by Julie Drew
“Well, yeah, but neither of you is a psychopath.”
“Far as you know.”
Sam was silent for a moment as they walked slowly back toward his bike, completing their loop around the outskirts of the field. When he finally spoke, it was clear where his thoughts had gone. “Just be careful, Tesla. Don’t do something crazy without thinking it through, okay?”
“Nice,” she retorted. “Your first assumption is that I’ll be some sort of loose cannon, and turn the world upside down.”
He considered her for a moment in the wan light as they got closer to the motorcycle. “Well, it is what you do.”
When they reached his motorcycle he silently handed her the helmet. After they were both settled, the engine idling, Sam turned his head and she leaned forward to catch his words, their breath mingling.
“I’m surprised your dad let you jump again.”
“Yeah, that would have been a surprise,” she muttered, but not softly enough.
Sam turned the engine off, got off the bike and turned to face her. “You came here again without telling your dad?”
She looked at him, her face a stubborn challenge. “Well, to be fair, I didn’t tell anybody. When I came before my dad didn’t know either, and that didn’t seem to bother you.”
“But now he knows what happened last summer. He’ll know you’ve jumped. He had no idea you were gone last time. Nilsen had him and he was unconscious. He’ll be crazed this time. That was stupid, Tesla. And kind of mean, actually.”
“Hey—” she spluttered.
“Look,” he interrupted, overriding her, no trace of the Beta-role he usually played to her Alpha. “You just vanished, from home, from school, from the universe. Dr. A’s gonna freak, and what about Max? I thought you said you two were close.”
Tesla had the grace to blush. “Okay, I didn’t think about Max. As for my dad, I doubt he’ll even notice.” She knew she sounded like a spoiled brat, and she was embarrassed, but she was angry, and stubborn, and felt wronged, and she was incensed that Sam didn’t see it that way. That his first loyalty wasn’t to her.
“Of course he’ll notice. Geez, Tesla—are you trying to publicize your parents’ time machine—is this how you’ve decided to punish your dad?”
“No! I’m as committed to keeping this a secret as anybody. I told you—there’s just a lot happening at home and I needed to get away.”
“You can’t solve your problems by running away from them.”
“Oh, okay, Dr. Phil. Thanks.”
Sam’s mouth drew down in a hard line and he said nothing, merely watched her as she began to squirm in the accusatory silence.
After a few minutes, Tesla conceded. “I guess it was kind of bratty, but anybody I care about will know pretty quickly that I jumped back. It’ll take like five minutes to realize no foul play was involved—I mean, my Aunt Jane is a government agent, she’s got the resources to figure that out pretty fast. They won’t call the police, or make a big deal out of it. My dad will call school and say I’m sick or something. And they’ll just wait, I guess, until I get back.”
Sam was silent, unconvinced, and Tesla spoke hotly before she thought—as usual. “Besides, one other person knows I jumped, and he can explain it.”
“Who?” Sam asked.
“Well I couldn’t very well jump and man the controls to send me back at the same time, now could I?” she asked, stalling now that she realized what she’d said, and where this was headed.
“Who sent you back?”
She paused, breathing heavily through flared nostrils, her mouth drawn in a tight, hard line. She was still angry, still frustrated, and annoyed that she’d carried it all back with her when she jumped. This was not exactly the escape she’d hoped for when she headed for the Bat Cave just a couple hours ago.
“You,” she finally said, reluctant and afraid, but also defiant as the word left her lips.
Sam froze, his mouth open just slightly, his breath held still.
“Me?” he asked quietly, then cleared his throat. “I sent you back? You know me—eight years from now?”
Tesla could only nod, watching him carefully.
Sam turned, hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans as he walked away from the bike where Tesla sat, but he only took three steps into the early-dawn gloom before he turned and came straight back.
“So eight years from now, we’re friends,” he said, and his voice was a demand she could not ignore.
Tesla nodded again.
“And I’m—twenty-two years old?” His voice was incredulous.
She nodded again. “But Sam—”
He held up a hand to stop her, and she swallowed what she was going to say, watching him as he ran a hand through his hair.
“Ho-lee shit,” he whispered to himself. “So, in the future, it’s this you that knows me—an older me, who has lived and aged over the eight years in between, you know, normally.”
Tesla frowned, unsure what he was getting at. “Yeah.”
“And the younger you in this time, where we are right now—the little girl—where is she in eight years?”
Tesla thought, trying to follow him, her brows drawn down in a scowl. “She’s…she’s me, I guess. This me.”
“Tesla, think about it. I can’t pretend to understand how all this works, these timelines, how we might change them, affect them—and if we do, if the other timelines are obliterated or just separate-but parallel, so, my God, there could be an infinite number of them possible every time we act—but, should you have told me that?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“It can’t all be one seamless timeline, Tesla—can it? I mean, how can our relationship just keep going on, with me just one person, going through time ‘normally,’ while you—all the yous—jump around and exist in multiple times and places simultaneously?”
