“No, Anna, I believe you! What did they say?” Louise asked urgently, now sitting fully upright in the bed.
“I couldn’t make out the words they were saying. They were leaning over you, speaking softly into your ear,” Anna recounted.
“What did they look like?”
“One of them was very tall with wild red hair. The other was much shorter with brown hair, and she had her hands placed over your stomach.”
“Marla and Glenda!” Louise said with a gasp. “It must be.” Instinctively, she placed her hands on her belly, still somewhat experiencing the gnawing pain in her stomach that she had felt in her dream. How did the women know that? Were they the cause of it?
“They were right here, and then they literally vanished.” Anna was clearly shaken. But Louise felt vindicated: She wasn’t crazy.
“Anna, we need to find those women,” Louise whispered loudly, eyes flashing.
“The witches?” Anna asked, scared. She began furiously making up the sofa bed where she had slept the night before. It reminded Louise of her mother, who would also tidy up when she got nervous.
“Yes, it’s the only way for me to get back to my normal life in Connecticut. And they can save you, too. This boat is doomed!”
“Connecticut?” Anna repeated, confused. “And what do you mean this boat is doomed?”
“The Titanic is going to sink,” Louise replied bluntly, her eyes getting hot with held-back tears.
“Why do you keep saying that?” Anna questioned. “Everyone says it’s unsinkable….”
“I guess nothing is indestructible,” Louise concluded. “Ships, planes, nations, presidents. You would never believe me if I told you what was going to happen in the next one hundred years.”
“How would you know what the future holds, Miss Baxter?” Anna asked hysterically, refolding the wool blanket she had in her hands.
“Anna, I didn’t say anything before, because it sounds crazy, but I’m not Miss Baxter. And I’m not an actress. The truth is my name is Louise, and I’m from Connecticut. It’s a state in America. One of the last things I remember is that it was 2011, and I was learning about the Titanic disaster in my history class.” Suddenly Louise wished she had paid a little more attention to Miss Morris’s lecture.
Anna stopped fluffing the pillows and made the sign of the cross over her body again. Apparently she had reconnected with her religion sometime over the course of the night.
“You’re not the real Miss Baxter?” she asked incredulously. “But you look exactly like Miss Baxter. How could you possibly be anyone else?” Anna walked over to the bed and gave her a thorough once-over.
“I don’t know,” Louise replied, frustrated, throwing her hands in the air in a helpless shrug. “It seems impossible, but I swear, I’m not her.”
Anna still didn’t look convinced.
“Would Miss Baxter do this?” Louise asked, crossing her eyes, sticking out her tongue.
Anna giggled, despite her extreme state of fear. “Certainly not. Perhaps Dr. Hastings gave you too strong a dose of that sleeping medicine.”
“Wait, come over here,” Louise commanded in a loud whisper, as she walked toward a gilded mirror hanging on the opposite wall. Anna needed to see her as Louise, and words would never convince her otherwise. Anna gave her a quizzical look but followed anyway. With great trepidation, Louise stepped in front of it, her head lowered—afraid of whom she would see.
She had spent her entire life wishing that something in her appearance would be different—that her hair would grow in like fifties starlet Elizabeth Taylor’s perfectly smooth brunette waves or that the mosquito bites on her chest would develop into real breasts so she could finally wear a bra like every other girl in the seventh grade. It took her by surprise that now all she wanted was to look exactly as she was. She needed to recognize herself.
Looking directly into the mirror, Louise once again saw herself for who she truly was—a skinny, twelve-year-old girl with braces. For the first time since this whole adventure began, she burst into tears—hot tears of exhaustion and happiness at seeing the first familiar face she had recognized all day.
Stunned, Anna gasped, crossed herself, and stared silently into the gilded mirror. Finally she said in absolute horror, “What do you have on your teeth?”
Louise laughed and wiped her tear-streaked cheeks and running nose with the back of her arm. “Be grateful you were born when you were. You’re lucky they hadn’t invented these orthodontic torture devices yet.”
