Time Traveler - Books 1, 2, 3 & 4: Books for Girls aged 9-12

by Katrina Kahler

“We tried to tell you,” I said and giggled, feeling close to hysterics. This had to be a dream, it really did, but the proof was right in front of me…or not I guess. I was filled with fear, but at the same time, I could not help the excitement bubbling inside. “That was a time machine, and Oliver just sent himself somewhere else to prove it was real.” I wondered if he went far enough back to see our dad, but that would be crazy.

  We had no idea exactly what this machine would do, and I prayed he wouldn’t have taken such a big risk so soon, at least not without me.

  “No, no that’s not real,” Kate mumbled and stepped away from me. “This isn’t possible.”

  “But it is,” I told her, trying to get her to understand. “Kate, my grandpa was a genius, and something tells me he left all this behind so one day, Oliver would find his work. Maybe even set about finishing what he…started.”

  I frowned as a gust of wind rushed past us both, ruffling our hair and stirring the papers on the workbench.

  “Did you feel that?” I asked, worried that maybe I was going a little crazy after all.

  But my friend nodded, trembling with excitement or fear, I couldn’t tell which.

  The gust came again, and we yelped in alarm as it nearly knocked us off our feet. Papers and small items whirled around us as if a cyclone had sprung up in the room and threatened to take us away with it. We struggled to pull ourselves out of the bursts of air, grabbing hold of the stair railing once more as the lights flickered and a crackling sound filled the basement. The hairs on my arms stood on end, and though part of me knew I should shield my eyes, I couldn’t help but stare at the spot Oliver had disappeared from only moments before.

  The crackling noise turned deafening, and my eyes widened in alarm to see blue light appearing out of nothing in the center of the storm. It sparked out in all directions and just when I expected it to catch something alight and burn our house to the ground, the same pop happened again.

  All of a sudden, Oliver stood before us, his hair a total mess but he was grinning madly from ear to ear. He still held the whirring machine in his hands. It continued to hum, but the sound was gradually decreasing along with the fading glow of the blue light.

  “Oliver!” I rushed off the steps and threw my arms around him, ruffling his hair at the same time. “You idiot! Don’t scare me like that! Where did you go?”

  “Don’t you mean when?” he asked, laughing at his own joke.

  “It’s not funny,” I scolded even though I was grinning right along with him.

  “I went back and found something you might want.” He reached under his arm and removed the history book he’d sent back in time the previous night. I stared at it, not ready to believe it actually still existed.

  I was also struggling to comprehend the fact that he’d gone back in time and retrieved it.

  “Pretty neat, huh?” the grin on his face could not have grown wider if he tried.

  Kate crept towards us and looked from me to Oliver and back again. “You…you went back in time?”

  “Yep, just to last night so I could get this book back.”

  Kate gulped, and I couldn’t blame her for being out of sorts. It was the third time I’d seen the machine work, and I was still at a loss for how or why it worked. My friend ran her hands through her hair, but a slow smile lifted her lips. “Wow…have I ever told you how happy I am that we’re best friends?”

  I hugged her with one arm, studying my history book. “Same.”

  “So, you two want to try it out or not?”

  We exchanged a glance then fell into hysterical laughter. “No way,” Kate burst out. “No, way!” she repeated once more. Then after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “I mean, is it safe? It seemed to work for you. But would it work for all of us? How do we even do it and when would we go back to?”

  Her questions continued, and I was thrilled at her enthusiasm. She had turned from a total skeptic to someone who finally believed that the time machine was real. She was now as excited as Oliver.

  But when I saw the pair of them smiling at one another and I realized they were serious, I stopped to process what they were saying. A voice in my head immediately screamed… This is a terrible idea!

