Time Travel for Love and Profit Read online

  Thor Jackson was a solid name, but in his series, Nordic Nocturne: Nine Naughty Tales of Endless Night, Thor is plagued by nightmares, owing to his past life as a murderous Viking. I liked that he had a conscience, but I didn’t want my timeship app to be burdened with a heavy backstory.

  I really loved Friar Ubu, the monk with ripped abs and a secret desire to be a go-go dancer. He was a contender. And the rest of the names had potential, too. Yet I felt unsatisfied. Nothing was making me drool. I was about to call it a night when I opened one last book: Thirsty for Thrills.

  On the cover, a shirtless man is crawling across a desert toward a woman holding a pitcher of water. I’d read Thirsty for Thrills before, and recalled a few technical problems—like, who could “drift into a blissful sleep under the stars” in the same place where she’d been battling rattlesnakes and tarantulas? But when I opened it that day, something else jumped out at me. The name of the love interest is Dirk Angus.

  “Dirk Angus,” I said. “Dirk Angus.” I busted out my romance-novel-heroine voice, which is husky yet vulnerable, and said, “Dirk Angus, how would you like to be a timeship app?”

  Dirk Angus flashed a brutish smile and replied, in a voice that was throbbing yet vulnerable, I’d love to, Fi. And while we’re on the subject, there are a few other things I’d like to do—

  “Hey, Nephele. Sorry to bother you.”

  Who said that?!

  I shoved Thirsty for Thrills under my thigh and looked around; nobody else seemed to be upstairs. Then I noticed Wylie Buford standing in Graphic Novels. He was doing the thing where he cleaned his ear with his pinky finger and looked at the wax.

  “Oh,” I said, relieved. “Hey, Wylie. You’re not interrupting.”

  I’d known Wylie since kindergarten. He reminded me of a bruised apple. Round red face, constantly apologizing (that was the bruised part). He was wearing his usual T-shirt, the alien with a million eyes.

  “Sorry,” said Wylie. “You can get back to your reading. Looks scintillating….”

  Immediately, I realized that although I had hidden Thirsty for Thrills, I was surrounded in the beanbag chair by books whose covers featured humans with their clothes falling off. “It’s, uh,” I said as I gathered them into a sweaty, heaving pile, “it’s fine.”

  “Oh, okay. So, first day of summer vacation,” said Wylie. “What a relief, eh? I’m not going to say I was counting the days until we were freed from the torturers, but…”

  Wylie pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket. When he blew his nose, it sounded like the horn of a semitruck. I looked around again. Thankfully, we still seemed to be the only ones upstairs. Since Vera had abandoned me, I’d been avoiding Wylie. Not to his face or anything. Just quietly. Wylie was the only freshman who got bullied worse than me. I was terrified of spending the rest of my high school career stranded with him on Outcast Island.

  When Wylie was done wiping, he held up his handkerchief. “Eco-friendly alternative to tissue. My grandfather has a whole drawerful.”

  “That seems like a grandfatherly thing to have,” I said.

  “The elderly are unintentional environmentalists,” said Wylie. “When they were young, there was less to throw away. Waste not, want not.”

  I looked around again; we still seemed to be alone. “My mom is like that,” I said. “She pulled a table off a street corner a few weeks ago and painted it green. Like, shamrock green. Now we eat all our meals off it.”

  Wylie giggled. And giggled. In this high-pitched way only Wylie giggles. “Beware of bedbugs and E. coli! Seriously. That’s economizing. Scrupulous.”

  Scrupulous. Wylie was the only kid I knew who sounded more like an adult than I did. He stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket. “So. What are you up to this summer, Nephele?”

  I shifted in the beanbag, feeling uncomfortable. Was Wylie going to ask me to hang out? “Just…you know, I’m gonna be super busy. Doing stuff. I’m working on, like, a project.”

  “Oh?” said Wylie. “What sort of project?”

  Wylie’s brown eyes were warm behind his glasses. The sun shining through the skylights made his hair look rusty and full of shadows, like sequoia bark.

  That was such a nice thing to ask.

  I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to tell Wylie about my time machine.

  But I hesitated. I mean, if I became friends with Wylie Buford, I’d never get Vera back.

  I was watching the barn swallows fight over a perch on the rim of the skylight, trying to figure out what to do about Wylie, when I realized he was gone. I got up and went to the railing, where I could look down on the first floor. Wylie was leaving through the back exit, the one that leads to the alley where the cats hang out. The screen door smacked shut behind him.

  Shoot.

  Well, I thought, I could follow Wylie. I should follow him.

  But did I want to follow Wylie Buford? When I was on the verge of pipe-bombing my mortifying past so I could give birth to my spectacular future?

  I did.

  But I didn’t.

  The cold wind blowing inland from the ocean makes Redwood Cove the kind of place where you always keep a sweater on hand, even in the middle of July. All summer, I sat at the desk in my bedroom, bundled in my hoodie, scribbling out the equations that would show Dirk Angus how to turn the wireless devices of the world into a gazillion-headed Hydra that would activate the quantum foam and send me to the past for my do-over.

  People say teenagers need exercise. Fresh air.

