by Melissa Faye
“I was – I found this.” He handed me a small metal container with some wiring inside. I was seeing how small of a computer I could build from scratch without any specialized equipment. “I figured it was yours. But who are you stunning? Where’s he traveling to? Are you talking about the guy from the bridge?
Dammit.
It was the second time Harrison walked in on me trying to take care of my Guardian work, and last time I had to erase his memory for it. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I used the Swiper Spray on him again, and I didn’t want to find out.
I stood still while Harrison looked me over. Then he walked slowly in a circle around the room, peeking at the closed trunk under the bed and the tablet sticking out of my messenger bag. He sat down on the bed.
“I’ve been here before.”
“Yeah, I know. You were asking about my jewelry-making supplies.”
He took the metal computer prototype from my hand and turned it around to look at each side.
“No, I was here another time.” He paused for a beat. “This is all weird, June. Why is it weird?”
I stared at the floor. I took a hair tie from around my wrist and twisted my hair up into a bun on top of my head. I couldn’t figure out the right words to explain myself.
It wasn’t only about trying to find a way to balance schools, a social life, and Guardian work. I also needed to figure out a way to keep these things to myself. But Harrison kept appearing at the strangest times, and he seemed interested in me - at least as a friend. He noticed my necklace. Plus, last time I needed help, he was there, and he was the one who figured out how I would save Ridge.
“I was talking about the man on the bridge. Smith Johnson.” I needed to find those perfect words. “He doesn’t belong here. In New York. That stunt was stupid, but the other man, the one who died, didn’t know something about Smith.”
Harrison raised his eyebrows.
“He didn’t know that Smith is not from here. Where he comes from, people are more athletic. They’re stronger. He had better balance and knew he could climb those cables.”
“I still don’t follow.”
I sat on the bed next to Harrison, careful to leave more space between us this time.
“If Smith keeps going around daring people to do stuff they can’t do, but Smith can, then more people are going to get hurt. So I need to send – to get him to go home. Where he’s from, everyone is as fit as he is.”
“Where’s he from?”
I bit my lip.
“He’s from the future.”
Harrison laughed until he saw the serious look on my face. He scratched the hair at the nape of his neck. There was an awkward pause, then he stood up.
“Okay.”
“Okay what?” I asked.
“Okay. If this man is from the future, what do you have to do? Can I help?”
I couldn’t help smirking. It was exactly how he responded last time. Excited to get involved, and not too concerned with the logistics. The problem was that, like last time, I didn’t want more people to know about my extracurriculars. I didn’t need another person around who might get the press or the cops involved in something they couldn’t manage. Last time, erasing Harrison’s memory was the only option. Would I have to erase his memory a second time?
If Harrison was interested...maybe he could help me with this one situation with Smith. I could use someone else on the team.
Especially since I felt my temper getting the best of me already.
I pulled up the Face Finder program on my tablet and scooted towards Harrison so he could see.
“I have this picture of Smith from the news, and I send the screenshot to my tablet, see?” Harrison nodded, leaning over me again. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, then I opened up the picture on my tablet.
“Why is it so blurry? Is that a future thing?” Harrison squinted and turned his head to the side.
The Face Finder was a large, complex program, but it worked quickly and efficiently. Give it a picture of a person, and it analyzes all the cameras around the city to determine where the person was last seen. But when I opened the picture, it was blurry, like Smith was one of those bystanders in a reality show who didn’t sign the release form. I looked at my phone again. The screenshot itself was strange, though it was harder to see on a small screen. Everything but the man was in focus. Smith was in low resolution.
“No, that’s not normal.” I opened a photo editing program and tried to fix the picture. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make Smith appear. I knew what he looked like; I saw him on television only a few minutes before. But it was like I couldn’t take a digital picture of him.
“This is weird.” I held my phone up for Harrison again. “See how you can see all the other faces, but Smith’s is blurry? I’ve never seen a picture like that before, have you?” He looked at my phone and nodded along. “We can see him, but we can’t record him.”
“Okay...so what do we do now?”
“No idea.” I stared at the screen. “I need to find him.”
“Couldn’t we, you know, look him up online?” Harrison pulled out his phone and typed Smith’s name into a search engine. The corners of his mouth twisted slightly upwards. “June, do you think his name is really Smith Johnson?”
Smith Johnson. John Smith?
“No, that’s probably not his real name. Let’s search for something else.”
We scoured the internet for hints about Smith. The articles about the bridge stunt mentioned very little about him. People said Smith completed a lot of dares and insinuated that he was making a lot of money off of them. No one mentioned where he lived or who he was gambling with.
“Wait! Look here.” Harrison pointed to a line in one of the articles. “This guy is a bartender at a bar called The Pearl. It’s down near Union Square.”
“Do you have any classes this afternoon? Do you want to come check it out?”
“No classes. Let’s go!” He practically leapt out of the room. “Did you say you’re gonna stun him? Like a stun gun? Is that from the future too? Can I do that part?”
Chapter 3
The Pearl was a seedy bar in Chelsea with a green sign and a dark façade. The bartender wouldn’t let us in without IDs until I begged and promised we only wanted to ask him questions. He finished wiping off a few tables before meeting us at the bar.
