Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls and Gadgets

by Kate Moretti

  “Find who?” I looked up and noticed his eyes were greenish-brown with big lashes. His whole face seemed to have gotten bigger. He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. His lower lip quivered.

  “What do you mean ‘find who’? Um… our teams? The rats?”

  “The rats are gone?” I screeched.

  He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Yes… um, you totally knew that. Are you okay? Are you drunk? You disappeared for, like, a half hour. I’ve been all over the place.”

  “What happened to the rats?” I pushed past him and flopped onto the living room couch, my mind racing. This is why Mr. Fitzgerald said to never mess with anything when you flip back. You shouldn’t talk to anyone or touch anything, just observe. Dammit, I’d talked to Trina. Trina.

  “We have to find Trina. She did this.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a stretch? Does she even know about the Science Expo?” Simon raised one eyebrow at me. He flopped next to me—very next to me. I don’t know why, but my heart did a little gallop. Oh, crap.

  “She knows now.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it. Okay.” I blew up my bangs. “Let’s just find her. I… have a hunch that she let the rats out.”

  “You’re too hard on her. She’s just…”

  I gave him a hard glare and briefly wondered if Simon liked her. He’d been weird lately. Then I felt annoyed—at him or myself, I couldn’t tell.

  “Never mind,” he mumbled. We both stood up at the same time. “Are you okay?” Simon grabbed my elbow and pulled me gently closer to him. “I want to talk to you. But we’re always with Rebekah—”

  “There you guys are!” Rebekah bounded into the room. “They found Doc and Dumbledore in the gym! There were sightings of others, but then Mr. Jenkins noticed the side door was open. It’s possible that the science fair is ruined, you guys.”

  “No. I can fix this.” I just have to go back to eleven thirty and avoid Trina. Easy peasy. “Um, can you guys go back to the school and look some more? I have to… take something and lie down. I have a huge headache. It should go away in, like, an hour.”

  Simon looked at me, bug-eyed. I ignored him and waved them out the door.

  He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Talk later?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure what to do with him. On one hand, I heard Rebekah in my head: I’d like a boyfriend before college. Totally valid. On the other, Simon? Simon? Then I remembered how we used to lie on the grass on summer nights, staring up at the stars, talking about intergalactic worlds and making up science fiction stories about space battles. We’d even slept in the same tent. I don’t remember when that stopped, or why. I just knew we didn’t do it anymore. I tried to imagine how it would be now. The whole thing just felt… weird.

  I headed back down to the basement, climbed into Fitz, jabbed Start, and closed my eyes.

  I was in the girls’ bathroom. I hoped it was still today, but I could never be sure. I quelled rising panic; I had gone to the bathroom right before English, and if that was now, I would blink forward before I had time to fix anything. I dug into my pocket and looked at my phone. Great. 10:15. How do I stop an assignment from being written? The electronic world simplified this. No one ever did in-class assignments on paper anymore. If there was no laptop, there would be no assignment. Mrs. Shotwell would just have to give everyone something else to do. I did a little skip-step at my own genius.

  Mrs. Shotwell’s room, 212, was dark. I didn’t know she had the period before my class free. I quickly grabbed my computer and all the back-ups, seven in all, and hurried from the classroom. I turned the corner and smacked right into Mr. Pine, the principal.

  “Hi, Meg. What are you doing?” He rocked back on his heels until I thought he would fall backward.

  “Oh, um, Mrs. Shotwell said I could borrow these. For… Science Expo. That’s tomorrow, you know. Are you going?” I shifted my weight, and one of the laptops slid off to the side. I juggled it with my arms to keep it from falling.

  “You’re borrowing seven computers? What’s your experiment?” He cocked his head suspiciously at me.

  I laughed nervously, brushing my bangs from my eyes with my shoulder. “Oh, Mr. Pine, you know I can’t tell you that! Science Expo projects are a secret! You’ll see!”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, if Mrs. Shotwell said it was okay…”

  “Thanks, see ya!” I ran down the hall, stopping at my locker to drop off the computers. I needed to avoid the biology lab altogether—who knows how many versions of me there were walking around the hall. Then again, I was so curious. Who was Trina meeting? I shoved the laptops into my locker and slammed the door. Good luck with all that, Past Me.

  I had no idea what the outcome of this would be, but hopefully, I could blink back, race to the school, return the computers, and no one would be the wiser. I had every intention of hiding in the bathroom, innocuously waiting to be sent back to the present, but I found myself taking a detour past the biology lab.

  Cautiously, I clicked the light switch and looked around. The rats twitched in their cages; Yoda ran in furious circles. Everything seemed fine. I fled to the bathroom, letting the stall door swing shut behind me, and pulled my legs up on the toilet seat to wait.

  The bathroom door opened, and two girls’ voices echoed against the tile walls.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll figure it out. He’s tutoring me in biology after Mrs. Shotwell’s class, and he follows her around like a puppy.” Gum snap. Trina.