  Nonsense.

  June happened. July happened. In the blink of an eye, it was August.

  The day before my first day of sophomore year, a sharp chill blew through my window, ruffling the pictures of quasars taped to my wall. I’d torn them out of the moldy old National Geographics that people were always donating to the Big Blue Wave.

  Quasars are the brightest objects in the known universe. Super-massive black holes that devour everything that comes near them, spitting out only their light. As if the light is bones.

  Any massive object has the power to warp time, thanks to its gravitational pull; Einstein taught us that. And a quasar is the definition of a massive object. The problem is, you can’t go inside one without getting devoured. So I considered quasars pretty useless as time machines. But I loved them. Quasars were so beautiful. And they made me wonder, where does something go when its light is gone?

  Luckily, smartphones weren’t known for devouring people. Dirk Angus wasn’t ready yet, but at least he wouldn’t eat me alive and spit out my bones.

  There was a soft knock at the door before it opened.

  “Cheese sandwich?” asked Mom.

  I didn’t turn around. “Just leave it on my bed.”

  When Mom cleared her throat, I put down my pencil. I knew what was coming next.

  “Wanna take a walk with me?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “How about a movie?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I ran into Vera Knight’s mom on Main Street again. She said she wishes you’d stop by….”

  I dropped my pencil, leaned back in my chair and groaned.

  “What, Fi?” asked Mom.

  If I told Mom the truth about Vera ghosting me, she’d call Mrs. Knight. She’d say she wouldn’t, but then she would, and it would be humiliating. I did not need my mother making my life more complicated than it already was.

  “What happened with Vera, sweetie?” Mom asked for the zillionth time.

  I turned around. “Mom! Quit worrying about me.”

  Mom started to say something and stopped. She crossed her arms. “Whatcha workin’ on?”

  I sighed. “I’m super busy right now. Could I get some privacy, please?”

  Mom smoothed her mermaid hair, gave me a thumbs-up, slipped out the door a
nd quietly shut it behind her.

  I picked up my pencil and dropped it again, feeling guilty. I didn’t mean to be mean to Mom. I loved Mom. But why should I put myself through the humiliation of explaining what had happened with Vera? Soon, it never would’ve happened in the first place.

  This was something I had to handle alone.

  * * *

  —

  When I woke up, my bedroom was dark and my face was resting on my desk in a pool of slobber.

  “Ew,” I said, wiping my cheek with my hoodie sleeve. Through my window, I saw a sliver of a mustard-colored moon. I yawned and pressed the space bar on my laptop, which was also napping, and felt a surge of panic. It was almost nine o’clock! The first day of sophomore year was tomorrow, and I absolutely could not be there.

  I mean, sure. If Dirk Angus took me another day or week or month to finish, technically, it wouldn’t matter. But I preferred to avoid prolonging the agony. I really didn’t want to face the wrath of my peers the next day if I didn’t have to.

  “Come on, Fi,” I mumbled. “You can do this.”

  In the soft blue glow of the laptop, I reread the code for Dirk Angus. When I got to the last line, I read through the whole program again, more carefully.

  And again.

  And then I heard a ringing in my ears. It was high-pitched without being painful, and it got higher and louder until it morphed into a whooshing feeling that made my whole body shiver and my arm fur stand on end.

  I could not add or remove a single line of code. The universe was curling up around me, hissing, Yessss.

  Dirk Angus was ready. I could put the timeship app on my phone and use it to go back to my first day of freshman year right now.

  A breeze blew my white curtains; an owl hooted a few short, serious hoots. A foghorn moaned a long, low note and another moaned back, a song that felt like a prayer. The world outside my window was announcing itself and I needed to answer. I wanted to say, “Here I am, universe! I’m about to rewrite the laws of physics!” But I couldn’t. I felt like I’d just met a stranger, someone I couldn’t be sure I wanted to get to know.

  I leaned on my elbows and closed my eyes. Was I doing this?

  Should I do a test run?

  A test run would give me one more chance to find any bugs in the app. The problem was, I’d worked until the last minute. For all I felt sure about, there was so much I couldn’t predict. Such as, how would time travel affect me physically? Would I be exhausted? Dehydrated? Get a headache? Amnesia?

  I didn’t know what I’d feel like doing or not doing after hurling myself faster than the speed of light backward through time. I might not want to try it again right away. I might not be able to.

  No. No test run. Couldn’t risk it. Tonight, Dirk Angus would strut his stuff on the big stage. We’d go back to my first day of freshman year, or we’d go nowhere at all.

  * * *

  —

  I stood at the top of the stairs watching my parents, who were sitting at the green kitchen table. Mom was rubbing oil on a bowl she’d carved from a log. Dad was munching peanuts. They were listening to an opera. Of all the records Dad played, opera had the strangest effect on me. No matter the language—Italian, German, Hungarian—certain voices singing certain notes made my eyes fill with tears. As I stood there teary-eyed, I thought about how music didn’t need language to do its job. It was pure feeling that could sail through the air and touch your soul. Not that I knew what a soul was, exactly. It just felt like that’s what the music touched to make the tears.

