PREVIOUSLY: Carrie/Elizabeth forked the timeline. This allows her to become a Temporal God in the timeline she created.

PART 96b: RESOLUTION

Chartreuse counted to ten before following Frank and Beth around to the front of the library. She watched as the time trippers piled into the time car and, after Frank grabbed the briefcase from the trunk, finally pulled away from the building.

She then ducked down as the gunman who had fired in their direction ran down the front steps of the library, waving his weapon. The guy managed to prevent a vehicle that had been pulling out of the parking lot from leaving. It was as the guy climbed into the passenger seat, pointing his gun at the driver, that Chartreuse knelt down in the snow, to open the trombone case she was carrying.

She pulled out the temporal gun. Along with one other item.

As the gunman’s hijacked car drove out onto the road, there was a flash of light. The driver swerved to avoid hitting the glasses-wearing teenager who had appeared. The car hit a patch of ice and spun out, slamming into a nearby telephone pole. The passenger door was wedged shut in the impact; for the moment, there was nothing to worry about there.

Chartreuse attached her item onto the recharge port of the gun. She then moved to get herself a good bracing position at the bottom of the staircase, kneeling down, pressing the bottom of her boot back into the concrete pillar. She knew the kickback from the gun would be a problem.

A second blond man ran out of the library, followed closely by Lee and Luci. The guy dashed down the stairs, and got about three steps further before being clocked in the head by the dictionary Lee had thrown. Their adversary went face first into a snowbank. Not that far away from him, another familiar person appeared from out of nowhere.

“Tim?” Luci gasped. She took the stairs down two at a time, pausing at the bottom. “Chartreuse? What are you doing?”

“Preparing,” she muttered back. She took aim across the parking lot.

Luci blinked. “When did you end up with the temporal gun? And why is the safety off?”

Luci reached down for it, and Chartreuse slapped her hand away.

“Chartreuse!” Luci said. “You’re being reckless - and what do you have on the recharge port?”

“A battery.”

Luci’s eyes widened. “WHAT? You CANNOT be thinking of charging that thing while you’re firing. That’s INSANE.”

“So is she,” Chartreuse whispered.

A short distance away, Laurie appeared.

Luci now reached down with both hands, and so Chartreuse shoved her friend back, out of the way. Luci fell into the snow. “Luci, I’ll, you know, explain later, there’s no time now!”

“Why not? Chartreuse, what is going on?”

Chartreuse looked back at the asian girl, and then at Lee, who was helping her stand back up. In that instant, Chartreuse wondered, what if she died here, and never got to explain?

“Okay, fast version? The day after we, like, talked to Mr. Waterson, I had a vision of today. Looking into it more led me to this experience ten minutes ago, where I used a set of paired relaxation crystals to tell our Carrie to, you know, nudge Mindy’s time car. And now I know that in, like, a few seconds, I’ll have my only chance at saving her.”

Chartreuse looked back across the parking lot. Which was when the blonde teenager appeared, her maniacal laughter echoing eerily around the whole area, her feet starting to lift off the ground as temporal energy sparked all around her, originating at her fingertips.

Chartreuse fired.

Energy lanced out of the gun.

The cackling blonde girl absorbed it. At first.

Chartreuse never moved her finger off the trigger. Even as her own body was driven back into the concrete post behind her, she continued the sustained burst. Tears sprang to her eyes as she felt an ankle give out with a snap, but she kept the gun up and on target. The battery on the port chirped… and the energy blast continued. Across the parking lot, Carrie stopped laughing.

“Chartreuse, stop!” Luci shrieked.

“I’m not losing her again,” Chartreuse cried. “Carrie! Carrie, I love you! CARRIE, COME BACK TO ME!”

“Chartreuse, the gun’s overloading!” Luci reached out again, only to have Lee pull her back, twisting his body around and using it as a shield.

The temporal gun exploded in Chartreuse’s hands.

But not before Carrie’s head had snapped back, her body falling into the snow as the golden light in her eyes faded away.

Carrie listened to the voices around her for a minute or two. From the sound of things, she was again in a hospital. And… geez, had the entire temporal group come to pay her a visit? She cracked open an eyelid.

“Carrie’s awake now,” Luci said immediately.

Opening her other eye, Carrie was able to make out… well, Luci, Frank, Clarke, Julie, Corry, Laurie, Tim, Lee, and even her own father. But not… “Char-treuse?” Carrie croaked out, through dry lips.

Laurie clasped her hands together. “Carrie immediately wants her girlfriend. The one who saved her soul. Oh my God, all the squee!”

The people closest to the head of the bed moved away, and as Lee did so, he made an elaborate gesture towards the next bed over. Carrie followed his motion, where she saw…

“Hi Carrie,” Chartreuse chirped. “I’d, you know, give a thumbs up, except…" She held up her arm, which had been completely wrapped up in bandages.

“She’ll be fine,” Clarke broke in, as Carrie found herself unable to avoid looking horrified. “Don’t worry.”

“Yeah, in fact we originally came here to see Chartreuse,” Corry remarked, crossing his arms. “We didn’t know when you’d wake up. So don’t get a swelled head, Waterson.”

“Speak for yourself,” the older Waterson objected.

Carrie licked her lips, her gaze shifting over to her father. “Dad. Gods, I’m sorry, I never meant to leave you alone in the present for so lon– geuh, I… I mean…"

“He knows about the power,” Frank reminded Carrie. “There was this whole thing where you had a double named Beth wandering through the school last month? So we kind of had to fill him in?”

“Oh. Right.” Carrie brought her hand to her forehead. Last month? “What day IS it?”

“January second,” Tim supplied. “H-Happy new year.”

“I really hope having no coins means we’ll get a few months before we see more time travellers,” Julie observed.

Carrie exhaled. “Yeah, there… there won’t be any more of that happening. Not now. We’re on a parallel time track now.”

The people around her bed exchanged glances. “Carrie,” Frank began. “Based on the temporal theory that a Future Luci explained to me, it’s highly unlikely that multiple time tracks–"

“TRUST me,” Carrie interrupted. “Our Luci’s path itself could be different going forwards. We can talk theory later, but for now, even if anyone from the revised future does try to rewrite us? Believe me when I say I know how to divert them out of our timeline.”

“In a SAFE way, yes?” Chartreuse piped up. “Because I don’t want a rerun. Even setting aside the, you know, temporal gun blowing up on me, I had to stick close to Beth last month in order to get a read on her majorly displaced temporal energy. That way I could, like, use it, in order to forecast my way further into the future than I ever have before. And that sort of ‘vision plus’? Featuring Insane Carrie clarifying the library events I’d seen? Not my, you know, happiest place.”

“I’ll find a safe way of dealing with time travellers,” Carrie assured. She checked herself. “Actually Chartreuse, we both will. Together.”

Chartreuse beamed.

Carrie’s gaze shifted back to her father. “Thing is, in this timeline, I can’t bring Mom back. I’m sorry. If it means anything, she was alive, in the future of another timeline… maybe that’s why some part of you felt like Mom never died?”

Hank Waterson flinched. “Oh. Well. Was she happy there?”

“I… I don’t know. Damn it, I didn’t even check.” Carrie’s head hit her pillow. “I’m sorry. I should have. Hell, maybe I could have even brought her too, I had all that power, it’s just I didn’t even think, I was so focussed on the separation. Dad, I’m so sorry…"

His hand reached out to squeeze hers. “It’s okay, honey. Let’s assume she was happy, and focus on the present. Because Carrie, you’re what’s important to me right now.”

She squeezed his hand back, and found that she was able to meet his hopeful look with a smile.

Lee cleared his throat. “Uh, hate to interrupt a moment, but we already DO have two other time travel guys? Arrested at the library?” He jerked his thumb towards the window. “Do we worry about them?”

Carrie frowned. “No, I wouldn’t. If they were trying to disrupt the awakening of my full potential, it didn’t work.”

“I’ve filed a police report there anyway,” Mr. Waterson added. “Along with what happened at the library, they’re being charged with the attempted kidnapping of my daughter. Never mind that it was technically that Beth girl at the time.”

“So, like Shady, they’re going to end up in the justice system,” Luci mused.

“S-So what’s next for us then?” Tim wondered. “Anything?”

“No,” Carrie groaned. “I pass on doing ANYTHING for the next while. Well, aside from schoolwork, which I guess I’m massively behind on, since my leaving during the talent show.” She looked towards Laurie. “Meaning guess what? You’re still in charge of the cheerleading. In fact, if you’re willing, it’s yours for the rest of our senior year.”

Laurie blinked. “Golly. Thanks.”

Carrie smiled. “Just because this new timeline has me staying in town, that’s no reason to take your future away from you.”

“But Laurie’s behind in her schoolwork too,” Corry protested. “She left for her fake art camp right after you vanished, Carrie!”

“So I’ll work hard,” Laurie said, crossing her arms in imitation of her brother. “Plus I have lots of friends who can help. I’m not letting Carrie or the other cheerleaders down, bro!”

“Ooh, watch out, Power Cad,” Lee said, chuckling at Corry’s sigh of resignation. “Double V here might end up running the school with the Cross One. Instead of it being you and the Rich Witch.”

Clarke frowned. “Witch? Lee, you might want to consider updating–"

“No, no, it’s fine, Phil,” Julie interrupted. “After all, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. The only thing that matters to me right now is how the two of us could work on the time car together. To kind of… find ourselves again.” She fingered her rose brooch before leaning into him with a smile. Clarke grinned back, raising his arm to encircle her shoulders.

Frank turned to Carrie. “That reminds me. We didn’t spot the car anywhere in town. Did you send it back?”

Carrie pressed her hand to her head. “Oops. No… I forgot. Didn’t want to do a global removal, or we’d likely have ended up with our Glen again. He’s a headache I don’t need. It’s probably for the best though? No time machine, no time gun, no Temporals, just us, and our normal, everyday lives from this point on.”

“No car and stuff?” Laurie moaned, her arms uncrossing. “Golly, I really hope alt-future-Laurie enjoys using my art supplies.”

Mr. Waterson cleared his throat. “Well, as much as I’m enjoying learning more about recent events, unless there’s anything else that’s urgent, I think my daughter and her girlfriend could use their rest.”

Carrie’s eyes went wide. “Oh. My. God. Dad, NO, do NOT say girlfriend yet, we haven’t really officially - oh NO!” She jerked her gaze back over to the adjacent bed. “Chartreuse, you said you had to get close to Beth? Are you saying you two have, like, kissed the way we did, and that the whole school now knows about… about…"

“No,” Chartreuse gasped. “Carrie, you’re, you know, the only one for me. And if you want, no one outside of this room has to, like, know that.”

“Okay. Okay, good.” Carrie let out a breath. “I mean, others can know. I just need a few days here, minimum.”

“Confirming it IS a relationship?” Luci said, winking.

“She did say kissed Beth ‘the way we did’,” Corry remarked.

“Plus there was that whole soul saving they did,” Julie observed.

Carrie felt her face getting warm. She pulled her bedsheets up over her head. “My Dad said it’s rest time. Goodbye now!” There were a few chuckles, followed by a shuffling of feet as people started moving away.

She gave it a good ten seconds, then pulled the sheets back down to her neck. “But before you leave? Thanks. For everything. I mean it.” She made a point of meeting each of their gazes with a smile, as they looked back at her. “Because I wouldn’t be here now. Not if it weren’t for each and every one of you.”

NEXT: Respite II, an Epilogue of sorts. Please stick around.

ASIDE: Part of the reason for splitting the last entry at this point is for site transition time back to Epsilon Project. (You can vote for that plot here.) But it’s ALSO because Drew Hayes was taking guest posts this week on his site. Read my post here, which in continuity, takes place a few months after the events above. Then consider sticking around on Drew’s site to check out his material, and the other guest posts.

PREVIOUSLY: Recreating a time machine will take weeks. Future incarnations have appeared, with a plan for making Carrie appear to still be in town.

PART 84a: ADJUSTMENTS

“Saints alive!” Beth Parker crossed herself and fell to her knees at her apartment door. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah, uh… look, get up.” Frank pocketed the radio transmitter with one hand, the other rubbing his forehead. Damn Carrie and her whole divine intervention story the first time they’d encountered Beth. “Truth be told, I was never actually an angel, and I - we - kinda need your help.”

“I always wanted to thank you properly. I’d hoped you’d return to me,” Beth said breathlessly as she scrambled to her feet. “I’ve become very religious in the last year, did you know that? What am I saying, of course you know. And my part time work at the Clayton hotel has almost earned me enough to get professional singing lessons! I plan to do gospel. Are you pleased? Am I on the right path?"

“Beth, please, I’ll explain everything.” Frank paused. “Okay, no… that would confuse you. But I’ll hit the highlights, so long as you come with me now. To the, um, oh heck with it, to an Astral Plane.”

Beth peered out into the hall. “Why now? And where is your partner? The one who looked like me, the one named Carrie?”

“That,” Frank concluded, “would be why we need your help."

“We’ll pull a girl out of the past,” Luci whispered to Frank. “Is that ethical? That can’t be ethical.”

Frank eyed the blonde girl who was currently gaping at all the television channels and other technology Julie was demonstrating. “We have to assume our future selves know what they’re doing,” he muttered back. “And I mean, we’re right - while Beth is a couple years older, with a little makeup and Mindy providing an external boost on any naysayers? She could pass as Carrie at school. At least in the few weeks we need leading up to Christmas vacation.”

“And EVERYONE on your astral plane has these ‘sell phones’?” Beth gasped. She looked up at Julie. “But why even call them phones if they do other things? Are you sure they’re not demonic devices?”

“Oh yeah,” Luci said dryly. “It’s like she and Carrie are the same person.”

Frank sighed. “We’ll need to monitor her. The bigger question is Laurie. Can we really hold that situation together for upwards of three weeks?”

“No, nO, NO, no, and, oh wait, how about a side dish of NO!”

“You know, Corry,” Mindylenopia observed. “We’re telling you as a courtesy more than anything else."

“I’m trying to say ‘no’ in a courteous manner. You’re not listening.”

The former waitress sighed, and looked to Frank. Or Bernard, Corry supposed, what with those two apparently being time displaced. Bernard was rubbing his forehead again. “Look, Corry - we can, and in fact did convince your family that Laurie’s away at an art camp. That she was recruited after someone saw that drawing that Megan published for her back in October. All we need is for you to warn Mindy if your parents seem about to–”

“What about the school Laurie would be missing?” Corry challenged. “Not to mention potentially Christmas! You think my family will buy her being away for something like that?!”

“I’m in the room,” Laurie said, quietly.

Both Venitis had been called and asked to come to the mansion a little earlier than everyone else. Corry turned to her on the sofa. “I know. Sorry Laurie, but based on your reaction, I figured I should advocate on your behalf.”

Laurie’s hands tightened where they held her skirt. “When they said what this trip would mean, I was shocked. I needed a moment. But there really isn’t an alternative, right?”

“I’m the alternative,” Corry asserted, waving off Mindylenopia before she could speak. “My ankle’s not that bad, and–"

“No, Corry.” Laurie stood up and turned to face him, her fingers releasing her skirt, in favour of twisting together. “You’re always jumping in, trying to protect me, and while I appreciate it - we’re seniors now. It’s like Megan says, I gotta do more on my own. Besides, my memory is still shaky, but I think maybe we’ve had this discussion before? When you volunteered for time travel a year ago, to go after Julie? And I don’t think I liked that. Even this year, when you and Frank were gone for two days after the van crash, I could barely handle it - no way can I bluff mom and dad for weeks! Whereas you can.”

Laurie pulled her hands apart, forcing her arms to her sides. “I’ll do extra studying, plus I’m taking History, and this is history. And Dad was away for the holidays two years ago, for work, so it’s not that weird. I can even record a message now for you to use, saying my plane home was cancelled or the camp was extended or something. Because bottom line, the time group needs me, so I’m going to go.”

“C’mon little sis, you can’t really…”

“Two minutes!” she reminded her brother, pointing at him. “Not THAT little. In fact I’m not only doing this for them, it’s for me too.” She paused for a breath. “Because here’s the thing, Corry! I admire Carrie. I have for a long while. I admire all things she can do so much better than me, even including her power of time travel. But know what I’ve learned? She can’t do everything. Not on her own. She needs people like us. So I’m stepping up. Last week with cheerleading, and now with this.”

She then crossed her arms, imitating the posture Corry so often made - with only a slight shiver betraying her nervousness. “Corry, I care about this group and what they’re doing a lot more than some stuffy classes,” she continued. “Except maybe art class, because here’s ANOTHER thing, I also want to be a professional animator. And this cover story will make my parents see that maybe, I’m just that good. So… so there. Deal with it, bro. I’m going.”

Corry opened his mouth to protest… and found he couldn’t. Not after a speech like that. For some reason, he was reminded of something Chartreuse had said to him, back when Julie had time travelled: ‘If Laurie wants to help someone, she’s going to do it. No matter what EITHER of us has to say.’ After a few moments of standing with his mouth open, he finally found enough of a voice to say, “Damnit Laurie, of all the times to make me proud, you just have to do it when there’s a chance of mortal danger, don’t you?!”

Laurie blushed faintly, smiling back at him. She then nibbled on her lower lip and let her arms fall back to her sides as she looked back to Bernard. “Golly, there won’t be MORTAL danger, will there?”

“Look at it this way,” Bernard offered. “Things go screwy for us in your future, our present. So maybe the safest place for you to be is with us, in the past.”

Corry didn’t feel entirely reassured, but he decided pushing the point would only make things worse for Laurie.

“Okay,” Laurie sighed. “So how many days do I need to pack for?”

“In theory, none,” Mindylenopia pointed out. “We won’t stay long in the past, then we’ll simply be returning to your future. In practice, of course, whatever an art camp would need.”

“Okay,” she repeated. “Though before I do that, I’ll need to teach this Beth girl our cheerleadering routines.”

“Heck. That’s a good point,” Bernard realized. “Let’s go see if Julie and the others are done with their technology primer.”

Laurie nodded, then looked back to Corry. “And one last thing? Since I’m not going to be here, please, tell Megan to go for it. Okay?”

Corry lifted an eyebrow. “Go for it?”

“Yeah, I think she’ll need extra encouragement. You can say I asked you to pass it along. Thanks Corry!”

Corry was tempted to ask what his sister meant by that, but she seemed to have a lot to worry about already. Besides, he reasoned, it couldn’t be too hard to figure out whatever Laurie was referring to.

The whole group met, and everyone was brought up to speed. Only Glen wasn’t there, having said he’d render his decision about leaving or not once Mindylenopia and Bernard came by the hotel with Laurie.

They’d then determined that the people to tell Mr. Waterson the truth about Carrie would be: Frank and Luci, as two of the originals, Mindy, as the adult, plus she’d been to his house yesterday, and Chartreuse, who knew of mystical powers.

Hank took it well, all things considered.

“So you’re saying that, ever since she was shot, Carrie - my daughter - has been a time traveler?”

Frank glanced over at Luci, then back to Hank Waterson. “Right.”

“I’ve been helping Carrie come to grips with it,” Chartreuse offered. “There are, you know, strange things in this world that at least 99.9% of the general population isn’t aware of.”

“Thing is,” Luci finished, “until we can get Carrie back, we’ll need a girl named Beth to act like her double in the present. Because as long as the future thinks Carrie’s still here, there won’t be repercussions.”

“Time travel,” Hank reiterated. He moved to sit down in one of the living room chairs. “This is like something out of a bad novel.”

“It’s really happening though,” Mindy (or to Hank, Theresa) observed. “Now, if you like, I can essentially hypnotize you into being okay with everything. It’s simply better for everybody if you’re dealing with Beth of your own volition instead, should any issues come up that I cannot foresee. Also, it avoids me needing to reiterate that ‘everything’s fine’ every few days, as you start to feel like it’s not.”

“We do have things more or less worked out,” Frank added. “Beth will need to be in school Monday and Tuesday, for continuity, then you can take her out for some sick days as we regroup. Her being sick will also help explain away any odd behaviour. From there, we’ll play it by ear.”

“How long will this go on for?” he asked.

“At least three weeks. Maybe to the end of December,” Mindy stated.

“Three WEEKS?!”

“Mr. Waterson,” Chartreuse said, reaching out for his hand. “Listen, there’s no way I can, you know, fully understand what you’re going through. Because you’ve gotta take a lot more here on faith than I do. But PLEASE sir, know that I, like, get some of it. Because Carrie and me, we’ve been, you know, pretty close lately. Like, extremely close, actually. So know that I’m scared for her, and that large parts of me now want to scream, or sob uncontrollably, or lash out at Theresa here… except I know those things won’t help. This thing with Beth? It will.”

He searched her expression. “How can you be sure?”

She swallowed. “I… I can’t. Not entirely. But we’ve met future counterparts, and they say this is our best shot, so I figure it’s gotta help. Please, sir, if nothing else, please trust that we all want the same thing here. We all want - no, we NEED - to, like, bring Carrie back to the present. To have her here with us again, all safe and sound.”

Hank realized that Chartreuse was trying hard not to cry. His grip on her hand tightened, and his expression settled into one of resolve. If Carrie’s friends could manage? Then he would as well. “All right then,” he said. “Tell me more about this Beth, and what I have to do to bring our Carrie back home.”

On the bright side, the first week was only mildly problematic.

NEXT: Crossing Paths

PREVIOUSLY: Carrie vanished during the school talent show. Everyone has parts of the puzzle…

PART 81a: MUM’S THE WORD

Hank Waterson opened his front door almost before his visitor had a chance to knock. “I’m sorry to have called you so early,” he apologized, opting to get straight to the point. “But I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know what to think about this, but her note mentions you, so I thought you might have more information. I don’t want to leave the house either, lest she come home…”

“It’s fine,” Luci assured him. “But like I said, I’ll need to see what Carrie wrote for myself.” She gestured to her companion. “And I hope you don’t mind, but I brought Julie along. She, um, specializes in cryptic Carrie notes.”

Julie gave him a quiet wave.

“That’s fine,” Hank said, beckoning them both inside. “At this point, I’ll take all the help I can get. From what I can gather, Carrie was last seen at the talent show? Is that why she insisted to me that I not be there? How far in advance had she planned her trip? Why didn’t she tell me about it, and when is she coming back?”

The two teenagers exchanged a glance, Julie offering Luci a small shrug.

“We’re not sure about any of that stuff,” Luci hedged. “Aside from yeah, she was last seen at the talent show. Maybe we don’t know that much more than you. Can we see the note?”

Unable to get any sort of read on their expressions, he nodded. “It’s upstairs, in her room. I left everything the way it was. I’d appreciate if you’d do the same, in case we need to open any sort of police investigation into her disappearance.”

“Why, do you think Carrie was coerced into writing whatever it was?” Luci wondered, as they ascended the stairs.

“I don’t know what to think,” Hank admitted. He let them into her room, gesturing at Carrie’s desk, over by the window.

Both Luci and Julie walked over, peering down at the note. Almost immediately, Julie turned to speak for the first time. “How long has Carrie been using this stationery? With the little pocketwatch in the corner?”

Hank shrugged. “I don’t know. I think maybe she bought it a couple of months ago?”

As the brunette considered that, there came a knock at the front door. Hank turned and ran back down the stairs, but instead of seeing Carrie when he opened it, he saw Chartreuse instead. She had a redheaded girl with her, whom he belatedly identified as Laurie.

“H-Hi, sir,” the pink haired teenager said nervously. “Sorry if we’re, like, disturbing you…”

“Did Luci tell you about the note as well?”

Chartreuse tilted her head to the side. “Note?”

Dear Dad, (it read)

  Some things have been happening in my life recently that I… I can’t deal with. So I have to disappear. Please know that this isn’t because of anything you’ve done, or didn’t do - I like how things have been getting better between us. I really do. But I don’t think I can go on, not with the path that’s been laid out for me. That said, my leaving? It means she can return. All the best to both of you,

Carrie

PS- Luci, if things DO go horribly wrong, do NOT hesitate to use the item that you found in that safe!

Julie crossed her arms. “It’s Carrie’s handwriting,” she confirmed for Luci. “And the ‘disappear’ remark would seem to confirm what Chartreuse said.”

“While the postscript obviously refers to the gun. But what about ‘she can return’? Surely that doesn’t mean…” Luci’s voice trailed off as footsteps approached, and moments later, Mr. Waterson was showing Chartreuse and Laurie into Carrie’s bedroom as well.

Chartreuse looked better than she had the previous night. Of course, Julie reflected, it would have been difficult to look worse. After Carrie’s girlfriend (should she now think of Chartreuse that way?) had run off, the rest of them - minus Glen, obviously - had waited around in the hall, making awkward small talk.

Eventually, they had gone back into the auditorium. No one had seemed to know what to say, Julie least of all, given how little she’d spoken to any of them of late. Chartreuse and Laurie hadn’t returned. They’d all left separately, and Julie probably wouldn’t have made any efforts to talk with them today if Luci hadn’t called her.

Julie watched silently as Chartreuse and Laurie read over the note, emitting twin gasps as they got close to the bottom. With Chartreuse though, there seemed to be a dawning realization, if not yet a complete understanding.

“Mr. Waterson?” Luci was speaking again, and pointing to Carrie’s dresser. “That empty picture frame. Do you know what picture used to be in there?”

He turned to look. “Yes, of course. It was Carrie’s mother. My wife, Elaine.”

Chartreuse’s eyes got even bigger than they had the previous night. “Oh my GOD,” she gasped. “She was trying to–"

“Mr. Waterson,” Julie said, cutting off Chartreuse. “We’re developing a working theory here. If you can give us a little time to network with the rest of our friends, we might be able to provide you with some answers by –" She looked from Luci, to Laurie, to Chartreuse, and then back to him. Based on their expressions, this wasn’t going to be straightforward. “The end of the weekend.”

Carrie’s father shook his head. “I can’t wait that long. If my daughter is out there, in trouble…"

“We’ll talk to you sooner if we can, but here’s the thing.” Julie rubbed her forehead. “Did it occur to you that Carrie’s letter might have been referring to the return of your wife?”

“It sort of did,” Mr. Waterson admitted. “But that’s ridiculous, since Elaine disappeared back when Carrie was only three years old.”

Julie nodded slowly. “Thing is? Rather a lot of ridiculous stuff happens at our school. And it’s going to take us some time to figure out where that possibility ranks on our events scale of ‘pop quiz’ to ‘van totalling the library’.”

Lee was the last person to arrive at the LaMille mansion. Julie couldn’t think of a time when they had all been together - herself, Frank, Luci, Clarke, Corry, Laurie, Tim, Chartreuse, and now Lee. Of course, there was one notable missing person.

She fingered the small jade figurine in her hands before placing it carefully back onto the table. At least this time, they knew Carrie couldn’t arrive and object to their gathering.

Julie cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “Okay. We all have various pieces of the puzzle, but I don’t think any one person knows everything, so we’re going to have to tackle this in pieces until we’re all up to speed. Make sense?”

Corry looked like he might want to say something, fidgeting with the cane he was using owing to his twisted ankle, but he kept silent.

“Okay,” Julie concluded. She sat down in the last available chair and pointed to Luci, perched on the arm of the couch. “Carrie’s letter to her Dad. Go for it.”

Luci outlined what had been in the message that had been left at Carrie’s house, adding that the photo of Carrie’s mother had been missing from her bedroom.

“Meanwhile,” Chartreuse piped up, “I, you know, saw Carrie with a photo as Glen was putting her into that trunk. And Tim saw her with a photo the night she, like, destroyed the chip.”

“You mean Carrie was using her mom’s photo as a focus,” Laurie reasoned. “To strengthen her resolve.”

Frank drew his gaze up from the floor. “There’s another link. That time, in the hospital, with Shady? When Carrie first went a bit crazy? She told me that the presence of her mother had been a strain on the timeline. That, after giving birth, her mom had to disappear, that she and Carrie couldn’t co-exist.”

“Whacky,” Lee mused. “But no more so than the rest of it, I guess. So when did her mom end up instead?”

Frank shrugged. “Carrie couldn’t see it. All we know for sure is that Elaine Waterson disappeared 14 years ago, on a flight from Miami to Bermuda, in the so-called Bermuda triangle.”

“So last night, Carrie went back to get her,” Clarke concluded.

“It would TOTALLY explain why she was so scared,” Chartreuse agreed. “On top of the, you know, issue of seeing her missing mom again, she would also have had to deal with airports or airplanes. She hates those.”

“She managed it not TOO terribly on one of our first time trips,” Frank admitted. “But yeah, point granted.”

“And since neither Carrie, nor her mom, are currently back in the present,” Luci remarked. “The trip can’t have gone well.” Frank nodded, and resumed looking at his shoes.

“Can I say something as the designated jerk in the room?” Corry remarked, waving his cane in the air.

Julie half smiled. “Please do, I rather like that you’re offering to take that title before I end up claiming it.”

“What’s the damn point in knowing when Carrie went? We don’t have a time machine to chase after her.”

“D-Don’t we?” Tim spoke up. As his gaze went to Julie, many of the others looked to her as well.

Julie let out a long breath. “Yeah, not presently. But Tim’s right, in that maybe we could.” She grimaced. “With Mindylenopia’s help.”

“Mindy?” Laurie gasped. “But she’s the one who crashed that van at school! She made Corry and Frank miss two days back in October and she… didn’t Carrie, um…"

“Mindy was banished through time,” Clarke finished. He looked curiously at Julie. “Right?”

“Here’s where it gets fuzzy again,” Luci said. She hopped down from her sofa perch and began to pace. “Frank found an article in the local paper five years ago, a poem simply signed ‘Mindy’, which told us not to trust Glen. Good advice, all things considered.”

Frank picked up the tale. “Then last weekend, Julie got a call from someone claiming to be Mindy. They said that they could help with rebuilding the time machine. But it was a ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’ thing, and she hasn’t called back - has she?” Julie shook her head.

“Soooo, this is a Mindy with a time machine then?” Lee asked.

“Unlikely,” Luci said. “Our current theory is that she’s the same banished person, who has been in town for the last fifty years or less. Possibly waiting for the chance to get her hands on a time machine again.”

“But then how did Mindy find out about Julie’s work?” Tim protested.

Julie threw up her hands. “However Glen found out, maybe? I swear, I should have taken out a billboard for all the good my secrecy did. But Carrie’s letter TOLD me that I was to–"

“What did THAT letter say?” Corry interrupted. “Do you have it?”

Julie sighed. “No, sorry. I ripped it up. Then burned it. It said I should do that. But give me a second, I’ll see if I can remember…" She closed her eyes trying to see the words again. Recalling the last time she’d looked at them, on that day, before taking off her rose brooch… damn, at this point, she really should get that back out of her drawer.

“Okay, it said, ummm, ‘Please help. It has to be you. You need to watch me now, and when I dispose of the time machine, save the key pieces. Then rebuild it. In secret. Please. Now destroy this note. Yours, Carrie.’”

“Kinda vague then,” Lee remarked.

“And that, like, makes no sense!” Chartreuse asserted. It was chiefly the tone of her voice that drew Julie’s attention - along with that of most of the others. Chartreuse winced under the scrutiny, and began fiddling with a crystal in her hands.

“Chartreuse, why does it make that much of a lack of sense?” Laurie asked, resting her hand on Chartreuse’s leg.

Chartreuse sighed. “It’s… oh boy. See, in timeline three? The one where the old time machine was, you know, still around? Um, Frank died.”

Frank’s posture straightened as he gave up on the plan of mostly staring at his shoes. Luci froze in her pacing. Many of the others present either inhaled or exhaled sharply.

“When?” Tim gasped.

“That time when Carrie was in hospital,” Frank realized. “Oh, geez, it had to be. Since that’s when she destroyed it.”

Julie rose to her feet again. “But my note WAS written by Carrie! Why would she want me to restore a timeline where one of you DIED?”

“Ohh. Oh no. I have a really bad thought,” Luci said. She waited until all eyes were on her before continuing. “What if Julie’s note was written by Glen’s ‘Future Carrie’? The one who wanted our Carrie to run off with him, and who would be extremely annoyed otherwise? Maybe she was trying to restore her timeline.”

NEXT: Do You Mindy?

ASIDE: Last chance to speculate before some massive revelations. Also, consider TWF voting if you didn’t on Friday?

Previously: Hank Waterson writes a story about woodland creatures with magical powers who have the names of Carrie’s friends. Raccoon Glen found evidence Fox Julie was a traitor.

PART 3.21b: WOODLANDS OMEN 2

“Right, a fox got double crossed, I’m so sure,” Carrie retorted.

“Carrie, she should get the benefit of the doubt,” Clarke put in quietly. “If we persecute people based largely on their animal heritage, we’re no better than the humans.” Carrie blinked at the beaver in surprise, appeared to think about that for a moment, then with a frown, she released Julie’s tail.

“But, okay,” Laurie said, puzzled. “If this documentation IS fake, and Julie’s NOT the traitor… who else COULD it be?”

As if on cue, there was the sound of something breaking the surface of the earth less than a metre away. Everyone turned in time to see a groundhog poke his head out. “Oh, g-g-good you’re still h-here!” it said in relief, scampering out of the hole. Behind him, a squirrel peered out of the hole as well.

“Luci?” Frank said in shock. “Where have you been?”

“Covert work underground,” Luci explained. “Sorry that me and Tim are late, but he can’t conjure his flashlight any more and we took a couple wrong turns.” She jumped out of the hole and shook the dirt off of herself.