Anna sat down shakily on the edge of the sofa. It was too much for her to handle. “Who are you?”
“My name is Louise Lambert. I’m from Fairview, Connecticut. I was born in 1999, and I’m twelve years old.” As she spoke, she felt her voice grow stronger, more confident. Wow, that felt really good, she thought with a smile. It was an overwhelming moment. She knew she was finally ready to be Louise again. But time was running out, and she needed to find an answer quickly.
Louise climbed up and sat on the edge of the puffy featherbed; her feet didn’t even touch the floor. She wanted to tell Anna everything she remembered from Miss Morris about the Titanic. Unfortunately, thanks to her teacher’s monotonous lecturing style, it wasn’t all that much.
“If I had to end up on the Titanic, I wish a young Leo was on board,” she said jokingly, thinking about the romantic epic movie that was made a few years before she was born. She had seen it recently, when she was home sick with a cold.
“Who?” Anna asked, understandably, considering Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t exactly alive in 1912.
“Never mind, I guess you had to be there,” Louise said, snapping back into focus. “The basic story is that one night this very fancy boat named Titanic collides with an iceberg and sinks. I know this is incredibly frightening to hear, but it really happened. Do you believe me?”
“I wish I didn’t.” Anna put her hand to her mouth, pausing to take it all in. “But after seeing your image in the mirror, I suppose I have to believe anything at this point. How did you manage to make yourself look like Miss Baxter to everyone else and do such a convincing job of impersonating her?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Louise confessed. “It’s totally crazy that everyone thinks I look like her. But I guess I’ve been preparing for this role all my life.”
“Incredible,” Anna said as she shook her head, dumbfounded. “I could swear I was talking to the real Miss Baxter. This is too bizarre. So… so… if you are Louise Lambert… where is Miss Baxter?”
“I have no idea.” Louise hadn’t even begun to ponder this angle of the story when suddenly they were startled by a loud snoring noise coming from the adjacent suite.
“Mr. Baxter!” she exclaimed in a loud whisper, having forgotten about him for a moment. “I’ll explain everything I can later, but we need to get out of here before he wakes up. Or else we’ll both have a lot of explaining to do, and we must escape.”
“Don’t worry, he could sleep through a shipwreck. Oops,” Anna said with a gasp, blushing a deep crimson, embarrassed by her ominous choice of words.
“Quickly. Let’s get out of here,” Louise urged, jumping down from the bed.
“First, you should put on some dry clothes,” Anna advised in a motherly tone. Louise looked down. She was still wearing the navy blue beaded evening dress. It was now damp and clinging from her panicky sweat.
“Does Miss Baxter own any jeans?” Louise asked hopefully.
“Jeans?” Anna responded in disbelief. “You mean the denim overalls that the railroad workers wear?”
“Oh, never mind.” Louise dreaded putting on another dress. She missed her own limited wardrobe back home. Trying to escape from this ship would be much easier in pants.
“Where are you going, ladies?”
The girls jumped. Mr. Baxter was standing in the doorway of the sitting room wearing a pair of pink silk pajamas with red piping and a sleeping mask dangling around his neck. His handlebar mustache was
a little askew.
“Uncle Baxter,” Louise cooed, instantly switching back to her Miss Baxter character. She hoped she could still pull off this façade, even though all she could think about was getting off the boat as quickly as possible.
Mr. Baxter removed a gold tassel earplug from his left ear.
“Uncle Baxter,” she repeated, this time fluttering her eyelashes like an overcaffeinated butterfly. “I couldn’t sleep, so Anna is going to fetch me some warm milk and honey.” That was her mother’s cure for insomnia. Louise hoped it was a really old recipe.
Mr. Baxter looked at both girls sleepily.
“Uncle Baxter,” she piped up for the third time. “Go back to bed. You need your beauty sleep.”
Too confused and tired to argue, Mr. Baxter padded back into his sleeping quarters.
“Good morning and good night, ladies,” he mumbled drowsily, shutting the antique oak French doors behind him.
