After Eden

by Helen Douglas

  “Calm down, Connor,” said Mr. Chinn. “There’s no need for that. We can all take turns looking through the telescope. Let Eden see what she wants to see and then we can check out your star.”

  There was no way I could keep Connor away from the telescope for a full five minutes. He was already moving it back toward Algol. Cringing inwardly at what I was about to do, I launched myself at him with all my strength. I pushed him away from the telescope so that he staggered and fell onto the concrete roof.

  Connor just lay there, blinking up at me, his face shocked and horrified. Megan knelt beside him, glancing up at me with confusion.

  And then I picked up the telescope and hurled it off the roof. Everyone stared at me as it crashed to the ground.

  For a moment, the world appeared to freeze. No one spoke and no one moved. And then everyone came back to life. Connor picked himself up off the ground and peered over the edge of the terrace.

  “It doesn’t look as if anyone will be looking at the stars tonight,” said Mr. Chinn.

  “It’s in pieces,” said Connor.

  “Of course it’s in pieces,” said Mr. Chinn. He narrowed his eyes at me. “I hope you have plenty of money. Because that is a very expensive telescope.” He turned to Connor. “I’m going to give you two minutes to lock this room and get out of here.”

  The door banged against the jamb as Mr. Chinn slammed it behind him.

  “You need help,” said Connor. The disgust on his face broke my heart.

  “It was a misunderstanding,” I said, my mind racing, grappling for an excuse that might explain my bizarre behavior. I glanced at my watch. Eleven o’clock. We were safe. Eden was gone.

  “There was no misunderstanding.”

  The door flew open and Ryan burst in. “There you are!” he said breathlessly. His eyes moved wildly from me to Connor to the open door to the roof terrace. “What’s going on?”

  “Why don’t you ask your psycho girlfriend?” said Connor, tossing the keys to Ryan. “Because I have no idea.”

  He wrapped an arm tightly around Megan’s waist and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “What happened?” asked Ryan.

  “I did it,” I said. I laughed, a harsh sound, faintly hysterical. “I stopped him from discovering Eden.”

  Ryan stared at me. Exhaustion rippled through my body, and then my knees buckled and I slid to the cold, hard floor of the lab.

  “He had a telescope out on the roof terrace,” I said, my voice cracking. “He was going to show Megan his favorite star. It was happening. Just like you said it would.”

  Ryan slid onto the floor beside me and reached for my hand. I told him everything.

  “You saved a lot of people’s lives just now, Eden.”

  “And earned myself a reputation as a violent pervert who likes to spy on her friends when they make out,” I said, covering my eyes with my palms. “As well as a destroyer of telescopes. How am I ever going to explain my behavior?”

  He touched my arm. “If it hadn’t been for you, Connor would have discovered the planet tonight and it would be game over for us all. What you did was brave.”

  “What I did was an act of desperation. I wish I could have found a less dramatic way of keeping him from that telescope. Now they all think I’m weird.”

  “They’ll get over it eventually. They’ve been friends with you for too long to hold it against you.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Ryan stood up and helped me to my feet. We walked out onto the terrace and looked down. Below us, our friends were weaving their way across the school campus toward the harbor beach. Laughter and shouting carried through the air.

  “What shall we do now?” I asked.

  Ryan checked his phone. “It’s time for me to head back.”

  “Already?”

  He nodded. “It’s quarter past eleven. Connor can’t detect Eden now.”

  Time was slipping away from us.

  “I want to come with you.”

  “To the farmhouse?”

  To the farmhouse. To the future. Anywhere he was going, I wanted to be there.

  “Yes.”

  “It might be easier to say good-bye here.”

  “Ryan, in less than an hour you’ll be gone forever and I will never, ever see you again. Please let me come back to the farmhouse with you.”

  He nodded. “Course you can. It’s not that I don’t want you to. It’s just that saying good-bye doesn’t get any easier.”

