30. Chapter 30
Chapter 30
“ M iss Willburne.” Mrs. Spencer’s tone was especially wasp-like today. “Would you mind explaining what you’re doing in the lab after school?”
“Uh.” Emily leaned on the doorway, hoping that was enough to conceal Will. “Studying?”
“How curious. I saw Mr. Turner leave, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have if there was a student, unattended, in his lab.”
Shit.
Mrs. Spencer ran her cold eyes over Emily. “I believe it’s time to pay a visit to the principal. I wanted to have a word about your school performance, anyway.”
The principal? Emily gulped.
“Come along.” Mrs. Spencer made a swift turn and started down the hallway.
“No, wait! I…” Emily frantically searched for a solution. The door to the history classroom was open, with a few students still lingering. “I wasn’t studying for chemistry!”
Mrs. Spencer turned and narrowed her eyes.
“I wanted to do your test. For the history competition.” Emily bit her tongue. Bad excuse. Very bad excuse.
“Is that so?”
“But I… had to go to the lab… because I forgot my notes here. And I needed to study.” That was better. Yup, totally reasonable. Emily grasped the explanation like a life jacket. “But I lost track of time—I see that you finished already—so I guess I’ll grab my stuff and…”
She examined the lab—Will was gone, lucky man—pretended to gather her things, and plastered an innocent smile on her face before she turned to face Mrs. Spencer. The teacher lurked in the doorway as if in a horror movie. Emily stifled a scream.
“That’s not a problem,” Mrs. Spencer said.
“Huh?”
“The test. If you wish to take it, you can do so now.” Mrs. Spencer gave her a smile as fake as her own.
She knows. But if Emily bailed, she’d only confirm she was lying.
So she followed Mrs. Spencer to the classroom, past a strange glance from Lilianne, and sat at a desk in the front the teacher indicated.
“I have one test left. A student couldn’t attend. Lucky you.” Mrs. Spencer whipped out a sheet of paper. It cracked through the air as she laid it in front of Emily. “You have twenty minutes.” She sat down at her desk. It may have looked like her attention was on the completed tests before her, but Emily was sure Mrs. Spencer was watching her .
Probably preparing her speech for the principal.
Emily pulled out a pen, staining it with the sweat from her clammy hands. First question. Who was the first Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire?
What the hell? This wasn’t even US history. Maybe they’d mentioned this last year, but if that info had ever stuck in Emily’s mind, it was long gone. She glanced at the other questions. Sports at the Summer Olympics, something about a transcontinental telegraph, the Great Depression…
She’d never figure this out. It wasn’t even multiple choice—she had to write down each answer.
She was doomed.
A feeling of dizziness overcame her—but not dizziness from the realization. Her hand became heavy and her mind clouded, unfocused, drifting. Her hand moved on its own, put pen to paper, and began to write. Emily wanted to scream, but she couldn’t—she was losing control of her body, her mind—
“Time’s up.”
Emily shook her head. The clock stated twenty minutes had passed. She blinked. Had she zoned out? Oh, no, the test…
Mrs. Spencer walked up to her. “Well done,” she said, somewhat reluctantly.
With a frown, Emily followed the teacher’s gaze. Her test was filled out. No way. I didn’t know any of the answers.
“You may have come around after all, Miss Willburne. You’re free to go. I’ll inform you of the results shortly.” Mrs. Spencer snatched the test and returned to her desk.
In a daze, Emily grabbed her things and walked to the door. She tossed one last confused glance over her shoulder. Mrs. Spencer contorted her mouth in a strange approximation of a smile.
Emily gave her an awkward wave and sped away.
The next day, Emily arrived at school fully prepared for someone to take her to the principal, or jail, or whatever she’d get for breaking into a lab, then lying to a teacher, then bluffing her way through a test.
Or whatever she’d done during that test. Maybe she’d zoned out because it was too embarrassing to remember.
But nothing happened. She was working on her math homework in study hall when a figure shadowed her vision. “Debbie?”
Her younger sister drew up a chair and sat backward on it.
“What are you doing here? Don’t you have English right now?”
