by Holly Hook
I let out a cry of disgust and turn away. "I can't sit here and try nothing!"
“I wanted to tell you about him.” He wraps me up tight and I collapse in his grasp. “We'll save your brother, Julia. I promise. But going back right now will only get both of you killed.”
His heart beats fast and strong in his chest. I want to believe him. I should believe him. Maybe I already do. If he can help me--
“Can't you go back to 1912 and get my brother?”
“It's not that simple. If it was, I would have done it a long time ago. Time made it very difficult for me to get you pulled out.” Simon rests his chin on my shoulder. “We're going to work on it. Before that, we need to make sure you're safe and that we can hide him from the other Timeless, too."
I close my eyes. See a mess strewn across a wooden floor. Old dresses of mine. A small figure sits in the middle of it all, rolling a ball across one of them. My little brother always used to get into my stuff and tear everything apart. How am I remembering that out of everything?
But as soon as I open them again, the image is gone, snapped away into an eternal night.
Now that my breathing has slowed and my heartbeat has calmed down, my other side, the logical one, starts to take back over again. He has a point. My brother's cries cut me deep, but I can't return now.
But I can't imagine how else we can pull this off.
How else we can save him.
“Can we head back? To the daycare?” I ask as the first drops of rain plop down around us. They whisper as they call in reinforcements. “I don't want to leave Peggy feeling like I hate her.”
* * * * *
Peggy sighs when I apologize and explain that I've had a very bad day and that Eric's near-drowning still has me rattled, which is true. I can't tell her the real reason for it, though her eyes beg for the answer that it wasn't her. But it only lasts for a minute before the expression on her face hardens.
She pours herself another coffee. “You're lucky you still have your job.” Her voice is quiet. Dangerous, almost. It's somehow far worse than any yelling she could have done. “But I am going to give you the next week off to work out whatever it is that you need to work out.”
“That's fine.” And it is. I itch to tell her we're even now—after all, she snapped at me the day Eric almost drowned in the pond—but I hold it back. I shouldn't be taking out all my stress like this on the people I care about. “I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me.”
Simon, who waits outside while I have my first awkward talk of the night, walks me home to where Nancy waits to start her own talk with me. That one's guaranteed to be even worse, mainly because I love her and I've let her down.
"Do you want to ruin your chances for college?" she asks me the second I get through the door. She stands in the doorway of the kitchen with steam billowing behind her. A pot boils in the background, ready to go over the top. "It isn't cheap. I can only help you so much. You do need a job to save."
I've never heard her get like this before at either me or Monica. I wish Monica were here right now, but she must be out with Trey. I need a shoulder to lean on who's not going to punish or judge me.
"No. I don't want to ruin my chances," I say. I've got to stay alive past Thursday night and early Friday morning to even worry about that. Everything else can come later. I remind myself of that as I try to avoid Nancy's disappointed gaze. "I really don't. I apologized to Peggy. She accepted it. I've been having a lot of stress about--"
My dead brother.
"--about the upcoming mid terms. They're awful. The math one especially."
Nancy's shoulders relax. She turns away and pours herself some cranberry juice at the counter. "I remember those days. But please, Julia, try not to take out your stress on others. No one likes to be someone else's verbal punching bag. Is there anything you want to talk about?"
Nothing I can talk about. "No."
Nancy's all worry as she faces me. "Anything at all?"
"I'm good.” Something inside me constricts. She deserves much better. And on the fourteenth, when I disappear, she's going to be angry if I do manage to come back on the sixteenth. Heartbroken if I don't. It's a thought I can't stand.
Chapter Thirteen
April 14
Today is the day I'm supposed to go back.
Tonight I'm meant to die.
That's all I can think as I wake on Thursday morning. The sunlight does nothing to chase the thoughts away.
The first thing I do is finger the plane tickets in my jeans pocket. Our flight to Houston leaves at seven tonight, with my arrival time at around nine forty-five. I'm nervous about flying for the first time, but even more so about what could happen if I don't. Frank and Isabel will probably have a hard time following me onto an airplane unless they know ahead of time where I'm hiding. Airport security pretty much guarantees that, according to Simon.
Once we're at Houston, though, all bets are off.
I put on my socks. A strange calm sweeps over me.
The day is here. I'm no longer waiting around, dreading what could happen.
Or is that calm resignation?
"Remember dinner tonight, Julia," Nancy says as I make my way through the kitchen. She sounds so happy. "We're still going to Grondin's. Maybe it is a good thing that Peggy gave you the week off. We won’t have to wait too long to get in.”
"It is," I say. I want to hug her and not let go. Monica, too. Without them, I never would have made it this far. But if I do embrace them, they're going to know that something's wrong.
Tonight, I'll be dumping my family at the restaurant and taking off with Simon. I'll excuse myself to go use the bathroom and not come back for a couple of days.
I hate it, but it's that or never come back at all.
* * * * *
"Julia, you haven't talked much at all lately."
