Running Out of Time (6 page)

The other man whistled.

“What shift?”

“Second.”

“You applied?”

“Wilma wants me to. I'm going to look into it. Especially now they're getting so picky here…. You'd think we were guarding a prison.”

“Wouldn't you want out, if you was those people? ‘Sides, they never said we was supposed to look for escapees.”

“What else we looking for? Ever heard of so many guards at a place like this?”

“I don't know…. Did I tell you? Jack said they're going to close this place soon, anyhow. No more tourists, no more freaky people living in the past, no more paychecks for us.”

“That rumor's been going around for years….”

Jessie didn't hear the other man's answer. What did he mean, close the place? Why wouldn't there be any more tourists? What would happen to everyone in Clifton? It was a puzzle Jessie didn't have time to worry about. She stored the idea with all the mysterious things Ma had told her, to think about later. She risked another look around the corner. And then she saw it, not far along the wall in the opposite direction from the two men: a sign that said
REST ROOMS
, with an arrow.

Jessie
thought
it was dark enough on that side of the room that they wouldn't see her. And there were enough tables between her and them…. She decided to crawl.

Strapping her package around her neck, Jessie crouched along the wall. Each motion took great nerve. She wished she'd stayed by the stagecoach. She wished Ma had picked
someone else to leave Clifton. Andrew, maybe. She wished Katie and the others had never gotten sick. She wished she'd never heard of the world outside Clifton. She wished Ma and Pa had never moved to Clifton, but stuck with whatever happened in the twentieth century.

Wishing all that, Jessie reached the sign with the arrow and followed the arrow down a short hall. There were two doors. Looking up, Jessie could see the word LADIES on one, with a small silhouette of a woman in a bonnet and long dress, like Ma or any of the other women in Clifton might wear. The sight comforted Jessie. The silhouette was etched in a strange hard substance, but Jessie didn't take the time to marvel at it.

She pushed open the door and went to sit on an odd white chair that matched her mother's description of a “toilet.” It would not be a comfortable place to sleep, but Ma had insisted.

Jessie crossed her legs up on the toilet, as Ma had directed, and leaned her head against the smooth metal wall around the toilet. She had made it safely. The guards hadn't caught her. Her terror slipped away, and she fell asleep wondering how this indoor outhouse could be used more than once, since the toilet was so shallow.

W
hoosh!

Jessie woke to an awful sound of rushing water. She remembered learning about the Niagara Falls in geography—was this what they sounded like?

Confused by the noise, at first Jessie couldn't remember where she was and why she wasn't sleeping cozily in the bed she shared with Hannah. Her whole body ached from trying to balance on the white porcelain chair—the toilet—all night. She wondered if it was safe to move yet. The room was as bright as midday, but Jessie couldn't see any windows. So it was those globe things again, putting out more light than Jessie had ever seen from a candle or a lamp. Even though the lights had almost led to her capture the night before, now that she was safe, she decided once again that they were incredible.

“Heather, is that the ring Jason gave you?”

“Yeah. Like it?”

The voices came from in front of Jessie's little metal stall. She was so eager to see what real 1996 girls looked like that she knocked her elbow against the back of her toilet getting up.

Whoosh!

This time the sound came from her toilet. The water swirled powerfully, then disappeared. In a few moments, more came pouring in from the back. Jessie watched it in amazement and felt the pipes that led to the wall. So that was why the toilet hole wasn't very deep. But where did the water go?

Jessie decided it was too much of a mystery. She went to the door she'd fastened so carefully the night before. Through a crack, she could see three girls standing before a mirror. One had her hand held out for the other two to see. All three girls had hair as wild as Jessie's, and Jessie grinned. Her hair fit in without her having to do a thing with it! For the first time she could remember, she could get up in the morning without trying to braid her hair.

Jessie tried to see what the girls were wearing, to compare with her own clothes. But it was hard to tell through the narrow crack. And while Jessie was peering out, the girls finished admiring Heather's ring and left.

