A Time Traveler's Theory of Relativity

by Nicole Valentine

  “Move yourself, Tom! You may be the town’s only legal light, but sometimes you’re a bit dim.” She kicked the leg of his chair and Mr. Abernathy flinched, then instantly looked abashed for doing so. Finn began to wonder who was in charge. That’s when he remembered what Aunt Ev had said in the woods.

  It was Gran. Gran had been the leader of ISTA. Only she could keep this unruly bunch in order.

  “Raise your hand and say ‘aye’ if you think we should go over primary syllabus to prepare for Finn’s initiation.”

  Finn counted hands carefully. The ayes had it by at least seven up-stretched arms. He was trying to memorize who was on his side when a loud noise came from the left side of the church.

  The sound of a door opening and then slamming.

  “I’ve decided to stay after all!” Aunt Billie announced. She strode proudly up to the shimmery Aunt Ev, her gray hair tied back in her ever-present tight bun, her stick thin arms crossed over each other in smug victory. Next to plump, pink-cheeked Aunt Ev, she looked like a pale ghost. Now she had that fuzzy halo around her too, waves of energy that no one else seemed to notice.

  The Aunt Ev next to Finn grabbed his wrist in panic. “She’s not supposed to come back!”

  Aunt Billie gave the shimmery Aunt Ev a sidelong glance, then sauntered over to the choir loft, obviously enjoying the fact that all eyes in the room were on her. She looked up and her face was full of smug victory.

  She knew they were up there.

  “We have to go. Now.” Aunt Ev pushed Finn toward Gabi, toward the small side door at the top. He grabbed Gabi’s arm as they passed her, and she stumbled after him. There was no time to make a quiet exit. Their shoes made a racket across the wooden floor of the loft.

  As they made their way through the small walkway they were greeted by another Aunt Billie, leaning up against the far wall, arms folded in nonchalant triumph. This Aunt Billie was not shimmering. When she stepped forward, Finn saw her movements stutter-step like Aunt Ev’s in the yard.

  That’s it! Finn thought. If you were in the same time and place as your Initial, you stutter-stepped, just like Aunt Ev had said. But there was more to it: while you were doubling there, your Initial also shimmered. He wanted to ask Aunt Ev if he had it right. If that was the case, why didn’t everyone in the meeting realize that Aunt Ev was doubling?

  “I figured you out, Evelyn.” This Aunt Billie was wearing a matching hat and scarf, and a giant purple puffy coat. It made her legs look all the more skeletal. She was dressed for January, not September, and cold was still radiating off her. Her face was pale as snow, not even a red-tipped nose or flush in the cheek. The lines etched in her face seemed twice as deep as the last time he had seen her up close. “This was your dumbest idea yet. You’re a misinformed meddler! He’s a boy! He is not capable of helping.”

  Finn registered the words and waited for the feeling of emptiness, preparing himself to push it away. Only this time, he felt something else. She was wrong. Deep down inside him there was a truth that was coming to the surface. There had to be something he could do or Mom wouldn’t have left him instructions.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway behind them. Finn could hear the other Aunt Billie leading them. “I know I heard something! I told you we need to consider better security.” Her voice held a theatrical quality. She sounded like a bad actress in a school play—someone who knows exactly how the scene is going to end, but pretends not to.

  Aunt Ev’s fists were curled up inside her gloves. “Let us by, Billie,” she said to Aunt Billie’s Initial. “There’s no need for everyone else to know I brought them here.”

  “Not until he answers some questions.” She pointed a bony finger at Finn as she spoke. Finn couldn’t help noticing how much thinner she had become. She seemed to be disappearing with age. He wondered if one day she’d wake up with no skin altogether: a walking, talking skeleton.

  “He doesn’t know anything,” insisted Aunt Ev. “I brought him here because I felt sorry—”

  “If you felt sorry for him, you’d leave him out of this! Let Will handle it his way. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “You and Will seem awfully chummy lately. For someone who can’t Future Travel, you sure seem to think you know what is going to happen. I wonder why.”

