A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity

by Nicole Valentine

  More likely, he’d interrupted a romantic interlude. He glanced back at the driveway and wondered if he’d somehow missed Doc Lovell’s old Jeep, but there were no cars parked anywhere near the house. It was possible someone else had dropped Doc off, though. “So very disturbing,” he muttered.

  Gran and Doc Lovell had been dating for over two years, and while they liked to pretend they never stayed over at each other’s houses, Finn knew better. He was happy Gran had someone. He just didn’t want to think about it too much.

  Still, it was unlike Gran to put anyone over her only grandson. Finn was used to top billing. It was a slight that stung.

  “Okay, Gran,” he shouted through the heavy wooden door. “I’ll come back later. Text me if you need me.” He waited a second to see if she’d change her mind. When it became painfully obvious she woudn’t, he pulled out the small bag of groceries from the backpack and left it in front of her door. His questions for her would have to wait.

  Chapter 2

  Gabi’s house reminded Finn of a giant acorn. It was like it had rolled down the side of the mountain and settled there, and someone had come along, hollowed it out and added windows. Gabi always complained about how small it was. Finn thought it was perfect. His own house was cavernous by comparison—always too empty, even before Mom left.

  Gabi’s mom was outside clipping the fading heads of late-summer flowers. She stood up and wiped the tips of her gardening gloves on her apron. Mrs. Rand didn’t look a thing like Mom, but there was a familiarity in that gesture that reminded the hole inside Finn’s chest to ache.

  Mrs. Rand tipped back her sun hat and smiled warmly at him as he coasted up on his bike. “Good day to attack the weeds.” She seemed completely in her element, and Finn found himself wondering why she and Mom hadn’t become closer friends. They had so much in common, between the theater and gardening. Then again, Mom didn’t have any close friends.

  Mom even had a gardening hat like that. A memory nipped at the back of his brain and refused to be shooed away: Mom introducing him to her favorite garden dweller, the praying mantis.

  “Did you know this is the only insect that can turn its heads 180 degrees to look at you over its shoulder? Sneaking up on a mantis is nearly impossible.”

  She’d urged him to try. He did and sure enough it spun around to look at him. He’d jumped backward, but Mom had smiled proudly at him just the same.

  “See how she puts her eggs in this protective sac so they’ll be safe all winter?” The branch near her held what looked like a brown Styrofoam walnut. Finn examined it closely. It was tiny.

  “How will she stay safe?”

  “Oh, well—she’s not made to survive the winter.”

  The mantis didn’t seem all that scary then. He felt bad for her and all her children who would grow up without her.

  Of course, he learned much later that the females sometimes cannibalized the males, which made him less inclined to sympathy.

  Mrs. Rand broke his reverie. “Gabi’s, uh—just gone down the road. You can probably catch her if you hurry.”

  Finn tried to find his smile. He wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Down the road meant the old marble quarry, which had been filled in with water and opened to the public as a swimming hole. Dorset had been founded because of that marble quarry and the town was proud of it. But the Firths stopped going as a family years ago.

  “I thought . . . she wasn’t allowed.” The older kids went on their own. Not them. They hung out in their own little world, grabbing day-old bagels from the Union Store on the green, or exploring the woods they knew so well.

  “Gabi begged and I gave in.” She said it hesitantly, fiddling with the gold necklace she always wore. “You’re both getting older, aren’t you? And today will probably be the last hot day of the season. Everyone trying to get in a bit more of summer.” Mrs.Rand was talking brightly and too fast. She studied him for a second and Finn knew what was coming. Pity. “You could wait here for her if you like.”

  No. Today, he would reject this. Today, he would choose normal.

  “That’s okay, I’ll catch up with Gabi. Thanks!” He pushed off on his bike.

  She yelled after him, “Finn, are you sure? I made fresh lemonade!”

  He kept going. The determination in his pedaling came easily because of what he was riding away from. He could practically hear Mrs. Rand’s thoughts. Poor family, been through so much, first the little girl, and now Liz leaving. It wasn’t until he was out of her line of sight that he realized what he was riding toward. His pace slowed. Normal was not something you could sail headlong into. He should know that by now.

