Running Out of Time (11 page)

But there had been no need for Jessie to tell anyone that, because everyone in Clifton knew her.

Now that Jessie knew Clifton wasn't a normal village, and it wasn't really 1840, did she know who she was? Could she go back to Clifton after this and live as she always had?

Jessie swallowed a bite of bread and it stuck in her throat. She bent over and cupped her hands in the creek, preparing to take a drink.

Then she heard yelling.

“Stop! Stop it!”

W
hen Jessie dared to turn around, she saw a man bounding toward her. He had a grizzly gray beard and snapping eyes. He was also the fattest man Jessie had ever seen. Jessie thought she could outrun him if she had to, but it scared her that she hadn't known he was behind her. What if he were from Clifton?

“Stop!” he yelled again.

Panting, the man leaned on the fence right behind Jessie. Jessie braced to run if he climbed the fence. She was not going to let someone fatter than Mr. Seward catch her.

“I don't mind you trespassing on my land,” the man said, “as long as you don't leave a mess. But I can't believe you'd be stupid enough to drink that water. Don't you know how many pesticides and herbicides flow into that creek every spring?”

Jessie wanted to act like a normal 1996 teenager, but she didn't know if she was supposed to say yes or no. So she said nothing.

Glaring, the man said, “You really don't, do you? I mean, it's poison! Stupid city kid.”

Jessie let the water spill through her fingers. Poison? It didn't look any different from the well water at home. No one drank out of Crooked Creek in Clifton, but Jessie had thought that was just because everyone had wells.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Where can I get a drink that isn't, uh, poison?”

She looked down at the water again. It sparkled in the sunlight filtered through the bushes. Poison? The man was probably crazy.

“There's a million gas stations with stores on 37,” the man said. “For all the Clifton Village tourists. People have to get their last fix of the twentieth century before they risk seeing the past.”

The man's voice was sarcastic. Jessie wondered if she dared ask what a gas station was. And what did people fix in the stores?

“So they would have water at the … gas stations?” she finally asked, hoping it wasn't a giveaway question.

“Sure, water, pop, juice, beer, you name it. They'll sell you anything. It's a capitalist age we live in, my dear.” Jessie decided to ask the more important question.

“Would they have a phone?”

“Sure,” the man said. He paused. “Oh, just come on up to my house and I'll get you a glass of water. Free. You can use the phone, too, as long as it's a local call. It won't be the first
time my afternoon walk's interrupted. It's not like I care that much about losing weight. It's for my wife. She keeps asking, ‘Isn't there something hypocritical about being a fat environmentalist? Using up all the world's resources?' “

The man gestured for Jessie to climb the fence and follow him.

Jessie hesitated. The man didn't sound like he worked for Miles Clifton. He seemed a little crazy, but not dangerous. He'd called himself an environmentalist, which was a word Ma had used. Maybe it was all right to go with him. Yet Ma had warned Jessie to be wary of all strangers, not just Clifton's guards.

“That was one reason Pa and I wanted to raise you children in Clifton,” Ma had said. “We didn't want to terrify you into staying away from strangers. It's odd—all the time, you were in danger here. And now all of you are too trusting. People in the outside world …”

Ma hadn't finished the thought, which scared Jessie plenty.

“No, that's all right. I'll go to the, um, gas station,” Jessie told the man now.

The man looked at her curiously.

“You're a little young to be out on your own, aren't you? Do your parents know where you are?”

“Oh yes,” Jessie said. It wasn't a total lie. One of her parents knew what she was doing, anyway. “In fact, I'm on an errand for my mother. I should be going now.”

The man looked at her doubtfully, but he shook his head. “Guess it's none of my business.”

Jessie scrambled to her feet and stuffed the remains of her lunch back in the pack. She walked across the bridge and
then along the big road, feeling the man's eyes on her back. The memory of Ma's warning spooked her. What might the man do? What had Ma been warning her against? Even though the man seemed nice, would he report her to Miles Clifton?