Jessie wanted to follow them, but first she wanted to find an outhouse. She started to unfasten her door, then remembered she didn't have to. Minutes later, she pushed the
whoosh
lever and felt quite proud that she'd figured out 1996.

Finally stepping out of her stall, Jessie faced the mirror. It was enormous, stretching the entire length of the wall. And unlike all the mirrors in Clifton, it was clear and undistorted.
For the first time in her life, Jessie saw herself without waves and lines and blotches.

Half fearing this might be another mirror people watched through, Jessie still stared in fascination. Her dark hair, unbraided, swirled around her head like a cloud. Digging through the bag Ma had given her, Jessie pulled out a wooden comb and began yanking it through her tangles. She went slowly, preoccupied with gazing in the mirror. Her eyes, she saw for the first time, were exactly the same color as Pa's in sunlight: greenish with flecks of hazel. But hers were impatient, curious, and she had never seen his look that way.

Standing back far enough to see her jacket and jeans, Jessie examined herself carefully so she would be able to compare herself with the real 1996 people. The coat Ma called a windbreaker was kind of pretty, even though it looked boyish. She unzipped it far enough to see the thing Ma called a T-shirt. It was yellow and had a huge black circle imprinted on it, with a line and two dots inside. It sort of looked like a smiling face, maybe on some stick figure Katie or one of the other little children drew in the dust.

While Jessie was staring at herself, she heard another
whoosh
and a girl stepped out from one of the other bathroom stalls. Jessie pretended to concentrate on combing her hair, but watched the girl carefully. She had fluffy blond hair that stood straight out from the sides of her face, almost as though it had been frozen in the wind. Her pants were the things Ma called blue jeans, but they were faded and much tighter than Jessie's. And her purple flowered top looked nothing like Jessie's T-shirt. Patting her hair, the girl stepped to a counter
in front of the mirror and turned a knob. Water gushed out of a shiny metal loop.

“What's wrong? Never seen anybody wash their hands before?” the girl asked.

Jessie didn't know what to say. Could the girl tell Jessie wasn't used to the twentieth century? Would she summon the guards?

Before Jessie could come up with a good answer, the girl shrugged, pulled a sheet of paper out of a nearby container, wiped off her hands, and threw the paper into a can. Then she left, as though she didn't care why Jessie had been staring.

Jessie didn't think the girl was going to tell anyone about her. Still, she decided she'd better leave the bathroom. But first, she tried turning the same knob, and again water came pouring out. What a place this world-outside-Clifton was!

After following the same ritual as the girl before her—even throwing away the paper, as crazy as that seemed—Jessie stepped out into the giant room she'd been in the night before.

The largest room Jessie had ever seen before this one was Seward's store, and it was always crowded with spices, cloth, barrels, and everything else Clifton needed. Only five or six people could fit inside comfortably at one time. This room was open and airy, with glass in the ceiling that let in bright sunlight. About the only furniture was a cluster of tables and chairs at the other end, where the guards had had coffee the night before. But the room was hardly empty: It was packed with people. Maybe two hundred, Jessie calculated in amazement, more than in all of Clifton. And many of them
appeared to be about Jessie's age. They sat along the walls, milled around in the open areas, hovered over the tables.

Anxious to fit in, Jessie couldn't help staring as she'd stared at the girl in the bathroom. Many of the other children wore blue jeans, but some jeans were a darker blue than Jessie's, and some were faded almost white. Some were skintight and some were so loose it seemed miraculous that they didn't fall off.

Jessie thought maybe her jeans looked okay.

The other children's shirts and jackets were very different, though, many with bright patterns that almost glowed. Jessie's top definitely stood out. But no one else seemed to notice. No one looked at Jessie at all. The other children were too busy talking, laughing, and even screaming.

“—and then he goes—”

“Who you going out with tonight?”

“—and we were at the mall and then—”

Jessie had never heard so many voices at once. It hurt her ears. It would be easy to leave unnoticed, she decided, but she leaned against the wall for a minute longer, trying to get used to all the noise.

