“Work for me? You mean let me get to Mom wherever she is?”
“Whenever.”
“Why me, though? Why haven’t you tried to use it?”
“I may have tried. I mean, maybe I do try. I don’t know. I only know that whatever your mother and Future Me attempt, it doesn’t work. Now, this is your task.”
He should call Doc and have him take her to the hospital in Rutland. That would be the responsible thing to do. Only the idea that he, the useless remainder, could possibly help bring back Mom made him keep asking her questions.
“What happens if it doesn’t work for me? What then?”
“We don’t need to go into that.”
“Yes, we do. Tell me.”
“Well, maybe nothing. It would just be a regular old tree to you.”
“Or? There’s more. You’re hiding something. I can always tell when you’re hiding something.”
She began to examine the arm of the sofa. “You could get stuck somewhere, or lost entirely.”
Finn brought her gaze back to him by placing his hand over hers. “What does that mean, ‘lost entirely?’ ”
“You could be obliterated—sliced clear through on a cellular level. You could die.”
“That’s insane! Why would you want me to even try?” He caught himself, reminded himself that this was all ridiculous, impossible.
“You’re all we have now, Finn. It may not have been made with you in mind, but still, we have to try. You are a twin. There’s never been a set of twins in our family before. Maybe—just maybe something rubbed off on you in the womb.”
Finn was tempted to remind her that he and Faith were fraternal twins—no more genetically similar than any other pair of siblings. But he immediately saw the absurdity of bringing science into this conversation.
Gran pointed toward the window. “The portal is on top of Dorset Peak. It might help you find her.”
Find her. The words made something inside him stir. Wasn’t that what he’d been wanting? Someone to find her. He had screamed the same words in anger at his father only a few weeks ago: “Go, find her!” Now, he could do it himself. Sure, the idea of a portal was pure fantasy, but maybe there was a real clue there, a note or something. He had to keep Gran talking, even if it meant entertaining an idea that was wholly unscientific.
“Is there a map?”
“She said you wouldn’t need one. You’ll find it.”
“How am I supposed to find one particular tree on an entire mountain?”
“I don’t know, but I know Future Me thinks you can.”
Finn remembered how much Mom loved hiking. How Dorset Peak was her favorite trail because the leaf peepers mostly left it alone. She knew that trail better than anyone.
He was trying to fit all the pieces together in his brain, but his rational side kept whispering, Gran is sick. You need to get her help.
Gran leaned in like they were conspirators. “This is what is going to happen next. Doc Lovell is on his way over to check on me. He’s a good man. You do as he says, you can trust him.”
Finn wondered for a moment if she knew that she was dating him, that he had become her boyfriend. Of course she knew! This was insane; she wasn’t from the past. But she had just called him Doc Lovell. She never called him anything but Will anymore.
“Go meet him in the driveway and act as if you’re just arriving. Tell him your father waited till the storm let up a bit before he left town. That he just dropped you off. You haven’t spoken with me at all today, do you understand?” She jumped up from the sofa, clearly expecting him to follow her.
“No. I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this!”
“I’ll explain more later. It must seem like I won’t have the time, but I will, you’ll see.” She ducked down the hallway and brought back his sneakers and backpack from the guest room, thrusting them at him. She waited impatiently for him to get his shoes on and pulled him by the wrist to the top of the staircase while he was still hopping on one foot.
“Go back to the driveway and wait. Don’t come back inside unless you’re with Doc Lovell, okay?” He numbly followed her down the stairs to the door. With her hand on the knob, she stopped and looked up at him. Finn watched her lips form a small, sad smile. She rested the palm of her free hand against his cheek. Her eyes were brighter than usual. Were there fewer crinkles? That couldn’t be possible.
“You’re so grown up already. You’ll have to grow up even faster from here on out, I imagine.”
