by Holly Hook
"That sure didn't apply to Eric, did it?"
“Eric?” Isabel's face twists in confusion as she looks at Frank and the other woman in the waitress uniform. The waitress shares her look, but Frank glances away for a second. It's enough to tell me the truth.
The other Timeless don't even know what he did.
I take my rage away from Isabel. "So I'm taking it you're not supposed to mess with the flow of history. With me in the wrong time and all," I say. It's my chance to get a stab in at Frank and a chance to stall. A chance to give Simon some time to get in here, and a chance to give Monica and Nancy some time to wake up.
Simon is coming, I remind myself.
He has to be.
I'm taking too long and he's going to come around to the front of the building and check on me.
"We're not," Isabel says from the periphery. "We're here to protect it. Julia, it's time--"
"Isn't pushing a five-year-old into a pond when he wouldn't be there before messing with history, Frank? I sure think so."
He withers as Isabel and the waitress look at him. Isabel's mouth hangs open.
Bingo. Right on target.
"You didn't," she says.
"I wasn't going to let him drown." Frank raises his hands at her and steps back. "I needed a way to send her back and get it over with. I just wanted to take it all off your hands, Isabel, I swear. I know how awful this whole case has been for you. I was trying to make sure you didn’t have to deal with it.”
There's an opening between them and the exit.
I bolt for the door.
Frank swears. Three sets of footfalls shadow me.
I grab the handle to pull the door open. A set of hands grips my shoulders and drags me back. I flail like I'm already back in 2:20, dying in that icy water. The cold sweeps over me again, promising the one-way trip.
Animal instinct takes over. I go blank and clear inside.
I'm no longer Julia McCready, trying to protect my family and hoping that Simon and I can be together even if we're worlds apart.
I'm just someone trying to stay alive, nothing more.
I throw my elbows back, hitting my captor in the stomach. Their grip loosens and I pull at the door again. It comes open as I lunge forward, desperate for the sunlight and its warmth.
"Hold her," the waitress shouts.
They seize my arms. Drag me back again. I'm screaming, making sounds unnatural to me. The door swings shut. My breath explodes in front of my face in the bitter air.
They’re opening a rift. And it’s opening much faster than the one at the dance. Simon was right. The anniversary is enough to make it work.
The building around me goes dark. There's no screams or music, but the silence is somehow worse. It's somber, vast--the darkness of death.
My necklace bounces against my chest, now free from under my shirt as I struggle against the grips of the Timeless. It's enough distraction to make Grondin's snap back into place. Nancy and Monica are still slumped over in their corner booth.
Frank's face contorts as he struggles to hold me there. The waitress does the same.
"Stop!" Isabel orders.
I freeze, arms still locked in twin grasps. The restaurant comes into focus again. Isabel stands in front of me, gaze on my necklace. Her mouth falls open. "Do you know what that is, Julia?"
The cold retreats from my skin a bit, leaving me a bubble of warmth as if time is giving me the chance to answer. "A necklace," I say. A horrible thought wells its way up inside me. If Isabel knows what this is, then…"Of course I know what it is!"
"The stuff inside," she says, slow and careful, "is coal salvaged from a famous shipwreck." She’s bewildered. "A very famous shipwreck. It's amazing you haven't slipped back yet with something like that on you."
My knees wobble, wanting to collapse to the floor. The waitress lets go of my arm. I grab the necklace and watch the teardrop slide over my palm. The coal inside rolls around. My insides do the same thing.
Isabel doesn't need to tell me which shipwreck it's from.
The cold, as if sensing my sudden weakness, closes in for the kill.
The room returns to dark. I spin around to face the door and the dying sunlight, but my knees go out from under me and I hit the floor.
Simon stands on the other side of the window, staring in at me.
His eyes widen.
But before I can see if he runs towards me or away, the void closes in with a rushing sound, invading my ears and filling my head before I can call his name.
Chapter Fourteen
April 14, 1912, 11:35 p.m.
The world is the fuzzy gray between sleep and waking. I turn over in bed.
"Simon."
I smell food, but the scent of fresh paint chases it away. My head rests on a pillow. I must have just woken up from a dream. Simon was in it, staring at me from behind glass…but as I strain to catch the rest of the memory, it runs away into the darkness.
I shift to lie on my back and open my eyes.
The wooden base of my father's bunk stretches out in front of my eyes. He's snoring away, sounding too much like the machinery not far below us, working in the bottom reaches of the ship.
I sigh and stuff my head under the pillow. We're going on the fourth or fifth day of this now. I can't wait until we get to the States and find a place so I can have my own room again, even if it's a dusty space under the stairs. I'm seventeen. I am basically an adult. I should have my own space. For a moment--a guilty moment--I wonder if my mother left because of this noise he makes every night.
There's a sucking sound, too, one that the pillow is as helpless to block out as the snoring. In the bunk across from mine, Melvin's got his thumb in his mouth. My little brother hasn't missed a night of that in the past two years. In the morning, I should tell him that he does this in his sleep. Of course, he'll get mad and argue that he's a big boy--a big, five year old boy.
But at least he's not getting in my belongings again.
