29. Chapter 29
Chapter 29
“ S o, what do we do?” Emily flashed Will a panicked look. Why wasn’t he panicking?
“I have tools to fix it at home.”
“Which you can’t get to because my watch isn’t working.” She hid her face in her palms. “We’re done for. What does this mean? Are you going to have to stay here forever? Wait, if we can’t get my watch to work either, how are we—”
The gravel on the driveway crunched as a car pulled up to the house.
“Nicky,” she whispered, and she and Will simultaneously stood up. “Go, go, go!” But where? He couldn’t leave. Shit. “My bedroom. Go!”
“I cannot possibly violate your privacy in such a way,” Will complained as Emily pushed him up the stairs.
“She can’t find you here.”
“Wouldn’t it be wise, then, for me to leave the house?”
“We can think about that later. For now, you need to hide.” They reached her room just as the key turned in the lock. Emily leaned on the inside of her bedroom door. Aside from her rapid breathing, everything was quiet.
After another minute had passed, she locked the door and motioned for Will to sit on her bed. He did so, emulating the stiff posture of the first day when he sat on the sofa downstairs—only now, he clutched their watches.
Emily sat on her desk chair and faced him. “So, what do we do?”
“We can fix my watch, at least. If I was able to find tools and materials in my time, we can find them here.”
“Do you think Walmart has a ‘Time Travel Repair Tools’ section?”
“I don’t know what that is, but you have plenty of technology.”
“Okay.” If anyone, Will would know what he was doing. “What do you need? I reckon I can find some screwdrivers and tweezers…”
“That will all be useful. I’ll also need a dynamo—”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“A generator? For electricity?”
“Oh. Would a battery do? We’ve got packs of them.”
“Voltaic?”
“I don’t know. They’re batteries.” She shrugged. “You put them in and the chemicals do their part.”
“I suppose I could work with that. I’ll also need blue vitriol and methyl alcohol.”
“Oh, god.” Emily collapsed back in the chair. “I don’t know what those are.”
“Do you have a place, a chemist who’d sell it?”
She opened her laptop and punched in the words. “Oh. Methanol . This should be in our school lab. They may have the other one, too.” She twisted around to look at Will. “Are we going to break into our chemistry lab?”
“You’re suggesting that, not me.”
“Both watches are broken. This is not the time for morals.”
“Can’t we just purchase what we need?”
“It might take a while. I can go to the lab tomorrow. Which means you’ll have to stay the night.”
“But…” He looked even more terrified than he’d been, watching the war documentary. “It’s your bedroom .”
She waved her hand. “I’ll be fine. It won’t ruin my reputation, or whatever you’re concerned about.”
“Your aunt?”
“She spends most of the time in the living room, watching soaps. Won’t notice anything.”
“Your sister?”
“Once she gets back, she’ll put on headphones with her beloved classical music. Helps her study, you know.” Emily shook her head. “You two would get along great. Anyway, this is the easiest to combine with our plan.”
“ Your plan.”
“My plan, which is going to solve our problem. Tomorrow, when we all leave, you can search through a cabinet downstairs and the garden shed for whatever you need. You’ll come to meet me after school, and we’ll sneak into the lab.” She crossed her hands over her chest. “Do you have a better idea?”
He pressed his lips together.
“I’ll make you a bed on the floor. With lots of soft blankets and pillows. Oh! A pillow fort! I haven’t made one of those in ages. You ever made a pillow fort? I’m sure you didn’t.”
“Emily!”
“You’re staying here. Even if I could sneak you out now, where would you go?”
“Emily! Supper!” Nicky called.
“Just stay. Please? I’ll bring you some food.” Geez, she was talking to him like he was a lost puppy. “And snacks?” Yup, definitely a puppy. “Chips, chocolate chip cookies, popcorn… and then we can do something fun.”
“Fun?”
“It’s a very futuristic concept—”
“I know what entertainment is. What do you suggest?”
Hmm. What to do with a stuffy ancestor? “Wanna watch a movie?” She went to her laptop and clicked a few times. “You’ve got a whole library here. I like some action-adventure myself, but whatever floats your boat, Gramps.”
