What if this serial were being filmed? What would end up in the blooper reel? I imagined some 14 scenes back in 2002, and after slight updates, present them here for your amusement. All “outtakes” come from Part 45, Part 46 and Part 47, so read those first for context! (Also, spoilers ahead!)

BONUS PART 47.5: OUTTAKES OF TIME

**1**

Clarke nodded, looking back down at the young brunette. “I think I’m going to take her 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.”

“I’ll head right there,” Corry remarked. He shrugged at the other two as they stared at him. “What? I… have a reason for this other than it’s necessary for the plot… I should probably check my line….”  

**2**

“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. His glasses flew off his face as he almost lost his balance. “Oop… too hard?” Luci said apologetically. Frank reached up to rub his jaw.  

**3**

Laurie stared at both her brother and her 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. She started walking. Only to trip over her shoelaces, falling down right in front of Carrie’s room.

Carrie poked her head out of the doorway. “As you can see, I’m growing stronger by the minute. I can even untie shoes at twenty paces!”  

**4**

Laurie didn’t look back. Not even after peering into Carrie’s room, and seeing the doctor and another orderly frozen to the spot. As was Carrie’s father, sitting by her bed. Though she 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 mmmmmmph," Carrie said as her blonde hair blew right in front of her face.  

**5**

“WHAT? Are you, like, SERIOUS?!”

“Chartreuse, Carrie seems bent on killing everybody no matter what,” Corry countered. “How does that old saying go, ‘The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many’?” He paused. “Er, wait….”

“There’s also one that says ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one’,” Laurie remarked. “So yeah, let’s kill her! Get the knives!”

**6**

About two paces from the door to Carrie’s room, Lee stopped. He looked back, a puzzled expression on his face. Then he walked all the way back. “Hey, why was I going to that room again?” he inquired.

The others exchanged a glance. “You were, you know, going to ask Carrie if she knew more about, like, a building, such as this one, with, you know, a fanatic in it, who’s like, you know, going to kill her, so, like, omigod, I so totally don’t know what I’m saying anymore,” Chartreuse reminded him.

“Oh! Yeah,” Lee said. “It’s so much clearer now.”

**7**

“W-Well… I was just thinking,” Tim began. “The police think Julie shot Carrie. We don’t want them to think that. Right?" Clarke nodded. “So, why not give Julie an alibi?"

Clarke stared. Then he sat bolt upright. “Of course! We can take Julie back to the evening of November the twelfth, and be somewhere in public when that’s not right, you had more dialogue, didn’t you.”

“Oh, I d-didn’t need that line!” Tim protested.

**8**

“By now? He’ll be at the hospital,” Luci said, marching into the LaMille house with the time machine. “Your alibi plan is great, but we’re short on time. Since Frank is maybe the only one Carrie will listen to any more, I told him to keep going.”

She continued into the sitting room, stopping only once she’d reached the couch where both Tim and Julie were sitting.

“Luci?” Julie murmured, looking a bit dazed as she tilted her head up. “Can you believe this is my only line?”

“I can,” Luci admitted. “You got more than enough last episode.”

**9**

Her scream was incoherent, even as her palm came flying at his face. But he had half expected that reaction. So he ducked.

And then he sprang back up, his own palm out, and scarcely believing that he was doing it, he slapped it hard against the cheek of the girl who could destroy them all. “DO YOU TAKE ME TO BE YOUR HUSBAND, CARRIE?!”

“I D— WHOA, that was NOT the right line!!”

“I was double dared. Romance stories are more popular,” Frank reasoned.

Carrie rolled her eyes. “I’d expect a ring first.”

**10**

“How can I help?” Chartreuse asked.

Carrie grimaced. “Catch me.” And the timer clicked down, to three seconds, then two… and then one, and then zero.

“Boom,” Chartreuse remarked. “Nice work, Carrie.”

“Okay, that was supposed to stop,” Carrie observed. “Who’s in charge of the bomb?”

“So we’re dead now?” Lee mused. “Man, that sucks. So much for next season.”

**11**

“How can I help?” Chartreuse asked.

Carrie grimaced. “Catch me.” And the timer clicked down, to three seconds, then two… where it froze, as Carrie crumpled towards the floor. She landed hard on her ass.

“Ouch! Chartreuse, you were supposed to catch me!!” the blonde exclaimed.

“Sorry, I had my eye on the timer,” Chartreuse apologized.

**12**

“How can I help?” Chartreuse asked.

Carrie grimaced. “Catch me.” And the timer clicked down, to three seconds, then two… where it froze, as Carrie crumpled towards the floor. Chartreuse let out a gasp, supporting Carrie but misjudging her weight and letting the blonde fall upon her in a tangle of limbs.

“Getting there,” Carrie remarked.

**13**

“How can I help?” Chartreuse asked.

Carrie grimaced. “Catch me.” And the timer clicked down, to three seconds, then two… where it froze, as Carrie crumpled towards the floor. Chartreuse let out a gasp, supporting Carrie and guiding her carefully down into a prone position.

There was a moment of silence. “Damn it, I have a line here,” Carrie sighed.

“You’re supposed to remove our memories now,” Corry remarked. “Oh, the irony.”

**14**

Carrie shrugged, then winked at him. “Fine, then consider it my way of telling you everything is back to normal.”

“Except I’m not taking it lying down this time,” Frank countered, springing up off his own swing, and extending his hands as if to tickle her.

Carrie let out a little yelp of astonishment, attempting a sidestep but Frank anticipated the move. He managed to pull her down on top of him.

“Ooooh, ow, hey, you’re not supposed to get me!” Carrie protested, laughing despite herself.

“I think it’s fitting, we were in this position in episode one,” Frank pointed out.

“I suppose so. But move those hands any higher and you will have trouble doing a second take,” Carrie warned.

THANKS FOR READING!

EPSILON PROJECT: STORY 3 COMES THIS SUNDAY!

(TIME & TIED WILL CONTINUE THIS SUMMER!)

PART 47: RESPITE

“Ten seconds. Sorry guys, I guess Carrie’s gonna, like, fry us after all,” Chartreuse said glumly. The three teenagers were all sitting on their hands now, Shady standing far enough away from the wall to shoot them - probably even if they all moved at once.

“I should have jumped him,” Lee murmured. “Damn it, I’m not going to get to say goodbye to my sisters.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Corry shouted at their captor.

“I will die for our cause,” was his only reply.

Chartreuse wondered if it would be better to have her eyes open or closed when the bomb detonated. Which was when a gust of wind blew through the area, as if a freight train were rushing by, and then Carrie was standing there with them. The blonde with the golden eyes raised her palm to the bomb timer.

“Or not," Carrie remarked.

“NO!” Shady shrieked.

The gun fired, even as Carrie’s other palm went up facing him. Chartreuse could now see the bullet moving through the air towards the blonde with all the speed of a paper airplane. Which was clearly impossible. As impossible as Carrie sidestepping it, yet she was doing that too.

And then Carrie flicked her index and middle fingers off her thumb, and Shady’s head snapped back. The fingers of his gun hand twitched again, but this time his weapon fired at the ceiling - because Lee was there, pushing his arm up. Corry joined him, and it occurred to Chartreuse that maybe she should get off her ass too.

She didn’t go for Shady. Lee and Corry were subduing him. Instead, she stepped over to Carrie, who now had both palms facing the bomb. The timer seemed to be oscillating back and forth between five and four seconds. Sweat was pouring down Carrie’s face as if she were running a marathon.

“What kind… of fail-safe… IS this…?"

“How can I help?” Chartreuse asked.

Carrie grimaced. “Catch me.”

And the timer clicked down, to three seconds, then two… where it froze, even as Carrie crumpled towards the floor. Chartreuse let out a gasp, supporting the blonde and guiding her carefully down into a prone position.

“Okay. That’ll hold for a while,” Carrie murmured weakly. “Only one more thing to take care of.” She looked up at Chartreuse. “Farewell, everyone.”

The blonde closed her eyes, and a wave of energy seemed to spread out from her position. It passed through everyone in the room, then out through the walls and up through the ceiling until it had encompassed the entire building… the entire town…

Carrie was released from hospital a week later, having been treated for a case of severe exhaustion. Her eyes were their normal blue colour as she trudged through the new fallen snow, following the path in the ravine behind her house that went up into the park. She continued over to the swing set, brushing it off and then sitting down.

“Kinda hoped you’d be here," she murmured to the boy in the swing next to her.

“Was it hope?” Frank wondered. “Or your powers?"

Carrie shuddered. “Please, Frank, PLEASE, no talking about my powers. Somehow, I managed to suppress them, but I can still feel them as this dull ache inside me. Even now, I’m not sure if I was controlling them, or if they were controlling me. Trying to use them again… would be dangerous. Hell, I thought I’d die after what I did.”

“Right, okay, no powers talk then,” Frank reassured. “Better question, will you coming back to school tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “Have I missed much?”

“You mean in terms of what teachers like Fisk think is important, or in terms of what’s actually important?”

Carrie smirked. “The latter, naturally.”

Frank grinned back at her. “The social situation is completely warped. Julie’s been the target of a lot of hostility since the flyer, not to mention her disappearance, and yet she refuses to let the information about her parental situation become common knowledge. So she’s not getting much in the way of sympathy. But guess who’s started looking out for her welfare - Corry Veniti.”

“What? No!” Carrie laughed. “Oh, boy. That must be confusing the daylights out of everybody.” She kicked her legs a little to start the swing moving. “How is Julie holding up?”

“She’s started her counselling," Frank said. “Tim’s alibi plan, putting her in the cafe when you were shot, has her in the clear for that. The information about Holly Rhodes, we gave to Jeeves. He was able to track the domestic down, and armed with the information, he has started acting as Julie’s de facto father. He seems to really care about her. And while Julie’s parents are putting up a bit of a fight, they’ve stopped short of any direct action, probably to avoid the potential publicity.”

“I think they’d lose a custody battle anyway," Carrie said, making a face. “Good. I mean, Julie may have done some terrible things to people, but it must have been a special kind of hell for her growing up.”

“Speaking of parents,” Frank said slowly. “Dare I ask about you and your father…?”

Carrie let the swing stop its motion. “Unh. Yeah. Me and dad are doing all right,” she replied after a moment. “He doesn’t remember being frozen, of course. Seeing as that last blast of mine somehow wiped all my temporal actions from the memories of everyone in the vicinity of the hospital building - time travellers excluded.”

She extended her leg, pointing the toe of her boot. “Dad still knows I was shot, of course, and I think that has him trying to make up for lost time. He offered to take me to a hockey game next weekend."

She lowered her foot. “Hockey. Sheesh. At the same time, he’s trying.” She bit her lip. “In fact, I think maybe he’s been trying for a long while. Which is… nice.” A small smile graced her face.

There was an extended silence. “By the way, me and Luci are dating,” Frank blurted.

Carrie turned her swing sideways. “Seriously?” He nodded, and her grin grew wider. “It’s about damn time. You want some dating advice then, as one friend to another?”

Frank became busy staring at a spot in the sky. It was hard to say if his red cheeks were due to the cold. “Um, yes? But maybe not right now? That is, I… we’re puzzling through it together for the moment.”

“Well, good for you. Don’t screw up the Christmas gift.”

His eyes widened. “Oh no, Christmas!”

Carrie fought back the urge to laugh. “Calm down. You two will be fine together. Here, change of subject. Elephant in the room, actually.” She took in a deep breath, turning away again. “What became of the time traveler who wanted me dead?”

“What? Oh, well, Shady was arrested of course,” Frank assured. “Blowing up buildings being against the law. In fact, the police on scene ended up thinking they were there because of him, not you. He’s also become the lead suspect for shooting you in the first place - which he did, in a roundabout way - so I wager he’ll be going to prison. The only surprise is that is he didn’t manage to talk his way out of it using his future ability.”

Carrie rubbed her nose. “Yeah, uh, along the lines of messing with people’s memories… I think was able to block Shady’s personal history for how to do his - what did Lee call it? Jedi trick? - but I’m not positive whether my tampering was permanent.”

She let out a long breath, visible in the cool air. “Damn this power of temporal paradox that I have. Or whatever you want to call it. It’s going to be an attractive weapon for everyone who knows about it.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not going to tell anyone,” Frank assured her. “We won’t be using the time machine again either - namely because, in a few weeks’ time we’ll have no coins to return us to the present.”

“The future, Frank. They know in the future. And they’ve now tried to get at me once, so I’m going to need to keep my guard up.”

He stared, then frowned. “You mean… this isn’t the end of it."

“No,” Carrie sighed. “No, I fear this is only the beginning.” She jumped up off of the swing. “But, hell with it. Until anything else happens, I’ve got a life to live in the present.” With that, she reached out and smacked Frank lightly in the back of his head.

“Ouch! Hey, what the heck was that for?!” Frank protested.

“Retribution. You hit me in the hospital.”

Frank crossed his arms. “You told me I was allowed to hit you. You even encouraged it, in this very park!”

Carrie pursed her lips. “Oh, right.” She shrugged, then winked at him. “Fine, then consider it my way of telling you everything is back to normal.”

“Except I’m not taking it lying down this time,” Frank countered, springing up off his own swing, and extending his gloved hands as if to tickle her.

Carrie let out a little yelp of astonishment, before athletically sidestepping him. “Catch me if you can!” she declared, breaking into a sprint. Frank could only shake his head in resignation as the smiling blonde teenager disappeared back down into the ravine.

END... FOR NOW

See the accompanying Commentary Post for ARC 2.4 or Funny Arc 2.4 Outtakes.

More was written back in the early 2000s, but I'm going back to "Epsilon Project" for a bit. You can vote on that.

UPDATE: Book 3 is now running, the above link is active.

PART 46: OUT OF TIME

Lee joined the others at the hospital. He’d already been tracking Shady in the vicinity, so it had been easy enough to hook up with the group after hearing from Clarke about the latest development.

“So, you’re saying future guy is gonna make a play for the track tease again, and that this act is what will make her explode?” he confirmed.

Chartreuse nodded vigorously, then frowned. “Okay, we aren’t totally sure,” she admitted. “But probably.”

“The new problem,” Corry mused, “Is whether we should try to stop this Shady - or merely warn him that Carrie knows he’s coming.”

“Warn him?” Lee asked, doing a double take. “Why?”

“To let him try something that would be more effective.”

“WHAT? Are you, like, SERIOUS?”

Corry reached up to pull the pink haired girl’s fingers off his shirt. “Chartreuse, Carrie seems bent on killing everybody no matter what,” Corry countered. “How does that old saying go, ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one’?”

“Corry,” Laurie said quietly. “Didn’t you tell me two days ago that you would never, ever do something that would kill a person? Was that a lie, for my benefit?”

“Laurie, no! But we’ve been told Carrie isn’t really a person, she’s more of a…" Corry’s voice trailed off as he saw his sister’s expression. He gulped. “Okay. Thanks for the conscience check, sis. My bad. So, we stop Shady then. The question is how?"

“Maybe the track tease knows a way,” Lee suggested. “She seems to know about everything else going on.”

“You think she’d tell us?” Chartreuse wondered.

Lee shrugged. “Can’t hurt to ask.”

“You might be surprised,” Laurie said, wincing.

Lee pulled on the lapels of his jacket. “I’ll go anyway. She hasn’t vented at me yet, so maybe I’ll get lucky.”

He turned away from the group and proceeded down the hallway. Hospital staff had been working for the last half hour to remove patients from the area; it was now mostly deserted.

About two paces from the door to Carrie’s room, Lee stopped. He turned, a puzzled expression on his face. Then he walked all the way back. “Hey, why was I going to that room again?” he inquired.

The others exchanged a glance. “You were, you know, going to ask Carrie if she knew more about the crazy guy from the future who’s out to kill her,” Chartreuse reminded him.

“Oh yeah,” Lee said. “Sorry, memory glitch.” Again, he went back down the hall to Carrie’s room. Again he paused about two steps away, and then returned, mind spinning. “Hey, why was I going to that room again?” he repeated.

“Never mind,” Corry said, waving his hand dismissively.

“She is getting more powerful, isn’t she,” Laurie said, shivering.

“Hey!” came a new voice. A security guard approached them in the opposite direction from Carrie’s room. “What are you kids still doing here? Get downstairs, all of you. This whole floor’s being evacuated.”

“Um, right, we’re on our way!” Lee assured him.

“Oh no,” Chartreuse moaned. “I hope that Luci and Frank devised a more cunning plan. At this point, that may be all we’ve got left."

Out in his backyard, Frank flipped open the time machine and inspected the pocketwatch inside. “Great timing,” he said. “We’re back a minute before we even left.”

Luci nodded beside him, belatedly realizing she had a bit of soot on her face. Yet as she attempted to wipe it off with her fingers, she only succeeded in smearing it even more. She sighed.

“Anyway, so I have the name Holly Rhodes,” she concluded. “As the only female domestic listed for exactly three years, beginning ten years ago, dismissed for no given reason. There was an address listed. Think it’s enough?”

“Hopefully,” Frank said, eyeing her.

“We’d better get to the hospital then,” Luci concluded. “To tell the others and help them deal with the Shady situation.” She stood and started walking off, only to see Frank wasn’t following. “Something else?”

He blinked. “No. Yes. Just, ah, thinking about what you must have gone through there to help Carrie and Julie out. Not only on that trip itself, but in dealing with a missing day for that long.” He cleared his throat. “You really are amazing, Luci.”

Luci shrugged. “It had already happened. I couldn’t avoid it.”

“That doesn’t negate the sacrifice.” He coughed. “So, I was thinking, if we survive, you want to get a soda together tomorrow? At the cafe? Maybe even… make it a regular thing?”

“Regular thing? What do you…” Luci stopped, seeing his expression. She felt her knees go weak. “Now? NOW of all times you bring this up?”

“Well if we DON’T survive, I’d hate for you to have thought that… that I didn’t care.”

“Frank, if you’re only saying this because you think we might die, you better realize that I am SO holding you to any promise you make here!”

He smiled. “I would expect nothing less of you. Sodas then?”

Luci felt like her heart was going to burst out of her chest. She ran back to him, throwing her arms around his neck. He grabbed her back, pulling her close. “Heck yeah, sodas,” she said in delight.

She savoured the moment, the hug, the way Frank’s arms were running up and down her back, the safety of his embrace, for as long as she could. Ultimately, she sighed. “And I think that’s our extra minute gone.”

“Mmm hmm. Apocalypse prevention time?”

“Apocalypse prevention time,” she agreed. “Let’s get to it.”

“Clarke,” Tim said quietly.

Clarke looked up from his magazine. He’d been hoping that the distraction might help his subconscious come up with some sort of plan. “What is it, Tim?” he asked, smiling encouragingly at his friend.

“W-Well… I was just thinking,” Tim began. “The police think Julie shot Carrie. We don’t want them to think that. Right?” Clarke nodded. “So, why not give Julie an alibi?"

Clarke frowned. “I’m not sure lying to the police is the best plan.”

“Oh, I don’t mean lie,” Tim protested. “I mean, well - time machine alibi.”

Clarke stared. Then he sat bolt upright. “Of course. We can take Julie back to the evening of November the twelfth, and be somewhere in public during the shooting. With an alibi on her birthday, the police would have to close the investigation. Great thinking, Tim!”

“Y-You think so?” Tim said with a partial smile.

“Definitely,” Clarke said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “Let’s see if Julie can handle another trip, then I’ll give Frank another call.”

“I don’t like this,” Chartreuse murmured, looking around the hospital lobby. Several police officers had now arrived. Granted, they seemed to be ignoring the teens, more interested in what was happening upstairs with Carrie than the earlier investigations at school surrounding Julie.

“Well, look on the bright side,” Corry remarked. “With all this added security, Shady will find it almost impossible to get upstairs.”

Chartreuse frowned. “Except I’m sensing from a lot of people here that they’re going to die. Only they don’t know it, so I can’t put my finger on when or how.”

“Y-You think Shady’s going to shoot his way up to her?” Laurie gasped.

Chartreuse slowly shook her head. “No? It’s not… I can’t figure it out,” she said, frustrated. “I’d try for a vision, but interfacing with Carrie has really tapped me out.”

“You know, we’re missing something,” Lee realized. “To save Carrie, you might have to be close to her - but do you have to be close in order to destroy her?”

Corry blinked. “No, of course not,” he agreed. “In fact, you’d be foolish to do it that way. She’d see you coming.”

“Plus I’ve seen future cult guy in this hospital before,” Lee continued. “He could have been scouting the place out. After all, say you wanted to destroy someone that you couldn’t approach directly, yet you still knew where they’d be - how would you do it?”

“More specifically, how would you do it if you didn’t care about any additional casualties?” Corry finished.

“Oh no,” Chartreuse said, feeling her blood run cold. “That’s it. That fits with what I’m sensing.”

“Do you know where it would be?" Corry said, grabbing Lee’s arm.

“Basement,” Lee said. “Bombs are always in the basement."

“Luci?” Clarke said in surprise. “Where’s Frank?”

“By now? He’ll be at the hospital,” Luci said, marching into the LaMille house with the time machine. “Your alibi plan is great, but we’re short on time. Since Frank is maybe the only one Carrie will listen to any more, I told him to keep going.”

She continued into the sitting room, stopping only once she’d reached the couch where both Tim and Julie were sitting.

“Luci?” Julie murmured, looking a bit dazed as she tilted her head up. “Do you have soot on your face?”

“I do,” Luci admitted. “And it’s your fault. But that’s a long story, and you need an alibi. So we have a time trip to take.”

The rest would be up to Frank.

A police officer questioned Frank’s arrival at the hospital, but the teenager managed to fake stomach cramps in order to gain access. Inside it was a bit of a madhouse… officers milling about, circulating around doctors and orderlies who were attempting to deal with both any incoming patients, and the ones being shuffled around inside the building due to the impromptu quarantine on Carrie’s floor.

“We can’t get close,” Frank heard someone say. “People tend to come back with no memory of their assigned task to negotiate. When they come back at all.”

‘That could be a problem for me,’ Frank realized. He soon discovered the stairwell was under guard, and that there was an officer in both elevators as well. ‘Assuming I even get up there…'

“Frank!”

He turned in time to see Laurie Veniti push her way past a couple of people to reach his side. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she whispered. “Chartreuse, Lee and my brother think that the time fanatic set an explosive charge somewhere in the basement. They’ve gone to check it out, it might be connected to Carrie’s plan for ending the world.”

“Laurie,” Frank said, taking her by the shoulders. “I’m glad to see you. I have to get up to Carrie’s room.” He pointed. “Can you distract that police officer over there? The one guarding the stairwell?”

Laurie shrank back at first, but then she clenched her jaw. “Golly, I’ll try,” she asserted. “I’ll babble at that cop so much he’ll have no choice but to escort me elsewhere.”

She turned to move in that direction - only to pause and look back at him one last time. “Frank… you be careful, all right?” she requested. “I… I really don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“Of course,” Frank said. He smiled at Laurie reassuringly, attempting to project a confidence he didn’t really feel.

“See anything?” Chartreuse called out.

“Yeah, the need for better lighting,” Lee remarked. “I can’t believe there’s so much stuff down here.”

“Hold on guys, I think I’ve found something,” came Corry’s voice. “There’s a digital readout connected to a bunch of wires and… oh hell!”

Chartreuse hurried towards where she’d heard his voice. As she turned the corner, she heard the voice say “Stop moving” - and then she couldn’t move. Her eyes went wide.

Shady was standing there, next to Corry, who was partly bent over what could only be the bomb, given all the wiring with what Chartreuse decided were high explosives underneath. “Stop moving,” Shady said again.

“Thinking no,” Lee retorted, stepping past Chartreuse.

Shady pulled out a gun, and directed the barrel directly at her. “Stop or your friend dies.”

Lee stopped. Which is when it occurred to Chartreuse that the guy hadn’t said ‘don’t talk’. “Stop him, Lee,” she pleaded. “Or EVERYONE dies.”

“I can also shoot Lee,” Shady pointed out. “And I’d say bleeding out is more painful than vaporization.”

“Maybe I die lifting the whammy you’ve put on my friends,” Lee observed.

“Or maybe you use the next five minutes and forty seconds of your lives thinking of a better plan,” Shady reasoned.

Chartreuse couldn’t see the timer from where she was, so she could only assume that was a reference to the countdown to detonation.

“I hate stalemates,” Corry interjected. “Though it does seem like you’re running out of time to get clear yourself, buddy.”

“Yeah,” Shady granted, sounding annoyed. “The timer’s been giving me problems. Cruddy present day merchandise. Seems like I may die down here with the rest of you.” He shrugged. “Oh well. It’s not like I could ever go home again. My future currency was stolen.”

He waggled his gun. “Lee, go sit against the wall. Pink hair, you join him. Redhead, you too.”

Chartreuse found her feet pacing over towards Lee. “It won’t work,” she blurted out. “Carrie, like, knows what you’re doing. She… she can stop you.”

“Then she’d better try,” Shady said. He grinned. “Because at this point, I have nothing to lose. I’m perfectly willing to die, knowing that I brought down our greatest temporal adversary.”

The three teenagers exchanged horrified looks, as behind Shady, the clock on the bomb ticked down past five minutes.

Frank stared into the hospital room. A golden-eyed blonde stared back at him. “You should not have come,” Carrie said at last.

Frank eyed all the frozen people surrounding them. “I get the impression you could have stopped me,” he observed. “Why didn’t you?”

“There was no point,” Carrie admitted. She turned away from him. “You’re going to be dead in exactly four minutes and twenty six seconds either way.”

Frank felt a chill run through him. “What?”

“There is a bomb in the basement that will go off then,” Carrie explained. She sounded fatigued. “When it detonates, I will channel its destructive energy through me, into the rivers of time. The future will explode, and the past will implode right along with it. Should make for a fun little light show… a pity that no one will be alive to see it.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Carrie said calmly. She turned back. “That fool with the explosives, he has no understanding of the true powers at my command.” She grinned. “Since focussing in on the bomb, I’ve been messing with him, making his timer run fast, slow, even backwards one time.”

Her expression shifted, becoming more wistful. “My only regret is that I’ll never get to experience a normal teenage life. No mother, no boyfriend, no one who could possibly understand the real me–”

“So we’re back to Selfish Carrie then.”

Her lips thinned. “Pardon?”

Frank decided it was all or nothing. “I mean, you have to be pretty full of yourself now, yeah? To not notice what PAINS the rest have been going through to FIX it all for you? I can see now that it didn’t matter. Sorry we were giving a damn.”

“You think YOU’RE in pain?” she shouted back. “My life never should have been! Right now, Julie’s past, Julie’s future, they hinge on me, a girl who should never have been born in the first place.” She pointed at her head. “And no matter what you do, with her or anybody else, I will still FEEL that inside me. A dull, throbbing ache that will never go away!”

Carrie slumped. “It was always meant to come to this. Destruction is my very reason for existence. It’s simply happening sooner than expected.”

“This from the girl who believes in temporal theories allowing free will.”

“I didn’t KNOW,” Carrie screamed back. “I was too naive, too stupid to understand the role I had to play!”

“So you’re giving up.” Frank found that it wasn’t hard to sound disgusted. “Carrie Waterson is giving up, and blowing up the universe.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Frank. I’m not destroying the universe, the effect will be localized to our solar system.”

“Oh, pardon me, big difference. What would your mother have to say about all this, I wonder?”

Carrie lifted her arm, pointing at him. “Oh no. Don’t you dare, don’t you DARE bring her into this.”

“Why not? It occurs to me that if you have all of time at your disposal now, you might have looked her up.”

Carrie was next to him in two strides, arm raised as if to strike him. “My MOTHER…” She stood still, then brought her arm down. “Was a time traveler,” she admitted. “Brought back from the future, she was left at an orphanage when she was very young. Adopted, and brought inconspicuously into society, she eventually met and married my father. They then had me. In this timeline. Which is, in a nutshell, the reason why I’ve become what I am. My hands are tied.”

A tear trickled from Carrie’s eye, but Frank forced down his instinct to apologize. He had to keep pushing her. Hell, maybe every time she’d pushed at him, he should have been pushing back. “So?” he demanded.

“So?” She reached up to wipe off her cheek. “Given that the decades long presence of my mother had always been a strain on the new timeline, my existence made the problem worse. She had to disappear. I know that now. We can never co-exist again. Which leaves me, a motherless girl, out of time and out of place.” Her hands clenched. “Is it any wonder I’m feeling a little… OUT OF MY MIND?”

“Who says she had to disappear?”

“I… I don’t know.” Carrie swallowed. “I can’t see where or when she disappeared to.”

“And now Carrie Waterson has lost her curiosity.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t curious.”

“Oh no, you’re just blowing up the solar system instead of investigating…”

“I can’t help it, Frank,” Carrie choked out. “I’m sorry, but this explosive force, this pain inside me, it’s too damn strong to resist.”

That was getting closer to the Carrie who had opened up to him in the park, weeks ago. The Carrie that he cared about, in spite of everything. “If it’s inside you, it’s only as strong as you make it,” Frank insisted. “So here’s the real question. Do you want to destroy everything now? Rendering everyone’s actions on your behalf completely meaningless?”

“Stop.”

“Or will you push on, letting me and the rest of your FRIENDS help you through this?”

“Stop it, Frank…”

“Do you WANT answers to the questions that remain unanswered?”

“Frank don’t DO this to me.”

“Damn it, Carrie, will you DESTROY or will you ACCEPT OUR HELP?”

Her body shook, her scream was incoherent, and her palm came flying at his face. But he had half expected that reaction.

He ducked.

Then he sprang back up, his own palm out, and scarcely believing that he was doing it, he slapped it hard against the cheek of the girl who could destroy them all. “DO YOU WANT TO CHOOSE US OR NOT, CARRIE?”

“I DO!” she shrieked back.

Her look became one of astonishment, though whether it was at being struck, or at her own words, it was hard for Frank to say. But for a second, when she blinked, her eyes flickered back and forth between gold and their more normal blue.

“I… I choose the unending pain,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Frank apologized at last. “But on behalf of the world, thank you.” He shook out his hand, then extended it towards her. “Thank you, Carrie.”

“Problem though.”

Frank frowned. His hand fell back to his side. “What?”

“Bomb in the basement, exploding in about twenty seconds, still taking out this whole building and everyone in it.”

“Oh… uh…”

Carrie cracked her knuckles. “So, here’s perhaps the last thing I will ever do. Show ‘Shady’ what a temporal weapon is REALLY capable of.” She flashed her fellow time traveller a sad smile.

“Thank you, Frank. For everything. And goodbye.” No sooner had she said it, then she seemed to wink out of existence, leaving a gust of wind in her wake.

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 44: TURNING POINT

***PAST: ILLINOIS

“Great. No LaMilles listed in the phone book,” Frank stated, throwing the volume aside. “Why did phone books ever exist, if important people weren’t listed in them?”

“The LaMilles were pretty rich even at this point in the past,” Clarke observed. “They could’ve asked to be unlisted - or maybe they only came here because it’s their winter home? Or property they were hoping to flip?”

“The point being, we have no idea where Julie could be," Frank moaned, pressing a hand to his forehead. “What’s worse, now we’re not only fighting to keep Julie’s suicide plans from succeeding, we’re probably also fighting the time streams, as they try to kill her off again.”

Clarke stared. “Frank… are you saying that Julie died in that car accident? Before we came back?”

Frank winced, then nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking I need to revise my initial time travel theories,” he admitted. “Because while that news article you found would scan the same whether we were here or not, if Shady was acting to change his past - our present - it follows that our presence here could have changed Julie’s past - now our present.”

“You mean Julie’s future,” Clarke noted.

Frank grimaced. “I guess, relatively speaking. But it means our REAL present could be in trouble too.”

“Julie’s at the hospital.”

Frank turned at Corry’s interjection. “What?”

The redhead turned towards the other two teens. “It’s time for us to go on the offensive.”

Clarke sighed. “Corry, now is not the time to–”

“You’re wrong,” he asserted. “It’s now or never. Think about it. Julie has been reduced to a defensive game here, and if we let her fortify that position, we’re sunk."

“But why the hospital?" Frank asked.

Corry lifted up three fingers, then curled one up. “First, when that girl has a goal in mind, she needs to know all of the related variables. The layout of the hospital, the staff on duty, et cetera. Even if she accomplished all of that before our arrival, she might want to observe our actions there.”

He curled up his second finger. “Second, I believe that our presence is going to make Julie act sooner, rather than later. She’ll bribe a doctor somehow, or switch around crucial medications, and then lead us on a merry chase as far away from the scene as possible. That chase likely starts at the hospital.”

“And third?” Clarke wondered.

“Third,” Corry said, curling his last finger before letting his hand fall open, “where else is she going to go? Like me, she has no allies here, no provisions, and for that matter, the hospital is where her double seemed to be headed. Though that was almost a half hour ago, so I suggest we get a move on.”

“And do what? Grab her when we see her? That didn’t work,” Frank protested. “We obviously need a better plan.”

“Maybe not,” Corry asserted. “In particular, because I’m now going to tell you what Julie did in front of me that day in January. I’ll warn you now, if you believe what I’m about to say, you won’t ever look at her the same way again.” He eyed Clarke. “But between her hating us forever, and her being dead? I think we want the former. Don’t you?”

“False labour indeed,” the woman grumbled. “It felt real enough. What do these small town doctors know anyway?”

“Now, now,” soothed her husband. “I made sure he was qualified, and you wanted the smaller town, to surround the event with a certain anonymity. Give it another couple of days; we can induce if we have to.”

“Peachy," she groused back, sitting herself down. “Well, I’m not budging from this spot for at least a half an hour. I need to recover my wits. Plus I may go into real labour sometime in the next few minutes.”

“Whatever you think is best,” the man consented, taking a seat next to his wife.

Mere metres away, around the nearest corner, a girl with wide, staring eyes was breathing heavily. Because those were her parents. Out there, in the hospital waiting area.

Julie could scarcely believe her luck - this must be why they hadn’t been at the house. She could end it all, right here, right now. This late in the evening, there were very few hospital employees around. She still had the gun, tucked away in a jacket pocket. She could easily get off one shot before anyone could stop her.

Except.

Those were her parents.

It wasn’t her mother’s fault that her daughter had turned out to be a huge disappointment. And the very thought of raising a gun to the woman who had given birth to her was making Julie sick to her stomach. Worse, what if it was for nothing? What if the doctors here were able to save the unborn child? To save Julie’s life? Did they have that ability in a hospital this size?

She became very aware of her heartbeat.

Julie swallowed. No. She had to act now. She had to risk it, before her future classmates could stop her. After all, no one would be expecting this, right? And she could shoot, and shoot, and shoot… until she ceased to even be here. The doctors, they would try to save her mother first, right?

Julie reached into the pocket of her borrowed clothing, trying to ignore her case of the shakes. Her fingers touched the gun. The safety clicked off. She began to walk around the corner. Somehow, it felt like she was moving through water. Like everything around her was happening in slow motion.

Like time itself was holding its breath.

There were running footsteps.

She began to draw the gun out.

A hand seized her wrist.

“We have to talk,” came the unmistakable voice of Corry Veniti.

Julie tried to twist out of his grip, to yank the gun out and point it at him instead, but his grip tightened, preventing the movement. She wanted to scream.

“No,” he said firmly. “Give me ten minutes, Julie. Then, if you still want to kill me - I’ll probably deserve it."

She refused to look at him. Her eyes darted about the waiting area as she searched wildly for some escape. Screaming still felt like an option, yet calling attention to herself was the last thing she wanted to do. At least she didn’t see any sign of Phil or Frank. Only her parents. And even now, she saw they were ignoring her.

“I pick where we talk,” Julie choked out.

Corry nodded, but maintained his grip. The two of them proceeded down the nearest hall. Julie passed up the first obvious choice for a room, choosing the next empty one. They entered, Corry leaving the door partly open.

“I’m going to release your arm now,” the redhead told her. “Bear in mind that if you shoot me before the ten minutes are up, it’s bound to affect your plans, and may even be something I accounted for in mine.”

Julie nodded slowly. He released her, and she immediately moved a few steps away. Hand on the gun. Waiting. Staring. At least half a minute ticked by.

“Okay,” Corry began at last. “Now… what goddamn fool stunt do you think you’re trying to pull?!”

Julie flinched. Any doubts she’d harboured as to whether this was truly the Corry she knew were now gone.

“I mean, I know you’ve had some complex plots in the past, but my God, killing yourself THIS way?” he snapped. “It’s the most twisted thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“Why does it matter to YOU how I kill myself?” she retorted.

“How could it NOT matter, Julie?” Corry asserted. “This isn’t what I wanted when I led my campaign against you. I wanted you brought down a peg, not taken off the ladder completely! Consider, if you do this, and we remember you? We feel guilty. And if we don’t remember… I lose all the experience I gained from having you as my adversary.”

He clenched his jaw. “Because as much as I hate to admit it, you pushed me to new heights, Julie. You broadened my universe. In no small way when you tried to kill yourself two years ago on the gym balcony. I didn’t think anyone could go that far! And since I wouldn’t let you act on it then - I’ll be damned before I let you do it now!”

The memory came to her, unbidden.

<< Her movement was quick. Blood began to well up from the cut on her arm. Corry was next to her in an instant, grabbing her wrists and holding them apart as she lifted her gaze back up towards him. >>

She pulled herself away from the image. That had been a gamble. This was all too real. “So here we are again,” she whispered. “The two of us, locked in a stalemate. Me with the weapon.”

“And me - with backup.”

Corry stepped to the side as Frank entered the room. Julie immediately yanked out her gun, pointing it at the brown haired boy. “How did you find us?!” she shrieked.

Frank swallowed, his eyes on the gun barrel. “H-Hid, and followed Corry. Look, Julie, n-no one has to die here.”

“Frank’s right,” Corry chimed in, Julie readjusting her target to the one who was speaking. “More to the point,” he added, “no one has died yet. Don’t cross that line, Julie.”

Julie shook her head. “No, no… I shot Carrie!”

<< Carrie stumbled back a step, reflexively bringing her hand up to her side. Her eyes dropped down to the redness that was now starting to stain her shirt. “Then again, maybe we can negotiate," she gurgled out, before collapsing down onto the floor. >>

“Carrie’s alive,” Frank asserted.

“I also shot you.”

“You missed me.”

“And then I killed that homeless woman.”

Frank hesitated.

“That was an accident,” Corry yielded. “No way did you intend for that to happen.”

“Julie, we can still fix things,” Frank insisted. “It’s not as bad as you think it is.”

