“So how do we find one of these holes?” Matilda asked.

“Already done,” Heathcliff said. “There’s one right here in this restaurant.”

He gestured to the multicolored ball pit at the center of the room. A tangle of tubes connected a huge pulsating engine to the pit. “I’ve attached it to a low-grade nuclear power source. I’m charging the battery cells now. It should be ready soon.”

“OK, I know I’m the C-minus member of this team, but even with a time machine, how are we going to find her?” Jackson asked. “Miss Information and her toad squad could have gone anywhere. Or ‘anywhen.’”

“She allowed herself to be photographed during her trip to August 16, 1987. Something she and her team did there erased … what was his name again?”

“Flinch,” Ruby said.

“Yes, Flinch. All we have to do is go back to that day and stop her plan and we get Flinch and Gluestick back in one shot,” Heathcliff explained.

“I can’t do this,” Brand said.

Ruby turned to him, fully prepared to unleash every ounce of her anger and frustration. His broken heart was not going to get in the way of her being born. She’d put him back in the mouse suit if he wouldn’t cooperate.

“… unless you let me shave,” Brand continued. “If I’m going to stop my ex from ruining the world, I want to look hot.”

While the remnants of her team waited for the time machine to boot up, Ruby sat at an arcade game and searched police records for news of her disappearance from home. What she found was worse than she’d imagined. Her mother and father had appeared on the nightly news, Grandpa Saul had done an interview with the Washington Post, and her cousins had built a Find Ruby Peet website. Her disappearance had gone viral, and hundreds of people were searching all over Arlington for her. She couldn’t stand knowing the suffering she was putting her family through. She felt like crying, remembering the last conversation she had with her mom and dad.

But then she found a newspaper article with a photograph of her house. Parked on the street was a familiar black car and behind the steering wheel was the same Secret Service agent who had taken her to see the president. The principal was right. They were watching her house, probably tapping the phones, and waiting to pounce if they got so much as a hint that Ruby was reaching out.

At that moment, she would’ve been happy to open up any drawer her nieces and nephews wanted to explore. She would let them tear apart her socks and ignore her TV remote instructions and build forts in her bedroom with filthy bricks. She wanted nothing more than to watch her big, loud, obnoxious family turn the house into a complete and total mess. Especially now, when there was a good chance she could be wiped out of existence at any moment. Then they wouldn’t be searching far and wide for her—they’d forget her completely. Somehow that was even worse.

“We’re ready,” Heathcliff said, approaching her cautiously.

“Brand?”

“He just finished. I wonder if I had forty minutes with a barber, manicurist, and a tailor if I would look that handsome.”

“It’s really hard for you. Isn’t it?” she asked him.

“What?”

“Not having a family,” she said.

Heathcliff’s shoulders slumped, and he nodded. “Sometimes I feel like I’m a boat on the ocean and I can’t find land no matter which direction I sail.”

Ruby looked back at an image of her family’s worried faces on the news. She didn’t know what kind of life she might have in the future, but if she could fix all her problems, she’d never complain about a crowded house again.

The team gathered at the ball pit. Ruby’s glands ached, and she looked around warily. “Where’s Matilda?” Ruby asked.

Jackson, Heathcliff, the principal, and Brand just stared at her.

“Not another one!” Ruby exclaimed. “We have to do this fast. Let’s move!”

Heathcliff adjusted some dials and checked a pressure valve. “One of us has to stay here and keep an eye on this machine. It needs a lot of power, some of which I’m pulling off the local grid. If the lights go out, our connection will be cut and we could be lost in time permanently.”

“And who is that going to be?” the principal said.

Everyone looked at Heathcliff.

“Me? No way!”

“Heathcliff!” Ruby cried.

“My life is at risk, too, right? If anyone should stay, it’s one of the grown-ups. She’s after team members, not staff!”

“Hodges, I need the most capable people on this mission,” the principal said. “Ruby and Jackson have upgrades. Brand is a trained secret agent. I was a Golden Gloves winner growing up in New Jersey.”

“And my argument is that you should stay and watch the machine,” Heathcliff said.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Of all the people associated with this team, Miss Information has the least grudge against you. If she even bothers to prevent your birth, she’s going to do it last.”

The principal growled. “Aargh! He’s right. Brand, I hate this job. I need to crush some skulls! I can’t remember the last time I gave someone a concussion! Once this is over, I’m resigning. I’ll go back to the kitchen. I miss my spatula!”

Brand looked at Heathcliff. “Looks like you’re along for the ride, kid. How does this machine work?”

Heathcliff beamed. “All you have to do is jump in.”

Brand eyed the multicolored balls. “Of course,” he groaned.

Using his cane, he crawled into the center of the balls.

“Get down in there,” Heathcliff said.

“Is there no end to my humiliation?” Brand fell onto his back and let the balls swallow him.

“Looks like it works,” Jackson said.

“I was a little worried he’d be sucked into a miniature black hole. If so, his entire body would have been crushed by an intense gravity. And we’d have had to watch the whole thing,” Heathcliff confessed.

“Get going while you still can, Heathcliff,” Ruby ordered.

Heathcliff snatched his backpack and leaped into the pit. A moment later he was gone, too.

Ruby’s head suddenly felt as if someone had hooked a bicycle pump to it and was filling it full of air. “All right, Jackson. You’re up.”

“Who?” the principal asked.

Ruby whipped around, looking for her teammate and his amazing braces, but he was gone. If she didn’t want to be next, she had to act fast. She dove under the balls and suddenly felt as if she were sinking into a huge Jell-O mold. There was a shimmering feeling to the air and a coppery taste in her mouth like she was sucking on a penny, and then—BAM!—she was gone.

The trip felt a little like the times she had dropped into the Playground from her school locker. But this tube seemed to be made of light and stars that branched off like the veins in a human body. The tunnels led to endless possibilities; one might take her to the dawn of man, another to Earth’s final days. There were millions of destinations. She hoped she’d stay on course. Things would go from bad to worse if she landed in the time of dinosaurs.

Suddenly, she hit something. It was hard and cold and smelled a lot like pizza. She pulled her head out of the balls. Brand and Heathcliff were waiting by the side of the pit, but the restaurant looked exactly as it did a moment ago.

“It didn’t work,” she said. “It was supposed to take us to the street that Miss Information and the BULLIES arrived on in 1987.”

“No, it worked,” Brand said. He pointed to a table full of kids happily munching on pizza. They wore faded bell-bottom jeans and platform shoes. They looked like extras from a TV show her dad loved called The Brady Bunch. At one table, the kids wore tie-dyed T-shirts and pants covered in rhinestones. She’d seen clothes like these in her grandmother’s closet. Oddly enough, the restaurant looked exactly the same as it did in her time, except the video games had been replaced by pinball machines.