d thought Diamond Head State Monument was a statue, but according to the map it was a park.

  One that was almost ten miles away.

  “I’m not walking that,” Rahim grumbled. He typed the address of the park into the map locator. He took a deep breath and pressed SEND.

  The air around him began to shimmer with a blue-green light. It surrounded him like a bubble. In an instant he was teleported from the beach to the Diamond Head State Monument park. The first time he had done it, Kasia had explained it to him as “time travel to the same time.” It wasn’t as dizzying as time travel to other times, but it still wasn’t completely smooth. He’d learned that if he held his breath, the process didn’t make him sick to his stomach.

  When he exhaled, he found himself standing at the entrance to the Diamond Head State Monument park. The breeze was coming down off the mountains and through the vegetation, and it was cool on his skin. Families milled around the park at the head of the trail that led to the summit. Everyone seemed to be wearing shorts, which made him a little bit self-conscious about his jeans. Maybe he should have worn shorts, but most of his had the names and logos of sports teams, which could be a giveaway. Other than that, he was right about his clothes allowing him to blend in. People might be curious about his T-shirt—Spawn was at least ten years away—but he didn’t think that would cause too many issues with the time stream unless he left it behind.

  Rahim walked up to the gatehouse at the entrance of the park. A large Polynesian man in a park ranger’s uniform leaned out a window in the gatehouse.

  “Fifty cents, please, little man,” he said. Rahim dug around in his pockets and found two quarters. He had learned to keep cash in his pocket in case of a mission.

  I’m actually getting good at this, he thought to himself. He handed the man the two coins and then he entered the park.

  The Diamond Head crater was an imposing dormant volcano that rose 762 feet into the sky. Despite all the missions he’d gone on since Kasia had first created the phone that became a time machine, he never failed to be impressed by the places he went and the things he saw. Even though his future self made a point of telling him how important and potentially dangerous the missions were, Rahim couldn’t help but feel lucky he got to experience what he did. History wasn’t his favorite class in school—that was English class—but going on these missions was like a 4K history lesson.

  He didn’t plan on going to the top of the crater, though. In fact, that was on his list of things he absolutely did not want to do in this brutal heat. Instead, he casually walked around the base, being sure no one saw him checking his phone as he referred to the photo of a volcanic rock. Again, the future Kasia and Rahim hadn’t assigned him any specific rock. They hadn’t said, “Go to the base of the stairs, take two paces to your left and then three paces forward, and then bend down and take the one that looks sort of like a heart.” They had just sent him a link to the picture and said, “Get one like this.”

  Rahim used his toe to kick at the black and dark-red rocks that littered the space around the base of the crater near the head of the trail. He was careful not to kick them too far. He didn’t pretend to understand all the nuances and technical aspects of time travel the way Kasia did, but he got the gist. Kasia had explained it to him (“multiple times,” she liked to say, leaning on the joke hard every time) using an example she called the butterfly effect.

  She had given him the same lecture a few days before. “Basically, it’s like this,” she said. “Everything is connected, right? A butterfly flapping its wings in Thailand can affect the path of a hurricane halfway around the world.”

  “Really?” Rahim said. He was trying to picture it.

  “Probably not really,” Kasia said. “But it’s a metaphor. The idea is that everything is webbed together, so a world where the butterfly flaps its wings results in a world where the hurricane heads north, whereas the world where the butterfly doesn’t flap leads to a world where the hurricane heads south. Basically, the tiniest things can have all kinds of far-reaching consequences. In time travel, it’s even more important, because the effects are played out over such a long period of time. Even if you do something that you think is next to nothing, like taking a pen off someone’s desk, it might change the course of history.”

  Rahim started to think. Right, he thought. Like if that person comes back, can’t find the pen, and then later can’t sign the contract to buy a car. That night, a car thief comes to the lot, and because the car is still there, they steal it, and they get involved in a crime. Maybe they end up stealing money from someone who was on their way to donate to an orphanage, and a certain kid never gets clothes, and gets sick, and misses a chance to get adopted. He liked this kind of thing. Maybe it would be a good rap lyric, like one of those story-songs that Slick Rick or DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince did. He could call it “The Butterfly Effect.”

  “Rahim,” Kasia had said. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” he lied.

  “I’m just saying that there are the obvious things you have to avoid, like finding younger versions of you and making sure that they never meet.”

  The way the past can work is strange, Rahim thought to himself. Little things can cause big change. While he was trying to pick a rock to take, he kept looking for one of those time loops that Future Kasia had described, but he didn’t see anything. He stopped and tied his shoe. (Once I stopped to tie my shoe / I was late to the barbecue.) Sometimes their adult selves had told them about a catastrophic event to come, and Rahim had brought it up with Kasia. “Shouldn’t we just go out and change something random?” he said. “Maybe that will be the butterfly that will make sure that the thing in the future doesn’t happen?”