  “We’ve already said good-bye. I just want to be with you for a few minutes longer.”

  “Come on then. Let’s go.” He reached for my hand.

  Cassie had left the car in the parking lot next to the harbor beach. We paused by the car for a minute and watched everyone on the beach. The tide was high, leaving just a bright crescent of silver sand. There were groups of people around a small fire. Others had shed most of their clothing and were paddling or swimming. A little farther along the beach, couples found quiet places to be together.

  “Are you going to say good-bye to the others?”

  Ryan looked across the beach to the water’s edge. “They’re all having a good time. And everybody hates good-byes. I’d sooner just disappear quietly.”

  I followed his gaze. Connor and Megan were at the water’s edge. The bottom of Megan’s dress was floating in the water and her arms were twisted around Connor’s neck. He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned toward her. I held my breath as she lifted her lips to his and they kissed.

  Ryan squeezed my hand. “Let’s hit the road.”

  “How will you get back?” I asked, as we pulled out of the parking lot.

  “In a flying saucer.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  He laughed. “I’m not serious.”

  “Do you have, like, a spaceship hidden somewhere? Where would you even hide a spaceship?”

  “Yes, we have a spaceship. Although I doubt it’s anything like you’re imagining.”

  “I don’t know what I’m imagining. I guess I’m thinking of a huge battleship-gray ship shaped like a disk.”

  “Like a military-style flying saucer.”

  I laughed. “I don’t really have any idea.”

  Ryan pulled onto the coast road as usual. “Our ship is small. It can carry five people maximum. We only have enough fuel to transport three people safely.”

  “It must be tiny.”

  “It’s just a bit bigger than an average-size car.”

  “You traveled through space and time in a car?”

  Ryan grinned. “Yeah. Although spaceships come in all sizes. You can get large ships and small ships. Those that travel through time are usually smaller because it’s easier to distort space-time for a small ship than a large one.”

  “How long does it take to travel back to your time?”

  In my head I imagined years, but Ryan was only seventeen so I knew that couldn’t be true.

  “Two minutes exactly.”

  “Two minutes,” I repeated. “How is that even possible?”

  Ryan shifted down as we took the dangerous bend above Lucky Cove. “It’s hard to explain. We create a shortcut. You probably think of it as a wormhole.”

  “I can assure you I don’t think of it as anything.”

  “Well, it uses a ridiculous amount of energy, but our ship distorts space and time, allowing us to travel from one time and place to another quickly. To reach most times and places takes only minutes.”

  “That certainly beats driving or flying. No lines, no waiting around. Travel in the future must be incredible.”

  “You can’t use it for short journeys. It’s much too dangerous.”

  “What’s dangerous about it?”

  “Portals—that’s what we call these shortcuts—are unstable. If they collapse when you’re traveling through them, you’ve had it. Distorting small sections of time and space is too difficult. You need some distance. So you can use them to
travel to distant parts of our solar system or to other star systems or through time, but not from one place on Earth to another.”

  “Will I be allowed to see you leave?” I asked.

  “No,” he said softly. “Ben didn’t want me telling you anything about our technology. He’d be furious with me if he knew what I’d just told you.”

  “Where will you do it from?”

  “The ship has been stored in the garage. By the time we get home, Ben will have moved it into the backyard, behind the garage where it won’t be seen.”

  All the lights in the farmhouse were blazing and Ben stood in the open doorway, a halo of light around him.

  “Mission accomplished!” yelled Ryan as we approached.

  Ben hugged Ryan and slapped his back. “Was it difficult?”

  “Eden took care of everything. Connor went onto the roof of the school with the telescope from the science lab! Eden tackled him and destroyed the telescope in the process.”

  Ben laughed and shook his head. “Despite everything we’ve changed, he was still planning on looking up at the stars through a telescope tonight of all nights. It makes you wonder if there’s any such thing as free will.”

  Cassie appeared alongside Ben. “Everything is ready to go.” She checked her watch. “Ten minutes till departure.”