  Oliver had somehow managed to get the machine to work for himself. But what if it was a fluke and the next time, it took us too far back? Or it took us forward instead? What if the machine got stuck somewhere and we weren’t able to get back to our real timeline? The worries mounted the more I let my imagination run wild with what could happen and just how dangerous it all was. Oliver said it himself; once something was sent back from this timeline, there was no getting it back. Unless the machine came with us and everything worked out perfectly, the way it had when he retrieved my textbook. But what were the chances of that happening again?

  “I know that look,” Kate said, and I shook my head to see them both watching me.

  “What look? I don’t have a look,” I mumbled, setting my textbook down.

  “Yeah, you do. Your face gets all scrunchy, and you look like you’re ready to burp or let one rip,” Kate said through her giggling. Oliver spurted with laughter behind her, and I rolled my eyes.

  “What?” Kate giggled again. “I’m just saying.”

  “Even if I have that look, it doesn’t mean anything,” I said, crossing my arms.

  “Yeah it does,” Oliver argued. “It means you’re going to say no and ruin our fun.”

  Kate’s head bobbed in agreement. “It’s true. That’s the…Holly’s no fun face.”

  “Five minutes ago, you still thought all this was a trick,” I pointed out, “and now you’re ready to just what…hop into that crackling blue light and disappear?”

  Kate shrugged. “Guess so. Come on, Holly! This is an adventure! You’re always talking about wanting to do something cool and different! Think of the stories we could tell from this,” she urged when I paced away from her and Oliver. “You’d get to do something that Jade would never dream of doing.”

  I stopped mid-step. That was true. Jade didn’t have a genius brother who could discover a time machine and tinker with it enough to get it to work. For once, I would have something that only I could do. And though I might never be able to tell her, I was pretty sure that made me cooler than her and her perfect nails, and her civil war artifacts.

  “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it soon,” Oliver said. “Mom will be back home in a few hours, and I don’t want to be reappearing when she’s here.”

  I grunted, shifting from one foot to the other as my conscious warred with itself inside my head. Kate clasped her hands together and stuck out her lower lip. Pouting! My best friend had resorted to pouting to try and convince me to go along with this crazy plan.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked Oliver.

  “Nope, feels kind of weird, but it doesn’t hurt,” he promised. “Worst scenario is that you’re going to have a very bad hair day when we land where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going to go?” Kate was shaking. She was bursting with excitement. “Can we go to the future?”

  He shook his head as he set the machine on the workbench. “I think it’s in the notes somewhere, but I’d have to study the device to figure out how to get us safely into the future and back. The future can be tricky, but the past…well…it’s complicated, too, but those were the first notes I found, so that’s what I’ve figured out so far. I don’t want to test future travel just yet.”

  I couldn’t believe I had agreed to this, but I finally nodded. Kate jumped up and down then hugged me so hard I swore I felt my ribs crack. “Can’t…breathe!”

  “Sorry!” She set me on my feet and danced around on the spot. “Oh man, this is going to be insane! Where are we going, or sorry,” she said when Oliver’s brow arched, “when are we going?”

  “Well, I went back a day,” he said. “We could try a bit farther back.”

  “Where did you land when you traveled?” I asked, joining him and K
ate at the workbench.

  “The same place where I left from. Maybe we could go back about a month?”

  We nodded in agreement and watched curiously as he mumbled under his breath, checked his watch, and jotted down notes on scrap pieces of paper. I was always fascinated by my brother and how smart he was. I might not always tell him like I should I guess, but he was the smartest person I knew. I wondered if Dad was the same way. Once again my mind told me his disappearance had something to do with the machine we’d found and were now tampering with. What if Mom came home today and found her kids gone, just like Dad? What would she think?

  What if Dad was the T person Grandpa referred to in his notes? Mom still hadn’t told us Dad’s name, so I had no idea if that could be the case or not.

  “I think I’ve got it,” Oliver announced suddenly, and I put my thoughts about our dad away for another day. Oliver fiddled with the dials and knobs again as Kate, and I huddled close by, waiting for what would come next. “A month ago on Saturday, Mom was gone. We were here on our own, and then we went into town,” he said. “Remember that day, Holly?”