Tesla looked stricken. She had to lick her lips and swallow once before she could answer. “I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know.” Her mind raced, tried to grasp time and experience and identity as not a singular thing existing as simplistically as she felt it. “Wait,” she said suddenly, reaching out her hand toward him. “Is it possible that I already told you this? That you knowing this about the future, about your future, won’t cause some horrible change, but rather it’s exactly what is supposed to happen, and causes that future to unfold exactly as it already has, in my time?”
“But, how can we know? If every time we break our rule we’re actually doing exactly what we already did—or worse, if only sometimes when we break the rule it’s what we were supposed to do—how will we ever know what to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s terrifying, Tesla. How can we even make a decision—ever?”
Tesla thought for a moment, and then looked at him serenely. “But that’s just life, right? We don’t ever know, not fully. Every decision, every action, every time we speak. We can be thoughtful about it, try to imagine the likely consequences, but once we do anything it’s out there, and it ripples through the world like water when you throw a stone into it, affecting everything, further than we can possibly see and in ways we’ll never know.”
“So, what, we’re just paralyzed, afraid we’ll wreck everything?” he asked in horror.
“No, not at all,” Tesla reassured him. “The opposite, I think. It can’t be controlled, never fully, whether we act or don’t act—and not acting is a decision, an act itself, right? So we do our best. It’s all we can do.”
“That’s not comforting,” he said shakily, trying to laugh.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “So here’s me doing my best: I don’t know you in the future until just this past summer, eight years after my last visit to you, in this timespace. When you sent me back last time from here, you were—the older you, I mean—outside the physics building waiting for me. So, you know. Do that. Wait, and then do it at the right time.”
Sam considered this, silently, shifting his weight to
his other foot as he stood beside the motorcycle, and slowly his face lost that stricken look. “So, what do you want to do while you’re here?” he finally asked.
“I guess I have to figure that out. There are some things my dad is hiding, about my mom. I honestly don’t think anything can go right until I get some answers. I don’t know what the consequence might be for trying to figure this stuff out, but I believe it’s the right thing to do. Beyond that,” she finished, “I have no idea.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “I’ll do what I can to help. But you’re going to have to deal with whatever is happening at home—with your dad, and with the asshats. Unless you want me to jump back with you and beat them up?”
“That would be interesting,” Tesla laughed, relieved that they were still friends, amused that it did not occur to him that he was talking in part about himself.
“So, how long are you staying—and where?”
Oh. Right, Tesla thought. Obviously she would need Sam’s help—again.
“I don’t know,” she evaded. “That’s vague, I know, but I want to try to find out more about my mom’s work. That’s likely where or how I’ll find Nilsen, too. So I’m staying a while. And yeah, I’ll need a place to crash.”
With Sam standing beside the motorcycle she sat on, they were almost exactly the same height, and Sam’s soulful black eyes looked intently into hers. “You know I’d let you stay with me, but I don’t know how I’d pull that off,” he admitted. “You’ve seen the house—it’s small, and even though my parents both work, they do come home.”
“That’s okay, really,” she hastened to assure him. “I was thinking maybe I could figure out how to hide in the bathroom at the library when they were closing, or something.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Sam said. “We might be able to do better than that.”
“Yeah? How?”
“You might be able to stay at the lab,” he said slowly, but as he warmed to the idea, his voice picked up speed. “Nobody knows that place at night better than me. I know where all the security cameras are and—more importantly—where they aren’t. But Tesla, it won’t be fancy,” he warned, seeing the excitement dawning on her face. “I’m talking utility closets and stuff.”
“No, I don’t care, that’s great!” she said, bouncing on the seat a little.
“I can take you there tonight,” he said. “You’ll want some supplies, though. I have a sleeping bag you can borrow. We’ll stop by my house for a minute. We’ll get some food, a toothbrush—you know, the essentials. You like peanut butter, right?”
“Yeah, I like peanut butter. Thanks, Sam.”
Later that night, after a day of riding, trying to stay mostly out of sight, and grabbing a quick bite at a taco truck in the next town over, they headed to the physics building on campus for Sam’s night shift. When he had successfully ushered Tesla inside, beyond the reach of the security cameras, they cleared a utility closet that Sam said no one ever used anymore. It had very little in it besides some ancient cloth-rope mops and an old-school metal bucket on wheels with rollers to squeeze the nasty water out, and some shelves with dusty cleaning products.
Sam insisted on sweeping the floor before Tesla laid her sleeping bag out and settled in. “Okay, well that’s as good as we can make it for now,” he said, standing in the doorway with hands on hips as he surveyed her kingdom.
“Sam, seriously. It’s great. Much appreciated. Really, it’s cleaner and neater than my room at home.” She laughed, then, and said, “I’m serious!” when she saw the skeptical look on his face. “I’m a horrible slob.”
“Okay, well, at least you’ll be warm, even though you’re sort of sleeping on the floor, and the bathroom is right down the hall. And there’s no security at all in this area, the labs are all on the other side of the building.”
“I know, Sam, you’ve told me like twelve times.” She yawned.
“Yeah, I can take a hint,” he said, and turned to go.