“We were able to translate a pertinent passage though,” Tim said, holding a sheaf of papers out towards Julie. “I think you’ll be p-pleased with the r-r-results!”

“Passage? Covert mission? What the devil is going on here?” Corry said.

“Something I turned up in the warehouse the other day,” Julie said, running her eyes down the top sheet. “Evidence of the fact that the humans have been planning their recent dumping activities for MONTHS, along with the ‘inside informant’ - who, ergo, is not me. The problem was, the critical passages were either in code, or a language I didn’t recognize. So I somewhat reluctantly called for Tim and Luci’s services.”

“This is a very clever smokescreen you’ve put together in case of capture Julie,” Glen said, folding his arms. “But you underestimate our ability to see through it.”

“Hold on. Let’s see what Luci and Tim turned up first, then compare,” Lee suggested.

Julie flipped to the second page, then quickly the third, before looking up at Tim in surprise. He nodded and shrugged. “Let’s get him then,” Julie declared. Throwing the sheets aside, she pounced - however, Glen was already moving.

With a speed no one had expected, Glen dove to the side, rolled a metre away and came up with one palm extended. “Freeze,” he ordered. All the other sentient animals stopped in place, with looks of surprise on their faces.

“Whoa, you’re totally more powerful than you look,” Chartreuse said, trying in vain to move her feet or her wings.

“Damn straight,” Glen said, now making no effort to hide his evil grin. “Of course, it helps that all of you have had your powers mostly leeched away by this point.”

“But… but you’ll soon be losing your powers too!” Laurie protested. “Glen, why are you doing that?”

“Because,” Glen explained patiently, “as Tim’s translation no doubt revealed, my powers aren’t tied to this forest like yours are. And once you all revert, the humans will be granting safe passage for me and one other, all the way back to my real home. Far, far away from here!”

“The translation actually wasn’t that specific,” Tim admitted. “It just said the r-raccoon wants out of here.”

“We were kinda hoping that by doing things this way, you’d give everything away,” Luci added.

“Oh. Well, whatever,” Glen said with a shrug.

“Wait, who’s the other one you’ll be with?” Clarke asked.

“Who else?” Glen said, gesturing towards Carrie.

The bunny twitched her nose. “Me?? News flash, Glen, I don’t I want to go with you if this is how you treat my friends! I mean really, Glen, how COULD you?”

Glen shrugged. “Carrie, my mission was to track you down, and use a magic charm to help you understand your own inherent powers of sentience,” he replied. “Unfortunately, at the same time as I was awakening YOUR powers, Mindy and Shady were prowling through the forest, scouting for ways to expand that human settlement. To keep my item hidden from their probing, I buried it in that clearing - not realizing that it’s aura was still active, and able to affect other animals!”

“So, what, you think we gained our intellect and magical abilities because of this magical charm you owned?” Luci scoffed. “Please. I’m more special than an ordinary, everyday squirrel!”

“Believe what you like,” Glen said airily. “All I know is, after years of travel to track down the Chosen Bunny, I had to spend even MORE time messing around here, to learn how to reverse sentience on a bunch of useless creatures!” Glen shook his head. “I had hoped that by splicing together my Linquist contract with the signature I found for Julie, you’d all be thrown all off the track… and in another day, things would no longer matter… but, no matter. You’ve become weak enough for me to gain the upper ‘paw’ regardless.”

“Glen! If this is the real you? I’m staying right here!” Carrie said. Her body tensed. “And… and I’d totally put my paws on my hips to emphasize that point if only I could move!”

“I am sorry to hear you say that. But you’re coming with me regardless,” the raccoon said, smirking. “Because if you hadn’t figured it out yet, you dumb bunny, your powers aren’t tied to this forest either. It’s not the dumping, but rather that pendant I gave you earlier in the week which is suppressing your abilities. And once you’re powerless, we’ll be going. Don’t worry, your powers will be restored when we arrive back at my home.”

“But that’s kidnapping!” Carrie shrieked. “You won’t get away with that, or with using my powers in order to start a future war!” She shuddered. “Wait, how did I even know that’s what you were involving me in?”

“As the Chosen One,” Glen said. “Deep down, you knew all along.”

“You… you spent all this time tracking me down because your faction needed more power in order to stage takeovers of neighbouring forests!” Carrie realized. “And somehow you knew I could be more powerful than any of the other animals on Earth!”

“Oh, great, Carrie’s a powerful weapon. This information would have been useful a week ago,” Corry sighed.

“Too bad there’s no such thing as time travel,” Julie agreed.

“But Carrie, if you’ve got a bunch of magical power inside you, how come you can’t use it to shatter that pendant you’re wearing?” Laurie said.

“I… I’m not sure how to even move,” Carrie said. She grimaced in an internal effort, tears springing to the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry guys. I… I don’t think I can do anything!”

“Here, let me get that for you then,” Lee offered, moving to take the offending jewellery off Carrie’s neck. There was a beat, as all eyes shifted to the porcupine. “Yeah, hey, I could move all along, I just wanted to hear Glen reveal the plot,” Lee said, tossing the pendant aside.

“Hmmmm. A natural immunity? That’s not good,” Glen mused.

Freed of the magic draining item, the blonde bunny quickly rounded on the raccoon, her blue eyes bright. “Kidnap ME will, you? Threaten MY friends?! Well then, it’s YOUR turn to freeze, you EX-BOYFRIEND!”

Carrie bounded forward, catching Glen before he’d even taken two steps. One tap on his forehead, and he dropped like a stone, lying on the ground as if he was frozen in time. Carrie blinked down at her paw in surprise. “I can DO that?”

With Glen down, all the other animals gave a collective sigh of relief, having regained their own mobility.

“Nice work, Carrie!” Chartreuse said, gleefully clapping her wings together. “And that was a totally cool fake out, Lee!”

Lee shrugged, tugging at his jacket lapels. “I live closest to the affected clearing - I must have built up a little extra internal power or something.”

“So what do we do with Glen now?” Tim wondered.

“Humans don’t look twice at roadkill,” Julie said offhandedly, producing another nail file from her fur.

“Julie dear, that’s a little gruesome, even for you, isn’t it?” Clarke said, reaching out to touch her arm. Julie hesitated, then gave a yielding nod.

“I say give HIM that pendant,” Luci suggested. “Seal it permanently around Glen’s neck somehow. I mean, if it worked on Carrie’s powers, surely it will work on his.”

“Good thought,” Frank agreed. “In fact, now that we know who our insider is, we can threaten the humans with exposing all this dumping they’re doing. If Shady really wants to keep things quiet, they’ll have to stop their interference.”

“Ooh, but what about cleaning up the damage that’s already been done?” Laurie said worriedly. “Chartreuse, your conjurable conjuring crystals, could they purify the area?”

Chartreuse shook her head.  “Already considered it. There’s, you know, too much there for me to handle.”

“Well, from what I learned about this glop from Mindy, there is a primary ingredient,” Julie offered. “I believe all we’d need to do is figure out how to neutralize that. Then the problem will take care of itself.”

“In that case, it’s a good thing I’ve spent the last few days analyzing slime from the clearing,” Corry spoke up. “You’ll be pleased to know that we’re not up against anything radioactive. Though the strange thing is, the primary ingredient - and believe me, I triple checked this - it seems to be… well… lime jello.”

“J-J-Jello?” Tim said, surprised.

“If jello neutralizes magic, remind me not to forage for it,” Lee said.

“Hah. If THAT’S all it is, I’m sure we can come up with a counteragent,” Carrie asserted, dusting off her paws after having given Glen a kick in the ribs. “Why, by working together, there’s nothing we can’t do!”

“What’s more, Corry’s analysis also explains why these humans were able to dump so much of that stuff within a fairly limited area,” Frank remarked.

“Oh?  How do you figure?” Luci wondered.

Frank shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious? There’s always room for Jello.” He had no time whatsoever to parry before the hammer and the croquet mallet came crashing down on his head.

Hank Waterson leaned back in his chair, letting out a yawn and massaging a cramp in his wrist. How had he managed to get through all that in one sitting? A glance at the clock showed that it was after 2 am. What incredibly inspired writing!

Yet now that he was actively thinking about it, Hank realized that he had questions. For instance, where exactly had the idea for that Mindy person come from? Why had he made accusations against Carrie’s friend Julie? And why had he turned Carrie’s boyfriend into the traitor? Was his subconscious trying to tell him something? Maybe he should keep Carrie grounded, so that the two of them wouldn’t be able to spend time together…

“What am I saying?” Hank muttered aloud. “This is fiction. It has no basis in real life." Besides, Carrie was good at finding a way around rules she didn’t like, so it wouldn’t do to keep her away from Glen. Moreover, he would be changing the names of the characters anyway. He could even change the villain’s identity once he got into editing. The whole story was still in a rather indeterminate state.

Shaking his head, Hank Waterson carefully stacked the story’s character sheets, and placed them back into his ‘Woodland Creatures’ folder. He then reached out and turned off his desk light, blissfully unaware of that fact that everybody’s temporal reality had recently entered a very similar indeterminate state, courtesy of his own daughter.

-Next Episode: Do You Mind?

-I hope you enjoyed this little detour/omen. Had you figured out who the traitor was? Do you see how things might tie into the real plot? Feel free to comment or vote for T&T.

Previously: Hank Waterson writes a story about woodland creatures with magical powers who have the names of Carrie’s friends. … Roll with it.

PART 3.21a: WOODLANDS OMEN 1

Hank Waterson did a quick scan back over what he had written. His short story had thus far incorporated most of Carrie’s friends as woodland animals with human sentience. Along with them, he had now written in two actual human characters, whose mysterious conversation had implied that there was a traitor within the animal group. Who was it?

Hank rubbed his chin. He wasn’t quite sure which one of them to use, and thus he decided to simply see where the narrative took him.

Slowly, the woodland creatures came out of hiding.

“So… what do you think about that?” Frank wondered.

“Mindy’s got a nice back end, for a human?” Lee offered.

“Okay, pretty sure Frank’s referring to the fact that there’s totally a TRAITOR among us!” Chartreuse wailed.

Lee shrugged. “Trying to lighten the mood.”

“Don’t. Now is the time to get serious," Corry growled. “Because if one of us is feeding these humans lies, and telling them things that will lead to us losing our powers within a week? That’s a MAJOR problem."

“It can’t be one of us. Whoever the traitor is, they already knew about this clearing having ties to the magical effects,” Julie noted. “Remember, that Shady guy implied it was their dumping here that caused a neutralizing effect."

“Hey, any of us could know more about this clearing than what we’ve said,” Luci said, glancing about suspiciously. “The question is, why would anyone want us forest creatures to go all mundane?”

“Unless the traitor knows of a way to keep themselves immune,”

Carrie suggested. “And they’re hoping to use their sentience to rule over the rest of us.”

Everyone’s eyes shifted towards the fox and bear. “Oh great, predators being persecuted again,” Julie grumped, twitching her tail.

“Hold on, everyone. Finger pointing doesn’t do us any good," Clarke said. “We need proof to make an accusation.”

Laurie raised her paw. “Why don’t we simply ask the humans which animal is working with them?”

Her brother sighed. “Laurie, approaching humans is not wise, they - oh, wait, they keep records. Maybe we could obtain some of their files? That could tell us something."

“We’d have to go into town for that though,” Frank pointed out, beginning to pace. “And the longer we’re out of the forest, the more the magic fades too. If we’re caught, we’d lose everything.”

“Someone could do it if they already had as idea as to the specific bases of operations used by these particular humans,” Lee noted.

“So Glen could do it," Carrie realized. “He’s spent some of his evenings skulking about in town. If anyone knows the layout, it’d be him.”

“But what if he’s the traitor?”

“Frank, stop accusing Glen of things already,” Carrie sighed, turning and slamming her mallet down on his head in exasperation.

“Um, but Carrie, I, like, said that,” Chartreuse noted, waving a wing as Frank fought to keep his balance.

“Yeah, Carrie, stop hitting on my boyfriend!” Luci declared, swinging her own hammer at Carrie. Carrie managed to block with her mallet… then both objects simply disappeared. Both Carrie and Luci blinked at each other in surprise.

“The magic problem is worse here,” Clarke decided. “We need to get going. Let’s at least see what Glen turns up, it could give us a starting point. Okay?”

Everyone present exchanged glances and nods. “And as a show of good faith, maybe Glen can grab me some of that aspirin stuff while he’s in town?” Frank mumbled.

“Crazy other animals,” Glen grumbled as he scampered down the alleyway. “As if I didn’t know it’s been four days - they didn’t expect me to know where Shady and Mindy were right away, did they?"

The raccoon peered out onto the darkened street and then headed down towards the part of town where the warehouses were located. “For a small town, it’s sure trying to work towards having more industry,” Glen observed. He soon found a hole in the fencing around the complex, and squeezed through. “Now, let’s see… that paper I found in Shady’s trash yesterday, it said Linquist was using Warehouse 3… hopefully I can find something in there to appease the masses.”

As it turned out, the warehouse was locked, but a few smashes on the padlock with a large rock allowed Glen to gain access. “Hmmmm,” Glen murmured as he scanned the interior - which was not much larger than your average sized human apartment. “If I know these humans, there’ll be a… yup, right over there.”

He hurried over to the corner that held the video surveillance equipment, and after giving it a look, he wound the tape back to erase his presence. He then pulled out his magical magnet and waved it over the devices for good measure. If it was strong enough to attract a garbage can, it was probably strong enough to mess with their electronics.

“At least the town’s still small enough to have lousy security,” Glen muttered. “Shady probably installed this in here himself. Still, it’s possible that there’s a silent alarm too, so I should work fast.”

The raccoon turned to start a quick search of the bins and filing cabinets, pausing as a file out in the open caught his attention. Sitting right next to the TV monitor, it was labelled ‘Security Breach 08/22/88’.

“Yesterday?” Glen mused. He flipped open the folder and his eyebrows went up. “Oho! Well then, it would seem we’ve found our traitor…”

“It’s, like, ridiculous, having to be up this early,” Chartreuse yawned as she looked out at the lake. “The sun’s barely up. Why can’t Glen stay up later, rather than, you know, waking us earlier?”

“Time is of the essence at this point,” Corry grunted. “Hell, last night I couldn’t get my yardstick to stay around long enough to take a precise measurement!”

“He’s trying to install new drapes in our cave,” Laurie explained brightly. “The old ones are so drab, even if they do compliment the existing decor so well. Soon we may even get a window to go with them too though looking at your faces I’m probably acting too perky for the hour so I should shut up now, should I?”

“It’s not THAT early,” Carrie insisted. “I’ve been up at this hour to meet with Glen before. We’ve watched sunrises together, it was romantic.”

“Hm, speaking of romantic, has anyone seen Luci?” Frank asked. “She seemed to disappear after yesterday morning’s meeting.”

“I’m sure she’ll be along,” Julie replied, filing her claws once again. “Unless she’s the traitor, that is.” Frank frowned.

“Well, hey, let’s just hope Glen has a stronger lead today, okay?” Lee put in. “What with infighting giving me a worse headache than the ones Frank gets from not reacting in time."

A silence fell upon the group. A few minutes later, Glen hurried out of the treeline and headed towards them. “Glen!” Carrie cried out happily, her bunny ears quivering. “Have you brought us good news at last?"

“Well, I have news,” Glen said, holding up a folder of papers. “It’ll be good for some, not so good for others.”

“Meaning what?” Clarke asked.

“Meaning, I think we’ve got our traitor," Glen explained. He flipped open the folder, and tossed a picture out onto the grass. Everyone leaned in for a closer look. There was a moment of silence. Then Corry made a lunge for Julie.

“Get her!” the bear snarled as Julie rolled away, firing her nail file at him. It grazed by Corry’s ear. Coming up on all fours, Julie then made a leap towards the trees, only to have the flickering forms of a broom and a tennis racquet crisscross in front of her. She hesitated only momentarily before making a move to dodge underneath them, but that moment was enough to allow her to be brought up short by a yank from behind.

“Ow ow ow ow!” Julie shrieked, falling onto the ground. “The tail is attached, you know!”

“Consider it retribution for all the times you’ve salivated over me and my kind,” Carrie shot back. “Now it’s time for a rabbit to put YOU on a hotplate!”

“Again with the persecution,” Julie said, turning her head, eyes flashing. “You have no evidence that I’m the traitor! So I’ve been in a human warehouse, so what??”

“So,” Glen said, clearing his throat, “you know more than what you’ve been telling. I also turned up THESE files–” He paused to toss some more pages on the ground. “–which show an agreement between Linquist and an unnamed co-conspirator to do the dumping in that clearing. Unless I’m very much mistaken, that top document has your paw print on it.”

“What??” Julie shrieked.

“I always knew you were a sly fox, Julie,” Corry said, glaring at her while rubbing his ear. “But I never realized how low you’d stoop to get your own way around here.”

“I should have guessed," Carrie said, bitterly. “I know she made friends with me only to secure the bunny vote in our part of the forest, so I should have KNOWN she’d betray us.” She took firmer hold of the tail in her paw and twisted it.

“Will you CUT THAT OUT?” Julie said, baring her teeth at the rabbit. “For the moment, I’m not going anywhere! And fine, I’ll admit that I’ve started doing a little covert work with that human Mindy, but it was only to discover what was really going on!”

“Then how do you, you know, explain this contract?” Chartreuse inquired, holding it out.

“I don’t know,” Julie said, peering at it. “Mindy did make me put my paw on something after I approached her, for her own protection. But that wasn’t it.”

“And what’s the reason for the security photo?” Frank asked.

“Mindy gave me the key to their warehouse the other evening. I went looking for files relating to the dumping. But Mindy said nothing about surveillance equipment… I think I’m being set up!”

-We’ve shifted from ‘Detour’ into ‘Omen’, as there will now be elements of foreshadowing for the end of this Book, and into Book 4. Any thoughts? Any desire to vote at WFG?

Previously: The time group fractured. Mindy used mental powers to get Hank Waterson to write a letter, warning his daughter Carrie about Glen.

PART 3.20a: WOODLANDS DETOUR 1

“This isn’t working,” Hank Waterson decided, after another twenty minutes of struggling with his novel. “I need to take a step back and get away from all this angst. Maybe… yes, of course. There was that collection of short stories requesting submissions before the end of the year. I’ll have another go at that.”

Hank closed his current document and reached into his desk drawer to pull out a small folder labeled ‘Woodland Creatures’. “Now, let’s see… I was superficially basing these new characters on Carrie and some of her classmates… I must remember to change the names later.” Hank half smiled as he browsed back over his character outlines, then began to write.

It was a bright sunny day, and Carrie was hopping merrily down the woodlands path, her long bunny ears jutting out cutely behind her.

“Did you want some barley to go with your hops?" chattered a nearby voice. Carrie turned to see a chipmunk watching her from a nearby tree stump. She immediately produced a huge croquet mallet from out of nowhere, using it to bonk Frank on the head.

“No rabbit puns!" the bunny girl accused.

“And stop watching Carrie!” came another voice, a smaller hammer coming down next to the mallet. “Remember, you’re dating me, not her.” Luci adjusted her skirt and twitched her long squirrel tail, after which both her and Carrie’s magical objects were dispelled back to the nothing from whence they came.

“I… I just thought Carrie might need some cheering up…” Frank protested, his eyes spinning around in a swirly pattern. “After last night’s date with Glen…”

“Hm. How DID that go?” Luci asked, scampering closer to Carrie. “Did you learn any more about him?"

“I learned he’s very generous,” Carrie said. She reached into her tank top and pulled out a small pendant on a chain. “Seeing as he gave me this present!"

“I still don’t trust him,” Frank protested. “I mean, Glen’s always wearing that mask…”

“He’s a raccoon,” Carrie reminded. She pulled out her mallet again for an over the shoulder shot, but this time Frank managed to produce his magical tennis racquet in time to block her. “There you go, much better reflexes that time,” the bunny applauded him.

“Your pendant seems to be glowing though," Luci mused, scampering left, right, over Carrie’s head and then under her arms to try and get a better look. “Is that normal? Should we analyze it?”

“It does make me feel all tingly,” Carrie admitted. “But this is a magical forest. One expects to have such tingles.”

“Does one? Because we’ve been feeling less and less of those," Luci reminded her, whiskers twitching. “It must be that the magic is fading, and we don’t know why.”

“Right, good point," Carrie sighed. “Soon the humans in that nearby settlement are going to see through the illusions, and start wondering why we wear clothes and have opposable thumbs on our paws.”

“Actually,” Frank piped up again, “we English-speaking clothes-wearing animals are the exception in this forest, not the norm. It’s more likely that we’ll simply lose the ability for higher thought, reverting back to being much more typical forest creatures."

“Yes, thank you for that uplifting reminder, Frank,” Carrie grumbled.

“He does make a point though,” Luci chattered. “If this magic fade keeps up, we may lose the ability to conjure our items, which makes us more vulnerable to… FOX!"

Luci made a jump for a nearby tree as Carrie spun, already whipping out her mallet. It’s handle connected solidly with a long pool cue, and Carrie grimaced with the effort of holding the solid length of wood at bay. “Why don’t you give this up already?” the bunny said through gritted teeth. “You’re never going to get me, Julie.”

“Just keeping you on your toes, much like how you do with Frank,” the fox replied, flashing a smile from behind the cue. “You don’t really think I’d eat a friend, do you?”

“I’d be more convinced if you’d stop licking your lips at the sight of me,” Carrie retorted.

“Aw. You know I can’t control my biology,” Julie said innocently. “Come on Carrie, have faith. This is only a test. Because here’s the thing, it feels to me like your parrying skills are slipping, and if I really wanted to, I could probably–"

Julie stopped speaking as, with a little flash, Carrie’s croquet mallet completely vanished. With a shout of surprise, Carrie jumped to the side, even as Julie executed a quick flip over her pool cue to land on her feet instead of her face.

“Hey!” Frank shouted in surprise. “You shouldn’t be able to counter her conjured item like that! Not that I’m complaining or anything,” he added, as Julie turned her gaze upon him. “And I’d get stuck in your throat, we know I would.”

With a shake of her head and a swish of her long red tail, Julie flipped her long wooden pole back into the null space from whence it had come. “I’m so misunderstood,” she lamented. “I’ve never so much as nibbled on a fellow sentient creature. I eat berries, grasses and fruit.”

“And insects, and fish, and mice…” Luci muttered.

“None of whom talk back to me. What, a fox girl can’t vary her diet from time to time?”

“Don’t change the subject," Frank protested. “What was with your dispelling of Carrie’s mallet??”

“Julie didn’t do that,” Carrie admitted, her bunny nose twitching. “It’s weird, I just… couldn’t hold it any more. You were right, Luci. This magic fading stuff is accelerating.”

“Or you’ve been playing around with your magic abilities too much, Carrie,” Julie retorted. She produced a nail file from the fur behind her ear and began using it on her claws. “It’s like I’ve always said. Only strike when it’s to your advantage to do so.”

“Still, in the year since we got these powers, none of us have ever really questioned where the source magic came from,” Frank chattered. “That now feels like a major oversight on our part.”

“Yeah, you never know what you’ve got until you start losing it,” Luci agreed. “But at this point, where would we even start looking for the source of our sentience power?”

The four animals exchanged uncertain glances. The silence was broken by a familiar voice came from overhead. “News, news, I’ve totally got news, you know!” Chartreuse called. “Calling all sentients, I’ve totally got… oh hey, there you guys are!”

“Oh good, a visit from our resident loon,” Julie said dryly.

Chartreuse dipped down lower, circling above the others as she spoke. “There’s news over at the lake!” the loon wailed. “Clarke’s found something that could be important, we should all, you know, get together and get over there ASAP! I’ve already notified Corry and Laurie and they…”

“What?!” Julie interrupted, jerking her head up. “Nuts!”

“Hm? Nuts?” Luci said, perking her head up.

“Chartreuse! I asked you to STOP telling Corry stuff before you tell me!” the fox girl shouted. Quickly discarding her nail file, Julie dropped to all fours and dashed off in the direction of the lake.

“Well, Corry was totally closer,” the loon said to Julie’s retreating form. “Now, hey, has anyone seen Glen?”

“He’s doing his nocturnal thing,” Carrie replied. “It’s okay, I can fill him in later. Come on, I’ll race everyone to the water’s edge!”

“Race? Oh, sure,” Frank mumbled as Carrie bounded off without waiting for a reply. “Except since the rabbit is always the fastest, what’s the point…”

At the mouth of the lake, the only sound was that of the river water splashing down over the rocks. A bear sat quietly on the bank, looking into the rushing current, apparently scanning for fish. He adjusted his silk shirt, cocked his head to the side… then quickly spun, producing a reinforced yardstick. “Don’t even try it.”

“Try what?” Julie inquired, standing up from where she had been crouched the grass. She brushed off her jeans.

“You know what,” Corry grumped, still pointing the yardstick at her. “You and that pool cue, you’re always searching for some balls to smack around. There will be none of that happening here!”

“Ugh, well what ELSE am I supposed to do with my stupid cue?" the fox sniffed. “At least YOU got a handy measuring tool.”

“Hmph,” the bear grunted noncommittally. He dispelled his stick and turned back to the water. “I still can’t believe how we predatory animals were somehow reduced to conjuring up little more than makeshift clubs. I mean, who decided that any potentially useful weapon could only be generated by the prey?”

“Fate?” Julie guessed, moving closer to Corry while still keeping a respectful distance. “Or, see it as a challenge. If we don’t have an actual mallet, we’re forced to think, which keeps our minds fresh."

“Mmm. Yeah, I guess. Still, if I had a human crossbow, I could take over your part of the forest in no time.”

“And if I had a human rifle, you’d be ousted from your area so fast it would make your head spin,” Julie smirked. “But since that’s not the case, we have to make the best of our situation. Like how your sister does.” Julie pointed past Corry towards the treeline. Laurie was now visible there, amusing herself by trying to balance her beachball on her nose.

Corry’s face took on a pained look. “I say again, you and your pool cue leave my sister and her artistic interests out of this! She may be more teddy bear than brown bear right now, but eventually she’ll realize how she’s capable of so much more.”

“Right. Last I heard she was catching fish by talking them to death.”

“Julie…” Corry began dangerously, but he stopped upon hearing another animal approaching from the forest. At almost the same time, a beaver broke the surface of the water nearby.

“Hey!” Clarke called out from the lake, shaking water from his head. “Everyone assembled yet?"

-Yes, we will get a few parts of this. Are you enjoying it? Do you think it’s a colossal misstep? Does the animal mapping at least feel accurate? You can always vote or comment.

Previously: Mindy was banished by Carrie, but left a warning message about Glen, via her father. Carrie was knocked out by an energy gun… in fact, most people were knocked out by something.

PART 3.18a: MAKING THE ROUNDS 1

“Yeah, right into the library,” Clarke admitted, lying back on his bed as he held the phone receiver up to his ear. “But we’re… we’re all fine here.”

“You don’t sound sure of that,” Mary remarked. “Look, sorry I didn’t make it back for Thanksgiving – Doug wanted me to meet his family - but I’ll be making it up to everyone by coming to your first basketball game of the season in a few weeks. Okay?”

Clarke found he was unable to hold back a smile. “That’s great news, Mary! Just… just great!”

“Uh huh. Okay Phil, even if I weren’t majoring in psychology? I’d know something was wrong. Out with it.”

“What? I… uh…” Clarke shook his head. “I swear I’ll manage to bluff you one of these days! Though seriously, the family’s fine. School’s fine. The only issues are, well, between me and a number of my friends.”

“Yeah? You want to talk about it? I’m speaking as your sister here, not as the family shrink.”

Clarke passed his hand in front of his eyes. “Actually,” he sighed. “It seems like I’ve already spent this whole Sunday talking…”

It had made sense for him to visit Carrie first. She had been the last to regain consciousness the previous night, and she hadn’t spoken to anyone at Julie’s place, except to ask Glen to take her home. Yet even though she had looked normal at the time, blue eyes and all, Clarke was worried. Not only about Carrie herself, but also at the rift that was again forming between her and Julie.

Mr. Waterson answered the door when Clarke knocked. “I’m afraid Carrie is unavailable to speak with friends today,” he said immediately. “She’s been acting too irresponsibly of late.”

“Oh, well… she kinda has information I need for a group project,” Clarke hedged. “It’ll only take ten minutes.”

“She’ll be at school tomorrow,” Mr. Waterson pointed out. “This can’t wait?”

“Not really. It’s sort of extra curricular. A lot of us are involved in it,” Clarke explained. He disliked skirting the truth like this, particularly around someone like Carrie’s father, but he really did want to speak with her. Though as it turned out, while Clarke’s reasoning was enough to get him an audience, Carrie wasn’t in much of a talking mood.

“Did Julie send you?” the blonde questioned. She marched across the living room, heading for the window, arms crossed. She didn’t even look his way.

“No. But that’s just it, I am a little concerned about the friction building up in our little temporal group…”

“Then you’ll be glad to hear it’s not a group any more,” Carrie cut back in. “There will be no more use of the time machine. If you’ll take that message back to the others, I think we’re done here."

Clarke winced. “Look, Carrie… I know having your powers released again must have been rough…”

“Rough? ROUGH?!” Carrie spun away from the window to face him now, her blue eyes blazing with anger - yet there was something else there too. Fear? “You have NO idea, Clarke, NONE at ALL, all right??” Carrie shot back. “Suffice to say, there’s going to be nothing more going on that’s even remotely temporally related until Glen and I can balance these forces inside me!”

Clarke waited until some of the tension had drained out of the air. “Then you didn’t change over willingly last night,” he stated, in a tone that invited comment.

“No, I… well, yes," Carrie said. Her gaze slipped away. “It was a plan me and Glen devised to deal with Mindy. I was to give myself up to that inner demon when I heard Glen say the words ‘swan song’. I chose those words myself, because I had this crystal swan three years ago that… oh, why am I even bothering to explain this to you?!”

“Because sometimes it helps to talk about stuff?” Clarke offered.

“Yeah, that worked out SO well on Thursday, when me and Julie were at cross purposes,” Carrie shot back. Clarke winced, recalling the slap. She jabbed a finger back in his direction. “I’m done. With the group, even with Chartreuse. Glen is the only person who can help me now."

“You’re sure we can trust him, then,” Clarke said, again not quite phrasing it like a question. “Even with his apparent mental abilities.”

“Yes!” Carrie said forcefully. She drew a shaky breath. “Yes, I have to trust him. Because he’s all I’ve got. It doesn’t matter what Mindy put in that letter she left with my father, I can’t simply…” She stopped. “Scratch that. You never heard that, there is no letter.”

“Er, okay…”

“In fact, I don’t ever want to hear Mindy’s name again,” Carrie went on. “I don’t know what time I sent her to, and I’d rather not think about it. You can tell that to the others too!”

“Then you’re sure none of us can–”

“Damn it Clarke, there’s no US! No group, not any more!” Carrie interrupted. She pursed her lips. “Except… okay, maybe answer me one question? What was it that pulled me out of doomsday-Carrie mentality last night? Because somehow, I know that wasn’t Glen.”

Clarke accepted the change of subject, explaining to Carrie about the gun that had been discovered in Linquist’s safe. “Great, I was a weapons guinea pig,” the blonde moaned, pressing a hand into her temples. “You probably should have killed me outright, who knows what long term effects will plague me now.”

“Well, if it looks like you’re growing a third arm, you let somebody know, all right?” Clarke responded, venturing a smile. Carrie was hard to read, but she seemed to be calming down. “I mean, time travel or not, we want to help you. That’s all we’ve ever been trying to do.”

Carrie moved her hand to rub the bridge of her nose. “I know,” she murmured. “I know. But here’s the sad thing. None of you can help me, at least not safely.” Her gaze fell upon Clarke once more, and this time he was pretty sure that she was trying not to cry. “Look. We’re still done, but tell Julie I’m sorry for slapping her the other day, all right? Her idea was actually a good one."

Clarke began to respond that it would be better for Carrie to tell Julie that herself, but the blonde cheerleader was already brushing past him. Before he could get out half a sentence, Carrie was out of the living room and running upstairs.

“So you say Carrie has major emotional issues owing to some burden that’s been placed on her?” Mary mused. “I hate to tell you this bro, but emotional issues are typical for teenagers."

“Yeah, but this is the sort of burden no one should ever have to carry alone,” Clarke countered, switching the phone to his other ear. “So given Carrie’s pushing people away because of it, that can’t be healthy.”

“Probably not,” Mary agreed. “But even so, I wager there’s one or two people who can still get through to her. If not you, any other candidates?”

“Well, Glen. Or the next best bet would be Frank… I actually ran into him in front of the house, after talking with Carrie.”

“You might have trouble getting past Carrie’s father,” Clarke cautioned. “I think she’s sort of grounded.”

“Oh.” Frank frowned. “I really think we need to talk about that whole temporal plan I authorized though, and she isn’t answering her phone.”

“Try saying it’s an extra curricular group project,” Clarke offered. “That got me past Mr. Waterson. Getting Carrie to talk at all though… that may be the real challenge. I didn’t exactly soften her up. If anything, I did the opposite. Sorry, Frank.”

“Well, historically speaking she’s had more experience through high school using people as tools versus being their friends,” Frank observed. “A bit like Julie. So it’s a matter of us working around that, right? I mean, would she be able to ignore me indefinitely if I was heaving rocks up at her window?”

