Better Late than Never

At Whit's End, a church group is packed and ready for an evening of roller skating, and the bus should have pulled out long ago. Only one seat is still empty. Robyn Jacobs has not shown up, and nobody is surprised, because Robyn is late for everything. Whit is sure there must be a good reason, but the kids waiting by the door set him straight. Jessie says Robyn always has an excuse and never a reason, and that if she got a penny for every time she was late she would be a millionaire. Connie has already had to make a harder decision: Robyn is late for volleyball games too, and if she is not on time for the district tournament in the morning, she is off the team. After nearly half an hour of waiting, the bus leaves without her.

Robyn arrives at a quarter to six, breathless and full of explanations about a stuck bike chain and wet hair and a mother who wasn't home. Whit listens kindly but does not let her off the hook. Being late for everything, he tells her, shows that a person isn't very responsible, and worse, it shows she doesn't really care about other people's time. He also passes along Connie's warning about the tournament. Robyn goes home to watch television instead, and gets a second helping of the same lesson from her father, who is hunting through the freezer for a TV dinner and predicting that one day she will be late for something truly important and regret it for the rest of her life. Robyn decides she isn't hungry after all.

She falls asleep in front of the TV, and her parents leave her curled up on the couch. That is when the warnings start echoing. A narrator with a camera crew introduces her, in the voice of a spooky old television show, as a girl about to step across the threshold of tardiness once too often, and announces that she is now lost in the Twilife Zone. What follows is one nightmare after another, and in every one Robyn is wearing her pajamas. She misses school and is sentenced to Saturdays forever. She misses the football game and is told the cheerleaders will never let her cheer again. She misses lunch and is handed millions of dishes. She misses her crowning at a beauty pageant, and the title goes to the runner-up. She misses her own wedding, and the groom marries someone else. A movie director gives away the starring role that could have made her famous. Her father, suddenly old and gray, is still waiting for her to be ready for church, and tells her that her mother finally got tired of waiting. Worst of all, Robyn arrives at a funeral to learn that it was hers, and that she missed hearing all the kind things people said about her. She begs to wake up, promising she will never be late again.

She does wake up, on a bright Saturday morning, and immediately roars through the house to get everyone moving. Then the real trouble begins. Her father's car won't start. Her bike gets a flat tire. She cuts through the Jacksons' yard and a dog gets hold of her sock, she falls into a creek in the woods, and when Whit finally picks her up on the road, his car dies too. Somehow, soaked and chewed and out of breath, Robyn walks onto the court just as the tournament begins.

Afterward the whole team crowds the counter at Whit's End for free ice cream, and Connie wants to know how she made the last stretch. The answer is Whit's newly repaired bicycle, riding in his trunk. Robyn's father arrives at last, having finally gotten the car going, and assumes from the party that the team won. They didn't. They are celebrating because Robyn got there on time. He tells her he is proud of her, and Robyn has one small request for him: next game, try to get there on time.