“Sam,” she said, impulsively moving into the doorway, and when he turned toward her she was much, much closer than he had expected. He was surprised, and a little taken aback.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks,” she said softly, leaning in, and then kissed him on the cheek. He backed out, without a word, and softly closed the door behind him, wondering why she had such a wicked look on her face, why she had laughed after that little kiss—a kiss so chaste he might’ve been her grandfather, for God’s sake.
CHAPTER 9
The next morning, Tesla swung her right leg over the motorcycle and settled into the seat, her helmet already on, and put one arm around Sam’s waist as the engine roared to life.
Sam had finished his rounds on the nightshift and knocked softly on Tesla’s door—the custodial closet door—and found her up, washed, dressed and ready to go, eating a peanut butter sandwich from the supplies they’d picked up at his house and reading from the worn paperback of Ender’s Game he’d left outside the door during the night.
“Morning,” he said, grinning to see her leaning up against the wall, book in hand. “Great novel, isn’t it?”
“Just started it,” she said thickly through the cloying peanut butter and bread she was still chewing.
She put the book down, took a swig from a water bottle, and stood up, dressed again in the black tunic, leggings and boots.
“So what are we doing today?” asked Sam.
Tesla had thought about that quite a lot through the night, sleeping only in fits and starts, oddly anxious. She needed to spend some time around her mother, needed to gain some understanding of the life her mother had been leading before she was killed, if she hoped to ever find out what had actually happened. But while her mother was unlikely—to say the least—to suspect that her daughter, years older, was in the vicinity watching her after having traveled back in time, still Tesla knew that her hair and her eyes were unusual enough that her mother might notice her if she was in range, and that simply could not happen.
“I need a disguise,” she said firmly.
“Oh,” said Sam. He had been taken aback, though he might have expected this. “Like what?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. The sleeping bag and snacks you got from your house are great, but I need to go to the store for a couple of things, and then—if you don’t mind, I really hate to ask—can I borrow some clothes? I don’t have enough money to buy much, and, well, I can’t keep wearing this.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t really sound like a disguise,” said Sam.
Tesla grinned, twin dimples indented in her cheeks and Sam smiled despite himself, then sighed in resignation. They both knew he’d do whatever she wanted.
“Oh, wait,” she said. “Is your house safe during the day?”
“Safe? You mean, are my parents gone?”
“Yes, you know that’s what I mean,” she said, stepping closer to him in her excitement. “Are they at work, the coast clear, the cops not on the scent, so we’re free to engage in this…skullduggery?”
“Skullduggery? What does that even mean?” he asked.
“No idea—it’s one of Max’s words.”
“Yes, other than my job—which I am happily off from today—we are free to engage in…whatever you want to engage in.”
Sam waited outside, at Tesla’s insistence, while she went into the enormous discount super-store. He couldn’t imagine what sort of disguise she thought she’d be able to put together, but for now he was content, leaning up against his bike in the parking lot, soaking up a little warmth from the November sunshine that would fade all too quickly into snow in just a few weeks.
Thirty minutes later he watched Tesla walk toward him across the crowded parking lot, spotting her the moment she emerged from the double glass doors that slid open for her. Her burnished hair blew around her shoulders. He saw the flash of her smile, the glitter of those eyes he always spotted from so many yards away, and he wondered if it was just him, or if everyone saw her as clearly, as
sharply as he did.
“What?” she asked, as soon as she was close enough to be heard without shouting.
He shook his head a little, realizing he’d been staring at her for the several minutes it had taken her to reach him.
“What?” he repeated, like an idiot.
“I don’t know—you’re looking at me funny.”
“Maybe you’re funny looking,” he said, turning and climbing onto the bike.
“Oh, wow, that’s hilarious,” she deadpanned, climbing on behind him and settling her shopping bag between their bodies before donning her helmet. “Your sense of humor is just slightly less funny than my dad’s.”
Sam smiled, not the least bit insulted. “Find what you need?”
“Yes I did.”
She sounded smug, and it worried Sam—as much as he could be worried at the moment, with the sun shining on his back, Tesla on his bike with her arms wrapped around his waist. He kicked the bike into gear and took off, turning left out of the parking lot with the wind in his face, a blue sky over their heads. Like there was no tomorrow, as his dad was fond of saying. And just for a moment he believed it, believed that this day, this mixed-up timeline, was the only reality and that he could hang onto it, hang onto her, without tomorrow spoiling it all. They sped down the road toward his parents’ house in the poorest part of town, following the ribbon of road while the dead leaves swirled in the wake they left behind.
Tesla looked up, her eyes still watering, and blinked, waiting for things to come into focus in the still-steamy bathroom mirror. As her vision cleared, she found herself looking at the reflection of the peeling wallpaper and rusted rim of the shower head in the edges of the mirrored medicine cabinet in Sam’s family’s cramped bathroom, her heart pounding, avoiding her own face in the center of the mirror.
She closed her eyes, listened to the sound of the blood pumping inside of her, breathed once, deeply—in, out—and then she looked.
The girl in the mirror had long, wet tendrils of dark, mink-brown hair already kinking up into spiraling curls. She was pale—alarmingly so, given the dark hair framing her white-white skin, but the dark brown eyes staring back at her confirmed that she was, in fact, a brunette.