“Depends on how good your aim is.”

Frank grimaced. “Well, there’s that oak tree, I can get reasonably close if I have to.”

“Maybe you and Luci could tag team on it?” Clarke suggested.

There was a pause in the conversation then, awkward enough for Clarke to realize that he’d accidentally hit a nerve. “Julie explained to me about the log book and the gun Luci found,” Frank said at last. “While we were waiting for her to regain consciousness. I think… that is, it feels like me and Luci have issues there. We barely talked when I was walking her home after. Maybe I’m trying to avoid that situation now, by coming to see Carrie instead. I don’t know.”

“Relationships do generate issues,” Clarke agreed. “If nothing else, it’s good that you’re acknowledging one.”

“I’m not sure I am. Girls are a mystery. I don’t know how you and Julie manage to keep it all together. Say, do you think Carrie would let me travel a week into the future, to see how I handle things with Luci?”

Clarke pursed his lips. “Frank, I’d strongly recommend avoiding any talk of time travel with Carrie today. Even jokingly.”

Frank let out a long breath. “That bad, huh? Guess my work is cut out for me then.” He shook his head. “I’m starting to feel like I should have gone to see Chartreuse this morning instead. As girls go, she at least feels approachable right now.”

“Well, whatever you decide, let me know if I can be of any help," Clarke said, clapping the other teen on the shoulder.

“I will,” Frank replied, reaching up to touch the bandage on the side of his head. “Thing is, the relationship stuff? I think I’ll have to work it out by myself."

“Do you think Frank was able to help Carrie then?” Mary asked.

“I really don’t know,” Clarke sighed. “It became the least of my worries. See, I wanted to check up on Tim today too, because of how he got involved in recent events. But before I got to his house, there was this other encounter. When I passed by the local cafe, I saw Glen. He was talking with Lee. So I went in to find out what that was about.”

-Who remembers Mary Clarke from Book 1, Part 11? Some main characters do have siblings. Thoughts on character reactions so far?

Previously: When Mindy reappears, Glen and Carrie plan to banish her, while Julie and the others plan to capture her. Luci has discovered a “temporal gun” in Linquist’s safe.

PART 3.17b: BANISHMENT 2

“Well?” said the voice Glen recognized as belonging to Luci. “Does it say the gun freezes people in time or not?”

“I d-don’t know yet! I can’t t-translate under these conditions!” came the reply.

“Steady on Tim,” Clarke soothed. “Here, I’ll hold the flashlight.”

Glen moved to intercept the four individuals. “Clarke!” he called out amiably. “Luci, Julie, Tim! Fancy meeting all of you here.”

“Glen?” Julie said. “Uh, didn’t Carrie tell you that this is an incredibly unsafe place to be right now??”

“Is it?” Glen said, blinking. “You should all be on your way somewhere else then.”

“Can’t,” Luci retorted. “We have some presents for Mindy, when she arrives here.”

“They can wait,” Glen insisted. “I really, REALLY think we should convince ourselves that it would be safer somewhere else.”

The four teenagers looked at each other. “G-Good enough for me,” Tim said, turning around.

“It does make sense,” Clarke agreed. “We should head home.”

“I’m not so sure,” Luci said, frowning. “Yet I’m thinking of a lot of places where I’d rather be.”

“No. No way. There’s nowhere else I would rather be right now,” Julie murmured, her body starting to shake. “Not after what I’ve caused.”

“Julie should bring you back to her place and serve some hot chocolate,” Glen continued calmly. “It’s getting cold out here and you’re all thirsty.”

“It IS cold,” Luci agreed.

“And I am thirsty,” Clarke added.

“Aren’t you guys coming?” Tim wondered, already three steps away.

“Why… what… why…" And Julie’s gaze focused in on Glen. “My God. YOU’RE ONE OF THEM!"

Glen turned quickly to focus all of his attention onto her. “Julie, don’t–” he began, but he got no further. With a speed and agility that surprised him, she had leapt to his side, while dashing a liquid out onto a rag in her hand. He tried to push her away.

“Nap time, mind warper!” the brunette cried out, slipping under Glen’s arm and slapping the rag against his face.

“No!” Glen protested, trying to keep from breathing in. “I have to wake…” His knees buckled, his vision blurred. “…goddamit… uhn, C-Carrie, SWAN SONG!” His last cry delivered in little more than a speaking voice, Glen then fell unconscious.

Julie stared down at her unconscious adversary. “Okay,” she decided. “Weird choice of last words…”

“Uh, guys? Whatever Glen meant by that, it was loud enough to get someone’s attention,” Clarke said, raising a finger to point over Julie’s shoulder. Julie turned, in time to see the figure rising up from the ground in the vicinity of the swingset. The figure had long blonde hair flowing out behind her, and when she turned, her eyes were glowing gold in the darkness.

“You will be banished,” Carrie said, raising her finger to point at the group of them.

“Ohhh HELL!” Julie swore, eyes going wide.

Luci immediately reached into her jacket, yanking out the gun she had been concealing. Originally in multiple parts within the safe, it’s six inch long barrel had now been screwed into the base, which itself was comprised of numerous of dials and lights. The main one showing four settings. Fortunately, while it seemed to be an energy weapon, it was at least partially charged, and included a standard trigger.

“Tim?” Luci said, trying to keep her hand from shaking. “We need the stats on this sucker like NOW.”

Electricity began to spark at the end of Carrie’s fingertips as she strode forwards. Clarke grabbed Tim, and both of them backed off to the right, as Luci and Julie began to circle around slowly to the left. Carrie paused as they split up.

“Okay, Carrie,” Julie began. “Stay calm here. We’re your friends.” She saw the movement in Carrie’s elbow a split second before her hand came out, and only just managed to dive out of the way of the crackling energies the blonde fired at her.

“Tim?” Luci called out again. “I can’t simply start firing this thing at random, I may only have the one shot! Is there a setting I can use to merely knock Carrie out?”

“D-Don’t rush me!” the small boy called back. “I need a minute, Linquist’s short form never makes sense!”

“I hope you have a minute,” Luci mumbled before dodging in a little closer to Carrie. “Hey, hey, ignore Julie, look at me!” She then backpedalled furiously, even as Julie became aware of the sound of more running footsteps approaching.

However, while Carrie did begin to focus on Luci, the bright flash of light and the appearance of three more individuals about a metre in front of the blonde quickly had everyone’s attention.

“Oh, GEEZ!” Frank choked out, stumbling to his feet. Next to him, Corry and Mindy remained on the ground, unconscious.

“Frank, get DOWN!” Luci screamed out. “You’re spoiling my shot!!”

“Oh look, more people here I can banish,” Carrie said with a smile.

Julie saw a tall figure spring out of the encroaching darkness, slamming into Frank even as electricity lanced out from Carrie’s fingertips. Frank was knocked back off his feet, his head hitting a partially concealed rock as he fell… but with that, the crackling energies passed harmlessly by both him and his rescuer.

“Ohmigod,” Chartreuse breathed from the edge of the park. “Lee tackled him in time.” She then joined Frank in the land of unconsciousness, the additional weight on Laurie’s shoulders almost pulling the redhead to the ground as well.

As Chartreuse collapsed, a certain redhead sprang to her feet. “Everyone back off!” Mindy shouted, whipping a knife out of her pocket. And Julie realized that Mindy had only been faking unconsciousness, to allow Carrie to get close enough for an attack. Oh no, she had to get in there with the chloroform!

“Mindy! Stop!” Julie cried out. Not even thinking about how she’d managed to completely ignore the redhead’s implicit command to ‘back off’, while everyone else had taken a few steps back, she launched herself forwards.

But Mindy saw Julie coming out of the corner of her eye. She checked her swing at Carrie in favour of leaping out of the way, so Julie’s dive only resulted in her ending up back down on the ground.

“Good! Everyone stay down, out of my line of sight!” Luci yelled. “Tim? Setting for Carrie OR Mindy? TIM?!”

“Calm down!” came Clarke’s voice out of the encroaching darkness. “Everyone just calm…”

Mindy jumped in towards Carrie again, her knife raised. The two of them were almost face to face now, Mindy’s knife held in the air, inches away from Carrie’s chest… and Julie saw Mindy hesitate. “Dammit Carrie,” Mindy whispered. “I never wanted to hurt…”

The electrical discharge hit the redhead at point blank range. She barely even got a chance to scream before she had disappeared in a crackling of energies and the sound of a thunderclap. “One down,” the golden eyed Carrie said calmly. She turned to face Julie, who had been readying herself for another attack on Mindy, and Julie abruptly discovered what it was like to be a deer caught in a car’s headlights. Oh lord. Did chloroform work on a temporal weapon?

“Luci!” Tim called out. “Setting four, on Carrie!”

Luci cranked the indicator over and immediately pulled the trigger.  For a second it seemed like her actions would have no effect at all, but then a sequence of lights on the gun lit up and a pulse of energy flew out of the end of the barrel, striking Carrie in the side. The effect was immediate. The building energies in Carrie’s palm fizzled out, and the blonde crumpled to the ground, Julie seeing her eyes flicker back to blue as they shut.

Luci, however, was unaware of this, as Julie then realized that the recoil on the gun had propelled the shorter girl back a good ten metres, right into the trunk of a tree. She now lay slumped at its base, out cold.

At last, all was silence.

The quiet stretched on for what felt like an eternity to Julie, however it was really under a minute before there came the sound of Laurie’s tentative voice from the treeline: “Is… is it all over?”

Julie looked up from where she had crawled over to check Carrie’s pulse - the blonde had one. Which meant either Carrie was only knocked out, or her heart rate could still be read through that gun’s ‘temporal freezing’.

“I think it’s over,” Julie agreed, her voice shaking.

There was another moment of silence. “So,” Lee said, clearing his throat as he pushed himself up. “Uh, will you guys still be needing my help? For moving all of these unconscious bodies?”

Not very far away, though completely unaware of recent events, Hank Waterson sat at his writing desk. He stared at the page in front of him in irritation. “This letter has nothing whatsoever to do with my novel,” he muttered. “It doesn’t even make sense. Where did it come from?” He scanned down the words on the sheet once again:

‘Waterson.

‘If you read this, it’s been over two days since my arrival. I assume either my mission is failing, or I neglected to turn off the equivalent of a post hypnotic suggestion. Either way, no more beating about the brush:  Glen ‘Glinephanis’ Oaks may not be a time criminal, but neither is he whom he appears. He is not merely a trainer. He represents a junction point for the entire temporal war. Please, DO NOT TRUST HIM. I retroactively apologize in advance for whatever methods I may use, or may have used, to convince you of this.

‘Yours, Mindylenopia.’

“It must be some game of Carrie’s,” her father concluded. Except, if that was true, how could it be in his handwriting? He shook his head. “I guess I’ll show it to her once she gets back from the movies with Glen… and she’s NOT going to put off our little talk about responsibility any longer.”

That decision made, Hank set the sheet aside and turned his attention back to his novel. Trying to figure out what he could do to fracture his character dynamics even more.

-Next Episode: Making the Rounds (aka the fallout from this)

-We’re maxing out on character tags in this post, even Hank’s involved. Was the resolution with Frank at all what you expected? Feel like casting a vote or comment?

Previously: Luci and Carrie independently decided to resume contact with Julie and the others. Glen told Carrie that she would return to him, and that she should destroy the time machine.

PART 3.16b: BLAME GAME 2

Luci shifted her attention from Chartreuse to Laurie to Clarke and then back to Chartreuse. “What do you mean,” she began, “when you say that Frank is now somewhere in the FUTURE?”

The young girl listened with half an ear as Chartreuse launched into an explanation of Julie’s plan. Internally, she wondered why the wealthy brunette hadn’t returned home yet. This all made no sense. What did they mean the car crash was related to a supposed visitor from another time?

I mean, sure, car accident, lockdown, but that had only been one of a number of things which Corry and the other student factions had done to each other that day. Right? RIGHT? So… so why did the three of them look so serious?

“Ok, whatever,” Luci said as Chartreuse finished. “Julie’s theories aside, have any of YOU seen this Mindy character??”

“I have,” Laurie piped up. “I was in the library when she arrived.”

“And did she look like she was some time traveler with mental powers?” Luci challenged.

“I… I don’t know. She had a gun with her. She ran after Carrie. I was scared.”

“Well… well…” Well, why didn’t someone tell me this sooner? That was what Luci wanted to say. Unfortunately, she already knew the answer was ‘we tried’, a response which she knew would only further aggravate her.

She really had become too obsessed with that log book. To the point of putting the rest of her life not merely on vibrate, but on total silent mode. As a result, Frank - and Laurie’s brother - had become stuck two days in the future. How could she have let this happen?!

“I’m back. Oh, good, you found Luci,” came Julie’s voice from the sitting room entrance.

“She arrived on her own,” Clarke noted, which was all anyone had time to say before Luci launched herself towards the new arrival.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BOYFRIEND?!” she shrieked, grabbing onto a handful of Julie’s sweater. “How could you send him off on such a rash, inconceivable, unprepared whim of a temporal mission?!”

“They went of their own volition,” Julie replied quietly.

It was her tone that brought Luci up short. She’d expected Julie to snap back at her, perhaps engage her in a shouting match - not reply in that soft, sad tone. As such, she offered no resistance as Julie pulled her sweater free from the shorter girl’s clutches.

“Now,” the brunette continued, “I suggest we modify our plans in order to incorporate a smokescreen with respect to Frank and Corry’s location over the next forty six hours. They’ll be back on Saturday night, that much is certain.”

There was the briefest of pauses before Laurie Veniti broke down in tears. “This is all my fault, oh God I never should have suggested that stupid idea to you, I didn’t know enough, I should have kept my stupid mouth shut, why didn’t I realize this would happen, oh God I’m so stupid, stupid, stupid, oh God, oh Corry, oh Frank, oh Corry…."

“Laurie! Laurie!” Chartreuse said, hurrying over to grab the redhead in a hug. “This isn’t your fault! You hear me? It’s not anyone’s fault!” She rubbed Laurie’s back as her friend buried her face in the crook of Chartreuse’s neck. “All this means is that something totally freaky happens in a couple days that will, you know, prevent Frank and Corry from time traveling back to us. That’s it! They’re not dead or anything! They’re only, you know, potential hostages, maybe.”

“At least Mindy is out of the way for now, right?” Clarke noted, after casting a worried glance at Laurie himself.

Julie nodded. “Yeah. We learned as much from Lee, who said Mindy vanished in a flash of light. I was going to explain more to him, but he decided I’d been right. If he doesn’t know, he won’t have to lie about it later."

“Well peachy as all THAT sounds,” Luci cut back in, hoping to reassert herself, “exactly what did you mean by ‘modify the plan’, Julie? Seems to me it’s been shot all to hell. You have no more knowledge of this Mindy than you did BEFORE your unauthorized use of the time machine stranded our friends in the future!”

“Frank authorized it. And two days hardly qualifies as a stranding," Julie countered. A measure of her own assertiveness was creeping back into her tone. “And as far as capturing Mindy goes, we can still do that, as per the plan. We know that she’ll be arriving along with the machine in the vicinity of the park, we even know roughly when, we simply need a way to ensure that redhead stays knocked out once she arrives!”

“Oh, sure, piece of cake,” Luci fired back.

“Look, we’re not debating this any more!” Julie said, throwing her hands up into the air. “Okay, fine, so my track record today has been lousy. So Megan’s running the school and we don’t have the time machine. So what?? I’ve always been better at the long term game! I can do a lot in two days! At least I’ve been actively involving myself here! Where the hell have you been since lunchtime, Miss Lucille Isabella Primrose??”

For a moment, Luci wasn’t sure if she wanted to get right up into Julie’s face again, or simply break down like Laurie. Neither option felt palatable. So with the simple response of “None of your business”, Luci quickly spun on her heel to stare over at the wall. She tried to ignore the lump in her throat.

“Fine,” Julie sighed. “So I propose we do phone tag with the Dijoras and the Venitis. Say that Frank and Corry are staying here tonight for whatever reason. Laurie can stay too, to add credibility. Luci too, maybe. That buys us twelve hours.”

“Perhaps more than that,” Clarke put in. “They said school would be cancelled tomorrow. Structural reassessment. We can drop by to visit our lockers if we need something, but otherwise school is out until Monday.”

“Fine, good,” Julie repeated. “So, does anyone else want to bitch at me here?”

The only sound was that of Laurie’s quiet sniffles. Until, from down the hall, there came the loud crash of someone slamming open the mansion’s double doors. It was followed by the loud scream of “JULIE!”, in a voice easily recognizable, even from within the sitting room. Then, “Julie, why the HELL can’t I sense Frank Dijora anywhere in the present?!?”

The time travellers in the room exchanged glances. “Well, on the bright side, she’s no longer Mindy’s hostage!” Chartreuse offered up.

Carrie stomped up to her house, clenching and unclenching her fists. The last words she’d spoken at Julie’s house still ringing in her ears.

“If any of you interfere with the time streams again, I’ll banish you all to the middle ages!”

Yeah, that had quietened down the lot of them. She wondered fleetingly if it was really an idle threat. After all, maybe a day or two stuck in history would convince the others that they shouldn’t muck about with time travel until AFTER consulting with time’s “ultimate weapon”!

Carrie froze, her hand a short distance from the doorknob. Oh no, what was she even thinking?! After all, the conclusions Julie and the others had drawn had been accurate. And the idea itself had been a pretty good one. Honestly, THAT was what irked Carrie the most. If only she’d been there, working with them… but she hadn’t been. She’d been working with Glen instead.

And because of that, they had no time machine, and Carrie would HAVE to return to Glen, not only to learn about banishing Mindy, but about how to keep Frank and Corry safe, while making sure Mindy didn’t get her hands on the portable time machine permanently, and of course Laurie and Lee were ALSO back in the mix, confusing things…

Carrie looked down at her hand. She swallowed. She wasn’t sorry about slapping Julie across the face. And yet, she realized now that she’d derived no satisfaction from it.

The blonde teenager reached out again open her front door, but this time before her hand could touch the doorknob, the door was opening from the inside. “Carrie!” her father shouted. “Where have you been?? I have been worried sick!”

“I… I was out with Glen,” Carrie said truthfully. “Something came up at school, and we had to have a talk about it.”

“I’ll say something came up at school! It’s all over the news!” Hank Waterson retorted. “Your friends Frank and Julie called, not knowing where you were, and some female police officer in plainclothes came by indicating to me that you were one of the people this escaped lunatic was shouting about… Carrie, I’d started calling the hospital every fifteen minutes, asking them if any unidentified girls had been brought in!”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Dad…”

“You watch your mouth young lady!” he interrupted. “Now, I realize you want to be free to live your own life, and I’ve been trying hard to accommodate you in that respect… but on a day when the school library gets demolished by some girl who refers to you by name, you should at least give me the courtesy of a phone call!”

Carrie paused. Her father was interpreting her momentary outburst as ‘let me live my own life’ rather than ‘as if I didn’t have enough to deal with’ - which was probably for the best.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” she replied, switching gears. She tried to bring a few tears to her eyes and found they came with alarming ease. “I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Oh, Carrie,” Hank sighed, softening his tone. He reached out to pull his daughter into an embrace. “I know we’ve had our differences, but I thought we’d reached an understanding. I want to be here for you. I want you to feel like you can tell me anything. The thought that I’ll receive another phone call like the one I had last year, it scares me to death.”

“I know,” Carrie murmured, instinctively reaching out to hug her father back. “I really am sorry. SO sorry. But honestly, there’s nothing I can tell you. I don’t know why Mi– that girl was after me today, so I just got scared and Glen happened to be nearby and I lost track of time.”

Her father led her inside the house. He pulled back slightly from the embrace, closing the door, and looking to meet her gaze. After a moment, he nodded. “All right then,” he said. “For now, I’m just happy to see that you’re okay. But we will have another talk about responsibility, mark my words. Now, take off your shoes and come into the kitchen. I’ve kept dinner warm.”

Carrie nodded, wiping her cheeks dry. It occurred to her then how much in character this was for her father of late - Glen must have been overreacting when he had said Mindy would influence her father and friends in some way. Unless this was all such a carefully engineered plot that even Carrie couldn’t see through it, in which case Mindy probably deserved to win.

However, deep down Carrie knew Glen was still dead right about one thing… in the end, she was the only one who could deal with Mindy. And so, she was going to have to sneak out tonight, and go back for training. Because she had less than two days to figure out how to release her temporal self… safely or otherwise.

-Next Episode: Banishment.

-Happy Thanksgiving Weekend to fellow Canadians! You may recall these episodes take place mid-October, in the week following that holiday. So this time next week, we’ll be temporally in synch - and caught up to Frank! Care to Vote? Or speculate in comments?

Previously: Luci discovered Linquist’s logbook was in another language. Someone named “Mindy” crashed a van into the school library and chased after Carrie, claiming Glen was a temporal fugitive.

PART 3.14b: THE CONSPIRACY UNFOLDS 2

At the warning, Julie spun to face Clarke. “But…”

“Frank ran to the office to keep tabs on things there,” Clarke continued doggedly, “And there was an announcement that all students are get into a classroom and remain there until further notice. We need to comply, to avoid calling attention to ourselves.”

Julie clenched her jaw, but based on the van driver’s expression, she realized that she had probably obtained as much information as she could from him. “Okay. But listen, we’ll need to convene a meeting of all time travellers ASAP,” she asserted, moving around the van. And coming face to face with Corry.

“A meeting which will include me, I presume?" the redhead said.

“Not today," Julie said, trying to dodge past him.

“Hold on!” Corry countered, moving to block her. “With something of this magnitude? I could cause even more damage by being out of the loop. Besides, if I’m not aware of whatever time travel stuff you and your friends have been unleashing, how can we be expected to effectively run the school together, partner?”

Invoking the partnership caught Julie off guard. She was tempted to point out how Megan was really the one in charge now, only to have a small voice interject, “T-Time travel?” from behind the adjacent reference shelving unit. Everyone spun as Laurie Veniti poked her head out.

“Laurie!” Julie said. “I told you to stay back, out of sight!”

Corry’s twin made a little shrugging motion. “Yeah, but that announcement said to go into the nearest classroom, and since I saw my brother creeping up on you I figured we could all go somewhere together… with Clarke too! S-So what are you saying? Because there’s something about time travel… something I can’t quite put my finger on…”

“Hold on,” Clarke interrupted, raising his hand. He’d noticed the school librarian hang up his phone, and Mr. Price was now heading towards them. “We really need to table this discussion for later.”

The halls were deserted. Hunt had apparently managed to evacuate the school during the hour Carrie had spent in the auditorium. Good. At least, Carrie assumed the building had been evacuated – she supposed some people might still be managing a silent lockdown inside the classrooms. But there were no police officers roaming the halls like she might have otherwise expected, and the level of ache in her head implied the massive changes were done with - for now. She decided to risk visiting her locker.

She found the note inside. It was unsigned, but Carrie knew who it had come from, given the handwriting. ‘Suggest you don’t go home.’ it read. ‘Meet behind park, at ravine. Will explain.’

“Yes, I think you’d better explain,” Carrie murmured. “Who is this sister of yours, this Mindy-onomatopoeia? Are you really some fugitive from the future? Or are you merely from a time traveling family that you elected not to tell me about, GLEN??”

She crumpled the note in her hand before grabbing her coat and bookbag and slamming her locker door shut. She felt confused, frustrated, and even a little scared. “Goddamn time travel,” the blonde cheerleader concluded, striding to the nearest hallway door and kicking at the crash bar with her heel to open it. “Why can’t I have a normal life?”

Moments after Carrie’s departure, a nearby door clicked open and a young asian girl poked her head out. She glanced up and down the vacant hallway before closing the door again. “I think we’re in the clear, Tim,” Luci whispered. “That noise had to be the last people evacuating. My guess is that no one expected people to duck into the yearbook room. That’s why no one came to get us.”

The blonde boy shifted uncertainly from his position under the table. “You think?” he asked. “I mean, that lockdown can’t have been a drill, not with people sending messages about a car crash and a gun. Maybe we should stay a bit longer? After all, we’ve sent something to our parents to tell them we’re okay, and it’s not like we’ve got nothing to do…” He gestured at the notebook open on the floor.

Luci grinned. “I’m glad you find Linquist’s language as fascinating as I do. But you said you had some reference books at home - so if the coast IS clear? We could make better headway there. It would probably put your parents more at ease too.”

Tim considered, then nodded, gathering up the pages of notes he and Luci had been making since lunchtime that day. Shortly after, Linquist’s logbook in hand, the young girl followed Tim out of the room.

Carrie paced back and forth at the tree line of the park, glancing in mounting annoyance at her watch. “An hour,” she muttered. “On top of the time it took to get to the note, so where the hell…” She paused as she caught sight of someone motioning to her down in the ravine. Stomping a little closer, she was able to recognize Glen’s coat, so she hurried down to meet him. Finally.

“Don’t you shush me!” Carrie said, noticing that Glen had a finger pressed up to his lips. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, buddy!” Nevertheless, she did keep her voice down.

Glen simply sighed, leading Carrie back deeper amid the tree trunks before speaking. “Is it true then?” he asked. “Was the person who crashed the van into the school looking for me?”

“She wasn’t only looking for you,” Carrie shot back, “this ‘Mindy’ girl waved a gun around and went out of her way to tell me you were a fugitive from the future. What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

Glen looked genuinely shocked. “Mindy? It was Mindylenopia? Oh, I’m so sorry, Carrie. I had hoped to have a little more time before explaining the nature of my mission, but if she’s forcing my hand…”

“Mission?!” Carrie felt a cold hand grabbing at her heart. Somehow, she’d still held out hope that this was all some sort of cosmic misunderstanding. That Glen would be as confused as her about the situation. No such luck. “You mean you really ARE from the future?”

“If you are indeed the ultimate temporal weapon.”

Carrie took a step back, stumbled on a root, and fell to the ground. “Oh God. Oh God, y-you knew about… the whole time?! B-But… does this mean you’ve never cared about me as a p-person?!?” Insanely, that felt like the thing which mattered the most. “I mean, on that first date, when you said you’d be honest with me, and that you merely sensed some extraordinary ability - was it all lies to get close to this weapon that I’m supposed to become?!”

“Oh, Carrie, no,” Glen said, kneeling down beside her. “I do care about you. And that is how I felt about you at first… about future you. The reason I never said anything to you about your destiny was because, well, your friend Chartreuse seemed to be providing you with something of a power basis. And there was no reason for me to start your training right away.”

“You were… sent back to train me?” Within her spinning thoughts, something clicked. “Of course. The reason you didn’t trip my headache that day in the drama room, out of time - is because you were somehow already a time anomaly. That’s also why, whenever I centred on you in a vision, my senses inevitably pulled me forwards into the future… because that’s where you originated.”

Which was what had also led her to see Mindy, that time at the dance. Her jaw clenched at the memory. “But if you’ve come back for me, who’s this Mindy? Is your sister an agent for the other side??”

“Actually, if this is the Mindylenopia I know, she’s an agent from our side gone bad,” Glen explained ruefully. “And she’s not my sister. For the record, Temporals don’t use ‘last names’ - those imply a certain ancestry. I’m more properly known as Glinephanis. I selected the name Glen Oaks shortly after my arrival in your time. It was the name of some memorial gardens in a nearby town. She must have learned of my name at the hotel here, then given herself a similar last name, to play with your mind.”

Carrie wished the pounding in her temples would cease. It wasn’t a temporal headache any more, but it was almost as bad. “So… the Chronologic Patrol?”

Glen frowned. “Chrono what? Carrie, there is no such thing.”

“Oh gawwwwwwwwwd,” Carrie moaned, lowering her head down to between her legs. “I can’t take this. Not now. I was all set to have a nice, relaxing evening… instead, I’ve got a girl from the future trying to kill a trainer I didn’t even know I had, and possibly me as well! Assuming you’re not lying, being some fugitive yourself, out to kill me in my sleep!”

“I assure you, I’m here to help,” Glen said. “Is there anything you’d like me to do to prove my sincerity?”

“Yes! No… I don’t know!” Carrie said, grabbing two fistfuls of her hair. “How could you even… wait, yes! If you really came from the future, you must have a time machine! Tell me, where is it?”

Glen stood back up. “I didn’t come here via a time machine, Carrie.”

“No? If not, how in hell could you end up in my present?!”

He smiled. “Carrie… you sent me here. Your future self did. Using your abilities.”

Mindylenopia forced herself to stop and take in a few deep breaths before approaching the house. She had to stop rushing things - she’d made it back. The hard part was over. There was more time now, time to work carefully, time to be cunning. Time to control the people she was talking to with more finesse.

Time to come up with a better cover story.

She wasn’t used to having that time. In retrospect, her improvised crashing of the van had done little aside from paint a target on her back. But for all she’d known, “Glen Oaks” had already recruited past-Carrie as his personal temporal guardian! She’d had to gamble that while at school, they wouldn’t be together. Hadn’t she?

Well, they were probably together by now.

Mindy continued her advance towards the house. Having time or not, after a half hour of observation here, with no sign of either Glen or Carrie, she had to DO something. “This world better appreciate what I’m going through for them,” Mindy muttered as she adjusted the zipper on the jacket she’d ‘borrowed’.

She rang the bell. An older man answered the door and looked down at her. “Yes?” Hank Waterson said tentatively. Mindy simply smiled.

Hopefully you’re enjoying this. Maybe even enough for the weekly vote? Or better yet, some sort of remark? Views are actually down since publishing twice per week. Bad form?

3.08: TUNE UP

The band hit the final chord as Corry finished singing. He turned to smile at them. “Great work, guys. Thanks for agreeing to the extra practice. We’ll knock ‘em dead tomorrow night.”

Tim smiled back from where he sat behind the keyboard. Lee hit the cymbals and gave Corry a thumbs up. Sue adjusted the strap of her bass guitar.

“What was the significance of that song anyway?” Sue inquired. “Flying to the moon, it’s a little sappier than our normal fare."

“Request from my sister,” Corry shrugged. “Reminds her of some animated TV show she likes. Actually, maybe we should wrap up today with something different?”

“Which one?" Lee inquired, spinning a drumstick in his hand.

“That one which is also a popular theme song," Corry said. “Remember? It goes like this…”

Glen smiled as Carrie’s father opened the door. “Hello, Mr. Waterson. I’m here to pick up Carrie.”

Hank Waterson stepped aside. “She’s still getting ready, but do come in. I’ve been hoping to get the chance to meet you.”

“I figured.” Glen entered the house, knotting his tie a little tighter. Inwardly, he cursed whatever human had invented the things, and wondered who had made this school dance a semi-formal affair. At least a nice shirt sufficed, no need for him to have a jacket. “I hope to make a favourable impression,” the redhead continued. “As my intentions are completely honourable, and I’ll try to have your daughter home by whatever time you specify."

“I’m glad to hear it.” Carrie’s father closed the front door again. “I gathered as much from her, but there were a few things that she was unable to tell me. For instance, you seem to have no family in town. What is the story with your parents?”

“Oh, they’ve now purchased a house over in that new development to the north,” Glen replied, gesturing vaguely. “But mom’s still wrapping up with business out east, and as such they’ve arranged to have me stay at the Clayton Hotel for a few more weeks.”

Hank Waterson’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re staying at the hotel?”

“Ah, yes.” Glen supposed that Carrie hadn’t mentioned that detail. Made sense, in retrospect. “It’s not a big deal, really. The room has a small fridge and hotplate, and the maid service tidies daily. My parents wanted me to be here for the full semester, you see, and this was the best way to do that.”

“I see,” Mr. Waterson said slowly. “And what business is it that your parents are involved in?”

“My mother is a scientist - that’s what’s keeping her out of town, at the lab - while my father is a pilot, so he’s all over the place,” Glen said easily. “I’m hoping to go into the field of sciences myself someday. It certainly seems profitable enough.”

Mr. Waterson seemed to size him up. “Yet Carrie tells me you’re a long distance runner.”

“Yeah, well, I run, I act, I skate, I paint… everyone needs hobbies,” Glen said. Time to spin a question back, perhaps. “A person should be well rounded, don’t you think?”

Before Hank Waterson could answer, Carrie’s voice came from upstairs. “Is that Glen down there? Don’t you dare give him the third degree, Dad! Tell him I’ll be down in another few seconds!"

Glen half smiled. “You heard her - so, any final rules I should know about, before your daughter comes charging down and admonishes you for giving them to me?"

Hank eyed Glen again, then shook his head. “Nothing that isn’t common sense,” he decided. “And you seem to be the sort of boy who knows what I mean by that. In fact, I’ll level with you, a part of me is glad to see Carrie making new friends like this. She’s seemed a bit more withdrawn from her peers ever since she was hospitalized last year.”

“Ah, when she was shot?” Glen said. “I heard about that. Nasty business.”

“It was,” Mr. Waterson affirmed. He then leaned in closer to Glen’s face to speak more quietly. “An incident which has helped me to realize that, should you or anyone else lay an inappropriate finger on my daughter’s body, I will be forced into drastic action. Understood?”

“Naturally,” Glen affirmed, maintaining his composure. “Indeed, I would have been disappointed not to hear such concern from her only surviving parent.”

