“You can stay in here with me if you want,” she tells Francesca.
Francesca tries out the mattress. “That would be great.”
Blake and I open the room next door and find a nearly identical space inside, minus the extra window.
I turn on the heater and stand with my bare feet as close to it as I dare. A few minutes later, Cowboy Bob and Levi find us.
“Will this work out for you?” Bob leans in at the doorway.
“Definitely. Thank you,” Blake replies.
Levi smirks at my bare feet. “Looks like you shouldn’t a left them shoes lyin’ in the barn.”
Bob looks at my feet. “Oh. That’s right. I forgot. We still have your things.”
“You do?” Blake says.
“Yeah, you left a pile of clothes in the barn your first time through. I never knew whom they belonged to then, but we kept them in a closet in the house. You’ll probably be wanting them back.”
“That would be phenomenal,” I say, rubbing my bare arms.
Bob leads us through the house to a back bedroom that has been converted into an office. He rolls aside a track door to the closet and shows us the shelves inside. There are a few different piles of clothes, but I recognize my blue sneakers sitting atop my department store jacket, looking slightly dusty. Francesca’s pea coat and scarf are next to it. As I collect our things, I can’t help but wonder whom the other piles belong to.
“You get a lot of people leaving stuff here?”
“Looks that way,” Bob says. “I must have gotten some additions along the way, because I’ve never seen most of these before. I’m sure I’ll meet their owners eventually.”
“You have a pretty interesting life.”
“Yeah.” He closes the closet door. “Can’t argue with you there.”
My toes feel infinitely better when I meet back up with the girls. Francesca is elated to see her coat and scarf again. She finds her hat stuffed in one of her pockets as well, but she positively swoons over getting her boots back. Mym admires them, too.
We leave the girls alone to change, and once they reemerge from their room, we turn off all the lights. Bob has retained the blankets from the balloon and we each carry one as we walk behind the house and into the open expanse of prairie. Bob guides us through the darkness and the tall grass. The stars have come out in force. We reach the top of a small rise that offers a panoramic view of the prairie and sky. Bob has obviously grown accustomed to the sight, but the rest of us keep our eyes skyward, taking in the immense array of stars.
“This is better than any observatory,” Francesca says.
“I’ve never seen a view like this anywhere,” Blake adds.
We lay down the blankets and sprawl out in a circle. Cowboy Bob points out the constellation Leo and it’s not long till we spot meteors.
“It’s usually most active toward the morning, but this isn’t bad either,” Bob says.
Mym is lying to my left and Blake to my right. Francesca and Bob have aligned themselves facing the other direction. We point out meteors until our arms get tired; then there are long periods of just lying in the quiet, appreciating the night.
After a while, I hear Francesca roll over and address us. “I know it’s technically only a bit after lunch for you guys, but we haven’t slept since 1986, so I’m pretty tired.”
“I’ll walk you back,” Bob says.
Blake rises slowly as well. “You coming back, too?”
“I think I’m going to lie here for a bit,” I say.
Blake looks from me to Mym and nods. “All right. I’ll see you back there.”
Once their footsteps have receded into the distance, Mym and I are left with just the sounds of the breeze through the grasses. I point out a pair of especially bright meteors, but when I turn to look at her, I realize she’s not looking at the sky, but rather at me.
“You’re an odd one, Benjamin Travers.”
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s something up with you, but I haven’t figured out just what it is yet.”
“Am I doing a better job at meeting you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The first time I met you, in 1986, you seemed to think I wasn’t doing a very good job of it.”
“Hmm. I think you’re doing okay. But future me might have higher standards.” She looks back to the sky.
“Does it get really hard to keep all your relationships straight with all this time traveling?”
“It’s different with different people.” She pauses a moment and then continues. “You have to pick the ones you want to stick with.”
“What do you mean?”
“You just don’t have enough time to keep up with everyone. You might think that time travel would make it easier to stay in touch with friends. It really doesn’t. It makes it harder, because you end up with friends in different times. Sometimes it’s multiple versions of the same friend. There’s only one of you to go around, so you have to pick. You have to decide which relationships you are going to keep working on and make them great. It’s the only way I’ve found that works.”
“So Cowboy Bob is one of your relationships you keep?”
She nods.
“Are you and him . . . a thing?”
“A thing?”
“Yeah, you know, are you . . . romantically involved?”
Her smiling eyes meet mine and then go back to the stars. “No. Bob and I . . . we just both like to float around. He’s a great friend. He always has been.”
I look back to the sky and stay quiet for a few minutes.
“You have somebody waiting for you back in 2009?” She’s watching me again.
“Hmm, no. Not really. I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell recently. My last relationship didn’t end very well. I’ve been just waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Something different, I guess.”
“You gonna try playing for the other team?”
“Not that different.”
She laughs. “Well now when you get home, you’ll be a seasoned time traveler. You can impress all the girls.”
“Does that work for you? Playing the time traveler card?”
“I haven’t really had to,” she says.
“Ah. I see.”
