SAL
Afterward, when Mr Merkel and Ezra were gone, Sal would wonder what a time traveler could do to keep it all from happening. Keep Lucas away from Lovelock, definitely. Keep Ezra out of Sal’s room with his OxyContin, or stop Sal from buying The Graveyard Book, probably. But when Sal looked back at those last weeks, the day that made it all seem inevitable was the day, seventeen days before Mr Merkel died, when Sal explored the old Prentiss farmhouse.
He’d never be able to explain why he did it. It was his birthday, his first without his mother, but after breakfast Ezra went hunting and Gideon vanished into his shed as if it were any other day. So maybe it was this, the loneliness of Sal’s twelfth birthday, that drew him to the farmhouse. Or maybe it was the audacity of being twelve, wh