A frown tugged at Hank Waterson’s features, but before he could say anything more, Carrie appeared at the top of the stairs. “Glen! Glad to see you.” She lifted the skirt of her long purple dress slightly in order to avoid tripping during her descent. “I trust my father hasn’t been bothering you?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Glen said, turning to face her. “And may I say, you look radiant in that outfit.”

“Why thank you,” Carrie said, pinkening mildly in the cheeks.

Her father cleared his throat. “Carrie, remember our deal. You’re home by eleven thirty.”

The blonde rolled her eyes. “Yes, Dad.” She grabbed her jacket out of the closet. “Come on, Glen, we don’t want to arrive at the dance TOO fashionably late.”

Glen nodded in reply and the two teenagers left the house, Carrie’s father watching them from the front door until they reached the sidewalk. Glen glanced back as the front door closed. “So, you made a deal with your Dad?”

“Yeah, he’s letting me wear the dress with the plunging neckline on condition that I come home right after the dance ends at eleven,” Carrie admitted. “Probably realized that I was going to wear this thing no matter what, and tricked me into that compromise.”

“Ah. Clever man. Something that runs in the family, I see.”

“Ha! He wasn’t so devious back before my brush with death. I swear, last year, he didn’t care at all! It’s only been during the last several months that he’s taken an interest.”

“Must be a real pain then, huh?”

Carrie pursed her lips. “No,” she murmured. “It’s nice. We need to be home on time.” She reached out to take Glen’s arm. “But never mind about my Dad, let’s get to this dance! I want to make sure Julie has someone to talk to when she turns up.”

“Uh oh.” Chartreuse looked down. “It’s, like, that bad, huh?”

“Oh, I didn’t say anything!” Laurie protested.

“That’s the thing, normally you have so much to say,” Chartreuse pointed out. She fanned out her skirt, staring down at the multiple splashes of colour that adorned it. “I, you know, thought it would compliment the sparkly sequins I added to my blouse. No such luck?”

“It… kinda works? It must be the lighting in the room. Don’t worry Chartreuse, I’m sure lots of people will ask you to dance!” Laurie Veniti adjusted the big, puffy shoulders of her own long, red dress. “Now me, I probably shouldn’t have gone with this choice of colour which is so similar to my hair because I probably look exactly like a tomato or a big red candle or something and the dress is too formal anyway plus so many people here are already in couples so I doubt I’ll be asked to dance by anyone!” She sighed.

“Laurie, stay calm. You look fine,” Chartreuse countered. “Anyway, worst comes to worst, we can always dance with each other.” Which didn’t mean she fancied her friend in that way, but Laurie was probably the only girl she could dance with and not spark gossip.

Chartreuse looked out across the dance floor. The music had started under half an hour ago, yet there were only a few people out there. Semi-formal dances seemed to be less popular these days - student council should have picked her suggestion of a Hawaiian theme. “So, when is your brother’s band going to be, you know, performing?”

Laurie’s brow furrowed in thought. “Golly, it’ll be at least another half hour, because I remember Corry saying something about Lee not being able to make it until after eight. But I know they’re doing two sets, whenever the DJ wants a break!”

Chartreuse’s gaze settled on where Corry and his group had set up their equipment, near the stage. It looked like Sue was double checking the electronics. Which is when Chartreuse realized she was getting a vibe. Why was she getting a vibe? “Remind me how the four of them, like, hooked up? It was second semester of last year, right?”

“Yeah. Partly on account of me,” Laurie agreed. “See, Corry had practically given up on the band idea after the mess with Julie. But last March I pushed for him to give it another go, particularly after Clarke talked to me, saying that Tim was trying to come out of his shell, and that he was a pianist. Knowing how hard it can be to put yourself out there, I had my brother hear Tim play, then Corry finally held guitarist auditions. Sue had the best one. And Lee got personally invited in, after Corry heard him drumming after school at around the same time.”

“Sweet. Nice that they’ve come such a long way in, like, a relatively short amount of time.”

“Corry really wanted to do this performance too,” Laurie continued. “In fact, he’s pushed for more and more rehearsals since school resumed… to the point where it kinda worries me that the other members resent him for that.” She followed Chartreuse’s gaze over to the band setup, then back again. “You’ve got that look. Why?”

“A feeling.” Chartreuse shook her head. No point causing her friend to worry. “Probably nothing. Yeah, it’s nothing Laurie, never mind. Come on, let’s head closer to the door. I think the guy there is, you know, trying to get your attention!”

It wasn’t a standard code, since rearranging the words - if you called them words - hadn’t helped. Luci hadn’t had any success reading the first letter of every word either. Or with ROT13. But perhaps if she… the young girl’s thoughts were interrupted by a pinch in her side. “Yipe! Hey, what was that for?”

“Well, I only asked you twice if I could take your jacket for you,” Frank pointed out with a grin.

“Oh. Sorry.” Luci felt her cheeks warm as she shrugged it off. “Guess I got lost in thought.” She looked down at her outfit. “Gods, I hate that this is a semi-formal affair! I don’t have any clothes like that, and even though Carrie offered to help me shop, I didn’t want to do that either.”

“Luci, don’t worry, those are nice pants and you look just fine in that blouse. It’s a nice shade of blue. Anyway, it’s not like I’m wearing a tie.”

“But you have a proper jacket. Which you can simply toss on a chair. Why can men can get away with that stuff, while we’re supposed to be all dressy?” Luci grumbled. “High heels should be against the law.”

Frank adjusted his glasses. “Well, I see some other girls around who aren’t in heels either. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Luci sighed. “Says the guy who won’t get laughed at behind his back for his outfit. Girls are the worst.”

Frank stared, then reached out to take Luci’s hand, gently squeezing it. “Okay, what’s bothering you? It’s not simply the dress code here, you’ve been in a bit of a mood all week. Are you still upset with me? Is this a test to see if I’m actually paying enough attention to you?”

“What? Oh, no, it’s not that,” Luci assured.

“Then what’s the problem?”

Luci shifted her weight back and forth. “It’s that logbook of Linquist’s,” she admitted. “The one Julie found. I’ve been working on cracking the code, to figure out exactly what sort of stuff that nutcase was doing, but I’ve had no luck! It vexes me. And because I was working on that, I didn’t go shopping, and so now I’m going to look like an social idiot, and it’s all that Linquist’s fault again!”

“Ah. Um, that last is a bit of a stretch - are you sure you’re not simply looking for more reasons to hate the guy?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I wish they’d picked Chartreuse’s suggestion of a Hawaiian theme,” Luci groused.

Frank lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, so you’d prefer to be wearing a grass skirt? I mean, not that I’d be complaining, but…”

“But, ugh, point made,” Luci realized, looking back down at her legs. “Fine, point to you, it could be worse, let’s enjoy what we have.” She attempted a smile.

Frank grinned back. “Okay then. I’ll just check our coats, be right back.” He moved off towards the coat check area.

Luci spent a couple of seconds admiring the decorations, but she couldn’t help it, her mind was soon spinning with more ideas, more possibilities for that book. Perhaps a Caesar cipher…

“How’s business, Joe?” Frank inquired as he set the jackets down on the table. The late September dance was usually better for snacks, as compared to the coat check part, which was better in February. Regardless, their booth was a way for the business club to make a bit of money, splitting the proceeds with Students’ Council.

“Slow but steady,” Joe Drew replied. “Actually, we haven’t missed your expertise back here at all. I’d be worried for your job.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Frank said dryly. His fellow senior tore off a couple of numbered ticket stubs, exchanging them for his quarters. “But I have to say, I prefer Luci’s company to yours.”

“I can understand that,” Joe granted. The blonde boy leaned in a little closer. “By the way, I’ve heard Julie might turn up later tonight. Can you believe that girl? I bet a brawl will break out, and Mr. Fisk will cancel all future dances forever!”

“Oh, come on Joe… I think she’s learned how to behave herself,” Frank said, hoping he sounded reassuring.

“Hrmph,” Joe retorted, drawing back. His eyes shifted to the stage. “I suppose that, deep down, it’s all that idiot Corry’s fault. Guy should have dealt with her last year. I mean, he exposed what Julie did! How she manipulated folks like me! So why did he turn around and start acting all nicey nice to her?!”

“Yeah, uh, I suppose there’s stuff we don’t know about the situation,” Frank offered. He began to wonder how to best extract himself from the conversation.

Joe shook his head. “I know as much as I need to. Julie probably paid him off, so Corry’s even worse than she is!”

Before Frank could think of a good reply, a couple came up behind him to place a coat on the table. “Service, please,” the boy stated.

“Coming right up,” Joe said, finally handing off Frank and Luci’s coats to his co-worker before moving to deal with the newcomers. Frank took the opportunity to escape back to Luci’s side.

Carrie tried to decipher the noise Glen made upon their arrival. Failing that, she spoke up. “What? Is this so different from dances at your last school?”

Glen shook his head, still eyeing the decorations. “The faculty there didn’t believe in dances. So you’ll have to forgive me if I tread on your toes, dancing’s a skill I never really developed.”

“Ooh, amazing, something you’re not good at,” Carrie teased. She smiled. “We’ll manage, just don’t make a habit of toe crunching.”

“Scuze me, comin’ through!”

Carrie recognized Lee’s voice, and she turned to see him dashing though the front doors, dodging nimbly around the nearest couple. “Whoop, sorry ‘bout that, gotta hook up with the power cad, pardon me, scuze me…”

“Glory be, now his gang’s all here.”

This time, it was the sheer bitterness in the tone that made Carrie look for the source. Which turned out to be a light haired boy leaning against the wall. He was glowering at the crowd in general, but when he saw that Carrie was observing him in particular, he turned and shuffled towards the cafeteria/dance floor.

“Wonder what that guy’s problem is,” Glen mused aloud.

“That’s Tommy,” Carrie explained. “Looks like he’s still upset that Corry picked Sue to play bass guitar in the band, over him.” She tugged idly on a strand of her hair. “See, Sue was a side switcher - with Corry in Grade Nine, but then she joined me and Julie. Only to return to Corry last November, after Julie’s secrets got exposed. Meanwhile, Tommy’s been on Corry’s side since grade school.”

Glen grimaced. “So this is some kinda loyalty thing?”

Carrie nodded. “Yeah. I mean, Corry wasn’t wrong to choose Sue for his band, in that she IS the better guitarist. But it might have been the last straw for Tommy. It was the people who were closest to Corry who were blindsided the most, you see. When he cracked down on any attacks against Julie. Speaking of, you WILL look out for her here, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Glen rolled his eyes. “School politics. How irritating. Stop me if I ask again.”

“Why? Is that another thing that you didn’t see much of at your last school?”

“Not over such petty issues,” Glen countered, shaking his head. “Where I come from, it’s all about world domination.”

Carrie blinked. “Pardon me?”

He winked at her. “Kidding. So, shall we go and have a dance or two?”

Kidding? Or were they back to him keeping her off balance? Carrie pursed her lips. Every so often, he said something to make her wonder if she should be more suspicious. Except, she’d recently realized that Glen didn’t trigger any temporal headaches. Implying that no changes were occurring to her timeline. No, this was on her, not him - she had to stop overthinking this.

“Yes, dancing. Watch the feet,” she warned, hooking her arm around his as they headed for the doorway.

“I d-d-don’t know if I can d-do this,” Tim said, peering around the door frame at all the people out on the dance floor. “I d-d-didn’t think there would be so many p-people here. N-Not given the theme, and what happened last year!”

“Tim, first of all, breathe. Second, you can’t cut out on me now!” Corry crossed his arms. “Not after all the hard work we’ve put in.”

“W-W-W-Well…”

“Yo, dudes and dudette,” Lee said, breezing past Tim at the door to emerge into the far hallway. For once, his worn suit jacket was actually appropriate to the occasion, even if the T-Shirt he wore underneath it was not. “Have I missed anything?”

“No, but you are five minutes late,” Corry said, irritably. “What’s more, that’s becoming a habit for you this month.”

“Hey, cut me some slack, jack,” Lee protested. “I told you when I came on board that family matters and schoolwork would have to take precedence over this band.”

“All right, come on, everybody calm down,” Sue put in. “There’s still plenty of time to tune up and decide on the songs for our first set. We’ll knock ‘em dead, no worries.”

“Right, good, I like that philosophy,” Corry said, pointing at her. “Now, I’ve already seen to the drums, the keyboard and the electronics… so Sue, let’s go get the guitars and do one final check. The DJ told me we’re on after another couple songs.” The two of them hurried off to the music room, leaving Tim and Lee behind.

“I’m n-not so sure about this,” Tim murmured to Lee, after checking to see that Corry was out of earshot. “What if I mess up notes? What if we g-get heckled off the stage?”

“Don’t even think about it, tiny T,” Lee soothed. “Mrs. Willis said we sounded great, and the school crowd ain’t that hostile.” He glanced towards the cafeteria. “Well, okay, some of ‘em are, but it’s only towards the power cad. We’re clear.”

“I g-guess,” Tim said uncertainly. He took a few slow breaths. “I’ll feel SO much better after tonight. When Corry isn’t so obsessive.”

Lee rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, uh, I wouldn’t totally count on that though?” he warned. “I figure the better this goes, the more the guy will want to perform. If you can’t handle his scheduling, you’re gonna have to learn to stand up to him. Like I do sometimes.”

“Oh,” Tim said sullenly. He shuffled his feet. “How about you stand up for me too?”

Lee shook his head. “Sorry, T. I would, but I don’t really want the guy on my case any more than he is already. Besides, you’ll eventually have to learn to do it yourself.”

“I g-guess.” Tim sighed. “Know what? It’s gotten to the point where I wish Corry would disappear. Only for a little while.”

Lee frowned. It looked to Tim as if he wanted to say something further, but before he could, Laurie Veniti peered out of the cafeteria. “Corry?” she said, timidly.

“Hey, double V. He’s on his way,” Lee offered, turning towards Corry’s twin. As if on cue, Corry and Sue appeared at the far end of the hallway with their guitars, walking towards them.

“Great!” Chartreuse said brightly, stepping out from behind Laurie. “Because the two of us wanted to, like, wish the whole group the best of luck on your little, you know, debut.” She offered an encouraging smile to all the members, before reaching out a hand towards Corry as he strode up.

“Sure, thanks,” Corry said absentmindedly, reaching out to shake Chartreuse’s outstretched palm as he passed. He was brought up short, however, when Chartreuse didn’t release him. Instead, she grabbed hold with both of her hands. He turned to fire an irritated look at her, only to flinch back upon seeing Chartreuse’s horrified gaze.

“Ohmigod,” the pink haired mystic gasped out. She shifted her attention from Corry’s hand up to his face. “You, like, totally can’t go out there!” Chartreuse declared. “If you do… you’ll die!”

(Return for Corry’s fate next week. A reminder that a vote at TWF is appreciated.)

3.05: TOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

“Okay, wait, stop, hold the phone!” Carrie shouted, clawing herself back up using the bedsheets. “First things first. You’re telling me this Tope Diamond wasn’t some jewellery, but rather a person?!”

“Yeah, who knew?” Chartreuse replied. “She was heir to the Diamond diamond fortune. Of course, her mother Mother Diamond’s diamonds weren’t from the Dullsville Diamond Mine. They were mining coal instead.”

Carrie stared blankly at her house guest.

“Never mind,” Chartreuse decided. “Here’s the thing. Some people wanted to kidnap Tope and ransom her back for Diamond diamonds. Hence we Vermilions were, you know, asked to help in taking Tope someplace safe.”

“All right,” Carrie said slowly. “Assuming I followed that, when did this turn into a love story?”

Chartreuse blushed. “Right after my eyes locked with Tope’s.”

“Right after your eyes locked with Tope’s,” Carrie repeated back. “Chartreuse, this IS a girl we’re talking about here, right?”

“Yes. But when I was fourteen, I was, like, bisexual. In fact, I’m pretty sure I still am.” Chartreuse swallowed. “I guess that’s never come up. I don’t advertise. Does it bother you? Do you want me to go?”

Carrie thought about it for a moment. “No, you can date whoever you like. Though I can’t help but notice that this Tope Diamond does bear some resemblance to me.”

“Yeah. My sister’s remarked on that,” Chartreuse admitted. “Which is partly why she’s teasing me lately, what with you coming over. But of course, Tope’s hair was, like, longer, her skin was paler and she, you know, smiled more.”

“Ah,” Carrie said. “Just so long as this Tope doesn’t have odd temporal powers too. Because if you were writing me in, I’d have to stop listening.”

“No, no, Tope only had power over my heart,” the pink haired girl said, following the comment with another dreamy sigh.

Carrie’s eyebrow twitched. “Chartreuse, is this Tope about to convince you to use your powers and save the day?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chartreuse accused. “I’ll have you know that I did NOT, like, use my powers during the trip. What happened next was Mom rode with the agents up front, Dad and Azure followed in our car, and I, you know, went with Tope in the camper unit itself.”

"So you can, like, see the future, and stuff?" Tope said, wide eyed.  “Ohmigod, that is so cool, you know?”

Chartreuse shrugged as she finished dying the last few locks of her hair. "I can, but I'm not doing it any more," she said. “It's what I said, and I'm sticking by it. My Mom can consult her spiritual advisors to help in choosing a route for us instead." She put her bottle of 'Quik-Dye' back in her backpack. "Now, I have to ask... has anyone ever told you that you have the most beautiful blue eyes in the world?"

Tope blushed. "Usually just, like, guys who, you know, want my money or my virginity or stuff. So I just tell them, 'yeah, right, as if!' and they, you know, totally get the picture." She paused. "When you say it though, it feels different. Did you totally, like, mean that?"

“Of course I did," the taupe haired girl said softly. "There's something about you, your look, your voice, your perfume - it's making my senses go crazy! I... I can't believe I'm about to say this, Tope, but I've wanted to be close to you ever since the moment I saw you. Would you allow me to kiss you?"

“What? Me, kissed by a girl??” Tope squeaked. "Ewww! That's like... like... well, okay, I guess I don't know what that's like. Hmmm. Gee, now you've got me totally curious. Very well, Chartreuse. You may kiss me!"

Chartreuse could feel her heart hammering in her chest as she moved in closer to that long flowing hair, those blue eyes, those luscious red lips... instinctively, she moved her arms out to encircle Tope's waist. Tope Diamond looked up at her then with another shy smile, draping her own arms over Chartreuse's shoulders, her perfume intoxicating her lover's senses as their eyes closed and...

“Um, but you, like, totally don’t need to hear that part of the story,” Chartreuse realized, cutting herself off with a cough.

“Chartreuse, were you two about to make out??” Carrie said, wide-eyed.

“We just, like, became distracted. Now, outside…”

“Oh my God, you did! You made out!”

“We got distracted!”

“When you were fourteen, you made out with a girl you’d just met? That’s… that’s… what the hell is that about?!”

The pink haired girl flushed. “Carrie, don’t fixate. Youth is for experimentation. Besides, must I, like, get into some the guys you’ve, you know, made out with? On a first date, no less?”

The blonde paused. She supposed she had gone to some questionable lengths in her first few years of high school, to get favours done for herself or for Julie. “Ugh. Fine.”

“So we got distracted,” Chartreuse repeated stubbornly. “As such we, you know, totally didn’t realize the battle was going on until the door kinda blew in.”

"Ohmigod! What was that?" Chartreuse gasped, poking her head out from around the drapes surrounding the camper bed.

"Oh, that was, like, sooooo good...! Do it again...!"

"No, shhhhhh, something's happened! The camper’s not moving and the door is gone!" hissed the taupe haired girl.

Tope's head appeared next to Chartreuse's, a hand raking her long blonde hair back out of her eyes. "Whoa," she murmured. "The Peeping Toms in this area totally don't fool around, yeah?”

"Stay here.” Chartreuse ducked back behind the drapes for a couple of seconds, then jumped out, finishing buttoning up her blouse. "I'll check it out." She reached back into her backpack, pulling out a medium sized relaxation crystal.

The taupe haired mystic crept cautiously towards the door. Moments before reaching it, a man in a grey pinstripe suit stepped in, wielding a tommy gun and smoking a cigar. "All right, me and my boys, we're taking over now, see?" the man said with a thick Brooklyn accent. "So if youse want to just toss that crystal aside and get your hands up, we can be through here nice and peaceful-like."

Chartreuse blinked at the man, glanced down at the crystal in her hand, then proceeded to toss it at him with all the strength she could muster. Caught by surprise, it smacked him in the middle of his forehead and he went down like a sack of wet rocks. The taupe haired girl quickly grabbed the gangster's gun and scrambled past him to glance out the camper's doorway.

The stretch of road they were on was currently deserted - with some notable exceptions. To the right, Chartreuse saw an attack squad of ninjas surrounding her father. Straight ahead, a number of old west gunslingers were facing off against her mother. And to the left, a bunch of Scotsmen with bagpipes were advancing on her sister. Agents Queue and Eh were on the ground unconscious.

"Are you ready to die?" one of the ninjas was saying, his words not quite syncing up with his lips.

"I'm sorry to say that I'm not ready just yet," Hugh Vermilion replied. Then with a yell of 'Aiiiiiiieeeee!' he leapt up into the air and took out a handful of his assailants with a seemingly impossible horizontal spin kick.

"Draw!" one of the cowboys shouted out.

"No!" Amber Vermilion retorted defiantly.

"Fine," the gunslinger said, whipping out his own gun.  Yet even as he did so, a beam of light rose from the small hilt Amber had in her hand. The amber beam neatly deflected the incoming bullet away, and she continued to deftly manipulate her light sword in order to avoid the other bullets which followed.

"About time you decided to help!" Azure shouted accusingly at her sister, drawing Chartreuse's attention to her.

"Ach, there be none who can help ye now, young 'un!" said one of the kilted men. "We'll deafen ye an' take our prize!"

"Oh brother," Azure sighed. She pulled out the small pendant she wore around her neck and shouted out, "Release!" The small key expanded to form a long staff, which Azure then spun about in her hands while she simultaneously withdrew a card from her pocket, tossing it in front of her. "Fight Card!" Azure called out. The magic circle of Clow Reed appeared around her as she tapped the staff on the card. "Release and--"

“Oh, no, wait a minute,” Chartreuse said, furrowing her brow. “I’m getting Azure’s card powers mixed up with one of those classic Japanese anime shows Laurie likes to watch.”

“Chartreuse, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of other wires crossing here too.”

“Maybe I should, you know, skip the fight scene, it was all a little hazy,” Chartreuse decided. “Is that okay, Carrie?”

“Fine by me,” the blonde said, rolling her eyes. “In fact, I never thought I’d say this, but I preferred the love story.”

“Yeah… Tope totally catches one’s eye, doesn’t she?” Chartreuse sighed, clasping her hands.

“That’s not what I… look, never mind. Are we nearly done here?” Carrie inquired. “Because I feel another massive headache coming on.”

“Actually, yes, almost,” Chartreuse said. “Because, see, this is where things get particularly poignant. For it was while we were defeating our many enemies on the one side of the camper, that a group of midgets in trenchcoats broke in through the other side and successfully kidnapped Tope Diamond! My one true love had been taken from me! So I resolved to use my powers again, in order to locate Tope and get her back.”

"Are you sure you can do this? After all, an accurate read of her near future will require particular knowledge of Tope," Hugh Vermilion reminded his daughter. "Did you get some in the time you were together?"

“Yeah. More than you think," Chartreuse muttered, trying to dispel the afterimages of Tope's gentle caresses. She set the last stone in front of her and closed her eyes.

“Remember not to push yourself too hard dear,” Amber reminded. "The forces have a way of drawing you in, if you let your guard down."

"Yes, mom," Chartreuse sighed, already sinking into the deep meditative state required as she focused on Tope and where the beautiful blonde was going to be taken. "Ohm, ohm, oh my... spirits from beyond, show me what is to come!"

Almost immediately her eyes snapped open, unseeing, as her spirit form left her and centred in on Tope's immediate future. She saw a warehouse. Chartreuse flickered through the wall to verify, and sure enough, there was Tope, being tied up to a chair.

"You total idiots!" Tope was saying, her voice somewhat distorted due to the vision. "You were, like, only supposed to threaten to take me, not, you know, actually do it! I mean, do you have any clue what you interrupted?! There was, like, this really hot girl and we were totally working our way towards a..."

Sixty-nine, that was the number listed on the warehouse. Dullsville Warehouse No. 69. Chartreuse had the information she needed, and a part of her warned that it was time to return to the present. Yet what was Tope saying, had she been a part of the original conspiracy? Surely not! Still, the idea made Chartreuse hesitate long enough for the vision to pull her onwards, further into the future.

"Okay, I, like, admit it, I totally screwed up," Tope said, her head bowed. "I'm sorry, Mom. I just wanted, well, a little adventure in my life. It was so totally dull here in Dullsville! I never, like, thought things would go so, you know, wacky."

'No, Tope, say it isn't so!' Chartreuse thought. 'You set this whole life threatening affair in motion?!' She tried to get a clearer read on where she was now, but the light reflections from the diamonds Mother Diamond was wearing were interfering with her sight. She couldn't tune into the conversation properly while trying to orient herself either, so she strained her ears to hear what was being said instead.

"...totally learned my lesson," came Tope's voice again. "I won't, you know, bother the government any more. Anyway, people out in the world are so, like, weird! It's a good thing I didn't, you know, get attached to any of them. Well, except the one."

Chartreuse felt her heart jump. 'Which one? Me?' she wondered. The vision began to melt away. 'No, no, I have to know more!' Chartreuse thought desperately. And there was more. The lure was there, the path to the final outcome of this sequence of events... and since Tope was apparently going to be rescued, what was the harm in looking?

She was in a church. Chartreuse's breath caught in her throat. A twentysomething Tope Diamond stood before her, absolutely radiant in her white wedding dress. "I, like, do," Tope said quietly before turning to smile happily at the person standing beside her. Chartreuse shifted her gaze in that direction as well. Knowing full well that this information would be too much for her, yet she was unable to stop herself.

The man wearing the black tuxedo and dark sunglasses looked back at Tope. "Eh?" he said.

Chartreuse fell over the cliff.

 

"SNAP OUT OF IT ALREADY!" Azure's voice screamed.

Chartreuse felt like she'd been pulled back into her body by an elastic band. She blinked her eyes a few times, only to realize she couldn't see. "Ohmigod, I'm, like, blind!" Chartreuse gasped out.

"Chartreuse?!?" Azure yanked the two jokers off of her sister's eyes.

"Ow! Oh, that's, you know, totally better," Chartreuse said. She glanced around only to find that she was seated in the middle of the coffee table back at their home, surrounded by several houses made of cards, arranged in a pentagram shape.

A lock of her hair was swinging in front of her face. Chartreuse reached out to grab it. "Say, when did I, like, dye my hair orange-violet-silver-fushia-green-taupe-candycane-cyan?"

"I did it! Oh thank goodness, I did it and it worked!" Azure said, reaching out to grab Chartreuse in a bear hug.

Chartreuse patted her sister uncertainly. "Um, yeah!" she agreed. "Though I think, I've, you know, missed something. What happened with, like, Tope Diamond?"

Azure pulled back. “Oh, that? I was able to get a reading of the past from the fedora that one gangster was wearing," she explained. "It was left behind in the camper. Seems he'd been recruited for the mission exactly one week ago by this con, Venient Plotwist. Mom got the location of Venient's warehouse from one of his recent victims, then Dad organized a strike force to retrieve Tope."

"Oh," Chartreuse said, nonplussed. "Then I was, like, no help at all. I totally messed up."

"Ayup," Azure affirmed. "That's what you get for mixing business with pleasure."

Chartreuse coughed. "Um, pleasure? Like, what pleasure?"

Azure rolled her eyes. "Sis, please. It’s taken me five days to restore your consciousness to the state it was in back in the past, before you zonked out. And the vibes between you and Tope were so strong that at first, I couldn't even isolate the two of you! Even now, I think there’s been some leakage... I mean, have you noticed you're talking like some valley girl here?”

"Like, what?" Chartreuse said in surprise. "Oh, that's, you know, totally ridiculous." She paused, reaching up to hold her throat. "Like, no way. I mean, like, no way. No, I said, like... ohmigod, I totally can't stop!"

"I am genuinely sorry," Azure said sadly. "But it was either that, or have my sister become a table centrepiece for the rest of her life."

Chartreuse tapped her throat again gently before letting out a sigh. "It's, like, okay. It wasn't, you know, your fault," she murmured. "Though, wait, did you say it's been five days?!"

Azure nodded. "We've explained your disappearance by saying you're off with Mom at Aunt Fluffy's funeral. It's kinda tragic, she died saving this kid. Seems a tree was going to fall on him, but she pushed him out of the way."

"My vision," Chartreuse realized. "Oh, wow. You mean, if I'd tried to stop it, some innocent child would be, you know, dead instead? I never saw that part!"

"I guess. All I care about is that you're back!” Azure said, giving Chartreuse another quick hug before moving to retrieve some of the playing cards on the table. "I mean, without you, who would I have to annoy?"

"I'm, like, touched," the orange-violet-silver-fushia-green-taupe-candycane-cyan haired girl said. She paused to pull at a lock of her hair again. "Though seriously, what is it with all these shades??"

"Oh, I wasn't sure if your frequent hair colour changes would impair my abilities to home in on your past self," Azure said. “So I redyed it. I mean, if you WERE going to be a centrepiece, this way we'd at least have a colourful one."

Chartreuse frowned. "You know, I'd totally have a good retort for that, if it weren't for one thing."

“Oh? What?"

“The fact that this experience has, you know, turned my stomach inside out," Chartreuse said, lurching off the coffee table and sprinting for the nearest bathroom.

Carrie stared at her companion in silence for a short while.

“So, that’s it?” Carrie said at last.

“Yup,” Chartreuse confirmed back. “Understand now?”

Carrie passed a hand in front of her eyes. “Chartreuse,” she began. “Couldn’t you have summed up that WHOLE STORY by simply telling me, ‘I once had a vision of my aunt’s death, but it turned out that she was saving someone else in the process, so it’s good that I didn’t try to prevent it’??”

“Of course not! You, like, miss all the nuances that way!”

Carrie threw herself back onto her bed with a groan. “Chartreuse,” she repeated with exaggerated patience. “I have been lying here all weekend, unable to keep down any food, with my insides feeling like they’re stuck in a vice, all because there is some part of me that now feels like it can twist free and display home movies of death and destruction in my mind. Movies that I can’t control, and that I can’t shut off.

“The ONE HOPE I’ve been trying to hold onto, is that if I experience another vision, I can FORCE myself into doing something to change the outcome. And yet now you’re telling me that, by making such a change, I could cause events to be even worse than they otherwise would be?!”

There was another protracted silence.

“You didn’t understand then,” Chartreuse concluded.

“I understand that you have a weird family.”

“No, listen,” Chartreuse insisted. “You experienced an unsettling vision of the future. I get that. But now that you’ve, you know, worked through any physical discomfort, it’s time for us to deal with the mental side of things. Because even though you can’t always control your powers, you can’t let them control you either. If you do, you won’t see something you could have seen, like me with Tope’s kidnappers. Or you’ll, like, push yourself until you see something you’re not meant to see, as I did with Tope’s wedding.”

“Gee, thanks Chartreuse. What other option IS there, aside from me being in control, or my powers being in control?!”

“Isn’t that obvious?” the mystic replied. “Find the balance. Life goes on, Carrie. You can’t obsess over everything these weird forces throw at you, or you’ll never be able to enjoy yourself. Trust me, I know. All too well.”

The pink haired girl smiled sadly, then began to back away, towards the bedroom door. “Anyway, I’ve probably overstayed my welcome. So I’m gonna, you know, head back home. But I hope you feel a bit better? I am looking forward to our next session! See you in school tomorrow, okay?”

With that, Chartreuse slipped back out of Carrie’s bedroom.

Carrie listened as her guest headed downstairs, said goodbye to her father, and then left the house. She continued to lie quietly on her bed for several long minutes before finally standing and moving to look at herself in the mirror.

“Find the balance?”

Carrie dragged her hair back off her forehead and pursed her lips. “Because I have been letting my fears of the future get the best of me,” she realized. “Worse, I’ve been doing it for months. No wonder it feels like my head is trapped in a washing machine stuck on spin. Thank you, Chartreuse.”

She turned away from her reflection. It was very clear what she had to do now. Namely get Frank to explain to her about setting the time machine, so that she could travel back to her last birthday. To have that talk with herself about Chartreuse. If nothing else, it would be one less future event for her to be concerned about.

Wait, hadn’t Frank already been by this weekend? Carrie marched out onto the upstairs landing. “Hey, Dad?” she called out.

“Yes, Carrie?” she heard him call from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you feeling better?”

“I think so. What’s been happening this weekend, anyone leaving messages for me?”

“Someone named Glen called for you twice,” her father said. “And Frank and Luci dropped by. Actually, Frank seemed more nervous than usual, and when he heard you were ill, he asked me if any knives had been flying through the air. I’m not sure what he meant by that.”

Carrie’s eyebrow twitched. “It means my first call today will be to Luci instead,” she decided, before spinning on her heel and heading back into her room. It was time to get their time travel group back together.

• End Arc 3.1 - next Arc begins next week!
• Consider voting for Time & Tied at WebFictionGuide. Eternal optimism; I've had a couple clicks in from their "Fantasy" page.

3.04: THE VISIONARIES

“Luci! Guess what I got today!” Frank said as he opened the door for his girlfriend.