  Finn resisted the urge to speak. He wasn’t trusting anyone, including himself. The voices below the choir loft were getting louder, and they sounded angry. While it was true he had known these people all his life, his friends and neighbors felt like complete strangers to him now. They were no longer individuals, they were a collective.

  ISTA.

  One thing he’d learned from Dad: All through history there were stories of good people, decent people, joining together to become a giant unstoppable force. People who would eventually regret what they had done in the name of whatever they called themselves. What were his neighbors capable of doing under that name? Finn recalled Aunt Ev’s warning to Gabi about being discovered: “If they see you, well, you don’t want to know.”

  At the very least, they would send him to Albany, like Doc wanted. He couldn’t let that happen. No one was going to stop him from getting to the top of Dorset Peak.

  Billie was practically shaking with anger. “You don’t know anything, Evelyn!” She spat the words out like poison.

  “Why don’t you enlighten me, Billie? What are you and Doc up to? You must be pleased Beth is out of the way now—maybe you can finally land him for yourself?”

  “You’re just like Beth! You can’t see the importance of who we are. What we’re meant to do!”

  “Importance? You? Every day you find yourself slipping back and forth in time because you can’t control what little power you have. What grand illusions are you harboring for yourself?”

  Finn heard the others approaching behind, fumbling for keys to the locked panel in the floor, and more feet thrumming up the stairs behind the other door. They were trapped!

  Well, he wasn’t going to end up in Albany without a fight. He thrust both of his hands out in the air, palms out, and yelled, “Stop it! STOP ARGUING!”

  Aunt Billie jumped backward in horror, her mouth open as if ready to scream. She slid down against the wall and cowered, shielding her face with her hands. Finn, Gabi, and Aunt Ev froze in confusion. Finn slowly lowered his arms and looked back at Aunt Ev questioningly, but she seemed as surprised at Billie’s reaction as he was. Finn hadn’t raised his hands in anger—he wasn’t even making a fist—yet Aunt Billie was petrified. He felt awful. Scaring his great-aunts into thinking he was capable of violence was not part of his plan.

  “I—I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

  The panel in the floor behind them began to open, and Finn knew he couldn’t wait around to explain himself. They were out of time. He grabbed Gabi’s hand and ran past the cowering Aunt Billie, down the stairs, toward the four illuminated letters at the bottom: EXIT.

  Chapter 14

  Shouting followed them once they were out in the open. Someone yelled “Stop!” and several lights popped on in the windows of small white houses surrounding the green. Finn heard a car door slam and an engine spring to life.

  “We have to stay off the roads!” he hissed to Gabi.

  They ran as fast as they could toward the golf course, then across the main road and into the woods.

  “What happened?” Gabi panted as they pushed farther into the tree cover. “Why was she so afraid of you?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t do anything!” It didn’t make sense. Finn could not figure out why he would appear so threatening to Aunt Billie.

  They paused to catch their breath at the top of the hill.

  “We have to get back to your house!” Gabi was poised to keep running.

  Finn shook his head. “They’re going to keep looking for us. My house is the first place they’ll check.” He held back the branches of a giant pine far enough to get a glimpse of the road. A car with high beams on was going by slowly. Finn was sure
the members of ISTA would try to keep their search quiet, but they wouldn’t give up easily.

  “Do you think they called the police?” Gabi was peering out from behind his arm, trying to get a vantage point.

  “They can’t exactly call the police and say ‘Hey, two kids crashed our secret time travel society meeting.’ ”

  “What if the police were already there, Finn? Half the town was there!” Gabi sat down on a bed of pine needles and hugged her knees against her chest.

  Finn felt a ripple of anger under his skin. For his entire life everyone had been keeping a secret from him. Well, not everyone. He made a mental tally in his mind. It wasn’t half the town; maybe thirty-five people were there, tops.

  “I don’t think all of Dorset’s in on it. They’ll want to keep things quiet. Wait for us where they think we’ll show up next.”

