1926. I exhaled. It was the break I needed. I scoured the headlines and less prominent articles. Pictures of people, old-fashioned cars and overcoats with fedoras, it was like an old movie reel, but uh, with less movement. Nothing I saw jumped out at me, until I came across a story on page three from September 18.
ABANDONED FARM HOUSE FIRE KILLS 8—Sept. 18 Terry McHutchen, Daily Times Staff Writer — The Bishop farm house in Marion, abandoned last year after years of disuse and neglect, collapsed in the overnight hours of September 17 after a fire consumed the structure. Eight people had apparently been meeting in some organized fashion. Dr. Melvin Traver, a vocal Temperance supporter, leader of the New Life Church, and mayor-elect of Marion, called “The Prophet” by his congregation, proclaimed the loss of life “terrible, but not unexpected, as many of these souls were engaged in the Devil’s businesses of gambling, drinking, and bootlegging.” Comparing them to notorious figures like Al Capone and Bonnie and Clyde, Dr. Traver promised he and his associates would pray for their spirits and that the town be healed from its troubled past. Sheriff Peter Townsend promised a full investigation, but remarked that as so many of the people involved had been badly crushed, that identifying their remains may take quite some time. People who have missing loved ones or who believe they may know anyone involved in the calamity should contact the Sheriff’s office.
I tore the microfiche out of the machine and tucked it in my pocket. Nothing in the article mentioned who was involved, but maybe there was something else in there or in the newspaper around that date. Had anyone survived after the fire at my mother’s farm house? How organized was Dr. Traver’s gang, if they could pull off an inferno? Was he behind it? What was I supposed to do with this information? Without any seizures, which had been my way back to then, how was I supposed to get there again to stop this from happening?
The puzzles swirled around in my head. Two dark brown orthopedic-looking shoes appeared on the floor, and I knew I was in trouble. I looked up at Miss Radise.
“I spoke with Sr. Phadelus,” said the librarian, her hands on her hips, “and she has not given you any kind of special assignment. Although after we talked, she said she could think of a very long and involved project for the likes of you.”
“That’s strange,” I said, shooting out of my chair and heading for the door. “I’m sure it was for Sr. Phadelus, wasn’t it? Now then, maybe I’ll go see her and check, although I suppose it could have been for Brother Thomas. You know sometimes I just get the two of them confused!” By this point I’d wiggled my way past her astonished face, thanking her repeatedly and then I was close enough to duck out of the library and back into the hallway.
The bells rang again, and a burst of talking filled the hall, so even though Miss Radice was onto me, I lost myself in the sea of blue and green uniforms. Hooray for plaid. That was the only time I’d ever been happy we all wore the same ugly outfits.
It was the senior’s lunch period, the second lunch of the day. I hoped I’d find Jeannine, because of all the people I knew, I could most likely share this with her and trust that she wouldn’t tell anyone else. She’d helped me with the coffee label, after all.
Seeing the cafeteria, I suddenly realized how much time I’d lost. Years were gone, years I’d lived through but had no memory of. This really sucks, I thought. My life was disappearing into these snaps back in time. It wasn’t fair. I told myself to calm down. Maybe I could jump back to the first clinical study and refuse to go, avoiding all of this mess. And another thought popped up: until this jump back, my time loss in my own time was a lot smaller than what I “lived through” back in time. But this go-around I’d come back two years later. Why?
Scanning the seniors for Jeannine, I found her over at the soda machines buying a can of Tab. She saw me and came over.
“Hey, I haven’t seen you in the hallway this morning. You feeling better?” She ran her fingers through my hair, and my back tingled, but in an awful way, not a sexy way.
“I’ve been working on a project in the library.” Okay, this phony project thing was getting old. Even the orthopedic shoe set was on to me.
She flipped her hair behind her shoulder and gave me a longer look. “You’ve got something going on.”
“Maybe.”
“What is it, Jack?”
“I’d like to talk to you about it, but not here.”