“Yeah, I saw Smith on TV today,” the bartender said. He had a goofy grin on his face as if he admired what Smith did. “The guy dared him last night. Smith said he’d only do it if the other guy did too. Guess that was a mistake, huh?”
“The man’s dead,” I snapped. The bartender eyed me suspiciously before returning his focus to the glasses he was wiping down.
“How do you know Smith? Have you seen him gamble like this before?” Harrison asked.
“He’s been coming around for a while,” the man said. “At least once a week. Sometimes more. He loves this stuff.” The bartender nodded towards the dartboard on the wall. There was a chalkboard next to it with a list of high scores. Smith’s name took up the first six slots.
“He plays darts all the time. Makes a lot of money off the regulars. But he gets bored playing, says it’s too easy, and the people who lost to him don’t want to play anymore. So then he dares people to do trick throws. You know, dumb shit. Last week he put an apple on a guy’s head and said someone should dare him to hit it with the dart. The poor guy was too drunk to say no. But Smith threw the dart and hit that apple dead center.”
Harrison’s eyes opened wide. “He’s that good?”
“Yeah, he can throw. And I heard he does this at the pool halls, too. Probably makes a lot of money off that. Anyway, then he dared someone else to try the trick with the dart, and that guy hit the apple guy in the shoulder. I made him get out of here and go see a doctor. Too much blood. I heard he needed stitches.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” I muttered to Harrison. “Maybe he’s a trick shot and
knows he can do this stuff, but other people can’t.”
“What else?” Harrison asked the bartender. “I mean, he’s good with darts. What else does he like?”
The bartender raised his eyebrows. He pushed the glass aside and leaned over the bar towards us. “Anything. Everything. If someone can think of something stupid, he’ll try it. Between us, though, he does some crazier stuff too. Everyone has stories about what he’s done. Half of them probably aren’t true. But if some of them are...he’s either the bravest guy I’ve met or the dumbest.”
“Or both.” Harrison added.
“I want to meet Smith,” I announced. “Do you think he’ll be here tonight?”
The bartender looked me over again. I was seventeen, small, and looked even younger with my round face and large eyes.
“He’ll be here tonight, but you won’t. We card.”
“We really need to find Smith,” Harrison jumped in. “What would it take for you to let us in here later?”
The bartender took another glass from under the bar and began wiping it clean. I groaned.
“We’ll pay you! Come on!”
“There’s a restaurant across the street,” the man said. “They don’t have to card you unless you order a drink. But if you hang out there, and Smith comes in here, I can have someone come get you.”
“That’s nice of you –“
I cut Harrison off. “How much?”
The bartender grinned.
“HOW DOES THIS WORK?” Harrison hissed as we walked towards Union Square. We decided to stay downtown until later rather than trekking up to the school and back. “I gave that guy $200. Is there some organization that reimburses me? Do I get a tax credit?”
“I told you I’ll pay you back!”
“You better, Wires.”
I paid for tacos and then got us ice cream, but Harrison wasn’t impressed. We walked through Union Square and stopped to eat the ice cream on one of the benches. It was mid-September and still hot; the shade was perfect.
“So you do this a lot?”
“Do what?”
“Question bartenders in seedy bars?”
I laughed. “I guess. Sometimes. Sometimes my program works and I can just find a person.”
“And tell me again what you’re going to do when you find Smith?”
I licked my ice cream in silence. My dad sent me a letter from the future. It was the only thing he told me to do since he disappeared nine years ago, and I was determined to follow his instructions. Don’t let people know what I’m up to. Don’t let the travelers learn who I am. But now I was sitting on a bench next to a boy I liked a lot, half-answering questions he shouldn’t be there to ask.
“I’ll send him home.”
LACEY TEXTED TWICE asking where I was, but I didn’t reply. We got to the restaurant at seven, ordered some greasy bar food, and waited. At around nine, someone tapped my shoulder.
“I heard you wanted to see Smith? He’s across the street.” The man was gone by the time I turned.
“What’s the plan?” Harrison whispered to me while I paid for our food. His eyes twinkled. “Are you gonna rough him up a bit?”
“I don’t know.” The bartender handed me my change. “I don’t want to fight him. I just want to send him home. We can’t do it if he’s surrounded by people, so I’ll need to get him alone.”
Harrison held the door open for me as we left. We crossed across the street towards Smith’s bar.
“Do you want me to attack him?” Harrison asked. I wanted to laugh, but saw how serious he was. “I can catch him in the bathroom or something. Or pick a fight and meet him in the alley.”
Harrison leaned over to open the door to the bar, but I pushed his hand out of the way and turned towards him.
“Do not pick a fight with him.” I frowned. “Last time you had the element of surprise, but this time –“
Harrison’s jaw dropped.
“Last time? Last time I fought someone? What are you talking about?”
I cursed under my breath and didn’t answer. Instead, I opened the door and led us inside. The bartender nodded to the bouncer, a large bald man with a tight black shirt, and the bouncer let us pass, muttering under his breath.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told Harrison. “Help me find Smith.”