Will inspected the selection with a slight frown between his eyebrows. Eh, he’d be fine. Halfway to the door, Emily gasped and turned back in a jump. “Oh, I know! Popcorn—with caramel !”
Mission ‘Sleepover’ involved a bunch of awkward maneuvers, including Emily sneaking in an unexplainable number of pillows and blankets, and having to go to the bathroom to change into her pajamas. Not finding anything suitable for him, Will remained fully clothed, only shedding his coat and vest. Emily hung them in the closet; it felt wrong tossing them over a chair.
Something rustled in the pocket of the coat when she straightened it out. A sheet of paper? What did he—
“You can take it out,” Will said. “It’s meant for you.”
Emily unfolded the paper. A painting. A watercolor of a landscape at sunset: dozens of little bushes in green and golden yellow, mixed with a bit of orange and pink.
“My home. In Provence.”
“It’s beautiful. I can’t take this. It’s your work—”
“I have dozens of them. That’s my favorite spot, in the vineyards.”
She sat down on the bed, unable to tear her eyes away. He gave her a painting. His painting. He’d shared a bit of himself. “You’re pretty talented.”
Will shrugged. “I’ve been drawing ever since I was little, but I think even then, science wasn’t far from my mind. Though I have developed more of a knack for it in the recent years. I’m studying at Boston Tech now.” He walked over to the window and turned his gaze to the night sky. “Do you ever have trouble falling asleep from your mind being too active?”
“Not really. I usually shut down”—she snapped her fingers—“like that.”
“Mine never seems to stop. It goes off in all different places. When I was younger, it was the simple things. How amazing would it be if we could fly? How far are the stars? What could I make from those scrap parts of a barrel I found? When I found out about the Watchers and studied them more, I began to wonder about all the things they never got the chance to invent. They could change the world. Perhaps save lives.” His eyes lingered on the shadows outside. “Or ruin them.”
“You’re a bit of a dreamer.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Not her. She never thought about the stars beyond the fact that they were there. She never thought about a bigger purpose—a goal beyond her little concerns. Survive high school. Find a college. Work in the salon. Or a fast-food restaurant.
Everything else sounded like so much work. How did people do it? Go against the flow? Fight for dreams that seemed impossible to achieve? How was she going to make the change? She shuddered. Best to think about that later. “Change isn’t that easy. You said so yourself.” She fluffed her pillow. “We should go to sleep. It’s gonna be a busy day tomorrow.”
Will lowered onto his makeshift bed. She waited until he found a good position, then turned off the light.
“I think people can change,” Will said after a moment of silence. “We’re social beings. We interact with the world and others around us, and their actions can change us. And we, in turn, can bring change to the world.”
“Do you think you’ll change me?”
“Maybe we’ll change each other a little. For the better.”
“Does this mean you’ll wear shorts when summer comes?”
“Definitely not.”
She giggled. “Goodnight, Gramps.”
“Goodnight, Emily.”
Will had been busy. When Emily met him after class, the thin blue fabric of the almonite bag he carried revealed the outline of a foot-high object.
“Looks like you found the things you needed.” She led him through the hallways. They were mostly empty, save for a few students lingering for extra-curricular activities.
“I took caution to leave everything as it was.”
“Honey, it’s not like anyone’s gonna notice. Now, if you took one of Nicky’s nail polishes, that would be discovered immediately.”
Another group materialized down the hallway—Mrs. Spencer’s Pets and… Debbie. Shit. Emily grabbed Will and pulled him behind the nearest door. They crammed into a tiny, dark broom closet.
“This room does not allow for personal space, does it?” He remarked.
“Nope.” She tried to wiggle but only made it worse when a bucket fell on her. “Way too tight considering we’re related.”
A blur of voices passed. Emily caught something about a history test; that would explain the Pets and Debbie. She waited for a few more moments, then eased the door open. “They’re gone. The lab’s over there.”
She crossed over to the lab door and turned the knob, bumping straight into the solid wood when the door didn’t open. Great start. “Of course it’d be locked. Why didn’t I think of that?”