  “Think so, but are you sure we’ll be in the house when no one else is.”

  “If my calculations are correct then, yes,” he stated. “It’s the perfect date for us all to go back to because no one else was here on that day. So that will work…I think.”

  “Oliver, why do you not sound so certain?”

  “There’s always a chance for error,” he said.

  “Why don’t we go to a time when there were people around?” Kate asked. “You know…so we know that we really are in the past?”

  Oliver frowned. “Not sure that’s a good idea. If we see our other selves, I’m not sure exactly what that could do. It’s safer to try and appear when no one else is here. It has to be a day when we were all out of the house. See that clock on the workbench? It shows the date, so we’ll know we’ve gone back in time.”

  Kate and I nodded. I did not want to cause some unknown problem if we were seen when we went back. So I figured what Oliver was suggesting, made sense.

  “Right, I think we’re set to go,” he said as he picked up the machine and gripped hold of it firmly. “Hang on tight. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  Kate held onto his right arm, and I held his left. He flipped the switch, and the machine loudly whirred to life. The pulsing blue light matched the unsteady beating of my heart. It was racing wildly in my chest as I held my breath. My whole body vibrated, and soon, the three of us watched as items in the room lifted and hovered in the air. I dug my fingers harder into Oliver’s arm, hoping he’d forgive me for probably leaving bruises. The crackling blue light shot out from the machine in his arms and crackled around us. My hair stood on end, and a weird, giddy sensation filled me. I laughed.

  I realized that when Oliver had trialed the device on himself earlier, and I thought I’d heard him gasp in pain, he’d been laughing; which was what we were all doing now. We couldn’t help it. Then the light-headedness set it. We were spinning; spinning around so fast I thought I was going to be sick. My eyes were clenched tightly closed. I didn’t dare to open them. Not that I’d be able to as they seemed glued shut and pulled tightly into their sockets.

  A pop made me jump, and when my feet hit the ground, I knew without a doubt that we were not in the present anymore.

  I glanced up from where Oliver, Kate, and I had landed in a heap on the basement floor. Trying to orient myself, I glanced at the clock on the workbench in an attempt to read the date and time. But I was still so shaken, it appeared blurry, and I was struggling to read it properly.

  “Oh my gosh,” I heard Kate whisper in disbelief. “We’re back in your basement!”

  Chapter 8

  “Did we come back to the right time, Oliver? A month back…like you said?” I whispered the words, afraid someone might overhear us and know we were down here.

  Oliver pushed to his feet, leaving the machine on the floor. “Yeah, think so.”

  “What do you mean you think so?”

  I watched his face pale, and he gulped. “Uh, well, I might have miscalculated by a little bit.”

  “How much is a little bit?”

  Footsteps stomped overhead, and the three of us hunkered down as if whoever was upstairs would know we were in the basement and rush down to see what was going on. I smacked Oliver on the arm, and he winced, shooting me a glare. After taking a closer look at the clock, I’d realized we were definitely farther than a month in the past.

  It was January 5th which meant we were still on winter break.

  “Oliver! Are you downstairs?” a woman’s voice called.

  “It’s Mom!” I hissed in a panicked whisper. “Mom’s here!”

  “I know,” he replied quietly, as he picked up the machine and motioned for us to back into the shadows of the basement. “Come on; we have to stay out of sight.”

  Kate and I moved with him beneath the stairs and behind stacks of boxes. “What do we do?” Kate asked as the footsteps moved closer to the top of the stairs.

  “Oliver?” Mom’s voice was clearer than ever.

  Oliver was focused intently on the time machine, hurriedly turning the dials and checking his watch. “I need a few seconds…just have to make a couple of adjustments.”

  I watched him closely, while at the same time, my pulse throbbed at the base of my throat. Silently, I urged him to hurry, before Mom decided to come down the stairs looking for him.