  He couldn’t make out Gabi’s face in the dark, but he heard her gasp. “Neither of our houses would be safe then. Even if they didn’t see me, people know we’re friends.”

  “Yeah. I think our best bet is to stay hidden and start the hike at sunup.”

  “But all our hiking gear is at my house . . . and the food and water and . . . you don’t happen to have the trail guide on you, do you?”

  Finn leaned hard against the nearest tree. “No.” This was bad.

  Gabi stood up and joined him, her back against the same tree. Her shoulder touched his arm. “Do you think Aunt Ev is really on your side? Maybe we can find her and ask for help.”

  “I’d like to think she is. But I can’t be sure.” Finn patted his pocket, feeling the crinkle of the paper and the curve of the stone. “And I don’t think we can risk telling her about the tree.”

  “For a minute, I thought you were going to.”

  “I just wanted to see what her reaction would be. She obviously doesn’t know about the portal. I think she suspects that Gran told me to do something, but she wasn’t pressing it. Frankly, I’m not sure if she knows what she’s doing.”

  Gabi nodded. “Yeah. Plus, she’s a thief! I wonder how many things I’ve lost to time travelers. And ISTA will be watching her now, too.”

  “Did the Aunt Ev in the meeting look funny to you?”

  “You mean the weird stuttery thing? No, but I couldn’t get a good long look at her from my spot in the loft. Why?”

  “I was just wondering.” He didn’t usually keep secrets from Gabi, but he kept the knowledge of the shimmer to himself. If you had asked him why at that moment, he wouldn’t have had a good answer.

  Another pair of headlights came from down below, lighting up the trees closest to the road.

  Gabi reached for his hand. “We should hurry, keep moving into the woods.”

  They went as far as they could by moonlight. There was the stream that would become a full-on babbling brook in the rain, the circle of trees that Gabi always swore was a fairy ring, and the mounds of moss that would become the homes of little red forest lizards come spring. Back in third grade, whenever Gran was looking the other way, they’d tested their boundaries by going ever farther into these woods, until they knew the paths by heart. Gabi had always wanted to search for magical creatures, while Finn wanted to treat it like a scientific mission where they’d collect specimens to bring back for further study.

  Gabi yawned into the night and Finn followed suit.

  “We’re somewhere behind Gran’s now. We can stop.” Finn slumped against a thick tree. He could see the boulder they used as base when they used to play hide and seek. He knew they were close to the trailhead.

  Gabi looked over at him. “Do you remember how we used to play back here?”

  “Yeah. You were always looking for fairies.”

  “And you were always looking for lizards. Can I ask you a question?” Her tone had changed. She looked away, busying herself with the lace of her sneaker. He wanted to say, Please don’t.

  “Why did you stop calling me?” Gabi’s voice was quiet. “Why haven’t you been inviting me over?”

  This wasn’t just a question. It was an asteroid on a collision path. “I’ve been texting you every day. I’ve been coming to your house.”

  “Only when I’ve been making you or you needed something.” She turned to look directly at him. He found himself very grateful for the darkness.

  “You were busy,” he said. “You were with your new friends.”

  The look on her face made Finn want to go back and edit his tone on those last two words. He shouldn’t have said it like that.

  She paused one heavy moment before she answered. “It was you who wasn’t around. I reached out to them because I was tired of being alone—and guess what? They aren’t all bad, Finn.”

  “Sebastian is a total reject.”

  “Sebastian is not my friend and you know it.”

  He didn’t know it. That was just it. He had no idea anymore. “You know what I mean. We’re not normal, Gabi. At least, I’m not. And you used to be like me.”

  Staring at his hands, he realized he had been picking at a hangnail on his thumb. It had started to bleed. In the moonlight the growing dot of blood looked black.

  “Nobody is normal,” said Gabi. “If you’d take the time to talk to anyone you’d see that. Everyone has something they’re trying to figure out.”

