When I arrive at the McIntyres’ home, Blake is shirtless, wearing a pair of workout sweats that he obviously cut into shorts himself.
He’s standing at the front door, leaning against it, chewing on a half-consumed green apple. He doesn’t move to greet me, except for giving a short wave when I park the car.
“Not even a hello?” I ask.
He only shrugs.
Part of me wonders if I should follow him. Maybe I should play this like a game of chicken. Make him say something to me, instead of just assuming that I’m going to trot after him. It’s a power move, after all, and playing into it is like giving unlimited oxygen to a house fire.
But then again, he has all the knowledge, which gives him the power, and there’s nothing I can do except play his game.
For now.
Before I can step over the threshold, he speaks without bothering to turn around.
“Take your shoes off,” he shouts.
I toss them into the corner before following his voice into the kitchen. There he is, leaning against the counter, swiping idly through his phone, his right bicep slightly flexed. He doesn’t look up but gestures toward two glasses on the counter. Sure enough, they are filled with the same purple-colored smoothie that I remember making dozens of times.
“Let me know if I made it right. Not sure I got the percentages down. Do you use whole milk or skim milk?”
“Whole. But I’ve switched to oat milk recently.”
“Of course you have,” he mutters.
I walk around the other side of the counter, taking the drink and sipping it slowly. From the thickness, I can tell that there’s a little too much yogurt, and from the tartness, I can tell that it’s the plain kind.
“So you can do it too?” I ask.
Blake looks up from his phone, turning it screen-side down. For the first time, I notice that he has the most beautiful green eyes I’ve ever seen. The type that look like some sort of biosphere lives and thrives inside of them.
“Yes and no.”
“I feel like ‘can you time travel’ isn’t the type of question that can yield a ‘maybe.’”
“Har har,” he says. “I can’t. Mom did it. She likes…learning about people. It’s the scientist in her.”
“What’s her field?”
Blake shrugs. “She’s a self-proclaimed scientist. Mom’s actually a lawyer. The fancy type that helps foundations keep out of legal trouble. But I think, deep down, all time travelers think they are scientists. I mean, if you can observe and make logical deductions about anything in the world, in any time period, isn’t that what a scientist is?”
“Not really,” I say bluntly.
Blake chuckles mid-sip and hisses. “Smoothie went up my nose.” He turns and grabs a napkin, blowing his nose loudly.
“So she…”
“Stalked you through time? Yes.” He empties his glass and puts it in the dishwasher, closing it with his foot. “Creepy, right?”
“Extremely.”
“Welcome to my life.”
Blake gets a new glass from the top shelf and pours himself the remainder of the smoothie from the blender. I have half a mind to ask him why he got a new glass, but I know the answer: rich white wastefulness. He’s probably never been told not to run the dishwasher with only half a load. Or to make sure he has all the clothes he needs for the week in the laundry because there won’t be another chance to do it this weekend. That’s what happens when you’re rich.
“I was an ass when you came over to visit,” he says.
“You were justified. I mean, this is a lot.”
He shrugs. Again. “Sure, but it’s a lot for you, too, I imagine. Learning that you can time travel. Meeting the family of the person who gave you his liver. It’s a lot to take in, and I should have…considered that before lashing out.”
Blake reaches back with his right hand, rubbing the back of his head. My breath hitches. It’s a beautiful sight, the way his abs flex and his skin stretches, how his bicep shows. It’s almost model-worthy, the type of pose and body that you think is unobtainable, just a figment of reality crafted by the beauty industry. But Blake actually has it. The strong pecs. The V in his hips.
Riverdale should just cast him right now.
“Ask anything you want,” he offers. “Any question that you think you need to know to help you process this. I know it’s a lot. Trust me, I grew up in a family of time travelers and it’s still sometimes too much for me.”
“To clarify, you’re offering me a free pass.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“On anything?”
“Well, if you asked me if I wear boxers or briefs, that’s probably not the best use of your question, but I’d answer anyway.”
“Trust me, that’s not a question I’m going to be asking you.”
But there are a lot of others: the rules of time travel, why he isn’t able to do it, what the limitations are, the consequences. All logical questions that a scientist would ask. All questions that my parents would ask.
And something about that makes me feel sick.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been compared to them. I’ve been told that I have my father’s knack for quick thinking. My mother’s skill in logical deduction. Two years ago, one of Dad’s colleagues said that I was the perfect mix of both of them.
And it never struck me how screwed up it is to say that to someone.
I like being like my parents. But I don’t want to be a perfect copy of them. I want to be my own person. That’s what everyone wants, right? Call it a teenage cliché or the need to rebel, but it’s true.
“Can I get…three questions?”
Blake’s brow furrows for a moment. It’s like watching something click in his head in real time. “You asked for three instead of two because you knew I’d say that question right there was one question, didn’t you?”
“You’re smarter than you look,” I fire back.
“Some of us have beauty and brains. It’s possible, you know.” He gestures. “Go ahead.”
So I do something that my parents would never do: I ask a completely off-the-wall question.
“Is your dad’s hair naturally brown, or does he dye it?”
Blake stops mid-sip, slowly putting his glass down. He doesn’t even swallow the mouthful of liquid for a moment, not until his mind seemingly remembers that he’s holding it in his mouth. He gives an exaggerated gulp, never looking away from me.
“Let me get this straight. I just confirmed a family secret that only about a dozen people in the world know, and you’re concerned about my father’s hair color?”