  He could see Gabi as he turned the corner onto Route 30. She was maybe fifty or sixty yards ahead. He watched her for a moment, debating what to do next. He could catch up and maybe convince her to go back home. That might work. Lemonade did sound good.

  “Gabi!” Finn shouted.

  She turned, saw Finn, and waved enthusiastically. He caught up and got off his bike to walk it alongside her.

  “I thought you were supposed to be at Gran’s,” she said.

  “Gran was real jumpy and sent me packing. I think Doc is over. Boyfriend visit.”

  Gabi raised an eyebrow at him. “We need to come up with a better term than girlfriend and boyfriend when talking about old people.”

  “Like what?”

  “Beloved? Paramour?” Gabi gave him a sideways grin. “Boo?”

  “You’re going to make me lose my lunch.” He was laughing. Gabi always got him to laugh. “I don’t think any of those work. Nice try though.”

  “Since she’s gonna be busy with her boyfriend”—she drew out the word in a mocking sing-song fashion that made Finn squirm—“Come with me!” She grabbed him by the wrist, her eyes wide with excitement. “The whole grade is going to be swimming at the quarry today and my mom actually said yes!”

  Finn pulled back. “I’d, uh, I was kinda thinking we could hang out inside—”

  “It’s gorgeous out today! Tomorrow it will be fall and the day after that it will be winter. C’mon, please? Just for a little bit.”

  “It’s gonna be full of tourists.”

  “It is not. Even if it is, we’ll outnumber them. I’m not taking no for an answer!”

  How could Gabi not know? It was true that he’d never told her any details. He had only said the word. Drowned. But the whole town knew everything about his family. And as much as he hated the gossip, it had also been his protection. It excused his weirdness, his quietness. People couldn’t expect too much from him.

  He’d assumed someone had told Gabi at some point. Sure, the Rands were flatlanders, not Dorset born, but Mrs. Rand obviously knew. Faith’s death was local ghost lore now. Kids would talk about the little drowned girl who lived deep in the quarry water, how she’d grab you and pull you under to make you her playmate for eternity. Now it was painfully obvious that Gabi—who, when it came to regular life skills, always connected the dots before he did—had not put two and two together.

  What he should’ve said was, I can’t go there. I can’t swim in that water.

  What came out instead was, “Those guys hate me.”

  “No they don’t. Stop worrying, you’ll hang with me. It’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Gabi was used to him being afraid of socializing. That was her strength, not his.

  She began to walk on down the road and babble on about the weather. Finn wasn’t listening; he was busy telling himself that he didn’t have to actually go in the water. He could just sit on the rocks and read. Gabi would be happy with that. If he stayed focused on a book or an article, he could avoid thinking about where he was and soon enough it would be time to go. Maybe this was the first step toward fitting in.

  “Earth to Finn!”

  “Sorry, I was thinking.”

  “A million miles away as usual.” She laughed. “Everyone from theater camp is going today.”

  “I don’t want to hang out with th
em.” Gabi didn’t get it because for her, all that came naturally. She could make friends with anyone instantly. Finn had lived here his whole life and all he had was her.

  “Do you remember the first day you met me at school?” she asked.

  “Yeah . . .” Of course he did. It was the first day of third grade. She was the new kid from New York. The first thing she said when he introduced himself was “Wow, your parents like alliteration, don’t they?”

  To which he could only respond, “Huh?”

  She asked him if he had brothers or sisters and he immediately answered yes. He never used the past tense. He was a twin. That’s who he was. When he asked her in return she said, “One older brother.” It wasn’t until later he discovered that Xavier was also gone. He was a marine who had died overseas. Gabi’s mother still wore a gold necklace with his name. Gabi’s dad couldn’t handle the grief. He’d left soon after Xavier died.

