Free The Center of Everything by Linda Urban Page B

but she is interrupted by the buzz of her cell phone. DELISH it says on the screen. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up,” she tells Lucy.
    Lucy frowns. “I guess I can go over my songs. But hurry, okay?” She walks ahead, singing about searching for crumbs and losing one’s way.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œThe Grand Canyon,” says Nero.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI was seven. My whole family went on vacation to the Grand Canyon. If I could wish myself back to any time, it would be then. Not a donut for miles. Now what about you? What’s your wish?”
    Maybe
this
is the sign. Maybe she’s supposed to tell
Nero
her wish. But how can she know for sure?
    â€œYou sound like a genie,” says Ruby, stalling. She hopes he will go off on one of his question tangents, asking why genies were always stuck in bottles and lamps but never in cans or packing crates, but he does not.
    â€œIs it embarrassing?”
    â€œIt’s private.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œWait. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s just that . . .” Ruby thinks carefully. She does not want to mess this up. “My quarter went through Captain Bunning’s donut,” she says. “On my birthday.”
    â€œWhoa,” says Nero. “Did you wish for something good?”
    â€œSomething important.”
    â€œA time travel thing?”
    â€œMaybe. I don’t know.”
    â€œHow can you not know?”
    â€œI wished . . . I wished that something had been different. In the past.”
    â€œWhich is why you care about homeomorphism,” said Nero.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI have mad Google skills, Ruby Tuesday. I read about tori and homeomorphism and time and all that,” Nero says.
    There is a connection between donuts and time? Maybe this is the sign. “What did you learn?” Ruby says.
    â€œI have mad
Google
skills, Ruby. Not mad physics skills. I didn’t really get it. But you get it, right?”
    â€œNo,” she says. “I didn’t even know about the time thing. I just want to—” She stops herself. “I just want my wish to come true.”
    â€œYour quarter went through the donut, right? I’d say you’re good.”
    â€œBut I’m not good.” How is she supposed to explain this? “I don’t feel good. You know how when you’re solving a story problem in math and you have an answer but it doesn’t feel quite done yet? Like you’re missing something? I have a missing-something feeling.”
    â€œYou sure it’s because of your wish?” says Nero. “What if you’re missing something else?”
    She is missing something else. Someone else. But so is her dad, and her mom, and all the rest of the Pepperdine family, and they’re just fine. No, it has to be about her wish. And once she figures everything out, she’ll feel fine too. “I’m not missing anything else,” Ruby says. “Except whatever was on that website.”
    â€œMeet me at the library. If you want. You don’t have to tell me what you wished for or anything, but, you know, we could look at the site together. I could help.”
    It would be good to have Nero’s help. “Two heads are better than one,” Ruby says.
    â€œNot always,” says Nero. “Like if you were at the store trying to buy a shirt, it would be hard to fit two heads through a regular neck hole. Or if—”
    Ruby’s phone buzzes. It’s a text from Lucy.
    Where r u?!!!
    Â 
    By the time Ruby gets to the theater, Lucy is already onstage.
    â€œHow could we have forgotten . . .” Inner Gretel stops. “Ugh. What’s the line?”
    â€œâ€˜How could we have forgotten about those pesky birds,’” says the director.
    â€œRight. Okay. Those pesky birds. Those
pesky
birds,” Lucy says. “Those pesky
birds.
”
    Ruby sits in the second row from