25

Leila stared cautiously into the lacquer box. She pulled out thirteen foreign coins, two lockets, and four necklaces. A flip phone with a Post-it note that said Recycle this! A feather. A fountain pen. A nail file. A faded pin that said WOODSTOCK ’69. A framed selfie of Auntie Flora in a crowd, most likely Times Square, her “home away from home.” At the very bottom was a leather book.

That was all.

Leila sighed, placing the book back into the box. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Not after the last twenty-four hours, when her best friend had gotten stuck in time and a monster cat had revealed the secret combination to this box. Leila had been stoked for finding something crazy—maybe a smoldering gunpowder pellet or a tiny mouse king puffing on a tiny mouse pipe. But these were ordinary Auntie Flora–type souvenirs.

Leila took a deep breath. She was jittery. She was finding weirdness in normal things. Maybe the cat hadn’t tapped out a combination. Maybe it was a coincidence. Or maybe the lock would have yielded to any random combo. The box may have been made with a wood that absorbed warmth naturally. And the white cat in the old photo may just have been . . . a white cat in an old photo.

Rachel was texting her now. If anybody could be counted on to do that at the wrong time, it was Rachel. Leila quickly checked: it was a small flurry of apologies about the rehearsals, with lots of sad emojis. Leila was in no mood for that.

Instead of answering, she reached into the box and pulled out the leather book that lay at the bottom. It was a beautiful journal, bound by a loosely knotted silk ribbon and labeled with her aunt’s initials, AFS, Augusta Flora Sharp.

As Leila picked it up, the ribbon slipped loose. The leather cover was scorched in one spot but otherwise soft and nubbly, with a pattern of intertwined branches around the border. The rough-cut paper edges felt feathery. Claudia and Rachel thought Leila was crazy for loving the smell of books, but here in private she could yank open the journal and inhale. The pages didn’t seem like paper at all, more like linen, with fine grains and imperfections. She wanted to run her fingers over a page, but she felt funny looking at Auntie Flora’s private thoughts. Those were none of her business. So she turned to find a blank page.

Shreds of paper rained out of the book.

The very last three pages were scratched and cut up into strips that barely hung together. As if Auntie Flora had transformed into a toddler with a pair of scissors.

Leila flipped back a few pages, all ripped. Finally she reached the journal’s last entry. There, the handwriting was jagged and primitive looking, not at all like Auntie Flora’s neat, organized script:

don’t know if I can keep up this charade any longer. It’s not fair to dear, sweet, patient Lazslo. I have tried so hard. But Gus was right. It is possible to become addicted. It’s happened to me.

He said you will begin to NEED the experience. And no matter how many times they warn you of the consequences, you never think it will happen to you. But I feel it. And I don’t know how much longer I’ll be myself. . . .

Leila sat down on her bed. Her head felt light.

Auntie Flora was one of them. A time-hopper, or whatever you called them.

She’d always been theatrical and moody, but she’d become a little strange and distant lately. Now Leila knew why. Flora was OD’ing on time travel. Becoming addicted. Papou had warned Corey about that sort of thing.

One by one, the people Leila really liked were disappearing. But why Auntie Flora? She stared again at the journal:

I thought I could tough it out. I never imagined I’d be writing this. But I feel the change coming on. I dread I will not be able to fend it off. Fenton, Roseanne, Cosmo—they were all stronger people than I, but look what happened to them. The change took them lock, stock, and barrel. I cannot let Lazslo see me. I must suffer the throes of TS on my own. I can feel it happening as I wr

That was it. Nothing more. On the next page, the slashed pages began.

Why?

Leila’s eyes scanned the page again. The change . . . the throes of TS . . . What change? What was TS? And who were those people—Fenton, Roseanne, Cosmo . . . ?

She began rifling back through the journal. Right away she knew it wasn’t an ordinary diary. Page after page was full of notes from her Knickerbockers meetings. Discussions about clothes to wear to visit the Great Depression. Excited passages about trips to “pre-Colonial New Amsterdam.” Musings about whether to try for a voyage on the Titanic.

I simply cannot keep myself from these trips. . . .

How much longer will Lazslo believe I am away on business. . . .

It pains me to have refrained from time travel these last four weeks. . . .

L. called the bureau in Mumbai and they told him I was at no such meeting. . . .

Dear, dear Cosmo deSmiglia has transspeciated. He fought the addiction. He hadn’t hopped in a year. I suppose he backslid. I am told that now he is some hideous species of peccary. Things are not going well. . . .

Leila closed the book, numb.

Transspeciated . . . TS. Had to be the same thing.

And that name . . . deSmiglia.

Yesterday, when Leila had chased after Corey in the park, she had seen something on the way. That strange massive mutant rat. It had scared her to death. But when she brought it up, Papou had answered her:

“Ah, you met Smig.”

Which sounded like deSmiglia.

Leila stared at the passage in the journal: I am told that now he is some hideous species of peccary. She quickly looked up the term “peccary” on her phone. In a second she was staring at the image of a hairy beast that resembled a warthog.

She placed the phone on her bed, her fingers shaking.

Smig had been “addicted.” And so had Auntie Flora. But not to any controlled substance.

To time travel.

From outside, Leila heard a plaintive scream, like a child in bitter pain. Thinking it was a neighbor, she ignored it. But the wail grew louder and louder. And it sounded spookily like her name.

“Laaaaaaay . . . laahhhh . . .”

She ran to her window, threw it open, and looked down.

A couple was walking down the street, pushing a stroller. A helmeted delivery guy was returning to his bike after dropping off a meal.

Leila almost missed seeing the lump of white, half-hidden by the plantings directly below. But as it slinked to the center of the sidewalk, Leila recognized it right away.

Catsquatch sat back on its haunches and raised its paw.

Leila could swear it was grinning.