| |
Getting through my last day of high school was a chore. First period, I took the final exam in Health, which I didn't need to study for. Mrs. Quinn had given us the answers to the test last week, and the material was pretty basic.
But all day I felt like I had two people inside of me. Part of me was depressed. Dad's memories were so clear and real in my head that they sickened me. Maybe I should have accepted Grandpa Ron's help after all.
Yet the other part of me was in shock at my self-discovery. Corinne Greene, time traveler extraordinaire, could also heal the sick and fill the world with flowers!
I also desperately wanted to spend time with Allen, this man who I was falling for, a person who could transform anything at will... It seemed like it had been ages since I’d seen him last, and I actually pined for him. It was pretty embarrassing.
As I wandered through the hall before last period, two girls strode past me, laughing to each other. They had been nasty to me in the past, so naturally I assumed they were making fun of me now. But I didn't care, because I could do things these girls couldn't dream of! I was more powerful than they could imagine!
I burst out in a proud giggle, and the girls eyed me curiously. “What the hell?” one said under her breath. They poked at each other, tittering at their own private joke, and sauntered off.
I watched them go, wishing Allen would turn them into worms. Or rats. Or mosquitoes.
I giggled again, feeling very self-satisfied. “I’m incredible!” I mur-mured under my breath. “So amazing...”
...Soldiers getting shot in a battlefield, one lone red-headed nurse trying to help until she was shot down too...the blood...
Dad's memories insinuated their way into my momentary excitement. “Go away!” I clasped my hands against my head tightly, trying to drive them out, but the horror remained. “I have to get past this,” I told myself. “Just...think of other things...” Falteringly, I continued down the hall.
It was fairly obvious that today was the last day of school, as evidenced by the hyperactivity of the students. Kids were flinging papers around, and I had to wade through a pool of them to get to my locker. Sal, one of the most ill-tempered janitors ever, came by and wheeled a garbage can next to me.
“Trash in the trash, young lady.”
I checked around me to see who Sal was talking to. But he was definitely aiming his accusation straight at me.
“I didn't throw any of these papers!” I protested.
“I don't see anyone else here.” Which was true. The actual perpetrators had already cleared out, probably due to the arrival of Sal and his garbage can of doom.
The bell rang, and I panicked. “That's because everyone's in class, and now I'm going to be late!”
“Pick it up.”
Angrily, I started sorting through the papers to prove they weren't mine. Of course, none of them happened to have anyone else's name on them either.
I couldn't be late to AP Western Civilization on the last day. Mrs. Thames was the meanest, strictest teacher ever, and if I was one second late, she would probably keep me from graduating.
“Stop dreaming and start cleaning,” grumbled Sal.
But I could travel back so I’d be on time...
Dad's voice wavered in my head. “Don't travel until we talk to you...”
“A minute or two can't hurt,” I uttered aloud, attempting to convince myself. It wasn't as though I was going back a century into a dangerous time I knew nothing about.
“What did you say?” asked the janitor.
With a wry smile, I tossed the last of the papers into the trash. I so wanted to have Allen turn the man into a garbage can, but I bet Allen was too nice of a guy to consider it.
Complaining under his breath about “pain-in-the-ass kids”, Sal rolled his garbage can away. I slammed shut my locker, incensed that he had made me late for no reason.
But I would fix that.
I entered the girls’ bathroom and went into a stall. Toilet paper was strewn on the floor and brand-new graffiti lined the walls. “SAL WILL GET YOU”, read one of the better comments. Truer words had never been written. Even if they were on a bathroom wall.
I covered my eyes with my hands. Concentrating deeply, I whispered, “Go ten minutes back. Ten minutes back...”
Like last time, I felt like my world suddenly changed. My body jolted, and then...
“AAAA!!” Blood-curdling screams rocked me. I dropped my hands to find that I now shared the stall with another girl.
“What the hell are you doing?” she screamed in fury. Apparently she had not yet done what she came in for, and her pants were still on, thank God. “Get out!” She shoved me backwards into the door. The impact forced it open, which sent me across the room and into the counter.
“Eww...oh, my God, what are you doing in there?” echoed another girl who stood brushing her hair. Meanwhile, my stall-mate ran shrieking out of the bathroom.
Rubbing what was sure to be a bruise, I sulked off to class, my face scarlet. At least I wasn't late.
***
ALLEN WAS WAITING FOR me at the edge of the woods after school. Dismissing the day's bathroom disaster, I ran to him in a flurry. “Guess what? You'll never guess! I'm a time traveler! Just like Daniel!”
I think he was impressed. I wasn't quite sure. His reaction was a halting, “Wow, that's...”
