“They haven’t traced anything back to your brother, have they?”
“Fortunately for us, there are a lot of men from India who work at the hospital.” He smiled at me. “It’s getting easier to spend time with you again.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. I’m remembering why we were friends in the first place, before you were such an asshole.”
I dropped my head. I’d been mean to him because he was gay, and here I was pining away over Lucas. I should tell him.
“It’s just that I don’t know, in some ways I think I’m different, too.”
His forehead scrunched up. “What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure. It’s so hard to know what’s real in all of this crap.” I tried to tell him about being Jacqueline, about loving Lucas, but the words were crowding up on my tongue.
“Sure,” he said, cutting me off before I could start. And then Jeannine and the doctor came downstairs, holding beige computer parts in their arms.
“Okay,” said Jeannine as they set down the equipment next to the makeshift EEG machine, “Dr. Dorfman thinks this is about all we need.”
“How can we help?” I asked.
He looked at me directly, his face seeming surer than I’d seen him since the neurology study.
“I really would like a glass of water, thanks,” was all he said. We left him to work on his own while we went to the kitchen to get lunch and a drink for him.
I asked Jeannine, “Is he really all back?”
“I think he’s kind of damaged, or haunted, by his experience. His fellow doctors think he lost his mind. His wife left him and took their two kids.”
“It’s my fault,” I said. I ran my fingers along the beveled edge of the white Formica countertop. It was a lot nicer than the counter we had at home, which had metal strips along the edges that caught dirt and were impossible to clean. All the houses in our subdivision had the same shitty countertops.
“Look at me,” she said, and I obliged. “This is not your fault. You didn’t create the study, you were told to be part of it. You have to believe it isn’t your fault.”
“I’ll try.”
“Seriously, Jack. It’s not.” She paused. “But it may be your calling.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CLOSING MY EYES made the experience feel more familiar, even if I knew I was sitting back on Jeannine’s rich friend’s couch and not in a lab. Dr. Dorfman’s voice was strangely comforting even with all of the guilt because of everything I’d put him through. Without seizures anymore, he wasn’t sure if this would work. Sitting still made me almost miss all the years of pills and needles and brain scans, but not really. Maybe I should have been more nervous about the hand-built EEG machine than my own capacity for out of control neuron activity, but I didn’t think the doctor would have subjected me to anything that could hurt me. Even as revenge.
We’d had a long discussion about trying to send me somewhere. Dorfpoodle wanted to have witnesses present who agreed that time travel was at least a possibility. I wanted to see if I could time jump without my own seizures, and I was desperate to see Lucas again. Alive. I prayed to nobody in particular. Please give me time to fix what was so screwed up back there.
“Relax, Jack,” he said. It occurred to me that I didn’t know why he cared to do all of this for us. Was he interested in inventing a time machine? Wanting to prove himself correct? Was he actually delusional? Why were these questions only now just popping into my head?
I considered ripping off the wires, held to my scalp with some kind of hair product instead of the medical putty I was used to. This was crazy. What was I thinking? I should get out of here, explain to my parents that I’ve been stupid and desperate. They’ll have to get over it at some point. Maybe I’ll super enjoy juvenile detention.
I felt an uncomfortable tingle all over my body and heard a low hum in my ears, and then figured I was getting a shock. Oh no.
I opened my eyes but was no longer in the posh living room. I coughed, waving at the dust in the air. Something was in my hands, warm where I held it but colder just a couple of inches away, where I hadn’t heated it with my touch. I tried to get my bearings.
“Hey, Jacqueline, where did you go just then?”
Lucas. It was Lucas talking to me, holding himself up on one brace while he held a small metal box in his other hand. He had a small splotch of grease on his cheek, and his jagged bangs shook as he opened the box, revealing a pile of virgin rivets.
“I was just thinking,” I said, lying. Which I was getting good at, shazam!
“About what?” he asked. We were in the abandoned bank. The car I’d driven away to my mother’s farm house sat in the middle of the room, the hybrid frame sitting on cinder blocks, surrounded by lots of smaller pieces and scraps. I looked at the assortment of metal and understood how it all fit together. I’d drawn much of this configuration down in my bedroom in Ohio, playing around with car ideas. I hadn’t realized it was a kind of training for the time when I could put it to use.
My moment had come.
Lucas stepped closer to me, putting his free hand on mine, which rested on the counter. “What’s going on in there?” he asked again, quietly, in a sexy tone.
I leaned into him and kissed him, inhaling car grease, the nutty smell of old dust, and the soap he used when he bathed. The same soap I’d used when his father had discovered me in the compost pile.
I caught him off guard at first, and then he returned the kiss to me. A blast of warmth went through me, much nicer than electricity, and I pushed harder into him. He tasted delicious and warm. I dropped the screwdriver and ignored the clatter as it hit the floor. Finally we pulled away to get a breath. I wiped the smudge of grease off his cheek with a rag from the workbench.
“I didn’t think you’d ever do that,” he said. He looked straight at me, still up close to my face. Was this our first kiss? I needed to figure out the date, or at least the season, but the windows were shuttered.