  “There. It’s ready.” Oliver glanced towards us and told us to grab hold. I knew he wanted us to get back to our time zone before anything bad took place. And I definitely wanted the same thing. But when he flipped the switch, nothing happened. No whirring, no bright blue light. Nothing. He shook the gadget, rattling it in its box angrily.

  “No! Come on!” he muttered.

  “Are we stuck here?” Kate asked, her eyes wide with fear.

  I waited for him to reply. We couldn’t be stuck. That would be bad. We had to get back! I didn’t even know what would happen if we were stuck in the past with ourselves. “Oliver. On a scale of one to ten, how bad is this, and be honest with me!”

  He shook his head, mumbling under his breath…words and calculations and things I didn’t understand. He rambled on and on as Mom yelled again, but when no answer came from the basement, she moved away, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But Oliver was losing it. I grabbed his shoulders firmly and gave him a hard shake.

  “Oliver! Look at me!”

  His head snapped up, and he chewed on his bottom lip. “What?”

  “Can we get back or not?” I repeated. “English, please.”

  He fumbled with the machine in his hands, and I worried he was going to say no. But he gave me a different answer entirely, “Maybe…I don’t know. Something malfunctioned. I need to fix it.”

  “Well, your tools are mostly down here, right?” I nodded to the workbench. “Get what you need. We’ll keep an eye out for you.” I could see that Kate looked as freaked out as I felt, but she stood up with me, her eyes darting toward the staircase.

  “Oliver,” I said in a firm voice, “you have to get us back home. We can’t stay here.”

  “Yes I know,” he replied as he jumped to his feet. “I just need a few minutes.”

  He hurried to the workbench while Kate and I stood at the bottom of the stairs, out of sight of anyone who might open the door, but close enough we could see and hear what was happening in the house above. I wracked my brain, trying to remember what we’d all been doing back on the 5th of January. But that was nearly three months ago. It had been so cold outside during winter break, and we’d had so much snow that we mostly stayed indoors…but if it was the week that I thought it was…at some point we did head outside.

  “I’m ready!”

  I jumped at the sound of my voice yelling through the house upstairs. Clapping my hand quickly over my mouth, I tried to keep myself from yelling in alarm. Kate twisted her hands anxiousl
y together as she watched Oliver. She then looked back to the basement door, her eyes never stopping.

  “Di you find your brother yet?” Mom asked, from the top of the stairs.

  I saw the handle turn and made ready to grab Oliver, but then I heard my brother’s voice booming through the house.

  “Who’s ready to lose?” he yelled in a mocking tone.

  “Whatever! I’m going to beat you both,” Mom said through her laughter. Their footsteps moved to the front of the house, the door opened, then closed again, and finally, we were alone. There was no one else inside except us, huddled in the basement.

  I remembered we had gone outside for most of the afternoon. We had played games out in the snow. But meanwhile, Oliver was still mumbling under his breath beside me as he continued to mess around with the machine. I didn’t want to make him any more nervous. So I kept my urges for him to hurry up, to myself, dancing from one foot to the other.

  “No…no it’s not down here!” Oliver exclaimed anxiously.

  “What isn’t?” I asked, rushing to the table.

  “My calibrator. It’s gotta be upstairs in my room.”

  “Where?”

  “On my desk, looks like a compass, but it’s digital—where are you going?”

  Ignoring his question, I was already halfway up the stairs before he could try to stop me. At the top, I paused and listened, but I heard our laughter outside and sprinted from the basement door, up the next flight of stairs and into Oliver’s room. Thankfully, his room was pretty well organized. I moved towards his desk, searching for the calibrator thing that he needed. We had to get back to our proper time zone. I was not going to remain stuck in the past.

  As for Oliver, I wasn’t even sure he knew what would happen if we were stuck here.

  After a few moments of frantic searching on top of the desk, I yanked open drawer after drawer then let out a quiet woot of celebration when I found what I was looking for. I poked my head out of his room again, making sure the coast was clear then darted down the first set of stairs.