In Times Like These (2 page)

I play along with Carson’s optimism. Most of our team has already gone to their cars to wait, but I’m not in any hurry to leave the company of my friends. I can tell that this storm isn’t likely to be over fast. Anyone with a few years of Florida weather experience gets to know the difference between a quick passing shower and a prolonged storm, and this one appears to be settling in for the evening. I’m bummed to not be playing for another week, but even rainout beers are better than being at work.

“I guess those guys don’t think it’s going to let up,” Robbie says, noting the opposing dugout clearing out.

Carson picks up his clipboard.
“If it stops and they don’t have enough players to re-take the field, we win by forfeit.”

“I came here to play. I hate win
ning by forfeit,” Robbie grumbles.

“What’s new with you
, Blake?” Francesca steers the conversation away from our glum prospects.

“D
id Ben not tell you the news yet?”

“No, he’s obviously slacking in the gossip department. What’s your news?”

Blake looks at me. “Should I show it to her?”

“You have it with you?”

“Yeah, it’s in my Jeep.”

“What is it?” Francesca’s curiosity is now peaked.

“Be right back.” Blake gets up, walks past Carson, who is in deep concentration over the stats sheet, and dashes into the rain toward the parking lot.

“What’s he got?” Francesca looks back to me, brushing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes.

“It’s pretty impressive.” I grab my flip-flops out of the overhead cubbies and start changing out of my cleats. Robbie follows my example.

“It’s not looking good,” he says. I nod in response and a minute later
, Blake dashes back into the dugout holding a plastic bag. He sits next to Francesca and unwraps the package. He holds out a small jewelry box.

“Oh for Mallory?” Francesca exclaims. Blake pries open the lid and displays the diamond ring inside. “Ooh, you did good Blake!” Francesca takes the box and looks adoringly at the ring.

“Well it’s time,” he replies.

“How long have you two been dating now? Four years?” Carson asks, his interest waning in the statistics sheet.

“Yeah, I wanted to wait till she finished grad school, but now that she’s almost done, we’re taking the leap.”

“That’s awesome
, man.” Robbie pats Blake on the shoulder.

We pass the ring box around, admiring it as the rain beats down on the dugout. Under the bright lights of the baseball diamond, the ring sparkles even more than the last time I saw it.
Mallory’s going to love that. I need to find a ring like that. I need to find a girl like that.
I close the ring box and pass it on to Robbie. As I do, an exceptionally bright lightning bolt sears across the sky and hits what can only be a few blocks away. The thunderclap is deafening and immediate. The bench is a symphony of expletives for a moment and Francesca clenches my arm and pulls herself against me.

“Holy shit that was close!” Robbie says.

A high-pitched whine like a jet engine begins to emanate from the direction of the strike. It grows louder and is followed by an explosion of bright blue light that domes up through the rain and illuminates the cloudy sky.

“What the hell—
” is all that escapes my mouth, before a deafening bang from a transformer blowing behind us drowns me out. I’m still too startled from the shock to move when the severed end of a power line whips into the end of the dugout and lands on the far end of our bench. The last thing I sense before blacking out is the sight of my friends glowing with a pale blue light, and the sound of Francesca screaming.

Chapter 2

“If you meet an experienced time traveler, you can usually trust that they are intelligent. The nature of this business rapidly weeds out the morons.”

-Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2110.

I open my eyes to bleary but bright sunlight. I’m lying on my back staring at a clear blue sky. The bright light worsens the ache in my head, so I close my eyes again. I can feel the heat of the sun on my face and the dry itchy feeling of grass on my arms and neck and the backs of my ears. There’s definitely something crawling on my arm, but I’m too unmotivated to care. I monitor the slow progression of little insect feet, trying to gauge the threat.
Lady bug maybe? Spider?
I consider the most likely candidates.
Shit, if it’s a fire ant, there’s probably a zillion more around
. I open my eyes again and angle my head slowly upward, trying to locate the intruder in the crook of my elbow. My eyes adjust to the light and I make out the ant. Not a fire ant. I lay my head back and stare at the midday sky.
Why is it daytime?

A low moan comes from my right. Francesca is lying next to me, her dark hair spread out around her and her fingers clenched in the grass. My eyes travel down her back to the wisp of smoke rising from the backside of her jeans. This moves me to ac
tion. “Francesca you’re on fiaargh.” My body objects to movement, and I collapse back onto the ground.
Son of a bitch that hurt.

I try again more slowly this time. I roll up to my elbow and reach a hand out to Francesca’s shoulder. “Hey. Fresca. You okay?” She doesn’t respond. Beyond Francesca, Blake and Carson are likewise lying in the grass. Blake’s legs are still extended over the bench of the dugout, only there is no more
dugout. I twist and look back toward my feet. The bench is there but the roof of the dugout and the cubbyholes where I had stashed my glove and water bottle have disappeared. The opposing dugout is gone too. In its place is only the cement slab and the bench. I twist farther and see Robbie sitting up behind me. “You okay?”

He rubs a hand across his face. “Yeah, I think so. What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are the others all right
?” He tries to get to his feet, but staggers a little and sits down on the bench instead. “Agh. There’s something wrong with my feet!”

I shake Francesca again and she rolls onto her back
, but doesn’t open her eyes. Blake sits up on the other side of her and looks at his hand. There’s a red scorch mark across his palm. He rubs it with his other hand as Robbie slides down the bench and nudges Carson. As Blake turns his right foot toward him, I see a hole through the center of his cleat with melted edges.

“Hey, you okay?”

He looks at me. “Yeah. Looks like we got a little crispy though.”