Jessie was glad when the road dipped and she was out of the man's sight. She wondered if all conversations with strangers were so strange. Until leaving Clifton, she'd never talked to anyone she hadn't known for a long time. And now she had trouble making sense of everyone: the guards, the teenage tourists, Mrs. Spurning and the chaperon, the bread man, and now the fat environmentalist. Was Jessie stupid, or was everyone outside Clifton crazy? Was that maybe why Jessie's parents and the other families had wanted to move to Clifton? Or did the people she'd met seem strange just because she didn't know them, and didn't understand the twentieth century?

Jessie couldn't figure any of it out. She was getting so thirsty she could barely think. She decided to try to look for a gas station, since it would have both a phone and a drink. But, again, she didn't know what she was looking for.

Then, about a mile beyond Crooked Creek, she saw a sign on a tall post, with the words
THE STOPPING POINT
. Underneath, it said
GAS, LIVE BAIT, PIZZA, COOL DRINKS
. Beneath the sign, there was a small white building and strange contraptions that looked like hitching posts for cars. At least, people would drive up to them and loop a hose to the car, like someone in Clifton would tie a horse's reins to a hitching post. But not all the cars had to be hitched like that—others were just parked by the store.

It didn't make sense, but Jessie didn't care. This had to be a gas station!

Jessie dodged the cars waiting for the hitching posts and pushed open the door of the store. At first, it seemed dim after the sunshine outside. Then Jessie's eyes adjusted and she realized the globe-things were almost as bright as the sun. Jessie felt a pang, missing the dim coolness of Mr. Seward's store. But it was easier to see in here, and she was fascinated by all the bright packages. Where Mr. Seward had barrels and tins to hunt through, this place had shelves full of cookies and crackers and things she didn't even recognize, all in containers covered with labels and pictures. She grinned at a row of bread loaves in red-and-yellow wrappers—the same kind as the bread truck she'd ridden in. But there were also loaves in a dozen other wrappers. And the bread was about the only familiar food. What was a Frito? she wondered. A Cheeto? A Dorito?

Jessie was tempted to buy a lot of things, just to see what they were. But habit was hard to break. In Clifton, no one spent money unless it was for something desperately needed. And Jessie needed only a drink and a phone.

Jessie decided it was okay to get a drink first, since she was a little scared of trying to use a phone.

She went to the back, where rows and rows of bottles leaned behind glass windows. Most of them said “Coke” or “Pepsi,” and Jessie wondered what that could be. Both drinks looked like cough syrup. She settled on a bottle of something called “Papaya fruit drink.” It was prettier.

Jessie opened the glass door and felt air as cold as winter. She slammed the door. How could it be? This wasn't an
icehouse or even a springhouse. Cautiously, Jessie forced herself to open the door again and grab the bottle of juice. The glass was cold. Jessie was tempted to let the juice warm up before she drank it. Pa always said it wasn't right to drink something cold in warm weather. But—it might taste better this way.

As Jessie took the mysteriously cold bottle to the front to pay, she noticed two round mirrors in the corner. Were they like the mirrors in Clifton that people looked through? She didn't like all this watching.

The strange cooped-up cold and the mirrors unnerved her. But as she stepped up to pay for her drink, she forced herself to ask the boy behind the counter about a phone.

“Right outside,” he said without looking up. “Don't know how you missed it.”

“Thank you.”

Jessie gave the boy one of the George Washington bills, and he took it as though he saw paper money every day. Well, that proved the one-dollar bills were good. Jessie was a little bothered that it had been so easy. Mr. Seward would have taken out his magnifying glass and checked the signature on the bill. Then he'd ask, in his dry pretentious voice, “Do you have your parents' permission to spend this?” Mr. Seward didn't believe in children doing anything without their parents' permission. Especially not girls.

But this boy was not much older than Jessie. She watched him hit buttons on a box, then count out change from a drawer that sprang out when he stepped back. The box would have intrigued her if she hadn't been so curious about the boy. He had hair shaved close to his head, and wore a black—what was it called? oh yes—T-shirt. The T-shirt was
covered with strange symbols; the word
MEGADETH
screamed across the front. Jessie wanted to ask what Megadeth was, but it was probably something she would have known if she hadn't been from Clifton.