Of course I didn't let him finish. I had to keep talking. “I'm not going to travel again until my parents talk to me about it, but after that, I can take you all over time!”
I didn't tell him about my Old West escapade. I guess I was ashamed about how terrified I’d been through most of it. But more than that, it was something I had shared only with my father. The experience was ours alone, and dredging it up would also unearth Dad's memories. I couldn't allow my mind to sort through them again.
Allen was uncomfortably quiet. He looked around the woods, tapping his foot on the ground. He glanced into the sky, then back down at me. “Promise me you'll never take me back,” he pleaded in a plaintive voice. There was suddenly a vulnerability surrounding him which I had never picked up before.
“To where you came from?”
He made a curt nod.
“Why would I do that?” I stuttered, appalled that he would think that I'd do such a thing.
Shuffling his foot through the dirt, he insisted, “Just promise me.”
“I...I promise.”
He let out a breath. “Good. Now,” he grabbed my hand and half-skipped us into a small clearing in the woods. “I have some plans for us today. You did so well in a four-legged form, I think you're ready to try something different.”
This time, a wave of anticipation ran through me. I wasn't scared. I felt adventurous and alive!
And, strangely enough, I trusted Allen with my life.
“Go ahead,” I said, clapping my hands together. “What will you make me today?”
He smiled. “A snake.”
“Oh!” I gasped as I became blinding light once again. I had no problem with snakes, although they weren't my favorite animal. But to become one? Well, I was going to find out what it would be like in the very next second!
I now hugged the earth. My figure had thinned and stretched, and the most unsettling sensation came over me. I was limbless.
My brain fought to use appendages that weren’t there. No arms! No legs! I can’t move them...
Once I got over this initial shock, I found that my new body was lithe and muscular, and I was able to twist it into all kinds of knots and contortions.
My acrobatics kept Allen well-entertained. “It feels like you're a living piece of rope when you're a snake. Like it?”
It's...mind-blowing, honestly. I feel weird not having arms and legs!
“You'll get used to it too. Instead of tying yourself into knots, move around a bit.”
I did. It wasn't as hard as I had expected. The snake body was made to slither, and I found I could go pretty fast.
“Can I pick you up, Corinne? I want to move you out of the open. We don't want you ending up as hawk food or worse.”
Good idea, I answered with a shiver. What could be worse than end-ing up as someone’s meal, though?
He scooped me up. My head and tail dangled over the sides of his hands, and then he ran his finger down my back, making me shudder. Feeling his skin bump along my scales was a very odd sensation.
“Look at that tongue!” he cried merrily.
Yes, without knowing it, I was stretching out my forked tongue. It was...telling me things. Somehow it sensed a nearby group of sparrows, and rotting leaves...
“It's how snakes smell,” Allen explained, coiling me around his hands. He ventured into the safety of the trees and set me down on a warm, sunny rock.
“Okay, I'm going to join you,” he announced, and he became a snake. And I'm also going to join you on this rock. I’d enjoy sunning myself.
Oh, come, by all means.
He slithered up beside me, and I was impressed by how well he moved as a snake. He likely had been one before. I probably would have done it myself if I could change.
He curled his body protectively around mine. Interestingly, it wasn't awkward at all. It felt nice and comforting. I think we both dozed for a while.
Want to go exploring? he asked after a time.
Honestly, I didn’t want to leave our place on the rock. The sun soaking into my scaly body was so soothing. Plus, I didn't have to worry about skin cancer or wearing sunblock.
We're cold-blooded, so that's how we stay warm, and that's why you're enjoying it so much. But come on and slither around with me. When we need to, I'll find us more sun.
Following Allen through the debris on the woods floor was like participating in both an obstacle course and a treasure hunt. I couldn't imagine what I'd uncover next with each twist through the leaf litter. Who knew there were so many creatures that lived under the leaves?
Mm. That was good, Allen said.
Oh, no! Did you eat something?
I forgot how good crickets taste when you're a snake.
Oh, that's awful. Poor cricket!
You're too good of a person. You're also not very practical. It's nature again, Corinne. We're animals in nature here. We're snakes. Snakes eat crickets, among other things. I sense a nice juicy field mouse over there by that bush...
Don't you dare! Yet I was getting hungry, and it horrified me that the idea of crunching into a mouse and swallowing it whole was rather appealing.
Time to change back?
Yes, I agreed reluctantly. I really didn't want to kill anything.
As we walked back toward my yard, human once more, Allen asked where I'd like to meet him tomorrow. It wasn't even a question of if I wanted to – I simply would, and I think he knew that.
“Are these 'meetings' going to be a daily thing?” I replied snidely.
He didn't hesitate in the least. “If you want them to be. Now where should we go?”