“I don’t want to be a grown-up,” he said. Right now, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be Finn. It was good that Doc was coming. He would help. He’d fix this. He’d get her medications switched, and everything would be okay. They’d laugh about this in a few days.
“None of us ever want to grow up, but the alternative isn’t any prettier.” Gran’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I want you to know I don’t regret anything. I love you, Finn.”
“I—I love you too, Gran.” He had no idea what she meant about regret.
This was impossible; she was hopelessly confused. He’d use the scientific method to set her straight. A hypothesis was already constructed for him: The women in his family could time travel. It was up to him to disprove it. He never defied her, but she wasn’t herself.
He darted by her as fast as he could, bounding up the stairs two by two, bolting down the hallway.
“Finn! No!”
It was the smell that hit him first. Pungent and sour, as though someone had been ill. Lying in the bed was Gran. Only it couldn’t be, because she was coming up behind him as well, breathing fast after chasing him down the hall. He looked at the bed and back to her. Same person, one alive and one dead.
“I—I didn’t want you to see me like this,” she stammered.
Finn staggered back from her and held on to the dresser for support. He realized that brought him closer to the body in the bed so he jumped forward.
It was Gran all right. She was lying on her back and her eyes were open, only they were seeing nothing. Everything else in the room was horribly, frustratingly normal. Her stack of paperbacks on the nightstand. Her pill organizer. Her pink slippers neatly placed next to the bed. This room wasn’t supposed to contain a lifeless Gran. You could almost be fooled. Almost.
He tried to make his mouth say something. Nothing came out. Then came the sound of tires on gravel, and Gran, the one who was alive, looked down the hallway and back at him.
“We’ll have to leave through the back door now. Oh Finn, I tried to spare you this!”
She forcefully led him down the hall. Too stunned to do anything but go along, he stumbled after her. Gran opened the door and went out first, pulling him behind her with that strength she hadn’t displayed in years.
“You’ll see me again. You will. Don’t be sad. I love you so.”
He stumbled a few feet in the wet mud before his knees gave out completely. Sliding to the grass, he rested his head against the siding of the house. He opened his eyes and found his voice. “How, Gran? How can this be real?”
Finn waited for a response, but he would have to keep waiting. Because Gran was gone. He was all alone.
He heard Doc Lovell’s voice calling her name cheerfully as he came inside. “Beth? I hope you made biscuits!”
Finn couldn’t see him from outside. He only heard him move through the house, but he could picture him clearly. Doc always looked exactly the same. His white hair was perfectly combed. He always wore the same kind of starched, plaid, button-up shirt, neatly tucked into baggy, wrinkled pants, with mud-covered sneakers. Gran teased Doc all the time, saying people were only supposed to look at his second floor because his foundation was a mess.
Finn heard Doc say her name again, sounding as confused as Finn had been earlier. Then it echoed much more cautiously: “Beth?” and finally, an anguished yell. Finn heard it with his heart.
He tried to get up, but he stumbled. The smell was still with him; it was in his
mouth. Death had a taste. He threw up in the bushes, stood shakily, and wiped his hands on his jeans. He felt a crinkle in his pocket and stuck his hand inside—Gran’s list. An hour ago it was only a shopping list, but now it was another relic.
He opened it up. It looked different, smudged through with a dark ink that had bled from the other side. The handwriting was scrawled as if done quickly, but it was definitely Gran’s. He turned it over and read:
I was wrong. Don’t trust anyone.
Chapter 7
Finn edged around the side of the house, doing his best to not make any noise. The wind picked up and he heard fat drops of rain, spaced far apart, thudding against the hard ground. All of his senses were magnified. It was an uncomfortable sort of internal buzzing that he couldn’t stop. His skin vibrated with it. He heard a vole rustle through the leaves and at the same time he heard Doc Lovell on the phone inside. Doc spoke urgently. Finn couldn’t make out individual words.
There was still one message he could hear loud and clear; it echoed in his brain even though he had only read the words.