<< Her father tore again, and again. >>

“No, no, NO,” Julie said, pressing the palm of her free hand against her temples. “I have to die, I know I have to die…”

“Why do you have to die?”

Julie spun to point her gun over at Phil, the latest arrival. Then she shifted it back to Corry, then Frank, then again to Phil. The three of them were too far apart. But she could get at least one of them.

“Why do you have to die, Jewels?” Phil repeated softly.

“B-Because I do,” Julie said hoarsely.

<< Her father tore again, and again. >>

<< The document she'd signed with the principal that morning was soon scattered on the floor like so much confetti. >>

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Julie said, not only pushing that memory aside, but grinding it beneath her heel and burying it. She had to focus on the present. Past. Whatever.

Frank spoke again. “Julie, don’t you see? We’re on your side here. And it’s not only the three of us." He pulled an envelope out of his pocket, extending it towards her with a shaky hand.

“Nuh uh. You open it,” she asserted, waggling her gun.

He did so. Nothing exploded out of it. Instead, Frank removed a sheet of paper, and extended that instead. “From Luci,” he said.

Julie eyed him. She cautiously reached out to take the page, keeping her gun trained his way so that the others couldn’t make a move to disarm her without unpleasant consequences. She unfolded the paper, and risked a quick glance down.

To Julie’s surprise, the message she held simply read: ‘Sorry we had to send the guys. Come back safe, okay Julie? We miss you.’ It had been signed not only by Luci, but also Laurie and Chartreuse. Exactly how many people knew about the time machine now??

Julie snapped her gaze back up. All that had happened was that Corry and Frank had taken a step back, leaving Phil in front. “Carrie didn’t sign,” she observed.

“That’s because she needs you back most of all,” Phil said softly. “Jewels, please - don’t do this. Don’t let them get to you this way."

“Who?”

<< The culmination of six - seven? eight? - years of effort. So many setbacks. But now - they had to understand. They had to see that she was capable, that she was worthy of being their child, that she deserved their love and attention...

<< "What damn fool stunt are you trying to pull?" >>

“You know, Jewels. It’s time to stop letting them control you.”

“No one controls me,” Julie snapped. She dropped Luci’s letter, hoping two hands on the gun would provide a better grip. “Phil, in all the time we’ve been at school together, when have I ever, EVER let anyone else tell me what to do?"

“I’m not talking about at school.”

<< “Juvenile delinquent," her father spat out. "Well, you've forced the two of us to use your birthday as an excuse to come back here to handle things. I hope you're happy."

<< Her mother sighed and pressed a hand to her temples. "Dear, you deal with this today, all right? It’s going to give me a headache, I’m sure of it.” >>

The gun began to shake dangerously in her hands. “Phil… don’t do this to me… don’t make me choose…”

“I have to,” he said sadly. “Don’t you see, Jewels? I have to. Because if you go through with this, and you die - they’ve won. I can’t let them do that.”

<< "Leave it to a girl to take things too literally."

<< He tore the document in half. >>

“It was my fault…”

“No.”

“I didn’t do it right…”

“They never gave you a chance!”

<< The document she'd signed with the principal that morning was soon scattered on the floor like so much confetti.

<< A single tear splashed down. Then the glass covering the image cracked as the picture was thrown forcibly against the wall. >>

“I love them,” Julie whispered. “Why don’t they love me, Phil? Why??”

“I don’t know, Jewels.” Phil took another step forwards. “I don’t know. But I want to help you understand. To help us both understand.”

<< "This is going to give me a headache."

<< “Juvenile delinquent.”

<< "She's your *daughter*, after all."

<< ... scattered on the floor like so much confetti. >>

“No… No, I can’t!!!” Julie said, desperately trying to cling to the only reality that had ever made sense. Without it, what did she have left?

“It’s okay, Jewels,” Phil soothed. “I know you’re hurting. But please. You’re stronger than this, I know you are. We all know it. And we all care about you so very, very much.”

The tall blonde took another two steps forward. Julie blinked the tears out of her eyes and cocked her gun back up, now pointing it directly at his chest, point blank range. “I should kill you now for speaking ill of my parents.”

“But you won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because of what I see now. The brooch. Even after everything you’ve been through, after exchanging the rest of your clothing… you kept my birthday present.”

Julie’s eyes fell back down to her chest. The silver brooch in the shape of a rose seemed to smile back up at her. “It w-was pretty.”

“As are you.”

Julie slowly brought her gaze back up.

<< He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small neatly wrapped package. >>

<< "Here’s something to remember me by. Happy birthday.” >>

<< "Happy birthday.” >>

“Oh PHIL,” The gun clattered to the floor as the brunette flung herself at him, pulling him to her, burying her face in his chest, blinded by tears. He was really there this time. It wasn’t her imagination. “They tore it up, Phil,” she choked out. “They tore up my whole agreement!”

“There, there, Jewels,” Phil said softly, hugging her back. “It’ll be all right. Everything’s going to be all right now.”

He held her tightly as she sobbed uncontrollably.

Seeing his opportunity, Corry quickly dodged around Clarke and Julie to retrieve the gun from the floor. Opening the chamber, he removed the bullets, then allowed himself a long sigh of relief.

Frank moved up next to the redhead and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks Corry,” he murmured. “Hardly the most well organized approach, but your plan sure got the job done.”

Corry allowed himself a relieved smile. “Yeah, well, it seemed to me that, deep down, Julie didn’t really want anybody to die. With me to remind her of that, you to remind her that we all cared, and Clarke to follow up with his more personal connection… that felt like our best shot.” He looked at the gun, then tucked it away. “Ugh, BAD way to phrase that. Anyway, with the right counselling, I hope Julie can pull through.”

“She’s in pretty good hands already,” Frank observed, looking towards Clarke. “At this point, I figure we let her calm down a bit more, then ask what she did with the missing microchips. Once I have those, it shouldn’t be too difficult for me to repair the time machine.”

“Right then,” Corry said, dusting off his hands. “Mission accomplished. Good to know that we’re finally through the worst of it!”

***PRESENT: ONTARIO

There was nothing but blackness all around. She was floating in it, surrounded by feelings of loss and loneliness. It was completely overwhelming. Chartreuse wondered how anyone could possibly deal with this.

“Hello?” Chartreuse called out into the void. “Carrie?”

Lee and Jeeves had remained with their captive back at the LaMille mansion, while Chartreuse had returned to the hospital with Luci. After all, the pink haired girl reasoned, there had to be some way to get through to the blonde cheerleader. Now that they knew about the problem. I mean, sure, Carrie held within her the power to destroy the world - but she was still their friend. Right?

Once in the hospital room, Chartreuse had laid out a series of meditation crystals around the bed. Then, holding a small healing orb in her hand, she had worked to form a connection with the unconscious girl for the second time today.

It had apparently succeeded, in as much as it had brought her here. Wherever here was. “Carrie?” Chartreuse called out again.

The sound of someone singing floated towards her from out of the darkness. The voice sounded as hollow and empty as their surroundings.

“I once wished to travel through time. To have such a power seemed really sublime. But I never imagined the problems I’d face. So now I’m lost in time and also in space.”

Chartreuse looked, but saw nothing. “Carrie, is that you?”

“I can speak of tomorrow but not yesterday, for when history changes your past goes away,” the singing voice continued quietly.

Chartreuse shivered, as she recognized the song Corry had sung at the dance. But the familiar tune was a bit off key, and there was an eerie tone of finality to the vocals.

“I see now that these forces can’t be understood, I’d return things to normal if only I could, but the ramifications have damaged my brain… it won’t be long now before I’ve gone insane…”

“Carrie, if that’s you, please stop this,” Chartreuse pleaded. She tried to push forwards, into the darkness. There was a shadowy outline there. It resembled Carrie, but it was facing away, so it was hard to tell for sure.

“Where are we, Carrie?” Chartreuse asked. “What’s going on?”

The singing stopped. Then the voice murmured, “You should not have come back, Chartreuse.”

Chartreuse stared. “Back?” she asked. “Have I been here before…?”

“Ah, that’s right. I removed that memory. Thing is, you should not have saved me then. Part of me was looking forward to death. Now, now this pain within me, it has become too great to bear…”

“Carrie, don’t give up,” Chartreuse interrupted. “If the problem with timelines is whatever’s happened to Julie in the past - like, we’ll do whatever we can to fix it for you. Surely you’ve realized that by now.”

The shadowy figure of Carrie seemed to think about that. “No, the ripples from the past are subsiding,” was her eventual reply. “Those who travelled back, and caused the waveforms to appear - the waves which were amplified at this time by my premature awakening - they will have been collapsed. There is no longer a… Schrodinger’s Julie. She has survived.”

“Oh… good?”

“But what of the future?” Carrie challenged. “Julie will be wanted for attempted murder. She will face severe punishment from her parents. One of many things that should not be occurring to her. One of many things that have come about, because of me. Me… the girl who who didn’t even exist, in the original timeline.” She laughed.

And something about that laugh was off, and somehow, Chartreuse knew that Carrie was broken.

“That’s the real problem, you see,” the blonde concluded. ”How it’s all about me. This story has always been all about me.”

Chartreuse swallowed hard. “Carrie, please stop. You’re scaring me.”

“None of this should have happened, I know in my gut,” Carrie’s voice sang again. “Yet our future is hist’ry, and I’ve lost what’s what. We must now beware, time is not playing fair, I would solve this crime it’s just I’m… outta time… outta time… outta time…”

Carrie’s silhouette spun, her palm thrust out towards Chartreuse. With a cry, both of surprise and pain, the mystic felt her spiritual self being hurled backwards. She collided with her own body, then somehow continued moving, her physical self propelled back into the far wall of the hospital room. The pink haired girl hit hard, then slid down onto the floor with a groan, struggling to remain conscious.

Carrie Waterson sat up in her hospital bed, her formerly blue eyes now blazing brightly with golden fire.

PART 43: DESPERATE TIMES

***PAST: ILLINOIS

A figure stirred within the quiet, suburban home. Hazel eyes blinked open and a brunette teenager slowly picked herself up off the ground. She looked around, spotting a calendar hanging on the wall. Her mouth quirked up into an odd smile, and she tapped the barrel of her gun on her chin.

“It worked,” she murmured. “It worked, and now I’m… home.” She began to laugh hysterically.

Fingers drummed nervously on the floor. Having decided a short time ago that her situation wasn’t actually funny at all - certainly nothing to laugh about - Julie had moved on to taking stock of her current situation. So, she had traveled back to the year of her birth. The time machine had worked, as described to her by Carrie that time in her former associate’s bedroom.

It was a stroke of luck that Julie had apparently ended up on November 9th. Almost as if the machine had already been set for that day, merely requiring Frank’s coin to provide the year. She looked down at the notes she had grabbed. Should she risk reprogramming the thing, to try and jump a little closer? No… she didn’t have the right tools, or the confidence. Better to destroy the device instead. To prevent pursuit.

Julie proceeded to rip out what seemed to be the most important microchips, tossing them into the backyard. She put the notes into the garbage, and took the black box down into the basement, cramming it into one of the many half empty cardboard storage boxes she found. Her parents rarely decluttered, so there wasn’t much chance of it turning up - though even if it did, without the chips or the notes, it would be practically useless.

So, what was she supposed to do for the next three days? Devise a plan, of course. A plan to kill a baby. Julie felt her stomach lurch, but then again, she was already a murderer, right? She’d killed Carrie, and probably Frank too with her second shot. So what was one more death? Particularly when it would be her own. Merely one more death…

Something didn’t make sense. Her mind detoured.

Why had she shot Carrie? What exactly had brought her to Frank’s place that evening? Julie remembered being at the mansion. Then that man had called, asking to meet her at the park. The thirty-something guy had given her the gun, and told her what she had to do. It had made so much sense at the time! Up until the point of seeing Carrie bleeding on the floor…

‘None of it will have happened once I cease to exist,’ Julie rationalized, blocking the memory. One of SO many memories that she didn’t want any more. Okay, planning time. She had to figure out where the hospital was, that sort of thing. Pausing only long enough to find a bag to slip her gun into, Julie left the house.

Phil was here.

Barely an hour out of her house, and Julie found herself being confronted by impossible setbacks. She squeezed her eyes shut and counted to ten before peering back around the street corner.

Phil was still there.

If he was a hallucination, as he had been in the basement of her house, he’d become a more persistent one. Then again, this Phil could simply be a look-alike. Maybe an ancestor. Except why had Julie been left with the impression he was looking for someone?

Was he looking for her?

She felt her heart getting squeezed. Part of Julie wanted to run out to Phil and tell him everything, about what her parents had done to her, and about what she had done to Carrie. But another part of her urged caution. Could even Phil forgive her for what had happened? Worse, what if this was some kind of trap?

“Excuse me… you wouldn’t happen to have any spare change, would you?” said a nearby voice.

Julie tensed. She turned. This homeless woman was about her height, with hair of approximately the same length and colour. The similarity ended there, but daylight was fading, so with the right clothes…

“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you do something for me,” Julie answered. Almost as an afterthought, she moved closer to the woman and slipped the gun out from it’s concealment. “And if you don’t do it right, I’ll kill you too.”

***PRESENT: ONTARIO

Jeeves re-entered the sitting room to find Luci pacing, Chartreuse fidgeting with some crystals, and Lee leaning over the couch where the fourth house “guest” remained tied up.

The LaMille butler was starting to regret having let them in. In doing so, he wagered that he had become an accessory to kidnapping, or harbouring a fugitive. He didn’t know which. He didn’t want to know. That way, he wouldn’t have to deny anything later.

The one thing Jeeves DID know was that Julie was in some sort of trouble. Furthermore, ever since he had been hired three years ago to take care of this place, and thus indirectly to care for her, he’d felt a certain obligation towards the young girl. She was obviously very troubled, but she was also smart, strong, and more driven than any other teenager he knew. He couldn’t understand why her parents didn’t spend more time with her.

Indeed, it had been after leaving her alone with her parents for the one night that she had disappeared. Perhaps he shouldn’t have reported Julie’s actions at school to her mother and father. Or perhaps he shouldn’t have agreed to take that night off. Yet they often released him that way shortly after coming home, and as a simple butler, had he really had any other choice?

Perhaps not. However, he did have a choice now. Namely whether to offer more information to these children, or whether to put a stop to things before they got out of hand.

“Pardon me,” Jeeves stated archly. “But could one of you please enlighten me as to the current situation regarding Miss LaMille?”

Luci turned towards him. “Situation?” she said tiredly.

“You indicated to me earlier that by allowing you in here, it might ultimately clear her name,” Jeeves reminded them.

“Oh. Yes.” Jeeves noticed that the young girl’s eyes drifted over to the man on the couch, before she resumed her pacing. Perhaps this mystery man had been the actual culprit? “It’s complicated,” she continued. “I’m sorry, but we need more time.”

“The thing is,” Jeeves continued pointedly, “I just got off the phone with Miss LaMille’s father.” That got all of their attention.

“I have been trying to reach her parents all afternoon,” he elaborated. “Ever since I learned that their daughter was being implicated in the recent shooting. I finally succeeded not ten minutes ago, only to be told by Mr. LaMille that he had no daughter. At first I thought that he was trying to disown her, however, it soon became apparent to me that he also had no recollection of even owning this house.”

The butler watched as the three teenagers exchanged a glance. “He doesn’t remember Julie?” Chartreuse said, biting her lower lip. “Uh oh. Um, you don’t think that means she, like, actually succeeded in… in the past, do you?”

Luci yanked a piece of paper from her pocket. “How could she have?” the young asian protested, scanning over it. She slapped at the page with her hand. “We know what happened back then. Look, girl hit by ambulance, three days before Julie was born. That hasn’t changed.”

“Unless…” The man on the couch struggled to stand. “She is more powerful than I realized. We have to stop her, now!”

“Stop Julie?” Chartreuse said, confused. “No, that’s what, like, Frank and them are doing.”

“Whoa, okay, time out,” Lee said, raising his hands in the traditional gesture. “I’m not sure I follow ANY of what’s going on here, so back the bus up… if Julie’s parents don’t remember her now because of some change to the past - how come WE haven’t forgotten her too?”

“The–“ Their captive cut himself off. “Your Carrie Waterson. I told you she had powers! Being in this town, right now, has put us in the eye of her time storm. We are not safe so long as she is around. Can you not see how time itself is beginning to destabilize? We must act fast. Someone help me up.”

Jeeves automatically felt himself take a step closer to assist, only to have the boy named Lee step between them. “Sorry, I’m thinking we keep Shady on the couch for now,” the teenager asserted.

“Yes!” Luci said, and when Jeeves turned to her, he saw that a light had come back into her eyes. She met his gaze. “Okay, Jeeves, thanks for the information but I bet none of this is making any sense to you, and we don’t have time to explain. So, I know it’s a lot to ask, but unless you seriously object, can you leave us alone again? It’ll avoid you getting any more involved than you have to.”

Jeeves raised an eyebrow as Luci voiced his earlier concern - yet he also sensed a hard edge to Luci’s voice. Was helping Miss LaMille really worth potentially putting these other teenagers in jeopardy?

“I will allow you another few minutes to discuss the situation,” Jeeves decided. “Should you need me, I will be in the hall.” He turned and left the room once again, hoping that he was doing the right thing.

Then again, according to his employers, he didn’t seem to work here anyway.

After Jeeves had departed, Luci turned back to Shady. “You don’t KNOW,” she asserted, grinning.

“What don’t I know?”

“You don’t know what Carrie’s capable of,” she concluded. “Not really. Your description of her powers has been vague, you didn’t know if Frank’s admission would save her, and you sure as heck weren’t aware of whatever this ‘time storm’ was until Jeeves pointed it out. So how could you possibly know whether Carrie’s irredeemably insane or not?”

Luci drew in a deep breath. “The answer is, you don’t. Meaning we might still be able to save her.”

Shady shook his head. “Don’t be foolish. I know she’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous why?” Luci demanded. She moved in next to him, placing her hand on the couch next to his head. “Tell us, why exactly is Carrie Waterson dead in your future, Shady? Why did you have to come back to this time period to get her? Why, exactly, is SHE the one tied to time?”

Their captor’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t have to answer to you.”

Luci’s smile vanished. “Perhaps not, but it occurs to me now that you were WAY too calm for someone who claimed to have lost an entire future war because of us.”

“Well, I’m not calm any more,” he snapped.

“No, you’re not,” Luci acknowledged. “So what is it about Carrie that has you so riled up? Tell us. ALL of it.”

“Go beat your head against a wall.”

Luci turned and marched over towards the nearest wall, drawing her head back - only to be grabbed from behind by Lee. She blinked, then snapped her gaze back over to the couch.

“That’s dirty pool,” Chartreuse said, horrified.

“You children, you have no idea, NO idea of what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in,” Shady said, a bitterness to his tone. “Enough of free will. Isn’t it time to leave this situation in the hands of your elders?”

“Okay, that’s it,” Luci decided. “I’ve had it.” She began to push a chair over to the side of the room. “Lee? Chartreuse? You can leave now, if you don’t want to see this.”

“Um, pretty sure I should stick around,” Lee pointed out.

“Why, what are you, like, going to do?” Chartreuse asked.

“Something I might regret later,” Luci admitted. She climbed onto the chair, and reached up to grasp the ornamental rapier hanging on the wall.

“Whoa, uh, hold on short stuff… what are you doing?”

Truth be told, Luci was asking herself that same question. She wasn’t really sure any more. All she knew was that were were still gaps, huge gaps in her knowledge that had to be filled. It had become more than a need, it was a necessity. How else could she solve this puzzle?

“The problem,” she reasoned aloud, hopping back down onto the floor, “is that I’ve been basing all my decisions to this point on the scattered half picture we’ve had available.” She brandished the rapier and pointed it at their captive. “Time to get the rest of the data. By any means necessary.”

“Luci,” Chartreuse gasped, reaching out to take her by the shoulder.

“No,” Luci protested, shrugging off Chartreuse. “It’s not us, it’s HIM, it’s his secrets that have doomed Julie and Frank and the rest of them.” She took a step closer to the couch. “So, you want to talk war? Fine, here’s your war. You will tell us about Carrie’s fate in your timeline, or suffer the consequences.”

The man met Luci’s gaze, sizing her up. “You have more willpower than I thought,” he said at last. “But no. I’ve told you too much already.”

“Don’t test me,” Luci cautioned, waving the blade around - to try and disguise how much her hand was starting to shake.

He smirked. “Please. You talk big, but you won’t use that. Put it away before you hurt yourself.”

Luci stared at him for another few seconds, realizing with growing frustration that he wasn’t going to stop treating this like a bluff on her part. ‘Hurt him!’ a part of her cried out. ‘He’s hurting you, so you can hurt him back!' Except… there was a big difference between cutting someone down with words, and doing it with a blade.

She grasped the hilt with both hands. Tears started stinging at her eyes. “Talk!”

Talk, Shady. Just talk. This was so easy in the movies. Why not now? Why, oh why couldn’t things be going her way? As Shady smirked, Luci felt Chartreuse’s arm encircle her shoulders. This time she didn’t pull away. Instead she let out a choked sob, finally letting the blade fall from her grip. It bounced on the carpet.

“Okay buddy, now you’ve made a young girl cry,” Lee observed. He cracked his knuckles. “We’ve reached my line in the sand.”

Luci looked back up, barely in time to see Lee backhand the man across the face. “Now say you’re sorry,” he admonished. He looked angrier than Luci had ever seen him.

“What… what the hell are you doing?!” their captive spat back, apparently as surprised as any of them.

“At present? I’m trying to figure out how a supposed adult has the audacity to put the whammy on girls less than half his age,” Lee said. “You also seem to be trying to kill another one of my friends, without telling us the reason, and to cap it all off - you’re making me late for dinner.”

Lee backhanded him again. “I’m ESPECIALLY annoyed about that last one, because I don’t want my sisters to have new reasons to cry either. So let’s get to it, okay ‘Shady’? Apologize to Luci, and then TELL her WHAT SHE WANTS TO KNOW.”

Lee’s victim glowered at him for a moment, before uttering a curt, “Sorry,” in Luci’s direction.

“Progress,” Lee said, glaring.

Shady grit his teeth. “If you weren’t somehow immune to me…”

“What’s the problem, not comfortable enough to answer questions?” Lee asked. “Well then, I’ll fluff your pillow here and… oh, I’m sorry, is that your foot? Dear me, I’d get your feet up out of the way but it is hard when they’re tied like this… oh, sorry, was that your stomach? You know, you’d make this a lot easier by talking. Though I guess it is a little difficult with me holding the pillow over your face. There, that better?”

“Are you INSANE?”

“Sounds like you need more time to think. How about this, I’ve heard it can help, having all your blood rush to your head. Over we go… oops, sorry. Oh, hey, mind that rapier down there…"

As Lee continued to contort the man’s body, Luci was reminded of the conversation she’d had with Clarke in the hospital. Sometimes, you had to pass the ball to your teammates. “Remind me never to cross Lee,” she whispered to Chartreuse.

Chartreuse didn’t respond, her eyes wide and her jaw slack.

“All right, I’ll talk,” Shady shrieked, once Lee had twisted his head away from the upholstery. “Bloody hell, I never expected you teenagers to be such a thorn in my side!”

“And our little dog too,” Lee remarked as he straightened back up and adjusted his jacket. He looked back over at the two girls, seeming a bit taken aback by their expressions. “Um, what can I say? I hate being late for dinner.”

“You want the truth about your ‘friend’, Carrie Waterson?” The temporal refugee spat out, even as he struggled to sit back up. “Fine. She is NOT dead in my future. Rather, she is on THEIR side.” He fixed his gaze upon Luci. “She’s a temporal bomb, who can destroy the entire world, because THAT’S what they designed her to do. Which is, if you haven’t figured it out, why we couldn’t very well recruit her to fight on behalf of the humans, could we?”

It was Chartreuse who managed to speak first. “Um, Carrie’s a human. Not some time bomb.”

“Well, she’s sort of both,” Shady countered. “Call her a sleeper agent, if you like, planted in the past. Except now that I’ve changed things? Now that she’s exerting her influence on this town, consciously or unconsciously preserving the memory of Julie? She’s armed. She has to be.”

“So you did come back in time to destroy Carrie,” Luci concluded.

He shook his head. “No, I came back to recruit that– thing, I swear. We had hoped to learn how to control the power, and to unleash it back upon her own people… but regrettably, if Carrie went psychotic, there would be no choice but to eliminate her. Because if she explodes? She will not only take this town, but this entire planet along with her. Make no mistake.”

He paused to let his words sink in. “So," he concluded, “will you finally release me, and let me destroy that shell of a girl before she does the same to all of humanity? Or shall we sit here chatting for what may well be the last hour of our lives?”

***PAST: ILLINOIS

They had to be destroyed. If they got in her way, she would have to destroy them. It seemed harsh, but being a murderer three times over now, Julie had made up her mind.

Three times… Carrie, Frank, and then that homeless woman… it had been so horrible, to see her die. Julie grabbed at her chest, feeling her borrowed clothing.

She should have been the one. The one lying dead in the road. In fact, a strange part of her felt like it HAD BEEN HER. Or would have been her. Before she’d noticed Phil on the street, and switched clothing. Now it wasn’t her. But could it still become her?

Tenses were getting muddled in her brain. No, more than tenses, it was all a muddle. Perhaps a side effect of the time travel. Or, you know, the fact that she was flirting with paradox, trying to prevent her own birth. Maybe something out there didn’t want her to do that.

What had even led to this line of thought? Right, she had to kill Phil, Frank and Corry… if they got in her way. Frank, dead for a second time. That was weird.

Never mind. Julie knew she needed a plan. A plan that she could execute quickly, for if Phil had actually been able to follow her through time, recruiting assistance from Corry of all people, there were sure to be more traps in store. Julie supposed that she should not have destroyed the potential advantage of her own time machine.

Too late to worry about that now. She couldn’t wait another three days for her actual birth. Not any more. It was time for action.

Still clutching the gun, Julie marched off for the hospital. If the others tried to stop her now, well… well, then they would suffer the consequences. The very deadly consequences.

PART 42: TIED IN NAUGHTS

***PAST: ILLINOIS

“You know,” Corry said as he wheeled his bike along the sidewalk. “If I ever decide to take another trip through time with you guys? Stop me. I don’t think I could take another day of this traveling through unknown territory, sharing cramped quarters and dishwashing for money and food.”

“I know there’s something I can’t take much more of,” Clarke murmured.

“My previous time trips haven’t been like this," Frank said, half slumped over his own bike. “But here, we had to allow extra time to find Julie, and we lacked enough currency for this time period. You knew all that before you came.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know this would be a one way trip,” Corry argued.

“It won’t be,” Frank assured. “Remember, all we have to do is figure out what Julie did with the circuitry she removed. With that, I can repair our version of the time machine, and get us back.”

“Oh, and I’m sure Julie will be very forthcoming with that information," Corry groused.

“Don’t mind Corry,” Clarke suggested to Frank. “Complaining seems to be his way of coping. We’ll manage, somehow.”

“Phil Clarke. Always the optimist,” Corry grumbled. “Oh well, at least this ordeal is almost over. How much time until… uh, the big event we’ll need to stop?” Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to say ‘death’.

Frank checked his watch. “If our newspaper was to be believed, we’re over two hours out. And we’re…” He glanced up at the nearby road sign. “Now five blocks away. So time to spare."

“How about change to spare?” came a hopeful voice.

Corry turned with the others, to see a young homeless woman. Or, if she wasn’t homeless, the early twenty something was at least down on her luck. Her clothes were ragged, her long curly brown hair was frayed, and she was carrying her possessions in a small, tattered bag.

“Well…” Frank began slowly.

Before Frank could say more, Clarke fished a couple of bills out of his pocket. “Here you go,” he said. “It’s not much, but it’s all we have to spare.”

“Bless you,” the woman said with a small smile as she took the handout.

“Oh, brilliant, Clarke,” Corry said once the woman was out of earshot. “That’s brilliant. Sure, let’s give away the rest of our money. It’s not like we might NEED it or anything! Gods, sometimes I can’t figure out what’s going through your heads."

“She’ll be around to use it tomorrow, unlike us,” Clarke rationalized.

“Only assuming we get through to Julie, remember?”

“Look,” Frank cut back in. “It’s fine, what’s done is done. Though for future reference, Clarke? We want to minimize our impact here in the past. Not call attention to it that way.”

“Right. Sorry.”

They were within a block of the hospital when Clarke cleared his throat. “So Corry, based on whatever Julie did with you that day in January - what are the chances she’ll be throwing herself into the path of this ambulance on purpose?”

Corry grimaced as he was forced to consider the possibility. “Hard to say. Why, do you think she’d be in a low mental state based on whatever talk she had with you after my flyers went out?”

“And here’s another thing,” Frank interjected. “You two need to stop being so… passive-aggressive with your whatevers.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Corry asked dryly.

Frank turned to face them, visibly frustrated. “Look, apparently you each have secrets about Julie. And while I commend your ethics, in that you both don’t seem to want to reveal them to each other without her approval, after four days, those conversations are getting REAL annoying.”

Corry tried to protest, but Frank kept talking.

“More to the point, the Julie I saw right before she time travelled didn’t seem to be in complete control of her faculties. Which for all we know, is going to be ten minutes before she shows up here. So, if you don’t want to reveal secrets about Julie, fine. But will you both stop fishing for information from the other guy about those past encounters? It’s time to focus on the Julie in our present.”

Corry wondered if Clarke’s look of surprise was mirrored on his own face. He hoped not - but he never would have figured on Frank having an outburst like that. “Fine,” he said. “Sorry if it felt like I was fishing, Clarke.”

“Yeah, me too,” Clarke said, looking sheepish.

“Okay.” Corry eyed Frank. “With that out of the way, what are your next orders for us, oh glorious leader?”

Frank merely sighed.

***PRESENT: ONTARIO

Lee sighed, as he looked at the text message from Judy. Apparently the new books hadn’t come in yet - so no extra hours today. In fact, since he wasn’t scheduled for work, that meant no need to go to the library at all. Oh well.

His original plan had been to use tonight to catch up on homework, so he supposed he might as well head home to do that. However, he found his footsteps were taking him towards the hospital instead.

Whatever events were happening between Clarke, Tim, and the rest of them? They had escalated. Not only into absences at school, but now the local constabulary was hanging around. The hospital wasn’t very far out of his way - it couldn’t hurt to check in on Carrie, right? Maybe one of the others would be around too, and he could do something more to help.

Lee absentmindedly scanned the building as he approached. As such, he was able to spot the figure darting out of one of the emergency exits. Was there a fire? No one else seemed to be evacuating.

Then another person ran out the door, apparently in pursuit of the first individual - and even at this distance, Lee recognized the profile, what with the bows in her hair. The two of them were heading more or less in his direction, so Lee decided to intercede on Chartreuse’s behalf.

He moved to box in the running man, who, upon realizing that he was caught between Lee, Chartreuse, and the building itself, headed for his one remaining option.  The shrubbery and fence surrounding the hospital area. Breaking into a sprint, Lee managed to catch the mysterious figure and haul him down before he could make good his escape.

In the process Lee made a startling discovery: this person, the one wearing the uniform of a hospital orderly, was the same guy who’d been loitering around the hospital on Saturday. The one who had been looking for information on the LaMilles previously. With a bit of leverage, Lee managed to get the guy face down onto the ground, arms pinned behind him.

“Thanks… thanks Lee…” Chartreuse wheezed as she caught up to them, sweat running down her face. She paused for a second to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath before bending down to stare their captive in the face. “Now, why were you trying to kill Carrie Waterson?” she demanded, jabbing out a finger.

Lee blinked at Chartreuse. “Kill Carrie?”

Chartreuse nodded sombrely. “Well?” the pink haired girl demanded again, off the man’s silence. “Tell me, or I’ll… I’ll do something mystical and unpleasant to you. Don’t think I won’t!”

Their captive attempted to flex his arms, but Lee held him down. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” the man said at last. “That ‘girl’ will destroy us all. I must be allowed to complete this mission.”

“Uhm, if your mission involves harming a hair on Carrie’s head, I so don’t think so," Chartreuse countered. She pursed her lips in thought. “All right, here’s what we’re gonna do. Lee, keep this guy here while I get Luci. Then the four of us can, like, go find someplace nice and private to have a good, long talk.”

“Er, you don’t think this is a matter to leave to the police…?” Lee protested.

Chartreuse shook her head. “No, the police might be kinda looking for me and Luci. Please, just, you know, hold Shady here - I’ll be right back.”

With that, the pink haired girl jumped up and ran back in the direction of the hospital. Lee was left in the shrubbery with his captive. “Guess this is what I get for not asking enough questions on the weekend,” he mused.

“Lee, you are going to do something for me now,” the man on the ground articulated. “Listen carefully. You are going to get off of me and let me go on my way unmolested. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Lee answered. “But I think we’ll stay here anyway.”

The man smacked his forehead down. “Oh well,” he muttered. “It was worth a shot.”

“Miss Primrose, I’m afraid I don’t have authorization to allow any of you to enter.”

“Jeeves, it’s important,” Luci insisted. “We can’t risk going to any of our homes, while this is probably the last place anyone will think to look for us. Besides, what we discover here today may well save Carrie - as well as clear Julie’s name.”

She watched his eyebrow arch. Good, he knew Julie was a suspect now, that saved explanations. “The police don’t have it quite right, Jeeves,” she added. “Please, if you care about what happens to Julie, you’ll let us in.”

It felt like an eternity, but the LaMille butler finally swung the front door of the mansion open wider. “See that I don’t regret this,” he cautioned them.

The four of them filed past Jeeves into the foyer: Luci, Chartreuse, Lee, and the man with his hands tied behind his back, aka Shady.

After closing the door, Jeeves headed for the telephone.

“All right,” Luci said once they were in the LaMille sitting room, having tossed their captive onto the couch. “Start talking. Who are you, what are you doing here, and why did you try to kill Carrie?”

Shady remained silent.

“All right then, I’ll start talking,” Luci decided. “You can correct me if I say anything wrong, all right?” She leaned against the back of a chair, staring at him.

“The first question we have to ask ourselves is why someone who once professed to be Carrie’s ‘Guardian Angel’ would attempt to kill her. Answer? It was, in fact, your goal all along. But you had to wait for the right moment. For the point of maximum entropy. You had to protect Carrie until then.”

Luci drummed her fingers on the fabric in front of her. “It explains why you got Julie to shoot Carrie in a non-fatal way. Putting your target into the hospital, you could indirectly get some preliminary readings on her.” Chartreuse let out a little gasp. “And don’t even try to deny being involved with the shooting,” Luci added. “Because even setting aside your call to Frank, I remember now that when I returned to his house on that night? Someone was sitting in a car less than a block away. Foolishly, I didn’t give it much thought, but seeing you here? It was you. And Julie had to get the gun from someone.”

Luci paused to give Shady a chance to speak. When he said nothing, she continued on.

“So, Carrie has been your guinea pig. Time travel - it’s not a fine science for you future guys, I guess? Sure, you used it to get back here, but prolonged exposure, that’s what Carrie was for. For some reason, you believed that all of her time trips would grant her special abilities, and once she got them…” Luci snapped her fingers in the air. “Dissection time.”

She turned away, as Chartreuse’s increasingly ill look was becoming too much of a contrast to Shady’s inscrutable expression. “But Julie running off with the time machine, that threw off your timetable,” Luci reasoned. “You had to delay, leading to checking on Julie’s past, contacting Frank, and generally messing with us to ensure we were looking anywhere BUT at Carrie. But now we are. And since we know your intentions, we’re not going to let you get away with it.”

She whirled back, folding her arms across her chest. “Well? How’s that, am I close?”

“And don’t even think about, you know, lying,” Chartreuse added, shaking a crystal at him. “Or I’ll totally know.”

Their captive frowned, as if trying to come to a decision.

“Look man,” Lee offered. “If you tell ‘em what they want to know, they’ll get off your back, and we can all walk away from this roller coaster ride of science fiction. Right?”

Shady sighed. “You are very observant, young Luci,” he said at last. “But largely incorrect. For instance, none of you need to fear developing any powers yourselves - Carrie’s abilities are not because of her time travel. They have always been within her. They are tied to her, bound to her by fate.” He smirked. “Which is the very reason I came back to this time to recruit her.”

“Recruit?” Luci blurted, before she could stop herself. She glanced sidelong at Chartreuse. The pink haired girl shrugged, meaning either she couldn’t detect any trace of betrayal, or she’d been bluffing about the lie detection thing. Lee merely looked nonplussed.

Luci decided she needed to sit down. Moving into the chair she’d previously been leaning against, she steepled her fingers, continuing to stare at their captive. “By all means then,” she said. “Explain to us how you can recruit someone by KILLING them.”

Shady inclined his head slightly. “If I do, will you let me go?”

“No,” Luci said, sourly. “But we’re definitively keeping you here until you do, so start talking.”

The man glanced at Lee. “Oh, very well. The crux of the matter is that there is a war going on in the future. One which we humans are losing very badly, I might add. But then, at the point when many of us were about to give up all hope, we discovered the identity of a woman. A woman with extraordinary powers. Powers which could extend into the very fabric of space and time itself - the problem being, she was already dead to us. So, with great effort, we managed to obtain a time travel device, and I was chosen to come back in time to find this woman. Back when she was a mere girl.”

“Okay,” Lee said, as Shady paused. “So far this sounds like a reverse plot from those Terminator films. Did the robots send someone back after you, dude?”

“No. We’re not fighting robots,” Shady said in an annoyed tone. “Can I finish my story?”

Lee gestured magnanimously.

“As such,” he continued, “I have been in sync with your time period now for close to three years, working at verifying this woman’s identity in her youth. Not as difficult a task as I originally thought, given how I picked up a temporal disruption in Algonquin Park a couple years back, and had to personally rescue her. Still, I wanted to be sure, so it was only a couple of months ago that I left my time machine out for Carrie Waterson to find.”

“Then your time machine is what became our time machine,” Luci affirmed.

He nodded. “It’s not like I brought a spare. The things ARE damned hard to get your hands on.”

Meaning Shady couldn’t escape through time. Good to know. “Still waiting on the whole death equals recruitment thing,” Luci pointed out.

“Did you want context for it or not?”

“Context is helpful,” Chartreuse said brightly.

“Fine. So, experiencing time travel was the first step towards awakening this obj- er, wom- this girl’s powers. She had to learn what she could accomplish, in a practical sense. She then had to learn how to put her own life into the cosmic perspective.” He paused briefly before muttering, “That second phase required a near death experience.”

Luci stood. “Then I WAS right, and you ARE responsible for influencing Julie.”