“I don’t mean it like that. I’m not saying I don’t need to. I just don’t usually get into that with people. Most guys aren’t really interested in being with a girl who can go look up their past behavior in person.”
“Ha, yeah, I guess you would be pretty hard to lie to. Maybe you just need to find guys who have less to hide.”
“Maybe.”
“You seem like you have a pretty awesome relationship with your dad. Does he usually approve of your friends?”
“He’s really great. I think he knows that I know better than to let myself get mixed up with the wrong people. I had a bit of a rebellious phase when I was a teenager, but it didn’t really pay off.”
“What do you mean?”
“You really have to stick together as time travelers, if you want to keep the people you love. You have to be pretty close, so you can’t really get much space from each other. I did little things to try to assert myself sometimes.” She smiles. “One time when I was about fourteen, I went and got my tongue pierced at this little stand at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. It was going to be my way of acting out, because I knew Dad would hate it. I was so excited that I completely forgot to treat it with gravitites, so the very first time I blinked out of there to go show him, it got left behind. Probably the most short-lived rebellion ever.”
“Ha. At least it makes a good story.”
“Yeah. I laughed at the time, too. It made me realize how ridiculous I was being. I just went home and gave my dad a hug instead. He still doesn’t know anything about it.”
The constellations creep through the sky above us as we lie there and share stories about our lives. The conversation comes easy. It’s t
he wee hours of the morning when I finally gather up our blankets and head back to the house. Blake is snoring softly as I crack open the door to our room. Mym gives me a wave and a smile as she disappears into her doorway.
I know I ought to be exhausted, but as I lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling above me, my mind won’t stop thinking of infinite future possibilities, and the way starlight reflects in blue eyes.
My late hours don’t seem as great of an idea when Blake shakes me awake. The morning sun is already bright as we step off the porch into the barnyard. Cowboy Bob waves us over from the front of the barn and Blake and I help him carry three car batteries to the gondola. Once he’s satisfied with the way they’re wired into the jump circuit, we head back to the house and find the girls in the kitchen. Mym dishes scrambled eggs onto plates, while Francesca turns strips of bacon and some sausages in a pan.
“That smells amazing,” Blake says.
“I’m no Connie, but hopefully I can’t screw up bacon,” Francesca replies.
“Where is Connie?” Blake says. “Is she okay? She didn’t . . . die or anything did she?”
“She’s okay,” Bob replies. “On vacation. I left a note about it.”
“That’s a pretty handy system,” I say.
“Yeah, it cuts down on the worry.”
The clink of forks on plates is the only sound when we first sit down to eat, but then Cowboy Bob broaches the subject of the next trip.
“What time are you looking to get back home? You have a specific date and time?”
“We need to get back to right after our softball game, preferably,” Blake says.
“It was June 10th, around sevenish,” I say.
“Okay, we probably can’t get you there exactly on time but we can get you close. We’ll get to June of 2009 by balloon and we can probably find you something that will work as an anchor to get you back to St. Pete. We both go there often enough. If Mym doesn’t have an anchor that will work, I might even have one.”
“Actually, I think I do have one that will work for 2009,” Mym says. “I have the piece of that bank clock.”
“Oh yeah. That thing’s there for a long time,” Bob replies.
Mym wipes her mouth with her napkin and explains. “There was a bank downtown that they demolished sometime around the millennium, but they left this free-standing clock on a wooden pillar still there, so for years and years there’s just this empty parking lot and a clock. I have a whole packet of photos of it from different times. I’ve free jumped it without a photo too, and been fine. I don’t really recommend that as a general rule, but realistically, the odds of you hitting something are pretty slim. Hopefully we have some time close, but worst case scenario, you could free jump it.”
“Or we could get you to the day of, or perhaps the day before, right here, and you can just fly home by airline again,” Bob says.
“This is going to be a great day.” Blake grins. He slaps his hand on the table and the silverware jumps.
“Whoa,” Francesca says.
“Sorry,” Blake replies. “I’m just really excited.” He pops up from his seat and takes his plate to the sink.
“He’s got a girlfriend waiting at home,” Francesca explains to Cowboy Bob.
“Sounds like a lucky girl,” Bob replies.
Blake smiles. “I’m the lucky one. I just need to get back. Almost there.”
After we get the dishes cleaned, Blake and I convene with Mym and Francesca in their room to look through Mym’s photos. She locates a small square of wood with an envelope taped to it.
“I cut this piece out the day before the clock got demolished. But it had a good long run before that, including all of 2009. Hopefully I have a photo of something close to your date.” She untapes the thick envelope of photos and hands out a small pile to each of us.
I sit on the floor and flip through the backs of mine. I notice some are yellowed and are dated as far back as the seventies. Some are slightly grainy like still shots taken from a surveillance video.
“I’ve got November of 2008 as my closest.” Blake lays his pile down and holds up one shot.
“I have September 2009, but we’d be three months late,” I say.
“Jackpot!” Francesca says. She slaps a photo down on the bed. “June 10th, 2009. Looks like it’s a window from 4:30 to 6:30 pm once you convert it. It’s Dr. Quickly’s handwriting. How’s that for right on the money?”
