Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Breakfast in the Future
Breakfast in the Future
Breakfast in the Future
Ebook183 pages2 hours

Breakfast in the Future

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

It's October 6, 2010. Why does it matter what twelve year old Max has for breakfast? And how could riding his bike to school change his life, his friend Ethan's life, and the course of history?

Time travel and friendship carry Max through twists and turns that will keep readers engaged to the end of this new book by the author of the Bill the Warthog mystery series.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 13, 2014
ISBN9781311378033
Breakfast in the Future
Author

Dean A Anderson

Dean A. Anderson grew up in a small town in Northern California watching too much television but going outside on occasion to climb trees, play in the world's smallest football league and put pennies on the railroad track.He went to college in San Diego and seminary in Deerfield, Illinois.He married a wonderful woman named Mindy and they have three children who have somehow grown up to be, you know, grown ups.He's worked as youth pastor a lot of years that allowed him to play much foosball, eat too much pizza and talk with some really cool kids about really important things.He now works as a hotel night auditor where he sometimes meets very interesting people at 3 AM.He hopes the things he's written give even a small fraction of the joy that he's received reading people like C.S. Lewis, Joseph Bailey and John D. Fitzgerald (along with many others.)

Related to Breakfast in the Future

Related ebooks

Children's Action & Adventure For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Breakfast in the Future

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    Breakfast in the Future - Dean A Anderson

    Introduction

    Are you sure it this isn’t the right cereal? Whole Bran Flakes have the nutritional components that a child your age would need for their optimal daily diet.

    I shook my head sadly. (Or should I say, I will shake my head sadly? It’s hard to figure out whether I should use past or future tense here. Some of the things I’m going to write about happened in the future, but I’m remembering them, so to me it seems like the past. To make it worse, some of the things I remember from the future won’t happen because the future changed. Or will change. Or did change. So the tense I use here may end up being the least of the things that confuse me.)

    Where was I? Oh yeah, I was straightening Bargo out about the kids’ cereal thing.

    Bargo, I said, You have to understand that kids my age, at least at my school, didn’t care anything about the nutritional content in our cereals. We cared about three things in our cereals, in this order: 1) Marshmallows. They could be shaped like stars or horseshoes or ferrets, but any good cereal should have marshmallows. 2) A cartoon character on the box. This is so our eyes would have something interesting to focus on as we’re clearing the sleep out of them. 3) A prize. Best if it was a squirt gun actually inside the box, but if we had to send in proof of purchase seals, that was OK because then we might have mail we could look forward to. Got it?

    Apparently, Bargo got it because he was back soon with a cereal box labeled Marshmallow Madness with a cartoon squirrel stuffing cereal in its cheeks. That’ll do, I told him.

    During those days, I was asked hundreds of questions to get my expert advice. I’m twelve years old so, I’m not used to people considering me an expert. But I am an expert on one thing for sure: on being a twelve year old kid in the year 2010.

    Bargo and his crew needed to know what I knew.

    Of course, it would have helped if they told me some of the things they knew. Like how my life would be (had been?) in danger. But not just my life. A whole lot of other lives, too. Most of all I wish they would have told me about the dangers that might be facing my best friend, Ethan.

    I guess I’m getting ahead of myself, so I should go back to what’s definitely the past so you can understand why I was (will be?) in the future.

    Chapter 1

    I won’t go back to when I was born or anything, I’ll start on the day I was taken to the future. It was Wednesday, October 6, 2010.

    Funny thing is, that day I didn’t have cereal. That day we were out of any decent cereals (the kinds with leprechauns or ship captains on the front) so I made myself cinnamon toast for breakfast. The first piece of toast tasted weird, kind of like metal. (You may wonder how I know what metal tastes like. Ethan and I used to have bet you won’t taste this challenges in the kitchen. He once challenged me to taste the aluminum foil.)

    I hadn’t gotten to my second piece of toast, which I hoped would taste better, when Ethan Perkins knocked on the door.

    Morning, Ethan.