Shady sighed. “Being displaced from time, I did not think it wise to act as the trigger myself. An ex-friend, who had been targeted at school that day? That seemed plausible. Anyway, you yourself noted how Julie’s shot was intended to miss any vital organs.”

“Okay, but, like, hold on,” Chartreuse protested. “This power awakening stuff, it seems to have gone wrong. Carrie’s not doing so hot."

“Oh, no kidding?” Shady said contemptuously. “Apparently you teenagers have an interesting way of keeping things ‘safe’.”

“Julie’s time trip,” Luci realized. “It did throw things off. Merely not how I thought.”

Shady nodded. “That part is as I said to your friend Frank. Carrie could not reconcile Julie’s death with how history proceeded prior to her powers awakening. But instead of following my advice, you all devised some asinine plan of your own! I finally used my own power to get the police involved this morning. Unfortunately, checking on Carrie’s condition afterwards, I found it was too late.” He folded his hands together. “Carrie is now irredeemably insane, and my mission has failed, thus killing her… well, at this point, it’s a form of mercy."

Luci shuddered, as she realized how wrong she had been. And Carrie was paying the price. She reached out for the chair again, using it to keep her from sliding down to her knees. “But there must be some way to still save her,” Luci asserted. “Something more we can do.”

Shady scoffed. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough already? You have doomed most of your friends, as well as an entire war going on in your future. I ask you, how many more people must pay the price for your bad decisions?”

***PAST: ILLINOIS

“How much time?” Corry hissed.

“At a guess? Five minutes, give or take,” Frank answered quietly. He peered out of the alleyway to look up and down the street.

Clarke stood there, surrounded by some of the locals who were going about their business in the early evening. Upon spying Frank, the tall boy raised his arms, palms up, indicating he hadn’t seen any sign of Julie yet. Frank slumped back against the wall; the group had locked their bikes up at the nearby library half an hour ago.

Corry sighed. “I hate us splitting up like this,” he groused. “I mean, I agree Clarke’s the best choice to reason with her, but Julie probably still has that gun, right? The one she used to shoot Carrie? What if she simply kills him, then picks us off, one by one, before jumping in front of the ambulance? I mean, maybe that’s what my sister is reading in the newspaper in the future at this very moment.”

“Corry, now is not the time,” Frank said tersely.

“But… ah, you’re right," came a grudging admission, much to Frank’s surprise. “Look, sorry if I’m a little hard on you and Clarke, Frank,” the redhead continued. “I’m accustomed to knowing a lot more about my surroundings. This whole trip has put me out of my element.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But I guess you don’t need both me AND Julie going after your jugular, huh?”

Before Frank could reply to that, they heard Clarke call out “Julie!” in a loud and clear voice.

The two teenagers poked their heads back out of the alley to see what Clarke was up to. He had crossed the street, and was hurrying after someone. A girl with long brown hair, who was wearing a dark green sweater with a blue pleated skirt. She was moving in the direction of the hospital.

“Julie! Jewels!” Clarke called out again.

The girl seemed to half turn before quickening her pace. Frank emerged from the alley and headed down his side of the street. He wasn’t quite sure how to help, but he didn’t want to lose sight of them.

What happened next occurred so fast that, upon later recollection, Frank would be forced to admit that there was nothing he could have done.

Having almost reached her, Clarke reached out to grab Julie by the shoulder. Sensing she was about to be caught, the girl twisted away, stumbling as she did so. It was then that Frank finally noticed the ambulance, which had not bothered to turn it’s siren on, as there weren’t any other cars on the street.

“Look out!” he screamed, even as Julie, off balance, staggered backwards. Right into the path of the oncoming vehicle. There was no time for anyone to run and push her out of the way, no time for the driver to brake - the ambulance simply hit her, head on.

“No…” Frank gasped as he saw Julie fly several feet through the air.

“NO!” he screamed. She had been their only hope of rescuing Carrie. Their only hope of getting back home. Four days, FOUR DAYS they had spent in the past, knowing that this would happen. And yet they had failed!

But maybe, just maybe, Julie wasn’t dead yet. So she could tell them where the time circuits were, and they could somehow try again, try to fix this… a crowd was already gathering, and Frank moved to push his way through them. He was restrained by a hand on his shoulder.

Frank turned to see Clarke, his face ashen, his body shaking slightly. “Clarke,” he gasped. “We have to–”

“It’s not her, Frank,” the tall boy said quietly.

It took a few seconds for Clarke’s words to sink in. Even then, they didn’t make sense. “What?” Frank finally managed.

“It’s not Julie.” Clarke released him. “As that person twisted away from me, I got my first good look at her face. The person who was hit… it was that homeless woman we saw earlier today. For some reason, she had put on Julie’s clothes.”

That still didn’t make any sense. “How? Why?” Frank protested.

“Because Julie knows we’re here,” Corry said, having come up behind them in time to hear Clarke’s revelation. His lips thinned. “She must know we’re here to stop her from killing herself. And she sent that woman towards the hospital as a decoy."

Frank let Corry steer them both away from the crowd, his mind now completely in a whirl. Julie knew they were there? But how? What was even going through that poor girl’s mind? A shudder ran down Frank’s spine as he realized that there was no way of knowing. No way at all.

And for the first time since they’d landed in Illinois, Frank felt very, very scared.

See the accompanying Commentary Post for ARC 2.3

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 40: REPARATIONS

“Corry… I want to know what’s really going on.”

Her twin blinked back at her in surprise. “What’s going on with what?”

For a moment, Laurie regretted saying anything. However, after both knocking AND waiting for Corry to invite her in, she decided she might as well see things through. She closed the door behind herself, to make it harder to leave.

“What’s going on with Carrie and Julie,” Laurie explained softly.

Corry sat up on his bed. “What has Chartreuse been telling you?”

Laurie tried to remember; she shouldn’t have left this talk for so late into the evening. “Not much. But she said that you both talked, and that she’d decided to tell you a bit about what was going on, and that you didn’t think there was any point her discussing more about the time traveling stuff with me today."

“Okay,” Corry said, visibly relaxing. “So?”

“So… I’ve decided I’m going to go see Chartreuse’s other friends tomorrow. To learn more about this on my own.”

Corry’s face clouded again. “I see. Why is that?”

“Because I want to,” Laurie stated. She forced herself to breathe, and speak in short sentences. “Because Chartreuse is right about stuff a lot more often than you give her credit for. And also because I need to know what really happened to Carrie and Julie. Even if that means finding out that my own brother is behind it all.”

Corry’s look became one of confusion, and he swung his legs off the side of the bed. “What?”

Laurie took in another breath. “Look, I know I’m naive, but maybe I’m not actually stupid,” she asserted. “You’ve never liked Carrie. Then you led that whole flyer campaign against Julie. The next day, Carrie’s in the hospital, Julie’s gone, and you barely look into it. So… so what part did you play in what happened to them?”

“You think I’m somehow responsible for what’s happened to those two?” Corry said. Now he looked shocked - but maybe he was faking it for her benefit.

“Aren’t you?”

“No! No, Gods no, Laurie, ruining a reputation is one thing, but have I ever done something that would threaten a person’s life?”

He seemed legitimately horrified. Oh no. Laurie looked down at her feet. “M-Maybe you’ve come close a couple of times.”

She heard Corry jump off of his bed and approach her. “Laurie… Laurie, look at me. Please,” he insisted, taking her by the shoulders. Slowly, her eyes came back up to lock with his. Okay, it didn’t look like he was upset with her, more - scared?

“Laurie, listen. I know sometimes I can get a little carried away. But you have to believe me, I would never, ever, do something that could outright kill a person,” he said. “Understand?”

Laurie searched her brother’s expression for any sign that he was lying. If he was, she couldn’t see it. She nodded, relieved beyond belief. “Okay. But then, if you aren’t behind what’s happened - why couldn’t what Chartreuse said be the truth?”

Corry released Laurie’s shoulders, shaking his head. “Laurie, time machines are science fiction. Apply Occam’s razor - meaning the simplest answer is likely correct. Carrie caught some disease after the shooting, and Julie ran away. And while I grant that I may have been indirectly responsible for that last thing, it was Julie’s decision to go.”

Laurie shook her head. “No, Corry. The right answer isn’t always the one that makes the most sense - otherwise I’d have higher marks. Besides, remember when Chartreuse found mom’s missing keys last August? Or when she had that premonition before our pop quiz in math class last month? Or when she predicted the Star Trek franchise coming back, despite the weak interest in that TV show ‘Enterprise'?”

“Sis, predictions related to Scott Bakula do not imply that a person can leap through space and time.”

“You KNOW what I mean,” Laurie protested, stamping her foot. “And it’s not only Chartreuse this time, apparently it’s Frank, and it’s Clarke, and so unless they’re all crazy there HAS to be something to this, yeah? So why couldn’t we at least talk more about that?”

Corry took another long, hard look at her before speaking again. “You’re not going to drop this subject no matter what, are you,” he realized.

“No, I’m n-not,” Laurie said, swallowing. She summoned up all of her resolve. “So please Corry, don’t blame Chartreuse for anything that happens now, because I’m doing it myself. You may like your more simple answers, but me, I’ve got to know more.”

Corry frowned. At first, Laurie thought he was getting upset again, until he said, “Honestly, I’m not that satisfied. All right, Laurie. If Chartreuse can somehow PROVE to me - to us - that her time travel theory is correct, I’ll go along with it.”

“Oh, thank you! I knew you’d be reasonable,” Laurie said, grabbing her brother in a big hug. “Let’s call her first thing tomorrow.”

“But at the first sign of a setup, we’re both out of there, okay?” Corry added, hugging back.

Laurie nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said happily. “I’m sure Chartreuse’s explanations will make PERFECT sense!”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Luci muttered to herself. “The circuit is closed, it should be getting power, so why isn’t it working?”

“Problems?” came the tired voice of Frank Dijora from the stairway.

Luci turned. “Frank, you said you’d get at least six hours of rest,” she accused.

Frank yawned. “I’m surprised I managed five,” he admitted. He gestured at the clock. “Besides, it’s almost time for breakfast. My mom’s up and making pancakes. Though I can bring ‘em down here if you don’t think we’ll make the noon deadline.”

“No, no, we’re on track,” Luci sighed. “But it’s frustrating - whenever we replace parts, they’re not as compact as whatever was in there before, and the wiring gets awkward. This would be so much easier using futuristic technology.”

Frank smiled wanly. “Tell me about it. I’m sure you’ve done the best you could with it though.” He moved next to her in order to peer down inside the black box himself.

Luci felt her cheeks warming at his proximity, and was not entirely successful in hiding it. “Er, sorry… too close?” Frank said, taking a step back upon realizing.

“It’s all right,” Luci murmured. “Some silly worries I’ve been having, which when coupled with my feelings… look, assuming we get this fixed, you make sure you’re careful while you’re back in the past, okay?”

Frank seemed surprised. “Of course,” he assured. “And…” His gaze drifted away from her face. “Luci, I realize it’s been three weeks now since… since you made your feelings clear to me. So… so I’m sorry that I’m still trying to sort it all out. But there’s been a bunch of other things happening lately and… well…” Frank stopped, obviously at a loss for what to say next.

Luci sighed. “It’s okay, Frank,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. “I’m a patient girl. It can wait until after we get through this crisis.” She smiled, as a thought struck her. “Besides, with this impromptu sleepover, I got to spend the night with you, in a way. I’ll let that carry me through.” She winked, and watched in amusement as Frank turned away to hide his own reddening cheeks.

“Frank, there’s a Chartreuse on the phone for you,” came the voice of Frank’s mother from the top of the stairs. “She says it’s quite important - something about Laurie’s brother?”

The two teenagers exchanged a quick glance before heading back up the stairway together.

“This is preposterous,” Corry said dourly. “You expect me to believe that pile of junk is a time machine? I mean, aren’t you supposed to be able to ride in them?”

“You can, you know, believe whatever you like,” Chartreuse declared. “The fact remains, it’s true.”

Corry hmphed, crossing his arms as he leaned back against the wall of Frank’s basement. Frank and Luci seemed to be in the process of some sort of repair work on the thing. Tim, who was apparently mixed up in this as well, had been delayed. Which meant the Veniti twins were being brought up to speed by, of all people, Chartreuse and Clarke.

Corry glanced sidelong at his sister - she looked skeptical, but it still seemed like she wanted to see things through. Fine. He shifted his gaze to Clarke, the tall boy seeming the saner choice. “So let me see if I have this straight,” Corry began.

“Carrie found a time machine last September. Julie found out about it, shot Carrie, and then used the thing to time travel back to the year of her birth, where she died. Carrie’s present condition is related to the fact that Julie’s death was not supposed to take place.

“Add to this a mysterious caller from the future, the rediscovery of your time device back here in town, and the fact that you need someone who was in Miami at the same time Julie was born to end up in the correct geographical location for this rescue operation. Is that right?”

“Yeeeeah,” Clarke said. He frowned. “I grant it doesn’t sound so plausible when you put it together like that.”

“So me, Frank and Clarke would be trying to track down Julie in Illinois?” Laurie said, chewing nervously on her lower lip.

“Right,” Chartreuse confirmed. “We need you, otherwise they’d end up in the wrong place. Though even so, you’ll probably be, you know, several kilometres off where you have to be, that’s why you’ll have, like, bikes and rations and stuff with you.”

“Miles, Chartreuse, they use miles in the States,” Corry reminded. He glanced around the room, scrutinizing everyone present.

“You’re all insane,” he decided. “I mean, it’s a fun little fantasy story, but you have yet to offer us any concrete proof. So please, give us an example of your magical ‘time travel’ abilities?”

“A demonstration is going to be a problem,” Luci said. She turned, tossing aside a screwdriver. “Because even though we’re finally done here, I can’t see the machine holding up for more than two, maybe three time trips.”

Everyone’s gazes shifted over to where she and Frank had been working.

“I’m forced to agree,” Frank said with a sigh. “Meaning there and back. Besides, we don’t have enough coins from the present year to waste on demonstrations. You’ll simply have to take our word for it, Corry.”

“How convenient,” Corry observed, rolling his eyes.

“So you… you can’t prove it to us?” Laurie asked quietly. Her gaze was pleading, but Frank and Luci shook their heads.

“Well then,” Corry concluded, pushing himself away from the wall. “Either you are making this up, and trying to ridicule me and Laurie with your ludicrous tales, or you are serious, and thus hope to get my sister to participate in a potentially lethal trip, chasing after my bitter rival. Does the phrase lose-lose situation mean anything to you?”

“Look, there is a better way to put this,” Frank insisted. He paused. “I just… don’t know what that is.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Chartreuse shouted. She reached out to seize Laurie’s hands. “You believe everything that we’ve been saying, right? You’ll help save Julie and Carrie no matter what Corry thinks?”

Corry grimaced, but he held his tongue, wondering what his sister would say. Laurie opened and closed her mouth a few times before actually speaking.

“I… I want to,” she said at last. “I really do. But…” Her gaze slipped away from Chartreuse and down to the floor. “This whole thing is getting more crazy and more serious, and I didn’t think it would be exactly like this, and Chartreuse, I… I’m scared.”

“But it won’t be, you know, so bad,” Chartreuse said, desperately. “I mean, Clarke would be along, and you like him, and he can make sure nothing real bad happens.”

Corry moved to put an arm around his sister’s shoulders, at the same time firing an angry glare at Chartreuse. “Sis, don’t let anyone pressure you into doing something you don’t want to,” he soothed.

Laurie lifted her gaze back up to look at her brother, then she turned to regard everyone else in the room. She bit down hard on her lower lip, the conflicting emotions inside of her evident in the changing expressions on her face.

“Come on now, why don’t we go home and put this whole sorry affair behind us,” Corry suggested.

For a moment, there was silence. And when Laurie finally opened her mouth to reply, a new voice broke in instead.

“G-G-G-Guys,” stammered Tim.

Frank turned as he heard the blonde boy nearly fall in his haste to get down the basement stairway. “Tim?”

Tim didn’t seem to hear him. “Is C-C-C-Corry s-still here?” Tim called out desperately. “I’ve g-g-g-got s-something s-s-so important!”

Clarke moved to his friend’s side, at the bottom of the stairs. “Hold on now, Tim,” he said calmly. “Everyone’s here, including Corry. Don’t stress yourself out. Take a few deep breaths, then tell us what’s happened.”

Tim blinked up at Clarke, then nodded and did as he suggested before looking out at all of the others in the room. He held up what looked like an old envelope. “It’s this m-message… it was l-left with my father’s l-law firm, sixteen years ago. I’m l-late today because he had been told to g-give it to m-me this morning… and it’s f-f-for you.” Tim concluded, bowing forwards slightly as he held the sealed envelope out towards Corry.

The redheaded boy blinked in surprise. He glanced around the room, Frank noting how everyone else was basically as taken aback by this new development as he was. Snatching the envelope from the smaller boy, Corry turned it around suspiciously in his hands.

It looked to be a perfectly normal envelope, with ‘Corry Veniti’ written on the front. But then Corry’s grip tightened. “This is my handwriting,” he realized.

“Wait, Tim, you got this message through your father’s law firm years ago - when exactly was this left with them?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “It actually came with some message from my Uncle Hubert, probably to appease my dad. Corry’s envelope there was inside a larger envelope for me. With a note saying to b-bring it here.” He shook his head. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“So we wrote ourselves a letter, telling us how to, like, deal with the current situation,” Chartreuse said.

“Hmmm… there is some logic in that,” Luci agreed. “After all, we now have a working machine, which reopens the free will debate. And if the only trip we’ll be taking is to get Julie, paying someone in Tim’s family to send a delayed letter would be the best way to communicate with ourselves now. I think I even saw this on a TV show once…”

“But then why address it to Corry?” Clarke objected.

“Maybe we’ll know when he opens it,” Laurie proposed. She looked over to her brother. He sighed, then ripped open the envelope, pulling out a whole stack of paper. The redhead’s eyes widened as he scanned over the top sheet of handwritten information.

“This is… impossible…” he muttered. “It has to be trick.” Corry’s gaze snapped back up. “How the hell did you all pull this off?”

“Pull what off?” Frank asked.

Laurie shifted position slightly so that she could see the pages over Corry’s shoulder.

“Well then,” Laurie murmured as she scanned across the page. “Either you are making this up, and trying to ridicule me and Laurie with your ludicrous tales, or you are serious, and thus hope to get my sister to participate…” Laurie stopped and looked back up. “The words written here are the same as what Corry said earlier,” she said in surprise.

“This is what everyone said,” Corry corrected, having flipped to a later page. His face had taken on a slightly paler shade than usual. “It’s a transcript, which includes Laurie’s fears, word for word… and what I’m saying right now…?!”

“Oh, neat. So how will our conversation end?” Chartreuse asked.

“I don’t know, it stops at what you said,” Corry answered through clenched teeth. Throwing the sheets aside, he reached out for Tim, grabbing hold of his shirt. “How did you do that?” Corry demanded. “Have you been upstairs listening in, did you learn to forge my handwriting?”

Tim let out a strangled gasp. “N-No, I-I-I-I-I–”

Clarke got a firm grip on the redhead’s arm. “Corry, I suggest you let Tim go. Now. Whatever is going on, it’s not his doing.”

“Besides, even if Tim was listening, how could he write out a conversation still in progress?” Luci pointed out.

“How could anyone write anything so precise?” Frank added, thoroughly confused. “I’m not recording down here, and it’s not like we could have time traveled back to plant listening devices… uh oh, do you think the government has found out about us?”

Having released his hold on Tim, Corry now turned to Frank. “You mean you really don’t know how that could have been recorded?” he marvelled. Frank shook his head.

Corry stared at him for another long moment before reaching into his own pocket. He walked over to the lab bench, slapping down a device. A miniature recorder. For a moment, no one was quite sure what to say.

Laurie spoke first. “So, um, hold on,” she said. “Corry, you mean YOU recorded this whole conversation, in order to use it to convince yourself that everything being said was true, even though you don’t really think the conversation is true and you didn’t think that when you started recording it either?” She frowned. “My head feels funny.”

“Look, I was recording everything because I thought I’d better have an account of what really happened, in case someone here tried to claim otherwise,” Corry stated. “Standard procedure for me. Why a transcript should appear in a letter that claims to be over sixteen years old, I have no idea.”

“I d-do,” Tim said, having stooped down to retrieve the pages Corry had thrown aside. He held up the final sheet, tapping at it. “Did you r-read this at all, Corry?”

Corry snatched the page back from him, scanning it over. His grip tightened, and his face went almost white. Laurie again crept in to read over her brother’s shoulder, Chartreuse also joining her friend.

“Now that I have your attention, I have a proposition to make,” Chartreuse read aloud, for the benefit of everyone. “Namely that I, Corry Veniti, take the place of my sister on the trip. Not only to, like, ensure her safety in the present, but also the safety of Frank and Clarke in the past - based on what I know of Julie. Based on how she, you know, acted that one January, our first year of high school.” She tilted her head. “Corry, what did Julie do then?”

When Corry didn’t respond, Laurie continued to read. “That said,” Laurie murmured, “Feel free to use free will and disregard this suggestion. All I ask is that I, Corry Veniti, now write it and send it back sixteen years in order to preserve the timeline.”

Corry slowly walked back to the lab bench, placing the page down next to his recording device. He leaned in against the edge of the table, lost in thought. Luci opened her mouth to say something, but Laurie held up a finger, shaking her head as she looked at her brother.

“Frank,” Corry said at last. “Did Julie go back in time with the express intention of killing herself?”

Frank flinched. “How could you have known that?”

Corry didn’t immediately respond, staring back down, re-reading the passage over and over. Finally, he turned.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay, if this were to hypothetically persuade me that you’re not outright lying, and furthermore convince me that I should, in fact, join you in your efforts… can you please guarantee to me that time travel won’t devise anything this CREEPY for me ever again?”

“I wish I could,” Frank sighed. “Believe me, I really, really wish I could.”

Corry raked his fingers back through his hair. “Damn.” He glanced at his sister, then back at Frank. “But fine. When will I be joining you to save Julie?”

PART 39: RECOVERY MODE

Corry Veniti tapped his pencil on the page before him as he contemplated the conversation he’d had with his sister. Despite telling her to put the whole Carrie/Julie situation behind them, Laurie’s mannerisms had suggested to him that she wouldn’t be able to do that.

Truth be told, the unanswered questions were gnawing at him too. He’d never been fond of mysteries relating to Julie. How was it no one at school knew what had happened to her? Could she have been kidnapped by someone? On account of those flyers he’d printed? Was her disappearance his fault?

“Stop that,” Corry admonished himself. “This isn’t my problem. It’s HER problem.” He reached out to resume the play of Beethoven’s fifth. Then stopped it again minutes later. “I brushed Laurie off too quickly though,” he decided. “I should have done something more to distract her.”

Making up his mind, Corry rose from his desk, leaving his chemistry unfinished. However, as he reached his sister’s bedroom, he heard Laurie exclaim something which sounded like “TIME machine??”. Chartreuse’s voice followed, mentioning “tricky special stuff”.

With his hand raised to knock, Corry instead found himself leaning in closer to the door, to catch more of whatever was going on. He didn’t like what little he heard. He decided to challenge Chartreuse about it as soon as he had the chance.

“We have to talk,” Corry repeated icily. “Now.”

Chartreuse eyed him uncertainly. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably, you know, wrong,” she ventured.

“I think you’re creating some sort of time travel delusion for my sister, so that she feels better about whatever’s happened with Carrie and Julie,” he said. “And while I’m all for improving her mood, I don’t think now is the time for such silly, mystic games. Particularly if they’re as “risky” as you seemed to be implying.”

The pink haired girl’s nose crinkled up. “How do YOU know what I was implying? I mean, I know you look out for Laurie, but are you seriously, like, bugging her room now?”

“What? No, hearing you was an accident,” Corry said defensively. And a bit too loudly; he lowered his voice as he moved closer to his sister’s friend. “I was merely coming to Laurie’s room to speak with her, and overheard some of your talk. Don’t change the subject. What nonsense are you getting my sister mixed up in?”

Chartreuse shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Ummm… okay, so… it is kinda like what you think, except there’s no nonsense here," she yielded. “There really is a time machine. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“It’s, like, missing.”

Corry stared. “You must think I was born yesterday.”

“Oh, not at all,” Chartreuse assured, perking up. “Since if you were, we wouldn’t be able to use your family DNA to travel back to recover Julie.”

Corry felt taken aback by her sudden certainty. “My what?”

“Okay, it has to do with spacials and…. you know, is it too late to say this was part of a Home Ec project?”

“Yes,” Corry replied, frown deepening.

“Figures.” She licked her lips. “Thing is, Luci, like, explained this part better.”

“What do you mean recover Julie? Is this one of her plots?”

Chartreuse opened her mouth, then closed it, then crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “Know what? Not gonna tell you,” she decided. “Not here, not now. After all, you have, you know, a blind spot where Julie is concerned.”

Corry felt his hands curling into fists. “Then you’re not going to say anything more to Laurie either. I’m nipping this H. G. Wells nonsense in the bud! She’s upset enough as it is without your–“

“Corry, do you seriously think I’m trying to hurt Laurie here?” Chartreuse interrupted, visibly frustrated. “You know I care about her as much as you do. Thing is, without her help… it will cost the lives of two other people.”

“Don’t overdramatize,” Corry scoffed. “Now, I know Laurie looks up to you, and values the time you spend together, but really - at some point you have to stop deluding her with your mystic ramblings.”

Chartreuse stamped her foot. “Okay, first of all? Laurie values her time with, like, everyone to some degree. Not only me, and perhaps certain people even more than you may realize. And secondly? Merely because YOU don’t believe in something, that doesn’t make it a fantasy. I’m speaking the honest truth here, Corry!”

Corry peered a bit closer, to gauge her sincerity. She definitely seemed serious. Except the stories she was weaving - they were nonsense. “Even assuming I believe you,” he decided. “Your plans seem far too dangerous.”

“Yeah, well, you know, life can be like that. Besides, if Laurie wants to help someone, she’s going to do it. No matter what EITHER us has to say.”

“Unless she’s not given the option.”

Chartreuse winced. “Corry…”

“From this point forwards, whatever you have to say to Laurie about this matter goes through me first,” he decided. “I will then decide whether it’s worth passing on. Understood?”

Chartreuse must have sensed his unwillingness to compromise, as her gaze dropped down to the floor. “Okay,” she sighed. Then she looked back up at him. “But, you know, think about this - what if I AM right? And what if, because of you, we do nothing, and people die terrible, needless deaths? How will you feel then? And how will Laurie feel when she learns about what you did?”

She strode away before Corry had a chance to formulate any sort of reply, fleeing downstairs to the kitchen. He watched her go with a frown. Time machine? Family DNA? Needless deaths? Ridiculous.

So where had Julie disappeared to? “She’s not my problem,” he asserted aloud, clenching his jaw. “Not. My. Problem.”

Lee shuffled home from the library, lost in thought. No matter which way he turned things around in his head, he couldn’t figure out what Clarke and Tim wanted with that old black box. It had been, what, two years now since his mom had grabbed it at the LaMille yard sale? So why were they asking about it today? And what did they mean, saying it could save lives? This was all very strange.

Oh well. Clarke had said he could explain it, after getting the okay from some other people. So Lee had said he’d get the box to them, after which they’d gone their separate ways.

He’s LEE KING.
Think about that name. And about his siblings. (Sorry.)

‘Which is good,’ Lee reflected as he trudged across the railroad tracks. ‘Since I don’t think many people have bothered to figure out my exact address, and I’d rather keep it that way.’ He proceeded further into the poorer section of town, finally stopping at an old two story house with a faded nameplate on the mailbox that read: ‘King Residence’. Taking a deep breath, Lee entered the house and called out, “I’m home!”

“LeeLeeLeeLeeLeeLeeLee,” came the excited voice of a young girl. Moments later she came tearing around the corner, jumping up into his arms. “Missed you,” she concluded, innocently batting her eyelashes as she stared up at him.

Lee couldn’t help but smile as he looked down at her. “Hi Soh,” he said, giving her a quick hug. “And how’s my favouritist youngest sister?”

“I’m okay,” Soh said brightly as Lee let her back down to the floor. “We did finger paintin' in class today an' I made a palm tree.” She giggled at her own joke.

“Well, I’m sure you did a wonderful job,” Lee assured. He glanced up. “What have you done with everyone else then? Playing a big game of hide and seek?”

“No, silly,” Soh declared, blonde pigtails flicking back and forth as she shook her head. “They’re all upstairs. ‘Cept momma, she’s cookin’.” The young girl lifted her hand, counting each person off on her fingers.  “Granmamma’s sleepin', Sing’s readin' her books, an’ Faye, well, she’s sulkin'.”

Lee’s heart sank. If the oldest among his younger siblings was sulking now, it meant only one thing: their father had cancelled out on them for dinner. Again. Poor Faye, she’d never been the same since the divorce. “And how about you, what are you doing?” Lee inquired genially, pushing those thoughts back out of his mind.

“Colourin’,” Soh said happily. “Come on, comeseecomesee, I’m even stayin' inside the lines this time, kinda.”

“Maybe a little later, okay?” Lee said, reaching out to pat her head. “I should check in with mom first.” He winked. “And hey, don’t be too worried about those lines. Hate to see you become a conformist.”

“Silly,” Soh reiterated. “I won’t be no confar miss.” With that, she turned and skipped back into the dining room area. Lee headed for the kitchen, where his mother was stirring something in a pot on the stove.

“He’s not coming then?” Lee said, leaning back against the doorframe. It wasn’t really a question.

“No,” his mother admitted, turning to flash her only son a tired smile. “He’s not. His excuse this time was work, keeping him out of town, but Faye’s blaming me as usual. Maybe you can talk with her?”

“I can try,” Lee said. “But not before dinner, I’m afraid. I told some friends I’d bring them something important. I’m only here to grab it.”

“Oh? Then if you’re going out again, can you pick up your grandmother’s medication?” his mother asked. “She was grousing about needing a refill when I got home today.”

“I guess so,” Lee said, scanning over the food on the counter. Looked like spaghetti again. Third time this week.

“You won’t have to use your own money either,” his mother added. “I was paid yesterday, so there’s some cash on top of the fridge.”

Lee nodded, moving to retrieve a couple of bills. “That reminds me, I might be able to work some extra hours at the library in the coming week,” he remarked. “Think the extra income would be of use?”

“Well, your father IS supposed to be sending us another cheque soon,” his mother answered. “But if it’s late again…”

“Gotcha.”

“I’m SO sorry about this, Lee…”

“Hey, no big deal, used to it by now,” Lee said dismissively. He smiled and moved in to give his mother a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll try not to be gone longer than another hour. Keep some sauce on the stove for me?”

“Will do,” his mother assured.

Lee proceeded out of the kitchen and upstairs; he then pulled down the additional flight of steps leading up to the attic, and continued up to his room. It didn’t take long for him to find the old black box - he knew it had been here somewhere, though he hadn’t realized it had been his end table.

He moved his lamp off the circular panel and picked the object up, turning it around in his hands a couple of times. He absently pulled down on the lever. Nothing happened. “Well, okay, if it’s that important to you guys,” he muttered. “Not like I store tons of stuff on it anyway.”

“How is Carrie?”

“No change,” Luci sighed as she approached him. “Though that does mean no worse. Any sign of Lee yet?”

“Nope,” Clarke replied, turning to glance around the main area of the hospital. “But this is where we agreed to meet, so I figure he’ll be along any minute.”

Luci nodded, turning to look around herself. She frowned. Then took a step back to lean against the wall.

“Luci? I’m sure Carrie will pull through,” Clarke offered up. “She has that sort of personality.”

Luci looked up at the tall blonde again. “Hm?”

“You look worried,” Clarke said. “I’m assuming it’s from seeing Carrie?”

“Oh! Right. Except no. That is…” Luci pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m worried about Carrie, but I have some other things on my mind today too.”

Clarke cocked his head to the side. “You mean like whether we’re going to pull off this whole crazy rescue operation?”

“Yeah…” Luci paused, then reached out to grab Clarke’s shoulder, maneuvering him away from the people nearby. “Maybe I need to talk to someone who’s not Frank,” she decided, glancing briefly back over her shoulder before looking up to meet his gaze. “Clarke - are we doing the right thing here?”

Clarke frowned. “You don’t think we should save Julie?”

“Oh no, it’s not that,” Luci corrected with an immediate shake of her head. “Not even Julie deserved to die this way. It’s more… what if we’re all being manipulated into doing it?”

“Manipulated?” Clarke repeated back, raising an eyebrow.

“Exactly. Think about it,” Luci continued quietly. “This ‘Shady’ guy who spoke to Frank may now be manipulating things - by staying out of them.”

“You already lost me.”

“When Carrie first got her hands on the time machine, Shady didn’t step in with any tips, or helpful pieces of information,” Luci elaborated. “Carrie had carte blanche to do as she liked. Then after she was shot, okay, he made the one call to Frank, but otherwise he has done nothing. This, despite his apparent power to “push” his will onto others. Now, Frank thinks it’s because Shady likes free will, but what if Shady’s been employing some sort of reverse psychology? Maybe he’s the one behind everything, and by trying to save Julie, we’ll end up playing right into his hands!”

She fell silent. Clarke seemed to consider her argument. “Except,” he reasoned, “by that logic, we’d have to second guess everything we do. And even then, if other people are second guessing our second guessing… well, er, it’s all kinda pointless in the end. Right, Luci?”

“I… guess?” Luci wrung her hands in the air. “Yet I’M the one who insisted to Frank that he wait on calling the police - and I can’t even go on the time trip we’re all organizing. So what if I’ve made a mistake? Like I did with Carrie’s personality and Julie’s reactions and what if Frank gets HURT, all because of my stubborn resolve?” She dropped her eyes to the ground. “I know, I know. Silly thing to worry about.”

Clarke reached out to place a hand on Luci’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s not silly at all,” he reassured. “In fact, you’re finally making more sense. I’m thinking you’re not used to being wrong much?”

Luci flinched. “I… it’s atypical, yes.”

“Me, I’m wrong a lot,” Clarke said easily. “And usually, it’s not a big deal, so I keep trying - or if it’s real important, and I’m not sure? That’s when I rely on others to take care of it for me. Heck, sometimes, to score the basket, you have to know when to pass the ball.” He smiled, and patted her shoulder. “Don’t second guess yourself, Luci. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure Frank’s kept safe for you.”

Luci felt her cheeks getting warm again. “I-I’m not ONLY worried about him, y’know…”

“Whoa, there y’are,” Lee said, choosing that moment to make his appearance. “Thought you’d be outside, but then I realized, wait, it is a bit cold for that. Oh, hey short stuff, you involved in this with the high guy too?”

“So to speak,” Luci said. Her attention was immediately drawn to the device in Lee’s hands. “So you DO have it,” she breathed.

Lee held out the black box. “Yeah, this what you were looking for?”

“That’s it,” Clarke confirmed off of Luci’s reaction. She accepted the device, turning it around in her hands a few times. She tried pushing and then pulling on the lever, but nothing happened.

“As I said, it’s broken,” Lee noted.

Clarke nodded. “That’s fine. You want to come with us then? The truth about all this might blow your mind.”

“I can’t,” Lee apologized to them. “Family errand stuff at the pharmacy. Can we delay the big scoop ‘till Sunday? Or whenever works for you?”

He watched as Clarke turned to Luci, who shrugged. “We probably don’t need Lee,” she admitted. “But then who knows what we’ll find in this thing.”

“I will be working at the library again tomorrow,” Lee reminded them. “So you can find me there if you have questions.”

“Okay then,” Clarke said, reaching out to shake his hand. “Thanks very much, Lee.”

“Hope you save those lives you were talking about,” Lee said, shaking back and flashing them both a grin.

“Come on Clarke, let’s get this to Frank’s,” Luci said, already moving off. “Time is of the essence.” Clarke nodded, and the two of them turned to leave the hospital.

Lee watched them go, wondering even more now about this whole affair - but family came first. More to the point, he had to think of a good way of talking to Faye, once he got home.

How was he supposed to explain to her that it wasn’t their mother’s fault dad didn’t visit more often? The man had been trying to distance himself from the family ever since Soh, the fourth King child had been born… but Faye couldn’t see it.

Lee shook his head and walked for the hospital exit. And stopped. Something had caught his eye. He scanned back over the crowd inside the waiting area a bit more closely, his gaze finally settling on a man who was sitting near the door. His quarry immediately pulled his newspaper back up in front of his face, but not before Lee got a good look.

‘That was the same guy from the library,’ Lee realized. ‘The weird cultist who wanted that information on the LaMilles. Huh, so he can dress normal. But why would he be hanging around the hospital now? Is it related to Clarke and Tim… and that box?’

Lee pretended to scan the area a bit more, then shrugged and turned away, hoping to present the illusion that he hadn’t seen whatever he’d been looking for.

‘I’ll mention this to one of those guys the next time I see them,’ Lee decided. ‘Because I’m starting to understand what they mean by this being a big deal…’

Frank rubbed the side of his head. “So, you all want the good news, or the bad news?” he asked.

All the teens that Chartreuse had once dubbed ‘time trippers’ had gathered back in his basement lab, where they had finally managed to pry the lid off the time machine with a crowbar.

“Let’s have the good news,” Clarke said. “About time we had some.”

“Well,” Frank began, looking up from his inspection. “I should be able to reconnect the lever mechanism to the top panel, making the time machine physically functional again.”

“A-And… the bad news?” Tim asked.

“With regard to actually activating it, there’s a couple of rather important circuits missing. Now, I THINK we can replace them too, the same way we did in October…” Frank let out a long breath. “Except the information for doing it was on those sheets of paper Julie grabbed before she left. So we’ll be working from memory.”

“You think Julie took out those circuits on purpose?” Luci speculated. Frank could only shrug.

“Then of course there’s the WORSE news, which is that Corry’s not going to let Laurie come quietly,” Chartreuse moaned. “I’m SO sorry about him finding out, guys. Though, you know, even I’m starting to have second thoughts about Laurie’s involvement.”

“Our work is cut out for us,” Frank said dryly. He cracked his knuckles. “But it’s still Saturday night. We have twenty four hours. So, unless any of you think you’ll be able to assist with repairs on the machine? It’s best for you - and your families - that you go home, and get some sleep. I’ll do what I can overnight, while you all think about Corry. We can regroup tomorrow.”

“I’m staying,” Luci asserted. She continued on before Frank had a chance to protest. “Since I CAN assist with repairs, and more to the point, you’ll need to get some sleep tonight yourself, Frank. Don’t want you traveling into the past tomorrow night without having slept.”