  “It’s nothing we can predict, or that anyone can predict,” she said. “It would be different if they told us that a block in their city was destroyed by a fire in the year we were living in, on a certain day. Then we could drive over there on that day and make sure it didn’t happen. What you’re talking about is superstition, and I believe in science.”

  Their future selves shared lots of information about the time stream, time loops, vortexes, and the collapse of their galaxy. They could also be incredibly mysterious. Like the Aevum Organization. Rahim didn’t know what that name meant. He didn’t know who was in the organization. He didn’t know how it figured into anything. Whenever he voiced his concerns, Kasia dismissed them with a shake of her head.

  “Whatever they’re not telling us, it’s probably to protect us from doing something destructive.”

  “You believe in science. Doesn’t that mean knowing as much as possible?”

  “I trust myself. Future or present.”

  Rahim trusted himself, too. When he was in a phone conversation with Future Rahim, he thought he looked pretty calm, not jumpy. Still, the secretiveness bugged Rahim. He’d seen what could happen when the time-space what-you-call-it started to fail. You get dodo birds running down Market Street and dinosaurs at the Liberty Bell and cavemen wandering around downtown. He knew how serious it was, but he just couldn’t shake the feeling that their other selves were hiding something. It was weird, but it wasn’t impossible to lie to yourself, he figured.

  He stood and shook his head as if to clear those thoughts from his mind.

  Just pick a rock and go home. You think too much, he thought to himself.

  He kept scuffing his shoe against the rocks at the base of the crater, while overhead birds he assumed were seagulls flew by to head out to sea. He kept checking his phone and looking around to see if anyone saw him checking his phone. He started to write a song in his head. He wasn’t sure of its power. He wasn’t sure of its value. But he knew that it was somehow key to setting things right.

  I’m tryna roll back the years, no fear in my stride,

  Fixing up the flow, yeah, we going pro, worldwide.

  My bars hit, no matter the year or the date,

  Serving lines hot, better clean that plate.

  I’ve been around, made foes into friends,

  Seen it all, from start to where it ends.

  Through black holes, time bends, T. rex rides,

  You don’t know me? I’m the one who flies.

  Time traveler, staying cool when it’s dire,

  Rhymes so tight, they spark like live wire.

  “What’d you say?” An older white man was standing about a foot away. Another line or two and they might have bumped into each other. That would teach him to freestyle with his head down.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just a song.”

  “Didn’t sound like one,” the man grumbled.

  Rahim kept walking and making his way around the base. He stopped, checked his phone again, and then kept walking.

  Then he tripped.

  He was able to catch himself somewhat and keep from skinning up his face and hands. As he started to get up, he saw a black rock with speckles of red right there in front of him. He checked the phone and then checked the rock.

  Close enough, he thought. He was about to put in the date and location to go home when he heard an excited voice behind him.

  “What is that?” the voice asked.

  Rahim looked up and saw a young Polynesian guy, maybe twenty years old. The guy had a wide smile and shoulder-length black hair. Rahim noticed that he was looking at Rahim’s phone.

  “Uh…” Rahim racked his brain for an explanation for the device in his hand. He tried to think of something in 1978 a kid his age would have in his hand walking around a park. Just then he remembered something his dad had told him. “We knew this guy,” he had said to Rahim. “We called him Transistor; he was one of your grandfather’s best friends. He used to carry around a transistor radio listening to the R & B station. It was some Motown back then, some Stax.” Rahim had looked up those bands, only to find out that they weren’t bands at all, but record labels. He liked some of the songs enough that he was glad he had done it. And now he was happy he had heard about Transistor in the first place.

  “It’s a radio,” Rahim said as he slipped the phone in his pocket.

  “That doesn’t look like any radio I’ve ever seen,” the guy said. He looked genuinely curious.

  “Well, that’s because it’s new,” Rahim said as he started to walk past the guy.

  “Where’d you get it?” the guy asked.

  “Um … the st-store,” Rahim stammered.

  “Which one?” the guy asked.

  “Uh, Electronic…”

  Before he could answer, three more kids appeared. They gathered around Rahim and the long-haired kid in a half circle. They looked a little older than the first kid but shared his complexion and his hairstyle.

  The biggest kid was the first to speak. “Who’s this, Kimo? You making friends with tourists now?” He was staring at Rahim. Rahim swallowed hard. After all his years dealing with Man Man, he knew a bully when he saw one.

  “I don’t know, Lono. He’s just some kid. He has a cool radio. We were talking is all,” Kimo said.

  “Oh yeah? Let’s see your radio,” Lono said. It didn’t sound like a request.

  “Yeah, well, uh, the thing about that,” Rahim said.

  Then he took off running.

  Rahim hated running. His sister was a runner, and said she loved everything about it. She said it made her feel free and powerful. That made no sense to him. On the other hand, being a kid who got picked on had made him good at it. He sprinted around the base of the crater, galloped downhill, and made his way to the entrance of the park. As fast as he was going, the other kids were bigger and stronger, and most of them were in decent shape, so he figured they weren’t too far behind him. As he ran past the guardhouse, he heard the park ranger give a shout. He paid no attention, and a few seconds later he heard another shout. He did some basic calculations. They were probably fifty yards back.