“Somewhere where no one is... Hey, you know the courtyard at school?”
“Oh, the one with the rabbits and the flowers?”
“Yes, in the middle of the school. Meet me there around noon. I'm
sure the building will be open.”
“Okay.”
***
BEFORE MY PARENTS GOT home, I got online and read about Central City on the Colorado Tourism website. An early history section contained several old pictures of the town. The buildings, the hotel, and the bank where Dad was attacked were all there, sepia-toned but real. The information even made mention of Doc Vervain, which sent shivers through me. He died in 1874. He passed away so many years ago, and yet, through the miracle of time travel, I had met him.
Again this led my mind back to my father lying helpless, Grandpa Ron's hand touching his son's head...The images...
Oh, poor Dad. Poor, poor Dad... I could only hope Mom's adventures by herself weren't as bad, but I made a resolution never to look. I didn't want to know.
“The memories of a time traveler are even worse than a soldier who's been at war.”
I couldn't stand the pain in Dad's words. I had to get my thoughts on something else.
I went back to look at the family tree once more. Yanking it free sent several other books to the floor. Grumbling, I stopped to pick them up, and there was our own copy of The Sad Little Peahen that we had all read as kids. I was surprised Mom had saved it. The cover was marred and the leaves were dog-eared, but, as I flipped through the colorful pages, the story of Hannah and her angry wizard-father Aldous remained bright in my mind.
Putting it back on the shelf, I fished up two stamp albums and another children's book of fairy tales and replaced them as well. Then I sat down and perused the tree.
Yes, now more things made sense. Uncle Jonas' dates were right, although I wasn't sure how one would notate a person dying twice. But that wasn't yet a problem, fortunately.
My thoughts turned to George. The man had always seemed slightly off, mysterious, and somewhat melancholy. If he was the man on the tree and he'd been born in 1822, then I could only imagine how lonely his life must be. And he obviously mourned his great-grandmother Lisette, which was why he always called me “Corinne Lisette”. It gave him joy, and who was I to take that away from him?
But Bella and Hannah...I'd ask my parents about them now and see if they had any “new” information to share.
Leah (Lisette) 1761-2013.
My eyes rested on those words and dates. It was mind-boggling. This woman had really lived for two hundred and fifty-two years? No wonder they had named me after her! How had she died?
“Uncle Jonas made that by time traveling.”
Mom stood in the doorway. I wasn't sure how long she had been there as I'd been so engrossed in the contents of the tree.
“So why didn't he go further back and do more?”
“Well, he was working on learning the languages.” She sat down next to me on the loveseat. “When you travel, you hit language barriers, cultural barriers... It's not all fun and games, like your dad told me when I started out. We're dealing with people's lives. You'll see wonderful things and horrible tragedies. You're opening a window onto other people's existences. Don't interfere with them. Your father and I learned that the hard way. Well, he did especially.”
“Dad messed with people's lives?”
“In a sense. He was trying to help people and make the world better in the process. See, your father rescued people.”
“Rescued?”
“He saved talented people who had died young. He'd rescue them right before they died, and he'd bring them to the present.”
Dad's dream-words came back to me, “People I saved, people I lost, people who hurt us...” My father, saving people's lives. The enormity of Mom's words struck me, and I listened with rapt attention as she went on.
“But his actions created a lot of negative repercussions, so he mostly stopped doing it.”
So, probably under my very nose, my family had been quietly fixing the world. “Did you help him?”
“I did a few with him. The artist Scott Manton, Mozart...” She raised her eyebrows.
I nearly choked. “Mozart? Come on, Mom!”
“The composer commissioned to write the new Olympics theme, you know, Jim Smith?”
“How could I not know who Jim Smith is, Mom? I mean, he's got to be one of the greatest movie score composers around! We play his music practically every year in band!”
“He's really Mozart.”
I think I stopped breathing for a moment. “You have got to be kidding me. That’s...” I had to pause. Mozart was living and breathing under the very same sky that I was? “Can I meet him?” I piped up.
“Sure! He loves to see us!”
Well, why wouldn’t he? We have friends and relatives visit all the time. Why not a legendary, long-presumed-dead composer?
More silence. Then another realization. “Bella is...”
“A rescue. Her father, Wilhelm Gruber, was a brilliant scientist who was originally murdered by the Nazis. Julian saved him, his wife Anna, and their baby daughter, Bella.”
Dad's concentration camp memories flooded my head. Graphic images of Nazis slaughtering children threatened to swallow my very soul...
I held back a wail. I'm not sure how Mom took that reaction, but she continued on while I forced myself to calm down.