“What, you’re a secret agent now? We’re in school, where else are we going to talk?”
Before I could answer, Jasmin Carlyle, cheerleader extraordinaire, dashed over to her, giving her an air kiss.
“See you at practice today,” she said through an enormous smile. “You did great yesterday, Jeannie.”
“Thanks, Jazz. Yeah, see you at four.”
Jasmin flitted away like a lightning bug.
“Jeannie?”
“Shh,” she whispered to me. “No making fun in front of everyone.”
“Me, make fun? Of tiny people who climb on each other but think the rest of us are losers? Nah.”
“I needed another extracurricular, you know, and they cut field hockey. So give me a break, it’s just for this year.”
“I know, I know.” Except I didn’t know. It sounded like a ridiculous excuse, but I didn’t want to piss her off.
“I can’t sit with you today, sweetie,” she said, and she touched my collarbone. She has a thing for collarbones, what is that about? “Because the yearbook club is meeting this period. But I’ll meet you at your locker before next period.”
“Okay,” I said. At least I would see where my stupid locker was. She leaned in for a kiss and I gave her a quick peck, which made her frown.
“What is up with the granny kissing today?”
“I think my breath is really bad.”
She nodded, perhaps horrified at my complete lack of hygiene. Whatever, it worked. I watched her walk away and sit down with what I presumed was the yearbook staff. I wondered what clubs I’d joined in the last three years. Did I give a shit about anything?
I felt in my pockets and came up with a couple of crumpled dollar bills. The food smelled semi-rancid, but my stomach growled anyway. Either I was used to eating breakfast in the morning, which I’d skipped, or I was an eating maniac, because even the cafeteria tables looked appetizing. I looked at the school clock and saw it was a bit past noon. Lunches were only thirty minutes long. I got in line and asked for the lasagna. I didn’t know where to sit; most of the students had taken up at the long tables already, and nobody was waving me over. Nobody waved me over or said hello to me. Was I a loner? After having close friends through middle school, the possibility seemed depressing. Who was I?
In the corner, near a window, I saw Sanjay, who was sitting by himself. I walked over and set down my tray.
“Hi,” I said.
“Uh, hello.” He went back to eating.
“The lasagna sucks,” I said.
“So don’t order it and you won’t be disappointed.”
“You’re really angry with me.”
He stopped chewing, swallowed, and looked straight at me. “You know how I feel, so give it up. Why don’t you go sit somewhere else?” His hair was longer, he already had a shadow on his face where his beard was growing in, but unlike me, he was still stick-thin. It would have been nice to know what had pissed him off so much.
“Can’t we talk?”
He paused again, probably not sure how to size me up. “What are you, a girl? Do you need to process? I don’t want to talk.” He made air quotes with his fingers around “talk.” Thanks for the emphasis, asshole.
I picked up my tray, gripping it too hard, and walked over to a small, empty table. Why did he need to go and say that to me? I ate a few small bites of lunch, crunching on the overcooked noodles and blackened tomato sauce. I’m not a girl. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with girls, either. Girls. Jacqueline. I have to figure out how to get back so I can warn them about the fire. Oh God, Lucas. I don’t even know
who or where I am anymore but I miss Lucas so much. I had to see Lucas again.
I needed a plan. Jay could screw himself for all I cared. I stuck my tray on the conveyer belt behind the cafeteria, wiping my hands on my jeans. I bounded up the stairs from the cafeteria and half-trotted past the giant statue of St. Francis. As always he stared off in the distance, possibly looking on the horizon for other small animals who needed saving, since that was like, his thing. There oughta be a Catholic saint for people lost in time.
I wandered around the school building for ten minutes, waiting for the end of the lunch period. I’m sure I looked like I’d lost my mind, staring at every little piece of modern technology. PA systems had never looked so interesting before.