I turn over, put the pillow back under my head, and stare at the stark white wall that closes in our little berth.
Focus on the good things, Simon always tells me.
Like the future we're going to have in New York. Thinking about that is better than concentrating on the racket only feet from my head. Right now, it's my only hope of getting back to sleep.
My father won't have to spend all his time slaving away down in the mines anymore. We might even hire a nanny for Melvin so I can find a job to earn back the savings that my father had to sacrifice for our tickets. Even the third class ones cost far too much in my opinion, but he’d insisted. We’ll have our own private room instead of having to sleep in one dormitory with a bunch of other people, he said. Also, they'll provide us food on the Titanic. Some other ships make you bring your own food if you sail third class.
He might be right, but I highly doubt the noise level would be much higher in a dormitory.
I wish Simon were beside me now, but he has to stay way at the front of the ship with the other single men. We're practically a few city blocks apart, farther away from each other than we were in our homes in Queenstown. I've only seen Simon twice since we've started the voyage, both times during meals in the dining area with my father hovering overhead to make sure we behave.
He has this rule about not letting me go off to see Simon alone.
It's ridiculous, especially since we're supposed to wed next month.
I haven't been able to wait since the day I met Simon at the beach carnival last year, since the moment he asked me if I needed help finding my brother in that crowd.
Since the first time I gazed into those chocolate eyes and heard his laugh on the carousel.
My father snores louder and his arm flops down off his bunk. His pocket watch dangles from his hand as if he fell asleep checking the time. Eleven thirty-nine. It's late. I consider getting up and heading down to go see Simon, but I'm sure he's asleep by now if he hasn't gotten caught up in a card game wit
h the other men. My father's a heavy sleeper. It won't wake him if I get up, dress, and leave for a while.
Besides, I need to get away from this noise.
I sit up.
My father's watch ticks from 11:39 to 11:40.
A shudder races through the ship.
My bunk trembles. I stiffen. My stomach lurches. Every nerve under my skin fires in warning. I grip the edge of my bunk, keeping my head down low to avoid hitting the one right above me.
The sensation lasts a few seconds, distant and close at the same time, and then it's gone.
I let out a breath.
Calm down, Julia.
Melvin murmurs something in his sleep--it sounds like pony--and settles back down again with his thumb out of his mouth.
I'm sure things like that shudder have happened lots of times and I just haven't felt them until now. It's nothing.
Yes. I'm just jumpy after whatever nightmare I woke up from a few minutes ago.
I inhale. Watch my chest fall as I release my tension. My insides calm down a little more, settling back into their normal places. Melvin mumbles again and my father lets out another snore.
And then, the rumble of the ship's engines stop.
It's more noticeable now that it's gone, like a chorus of crickets during a hot summer night. An eerie silence falls over the room. It's somehow more ominous than the shudder.
My heart jumps through hoops.
It's nothing, I repeat to myself over and over, but it doesn't listen. Nothing.
I wait for the sound of the engines to turn back on, but the silence stays heavy as ever until someone takes a couple of steps in the room next to ours. Coughs. Says something I can’t make out.
I should go out and investigate.
I stand, fish out my clothing to dress, and spot the necklace hanging from around my neck. I forget all about the bump and the engines stopping.
It wasn't there before, and yet I have the strangest feeling that it was…no, I definitely didn't have it on during supper.
I've never seen it before in my life.
It's a glass teardrop hanging from a black cord, filled with flecks of what I recognize as coal. My father's come home with enough of it under his fingernails for me to know what it is. I've washed plenty of it off his clothes on the weekends--another thing I won't miss.
I hold it up in the dim light. The flecks roll around each other, shiny, not quite like the dust that hitches a ride on my father. This is fresh coal, glistening like it's been washed in the ocean itself.
Maybe Simon's paid me a visit and slipped it around my neck while I was sleeping. As soon as the thought hits me, I know. It's right. Simon always manages to slip me little presents. Never gold or jewels--he can never afford those things like the first class folks that sleep above us--but his gifts are always so much better. They show up whenever I'm least expecting it. On the sink when I'm about to do the dishes. In the closet next to the broom.
Yes. I'm going to go see Simon. He might know what that shudder was, too.
"Julia?" Father's voice is groggy as his sheets rustle above me. "What are you doing up?"
Rats.
"I thought I felt something." That's the truth. "A shudder. Did you notice?" I stay facing the door to our berth so he doesn’t see the necklace resting on my nightgown. He won't be too warm to the idea of Simon sneaking in here under his nose and putting it on his daughter.
"No," he says as he rolls over. "I'm sure it's nothing. They built this ship good, Pea. There's nothing to fret about."
I tuck the necklace under the fabric and turn before he asks questions. "Then why did they stop the engines? You can't miss that."
My father's a black shape on top of his bunk. "I'm not sure. It's likely not serious. Why don't you go back to sleep?" He settles down, gripping his watch. "It's quarter to midnight."
I have no choice now. "Okay." I crawl back into my bunk, stare at the bottom of my father's bunk, and close my eyes in the heavy silence that follows.
He's probably right.
I have nothing to worry about. It's just a hiccup in the engines below. We might get to New York a little bit later than we thought, but that's okay.