  Finn pictured all the happy faces in the school hallways. It didn’t seem possible they were focused on anything other than whom to torture next.

  “You were always a loner, like me. We were loners together. Now you’ve gone and gotten so—so—well-adjusted.” He was alternately sucking on his finger and thrusting it back in his pocket, trying not to let on that he was bleeding.

  She balled her fists at her side. “I am not well-adjusted! What makes you think you get to be the expert on who is well-adjusted or not?”

  Oh. She never even talked about Xavier. Finn knew about this part of her life—it just always seemed like ancient history to him. Something that occurred before she moved to Vermont, before they became Gabi and Finn.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just—well, you’re so cool about it all. You’re so good at dealing with it. You make people forget.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t forget and I am not good at dealing with it. What, like you talk about Faith all the time? You never even told me about the quarry!”

  Finn felt her words in his gut. She was right.

  “It’s hard for me too,” Gabi went on, picking at the hem of her jeans. “My brother died, my dad skipped town. I’m living in a tiny house that barely has enough air in it for me to breathe! And this town, you know everyone looks at my mom and assumes things. Like they think they know our whole story. It’s not just Doc.”

  Dorset had always felt suffocating for Finn because his family was a favorite topic of gossip, but now Gabi was making him look at it in a whole new way. It was like she was turning and shaking a snow globe for him to peer into. It was stifling for her, too. He had never thought of her house as tiny, never considered it might be all Mrs. Rand could afford. He sat next to Gabi in stupefied silence.

  She ran her hands through her short hair, and it stayed parted a little bit where her fingers had trailed through, like wet feathers. Finn felt as if he was looking at her, really looking at her, for the first time, as if she were brand-new to his life. Sitting there in the moonlight, she was the same, but somehow different. She was still small and wearing baggy clothes too big for her. She was wearing the same jeans and her favorite gray sweater that her mom had knitted for her. Maybe she didn’t always wear it because it was her favorite. Maybe she didn’t have much else. Why had he never thought about these things before?

  An even worse idea entered his mind. What if she’d resented him all along for what he had? They never talked about their differences. He felt a dawning panic. Maybe childhood friendships meant nothing, maybe when you got older you somehow had to start all over. The stakes changed and you had to earn it all over again. You had to pay att
ention.

  “Will you say something and stop staring at me?” Gabi snapped.

  “Uh . . . I guess . . . we should talk about stuff more.”

  Talk about stuff? What he wanted to say was how much he admired her and wanted to be like her. How even though her life was as hard as his—harder—she had edges. She was real. He felt as if he was only defined by the empty spaces around him, by who wasn’t there anymore. Faith’s death, and Mom’s leaving, and now Gran’s death. He was an equation made entirely of missing variables. Unsolvable.

  Gabi let out a frustrated snort.

  “I’m sorry, Gabi. Really, I am.”

  “It’s just that you act like you’re the only person in the world who has to deal with people disappearing on you. You never even thought to talk to me about it. Me!”

  She was right. He hadn’t. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Well, now we agree on something.” It was a dig, but her voice had softened.

  There was something else he could talk to her about. His biggest secret.

  “I’ve never told anyone this,” Finn said quietly. “I don’t really miss Faith, at least not the way everybody else does.” There. He’d said it.

  Her face gave him no indication of how she felt about that.

  “It means I’m a terrible person, doesn’t it?”

  “No! You were so little. How do you miss her, exactly?” Gabi asked.

  “I miss—me. Is that wrong? When she was here I was still Finn. I can remember that much.”

  “You’re still Finn.”

  “No, I’m not. To everyone in town, I’m the little drowned girl’s brother. I’m the constant unwelcome reminder. My dad can’t even look at me anymore. He looks past me at whatever is behind me, like it’s more interesting. Mom probably left because of me.”

  “You know that’s not true, right?”

  “I don’t know that. I don’t know anything.”

  “Well, I know. I know who you are too. You are my best friend.” He was happy she said it. Even though, in light of all her new friends, this still felt like something that could be taken from him at any time.