“The popcorn?” the young asian guessed, entering the Dijora house and looking at him in amusement. “I mean, that was our arrangement, you get the popcorn, I get the movie…”

“Yes, yes, but look what I received in the way of change,” Frank said, fumbling in his pocket for the money. He held six coins out for inspection.

Luci stared. “They… overcharged you?”

“The dates,” Frank said patiently. “Look at the dates.”

Comprehension dawned. “Oh! Two more from the current year."

“Yup,” Frank affirmed as he pocketed them. “It’s weird, for whatever reason, we haven’t had as many recently minted coins in circulation this year. I don’t know why, but it could be a problem for when we resume time trips.”

“When? Not if? But Carrie hasn’t authorized more time trips.”

“Well, no,” Frank admitted. “But she can’t hold out indefinitely, can she? In particular, now that she’s gone out with Glen, we may want to use the time machine to investigate…”

“OKAY, stopping that train of thought before it leaves the station,” Luci interrupted. “No Glen tonight. Movie tonight. Yes?”

“Yes, right,” Frank agreed. “What did you find?” Luci smirked as she held up the casing. Frank’s eyebrow went up as he read it. “Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’?,” he questioned. Luci nodded.

Sunday afternoon found Chartreuse ringing the doorbell at the Waterson residence. Carrie’s father answered it for her moments later. “Um, hi!” she began. “Is Carrie in? I think we, like, have something that we need to talk about.”

Hank Waterson shook his head. “She is here, but she’s not feeling very well. Could you come back another day?”

Chartreuse pursed her lips. “I could. Except I think I know what her problem is, why she’s been so, you know, withdrawn all weekend. And I think I can help.”

“Really?” Hank said. “What’s wrong? I know she doesn’t have a fever, but it seems to be more than an upset stomach…”

“It’s related to our weekly sessions,” Chartreuse hedged. “Can I please talk to her?”

“She refuses to speak with anyone. Insisting only aggravates her - I had to turn away both Frank and Luci when they came by. In fact, it’s all I can do to get her to say anything to me.”

“Carrie doesn’t have to speak to me, only listen,” Chartreuse pleaded. “Please, Mr. Waterson? I know what I’m talking about.”

“Well… all right. Come in,” Hank Waterson decided, moving aside. “I do hate to see my daughter like this and I’m at a bit of a loss as to a solution. You sure she won’t mind seeing you?”

“Go away!” Carrie shouted through her bedroom door.

“Carrie, hear me out!” Chartreuse protested. “You’re upset because of the fire at the cafe, right?”

No reply. Chartreuse knew she was right. The pink haired girl motioned with her hands for Carrie’s father to depart.

He looked at his daughter’s door, then back at her. “Call me if she starts throwing things,” Mr. Waterson said at last, before heading back downstairs.

“Look, I understand some of what you’re going through,” Chartreuse continued, once she was alone. “I’d like to tell you a story about the time my abilities caused trouble in my life too. Can’t I, like, say it to your face?”

Nothing.

“Fine, I’ll talk through the door,” Chartreuse continued stubbornly. “It all started three years ago, when I was fourteen. I’d received a disturbing vision. It was a vision of death…”

"There has to be something we can do!" Chartreuse said desperately, nibbling on a lock of her violet coloured hair. "I don't want Fluffy to die! Not like that!!"

Her mother sat down on the bed next to her. "I'm sorry, Chartreuse," she said softly. "We can warn her, but I'm not sure she'd understand us. Fluffy's always enjoyed playing in traffic, it was just a matter of time."

"But... but it's not right!" Chartreuse objected. "Can't she be kept in her house? Can't we prevent things that way?"

"She'd find a way out," Mrs. Vermilion sighed. "You know her, she's sneaky that way. There are some things you can stop, Chartreuse, and other things that are inevitable. You have to let this one go, dear. Fluffy's death is meant to happen."

"But Mom, she's your own sister-in-law!" the violet haired girl sobbed. "If this is what it means to see the future, I don't want to see it any more!"

"Chartreuse, she may have married your uncle, but me and Fluffy weren't that close," her mother insisted. "Now, please, try to work through this. You can take all the time you need."

“Hold it!” Carrie interrupted. The lock clicked, and the door of her bedroom opened a crack. “Are you telling me Fluffy was your aunt?!”

“Yes,” Chartreuse sighed. “It was so horrible. She died when a tree fell on her.”

Carrie glared at Chartreuse with one eye. “You’re making this up.”

“I am not!” Chartreuse said indignantly. “Our other aunt, Emerald, was quite broken up about it! I think maybe my Mom was too, but of course since she can see, like, astral projections, she could still talk to Fluffy after her sister-in-law’s death.”

“But… if a tree fell on Fluffy, what did playing in traffic have to do with anything?”

“If Fluffy hadn’t been in the road, the tree would have, you know, missed her,” Chartreuse said patiently. “Now, are you going to keep asking questions, or can I continue my story?”

Carrie hesitated, which Chartreuse took to be a yes.

"All right, Chartreuse," Mr. Vermilion said, entering the room. "I'm sorry, but we can't afford to give you any more time to grieve."

"But Dad, it's been less than an hour!” the orange haired girl wailed. "Can't I at least--"

“Stop! You said your hair was violet a minute ago,” Carrie interrupted again.

“Did I?”

“You did! How can it be orange less than an hour later?”

“Maybe you, like, misheard me through the door. Can I come into your bedroom already?”

Carrie glared at Chartreuse again before finally opening the door wide enough to allow the other girl inside. “Thank you,” Chartreuse said. “Ooh, you have a nice room here, Carrie. Nice pyjamas too.”

“Don’t try and change the subject,” Carrie said, closing the door and moving to lie back down on her bed. “Now, skip to the part where your story has something to do with the fire I was in.”

“Oh… were you actually in the cafe when your vision occurred?” Chartreuse said. “I didn’t realize. Maybe this isn’t the most appropriate story after all.”

Carrie sat back up. “I knew it! You’ve been making it up.”

“No way!!” Chartreuse objected. “You want to know what, like, happened next?”

“Okay,” Carrie retorted. “What happened next?”

"Honey, I'm sorry," Mr. Vermilion said. "But we may need you to use your abilities--"

"I'm not ever using them again!" Chartreuse countered. "I'm renouncing my powers! I don't wanna know anything more about what might be happening around me!"

"But the Prime Minister of Canada has a very important job for us to do," her father insisted. "Won't you at least listen to what he has to say?"

The orange haired girl eyed him. “Well... all right, I'll listen. But I won't do anything I don’t want to!”

"That's my girl," Mr. Vermilion said with a smile. He reached out to twist the bedknob on his daughter's bed, which caused the mirror on the vanity to rotate 90 degrees. The two of them jumped into the tunnel now visible behind the mirror, sliding down a chute and falling into the couch at the bottom. Mrs. Vermilion looked over and smiled at them as she reached out and clicked on a small remote. A large wall screen lit up with an image of Jean Chretien.

"'Allos!" the Prime Minister said. "As I was saying, I am having a very important jobs for you Vermoothians!"

“CHARTREUSE!!!”

“Oh, what now?”

Carrie pressed a hand to her forehead. “You expect me to believe ANY of that actually took place?!?”

Chartreuse sighed. “Fine, I didn’t give in quite that easily, but I’m, like, embellishing a bit in the interests of time. Do you really want me to go into every little detail?”

“That’s… not my problem! What about all that other stuff? With the bedknob, the chute and Chretien?!”

“Oh, that! See, I was going through this secret agent phase, which is partly why I kept re-dying my hair. My parents were nice enough to humour me by doing some, you know, remodelling. As to Chretien, we, like, have a filter set up so that all communications coming in from the Houses of Parliament look and sound like Chretien, no matter who the Prime Minister actually is. Jean was my dad’s favourite prime minister, you know, even if the guy could never pronounce our family name properly.”

Carrie stared. “Chartreuse. This is a stretch. Even for you.”

“Well, whether you believe it or not, that doesn’t change what, like, happened!” Chartreuse said petulantly. “Now, are you going to listen to me, or are you going to interrupt every five seconds?”

“Fine, fine.  Continue the story,” Carrie sighed.

The image of Jean Chretien cleared his throat. "So's if you Verminions could handles dat little problem for me, da government would be grateful. Until da next times!" His image clicked off the monitor.

"I can't believe that guy won even one election," eleven year old Azure muttered from her own seat on the couch. Her father shot her a look of annoyance.

“That's beside the point,” Mrs. Vermilion stated. “Now then Hugh, how do you figure we should handle things?"

Mr. Vermilion stood. "Well Amber, the best way to protect this Tope Diamond while it's en route would be to choose what seems to be the safest path, and then have Chartreuse tell us if she foresees any impending danger. If she does, we can change our plans and try another reading."

"Good!" Azure said, standing up. "Then you don't need MY ability!"

"Wait, I'm not helping out here!" Chartreuse protested, also rising. "Have you forgotten that I was only here to listen? My powers are still renounced!"

Azure blinked over at her sister. "Really? You finally came to your senses? What caused the sudden turnaround?"

"It's personal," Chartreuse said, crossing her arms.

“Don't be an idiot," Azure countered. "If you don't tell me, I'll simply go scrying into your past and find out for myself!"

Chartreuse turned her back on the blue haired girl.

Rolling her eyes, Azure pulled a deck of cards out of a pocket of her jeans. She closed her eyes, murmuring a quick incantation as she shuffled, before dealing eight cards out onto the coffee table. She then flipped over the next card, the ace of spades. "A vision and a death," Azure mumbled, after a cursory examination.

She proceeded to cut the deck and turn over the top card, which listed upon it the rules for playing draw poker. Her eyes went wide. "Oh no, Auntie Em! Uncle Henry! And their little dog too!"

"Emerald and her family will be fine, Azure," her mother soothed. "The imminent death Chartreuse foresaw was Aunt Fluffy's."

"Oh, right. I knew that," Azure said, gathering her cards back up.

Chartreuse stamped her foot on the floor. "How can you all take that news so casually?!" she said angrily. "This is a human life we're talking about! And you haven't even given me an hour to deal with that yet!"

"Chartreuse, people die every day," her mother soothed. "I know, because I've seen a lot of them after it happened. We're not being cruel, dear, it's simply that we accept death as being a part of life."

"Besides," her father chimed in. "Even if you don't actively use your abilities, you'll still get flashes and pick up random impressions from people. Isn't that right, dear?"

"It is," Amber Vermilion confirmed.

"I don't care!" the orange haired girl said. “I’ll be a hermit if I have to! I don't care about my powers, I don't care about this Tope Diamond, and I will not be bribed with a peach sundae, so Mom, put that money back in your purse!"

Amber replaced the bills, abashed.

"You go, girl!" Azure said. "Don't be fooled by the old 'just this one time, it's so important to the general population' trick either. I cannot BELIEVE we keep falling for that..."

"This IS important to the general population though," Hugh Vermilion pointed out. "After all, most people have never heard of the Tope Diamond's existence. But they will, unless we can get it safely to the required destination!"

"Would it be so bad if they did find out?" Chartreuse challenged.

"We can't know that until we see this Diamond for ourselves," her father replied. "There's no school tomorrow, so how about we all travel to Dullsville to check it out? A day trip. A family outing!"

"Oh no, this is how it starts," Azure moaned.

"It will also give you more time to come to grips with what you've seen, dear," Chartreuse's mother added. "I mean, you don't want to make any hasty decisions tonight.”

"Don't listen to them, sis, don't listen!"

"We can always have peach sundaes for dinner tonight too," Hugh finished. "Though if we spend much more time arguing, I won't have a chance to get to the stores before they close."

The orange haired girl shifted her weight back and forth uncertainly. "Well... all right, I'll go, but I still won't use my powers," she decided.

"You traitor!" Azure shouted. "You know I can't stay here all by myself!"

"Oh come on, sweetie, it'll be fun," Amber said, reaching out to hug her youngest daughter. "We'll have some blueberry ice cream tonight as well, how about that?"

Azure made a face. “FINE,” she decided. "I'll be bribed, but I won't like it."

“I can skip ahead now, right? I mean, you’re not, like, interested in the dinner itself are you?”

“Chartreuse, I’m not really interested in any of this,” Carrie mumbled. “You’ve gone from the ludicrous to the bizarre, and none of it has any bearing on what’s happened to me.”

“Not that you can see, but wait for it. There is totally a point here,” Chartreuse insisted.

“What, that peach ice cream heals all wounds?”

Chartreuse winced. “Peach sundaes, and can I help that I like them so much? Anyway, they’re, like, not important to the story. Let’s pick up again as we were waiting outside the Diamond Mine in Dullsville the following afternoon. Or that’s what I’m calling the town, anyway. National security, you know how it is.”

Chartreuse fidgeted absently with the ribbons in her fushia hair as she looked around. "Maybe no one'll show," she said.

"We should be so lucky," Azure mumbled.

"Oh, look, here comes someone now!" Amber said brightly.

The Vermilions watched as a camper pulled into the mine site and parked in front of them. Two men wearing dark sunglasses got out, trying to look inconspicuous despite the overcast day. One of them glanced casually about the area as the other stepped forwards. "The strawberries are not yet in season," he remarked.

"Oh, was there a recognition code?" Hugh said, looking troubled.

"No, but this is a good place to pick them in July. My name is Agent Queue."

"Cue as in pool?"

"I don't swim. Queue, for Vowels."

“Ah, four vowels,” Hugh realized.

"Yes, Vowels couldn't make it. Here's my associate Eh, part of the vowel movement."

“Then it's a Queue & Eh session?" Hugh verified.

"How's it going, Eh?" Amber inquired.

"Eh?" the second agent said, turning to them.

"Hearing problem, he takes my cues," Queue noted.

"I thank Queue," Eh said.

"Now, you?" asked Queue.

"Me? Hugh."

"Hugh, with who?"

"My wife Amber."

"Amber's a nice hue," Queue remarked.

“Say what? Amber is Hugh?"

"We are not Hugh, Eh," Amber assured him. "He is Hugh, and these are my daughters Chartreuse and Azure."

"Missed Queue's cue, eh, Eh?" Hugh said.

"Eh," Eh shrugged.

Queue pulled out a sheet. "I'll denote your party the Hue Continuum," he decided. "For simplicity."

"What??"

"Azure, as you're aware, we receive code names," Amber reminded her daughter.

"But why Queue's Hue, I like when you and Hugh pick too!"

"Two won't do, blue," Queue remarked. "Too bad for you."

“Well, sofa Queue!” the blue haired girl retorted.

"Eh?”

"Never mind,” Queue said, waving off his partner. "That language was too colourful. Chartreuse, do you have anything to add?"

"She's beautiful," the fushia haired girl breathed.

Everyone turned to see who it was Chartreuse was referring to. By the door of the camper, there now stood a girl of about fifteen years of age. She wore a small frilly pink dress, white stockings, white shoes, and in her blonde hair there was a violet hairband. Chartreuse's breath caught in her throat as she pictured how that long hair might shimmer in the sun, were there any sun around. However, Chartreuse’s eyes were soon drawn to the enigmatic blonde's blue eyes and shy smile.

"Hello," the strange girl said with a little wave. "I'm, like, Tope Diamond."

Chartreuse sighed happily at the memory.  “And, you know what? It was right then that I knew I wanted this girl to be my wife,” she said dreamily.

Carrie fell off her bed.

• I did a Commentary Post last Sunday, if you missed it. Story continues next week!
• Consider voting for Time & Tied at WebFictionGuide. Because visibility.

PART 45: FULL CIRCLE

“Uhhhnnn,” groaned Clarke, gradually regaining his senses. He looked around to find that they were in the somewhat familiar environs of Willowdale park.

Corry was struggling to his feet, Frank was looking over the time machine, and Julie, still unconscious, was lying next to him. The bikes and the rest of their gear was in a heap nearby. “Uh, hey, when are we?" he asked uncertainly.

“One day late," Frank replied. “Either bad luck or I wasn’t able to properly recalibrate the chips. Should be an easy fix though, and we can always write off the missing day as us searching for Julie.” He looked up. “On the bright side, I guess this confirms some kind of geographic failsafe if we have no doubles around.”

Clarke nodded, looking back down at the young brunette girl. “I’m going to take Julie home then.”

“You do that,” Frank agreed. “I’ll get the time machine and our other supplies stowed away, then go to the hospital to check on Carrie.”

“And I’ll head right there,” Corry remarked. He shrugged at the other two as they stared at him. “What? I’m rather hoping to learn that our four day trek into the past wasn’t all for naught.”

“All right then, I’ll see you shortly,” Frank concluded. The three of them turned to go their separate ways. Completely oblivious to the fact that the world would soon be ending.

“Carrie… ohh, Carrie,” Chartreuse choked out. She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head to clear it before opening them again. Luci was now crouching down next to her.

“Um, Chartreuse… is this what you were trying to do?” Luci whispered.

Their friend was now sitting up in bed. Carrie’s eyes were glowing yellow, and her blonde hair was rippling out behind her in waves. A remarkable feat considering the lack of any wind.

“No,” Chartreuse answered. “She’s… she’s hurting, Luci, but I don’t understand it. I’m not sure any of us can.”

The two girls watched as Carrie scanned the room. Her golden eyes alighted upon the man sitting next to her, who had been momentarily stunned into silence.

“Carrie?” Hank Waterson now said. “Carrie, is it you? Are you all right now? What–”

“Freeze,” Carrie said calmly, reaching out to touch her father in the middle of his forehead.

He froze. Literally. It was as if he were a mannequin, suspended in time. Carrie then turned to face her classmates.

“Whoa, Carrie… Carrie, you, like, don’t want to do anything rash,” Chartreuse said, nervously. She managed to struggle to her feet with Luci’s help.

“I’m not going to do anything rash,” Carrie replied, her voice far too calm. “I am merely going to make all the hurting go away. For everyone, forever.”

“Kinda sounds rash.”

“How will you do that, exactly?” Luci murmured.

Carrie paused. “Still working that out,” she admitted. “Perhaps I can shift everything a few milliseconds into the past.” The blonde extended her palm out towards a small glass sitting next to her bed. The glass shattered into a hundred pieces as it tried to coexist with itself, the water spilling everywhere - the same way Carrie had done it less than two weeks earlier.

Both girls jumped. “Or perhaps I can come up with something else,” Carrie countered.

“Carrie, you totally don’t want to do this,” Chartreuse pleaded. “We can fix up this present for you. For Julie too. I know we can.”

Carrie laughed hollowly. “You really think so? Because for the past few weeks, I have been trying to cope with knowing that in the first timeline, the original one - I never even existed. Do you know what that feels like? Being aware of a timeline where you had never been born?”

Chartreuse shook her head, not sure how else to respond.

“Not only that,” Carrie continued, “but this timeline where I AM alive has been coming apart ever since Julie pulled that trigger. We can’t even change that, because if I was never shot, I sense that my powers would now awaken regardless, and pull me apart.”

So, Shady hadn’t been lying about that then? Damn.

Carrie shook her head. “This must end,” she finished, dispassionately. “I will end it. It is, after all, the only reason for my even being here.”

“Carrie, wait,” Luci insisted. “Give us a chance to restore things first. Okay? To fix the present, make it better for everyone - including you and Julie! You won’t need to destroy our timeline then, right? Right?”

Carrie stared at the younger girl. She didn’t agree. On the other hand, she didn’t disagree either.

Which was when they heard an unexpected voice coming from the doorway. “Holy… what the hell is going on here?” Corry Veniti demanded.

“Y-You’re back!”

Clarke blinked in surprise at the person who had opened the door of the LaMille mansion. “Tim?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“L-Lee called me,” Tim explained shakily. “Luci asked him to, when she and Chartreuse left to go to the hospital. To have someone else here. But even so, me and Laurie, we didn’t get here in time.”

“In time? In time for what?”

“To stop their t-t-temporal refugee from escaping.”

Not sure exactly how to take that, Clarke decided to ignore it for the moment. “Can you help me get Julie into the house?” he requested. The brunette was now semi-conscious, and standing upright, but she was using him as a support post.

“Allow me to assist also,” Jeeves said, approaching from behind Tim. Between the three of them, they were able to get Julie inside. Laurie gasped as they came into the sitting room.

“CLARKE! Then, my brother? Is he back too, is he okay, why isn’t he here with you??”

“He went to the hospital to check on Carrie,” Clarke explained.

Laurie proceeded to dance nervously back and forth from foot to foot as they lay Julie down and covered her with a blanket. Apparently torn between wondering how she could help them, and wanting to ask more about what had happened.

“Go to Corry,” Clarke suggested once Julie had been settled in. “I’ll stay with Tim.”

Laurie looked to Tim, who nodded, and then with a grateful smile, she dashed out of the house, nearly forgetting to grab her jacket in the process.

“Now, what’s this about a temporal refugee?” Clarke asked, looking to Tim.

“S-Some guy from the future,” Tim explained. “Lee didn’t seem too clear on it himself, but apparently this ‘Shady’ was responsible for Carrie being shot. She’s now gained mystical time powers.”

“Wait, back up - this guy is the one who blackmailed Julie into doing the shooting?”

Tim shook his head. “Not blackmailed. Lee said the Shady guy can do mind tricks like some J-Jedi,” he clarified. “And Lee is the only one who’s immune.”

Clarke fumbled to sit in a chair. “And given Julie’s mental state that day… easy target. Damn. How could you let this guy get AWAY?”

“I’m afraid that was my fault, sir,” Jeeves spoke up. “I untied him when Mister Lee’s back was turned. In retrospect, I’m not certain why, but he must have said something to me.”

“Lee headed out to look for Shady once Laurie and I got here,” Tim noted. “I should maybe call to tell him that J-Julie’s back…?”

“Yeah, do that,” Clarke agreed. He sighed. “We’re not out of the woods yet, huh?”

“Frank? Frank!”

“Luci?” he said in surprise. He watched as she ran down the road, then barely managed to avoid falling down as she charged full tilt into him, throwing her arms around his body.

“Frank, thank god you’re here and still alive,” Luci said. Not sure what else to do, he gave her a quick hug back. The small girl finally pulled away, only to reach up and give his cheek a smack. “Now that’s for making me worry you were gone forever,” she accused.

“Ouch,” Frank protested. “Geez Luci, maybe you have been hanging around Carrie too long. But what’s been going on? My mom was on me about skipping school today, saying something about police coming by? She almost wouldn’t let me leave the house again!”

“It’s all become very complicated,” Luci sighed. “That’s why, when I learned from Corry that you’d returned, I knew that I had to find you. You see, Carrie’s conscious, but Chartreuse believes she’s going to destroy the Earth with her time powers unless we can make everyone around here forget about how Julie shot her.”

Frank blinked. “Run that by me again, please?”

“I’ll explain on the way back to your lab,” Luci said. “The time machine, I hope it can handle one more trip?”

“Yeah - maybe more than that, we got the circuits back from Julie. It needs a bit of fine tuning though, and there’s maybe another hour before it’s recharged. Why?”

Luci gave him a quick summary of the day.

“But if we can force Shady to explain when he tipped off the police,” she explained, “we can go back and try to stop him then. To undo this. I’m not sure what that means for our present, but with Julie back now, her parents should remember her and the house - and with no police questions, her life is liable to fix itself! I mean, her family will simply be happy to have her home after she was gone for more than a week, right?”

Frank pursed his lips. “No. Unfortunately, Julie’s family situation is a lot more complicated than we first suspected…” He began to explain quickly about his own trip into the past.

“I’m here,” Laurie said breathlessly as she charged out of the elevator. “I’m here, what’s going on, where’s my brother?”

“Hold on, little sis, I’m right here,” Corry said, raising a hand. He was standing a short way down the hall, along with Chartreuse. She hurried up to him. “Please, Laurie, don’t go any further than this point.”

After giving him a quick hug, Laurie looked past him, down the hall. A few doctors were speaking in hushed tones and glancing almost fearfully towards a familiar door.

“Why, Corry? What… what’s happening there?” Laurie asked.

“We’re not exactly sure,” Chartreuse admitted, stepping forwards. “But Carrie is awake, and she’s hurting, and she kinda, like, wants to destroy all of time. After Corry showed up, she told us to ‘Get out’. Luci’s got a plan though, she’s gone to find Frank.”

“Oh. Golly,” Laurie said quietly.

Chartreuse’s look became thoughtful. “Though… you know, you may know Carrie better than we do. You’re a cheerleader on her squad. Maybe she’d be willing to talk to–”

“Hell no,” Corry interjected. “Even the doctors don’t want to go in that room now. It’s far too dangerous.”

“Hush, Corry,” Chartreuse asserted. “You had your turn with Julie. Carrie talk is more of a Laurie thing.”

Laurie swallowed. “But w-what would I even say to her?”

“That you care about her, despite everything,” Chartreuse suggested. “That we’re trying to, you know, help her. That she needs to give us a chance. To give us more time.”

“What would THAT accomplish?” Corry scoffed.

Chartreuse shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

Laurie stared at both her brother and her mystical friend. She turned again to look down the hall. Towards the girl who was better than her. At school, at athletics, at popularity, at practically everything… including, perhaps, at taking things a bit too far. And Laurie started walking.

“Laurie, no! OW, Chartreuse that’s my FOOT.”

Laurie didn’t look back. Not even after peering into Carrie’s room, and seeing the doctor and another orderly frozen to the spot. In the same manner of Carrie’s father, who was sitting by her bed. Though the redhead did let out a gasp when Carrie turned to face her. The blonde’s eyes were yellow-gold, and her hair and hospital robe were fluttering around her in some nonexistent wind.

“Why did you come here?” Carrie demanded.

Laurie felt her throat go dry. “W-Well, y’see… Steve’s done a pretty lousy subbing job for you at cheerleading, so I was kinda looking forward to you coming back.”

“The school will soon cease to exist,” Carrie stated. “Everything will cease to exist.”

“Oh,” Laurie said, nonplussed. “Well, he hasn’t done THAT bad of a job, really.”

“Laurie Veniti,” Carrie said, a dangerous edge on her voice. “I have no desire to talk with you or anyone else who knows about the existence of time travel. You should leave, unless you want to end up like them.” She gestured at the frozen individuals.

“It’s hard,” Laurie said, the words tumbling from her lips before she could even think about them. “Okay? I know it’s hard, realizing that you’re stuck in this box, seemingly unable to do any better no matter how much you try, always comparing yourself to others who seem to have it so much better than you… but you know what I’m realizing, Carrie? Maybe we’re all struggling. Even the people who seem to have it together. And maybe that’s okay, because when we push at the edges of our boxes, we grow, and we become more than what others tell us we’re supposed to be.”

Laurie took a step closer. “I know what Lee and the rest of them have told me, Carrie, but you’re more than some weapon. You are. To me, and to so many others. And so I want you to know that I forgive you for what happened back at the dance, and I want you back at school running new routines for us, and I think that’s gonna be REAL hard if everything will no longer exist, so… so please reconsider? For me?”

Carrie seemed surprised. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “I am sorry,” she said quietly. “I can’t, not now. Now that I know how it’s all going to end. Shady is putting us on a road that has no turns.”

“But…“

“LEAVE NOW,” Carrie commanded. Her gaze came up, her face twisted in pain and sadness, her eyes glowing, and energy seemed to crackle around them in the air. With a little shriek, Laurie ran back out of the room.

She hightailed it all the way back to the elevator, where her brother grabbed hold of her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” she apologized, struggling to catch her breath as she clutched at him. “I… I don’t think Carrie’s going to listen to me or to anyone else.”

“It’s all right,” Corry said, hugging her. “It’s all right, Laurie. I’m sure you did what you could.”

“Did Carrie say anything, like, useful?” Chartreuse said hopefully.

Laurie shook her head. “No, only that everything will no longer exist because Shady’s putting us on a road with no turns.”

Chartreuse sighed, and the three of them turned to look back down the hall. Then the pink haired girl tilted her head to the side. “Putting. As in, still present tense?”

Laurie nodded. And Chartreuse jerked her gaze back towards Corry.

“He’s GONE?” Luci said.

“So I’m told,” Clarke answered from the other end of the phone line. “Jeeves is very sorry. Lee is trying to find this Shady even now.”

“And I thought things couldn’t get any worse,” Luci muttered. “Now how are we supposed to figure out when he spoke with the police?”

“Clarke,” piped up Frank, listening in through speaker phone. “How influential are the LaMilles? If they wanted to, could they throw their daughter’s attempted murder case out of court, that sort of thing?”

“Possibly,” came the dubious answer. “But even if they were willing to do it, Julie’s life would only become an even bigger hell, given how she’d owe them.”

“Except her parents might not do anything if we threatened to expose what they’ve already done to Julie. That’s not the sort of thing the LaMilles would want to be made public.”

“Whoa, hold on, Frank,” Luci objected. “You’re saying we resort to blackmail? That’s a big can of worms there.”

“Yeah, plus Julie HERSELF said she doesn’t want this to go public,” Clarke added. “Besides, her parents were always very careful. We have no proof.”

“Always?” Frank said, frustrated. “For sixteen years, no one ever saw or heard ANYTHING? That’s really hard to believe, given their tendency to employ hired help.“

There was the sound of Clarke drumming his fingers on something. “Well, we saw nothing,” Clarke reminded him. “And I’m pretty sure Jeeves and Mimi didn’t either. But maybe, if we look further back in time…"

“We’ll have to at some point. That’s the sort of proof Julie will need,” Luci realized. “In order to get into proper counselling, over her parents’ likely objections or suggestions.”

“I’ll check with Jewels and give you a call back,” Clarke decided.

“Okay,” Luci agreed. “We’ll be at Frank’s, making final adjustments on the time machine. Oh, also give us a call if you hear any more about the location of our fugitive from the future.”

“Will do,” Clarke agreed.

Frank took the call from Clarke less than a half hour later. Luci closed up the time machine as he hung up. She turned. “What’s the word?”

“You want the good news or the bad news?”

“We could use some good news about now.”

Frank nodded. “Julie managed to recall a time, back before she was ten, when a servant came back unexpectedly and caught her parents chewing her out. The woman, who had worked with them for three years prior to that event, was dismissed soon after - though Julie recalls her being a sympathetic individual. If we track her down, she could be our evidence.”

“Okay. And the bad news?”

“Two flavours,” he sighed. “First, Julie’s too shaken up right now to remember any more, and then when Clarke went to check the records being stored in the mansion himself? The ones detailing the servants for that period of time were missing. Jeeves recalls a small fire some time last year, shortly after the LaMilles transferred those very same records to the house for storage.”

“How convenient,” Luci said dryly.

“My thoughts exactly. Second problem, Chartreuse called Clarke with an update. Something Carrie said makes our resident mystic think Shady is going to make another attempt on Carrie’s life. Which could render all of our efforts to restore this timeline to a sense of normalcy rather moot.”

Luci resisted the urge to bang her head down on the table. “Joy. Okay, one problem at a time. When was this small fire? Maybe we can time travel back to before it took place, and obtain the information then.”

“And how do you propose we get into the LaMille mansion to retrieve it?” Frank countered. “The Julie from our past would never let us stroll in and search. The only one of us who might have a chance is Clarke, except tampering with his past connections to Julie could cause us much bigger problems now.”

“That’s true, but there must be some way,” Luci insisted. “Maybe we could go back in time a year, to a day when we were all in Grade 10, and tell a past version of ourselves that if they ever get the chance to visit the mansion…” Luci stopped. She felt lightheaded. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“It fits. Oh my God. My second day of high school. It fits!”

“What fits? Luci, what are you talking about?”

Luci took a deep breath, as the missing piece that had puzzled her for over a year snapped into place. “It’s my missing day, Frank. The second day of high school has always been a complete blank to me. All I know is that it had something to do with me getting involved with Julie and Corry, not to mention seriously ticking Carrie off somehow. I’ve always wondered if there was more to it than simple amnesia.”

“What? Are we heading into ‘Butterfly Effect’ territory here? Because that movie series was not–”

“It’s more,” Luci interrupted. “Consider that while I might have grown a little since then, it’s negligible, and after Linquist I’m only ballpark my real age anyway.”

She took a deep breath. “You say the only place we can get these records is in the past? Fine. None of you knew me at the start of last year. That makes me a wild card. So, we’re about to use the time machine to travel back to that September, at which point I can take the place of my younger self for a day. My second day of high school. A note you leave in my locker is all it will take.”

He stared. “Luci, that’s crazy.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “Thing is? If I’m right, it’s already happened anyway.”

(Option: Go With Luci, Full Circle, Back to Part 25)

PART 41: RESCUE EFFORTS

The wind blew through the empty field, bending the long grass back. A few clouds floated by overhead as the sun approached its highest point in the sky. There was no one around for kilometers - miles, even.

Which is when, in the wink of an eye, three individuals appeared, along with a bunch of equipment. There was a brown haired boy with glasses, a tall blonde, and a redhead. Only the first of them was conscious. As such, only he was able to cry out in horror before all of them plummeted metres – feet, even – from the air down towards the ground.

***PAST: ILLINOIS

Clarke pressed a hand to his forehead. “Corry, that language isn’t going to improve the situation.”

“Falling bloody well HURT,” the redhead fumed. “Damn it Dijora, you didn’t say we’d arrive in free fall. Good thing I DIDN’T let my sister go on this trip, she’s liable to have ended up with a broken leg for gods' sake!”

