Nellie Nova Takes Flight

by Stephenie Peterson

  "Think, Nellie!" she told herself under her breath. She was at least two miles from home, and even if she made it home, the agents would surely look for her there. She paced back and forth on the lemon-yellow tiled floor of the bathroom.

  If only she could call home, she knew her family could help her. Nellie realized that the agents had probably put a tap on all their family phones, and any call she made would be intercepted. How could she get a message home?

  She heard a commotion outside the restroom. Agent Riley's gruff voice boomed through the door.

  "Anybody seen this kid?" he growled. Nellie correctly assumed that he had a photo of her and was showing it to the employees and customers. Nellie could not make out the responses that murmured through the door, but she decided it would be a good idea to find her way out of the restaurant quickly. She climbed on top of the toilet and squeezed herself out of the small rectangular window that was above it.

  She dropped down into the alleyway behind the restaurant and took in her surroundings. To her left was a busy street, to her right a shopping complex. Directly in front of her was the dumpster. She heard footsteps in the parking lot and jumped into the bin.

  She tried as hard as she could not to cough, gag, or breathe loudly. The smell was absolutely atrocious. It was every bit as awful as you probably think, and maybe even a bit more so. Nellie was miserable. But she was clever. The footsteps were those of Agents Riley and Maloney, who, upon finding the alley empty, decided she must have taken off on foot.

  "You head east, I'll go west," Riley ordered Maloney. Nellie waited until she heard their footsteps leaving before she popped out of the trash bin.

  She sighed and wondered how on earth she was going to get out of this latest terrible situation. Still half in the dumpster, she looked down at her feet to see if she had stable footing before she jumped out. What she saw excited her. Not the old food, of course, but there were several discarded mechanical items in the dumpster. Most nine-year-old girls wouldn't even take notice, but you know by now that Nellie was not like most nine-year-old girls. Nellie gathered an old cell phone, a remote-control airplane, a laptop with a cracked screen, a run-down lawn mower, and a set of rusty tools and saw them as a solution to her problem.

  Inside her mind, the giant book pages flipped quickly as massive blueprints of her new machine were drawn up with colossal pencils, leaving a trail of glitter behind as they moved. The classical music in her mind picked up the tempo as all the pieces moved together to create a way to get a message home.

  Nellie huddled down in the dumpster, trying not to be bothered by the awful smell, and went to work. About forty-five minutes later she'd rigged up the remote-control airplane with some of the parts from the lawn mower, hoping to increase its speed. She'd attached the cell phone so she could use its GPS to track the plane's flight with the cracked laptop. She used the Wi-Fi signal from the restaurant. She pawed through the trash and found a tattered red ribbon, which she used to attach the note to her contraption.

  She took a deep breath and turned on the remote control for the airplane, thankful that the batteries seemed to have a decent charge. The airplane responded fairly well to the controls, in spite of the change in weight. She was easily able to guide it up above the building. She took it up another twenty-five feet or so to try to account for any taller structures that the plane might encounter along the way. She pointed her plane toward home and prayed a silent prayer that it would make its way home in one piece and her family would actually get her note.

  Her stomach filled with butterflies as the plane flew out of sight. It was up to luck and GPS now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Fox got home about an hour after Nellie went missing. No one had noticed her absence. Niles had stayed busy with his violin, and Amelia had found a new lead on obtaining a passport under an assumed name. They'd been absorbed in their projects and assumed that Nellie was still reading.

  When Fox got home, however, he wanted to know exactly where everyone was. After Nellie didn't come in when he called, he headed outside. He saw Nellie's book askew on the ground and the overturned bench and knew something was very wrong.

  "Nellie," he called nervously. "Are you up in the tree house? I need you to come down right now, sweetie."

  When he heard no reply, he felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. Trying to remain calm, he climbed up the ladder to the tree house to check if she was there. She wasn't.

  He climbed down the ladder and went to the front yard. No Nellie. He walked up and down the streets of the neighborhood calling for her. Finally, he went back home and told Niles and Amelia the awful news.