Smith wasn’t trying to hide, so we found him immediately. He was at the center of a horde of bar patrons, laughing about his victory on the bridge. He had short blonde hair and a thin, scruffy beard. He wore a t-shirt and jeans, but his sneakers were what stuck out. They were unlike any we had in this present. They must have had some sort of technology infused in them. There was a faint glow all along the red stripe along the soles, and when he moved, they left a light trace of red in the air behind them.
I made a mental list of possible shoe powers. Maybe they help him cling to metal wires. Walk across water. Float up into the air. Not helpful. They could just be what’s in style in his Present.
Like earlier, Smith wore the cuff on his ear that I knew would allow him to travel back to his own Present eventually. I also knew from one of the other travelers that it could pluck data out of technology and manipulate it however he wanted. The traveler I saw at the zoo last month used it to pull Ridge’s contact info from my phone.
“Didn’t think I’d make it!” He laughed and someone slapped him on the back encouragingly. “Not much to hold onto up there. But when I got to the top, with the flag...man, what a view!”
The patrons laughed and slapped Smith on the back. I clenched my fists. Harrison put out a hand to stop me, but I shook him off and approached.
“You know, someone died this morning.” I had to speak loudly over everyone chattering. “That was a stupid thing to do.”
Smith squinted his eyes. “Who let this girl in here? Did you get lost?”
“You don’t belong –“
I paused. Everyone was staring at me now. It wasn’t the right time to recite June’s Rules of Time Travel, though if I did, I would have referenced Rule 2: Don’t change anything. Along with the unwritten addendum: That means don’t get people killed.
The crowd laughed as I hesitated to continue. Harrison held my arm now and leaned in.
“How are you gonna get him alone?” I shook my head to get him to stop talking.
“Ok, what’s on for tonight?” Smith shouted. “This morning got me worked up. Let’s keep going!” People whooped and cheered. I stepped back with Harrison so I could watch from afar without drawing anyone’s attention.
A guy stepped forward. He was big, with broad shoulders and a muscle tee that accentuated his ripped biceps.
“Last week you said you could jump across the train tracks.” He placed his hand on Smith’s shoulder. “You still up for that?”
Smith laughed and raised his beer high in the air.
“Would any of you jackasses like to see me jump across the subway tracks?”
People raised their beers in the air.
“That’s not a challenge,” someone piped in. “I’ve seen teenagers do that. What else you got?”
“Yeah!” someone yelled. I glanced at Harrison, whose face looked as concerned as I felt. How far does Smith need to take this?
Smith stood up on a chair, beer in hand.
“I dare anyone in here to jump across two train tracks in a row –“ he shouted. There were more cheers until Smith kept going. “-only you can’t jump until someone sees a train coming towards the second tracks.”
This got everyone’s attention, including several groups across the bar. I shook my head and clenched my jaw. At least no one here is going to take him up on something that stupid. Smith could probably pull that off. But it was way too risky for someone from my Present.
“I’ll do it!”
I stood on my tiptoes but couldn’t see who was talking. Harrison got a better look; he was a foot taller than me.
“Some kid, maybe a few years older than us. Looks like he works out.”
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“He’s gonna get himself killed. You know that, right?” I folded my arms in front of my chest defensively.
Harrison raised his hands in innocence. “I’m not making him do it! We’ll tell him he shouldn’t, that he’ll be killed. He probably saw the man die this morning. He’s just had one too many drinks.”
People erupted into shouting over the logistics. Which station, which train line. Who went first, the kid or Smith? Someone kept track of the bets – whether the kid would make it, whether the kid would chicken out, whether he could even jump the first tracks. People didn’t seem as interested in betting on Smith.
“I’ll give you $1000 if you make it,” the bartender called out to them. “Either of you. But you have to wear a t-shirt with the bar’s name on it.”
“Dumb idea,” Harrison whispered in my ear. “Someone’s going to be killed with his bar’s t-shirt on.”
Indeed.
Chapter 4
The crowd was delirious. I tried to shove my way over to Smith, but he was constantly surrounded. I finally clawed my way between two patrons and grabbed Smith’s shirt. Harrison stood behind me,
“I know who you are!” I hissed. Smith leaned over.
“Oh do you now?” he sneered. “And who is that?”
“You don’t belong here!” I reached into my messenger bar and clasped my Some Gun. Smith smiled.
“What do you think you’re going to do about that?” He looked around theatrically. “You going to fight me right here? Because I think I could take you.”
Harrison leaned over.
“Do you think you could take me, too?”
I shoved Harrison away from Smith by his chest and shook my head. Of course the traveler could take him. We only survived last time at the zoo because Harrison used the Shusher. The traveler couldn’t hear Harrison coming. Harrison didn’t remember any of that.
“Stay out of my way, kids,” Smith said. His face darkened. “You’re out of your league. I’ve found a good way to entertain myself here, and I’m making some money doing it.” He smirked. “Not that this money means much where I’m from, does it? Inflation and all? But I’m having a good time, and you aren’t going to stop me.”