    Morning, Max, Ethan said. Did you finish your vocab?

    Stink! I said. Maybe I said something else, but my mom might read this someday. I did it, but I forgot to print it up. Do we have a minute?

    You know it’s going to be at least five minutes, but yeah.

    I turned on the computer and noticed that Ethan was eating my second piece of toast. Does that toast taste like metal to you? And by the way, did you ask if you could steal my toast?

    This toast does not taste like metal. In fact, I must compliment you on the crystal consistency you achieved while toasting the cinnamon sugar. And this is not stolen toast. I reminded you of the vocab; I earned it.

    Ethan was always reminding me of stuff, especially school stuff. He never needed reminding. He didn’t need to take notes in school. He seemed to remember everything he heard, saw and read.

    We’d been friends since kindergarten, and he’d always been the smartest kid in the class -- in the school really. Which was a good thing, because I wouldn’t have been doing even as well as I was in school without Ethan. Even the early years of elementary school Ethan helped me, but not in a way where he seemed like a total nerd. Like in math he would say, Okay Max, if you pulled three boogers out of your nose and I pulled two out of mine, and we smeared them on Mrs. Millia’s chair; how many boogers would she sit on? You know, stuff like that; helpful but not boring.

    I was always expecting him to skip a grade or two, but his parents thought it was important for Ethan to remain at his physical and social level even though he had left every other kid in the intellectual dust. I was glad he didn’t skip a grade, because if Ethan wasn’t in my class, I wouldn’t have any real friends in the seventh grade.

    Anyway, I printed up my vocab sheets. It should have been two pages, but three printed up. I didn’t think much about it, just stuck the sheets in my backpack and headed out the door.

    Ethan and I biked to Robert Zemeckis Middle School. We locked our bikes at the rack and had the distinct misfortune of meeting up with Jeff Roades. Jeff had more hair growing out of more places than any other seventh grader, and he was awfully big, so there was plenty of room for hair to grow (word had it he’d been held back twice).

    Hey, Perkins, Roads said with his fuzzy mustached mouth. Bet you thought you were awfully funny with that history paper you gave me.

    Ethan nodded, You’re absolutely right, Jeff. Great amounts of humor were derived from that history paper and the fact that you turned it in.

    Every kid in school had been assigned to do a report on a U.S. President. Then all the papers were sent to the local newspaper, and the best ones were published. Jeff didn’t actually write a paper, but told Ethan beatings would happen if Ethan didn’t write one for him.

    So Ethan wrote a paper for Jeff, and excerpts from it did appear in the local paper, anonymously, in an editorial on the sad state of our schools. Ethan’s paper under Jeff’s name was about Martin van Buren. You know, the United States President who invented two-ply toilet paper, declared war on Eskimo Land and established the National Scrapbook Society. A fact or two may have been a tad off.

    I’m going to hit you so hard, Jeff said, Your nose won’t be able to stop smelling your socks. Jeff’s threats didn’t usually make much sense, but that didn’t make them any less threatening.

    Not now, I would think, Ethan said. After all, how many tardies have you collected so far this year? You might find learning to read a clock could do so much for your life.

    Jeff looked at his WWF WWE watch. He looked at it longer than was necessary, making me think he was considering what Ethan had said. (Or maybe it really did take him that long to read the time.)

    Yeah, I might as well head to class, Jeff said. ’Course I’ve got plenty of time, unlike you. Meet me at the flagpole after school, 3 o’clock. He turned and started to jog toward his class.

    Such a tempting offer, Ethan called at him.

    Fortunately, Ethan and I were right by our first class, Harder’s Homeroom/ English Class, and we sat in our chairs with a minute to spare.

    He doesn’t scare you? I asked Ethan.

    Of course he does, Ethan said. But I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing it.

    The bell rang, and we sat and listened to the announcements. Along with the announcements for cross country, soccer, and drama rehearsals, there were congratulations to Ethan for his first place prize essay on Calvin Coolidge in the U.S. President contest, which was accompanied by a $100 gift certificate to the Twin Oaks Mall.