“Clarke’s right, calm down," Frank said, taking deep breaths to try and steady his own nerves.

They were all regaining their bearings in the middle of the empty field where they’d fallen. “Obviously there was a little spatial problem with altitude that we didn’t account for,” Frank reasoned. “But the long grass cushioned us, and I get the impression no one sustained any injures above some bad bruises.”

“This from the guy who didn’t half land on a BIKE,” Corry fumed. He flexed his arm, then rubbed his shoulder. “Little altitude problem, my ass… I’ve half a mind to force you to take me back home right now.”

“You mean back home to Miami?” Clarke asked. “Since that is where you’re living at this time, right?”

That remark finally shut Corry up, as he turned to regard the black box which had facilitated their arrival. Frank picked it up, turning it so that Corry could see the digital readout.

“A week before Julie’s birth,” Frank observed. “Alternately, four days before she gets hit by an ambulance and dies. Let’s hope it’s enough time to track her down and prevent that."

“Son of a bitch,” Corry muttered at last. “It really has happened, hasn’t it. We’ve traveled through time.”

Frank nodded. “We have.”

Clarke turned away from the both of them, starting to sift through the rest of their supplies.

Corry rubbed his chin. “Damn. I’m not sure I truly believed it until now. Even after getting that letter."

“You thought you were lying to yourself?” Frank wondered.

“No, no,” Corry said, shaking his head. “Bringing up my history with Julie convinced me I was serious. It’s more that, writing the letter out myself, right after receiving it? Sort of took the edge off. Made it feel like it could be a prank.” He tugged his earlobe. “Why couldn’t we simply bring the original back in time with us again?”

“Because until you wrote it out, there was no original,” Frank reminded. “If the letter we have with us now had been the same one we received, it would have been created from nothing. And we couldn’t risk adding that kind of paradox, not on top of all the other temporal problems we’re dealing with at the moment.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Corry said, irritation creeping back into his tone. “Just like Tim had to obtain fresh copies of the required documentation on his end. I don’t know, it still sounds like a big waste of time to me.” He sighed. “And what was that other note Luci gave to you?”

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted, glancing towards his backpack. “I’m supposed to give it to Julie.” He frowned, remembering that conversation.

“I don’t understand,” Frank protested. “What’s the point of this?”

“The point,” Luci said, tapping the envelope edge first on his chest, “is that without Laurie going along, you’ve become an all male team.”

“So?”

The asian girl shifted to tapping the envelope on his forehead. “Think, Frank. Julie might be a little intimidated by that.”

“Julie? She’s in charge of half our school, Luci. Nothing intimidates that girl.”

“WAS in charge,” Luci reminded. She reached out for his arm, using it to pull out his palm before slapping the sealed letter down into it. “Humour me. Call it a feeling. Give this message to Julie.”

“Oh well,” Corry said, scattering Frank’s thoughts. “On the bright side, I can’t feel my writers' cramp any more - due to the pain in my shoulder!”

“You know, Corry,” Clarke said, moving close to them once more. “Me and Frank are here to save someone’s life. Someone who is very important to me. If you’re only tagging along because you didn’t want your sister to be here, maybe you should wait in a hostel somewhere for the next few days. We can circle back to pick you up again before we go.”

“Hmph,” Corry grumbled. “Thanks, but no thanks. At this point, I’m not letting either of you out of my sight.” He raised his hands defensively off Clarke’s expression. “Look, I AM here to help, okay? After all, as much as I dislike Julie, I know things. Plus the thought of her being in this twisted little suicide plan you’ve described… I can’t let that go. No one should end up like that. No one.”

“So, Clarke, how did our supplies fare?” Frank asked of the taller boy, hoping to change the subject.

“We got lucky,” Clarke replied, turning to him. “A dislodged chain and a couple bent spokes, nothing I can’t fix. The compass is also fine, and between that and the maps we have, we should be able to find shelter in a nearby town before sundown.” Clarke shifted his gaze to the black box. “What about the time machine, Frank?”

“Good question,” he realized, reaching out to grab the lever and pop the lid off. On the bright side, there was no smoke. On the down side…  “Clarke, get me the small toolkit out of my pack,” he requested worriedly, putting the machine down and crouching over it.

“Uh oh,” Corry said as Clarke complied. “Another little ‘calculation problem’?”

Frank didn’t reply right away, instead spending the next several minutes carefully poking around the wiring. When he finally looked up, he suspected his face was pale. “I’m sorry. I should have known,” Frank apologized. “I should have realized.”

“Realized what?” Clarke prompted. “What do you mean?”

Frank took in a deep breath. “Remember how we figured on the time machine only being good for two, maybe three trips? Well, a sixteen year trip alters the recharge time, and puts more strain on the whole assembly which in turn…”

“Cut to the chase,” Corry interrupted. “What’s the situation?”

Frank swallowed. “The time machine is broken again," Frank stated. “And I don’t have the right materials to fix it here. So even assuming we rescue Julie… there is no way for us to return.”

***PRESENT: ONTARIO

Luci sensed Laurie’s presence behind her even before the redheaded girl sat down next to her in the school library. She chose not to acknowledge the arrival. Not even after Laurie had cleared her throat twice.

“Okay,” Laurie said at last. “You want to be alone all lunch then.” She rose.

“Wait,” Luci sighed, reaching out for Laurie’s arm and missing. She looked up from the empty spot on the table where she’d been staring for the last half hour. “Stay.”

Laurie twisted her fingers together. “But if you’re upset…”

“Better you talk to me than Chartreuse,” Luci said, returning her attention to the tabletop. “I’m guessing she sent you over.”

“Chartreuse did figure the two of us had something in common right now, what with it being both my brother and my longtime crush on the trip with Frank,” Laurie admitted. She hesitated, then sat back down. “That’s what’s on your mind, right? Whether they’re okay?”

“What’s on my mind,” Luci began slowly, “Is that we’ve failed. Again. We doubled down on our bets, and we failed. AGAIN.” She reached up to grab her twin tails in her hands, yanking hard on her hair. “HOW? What did I miss? Why is this still happening? How do you normal people LIVE with the agony of knowing you can fail so SPECTACULARLY?”

“Whoa! C-Calm down, Luci,” Laurie pleaded, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Sure, it’s Monday, but it was going to take the guys a few days to reach Julie in the past.”

“Yes. In the PAST,” Luci reiterated. She turned to fully face the redhead. “Laurie, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but if they were coming back… they would be here already. They left Sunday night. They were going to return on the same day, so that Frank could call the police if he had to. Except now it’s Monday! Over twelve hours later.” Luci clenched a fist. “They’re not coming back, Laurie, and it’s all my fault. I never should have let them leave.”

The redhead swallowed. “Maybe they set that machine wrong? They could come back tonight instead.”

“I don’t think so,” Luci countered. She pulled the creased paper out of her pocket, shoving it back at her companion.

Laurie unfolded the sheet. “It’s that article Clarke talked about,” she realized. “Describing Julie’s accident with the ambulance. So?”

“So don’t you see?” Luci said. “If the others had been successful, we would know right away. That article would never have been WRITTEN sixteen years ago. No, something has gone wrong.” She squeezed her eyes shut.  “Something has gone very, very wrong, and for all my supposed intellect, I can’t figure out what. Let alone what to do about it.”

There was another long pause. “You will,” Laurie decided.

“What?”

“You will figure it out,” Laurie concluded. “You’re smart, Luci, you’ll figure it all out. So don’t give up hope. Okay?”

“Laurie…”

“Please?” Laurie said more insistently. “Please, Luci? Because if this is beyond you, I don’t know where else to turn, and I… I want to stop thinking about it. Okay?”

As she continued, her voice started to become more desperate. “I have to think it will work out, so I want to stop thinking about it, but all I can see is Chartreuse wondering about what they might be doing, and you being so worried and upset, and Chartreuse also being worried not only about them but about you, and about me, and I only want Frank and Clarke and Corry to be okay, so please can’t we all go and have some french fries for lunch and not think about this for the next little while, please, please, PLEASE Luci can we stop thinking about this now??” The redhead began to choke on her words.

Luci looked up again. She was momentarily taken aback by the tears shimmering in the corners of Laurie’s eyes, instinctively reaching out to touch Laurie’s arm in imitation of the redhead’s earlier gesture.

“I…” Luci stopped, not sure what she could possibly say that was reassuring. Maybe an apology would be enough. “All right,” she decided. “I’m not giving up. Let’s go get some fries.”

The two of them met up with Chartreuse by the library doors. Their resident mystic had been fidgeting with some multicoloured crystals, but upon seeing Luci and Laurie approach, she quickly put them away and offered up a halfhearted smile. The three of them proceeded towards the cafeteria.

Before they could arrive, Tim rushed up to meet them. “L-Luci. L-Laurie. Chartreuse,” he said quickly, trying not to stumble over his own words, having become short of breath once more. “Thank g-goodness. We, we’ve got to get out of here!”

“Why, Tim?” Chartreuse prompted.

“P-P-Police,” Tim forced out. He took in a long breath. “I saw them going into the main office, and they were s-saying something about an anonymous t-tip concerning the attack on C-Carrie. They w-wanted to question Frank, p-plus any students who were close to Julie.”

The three girls exchanged a quick glance. “Perfect,” Luci murmured. “Just perfect.”

As expected, it wasn’t long before the disappearances of Frank, Clarke and Corry were remarked upon. The three time travellers had covered for themselves the previous night by leaving messages stating that the three boys were sleeping over at each others’ houses - just in case. But now?

Chartreuse figured it wouldn’t be long before an investigation traced their missing friends' whereabouts back to the same group of students who had met at Frank’s the previous day.

Thus, after Tim’s warning, the group had all fled to the local cafe. Skipping their afternoon classes. From there, there’d come up with a plan.

Tim had agreed to take Laurie to the library. Extra research couldn’t hurt, plus in all the excitement of Sunday, they hadn’t ever clued Lee in as to what was happening. As such, and assuming he was working there later on, he might be the only one left who could afford to be seen out in the open. Meanwhile, Chartreuse and Luci had elected to go to the hospital.

“It’s all about Carrie, after all,” Chartreuse concluded as she looked at the floor indicators inside the hospital elevator.

“Hm?” Luci said.

The elevator doors opened and the two girls stepped out onto the floor which housed Carrie’s room. “It’s all about Carrie,” Chartreuse repeated. “I mean, you know, she found the machine, she does paradoxes, she’s supposedly in trouble because of changes to the past… like, why her, anyway? There’s gotta be some answers with Carrie.”

“The thought did occur to me,” Luci admitted. “Unfortunately, unless Shady calls again, we’ve got no one around to ask. Carrie herself is in no condition to talk. Or at least no condition to make sense when she does talk.”

The two girls reached Carrie’s room, Luci giving a tentative knock on the open door. Mr. Waterson looked up from his bedside vigil and offered back a tired smile through his two week old beard. No police, Chartreuse noted. Good sign!

“Hello there, Luci and… Chartreuse, is it?” Carrie’s dad asked.

Chartreuse nodded back. “Totally. We thought we’d stop in right after school to, you know, see how Carrie was doing,” she said.

The older Waterson turned back to his daughter. “No improvement, I’m afraid,” he said sadly. “Still unresponsive, with the occasional period of incoherent babbling.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Luci said. “But it means she’s not getting any worse, right?”

Mr. Waterson rubbed his neck. “Yeah. But considering they still don’t know what the trouble is, it’s hard to take comfort in that. Though the police are still following some leads on the shooting - they were by earlier, and said that Carrie’s friend Julie might have had something to do with it. That maybe she’s run off somewhere now to hide out. Can you believe that? I don’t suppose either of you know anything about it?”

Crud. Chartreuse looked to Luci, who winced. “No,” Luci said slowly, almost painfully. “We can’t help you there.”

“Oh well,” Carrie’s father sighed. “Still, it’s fortunate you came by. I don’t want to leave Carrie alone, but I need to use the restroom… please stay with her until I get back, all right?”

“Of course,” Chartreuse assured him, stepping into the room.

Mr. Waterson gave his daughter’s hand a final squeeze before standing up and releasing his hold upon her. “I’ll be right back,” he said. The pink haired girl took his place in the chair, reaching out to take hold of Carrie’s hand herself.

“Chartreuse… do you think YOU can reach her? Mystically?” Luci asked, once Mr. Waterson had departed.

Chartreuse bit her lip. “Whenever I’m here, I always hope I’ll get an impression or something from her. But still nothing.”

“Can you force it?”

Chartreuse turned and blinked at the younger girl. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Supposedly, she has powers. You have powers. Maybe you can… interface? I know, I’m grasping at straws here, but straws seem to be all we have left.”

Chartreuse looked back down at the blonde cheerleader. She was reminded of her classmate’s condition during the vision quests she’d done the previous week. There would come a point this week when Carrie would start twitching, convulsing, gasping for air, and then… then Chartreuse had pulled away, not wanting to know more. Unable to bear seeing more.

But Luci was right. They had to know more. For instance, was there some way of pinpointing exactly when Carrie’s condition would deteriorate? Would that give them another avenue to follow? “Carrie’s an Aries, right?”

“I don’t know,” Luci admitted.

Julie had thrown a birthday party for Carrie the past two years. “Pretty sure she’s an Aries,” Chartreuse concluded.

She reached back into her backpack, pulling out a small, smooth grey stone. She placed it into Carrie’s hand, wrapping the blonde’s fingers around it. Luci watched in silence as Chartreuse leaned over the bed, closing her hands over Carrie’s before shutting her eyes and concentrating.

“Ohm, ohm, oh my,” Chartreuse murmured quietly. “Spirits… tell me more about Carrie’s condition.” She swallowed. “Please.”

“Chartreuse!” Luci shouted. The asian girl was right up in her face, and Chartreuse flinched away out of reflex. Only to discover that Luci was holding her by the shoulders, having apparently yanked her away from Carrie’s body.

“Wow, what?” Chartreuse said, trying to regain her balance.

“I don’t know. You tell me,” Luci stated. “What was all that counting about?”

“Counting?” Chartreuse said in confusion. Wait, when had Luci moved close enough to grab her anyway?

“For the last minute and a half, you’ve been standing over Carrie with your eyes glazed over, counting backwards from 208 in one second decrements,” Luci stated. “It was REALLY starting to freak me out. When you wouldn’t answer me, I decided I didn’t want to let you hit zero.”

Chartreuse furrowed her brow, thinking back. She’d been leaning over Carrie, then… what? What had she even been thinking about? “I have no memory of counting,” Chartreuse admitted. “Are you sure?”

“Chartreuse - why would I lie about something like this??”

“I don’t know.” Chartreuse looked back towards the blonde lying comatose on the bed. “Carrie didn’t move or anything, did she?”

“No,” Luci replied. “In fact, the both of you were essentially motionless. Are you sure you don’t know what you were counting down to? Because it’s now about sixty seconds away.”

“No idea,” Chartreuse replied, reaching out to retrieve her stone from Carrie’s hand. Yet, no, that wasn’t exactly true… Chartreuse could now feel an overwhelming sense of impending doom. Somehow, Carrie’s deterioration was imminent. Yet how did she know that? And what was going to be the cause?

“Excuse me,” came a male voice. Chartreuse turned to see a hospital orderly. “I have to take another blood sample,” the man stated.

Luci moved aside with a sigh. “So, we’re back at square one then?” she asked.

Chartreuse was only half listening. Her attention was zeroing in on the thirtysomething orderly with the longish, dark hair as he readied his needle.

Lightning quick, her arm flashed out to grab him by the wrist and twist his arm away from the bed. He gasped and turned to her, a look of shock on his face.

As soon as their eyes locked, Chartreuse knew.

And Shady knew that she knew.

“Luci, get help,” Chartreuse ordered.

The man jerked himself out of Chartreuse’s grasp and sprang for the door. She launched herself after him, too late to grab hold, knocking the wind out of herself as she fell on the ground.

Quickly stumbling to her feet, Chartreuse dashed into the hallway in pursuit of the fake orderly. The one who had been about to kill Carrie Waterson.

***PAST: ILLINOIS

Some sixteen years before the attempt on Carrie’s life, two adults had been having a small difference of opinion. “I tell you, the baby’s coming,” the woman snapped.

“All I asked was ‘are you sure’,” the man countered, helping his wife put on her coat. “Because I don’t think your water broke.”

“Nnnnngh… look DEAR, if I need to have the child YOU want, YOU are going to drive me to the damn hospital when I damn well tell you to do it. Understood?!”

“Okay, okay,” her husband soothed. “Calm down, we’re off to the hospital.” He quickly moved to help his pregnant wife out the front door, locking it behind them.

Seconds later, a vortex opened in their home. It deposited a black box and an unconscious girl with long, naturally curly brown hair, which was still damp from a recent rainstorm. Their future daughter.

PART 37: GEOGRAPHY & GEOMETRY

Hank Waterson stared down at the prone form of his daughter, lying on the hospital bed. For once, Carrie seemed conscious, but her eyes were blank. She didn’t seem to be aware of her surroundings.

“Carrie?” Hank whispered to her, again taking her by the hand. “Carrie, it will be all right, do you hear me? I’ve got the doctors doing everything that they can. So stay strong, honey, we’ll get through this. And then… then maybe we’ll go to a hockey game? Or anywhere you like. Okay? Please, you’ve got to stay with me.”

Hank squeezed his eyes shut to try and hold back the tears. ‘I can’t lose her now, not like this,’ he pleaded silently. ‘Please, someone… find a way to help my daughter…’

The teenagers in Frank’s basement couldn’t hear Mr. Waterson’s plea. But they were working on a plan.

“Right then," Frank said, placing his palms upon the lab table. He looked out at the faces of Luci, Tim, Chartreuse and Clarke. “Let’s get this meeting underway.”

He turned to Chartreuse. “Do you have any further news concerning Carrie’s condition?”

Chartreuse shook her head. “I did another vision quest last night but got, you know, the same results,” she reported. “Namely that Carrie won’t get any worse until after this weekend. It could be as early as Monday that she, well…” The pink haired girl bit her lip.

“So, if this doesn’t come together, I’m revealing the truth about Julie being her shooter tomorrow. Sunday night," Frank decided. He glanced at Clarke. “You realize we’ll have no choice.”

Clarke nodded. “I… I understand,” he said. “It is nice that you’re still giving Julie every chance.”

Frank rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly? I nearly told the police the morning after Shady called. Luci talked me into waiting through the weekend, as I’d originally intended.”

“I simply don’t trust this Shady guy who called Frank,” Luci piped up. “He seems to have his own agenda, and doesn’t care about the rest of us at all. Besides, we have our own future divining rod.” She smiled over at Chartreuse.

“W-what is it that you’re proposing then?” Tim wondered.

“We’re coming to that,” Frank replied. “First of all, Clarke, were you able to verify at least part of Shady’s story?”

Clarke nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t hard to track down the article, once I knew what to look for.” He produced a sheet of paper. “I made this copy for the rest of you.” The others crowded around to have a look.

“Mysterious girl hit by ambulance?” Chartreuse read in horror. “That’s, like, terrible! Though… you’d think she’d have been close enough to receive medical help?”

“I guess Julie’s wounds were too severe,” Clarke said, swallowing. “Besides, no identity, no insurance, and not the biggest hospital in her hometown."

Frank eyed the article. “The state of Illinois? Hold on, Julie’s American?"

Clarke nodded. “That’s where she was born, anyway. When Jeeves told me, I was as surprised as the rest of you. Not sure how long she stayed there, as her parents moved around quite a bit.”

“I-Is there any chance that this article isn’t about Julie?” Tim asked. “Maybe this ’Shady’ lied.”

“There’s always a chance," Clarke admitted. “It doesn’t give her name. But… it seems unlikely."

“Long curly brown hair, wearing a dark green sweater… sounds like Julie on the day she left our time,” Luci agreed.

The five of them stood staring at the article for a moment. “Okay then,” Frank said at last, pushing the paper aside. “Here’s the plan. A bunch of us travel back in time, save Julie, and return to the present with her. If Carrie’s condition is a result of some ability to sense Julie’s untimely death in the past or present or whatever - problem solved.”

“Uh, wait,” Chartreuse objected, raising her hand. “Julie, you know, took the time machine. So how can we travel back?”

“Consider Clarke’s logic about our present being her future,” Frank countered. “And recognize that Julie can’t still be using the time machine if she’s no longer alive.” Chartreuse still stared at him in confusion. “Basically think of it this way," he decided. “Have you ever seen Back to the Future, part three? If so, picture us as being in 1955, having to go back to 1885 to prevent the Doc’s death.”

“Oooooooh,” Chartreuse said, comprehension dawning. “You mean we just have to figure out where Julie left the time machine in the past. Knowing that, we can track it down in the present.”

“Exactly,” Luci confirmed. “That time machine must now exist somewhere in our world. The idea occurred to me and Frank, after we realized how Shady seemed to think it was possible - if inadvisable - for us to go back and mess with the day Carrie got shot.”

“B-But Julie didn’t leave us a note telling us where to look,” Tim objected.

“True,” Frank admitted. “Which is why we requested that you do that additional research yesterday, Tim…”

Tim face-palmed. “OH. Of course.” His gaze fell to the floor. “I… I wasn’t able to turn up anything though. No w-weird occurrences in early November of that year, no indications of unknown scientific devices in public records, no discussions out on the Internet about the device… I’m s-sorry, I don’t think I even have the beginnings of a lead to follow up on.”

Frank exchanged a glance with Luci. “I suppose it was too much to hope that it would be that easy.”

“I’ll keep searching though, if it w-will help save lives,” Tim assured. “All w-weekend if need be.”

“I’m sure you’ve been doing your best,” Clarke said, resting a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “And having exhausted the Julie angle, I can help you now. If you like.” Tim nodded eagerly back at his friend.

Luci walked around the lab bench to stand by Frank. “Setting that aside for the moment then,” she remarked, “we have one additional problem. Temporal-spatial relocation. Which is particularly bad if we want to end up in Illinois.”

Frank winced. “Oh, DARN. I knew this plan was coming together too well… how are we supposed to end up in the United States?”

Chartreuse waved her hand frantically in the air again. “Wait, what’s that about temporary specials?”

“Time-space relocation,” Luci reiterated. “See, whenever we use the time machine, we don’t stay in the same place. Sometimes we travel a few blocks away, sometimes we wind up at the school - Frank and Carrie have even been on trips taking them out of town.”

“So, if you’re not careful, you could end up in the m-middle of the P-Pacific Ocean?” Tim said, eyes widening.

“Quite true,” Luci confirmed. “However, Frank has a working theory relating to the machine’s destination. We’ve checked it out in retrospect, and it’s held up for every single trip.”

“I should have realized it after Luci was abducted,” Frank admitted. “Once we discovered that the readings Linquist had on her were somehow related to the electronics in the time machine’s activation handle. But it took Shady’s mention of Algonquin Park for things to really click. Now, granted, we don’t have the machine to test this theory out…”

“Still, the answer is so obvious, I’m sure it’s correct,” Luci interjected. “I mean, I feel pretty stupid for having missed it in the first place.”

“Care to, you know, clue us in then?” Chartreuse pressed.

Frank nodded. “Okay. Consider, the time machine needs to pinpoint its destination location in four dimensions, three in space and one in time.” He went over to the nearby chalkboard. “That last is taken care of with the year of the coin used to power the device. The other three… those are actually the trickier ones.”

“The earth spins,” Luci elaborated. “And moves around the sun. The point we’re at right now, spatially, is different from the one we were at even five seconds ago.”

“Right,” Frank confirmed. He drew a line across the chalkboard, giving it a very sharp crest on the left and a long runoff to the right. “Now, this represents the ravine running through our town. Here’s Carrie’s house.” He marked an ‘x’ on the left of the board, near the top of the sharp crest.

“A lot of her trips remained near her house, or took her into Willowdale Park, on the other side of the ravine.” Frank shaded in the small area just under the crest and marked in ‘park’. “When I traveled with her, there were a number of times that we also ended up in the park. The explanation for that lies in the position of my house, about two blocks away from the ravine, but on the opposite side.” He marked in a second ‘x’.

“Okay, so… the park’s kinda halfway between your houses,” Chartreuse observed.

“Then it’s locating based on where you live?” Clarke mused.

Luci shook her head. “Not where we live. Where we ARE. Tim, Chartreuse, you remember the trip that me, Frank and Carrie took to the future? We ended up on the street outside, near our meeting place. The time before that, when the three of us traveled to the school dance, we ended up less than a block away from the school building.”

“And then there was my second trip with Carrie,” Frank added, tossing aside his chalk. “On a day when past me was visiting relatives in Sudbury. I asked Carrie’s father, and he says it’s possible he and Carrie had spent that day in Ottawa.” He raised his two index fingers, and slowly brought them together. “With Sudbury and Ottawa, the midpoint is…”

“Algonquin Park,” Clarke finished.

Frank nodded, pointing at the blonde boy. “Bingo. Everything fits. Even a trip we took to an airport. It also explains why recent trips are occurring in town. No one’s left here in the last couple of months.”

“B-But how is this possible?" Tim protested. “Like, what if you travel to a time where you aren’t, um, there? Can you only travel back and forth within your own lifetime?”

“Valid question,” Frank yielded. “Given one could time travel forward with no plan to return. Except, I did travel with Carrie back to the 1950s. We stayed in town. Meaning either there’s some sort of geographic failsafe, or, I don’t know, it’s doing geometry based on similar DNA. Found in our ancestors or other relatives.” He shrugged. “We’d have to test that empirically.”

“More to the point, what if you take the same trip twice?” Luci put in. “The machine seems to account for the structures around us, but what about the danger of overlapping its own arrival?” She smiled. “THAT is where the random variance comes in. By randomizing the time by a few minutes, along with the space within a certain radius, you shouldn’t have to worry about rematerializing on top of yourself.”

“Wait, Julie’s death,” Tim realized with a start. “That fits your pattern. She died back in the town where her parents were.”

Chartreuse let out a low whistle. “This is SO COOL,” she said. “The inventor must have, you know, put a lot of thought into this thing.”

Frank came back to the table. “As you say. It also means that we’d better not play with the electronics in the handle, as I have no idea how the heck this device is scanning all of space for its users, then accounting for the curvature of the Earth and whatnot.”

“Right,” Clarke mused, nodding slowly. “It would suck if your past selves were on opposite sides of the planet, leading to the machine placing you under the Earth’s crust or something.”

Frank nodded. “Unfortunately,” he added, “this makes our trip to retrieve Julie that much more difficult. I mean, short of recruiting her parents…”

“Bad idea,” Clarke asserted, with some bitterness. “Hell, they didn’t even stick around town past Day 3 of the search for their missing daughter.”

“Okay.” Frank looked to Luci, then back at Clarke. “Then we’re either going to have travel down to Illinois the long way - which is problematic in our present and a pain in the past - or we get fancy with geometry.”

“And for that,” Luci summarized, “we’re going to need all of your birth places.” She sighed. “Of course, since I’m younger than Julie, and I don’t even know who my parents were, I can’t join the rescue mission. It adds too much additional randomness to the calculations.”

“You can co-ordinate our efforts here, Luci,” Frank noted, reaching out to touch her shoulder before looking at the others. “Now, I had a map of Canada, but if Julie was born in the States, that’s not going to be big enough. I’ll run and get an atlas.”

He hurried off upstairs.

“Tim, what’s up?” Clarke inquired, after scanning everyone’s expressions. “You’re looking unusually pensive.”

Tim flushed slightly. “Oh, w-well… I g-guess I’ve gone back to wondering where the time machine might be.” He paused. “I mean, since it’s so important that we find it, can’t you do it, ah, temporally? L-Like, declare that whoever goes back to save Julie, they’ll place the device somewhere that it can be easily found now or something?”

“Set ourselves up you mean?” Luci piped up. She shook her head. “We haven’t been able to do that yet. Frank’s tried, and to a lesser extent, so have I. And while Carrie is a different story - she’s somehow adept at paradox without even trying - at present, she’s obviously unable to help.”

“Hey, you think maybe Carrie’s connection to paradox is, like, part of the reason she’s having trouble now?” Chartreuse proposed.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Luci agreed.

“Okay, I’ve got an atlas,” Frank called out as he hurried back downstairs. “The map of North America is a bit crude but will hopefully serve for our purposes.”

He laid it out on the table. “Now, I was born in Ottawa, Ontario,” he began, drawing a circle around the nation’s capital. “And with Luci staying here, I’d better go as a specialist on the time machine. Clarke, it’s probably best if you come too, since Julie’s unlikely to respond well to anyone else. Where were you born?”

“Vancouver.”

Frank let out a breath. “British Columbia. Of course.” He circled the west coast city, pulled out a ruler, and connected the two points. “Which means that according to the midpoint theory, we end up somewhere southwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba.”

“I was, like, born here in town,” Chartreuse added.

“Okay, so if we do a triangulation and take the midpoint of that… hm, practical use for this math stuff.” Frank located the centroid. “Okay, I think it pulls us closer to Thunder Bay,” Frank concluded. “Tim…?”

“T-Toronto.”

Frank drew a few more pencil lines on the map. “Er, second triangle then… uh, with me, Clarke and Tim, the arrival point borders Lake Superior? Then if we add Chartreuse back… hm, quadrilateral. How does this work… we should automate these calculations…” More lines were drawn. “Okay, er, I think we’d be IN Lake Superior.” He frowned, staring down at the map for a few seconds. “This isn’t going to work at all, is it.”

“There’s also the fact that, since the Earth’s surface is curved, the shortest distance between two points isn’t such straight lines,” Luci realized. “Or maybe we’re supposed to use the circumcenter, not the centroid?”

“Is there NO way to work around that part of this locating procedure?” Clarke asked.

Frank shook his head. “Figuring that out would take time and effort, both things we don’t have, given how we still have to track the machine down in our present in the first place!”

“If I might, you know, offer a suggestion?” Chartreuse piped up.

Frank gestured back in her direction. “Go ahead.”

“It seems that what we really need for the time trip is a point somewhere south of Julie. To pull us into the States. So, like, how about Miami? It looks like you might get good results if you, you know, calculate a position including that city.”

“But we don’t know anyone from Miami,” Frank protested.

“We might. Calculate it,” Chartreuse insisted.

Shrugging, Frank drew in more pencil marks and triangle medians. “All right, well, if we calculate right back to me, Clarke and ‘Miami’…” He blinked. “Illinois. West of Chicago. A little too far west, but it’s the closest yet.” He frowned. “Still, as I said, we’d need someone in Miami.”

Chartreuse pursed her lips. “Well, actually… Laurie Veniti was born there.”

“Oh boy.” Frank flipped the pencil forward onto the table and pressed his hand to his forehead.

“See, the Venitis had an uncle living here in town who, like, died when the twins were five,” Chartreuse continued earnestly. “He left his house to their family, so they all, you know, decided to move into the area at that time. But originally, they were born in America too.”

“Y-You think Laurie will be okay with this insanity?” Tim asked.

“Or CORRY?” Luci added.

“Yeah, why would Corry allow anything that might help Julie out?” Clarke agreed.

“Stop going on about Corry - Laurie will help if I tell her it’s going to help Carrie,” Chartreuse countered. “And if I go along as well, I can make sure my friend isn’t any trouble.”

“Except - you can’t go with her,” Luci interjected. She had retrieved Frank’s pencil and drawn in a couple new lines herself. “If you do, everyone ends up in the middle of Lake Michigan.”

“Those Great Lakes keep getting in our way,” Tim observed.

“Okay, so… what if Tim, like, joins all of us too?”

“Stop, this is out of control,” Frank protested. “First things first, do we really want Laurie, and potentially Corry, to find out about the machine?”

“Well, the situation HAS changed,” Luci yielded. “Not only are we pressed for time, we’re under surveillance by some guy from the future. Extra help from a truly unexpected place could come in handy. Assuming we can trust the Venitis to keep quiet.”

“I guess,” Frank said dubiously. “But you know how Laurie tends to babble. This isn’t something we want the whole school to find out about.”

“Hey! Laurie can, you know, keep secrets,” Chartreuse protested. “And she’ll see the importance in not telling anybody.”

“But don’t you think her brother would take advantage of the situation?” Clarke insisted.

“S-Seems to me that Corry is the bigger question here,” Tim agreed. “I mean, even if we only tell Laurie, won’t he figure it out eventually?”

Frank drummed his fingers on the table. “Probably.” He frowned. “Okay Chartreuse, you probably know Corry best. If he were to find out about the time machine, what would he do?”

Chartreuse pondered. “Well, he does know how to listen to reason. Though it might be touch and go, given Laurie’s potential involvement. Still, yeah, if we can’t keep him out of this indefinitely, I guess it’d be better to, like, be up front with him about it.”

“We certainly want to avoid him discovering things in a manner similar to Julie,” Luci concurred.

“So should we put off deciding anything until we find the time machine?” Tim offered. “I mean, if we can’t find it, this is all moot.”

Frank shook his head. “Annoyingly, time is against us. Remember, come tomorrow night, I talk to the police and the situation changes again. So once the time machine turns up, we’ll want to take the trip, not waste hours on explanations.”

“Okay, I propose the following plan,” Luci declared. “Chartreuse, you tell Laurie - discretely - about the trip to rescue Julie. If she’s agreeable, we ALL go to present a united front to Corry. That way we’ll know straight out if he’s going to cause us trouble. In the meantime, the rest of us can try to figure out what happened to the time machine between Julie’s arrival in the past, and our present.”

