Run (The Tesla Effect #2)

by Julie Drew

  “Why would she hound you?” Tesla asked, her voice a little stronger now.

  “Exactly!” he shot back, arms crossed over his narrow chest and a scowl on his face. “I get mostly Cs, which is average. What’s wrong with average? Someone has to be average. I’m not good in school,” he added with a shrug. “Big deal.”

  Tesla was stunned. She licked her lips and looked away from Max, from what she now thought of as a dull, slightly slack look in his eyes. How could her brilliant, articulate, literary little brother be, well, this, because of the good fortune of having not lost his mother when he was an infant?

  Because one change can’t be just one, it’s a thousand, thousand changes you could never trace. Ripples in a pond.

  “But Max,” Tesla said, her confusion apparent in her voice. “You are good at school. You’re in all advanced classes and you make straight As. You read all the time. For fun.”

  Max’s lip quivered as he stared at her, and Tesla saw his hands form into tight fists at his side, saw his eyes fill with tears as he began to shake. “Don’t make fun of me,” he said through his clenched jaw.

  “I’m not,” she protested, reaching out a hand toward him, just as he punched himself in the forehead.

  “Max!” Tesla gasped, his face just above his glasses turning red from the impact before she had covered the few feet between them. “Max, stop!”

  He punched himself in the head twice more before she fully reached him and grabbed his arm, pulling it down by his side, shocked by the tension in his thin, wiry frame. It was all she could do to hold his arm down by his side.

  They were both shaking equally now, Max’s face red as he breathed hard and fast through his flared nostrils, Tesla white as a sheet of paper, her eyes huge, wide, and dry.

  “Max…Max what’s wrong?” she whispered, paralyzed by fear.

  They stood like this for several seconds, Max breathing noisily without answering, his bottom lip jutting out aggressively. Finally, he moved—not a sudden, violent movement, but a slackening, and a step back—and Tesla dropped his arm.

  “Nothing,” he muttered, shuffling toward the door. “Just leave me alone.”

  Tesla ran back up the stairs to her room, picking up a crumpled pair of skinny jeans off the floor on her way to her closet, where she grabbed a dark, forest-green wool sweater off a shelf and a black knit cap buried under summer sandals. In six minutes she had dressed, laced up her black hiking boots, and dashed down the hall to the bathroom. She caught site of herself in the mirror and froze, her hand in mid-reach toward her toothbrush.

  My hair is still dark, she thought. But it would be, right? She scowled, trying to understand. She had thrown the dark contacts away last night, so she wasn’t surprised to see her blue and green eyes locked on their opposite reflection, as she worked through it out loud.

  “I jumped back. Dyed my hair. Came back to the present. Went back again and changed things. Came back—apparently the same me. This isn’t a new me, a different one.” She stared at herself, trying to feel some relief, to make of this some type of evidence that she hadn’t changed everything—and everyone—by saving her mother’s life.

  She failed. Her brief encounter with Max was irrefutable proof that, even if everything hadn’t changed, some things had, and not for the better.

  Tesla brushed her teeth, washed her face and pulled the hat down over her hair. Just as she reached her bedroom door, however, her father appeared and she pulled up short.

  “I’m heading to the lab,” he said, his tired eyes pausing on her hair for a brief moment, but registering no surprise.

  Tesla knew what he must be thinking, though, so she rushed to explain. “I was just trying it out. It’s temporary. It’ll shampoo out.”

  At that, Greg Abbott registered surprise. “Okay,” he said, his shoulders rising in the barest of shrugs. “Your mom’s already gone. See you tonight.” He turned to go, but Tesla stopped him, her hand on his arm, effectively turning him back toward her, his eyebrow up, waiting, and a slightly impatient, annoyed firmness about his mouth.

  “Dad, Max seems… I don’t know. Not himself,” she ventured.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, but there was no real curiosity, no sense of urgency in his voice.

  “I’m not sure,” she hedged. “He seems… agitated or something. Dad, he got upset and started—well, hitting himself in the head.”