  Finn had liked Gabi immediately, even if he sometimes needed a dictionary to understand her. When Gabi laughed, he couldn’t help but laugh too. He remembered liking how she said the word “roof” wrong, like it was “ruff.” He used to gleefully point it out to her, and she’d get angry. Back then she was a flatlander—an outsider to Dorset, and even though he’d been born here, so was he. He was a living reminder of a local tragedy. Someone to be whispered about.

  “Do you know why we became friends?” Gabi asked him.

  “Because I had the nerve to walk up and talk to you?” He figured this was a Gabi lesson to remind him to be social.

  “Yeah, but what really did it was a few days later. I had a bad dream where you were in trouble. One of those dreams that felt so real I could remember every detail when I woke up. You were you, but not you. You know how that sometimes happens in dreams?”

  He nodded because in fact he did.

  “You couldn’t get back home and you couldn’t see. So I sent you a big ball of sunlight and everything was all right.”

  “Magic sunlight, huh?”

  “Don’t make fun of me. It was third grade.”

  “Sounds like a flimsy basis for the start of a best friendship.” He elbowed her in the arm playfully.

  “Don’t get all Mr. Skeptic on me. This is why I don’t tell you anything.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s cool. Though you do know sending me a ball of sunlight would usually make me run in the other direction.”

  “Well, today I’m bringing you to the sun, not vice versa. C’mon.”

  As they approached the small gravel parking lot, Finn’s heart began to beat faster. The plan to hide inside a book seemed ridiculous now that he was faced with the reality. Seeing the big slabs of marble jutting out of the greenish water like giant, crooked grave markers made his stomach lurch. It had been a long time since he had been here, though he saw it often in dreams. The different levels of white rock and cliff face around the deep water made it look like a crooked mouth surrounded by rotting teeth. It was an almost perfect narrow rectangle, about the width of an Olympic swimming pool but much longer—and far deeper. It was no natural lake or water source. It was a wound sliced out of the mountain’s base with unsettling precision, an ugly man-made thing, pretending to be nature.

  But Gabi was wide-eyed and beaming like she had just entered one of her fantasy books. Finn parked his bike against the fence and followed her.

  Hoping to remain inconspicuous, he pointed to a cluster of cut marble farthest from the water and closest to the parking lot. Gabi looked at him sideways but agreed with a smile. She pulled out some cheesy fashion magazines he had never seen her read before and laid out her towel. Finn sat down cross-legged on a large slab, while Gabi lay down on her stomach.

  “It’s so cool that this place exists.” Her face was propped up in her hands, elbows on her towel.

  Finn looked around, scanning faces for anyone who might be looking at him. Judging him for coming here.

  “This couldn’t happen back in New York. It’s a wonder adults haven’t come along and shut it down, gated it all up.”

  Finn often thought about that himself.

  “It’s like our own Stonehenge, only better!”

  He could sort of imagine how it would be magical to her, with the way the giant marble slabs rose from the water, the way the surrounding trees seemed to grow straight from the rock.

  “I like to pretend that this is part of Earthsea, you know?” She sighed the way she always did when she was about to talk about her fantasy books. At least she hasn’t stopped reading those, Finn thought. He needed her to stay the Gabi he knew, his Gabi. The Gabi who loved the woods, the Gabi who’d searched for fairies and gnomes in the forest behind Gran’s house. Life was so much simpler when they were in third grade.

  “But you don’t know,” she said, pointing a finger at him in mock anger, “because you refuse to read my books! Someday you have to read Le Guin.”

  Usually, he would remind her how she refused to learn chess for him. But this time he was about to promise he would read them when he was cut off by the loud whooping of some boys jumping off the highest cliff into the deep water. It was a thirty-foot drop that only the bravest—or most reckless, depending on how you looked at it—chose to conquer. They took running leaps off the highest outcrop and did flips in midair. The sound of their bodies hitting the surface of the water struck Finn like a slap. He looked briefly at the greenish water and was sure it would swallow him whole. It would be a slow descent, eyes open, fingers splayed reaching for the ever diminishing sun—

  “Gabi, this was a bad idea. I’ve gotta go.”