Of course it is.
It has to be.
The first pangs of a nervous stomachache nag at me. It takes me back to the time my mother left the house two years ago and never came back, letting all her duties tumble down on me like an avalanche of boulders. Boom, boom, boom. The wash. The cooking. The scrubbing. And worst of all, trying to explain to Melvin why she'd gone, why she’d left with that mystery man in the trimmed mustache and new jacket.
Until the day my father came home with four tickets in his hand, slapping them down on the table. Simon and I have reached a decision. We're leaving Ireland and you're getting back to school. All four of us are sailing to the States.
I turn over as those words echo in my head, the words that promise freedom.
A better life.
A future.
I feel Simon's kiss tingling on my lips when we hug later that night and sneak away from that hot kitchen to go dance under the stars.
It's enough to chase away the ache and the pain of my missing mother. I stretch out and my forearm hits something under the covers. Distracted, I feel around and produce a jewelry box covered in blue velvet. It belongs to the necklace, I decide. I toss it down to the floor where it lands with a gentle thump, face the ceiling again, and breathe out slowly.
Nothing at all is wrong.
Nothing.
I'm going to marry Simon next month and get a job, make sure Melvin starts school, and escape.
I close my eyes and slowly float into the darkness behind my lids and the silence which, although I'm lying in a safe bunk bed, feels like the cold dark on the inside of a coffin.
* * * * *
April 15, 12:45 a.m.
A series of loud knocks on the door rips me right back out of the darkness.
I rise and this time I don't miss hitting my head on the bottom of my father's bunk. Pain screams across my scalp, jarring me all the way awake.
"What--?" I begin.
My father grunts, tosses off his sheets, and scrambles down the ladder to open the door.
Light streams into the berth, blinding me. I squint, but I can't miss the pandemonium.
A steward stands on the other side of the door, breathing heavily. He's not much older than Simon, with blue eyes instead of brown and a complexion that's way too pale for his black hair. Behind him, men and women push past each other. Chatter fills the air. A woman shoves past the steward, wearing something that looks like a flat, white pillow around her torso.
One of the--
"Put on your life belts," he puffs, rushing into the room and turning on the light. "Just a precaution." He reaches up and yanks ours off the shelf. They tumble to the floor. "I assure you, there's no danger."
"Excuse me." That lurch I felt earlier. This must have to do with that. "Can you tell us what's going on?"
But the steward rushes past me, fights his way out the door, and disappears.
My father starts to say something, but it's lost in the commotion outside our room. Melvin turns over in his bed and rubs his eyes. Somewhere, a small child starts crying as a pair of girls a little younger than me rush past the door, skirts flapping like the wings of escaping birds. The steward runs past the door in the opposite direction, too fast for me to catch. He shouts something else, but gets a response in a language that I don't recognize.
The tribal drumbeat returns to my chest as I recall the thump and the engines stopping.
This isn't nothing.
My father faces me. He has a brown shadow where his stubborn beard keeps trying to grow. "Get dressed, Pea," he says, rushing to his own bunk. "I'm not sure what's happening. I suppose they'll tell us in a moment."
Melvin lifts his head from his pillow. "Julia?"
"Shhh," I tell him, though it won't do much good with all the noise. "Get up.
Get dressed." I think of the awful cold outside. The temperature's managed to drop like an anvil today. It can't be any better in the middle of the night. "Put on your coat. And your warm stockings, now that I think about it."
My father leaves the room, closing the door behind him and giving me the privacy to change. I hear Melvin struggling to find his clothes under his bunk as I struggle into an unknown dress--probably the one with ugly brown flowers that used to be Mother's--but my mind is elsewhere. On the thump. On the confusion outside. On the growing sense of dread inside me that's getting bigger and bigger, threatening to burst out. But for Melvin's sake, I have to keep it hidden. He depends on me and has since the day our mother left us.
And my mind drifts to Simon.
He's probably way over in the front berths of the ship, pacing around with one of those white pillows around him, wondering the same things I am.
I help Melvin dress and ruffle his hair as he groans, wiggling his arms in his coat.
"I'm tired," he says, not taking his gaze off my hands fastening his buttons.
"I'm sure that we'll be able to go back to bed soon," I assure him.
Melvin looks up. Even with bags under his eyes, he manages to narrow them at me. His thoughts almost materialize in front of him. Come on, Julia. You're fibbing.
I don't argue, since I probably am.
Father goes back into the room to change after we finish. I keep Melvin's hand locked in mine and make him stand near the door. People jostle past us, so many of them in the narrow white hallway like ants squeezing through a tunnel. I can't make out a single conversation, they're speaking so much. Someone holds up a life belt over the crowd. It brushes against the ceiling like a squashed flag.
Melvin retreats from it all, pressing against the wall and playing with my necklace box, fascinated with how it opens and closes. The backing on the inside is even starting to come off. He's still keeping his tradition of getting into my stuff. It does something to calm my nerves down.
"Finished," my father says, emerging from the room in his coat and putting on his hat. He holds our three life jackets in his arms--three mini easels, really. "I'm not sure we're going to need these, but I'll hold them just in case."