“I guess,” Frank yielded. “Okay. Let’s meet back here tomorrow at noon. Alternatively, if you have any new ideas, or me and Luci make better time on the repairs, we can get in touch.”

The matter was settled shortly thereafter. Not only at Frank’s house, but also in a discussion taking place at the Veniti residence.

PART 38: COMING TOGETHER

Laurie finished shading in her drawing, then leaned back to get a better overall look. The kitten stared up at her from the page with small, sad eyes. “Oh, who am I kidding?” Laurie whimpered. She pushed aside her sketch pad and leaned over her desk, cradling her head in her arms. “Drawing won’t cheer me up. I should get back to my math.”

The redhead reached out and flipped open her textbook, pulling it over and staring down at it blankly. Golly, this unit was hard to figure out! It was bad enough trying to understand math under normal circumstances… now, what with Carrie in the hospital, and Clarke withdrawing, no doubt due to Julie’s disappearance…

“I can’t concentrate,” Laurie wailed aloud. She pushed the textbook away and picked up her pencil again. However, after less than a minute of doodling, Laurie had tossed it aside once more.

“I’ll see what Corry’s up to,” she decided. Heading out of her room, she went down the hall, making a point of knocking on her brother’s door.

“Who’s there?” Corry called out.

Laurie turned the knob and peered around the corner. “Who d’you think?” she answered.

“I said ‘who’s there’ not ‘come in’,” Corry observed dryly, turning away from his own desk. He reached out and hit pause on his music player, cutting off the sound of classical music.

“Close enough,” Laurie said. “I did knock.”

Corry rolled his eyes. “Guess that’s what confused me. Okay little sis, what’s up?”

She didn’t even think to call him out on the ‘little sis’ remark. “Guess I was wondering what you were doing.”

“Finishing my chemistry write-up,” Corry noted. “It’s due soon, and I’ve been putting it off.”

“Oh.” Laurie edged a little further into the room, glancing over at the music player then back at her brother. “So… that was Beethoven, right? One of his symphonies?”

Corry nodded. “Glad to see I’m finally having a positive cultural effect on you.”

“But you only listen to his symphonies to calm down when you’re upset about something,” Laurie pointed out. “So… so does that mean you’re troubled by what’s been happening?”

Her brother looked away. “Troubled? No, I wouldn’t say troubled. It’s been an interesting few weeks, that’s all.”

Laurie leaned back up against the door frame. “Oh.”

He looked back. “Laurie, are you feeling troubled?”

She shifted her weight back and forth. “Maybe.”

“About Julie or about Carrie?” Corry prompted. Laurie didn’t reply, merely shifted back and forth again. Corry sighed. “Look sis, there’s no point in getting all worked up over those two,” he continued. “After all, whatever’s happened with them, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Yeah… I know,” Laurie admitted. “Still it’s… well, it’s upsetting, yeah?”

“If you ask me, it’s nonsensical,” Corry countered, annoyance creeping into his tone. “Julie disappearing without a trace? Carrie going stir crazy in the hospital? I don’t get it. Makes no sense. So, better to put it all behind us and move on.”

“But… but how can you just DO that??”

“Simple, look towards the future. Not back at the past. For instance, have you started your math homework yet?”

“Kinda,” Laurie admitted sullenly. “It’s too hard though.”

“Tell you what then,” Corry continued. “Give me a half hour to finish up my stuff here, and then I’ll help you out with it. Okay?”

“O-Okay. I guess.”

Corry smiled reassuringly. “Cheer up, Laurie. Whatever’s happened, I’m sure it will work itself out in time. Until then, we move on with the rest of our lives. I’m sure Clarke would want you to do that, right?”

Laurie pursed her lips, then nodded again. “Yeah. Okay,” she repeated. “See you in half an hour then?”

Corry nodded, and Laurie slipped back out of his room, closing the door behind her. She still couldn’t bring herself to smile though. What was she going to do for the next half hour anyway? Maybe she should call Chartreuse. Yes, that was a good idea, Chartreuse always helped her feel better.

Laurie headed back to her room. However, before she reached it, she heard the doorbell ring. Straining to hear who the visitor was, Laurie heard a familiar voice speaking to her mother.

“Chartreuse, I was just going to call you,” Laurie said, bouncing down the stairs towards her. “Maybe this is one of those psychic ESP things you’ve talked about?”

Chartreuse smiled at her red haired friend. “There must be some good alpha waves going on,” she agreed. “Though I’m kinda here on a mission too. Mind if we, like, have a quick talk about something? In your room?”

As they walked upstairs, Chartreuse debated possible ways to broach the subject of what had happened to Julie. The direct method was probably best. Right? Except Laurie still looked a little distraught. Could she handle direct?

“So, what’s up?” Laurie asked, moving to sit cross-legged on her bed.

“Well, it’s, you know, something very secret,” Chartreuse began tentatively, as she closed Laurie’s bedroom door. She forced herself not to pace back and forth. “Along the same lines as your dream to become a professional animator.”

Laurie’s eyes widened. “But… you’re the only person I’ve ever told that to. Not even Corry knows about it.”

“And he can’t know about this either. Not right away,” Chartreuse asserted. “So promise you’ll, like, keep this quiet forever n' ever, or, um, at least until circumstances change?”

Laurie nodded wordlessly.

Chartreuse took in a deep breath. Yeah, best to simply say it. “Okay then. So, Frank, Carrie and Luci had a time machine. But Julie took it to, like, escape into the past. So now we need your help to get Julie back. You follow that?”

Laurie stared. Her nose crinkled. “Waaaait… TIME machine?? And… me? Why me?”

“It’s got to do with some, you know, tricky spacials stuff. It hinges on the fact that you were born in Miami during the right year,” Chartreuse explained. She was having trouble figuring out if Laurie was more confused or excited.

Laurie’s frown deepened. “But… okay, well, I was obviously only in Miami from May 21st onwards, because birthday, so how does that connect and where did this time machine come from, did Frank and Luci invent it and how did you find out about it, for that matter how long have you known and does this have anything to do with why Carrie’s in the hospital now because oooooooh, golly, hold on, she wasn’t shot because of this machine WAS she, I mean there aren’t international spies running around trying to get it back from you are there, is your life in danger or is Julie’s, or was Julie in on it and is that why she was usually able to best my brother - it could explain some things - though it raises a lot of other questions too and golly I’m not really sure where to begin anymore but give me a second to keep processing this–”

“Laurie, hold on,” Chartreuse cut in quickly as Laurie paused for a lungful of air. At least the nonstop talking was a really good sign. “All your questions will be answered. For right now, what I have to know is… are you willing to help us out? Because it could be dangerous.”

Laurie’s lips pursed. “Seems like if I don’t help, nothing will get better for Carrie or Julie. Right?”

Chartreuse nodded reluctantly. “Probably. But regarding time travel, there’s a lot of stuff we’re still not sure of. So don’t, like, base your decision only on them… you’re hardly close friends.”

“Chartreuse, how long have you known me?” Laurie said indignantly. “If I can help make people feel better, I want to do it. Doesn’t matter if they’ll thank me or not, what goes around comes around, and I know there’s loads of times when I’ve needed people to help me out too.”

“Right… I should have, you know, figured on you saying that,” Chartreuse admitted. She should have found a way to phrase things better.

“So when do we leave?” Laurie asked, uncrossing her legs.

“Whoa, hold on,” her friend protested. “We don’t even, like, have the machine back yet. In fact there’s a lot of stuff still being organized, and… well, we’ll have to talk to your brother first.”

Laurie folded her arms. “Chartreuse, you JUST said that this was a secret that he can’t know about!”

“Welllll… it’s more we don’t want him finding out at a time which isn’t of our choosing,” Chartreuse corrected. “Otherwise he might react badly, given how Carrie and Julie are involved too.”

Laurie shook her head. “That makes NO sense. If you have a time machine, how can it NOT happen at a time of your choosing?” she protested.

“Okay, it’s not as simple as that,” Chartreuse sighed. “Again, we don’t have the machine now, plus I also said this was, you know, tricky and dangerous.”

“But you’ve travelled through time, haven’t you? And you look okay!”

Chartreuse blinked in surprise. “No,” she corrected. “I haven’t done any time traveling yet.”

“Oh.” Laurie thought on that for a moment. “Why not? I thought you’d jump at the chance.”

Chartreuse took a moment to try and phrase things right this time. “The opportunity never really, I don’t know, presented itself.”

“So when the two of us go, it will be your first time too?”

Chartreuse realized she still hadn’t properly explained the situation.

“Laurie, wait. This time trip that we need your help for, it’s very possible that I won’t be able to come along. You’d be with Frank and Clarke,” Chartreuse clarified.

“Oh,” Laurie repeated.

Which was when, looking into Laurie’s innocent green eyes, Chartreuse really began to wonder whether bringing her best friend in on this had been the best idea. If something did happen to Laurie now, would Corry ever be able to forgive her? Would Chartreuse ever be able to forgive HERSELF?

Maybe she should do another vision quest to ensure that Laurie would come through this safely. Though after reading Carrie, another experience so soon after would be quite a strain on her system. And would it even work, since she forecasted the future, while Laurie’s future would be in the past?

“Chartreuse?”

Chartreuse refocussed. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Why can’t you come?” Laurie asked again, softly.

Chartreuse sighed. “More tricky spacials stuff,” she said. “You know Laurie, it’s not too late to back out. We… we might be able to manage without you.” Oh yeah, THAT was convincing.

Laurie bit her lip, yet at the same time she shook her head firmly. “I still want to help,” she declared, although it was apparent that some of her earlier eagerness was being replaced by worry and doubt.

As it should be, Chartreuse reasoned. So why was she starting to feel so bad about this? “Look, Laurie, let’s put the time travel stuff aside for now, okay?” she proposed. “I’ll, like, get back to you on details either later today or tomorrow. All right?”

The redhead hesitated, but ultimately nodded slowly in agreement.

Chartreuse smiled encouragingly. “Great. So, how about some meditative exercises? Might, you know, help to take your mind off of things?”

Laurie shook her head again, surprising her friend. “I don’t think so,” she said quietly. “That is… maybe later, but right now I think I still want to spend a few minutes thinking about this. By myself. Okay? Maybe you can get us a couple glasses of water?”

Chartreuse looked closely at Laurie’s expression before nodding back. “Okay, sure,” she agreed. “Maybe even some orange juice instead?”

Laurie agreed to that, so after squeezing her friend’s hand supportively, Chartreuse headed out of Laurie’s room and down towards the Veniti kitchen. Yet she had only reached the top of the stairs before a voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Chartreuse. We have to talk.”

Chartreuse turned to face Laurie’s brother, offering a quick smile. “Hi Corry!” she greeted him. “Sorry, can’t stop, I…”

The words froze on her lips as she got her first good look at the expression on Corry’s face. It was in that instant that Chartreuse realized that he knew… that he had somehow overheard part of her conversation with Laurie. Oh no. Was he bugging his sister’s room?!

“We have to talk,” Laurie’s twin repeated icily. “Now.”

Chartreuse wondered fleetingly if things could get any worse.

“It’s worse than we thought,” Clarke agreed. “There aren’t ANY useful scientific records for the area and time period in question.”

Tim sighed. “I d-didn’t think there would be much call for small town American newspapers in our library anyway,” he said in resignation. “Still, given you found that one about Julie’s death, it was worth a shot.”

The shorter blond boy sat down at the table in the records room. “So… what now? The internet’s hopeless when you only have vague search terms, and we’ve now exhausted our town library.” He frowned. “What’s even the point in continuing to search like this?”

Clarke flinched. “I beg your pardon, Tim?”

Tim looked momentarily embarrassed. “Oh, d-d-don’t get me wrong. I still want to help Julie, it’s more… well, listen Clarke, what if the time machine we need really IS still around in this present time? Will that do us any good if we learn the machine is still somewhere down in Illinois? Or in Area 51?? We now have less than forty-eight hours to somehow recover it, a-and we can’t do that, we don’t have the resources.”

Clarke paused to consider the blonde boy’s words. “That makes sense,” he yielded. “But if I understand Frank’s logic, once we’re SURE about where the device is, someone could leave town to go there, and then use the machine’s geography to time travel back to here, now, when the rest of us can use it.”

Tim began to drum his fingers on the table. “Yeah, I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around those time travel rules. So… so maybe our best move is to ignore them. To play for the chance NOW.”

“You’ve lost me,” Clarke apologized.

“It’s l-like in the game of bridge,” Tim explained. “What if the only way you can make your contract is if your opponents' hearts are split 3-3? Obviously, you play for that chance, since it’s the ONLY way you’ll win. S-So… what if the only way we’ll win here is if the time machine has already found it’s way back to us?” He pushed himself back to his feet.

“Yeah,” he continued, enthusiastically. “We shouldn’t be figuring out where the time machine COULD be. We should start by figuring that it’s already HERE. In town. After all, we’re the source of the problem. And this is where Carrie is. I mean, okay, Luci said we can’t set ourselves up, but why can’t fate or time or something be working on our behalf? Because otherwise… w-well, otherwise we’re wasting time looking for the needle in a haystack.” Tim paused, becoming unsure of himself. “R-Right?”

Clarke couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Tim that animated. But did that mean his reasoning was correct? “Maybe,” he agreed slowly. “But if that’s so, what do we do about it?”

“A local news search,” Tim proposed. “Mysterious arrivals of people or weird things here in t-town over the last seventeen years. Or since the LaMilles arrived. It c-could point us in the right direction.”

“Agreed,” Clarke stated. “It’s worth a shot.” His eyebrow lifted. “By the way Tim, when did you start playing bridge?”

“What? Oh, I d-don’t,” Tim assured him, looking embarrassed again. “But I read a lot, and I enjoy that c-column.” He licked his lips. “For that matter, the whole idea of acting on a chance… I never quite understood it. I mean, if taking the chance could leave you worse off than if you’d done nothing, why do it? But maybe I get it now. Now that it’s important, now that people’s lives are involved - we have to try this. Don’t we?”

Clarke smiled. “We do. Stop doubting yourself, it’s a good thought.” He cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get to it.”

Over an hour later, Tim’s doubts had fully reasserted themselves. They’d tracked back five years, and still hadn’t found anything that looked very promising.

“M-Maybe we need to make it even more personal,” Tim piped up at last. “Could we have missed something ourselves in events over the last month…?”

Before Clarke could answer, the voice of Lee cut in through the book stacks. “Beats me,” the library employee said. “But whatever you’re missing, I hope you find it in the next ten minutes. That’s when the library closes.”

Clarke looked at his watch, then over to Lee as their classmate ambled into view. “Damn. When does the library open again tomorrow?”

“Hours are posted right out front.”

“B-But we need to keep searching these records,” Tim stammered out. “It’s important! C-Can’t you make an exception? Or let us check some of them out tonight?”

“Nope,” Lee said apologetically, as he glanced down at the bound books of newspapers. “Those sorts of papers can’t leave the library. Though you can probably photocopy stuff, if you’re quick enough to avoid my deja vu.”

“Your… what?” Clarke asked.

Lee flashed a grin. “Sorry. You’ve reminded me of this incident over a week ago, when this weird cult-like guy was back here researching newspaper records too. Similar books, also happened as the library was closing. Say, you don’t know the guy, do you?”

Clarke and Tim both shook their heads. “B-But, wait, this guy…” Tim began slowly. “I d-don’t suppose he was reading anything related to a s-strange black box, was he?”

Lee quirked up an eyebrow. “Nope. He was reading up on the LaMilles. Granted, I once got a strange black box from them, but the cultist couldn’t have known that.” He chuckled.

Clarke took a step forwards. “Stop. Lee, you got a black box from the LaMilles?”

“Yeah,” Lee said, gesturing dismissively. “My mom bought it from the LaMille yard sale. You know, that big one their family had soon after moving into the mansion? If you ask me, I think they mixed in some old, broken stuff they’d been keeping in storage along with Linquist’s clutter. Hoping to take advantage of us small town Canadians.”

“Lee,” Tim said, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. “What did this black box look like?”

Lee thrust his hands into his pockets. “Oh, kinda like a flattened jack-in-the-box, except jack never popped up when you yanked the lever. Maybe because the digital readout was broken? Who knows - there weren’t any screws or other means of getting inside to fix the darn thing, so I… uh, did I spill something on myself? Why are you two staring at me like that all of a sudden?”

“Lee, this may be VERY important. Do you know where that box is?” Clarke said, reaching out to take him by the shoulders.

“Somewhere in my house,” Lee said, in obvious confusion.

“C-C-C-C-C-Could we s-s-s-see it?” Tim forced out.

“Maaaaybe,” Lee replied slowly. “Why? What’s this all about??”

Clarke let out a breath he seemingly hadn’t realized he was holding. He smiled at Tim. “It’s about playing for a chance,” he explained. “As well as saving a couple of our classmates’ lives.”

To Tim, it looked like Lee wanted to make some sort of joke. Except the seriousness of Clarke’s tone had him at a loss for words. Tim leaned back in his chair, wondering how everybody else would feel about letting one more person in on their time machine secret.

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 34: SHOTS FIRED

Julie stared up the driveway to her house. Despite her earlier assurances to Clarke, she realized she was feeling more than a bit anxious. “I’m being silly,” she chastised herself. “Probably unsettled because of those storm clouds moving in.” Taking in a deep breath, she approached the front door and entered the mansion.

“I’m home,” Julie called out. “You’ll never guess what happened to me today.” Her father came around the nearest corner, heading for the front door. “Hi Dad,” Julie greeted. “Jeeves and Mimi already get the evening off?”

Her father didn’t immediately reply. Instead, he glanced outside, closed the front door, and allowed his gaze to fall upon Julie. He looked upset, but then, that was normal when it was only the two of them. Finally, he spoke. “So what in the hell have you been up to?”

Julie swallowed. “Wh-What do you mean?”

“Jeeves has been informing us of your principal’s calls to the house,” he clarified, crossing his arms. “Damn it girl, can’t you ever stay out of trouble at school? We’re running out of places to send you.”

“What did you expect, dear?” came a new voice. Julie’s mother entered the hall, idly filing her nails. “She’s your daughter, after all.”

“Juvenile delinquent,” her father spat out. “Well, you’ve forced the two of us to use your birthday as an excuse to come back here to handle things. I hope you’re happy.”

“N-Not exactly,” Julie said, her confidence eroding fast. “And it’s been over two years since you last heard from any school administration.”

“Meaning you haven’t been caught until now," her mother observed, blowing on her fingertips.

Julie swallowed. “I guess,” she yielded. She had done some rather terrible things. “But… but it’s fine now. I got everything resolved with the principal today.”

Her father turned. “Did you hear that, dear?” he remarked. “She got everything resolved. Everything. There was no need for us to come home after all, our daughter somehow accounted for every last little detail.”

“Your daughter,” Julie’s mother reminded. She finally put the nail file away and came closer, directing a look towards Julie for the first time. “But you’re right. It’s good that we came. She can’t have any idea just how complicated things are in the real world, after all.”

“No, I… I d-do,” Julie stammered. “I’ve been reading and learning and… and today, today I was running the whole school,” she blurted. “Look!” Julie fumbled within her sweater, pulling out the precious agreement. However, she was developing a case of the shakes, and it slipped through her fingers before she could hand it to her father.

He reached down and scooped it up off the floor before she had time to retrieve it, letting out a sigh of exasperation in the process. Julie bowed her head, biting her lip as he scanned over the paper.

This was it then, the moment of truth. The culmination of six - seven? eight? - years of effort. So many setbacks. But now - they had to understand. They had to see that she was capable, that she was worthy of being their child, that she deserved their love and attention…

“What damn fool stunt are you trying to pull?”

Julie snapped her gaze back up. “W-w-w-what?”

“Honey, have a look at this,” her father remarked, handing over the paper. “She actually believes she was running the school today because the principal signed some agreement. Assuming it’s not forged.”

“Lovely. Something even more troublesome than usual to clear up,” said Julie’s mother dryly, scanning the paper herself.

“N-No, it’s true,” Julie assured them. “Mr. Hunt asked me about every decision today. I also kept other students from committing any violent acts. I was handling it, I was handling it all!”

Her mother sighed and pressed a hand to her temples. “Dear, you deal with this today, all right? It’s going to give me a headache, I’m sure of it. I’ll see you back in the kitchen.” She returned Julie’s signed agreement to her husband and flashed him a smile, before spinning on her heel and stalking back down the hall.

Julie’s father returned the smile before resuming his severe expression. “Now see what you’ve done to your mother?” he accused of Julie. “I hope you have a VERY good explanation as to why you did something so idiotic.”

Julie felt herself getting lightheaded. Was this even really happening? “I did it for you,” she said quietly. “Don’t you remember? When I was young, you used to tell Mom that if I’d been a son, I would have been able to run an organization before even graduating from high school. So, even though I’m not a son, I… I did it. I ran the high school. So doesn’t that document prove to you that I’m every bit as good as a son would be?”

“What?” Her father shook his head. “Leave it to a girl to take things too literally,” he concluded. “I mean honestly, what WAS going through that empty head of yours?”

“I… I…” Julie swallowed, no longer sure what to say.

“Let me show you how important this little piece of paper is,” her father concluded. With that, he tore the document in half.

Julie felt like she was being torn in two. “Dad, no!” she choked out, reaching out towards him. Her father simply stepped back, out of reach, and then he tore again, and again.

Julie fell to her knees. The document she’d signed with the principal that morning was soon scattered on the floor like so much confetti. A tear ran down her cheek. “No…”

“I will deal with this situation now,” her father concluded. “Pray that it’s not as bad as it sounds. You will go to your room. Make sure I don’t see your face again tonight.” With that, he turned and walked away.

Julie was left behind, a crumpled mess on the floor.

The ‘play room’ was a shambles. Her maps had been torn from the walls, file cabinets had been tipped over, electronic gadgets had been thrown against the floor, a couple of legs had even been snapped off of the central table.

In the middle of the room stood Julie, breathing hard.

Interestingly, she didn’t feel angry. Or sad. If anything, she felt numb. And not the happy, lightheaded numbness from earlier today, it was… well, nothing. Emptiness. Complete and utter void.

Julie sank back down to the ground. Destroying this room, it had felt like the right thing to do. Perhaps she should start a fire too, to burn up all of the useless information she’d accumulated. But no, such a blaze could prove dangerous. Dangerous.

The thought of her doing something dangerous struck Julie as funny, so she laughed. Later, she stopped. Then she fell back onto the ground in a completely prone position.

“All for nothing. All of it,” the brunette whispered. She wondered if that was funny or not. Should she giggle? She couldn’t decide. Instead, she let her head fall to the side.

An item caught her eye, and she realized that during her destructive rampage, it must have fallen out of the lower drawer of the file cabinets. Julie crawled over towards it, then looked down upon the smiling faces of her mother and father. She traced her finger over the glass. A tear splashed down.

Then the glass covering the image cracked as the picture was thrown forcibly against the wall. “Should have stayed in that cabinet,” Julie shrieked at the object, hands clenching into fists. “We were both better off!”

She curled up into a ball on the floor for a while.

Gradually, she became conscious of something poking her in the side. It was starting to get annoying, so Julie decided to see what it was. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small neatly wrapped package. That’s right, Clarke had given it to her earlier that day.

“Happy birthday to me,” Julie murmured. She decided to stop staring at the package long enough to sit back up and remove the wrapping paper.

Inside she found a silver brooch in the shape of a rose. “So pretty,” Julie gasped. She pinned it onto her sweater. “He really shouldn’t have though,” she said sadly. “He’s too good to me…”

“You’re not half as bad as you think you are.”

Julie spun. “Phil?” she breathed. When did he get here?

“You are SO strong, Julie. Stronger than I realized.”

How could he be standing there behind her?! It didn’t matter. Julie stumbled to her feet. “Phil,” she repeated.

“This conversation isn’t over yet, okay?” Clarke continued. “In the meantime, here’s something to remember me by.”

Julie reached out for him, but the image of Clarke faded from view before she made contact. She stumbled and fell against the wall. “Wow. Now you’re hallucinating, you idiot,” she breathed. Her fingers traced over the silver brooch. Well, at least he was going to call her.

“He’ll call, that’s right,” Julie gasped, head snapping back up. What had she done with her phone?! She’d left it upstairs before sneaking down here, so as not to damage it, or get it confiscated. She was making so many bad decisions today! “I’ve got to make sure I can answer the phone,” she gasped.

Julie sprinted out of her play room, back upstairs. She didn’t know if talking to Phil Clarke would do any good. She didn’t even know if the phone had already rung that night - was it even night yet? It seemed to be raining outside. She found her phone. Less than two hours had passed. Clarke hadn’t phoned yet. Should she phone him? No. Too needy.

She waited, her finger over the button to accept the next call. Her hands were shaking. She made them stop. It was fine. He would call. He had to call. Please, he had to call. He had to know she was waiting for him now. Right? Please?

When the phone rang, Julie hit answer before seeing who it was. “Phil?” she breathed. “Phil, are you there?”

“Julie LaMille?”

It wasn’t him. It was an older male voice. Someone she didn’t recognize.

“Julie, don’t hang up,” the voice continued. “Okay?”

Julie bit her lip. “O-kay?” she said tentatively.

“You are going to do something for me now. Listen carefully. You are going to sneak out of your house, and meet me at the corner of Parkside and Erb. You will receive further instructions there. Do you understand?”

“I will receive further instructions at Parkside and Erb,” Julie acknowledged, feeling a curious fog in her brain. “What… what instructions? What’s going on?”

“You are not ready for answers yet. All in good… time.”

“I am not ready for answers yet. All in good time,” Julie repeated back.

“You will receive further instructions at Parkside and Erb.”

“I will receive further instructions at Parkside and Erb.”

“You will go there now.”

“I will go there now,” Julie confirmed, feeling her body swaying from side to side.

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Julie obediently hung up the phone and went to find her jacket. Her parents didn’t notice when she left.

“Oh, shoot,” Luci muttered.

Chartreuse glanced over at her companion. “What’s wrong?”

“I took some music out of my bag to look over while waiting at Frank’s, and I never put it back in,” Luci sighed. “You go on ahead, I’m going to run back and get it.”

“You can always, like, look on with someone else,” Chartreuse pointed out.

“Yeah, but my music has all my little pencil markings on it,” Luci noted. “Anyway, it’s not raining that hard now, and it’ll only take me, what, ten extra minutes? I’ll meet back up with you at practice.”

Chartreuse shrugged.  “Okay, see you there then.”

Frank set the pencil back down. “So that’s the equation you come up with,” he concluded. “Understand?”

Carrie leaned against her hand. “No,” she admitted, eyeing the page. “What’s the x mean?”

“That’s the length of the ladder.”

“Uh huh. Remind me, why do we use x?”

Frank shrugged. “Why not x? Doesn’t matter. We have to solve for something.”

Carrie drummed the fingers of her free hand against the table. “If you ask me, using x is a stupid system. It always makes me think of multiplication.”

“Well, you can pick another letter if it makes you happy,” Frank said with a smile. The doorbell rang, diverting his attention. “One of the others must have forgotten something,” he remarked, glancing at the clock. “Be right back.”

“Okay,” Carrie decided. “While you do that, I’m going to trig this thing up again using h.”

“You do that,” Frank said as he walked out of the sitting room. The grin on his face faded as he opened the front door. “Julie?” Frank greeted.

“Carrie still here?” the brunette asked blankly.

“Er, well, yeah… Julie, your hair’s dripping wet, don’t you have an umbrella?”

“I must see Carrie,” Julie said. She pushed her way past Frank and advanced into the hall.

“Um, come in? Julie, what’s going on?” Frank wondered, closing the door and hurrying after her. Julie stopped at the entryway to the sitting room.

“Julie!” Carrie said, standing up as she caught sight of the visitor.

“Carrie Waterson,” Julie responded evenly.

The two girls stared at each other across the room. Frank hesitated, not sure whether to intercede or not.

“Look Julie,” Carrie said at last. “I hope you’re not coming to me with any thoughts of restarting our friendship. Because honestly, I think you got exactly what you deserved today. Heck, now that I’ve started to get my life back together, I couldn’t care less about you. So, know what? It’s probably in both of our best interests for you to turn around, and walk back out through that front door.”

Julie didn’t bat an eyelash. “Shut up,” she said calmly. She drew the gun out from underneath her jacket, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

Carrie stumbled back a step, reflexively bringing her hand up to her side. Her eyes dropped down to the redness that was starting to stain her shirt. “Then again, maybe we can negotiate,” she gurgled out, before collapsing down onto the floor.

“CARRIE!” Frank’s voice screamed. She heard him running into the room, and then he was pulling her back up into something of a seated position, leaning her against the table. “Carrie, are you all right? Speak to me!”

“I… I seem to be bleeding,” Carrie murmured, pulling up her shirt to see. She tried to apply pressure to the wound. The gunshot wound. Wow. They hadn’t covered this yet in health class…

“What? What happened?” someone gasped - Julie gasped?

“What HAPPENED? YOU JUST SHOT CARRIE, DAMN YOU!”

“Frank, don’t upset the crazy person,” Carrie suggested. Okay, talking hurt now. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“N-n-no,” Julie whimpered. Carrie reopened her eyes, in time to see that her former friend was now staring at the gun as if she was seeing it for the first time. That didn’t make much sense. However, when Carrie saw Frank rising to his feet out of the corner of her eye, Julie quickly cocked the weapon back up at him. “D-D-Don’t move,” Julie warned.

Unlike before, the gun was now wobbling all over the place. Then again, Carrie decided it was equally possible that her vision was wobbling all over the place. Should she call 911? Wow, yeah, someone should definitely do that…

As if reading her mind, Frank said, “Julie, let me get my phone out. Carrie needs medical attention.”

“This is not how my birthday was supposed to go,” Julie gasped. With that, Carrie decided that both of them were shaking. “This is NOT how my birthday was supposed to go. This IS NOT how…”

“Julie, put that gun down, so we can straighten all of this out,” Frank suggested.

“NO,” Julie shrieked. Her head snapped from side to side. “I’ll fix this,” she declared. “I’ll fix it all. Where’s your time machine?”

“Wh-What?”

“I KNOW you have one! Carrie told me all about it, you MUST have fixed it by now, so WHERE IS IT?”

The brunette was not longer whimpering but practically screaming, while holding the gun in both hands. Even that wasn’t helping to keep it steady. Heck, Julie’s whole form was starting to look blurry. Wait, no, Carrie realized everything was getting blurry…

“D-Downstairs,” Frank said.

“Downstairs,” Julie repeated. She swallowed. “I know how to make everything better. I never should have been born.”

“Julie…”

“NO!” Julie shrieked again. “I can’t LIVE like this any more.”

She fired the gun a second time. Frank stumbled back as the bullet slammed into the carpeting somewhere by his feet, and Julie took the opportunity to run out of the room.

It was as Carrie heard the new voice calling out from the front of the house that she discovered her unfocussed gaze was drifting up towards the ceiling.

“Frank??”

That was Luci’s voice! “In here,” Frank called out to her.

“Frank, I came in because I thought I heard a… holy geez!” Luci gasped out as she rounded the corner and spotted both him and Carrie.

“Julie’s gone crazy and she’s after the time machine,” Frank explained to her, fumbling with his phone. “See if you can tell what she’s doing as I call Carrie an ambulance, but BE CAREFUL. Julie got herself a gun from somewhere.”

Luci nodded wordlessly, and ducked back out of the room.

Frank finished dialling 911, requesting aid for a gunshot wound, and giving them his address. He winced, as he now recalled that their time machine was sitting out in plain view, on his lab bench.

“Frank?” he heard Carrie rasp. “Frank, it’s getting cold. Did your parents not pay the heating bill?”

Frank pulled the phone away from his mouth. “Yes, Carrie,” he replied, tears stinging at his eyes. “But we’ll get it fixed, so you make sure you stay conscious until then, okay? You promise me you’ll stay conscious!”

“Okay,” Carrie agreed quietly. “Okay, yeah… I’ll… try… that……”

“You won’t just try, you WILL,” Frank pleaded. He saw movement by the entranceway, and whirled towards the source.

“It’s me,” Luci said, raising her hands.

“Julie…?”

“She’s… gone,” Luci admitted quietly. “I saw her grab about half of our notes, take a coin for a particular year from your collection and then she activated the time machine. I’m not even sure what time period she selected.”

Frank ran a hand back through his hair. “From what she said, I’ve got a pretty good guess,” he admitted. “But… without the machine, we can’t follow her.”

“Right.” Luci swallowed. “So… so what do we do?”

Sirens began to wail outside. “I wish I knew,” Frank replied. “I really wish I knew.”

PART 33: JULIE’S SECRET

Principal Dell A. Hunt let out a sigh as he drove in to work. His job had its ups and downs, to be sure, yet for some reason the downs were outweighing the ups of late. Especially surrounding that one student:  Julie LaMille.

Her requests were becoming persistent, and he couldn’t get any information from her parents, as he had been unable to contact them directly. “I wonder what she’ll have to say this week,” he mused aloud to himself as he pulled into the school parking lot.

She was standing near his parking space. Over an hour before classes would start. “We’re starting early today," he realized. Upon exiting his vehicle, Mr. Hunt leaned back against it, letting her approach and have the first words. She cleared her throat.

“It’s November 12th. We have to end this today," Julie stated simply.

Mr. Hunt pursed his lips. “Inside,” he decided.

When Mr. Hunt made the offer to sit down, Julie accepted. She hoped that the concession to his current position of superiority would make him more amenable to her news.

She then waited patiently as Mr. Hunt closed the door to his office, and walked around to stand behind his desk. “All right,” the principal said. “Explain. What do you mean by ‘we must end things today’?”

“Very simply put, the date I’ve been anticipating has finally arrived,” Julie responded. “Something will occur today, a major event, one that cannot be resolved peacefully unless you have my cooperation. You know what that means."

The principal leaned forwards, placing his palms flat on his desk. “Miss LaMille. I grant that you have been “predicting” events for me for over a month. From incidents as large as the discovery of those drugs in one student’s locker, down to Mrs. Latour’s missing potted plant. I also grant that the incidents are too varied to be traced back to you directly, and that the faculty have been unable to prevent them. Yet do you remember what I said to you in this very room, after school, on the day we discovered those drugs?”

“Of course. You told me that you would not grant any requests merely because I provided you with some advance information,” Julie recalled.

“My position on that has not changed."

“But this is IMPORTANT!” That sounded too desperate. She worked to reign in her emotions. “You need me on your side today," Julie continued more calmly. “If I don’t defuse the situation, hostilities may well break out between certain factions of students.”

Mr. Hunt regarded her quietly for a moment. “Let’s go off the record here,” he decided. “Contrary to popular belief, I am not blind as to what goes on in my school. I know about your disagreements with Corry Veniti, and I know that the two of you have spent years polarizing the student body. To that end, it seems likely that you - or your friends - have had a hand in most, if not all, of your “predicted” events. Granted, I have no proof. Still, if this major event today is in the same vein, and you are using it to threaten this administration…"

“No,” Julie gasped. She took in a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay. Cards on the table.”

She met his gaze anew. “You’re right. I may have played a part in some of the events I revealed to you. But you of all people must realize that knowing about something, and being able to stop it - those are two very different things. I can guarantee to you that I will have no say in what happens today. Only in how the events play out around the school. And I’m willing to be on your side. To keep damage to a minimum. All it takes is a simple signature.”

The principal slowly shook his head. “Miss LaMille, your continued requests for my signature on that document are unreasonable. It would give you full control of the school.”

He paused to size Julie up once again. “Know that I am not unsympathetic. I do want to help you. That is why I have allowed things to go on for as long as they have. However, until you agree to see a guidance counsellor, or some other specialist concerning these control issues of yours… there is nothing further for us to discuss here.”

“But…” Julie flexed her hands, mind whirling. She was fast running out of options. However, a last ditch idea was taking shape in her mind. “A compromise then. Sign the school over to me, for today. Just for today. If you do that, I… I will voluntarily attend your guidance sessions. Starting tomorrow.”

“I will not be blackmailed.”

“It’s NOT blackmail!” Julie protested. She fought down the urge to scream. “Listen, give me today. You don’t even have to change your routine. Whatever you do, you merely tell me first, so that I can make a point of approving it. I’m sure I won’t contradict you - why would I need to? In return, I will seek whatever counselling you recommend.”

Silence. Then, “What guarantee–”

“I’ll co-sign a separate paper with you on the counselling subject,” Julie interrupted. “You get what you want, and I get what I want. In fact, you get more, because with me controlling the school, I’ll have to take care of the upcoming situation with Corry in the most diplomatic way possible. Consider this a learning experience for me. Please, Mr. Hunt. You might even be surprised by some of the things I know, not only about everything that happens in this school, but about how to run an organization smoothly.”

Julie took in a deep breath, feeling her nails digging into her palms. “Also, it’s my birthday today,” she admitted. “So if you find yourself needing an excuse to fall back on for the faculty, you can use that. All right? How about it? What do you say?”

Mr. Hunt finally sat down in his chair. Julie’s tone held more than a hint of desperation - but her gaze was determined. More to the point, he saw pain lurking behind her outward expression. This teenager needed help. Was agreeing to her request the only way to ensure that she got the necessary treatment? It was starting to look that way.

He knew the LaMille girl well enough by now to recognize that she wouldn’t simply dismiss any contract she put her name to. Moreover, her proposal actually made sense, to a certain degree. ‘This also wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ever gone out on a limb to help a student,' the principal reflected.

“Miss LaMille,” Mr. Hunt began. “I will agree to your proposal, subject to three conditions.”

“Name them,” Julie said.

“First, I want copies of any documents we sign. Particularly the one which ensures your compliance with a counselling session.”

“Done,” Julie agreed quickly.

“Second, I want your assurance that no one will be harmed by any action you take while at school today. Such an event would void our agreement.”

“That’s fair," Julie yielded.

“And finally… I would like to know why this one act of scholastic control means so much to you.”

Julie felt her heart drop. She had never revealed her true motive to anyone before. Even at that boarding school in England, she’d never gone into detail. However, she couldn’t take the risk of lying now! Not with so much at stake. So… perhaps a half truth would be enough.

“It’s…” Julie faltered, as she felt her body start to shake. No, not now, get ahold of yourself, stupid! Swallowing hard, Julie sat up straighter in her chair.

“It’s my parents,” she explained softly. “I have to show my parents that I’m a capable d-daughter. They… I have to show them this.” She swept some hair back off her shoulder, in the process reestablishing her mental control. “Now, will you sign the necessary papers?”