  Right or left? Rahim thought as he exited the park. To his left, the road wound down a hill toward a neighborhood full of single-story houses and bungalows. To his right, the road went uphill toward what appeared to be a lush green forest. A forest seemed like a safe place to hide, but a terrible place to get help. Left, it is, he thought as he turned and ran even faster downhill. His initial burst of energy was starting to evaporate, but he kept pushing himself. He tried to let gravity do most of the work and concentrated on not getting his feet tangled up and falling down on his face. He could hear the kids behind him hollering.

  Once he was at the bottom of the hill, he took another left and found himself running through the actual neighborhood. His feet pounded on the sidewalk as he slipped past the coconut palms and bottlebrush trees that lined the street. Rahim felt like his lungs were on fire. He needed to find a place he could slip into, like an alley or a store. Then he could get his phone out, open the portal, and go home with the rock, the phone, and all his teeth.

  It was then his feet tangled. Again.

  He tripped, stumbled, and fell against a chain-link fence. Rahim bounced off the fence, spun to his left, and ran through an opening in the fence. He slowed down and looked around. He was on a basketball court.

  There were some kids playing a game. The kid with the ball, a tall, light-skinned skinny kid with a mini-Afro and huge ears, stopped dribbling when he saw Rahim. About twenty seconds later, the kids who were chasing him, including Kimo, walked onto the court as well.

  The tall skinny kid placed the ball in the crook of his arm.

  “What y’all doing? We trying to play here,” he said.

  Lono pointed at Rahim. “That kid stole my radio,” he said. “I want it back.”

  Rahim tried to object, but he was out of breath, and his words came out in a dotted line. “No … it’s … mine … he … wants … to … steal … it,” he panted.

  The skinny kid looked around at the other kids in his pickup game. Two of them were also biracial. Two more were Polynesian. One was Samoan. One was white. “Well, someone’s not telling the truth.”

  Rahim had regained his breath a little now. “I’m not lying,” he said. “Ask him.” He pointed at Kimo, who he thought would back up his story, but Kimo stepped back a little.

  * * *

  “What does your radio look like?” the skinny kid asked Lomo.

  “Kimo? You can tell him,” Lono said.

  “No,” the skinny kid said. “You tell me. You said it was your radio, so it’s something you should know without having to ask someone else, or think too much about it.” Lono was bigger and taller, but the skinny kid didn’t seem afraid at all. Rahim noticed how the other kids gathered around him like he was their leader.

  Lono scratched his nose.

  “Don’t matter what it looks like. It’s mine. And I’m coming to get it,” Lono said.

  The skinny kid dribbled the basketball a few times.

  “How about this? We’ll play you four on four. You win, you get the kid’s radio. You lose, you leave him alone. Deal?” the skinny kid said.

  “I’m not good at basketball,” Rahim whispered.

  “But he is,” one of the kids on the skinny kid’s team whispered back.

  Lono took a deep breath.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Rahim was standing near the foul line as Lono and the skinny kid went up for the jump ball. The skinny kid got a piece of it and tipped it toward one of his teammates. Rahim moved as far away from the basket as possible while still being on the court. He’d told them he wasn’t good at basketball, but that wasn’t the whole truth. He was terrible at it. He was also bad at baseball, and kickball, and football, and tennis, and soccer, and every other sport. The first time he had gone bowling, he had been pretty good, and he thought that might be his thing, but the second time he went he got four gutter balls in a row to start out.

  He appreciated the skinny kid trying to help him, but putting the fate of his time-traveling phone on the outcome of a basketball game was probably not the greatest idea.

  Then he saw the skinny kid play.

  He turned and launched a sixteen-foot fadeaway jumper.

  “Good!” the skinny kid yelled as he launched the shot.

  And it was good, all net.

  On the next possession, he launched a twenty-foot shot from the top of the key. All net again. And again, and again. The skinny kid was on fire.

  “That’s what I do!” the skinny kid said as the ball went SWISH through the net. Or “You didn’t see that coming!”

  In the end, it wasn’t even close. The skinny kid was the leader the whole way. When he had a chance to take the final shot, he did the most leader-like thing that Rahim had ever seen. He faked the shot, got the defender off his feet, and then passed to an open teammate, who hoisted up a shot. It rattled against the rim and dropped through. The skinny kid ran over to the kid who had made the shot and clapped him on the back. “Good job,” he said. He turned back to the rest of the team. “Good job, everyone.” Rahim felt like he had been part of the victory, even though he had mostly stood and watched. Only after the skinny kid had made eye contact with each of his teammates did he speak to the other team. “All right,” he said. “That’s it. Twenty-one to six. We win.”