  “Come on, Finn, we just got here. You don’t have to jump the cliffs. We don’t even have to go in the water. What’s the big deal anyway? You can sw—”

  Gabi froze, looking wide-eyed at Finn.

  “This isn’t where . . .?”

  Finn couldn’t look her in the eye. He didn’t even nod. He focused on the little cotton loops of thread in her towel.

  “Oh Finn, why didn’t you say anything?” She jumped up and began gathering her things.

  Finn scrambled to his feet to get out of her way. He didn’t want to meet her gaze. He should’ve told her. He had put her in an embarrassing situation by saying nothing.

  Gabi began stumbling over words as she fought with her towel. “I’m so sorry. I always thought—I thought it was the lake. I thought the girl, the ghost girl—I thought it was a hundred-year-old story!” She was doing her best to squash her unfolded beach towel into her small bag. Her face was bright red and she was avoiding looking at him.

  “Hey, Gabi! Where you going?” A dripping wet Sebastian Connors materialized in front of them. Finn had done a good job of avoiding Sebastian so far. He was new, but he’d already become the leader of the boys who always took risks and never paid for them.

  “Hi, Sebastian. I’m sorry, we have to go. I forgot—something,” said Gabi.

  “You just got here!” Sebastian trained an eye on Finn and smiled. “Are you making her leave before she even gets a toe in the water?”

  And there it was, the moment when the alpha dog looked him in the eye and addressed him innocently enough. Somehow Finn was always awarded that chance. Maybe it was because of his height. It bought him a measure of respect before anyone got to know him. They always started by joking with him. There was that split second when Finn was treated the same as anyone else, and what he did next mattered. He could recognize the moment every time, only he could never tell what he was supposed to do or say to make the situation go in his favor.

  The rest of Sebastian’s crew began to assemble behind him, dripping wet and already full of adrenaline.

  “It’s my fault. I forgot something back at home,” Finn offered.

  Sebastian’s eyes narrowed and his mouth turned up at one side. It had happened. Finn had somehow designated himself as prey.

  “Well, no reason Gabi has to go then. Stay here with us. Let Finny head back on his own.”

  Finny. There were
snickers from behind Sebastian now.

  “No, no. We’re both leaving.” Gabi was still flustered.

  “How about one jump before you go, Finny?” Sebastian was wielding a thick smile.

  “No thanks. I really have to go.”

  “Have you ever even done it? You’re not afraid, are you?” Sebastian nudged Troy Sprague. Troy and the rest began to shift uncomfortably, fearing where Sebastian was going to take this next.

  “Thanks, but no.” Finn bent to grab his bag.

  “Why not? Afraid the ghost girl will drag you down to the bottom and keep you forever?” Sebastian snickered and looked at the others for affirmation. There was nothing but uncomfortable silence. Gabi was staring daggers at Sebastian now and he was beginning to notice.

  Troy leaned in and whispered something in Sebastian’s ear. Finn watched the exchange and imagined the words. “Dude, that’s his sister who drowned here.” Sebastian’s face contorted with confusion, then anger. It wasn’t Finn who’d caused his embarrassment, but he knew that wouldn’t matter. Guys like Sebastian were all the same. Whenever they embarrassed themselves, they would direct the blame elsewhere.

  “C’mon, Finn, let’s get out of here.” Gabi’s hand was suddenly in his. Finn watched Sebastian’s eyes take in her gesture.

  Finn could hear the fragments of whispers as they walked away, the word “sister,” and then “mom.” Sebastian practically shouted in Finn’s direction, “Well, now I know why he’s such a freak. That’s messed up.”

  The words hit Finn from behind like a blow. It would’ve been easier if Sebastian had punched him. The truth was more painful.

  °°°

  Gabi walked double-time to keep pace with him till they reached her house. Mrs. Rand was no longer in sight and Finn was glad of it. He couldn’t find it in himself to handle her sympathy and small talk now.

  “We can go inside and get something to eat,” she offered.