Again Mr. Hunt looked back at her in silence. Three seconds passed, then five, then… he nodded to her in agreement. It took all of Julie’s willpower not to burst into tears.

The school was hers. Her father had thought it couldn’t be done, but she had done it. She had the paper in her pocket to prove it. For so many years, she had been striving for this moment, handling setbacks from students and teachers alike, tiptoeing carefully around administration… and then there had been the time machine, forcing her to accelerate her plans prematurely. To prevent any discovery of her goals and motivations. Yet though it all, she had prevailed.

The principal had called her out of French class last period, in order to advise her about a requisition from the science department. She had of course given her go ahead for the purchase of new supplies. She had also agreed with how Hunt was handling an issue with a concerned parent, to the point of seeing no need have him provide her with the actual name.

The irony was, she couldn’t have succeeded here without Corry. Julie had required his final act against her that morning, the distribution of that flyer, in order to clinch things. The one thing she’d had no control over, that was what had given her control… and now that she was running the school, she’d make sure it didn’t fall apart through any misguided attempts to avenge her name.

Thank goodness Phil had pointed out the date to her, which had snapped her out of her constant over-analysis of the situation… Julie winced at the thought.

Phil Clarke. She’d been avoiding him. Would he even remain her friend after this? Well, as long as she had the paper in her pocket with Mr. Hunt’s signature on it, the rest didn’t matter. Right? No, the rest didn’t matter to her at all.

“So, LaMille. Do you yield?”

It was Corry’s voice. Julie looked up from her lunch, vaguely aware of everyone else in the cafeteria edging away from their position.

The brunette allowed herself a tiny smile. “Yes,” she answered quietly. “You win. Do whatever you like now, Corry. Thank you.”

Regrettably, Corry turned out to be something of a sore winner. At the least, whatever response Corry had been expecting, Julie supposed it hadn’t been that. The redhead glanced around the area briefly, perhaps wondering whether he’d come to the right table. “You… you wanted to have your network of deceit exposed to the entire school?” he said, incredulous.

Julie shrugged. “When you put it that way, no," she admitted. “However, what’s done is done. So you win. Though I will say that when you calculated out the number of my voluntary followers on that flyer? You overestimated by about five percent.” She placed a forkful of salad into her mouth.

Corry’s eyebrow twitched. “You’re planning something. You already have retaliation in mind. What’s your game, LaMille?”

“On the contrary,” Julie said, swallowing. She raised her voice. “Let me once again make it clear to EVERYONE here that any action of vengeance taken against Corry today? Will result in me giving out a punishment of MY OWN. And trust me, you do NOT want that.” Heck, she even had the power to give suspensions today - though she probably wouldn’t use it.

“Yeah, because you want to deal with this yourself,” Corry deduced. “But it’s too late! Some of your more embittered followers are already massing together to take you down, now that they know they’re not alone.”

“Let them come,” Julie countered. “It can’t happen overnight. They’ll need at least a few days to get themselves organized.”

“And you’re not concerned about that?”

“I have what I want. The rest doesn’t matter.”

Corry’s jawline tightened. “What the hell, LaMille?” The plastic fork in his hand snapped in half. “How could this POSSIBLY have given you what you want??”

Julie poked at her salad. “It’s like I told you in Grade Nine, at the very beginning of all this, Corry. Our motivations are fundamentally different. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m eating my lunch.”

Corry jabbed a finger at her and seemed about to reply to that, until it presumably occurred to him that there wasn’t much he could say without looking like the bad guy. He settled for a “Damn you!”, after which he threw the remains of his fork towards her and stalked off.

Julie belatedly found herself hoping Corry wouldn’t do anything more drastic now, on account of her subdued reaction. It’s not like she was acting that way out of spite.

Oh well. Even if he did something tomorrow - she still had today.

“Jewels, wait up!”

Julie turned to see Clarke approaching. The day was over, so there was still time to run out the school doors, to avoid him again… no. That felt cowardly. She was no coward.

“H-Hi Phil," she said, greeting him with a hesitant smile as he ran up to her.

“Jewels… what’s going ON?” Clarke asked. “I mean, I’ve spent the day trying to figure this all out but… but I got nothing. Is what Corry says in here true?” He held up one of the flyers.

Julie nodded. “It is,” she admitted, straightening her posture. “I have bribed. I have blackmailed. I have tried to keep this from people. From you most of all, actually.”

Clarke shook his head. “But… but WHY, Jewels? I mean, I always knew you did things your own way but THIS? This is… well… now I’m not sure what to believe about you any more.”

Julie felt her heart sink. “You’re disappointed.”

Clarke ran a hand back through his hair. “I’m confused. You’ve put so much effort into keeping your past quiet. Whenever I’ve asked, you’ve pushed me away. Yet now that it’s all come out here… you don’t seem to care at all.” He paused, visibly frustrated. “So, if this didn’t matter to you, why didn’t you tell me about it in the first place? Was it because you thought I’d hate you for it?”

Julie looked up at the blonde boy, the one person who was perhaps the closest she’d ever come to having to a friend, the one who had not only stuck by her through all of this, but had even tried to UNDERSTAND her. No one had ever done that for her before. No one.

She couldn’t push him away any more. “Come with me,” she said, tugging at his arm.

“What?”

“Come,” Julie repeated, leading Clarke back into an abandoned classroom. She didn’t speak again until after checking to ensure that they were alone. “Phil, it’s not that it didn’t matter,” she explained. “It’s simply that, as of this morning, the whole situation changed.”

“Situation?” Clarke wondered. Julie pulled the precious paper out from underneath her sweater and handed it over to him. He unfolded it, and gave the document a quick scan. His eyes widened. “Hunt let you run the school today?”

“Provisionally, yes.”

Clarke looked back up. “That’s why you got called down to the office so many times.” Julie nodded. “Thank goodness,” he sighed. “I thought that somehow you were getting into worse and worse trouble.”

“Because of Corry’s flyer?” Julie clucked her tongue. “Phil, you should know better. As devastating as it is, it’s all supposition and circumstantial evidence. No one’s even named in it, except for that Tracy.”

“Which won’t stop people from coming after you - perhaps with good reason.” Clarke glanced back down at the document he held. “Are you hoping this agreement with Mr. Hunt is going to protect you somehow? Because I don’t see–”

“No,” Julie said, shaking her head. She held out her hand, and he returned the sheet to her. “This agreement is for a more… personal matter, separate from Corry.”

Clarke leaned in closer, staring at her. “You’re still holding something back,” he realized. “Jewels… Julie… please. Tell me.”

“I…” Julie felt her throat go dry. She wanted to tell him. To tell someone who knew her, before she would be forced to spill all about her life to some counsellor who was liable to completely misunderstand. Yet even so, the words wouldn’t come. “I… c-can’t…”

Clarke stared at her for another long moment. “Then I don’t know what to do,” he said at last. “I want to help you. I’ve always wanted to help you. You know that. I’ve also believed that, deep down, you weren’t a bad person. That you weren’t using people. That you weren’t using me.”

He turned away. Julie found her breaths becoming shallower. “But now?” he continued. “Julie, I’m at a loss. Maybe Corry’s right after all. Maybe the only person who ever mattered to Julie LaMille was Julie LaMille. And if that’s true, then… then she sure doesn’t need me hanging around her any more.”

“No!” Julie gasped. Clarke didn’t turn back. But he didn’t walk away.

She swallowed again, yet somehow her throat was still dry. “Phil, don’t be like that,” she pleaded. She didn’t understand why this conversation hurt so much. Because they were breaking up? Had they ever truly been together?

“Then tell me,” Clarke said, turning back to her.

Fine. My parents. “My…” Two words. Not hard. “My…” Julie felt a tear forming and she wiped her palm over her eyes. “It’s my…” Julie shook her head. “God Phil, I CAN’T, okay?” She spun to face the chalkboard. “I’m sorry. Just break up with me already and go.” He was too damn good for the likes of her anyway.

She expected him to sigh in resignation and walk away. And she heard him take a step. But even as she realized he was moving closer, Clarke was pulling her into an embrace from behind.

“Jewels, even if I assume we’re going out, I would never break up with you on your birthday,” he murmured near her ear. “So if you need some help, anything at all… I’m still here for you. At least for now. The flyer doesn’t change that.”

Julie felt her legs go weak, and for the second time today, it took all of her willpower to keep her emotions in check. This didn’t make any logical sense. “Phil, no,” she protested. “How can you possibly still be so nice to me? After everything I’ve done?”

Clarke lowered his chin to her shoulder. “Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment,” he replied. “Or I’m a naive guy who can’t understand how bad this stuff really is. But honestly… I’ve seen you smile. And I still think that deep down, you’re not half as bad as you think you are. Not really.”

Julie turned, and she found her own arms encircling Clarke as he straightened, and she rested her own head upon his shoulder. The silence that followed his comment seemed to stretch on for an eternity. It might have been seconds, or hours, Julie didn’t know. However, once the words started to spill out of her mouth, she found that she couldn’t stop them.

“It’s my p-parents, Phil,” she admitted, a lump forming in her throat.  “They don’t love me, you see. They never have. Never even wanted me. My mom, she hates me, and my dad, he wanted a son. And as their only child, they’ve never, ever let me forget that.”

Clarke pulled back slightly in order to look Julie in the eyes. He searched them for any hint of deceit, and found none. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

Julie looked up at him. She didn’t speak, only bit into her lower lip. His first instinct was to say she must be misinterpreting things, that no one’s parents could be that mean, but she looked so earnest. Then he remembered something.

“You mean to tell me that, the time you were told you were insignificant… and that you would never amount to anything… it was your parents who said it?”

Julie managed a small shrug. “Yeah, well. That’s life.”

“Like hell it is,” Clarke countered. “My God, Julie, why haven’t you ever mentioned this?”

“You’ve met my parents,” she reminded him. “During the summers and on the few other occasions they’ve visited. Did you ever get the impression that they didn’t care for me? Or that they’d sent me away, so that they didn’t have to deal with me in person?”

“I… well… no,” Clarke admitted.

“Exactly. It’s like they have two faces, you see. The one they present to the public, and the one they present to me. So no one else ever gets to see how they really feel.” She smiled then, but it was a sad smile. “Come to think, maybe that deception is a trait I get from them, I don’t know. Still, it’s why I can’t stand anyone talking to me about my parents. On some level, their fakery disgusts me.”

“We have to do something about this then,” Clarke decided. “Talk to a counsellor, or child services or something.”

“And tell them what?” Julie asked. She shook her head. “My parents don’t physically abuse me. And you can’t prove a case of my word against theirs. Anyway, it’s not their fault. It’s mine.”

Clarke felt a knot forming in his stomach. “Jewels, no.”

“I’ve been a major disappointment from the beginning. Not the sort of person who could carry on the LaMille family line. As a child, I was weak and helpless in the face of confrontation. I even sucked my thumb until I was three years old. But I’ve been working hard over the years. Reading. Experimenting. And now, at long last, I’ve had an entire school and faculty under my control.”

She clenched her fist. “My parents will have to acknowledge me now. They thought it couldn’t be done. That a girl like me could never accomplish anything. But I did it. This PROVES that I’m worthy! So finally, it will be okay. It will all be okay.” Julie smiled, and the smile was sincere, and Clarke couldn’t bear it.

“Oh God, I never knew,” Clarke choked out. “I never even suspected. I’m so, so sorry, Jewels. Can you ever forgive me?”

She looked back up. “Forgive you? Phil, what are you talking about? Why are you crying?”

He reached up, only now discovering that his cheeks were wet. “I… I can’t help it, Jewels. I love you, and I hate seeing what you’ve become on account of your parents.” He pulled her close once more, and Julie hugged him back. Again, there was silence.

“Phil?” Julie ventured at last. “You mustn’t tell anyone else what I’ve told you. Okay? NOBODY. Promise me that.”

“Jewels… oh God, don’t ask that…”

“No one, Phil. Please. PLEASE,” Julie insisted quietly, her hug becoming something of a death grip. “Because no one will believe you. You’d only get in trouble. It’s all going to be okay after tonight anyway. Now that I have the agreement.”

“What do you– your parents are back in town, aren’t they,” he realized. Julie nodded. Clarke set his jaw. “I’m going home with you. You don’t have to face them alone.”

“No. You can’t,” Julie pleaded. “With you there, they’ll go all fake again. But don’t worry, Phil! As long as I have the principal’s signature on that paper, it’ll be okay.”

Clarke swallowed. “Right,” he said. He squeezed her a bit tighter before pulling back. “Look, I won’t say anything for now, but this conversation isn’t over yet, okay? I’m going to call you tonight.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, neatly wrapped package. “In the meantime, here’s something to remember me. Happy birthday.”

Julie smiled again, and he felt his heart breaking. “Thanks, Phil. For remembering… and for everything these last couple years, I suppose.”

He shook his head in awe. “You are SO strong, Julie. Stronger than I realized. Just remember, there are people out here who love you, okay? We’ll talk more later tonight.”

“Sure we will,” Julie agreed. “I’m looking forward to it already.”

They didn’t speak again that day.

*Posted on Nov 12th, Julie's birthday! Huzzah!*

PART 32: FREQUENT FLYERS

Frank fell hard against the pavement. As he collected his wits, he realized that his fall hadn’t been because he’d been hit by the van bearing down on them. It was because he’d been pushed from behind by Carrie.

She’d shoved him out of the way - but wasn’t next to him now. Hearing the squealing of tires, Frank twisted his head around, expecting the worst. “Carrie?” he called out. The van had stopped right past where they’d all been standing. “Carrie!” Frank repeated.

“No need to shout, geez,” came Carrie’s voice. Frank was forced to turn again, now seeing that Carrie - no, TWO Carries - were lying a short distance away, in the grass by the sidewalk. Along with the time machine.

“Thank goodness," Frank sighed. “And Luci? LUCI?!"

“Present,” came Luci’s voice. “Nice to be remembered.”

Frank now registered that she was lying rigidly on the pavement. She must have reacted fast enough to flatten herself down onto the ground, leaving the van to pass overtop of her. She seemed none the worse for wear; maybe breathing a bit harder than usual.

“I would have shoved you as well, Luci," one of the Carries said, also sounding winded. “But you seemed to be reacting fast enough.”

The shorter girl pushed herself up from the pavement. “Yeah, well, I’d have pulled Frank down with me, but you were already ramming into his back.”

“Meanwhile, I had to tackle my younger self out of the way,” the second Carrie piped up. “I’m thinking I should get a thank you there?” She looked pointedly at her double.

The first Carrie brushed some hair back off her face. “Uh, yeah. Thanks,” she managed. A ‘hmph’ was her only reply. Frank wondered idly if meeting oneself was something a person could ever get used to.

“Vat yu crazy kids doin'?” a new voice said. It was the owner of the van, who had now exited his vehicle and peered beneath it, obviously concerned that there might still be someone else there. “Any body hurt?”

Carrie - their version from the past, Frank decided, based on her clothes - waved her hand sheepishly. “No, we’re fine. Sorry, didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“Won’t happen again. Please, drive on,” the other present day(?) Carrie added. She helped her counterpart to her feet. Frank also stood up, brushing off his hands.

The man blinked. “Vat you mean? Everything hokay then?”

The teenagers exchanged a quick glance, then replied all at once, saying phases such as “sure”, “oh yeah”, “great” and “no problem”.

“But yu know, is bad idea to play in road,” stated the driver. “Be more careful in future.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be more careful while in the future,” Luci quipped.

The van driver stared at them for another moment before shaking his head. “Crazy kids,” the driver repeated. He got back into his van and drove off, Frank idly noticing the licence plate read ‘LARS 02’. He then looked around to get his bearings. They were on his street, near his house.

“So anyway, welcome to November 12th,” present (yet technically future?) Carrie said. “Now let’s hurry up and get inside. You need to tend to your scrapes and bruises, plus it’s about to pour rain.”

They all headed off to Frank’s place. None of them paid any attention to the thirty-something male sitting in the parked car nearby, as he scribbled on a notepad.

“5:44,” Frank said. He closed the pocket watch and moved to put it back in the machine. “You past versions got that? That’s the time you all appeared here, so that’s the time when Carrie will have to save herself today after you all go back.”

“You were expecting us then,” the second Frank realized. “That… makes sense. Good to know we’ll make a safe return trip.” He rubbed his forehead. “Though I’m having trouble understanding how we can be here simultaneously. I mean, it makes sense if we go into the past, making that the present, but now that our present is the future instead…?”

In Frank’s sitting room there were now two Franks, two Carries, two Lucis, one Chartreuse and one Tim. Past Luci cleared her throat. “Try thinking about why the pocket watch actually worked instead,” she offered. “That’s the part that’s blowing my mind.”

“This is going to be, like, a real weird conversation,” Chartreuse realized. “How do I even refer to you guys? Frank One and Frank Two?”

“The first time around we used middle names," Carrie said absentmindedly. “That is, the time we did this when I was you,” she clarified, indicating her past counterpart. “I believe the explanation I gave was that it could become a useful standard for any other encounters? Any of us out of our present time can auto-revert to their middle name.”

“That makes sense,” Carrie’s prior self agreed. “I don’t mind being called Elizabeth.”

“But, Carrie, you’re messing with causality now!” the time displaced Frank protested. “How does that idea even have an origin?”

“You know what? Screw it,” Luci decided. “This means I’m Isabella. I’m putting that out there now, lest Carrie manage to create a new middle name for me.”

Frank rubbed his forehead. “But… fine. So I’m, uh, Bernard."

Elizabeth lifted an eyebrow. “Bernard?”

“My grandfather’s name,” Bernard explained with a shrug.

“I like Elizabeth,” Chartreuse observed. “Carrie, can I, like, call you Betty or Beth too?”

“No,” Elizabeth said, making a face. “Elizabeth.”

“Things are confusing enough already," Isabella sighed in agreement.

“I’m already lost,” Tim admitted, speaking up for the first time. “I mean, why are we here anyway, since you past guys said nothing came of this after you got back?”

“Because while nothing came of it when I was Isabella," Luci explained, “that doesn’t mean that talking now won’t trigger a revelation a little ways along in our present, which our counterparts wouldn’t have known, having already returned to the past."

“Besides, we already had this discussion, so we have to have it again,” Frank asserted.

“Oh." Tim lowered his head down between his legs. “So do you really need ME here?"

Chartreuse reached over to pat Tim on the back. “Aw, hey, don’t sweat it. See it as, like, a whole new sort of experience. Besides, the discussion can’t go that long. Frank’s parents have to come home at some point, plus me and Luci have, you know, band practice later tonight."

Bernard let out a breath. “Then in the interests of expediting matters… our arrival here in the future was obviously expected, so our reason for coming must also be known. What’ve you got?"

Carrie smiled. “That’s my cue!” she said, producing three identical flyers and handing them out to the three time travellers.

Bernard looked down at the sheet in his hand. There was a picture of Julie on top. She looked a little younger, and was wearing what looked to be some sort of school uniform, like from a private school. Indeed, as Bernard began to read he realized that’s exactly what her clothing represented. “This is information on Julie’s past,” he said, shocked.

“Corry figured all this out?” Isabella asked, looking back up.

“He both figured it out, and then printed up something like 500 copies of that to spread around the school," Luci confirmed to her prior self.

“Oh, this is PRICELESS,” Elizabeth said, letting out a laugh as she scanned over the sheet in her hands. “This stuff must have made Julie livid! Damn, it might have been worth the wait after all.”

There was a brief silence, after which Elizabeth found that everyone was staring at her. Even her future self. She brushed some hair back off her shoulder. “What?” she said haughtily. “Have we forgotten what Julie DID to me? She’s hardly the heroine in our school soap opera.”

“Don’t try to fill the vacancy,” Isabella muttered.

Bernard cleared his throat. “Look, Carrie’s… er, Elizabeth’s grudge notwithstanding, Julie’s reaction IS the main reason for having this talk,” he pointed out. “What do we have on that?”

Carrie took a step towards the middle of the room. “You need context first. So, here’s what I remember myself saying. Which was confirmed when Corry talked with me, so don’t you start into one of your time loop discussions, Bernard,” she added quickly, shaking a finger at him. Bernard raised his hands in deference to her.

Carrie started her explanation.

“Corry has actually spent years trying to learn more about Julie,” Carrie began. “Ever since Grade Nine. More recently, he was able to track down a girl named Tracy Irving - you can see her referenced there at the bottom of the flyers. Now, this Tracy used to be close to Julie, back when Julie was attending a private boarding school in England.”

“Wait, close to Julie? Close how?” Isabella wondered.

“A friend,” Carrie shrugged. “I guess the same way I was. Basically, we’re not the first school to have faced Julie’s quest for domination.”

“England? But Julie doesn’t speak with an accent,” Bernard mused.

“She’s not FROM there, her parents sent her away. Rich, remember?” Carrie countered. “Point is, Julie recruited Tracy to assist her in controlling her old boarding school.” She began to pace back and forth. “But after a few months, Tracy was put off by Julie’s methods. Their friendship died. And that didn’t slow Julie down much… but what DID set her back was the actions Tracy took afterwards. When Tracy decided that Julie had to be dealt with. And asked to rejoin her.”

“Wait - was TRACY the wizard’s apprentice in Julie’s loyalty story to us?” Elizabeth asked. Carrie shrugged. Elizabeth frowned. “I feel slighted.”

“You know,” Chartreuse broke in, “I’m getting the impression that this Tracy has, like, a fair bit in common with Corry. They both sound… kinda ruthless.”

“Could be how they finally found each other,” Carrie acknowledged. “The internet is funny that way. Anyway, long story short, Tracy begged forgiveness of Julie, she was let back in, and she formed some counter alliance within Julie’s ranks. If you look at paragraph three of that printout, you’ll see how Julie’s methods have included coercion, bribery, even blackmail. Except people also join her voluntarily, so you never know who’s with her for what reason. And Julie makes a point of not revealing that information - or it was like that until Tracy. And now Corry.”

“Julie has some serious issues she should deal with,” Bernard said.

“Wait, I… I’m getting lost again,” Tim sighed. “Why did Julie even accept this Tracy back? She never accepted you back, Carrie.”

“Younger Julie. Sloppier. Learned her lesson, and then took it out on me,” Elizabeth decided.

“Or maybe Julie underestimated this Tracy,” Luci proposed. “Blind to the fact that she could ever lose.”

“Wait.” Chartreuse tapped her fingers against her temples. “Corry obviously didn’t get HIS information from, you know, infiltrating Julie. So unless Carrie provided him with a LOT more stuff than Julie thought was possible, how did Corry, like, come up with the flyer? Because based on how people reacted today, I don’t think the info was, you know, faked.”

“Extrapolation,” Carrie said, before Elizabeth had a chance to speak. “Corry combined what Tracy told him with what he already knew about our school. After all, Julie’s methods haven’t changed outright. Corry was able to draw as many parallels as he could, and quiz me endlessly on some of the gaps. Then he got Tracy to send him that old picture, and BOOM. Despite the flyer not naming names, Corry’s put Julie’s ranks into chaos. He got the whole school wondering who the real Julie LaMille is.”

Bernard spoke in the silence that followed. “Context aside, what of Julie’s reaction?” he pressed. “That’s part of why we’re here. Is she about to lose her mind and start attacking people?”

“No,” Frank answered himself slowly. “Her reaction wasn’t what any of us expected.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I’m betting Julie simply denied everything, and made people doubt this Tracy person ever existed outside Corry’s imagination. Yeah?”

The five people in their proper time exchanged a glance. “No,” Frank repeated. “That’s just it. She not only confirmed what was in the flyer, she pointed out an ERROR Corry had made. It seems he had overestimated the number of her voluntary followers.”

The three time travellers stared back. “But that’s CRAZY,” Isabella protested. “If even half of what I’ve seen written on this flyer is true, practically every student is going to eventually turn against her.”

“Was Julie hoping for leniency?” Bernard guessed.

“We have no idea,” Carrie said with a shrug.

“Actually, I even heard Julie, like, voluntarily scheduled herself in for counselling sessions tomorrow,” Chartreuse added. “Something that had been recommended by the principal.”

There was a moment of silence. “Well, I guess we’re done with this time trip then,” Elizabeth concluded. “I got to see what was going to happen, you got to see travel to the future, turns out everyone will live happily ever after, the end. At the risk of sounding unoriginal, when do we go back?”

Isabella crossed her arms. “No. NO. I don’t like it,” she said bluntly. “It’s too perfect.”

“I agree, unsurprisingly enough,” Luci said. “However, Elizabeth does have a point. Wasn’t this the outcome we were hoping for? A nice, non-apocalyptic, non-gun wielding conclusion to everything? Hey, here it is, and we didn’t have to lift a finger to create it.”

“In fact, if you three try to lift a finger, this could turn into a disaster,” Frank pointed out. “And I don’t mean at the school. Consider the following: You change something. Because of that, Carrie is unable to save herself from the van at 5:44. It would at minimum change this conversation, and in the worst case, an injured Elizabeth could make for a nasty time… loop? Paradox? I don’t even know. Thus it’s in all our best interests to act like your trip never happened. I know I’m going to. Er, going to have that is.”

The three time travellers again exchanged a glance. “I’m right,” Bernard realized. “We can’t do anything to disrupt this future from happening. The timeline needs to unfold this way.”

“Lovely,” Isabella said, smacking her palm to her forehead. “Honestly Carrie, it’s always something with you! I guess that means we won’t be able to tell past Chartreuse and Tim about any of this either.”

“What? Luci, I’m hurt,” Chartreuse protested. “Seeing as nothing’s going to come of this, why can’t I, like, know earlier?”

“You really think you can fake your way sitting through that explanation, when you would already know it?” Frank asked.

Chartreuse paused. “Welllll…”

“Chartreuse, if we leave it like this, it gets us out of the discussion in a non-weird way,” Tim pleaded. “Please, right now that’s what I’m hoping for the most.”

“Okay then,” Chartreuse sighed. “I guess I can accept it. Though it means I’m now, you know, in on a secrecy conspiracy against myself.” She brightened. “Which, come to think, is kinda neat.”

“Did I at least take one of these flyers with me to study?” Isabella questioned. Her counterpart nodded, and Isabella pocketed the information.

“We’ll clear out of your way now,” Bernard decided. “I only hope that this future turns out to be as good as it looks.”

“You worry too much,” Elizabeth said airily. “Let’s not look the gift horse in the mouth, okay?”

Five minutes later, after the time machine had been reset, Elizabeth, Bernard and Isabella pulled the handle to head back into the past.

“That’s cleared some of the clutter out of here,” Carrie observed, dusting off her hands.

Frank walked over to the sitting room window. “It was certainly a bizarre experience, meeting oneself that way,” he reflected, watching large droplets of rain splatter against the glass. At least it wasn’t cold enough for snow yet.

“It was pretty amazing I’d say,” Chartreuse noted. “You know, I think I’d like to try a time trip myself next. If that’s okay with you guys, of course.”

“I’m just glad it’s over with,” Tim sighed. “Not only the time travel but also the mess with Julie. Maybe life can get back to normal now.”

Chartreuse turned her gaze upon him. “Aw, Tim, I’m so sorry you, like, didn’t enjoy any of this. I hope you can forgive me and that we can still, you know, be friends?”

Tim hesitated only briefly before smiling back at Chartreuse. “I-I’d like that,” he admitted. “And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, Chartreuse! I mean, I did agree to come here. It’s only… it’s a lot to take in. It’s easier for me to handle social stuff when it’s just me and Clarke, I guess.”

“Time travel is overwhelming no matter who you are,” Frank remarked. He turned away from the window. “Before you all go, the logical question we need to ask now is - is there anything further to say about Julie’s reaction?”

No one spoke. Then Luci let out a sigh of resignation. “It doesn’t look like it, much as I wish that weren’t the case,” she said. “I mean, we all saw Julie today. She should have been angry, and she wasn’t. She was smiling. Smiling in a weird, contented way, like she got what she wanted. My past self was right, it’s too perfect. We’re missing a piece of the puzzle.”

“It was her birthday,” Chartreuse pointed out. “Maybe Julie decided to, like, accept that the skeletons were out, in order to restart her life at sweet sixteen.”

“Maybe,” Luci said, unconvinced. “I guess I was holding out too much hope that, upon seeing our previous conversation from this side, something else would be triggered.”

“Yeah, well, I got nothing,” Carrie declared. “So we might as well wrap this meeting up.”

Chartreuse looked over at the clock. “Probably best. Me and Luci have, like, less than a half hour until band rehearsal. We’d better get a move on.”

“I don’t want to overstay my welcome either,” Tim said, standing up. “I bet your parents will be back soon.”

Frank pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “All right then. Thanks for coming,” he concluded. “Also, Tim, Chartreuse, now that you know about the time machine, I see no reason to exclude you from any new incidents that come up. All we would ask is that you continue to keep the secret.”

“Of course,” Chartreuse agreed. “As long as you consider letting me time trip.”

“I’ll keep the secret,” Tim added. “But don’t feel you have to call me in. Keeping me updated through Chartreuse is fine.”

“Fair enough,” Frank said.

Everyone proceeded out of the sitting room.

“Oh yeah, Frank, there was an actual math question I wanted to ask you about,” Carrie remembered, snapping her fingers. “Can you spare a few more minutes?”

“Sure,” Frank agreed. “It’ll be nice to do something mundane for a change.”

Carrie pulled her notebook from her bag while the others retrieved their belongings and headed out the front door. With only a brief backwards glance, Luci joined Chartreuse under her umbrella in her walk towards the high school. His own umbrella open, Tim followed for a short distance before turning away to head for his own place of residence. Meanwhile, Carrie and Frank adjourned back to the Dijora sitting room.

At that moment, none of them felt particularly concerned about the future.

Ten minutes later, the gun went off.

PART 31: PAST MEETS FUTURE

Julie twisted the Rubik’s cube around. Perhaps if she… no, the colours weren’t going to line up that way either. Frustrated, she threw the object across the room, where it bounced off one of her filing cabinets. She glared at it, knowing full well that she wasn’t really upset with the puzzle cube.

“Damn you, Corry,” she seethed. “You have more stamina than I thought. I played the tape incriminating your sister at the dance. I set you up by putting those prescription pills in Carrie’s locker. I opened myself up to attack, and despite that - you wait. You. WAIT. This is driving me NUTS! I thought for sure, on Halloween…”

Julie raked a hand back through her hair and leaned back against the wall. “I can’t lose to you if you do nothing, Corry. What the hell is wrong, idiot? You know you want to deal with me. You’ve wanted it for two years, so COME AT ME already!”

There was a knock at the basement door to her ‘play room’, making Julie jump. “Who’s there?” she hollered.

“Me," came the voice of Jeeves, the family butler. “Clarke’s called you again.”

She’d stopped taking cell phone calls; he’d resorted to the land line. “Then you should have told him I didn’t want to talk."

“Indeed I did. But following that we had another call from your high school.”

“Then you tell Mr. Hunt he knows my price. I’m not budging an inch,” Julie asserted, even as she slid down the wall onto the ground.

“On the contrary, this time the principal recommended a good counsellor for you,” Jeeves responded. “And frankly Miss LaMille, I’m starting to think that a wise course of action. I would hate to see a repeat of whatever happened three years ago, before you came to this town.”

Julie began to rock her body back and forth. “It won’t happen,” she called back. She swallowed. “I’ll do things right this time,” she finished, too quietly for him to hear.

“Very well,” Jeeves concluded after a moment. “But your parents ARE still due to arrive next week. For your birthday. Ultimately, I believe the decision on counselling will be up to them?”

Julie didn’t answer. Her eyes merely tracked back to the lower drawer of that one particular filing cabinet. “You’ll see. I’ll do things right this time,” she repeated softly.

Mrs. Dijora smiled as she opened the door. “Why Carrie, how nice to see you again!”

Carrie flashed Frank’s mother a quick grin. “Thanks, likewise! Frank in?”

Mrs. Dijora nodded. “He’s downstairs with Luci.”

“Great,” Carrie said, stepping inside. “Euhhh, I can come in, right?” she asked belatedly. Mrs. Dijora simply nodded again, looking mildly amused as Carrie hurried past her to open the basement door. The blonde took the stairs down two at a time, the individuals in Frank’s lab turning to look as she reached the bottom.

“Don’t you ever knock?” Luci wondered.

“I knocked on the front door,” Carrie retorted. “Look, I’m actually glad you’re both here. We’ve got a new date we can time travel to as a test. Once you’re finished with your final checks or whatever.”

Frank adjusted his glasses. “Oh? What date might that be?”

Carrie took in a deep breath. “November 12th. Four days into the future.”

Frank stared back at her for a moment, then he turned to Luci. “Is there something going on here that I don’t know about?”

Luci pursed her lips. “Hard to say, really.”

Carrie lifted an eyebrow. “Okay, I know I’VE missed any connection between me and the– between me and Luci.”

“She suggested that same date to me yesterday,” Frank explained.

“Oh, she did, did she?” Carrie said, folding her arms.

“As I said to Luci then, even if it is possible, given how the device can apparently travel to any time during our current year… I’m not sanguine about travel to the future,” Frank continued. “It will substantially compound the number of unknown variables involved.”

Carrie shrugged. “Your fancy words are outvoted two to one,” she pointed out. “Though I would like to know exactly what Luci’s interest is with that date.”

Luci shrugged as well. “The same as yours?”

“You mean Corry?” Carrie pressed. Luci nodded. “So how did YOU know he’d be doing something then?”

Luci hesitated only briefly. “That would take a bit of explanation," she admitted. She boosted herself up to sit on the edge of the lab table, bringing her closer to Carrie’s height. “And while I’ve considered saying something before, it’s only now that the time machine is a factor again that it’s relevant. Thing is, Carrie, you cannot reveal what I’m about to say to Corry.”

Carrie sniffed. “No deal. At least, not if this relates to Julie, since the guy grills me on her every other day. I’m starting to think he’s got psychological problems."

“It doesn’t directly relate to Julie,” Luci assured. “It relates to Chartreuse. However, I cannot say anything more without an assurance of your complete confidence.”

Carrie frowned, and looked at Frank, who shrugged. “Look, I’ll keep quiet either way," he pointed out. “Again, more concerned with the actual travel into the future.”

Carrie fought briefly against her curiosity, but it was a losing proposition. “Okay, Luci,” she agreed. “Nothing to Corry. I’m pretty sure he’ll ease off me after the 12th anyway."

Luci eyed her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay then.” She took in a breath. “For the last month or more, Chartreuse, Tim and I have been working together. Trying to keep tensions from escalating too high at school between the Julie and Corry factions.”

“Seriously? You’re doing a lousy job then," Carrie blurted out. “Julie was accused of stealing that potted plant from Mrs. Latour’s desk the other week, Corry was blamed for messing up Julie’s law case files…”

“It’s not easy,” Luci interrupted. “People are ready to go off at the drop of a hat.” She leaned forwards. “That said, we’ve been pretty sure that Corry’s had something on the back burner. Chartreuse finally got the date of November 12th from Laurie earlier this week.”

“Hrmph. Okay, you’re up on me then,” Carrie grumbled. “Corry only gave me that date today. It makes sense though, that being Julie’s birthday,” she added. Luci nodded slowly.

“Wait, hold on,” Frank protested. “Why would Corry take action against Julie on her birthday?”

“When else?” Carrie retorted. “Corry doesn’t have experience with the long game, not like Julie. When she didn’t do anything after I switched teams, Corry was shocked. Since then, he’s questioned me about her motivations. Obsessively. Now, if you know Julie, you can see she’s been gradually fraying around the edges too - but in the end? No way was he going to outlast her. The date makes perfect sense, now that I know.”

“What DID Corry come up with on Julie’s motives?” Luci wondered.

“Can’t talk about it,” Carrie shot back automatically. She then rubbed the back of her neck. “Mainly because I don’t know. Corry and I don’t go much beyond speaking terms. He only gave me the November 12th date because, once I realized he wasn’t going to wait forever, I asked him to be nice enough to give me a few days heads up.”

“But… then what is Corry about to do?” Frank asked.

“Obviously, we don’t know,” Luci said. “Which is why I proposed going ahead to November 12th, to see something that might help clear things up for the 2DEGS."

Frank blinked. “For the… what?”

Luci blushed. “Uh, the 2DEGS. It’s, well, how Chartreuse refers to our little group of three,” she admitted a bit sheepishly. “See, she, me and Tim, we all have two degrees of separation from… look, it doesn’t matter,” she decided as Frank and Carrie’s stares become more incredulous. “Point is, I’ve always wanted to try a trip to the future too, to verify that it could be done. The time machine is functional again, so why not use it for a good cause like this?”

“Exactly!” Carrie shifted her gaze back to Frank. “Besides, aren’t you curious about the Julie-Corry feud? I say let’s go for it. I mean, for crying out loud, aren’t you at least pleased that I’m suggesting THIS instead of a trip back to deal with you-know-what?”

Carrie had decided that there would be time enough for her mother once the school situation had been dealt with.

Frank sighed. “Well, as you said, it appears I’m outvoted.”

“Excellent,” Carrie said, rubbing her hands in delight.

“There’s just one more thing,” Luci said. “I decided to tell you all that for a reason. Basically, before we go anywhere…” She took in a deep breath. “I want to tell Chartreuse and Tim about our time travelling.”

Both Carrie and Frank turned back to Luci. “What?” they chorused.

The next evening, Tim was shown into the Dijora sitting room. Chartreuse was already there. She smiled brightly at him. “Glad you could make it.”

Tim smiled back weakly.

“I’m so glad we’re getting to meet more of Frank’s classmates,” Mrs. Dijora said, clasping her hands together. “My son said he’d be upstairs shortly, can I get either of you anything while you wait? Juice maybe?”

“I’m okay, thanks,” Chartreuse said. “Tim?”

Tim simply shook his head. Mrs. Dijora nodded and left the room, after which Tim heard her calling downstairs to her son. He turned to Chartreuse. “So why would Luci ask to meet us HERE?” he wondered.

“Dunno,” Chartreuse confessed. “But I would, you know, guess it has something to do with Corry and our upcoming doomsday.” Tim nodded in resignation and took a seat. “Not a bad looking house here,” Chartreuse continued conversationally. “It’s probably got, like, good fung shui.”

Tim shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, neither would I,” Chartreuse concurred. “Not my area of expertise.”

She winked and smiled again, and Tim found he couldn’t help but smile back. For all her faults, Chartreuse did have a way of helping a person feel more at ease. Still, Tim found it difficult to get comfortable, particularly when not only Luci and Frank, but also Carrie walked into the room. All wearing sombre expressions.

