Dr. Pretorius grins wolfishly, like her door knocker, which sends a shiver through me. I don’t mind admitting I am nervous. It is not only the whole “keeping a secret” thing, plus the fact that Sass’s sister spotted us. It’s also because this visit to Dr. Pretorius has been growing in my head so that I now think of it as:

THE BIG EXPERIMENT!

I don’t dare admit it to Ramzy, but I really didn’t want to come. I list the reasons in my head:

Dangerous.

Risky.

Unsafe.

And so on.

I know: all variations of dangerous, really, although I have no idea why. To be honest, I think I’m just scared.

I am on the brink of telling him, but his “fellow adventurer” comment earlier made him look so excited that I tell myself I’m being unnecessarily cautious, though I don’t use those words. Stop being a wimp, Georgie is what I say in my head.

And why is Dr. Pretorius grinning? She practically skips like a girl up the metal steps to the studio and opens the double doors without looking back at us. She shrugs on a white lab coat and shouts, “Studio lights!” They flicker on as we follow her to the control room. On the desk is a large bottle of Fanta with three glasses and a plate of foil-wrapped chocolate cookies: definitely an improvement on the cheap cookies and supermarket cola we’ve had before.

“Hey, wow!” says Ramzy appreciatively, and he reaches out for a cookie. Like a frog catching a fly, Dr. Pretorius’s hand slaps his and shoots back again.

“Manners! They’re for afterward. To celebrate! I think we oughta sit down, and you had better listen.” Then she stops and her brow wrinkles in confusion. “Why have you got writing all over your clothes?”

“It’s the end of the semester today,” I explain. “It’s a tradition.”

Dr. Pretorius’s eyebrows shoot up above her spectacles. She shakes her head slightly and says a flat “Ha.” I can’t tell whether she’s amused or if she disapproves.

We sit on the stools, and Dr. Pretorius sits in her wheeled desk chair and takes from a drawer the familiar bicycle helmet. Her voice goes very quiet: she is almost whispering.

“I reckon you should know: you two are the first people ever to see this! Apart from me, of course.”

Ramzy’s eyes flick to meet mine. This is getting weird. The three of us sit there, gazing at the helmet. Seconds tick by until eventually I break the silence.

“B-but we have seen it. Haven’t we?”

Her voice is still hushed and husky. “This is different. So very, very different.”

There’s a long pause, while Ramzy and I wait for her to tell us. We both jump when she barks at us: “Well? Aren’t you gonna ask me how? Jeez, you kids today! So incurious! I spend my whole life making this thing that’s gonna—”

“How?” says Ramzy to shut her up, I think. “How is it different?”

Dr. Pretorius stops midsentence. “You wanna know?”

“Of course we do. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it, Georgie?”

I nod vigorously. Evidently satisfied with our enthusiasm, Dr. Pretorius takes a deep breath.

“This,” she murmurs, “is going to change the world.” She strokes the curved top of the helmet as though it were a cat and seems to be gazing at her reflection in the shiny surface. We wait, and eventually she begins talking again. She looks up at me, and it’s as if a light has gone on behind her ice-blue eyes. Her skin seems to glow and she talks urgently as she stares at me.

“You! Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see the future? To know what’s going to happen tomorrow? Or next week? Or next year?”

The truthful answer would be a half-shrug, but I guess that would upset her, so instead I say, “Yes. All the time,” which isn’t strictly true, but it satisfies her. She grins and gets to her feet, waving the bicycle helmet at us.

“Well, now you can.”