  "Nellie's missing. Niles, call your mother. She needs to come home right away."

  "What? What do you mean she's missing?" Niles asked, confused.

  "I think those agents took her. They made a mess of my office this morning. I saw them leaving campus as I got there."

  "Are you sure she's not in the tree house, Dad?" Niles asked, the fear in his voice almost tangible.

  "Yes, I'm sure. I've been through the whole neighborhood. Please call your mother, now."

  "What can I do, Fox?" Amelia asked with worry in her eyes.

  "I don't know. I really don't know," Fox replied sadly.

  Twenty minutes later, they met Annie in the driveway. Fox, Amelia, Niles, and Annie talked through their options for forming a search party. They were debating who should stay home when Annie heard a noise.

  "Quiet, everyone," she said. "I hear something."

  Annie scanned the sky for a moment and then saw the jalopy of an airplane that Nellie had made, flying straight at Casa Nova. It began to soar lower and lower in the sky until the engine stopped right above their heads and it dropped into the front yard, a few feet from the house.

  Everyone ran over to the plane to inspect it.

  "What's with the ribbon?" asked Niles.

  "I think there's a note attached," said Amelia.

  "It's Nellie," said Annie, before she even untied the note. A mother knows her child, and Annie knew that Nellie would not make an easy hostage.

  She unrolled the paper and read it.

  "She's behind the Peach Tree Diner downtown. In a dumpster!"

  "Let's go get her!" said Fox excitedly.

  Annie rushed inside to get her keys. She set the plane down on the kitchen counter, grabbed her purse and the keys, and sprinted to the driveway. All four of them hopped into the minivan and headed to town. A few blocks away from the restaurant, Niles called out in shock.

  "It's them! It's the agents!" he said as they passed the black town car they'd come to know all too well.

  "Did they see us?" Annie asked from behind the wheel.

  Fox turned in his seat just in time to see the agents make a U-turn in the street.

  "They did. Step on it, baby!"

  Annie knew that she had to lose them before she could go rescue Nellie. She drove as fast as she could, making turns to get as far from Nellie's hideout as possible. The town car picked up its speed as well. After several miles, Annie found her way to the highway. She got on and drove six miles farther before she lost sight of the town car. She exited the highway and got back on, going the other direction.

  "I think we lost them!" Amelia said, full of relief.

  "I hope we have!" said Annie.

  "I'll keep watch for them," said Fox. "Niles, you keep your eyes peeled too!"

  They drove back toward the diner in a nervous silence. After about fifteen minutes they were in the alley. Fox hopped out of the car and knocked on the dumpster.

  "Nellie? Are you there?" he whispered.

  He waited nervously for what seemed like an eternity (but was only a few seconds) before Nellie popped out of the dumpster. He grabbed her, relieved to have his daughter safe again.

  "I thought I'd lost you, but you're too strong for that, aren't you?" he asked her.

  "I wasn't going to let them hurt us, Daddy," she replied.

  She g
ot in the car with her family. They all embraced her and the car was full of joy. The drive home was short, and everyone was still excited. That is, until they pulled onto their street and saw the familiar town car in the driveway.

  "What do we do?" asked Annie. "Should I turn around?"

  "No," Nellie told her. "I have a plan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Annie parked the minivan in the street and all the Novas and Amelia nervously exited. Nellie walked right up to agent Riley and said, "I'm ready to tell the truth."

  Riley's eyes went wide, and Maloney smiled. Agent Bishop looked surprised. Fox and Annie exchanged a glance, wordlessly wondering what their daughter was up to now.

  "I did it," she said.

  "You did what?" asked Riley.

  "I made the time machine. I confess."

  "You? You made a time machine?" asked Maloney.

  "Yes, sir. I'll go get it. Niles, can you help me?" she asked her brother.

  Niles followed her into the house.

  "What are you doing?" he asked.

  "Fooling them," she whispered.