Don’t trust anyone.
Leaning against the siding, he clumsily tied his muddied shoelaces. He couldn’t go to Doc for help. The plan was altered. Gran had changed her mind about him. Anyone.
Finn looked over at the trailhead, and the mountain didn’t look protective. It looked like a three-thousand-foot wall he had to climb to get to Mom. If he even could get to her.
He needed help.
Anyone. Gran couldn’t possibly have meant Gabi.
There was nowhere else to go. He had trusted Gabi since the third grade and no matter what the note said, he needed someone on his side right now.
Running through the back woods and out of sight of the main road, he clutched his backpack straps tight and took off through the trees. Branches fell around him as the wind kicked up, and another low rumble of thunder echoed through the valley. The line of thunderstorms was still coming. Even though he knew it was dangerous to remain in the woods, he stayed inside the tree line. He didn’t want Doc to find him on the road.
His breathing became ragged with the running, or maybe it was the remembering.
This couldn’t be happening. Gran couldn’t be dead.
The repetition of one hard footfall after another helped dull the constant buzzing. He could think a little more clearly. Gran had been there. She had been in bed and standing behind him at the same time. That was impossible. The only explanation was that Gran, or more accurately, Gran -5, was telling the truth.
Maybe Gabi had been right all along; maybe her fantasy novels went beyond his science textbooks.
No! He was not ready to concede that science had it wrong. How could all the women in his family time travel?
Vague images of biology homework flashed in his brain, Punnett squares and mitochondrial DNA. Certain traits were only hereditary through the female line. He remembered reading that it was possible for a gene to go from only mother to daughter through generations. Science didn’t have to be wrong. Science could explain anything given enough time.
A huge clap of thunder hit the sky like a punch, reverberating in his chest.
He began moving faster, leaping over fallen branches. His toe caught on a root and he went sprawling, catching himself right before he would’ve smashed his face against a large rock. He lay there on his stomach for a moment, catching his breath and contemplating his mortality.
He recognized the smell in his nostrils. Ozone. Another flash of lightning lit up the sky like the world itself was cracking in half. Close. Too close.
He stood up and found he couldn’t decide which way to point his feet. Neither of his choices were good: stay in the woods where he could be hit by lightning, or move out onto the road where he could be spotted.
Don’t trust anyone.
That meant he was supposed to do this on his own. But that wasn’t who he was. He was the one who studied, analyzed, found answers. He didn’t hike mountains and find portals. “Portals!” He said the word aloud in disbelief. And what would happen if he found it? He couldn’t time travel. He’d be obliterated—how did Gran -5 put it again? “Sliced clear through on the cellular level”?
No, that could not be. If there was a tree, that was all it was. A tree. There was no such thing as time travel! His brain said it, only his heart reminded him of a lifeless Gran and a Gran -5 standing behind him.
Another crack of thunder shook the earth he stood on. FINE! he thought defiantly. So what if there IS such a thing as time travel?
Test the hypothesis.
If there was a tree it was meant for Faith, not him. She was the one. His family had never moved past her death. Now, he was sure it was far more than that. So many times, he’d felt their disappointment when they looked at him. It was obvious now. They were thinking what a shame it was that the one with the talent had died.
He walked deeper into the woods and deeper into dark thoughts.
The buzzing grew louder. Except this was different. The hairs on his arms began to rise and he felt a tingling in his scalp.
Oh no—
The next lightning bolt hit like cannon fire. The ground shook beneath Finn’s feet and the white light of the explosion momentarily blinded him. He fell to his knees, covering his ears. When his dimmed eyesight returned he frantically patted his arms and legs, making sure they were still intact.
“I’m okay,” he said to no one but himself. Only he couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear anything except a loud ringing in his ears. He held up one hand to his ear, then checked it for blood. Nothing. He took a deep breath of relief and surveyed the damage. The scent of burnt wood and ozone was all around him, and twenty feet deeper in the woods, he saw a glow. It was a huge old oak with a seam of fire burning within it. It had taken the direct hit. The tree was lit from the inside with a molten red that gave off heat like a furnace. It was beautiful and strange.