I feel around my backside and find a singed hole
in my athletic shorts. “Ah, man . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just apparently got shocked through my butt cheek.” Francesca’s eyes are open now. I lean toward her. “Hey. You all right?”

She tilts her head toward
me. “I feel awful.”

“Yeah. Join the club.”

“What happened?”

“We got electrocuted,” Blake says.

“But what happened to the field?” Robbie inquires from the bench. Carson is sitting up now also, staring blankly past me.

“I don’t know. That’s throwing me off too.” I stare at the open sky where the roof of the dug
out ought to be. I blink twice, half expecting to see the illusion disappear and the dugout rematerialize. The vacant space refuses to yield. I climb to my knees and gingerly take a seat on the bench.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Francesca has her hand around the backside of her jeans and has discovered the burn hole. “I just bought these.” She mutters a little more and extends a hand for me to pull her up. She twists to inspect her butt again and then sits down next to me.

“What time is it?” Carson climbs to his feet and brushes some grass clippings off the shoulder of his shirt.

“Looks like the middle of the day,” I say, looking at the sun.

“Were we out here all night?” Francesca asks.

“I don’t see how. When I woke up, your jeans were still smoking.”

“What?” Francesca pivots to check her backside again.

“Yeah, something weird is going on.” Blake is fingering the chain link fence between
us and the field. “None of this looks right.”

“Dude, where are our cars?” Carson springs off the bench and begins hobbling toward the parking lot. I follo
w him. Blake limps along with us. The only car in the parking lot is a dark red Ford Tempo. Carson looks fruitlessly for his pickup truck. Mine is gone too. “This is so not cool.” Carson holds his hands to his orange hair.

Good thing my truck
is a piece of junk. Who the hell would want to steal it though?
I walk over to the Tempo. The paint job is shiny and clean. The interior looks pristine as well. I lean down and note the original stereo system.
Somebody has really gone to some pains to restore this thing. Who would restore a Tempo?

“We need to call the cops,” Blake says. He shouts back to Robbie and Francesca, “Do either of you have your phones?” I turn away from the car and follow him back toward the bench. His fingers go to his pockets as he’s walking, and he shouts again. “Hey! Anybody see the ring?”

I stop and inspect the ground as Blake hobbles toward the bench. “I think I had it last,” Robbie says. He stands up and looks around, evidently no longer in possession of it.

I’m working my way closer when I hear Francesca exclaim, “Is that it?”

Blake vaults over the bench to the place she’s indicating and snatches the ring box out of a clump of grass. The muscles of his face relax as he opens it and finds the diamond still inside. He slips the box into his pocket.

“That would have sucked,” Carson says. Francesca removes her phone from her pocket and opens it. “Did it get fried?” Carson asks.

“No, it’s still on, but I’m not getting any signal.” She hands the phone to Robbie. “Here. You mess with it. I’m cold. Is anyone else cold?”

“It is kind of cool out,” Carson responds.

“So what are we doing? Are we trying to call the cops?” I look around the empty field and see no sign of our other teammates or the opposing players.

“Yeah, if we can get any kind of signal.” Robbie holds
the phone up and walks around.

“So wait, I don’t get what’s going on,” Francesca says. “What happened to the field? Are we at the same place? What happened to the dugouts?”

“I don’t know what the hell is going on.” Robbie shuts the phone.

Blake is looking at the scorch on his palm again.
“We should probably get ourselves checked out at a hospital. Some of these burns might need attention.”

A door opens in a house across
the street and a woman walks to the sidewalk to check her mail. As she collects it, she takes a side-long glance in our direction before going back inside.

“Did you see that woman’s hair?” Francesca asks. “It was huge.”

“Pretty out of control,” Carson agrees.

“Nice mom jeans too.” Francesca scoots over for me to sit down next to her.

“Are we getting pranked right now or something?” Robbie asks. “Why is the field different looking?”

“If somebody thought pranking us after we just got electrocuted was funny, I would probably kill them,” Carson says.

“Who would be capable of doing something like this?” I ask. “This would be really elaborate. Besides, the only people who ever prank me are sitting right here.”

“Maybe the electrocution messed with our heads,” Francesca suggests. “Maybe we’re just remembering it wrong?”

“All of our batting gloves and mitts and stuff were in those cubbies. We had bats and balls and water in the dugout. It’s all gone. How could we remember that wrong?” Carson asks.

“My batting gloves are actually still here.” I pull them up from between where Francesca and I are sitting on the bench. “I guess if we moved, these managed to come with us.” I stroke the leather of the gloves between my fingers.
What happened to the rest of my stuff?
I have a nagging at the back of my mind like I’m missing something. I stare at the baseball diamond, trying to make sense of the changes. I feel like it’s there, right in front of me, but I just can’t see it. “Did you guys see the power line hit the end of the bench?” I look up at the poles near the street, the power line hanging benignly between them.

Francesca shakes her head. “I just remember the noise.”

“And the results.” Blake holds up his scorched hand.

Carson shields his eyes from the sun while looking up at the lines.
“I saw it. But it’s back up there now.”

“Maybe Francesca’s right,” Blake says. “Maybe our brains are fried, because none of this is making any sense.”

“You guys want to try to walk to find a place where this phone will work, or maybe find a payphone?” Robbie scratches the back of his head. “There might be one over on
Ninth Street.”

“Walking? Really?” Francesca says. “We just got electrocuted.”

“Well, we can sit here I guess, but without a phone, I don’t really know that we’re going to get much help,” Robbie says. “You can try to ask mom-jeans across the street I suppose.”