“I wanted to,” I said. “I want to again.” I was lightheaded.
We drew together and kissed deeper this time, and I didn’t think about anything except how his lips felt, the sense of him holding me, and the burning inside me. The world nudged its way back into my consciousness, whatever consciousness meant at that point. We were in a fight over the town and people’s lives. Right. We needed to make progress, and this was a distraction. Stop it with the kissing.
“We have to get back to this,” I said, staggering over to the car. I looked again at the screwdriver I’d dropped. It was the strange tool from the box in the sewer. I picked it up and turned it around to get a better look at it. Was this another one or the same from before? I mean, later? Oh my god, Time, you’re ridiculous.
“I know,” he said, handing me a curved piece of metal. The blankness in my brain fell away, replaced by knowledge. This was my design, and I knew where it went. I crouched down and screwed it into place under the carriage. Its sister hung on the other side. I was grateful that all I could see from down here were his shoes.
“Are you hiding under there?” I heard him ask.
“I’m working,” I said. But yes, I was hiding, and that was my business. I asked Lucas for a few more of my devices, and he obliged. Tubing for a smokescreen, wiring for a HAM radio. Set a scrape plate underneath to protect the nonstandard wires. Under the car, I cried without noise, thinking about what only I knew would happen to him and the other underground members. My body betrayed me, and my nose filled up. I sniffled and gave myself away. I’d been planning to come back, I’d convinced myself all of this was real, and now here I was and I had to make everything better. I really, really was here.
“Okay, come out from under there,” Lucas said.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” It was a reflex, I’m sorry I snapped at you.
“You are so headstrong. I just want to talk to you.”
“You can talk to me fine from there.” So what if I was childish
? I focused on tightening bolts and screws with a pair of pliers on the ground. They were heavy, and my arms started shaking with muscle failure. In so many ways I was different as Jacqueline, and I liked that. But okay, I wasn’t a big fan of muscle fatigue.
I heard a clatter, and Lucas crashed to the ground, his face in an odd half-grimace, half-smile.
“I like seeing you when I talk to you.” His hair fell over his face, and I saw he’d torn his shirt at the elbow.
“You are a ridiculous person,” I said.
“Are you calling me a cripple?”
“Most certainly not. I’m saying you’re ridiculous. I think that’s self-explanatory.”
“First you kiss me and then you won’t look at me,” he said. “What’s going on, Jacqueline?”
“Can we please discuss this later? I need the oil pan.”
He lay there, continuing to look at me. I’m not ready. I thought I was ready but I’m not.
“Do you need help getting up?”
Lucas frowned.
“Sometimes you really are insufferable, Jacqueline.” And then he stood up, slid the hunk of metal over to me, and left out the back door of the bank. Well, let’s just add being a jackass to the list of reasons to sob.
At least he’d given me some space to cry. I didn’t want to be in someone else’s body, after months readjusting to mine. But I did, too. I wasn’t sure what any of this made me, even as I felt such a strong pull to fix situations that I suspected were at least partly my doing. I was drawn to Lucas but I also worried that what we were doing was wrong. Sanjay would disagree with me, but he wasn’t here to talk about it, either.
I crawled out from under the car, wiped my eyes, and looked around the room. The last time I was here the car had tires and was ready to use, but didn’t have a HAM radio, for sure. So was I earlier or later than the day we roared out of here to Jacqueline’s mother’s house? But more weird, if I was only just now coming back to put in a radio, how were the wires already in place? That didn’t make any sense.
I went in search of Lucas. I whispered his name instead of shouting in case one of Traver’s people was nearby. He called back to me, and I followed the sound.
He was up in a tree, maybe thirty feet off the ground. His crutches were propped against the roots. He clearly had not learned his lesson from the last go-round.
“What are you doing up there?”
“What do I ever do up here?” he asked. “Come up.”
He had much better upper body strength than I did, but I was light and apparently nimble. I made sure my feet and hands were well planted before taking any new step, but I winced as the sharp bark broke through the skin on my forearms.
“So sensitive,” Lucas said, inspecting me. He leaned in to kiss me.
“Wait,” I said.
“Must you do everything backwards?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The man is supposed to lead, like in dancing.”
“Well, that’s an old-fashioned way to see it,” I said, before I remembered we weren’t in the 1980s. Of course this was his opinion. “Look, I like you. I just have fears.”
“Because of our predicament?”
No.
“Exactly,” I said, lying. Because I’m really a boy like you, or at least I used to be, or I am when I’m in another place and time but here I am from the frigging future and oh by the way I’ve completely fallen for you and I don’t understand a bit about any of it.
“Well, that’s a good point. But I fancy you and I can’t change that.”
“I wouldn’t want my own space if I didn’t really like you.” At least this was mostly true.
This time when he leaned in to kiss me, I didn’t push him away. But it was less intense than before, mostly because I had to put some of my energy into balancing myself on a knobby branch. He sat back, staring intently at me.
“I better quit before I fall out of a tree again.”
***
We worked on the automobile for a few more hours, until the sun got too low in the sky for us to see well. Neither of us wanted to use any lights because they could give us away. Lucas had put in a radio himself because he’d seen the sheriff and deputies using them in their patrol cars.
