In Times Like These (28 page)

No one shows.

Last night in 1986. I wonder how far we’ll have made it by tomorrow night.

Chapter 15

“If you post your used concert tickets on Craigslist and someone actually buys them, you know you’ve found yourself a time traveler.”

-Excerpt from th
e journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2013

“Where are we going to do this?” Blake is standing in the kitchen, holding Carson’s bike handle and the corresponding photograph. The photograph shows a child’s bicycle propped on its kickstand on the sidewalk in front of a blue house. The description on the photo lists the bike handle as being 38 1/2 inches off the ground. Mr. Cameron has loaned us his tape measure since we didn’t bring any of Dr. Quickly’s.

“I guess we could do it anywhere really,” I say.

“Let’s use the backyard,” Francesca says. “It’s nice out.”

I pick up my pack and carry
it out the back steps. The mid-morning sun feels good on my skin. Mr. Cameron and Robbie are already out there watching the dog foraging through the garden. Francesca is carrying the other pack.

“You want me to carry that for you?” Blake asks.

“No. I got it,” she says.

We congregate in the
middle of the walkway to the garage and find a cement paver that looks level.

“I guess we can measure from here. As long as we ha
ve the handle down lower than thirty-eight inches, our feet will show up higher than ground level.”

“You know which way is up on that handle?” Francesca asks.

“Yeah, it’s got these little finger grip things on it,” Blake says, pointing to the picture. “This way is down.” He twists the bike grip so the finger bumps point at an angle toward the ground.

“Okay. Just checking,” Francesca says.

“That’s good,” I say. “We should check each other’s work a lot, just to be sure.”

Once we’ve figured out the details of our jump, Blake sets t
he bike handle down and we turn to our host. Robbie helps Mr. Cameron out of the lawn chair, but once up, Mr. Cameron seems to be doing okay on his own. We meet them in the middle of the grass.

“I guess this is it,” I say.

“You have everything all set?” Mr. Cameron asks.

“As ready as we’re going to be.”

“It’s going to be exciting to see it. I’ve never had any time travel activity in my backyard before. I probably should have sold tickets to the neighbors.”

“Maybe you can set that up for Robbie and Carson.” I smile.

“It has been a pleasure having you here, Ben.” Mr. Cameron steps forward to embrace me. When he steps back, he pats my shoulder. “You’re a good man.”

“Thank you
, sir. Thank you for . . . everything.”

Francesca is next. She wraps her arms around his neck and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek.

“It was great having a lovely young woman in the house again,” Mr. Cameron says. “I wish Abby could have met you. I think she would have loved getting to know you.”

“It was really great being here,” Francesca says. “Thank you so much for being so kind to us. I’m really going to miss this place.” Francesca steps back and brushes a tear away with her finger.

“Blake.” Mr. Cameron gives him a hug as well. “I wish you all the best in getting back to your future fiancé. She’s lucky to have a man like you fighting for her.”

“Thank you
, sir,” Blake says. “Thank you for all your generosity. I don’t know where we would be without you.”

Robbie gives my hand a shake. “See you in a bit, huh?”

“Yeah.” I smile. “Take good care of them.”

Francesca hugs Robbie as Carson
extends me his hand. “Be careful, dude.”

“We will. You too,” I reply.
“Don’t linger too long. We’ll need you back throwing batting practice. Big game next week.”

Carson smiles. “Yeah, no worries. Those guys are chumps. We’re gonna crush
’em.” I pull him in for a hug.

Francesca and Carson stand apart for a moment.

“Later gator,” Carson says.

Francesca hugs him and lingers a moment before stepping back.
“After a while crocodi—” She turns her head and wipes away more tears.

“Don’t worry
, kid. We’ll see you there,” Carson says.

Francesca nods, still holding her hand under her nose. Mr. Cameron offers her his handkerchief.
Blake exchanges handshakes with Carson and Robbie also.

“Now get outta here,” Carson says. “We’ve got shit to do today.”

I smile and we make our way back to our bike handle. Spartacus comes by and sniffs it before Mr. Cameron calls him. “Leave that alone, you menace. They need that.”

Blake picks up the bike handle and Francesca and I huddle around him.
“Let’s see that picture again,” I say. Blake pulls it out of his back pocket with his free hand and I take it. I extend Mr. Cameron’s tape measure back to the ground. “So thirty-eight inches is here.” I hold my hand out and Blake lowers the handle a few inches below it. “We’re going to have a little bit of a drop when we get there.”

“That’s great. I love immediately falling on my ass whenever I show up somewhere,” Francesca says.

“Shouldn’t be that bad,” Blake says. Francesca and I crouch down and put out our chronometer hands to touch the bike handle, making sure to stay clear of where the rest of the bike will be.

“You guys all look ridiculous by the way,” Carson says from behind us.

“You’re not helping, Carson,” Francesca replies.

I toss the tape measure back toward Robbie’s feet. I see Blake feel for the lump in his pocket that is Mallory’s engagement ring.

“You guys ready?” I say.

Francesca nods.

I look back over my shoulder at Mr. Cameron and Carson and Robbie. Robbie smiles and gives me a thumbs up.

“Bon voyage,” Mr. Cameron says.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Blake says.

“On three,” I say.
“One . . . two . . .” One last glance at our home. “Three.”

I push the pin.

I sway for a moment on the landing
, but stay standing. Blake and Francesca manage to keep their feet too, though Francesca grabs my arm to steady herself. We’re on a sidewalk under an iron gray sky. My breath catches from the cold.

“We did it!” Francesca says.