Jeannine came down the hall with the yearbook crew, a nerdy tiny girl with oversized black glasses, two guys who looked like they’d just as soon be playing chess, and some gal who had on the absolute limit of makeup allowed by the principal. They waved to me and continued down the hall, and Jeannine curled her arm into mine. I was starting to get used to her affection, but I didn’t feel anything toward her.
“Why are you standing over here?” she asked. “Your locker is down there.”
“Sure. Let’s go.” Locker A179 was in the middle of the row of lockers, and apparently mine. It seemed perfectly fine, mostly undented, with a lovely combination lock attached. And which I didn’t know how to open.
Jeannine sighed, then twisted the knob a few times and unclicked the lock.
Of course she knew my combination. I resisted rolling my eyes.
I opened the door and looked at a neat stack of textbooks and two three-ring binders. I was organized? On the inside of the door were seven or eight photos of Jeannine.
“See anything new?” she asked. Jesus, one of these must be recent. I honed in on the cheerleading photo.
“Aw honey, you look great,” I said, lying through my teeth.
“You think so? I was skeptical at first but you know, cheering is growing on me.”
“Like a fungus,” I said, and the bell rang.
“Come on, we’ve got Mr. Marshall’s class.” She tugged at my sleeve and I grabbed a binder, hoping I’d picked the right one. I hated to shut my lock but I couldn’t leave everything open.
Mr. Marshall was a new teacher, or well, new since I’d jumped out of time. He taught physics. Terrific. I don’t know anything about physics. Although maybe he knew about time travel. Wasn’t that a physics thing?
Maybe this was just the sort of class that could help me. Unless like, the teacher called on me. I sat in the chair behind Kevin Hunter, because he was usually right in front of me. Catholic school was always good for alphabetized seating.
Taped to the inside of the cover was my combination and schedule. At least that’s solved. I had three tabs set up: Physics, Honors English, European History. I flipped to the physics tab. Maybe if I studied my own notes I wouldn’t be lost in class. Nah, I don’t get a lick of it. Mr. Marshall had a way of droning as he talked that made everything a ton more boring.
I kept reading. Scribbled notes, crude diagrams, lots of things about special relativity theory, whatever that was. And then on one page, a note.
Is this how time travel happens?
Ah, so this is why I took physics. I was looking for a way back. And here I’d thought I’d only stopped doubting myself during my last trip back.
Time travel was so freaking confusing.
***
After school I ditched into a park behind the high school and watched Jeannine’s car, waiting for her to come over for her drive home. I would have preferred to go back to the library, where I could read my notebook in private, but there was only the one entrance, and Miss Radise would be watching for hooligans, if not me specifically, to enter. And so far I’d eluded Sister Phadelus, so I didn’t want to press my luck. In front of me was a rusty red merry go round, and some kind of worn out animal on an enormous spring stuck in the ground. If it was ever a happy place, it had long ago lost that feeling and settled into creepy forlornness. To top it off clouds started clumping up overhead, making the already old park equipment look even more tired.
I found a spot on a half-splintered bench that sagged a few inches when I sat down, and thought about what I’d been through—a simple neurology test, a hallucination that wasn’t, thrown into some other world that actually had a name and a place on a map. I played with the paper in my binder, clutching it to me like it was some kind of plastic shield. But what I really needed was a way back. To stop the fire. To see Lucas. To be Jacqueline again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THROUGH THE THIN LINE OF TREES, none of which were as robust as anything from Marion, I saw Jeannine come back out to her car after cheerleading practice. I braced myself for her touchy-feely stuff. Three or four other cheerleaders walked with her, lots of hair bouncing around them and skimpy cheerleading uniforms looking bright and uh, cheery. People in Marion would have laughed their asses off over these costumes. They waved at each other and made beelines for their cars.
I carried an enormous secret with me now, no matter what I did, and there was no way to tell people what I was really going through without them thinking I’d come unhinged. I wasn’t just sitting by myself in an unused children’s park. I was alone.
Looking up again, I saw Jeannine start her engine. I was going to miss her and then not have a way home, twenty miles away.