“Yes, Bella was rescued as a baby from Nazi Germany. Jade, Hannah and Andrew...they're all rescues too.”
And I'd thought they were patients. “What about Rollo, the English guy?”
She laughed. “Rollo went the other way. He met a girl in 1854 when we brought him back in time, and he married her and stayed there. So Rollo's dead.” She didn't seem too overwrought about this statement.
“But I just saw him. If he died in the past, then...”
“That's because Julian brings him forward from time to time to visit. Or we go to see him. We can visit him whenever we want!”
Okay. My brain was officially fried...
***
AT DINNER, I TOLD MY parents about what had happened in the school bathroom. Dad got really angry. He stood up from the table, grabbing it tightly. “Corinne! I told you to wait to do any more traveling until you talked to us about it first!”
“I know, but I figured a few minutes wouldn't hurt.”
“But it did! Two girls know something is up, and the one that you appeared in front of in the stall, well, that was probably pretty dam-aging!”
“Well, how was I supposed to know someone was there?” I cried.
“If you had just... Oh, damn it, Corinne!”
My mother moved over to me. “You'll get a feel for it. We can sense if people or objects are where we're aiming to go. Until you develop that, make sure the place you're going is safe and empty first.”
“Right. Right. Maybe I'll just never travel!” I yelled and stalked off. Now I was grateful that I hadn't told them about Allen yet. They'd be far angrier than they were now.
“Corinne, who was the girl in the bathroom stall?”
“One of your patients' daughters – Stephanie Burr,” I called back.
“Oh, Clarice Burr’s daughter? Great,” Mom exclaimed.
“Go to her,” Dad replied.
“I will,” was the quiet response.
Only my dad came upstairs after me.
***
“I WENT BACK TO CENTRAL City,” Dad said, hovering over my bedside. Well, he wasn't actually floating, but he could have been had he wanted to.
I turned away. “What's Mom doing to Stephanie?”
“She's making her forget. Like my father does, only she can completely erase thoughts. Grandpa Ron usually can only blur them up.”
I snorted. “Is there anything Mom can't do?”
“Corinne,” Dad sat down beside me, ignoring my question, “they said Doc Vervain tried to help me out.”
“Yes! He tried to bleed you, Dad! It's a wonder you didn't get gangrene or something when he plunged that unsterilized blade into you with his dirty hands!”
“How'd you stop him from doing the bloodletting? Did you say anything you shouldn't have?”
Shouldn't have? What was that supposed to mean? “Like that I was from the future? No. I just said I didn't want him to kill you. Now why did you go back? To revisit the scene of the crime?” I asked bitterly.
“No,” he snapped. “I paid the poor man for his services. He's a good man. He's one of the people who taught my friend Rollo how to be a doctor.”
“Then Rollo's probably pretty bad at it.”
“No, other than the bloodletting part, Doc Vervain was an excellent doctor, and he taught at Rollo’s medical school. Rollo learned a lot from him. He wasn't successful in changing Doc's mind on the bloodletting issue, though.”
“A person from now went to medical school in the 1860s? That’s weird.”
“1850s, and yes, it was weird for him. I sat in on some of his classes. Pre-Civil War medicine in some cases is little more than faith healing.”
I closed my eyes, picturing my father lying helpless before Doc Vervain. “Dad?”
“What?”
“I'm glad he didn't kill you.”
“Me too. Dying once already was enough for me.”
***
DAD'S MEMORIES BOMBARDED my sleeping brain, playing over and over again. I couldn't pull myself from witnessing Nazi barbarities, but I was helpless to do anything...
“Mom! Dad!” I shrieked, not sure if I was even awake or not.
They were beside me despite the fact that the door of my bedroom had never opened. Mom merely had to look at me to know what was wrong. “What you saw. You can't get it out of your head.” She sat down on the bed beside me and wiped at my tears with the sleeve of her nightgown.
“I need Grandpa Ron,” I cried, clasping at her tightly. “I...can't handle it... I really can't...”
Dad glanced at the clock. “It's after twelve,” he stated. “Should I get him?”
Mom placed her hand on my forehead. “I can do it too if you'd like, Corinne.”
With the frilly pink nightgown and disheveled hair, Mom seemed like a fairy godmother to me right now. “Can you erase it all?” I asked her.
“Yes, but I don't think that's a good idea. Know what's out there. Keep it from happening again.”
“Whatever,” I whispered. “Just please, please help me, Mom.”
“Shh. I'll lessen it for you. Lie down.”
I lay back. Mom leaned over more, her palm warm against my skin. Her touch introduced a calm all through me, and my whole body relaxed. As Dad looked on, Mom shut her eyes and did whatever it was that she needed to do.
And I dreamed of flying.