“We’re clear,” Frank remarked, looking down the hall. “Dad’s out like usual these days and Mom’s gone upstairs for the moment.”

“So what’s, like, up?” Chartreuse asked. “Do you all have some new…” Her voice trailed off as Luci motioned for quiet.

“We’re about to let the two of you in on a big secret,” Luci began. “And while I trust you’ll both keep this quiet, there have been some reservations expressed.” Tim saw the younger girl glance at Carrie. “So let me be perfectly clear. What I am about to reveal, you are NOT speak of to anyone else. It doesn’t go beyond the five of us. Okay?”

Tim and Chartreuse looked at each other, surprised. “Okay, sure,” Chartreuse agreed.

“Not even to Clarke?” Tim asked.

“Especially not to him,” Carrie insisted.

Luci fully turned towards the blonde cheerleader. “Well… we are pretty sure he suspects anyway, via Julie,” she pointed out.

“All the more reason not to give Julie any more information,” Carrie challenged. “Clarke is not part of this agreement.”

“We’d prefer you didn’t mention it to him,” Frank offered up. “But we’ll take any other names under advisement, as we did when Luci suggested the both of you.” Carrie sighed in exasperation, but said nothing more.

Tim nodded. “O-Okay then,” he said, biting his lip. “The five of us.”

Luci spoke up again. “Tim, remember how you saw two Carries at the school dance? That’s something that never got properly explained. And Chartreuse, you’ve asked me about that other person caught by Professor Linquist - the one who looked similar to me, yet older. Again, I couldn’t go into any detail.”

The young asian girl began to pace. “This secret will explain everything. My hope is that it will also lead you to believe any information that comes out of what we’re about to do. Plus, Chartreuse, there’s something you’ve been hiding from us in the last week.” Chartreuse flinched. “Please take this action of mine as a gesture of faith towards revealing your own secret.”

“I… I’m not really hiding a secret,” Chartreuse protested. “There’s only this, like, event that I foresaw over a month ago, and I’ve recently had the feeling that it may be, you know, close at hand. If it happens. I could be wrong about the whole thing.”

“Oh, get ON with this already,” Carrie groaned. “Luci, if you’re going to tell them, do it before Frank’s mom comes back down.”

Luci rolled her eyes. “Okay, bottom line. Chartreuse, Tim… the three of us here have access to a time machine.” She let the comment sit there for a moment before adding, “And we’re planning on using it to travel forwards three days in order to see what happens to Julie at school.”

“What?” Tim said, bewildered.

“Cool,” said Chartreuse, without missing a beat. She leaned forwards. “How did you, like, get ahold of something like that?”

Carrie, Frank and Luci all answered the question at once.

“Government agents,” Carrie said.

“Came from the future,” Frank said.

“Through alien technology,” Luci said.

The three of them turned to look at each other. “We’re not sure of its origins,” Frank finally admitted.

“You have got to be kidding us,” Tim murmured.

“We wouldn’t kid about this sort of thing,” Luci assured him.

Frank stepped forwards. “In fact, there was one key argument in favour of revealing the time machine to you now. With the three of us traveling to the future, if something unexpected happens, and we can’t get back… well, it seemed wise to have someone in our own time who knew what was going on.”

“Can we actually see this time machine thing then?” Chartreuse asked eagerly.

Frank nodded. “It’s downstairs. Come on, we might as well explain to you what we’ve figured out so far.”

“Not that you’ll understand most of it,” Carrie added under her breath. Still, she was loud enough that Tim heard her remark. And, based on his understanding of things to this point, he was inclined to agree.

Chartreuse peered closely at the black box on Frank’s lab table, even as he began to explain something about coins. “You know,” she piped up when he paused. “I kinda thought a time machine would be, like, bigger. Aren’t you supposed to be able to ride in them?”

“Wait, let me see if I understand,” Tim said uneasily. “You drop a coin in that thing, pull the lever, and end up in the same year as when the coin was minted?”

Frank nodded. “Exactly. We can rig the month and day internally, even set the time now thanks to some new integrated circuits of Luci’s. There IS random variance, but so far we’ve only been more than a day off target once or twice.”

“Except when we ARE off by more, it can be for a month,” Carrie grumbled.

“Then what’s the pocket watch for?” Chartreuse wondered, pointing at it through the open top of the device.

“Oh, that’s my idea,” Carrie said, smiling as she leaned against the table next to Chartreuse. “It belongs to my family, and it’s going to display the actual time of arrival.”

“Maybe,” Luci yielded. “Thing is, we tried a digital readout, but it risks an overheating problem. This mechanical stopwatch doesn’t seem to affect the internal workings that way - and for whatever reason, it’s hands twitch when the machine is charged. Carrie has a ‘feeling’, so we mounted it inside.”

“Cool,” Chartreuse reiterated, deciding to ignore the skepticism in Luci’s tone. “How long have you guys been, you know, working on this thing then?”

“I found the machine back in September,” Carrie revealed.

“I did most of the initial work that month,” Frank added. “Though have been collecting coins for a few years.”

“And I helped tinker all through October,” Luci finished. “Not always successfully. Which is why you saw me as a twenty year old that day, Chartreuse.”

“This really doesn’t seem that safe then,” Tim put in. “You don’t know where it’s f-from, don’t know what it’s capable of, it’s got r-random variance, yet you’re actively USING it?”

“Some of us have a personal stake,” Carrie noted, crossing her arms.

“Plus we haven’t had any major problems,” Frank assured. “And it’s in using it that we discover more about it.”

“So, like, how many trips have you made?” Chartreuse wondered.

“I haven’t been keeping track,” Frank admitted. “Initially we made a few little test trips. That said, right now, we only have a half dozen or so present day coins left. I’ve seen fewer of them since they first started circulating, at the beginning of summer.”

Luci cleared her throat. “Respectfully - the questions could become endless, and they aren’t important right now. Chartreuse, Tim, I simply felt that you deserved to know.”

“THANK you,” Carrie sighed. “With that dealt with, let’s travel to the future before the future becomes the past. You’ve already set the device properly, right Frank?”

Frank nodded. “For after school on the 12th. That way we can learn about things through the aftermath, avoiding details.”

“Wait,” Luci objected. “Before we go - Chartreuse, that vision you mentioned…?”

Chartreuse felt her mood crash. “My visions aren’t always accurate, Luci,” she protested. “I mean, maybe you heard that in September, I forecasted that we’d finally have a winning football team? That never happened.”

“I doubt you put much effort into that reading,” Luci observed.

“Circumstances have, you know, changed over the last month too,” Chartreuse continued desperately. “I mean, my own detention with Carrie after the drugs might have, like, cancelled out what I saw.”

“Regardless, Chartreuse - if you know something about the future we’re going into, we could use that advantage.”

“Oh no, look, no, you don’t want this knowledge,” Chartreuse said, adopting her most serious posture. “You really don’t.”

“Maybe not. But I think we need to have it,” Luci said.

“Luci, if she doesn’t want to tell us, fine,” Carrie broke back in, with obvious exasperation. “Is this really so important?”

“It might be,” Frank put in, now looking a little more closely at Chartreuse. “Because this sounds significant. Like, drugs in a locker significant.” Carrie pursed her lips at that.

“Chartreuse,” Frank ventured, “we’ll be flying more blind than usual. If you somehow have insight into anything that’s coming… it really could be invaluable.”

Chartreuse shifted her weight back and forth. “Ooooh…” She exhaled, and decided to say it all in a rush. “ISawSomeoneWeKnowFromSchoolFiringAGun!”

No one spoke at first. Until Luci fired off the logical question, “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Chartreuse said sullenly, shaking her head.

“When?” Tim gasped out.

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“Did anyone get hit?” Frank wondered.

“I don’t know.”

“You really don’t know much at all,” Carrie muttered, barely audibly.

Chartreuse spun to face the blonde. “THAT’S why I didn’t want to say anything! You don’t know what it was like to see even that much, Carrie. I mean, if you’d, like, seen someone you knew shooting a gun, could you ever look them in the eye again without thinking about that? I didn’t WANT to know more.” Never mind that even that much had overloaded her vision.

Carrie seemed surprised at Chartreuse’s reaction, causing the pink haired girl to bow her head. “I-I’m sorry, Carrie. I didn’t mean to, you know, snap at you like that.”

“No. It’s fine, I think I had that coming to me,” Carrie yielded after a second. She turned to Luci. “Before I say something else I shouldn’t, can we please GO already?”

The younger girl reluctantly pulled her gaze away from Chartreuse. “Okay. Yeah. I think all the secrets are out now,” she finished.

Except there was too much tension in the air for Chartreuse. “We five do make an odd group, don’t we?” she offered up to them. “Guess I’ll have to, like, change the name of the 2DEGS, huh? How about, er, the time trippers?” Everyone blinked at her.

“That makes it sound like we do temporal drugs,” Tim objected. Carrie snickered, and to Chartreuse’s relief, the others joined in.

“Okay,” Frank concluded, after he finished chuckling. “So, any technical details should be answerable in the steadily growing pile of notes me and Luci have been making.” He gestured towards them. “Chartreuse, Tim, feel free to glance over those while we’re gone.”

“Though we may be back before we leave,” Luci remarked.

Carrie plunked a present day nickel into the time machine device. “We won’t get BACK unless we GO,” she reminded, grabbing the handle.

With another nod, Frank grabbed for their backpack of supplies and moved to take hold of the handle too, right after Luci. On a count of three, they pulled, and Frank felt the temporal void sucking him in. The next thing he noticed were the bright headlights of a van bearing down on him, doing at least 30 kph.

By the time this fact fully registered with him, Frank barely had enough time left to process being in the middle of the road. He realized then that he wouldn’t even be able to cry out.

There was nothing he could do now, except get hit.

PART 30: SEARCH AND RESCUE

Luci dropped her pencil to flex her fingers slightly. She glanced down at the floor but Taimu had wandered off somewhere else. Noticing the clock, she realized her parents might be back soon. Her foster parents - they had left a note upstairs indicating that they were out looking for her. As to her real parents, who knew? Maybe they really had been aliens.

Luci grimaced. Geez, what was she thinking? “Let’s get through the rest of this," she decided. The twenty year old scanned back over what she had written. “Though it looks like I’ll need to backtrack first.” She resumed her writing.

‘‘However, something I didn’t know at the time: When I didn’t show up for dinner, my parents contacted the Dijoras and the Vermilions. Then later in the evening, the police. A search was started, which as of Sunday morning, included Frank, Carrie and Chartreuse, all out looking for me.’’

“We’re getting nowhere,” Carrie stated.

Chartreuse ventured a smile at the blonde. “Not true. We, like, know that Luci made it to the store, and that nothing happened at the store. So whatever happened, happened after."

“Brilliant,” Carrie said dryly. “Peered in your crystal ball this morning, I see.”

“Carrie…” Frank said.

Carrie sighed in exasperation. “Okay, I’m sorry, but come on. Wandering the streets is not helping us at this point. We need a plan of attack. For instance, wouldn’t it be great if we could travel back in time a day to see what happened in person?”

Frank coughed. “Too bad we don’t have access to a working time machine," he said, looking pointedly between Carrie and Chartreuse. “Oh, um, offering to help us look around was very nice of you, by the way. It’s appreciated,” he added to the more heavyset girl.

Chartreuse adjusted one of the bows in her pink hair. “Hey, least I can do, you know? Luci’s my friend too. Still, I fear Carrie’s right. This doesn’t seem to be, you know, helping. Maybe we should, like, directly question people around here?”

She reached out to tap the shoulder of a man passing by. “Excuse me, sir, do you know anything about…”

The words froze on Chartreuse’s lips as her hand made contact with him. A wave of emotion blasted through her, making her snap her hand back with a gasp. She stumbled and might have fallen if Frank hadn’t caught her.

The wide-eyed white haired man turned. “What? Are you saying something?” he inquired.

“No. Nothing. Carry on,” Chartreuse gasped, trying to regulate her breathing. He blinked at her a few times, glanced at Frank and Carrie, then shrugged then continued on his way.

“Okay, what was THAT little drama about?” Carrie inquired, after the pedestrian had moved off a little ways.

“That guy, the one I tapped, who came out of the library – he knows something about what happened to Luci,” Chartreuse explained breathlessly. “I got this sensation that somehow, he, like, knows where Luci is.”

“What? Where is she??” Frank asked.

“I don’t know. This was an impression thing, you know, not a vision thing,” Chartreuse said, still trying to regain her equilibrium. “Don’t ask him though. Something’s off. It’s as if he knows WHERE she is but not WHAT she is, if that makes any sense.”

Carrie peered closer at Chartreuse. “Oh yeah. Lots of sense happening here.”

“You have to believe me! I mean, remember back when I, like, knew about the drugs in your locker?” Chartreuse reminded. Carrie flinched back.

“Okay, it’s our only real lead so far,” Frank concluded, looking up to see the man turning the corner. “Come on, quick, before we lose him.”

‘‘So they followed him, out towards the wooded area north of town,’’ Luci continued. ‘‘They lost him there, trying too hard to be unseen I suspect, and at that point split up to relocate him. Just my luck that Carrie was the one to stumble upon his cabin.’’

“You can allow me to have a direct look at your brain.” He turned the scalpel around in his hands. “Alas, at this point, that’s the only way for me to be certain.”

Which was when Luci heard a door behind her burst open and a familiar voice shout out, “Freeze!”

The man was instantly on his guard, crouching slightly. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“I’m… the one telling you to freeze,” Carrie’s voice said. “Luci, is that you?”

“Oh please, tell me you have backup,” Luci groaned, her eyes fixated upon the twitchiness of her abductor. She watched as he circled around towards the right, sensing that Carrie was moving in from the opposite direction. Soon they were both in her peripheral vision.

“Luci?! What has he DONE to you?” Carrie gasped as she finally got a good look at the asian’s eighteen year old body.

“Waiiiiit, wait, wait,” the man said. “Are you another of THEM? Come to take this one back to the mother ship?”

Carrie quirked up an eyebrow. “Um. Yes, in fact, I am one of them.”

“Carrie!” Luci hissed. What the hell was she hoping to accomplish by provoking an insane person? The blonde merely waved her off, intent on her original target. The crazy man.

“I should have known,” he said, growing visibly agitated, beginning to wave his scalpel around in the air. “I won’t let you win. I’ll kill you all!”

“But wait,” Carrie continued. “I am not here for this girl. I am defecting! That’s why I’m here now, to warn you - there’s thirty of the others tracking you down at this very moment. You’ve got to get away, before it’s too late.”

His mouth twitched. “You’re lying.”

“Yeah, they’re counting on you thinking that. It means they’ll finally be rid of your interference.”

His eyes flicked back and forth. “I… I can take them.”

“Yeah, they’re counting on you thinking that too. Geez, get going while the going is good! Here, I’ll help you gather up your notes.” She moved backwards.

“Hey… DON’T you TOUCH those!”

With both Carrie and her captor now out of view, Luci only heard him running, a loud THWACKing sound, and the noise of someone falling onto the floor. Then, heavy breathing. Luci squeezed her eyes shut. “Damn it Carrie, why don’t you think before you act?” she whimpered.

“Because if I did, he might have your brain in a jar by now,” Carrie panted. Luci blinked her eyes back open as she felt her classmate start to undo the ropes keeping her in the chair.

“Carrie! What… what just happened?”

Carrie finally caught her breath. “Fortunately, our friend here had a lot of notes, which make for ‘heavy’ reading. But what did he do to you, Luci? You look older than me!”

“This wasn’t his doing,” Luci explained as Carrie undid the last of the ropes, allowing her to rise to her feet. “It started before I saw him. This has something to do with the time machine.”

She could now see the rest of the room, including the apparent owner of the residence face down on the floor, a heavily bound book by his head. There were a number of papers scattered about.

“The time machine? You’re from the future?” Carrie said in confusion.

“No.” Luci took some tentative steps towards the prone figure as she fought to regain her sense of equilibrium. “It’s from when I touched those wires yesterday. In fact, I’m still tingling… this guy seemed to think my DNA was in flux.” As she said that, Luci stumbled and fell, but she was close enough now to reach out and grab a few of the loose sheets.

“Well, I hate to tell you this Luci, but this guy is a first class NUT. We’d better get out of here before he wakes up. I’ll call in the police and let them deal with him.”

Luci shivered slightly as she saw what had to be a lot of her vital statistics listed on one of the sheets she was holding. She wondered what had happened while she’d been unconscious. Still, it was the name at the top which quickly caught her attention.

“Report by Professor Linquist,” she said slowly. “I know that name.”

“Linquist?” Carrie frowned. “Yeah, wait a second. That’s the guy who lived in the LaMille mansion. Before they came to town.”

“I think you’re right. Wasn’t he supposed to be a reputable scientist?”

Carrie shrugged. “He might have won a local award or two, but the guy was a mysterious loner, meaning only slightly less whacked than he appears now. I mean, deciding to sell your mansion, in order to live out of a cabin in the woods? Hardly an upwards career move.”

Luci stared at the page. “But…” Then she froze as her stomach lurched. Oh no. Collapsing onto all fours, the buzzing noise returned.

Luci squeezed her eyes shut, gasping for breath, crying out in pain and confusion as her surroundings shrank and her body experienced another time jump forwards.

When the feeling passed, the first thing Luci became aware of was Carrie shaking her shoulder and calling out, “Luci? Gods, Luci! What the hell happened? Are you all right?”

“The tingling. It’s finally stopped,” Luci realized.

“Okay, that actually sounds bad. Come on, we’re going to see Frank,” Carrie decided. She must have taken off her jacket, as she now draped it over Luci’s shoulders. “I’ll carry you if I have to. Though… maybe not, you’ve gained some weight with your age. But still, come on already!”

“We have to gather up all the papers about me first,” Luci insisted. “I don’t want anyone else to have this information.”

She grabbed for her ID and personal effects, then any sheets which seemed to relate to her in any way. Carrie helped her scan through the pages.

“Why are you helping me here anyway?” it occurred to Luci to ask, wishing the pounding in her head would subside the way the tingling had.

“Because you’re another of Frank’s friends,” Carrie answered. Papers dealt with, she helped Luci back to her feet, grunting a bit with the effort. “Also, I’ve learned it’s not good when bad things happen to semi-decent people. Now, pull yourself together and let’s get a move on! Oh, by the way, Chartreuse is around here too. We’ll have to pass you off as your own long lost cousin, okay?”

Luci stared at Carrie, trying to wrap her head around that response, before nodding and allowing herself to be led out the door. Carrie filled her in as they headed out of the woods.

‘‘In retrospect, Carrie’s actions were nice. In a Carrie-esque way. Is it possible some of my prior opinions of her were coloured by her associations with Julie? And her apparent grudge against me, which came out of nowhere after that as-yet-unexplained missing second day of high school?’’

Luci nibbled briefly on the end of her pencil. She shook her head. ‘‘Anyway. Carrie sent a message to Frank. We all got back together, and then, to let me regain some more of my strength, Carrie and Chartreuse went off to handle talking to the police. This left me alone with Frank… all alone, with him sixteen, and me four years older than that.’’

Her grip tightened. ‘’That’s when everything went horribly, horribly wrong.’’

“Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Frank said. “Both you and Luci were kidnapped by this Linquist guy, but you managed to escape?”

“Not quite,” Luci admitted. “That was Carrie’s story for the benefit of Chartreuse.”

Frank grinned. “It had the flavour of one of her stories. Is this why you wanted me to wait here with you?”

“Yes. You see… Frank…” She took a deep breath. “I am Luci.”

Frank nodded. “A future Luci.”

“No. There was an accident with the time machine yesterday,” Luci explained. “When I touched those wires it did something to me, something that’s caused me to age rapidly a total of three times now.” Frank frowned and took a step closer, looking Luci up and down more carefully. She blushed mildly at the scrutiny. “Frank, I wouldn’t lie to you about this, honest.”

Frank coughed, stepping back again. “Sorry. But that’s kind of crazy - what do you think could have caused this?”

“It might have something to do with a genetics trigger in the machine,” Luci said tentatively, holding up the pages she’d retrieved. “That Professor Linquist, he’d picked up on the fact that there was a temporal signature fluctuating inside me.”

“Really?” Frank took the pages from Luci and scanned the top sheet. “Then do you think there might be a way we can use this information to change you back?”

Luci stared. “Change me… back?”

Frank looked back up. “Well, sure. You don’t want to stay in the body you have now, do you?”

Luci licked her lips. “I… I don’t know. Why… what’s wrong with the body I have now?” she murmured.

“Well… nothing I guess,” Frank admitted. “It’s just not you, right?”

“On the contrary, there’s every possibility that this is how I’m going to look in six or seven years.”

“In six years, sure,” Frank agreed. “But inside you’re still fourteen. Er, aren’t you?”

Luci looked down at herself. “Inside… I’m not sure how old I am,” she said softly. She turned away. “Frank, I’ve always been an outcast. Too smart for people my age, and too young for people of comparable intellect.”

She brushed some of her long, black hair back off her shoulder. “So this, it could be a blessing. My chance to fit in. The tingling inside me has stopped, so I don’t think I’ll get any older. So… so why can’t I continue my life from here as if I’m twenty?”

“Luci…”

She spun back towards him. “I mean, the time machine could have just matched my physical age to my mental age, right Frank? RIGHT? Maybe that’s what it did. Because look at me. LOOK at me! In this body, I can be taken seriously. No more condescending remarks from older people, no more students whispering about me behind my back. I can start living life anew.”

Frank stared at her for a long moment. “And what of fourteen year old Luci?” he said quietly. “The one who’s gone missing, the one who has a lot of people worried? If you stay at your current age, you can’t reveal who you really are, you must realize that. Think of all the questions it will bring up.”

Luci looked down at her feet. “So I’d have to move away. It’s fine, I’ll leave a note for my parents, and there aren’t that many people who will miss the old Luci.”

“I’d miss her.”

Luci smiled. “Frank, don’t be silly… I can visit. You’ll know it’s me.”

“No, I mean I’ll miss the Luci I used to know. The one I could study with. The one I could chat with over a juice.”

“But I’m still that Luci, only better. Older,” Luci asserted. She reached out to pull Frank closer to her. “In fact, I… I can be even more to you… like this…”

Frank’s gaze slipped down. He quickly jerked his head back up to look her in the eyes. “It’s all right,” Luci murmured. “I don’t mind if you look there. In fact, I… I’ve wanted to be close to you like this for so long.”

Frank’s eyes widened. “Oh, Luci…”

“In fact, I think I can finally say it. Frank… I love you.” With that, she leaned in and kissed him.

He didn’t react.

Then he pulled away.

A single tear splashed down onto the page of Luci’s diary. She pushed herself away from the desk. “This writing is NOT helping,” Luci realized. “It STILL doesn’t make sense.”

Slamming the book closed, she stood and hurled herself back onto her bed, grabbing one of her pillows and hugging it to her chest. Her now too large chest. “Why?” she whispered. “Why did I do that? I suppose I thought I could live out my fondest dream… Except…”

“Luci, this isn’t right.”

She stared at him. Trying to understand. “You think I’m too old for you now?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean you’re… you’re not my Luci.”

“Frank, I really am her. And my feelings are real.”

“Luci… I can’t. This is too weird. Y-You’ve just experienced something traumatic, w-we have to analyze that first…” He took a step backwards.

“Frank, wait!”

“I… I’m just going to have a look at these notes, okay? I’ll see if there’s anything I can do about what happened and I’ll… I’ll let you know if I come up with anything. Okay?”

“No… no, don’t be like this. Please don’t…”

“Luci, to me you’re still fourteen.”

“But Frank, I do love you!”

“I can’t handle that right now. Not like this. I… I’m sorry, Luci.” He turned and ran.

Luci threw her pillow across the room. “WHY?” she screamed, seized by an uncontrollable rage, her tears starting to flow freely once more. “I’d just escaped from a lunatic, everything was getting better, we’d kissed… MY DREAM WASN’T SUPPOSED TO END THAT WAY!”

Taimu, who had just peered around the door of her room once more, let out a yowl and backed away as he was almost hit by her second pillow. Luci didn’t even notice. Curling herself up into a ball, she simply cried. And cried. And cried.

“It’s not fair,” she choked out. “It’s not fair. I’m the right age now, it wasn’t supposed to end like that….”

It eventually occurred to her that she must present quite a sight, a twenty year old girl sobbing uncontrollably in the basement bedroom of her parents' house. With them out looking for her. Worried about her. Yet she couldn’t stay here. Not now. She swallowed hard, wiping at her cheeks, as another thought occurred.

“Physically, I’m twenty,” she whispered. “Mentally, I’m at least that old. But emotionally… emotionally am I still fourteen? Is that the problem here? And what about socially? I mean, what’s the point of being a brilliant scientist, if you have no friends to share your accomplishments with?”

She rolled her gaze up to the ceiling. “Gods, becoming this age… somehow, it’s lost me everything. Even Frank. I’m going to have to run away… and I don’t want to. I want to stay here! To be myself again! Oh God, whatever am I going to do?!”

Before her tears could flow again, her phone rang.

It was Frank.

‘‘Dear Diary. Well, I look fourteen again. Go figure.

‘‘It’s only ballpark fourteen, of course, as randomness dictates that I may be months off either way. It wasn’t calculated so much as it was an apparent correlation between some readings off of Professor Linquist’s scans, and power readings we’d recorded the other day off of the time machine. Which led to, you guessed it, going through that whole tingly physical ordeal again, merely in reverse. JOY.

‘’I skipped school on Monday so that no one would notice my age regressing, stuck it all out in Frank’s basement - after giving my parents a call to tell them I’d gotten away from the Professor and would see them once I’d worked through some issues. Adding to the confusion, when the police went out to Linquist’s cabin, the guy had vanished. They didn’t find any evidence of his bizarre activities either. Hopefully he left town, and we won’t run into him again.’’

Luci spun her pencil.

‘‘Now. On to the important stuff. The relationship gates are open between me and Frank - and neither of us quite know what to do about it. Frank said he thinks of me as, “a close friend, it’ll take time to sort the rest out”. I admitted that I went a bit overboard, and can wait on him for an answer. Particularly now that I’ve realized making myself older won’t solve anything. In fact, I think he asked Carrie about me today… she gave me a funny look when I left his place. Good! Let her wonder about me for a change.’’

Luci smiled at the thought, but it faded quickly.

‘’Actually, about Carrie… I remember writing once that no good would ever come of her hanging out with Frank. That my separating them would be for the best. In that, I may have been… mistaken. I’m starting to realize what a positive influence he’s been on her, while she, in her own way, has been pushing him towards becoming more decisive. It sounds weird, but we might both have Frank’s best interests at heart. Ugh. Could be trouble for me, long term… but hey, I got in the first kiss!’’

Her smile was back. ‘’To reiterate, what they say is true. Be careful what you wish for, lest you get it.’’ Luci set her pencil aside and closed her diary. But then she stopped, re-opened the book and riffled through to her last entry, taking up her pencil one last time.

‘‘P.S. : Since Linquist was apparently correct in his temporal analysis of me, where did he get the rest of his so-called data concerning “aliens”? Not that I believe I’m an alien, but the guy WAS once a legit scientist. Stands to reason that there was some truth to his ravings. Right? Meaning… the origin of the machine is extra terrestrial…?’’

Luci stared down at the page silently for a moment, before shaking her head, closing the book once again, and reaching up to switch off her desk lamp.

They had a fully working time machine less than three days later.

See the accompanying Commentary Post for ARC 2.1

PART 29: GROWING PAINS

‘‘Dear Diary,’’ scrawled Luci’s mechanical pencil. ‘‘A lot has happened the past 24 hours. Enough to make me feel like it’s spanned six years. Which… it has, in a way. It’s funny. And a good example of why you need to be careful about what you wish for, lest it come true. I hope writing things down here will help me to make sense of it all.’’

The pencil stopped moving across the page at that, fingers spinning the writing implement around idly. “It’s not like there’s much else I can do now,” came a soft voice. The voice belonging to twenty year old Luci Primrose.

Luci shook her head and leaned forward to continue writing, only to have one of her long ponytails slip around her shoulder and hide her arm under a mass of dark hair. She irritably grabbed at her tresses, flinging them back out of the way. “I should braid it, like Chartreuse does,” Luci grumbled. Then her lips pursed.

“I wonder, if I hadn’t considered having longer hair in my future - would it have been altered differently?” she mused aloud. “That seems likely… I should be happy it didn’t grow out everywhere. And that the dress in the back of Mom’s closet actually fits me. And that…” Luci looked back down at her diary. “Ugh, let’s go back to the beginning.”

The twenty year old resumed writing. ‘‘It all started yesterday afternoon,’’ she scribbled. ‘‘Typical Saturday to start November. Finished my homework, then went over to Frank’s house to put the finishing touches on our repairs to the time machine. Carrie was there too, being annoying. What else would one expect?’’

“Anything I can do?” Carrie asked, bouncing up and down on her heels.

“You can stop asking that every two minutes,” the young girl responded.

The fourteen year old peered into the open black box sitting on Frank’s lab bench - the box being the time machine device Carrie had found back in September. “Frank, are you getting a reading there yet?”

“Not yet,” Frank said.

“Hmph. I only want to help,” Carrie pointed out.

“Help by being quiet,” Luci proposed.

Carrie fell silent for another sixty seconds before speaking up again. “I have been looking over the circuit stuff you guys wrote out for the machine, you know,” she said. “The resistors, capacitance and all that. I may soon be capable of setting the device myself. I am trying here.”

Luci almost responded, ‘yes, you’re very trying’, but she bit her tongue before the words could come out. Things had been easier last month, with Carrie making verbal attacks and literally smacking people upside the head. Luci had years of experience in defending against aggression.

But no, ever since that incident with the drugs in her locker, Carrie had developed some sort of “rapport” with Frank and was thus being “nice”, so Luci couldn’t justifiably provoke her rival for his spare time. It was getting really hard to figure out the blonde cheerleader; Carrie had even switched sides from Julie to Corry in terms of school politics.

“Carrie, there really isn’t much more to be done at this point,” Frank chimed in. “After Luci makes these final modifications, we’ll be set to go.”

“Okay, I’m just saying, I want to help,” Carrie reiterated.

“Which is good,” Frank said. “But right now, you’re being distracting.”

“Okay, okay,” Carrie said, raising her hands in surrender. “Backing off.” She turned her attention back to the schematics on the nearby table, still glancing over her shoulder at them every now and again.

Breathing a silent thanks to Frank, Luci made a few more delicate adjustments. “That should do it,” she murmured, stepping back.

“I’m getting something,” Frank confirmed. “It’s… yes, hallelujah, we have power!”

Luci brushed off her hands, smiling happily. “Excellent. I can’t see how these new circuits would overheat the device like before, and it should now be possible to incorporate an item that displays exact time of arrival. Give or take three minutes, nineteen times out of twenty.”

“You’re done?” Carrie asked, coming back over where they were working. “We can do more time traveling now?”

“After running a few tests,” Frank reminded her.

“Oh. Testing, right, sure,” Carrie said, making a face. “Uh, I can try to help with that too?”

“First things first,” Luci decided. “Let’s double check what we’ve done so far.” She reached out for the present day quarter sitting nearby, plunked it into the time machine, and peered back down inside the device. “Hmmmmm,” she concluded.

“Hmmmmm? What’s hmmmmm, good hmmmmm, bad hmmmmm?” Carrie asked, trying to look over Luci’s shoulder.

“Frank, the machine’s not lighting up the same way here,” Luci said. She moved aside to allow him to look.

“That’s funny,” Frank confirmed, glancing into the device then back to the voltage meter he had hooked up. “Yet I am getting a power reading. In fact, the charge is increasing.”

Luci again looked into the black box. “I don’t understand. This should have worked fine. It must have something to do with how we reconnected the assembly to those mystery electronics inside the handle.”

“Maybe. I’d still rather not probe too deeply into those,” Frank said uneasily. “Since that handle controls the time jump. You didn’t, I don’t know, reverse any positive or negative connections, did you?”

“Frank, please,” Luci said, shaking her head. True, he was better at hardware than her, but she was above such a basic mistake.

“Maybe it’s something to do with a transistor?” Carrie piped up.

“No, Carrie,” Luci sighed. She paused. “Wait a minute, these wires don’t seem to be fully connected…” Grabbing a pair of tweezers, Luci reached in to gingerly nudge the ends closer together.

There was a flash of light, and the next thing Luci knew, she was on the floor, halfway across the room.

“Luci! Luci, are you okay?” Frank was saying, tapping her hand.

Luci briefly squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head to clear it. “I’m fine,” she said, slowly maneuvering herself into a sitting position. “Feeling a bit tingly, that’s all. What happened?”

“There was a big flash and you shot back a few feet,” Carrie explained. “Guess you touched something you shouldn’t have.”

“It could have been some sort of residual static charge,” Frank guessed. “Though if so, it was pretty big.” After helping Luci back to her feet, Frank returned to the time machine. “It’s no longer lit up. Strange!”

Luci shook her head again, trying to shake off the tingly sensation. “Strange indeed. I’ve no idea why the machine’s acting this way.”

“Maybe we’d better look back over those technical notes we were writing up.”

“The technical notes AGAIN?” Carrie said in horror. “But it’s already after five o’clock! Not that I mind,” she added hastily as Frank and Luci turned to her. “It’s only, well, I should tell my dad I’ll be sticking around a little longer than expected, yeah?”

“Wait, did you say it was after five?” Luci turned to look at the clock. “Mom asked me to pick up a few things at the grocery store this afternoon. I’d better go do that… but I can come back here right after. I don’t need to have dinner with my family, I can grab a snack.”

Frank shrugged. “We could probably do with a bit of a break anyway. Go pick up your groceries and have dinner, Luci. Contact me after seven if you want to come back and spend another few hours on this.”

Luci nodded. “I’ll be back, count on that. I want to figure out where we went wrong,” she asserted. The young asian girl turned and headed for the stairs.

“I don’t really need a break,” Carrie remarked. “So I can stay long enough to help you tidy up a bit.”

‘You don’t need a break because you didn’t DO anything,’ Luci thought. She turned around to say something of the sort, but Frank spoke first.

“Okay Carrie,” Frank relented. “If you’re dead set on being helpful, want to give me a hand coiling up these wires?"

Luci watched as Carrie nodded and moved next to Frank, smiling at him. A smile Frank returned. Luci’s grip on the stair banister tightened marginally. ‘If only I were a few years older,’ she thought. ‘Then I’d mean more to him.’

The tingly feeling refused to go away.

Gripping her pencil a little harder, the twenty year old Luci reached out with her free hand to take a sip from her nearby glass of water. Then she resumed writing.

‘‘So anyway, I went to the market, picked up a cauliflower, some ground beef and a few oranges. It was on my way back home that things first started to get out of hand…’’

Luci shuddered as she walked. The tingling sensation seemed to be growing worse. She decided she’d better send Frank a message as soon as she got home, it could be a bad sign. Of what, Luci wasn’t sure, but given the unknown factors they’d been playing with in their reparations…

Luci froze. Her stomach lurched, her fingers spasmed, and she dropped her bag of groceries onto the ground. A solitary orange bounced out, rolling down the street.

Reaching out to lean against the building next to her, Luci heard a buzzing noise in her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut. She gasped for breath. Something was happening to her, something she didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. She opened her mouth and cried out, the world around her inexplicably shrinking, like she was being pulled away, to another time…

The feeling passed. Luci re-opened her eyes, breathing hard. Everything around her looked the same. What on earth had that been about? Seeing her bag of groceries on the ground, Luci stooped down to retrieve it, but she misjudged the distance and fell to her knees.

She realized then that her jeans felt too short and too tight, particularly around the hips. Her bra was also too confining and her hair… her hair had grown out, past her shoulders.

“What’s happening to me,” Luci whispered, looking her body up and down. “I… I’ve aged a year or more…” She quickly made the connection. “It must relate to the machine. I’ve got to get in touch with Frank!”

A pair of feet stepped into view, and Luci looked up into the face of a man with wild, white hair and wide, staring eyes. Eyes which were currently fixated upon her. They accompanied an expression of complete and utter astonishment.

“I saw what you did,” the well dressed male said. “Don’t think I didn’t see what you did.”

“Please,” Luci croaked out. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not like that. I need to make a phone call… help me up…” She extended a hand in the hopes of receiving some support.

She didn’t get it.

“You’re one of THEM,” he cried out. “You inhuman monster. I’ll kill you myself!” With that, he backhanded her across the face.

Caught off guard, Luci fell to the side, misjudged again where the ground was, and knocked her head on the pavement. The last thing she heard before succumbing to unconsciousness was the man muttering, “I knew they had to slip up eventually.”

“Miaou?”

Luci turned. “Taimu!” she said in delight. Setting aside her pencil, Luci leaned down to regard the small black cat which was currently cocking its head curiously at her. “You still recognize me even though I look a lot older, right Taimu?” Luci said.

The cat seemed uncertain. It kept its distance, flinching back as Luci extended a hand. However, Taimu didn’t run off either. Continuing to size Luci up, he finally allowed her to scritch behind his ears. “I’m still the same old Luci inside,” Luci explained softly. “But something unusual has happened to me. You may never see fourteen year old Luci Primrose again.”

Taimu began to purr softly. Luci smiled. “If only everyone was as understanding. Unfortunately, I might have to go elsewhere to start a new life, to avoid curious people poking and prodding at me.” She shuddered. “I hope I don’t run into Professor Linquist again any time soon.”

“Mrow?” the cat vocalized, tail twitching.

“You don’t want to know,” Luci assured her feline friend. Pulling away from Taimu, Luci resumed her seat, picked up her pencil and spun it idly around her fingers once more. Then, taking a deep breath, she continued to write.

Luci regained consciousness only to find herself tied to a chair, bound hand and foot. Moreover, she didn’t seem to be wearing the same clothing, she was dressed in some kind of hospital-style gown. She forced herself not to panic. One thing at a time. At least it didn’t feel like the outfit was open at the back.

Looking around, she saw that she was inside a sparsely furnished one room cabin structure, and was at present facing the rear wall. There was a table nearby with a loaf of bread sitting on it, making Luci realize how hungry she was. How long had she been knocked out? There was daylight filtering in through a window somewhere, so possibly all night.

Luci tried to twist her body around to see what was behind her, only to have the man who had accosted her out move into her field of vision. He now seemed to be wearing a lab coat overtop of his button-up shirt and pants.

“Good, you’re awake,” Luci’s abductor said, mouth twitching slightly. “Had to keep you unconscious until now, hope you don’t mind.”