  Some sense of the horror she had felt must have crept into her voice because her father’s gaze sharpened as he watched her, and then, unbelievably, slid away altogether, his eyes now looking away, down the hall, where he clearly wanted to be.

  “Look, Tesla, your brother’s a handful, you know that. Your mom’s taking care of it. Nothing to worry about, he needs to be more disciplined about school, that’s all.”

  “But Dad, I’m not sure ‘discipline’ is the issue here, and besides—”

  “Look, Tesla, I really do have to run,” he interrupted, gently releasing his arm by stepping away. Escaping. “Talk to your mom about it. I’m late.”

  And he was gone. Tesla stood in her bedroom doorway, barely breathing. What the hell is going on around here?

  Tesla slung her messenger bag over her sweater as she walked down the stairs, and stopped dead as her mother walked out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand.

  “Morning,” said Tasya, raising the cup to her lips while her eyes held Tesla’s. The steam from the hot coffee wafted up and around her face, obscuring her eyes and the details of her facial structure just enough to make her hazy, out of focus. Not quite real—unfinished, always some detail missing. Exactly as Tesla had dreamed of her all these years.

  “M-morning,” Tesla said, trying to sound normal.

  “I like your hair like that,” Tasya said, smiling, and for the first time Tesla noticed the lines at the corners of her eyes, the sharpness of her cheekbones that time had chiseled. My mom is eight years older than she has ever been.

  “On your way so early?”

  Tesla nodded, for a little too long, and forced herself to stop. “Dad said you’d already left,” she said, which made Tasya laugh.

  “Your dad doesn’t really know what’s going on,” she said conspiratorially, as if this were a family joke that Tesla knew well. “He’s more distracted than usual. We have a lot of work to do at the lab today.” Tasya’s eyes narrowed, and she smiled with her lips closed.

  She’s smug, Tesla thought. “What’s going on at the lab?” she asked, and was shocked when Tasya burst into genuine laughter.

  “I’ll see you down there later,” her mother said, then turned her head toward the kitchen and in a completely different tone, one that spoke of frustration, yelled, “Max! Let’s go. You’ll be late for school.”

  “I have to get to school, too,” Tesla said quickly. “Maybe later we can talk—about Max, and everything.”

  Tasya frowned, her entire attention immediately back on Tesla. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You haven’t gone to school in months, we agreed it was a waste of time. I thought you liked homeschooling, liked the intensive training we’re able to give you at the lab? Besides, there’s work to be done. The whole point of focusing your education this way is because of the opportunity for…application. So I’ll see you at the lab in a few hours.” She turned and walked back toward the kitchen. “Max!” she shouted as the door swung closed behind her.

  Tesla was stunned. She stood, somewhat dazed, as she listened to her mother talking in a low voice to Max, heard the garage door open, and the sound of the car leaving. And the house settled around her, eerily the same in every way, which only served to highlight that everything that counted was very, very wrong.

  CHAPTER 27

  Tesla walked out the front door, already at a fast clip the moment she hit the sidewalk. She tried to stay calm as she felt panic encroaching, unable to even imagine what she would find when she got to Jane’s.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Abbott!” she heard f
rom behind her.

  Startled, Tesla turned around and saw a young man running after her down the sidewalk, followed by another man carrying a huge camera on his shoulder and trying to keep up. Tesla looked past them and saw a news van parked outside of her house, which she had been too preoccupied to notice.

  The young man came bustling up, and instead of stopping in front of her, he stepped up beside her as the cameraman caught up, adjusted his camera, and pointed it right at his colleague and Tesla.

  “Ms. Abbott, would you care to comment on the story that has just broken on the AP Wire? It’s already been picked up by the Times, as well as the Tribune, who are both reporting it on their websites.”

  “Sorry, what?” asked Tesla, thoroughly confused, glancing nervously at the giant lens of the camera that was a mere thirty-eight inches from her face, its smooth black surface reflecting her startled expression back at her.