  “Then we’d better say our good-byes,” said Ben. He pulled me in for a big bear-hug. “You’re an amazing girl,” he said. “I still can’t believe how you’ve taken so much in stride. Thank you for being such a good friend to all of us.”

  “Thank you for letting me,” I said. “I know that my finding out about everything left you with some tough decisions. Thank you for trusting me.”

  “Ryan didn’t exactly give us a choice,” he said, laughing. “But he was right to trust you.”

  Ben released me from his grip and held me at arm’s length. “I know I don’t need to ask you this,” he said, looking deep into my eyes. “But don’t forget to keep all this secret, will you?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Have a good life.”

  “You too,” I said. “Look up my grandchildren. Or my great-grandchildren.”

  “I intend to.”

  I tensed at the thought that my future was out there somewhere, lying ahead of me, unlived, unknown, unimagined, but that in a few minutes’ time Ben and Ryan would be able to find out exactly what I had done with my life, exactly what I would do.

  Cassie shook my hand. “Take care of my great-grandfather.”

  “I will.”

  Ryan took my hand and pulled me to him, so that the full length of our bodies was pressed together. He looped his arms around my waist and pulled me tight. I could feel the warmth of his arms against my own cooler skin, the warmth of his body through his shirt and my dress. He kissed me hard, with the urgency and passion I realized meant good-bye. Forever. I felt myself flush. Ryan seemed oblivious to anyone else, but I was acutely aware that we had an audience.

  Cassie cleared her throat loudly. “How long is this good-bye going to take? Should we sit down with a cup of coffee and come back later?”

  Ryan ignored her and looked at me. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

  “I’m going to miss you too.” I put my lips to his ear. “When you get back, dig up the time capsule. I wrote you a letter.”

  “You did?” He looked surprised.

  Cassie sighed loudly. “Five minutes to go, Ry. Have you finished your good-byes or are you planning to go back for an encore?”

  He kissed me lightly on the lips. “Good-bye, Eden.”

  “Good-bye,” I said, swallowing hard, determined not to spoil our last moments with tears.

  He looked at the watch on my wrist. “It’s four minutes to midnight,” he said. “It will take us about twenty seconds to leave. Go inside and sit down. Wait until two minutes after midnight.” He smiled apologetically. “Temporal Laws and all that.”

  I nodded, no longer trusting myself to speak.

  “Ry!” shouted Cassie.

  He released me and followed her behind the garage to the backyard.

  I went inside the house and sat at the kitchen table. If I was in a film, if I was a different person, I would have raced outside and around the back of the garage yelling at them to stop, wait, and take me with them. I would have told Ryan that I didn’t want to live without him. And I would have told him that I loved him.

  But I wasn’t like that. I was practical and sensible. I knew that I had obligations here in Penpol Cove in my own time. So I sat at the kitchen table as I’d been told and stared at my watch as it ticked away the minutes till midnight, while Ryan, Cassie, and Ben prepared to travel forward in time.

  I did quite well. I watched the second hand make three complete revolutions before I went outside. I didn’t run. I walked calmly through the yard and around the back of the garage.

  Directly in front of me, a huge translucent disk vibrated and shimmered. Through it I could see a blurry vision of a gray vehicle. The disk vibrated faster and the image beyond it blurred further. After a few seconds the disk appeared to stop vibrating and the blurry image disappeared. A flash of light blinded me. And then the disk collapsed inward until it vanished. All that remained in front of me was the lawn.