Monica's alone today at the lunch table, hair straight like she forgot to curl it. Trey is out sick today, so it's just me and her, which I like. I check the time on my phone. Two minutes into lunch. Simon is supposed to join us in a few minutes. Until then, I need to enjoy this time with Monica. I don't know when I'll see her again, if ever.
Simon and I need to be in the air in a crowded plane tonight, where the Timeless can't capture me and shove me through a rift.
From there, we ride on a cramped bus from Houston to New Orleans until the wee hours of the morning.
We need to keep moving through the entire anniversary, never stopping, never resting.
"I know," I admit at last, checking the cafeteria door again.
"You really like him," Monica says.
She catches me off guard. I turn to face her. "I might," I admit. That's an understatement.
"Oh, come on. You've only spent every waking minute with him this week." Monica smiles. "You haven't told me anything about it. Come on."
"Well, to be fair, you haven't opened up about you and Trey, either." I don't want this to end. I don't want to leave. Monica's the only real sister I've ever had, even if we're not related by blood.
"Well, it's just that I haven't seen much of you lately." She leans forward. "I've seen this before. I don't want to see you drop off the face of the earth for a guy. My friend Shauna did that last year. She stopped talking to me. She even started skipping school."
I snicker.
She has no idea what she’s saying.
“You okay?”
"Don't worry. I'm not going Shauna," I reassure her as my stomach tightens into a ball of rubber bands. Because for a couple of days, I will be going Shauna, even if it's not for the reason she thinks. "We'll spend more time together next week. I promise. I'll hang out with you and Trey more. Maybe we can catch a movie. There's some remake coming out next week, right?"
Monica smiles. "Which remake?"
"Really." I force a grin.
"You know what? That's exactly right." The corners of her eyes wrinkle with relief, but a thin cloud remains. She turns and waves at s
omeone walking into the cafeteria. Simon. I've grown used to his reclusive hermit look.
I turn back to my tray with the sense that Monica doesn't quite believe me.
She doesn't want to lose someone all over again, and I can't blame her.
The problem is that I just might go down that same path.
* * * * *
I might as well be dressing for my funeral. I very well could be.
The light's turning stretched and yellow outside my bedroom window. My twenty-five cent Goodwill blouse is white and frilly at the front, something that belongs in a coffin in a nice funeral home, surrounded by bouquets of flowers. I take it off and pick a bright magenta one instead. It's more suggestive of Valentine's Day than anything else, but considering that Simon is supposed to be picking me up from Grondin's tonight, it's not too out of place.
I have to keep the positive in mind. If I don't, I might as well give up and go face 2:20 right now.
Monica's dressed in a yellow blouse and her cream dress pants. It's almost the same color she wore for the dance and it adds to the sense that that I'm about to repeat history.
Literally.
If Nancy still worries about me, she doesn't show it. She's all zipping through room to room as she gathers her purse and slips on her shoes--her dress shoes, I notice, the ones with the little bows that someone must have stolen from the set of the Wizard of Oz. She's been looking forward to this for a long time. This means a lot to her.
It's going to kill her when I go missing tonight. She'll call the police. Stay up all night, waiting next to the phone, dialing my number and spiraling deeper into panic when her ring doesn't go through. I won’t be able to call her back. Simon's mentioned that Frank and Isabel might have found out ways to track phone calls.
And then, if I survive, she's going to kill me when I return in a couple of days. I still hope to see that moment.
I force myself to talk on the way to the restaurant. About the weather. About school. I'm glad when Monica takes over the conversation and tells us about the super boring field trip her Government teacher made her class take to the city hall. Even Nancy sighs at that one and it probably has to do with the fact that she works there twice a week, sorting out the town's water bills.
I let the conversation distract me up until we pull into the parking lot of Grondin's.
Then, I can't push it out of my mind anymore.
Nancy's dash clock reads six thirty-seven. Twenty minutes from now, I leave.
The restaurant is pretty dead on a weekday night, with all the tables near the windows empty. Red and yellow stained-glass lights shine on the other side of the glass. A waitress in black and white rushes past the window and pulls down a blind to block out the setting sun.
Rats. Simon's going to have a hard time getting around all these windows to come into the building. Unless, of course, there's a random rift in there he can use. I imagine him taking us through a wall in a bathroom. Not quite the grand exit I imagine, running out and jumping into a car with him, but better than nothing.
We get out. Walk inside. I remain silent, scanning my surroundings.
Safe.
Grondin's has never been this dead in my memory, which, granted, only spans about one year back from today. An elderly couple wraps up their dinner on the other side of the building as we walk in and the waitress seats us in a corner booth. Three purple menus slap down in front of us as I poke at the cloth roll on my table that contains my silverware.
"Drinks?" the waitress asks as she chews gum. I wonder how long it'll take the managers to reprimand her for that.
"Water," I say. I won't be drinking any. We can't afford to make bathroom stops on the way to the airport. Time's not on our side.
"So," Nancy says from the other side of the table. "Would you like to rent some movies after dinner? How about some chick flicks?"