  “Come on, Ms. Abbott, give me a break,” the man said, flashing a perfect smile and tossing his head a little, which made him look like a pony. “We were literally a block from here and I’m the first reporter to get to you—this is going to be huge!”

  Tesla took a step back from him, and then another. The reporter turned to follow her, he and the cameraman advancing on her as she walked backward, her hand held out, palm facing them, as if that would stop them.

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said quickly. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

  “Tesla Abbott? Daughter of Tasya Petrova and Greg Abbott, the physicists?”

  Tesla nodded—she couldn’t help it, it was the truth.

  “Tesla, let us help get your story out. You’re going to be famous, honey—the sky’s the limit!”

  Tesla was scared now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—leave me alone!”

  She turned and started jogging away, her back to them, knowing she could outrun them if she had to. She glanced once over her shoulder and saw that they had stopped, stood still twelve feet behind her, the camera no longer pointed at her and the reporter staring forlornly after her. Tesla saw another van peel around the corner and come to a screeching halt behind the other one, just in front of her house.

  Without hesitation she darted through a neighbor’s yard, cleared the low, decorative fence that lined the back of their yard, and sprinted toward campus and Aunt Jane’s house.

  When she arrived at the front door ten minutes later, she let herself in, closed the door behind her, and leaned back against the door, eyes closed. What the hell was that?

  Jane Doane, walking from the kitchen to her home office, caught sight of Tesla in the entryway. “Tesla? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m…just stopping by?” Tesla asked, afraid to make any statements—even something as simple as I’m going to school had turned out to be completely false. Did she even work for Jane? Did the others? Was Jane a spy? Oh my god, does Finn even live here? And Bizzy and the others? She was very close to hyperventilating, she could already feel the tingling in her hands from lack of oxygen.

  “Well, that’s nice,” said Jane with a slight frown. “But don’t you have work at the lab this morning? The others are still sleeping, I think, or have gone off to class. You all have a fencing lesson this afternoon, I believe?”

  Tesla heaved a huge sigh of relief, which made Jane raise a smooth, quizzical eyebrow.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, but there was a formality in her tone and manner that was off, and Tesla felt uncomfortable confiding in her.

  “Yeah, of course,” Tesla said. “Can I just go up and see if Bizzy’s up yet?”

  “Go ahead,” Jane said, following Tesla with a puzzled frown as she bounded up the stairs.

  Tesla stopped at the third floor landing and paused to catch her breath. She hesitated as she walked by Finn’s room, remembering the last time she’d been in there, but so much had happened it seemed a lifetime ago. She stopped at Bizzy’s door and knocked softly.

  “Yeah?”

  Tesla opened the door just wide enough to stick her head inside. “Hey, Biz, it’s me. Can I come in?”

  Bizzy was sitting cross-legged on her bed, chewing on the end of a mechanical pencil, open books and papers scattered all around her. She didn’t look up, simply waved her hand to indicate that Tesla should come in.

  Tesla sat down on the edge of the bed, afraid to do or say anything as she stared at Bizzy. Her relief was so strong when Bizzy looked up at her, still in her pajamas but with her eyes fully lined in black, that Tesla burst into tears as she sprang forward and hugged the startled girl.

  “Uh, okay,” Bizzy said from somewhere near Tesla’s ear. “What’s up?”

  Tesla laughed, pulled away, and wiped at her eyes with her fingers. “Nothing, I’m just having a weird morning,” she said quickly. “And I’m glad to see you.”

  “Sure,” Bizzy said, frowning in confusion.

  “So, will you be at the lab today?” Tesla asked cautiously. “You know, working? With my dad?”

  Bizzy looked at her like she was an odd specimen of some kind, performing under her microscope in unexpected ways. “Yeah. Where else would I be?”

  Tesla laughed again, and the sound was not pleasant. Was she getting hysterical, she wondered? She tried to choke back another giggle, and didn’t quite succeed.

  “Tesla, are you okay?”