Outside, Jessie counted the change the boy had given her. Eleven cents! That couldn't be right. That meant the drink had cost eighty-nine cents. Pa would have to shoe eight horses to make that much money, and she'd just spent eighty-nine cents on some silly drink. Why, that would buy pounds and pounds of flour at Mr. Seward's store…. Jessie wanted to go back and tell the Megadeth boy there'd been some mistake. But maybe money wasn't the same here. She took a drink and the liquid was nice and sweet, as well as pleasantly cool. Yet somehow it was spoiled for her.

This time Jessie noticed a small blue sign that said
TELEPHONE
. It was on a rectangular box mounted on a post beyond the car hitching posts. She walked over. The box had the words “Deposit 25 cents” at the top. Jessie looked through her coins until she found one that said “quarter dollar.”

Jessie lifted the club-thing that Ma had said to put by her ear and mouth. What if she got it upside down? Would she still be able to hear? For a moment, Jessie just stood there feeling strange, but then she dropped her quarter in. The little cup at her ear gave off an annoying buzz. Jessie hoped that was a good sign. She took out the note Ma had given her, with Isaac Neeley's name and phone number, and began hitting the numbers.

With each button she pressed, the little cup at her ear gave off a tone. It was like music, she decided.

The phone gave off another tone, and Jessie waited. Then there was a click.

“Please dial 1 before this long-distance number,” a woman's even voice said from the earpiece.

Jessie jumped. So you really could hear people talking on a phone! She pulled the earpiece away from her ear and looked at it suspiciously. The box and the earpiece were too small for a woman to be hiding inside. And Jessie could see that no one was talking on the other side of the box. How did the voice get in the phone?

Jessie was so surprised, she forgot what the woman had said.

“Hello?” Jessie said. “What did you say? Can I talk to Mr. Neeley?”

Jessie felt foolish talking into the phone. It was like talking to a book or a house or something else that wasn't alive. Jessie wasn't used to talking to anything but people. Had she done it right?

The voice didn't answer.

“Hello?” Jessie said again. “I just want to talk to Mr. Neeley. Can you please get him for me?”

She didn't know what else to say. Still, no one answered. Jessie wondered if the phone worked after all. Maybe she would have to walk all the way to Indianapolis to talk to Mr. Neeley. But at least someone had talked on the phone…. She heard something falling through the phone. Her coin?

Jessie took her quarter dollar out of a small door at the bottom. Maybe it was just a bad coin. That happened sometimes. There were counterfeiters around. Jessie had seen men test coins with their teeth to make sure they were real. Now
that she noticed, this one didn't look like real silver.

Jessie tried another quarter and hit the buttons again. Again, she heard the odd music, the tone, and the click.

“Please dial 1 before this long-distance number,” the woman said again.

“A 1?” Jessie said. “Why? I know it's a long distance. That's why I'm using the phone—”

Jessie had the feeling the woman wasn't listening to her. Her coin fell through the phone again.

Jessie put the quarter back in. She hit a 1 hesitantly, but nothing happened. She hit the numbers Ma had written out for her to call.

The odd music and clicks were almost familiar now. A new voice answered: “Please deposit one dollar and forty cents.”

At least it was something new. Jessie pulled out the rest of her money. One dollar and forty cents was a fortune. But it made sense that it would be expensive to talk to someone forty miles away. Jessie counted out the right amount, then tried to figure out where to put the dollar in the phone.

“Where?” she asked. “Do you want me to fold up the dollar and put it where the quarter went? I'm afraid it will get stuck—”

No one answered.

“Hello?” Jessie said. “I want to give you the money, but I don't know where to put it.”

No answer.

Jessie was worried. If Mr. Neeley stayed on the phone as briefly as everyone else, Jessie would never have a chance to explain about Katie and the others. But she started to fold up the dollar bill, to try to put it in the little quarter hole. In her
haste, she knocked some of her coins to the ground. She bent over to pick them up. Seeing all the coins on the ground gave her an idea. She could put one dollar and forty cents in coins into the phone! Jessie felt really smart, until she hit her head on the bottom of the phone standing up. When she listened to the earpiece again, it made a nasty buzzing noise. Had she broken the phone?