“I’m an Amateur Second Class,” he announced to me and the car. “Which just means that I had to take the radio test by mail since there’s no Radio Commission office anywhere near here.”
“Such accomplishment,” I said, pretending to swoon.
“I acknowledge that you are in the presence of greatness,” he said. “Remember to find me at 100 kiloHertz after twilight.”
“Why then?”
“Because I’m busy all day, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Do you fancy another kiss?” he asked me, tilting his head.
“I do.”
I fell into him a little, breaking away only when my need for fresh oxygen took priority. I could do this all night. After basically making out with him for I don’t know how long, he stood back and looked at me.
“We must meet the others.”
“We must,” I said.
“Are you mocking me?”
“Never.” My giggle gave me away. He took my hand and we locked up the door, walking back into the woods. We found the horses I supposed we’d ridden in on earlier in the day. I watched him lash himself to the saddle, and I tucked my feet into the stirrups and pet the horse’s mane as he got ready to ride. It was the same horse I’d had in the other time jumps. We were familiar with each other somehow, even through my strange time jumps and in and out existence.
“I need to ask you a question,” I said.
“What is it?”
“How long have we been working on this car? I’m having some memory problems.”
“I know, Jacqueline,” he said; I wasn’t expecting that. “It’s been a month or so, I imagine.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to figure out the time line, the real time line, including jumps and all. Judging from the buds still on the trees, it was early spring. “Can you remind me what year it is again?”
“It’s March 20, 1926,” he said. “You know, you should procure a calendar for yourself.”
“What great advice you have.”
“It’s rather banal advice, I’m afraid,” he said, but I didn’t know what banal meant so I let it go.
We turned onto a trail, still covered by woods, and trotted over fallen logs. A buck with enormous antlers off to our left watched us from fifty yards away, and behind him, a herd of forty deer waited for us to pass.
“I want to, but it’s unbelievable. You’ll think I’m crazy.” Now we cleared the edge of the forest and galloped off to the Rushman Farm, where the downstairs was lit but looked empty. Puffs of warm air blew out from the horses’ nostrils and mouths but they seemed to enjoy the downhill slope, an easy challenge for the end of the day. Reaching the porch, we walked around to the stables at the back, where we unsaddled the horses and latched them into their stalls. Lucas took my hand and held it to his lips.
“I care for you, Jacqueline. You are clearly your own woman, and I admire that. When you want to tell me your story, I’m sure you will.”
I wanted to fall into his strong arms, but I saw several pairs of eyes of the underground members watching us from the kitchen. We went inside to update them instead.
Walking into the warm kitchen, Darling handed me a mug steaming with liquid. She said it was her family’s tea blend. Earthy and soothing, I took a long first sip, trying to cool it while I drank. Arnold Dawkins, his hair in a messy crown around his head, stepped aside so we could sit around the long wooden table just off of the kitchen. I noticed grease on my fingers and begged off to wash my hands. Mr. Van Doren lingered while the others took their seats. Lucille Griffin stood next to the windows and clutched a beat up leather notebook. Her hair had a few gray streaks in it that I didn’t remember. She was in a tailored green tweed jacket and her skirt
reached exactly the middle of her knees.
I lathered up, fighting the car fluid that wouldn’t let go of my skin.
“I’ve got a nail brush if you want one,” said Mr. Van Doren.
“I’m all right, thanks.”
“How did it go today?” He was trying to sound casual, but I knew better. I thought about him in the picture with Dr. Traver’s gang of merry Prohibitionists. When would he sell us out? Had it happened already? Was he why my mother’s house was burned to the ground? If so, why had he tried to help us get out? If he was a traitor, I hoped I had time to stop him. I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Jeannine, Sanjay and I had never figured out a plan. I should have stuck around before jumping so that we could have worked out a strategy, but I’d pushed so hard to get back here, and I’d been so afraid of getting found out by the cops after we took Dr. Dorfman out of the hospital. Jeannine was wrong. This was all on me.
“It went well,” I said, trying to avoid giving any details until at least I could provide them to the others.
I thought such bad things about Mr. Van Doren, and he was Lucas’s father. What an awful person I was—kissing him while plotting against his father.
“I’m glad,” said Mr. Van Doren.
“I’m glad, too.”
“Jackie, is everything okay? You seem distant.”
I seem distant because I am, I thought. Why state the obvious?
“It’s been a long day, Mr. Van Doren. I’m tired, is all.”
“Well, there’s a bit of food on the table if you’re peckish,” he said, patting me on my shoulder. I did my best not to recoil.
“Thank you.” I moved to the table as fast as I could without making him notice my discomfort. I had to figure out what his angle was, and soon. By my reckoning, we had six months until the fire at my mother’s house. I’d wanted to get back earlier and somehow, here I was. But what to do next? Get information on what Dr. Traver’s people were doing? Find out if there were any more turncoats in our midst? Telling everybody that I was a time traveler and knew what was going to happen in the future didn’t seem like a workable strategy. I settled in at the table to give myself more time to like, assess or something.
The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1) Page 17