His brain said, A common sight after a direct lightning strike. His heart said, A sign. It wasn’t on the mountain and it wasn’t Mom’s tree, but it was enough to convince him.
He had to find Mom. Even if it meant climbing the peak and somehow finding one particular tree. He turned toward where the mountain should be, but the storm clouds hid it entirely.
He willed his legs to run, and they miraculously obeyed. He came through the trees and his feet hit the open road. There were no cars. The rain was coming at him sideways. He kept on running down the empty street, hearing the sound of his sneakers slapping against the pavement like it was happening far away.
He could make out the side of Gabi’s house peeking around the back of Dorset Peak’s slope. It stood there like a refuge, small and safe. Halfway up the yard, he realized he had no idea what he would say to Mrs. Rand. Gabi’s mom was sure to be home this early in the morning. He couldn’t say Gran was . . . dead. Was she? He wasn’t even sure himself. He had seen her. Dead meant gone forever for most people, but she had been there talking to him, promising to see him again soon. He wasn’t sure what to believe. Besides, he wasn’t supposed to have been there. He wasn’t supposed to know.
He changed course, heading to the back of the house. Gabi’s bedroom window glowed with a warm amber light. She was awake! He rushed up to her window and banged on the glass.
Gabi nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw him standing there. He probably looked menacing, backlit by flashes of lightning. He put his hand up in a feeble attempt to reassure her that it was only him. She opened the window and he clumsily crawled in.
“Finn! What on earth are you doing?” She was both whispering and shouting at the same time.
What was he doing there? He needed to trust someone and it was Gabi. “I need help.”
She put one finger to her lips and dashed out of the room, only to return a moment later with a large towel. Finn took off his sodden backpack. She draped the towel around his shoulders.
“What happened?”
All his words came out a
t once, like a stream of bees from a hive.
Gabi’s brown eyes grew steadily wider as he spoke, and once he was finished they began to narrow in concentration.
He braced himself for the inevitable disbelief. He waited for her to jump up and yell for her mom and say he’d lost his mind. Monday at school, she’d tell all her new friends that Finn was delusional. Sebastian and his crew would laugh.
But she said, “It all makes perfect sense.”
“What?!”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Finn. Your family has always been, well, really weird.”
I’ve never gotten used to traveling in and out of bad weather. You’d think by now it would be second nature. It’s only gotten worse with age. It’s murder on the joints.
And now, another mountain to climb. The same mountain, really. Look at it up there, taunting me. I’ve come to know it well. I won’t be hiking the whole thing the old-fashioned way of course. That would be too difficult at my age.
I just hope this time I’ll steer clear of trouble. I need to stay hidden. I don’t know how many more times this body can go through that kind of punishment. My enemy has no compunctions about inflicting torture on the elderly.
It’s probably because of who I am. All that rage, saved just for me.
Second thunder clap . . . fourth lightning flash . . . cue the gust of wind from the west. It’s all the ticking of an enormous clock. Who would have thought I’d ever be the one saying this?
But I’m running out of time.
Chapter 8
The landline phone rang and they both froze. Finn heard Mrs. Rand give a cautious hello and then her voice changed, becoming serious and questioning.
“No. He’s not here. What’s wrong? Oh no.” There was a pause and then, “Oh, I’m so sorry. No, I’ll ask Gabi. I’ll call back if I hear anything.”
Then came the footsteps on the stairs. Panicked, Finn started for the closet. Gabi shook her head, motioning him to stay put. The door opened, and Mrs. Rand’s face changed as she realized there was a sopping wet Finn standing in her daughter’s room. His cheeks grew hot, even though the rest of him was still chilled to the bone.
A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity Page 5