  Dad looked up. “Fi!” he said. “You got a hug for me?”

  I swallowed my tears and went downstairs.

  Dad’s hug was snuggly and comforting, like always, but when I hugged Mom, I felt a wave of misery. I said, “I’m really sorry, Mom.”

  Mom pulled me back to look at me. Her eyes sparkled silently, like the sun on the sea. “For what?” she asked.

  “For…I don’t know.”

  “Listen,” she said. “It’s gonna be okay, Fi. School, and Vera, and—it’s just, girls can be so—” She shook her head.

  “So what?” I asked.

  “So mean,” she said. “But it’s going to be okay tomorrow, sugar. You know that? It really is.”

  I hugged Mom again, feeling slightly better. Mom was right. It would be okay; it had to be.

  The math was flawless.

  * * *

  —

  I waited until my parents fell asleep. And longer, until our house moved through quiet into too quiet. No more creaks and clicks. Mom’s occasional alarmed-sounding snore was the only disturbance beneath the surface of a still and inviting darkness.

  It was time.

  The night breeze made my curtains float gently. I was sitting on my neatly made bed with its quilt of shadowy stars, wearing my backpack and holding my phone, which contained Dirk Angus. I flipped to a page I’d bookmarked in Time Travel for Love & Profit:

  Dear reader, don’t delay your rightful fate.

  Wipe away the future that’s so wrong for you.

  Look in your heart, turn back time and unwalk your tragic path.

  I have faith in you.

  Now you have faith in you.

  Can you give yourself this gift?

  Will you take the plunge?

  Time travel was my rightful fate. I believed that.

  But now that the moment had arrived, I was hesitating. I mean, I’d read enough science fiction to imagine some fairly gruesome things that could go wrong.

  Such as I make it back in time, disturb a butterfly and accidentally cause an avalanche.

  Or I make it back in time, learn that time travel already exists, and there are time police who are twisted thugs who put me in jail for infinity for breaking some nonsensical intergalactic law I couldn’t possibly have known about.

  Or I accidentally travel too far back in time and somehow meet my father when he was my age, and he falls in love with me instead of Mom and I can never be born (ew, ew, ew). That happens in a science fiction movie I’d considered highly amusing until recently, when I determined that I couldn’t rule out being un-born as a mathematical possibility.

  The question is, how can you be sure you’re doing the right thing until you do it?

  I didn’t know.

  I felt close to tears again, sitting on the edge of my bed in my hoodie, holding my phone. I had to admit the risk that when I opened my timeship app and pressed GO, the consequences could be far worse than being locked up by the time police.

  Dirk Angus might just kill me.

  I didn’t know how that would happen exactly, but it seemed possible. There was so much I wouldn’t know until I tried. And it wouldn’t be worth it to devastate my parents for a science experiment.

  But I couldn’t ask someone else to go first. And I couldn’t stand in the way of a groundbreaking mathematical discovery I might have been born to reveal.

  If I did that?

  Well. I wouldn’t be a scientist at all.

  I took a deep breath and opened Dirk Angus. As I started to type in my destination, I noticed that my hand was quivering. I shook it out and kept typing. “We’re doing this, Fi,” I said. And before I could talk myself out of it, I took half a breath and pressed GO.

  * * *

  • • •

  I’m shooting like a bullet through a pulsing, sticky liquid, breathing so fast I’m almost hyperventilating. It’s hot; it smells like burning leaves. Rough shells with squishy insides attach themselves to my skin like barnacles. I try to pull them off with my fingers, but my hands are slippery, like fish fins, and I can’t grasp them. My mouth fills with tangy smoke. My ears are ringing. My tongue is swelling. Something tastes metallic. Is it blood?

  My bones are stretching in every direction simultaneously, like I
’m the sun’s rays—but I don’t hurt.

  Now I’m shattering into billions of tiny pieces, spinning and spiraling away from myself.

  I am pure light, sleeping on a log in the redwood forest.

  I sleep for a hundred years, or a thousand.

  Time can’t touch me anymore. I’m a memory. The memory of microscopic particles swimming through the galaxy.

  I am nowhere, with fire all around me.

  I’m a dark night brimming with shooting stars.

  I am everything and nothing at the same time. I am the universe, being born and dying, being born and dying, again and again and again, forever.

  • • •

  Something punched me in the gut.

  I gasped, drinking in air. It tasted like rainwater. My heart squeezed, then squeezed again. I had a body and it was pulsating. I felt the softness of my pillow under my head and the weight of my star quilt.

  I remembered two faces.

  “Mom?!” I yelled. My voice was tight and scratchy. “Dad?!”

  My legs felt heavy as I scrambled out of bed, desperate to find my parents.

  * * *

  —

  Gold light filtered through the fog outside the window and made the kitchen bright. So it was morning. Had I slept? That explained it. Like a movie with an eye-rolling cop-out of an ending, the incredible part had only been a dream.

  On the other hand, I was pretty sure I’d died in that dream.

  When I saw Dad with his mess of curly hair and his blue band T-shirt, scuffling in his socks and plaid pajama pants toward the coffee pot, I bolted downstairs and hugged him so hard I almost plowed him over.