“Kids, come on. It's your turn for the tour.”

Jessie turned and saw a woman about her mother's age, dressed in brown pants like a man. She was talking to the group around Jessie. Jessie noticed that the girl called Heather was right beside her.

Most of the others got up, but Heather and her friends still sat. Jessie decided to wait a minute before leaving.

“Oh no, you guys, too,” the woman said. Heather and the other two stood up, complaining. The woman looked at Jessie.

“Why aren't you coming? Do you expect me to carry you?”

“But—” Jessie started. The woman thought she was with the other girls! It was on the tip of Jessie's tongue to explain that she wasn't, but the woman was glaring like Mr. Smythe always did before he said, “Do you want a whipping?” Jessie looked around. She didn't see any guards, but they might be just around the corner. What if the woman yelled for one? What if the woman started asking just where Jessie did belong? What if “Clifton's men” found out where she was?

Jessie tried to look innocent.

“I'm coming, ma'am,” she said.

The woman gave Jessie a surprised look, but Jessie followed along, looking meekly at the ground.

It appeared she was going to be one of those things called tourists.

T
he woman who had herded Jessie and the others together walked right behind Jessie, so there was no chance to break off and escape.

“Teenagers!” the woman snorted. The word sounded vaguely familiar to Jessie. She thought it might be like “okay” and “shut up,” another word from the future not allowed in Clifton. But why did the woman say it so angrily?

Jessie gave up wondering and looked around. They were heading down the same corridor Jessie had crept through the night before. But in the bright light from those miraculous glass globes, now Jessie noticed pictures on the wall. Moving slowly toward them, Jessie saw they weren't paintings or drawings but something else, something that seemed to capture scenes just as someone might see them. They were incredible. How could such pictures exist?

Jessie remembered Mr. Smythe telling the school about a new invention called a daguerreotype, but she'd only half believed him. It sounded crazy, that someone's image could be captured like that. And, of course, she'd never actually seen a daguerreotype. The first one in the United States had been taken only the year before, in 1839. Maybe that's what these were. Why, she'd be the first person in Clifton to—

Suddenly Jessie realized how silly she was being. Everyone else walked by the pictures as though they were nothing. The rest of the world had seen hundreds of these daguerreotypes, probably. She had to remember this was 1996, not 1840.

Then Jessie noticed all these scenes were from Clifton: Mrs. Harlow cooking over the open fireplace, Mr. Seward measuring out a poke of flour for Mrs. Ruddle, Mr. Smythe looking stern as the schoolchildren stood and recited. And yes—Jessie was in that picture, in the fifth-grade row. She looked younger, but it was definitely her.

Jessie looked around, wanting to tell someone how strange it was to see herself as she'd looked two years ago. But she couldn't. That was the last thing she should tell anyone.

Remembering the danger, Jessie moved away from the pictures. She tried to walk in the center of the group. Cautiously, so no one would catch her staring, she looked around at the others. And she got another jolt: A few of the children, she discovered, were actually Negroes! At least, their faces and hands were a shade or two darker than Jessie's. Some of them had curly hair, but others' hair was straight. Jessie had never seen a Negro, and she was disappointed that their skin wasn't pure black and their hair pure curl, as she'd always heard. Jessie didn't think they could be
slaves, because they acted just like all the other children. Maybe the abolitionists in Clifton had gotten their wish, and there wasn't slavery anymore.

By this time, the group was beyond the door Jessie had come through the night before. A bit farther down the hall, Jessie saw a woman wearing a long dress, apron, and bonnet. It made Jessie feel better to see someone dressed like that, but the woman wasn't from Clifton.

The group of children reached the woman and she motioned for them to stop.

“Good morning!” she said, a little too cheerfully. “Welcome to Clifton. My name's Mrs. Spurning and I'm going to be your tour guide today. I understand you've come on a school trip from”—she looked at a card in her hand—“Oakdale Junior High School?”