  They both stopped when the doorbell chimed loudly from below, a speaker on each floor carrying the sound clearly throughout the house. They said nothing, and a moment later it rang again, twice in quick succession, suggesting an impatient caller at the very least.

  “What, I’m the only person in the whole house who’s up?” Bizzy muttered, getting off the bed and heading toward the stairs. Tesla followed silently behind as they walked down the stairs to the first floor.

  Tesla hung back, an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, as Bizzy opened the front door.

  Tesla couldn’t see very much from where she stood, but it seemed from the noise of multiple voices and even the couple of arms that shoved their way in through the opening that there was a crowd gathered on the porch of the old Victorian house.

  “Is Tesla Abbott here?”

  “We’re looking for Tesla Abbott.”

  “I know she’s here, I saw her walk inside—we just want to talk to her!”

  The voices clamored over one another, rising in volume, competing to be heard. Tesla started to back away, moving slowly toward the stairs, feeling like a rabbit cornered by a pack of slavering dogs trying to reach her with their sharp teeth. She was just going to run upstairs and hide out until the press went away, and then she’d sneak out.

  Her shoulders were suddenly held in a firm grip from behind and she gasped, spinning around to face her assailant.

  “Hey, Abbott,” said Finn, his charming smile and warm, gold-brown eyes easing her fears as he stood at the bottom of the stairs. He tucked her hair behind her ear as Joley descended the stairs right behind him.

  “There’s—I’m not sure what’s going on, but there are a bunch of reporters outside—there were some at my house, too—can I hide upstairs until the coast is clear? I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to talk to them.”

  Finn’s head tilted just slightly to the side as he considered her, his eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

  “Because—well I don’t know. I don’t know what they want to talk to me about, and I don’t like microphones and cameras shoved in my face. Or people chasing me,” she said, growing increasingly angry as she spoke. “I want to go upstairs until they leave.”

  “Tes, if they just want to ask questions, there’s nothing to freak out over,” Finn reasoned with a reassuring smile. “We’ll help you—we’ll stay right with you, won’t we Joley?”

  Finn turned and looked at Joley, and Tesla closed her eyes, trying to block out the sight of Finn, unsurprised and unconcerned. She didn’t know what had changed, only that it had. The rest w
as merely detail. He didn’t understand her, didn’t get that she was scared—or worse, he did—they were entangled, after all—unless they weren’t anymore? Either way, he didn’t seem to care.

  She opened her eyes to find them both watching her, and Joley laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “My advice would be to go ahead and take questions,” he said gently. “You’ll have to sooner or later.”

  Finn turned back to her expectantly, apparently having nothing to add. She stared at him, incredulous.

  “Do you know what this is about?” she snapped. “Either of you?”

  “Naturally,” said Joley. “You’re the girl who can time travel—everyone’s going to want to talk to you—it’s bloody exciting, don’t you think?”

  “But—how could—I don’t understand, the press knows?? How did it get out? My parents are going to freak! Do you have any idea—”

  Tesla stopped mid-sentence, something about Finn’s face, right in front of her, silencing her, the questions racing through her mind dying on her lips.

  “Finn,” she said in a horrified whisper, taking a step forward and grabbing his hand. “What have you done?”

  He smiled, flashed that brilliant smile, his eyes warm and crinkly at the edges, and she thought, I’m wrong, it’s still him, it has to be him, and as if he could hear her thoughts he gently withdrew his hand and tucked her hair back behind her ear.

  “I made my career, Tes, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve got a book deal. I’ve got access. You and time-travel, Tesla. You’re news, and it’s my story.”

  EPILOGUE

  The window opposite the fireplace in the living room was open, the edge of a curtain moving slightly in the cool breeze. It was an unusually warm night for early December, warm enough to allow the fresh evening air into the house, and the watcher was grateful for the unexpected opportunity to both see and hear the family that gathered inside, lit warmly in the glow of the room’s lamps. It was supposed to be a bitter winter, and the watcher wondered—hoped—if perhaps the forecasters were wrong, that the days ahead would be easier than foretold.