“Who are you?” Luci asked hoarsely. “Where am I, what’s going on?” She needed a glass of water.

“Tut tut, I’ll be asking the questions,” came his reply. He looked down at a sheet of paper. “You are Lucille Isabella Primrose, correct?”

“I prefer Luci,” Luci responded. He’d taken away her ID. Great. Worse, she was having trouble concentrating, and her body was tingling. She wondered fleetingly if she had a concussion, only to remember these sensations matched how she’d felt before getting knocked out. In fact, Luci now realized that she’d had another strange growth spurt while unconscious. Perfect. “Can… can I have some water? My throat hurts.”

He peered at her. “Yes, all right, that might be all right.” He backed away and Luci heard a fridge open. When he returned, he poured some water from a bottle between her lips. That helped her feel a bit better. “However, you’d best be co-operative now,” he asserted.

Luci stared at him, fighting the impulse to scream. “Why have you brought me here?”

The man waggled his finger. “That’s not co-operative.” He threw the bottle away into a corner of the room, making Luci jump, then began to pace back and forth. “I’m not the one tied to the chair, so I’m the one who gets to ask the questions. It only makes sense.” He crouched down before her. “Now. Tell me, who are your parents?”

Luci sized up her opponent. He didn’t seem completely stable, and she wasn’t in much of a position to bargain. “Amy and Greg Primrose,” Luci answered.

“No,” her captor fired back irritably, jabbing a finger at her. “I’ve been doing some checking on you. You’re adopted! So, who are your REAL parents?”

“How the hell would I know?” Luci countered.

He nodded. “I knew it. Your true parents are aliens.”

Luci flinched anew. “A-Aliens?"

“Oh yes.” The man began to rub his hands together. “That’s how they do it, you see. They leave their children on doorsteps and in orphanages, in the hopes they’ll be adopted, and brought inconspicuously into society. Very clever, very hard to trace. But I knew I had to come across one like you sooner or later. This was the most likely town for it!”

Oh God. The guy was definitely a few chips short of a motherboard. “I assure you, I’m not an alien,” Luci said, struggling to keep a neutral tone. “Being an adoptee doesn’t mean someone’s an alien.”

“I know that,” he retorted. “I’m not stupid! But you’re more than an adoptee. You look like an 18 year old to me today. Yet yesterday you looked to be a 16 year old disguised as a 14 year old. A little difficulty controlling how people perceive your form, hmmmm? What’s your REAL age?”

“I… I’m fourteen,” Luci yielded. “Something strange has been happening to me, physically. But it’s not because I’m an alien. Come on, you’ve got to believe that.”

He looked her up and down again, scrutinizing her closely. Too closely. It made Luci feel very uncomfortable, not only owing to her restraints, but also due to the ‘new’ body she seemed to be in. She would apparently blossom quite nicely in her later teens.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” he concluded. “Yes, you shouldn’t have said that, you’re making my life so much more difficult.”

Luci shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Aggggh,” he grumbled, pulling back and rubbing the sides of his head. “It’s your DNA, don’t you see? I took a sample of genetic material. It’s in a state of temporal flux! That’s what I don’t get, I don’t get that, it could mean you’re a victim as opposed to a collaborator… so should I kill you, or not? Hm, wait, okay, tell me, were you recently abducted by aliens??”

“Not before you.” Luci immediately wished she could call that retort back. “But what do you mean my DNA is in temporal flux?” she continued, hoping to divert his attention. “How could you possibly determine something like that?”

An off-kilter smile spread across her captor’s face. “Oh, I have methods,” he remarked. “After all I’ve been looking into alien visitations ever since… hey, you’re asking questions again!”

Luci attempted a shrugging motion. “Sorry,” she said, averting her gaze.

“Don’t you turn away from me!” With one step he was beside her, grabbing her chin, turning her head back. Luci gasped. “Your eyes, your eyes are most interesting to me, actually. Different colours. That, I think, might be significant.”

“Please, let me go,” Luci whimpered, starting to lose control over her emotions.

“Mmmm. Nope, nope, can’t do that I’m afraid. See, it’s important I know about you for sure, one way or the other.”

“Then how can I convince you I’m human…?”

He stared at her silently for a moment before letting go of her chin.  Reaching into a pocket of his lab coat, he pulled out a scalpel. “You can allow me to have a direct look at your brain.” He turned the scalpel around in his hands. “Alas, at this point, I fear that’s the only way to be certain.”

PART 28: HISTORY LESSON

Carrie was in trouble almost immediately after her alliance with Julie became public knowledge. It was Monday morning, so at first, she’d thought that she’d merely misremembered her locker combination. But after two more attempts, upon peering a little closer at the lock, she noticed a white substance congealed around the mechanism. She frowned.

“Here,” Julie remarked, coming up behind the blonde. She tossed Carrie a new lock. “Anticipated something of the type. Happened to me too. No sweat, we’ll get the janitor to cut off your old one before class."

Three days later, Chartreuse chased Corry down the hall. “Corry! Oh,  Corry,” the green haired girl called out. “I was sick yesterday. Could I, like, borrow your notes from science class? Please? You always take real good notes."

Corry stopped walking and turned to her. “That won’t be possible," he said tersely. “Seeing as I need to find someone with a fresh copy of the notes since Monday myself.”

Chartreuse blinked. “What? Why?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” was Corry’s final word on the matter.

The following week, Julie opened her locker at the end of the day, only to have two dozen condoms spill out onto the floor. She pursed her lips, as around her, people’s eyebrows went up. “Crude, but effective,” the brunette murmured.

A week later found Mrs. Willis growing upset with one of her students.

“Corry, will you PLEASE correct your tuning?” Mrs. Willis pleaded. “Your notes sound at least a semitone out.”

“But I’ve already tuned twice,” Corry protested. “Maybe the flute is… wait a minute…” Corry leaned over to glance at the stand of the person next to him. Then he looked more closely back at his own music.

His eyes widened, then he bit down on his lower lip. “I’m sorry, I don’t think this is the same part you handed out at the end of last rehearsal. Do you have another copy available?”

The feuding continued like that right through into December.

A week before Christmas, Carrie dropped by the LaMille mansion in advance of a shopping trip. She was easily persuaded to hang around long enough for a cup of hot chocolate, in order to allow her friend to finish working on something.

“Julie,” the blonde began tentatively as she leaned back in one of the plush chairs of the sitting room. “Can I ask something about school?”

Julie glanced up from the coffee table, where she was making notes. “Hm? Sure, what is it?”

“It’s about Corry. At this point, we have pretty clearly defined friends, and he has other friends, and yet there’s still this dominance thing going on between you two. Which seems to be getting worse and worse,” Carrie added. “Yet a couple months ago, you said Corry would eventually cease to be a problem. So… I mean, how soon is eventually?”

Julie half smiled. “You’re not questioning my plans, are you?”

“Nah, nothing like that,” Carrie said dismissively. “Just curious as to where this is going. I mean, you don’t want this to be a never-ending battle… right? Eventually some seniors will get caught in the crossfire, or lord help us, administration. And that Mr. Hunt, he can really freak a person out.”

“Don’t worry,” Julie assured. She scrawled a couple more items down before adding, “I’ve got something in the works. The feud will end before our exams in January.”

Carrie leaned forward once again. “I knew you had a plan! Come on, can’t I at least get a hint about what it is you’re up to?”

Julie sized Carrie up. “Okay. You remember that picture of Corry I tacked up on the bulletin board last week?”

Carrie grinned. “The cute baby picture? Yeah! Hey, where did you get that anyway, from his sister?”

“No,” Julie said, shaking her head. “But the source was someone close to Corry. Someone who has now proven that they are willing to assist me instead. Someone who will help bring things to a close.”

“Oooo, crafty,” Carrie remarked. “Okay then. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help."

“I will,” Julie assured her. “Patience. For now, simply wait and watch."

Carrie nodded. “Okay, okay, sure.” She tapped her fingers absently on the armrest as Julie resumed writing. “So, you almost done? I do want to get to the shops before they close.”

“Almost,” Julie confirmed.

“I still don’t know what to get as a Christmas present for dad," Carrie grumbled. “It’s been a tie the last two years, maybe I should show more originality. Not that he’ll really notice… hey, what are you getting your parents?”

Carrie turned back to Julie, only to find herself on the receiving end of an icy cold stare. “O-Oops,” the blonde said meekly. “No talking about your family, right. Sorry. Slipped my mind for a moment.”

Julie set her pencil aside and stacked the pages where she’d been writing. “I’m ready,” she said simply, her expression turning back into a smile. “Let’s hit the mall.”

The New Year came and went. School resumed, for the final weeks leading up to semester one exams. And Corry opened his locker at the end of the day on Thursday, to find a note lying on top of his books.

‘‘Friday marks four months since we first saw each other. We both know that’s when it’s going to end. Meet me before school on the balcony section of the gym. 8am. No recording equipment, no tricks, no sidekicks. Let’s finish this.’’

“Yes, let’s,” the redhead murmured, picking up the note and crumpling it in his hand.

The two teenagers stood staring at each other in the silence of the large gymnasium. As it had been back in September, their expressions were cold, neither of them willing to blink first. Ultimately, Corry succumbed. But Julie was the one who spoke.

“This can’t go on,” she began. “So it ends here. Today.”

Corry nodded. “I agree. One of us has to bow aside and let the other claim victory.”

Julie brushed some of her long hair back off her shoulder. “I believe the winner will be based on the results of the Christmas fundraising drive. I’ve heard that those numbers are being announced today."

“Correct,” Corry agreed. “It’s a bit silly really, the band raising money by selling Christmas ornaments. Fruit, now that’s where the real money is."

“I’ll take your word on it,” Julie shrugged. “Band isn’t my thing. That said, you have managed to sell quite a number of those ornaments.”

Corry grinned. “You did get that delivery then. Good.”

Hands moving to her hips, Julie began tapping her foot on the floor. “What, precisely, were you hoping to accomplish by signing me up for $200 worth?"

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Yes, but go ahead and confirm my suspicions. I’m sure you’re dying to any way,” Julie said, gesturing Corry’s way.

Corry inclined his head in acknowledgement. “It’s quite simple really. The fact that I got you to purchase such a large quantity of items from me would be seen by others as a lessening of hostilities. By paying me, you’re also implicitly accepting me in a position of authority. Thus there would be talk if you persist in rebellious activities following this incident. In particular, I would be most wounded and confused by any breach in our ‘ornament agreement'.”

“I could always refuse to pay you,” Julie countered. “Claim that you forged my signature. Seeing as you DID.”

“Oh! Such a lack of school spirit,” Corry gasped, bringing a hand to his chest. “Come off it, Julie. I wouldn’t have done it without knowing that your family could afford it. Besides, I think you knew what I was doing, and did nothing to stop me. It’s too late to cry wolf now."

“Indeed,” Julie said dryly. She shifted attention to a fixed point off to Corry’s right. “Not a bad plan, really. But here’s the thing. I obviously have more school spirit than you think, since I paid for $300 worth of those useless ornaments.”

Corry lifted an eyebrow. “You think raising the stakes gets you out of this?”

“Yes,” Julie remarked, looking back at Corry. “Particularly when the records reveal that everyone only expected that amount to be $200.”

Corry frowned. “You can’t change the past though,” he argued. “And you only received $200 worth of merchandise. In a war of my word against yours, I win out."

“Well, no,” Julie countered. “Because I DID receive $300 worth, and my personal records show a loss of $300. Which gives me the stronger case. I wonder, where did that extra hundred GO, Corry? Surely you’re not using it for anything unscrupulous!”

She brought her hand to her chest, mimicking his earlier action. “Now, we can write it off a simple accounting error - that I had to bring to your attention - but only if you acknowledge that I’ve come out on top in our little war of one-upmanship.”

Corry narrowed his eyes. “Impressive. However, you couldn’t have managed something like that alone.”

Julie tapped a finger against her cheek. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps there’s someone you shouldn’t have trusted quite so much.”

There was a moment of silence. “You got to Sue,” Corry concluded. “It’s the only answer. She’s one of the few who knew what I was going to do, but more than that, she offered to run the final tally sheets in to the company before the Christmas break. Gives her both means and opportunity. But what was her motive? What did you offer her?”

“That’s confidential, I’m afraid.”

Corry pursed his lips. “I could take $100 from my personal savings to cover the situation.”

“Which still means that underneath it all, I win,” Julie pointed out. “You have to acknowledge that.”

“True. Point, counterpoint, very nicely done. Except there’s one little detail we still need to cover.”

Julie’s hint of a smile vanished. “What might that be?”

“The fact that I already knew Sue was working with you. I’ve known for the past month,” Corry continued. “It was my idea to have her defect in the first place.”

Julie tensed. “Really.”

“Oh, yes,” Corry replied, a smile slowly returning to his features. “I even managed to suck it up for those couple of humiliating instances where Sue helped you out. Not the way I’d have preferred to go about things, obviously, but I’d hoped that an apparent defector would interest you. That it would pay off in the end. And it has, it really has.”

The side of Julie’s mouth twitched. “Indeed.”

“So, let’s review, shall we? You have $300 worth of little Christmas trinkets. I have a signed statement from Sue,” Corry said, pulling it out, “to the effect of you chipping in that extra $100 over my $200. Along with the reason why, so don’t even try to claim that you did it to be gracious. Which means - and correct me if I’m wrong - that however much you decide to pay me, I’ve won!”

Julie remained silent, so Corry tipped an imaginary hat her way. “I am sorry,” he concluded. “But you see, it all came down to loyalty. A concept you don’t appear to fully understand. Must make things terribly lonely for you.”

“I should have known,” Julie whispered at last, clenching and unclenching her fists as she glared at the paper Corry was holding. “Sue was always a little too eager to please. I should have seen through that.”

“Well, don’t feel bad,” Corry soothed. “I may still consider you a follower of mine sometime in the future. Though, based on what I heard from Sue, you have a ruthless streak. Got to make sure I don’t give you too much power, or people might get hurt.” With a final parting smile, he turned away.

“Wait,” Julie retorted.

Corry turned back. Not so much because he cared what she had to say, but because the tone of her voice had suddenly taken on a peculiar, even eerie quality. “I beg your pardon?”

“You have won this battle,” Julie said slowly. “Privately, I will admit that. And publicly, I will take no further direct action against you for the next couple of years. However, I ask that you do the same for me. No actions, and most of all, no lording this victory over my head. I concede… to a stalemate.”

Corry almost laughed. Except something about her demeanour was starting to spook him. “What possible motive could I have to do that?” he demanded. “Come on, accept that you lost, Julie. We’ll move on.”

“No.” Julie began to roll up the left sleeve of her blouse, all the while staring at Corry. “I can’t lose,” she said. “Not to you. Not like this. I have too much at stake. Again, I concede… no, make that I request a stalemate.”

“Julie, you’re not being reasonable.”

“You can do this. You will claim that the $300 was a joint effort we’re using to put aside our differences. You will not reveal your ‘signed statement’ to anyone. We will leave each other alone except in cases of indirect or third party involvement.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “Note I would be most wounded and confused by any breach of this new ‘agreement’.”

Corry spread his arms out. “Oh, please. And what are you going to do if I don’t comply with these ‘rules’?” he challenged. Her smile was off kilter. What was up with that face?

“You will, because if you don’t comply… I’ll kill myself," Julie finished softly. She raised her right hand, which now held a razor blade in it.

Corry’s eyes widened. “You’re bluffing,” he retorted.

Her movement was quick. Blood began to well up from the cut on Julie’s arm. Corry was next to her in an instant, grabbing her wrists and holding them apart as she lifted her gaze back up towards him. “The next cut might be lethal,” Julie said. “Now, accept the terms of my stalemate.”

“What the hell are you doing, Julie?” Corry asked. For the first time in his life, he felt panic, like somehow he was in way over his head. “High school freshman command structure is not something to kill yourself over!"

“It’s as I told you in the beginning,” Julie said quietly. “Our motivations are fundamentally different. Now, accept the stalemate.”

“Julie, you need help. This is not normal behaviour. Let’s go see a guidance counsellor, okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Once you accept the stalemate.”

“Stop saying stalemate and listen to me. I’m not going to let go of you until you listen!” He shook her slightly. A drop of blood dribbled off Julie’s arm and onto the floor.

“On the contrary,” Julie continued calmly. Too calmly. “I hear you quite clearly. Moreover, you’ll have to let me go sometime. Either that, or explain why you’re holding me with a cut on my arm.”

The corner of her mouth turned up. “My version of events might not match yours there. So I say again, accept the stalemate.” She tilted her head to the side. “Unless you are willing to let me die after all?”

Corry worked through a few choice facial features. Never, in a million years, could he have anticipated that things would turn this dark. “This is blackmail,” he pointed out. Julie didn’t respond.

He eyed her arms – there was no evidence of any other cuts there. This had to be a one time thing. Right? “Y-You won’t really do it,” he asserted.

No reaction. Damn, but that was creepy. It was like she didn’t care at all. Corry let out a rush of air. “Fine, I won’t take you on directly but don’t expect me to step aside for you.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, all right, I accept your goddamned stalemate! But I don’t accept YOU, Julie. Moreover, you need to get yourself some serious psychological counselling.” With that, he released her, remaining poised to act again should she lift the blade once more.

Julie merely nodded, swaying slightly on her feet. “We’ll see.” She produced a handkerchief, wiping off the the razor blade and putting it back in her pocket. Even as another drop of blood slid off her arm. “By the way, if you speak about this to anyone, I WILL deny that it ever happened.”

“Of course you will,” Corry said. “Which doesn’t change the fact that your parents need to get you a shrink.” He glanced down again at the cut across her arm and a shiver ran up his back. Turning away, he stalked out the nearest door.

Julie was left all alone. She glanced down at the pretty crimson stain she’d created. “Maybe they do,” she murmured. “But for that to happen, I must first prove myself to them.”

She finally used the handkerchief to apply pressure to her arm. “If only I hadn’t been forced to play this trump card so soon… now I’ll need to find another one.” She hurried off to find herself a better bandage.

“Carrie, wait,” Julie called out. She caught up to the blonde girl right before she could enter the school. The brunette smiled broadly. “There’s something I’d like you to do today, okay?”

Carrie nodded. “Sure, Julie, what’s up?”

Julie glanced around, to make sure there was no one nearby. “I’d like you to see about getting Laurie Veniti to discover, in advance, the location of the upcoming math tests.”

Carrie blinked. “Corry’s sister? But what about last week? I thought you and him had decided on some stalemate or something.”

“Yes, but I played some of my cards a bit soon,” Julie explained. “So I need a new ace. Please do this for me, without her brother finding out.”

“Okay,” Carrie said with a shrug. “Keep you updated as usual?”

“Of course,” Julie acknowledged with a smile.  “In particular, I want you to let me know when you’ll end up meeting with Laurie to discuss the tests' actual location. That will be really important.”

Monday lunch, Sue slammed her hands down on the cafeteria table.  “What the hell is going on?” she demanded in cold fury.

Corry looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? What do I MEAN? What you THINK I mean?” she hissed. “We had her, Corry, we had her in the palm of our hand, and you let her walk away! Why?”

Corry looked back down at his lunch. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“You’d rather not talk about it,” Sue repeated. She shook her head. “I thought I knew you, Corry. Maybe high school has changed you. What did she give you anyway, money? I turned down a new wardrobe to remain loyal to you. Was that a mistake?”

“Sue, I REALLY don’t want to talk about this right now,” Corry insisted, the grip on his utensils tightening. “Let’s leave it at ‘things got complicated’.”

“Well, isn’t that nice. Especially considering all the times you’ve wanted to talk with me about this, that, or the other thing. Time I put aside what I was doing for you. To talk, or research, or whatever. Because I believed in your ideals, and the things you were doing.”

She leaned in closer. “So now I’m asking you, Corry, as a friend… why didn’t you expose Julie for who she really is?”

“Because we don’t KNOW who she really is,” Corry shot back, angrier than he’d intended to be. “We don’t know who she is, or what she might be capable of. Trust me. We have no idea.”

“Oh, lovely. Now you’re questioning my research. She really has a put a spell on you.” Sue stared at Corry quietly for another minute. “So, as much as it pains me to say this, I don’t feel comfortable working with you any more. Not under these circumstances.”

“Look, what’s done is done, I can’t help that,” Corry stated, closing his eyes and wishing he were somewhere else. “At this point, it’s too late for me to go back on my public word. It would have… consequences.”

At least, he suspected it would. Yet to see Julie today, you’d never know she had suicidal tendencies. Assuming she honestly did. Was it possible that the whole episode had been a huge gamble on her part? He wouldn’t put it past her.

But then, he also wouldn’t put it past her to lie if he actually told anyone about the incident. Worse, there remained a chance that she really might do something to herself… so, as he’d said, he couldn’t change the past. Merely work to improve the future.

He reopened his eyes in time to see Sue shake her head. “Okay, Corry. It’s been fun. I’ll probably freelance for a while, but don’t take it personally if some day, I end up working for Julie. After all, it looks like a little ruthlessness goes a long way." That said, Sue turned and walked away.

Behind her, Corry clenched his fists. “Damn you, Julie,” he whispered.  “Whether you’re a lunatic or not, if you screw with my life to this extent again…” The plastic fork in his hand snapped in half. “No mercy.”

In early November, nearly twenty-two months later, two other students met in the balcony area of the school gymnasium, early in the morning. The male cleared his throat. “Laurie?"

The redhead turned, feeling her cheeks grow warm. “Clarke.”

“Did you… that is, were you able to find out anything?”

Laurie’s gaze fell to the floor. “Maybe.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Clarke assured her. “Not if you feel like you’d be betraying your brother. It’s only that, well… it’s been a month since that recording played at the dance. Since Carrie switched sides. Since Julie… I don’t even know. Initiated a cold war, to the benefit of nobody. It all hinges on Corry now. So any information I can get there is handy for trying to get through to Julie.”

“Yeah,” Laurie said quietly. “I know. Don’t worry. You, I’ll tell.” She took in a deep breath. “I went into Corry’s room when he was out at band practice and he’d flipped his calendar over to this month, and I saw he’d marked a date there, circled it in red, and it was the twelfth.”

She swallowed. “So whatever it is, I think November twelfth is gonna be the day he moves against her.”

“Julie’s birthday,” Clarke realized. He turned to look out over the balcony railing. “Damn.”

PART 27: FLASHBACK

It was hate at first sight. Then again, no, perhaps hate was too strong of a word, Corry mused. But this was at least mistrust. Before the male Veniti twin could think any more about it, his thoughts were interrupted by his sister.

“Golly, isn’t this exciting?” Laurie said, clasping her hands together. “High school. Grade Nine. A brand new school, with new teachers, new friends, new everything, even a new school notebook for me, I hope I don’t lose it or get lost in the halls either and oh what about classes, how hard do you think they’ll be I’m a bit worried about that but I can probably ask for extra help if I have to, or you could help me out too if I run into real trouble I mean that would be all right, wouldn’t it, Corry? Corry?” She tugged on his shirt.

Corry sighed softly. “Laurie, not right now. I’m trying to size up the crowd.” He turned to look for the brunette girl again, but she had disappeared.

Laurie sighed back at her brother. Here they both were, standing out in front of THE school, the only secondary public school in the small Canadian town where they lived, finally as high school freshmen… and he was fixated on people watching.

Although they both looked similar - at least in terms of their heights, their shoulder length red hair and freckles, and the fact that they were both wearing red shirts and dark pants - the similarities ended with appearances. Laurie simply had no idea how the both of them could have ended up with such different outlooks on this pivotal moment in their lives.

“Geeeezzz Corrrrrryyy,” she retorted. “If you’d stop your resizing for a minute or two maybe you’d realize how cool this moment is. I mean why are you getting all wrapped up in finding new followers already, we haven’t even made it to homeroom yet to see who’s there, why don’t you relax and have fun like you used to?”

“Corry, there’s more to life than position and statues!”

“Status,” Corry corrected absently.

“Ugh, whatever,” Laurie said, gesturing dismissively. “Look, this is our youth, we’re supposed to enjoy… oooh, golly, there’s Chartreuse, I recognize the green hair. Look, I’m gonna leave you to your moping and go say hi before the bell rings and all that, ‘k?"

Without even waiting for her brother to respond, Laurie hurried off to talk with her friend.

Corry took a moment to watch his sister go, smiling despite himself at her enthusiasm before he resumed his inspection.

“Okay, that guy looks influential, could be someone to have in my corner," he muttered to himself. “While the girl there with the glasses could be roped in once I’ve gained some prestige. The guy heading for the doors looks to be a senior - I’ll deal with them through music extra curriculars, at least at first…”

Corry stopped as he caught sight of THAT girl once more. She had long curly brown hair, and was wearing a conservative looking sweater. Again, he felt that sense of mistrust. There was something about her that he didn’t like.

When he finally put his finger on exactly what that thing was, the answer surprised him: she appeared to be sizing up people in the same way that he was. Even as he realized this, she turned, and their eyes met. For a split second, it was as if they were the only two people standing in the area.

‘Who are you?’ Corry thought. He took a step towards her, but a group of people chose that moment to disrupt his line of sight. By the time he reached her former position, she had once again disappeared. Corry pursed his lips. He decided he didn’t like this turn of events.

“Yo, Corry! High school, how about it?”

“Tommy, I have a job for you.”

Tommy blinked. “What, already? Man, don’t you ever relax? We haven’t even started classes yet.”

“There’s a girl, a brunette with curly hair down to about here,” Corry said, turning to his former middle school ally and motioning partway down his back with his hand. “I think she’ll be in our grade. I need to you find out everything you can about her. But make sure no one knows I’m the one asking.”

“Uh, okay,” Tommy agreed. “She some new love interest?”

“Just do it, please,” Corry sighed. He glanced quickly around at the crowd of high school students once more, hoping to pick her out again.

‘Where did you come from?’ he wondered. ‘More importantly, what’s your angle?’

“Julie LaMille!”

Julie turned to regard the red haired boy, who was leaning up against the side of the school building, right next to the door she’d exited. “Corry,” she said simply. It was his name, after all.

Corry pushed himself away from the wall. “You’re quite the mystery, you know that? All I’ve got after a week of asking around is that you’re part of the rich family who moved into the area about a year ago, after buying that mansion from old Linquist. A year, during which there’s never been any mention of the LaMilles having a daughter. Yet despite that, here you are.”

“Are you coming to a point?”

Corry shrugged. “Maybe.” He walked slowly around Julie, allowing her about a metre of space. She simply stared back at him, coldly, impassively.

“Forgive me,” Corry said at last, “But as far as I can tell, you haven’t had the chance to make many friends around town yet. Now, I can help you out there. I know people. I’m hoping to know more people. If you sign on with me, my friends can be your friends. We might even make a pretty good team, the two of us.”

A corner of Julie’s mouth quirked up. “Why Corry, are you proposing some sort of camaraderie between us?”

“Interested?”

Julie cocked her head to the side slightly, in order to make him think she was actually considering it. “No,” she said at last. “You see, I’ve determined that our motivations are fundamentally different.”

Corry blinked. “Different? How so?”

“Mmmm, that would be telling.” Julie now took the opportunity to pace her own circle around Corry. “Corry Veniti,” she began, upon completing the circuit. “Fraternal twin to Laurie Veniti. Former student of MacKenzie King Middle School, with a reasonable number of followers, though most known in musical circles. Instrument of choice, the flute. Birthday, May 21st. Parents’ names…”

“Stop.” Corry’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been busy.”

Julie allowed herself a small smile. “Being enigmatic is not without its advantages,” she explained. “People seeking to resolve that sort of a mystery can be coaxed into talking.”

“So it would seem.” A silence descended upon the two teenagers. As their eyes met, they practically dared the other to blink first. “You realize that if we cannot be friends, we will become enemies,” Corry said.

Julie lifted an eyebrow. “A threat?”

“An observation. You know, you have no dependable followers here yet, Julie. I do. I strongly urge you to reconsider my offer of partnership. I won’t make it again.”

“In that case, we have nothing further to discuss. You might as well run along home.”

Corry shook his head. “You’re making a mistake.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Julie remarked, mouth tightening. “However, you may find me a more formidable opponent than you think.”

“What, because your family is rich? I wouldn’t pin all your hopes on that.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

Corry turned away first. “Fine then, have it your way,” he concluded, a sour expression on his face as he walked off.

“Until next time,” Julie said, continuing to watch Corry’s retreating form without so much as batting an eyelash. “Until next time.”

***

Julie tapped her foot absentmindedly on the floor as she leaned back against the row of lockers. Much as she hated to admit it, Corry had been right about something during their encounter the previous week. She didn’t have any dependable followers yet. And sooner or later, people’s interest would wear off.

Meanwhile, Corry had taken the opportunity over the last seven days to start planting hints, if that boy Clarke’s remarks to her in the hall earlier today were to be believed. Phil Clarke had seemed a candid guy too, so she had no reason to doubt his word… being someone else not from this area, he could even be a good person to win over in the future.

However, in the here and now, Julie needed to find herself a more devoted follower. Someone others in the school would know, perhaps trust, hence someone who had lived in the area for a while. Someone who was also reasonably intelligent, thus could take direction, yet at the same time be sufficiently self absorbed so as to not to pick up on everything that Julie was doing. If that someone was of questionable conscience it would be all the better.

Julie had spent her first two weeks at school keeping an eye out for just such a person, and she now believed she had located a girl who fit most, if not all, of her requisite criteria.

“Hello Carrie,” Julie said with a half smile as the blonde with the long hair walked up to her.

Carrie Waterson stared back. “Julie?” She glanced up and down the hall before looking back to the brunette. “Why are you at my locker?”

Julie’s smile widened. “Because I have a proposition for you.”

“A… proposition?”

“Yes.” Julie stepped aside to allow Carrie to work her lock. “You seem surprised by my being here.”

“As far as I know, this is the first time you’ve ever approached anyone of your own volition,” Carrie admitted.

Julie nodded. “I’ve been thinking of changing that. Moreover, I’ve been thinking of doing that with you at my side.”

Tossing her books into her locker, Carrie slammed the door shut. “Why me?”

“Because Carrie, I believe you’re a relatively intelligent girl who has as much interest in status as I do. You already have some admirers, I have some ideas. By combining our efforts, well, let’s just say good things are sure to come our way.” There was no point beating around the bush - her best approach here was the truth.

Carrie gave Julie a wary look. “What exactly would I be getting out of this deal?”

Julie spread her hands out. “What do you want?”

Carrie laughed. “No, seriously, what would I get?”

“I am being serious, Carrie. Right now, what do you want?”

Carrie pursed her lips. “Right now? Revenge.”

“Revenge?” Julie repeated, not having quite anticipated that.

Carrie nodded. “Someone broke into my room late last Friday night and broke a crystal swan I keep on my desk. I’m not sure who it was, but they seemed familiar somehow.” Her mouth twitched and her hands briefly curled and uncurled. “I want revenge against whoever it was for what they did. I want them hurt, and hurt bad. Ideally without them ever knowing what hit them. Can you do that?”

Inwardly, Julie laughed. Carrie was even more perfect for her purposes than she’d first suspected.

Still, better to play things cautiously, at least to start. “Well,” Julie began. “That isn’t much to go on, but I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. In the meantime, I assure you that if you join forces with me, steps can be taken to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.”

Carrie worked through a few choice expressions on her face. “What if I don’t like the way things start working out?”

“Two week grace period,” Julie said easily. “If, during that time, you don’t like the situation? You can walk away. However, I would hope that we can deal with any problems that arise together, resolving them to our mutual satisfaction.” She winked. “Come on now, Carrie. What have you got to lose?”

Carrie sized Julie up one last time. “All right,” she agreed. “I’m in.”

(ASIDE: If you came here from part 1, you can see their friendship back in the present with this link to part 7.)

Corry paced in front of the two other people in the empty classroom. “So,” he began at last. “It’s been two days. What have you turned up on this Carrie Waterson? Sue?”

“Bits and pieces,” the brown haired girl replied. “As you must have figured out, she’s from the other major middle school that merges with ours at this high school. Casual inquiry has revealed to me that in many ways she’s your typical, shallow, blonde airhead. Unfortunately, the exception here is that her head isn’t filled with air.”

“She knows how to use what she’s got to manipulate people when she wants,” Tommy chimed in. “Bit of a flirt too.”

Corry leaned forwards, placing his hands upon a desk. “Popular?”

“Athletically, yes,” Sue confirmed. “Fast runner and fair gymnast. However, her social life outside school is erratic at best. She’s got an attitude and an ego. The few people I spoke with said that the only parties of note Carrie’s ever been invited to were ones thrown by guys hoping to get to first base with her. What followers she has are at least 80% male.”

“I don’t think she even gets out that much,” Tommy added. “Her mother is gone, either dead or divorced, which could mean she has an unstable home life. That may be carrying over into her personality. Appearances are a bit deceiving around Carrie.”

“I see,” Corry concluded. “To sum up, a lively, yet somehow vulnerable person. Julie chose well… she’s obviously not about to go down without a fight. As a team, how much of a threat do you think they’ll pose?”

Tommy and Sue exchanged a glance. “It’s too soon to tell, really,” Tommy admitted. “I mean, they may bond instantly or Carrie may decide to move on next week… our data on Julie is just too sparse to make any accurate predictions.”

Corry grimaced. “Well, you two have been at my side the longest. I trust you implicitly. If anyone can turn up more about Julie, you’ll find a way. Don’t worry about Carrie for the moment either… I’ll deal with her tomorrow.”

“Waterson,” Corry said as he approached her locker the following day.  “Just the person I wanted to see. A few words?”

“I have to get to class,” Carrie retorted.

“We’ve got ten minutes before the bell.”

Carrie hesitated, then shrugged. “In that classroom then,” she said, gesturing. The two of them entered the vacant room.

“So, you and Julie have hooked up together,” Corry remarked.

“Could be,” Carrie said noncommittally.

“I strongly advise you to reconsider that decision,” Corry continued. “There is a lot we don’t yet know about her. She may well prove dangerous.”

Carrie laughed. “What, you don’t know much about her, so you jump to that conclusion? Paranoid much?”

“I’m being serious,” Corry said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his tone. “I’ve been getting some bad vibes about the whole situation. Now, in contrast, I am willing to be perfectly candid with you.”

“I’m sure you are,” Carrie said, nodding. “Mr. Corry Veniti, fraternal twin to Laurie Veniti, former student of MacKenzie King Middle School, well known in musical…”

Corry slammed his books down onto a nearby desk. “Look, Waterson, Julie LaMille cannot be trusted! I’m sorry I didn’t get to you before she did, but believe me when I say it’s not too late to disassociate yourself from her.”

Carrie smiled. “Why Corry, are you proposing some sort of counter offer to me?”

“Well… yes, I guess I am,” Corry admitted. “If you’re willing to become another one of my backers, I’ll give you the associated benefits and speak out on your behalf once I’ve gained enough of a voice around here. Given time, I may even be able to support you with more than mere freshmen.”

“Let me see your books,” Carrie countered.

Corry raised an eyebrow. “My books?”

“I want to make sure you’re not concealing any sort of recording device that you’ll play back to Julie later.”

“Oh, please. Now who’s being paranoid?” Corry retorted.

Carrie simply looked up at the ceiling and began whistling idly, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. Corry sighed. “Fine, fine, here,” he grumbled, shoving his books in her direction.

Carrie grabbed them and quickly flipped through the pages of his two texts, as well as his binder. Corry took the opportunity to lean back up against the wall. “Satisfied?” he said irritably once she’d finished.

“Sure,” Carrie agreed, reaching out to hand his stuff back. The textbooks slipped off the binder and fell to the floor.

Corry sighed again. “Are you trying my patience deliberately?” he asked, stooping down to retrieve the fallen texts.

“Not really. But about this deal of yours… you say follower. What about a partnership?”

“It may be possible someday,” Corry yielded, adding under his breath, “assuming you’re not always like this.” He stood and grabbed his binder back, stacking his texts on top of it.

Carrie regarded Corry quietly for a moment. “But Julie’s offering me partnership. And - correct me if I’m wrong - you did offer HER a definite partnership, didn’t you?”

“Hmph. Yes, of sorts,” Corry admitted. “But Julie is a unique case.”

“Because you’re worried about her,” Carrie said.

“She has qualities of which I’ve taken some note, that’s all.”

“It’s all right, Corry. It is understandable, fearing the unknown,” Carrie soothed.

“I wouldn’t go as far as fear,” Corry asserted.

Carrie pressed a finger on her chin. “Oh no? Funny. If I were you, I might go that far. After all, she has your reactions predicted down to a tee.”

“But she… wait, what do you mean?” Corry asked.

Carrie smiled again. “I mean this conversation is going almost exactly the way she told me it would. You know, it’s interesting, Corry. I wasn’t totally sold on Julie. But now, looking at how well she can handle someone like you, well… I think my friendship with her just might work out after all.”

Corry grit his teeth. “You’re making a mistake. If you’re with Julie, you’re against me. Are you sure you want that?”

Carrie flashed a patronizing look his way. “It’s okay, Corry. I think we girls can handle you.” She then produced a number of papers from behind her back, and unceremoniously dumped them into the garbage. “Bye now!”

As Carrie walked out of the class, Corry moved to see what on earth she had discarded. Lying on top of a few dirty Kleenex and a banana peel, he recognized his homework assignment for the day.

Eyes widening, Corry flipped open his binder, looking at the pocket where his assignment should have been. In its place was a small yellow card which read simply: ‘‘Your move now. –Julie’’

“All right,” Corry seethed, clenching his hand into a fist. “If it’s war you want… it’s war you get!" Grabbing his assignment from the trash, he wheeled and stormed out of the classroom.

PART 26: TIME ZONES

“What do you mean Chartreuse ran off for lunch with Laurie?” Julie said, slamming her locker shut. “You said you could speak with Corry’s sister during Home Ec.”

“Sorry, Julie – the mystic beat me to the punch,” Carrie apologized. “You think maybe she used her weird powers to sense the future?”

“Hmph. I’m not wholly convinced she can do that,” the brunette grumbled. “Anyway, it’s irrelevant. Damn it, Carrie, the one week me and Corry have rescinded our truce in order to make a play for the freshmen – and now I can’t maneuver Corry’s sister into whatever trap he had planned for me?"

“Look, I’m sorry. I thought you had a backup plan."

“Oh, of course I do, but nothing else will be quite so satisfying,” Julie sighed. The two girls walked in the direction of the cafeteria.

“We could always go somewhere else for lunch,” Carrie suggested. Julie gave her a look. “Or not,” the blonde amended hastily.