  A few minutes later, Nellie and Niles returned to the driveway with the purple refrigerator box that used to hold the mechanism of the old time machine. Nellie had quickly attached the remote-control airplane to the top of the box and then written "Time Machine" on it with a marker, in her sloppiest handwriting for good measure.

  "What exactly is this?" asked Agent Riley.

  "My time machine. I built it all by myself. Isn't it pretty?" asked Nellie, pretending to be proud of a box with a toy plane attached to it.

  Agent Riley peeked into the refrigerator box, followed by Agent Maloney.

  "Does this thing actually fly?" asked agent Riley.

  "Oh yes, but it's not ready for human missions yet. I took my dolly to ancient Egypt though. She met Cleopatra," said Nellie in her sweetest possible voice.

  "This thing flying around the neighborhood might just set off the radar alerts," said Agent Bishop. "At that weight it might not be large enough to show up constantly, causing blips on the radar like you thought time travel would do." He looked at Riley.

  Riley didn’t know what to think. He just stood in the driveway shaking his head.

  "I think it's time to let this one go, Riley," Agent Bishop told him. "And apologize to the Nova family for all that we've done."

  Riley didn't speak. He just nodded. He felt like an idiot.

  "We are just so sorry," Agent Maloney said, his eyes wide.

  "I cannot apologize enough," said Agent Bishop.

  Riley just kept shaking his head. The three men got in the car and drove away, leaving Nellie and her family grinning in the driveway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Over the next few weeks, life returned to normal. Annie and Fox went to their offices, the kids worked on their schoolwork and made lots of messy art projects, and Amelia managed to get a new ID card and was able to enroll in a flight academy, where the staff was shocked at her "natural ability." She was now known as "Amelia Nova" instead of Amelia Earhart, and as far as anyone knew, she was Fox's sister.

  Nellie really missed time travel. She knew she couldn't risk the Purple Flyer showing up on radar, so it stayed parked in the tree house. She confessed to Niles just how much she missed it one day as they were working on a physics experiment in the backyard.

  A few weeks later, Nellie made her way into the tree house to visit the Purple Flyer. She did this frequently. She just went out and sat in it and remembered. When she opened the door this day, however, she found Niles already inside.

  "What're you doing here?" she asked. "You startled me!"

  "Well, Nellie," said Niles as a smile spread across his thin lips, "I couldn't stand to see you mope around the house anymore. I had to do something. So I did some research on scrambling radar signals, and now, long story short, the Purple Flyer is untraceable. I just finished installing the radar blocker. She's ready to fly.”

  Nellie gasped. She threw her arms around her brother. "Thank you so much!" she squealed with delight. Nellie gasped. She threw her arms around her brother.

  "Thank you so much!" she squeaked with delight.

  "No problem, Sis," he replied.

  "I wanted to travel in time again too. Besides, don't you have some more important women to introduce me to? I can't imagine that one world-changing woman is enough to prove your point." Joy exuded from his freckled face.

  "All right!" Nellie yelled. "Let's go!"

  After a quick trip inside to tell their parents that they were going to safely travel in time (they had, after all, promised to tell them if they left the house), Nellie and Niles ran back to the Purple Flyer. They stood in front of it, excitedly thinking of all the time and places they could visit.

  Nellie sighed a happy sigh.

  "It's like coming home," she gushed.

  Every bone in her body radiated pure bliss as she started up the time machine’s computer.

  Nellie ordered the machine to take off. Green lights filled the tree house. The Purple Flyer began to spin, faster and faster until it took off into the spiraling vastness of time. Niles whooped. Nellie squealed with glee. They soared into eternity, ready for whatever came next.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Semi-nomadic, Stephenie and her family currently live near Raleigh, North Carolina. Her kids are Texans at heart (Hi, McKinney!) and Steph and her husband grew up just outside of Seattle (What up, Port Orchard?!) Stephenie writes, creates art, and homeschools her three amazing kids. Stephenie loves to hike with her family and drink lots and lots of coffee.

  The second book in the Nellie Nova series, Nellie Nova's Summer on the Run is now available! Continue reading about Nellie's adventures today!