I nod. “It’s for science.”
“You know time travel is science, too, right?”
“Science fiction, maybe.”
“Science fiction is something that’s not real.”
“I’m still not completely convinced that I’m not losing my mind—or that I’m not in a coma and this is just some fabrication that my brain has made up to help me deal with some horrific trauma.”
“Are you always like this?”
“All the time.”
“So, Mr. I’m-Stuck-in-Some-Dantesque-Coma, what do you think all this is?” He gestures toward the smoothies.
“A lucky guess?”
“You’re stubborn as hell.”
“You’ll grow to love it.”
A slow grin spreads over Blake’s face as he crosses his strong, well-defined arms over his broad, bare chest. “Naturally that color.”
“So, you’re the lucky one,” I reason. “There was a fifty-fifty chance that you’d get the gene for red hair. Well, you might still have it, actually. But a fifty-fifty chance that it would manifest. Your brother got it. You didn’t. It’s basic science, really.”
“That’s not basic at all,” he replies.
“If you pay attention in science class—genotypes and phenotypes—it is.”
Personally, I think the tidbit about red hair is interesting. It’s a mutation, after all. A dying out one at that. But Blake’s sullen face proves that he doesn’t think the same. His muscles tighten, and he looks sharper, more angular and threatening than he did before, when his edges were rounder. Quickly, he stands, taking his glass and rinsing it out.
“That’s another thing David got that I didn’t,” he mutters.
The tension in the room instantly becomes so thick that it’s hard to breathe, and to combat it, I check my phone. Two texts from Isobel and one from my mom asking how the meeting went. Before I can finish my informative three-sentence reply, Blake says, “Here’s the deal. I didn’t call you back for smoothies or to talk about genealogy.”
“Technically, I called you, but…point taken.”
Blake rolls his eyes. “My mom is, frankly, obsessed with time travel. She’s been looking for other people like us, our family, for…I think her whole life. There aren’t many. It’s a dying genetic trait.”
“Like red hair.”
“Get over the red hair, but yes.”
“All right, next question then.”
“There’s more?”
“How much do you know?”
Blake arches his right brow. “About time travel?”
“That, yes, but also about…me and my ability to do it.”
“About as much as you do,” he says honestly. “This isn’t normal. I’m not sure how long it’ll last. I don’t think anyone is. You’re, in some ways, a new breed of time traveler—don’t let that go to your head.”
“Already has.”
“I could’ve sworn your head looked bigger. But I do know that you need to learn how to control it. Because what you don’t want happening is you time traveling to the wrong time period and dying or getting stuck or jumping at the worst possible time or… Well, a lot of things can go wrong.”
“Wait, sorry, pause. That can happen?”
“Amy Grant. My mom’s great-grandaunt. Traveled back to the fifteenth century and landed in a river. Couldn’t swim. Drowned. Ian McIntyre. My father’s grandfather. Traveled back to the Civil War. Stood in the path of a musket and jumped back just in time to die on the living room floor. Oliver…”
I hold up my hand. “I get it.”
“You sure? Because I have about a dozen more.”
“What changed? Three days ago, you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“A lot can change in three days.”
“Your mother forced you, didn’t she?”
“Correct.” He juts his head toward the living room. He walks. I follow.
When I enter the room, Blake’s already sitting on the couch, his right leg under his left.
“I have a proposition for you.”
Well, that doesn’t sound good. But what other choice do I have? Right now, Blake is my only hope if I want to understand any of this.
“Let me guess, you’ll tell me about time travel—”
“And, in exchange, you’ll do something for me in the future,” Blake interrupts.
And there it is.
I cross my arms and shake my head. “A blank check IOU? Those never end well for the recipients.”
“You know what doesn’t end well? My mother as your teacher. She’s a tyrant, Andre.”
“That’s just what men call a woman who has the confidence to demand the best results from the people around her,” I say, quoting word for word what Isobel once said to a guy in a movie theater who called her a bitch for outsmarting him in trivia.
“Oh my God,” Blake groans, flopping back on the couch. He rests his feet against the arm of it, covering his eyes with his forearm. Lying there, he lets out a loud breath, which for a moment makes his abs look even more defined than they already are.
“Wouldn’t you rather work with me than my mother? Someone your own age? Someone dashing and charming and with a six-pack?”
“Are you flexing your abs right now?”
“Are you looking?”
I shake my head. I totally was.
He grins and shrugs. “I’m not going to ask you to crash the stock market or get me, like, Martin Luther King Jr.’s tie or anything like that. It’s going to be something small. I promise.”
“But you don’t know what it is yet?”
He shakes his head and sits up. “Probably something borderline illegal. Enough to piss off my parents but not, you know, actually screw up time. Don’t worry, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” He extends his hand. “So do we have ourselves a deal, Andre?”
“I’m not going to call you master or anything like that.” I shake his hand firmly—that’s what confident people do. “For now.”
“Ah, an alliance of convenience. I’m going to like you.”
In response, I roll my eyes. “So when do we start?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “Are you free now?”
“I can make time.”
“See, you’re already doing well. Time-travel humor. That’s a key part of being one of us.”
He stands up and walks by me, leaving the living room, then turning down the hall, expecting me to follow. Part of me wants to be stubborn and not follow him. To remind him that he should ask people before just assuming.
But curiosity gets the better of me. There’s a whole world in front of me, a world I didn’t know was possible, and Blake is my ticket to knowing more about time travel.
And I want to know everything.