  I walked back to the front yard and our apple tree and sat beside it. My watch told me that it was thirty seconds after midnight. In another ninety seconds he would be back in his own time. I watched the second hand of my watch tick away. At precisely two minutes past midnight I gazed up at the clear night sky. High above me was the constellation Perseus with its demon star Algol. Out there somewhere was Eden, the birthplace of the most perfect boy in the universe. Ryan was gone. And it would be months before I would once again see the constellation Orion, his name written across the sky in stars. I shut my eyes and breathed in deeply. Where was he now? Was he thinking about me? I liked to imagine him sitting in the yard beside me, separated only by time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I woke early, the cheery sunshine bringing me back to the depressing reality of the rest of my life. I was sixteen. I wouldn’t live for another hundred and ten years, no matter how well I took care of myself. And if, by some miracle, I did live for a hundred and ten years, I would be the crinkliest, most wrinkled old woman on the planet. I would be one hundred and twenty-six. He would be seventeen.

  I made another calculation. If I Iived until one hundred and nine, I would be around when he was born. I could see him as a baby. Of course the chances of living to a hundred and nine were not much better than living to one hundred and twenty-six. And the whole idea was, frankly, sick.

  There would be no happy ending for Ryan and me.

  Tears pricked the back of my eyes and I knew that if I didn’t take steps to pull myself together now, I would end up wallowing in a full-on pity fest.

  I heaved myself out of bed. My green dress was in a heap on the floor. I draped it on a hanger and hung it on my closet door. At some point I would take it to the dry cleaner’s.

  I threw open my curtains. The rising sun was like a wound, staining the clouds a deep red and slowly spreading across the horizon. Red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning. That meant bad weather would be arriving later. It didn’t look like bad weather. In fact, it looked sunny and hot—perfect beach weather. After breakfast I would call Connor and make plans for the day. Then with a shudder I remembered the night before. Perhaps he wouldn’t want to talk to me. I put on a short blue beach dress and then, since Cornish weather typically changes direction several times a day, tied a warm hoodie around my shoulders.

  The smell of fried bacon was drifting up the stairs, the only smell that could still tempt my vegetarian taste buds after six years of abstaining. Travis. He had started staying over on the weekends recently and he loved a full English breakfast on Sunday mornings.

  I dragged myself downstairs into the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t in the mood for Travis’s sarcasm, and I
didn’t think I could stomach Miranda’s cheery questions about the ball.

  Miranda was standing at the stove, pushing food around a hot, oily frying pan. Travis was standing just outside the back door, a half-smoked cigarette dangling between his lips. He removed it when he saw me and smirked.

  “I’ve been led to understand that a greasy fry-up is the perfect hangover cure,” he said.

  “That’s not funny, Travis,” said Miranda. “You know she doesn’t drink.”

  Travis winked at me, as if to suggest that he didn’t believe that for a second, but was willing to keep it just between the two of us.

  He stubbed out his cigarette on the doorstep. “I was merely offering you a fried breakfast. Miranda’s cooked enough for a family of ten.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure it will involve too many slaughtered pigs for my taste.”

  “Why don’t you make an exception?” he said. “You can’t deny that this smells good.”

  “I don’t want to feast on the misery of another being.”

  “You don’t know how to enjoy yourself,” said Travis. “That’s your problem.”

  I grabbed a cereal bowl and a box of muesli and plunked myself down at the table.

  “So tell us all about it,” said Miranda. “Was it wonderful?”

  “It was a lovely evening,” I said as I splashed milk into the bowl.

  “Did you take lots of photos?”

  “I didn’t take my phone, but Megan’s mum took some before we left her place and Connor took loads. I’ll get copies.”

  Miranda served up two steaming plates of bacon, eggs, sausage, mushrooms, and fried bread. The smell of hot grease made me feel queasy.

  “Did your boyfriend leave last night?” asked Travis. “He was due to leave after the ball, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he left,” I said. “But he isn’t—wasn’t—my boyfriend.”

  Miranda and Travis smiled at each other over the table.

  “You said you were in love with him.” Travis dipped the end of a sausage into the runny yolk of his egg.

  I groaned to myself. It was one thing to confess to being in love when it was dark and I was still a little drunk. It was quite another to talk about it now in front of Miranda and Travis. Especially when I was doing everything I could to not think about Ryan.