Page 49 of Everything All at Once

Leonard’s girlfriend had brought him lunch, and they were eating it behind the counter. I found the record quickly—You Don’t Mess Around with Jim—and brought it to the front.

“Your aunt played us this song in class,” Leonard said, turning the album over in his hand. Then, when he saw my wallet, “No, no, no, no—this one is on me. Consider it an overdue book fee.”

“Really? Thanks! Hey—do you know anywhere I could get a record player?”

“Sure thing! I know a great spot,” he said, and wrote out a few directions on the back of a napkin. “Come back soon.”

I took the napkin from him and thanked him again. Outside, Sam and Em and Abe were leaning against the car and looking through their purchases.

“Come on,” I said, hopping in the driver’s seat. “We have another stop to make.”

It was a rainy and gloomy sort of day: Margo’s favorite kind. She took the long way home from school, not bothering with an umbrella, letting herself get absolutely drenched.

You’re going to catch your death of a cold!her mother would have said, if she had seen her daughter’s present condition.

But the joke would have been on her. Margo couldn’t catch colds anymore.

Not that they’d actually told their parents of their new immortal status. No, it was still a secret that Alvin and Margo shared. That was why Alvin had been able to stay home from school that day; “I don’t feel good” was still an excuse that held water with their parents.

But Margo didn’t mind being alone.

She had her headphones, her music.

She had the wonderfully chilly rain.

And she had—all of a sudden—the distinct sense that she was being followed.

—fromAlvin Hatter and the Overcoat Man

12

Sam left his bike in the Magic Grooves parking lot and helped me decipher Leonard’s directions as Abe and Em carried on a loud, heated conversation in the backseat about what would have happened if John Bonham hadn’t died all those years ago.

“Theentire trajectoryof music history would have been changed,” Abe said.

“You cannot possibly maintain such a high level of substance abuse and still remain productive,” Em argued. “They would have broken up anyway. Maybe they would have released one more album, but...”

“Even one more album and theentire trajectoryof music history would have been changed!” Abe said.

“You just keep saying the same thing over and over,” Em pointed out.

“It’s a pretty good thing. I’m sticking with it for now.”

After just a few minutes of driving, Sam motioned me over to the side of the road and I parked. We must have gone closer to the ocean; I could hear the crashing of waves even though I couldn’t see the shore. It took me a minute to see the little store, which was nestled against a thin wooded area. A sign out front said Thrift Sto. The last two letters were faded and unreadable. It was one of the tiniest buildings I’d ever seen, and it was completely surrounded by things for sale: picnic tables and washing machines and doghouses and tool chests and road signs and water-damaged dollhouses. We filed out of the car, and I picked my way between a plastic rocking horse and an oversized garden gnome and slipped through the front doors.

The building was almost certainly bigger on the inside.

“TARDIS,” Abe whispered, nudging me excitedly in the side. The building stretched on for an impossible amount of space, and it was filled with more junk than I’d ever seen in one place.

“What’s a TARDIS?” Em asked.

“The Police Box,” I said.

“Oh. Good reference.”

She and Abe drifted away, and Sam asked me what I was looking for.

“A record player.”