“We’re not running away,” Julie stated firmly. “No, Corry is sure to try and show me up at the start of lunch. All we’ll need is…”

“Frozen yogurt?”

Julie paused long enough to turn and regard the person who had spoken to her. “I beg your pardon?” she said with exaggerated patience.

“Want me to buy you a frozen yogurt, rich witch?” Lee said easily, leaning against the wall beside the cafeteria. “It would go nicely with your icy attitude today.”

Yet Lee was not so easily dissuaded. “Aw, I’m hurt, track tease,” he protested, following the girls into the cafeteria. “Can’t you two take a joke? Look, I’ll buy you some fries instead, to make up for it.”

“We need vigilance, Carrie," Julie said, pointedly ignoring Lee while maintaining a wary eye on her surroundings. “This first week is critical, we can’t afford any slip ups."

“Are you saying you’d prefer bananas? They do say you are what you eat," Lee piped up again. “Here, mind if I join you two?” Without even waiting for an answer, Lee slipped past the girls to sit down on Julie’s usual bench.

It collapsed under his weight, dropping him unceremoniously to the floor. Julie’s eyebrows shot up, and she took a few quick steps backwards as all around them, heads turned and stared.

“It’s all right! I’m fine,” Lee said, glancing around and offering the crowd a quick wave. He tried to use the table to prop himself back up, but it too fell apart as soon as he’d put enough weight on it. “Aha,” Lee concluded from the ground. “School’s gotta do something about these termites.”

Having edged a respectable distance from the action, Julie turned her gaze slowly in the direction of her redheaded nemesis. He was watching the proceedings with a frustrated look on his face. Nodding slowly in understanding, Julie plucked at the sleeve of Carrie’s shirt and went to sit at a different table. Julie continued to watch as Lee struggled to his feet again. His eyes went towards one corner of the cafeteria.

Julie followed Lee’s gaze. There was a young asian girl there, her hair done up in two ponytails. Luci Primrose. As Julie stared, the young girl gave a thumbs up to Lee, then beckoned to Julie before walking out of the area.

Julie stood. “Carrie, watch my stuff,” she ordered. “I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, Luci,” Frank said as the young girl exited the cafeteria right in front of him. “Hi! How are you doing with things around the school today?”

Luci seemed to flinch away from him. “Oh, ah, I’m fine,” she said, glancing furtively back at the cafeteria doors.

Frank nodded. “Oh, good. Actually, I wondered if yesterday I was a bit, I don’t know, abrupt with you, so I was thinking, if you want to talk about stuff again some time, like schoolwork…"

“Frank, it’s not a good time,” Luci interrupted. “I’m meeting someone. Later, okay? I’ll get back to you.”

“Oh, er… sure,” Frank agreed, even as Luci brushed past him to head down the hall. He watched as Julie strode out of the cafeteria moments later, following after.

He nearly fell into step behind them, before deciding that it obviously wasn’t any of his business. More to the point, Luci seemed to be fitting in just fine without his help. He went in to have lunch by himself.

Of all the times for Frank to approach her, it had to be RIGHT then? Luci sighed. She’d avoided speaking with Frank thus far, figuring that it would only complicate matters even more than they were already. What with her being a time traveling version of herself. But given that encounter, was it any wonder that they hadn’t hit it off initially?

Luci shoved those thoughts aside as Julie caught up with her outside the library. “All right Luci, what’s your game?” the brunette demanded, hands on her hips.

“To get your attention," Luci replied evenly. “I’m glad to see you recalled our earlier conversation.”

Luci didn’t add that she had engineered things today by playing the odds. Namely telling Chartreuse to take Laurie out for lunch, followed by steering the one person who could defuse ANY situation into hanging close to Julie. Thank goodness Lee was such a good sport.

As if she was reading Luci’s thoughts, Julie fired back, “If you think I’m going to be impressed because of how you got Lee to act out, that’s normal for him. He’s also a sucker for hard luck cases such as yourself. So don’t start making demands of me.”

“Don’t I get some added respect for preventing a humiliating incident for you in there?”

“No. Because I would have checked the bench, and that should have been Laurie, not Lee. In fact, for all I know, you’re the reason Chartreuse got Corry’s sister out of the way today,” Julie countered. “You succeeded here only because I didn’t factor you in. Furthermore, as to any plot against me tonight, I’ve checked with certain sources and found no indication.”

Julie had checked. Luci seized on that. “Are you saying you don’t want to listen to a potential recruit here? One who has information so secret that not even your sources are aware of it yet?”

Julie grimaced. They stared at each other. Two seconds became five, then ten… “Listening,” Julie said, grudgingly.

Gotcha. “Thank you,” Luci said with a partial smile. “So, you know how Clarke is planning on coming over tonight? Well, he won’t. And I think it would be in your best interests to find out why, by being at his place at 8pm.”

Julie’s eyebrow twitched. “What are you implying?” she challenged.

“You’ll find out at 8pm,” Luci countered smoothly. “That is, assuming you don’t ask Clarke in advance, or tell anyone else about this conversation. Not even Carrie. If you did, I’m sure certain plans would… change.”

“Is that so,” Julie said, folding her arms across her chest. “Is this related to another of Corry’s plots?”

“8pm,” Luci repeated inscrutably.

Julie glared again, but it quickly became obvious to her that Luci wasn’t going to budge. “Fine,” the brunette concluded in irritation. “But don’t think that jerking me around is going to earn you special privileges.” She spun on her heel and stalked back towards the cafeteria.

Once she was out of sight, Luci sank back against the wall. ‘I cannot believe I pulled that off,’ she thought. ‘Thank goodness there’s only a few more details to fix up.’ Pausing only long enough to rub her temples, Luci went to find Clarke.

“You’re sure Julie asked me to bring you to her house?” Carrie grumbled. “Because she never said anything about it to me.”

It was a quarter to eight that night. Luci and Carrie were on their way over to the LaMille mansion. At this point, Luci could only hope that the timing of the situation would work out. “Trust me,” she reassured her blonde companion. “It’s part of some master plan. And you know Julie and her plans.”

Carrie sniffed. “Even so, she usually gives me more information. Well, I think she does. Look, you’re sure I wasn’t supposed to call ahead?”

“Positive. Make a phone call to Julie, it will put the whole plan in jeopardy,” Luci insisted. “Don’t worry, it’s not like anything bad can happen at her place, right? She has a butler and security and stuff.”

“I guess,” Carrie yielded. “But I’ve got my eye on you. Don’t try anything funny.”

“Perish the thought.” They walked the last two blocks in silence. Getting to the front door of the LaMille mansion wasn’t actually difficult - if you didn’t mind being under surveillance - the sticking point was how Jeeves would never let anyone in, unless they had an appointment, or he knew them personally. Fortunately for Luci, Jeeves knew Carrie.

“Yes?” the LaMille butler said archly as he opened the front door.

Carrie smiled broadly. “Heya Jeeves! I’m here with Luci, Julie’s expecting us.”

Jeeves frowned. “Is that so? Because Miss LaMille left about five minutes ago and gave no word.”

“Oh…?” Carrie turned to look suspiciously at Luci.

“Julie’s very busy with a lot of things right now, it must have slipped her mind,” Luci suggested. “Maybe we can wait in the sitting room for her? I’m sure she won’t be gone long.”

There was a pause as Carrie glanced back and forth between Luci and Jeeves. “You ARE putting in a good word for me with Michelle, right?” the blonde athlete asked.

“I… I’ll try,” Luci agreed. Even as she said it, she knew she had no recollection of ever having done so. But given the stakes here, this wasn’t the time to quibble over social niceties. No wonder Carrie would harbour a grudge.

Carrie nodded. “We’ll wait inside.”

The butler inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement before ushering them in. Luci would have let out a sigh of relief, if only there weren’t so many other things that could still go wrong.

“Surprise,” Julie said, hands on her hips and one foot tapping on the ground. “I bet you weren’t expecting to find me here.”

“Oh! Well, no,” Clarke admitted. He opened his front door a little wider. “I mean, I’m just on my way out. Is there a problem…?”

“Depends where you’re going,” Julie countered. “I know it’s not to my place.”

“No, it’s to the cafe. Tim’s been concerned about some new rumour about me leaving town, so I’m meeting with him now. I can still drop by your house tomorrow. Did Luci not pass on that message? I mean, it was her idea for me to meet with Tim in the first place.”

“It was…” Luci. In that instant, everything clicked. Plot against her indeed. It was a plot by Luci! “I may have misunderstood what she said,” Julie realized. “My apologies, Clarke - I have to get back home now. Thank you for your help here.”

“Uh, any time,” Clarke replied.

Julie supposed his confusion was natural, but she had to no time to explain. Luci was in big trouble! Julie pulled out her cell phone.

The doorbell rang at the LaMille house at the same time as the phone. Being closer to the door, and knowing that their answering machine would pick up, Jeeves answered the former. He found a teenager wearing glasses waiting on the other side.

“Uh, hi,” the visitor said. “Is Carrie Waterson here?”

“Who should I say is calling?” Jeeves inquired.

“Frank Dijora,” Frank replied. “I mean, I hope I’m not disturbing, but I got this note, I think maybe from Carrie, saying that I should come here at this time, and that I’d know what it was about… so I’ve come to find out if I really do know and, uh, well, can you maybe tell Carrie that I’m here?”

“No need, I can hear that you’re here,” came Carrie’s voice. “The question is WHY?”

Jeeves turned to see the blonde approaching from down the hall. He stepped aside in deference to her. The phone stopped ringing, so he continued to observe them.

“Well, as I say, I got a note,” Frank replied, sizing Carrie up as she reached the doorway.

“That’s both unoriginal and pathetic,” Carrie said haughtily. “Either you’re being pranked, and your gullibility is impressive, or you can’t think of a good excuse to save your life. Tell me Frank, why would I ever want to see you?”

Frank shrugged feebly. “Uhm, I don’t know. To learn about time travel?”

Carrie sized him up in turn. “Don’t be stupid. Why would I care about science fiction stories?”

“Right, of course. I’m going,” Frank said hastily. As he started to turn, there was a loud thumping noise from upstairs.

Jeeves frowned. “Mimi’s out shopping. Carrie, is your friend Luci still in the sitting room?”

“No, I was taking her to the washroom when I heard my name out… oh, hell,” Carrie gasped.

“Miss Waterson, how well do you know that girl?”

Carrie closed one hand into a fist. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill both of you,” she amended, jabbing a finger at Frank.

“What?” Frank said in confusion.

“You both knew I’d be curious as to why a geek was calling for me at Julie’s. You and Luci set me up, so she could get away. Jeeves, hold Frank here while I find the short one.” The blonde sprang for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“Come in and stand right there,” Jeeves asserted.

Frank edged in, looking nervous. “Ah, so, Luci’s here too?” he said in what Jeeves judged to be genuine bewilderment.

‘I can’t believe this is working,’ Luci mused she crept down the hallway of the third floor. ‘Of course, by involving Frank, he’ll now think I’m with Julie, even as I’ll think he was connected to my memory loss… amazing how one single day can screw up a person’s life.’

The light from her pocket flashlight cut out, reminding her there was still time for things to go wrong. When shaking it didn’t work, she risked banging it against the wall. It didn’t help, and she knew turning on lights would only advertise her location. ‘At least I’m nearly at the right room,’ she realized, quickening her pace.

Except the records room was locked. Luci couldn’t believe how she’d overlooked such a tiny detail. She could now hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs down the hall.

“Think, Luci, THINK,” the young girl hissed to herself. “Use this high powered brain of yours.”

Before the LaMilles had bought this mansion, it had belonged to one Professor Linquist, and he’d been eccentric… hadn’t there been an old rumour about secret passages? Could she find one to hide in?

Luci frantically pressed a few spots around the doorframe, ran her hands over the wall and pushed aside a plant in a nearby alcove. Underneath the plant was a key. Muttering a prayer of thanks, Luci snatched up the key and jumped back to the door. The key fit the lock.

The next problem she faced was the complete darkness inside the records room. There were no windows, and without her flashlight, Luci knew she would never find what she needed in time. However, on a table by the door Luci could barely make out a candle and a box of matches. So there were still some temporal deities looking out for her.

“Come out, come out,” Carrie said through clenched teeth as she stalked down the hall. She opened another door, flicking on the light. No one there.

Well, Luci couldn’t hide forever, she didn’t know the layout of the house as well as Carrie did. Though the girl HAD known enough to get to the upper floors via the back staircase… was she working with inside information? How? Obtained through Corry?

‘If this is one of his plots, I am SO dead,’ Carrie realized. As much as she hated to admit it, while her alliance with Julie had its advantages, the need for her to constantly be on guard at certain times of the year was bothersome. On the other hand, Frank’s added presence implied Corry was not a factor - so far, that geek was unaligned.

Another room, and again nobody. Carrie forced herself to calm down - and in doing so, she realized that her systematic approach here was all wrong. She hurried back to turn off the light in the hallway, then scanned the darkness for anything unexpected. Nothing. No, wait - a flickering light coming from underneath the door at the end of the hall. Weren’t old records kept in there or something?

Carrie ran down the hall. As she reached for the doorknob, she heard a voice exclaim, “I’ve got it!” Without hesitation, Carrie threw her weight against the door, bursting into the room.

The lights weren’t on, so Carrie only saw the shadowy figure as she stumbled on top of her. Both girls tumbled to the floor, a candle and file folder falling to the ground next to them.

Carrie immediately seized the advantage, pinning down her adversary. “All right Luci, who are you working for?” the blonde demanded.

Luci met her gaze. “You, in a way,” she replied after a moment’s thought.

“I think not,” Carrie scoffed.

“This will make more sense in about fourteen months.”

Which was when the candle set fire to the dossier.

As Julie flipped on the third floor lights, she was greeted by the sight of an open door with smoke billowing out, followed by Carrie bursting out of a nearby bathroom with a basin full of water. The blonde charged into the smoky room, and by the time Julie had made it that far, Carrie seemed to be stamping out the last of some smouldering papers.

“I am waiting to hear your explanation for this with great anticipation,” Julie said dryly, surveying the damaged area. It didn’t look that bad - whatever had caught fire had been thrown into the metal wastebasket and subsequently drowned before the flames could spread. Still, those acts had rendered the pages completely unreadable. She desperately hoped it wasn’t something her parents considered important.

“It was that Luci girl,” Carrie said angrily, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm. “She got away after the fire started… we’ve got to go after her!”

Julie held up a hand to stop her companion from rushing out. “What’s your hurry?” she said calmly. “It’s only us here. I sent Frank away, Jeeves is watching the front door, and even if Luci gets out the back, we know where to find her tomorrow. Please, take a moment to enlighten me.”

Carrie went into a hurried explanation, which became slower and more detailed as Julie asked her a number of pointed questions. Ultimately, the brunette leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms and thinking.

“So, you don’t think Luci left with any papers?” she mused.

“Not unless she put something in her pockets before I arrived,” Carrie said. “Which is unlikely, as it sounded like she only found whatever it was she wanted as I got here.”

Julie nodded. “In that case, our choice is clear. We do nothing.”

“We WHAT?”

“Think, Carrie,” Julie said patiently. “I make a big scene over this, and Corry’s going to figure out that I got duped by some twelve year old girl. I need time to gather more information on this Luci, so as to stop underestimating her. In fact, it won’t be difficult to cover up this incident completely. Frank is unlikely to say anything, Clarke wasn’t involved directly, and only you and Jeeves even saw Luci enter the house. My suggestion? Put it out of your mind.”

“But that little girl - she PLAYED us! What if she sells whatever information she got?” Carrie protested.

“Without anything on paper, it’s her word against mine. Besides, the family records in this room are hardly as incriminating as the files on the school that I keep downstairs.”

Julie reached out to touch Carrie’s shoulder. “Carrie, this week we need to stay focussed on Corry and the Grade Nine freshmen. Luci’s a wild card. We’ll deal with her in time. Consider, I could ultimately discover her motivations by swinging her over to our side.”

Carrie shifted her weight back and forth from one leg to the other. “I… I guess that makes sense. But damn it, I bet she isn’t going to talk to Michelle at all, the scheming little know-it-all.”

“Come on, Carrie,” Julie said calmly. “You’ve rubbed some soot on your face. Go clean it off while I tidy up in here.”

“Aha, here you are,” a voice said, cutting through the stillness of the ravine.

Luci jumped back onto her feet, spinning around - only to see the face of Frank Dijora behind her. She let out a long breath of relief. “Damn it, Frank, don’t sneak up on me like that,” she accused, jabbing out her finger.

Frank took a step back. “Sorry,” he apologized. “But it’s almost 9:15. I was starting to get worried as to where you were.”

Luci looked down at her watch. “Shoot, I lay down and lost track of time. I’m the one who’s sorry. Did you have any trouble with, uh, me?”

“Nope. I left your past self up in the park. Kept an eye out from behind a tree until she regained consciousness. The younger Luci looked around, and then marched off home.” He cleared his throat. “So, were you able to discover…?”

Luci smiled. “I have the name,” she reassured him, tapping the side of her head. “Also an address we can use as insurance. Funny thing, remember the small fire that messed up the files we needed? Carrie just inadvertently helped me to cause it. It happened today.”

Frank frowned. “Hold on. If by traveling back here we helped to cause the fire, while it was partly due to the fire that we came back here…”

“It’s another of Carrie’s causal loops,” Luci concurred. “But I saw no choice but to involve her in this day. You too, actually. Um, sorry for that.”

Frank stared. “Wait, so THIS was the day…” He ran a hand back through his hair. “Huh. Kinda makes a person stop and think, doesn’t it. I mean, how many weird, unexplainable moments in our lives could be due to interference from future versions of ourselves?”

Luci shrugged and reached out to touch the black box Frank was holding. “One thing at a time. We still have to fix our present, before it’s no longer there to be fixed.”

“Right,” Frank agreed. He pulled a coin out of his pocket.

Thirteen year old Luci Primrose spun her pencil around on her fingers a few times, before finally bringing it down onto the page of her diary.

‘’I have found no explanation yet as to how I lost my memory for twenty-four hours.’’ she wrote. ‘’I haven’t told anyone, lest they pin it on stress and try to shove me back into Grade 9 or something. Instead, I’ve been trying to put the pieces together by observing my classmates this week. To wit:

‘‘Frank Dijora is… interesting. And kinda cute.’’ She erased the last sentence. ‘‘But despite his seeming confusion, he’s tops on the list of those who may be responsible for my missing day. Meanwhile, one Carrie Waterson has acquired a grudge against me. That might be due to my dislike of her friend Julie LaMille, and their apparent feud with Corry Veniti. But maybe it’s more? Since Lee and Chartreuse said I’d been speaking with them about the feud too. They didn’t know why. Fortunately, they’re nicer. If weird. Lee’s started calling me “short stuff”.’’ Luci nibbled on the end of her pencil.

‘‘I still don’t know who to approach for a friend. Maybe I should stick to this observing for a while? Seeing as it’s the opening of my big mouth which gets me into trouble. That, and being the wrong age. Gods, if only my body would catch up to my mind. Damn it!’’ She sighed, spinning the pencil furiously around her fingers again. ‘‘Oh well. Here’s hoping for a better future.’’

Luci put her pencil aside and snapped her diary closed - wondering idly how her upcoming year of high school would stack up against someone who had actually experienced Grade Nine. The way the rest of her current classmates all had, one year ago.

At that time, she had no way of knowing how much impact those Grade Nine experiences of Julie and Corry would end up having on future events.

PART 25: MISSING PIECE

Despite Luci’s best efforts, there were already a few students present when she reached her first period mathematics classroom. She had hoped to be the first one to arrive, to get a desk at the back, ideally near the door. A seat which would allow her to watch all the others as they came in.

She needed to find a new niche in Grade Ten, to make a clean break away from the Grade Nines, now that she was skipping that grade entirely. Trouble was, that had involved taking the long way here, to avoid any awkward encounters in the hall.

Fortunately, the desk she wanted was still available. As she slid into the chair, a brunette with long, naturally curly hair approached.

“Hello! Who are you?” the brunette inquired.

“Who’s asking?” Luci shot back, out of reflex.

The unknown girl frowned, leaning her palms against the edge of Luci’s desk. “I asked first. I don’t recognize you from last year, are you a transfer student?”

Okay, now this girl was bothering her. “What business is it of yours?” Luci demanded.

“Everything that happens around here is my business,” the girl said with mounting annoyance. “You always answer questions with questions?”

“What if I do?” Who WAS this girl?

More to the point, why was Luci sabotaging their relationship right out of the gate? She bit the edge of her tongue.

Her outspoken nature had never been of much help, before or after her adoption. She’d had no close friends last year, in Grade Eight. And so, in moving on to high school, Luci had put her foot down - new school, new circle of peers. Ones closer to being her intellectual equal.

At the very least, this way she’d be done with high school a year sooner. She’d deftly shot down every argument that had been thrown at her. That had been the easy part.

“Julie, don’t bother the newcomer,” came a new voice. Luci turned to see a redheaded boy entering the classroom. He looked vaguely familiar.

“I’m being sociable, Corry,” Julie retorted, pushing herself away from Luci’s desk. Corry, mused Luci… why do I know that name?

Right, back at MacKenzie King Middle School there had been a Corry Veniti in the grade ahead of her. He’d had delusions of grandeur, as Luci recalled. This had to be the same guy, now in her grade.

“Of course you are,” Corry was saying to Julie. “And by tomorrow, you’ll have the poor girl hauling your books to your next class."

“Sorry, I didn’t know you were interested in her,” Julie retorted. “By all means, convince her to carry your books instead.”

“Idiots,” Luci muttered under her breath, even as the two of them ignored her in favour of glaring at each other. She could do better than people so petty. Right? Maybe?

This small Canadian town wasn’t helping. With very few other asians around, and her fitting a number of the racial stereotypes, she’d trended even further into sarcasm when talking to people. Honestly, why didn’t people THINK before opening their mouths?

Though maybe it wasn’t their fault. Okay, positive thoughts. Luci eyed the classroom door.

As the five minute warning bell went off, Luci saw a girl who had to be Corry’s twin sister enter, given the physical similarity. She was accompanied by another girl with a crystal necklace, who had pink hair. Except the redhead was saying her friend hadn’t always had pink hair, last year it was green, though pink went better with her outfit, and oh God, their conversation seemed so boring and shallow. Rejected.

Then a shorter boy entered by himself; he looked too introverted. Then a taller blonde boy; he gravitated immediately towards Julie. Then more students, and in all cases, Luci found that she was rejecting them as possible friends for one reason or another. In large part because it seemed like the cliques here had already formed. For the first time, the advice of her counsellor hit home: ‘Skipping Grade Nine is a BAD idea.’

The teacher re-entered the room with a minute to spare, and people began finding seats. With less than thirty seconds before the final bell, there was a crashing sound in the hallway, and Luci turned again.

A blonde girl with long hair was sitting on the floor. Next to her was a male wearing glasses, now slightly askew. Apparently the two of them had collided, running to class from opposite directions.

“Pervert,” the blonde accused, moving to slap the male upside the head with her binder. “I felt that. How dare you try to cop a feel by crashing into me?”

“Ow! What? I was trying to keep myself from falling down,” the male protested, reaching up to adjust his glasses and rub the side of his head.

“Nice try,” the blonde retorted. She whacked his hand. “The last guy who fed me a line like that at least bought me dinner first!”

The final bell chose that moment to ring, the two teenagers turning and blinking in the direction of the classroom. They jumped to their feet and leapt for the entrance, both squeezing through at the same time.

As the announcements clicked on, the blonde hurried for what was apparently a reserved seat next to Julie, while the boy in the glasses slid into the closest available desk… right next to Luci. The young girl realized then that she had yet to take her eyes off of him. She snapped her attention back to the front of the room.

‘Okay.’ Luci resolved. ‘It’s socializing with that guy or nothing!’

Luci next encountered Frank - she’d obtained his name via attendance taking - during lunch. He was sitting alone in the cafeteria, poring over a book of some sort. Summoning up her courage, Luci set her tray down across from him.

“I’d like to sit here?” she said, belatedly turning the assertion into a question.

Frank looked up. “Hm? Oh, sure, sit where you like,” he said.

Luci nodded, sliding into the available space. Frank looked back at his book. “I see you’re interested in time travel,” she continued, unwrapping her sandwich.

“What?” Frank said, looking up again. Luci motioned to the book he was reading: ‘Time Machines’ by Paul J. Nahin. “Oh!” Frank realized. “Yes, it’s a passing interest. Alternately, a long and complicated story… uhm, forgive me for asking this, but do I know you?"

“No. Not yet,” Luci admitted. “I’m new to the school. But we were sitting next to each other in math class. Luci Primrose,” she offered, extending her hand.

“Frank Dijora,” he responded, setting his book down to shake.

“You know,” Luci continued. “That girl had no right to hit you the way she did this morning. Outside our classroom. You should have stood up to her.”

“Oh, you saw that?” Frank said, wincing. “That’s… well, yeah, maybe you’re right, except Carrie will be Carrie. Contrary to what some people say, she’s not all bad. Overly emotional maybe. It’s not entirely her fault. Uh, never mind. Did you transfer in from out of town?”

Luci noted the change of subject, but decided to roll with it. She swallowed her bite of sandwich. “No, I skipped Grade Nine.”

Frank lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you looked young! Nine is an odd one to skip though, it must leave you at a bit of a loose end with respect to the school.”

“Yeah, kind of,” Luci admitted. “Which is why I’ve been looking for someone to help me out. And you seem to be both nice, intelligent and…” She stopped herself before adding ‘good looking’, only to realize she was no longer sure where else to go with that sentence.

Frank’s other eyebrow joined his first. “And what, you want me to show you around or something?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean, I don’t need a tour,” Luci amended hastily. “But maybe catch me up on what some of our classmates are like? Friends, enemies, personalities?”

Frank shook his head. “I’m not the person for that,” he sighed. “For statistics, go to Julie. Rumour has it that she’s got a file folder for every student. In our grade, and beyond.”

Luci wrinkled her nose. “Julie, I met. Didn’t like her.”

“She can evoke that reaction,” Frank agreed. “But she’s popular. Does things for people, throws good parties - she’s a LaMille, you know.”

“A LaMille?” Luci said, taken aback. “Related to that rich couple who own the old mansion in town?”

“Yup,” Frank said. “So if you’re aiming for popularity, you’ll need her on your side. Well, her or Corry Veniti. They’re the most influential people in our grade.”

“See, this is exactly the stuff I need to know! Tell me more.”

It took a bit of convincing, as Frank seemed wary of spreading misinformation, but Luci left their lunch period feeling a bit more confident in her ability to fit in. And in having found someone to talk to.

That’s when things took an odd turn.

Luci opened her locker at the end of the day, to find a note taped on the back side of the door. This, despite how she had only bought her lock last Friday, and had told no one about the combination.

Luci pulled the note off and scanned it. It read: ‘I have important information. Willowdale Park at 9pm tonight. Come alone.’

“Something out of a bad movie,” Luci muttered to herself.

She flipped the paper over, but it was unsigned and she didn’t recognize the handwriting. Luci tapped the paper edge against her fingertips. “All right. I’ll bite,” she decided. “But whoever you are, don’t underestimate me.”

The park was deserted when Luci arrived. As she was ten minutes early, she hadn’t really expected anyone else to be there yet. Seating herself in one of the swings, Luci took the opportunity to scan around in all directions, through the growing darkness.

She first heard a noise at a minute to nine. “Hello? Who’s there?” she called out authoritatively.

“Luci?”

“Frank?” Luci’s tone turned to surprise as she stood. “Frank, is that you?”

“Er, yes,” Frank responded. She could now see him approaching her. “Sorry about this cloak and dagger act,” he continued. “It’s all rather complicated.”

“Apparently,” Luci fired back. “First things first, how did you know my locker combination?"

Frank winced. “You told it to me, Luci.”

“I did no such thing.”

“No, you kind of did, actually,” Frank insisted.

She crossed her arms. “Explain.”

He stepped closer. “Right. See, I am, um, a secret government operative with the power to read minds. I was asked by my superiors to look into you as a potential recruit, due to your high intelligence."

Luci stared. Great, so she’d decided to befriend a crazy person. “Where’s your proof?”

“Well, right now you’re thinking that I’m crazy."

“That’s not proof! What agency is this? Why would it have a branch in Canada? What other science fiction books are you reading?”

“Okay, stop, that’s a lot to answer at once,” Frank protested. “We need to take this slowly, like where you think of a number, and I tell you what it is, and then after that we’ll move on to shapes, and you know what, now would be a real good time, Luci!”

Too late, Luci heard the noise behind her. She started to turn, but the cloth had already been slapped across her mouth and nose. The effect of the drug was almost immediate. After a short, futile struggle, the thirteen year old asian girl lay unconscious upon the ground.

The fourteen year old asian girl, still with her hair done up in two ponytails, was left looking down at her own body.

“Okay, sneaking up on one’s past self now officially ranks as one of the CREEPIEST moments EVER,” Luci said, shuddering.

Frank shrugged helplessly. “It’s not like we could tell your prior self about the time machine. You’re not supposed to learn about it until next August. Which is before it’s even discovered! Heck, my present day self knows about it, but we’re not telling him about this either.”

The new Luci held up her hand. “Okay, okay, stop rationalizing,” she sighed. “This WAS my idea. Anyway, what’s done is done, and so it had to be done again. Let’s just… get my past self out of here before anything has a chance to go wrong.”

The next day found Luci Primrose arriving at school a full half hour early. She had spent a good deal of time the previous night looking back over her prior self’s diary entries, to try and get herself back in the right frame of mind.

She only had twenty four hours here to find the information they needed in the future. Frank would be back in the park around 8:45 that night, for them to switch her back. And since he’d jumped there directly using time travel, they couldn’t change the plan now.

Not that there was much of a plan. They hadn’t had the time to come up with one. Fortunately, Luci still had a logical starting point, namely Carrie Waterson herself. Thus the reason behind her heading to the school’s outdoor track, where the blonde teenager was bound to be running some morning laps, in order to attract attention.

Sure enough, Carrie was there, her form fitting lycra outfit netting her a small group of interested onlookers in the stands. Mostly male. Luci leaned up against the fence enclosing the track area and observed herself.

The blonde slowed as she completed her final lap, reaching back to pull out the ribbon holding back her hair. The long blonde tresses cascaded out behind her, finally settling over her shoulders after Carrie shook her head. There were a few whistles and a smattering of applause as Carrie paused to fire off a wink towards the observers.

Luci suppressed the urge to gag. “Forgot how much of a show off Carrie was last year,” she grumped. She hurried after the athletic blonde girl, entering the otherwise empty girls’ locker room after her. “Carrie,” Luci called out. “Got a moment?”

Carrie turned. “Sure,” she said with a smile. “Let me guess, you were super impressed by my athletic ability, and want to learn just how I got to be so good? To be honest, a lot of it is natural talent. But I could give you some pointers if you and your friends put in a good word for me with Michelle… she’s the girl in the forerunning for the position of cheerleader captain this year. I’m pushing to be captain myself by next year!”

Luci bit her tongue to keep from making an immediate retort. “Actually,” she said, “I was hoping you could answer a couple of questions for me about Julie.”

“Oh,” Carrie said, her smile vanishing. She shrugged. “Maybe. Why, who are you anyway?”

“Luci,” Luci answered. “Luci Primrose. I’m new to the school but in your grade.”

“Really? How’d that happen?” Carrie asked curiously as she began to peel out of her running outfit. Luci couldn’t help but turn away at that; she really didn’t need the blatant reminder of how little she’d developed in comparison with Carrie. Even if, despite the time travel, she was still younger than the blonde.

“I skipped Grade Nine,” Luci answered, fixating upon a point near the corner of the room. “So do you think you’ll be able to help me find out some information?”

“Depends what I’m getting out of it,” the blonde replied.

Right. Grade Ten Carrie. Luci pursed her lips. “What were you thinking of?”

There was a pause, during which Luci heard the blonde head to the shower area and start the water running. “Are you in any athletic circles?” Carrie called out at last. “Because I can always use more cheerleading support.”

“You want more support, wear a better bra,” Luci muttered.

“Pardon?”

Luci bit her tongue again. God, past Carrie was so self-centred! If only their Carrie were able to answer these questions… and remembering why that wasn’t possible immediately focussed Luci’s attention back on the mission.

“Nothing. Look, I can’t promise anything. But all I need is to find out who was working for the LaMilles when Julie was about nine years old. Do you know how I might do that?”

“If you’re not promising, I can’t help,” Carrie fired back. “That’s not the way the world works.”

“Oh, fine then,” Luci retorted in exasperation. This had been a bad idea. She turned and headed for the door.

“Though to be honest, I don’t know that sort of stuff,” Carrie admitted. “So how about this? If you become part of Julie’s ‘in’ crowd, you can ask her yourself.”

The shower turned off and Carrie emerged, wrapping herself in a towel. “Step one, you’ll need to dress more appropriately,” she offered. “Your jeans and T-shirt look is SO tired. It’s no way to be remembered.”

Luci hesitated. Assuming she had no luck with her other potential sources, being inside Julie’s house was the only way to obtain the required information. “Okay,” Luci agreed. “How many steps before I could drop by the LaMille mansion?”

“Don’t push it,” Carrie said, waggling her finger. “Wait for Julie to throw a party. She’s sure to have one this month.”

‘Since I only have thirteen hours left, that’s no good,' Luci thought. “I’ll get back to you on that,” she sighed, turning back towards the door, idly trying to recall to what extent her past self had ever followed up.

“And if you DO see Michelle, tell her how dedicated I am to practicing, okay?” Carrie called out as Luci departed the change room.

The young asian couldn’t keep from rolling her eyes. There were now only ten minutes before the first bell, and she had more people to talk to.

“The LaMille hired help?” Clarke mused. “Never thought about it. Guess I assumed Jeeves and Mimi always worked for them. Why?”

Luci shook her head. “Random thought. Don’t worry about it.” She hadn’t held out much hope for an answer – the Clarke in her time hadn’t known. She was gambling that he’d merely forgotten.

“What’s Julie’s house like these days anyway?” Luci continued. “I mean, who can get invited there… that sort of thing.”

Clarke rubbed his chin. “Actually, I bet Julie’s curious about you, since you’re new in our grade. And I was planning on dropping by her place tonight, around eight. We could go together, if you like.”

Luci almost agreed. But she forced herself to consider the offer. If they both went, and Luci was caught sneaking off to track down the necessary files, it might reflect badly on Clarke. They couldn’t afford to take that risk.

The Julie-Clarke relationship was still tenuous at this point in the past. Besides, even if their past relationship was NOT affected by her time travel, any repercussions could still lay within Luci’s future.

It was really too bad that it wasn’t Carrie who was going to Julie’s house tonight. They had an established relationship now which would fragment in the future anyway.

“No,” Luci answered. “That won’t work for me. Still, is there anything more you can tell me about the mansion?”

Clarke shook his head. “Not really my place. Talk to Julie.”

Fine. Seemed like she’d have to go right to the source. Luci continued down the hallway into homeroom.

As she made for Julie, she saw the brunette jotting down something down in a small black book. It was tucked away under her sweater before the younger girl got too close. “What do you want?” Julie demanded. “Corry send you to spy on me?”

“No,” Luci answered. “In fact, I’m sure he’ll be annoyed by my talking to you at all. But I have something to ask.”

Julie folded her arms across her chest. “Ask away.”

“I need to know who was working for your family about six or seven years ago.”

If Julie wondered as to the request, she didn’t show it. “Why?”

“I can’t tell you right now,” Luci admitted. “But I can promise that the information won’t be used against you. Moreover, if you need me to do something for you today in exchange, I am willing. As long as it’s only for today, and within the bounds of reason.”

Julie remained silent for close to a minute before speaking again. “Oddly tempting,” she admitted. “But here’s a tip: I never give out information about my family. You want to learn more about the LaMilles? Read a newspaper.” Julie turned away.

“Wait,” Luci said quickly, shifting gears as an actual plan occurred to her. “What if I were to demonstrate my good faith by warning you about a certain plot against you? Happening tonight?”

Julie glanced back. “And I would believe you because of… your young girlish charm?”

“And the fact that I ALSO know about the plots you and Corry have for embarrassing each other at lunch today.”

Julie smiled. “You claim to know a lot.”

“I’m an observer,” Luci stated. “So, remember this conversation at around twelve o’clock today.”

Julie simply shook her head before turning away again. The five minute bell chose that moment to ring, and Luci stepped away, letting out the breath she hadn’t even known she was holding.

This was where things became risky, as she entangled herself in the plots of Corry and Julie. Made even more dangerous by the fact that Luci honestly couldn’t remember WHAT the two of them were doing – only that there had to have been something… something during that missing day of her life. Which was now today.

She had the rest of the morning to try and piece it together. If only there wasn’t so much at stake if she failed.

TIME & TIED

TT (Time & Tied) presents…

STORY 2: ESCALATION

Teenagers have discovered a time machine in the present. Even as they learn that one of them is tied to time, someone tries to completely unravel the past. Secrets become exposed, and when a larger plot is revealed one question remains - can this group of high school students still trust themselves?

(Listed in Web Fiction Guide. Check out more serials there.)

(For main characters: See T&T CAST LIST.)

(For STORY 1: See "Awareness")

**CAUTION: No graphic language, but some issues involving people being psychologically abusive to minors, and depression.

INDEX: ESCALATION

ARC 1: FROM THE PAST

2.01. Missing Piece

2.02. Time Zones

2.03. Flashback

2.04. History Lesson

2.05. Growing Pains

2.06. Search and Rescue

ARC 2: TO THE FUTURE

2.07. Past Meets Future

2.08. Frequent Flyers

2.09. Julie’s Secret  (*publishing Nov 12!)

2.10. Shots Fired

2.11. The Wounded

2.12. Question Everything

ARC 3: TO THE PAST

2.13. Geography and Geometry

2.14. Coming Together

2.15. Recovery Mode

2.16. Reparations

2.17. Rescue Efforts

2.18. Tied in Naughts

ARC 4: FROM THE FUTURE

2.19. Desperate Times

2.20. Turning Point

2.21. Full Circle

2.22. Out of Time

2.23. Respite

BONUS: OutTakes of Time (Feb 26)

END OF BOOK 2

BOOK 3 (“Destruction”) BEGINS BEGAN SUMMER 2016

(STICK AROUND FOR ANOTHER "EPSILON PROJECT"!)

Now listed in Web Fiction Guide (online novels, reviews). See also Novels Online.