“What can I do? Break my leg?”
“Well… if you had the bottle for it, you could throw yourself down the stairs… probably do yourself some serious enough injury…”
“Thanks!”
“…But I wasn’t thinking of that. Tell Emma you’ve left something upstairs. We’ll go up to my room and you can get in the chest with Boone’s figure and I can send you back to his time.”
Patrick’s face was blank for a moment, and Omri thought: He’s scared, and who can blame him! But then he saw it wasn’t that at all. Patrick simply hadn’t been able to grasp the idea at first.
When he did grasp it, not just his face but his whole body seemed to light up with excitement.
“Wow,” he said simply.
“You mean you’ll do it?”
“Are you kidding? Go back to real cowboy-time, cowboy-country? See Boone full-size? Lead me to it! Let’s go!”
He bounded out of the living-room and was halfway up the stairs before Omri had gathered his wits to follow. As he came into the hall he noticed Emma standing much closer to the living-room door than she had been before. Patrick had nearly bowled her over as he emerged.
A suspicion struck Omri.
“Were you listening?”
“Yes,” she said at once. “But I didn’t understand what you were talking about.”
“Ah,” said Omri with relief. It crossed his mind that she was a very straightforward girl, at least – Tamsin wouldn’t have admitted eavesdropping like that. Not many people would.
He gave Emma a closer look. She was a year younger than him – which was why he had hardly noticed her at school, somehow you only noticed your contemporaries or people ahead of you. But she’d been more or less around for most of his life. Odd that he’d never really looked at her before. Now he saw that she was quite nice looking in a fair, snubby-faced way. She had freckles and large eyes, and was dressed in sensible jeans and a blue anorak. She had her hands deep in her pockets and was gazing at him expectantly.
“What were you on about in there?”
“Private,” said Omri. He glanced up the stairs. Patrick could already be heard thudding up the last flight, to Omri’s attic bedroom.
“Where’s Patrick gone?”
“Er – up to get his pyjamas and stuff.”
“But he didn’t take any last night, he just dashed out.”
“Oh. Well – anyway he’s – gone up,” said Omri feebly, making a move to follow him.
Emma followed at his heels. He paused on the second stair.
“Can you wait down here?”
“Why?”
“We’ll be – right down.”
“Can’t I see your room? You saw mine,” she said. “Last night, when you came to our house. Mum moved Tam and me out so Patrick could have it.”
“Well…”
From above came Patrick’s impatient voice. “Come ON, Omri! Don’t hang about!”
“You wait in the living-room,” Omri said decisively. He turned away from her and ran upstairs.
In his room he found Patrick already climbing into the seaman’s chest.
“Go on, I’m ready! Send me!”
But Omri, having come up with this amazing idea, was already having second thoughts.
“Listen, how’ll I explain where you’ve gone?”
“Don’t. Get rid of Emma somehow, make her go home, and you can tell your parents I went with her.”
“But what when Emma gets back to her place without you?”
“It’ll be too late then! I’ll just have vanished!” He grinned all over his face with glee.
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