"Sure. Would love to." They're Nancy's favorite. Mine, not so much, but right now nothing sounds better. I wish I could stay.
Our drinks arrive, and I tap at the mouth of my glass with my straw, watching the bubbles in my water float up to the ice cubes as if they're trying to escape. Most of them get caught under, drowning and trapped.
I need to excuse myself before we order our food. I want to avoid leaving Nancy with my bill if I'm not going to eat it. Simon should be waiting in the back parking lot for me right now. I told him we'd be here around this time.
Monica sips her Dr. Pepper. "So what were you thinking movie-wise?" She yawns but manages to cover her mouth in time, much to Nancy's approval.
"I don't know." Nancy's words stretch out, tired.
Behind us, the older couple walks out, leaving us the only people in the restaurant. It's suddenly very quiet and all the little hairs on the back of my neck tingle and stand up. Something feels off about Grondin's tonight.
The Open sign switches off as soon as the door closes behind the couple.
And the Sorry, We're Closed one lights up a few seconds later behind Nancy's head, blazing red and blue against the glass.
Nobody shuts down this early unless it's a holiday.
I stiffen, hands on my thighs, ready to shoot out of the booth. "Why did the place just close?" I ask, nodding at the sign.
Nancy checks it out before meeting my gaze again. She shakes her head and her eyelids droop. "I don't know. They must be trying to save money since they're so slow tonight." A yawn takes up her face. "Thanks, Monica. Now I caught your yawn."
"Sorry." Monica puts her hands over her face to stifle another one. "Can’t help it."
I stiffen.
Something's going on.
My glass of water has way too many bubbles in it. They all merge under the ice cubes in a mass that finally explodes to the surface and pops. A bitter smell meets my nostrils, faint but there. I want to pretend that I'm imagining things, but I can’t afford to take that chance.
I rise, every nerve on edge. "We have to leave."
"Huh?" Monica asks, extracting her face from her hands. She blinks at me, barely able to keep her eyes open.
They’ve been drugged.
"Are you okay, Julia?" Nancy yawns my name.
"No. I think I'm getting the stomach flu. Can we come back another time?" I hold my belly, hoping to get the point across as I scan the parking lot outside. Empty. I'll have Simon take Nancy and Monica with us, wherever we go. The two of us can drag them if we need to. I'm sure his Timeless skills will help with that. Neither one of them can drive in this state.
"I don't feel the best myself," Nancy says, punctuating her sentence with her forehead hitting the table.
"Nancy!" I rush around the booth and shake her. She moans something, but doesn't lift her head.
Then, silence.
I shake her again. Her back rises and falls with each breath, slow and relaxed. Nancy's knocked out, dead to the world.
"Help." I look at Monica, but she's slumped back in her booth, head against the window, eyes closed as she drifts away into something unknown. "Wake up. We have to leave." It's pointless. The panic rising inside like a screaming banshee tells me that.
But they don't want my family. There's no point to that. They're in the right time. Even Frank should leave them alone. They're just knocked out so they don't witness by disappearance.
I have to run.
"Julia. They'll be fine."
I whirl around.
Isabel stands there beside the waitress. Frank waits right behind her, shifting leg to leg. They're blocking my escape.
All three of them stare at me with those glittering eyes.
They came early.
Somehow, they figured out what I'm planning.
I back into the booth to where Nancy snores with a volume that would humiliate her. They're asleep. Not dead.
"How did you know I was going to be here?" I should be more scared than this. But there's a desperate hope inside that feels too much like the one at the dance, the one I'd had in the office before Frank blew his cove
r. It's the hope that I can stall or make them understand that what they're doing is horrible. For some reason, I want to convince Isabel to help. Why am I thinking that? Of course she won't. She has a job to do.
"We were able to ask around," Frank tells me in a let's-get-this-done tone. "It was much easier to spy on Nancy than it was on you. It seems like she doesn’t know anything that’s going on. You didn’t tell her any of it, did you? It wasn't hard to sicken the staff of this place today and make then stay home."
"You spied on Nancy?” I step away from the booth and Nancy, closer to the Timeless like a mother bear protecting her cubs. A small voice pops up, telling me it's a bad idea, but I've gone past that.
It should be Simon here, not them.
He's got to be close.
Isabel's every inch apologetic as she looks at the carpet and back to me. Even the gold in her eyes looks duller somehow, sadder. "We'll make sure these two don't remember you when they wake up. They won't be worried. Things will be okay for them. Then, we will do the same for your teachers and the other students at school. You've left us a mess to clean up, Julia. No Rogue has ever escaped detection for as long as you have."
They’re going to do a mind trick on Nancy and Monica.
I spread my arms wide, blocking them as much as I can from the golden-eyed terrors. "No!"
They're taking away my family.
Taking everything.
Isabel swallows. "We're not monsters. We don’t hurt people.”
I lose it.
Lunge towards her, stopping a foot away. I glare right into those eyes, the eyes of Time itself.