    Why didn’t you tell me? I whispered to Ethan.

    It was no big deal, he answered before we were hushed by Mrs. Harder.

    It was time for S.S.R. (Silent Sustained Reading) for the next fifteen minutes. I was reading a novelization of the new Silent Avenger movie. Ethan was reading something by Stephen Hawking. Ethan tried to explain what the book was about. I nodded and smiled through the explanation and took in approximately nothing.

    Then it was time to turn in our vocabulary sheets. I pulled mine out of my folder. I was right about the two pages vs. three pages thing. My vocab assignment was just two pages, but the printer had printed three.

    The third page, in all caps, read: BE AT THE EQUIPMENT ROOM AT 3 PM

    BE AT THE EQUIPMENT ROOM AT 3 PM

    After I passed my vocab down the row along with Ethan’s, I showed him that third sheet. He glanced at it, looked puzzled and shrugged his shoulders.

    I was pretty sure Ethan had no idea where that little message came from. If it had been his prank he wouldn’t have been able to keep a smile down. I couldn’t see my parents printing such a message.

    So I wondered who did it. And I wondered if I would find out later in the day. Like maybe at three o’clock.

    Chapter 2

    The next class was completely normal (math, which means boring). But things started getting really weird in the next class, P.E.

    We were going to be playing Below the Neck, which was really just dodge ball, but Mr. Grey liked to emphasize the below the neck rule in the game ever since Cindy Kolzowski’s glasses got broken, and her parents threatened to sue the school. (Of course, if she had the smarts of Ethan, she would have done what he does and stored her glasses in her locker when we played dodge ball.) I thought the lawsuit would be the end of dodge ball for sure at RZMS, but the games went on.

    Which was OK with me because I like the game. I liked when we were outside better but Below the Neck Dodge Ball was by far the best inside game we played.

    We always had co-ed teams. I liked it when Ethan was on my team, but he wasn’t that day. At least Anita was on my team.

    Anita was always nice to me. I knew it was because she liked Ethan and Ethan was my friend, but hey, nice is nice. She was pretty cute; long red hair, nice smile, and looked fine in all the places you could throw a dodge ball at.Ethan didn’t seem to notice she liked him. He was nice to her like he was nice to most everybody. But Anita was always asking me about where he’d be and what things he liked. So when we’d go to the movies or to fast food, Anita would happen to be there. But Ethan was oblivious.

    Anyway, in the first round of the game I was one of the last three players alive on our team, and Kevin Daniels was the last on the other side, and someone got a great shot that hit his left foot and knocked him to the ground, so that was pretty cool.

    But weird stuff started to happen in the next round. A ball hit the back wall and rolled between Anita and me. We both reached for it and I thought I got it first, but somehow I didn’t pick it up. Anita said thanks and picked up the ball and threw it, hitting Ethan in the thigh.

    Kevin was throwing like a wild man to make up for the game before. Right after Anita hit Ethan, he grabbed the ball and threw it right at me. I thought I must have dodged it because I didn’t feel anything.

    But Kevin yelled, Hey, Max, get out! I hit you!

    Did not! I yelled back.

    The ball went straight back to the wall, Anita argued. It didn’t bounce off him.

    The game went on, and I stayed in. But Kevin threw the ball at me again. And I didn’t feel it hit me. But I saw the ball go right through my right knee. Don’t believe me? Whatever. The ball went right through me, and I didn’t feel a thing.

    I went to stand by the wall because it seemed like that should count as a hit. I didn’t think anyone else noticed but I looked at Ethan, and I could tell he had seen it. I just shrugged my shoulders.

    We lost that round. In the next, final round of the game, I couldn’t pick up a ball. Whenever I tried to grab a ball, my hands went right through it. So I just dodged. But then I thought, ‘Why dodge?’ So I jumped into the path of some balls, and they just went right through me. Through my stomach. Through my shoulder. Through my foot.

    Everyone stopped playing and looked at me. They kind of formed a circle at me.

    "What’s the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1