The girls exchanged a relieved look. Very quietly but quickly, Anna snuck around the suite, gathering some fresh clothes for Louise. Louise quickly changed into the simple wool dress and brown button-up leather boots that Anna had lent her.
Together, they tiptoed out of the room and gently shut the door behind them before running as fast as they could down the hall.
“We have to be careful. We need to stay away from Captain Smith and Dr. Hastings at all costs,” Louise whispered as they ran as quietly as possible along the deserted and dimly lit hallway.
Anna nodded. “But where exactly are we going?”
“I don’t know. I want to get a clear map of the ship in my head. Do you know your way around?” From what she had seen, there seemed to be miles of passageways that all looked remarkably similar. “Do you know where the navigation room is?” Louise asked more specifically.
“Yes, I do,” Anna said as she nodded vigorously. “Although it’s off limits to passengers; we’re not allowed up there.”
“That’s where we need to go!” Louise decided. “There must be someone there who will believe us and change course.”
“Captain Smith is a very powerful man,” Anna interrupted, grabbing her arm. “It’s not going to be easy to find someone who will disobey his orders. Especially if the new orders are coming from two women.”
Louise sighed, feeling another surge of panic. She kept forgetting that in 1912 women didn’t even have the right to vote, and that her opinion might be ignored simply because it came from a female voice. “Maybe we should first find Glenda and Marla. If you saw them and Lucy saw them, then they must be on the Titanic with us….”
“The witches?” Anna trembled, interrupting Louise’s train of thought.
“I’m afraid it might be the only way.”
“I think we should go with the first plan,” Anna said nervously. “I mean, how will we know it won’t work if we don’t even try? And I know someone who might help us.”
“Who?” Louise asked.
“Oh… just some boy,” Anna replied quickly.
“You lead the way,” Louise ordered. “We can use all the help we can get.”
“This way,” Anna said as she motioned for Louise to follow her. They scurried in a thoughtful silence until they reached the outer deck and then headed toward the bow of the ship. Anna led them past a group of ladies lounging on wooden deck chairs huddled under white blankets embroidered with the White Star insignia, sipping hot toddies and enjoying the morning sun.
Louise looked up and saw several wooden lifeboats suspended with ropes and cables overhead. Maybe she and Anna could urge the ladies to come with them and get one down and escape now before the Titanic hit the iceberg.
Staring up at the lifeboats, Louise was suddenly transported back to her history class. She could hear Miss Morris’s dull but informative voice inside her head. “The fatal flaw of the Titanic was that it did not contain nearly enough lifeboats for its two thousand passengers. To compound this fact, the boats were frantically lowered into the sea half empty, and precious lifesaving seats were left vacant.”
How could Louise justify stealing a boat for a handful of people when there already weren’t enough seats for every passenger? And, she realized, the chances of convincing these ladies to put down their steaming drinks to get into a small lifeboat in the middle of the freezing cold Atlantic Ocean was pretty unlikely. As badly as she wanted to get off the ship, she realized that she wasn’t willing to save herself at the expense of so many others.
“We’re almost at the bridge,” Anna said in between breaths to Louise.
“The bridge?”
“That’s the place where the ship is navigated from.”
“Perfect. You lead the way.”
Anna continued to lead them hurriedly down the deck and then stopped suddenly at a door that read PRIVATE—DO NOT ENTER.
“Here we are,” she announced, looking at Louise ominously.
Louise glanced around. The coast was clear. The two girls opened the forbidden door and slipped inside.
“Follow me,” Anna whispered, grabbing on to a suspended ladder and hoisting herself up with ease. “It’s sturdy. Don’t worry,” she added as she climbed up.
Louise hitched up her skirt, curious as to how Anna knew so much about this, and followed her friend up the dark wooden ladder. She climbed over the top rung into what she realized must be the navigation room. Maps and sea charts were hanging on the walls and spread out over every available flat surface.
“What are you ladies doing? Passengers are not allowed in here!” a voice boomed from somewhere behind them.