Glances were exchanged. “It sounds like our best shot,” Frank agreed.

“Then let’s do this, for Julie!” Clarke chimed in.

“A-And Carrie too,” Tim added.

“I’ll totally make that unanimous,” Chartreuse concluded, beaming. She thrust her palm out into the middle of the group. “So let’s, you know, make it official!”

Luci and Tim instinctively reached out to place their palms on top of Chartreuse’s. Frank and Clarke blinked in surprise, but then added their own hands to the group. “To the future!” Chartreuse declared.

“You mean the past,” Luci observed, amused.

“Like, whatever,” Chartreuse countered with a wink. She left for the Veniti house minutes later.

PART 36: QUESTION EVERYTHING

Clarke stood staring out the classroom window for several minutes. At last, he turned to face Frank again. “I see why you wanted to tell me that in person,” he remarked. The two of them had agreed to meet that morning before classes started.

“You believe me then?” Frank asked.

Clarke considered the question, and ultimately shrugged. “You have no reason to lie,” he said. “It also helps explain why I couldn’t reach Julie last night. I didn’t really buy her parents’ excuse that she was asleep.”

Frank nodded. “So, what do you think then? Is there any chance that Julie was, I don’t know, coerced or possessed or something?”

“That,” Clarke said slowly, “is a very good question.”

He thought for another long moment. What should he say? Julie had asked him - PLEADED with him - to keep quiet about her family situation. He couldn’t betray that. Not when Julie was no longer here to give permission.

“I can tell you this much,” Clarke yielded. “Julie had a lot riding on this talk with her parents last night. If it went badly… I’m not sure what mental state she’d have been in. However, Julie hasn’t even been thinking about Carrie since the two of them split, over a month ago. There was no reason to shoot her. Unless Carrie has done something to annoy Julie lately…?”

“Not as far as I know,” Frank said. “I mean, she did indirectly help Corry with research for his flyer.”

“Julie would have targeted Corry for that, and even then, non lethally,” Clarke countered. He tapped his foot on the ground. “No, I’m as puzzled by Julie’s actions as you are.”

Frank ran a hand back through his hair. “I see. Damn. I… I guess I thought this conversation was worth a shot. Thanks anyway.”

“You know, I’m glad you didn’t blame Julie out of spite,” Clarke added. “Most wouldn’t be half as kind right now.”

“Well, while I can’t forgive Julie for some of the things she’s apparently done - this doesn’t add up. And since you’ve always been advocating on her behalf, I figured that had to mean something.”

“Thank you.” A thought struck Clarke, and he leaned back against the wall. “Though, hold up a sec, you said that after Julie shot Carrie, she took your time machine to try and undo everything. Right?”

“By erasing her own existence, that’s correct,” Frank confirmed. “I am sorry, Clarke.”

“Thing is, I still remember her,” Clarke continued. “You still remember her. Carrie’s still in the hospital. If Julie wanted to wipe herself out, it didn’t work.”

“Which does fit with my timeline theory,” Frank noted. “It’s impossible for anyone to affect their prior self that way.”

“So if she can’t do it, why hasn’t she come back?” Clarke questioned.

Frank shrugged. “Maybe she hasn’t realized the problem yet. Or had no money to return. Or our machine’s random variance meant she’s stuck in the wrong time period. We have no way of knowing what happened.”

Clarke slowly shook his head. “But we HAVE to know, Frank. We’re in Julie’s future here. We should know what happened with her time traveling right away.”

“Er… okay, good point,” Frank yielded. “Well, it could be that the machine broke down… so she decided to take up residence in the past… and is currently living a new life somewhere else?”

“Even if that’s so, we should STILL be able to find out,” Clarke insisted. “Right? I mean, in historical records, newspapers, that sort of thing? Maybe Julie even left a message for us somewhere!”

“I… I suppose that’s logical,” Frank granted.

“That’s what I’m going to do then,” Clarke decided. “I’m going to research, and track Julie down. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

“Not a bad idea,” Frank admitted. “Okay… you can also talk with Luci, Chartreuse or Tim. They’re the other ones who know about the time machine.”

“Tim??”

“Sort of a long story. Chartreuse related. I’m sure he’d be more than happy to tell it to you himself.”

“He probably would,” Clarke agreed. “Okay. One more thing - could we maybe keep on keeping Julie’s name out of this? While I look? Things are bad enough for her already.”

“I…” The first bell rang, warning students to head to their homeroom classes. “Yeah, okay,” Frank agreed. “Talk to you this evening then?”

“Right, until then,” Clarke confirmed. With that, the two teenagers headed off to their first class.

Hank Waterson dropped his daughter’s hand and rose to his feet as the nurse entered the room. “She’s still unconscious. Why is she still unconscious?” he demanded of the man. “Is there something wrong? She’s been in recovery for over two days now!”

“Mr. Waterson, please, shouting at me is not going to do anyone any good,” the nurse said, moving to check on the instruments by Carrie’s bed.

“I’m not shouting!” Hank paused before sinking back down into the chair next to her bed. “Fine, maybe I’m raising my voice. The thing is, I’m starting to feel like you all know something I don’t.”

The nurse finished taking his reading and marked something down on a clipboard. “I assure you, Mr. Waterson, we are being quite transparent. Your daughter’s wounds have been treated and there’s every chance she will make a complete physical recovery.” He made some additional notes.

“Then why is she still asleep?” Hank protested. “Is she in some sort of coma? Are you giving her too much morphine??”

The nurse shook his head. “As far as we can tell, this deep sleep is exactly what it looks like. As to why she’s not waking up… I grant, that is a good question.”

“Is the fact that I don’t have a genetic history on her mother’s side of the family important? Is there anything there that might allow for Carrie’s current condition?”

The nurse sighed. “Possible, but unlikely. Mr. Waterson, why don’t you go home and get some sleep? I’m sure it’s simply a matter of time until…”

“TIME!”

The nurse physically recoiled as Carrie’s eyes snapped open. Hank barely registered the man’s shocked expression, attention already back on his daughter. “Carrie,” he said happily, grasping her hand again. “Carrie, it’s me, it’s your father! A-Are you all right?”

Carrie sat bolt upright on the hospital bed, her eyes wide, yet unfocussed. “Time,” she repeated. “Time, time… I can see it, oh God, why can I see the flow of time…”

Hank exchanged a brief glance with the hospital official. Now the man merely looked nervous. “Carrie, stay calm,” Hank continued slowly. “Lie back, you’ve been through a somewhat traumatic…”

Carrie’s unseeing gaze snapped over to him, bringing him up short.

“It’s all wrong,” Carrie continued. She started to shake. “This is the wrong timeline. You… you’ve got to fix it. Please, you’ve got to fix this for me.” Her heart machine began to beep faster.

“I’m going to get someone,” the nurse decided, hurrying away.

Hank Waterson squeezed Carrie’s hand a little harder. “Okay hon, don’t worry, whatever it is, I’ll fix it. First, please lie back down.”

“No, no, no,” Carrie said, shaking her head. Tears began to well up in her eyes. “It hurts, it hurts, you’ve got to fix it now, please, PLEASE someone’s got to fix it NOW.”

“Okay,” her father soothed, not sure what she meant, but hating to see his daughter in such pain. “We can give you stronger painkillers. Don’t worry, the doctors have assured me you’ll make a full…”

“No, no, it huuuuuuuuurts,” Carrie sobbed, yanking her hand free from her father’s grasp and pressing both palms against her temples. She began to rock back and forth. “Change it back, you’ve got to change time baaaaaaaack… please pleeeeeease someone change time baaa-aaa-aaack…”

“Change what time back?” her father asked. “Like Daylight Savings? Does your head hurt, dear, is that the problem?”

“Huuuuuurts,” Carrie sobbed. “They can’t change the past, they can’t change…” She threw back her head and began laughing hysterically.

“Carrie… Carrie, honey, what’s wrong? What’s so funny? How can I help you?” Hank asked desperately.

She didn’t even seem to hear him, she merely kept on laughing. He started to stand up, to try and get that nurse to come back.

Her hands had grabbed him by the lapels of his shirt before he realized it. Carrie now silently stared up at her father, tear streaks on her cheeks and a haunted look in her eyes. She spoke again. “There IS no NOW. But she’s NOT supposed to be DEAD. WE… MUST… CHANGE… TIME… BACK.”

And the glass of water next to Carrie’s bed inexplicably shattered into a hundred pieces. With its contents no longer confined, the liquid unceremoniously spilled out all over the tabletop and down onto the floor.

Hank Waterson jumped at the noise, and with his attention diverted, it took him a few seconds to realize that his daughter had fallen unconscious once more, her fingers still twisted in against his shirt.

“Dear God,” Hank whispered, gently lowering her body back down onto the hospital bed. “What… what was all that about?”

“It’s a mystery,” Frank decided.

“No, it’s not,” Luci countered. She reached out to point to the equations. “See, this chemical acts like a catalyst, that’s why we were able to observe the change.”

Frank blinked. “Oh, right. Uh, I knew that.”

“Yes, you did,” Luci agreed. “What’s wrong, Frank? You’ve never been this inattentive about your science homework before.”

He was unable to hold back a sigh. “I’m sorry, Luci. I suppose I can’t get my mind off of the whole time travel mess.”

Luci rested a hand on his shoulder. “Frank, there’s nothing more we can do about that. It’s been over a week since the shooting. Time to start thinking about living our normal lives again.”

Frank could scarcely believe she’d suggested it. “HOW?” he protested. “You know Carrie’s condition! The few times she’s been conscious, she’s been raving about time and disrupted timelines. And her physical state remains poor due to the apparent mental strain she’s under. Now, there’s got to be some connection between that and our time trips.”

“There probably is,” Luci acknowledged, her grip on him tightening. “But we have no way of knowing what it might be. Nor do we have the time machine, so telling anyone about our trips is liable to get us locked up in some psychiatric ward.”

“Along with Carrie, you mean,” Frank said dejectedly.

“No, Frank, I don’t mean that,” she asserted, pulling her hand away. “Carrie’s not there yet.”

“She probably will be soon.” Frank slammed his own hand down onto his sitting room table. “Damn it, Luci, if only I hadn’t left the time machine out. Hadn’t let Julie get her hands on it! If we had it now, we’d be in a position to DO something.”

“And maybe we wouldn’t. And maybe you’d be dead. Besides, you warned me Julie was headed for the basement, I’M the one who let her activate the damn thing. So it’s my fault than anything!”

“Don’t be silly, you…” Frank stopped as he looked over and finally registered the pain in Luci’s expression. “You’re feeling guilty too,” he realized.

“This surprises you? Don’t forget, I also suspected everything was too perfect with Julie. Yet I wasn’t able to determine what was really going on! Now look where we are because of it.”

“But Luci, you couldn’t have predicted this,” Frank protested. “No one could have predicted this!”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Luci’s expression became a wry smile. “For instance, Chartreuse thinks she could have. And Clarke’s upset he hasn’t found anything on Julie yet, and Tim wonders if he should have been more involved, and trust me, Frank, there’s enough guilt to go around our little group already. Too much, if you ask me. Which is why I wanted to work on chemistry. Why I wanted to avoid thinking about it for a change.”

Frank looked back down at the science questions. “I see your point.” He swallowed. “But I don’t think I can do this. Not yet. I’m sorry, Luci - could we give it another go tomorrow?”

“I suppose,” Luci agreed. She offered up a small smile. “Please, don’t think I’m unsympathetic. I really wish there was something more we could try. But with no time machine, no information about Julie’s whereabouts, and no way for us to understand, let alone treat Carrie’s condition, we HAVE to move on. If we obsess… I don’t know. Maybe we will all go nuts.”

“I hope not,” Frank sighed. “Give me one more night though. To reflect. Inspiration could strike.”

Luci rubbed her thumb and index finger in against her eyes, finishing by pinching the bridge of her nose. Then she reached out to close their textbook. “Sure. And if it does strike, or even if you simply want to talk - you know my number. I-I’m here for you, Frank. Yeah? You haven’t forgotten about how I feel about you, right?” she added more softly.

“I haven’t,” Frank assured. “Thanks, Luci.” He smiled back at her, and the two of them hugged. Unfortunately, his expression held up only as long as it took for Luci to pack up her things and leave the Dijora household.

Frank was still frowning after dinner, as he lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Okay,” he asserted. “Tomorrow, I am going to time travel back to NOW, so that I have a time machine NOW that I can use tomorrow to time travel back to NOW.”

And … nothing changed. He idly wondered if they needed Carrie to make something like that work. “I don’t even know when we’d need to start changing things for her, even assuming we could,” Frank groaned, rolling onto his side.

His phone rang. He grabbed for it, wondering who would be calling - and for some reason, there was no data available. “Hello?” he said, answering anyway.

“Frank Dijora?”

Frank frowned. It was an older male voice. Someone he didn’t recognize. “Yeah, speaking,” he confirmed.

“Frank, you need to tell the police about Julie LaMille.”

Frank was instantly sitting up. “Who is this? What do you know about Julie?” None of their group had said anything, and Carrie had never been lucid enough to give a statement. Officially, Julie was simply a missing person.

“If you don’t reveal the whole story about Julie, Carrie’s condition will continue to deteriorate.”

Frank’s grip tightened. “Y-You know something about Carrie’s condition too?!”

The voice sighed. “Listen, Frank - you and your friends are playing with forces you don’t understand. Only by revealing Julie’s part in this can we help set time back on its proper course.”

“Set time… proper course… are you from the future?”

“Immaterial. Are you even listening? I don’t want to force the issue here, but I will if I have to.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Frank protested.

“Frank, you will now scratch your nose,” the voice interrupted.

“I will now scratch my nose,” Frank agreed, doing so. “But how does that even–“ Frank froze. He looked down at his hand. Why… why had he done that?

“Again, I don’t WANT to force the issue here. But I WILL if I have to.”

Frank swallowed hard. “W-Who… Who are you?”

A pause. “Let’s call me Carrie’s Guardian Angel. After all, I did manage to save her once before, when she took a time trip out into the middle of Algonquin Park. Without coins. Did she ever mention that trip to you?”

Frank almost replied in the negative - only to have all the pieces fall into place. June, two years in the past, one of their first trips, when they’d both been trapped in the woods, and Carrie had run into the guy with the nickel who had said ‘Guard it’. Was it possible? Could this be the same guy? “Maybe,” he realized.

“Fine. So, you will set the record straight concerning Julie?”

“ONLY if you answer a few questions first,” Frank retorted, hardly believing his own audacity.

Silence. Frank tensed. Had he blown it? But then, a response: “If I do that, you will do as I ask?”

Frank cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll allow three questions.”

“Three?!”

“I’ll be nice and not count that as one of them.”

Frank closed his eyes. He forced himself to slow down and think. He had an opportunity here. But with a question limit, there was no point in asking anything which he might now be able to deduce.

First, this guy - Carrie had referred to him as a ‘Shady’ guy back then, and it seemed a good enough moniker - knew too much. Odds were good that Shady was another time traveller. Or knew someone who was. So, were others changing the past too? Is that why Carrie had said something to her father about the wrong timeline? Or was it changes by Julie causing the problem?

Shady’s request implied the latter. Despite being suspicious of the messenger, he had to get more information about that first.

“First question,” Frank said. “What is it Julie changed in the past, which is causing Carrie to react in our present?”

“Julie died.”

Frank nearly dropped the phone, Shady’s response had been so cavalier. “I’ll need proof,” he demanded.

“Her teenaged self died on November 9th, precisely three days before she was even born. I thought you might ask, so I checked in the library. You can look it up in the newspaper published by her home town. Though of course, they didn’t know the person was Julie. She was simply listed as a Jane Doe.” The man chuckled. “Proof that time doesn’t like it when people attempt drastic alterations to their own histories. Ironic, in a way.”

Frank forced his emotions down. Two questions left, and he now had a lot of new information. New fact: Shady couldn’t time travel at will. If he could, why bother looking things up in old newspapers? Further, his “ironic” implied that what was on the surface here contrasted with what was really happening… to the point of being a complete opposite. Could that imply that Shady was also changing history, more subtly?

Shady coughed. “Are you still there?”

“I’m trying to parse the fact that you’re saying someone I know is DEAD,” Frank sniped. He got another sigh in response.

Okay, where to go with this? Well, if this guy could effect changes like making Frank scratch his nose, surely he could convince the police without Frank’s help. So why hadn’t he?

“Second question,” Frank said. “Since you can seemingly force your will onto people, why even give me the option here?”

“Mmph,” Shady grunted. Frank got the impression he didn’t like this question. “So, there are limits. Sure, I could make you tell the police yourself the next time you see them, but depending on how they react, you might end up coming across as a robot, or coerced or something. That would be bad. Besides, free will is important! It’s the whole reason I…” His voice trailed off.

“It’s the whole reason you what?”

“Is that your last question?”

Frank grimaced. “No.” Damn. Shady was getting canny.

So, Shady could influence individuals, but he didn’t necessarily have control over how things played out? Interesting. Not to mention a stronger case for him being behind all of this in the first place.

Frank decided his last question had to be about Carrie. Shady didn’t seem to care that Julie was dead - did this ‘Guardian Angel’ truly care about Carrie, or was she a means to an end?

“Third question.” Frank paused to frame it in his mind. “How do you know for sure that Carrie will be all right, once the truth about Julie’s role in her injury comes out?”

“I don’t.”

Frank stared at his phone, but there was no immediate follow-up. He clenched his jaw. “That’s not an acceptable answer.”

More grumbling. “Carrie Waterson is having trouble rationalizing the sequence of events surrounding the awakening of her powers,” Shady said at last. “Because Julie was the trigger this time, and–”

“THIS time?” Frank interrupted. His certainty about a fixed timeline was eroding fast.

“Because Julie was the trigger,” Shady amended swiftly, “And because Julie was temporally displaced so soon afterwards, Carrie is experiencing a disconnect between present and past. My most reasonable hypothesis is that she now believes herself to be in the past too. So if we construct a present where Julie is a fugitive rather than merely missing, Carrie will be more grounded, and her disconnect can be resolved.”

“But you don’t know.”

“I said that already. There are a number of uncertainties here, including how far that– how far your Carrie’s insanity has progressed.”

Frank bit down on his lip. “Seems like we should use time travel to prevent the shooting in the first place then.”

Shady grunted. “Okay, free information since it scares me to think that you might actually try something that STUPID.” He actually sounded worried. “You rewrite what has happened to this point? Carrie will be faced with simultaneous futures, one in which her powers are awakening, and one in which they are still dormant. The resulting temporal stress would destroy her mind. From the inside out. Likely taking this whole town along with it.”

“Oh…” Frank swallowed. “But what powers–”

“No more questions,” the man retorted. “Your turn to keep up your end of the bargain.”

Frank winced. “Fine, Shady, I-I’ll tell the police before next week.”

“Shady?” the guy yelped. “What is WITH you teenagers and your labels? And you want to wait until– Look, Frank, you bear THIS in mind! Every MINUTE you wait is one MORE minute for your precious Carrie to slip further away. Understood?”

And the line went dead.

Frank collapsed back onto his bed. That whole conversation had been… surreal. Beyond insane. He had to write this stuff down, before he forgot. No, wait - better idea. Frank reached back for his phone, dialling another number with a shaky hand.

“Hello… Luci?” Frank said as soon as he heard the familiar voice on the other end. “There’s been a new development.”

See the accompanying Commentary Post for ARC 2.2

PART 35: THE WOUNDED

His pencil tapped idly against the pages as he looked down at what he had written. There no longer seemed to be any clear cut way to extract his characters from the situation into which they had been placed.

“I hate it when that happens,” Hank Waterson grumbled. He finally tossed his pencil aside and left his novel behind in the study, figuring he could use something to drink. The phone rang on his way to the kitchen, so he stopped in the hall to answer.

“Hello? Yes, this is Hank Waterson,” he replied absently. His knuckles went white. “There was a what? Where is she?? Oh my God… okay, I-I’ll be right there!”

Slamming the phone back down, Hank turned and charged out of his house, coming back only long enough to grab his car keys.

“Where is she? Where is my daughter?" Hank Waterson demanded as he charged up to the front desk at the hospital, breathing hard.

“Take a moment to calm down, sir," the receptionist advised. “Then tell me your name."

“Mr. Waterson!”

Hank turned to see who had spoken. It was some teenage kid with glasses. No, wait a minute, he knew that guy. Nice kid, they’d met about a month ago. He came to see Carrie every so often, to help her with math. What was his name?

“Frank?” ventured Carrie’s father once he’d managed to catch his breath.

Frank nodded. “They… Carrie’s still in emergency. It’s supposedly not as bad as it looked to me, but…”

“You mean you were there when it happened?”

Frank bit down on his lip as he nodded again. “It all took place so quickly, sir. I-I’m sorry, there was nothing I could do."

“It’s fine. It’s not your fault,” Hank assured, resting what he hoped was a comforting hand on Frank’s shoulder. “If… if possible, I’d like to hear more. Once I’ve checked in with the appropriate people.”

“S-Sure, I’ll be over there,” Frank noted, gesturing to the nearby waiting area.

When Carrie’s father came over a little while later, Frank felt his body tense up. It was fine though, he told himself. He’d repeat the same story that he’d given to the police.

“Good news,” Mr. Waterson said. “They’re doing everything they can for Carrie.” He paused. “There’s every chance she’ll pull through."

“You don’t sound that confident,” Frank pointed out.

“I…" The tall man sighed, and sank down into an adjacent seat. “I guess I’m not,” he admitted. “I mean, they’re doing their best, of that I’m sure. It’s only, I heard similar things after my wife…” He stopped. “You don’t need to hear about that. What DID happen then? It was at your house, I’m told?”

Frank swallowed. Time to lie again. “It’s… all kind of hazy, actually,” he said. “It’s like I told the police, someone got into the house - I guess they were trying to rob us - and they surprised me and Carrie in the sitting room. A couple of shots were fired, the person escaped, and I called 911.”

Carrie’s father nodded, and reached out to touch Frank’s knee. “Thank you for doing that. I’m sure every second counted. Oh, and good to see that you weren’t hurt either," he added. “I suppose this was somewhat traumatic for you too… where are your parents?”

“Around,” Frank said. He’d made them drive him to the hospital, after making a preliminary report for the police. “But I told them I’d feel better without them hovering. I am here with another classmate.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“Me.” As Luci walked up and held out a can of juice from the vending machine towards Frank, Carrie’s father turned his gaze upon her.

Perhaps sensing the older man’s scrutiny, the ponytailed asian girl jerked her gaze back over at him. “Hello, YES?” she said pointedly. Mr. Waterson pulled back at her manner, and Frank belatedly realized they might not have ever met.

“Oh! Er, Luci, this is Carrie’s father… Mr. Waterson, this is, er, Luci Primrose, a mutual friend,” Frank said hastily. He took the proffered juice can from her.

“Luci…” Hank said slowly. “Oh, of course! You’re the young, intelligent one Carrie’s mentioned on occasion.”

“I suppose so,” Luci replied guardedly, still sizing him up.

Mr. Waterson lifted an eyebrow. “Um… Luci, is everything okay? Have I said something wrong?”

Luci shook her head. “No,” she vocalized at last. “It’s only that I’m a bit surprised to see you here.”

“Luci!”

Mr. Waterson raised a hand to forestall Frank’s protest. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

Luci glanced back in Frank’s direction only briefly before looking back at Carrie’s father. “I figured it would take you longer to arrive. After all, from what I’ve been able to learn through Carrie, you never took much of an interest in her.”

Frank stood, aghast. “Luci, maybe we should find my parents and go–”

“No, that’s all right,” Mr. Waterson interrupted with a sigh. “After all, she’s not wrong.”

Frank winced. “Oh, I don’t know…”

“If it takes a life or death situation for me to meet someone’s Carrie’s been spending a lot of her time with, I can hardly claim otherwise, can I?” he retorted wryly. He smiled at Luci. “You certainly share Carrie’s spirit and determination. The two of you must be close.”

The corner of Luci’s mouth twitched, but the elder Waterson missed it, having already looked at the floor. “I fear that ever since her mother left us, me and Carrie have been drifting further and further apart,” he admitted. “It’s on me. I have tried to be the best father I can, yet I seem to make all the wrong decisions at crucial times.”

“I’m sure you’ve always tried your best,” Frank assured, sitting back down. He placed his own hand back on Mr. Waterson’s knee.

“I can still remember back when we had it all worked out,” Carrie’s father continued, seemingly to himself. “My wife worked during the day, while I took care of Carrie and did periodic work on my novels. In the evenings, Elaine would take over at home, while I worked part time at a phone call-in centre. We only really saw each other on the weekends, but at the time, it was enough. It was only supposed to be until we’d raised enough money to give Carrie a good life anyway. The trip to Bermuda, that was going to be the turning point.” He paused. “I guess in a way it was.”

Frank and Luci exchanged looks. “I was sorry to hear about your wife’s disappearance down there,” Frank ventured.

“She TOLD you about that?” Mr. Waterson said, looking back at him with a measure of incredulity. Frank nodded. The adult continued to stare for another few seconds, then returned his gaze to the ground.

“I should have told her myself, back then,” he said. “I simply couldn’t believe it had happened.” He smiled sadly. “It’s funny, really. Before I met Elaine - Carrie’s mother - I’d never even considered marriage. Then after we met, I couldn’t imagine life without her. I always thought that somehow, that meant I’d know if she died… that I’d feel it somewhere. Yet I still haven’t, not to this day.”

Luci cocked her head to the side. “Have you ever expressed those feelings to Carrie?” she wondered.

Carrie’s father shrugged. “She won’t listen. I can’t blame her. For years, I had her convinced that her mother would be coming home. We didn’t even attend the memorial service. I was so sure that Elaine would be found…!” Hank briefly clenched his fist, then let it drop open. “Carrie’s never forgiven me for hiding the truth the way I did. And there’s no way I can make that up to her.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Well, I’m sorry to say this, but you’re probably right,” Luci said at last. “However, that’s no reason to pull away from Carrie. Avoiding her now isn’t helping matters.”

“Avoiding?” he frowned. “Have I been avoiding her? Hm. Perhaps I have been, at that. She’s been reminding me more and more of her mother of late… not only in appearance, but in her willpower, and her drive to shape the world the way she wants… how can one lone man even handle that?” His smile became genuine. “It reminds me of a story my wife once told me, from back when she was young herself. Elaine nearly brought a whole orphanage down to it’s knees.”

Frank sat up straighter, even as Luci blurted out, “Did you say ORPHANAGE?”

Mr. Waterson nodded. “Yes, Carrie’s mother spent the first several years of her life in one. She was left there as a baby, never knowing who her real parents were… a bit of a shame, really.” Hank stopped at the expression on Luci’s face. “I’m sorry Luci, now I HAVE said something wrong.”

“N-No,” Luci stammered out, shaking her head. “It’s nothing.”

“Luci doesn’t know who her real parents are either,” Frank offered up.

“Oh. Well, you seem to be dealing with it all right, that’s good to see,” Carrie’s father said. He paused as he caught sight of his watch. “But look at me, babbling on endlessly to the two of you when you should be getting back home. I can keep your families updated with information, so there’s no need for you to stay here personally. Dijora and… Primrose, was it?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. Still, it didn’t feel right to leave.

Mr. Waterson seemed to pick up on his hesitation. “They probably won’t even let you see Carrie, outside of visiting hours,” he pointed out. “Go. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“How can you be so sure?” Luci challenged.

This time, Carrie’s father didn’t flinch back from Luci’s scrutiny. “Because after losing my wife - I’ll be damned before I let anyone take my daughter away from me too.”

Frank tossed the empty juice container into the trash receptacle. He and Luci had moved out of line of sight of the elder Waterson. “Okay Luci, what’s on your mind?” he asked. She’d had that partly thoughtful, partly annoyed look on her face for several minutes now.

“You want Issue A first, or Issue B?”

“Issue B,” Frank said. He was pretty sure he knew what “A” involved.

“Fine. The bit about Carrie’s mother being an orphan? It reminded me of Linquist,” Luci stated.

Frank adjusted his glasses. “Linquist did come to my mind too. Except Carrie’s mother disappeared over thirteen years ago. Even if Linquist was checking over adoptees back then, which seems unlikely given how his interest is more recent, what are the odds that his crazed ravings are in any way connected to fact, let alone to her? And could he really have made an entire plane vanish?”

“It’s unlikely,” Luci yielded. “You’re right, of course.” She frowned. “Just a funny feeling, that’s all.” She fell silent for another few moments. “Okay. So. Did you tell Mr. Waterson about Julie?”

Frank let out a long breath. Back to Issue A. “No,” he admitted. “Luci, we need to keep that quiet."

Luci shook her head. “Frank, WHY?” She paused to make sure there was no one in earshot before whispering, “Julie shot Carrie! Should we defend that simply because she escaped into the past with our time machine?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Frank protested. “It’s as I told you before the ambulance showed up. Julie was acting funny.”

“Frank, Julie’s never been normal. Remember the flyer?”

Frank shook his head. “No, listen, the whole incident didn’t make sense.” He slapped his index finger into his palm, deciding he had to justify this as much to himself as he did to her. “First, Julie arrived at my place totally calm and collected. Then she was shaking like a leaf. Why?” He added a second finger. “Second, she shot at Carrie knowing I was there and could I.D. her, yet she took no direct action against me - not until I provoked her. None of which sounds like a typical Julie plan.”

Luci opened her mouth as if to interject something, but Frank kept talking, adding a third finger to his tally. “Third, and most importantly, what on earth was her motive? Why shoot Carrie, and then decide to undo, well, everything? Why not simply avoid shooting anyone in the first place, meaning there’s nothing to undo?”

Luci stared, seemingly wondering if he was going to add another point. “So, what, you think Julie was set up?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know,” Frank admitted, spreading his arms out, wondering if he sounded as frustrated as he felt. “So until we DO know something, we keep Julie’s name out of it. There was a robber. You didn’t get to my house in time to see anything, and then you came here to the hospital. End of story.”

Luci rubbed her nose. “For THIS, you don’t compromise,” he heard her mumble. She looked back up at him before he could think to comment. “Okay, look. You HAVE to realize that as soon as Carrie regains consciousness, Julie’s name is going to come up.”

Frank nodded. “True. But this delay? Will give me enough time to talk with Clarke.”

“With…” Luci’s vexed look became thoughtful. “Hm. What do you think Clarke knows? How much are you planning on telling him about what happened? Are you going to mention the time machine?”

“Clarke gets the whole story.” Frank rubbed the back of his head. “So I’ll have to mention the time machine. But as you pointed out to Tim a few days ago, we’re pretty sure Clarke knows already.”

Luci nodded. “True enough.” The young girl rocked on her heels for a moment. “And the only person who might object is Carrie, and she can’t exactly vote right now. Thing is, if you’re right? If someone blackmailed Julie into what she did? Something big is going on. Maybe bigger than we can handle."

“Hey, if you have other options, I’m open to suggestion.”

Luci opened her mouth to respond, but ultimately shook her head. “Nothing comes to mind,” she sighed. “I’ll keep thinking though.”

“Okay,” Frank agreed. “I’ll let you know how it goes with Clarke.” He glanced over towards the clock. “So unless there’s anything else…?”

Luci started to shake her head in the negative, but then she grimaced. “Okay, yeah, one other thing I want to ask.”

“Sure, Luci, anything.”

The young girl pursed her lips. “Carrie and me, we’re not so alike, are we? I mean, we’re not ‘close’, like her father said, right? After all, she’s so… so… while I’m so… I mean, I’m not like her, am I?”

Frank felt at a loss as to what the actual question was there. “Not really. Why, does something about the comparison bother you?”

“It annoys me that her father said we were close, within minutes of my first meeting him,” Luci said. She crossed her arms. “I mean, you don’t think I’m going to be like Carrie two years down the road, right?”

Frank grinned, as he tried to picture Luci spinning her hair in her fingers and batting her eyelashes, trying to get random boys in the hall to carry her books for her. “Trust me, Luci,” he said reassuringly. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Lee whistled absently as he finished reshelving the last of the books. A quick glance at his watch told him he was just in time, the library would be closing in another two minutes. “Another day, another dollar,” he remarked aloud. He quickly wheeled the book trolley back to the rear of the building, resisting the urge to ride on it.

It was as he walked back to the stairs that some movement caught his eye back in the records section. “‘lo?  Anyone there?” Lee called out.

He saw the movement again and decided to check it out. “Hello?” he called out again. “Library’s closing in under a minute, get going while the getting going’s good.”

There seemed to be a figure standing in the shadow of the main shelves. “Time’s up today, buddy,” Lee continued. “Come back tomorrow.” The figure didn’t respond. “Look, I can totally see you,” Lee observed. “And the library is closed, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

The figure finally stepped forwards. It was a person wearing a cowl which concealed their face; Lee couldn’t make out any features. “You are going to do something for me now,” he - it was a male voice - said. “Listen carefully. You will turn around, and forget that you ever saw me. Understand?”

“Uh huh,” Lee replied. “Sure, buddy. You been reading ‘Hypnotism for Dummies’? Come on, I’m serious, library’s closed.”

The figure stepped closer. “I SAID, you will turn around, and forget that you ever saw me,” he repeated. “Understand?"

