Chapter 1

Oh No!

It was just days before the beginning of eighth grade, and I was standing with my best pal, Bones, in a New York City subway car, trying to hide my shock. Somehow I knew from the way Bones was looking at me, I wasn’t doing a good job of hiding anything. I was really worried and he knew it. The words echoed in my head: Subject does not exist . . . ten months.

Sometime next summer, I, CJ “Lumpy” King, would be heading off to high school . . . but my closest friend would not—because he had cancer. I was staring at Bones, trying to make sense of the senseless, when he poked me in the ribs. “Hey, Lump, cheer up!”

His face, which a second ago had been etched with worry, turned into his typical goofy grin. He took Stevie Ching’s phone from my hand, and I didn’t object. We had Stevie’s phone because he had been kidnapped by the Suits. We were lucky enough to find the phone and hide it from them.

The Suits were a group of underground, Chinese criminals, and they were desperate to get their hands on what Bones and I were holding. This phone was the most valuable piece of technology ever invented: it had an app called LightYear and it let you time travel— for real, time travel.

We knew the Suits would stop at nothing to get the phone back, but no way were we going to give it to them—it was literally Bones’ lifeline.

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