Startled, Louise and Anna spun around to find a young crew member with cropped blond hair wearing a navy White Star Line uniform.
“Anna, is that you?” The crew member’s voice suddenly lowered. “What did you bring her up here for? Now I’ll get in a heap of trouble.”
It seemed that Anna did, in fact, have a secret crush, Louise immediately realized. A really cute secret crush.
“She won’t get you into trouble, Christopher,” Anna said as she took his hand. “I promise.” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “But I need you to help us out.” Christopher blushed a deep red and looked worriedly at Louise, or rather Miss Baxter.
He was definitely good-looking: sixteen, maybe seventeen years old, tan, very short sun-bleached hair, sky blue eyes. Actually he was more Brooke’s type, Louise thought, instantly missing her best friend more than ever. She couldn’t help but wonder if she would ever see Brooke again.
“I’ll try. But you really shouldn’t be in here. If Captain Smith comes up, that will be the end of it—and my job.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t let that happen,” Louise interrupted, rationalizing that it would be better to be fired than dead.
“It’s a bit complicated to explain,” Anna began, choosing her words carefully, “but let’s just say that Miss Baxter has had a premonition that the Titanic is going to hit an iceberg and sink.” She grabbed Christopher’s hand tighter as she spoke. “We need you to change the course of the ship, only by the slightest degree, or else we—”
“What?” Christopher interrupted, pulling his hand away. “Anna, have you lost your mind?”
“Please,” Louise pleaded. “You must believe us!”
“You want me to disobey my captain’s orders and lose my job because of a premonition?” His clear blue eyes opened wide in disbelief. “I will do you a favor and not tell the captain you were up here, but that’s all I’ll do.” He put his hands up, backing away from the girls.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” Louise and Anna spun around and came face-to-face with a very angry Dr. Hastings. He shut the door behind him and walked briskly over to Louise. “This has gone far enough,” he growled, grabbing her by the wrist. “Now you’ve become a danger, not only to yourself but to the other twenty-two hundred passengers who are on this ship with you.”
“Dr. Hastings, Christopher, you both need to listen to me! I am a respected actress, a pu
blic figure… and if the press hears that you even attempted to lay one finger on me…” Louise said as she extracted her wrist from Dr. Hastings’s loosening grip. This was by far her most impressive, Oscar-worthy Miss Baxter performance. “Well, the public would be outraged….” Louise trailed off, noticing that Christopher suddenly looked very scared. Was she doing that good of a job? Anything to get off this boat!
Christopher raised his right hand and pointed at the wall across from Louise. He was ruining her plea; what could it be? She looked over at Anna, who had turned a ghastly shade of pale.
Louise turned to the left, following Christopher’s terrified expression and pointing index finger. And what she saw shocked even her. It was herself, twelve and awkward, dressed in a drab, old-fashioned costume, being reflected off the large circular mirror hanging on the opposite wall. She felt her façade crumble. In the middle of her most important performance, she was being exposed for who she truly was.
“Witches!” Dr. Hastings said with a snarl, his bottom lip trembling. “Good God Almighty, we’re dealing with witches.”
Louise and Anna slowly started backing away.
“You’re seeing things, Doctor,” Louise said cleverly, walking backward toward the captain’s wheel.
“Oh no, I’m not. I may be a man of medicine, but I know a witch when I see one.”
Before the evil doctor could drag her away, Louise frantically reached out, grabbed the massive wooden steering wheel, and gave it a hard yank. She could have sworn she felt the boat jerk ever so slightly to the right.
“Stay the course!” Dr. Hastings bellowed as Christopher rushed to the wheel.
“Latitude, forty-one degrees, north, longitude, fifty degrees, west,” Christopher replied automatically.
Within minutes, the Titanic was back on its predestined route.
But maybe it was enough? Louise thought frantically, as Dr. Hastings tightened his grip on her and roughly pushed her toward the door. Have I just rewritten history?
The Time-Traveling Fashionista Page 9
