I'm not a twin

What sin did the city of Phoenix commit to get punished like this? I didn’t think hell could be this hot. And what about this massive, tremendous yard? I’m pretty sure it's bigger than it needs to be. Is there a rule for that? Will my dad get fined if this colossal yard is too immense?

If it wasn’t so ginormous it wouldn’t take me all day to water it. It takes forever to mow on those weeks when I gotta do that.

Sprinklers are better. If only I could get me some sprinkler action right now. I wouldn’t need to be out here. I could be at Sizzler. It isn’t like we don’t have them, they just don’t work. My stingy dad doesn’t want to pay a repair guy. Ugh, no, repair person. Ms. Watkins wants me to be more inclusive.

I hear a plop behind me—like the sound you hear when a soap bubble pops. I turn around and am way shocked to see a phone booth just come out of nowhere, right into my backyard.

What the? Where did this thing come from? I got scared shitless, I figure, since there wasn’t any shit in my pants. But I was also way curious about this thing. A phone booth is now in my yard. Why? Where did it come from?

Alright, I know it's not a phone booth, but it so looks like that thing in that TV show with that doctor they keep changing guys on. This thing looks like what he uses.

It opens and out walks an alien, or creature. A being. He—I mean it—walks out and looks around. I don’t know alien faces so I don’t know if it was mad, happy, surprised or what.

“This is the wrong time,” it says, or thinks. I don’t hear it talk, I just hear the words inside my head. He just stands there, looking around. “I must return,” it then says, or thinks. 

He turns back to the booth then falls over and dies. Or something.

I mean I guess I could have checked it for a pulse, but I don’t know if they breathed or what. So I am just standing still. But even if I had moved, I didn’t have time to check or anything because right after it fell over, it just blew up. Sort of. You can see, but not hear, lots of little itty-bitty explosions. They’re like the ones you see when you win that huge teddy bear at the carnival, but smaller, without any noise. After that, the alien just puffs away. There is nothing but black and green smoke drifting away.

That’s when the phone booth looking thing caught on fire, too. Maybe it’s supposed to? Maybe the alien dying makes it go up in flames?

I don’t know, but since I had the water hose in my hand, I just put out that fire. 

After I spray the heck out of it with water, I get to see the inside. If I could read this alien language, I’d be reading this thing for days. This booth has a lot of writing. All the knobs and dials have some, I guess it’s just like normal knobs and dials on human things in all those movies.

I wanted to see what this booth could do. What did the alien mean by wrong time? Go back where? I need to figure stuff out, this is going to take some real time. Like maybe the whole weekend. I’m gonna need a place to hide this. There’s a lot of stuff to know here.

I ran back to my house, to find a place to stash this thing. I need to put it in a room my dad never goes into. I know! The garage! He’s never gonna see it! Figure I’ll use that old wagon, I still have from when I was a kid, to move it.

Wow, this thing doesn’t weigh anything. Alien technology is kinda impressive. I easily knock the phone booth thing on its side then pick it up with just one hand. I bet I could throw this, like all the way to the garage. I just toss it onto the cart and start pulling it there. 

Oh wow. Lame. I watered this crappy yard too much in some parts. The wagon wheels sink into muddy stuff in a few places.

I pull it into the garage and hide this booth in the corner, behind the kitchen door, near that huge, cardboard TV box that is now stuffed with all those threadbare towels we don’t use anymore. This way, when my mom comes in here, to get stuff from that freezer that lays down sideways, she won’t be able to see it either.

I got some of those towels to dry off the phone booth. And wow, there’s a lot of knobs and dials. They cover all of one of these little inside walls with them. I don’t want to move them as I am doing the drying, but that’s hard. I know! I’ll use air!

In some public places I pee, they have these machines that dry your hands with air. So I’m gonna be using our old leaf blower vacuum thing to shoot air at the inside of the phone booth to get it dry. It does make a lot of noise, so I guess I’m glad that my parents aren’t home. They went to the Sizzler. They didn’t take me with them. I didn’t get the yard watered so they left without me.

So this is a time machine? The alien said this was the wrong time. So I’m thinking that this thing has to be able to jump from now to whenever or the other way around. He also said he needed to return, and since that thing didn’t start here either, it must also jump around from place to place too. 

When and where is it set to go? I figure that’s what it does,

jump in both time and space. A really neat machine. I’ll have

to give it a name.

Alice. That is what I’ll call my phone booth, Alice.

Things do better with girl names. I don’t think Ms. Watkins would care much about inclusion, or whatever, on me using a girl's name for a thing. Didn’t they always use girl’s names for boats too?

So when am I going? Ha! Get it? I think it’s funny I just made that joke. Not where I’m going but when. I can sometimes be a funny guy.

It does seem drier now. In one section, there were no dials, just knobs. There’s one bigger than the others. When I turned that one, the thing just seemed to turn on. The lights get lit now. And some of the dials are also moving too. Crazy.

These levers are up in the middle, on the left side of one of those little walls. On the right side was a handle you yank down with a big yellow button with a red x right next to it. I bet that’s what makes this thing go.

Now is as good a time as any. I pull the lever then slam that button home. That's when I hear the sound I was hoping for, the sound of a popping soap bubble. Alice is now somewhere else. I race outside her to explore this brave new world only to discover that I’m now just in someone’s yard. But when?

You know, something’s different about this place. This yard is wetter than the usual dry one I always get in trouble for. So when am I? Ha, well no, that joke isn’t as funny this time.

I yank out my phone to see what day it is now. Ah, great! The jump must have done something cause my phone now has a cracked screen with black stuff all over it! I can’t get it to tell me anything. 

So when am I?

I run down the sidewalk to get to a corner store. As I’m running, I start thinking it looks familiar. It looks a lot like mine. Crap, yeah, I guess it is my street. That’s where the alien went, my own lousy, used to be dry, but not now, yard. It figures that this where I went too. But when?

I then see Super Maxies, that same old shop on the corner. I see that in this time they still sell lotto tickets. The door going in has all the usual things about winners and stuff. They always have the date on the ticket so that’s how I’ll know when I am. I’ll buy a ticket.

The price on these tickets is still one dollar. It’s that much in my time too. Then again, it’s been that way forever. That will never change. I stand before the counter.

“One ticket please.” I slide my dollar over to this guy, ugh, person. Wait, Ms. Watkins wouldn’t have a problem with me calling him a guy since he is a guy, right? Sometimes her stuff can be so confusing. And a pain in the you know what.

He didn’t check the date on the bill, so I guess they still don’t care, like I know they don’t care in my time. I run outside and then look at my ticket.

What? Today?

How can it be the same day? Why didn’t I travel through time in my time machine? And I didn’t travel much. I just went back into my yard. Not that impressive. Yeah, it's easily carried, but it doesn’t take you to different times. And not much farther places either.

I get back to my house knowing that the phone booth is in my yard again. I guess I’ll need the wagon to pull Alice over and get it back inside. Maybe I’ll just throw it. I know I can. Nah, I’ll just drag Alice over on that cart. So I walk back to the garage while avoiding the muddy parts in that stupid yard.

I open the door and then the shit, that’s not in my pants, hits the fan. I’m standing right there, about to step inside, looking at me inside Alice. I’m banging on the knobs with a plastic hammer.

Part of me wants to yell at me for hitting Alice with a hammer, even a plastic one. But another part of me just wonders where I’ll go now. I can’t stay here.

I’m not a twin.