“I told Mr. Walker I need to go to the restroom for girly stuff.” Debbie scrunched up her nose. “But I have to get back quickly, we’re having a fascinating discussion on adverbs. First, though—what the heck was that with the history competition?”
Oh, wonderful. Now she’d get mocked by her little sister. “Well, I—“
“Mrs. Spencer said you got a perfect score.” Debbie narrowed her eyes. “ How ?”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah, what?” Sarah raised her eyes from The Strangest Cases of Alien Possession in the 20th Century .
“Emily?” Lilianne, sitting two desks away, turned.
Panicked, Emily’s eyes darted from one to the other. It was like being called out by a teacher in front of the whole class—only the opposite, she guessed, since Mrs. Parker didn’t care what the students were doing during study hall.
“Emily made it into our team for the History Juggle,” Debbie explained to Lilianne.
Sarah snorted. “History Juggle? Who names these things? Also, why are you on a history team?”
“Is exactly my question,” Debbie said.
“Well… why are you ?” Emily shot back.
“Because if we win, it’ll show my commitment, leadership, and recognition, the things most important to stand out in a college application,” Debbie smoothly recited.
Emily blinked.
“Anyway…” Lilianne cast a half-scared look toward Debbie and smiled at Emily. “If you want, you can come practice with us. Cory broke his leg and his mama wouldn’t allow him to compete, but Michael made the team. We meet at his house. And we have less than three months before DC, so now that the team is set, we should really—”
“DC?” Emily interrupted.
“That’s where the competition is.”
“I have to go.” Debbie stood, still examining Emily as if she weren’t sure she was human. Emily turned and saw the same expression on Sarah’s face.
“History. Juggle?” Sarah’s tone matched that of a parent discovering their child had made a mess. “Who are you? What are you? You didn’t go anywhere near Area 51, did you?”
“I’m not an alien,” Emily murmured, following retreating Debbie with her gaze. “It was a misunderstanding. I had to do a test so I wouldn’t get in trouble with Mrs. Spencer.”
She’d gotten all the answers right. How? She stared at the unsolved equation in her notebook. She didn’t even remember—
That was it. She didn’t remember. Because a different Emily from another time had taken over. She’d traveled back to the test to save her butt. But why all the answers? It only got her into more trouble. Now she’d have to explain to Mrs. Spencer she didn’t want to go to any competition. Which made no sense since she supposedly wanted to take the test.
Emily sighed and bumped her head on the desk.
Stage fright probably wouldn’t work as an excuse.
Will waited for Emily near her house, pretending to be a casual stroller.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“I think anything I say would be an understatement. How are you, Gramps?”
“Everything is fine. I fixed your watch. Did you end up in trouble?”
“Depends on how you define trouble.” Emily inspected the area and let Will into her house once she was sure nobody was watching. She explained the events of the previous day as they headed up to her room. “So, now I need to travel back and write the answers. What I don’t get is why I answered everything correctly. I want nothing to do with their history competition.” She sat on her bed while Will took the position in front of the desk.
He scratched his chin. “Curious, indeed.”
“Are you sure I can’t change the past again? If I traveled back and only got half of the answers right…”
“No. What happened tells us that the final result, regardless of how many travels you made, was you getting all the answers correct.”
“Then I’m just plain dumb. Why would I submit myself to going all the way to DC with Mrs. Spencer? And Debbie?”
Will snapped to attention. “DC? As in Washington?”
“Yeah. Where the competition is.”
Will paced to the door, then turned to her. “My mother’s mission is in Washington. You’ll need to go there.”
Emily shot from the bed. “And you’re telling me that now?”
“I hadn’t considered it would be much of an issue. Travel is easy in your era, is it not? You have those airplanes—”
“Easy, but not cheap. I don’t have the time or the means.” Emily grunted and ran a hand through her hair. “I have the means now, don’t I?” She collapsed on the bed, splaying her limbs. “Now my answers make sense. I had to get it all right because I have to get to the damn competition.”
“It is commendable, really.”
She raised her head. “What is?”
“That you had—or, will—study history despite not liking it.”
“Study it? Oh, no, no. I already know the questions. I’ll just look up the answers. In fact, Debbie probably has cliff notes somewhere.”
His eyebrows drew together. “You intend to cheat.”