Will followed her. “Do you have a pin? Two, if possible.”
Emily reached up, removing two pins holding her hair at the sides. She brushed the loose strands behind her ear as Will twisted the pins and kneeled.
“You’re not doing what I think you’re doing.”
He bent one pin at a ninety-degree angle, stuck it inside the lock, and turned it slightly. With the other, he poked around in the lock. Something clicked, and when Will tried the knob, the door swung in.
“No way. I thought they only did this in the movies.” She followed, closing the door behind them.
“Hairpins are as good as the proper tools if you’re not dealing with complicated locks. All that matters is achieving the correct shape.”
He examined the storage cabinets. Various jars and bottles, clear and opaque, were stored on the shelves behind glass doors.
“How— why do you know how to lockpick?”
He gave her one of his mysterious smiles. “Mother taught me. Or, rather, I persuaded her.”
Emily entertained a vision of Will being an impish child before she fully realized the meaning of his sentence. “Fabienne taught you how to lock-pick?”
“There’s methanol.” He reached for a bottle of clear liquid. “We’ll need to be careful with this. It’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, the little skull gave it away. So, lock-picking?”
Will paused, still searching through the shelves. “She has kleptomania. She can’t resist the urge to steal. Most of the time, it’s nothing too valuable. It used to be a bit confusing, however, when my toys went missing.”
The slight trace of humor in his last sentence made Emily relax. “Can’t you cure it?”
“There is no known cause. The so-called experts would consider her immoral, hysterical…” He shook his head. “As it is not dangerous, we keep it to ourselves. The worst it does is cause some mood swings, anxiety, and having things go missing. And then having to return them.”
“So she learned to be a thief because she was a thief in the first place?”
“You could say so. Ah!” He grabbed a plastic bottle and opened it, revealing vivid blue crystals. “Blue vitriol!”
“Copper sulfate. That’s what you needed?”
“Indeed. We can proceed.”
They took everything to a long string of tables running down the lab. Will uncovered his device. Three metal rings were set one above the other, supported by a short stump that looked like a part of a hammer. An abundance of wire wrapped the contraption.
“Interesting science project,” Emily said. “You get an A for creativity.”
“Let’s hope it will also work.”
Will poured the methanol into a small vial and sprinkled the blue crystals along the rim of one circle. Emily brought him a pair of gloves and goggles, smiling at his mad scientist look as she watched him do the magic. Or the science, as it was.
He put his watch's mainspring into a beaker, set it at the center of the circle, and connected it with the wire.
“You won’t blow anything up, right?”
“I’ve done this before. Well, with similar equipment. My almonite recharger at home is slightly more intricate.”
“Does your watch break often?”
“Occasionally. And at random.”
“Why is it doing that? Is it something that can happen, like a glitch?”
“No. It was…” He paused to focus, holding a loose bit of wire with the tweezers, and snapped it to a battery. “At the end of the Civil War, the morning Lincoln died… The Watchers never figured out what exactly had happened, but the reports described a wave of chilling air, felt by those with almonite in their blood. It didn’t harm them, but whatever had passed through destroyed the majority of raw almonite. And it broke the watches.”
“I’m starting to wonder what doesn’t break the watches,” she muttered. “But you fixed them.”
“I fixed mine. This chemical infusion allows the almonite in the barrel to reconnect with the traces in my body. But I have to keep doing it.”
They waited for a long time with no discernible changes, save for the burning-chemical smell coming from the device; but nothing was burning.
Bored, Emily leaned on the desk and supported her chin with her hand. Will, in contrast, stared intensely at the beaker with the mainspring, until a cracking sound came, and the liquid smoked. “It’s done.”
“Oh. Wow. That was sudden.” She snapped to attention. “I thought there’d be more drama.”
She put everything back in place while Will carefully wrapped up the mainspring in a piece of cloth and put the device back in the bag. The outside was still quiet, but the experiment took over half an hour, and Emily was getting nervous.
“Ready? We better go now.”
“All sorted out,” Will said.
Emily gave him a thumbs-up and opened the door.
And looked straight into the cat-eyed glasses of Mrs. Spencer.