In place of Mr. Cameron’s backyard is a residential neighborhood on a cul de sac. We’re standing in front of a home three houses from the end of the street. Its blue vinyl siding is stained rust-colored around a hose reel in the front yard. The grass looks unhealthy, but I realize that’s just because it’s winter. The neighborhood is silent.

It only takes a few seconds till Francesca complains.

“God it’s cold.” She crosses her arms and holds her shoulders. “Why don’t we go anywhere when it’s summer?”

“Working with what we’ve got,” Blake says as he walks u
p the driveway and picks up a newspaper lying on the porch. I study the bicycle in front of me. It’s a pink-and-white Huffy with red dice and some beads on the spokes.

“December 15
th, 1986,” Blake reads.

“Well we got that right,” Francesca says.

“Oh shit,” I blurt out.

“What?” Francesca says, her eyes alert.

“I forgot about the space shuttle.”

“What?”

“The Challenger explosion was going to happen in January. I was going to see if we could stop it from exploding.”

“Oh wow,” Francesca says.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Blake says as he walks back to us. “Probably would have screwed up a bunch of shit. The only thing I’m interested in changing about the past is the fact that we’re stuck in it.”

“Hey, Ben?” Francesca asks.

“Yeah?”

“Does your pack feel lighter?”

I jostle my pack on my back. “Actually, yeah.”

I swing it off to look at it. Instead of being stuffed tight, the edges now hang loosely around the contents. “Shit. What happened?”

Francesca takes her pack off as well.

“What are you
—” Blake looks at our partially filled packs. “What did you do?”

“It wasn’t me!” Francesca says. I open my pack on the ground a
nd see my tortoise shell inside on a pile of clothes, and a few other anchors.

“Damn. We’re missing a lot of stuff,” I say. I peer into Francesca’s pack. Hers has likewise been depleted.

“We just lost a ton of shit!” Blake pulls Francesca’s pack toward him and rummages through it.

“What happened?” Francesca asks.

I pull a notched silver dollar out of my pack and then throw it back in as I root around. “We still have some of our anchors.”

“Do we have our next one?” Francesca asks. “Next was the piece of rain gutter right?”

I look through the pack. “I don’t see it.”

“It’s not in here either,” Blake says.

“What was next on the list?” Francesca grabs her pack to look in the front pocket. “Damn it. My list is gone too.”

“That makes sense actually,” I say. “Your list was written on paper from Mr. Cameron’s house. That never had any gravitites in it. I copied the list into my logbook though.”

I pull my logbook out of my pack and see Francesca’s in there also. “May as well log this jump,” I say, handing her book to her.

“So you knew this was going to happen?” Francesca says.

“No. Well I knew your paper wasn’t going to make it, that’s why I wrote it in here, but I figured all the anchors would be fine. They all came from Quickly’s lab. They must not have all been treated with the gravitites though.”

Blake is frowning down at us as we squat over the packs. “Nice if he would have stuck around long enough to tell us that.” He kicks over the bicycle.

“Hey!” Francesca says. “That’s not very nice. That’s some girl’s bike.”

Blake glares at her for a second as if he’s going to respond, but does
n’t. After a moment he picks the bike back up.

“So what are we going to do now?”
He pulls out his logbook and starts angrily flipping to the right page. I finish jotting my entries and hand him my pen.

“Let me see if there’s anything about this in Quickly’s journal.” I pull the journal out of my back pocket. “Wait!” I spin around and search the area around us.

“What?” Francesca looks up from her logbook.

“Dr. Quickly!” I say. “He was here! He wrote on the back of this photo.” I pull out the photo of the bike and show her the back. “That’s Quickly’s handwriting, so it means he took the picture. He has to be around here somewhere!”

I dash out into the middle of the street and look around. There’s no sign of anyone except a postman a few blocks down delivering mail. I trot down to the end of the cul de sac and continue looking, but see no one. A Dalmatian barks at me from behind a chain link fence. Disappointed, I walk back to my friends.

“He had to be here recently or that photo never would have been taken.”

“Well, he’s not here now,” Blake says. He and Francesca have finished with their logbooks and Francesca is pulling a couple of T-shirts out of her pack. She layers them over the shirt she’s wearing. One of them is mine, but she doesn’t seem to care.

“Where are we?” s
he asks.

“I don’t know actually,” I say. The back of the photo doesn’t list a city. I look around at the neighborhood but see no clues.
Quickly was right, American suburbia does pretty much all look the same.

“The newspaper was
The Boston Globe
,” Blake says. “We must be somewhere in New England.” He walks to the mailbox and pops it open. He reads an envelope he finds inside. “We’re in West Bridgewater, wherever that is.”

“So what now?” Francesca says.

There’s a trashcan sitting at the edge of the curb of the house next to us. I walk over to it and toss the photo of the bike handle inside.

“What’re you doing?” Blake asks.

“I read in the journal that you’re supposed to dispose of your used photos immediately, so that you don’t accidentally reuse one that you’ve used before.” I flip open the journal and thumb through it till I find the page I’m looking for. “It says, ‘Maintain a careful and accurate inventory of used and unused jump anchors to avoid duplication of use.’”

“W
ell we already screwed that up,” Blake says. “We left half our inventory on Mr. Cameron’s lawn.”

I keep reading. “It also sa
ys as a precaution we need to ‘exit the vicinity of the jump area immediately, to avoid potential collisions with other time travelers accidentally using the same location.’”

“So I shouldn’t have been still standing here the last five minutes?” Francesca says. “Is that what you’re telling me?”