While Petula Grabowski-Jones waited in rapt anticipation, Mitch Murló suppressed a sigh.
“Okay, here she comes,” Petula said. “Watch—this is gonna be good.”
This wasn’t Mitch’s idea of a good time, but he was willing to suspend judgment since it seemed to make Petula happy. And he wanted to keep her happy, because this was their first date that didn’t involve the blissful silence of a movie theater. It meant they had to acknowledge each other’s existence for an extended period of time, and actually converse. Such a thing is not easy. It had taken a while to settle on a nonmovie date that worked for both of them. She had nixed bowling as too lowbrow, and fine dining was inconceivable with Mitch, because, according to her, he had “the table manners of a lemur with brain damage.”
It was thinking about himself as a lemur that made Mitch suggest the zoo. Petula had accepted, but, like everything else she did, it was for her own unique reasons.
Mitch couldn’t quite say why he liked Petula. Maybe it was the charmingly irritating way she introduced herself to people (“It’s PETula like SPATula, not PeTULa like PeTUNia”). Or maybe it was the way she parted her hair and braided her pigtails with quaint, yet terrifying, mathematical precision, so that even their faintly lopsided nature was by design. Or maybe it was just because she liked him. Whatever the reason, they now held hands and sat at a table at the edge of the snack bar of the Colorado Springs Zoo, watching Earth’s highest mammal species—the kind not protected from Petula by the safety of cages.
“You remember how dark the reptile pavilion was, right?”
“Yeah…” Mitch said.
“And you see how bright the marble ground is right by the exit, right?”
“Yeah…” Mitch said.
“And you see that one single unexpected step, right?”
“Sure…” Mitch said.
Petula gestured with her hand, as if presenting him with some breathtaking vista. “Observe.”
The woman who had just exited the reptile pavilion was fast approaching the nearly invisible step.
“Uh…shouldn’t we warn her?” Mitch asked.
Petula burned him with a glare. “Is there something wrong with you?”
Blinded by the white marble, the hapless woman didn’t see the step, and never had a chance. And while some other people exiting the reptile pavilion had made mildly clumsy missteps, this woman took a headlong fall; a wipeout for the ages. Her purse flew from her hands, disgorging its contents across yards of white marble, until it looked like the aftermath of a plane crash.
The woman, now prostrate as if in some odd form of worship, was rushed by half a dozen people. They helped her to her feet and gathered whatever belongings were not already being carried away by pigeons.
“That was…intense,” Mitch said.
Petula leaned into him, in a very friendly sort of way. “Some moments are too special not to share.”
“I think we should help her, though. I mean, look at her.”
Even with the assistance of several bystanders, the woman seemed seriously disoriented.
Petula sighed in mild exasperation. “We can’t help her, because we didn’t help her.”
“Huh?”
Reluctantly, Petula reached into her purse. “I didn’t want to show you these, as they would spoil the surprise. But I suppose it’s better if you know.”
And then she presented Mitch with a series of black-and-white photographs of this exact spot. One was an image of the very scene before them, as if it had been taken two or three seconds earlier. Another was a shot of a man lying sprawled out in equal distress. And there was a third photo, of an entire family that had landed in a dog pile.
And all at once Mitch got it.
“The box camera.”
Petula nodded. “I came here yesterday, set the camera for twenty-four hours, and started snapping pictures. I’ve been here several times before to enjoy the epic spectacle of the human fail. But I never knew when the most spectacular falls would take place. Thanks to the camera, I can tell down to the minute. The second fall will occur at three seventeen. And this third one at three thirty-two. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the family ends up like this.”
Mitch was still having trouble wrapping his head around Tesla’s camera that took pictures of the future. “But if we know what’s going to happen, and we stop it—”
“We can’t stop it,” Petula pointed out. “The fact that we have a picture of it proves that it wasn’t stopped. And the fact that we’re not in the pictures helping these people proves that we won’t.”
“But we could.”
Petula balled her hands into fists. “There are no pictures of you and me catching falling people. Do I make myself clear?”
When Petula became adamant about something, Mitch knew there was nothing to do but let nature run its course without further argument.
Petula, however, did realize that it was in her best interest to control her temper. She had to remind herself that Mitch was an imbecile, but only in the way that all fourteen-year-old boys are imbeciles. She would help him outgrow it. A month ago Mitch Murló was barely on her radar. Funny how things change. She actually enjoyed her time with him, even when he made her angry. Especially when he made her angry. For in anger there is passion.
But then leave it to Mitch to spoil the moment.
“You know, you really should give Nick back that camera.”
The mention of Nick made her feel defensive, possessive, and emotionally violated all at once. How dare he bring up the boy she’d rather go out with?
“Why would I ever do that? He still blames me for Vince’s death. He hates me.”
Mitch shrugged. “Maybe if you gave him back the camera he wouldn’t hate you so much. Besides, Vince’s death wasn’t such a big deal, if you know what I mean.”
Petula had to admit that the idea of Nick Slate not hating her would be a giant step toward her wish being fulfilled. And besides, she had other reasons to get back in Nick’s good graces—reasons that had nothing to do with her feelings and all to do with the tiny Accelerati pin she wore secretly under the lapel of her blouse.
“I’ll consider it,” Petula told him, gently patting Mitch’s hand. Then she pointed to a man exiting the reptile pavilion, a man destined to meet the marble in a most glorious fashion.