“Nice! It’s about time we catch a lucky break,” Blake says.
I grab the photo off the bed and look at the scene of the dusty parking lot.
Home. We’re almost there.
“Do you guys want to take those clothes home with you?” Mym asks.
“Yes,” Francesca blurts out immediately.
“Come on then. We can use Bob’s gravitizer quick before we go.”
We follow her back to the house and she leads us upstairs to the loft. There is a bedroom and an office. Inside the office is a device about the size of a photocopier. It has a shape more along the lines of a microwave however, with a large hinged door on the front. We strip off our winter clothes and shoes, and Mym shoves them inside the machine. She shuts the door and latches it, then moves to the control panel. She checks to make sure it’s plugged in, and observes a graduated sight gauge full of blue fluid.
“Looks like we have plenty left,” she says.
“What is that stuff?” Francesca asks.
“It’s actually liquid gravitites. Well, it’s in a base solution to stabilize them, but it’s mostly just gravitites.”
She punches a button and flips a lever. The machine vibrates. A couple of seconds later, a chime dings.
“All done.” Mym smiles and opens the door.
“If only we’d known it was that easy . . .” Francesca says. “I really need one of these.”
Cowboy Bob and Levi have the balloon upright again as we carry Mym’s luggage and my pack out to the gondola. Levi consents to give me a nod as I walk past him.
That seemed downright friendly.
Bob helps us stow the luggage and we climb aboard.
The sky is clear as we loft upwards. This time, Levi releases all of the cables and we drift up and away from the pasture. The breeze carries us northeast.
“Looks like we might be going to Canada today,” Bob comments.
Farmhouses and fields pass beneath us. A pair of children wave to us as they ride bicycles around their driveway. Bob lets us drift for about half an hour before spotting a handy landing spot. He fluidly guides the balloon lower and lower till we’re about a hundred feet above a grassy hillside. He tosses a cable overboard and its weighted end thuds into the grass below. Moving to the controls, he checks his settings and connections to the batteries, then puts his hand on the lever.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . .” He flips the lever. “June 10th, 2009.”
The sun has moved. It’s warm out again. I peer over the edge of the gondola and see that the anchor is buried under a pile of healthy grass. Our shadows drift across the ground below us. I strip off my jacket and roll it into my pack. Blake and Francesca hand me their winter things as well, and I stuff them in as best I can.
Bob depletes the lift in the balloon till we settle to the ground with a thump. He hands Mym the cord as he vaults out of the gondola with some corkscrew stakes in his hand. He screws the stakes into the ground and Blake and I toss him cables to tie off. I swing over the basket edge and bring him the last one. The others follow me out.
Blake is smiling. He slaps me on the back. “We made it!” He turns and hugs Francesca. She’s smiling, too. We gather in a circle.
“It’s just one more short hop and you’re home,” Bob says.
I reach out and shake his hand. “Bob, you’re a lifesaver. Seriously. How can we ever repay you?”
He smacks me on the shoulder. “It’s no trouble. Any friends of the Quickly’s are friends of mine. You don’t owe me anything. I’ve gotten plenty of help along
my way too.”
Francesca steps up and gives him a hug. She then turns to Mym and hugs her, too. “Thank you so much for helping us.”
Blake shakes both of their hands. “You’ve both been so amazing. Thank you so much.”
“I’ve got something for you,” Cowboy Bob says. He walks to the gondola and leans over the edge into one of the storage areas. When he returns, he hands Francesca a small crystal fob and an envelope. “I found this anchor for you last night when I was going through my stuff from 2009. It’s off the ceiling fan chain in the office. It’s not till about two months from now, but if you guys run into trouble for some reason, come back and see me. I’ll make a point of stopping back by 2009 on my return trip.”
“Where are you off to now?” I ask.
“Since we’re up this far anyway, I might go farther and check out the London Olympics in 2012, or maybe Rio in 2016. I heard that one is a great time.”
“Bob is a big Olympic badminton fan, in case you were wondering,” Mym says.
“Who isn’t?” I smile. Bob grins back. I turn to Mym. “And will we be seeing you again, ever?” I try to sound casual.
“I’ll get your addresses.” Mym pulls out her MFD and speaks to it. “Catalog addresses.” She holds the device up. “Here. Just say them out loud and I’ll have them all.”
We each speak our contact info and she records it and stuffs the device back into her pocket.
“Do you have your anchor?” Cowboy Bob asks.
“Yeah, I have it,” Francesca says. She holds up the piece of wood from the clock.
“It’s about this high up,” Mym says, and holds her hand in front of her chest. “I can hold it up for you. That works the best.”
“You need to degravitize that sucker,” Bob says.
Mym reaches into the back pocket of her jeans and pulls out a cylindrical device about the size of a mini mag-light. Instead of a flashlight bulb, the tip has an open, cupped end. The device is silver but has a clear sight glass built into the handle.
“I’ll show you how to use this,” Mym says. “It doesn’t really get rid of gravitites, as much as relocates them.”
In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 29