I leaped up and raced into the parking lot, waving my arms, and saw the flash of Jeannine’s brake lights. She backed up and reached over to unlock the passenger door. A rumble of thunder sounded.
“What the hell, Jack?”
“Can I get a ride?” Each word came out with a gasp of breath in between.
“Of course, get in.” I leaned over and flicked on the radio, turning the knob to find an alternative rock station.
Music has gotten so weird, I thought. The radio wasn’t familiar anymore.
“So Jack, what is up with you? Did you cut class all day today?”
“I was in the library in the morning, until Miss Radise kicked me out. But I went to my afternoon classes.” Not that I’d understood any of it. Apparently physics was one of those classes you needed to kind of get in on at the start.
“Are you a hall monitor now?”
“What? Why were you in the library?” she asked.
I waited for her to stop at a traffic light. The sky had opened up and we were in a downpour, sheets of water drenching the Sunbird. The windshield wipers whipped over the glass.
“Remember when I asked you to go to the public library with me?”
“Back when we were freshmen,” she said, nodding. The light turned green and she accelerated slowly, as if we could hydroplane at ten miles per hour.
“I went back there again. It’s not a hallucination.” I knew she knew where “back there” was.
Silence. We crept along, the rain winning the battle against the wiper motor, and then Jeannine put on her blinker and pulled to the curb. “I can’t concentrate and have this conversation at the same time,” she said. She turned to me.
“Jack, you know how this sounds?”
I nodded. “I know, but I can tell you things I just shouldn’t know.”
“Can you?” I couldn’t tell if she was exasperated with me, but she was still listening. I really needed her to listen, at the very least.
I explained, as the engine idled gruffly. She needed to flush it. Jeannine switched off the radio in the middle of a song. The windshield had become a waterfall, where the world on the other side of the glass lost its edges.
“Who was that?” I asked. Music. We could talk about music. Maybe she’d forget that her old friend was completely loony tunes.
“It’s called R.E.M.”
“Rapid eye movement? Why name yourself after something so boring?”
“I don’t know, Jack.” She looked exasperated with me. “Can we get back to this time travel stuff?”
I was taking up her time, spewing nonsense. I needed to get her to understand. I told her the whole story of the Underground and Dr. Traver.
Jeannine stared into space.
“Let’s say this is real. You’re not lying, mistaken, or nuts.”
“I’m okay with that.”
She smiled at me, but only for a moment. “When do you think you left last? This month?”
I hung my head a little, as if being gone for years was my fault. “I went away in the fall of freshman year, and woke up this morning.”
“Holy shit,” she said. Her hands on the steering wheel turned white as she gripped it harder. “That’s three years, Jack.”
“Oh, it gets even better,” I said.
“I can’t wait.”
I told her about being in the body of Jacqueline, of going back multiple times at different points in her life. Of Lucas, the tree, the growth of the sleepy town, the threats from Dr. Traver and his merry band of Prohibitionists who set Jacqueline’s house on fire. She listened, and eventually the rain let up and we began driving again.
“What I worry about is my mother, here. My real mother. She’s sick and the doctors can’t help her.”
“You’ve lost time with her, too,” Jeannine said, making me think about that all over again. I had a knot the size of a Whitney-Pratt engine stuck in my stomach. Talking about it with someone was supposed to be a relief, but instead it was anything but.
We pulled into her driveway, my house down and across the street from us.
“Look, you need to get started on learning how to figure out how to manage when and how you travel. I also think you have to put today’s technology to work for you. If the group back then could communicate better, like maybe with HAM radios or something, they’d have an advantage over Dr. Traver.”
Why hadn’t I thought of any of this? She was so much smarter than me. Of all the people to be jumping back, why wasn’t it someone more impressive than me? What a let-down it would be if the planet found out I’d successfully traveled through time. Dumbass Goes to Prohibition-era Kentucky, news at eleven.
The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1) Page 12