Lee rolled his eyes. “Hey, Judy,” he shouted out, hoping the head librarian would hear. “We’ve got a stowaway back here. Looks to be part of some weird cult.”

Said stowaway quickly reached up and pushed back his hood, allowing Lee to take in the features of a nondescript thirtysomething male with longish, dark hair. “I am not part of a weird cult,” the man said in obvious irritation.

Lee grinned. “Customer’s always right, of course. I simply call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

The man glared. “You have a very closed mind, and little to no understanding of what’s really going on around you.”

“Yeah, that’s what my friends always say. Now, are you gonna leave the library or not? You can always come back tomorrow, you know. This is how libraries work.”

“Oh, very well,” came the grudging reply. “What time do you open?”

“Hours are posted out front,” Lee said automatically. The man let out another quiet grumble and began to move past him. “Oop, hold on,” Lee remarked, extending his hand to block the way. “That a book of bound newspapers in your hand? Those can’t leave the library, sorry.”

The man turned. “I need some of these articles.”

“Well, take a snapshot or photocopy them,” Lee replied. The man nodded and moved off towards the photocopier station. “But not now,” Lee added. “Seeing as the library closed five minutes ago.”

“You really are trying my patience.”

“Is there a problem here?” came a new, female voice.

Lee turned to see the head librarian approaching. “No problem, Judy,” he assured her. “Whatzizname here was looking to photocopy old newspaper clippings, except he left it a bit late.”

Judy nodded. “Right, the photocopiers will have powered down by now,” she stated. “Can you come back tomorrow, sir?”

“Oh, well, fine!” the thirtysomething said. He tossed the book of bound newspapers angrily into Lee’s arms, with enough force to make Lee stumble, then stalked off towards the stairwell.

‘Now there,’ Lee mused, ‘goes a guy accustomed to getting his own way.’

“I’ll follow him to make sure he gets out,” Judy said. “Can you possibly reshelve that volume before you leave yourself?”

Lee nodded. “No problemo,” he affirmed with a grin and a thumbs up. Judy smiled back and headed off, while Lee quickly tracked down the proper place for the records he was holding.

It was as he was sliding them in that he noticed a piece of paper sticking out. Likely a bookmark of sorts. Vaguely curious, Lee pulled the volume back out and flipped open to the page in question. He frowned.

The three year old headline referred to the recent purchase of their town’s biggest house, by a wealthy out-of-town family.

“Bizarre,” Lee murmured. “Why’s a creepy dude like that reading up on the LaMille history?” After a moment of thought, Lee shrugged, replaced the volume, and returned to the library’s front desk to sign out.

(How bad are the site stats? I've added an index page and I'll draw less, I guess?)

PART 19: DANCE DANCE REDUX

Luci peered into the black box sitting on Frank’s lab table. She smiled - being done a little ahead of schedule meant a chance to chat with Frank this evening. They’d been so focussed on their work, both Saturday and today, that there hadn’t been much opportunity for idle conversation.

Then again, Luci still felt awkward whenever talk shifted to personal lives - partly because of how Frank tended to talk about Carrie. Luci wasn’t quite sure what to say about that.

Why did Frank think that Carrie was anything more than the shallow persona she displayed at school? Even as Luci pondered this, the basement door opened and she heard someone coming downstairs. She looked up, reading the expression on Frank’s face.

“She’s coming over then?” Luci guessed.

Frank nodded, running a hand back through his hair. “Carrie’s on her way,” he affirmed.

Several blocks away, Carrie threw on her jacket as she headed for her front door. “I’m going out, Dad,” she called out in passing.

“Carrie, wait,” her father requested.

The blonde poked her head back around the entrance to the living room. “Yes?” she said with thinly veiled annoyance.

Hank Waterson folded up his newspaper and set it to the side of his chair. “We still haven’t discussed the matter of Friday’s dance.”

Carrie sighed. “It’s like I told you yesterday, there’s nothing to talk about. In fact, by the end of the weekend, you’ll have forgotten all about it.” She smiled at her inside joke.

“Carrie, when your school calls to tell me that my daughter may have been involved in a case of cheating, this is not something I will casually dismiss!”

‘Why not, you do that to everything else about me,’ Carrie thought to herself. Aloud, she responded, “Dad, please. It was almost two years ago, and they have no proof it actually happened. The whole thing’s been blown out of proportion. You know how school does that with me.”

Her father hesitated. “Still, I’d hate to see something like this escalate, and damage your permanent record. I got the impression that your school contacted me to ensure that such a thing won’t happen.”

“It won’t,” Carrie asserted. “Don’t worry, Dad, I know cheating is bad. Also, drugs are bad and sex is bad. I’ll be a good girl, okay?”

“Carrie! Be serious with me.”

“I am being serious!” Also snarky, her head voice added. Tone it down with him, for once? “Look, I’m sixteen, I can take care of myself without a lecture from you. Okay?” Carrie attempted another smile. “Now can I PLEASE go to Frank’s house? He’s expecting me. It’s math stuff.” Time travel involved math, right?

Her father appeared to wrestle with this internally. “Be back by ten o’clock,” he concluded.

“Ten? Since when do I have an actual curfew??”

“Since there are consequences to your actions. I’m only allowing the trip at all because it’s related to your schoolwork.”

“But… oh, fine,” Carrie sighed, deciding to hurry for the front door rather than stay and argue.

Honestly, why did her dad even try? It was obvious he didn’t care much for her, as highlighted by the fact that it took a problem like this for him to pay attention to her. Or was it more like, for her to pay attention to him? ‘Shut up, voice inside my head,’ Carrie grumbled.

He turned to look at the picture…

After the front door slammed, Hank slumped back down in his chair. He turned to look at the picture sitting on the table beside him. “She’s so much her mother’s daughter,” he murmured. “I don’t know how to handle her, Elaine… not since she found out you wouldn’t be coming back. What would you have done if you were here? Would you have let her go? If only you could guide me somehow…”

The picture didn’t answer. He hadn’t expected it to. A few minutes later, Hank retrieved his newspaper back from the floor with a sigh.

Frank closed up the time machine. The new circuits looked fine. Great. Now came the tricky bit. He turned to Luci. “Okay. So. Uh, if you want to head out before Carrie gets here, that’s understandable. Seeing as the two of you… haven’t been getting along.”

A huge understatement. He could still recall Carrie’s reaction from last Monday, when he had called her over - then revealed that Luci was going to be helping out with the time machine.

“Luci?!” Carrie had yelped at him. “Luci is going to be messing with the time machine? Frank, we’d agreed NOT to tell anyone about it! If this device was too much for you, you could have said so, rather than call in little miss ‘I-know-so-much-that-I-skipped-grades’. I mean, what’s she going to do for us, integrate a high-tech lollipop dispenser into the thing?”

All that - with Luci in the room. Fortunately, Luci had taken it in stride, retorting, “I’d promise not to show you up, Carrie, but that would entail me doing even LESS than nothing.”

A comment which hadn’t endeared Luci to the blonde. It had taken Frank’s explanation, of Luci discovering the machine’s existence herself in August, along with a reminder of Carrie’s “one week deadline”, to get Carrie to capitulate.

“No, I’m going to stay,” Luci now asserted. “The trip you’re both planning, it’s back to Friday, right?”

“Yeah,” Frank admitted, pulling himself back to the present. “After all, Carrie’s taken issue with what happened at the dance. So it’s a good a date as any to test out our new circuits.”

Luci shook her head. “Is it really? Or is that what she says? Because you don’t need to go to Friday - heck, even if Carrie somehow prevents that recording from being played, it doesn’t change what she did to Laurie in the first place!”

“I know that,” Frank assured her. “But there’s more to Carrie than how she acts.” After all, she had… well, helped that girl Beth in 1955? Frank ran his hand back through his hair. He was starting to wonder if his defence of Carrie was becoming more a defence of his own choice to work on time travel for the last two years.

Luci sighed. “What exactly did Carrie say to you when she came by yesterday?”

“Nothing mean. Not really. She was upset about the dance, that’s all. And about how we couldn’t use the machine yet, because we were in the process of making adjustments.”

“So she showed up ONLY for the time machine,” Luci pointed out. “Can’t you see how that girl’s all take and no give? I mean, really.”

“But there’s also her unique perspective on time,” Frank protested. “She sees things differently. Plus, something bad happened in her past.” Luci looked at him expectantly. “It’s not my place to go into detail.” Detail that had been filtered through his younger self. Were his memories even accurate?

“Uh huh.” Luci put her hands on her hips. “Fine. Then I’m not only staying now, I’m going back in time with you both.”

Frank stared. “What?” Yet again, Luci was surprising him.

“Even setting aside how Carrie’s been manipulating you, based on past experience? I suspect neither of you have much of a plan as far as a trip to the dance goes. You could end up getting yourselves into even worse trouble. I figure someone has to be around to talk sense.”

Frank shook his head. “The dance is a familiar environment. And since I still believe that we can’t change the past, we can’t get into any more trouble than we’re in already.”

Luci crossed her arms. “Sorry, but I’m not sold on your unchangeable theory about time. And even if I were, there could still be repercussions as yet unseen. So - I’m going! If you’re worrying about how to pitch it to Carrie, I’ve spent at least 24 hours fiddling with this machine over the past week. Am I saying you two owe me this trip? No… but if something goes wrong with the new circuits, it might be good if I’m there too, right?”

“That’s… a fair point,” Frank conceded. He let out a long breath. “All right. We’ll see what Carrie says.”

“No! Absolutely not.”

“Carrie, let me finish. Luci knows more about the new–”

“So IF something comes up, we’ll give her a phone call Friday night,” Carrie interrupted. “For that matter, I can do the same with you, Frank. Neither of you need bother coming. I can take this trip myself.”

From her position, sitting on the lab table, Luci fought down the urge to comment. After all, it would be better for all of them if she let Frank assert himself here. Right?

“Carrie, be reasonable. You haven’t been able to set the machine by yourself yet. And you can’t paradox your way through this, I don’t remember seeing you on Friday.”

“You mean you don’t remember seeing me YET. But fine - you’re testing stuff, so you can still come. ONLY you.”

Frank merely sighed. And Luci could no longer hold her tongue. “Carrie,” she broke in. “Do you even have the faintest idea of what you’ll be doing to try and reverse things on Friday?”

“How odd. Frank, did you just hear a noise?”

“I’m right aren’t I?” Luci pressed. “You probably don’t even know the recording was all a plot by Julie.”

“What?” both Carrie and Frank chorused, turning to face her.

Luci looked back and forth between them. “Surely that can’t come as a complete surprise to BOTH of you?” Even without the extra tip-offs through Chartreuse, Julie’s involvement had seemed fairly obvious.

“It’s likely,” Frank admitted. “But I also heard some people talking as they left. They seemed to think Corry had set it up, as an attempt to regain sympathy after his unfriendly remarks about Julie’s teddy bear.”

“I actually challenged Julie about it that same night,” Carrie added. “She said she left after Corry’s statement to the effect of her not trying anything, figuring it would be best to just go. She didn’t know he was going to play that recording of me, and she apologized for not coming to my rescue. Said she’d make it up to me somehow this week.”

Luci boggled. “Carrie - are you actually that stupid?”

“Now you listen here, little girl…”

“Carrie, stop,” Frank said, stepping between the two of them. “Please? Let’s all be civil about this? Please?” His uncertain gaze went from Carrie back to Luci. When neither of them spoke, he ventured, “Now, Luci, why do you say it wasn’t Corry?”

“Because of how it involved his sister,” Luci answered easily. “Corry doesn’t always show it overtly, but he’s very protective of her. Remember that whole mismatched date thing he set up last year? He’d never hurt Laurie the way that recording did. And once you eliminate him, it’s down to Julie. With the possible exception of one other person.”

“Ha! So it could be this other phantom person and not Julie?” Carrie challenged.

“Yes,” Luci yielded. “But that other person is you, Carrie.”

“What?” Carrie and Frank chorused again, Carrie adding a “how DARE you imply such a thing!”

Luci sighed. “Oh my God, you two. Think about it, seriously. Who led the outcry against Corry all last week regarding the teddy bear? Carrie. Who had the most opportunity to record the Carrie/Laurie conversation we heard? Carrie. Who had words with Corry immediately following the incident? Carrie. Who is the most mean spirited cheerleader on the face of the Earth?”

“Luci!” Frank said.

“Nope, not me! I bet Carrie was even the one who suggested karaoke to Corry. Am I right?”

“Okay Luci, enough.”

It was Frank’s tone more than anything that caused Luci to purse her lips shut. He seemed to be troubled. Indeed, she could now see that Carrie’s face was also an interesting mix of emotions - ranging from anger to confusion.

“That recording made me look equally guilty,” the blonde finally managed.

Again, Luci couldn’t stop herself. “The school has no proof. Technically, the worst they can do is a slap on the wrists, maybe a phone call home. The only hitch in my reasoning is how I know for a fact that you aren’t smart enough to pull something like this off.”

“Shut it, brainchild!"

“Shut it, brainchild! I’ll have you know that I’ve recorded pretty damning information before. Remember, Frank?”

Frank winced. “Yeah, um, you mean that time with Julie in that chemistry lab affair?"

“I stand corrected then,” Luci acknowledged. “You could have pulled it off. Corry will be pleased to learn that, I’m sure."

“OOoh! I said shut it, or I’ll shut it for you,” Carrie shouted, trying to reach around Frank to grab for the shirt of the younger girl.

“No, stop this,” Frank pleaded, putting his own arms out to block her. “Please! Luci, you stop baiting her, and Carrie… you HAVE to admit, insults aside, that what Luci says about Julie makes some sense. Julie may even suspect about our time machine.”

Carrie’s gaze snapped back to him. He lowered his arms slowly. “Oh. Yeah, uh, I’ve been watching her the past couple of weeks. She worries me, kind of. I even talked to Clarke about her.”

Carrie worked through a few more choice facial features. “I tell you Julie wouldn’t set me up like that. She doesn’t treat her friends that way.”

Luci bit down on her tongue, and was glad when Frank spoke up instead to ask, “Are you one hundred percent sure?”

Carrie fumbled for a strand of hair, which she then started twirling about her finger. “Okay. Say it’s Julie,” she said, doing her best to sound nonchalant. She wasn’t successful - Luci could tell that Carrie was getting worried. “How did she pull it off? She wasn’t even in the room.”

“Well, er…” Frank turned helplessly back to the younger girl.

Luci decided to look back at Frank, rather than at Carrie, to keep her focus. “I don’t know how Julie did it,” she admitted to him. “What I’ve told you has all been worked out in hindsight. Which I grant may be part of the reason why I want to go back there with you. I’m missing something.” Also, Chartreuse deserved an explanation.

Luci sensed Carrie glaring at her, but she kept staring at Frank. At his glasses, his jawline, his lips… she shifted her gaze to the ceiling.

“Fine,” Carrie murmured at last. “Fine, Frank. Luci can come too, if she wants to. I mean, why should I care, right? I’ve already won at being the meanest cheerleader on the face of the Earth. Why continue to prove it?”

Okay, Luci couldn’t ignore that pitying tone. “A sympathy act? REALLY, Carrie?” she fired off.

As she turned back though, Luci was surprised to see genuine distress on Carrie’s face. Was Carrie upset because Luci had called out her act? Or, the younger girl wondered, had she actually managed to hurt Carrie’s feelings somehow?

“Okay! Well then, let’s all travel now before anything else happens," Frank decided, clapping his hands together and smiling hopefully.

The previous Friday evening saw three figures materialize in a residential backyard. One of them collapsed immediately to the ground, while another slipped over to the fence nearby. The third set down the time machine and popped it open for a quick glance. “So far so good on the new circuits,” Frank said.

“And the school is right over there," Carrie added, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. “Let’s go. I figure, if I cut power to the whole stage early, the recording can’t play after Corry’s song. Good enough plan?”

So she had thought about it since they’d spoken on Saturday. “Actually, yeah. But hold on, Luci’s fallen unconscious,” Frank indicated.

Carrie sighed. “It’s always something with her.”

“The same thing happened to us the first few times we used the time machine, remember?” Frank pointed out, tapping Luci lightly on the cheek. “Besides, she adjusted her new circuitry for 9:30pm, so we should have over half an hour. The school’s right there, so what’s the rush?”

“Fine, fine.” There was a moment of silence. “Look, Frank, do you truly think I’m so mean as to…”

Carrie stopped as Luci groaned and began to stir. Then the young girl’s eyes shot open, and she sat up quickly, looking around. “Wow. What a rush,” Luci exclaimed.

Frank smiled. “I guess it can be, at that.”

“Peachy,” Carrie interjected. “Let’s get going.”

The three teenagers were soon over the fence and creeping towards the school. “Wait,” Frank said. “With our past counterparts already inside, how are we going to walk in without drawing any attention? Particularly given how I now have the time machine and our backpack of provisions.”

“I chose to wear the same clothing today as I did at the dance,” Luci offered. “On the off chance I’d get to come back with you. I’m also not very noticeable, so I’ll walk in and go around to the doors closer to the gym. I can let you in there.”

“Well, haven’t you thought of everything,” Carrie grumped.

“No, but I have actually THOUGHT,” Luci retorted, heading off to the main doors.

Once Luci was out of earshot, Frank turned back to Carrie. “Can’t you be a little nicer to her? She’s majorly helped us out.”

“Yeah, but… you know, Luci’s not a very nice person either. Given some of the things she says. And can she run the hundred metre dash in twelve seconds? I don’t think so.”

Frank wondered if he’d missed a segue. “What?”

“I’m just saying, nobody’s perfect,” Carrie said defensively. “At least I’m not trying to impress you the way she is.”

“Impress me?”

“Yes, it’s painfully obvious what her intentions are.”

“Why would Luci be trying to impress me?”

Carrie did a double take. “Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

Carrie shook her head slowly. “Good grief, it’s a wonder geeks ever reproduce,” she muttered under her breath.

“What?”

“Look, never mind, none of this is important. Let’s get over to the gym doors.” She immediately jogged off, setting a quick pace.

Frank followed after, giving up on understanding. In short order, the three time travellers had reunited inside the school. “We have about ten minutes,” Luci informed the others. “Apparently my time setting was also subject to some random variation, we must have arrived closer to 9:45.”

“Or your stuff never worked and this is a fluke,” Carrie observed. Frank opened his mouth to protest, only to have her add, “But, benefit of the doubt, good job and all that. I’ll be off to the circuit breakers near the stage now.”

“Try not to, you know, bump into yourself or cause too much trouble?” Frank pleaded.

Carrie grinned. “Tempting, but in this instance, why bother? I’ll meet up with you guys in that classroom there in twenty minutes.”

“Okay. In the meantime, we’ll re-adjust the time circuits,” Frank offered. Entering the abandoned room in question, he opened up the lid of the machine. “Still stable. You really knew what you were doing, Luci," he remarked as she came up behind him. “Ah, if you were trying to impress me, I’m impressed.”

Luci opened and closed her mouth, then cleared her throat. “Yeah, so, while I have this opportunity, I’m going to go tail Julie."

Again, Frank was sure he was missing leaps of logic. “What?”

“She left the cafeteria before everything happened. I figure it was to set things in motion, because there was no way for her to know in advance what song Corry would sing. I have to know what she did.”

“Luci, are you sure that’s wise?”

“Unlike Carrie, I’ll be careful. Be back ASAP,” With that, she slipped off towards the cafeteria.

As she walked, Luci reflected on the fact that there were two reasons why she felt she had to do this. The first being for the benefit of Chartreuse. The poor girl had seemed rather crushed by the defeat of their little group. Perhaps if Luci could show her that there was nothing they could have done, it would make Chartreuse feel better.

But the second reason was for the benefit of Frank. After all, if Julie WAS initiating some sort of war - Frank’s current ties to Carrie were liable to put him in the blast radius. Maybe. Luci wasn’t sure - she had to know more.

There were a few people milling about in the hallway outside the cafeteria when Luci unobtrusively took up a position there against the wall. About five minutes later, inside the cafeteria, she heard Corry get on the microphone. This was it. Her eyes turned to the exit, peering attentively for Julie.

There she was. Luci reflexively held her breath as Julie passed by, then inched after her along the wall, keeping the brunette in sight. Which was when she heard the familiar voice.

“Hey, short stuff! Sounds like Corry’s up to something, want to come in with me and check it out?”

PART 1: TIMELY DISCOVERY

It was the night before Carrie Waterson’s first argument with a future incarnation of herself. Rather ironically, she was thinking that a time machine would solve all of her problems.

After all, Carrie reasoned, if she had a time machine, then she could make her appearance at Julie’s first major party of the school year, and then later on, travel back in time to now. This meant that her future self would be back here in her room, on the off chance that her father came to check on her later, with the fringe benefit that she would then get a full night’s sleep before Friday morning’s math test.

Of course, her dad probably wouldn’t check. Seeing as, generally speaking, he remained wonderfully oblivious to most of her comings and goings, and indeed, her whole social life. The party wouldn’t even be a problem if she hadn’t accidentally let slip about it during dinner earlier this week. Now, if she’d still had a mother, maybe her mother would have paid more attention…

“But you don’t, so let’s get on with it,” the blonde teenager muttered aloud to herself.

Pulling herself out of her mental musings, she raised her bedroom window to glance around the backyard. No one there. Hardly surprising for late September, but since their yard opened right out into the ravine, one could never be sure what people (or small animals) might be wandering around.

After adjusting the strap of her small shoulder purse, Carrie made her way onto the roof, and over to the oak tree. With practiced ease, she climbed down via the branches, having no difficulty despite her long hair and somewhat impractical choice of attire.

You didn’t show up to a party thrown by the richest girl in town wearing a long sleeved T-shirt with torn jeans, particularly not when you had been named the head cheerleader for the school year. So Carrie had chosen a cropped top, and a skirt that only just reached her knees. With her reputation established, she could be forgiven for wearing her running shoes, which would be more practical for traversing the ravine than any sort of heels.

CARRIE WATERSON

Carrie dropped to the ground, dusting off her hands. A thought nagged at her. It WAS her athletic abilities which had netted her the cheerleading status, and not merely being best friends with Julie, right? Neither girl was part of the graduating class, but Julie LaMille was not only the richest student, she was one of the two polarizing forces within the school.

Carrie pushed those thoughts away as well. After all, she could do handsprings around the seniors. She hooked some errant strands of her long hair back behind her ear, adjusted the blue hairband she wore, and sprinted across the backyard, into the cover of the nearby trees.

She did glance briefly back towards the house, seeing the light was still on in the den. Maybe her dad would be so into writing his latest set of short stories that she would be back before he even went to bed; Thursday parties didn’t go past midnight. That would be helpful.

Carrie finally headed down into the band of greenery that cut a swath through the small Ontario town where she lived. There were some paths through the underbrush, to be sure, but they weren’t always obvious. And in the dark, Carrie knew she had to take care not to stumble on a root, perhaps falling and twisting her ankle. It helped that she knew the best route, through to the park mere blocks away from Julie’s house, having lived in this town all her life.

Carrie peered at her watch. It was nearly 10pm already. She picked up the pace, putting her track and field abilities to good use. Except in her haste and confident familiarity, the blonde cheerleader tripped just before emerging into Willowdale park. She fell to the ground, biting back a cry of surprise. And while managing to break her fall, she still slid on the ground, and felt a twinge of pain.

The blonde quickly turned herself over into a seated position, peering down at her knees. Sure enough, she’d skinned one of them. Perhaps she should have worn jeans after all?

Carrie sighed. At least her reflexes had still been good, and the rest of her seemed fine… but damn it, if there was one thing she was not, it was clumsy. How had she fallen? Something unusual must have tripped her up. Becoming more curious than annoyed, Carrie sat up fully and peered back along her trail to see what had been in her way.

It was difficult to see in the dark. But with the moonlight, Carrie was able to pick out the outline of a black box. Most curious.

She approached to look more closely at it - she was sure it hadn’t been there earlier in the week. The box was a rectangular prism, maybe 60cm by 60 cm, by 30cm in height? But it had a digital readout that had been sunken slightly into the front.

It also had a handle on the side, and Carrie’s first impression was that this device was some cross between a computerized slot machine and a cash register. But the readout didn’t depict cherries or lemons. Instead, it featured eight numbers – with no indication of a decimal point. Why had someone thrown this device away?

A MYSTERIOUS DEVICE

Wait a minute. Holding it up, Carrie realized there was also a slot next to the readout where you could drop in coins… another reason she was drawing parallels with slot machines. But, upon investigating further, Carrie saw nowhere to collect your winnings, or any other openings. It was also lighter than she might have expected, as if it was partially hollow. So what was this thing, and why was it here?

Carrie shook it. She couldn’t hear anything rattling inside. She ran her hands over the sides of the machine, which seemed to be surprisingly smooth. Something about it struck her as being high-tech, but she couldn’t put her finger on what. What was it supposed to do? Carrie decided a few more minutes of inspection wouldn’t hurt at this point. She looked closer.

There was an unexpected flash of light from somewhere in the park behind her, which allowed Carrie to pick out the outline of a circular panel on the top of the device. Carrie tossed a quick glance back over her shoulder, saw nobody, and returned to her examination.

The panel reminded her vaguely of her father’s CD player. This really was a hybrid device. She pressed the top circular section, wondering if it would open, but nothing happened. Maybe the handle? She pulled it down, but again nothing happened. Perhaps it worked like an old style jukebox, only activating when you dropped coins into the slot.

Curiosity completely piqued by this point, Carrie fished around in the small shoulder purse she’d brought with her, bringing out a quarter. Potentially a waste of money, but if this thing did play music or do anything cool, she could present it to everyone at the party as both an interesting artifact and the reason for her lateness.

Carrie plunked her quarter into the machine. It began humming. This seemed like progress. Carrie pressed on the top. Nothing. She pulled down on the handle.

There was a flash of light and Carrie had the sensation of being sucked into a void. She screamed, as both literally and metaphorically, her life was turned completely upside down.

Carrie felt consciousness coming back to her. She reached out, felt dirt, and sat up with a start as she realized where she was.

“Dammit,” the blonde cursed, brushing more dirt off of her clothes. How had she fallen? It was more like the earth had dropped away from underneath her. But then why wasn’t she down in a hole somewhere?

Carrie looked around. She was still near the border of the ravine; the treeline wasn’t far. What the hell had just happened? Carrie’s eyes set on the black box, still in front of her. There had been a flash of light…

“Damn thing almost electrocuted me,” Carrie deduced, speaking aloud to try and clear her head. No wonder it had been thrown away. Her natural curiosity would be the death of her someday.

Scowling, Carrie picked herself up off the ground, being reminded of her scraped knee in the process. She tried to brush the rest of the dirt off of herself but quickly realized that her clothes could use changing now too. How many things could go wrong in a single evening?

For that matter, how long had she been unconscious? Carrie checked her watch: less than an hour. She should have time for a quick tidy up before taking another run at the party - since Julie’s parents were away like usual, they wouldn’t shut it down early.

Leaving the stupid box where it was, Carrie hurried out of the wooded area behind her house, up towards the convenient tree in the backyard. The wind had picked up, so maybe it would be good idea to change out of her skirt.

Carrie stopped.

This was her backyard. But she’d been about to emerge into the park before she found the device… right? What was she doing back on the wrong side of the ravine?

Carrie’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps she had wandered towards the house in a semi-dazed state after receiving that electrical shock? Dragging the weird box with her? Well, it was the only explanation she could think of. Anyway, she had were more immediate concerns, she’d figure it out later.

Carrie climbed up the tree, slightly favouring her right leg. She soon reached her unlocked window, opened it, and moved inside, onto her desk. She swung her legs around to hop off… and in the process kicked the crystal swan she kept there, causing it to fall to the ground and shatter into a dozen pieces.

Carrie froze. Her heart constricted.

She wasn’t upset over the noise she had just caused, this was more than that. She couldn’t have just hit the crystal swan she kept on her desk. That particular ornament had been broken over two years ago…

It was then that Carrie heard the movement over in the sheets on her bed. Someone was in her room? No one was supposed to be in here! What the hell was happening?

Carrie sat on the desk, paralyzed by fear and confusion, as whoever was in the bed rolled over, looking in her direction as they blinked themselves awake.

On the desk, Carrie’s eyes went wide. Then Carrie let out a scream.

But it wasn’t the Carrie on the desk who was screaming. On the contrary, that Carrie’s reflexes were finally kicking in, causing her to get away by practically falling back out of the window, onto the roof. Which left the younger Carrie in bed, screaming for a second time.

Carrie tossed her covers aside, rubbing her eyes to try and clear the sleep from them. There was a knock at her bedroom door. “Carrie, are you all right? Was that you screaming?" her father called out.

“I…” Carrie stopped, not sure what to say. Had she really seen a figure breaking into her room, or had she been dreaming? Wait, hadn’t she closed her window before going to sleep?

Carrie scrambled out of bed and moved towards her window. There was what looked like fresh traces of dirt on the surface of the desk and the windowsill. She peered outside. Nothing. But if the person was quick, they might have made it down the tree and around the side of the house.

So someone had been here. And the silhouette had been strangely familiar. Someone from school playing a trick on her? Carrie didn’t think it was very funny.

“Carrie? I’m coming in," her father announced.

Carrie grabbed a couple of textbooks and stuck them down to conceal the few dirty smears on her desk as her door opened and the lights clicked on.

If her dad found out about how she could use the oak tree out back to get in and out of her room, he might chop off the branches - and her social life would be dead on arrival. She didn’t need that sort of aggravation during her first year in high school.

“It’s all right,” Carrie said, turning. “I had a bad dream and overreacted.”

Her father stared. “Are you sure that’s all?” He took another step into her room. “It looks like you’ve broken something…”

Carrie blinked, and with the lights on she noticed for the first time the demise of her crystal swan. She choked back a cry of horror. “The swan… the swan mom gave to me,” Carrie said, biting her lip.

She was not going to cry, damn it. She was not going to display such weakness, not with her father here. Carrie didn’t want any fake words of comfort from him. After all, he didn’t care about her, or he would have explained, as soon as her mom had disappeared, he would have explained… anyway, the less attention her dad paid to her, the easier it would be for her to improve her social life in high school.

“It… the wind must have knocked it off the desk,” Carrie continued.

Even though her father couldn’t know about the prowler, this settled it. Whoever had just been in here, playing this horrible, stupid prank? They were going to pay. She would see to that! Except - how was she supposed to figure out who had done it?

“I’m sorry,” her father replied. There was a pause. “Maybe I can find you another crystal–”

“Don’t bother,” Carrie said curtly. She reached out and slammed the window shut. “I’ll clean up the mess tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going back to bed. See you in the morning.”

Her father frowned, perhaps at the abruptness of her manner, but he didn’t seem to know what to say about it. So it was with a final ‘goodnight’ that he turned the light back off and departed the room.

For her part, Carrie curled up in her bed, partly incensed but more despondent than anything else. And with her father out of the room, she finally allowed a tear to trickle down her cheek. Who had broken the swan? One of the few remembrances she had of her mother. Was there anyone she knew who could help her track down the culprit and get revenge?

(ASIDE: Want more on Young Carrie? You can now follow her path, into Part 27… blue links like that will bring you back to Part 1 later.)

Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang at Julie LaMille’s house. Well, mansion. Despite only recently moving into the area, the LaMilles had bought the largest property that they could.

It was only after three rings that Jeeves answered the door. This surprised Carrie on two levels.

Firstly, because she had thought that Julie had given the family butler the evening off, what with the party and all. Secondly, because he was wearing a bathrobe. It wasn’t midnight yet, and Carrie had always thought that the family help didn’t go off duty until sometime after that.

“Yes?” Jeeves said archly. “Why are you disturbing us so late at night?”

Quite a sight…

“Uhhhh, I’m looking for Julie,” Carrie said uncertainly. She was probably quite a sight too, knee still scraped up, looking dirty, and now sweaty after having run all the way over here. But where else was she supposed to go? Except there was no party here. Where WAS everybody?

“Miss LaMille is asleep, as is the rest of the house. Come back tomorrow.” Jeeves started to close the door.

“No, wait. Jeeves, just tell her it’s Carrie, please. I don’t know where else to go. I think somehow I just met myself. I’m so confused…”

“Neither Miss LaMille nor I know of any teenager by the name of Carrie. So whatever problems you have, either take them elsewhere, or come back at a more decent hour.” With that, the door slammed shut.

Carrie reeled. Now Julie’s family and servants didn’t know her? But they’d been acquainted for almost two years now! Were people being replaced by alien pod lookalikes? That could explain the other version of herself had been sleeping in her bed… Carrie suddenly felt like she was lost in some bad science fiction movie.

She took a deep breath. Focus. When had things gone crazy? After the box. That damn black box thing. That had to be it, Carrie realized. Somehow, it had done something to everyone.

Or, no… more likely to her. But what? Well, she’d soon figure that out. With nowhere else to turn, Carrie hurried back towards the spot where she’d left the device. As she approached the location, she heard a rustling in the bushes. Someone else was out here now! Had the original owner tracked down their property? Would they have answers?

“Who the hell is out there?” Carrie demanded.

In response, in the darkness, a shadowy figure jumped up and turned, starting to run away. Screw that - Carrie was fed up with the entire situation now. Whoever this person was, they weren’t getting away.

Calling once again upon her athletic abilities and ignoring the aches in her body, she sprinted forward and tackled the stranger.

Both of them fell to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.