“Relax. I’ve done it before with an assignment or two.”
“I would much prefer if we go about this the honest way.”
Of course he would. She sat up, cross-legged. “Will, I can’t afford to go about it the honest way. I don’t want to, I don’t need to, I can’t . I don’t have time to study that much material! I have other tests, and the SATs are coming up—”
“Understandable. But it doesn’t mean I condone it.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m still doing it.”
“Emily—”
She walked to him and clutched his shoulders. “Guillaume Pelletier, do you want me to save your mother or not?”
His jaw twitched.
“Will?”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Simple. I look up the answers, travel back, write them down. One trip, twenty minutes. Easy-peasy.”
“I’ll let you do what you think is best. It’s your world,” he said stiffly. “But let it be known, I’m not in favor of your hornswoggling.”
She snorted. “Cheating? Well, it’s what we do, if we’re given the opportunity.”
“Not all of us,” he mumbled as she took her laptop to the bed and powered it up.
“If it’ll make you feel better, you can tell me the answers, if you know them.” She shot him a sideways glance. He remained stubbornly silent. “Okay, then. Let’s see, what did we have. Holy Roman Emperor…”
She wrote the questions down, then went in search of answers.
“Your telephone is buzzing,” Will said.
Emily checked it. Two missed calls from Nicky. Oh, no. She was supposed to visit Mama today. Emily bit her lip, then sent a quick ‘sorry, forgot’ text to her aunt.
Using schoolwork as an excuse again?
She shook off her annoying thoughts. She had more pressing matters. It wasn’t that she couldn’t bear being there, in that sad little room, where the beeping of the devices that kept Mama alive formed the other end of the conversation. In the room where she saw Dad’s heartbreak.
Emily forced herself to focus on the task at hand. This was how she’d save her. “This is a weird one,” she murmured as she checked the next question. “Krakatoa is a synonym for what? Maybe I didn’t get it right. I’ll have to travel back to make sure—”
“Disaster,” Will said.
“Okay, the situation is not that bad.”
“No, the word Krakatoa. It means disaster.”
She looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“It’s a volcano in Indonesia. It erupted two years ago—that is, in 1883. A massive explosion, they say. Thousands of lives lost.”
“Oh.”
“Ash particles spread in the atmosphere all over the world. They lowered the temperatures. The grape harvest was late. But the particles also made spectacular sunsets. Blood red and orange, so vivid you’d think there was a great fire in the distance. Sometimes, the moonlight would be blue or green. I painted some of it. It was incredible.” He grimaced. “Although the thousands of dead would disagree.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She suddenly felt so small, insignificant. The entire world around her was rooted in history. Down in the Historical District, centuries-old houses were haunted by lost souls: souls who, even if they didn’t die as dramatically as the stories went, still had to come from somewhere. They lived and they died; they walked on some same and some similar streets, perhaps sat under the very same trees she had.
And she’d never cared about any of it.
“Should you continue?” Will asked.
“Right. Yeah.” She shook her head and returned to work, writing down what Will had told her, and double-checking it with a search. But it didn’t feel the same, only reading about the disaster.
In another ten minutes, she collected all the answers. “I think I’m ready. I’ll go back to the test now. You, uh, you can go if you don’t want to be an accomplice in this.”
Will shifted on his seat. “I’ll wait.”
She lowered her eyes. This is the best way. The easiest way. She readied her watch, calculated the time, and, in a second, was back in the classroom where she whizzed her way through the test. At least Will could give me credit for remembering all these answers. She didn’t have to travel back a single time in between; just wrote it all down, then traveled back to leave her past self slightly confused about what had happened. I’m sorry. You’ll get it soon enough.
“The telephone doesn’t stop buzzing,” Will told her as she returned.
“Ugh. It’s my aunt.” Emily called back. Nicky picked up immediately. “I know I forgot, I’m sorry. Didn’t you see the text?”
“Emily.” Her aunt’s voice was different—low, unstable, as if being tossed around on invisible waves. Emily had never heard it like this.
No. She had. Once. That evening before Christmas.
Shivers spread over her skin, and she felt it, knew it, before Nicky continued.
“It’s your mama.”