  “I don’t know why you care so much. She’s just a stupid geek with a weird crew.”

  “Because she’s a pain in the butt. And her stupid dad stole my dad’s girlfriend. I liked Paula. He would have married her, but now all he does is laze around the house in his underwear. It’s gross.”

  “That’s not Meg’s fault, you know.” A faucet turned on and off.

  “Shut up, Rowen.”

  Blink.

  I woke up in my living room. It was getting harder to keep all my realities straight. I sat down on the couch and tried to figure out what just had happened. Paula Reisin, my kindergarten teacher, used to be Trina’s dad’s girlfriend? Before she dated my dad, she’d dated Trina’s father? I had no idea. Moreover, how was any of that my fault? It explains why Trina has always hated me. Like irrational, deep-seated hatred.

  I hadn’t seen my dad in—I calculated—six months. I was his disappointment, his failed attempt at fatherhood. I befuddled him. The last time I saw him, he took me to Friendly’s, and he ordered me a sundae. When the waitress told him it wasn’t free because I was over twelve, he just shook his head and blinked. I never knew if he was confused about the age limit or if he really didn’t know I wasn’t twelve anymore.

  “Meg!” Simon’s deep voice bellowed out. I checked the clock. Four thirty. Whew, okay back to normal. With any luck, the rats weren’t missing anymore. “Oh, hey.” He was cool, with one hand in his pocket. With a start, I realized that the moment in the living room had never happened. It was an alternate reality. My stomach gave a little flip of regret. A twinge, hardly noticeable. Except, it was.

  “Come on. We have to set up.” He scratched his chin and looked at the ceiling.

  “Are the rats okay?” I asked, trying to appear nonchalant.

  He gave me a puzzled look. “Uh, as far as I know.”

  So my hunch was right. The rats were fine because I blinked back and didn’t spill Trypan Blue on Trina. That could only mean that she had let them out in the first place.

  “Okay. Where’s Rebekah?”

  He gave me an odd look. “What is with you? She’s meeting us there.”

  Hmm. That meant that somehow, stealing the laptops and having that brief conversation with Mr. Pine had somehow affected our previous p
lans. Things were starting to spiral. But at least I’d kept Trina in check and the rats were still, as far as I knew, caged.

  We walked to the school in silence. Simon didn’t bring up needing to talk to me, and I guessed it was better that way, but I felt a little sad, like what if we missed our chance?

  I told Simon I’d meet him in the gym and ran to the biology lab, checked on our rats, and grabbed our poster presentation.

  On the way back, I stopped at my locker and stacked all seven laptops in my arms. I detoured past Mrs. Shotwell’s classroom and returned them to the lab, arranging them like they’d never been missing. I wondered if Mrs. Shotwell had given the journal assignment, or if she just skipped it entirely in favor of silent reading. I hoped for the latter.

  The gym was a flurry of activity; no one was looking at my journal entry. No one paid any attention to me at all. My heart steadied its rhythm, and I blew out a breath.

  We were being judged on one live demonstration and then a detailed poster of our experiment and results. Rebekah and I had stayed up late for the past week, putting the finishing touches on the poster presentation. I set it up in spot number thirty-one and covered the easel. Science Expo secrecy was taken very seriously.

  Simon quietly set up our table, demarcating each section with tape. I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  He gave me a weak grin and a shrug. “I’m fine.”

  I shrugged and went back to check on the crates. When I looked up, Simon was still looking at me with a sideways kind of smile.

  Rebekah showed up, all pink glitter lipstick and shiny hair. William Rex hovered behind our table, craning his neck to get a better view of our poster. I scowled in his direction and scanned the gym. Trina and Rowen were in the corner, in spot number fifty-two, setting up a television screen and an easel.

  I nudged Rebekah. “When did they sign up for Science Expo?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe they analyzed the hold strength of various hairsprays.” There was the Beck I knew and loved.

  I stood back and admired our station, confident of our spot in the finals.

  A deep voice behind me cleared his throat. “Ms. Bryant? I’m going to need you to come with me.” I turned to see Mr. Pine and, close behind him, Mrs. Shotwell.

  Would today ever end? “Um, okay. Why?” I scratched my elbow.

  “I think you know why, young lady.”

  The laptops. Ugh.

  Rebekah and Simon watched me worriedly. In the corner, Rowen nudged Trina, and they eyed us with amusement.

  I sighed. “Okay. Fine.”

  When I got home, I crashed on the sofa. It was after eight, and I was exhausted. Today had to have had over thirty hours in it, if I counted all my flipping back and forth in time. I wanted my bed.

  I’d managed to convince Mrs. Shotwell and Mr. Pine that my laptop caper was entirely related to my super-secret Science Expo project, but they were both skeptical. I showed them that they were all returned to their proper places. Mrs. Shotwell, who generally felt sorry for me, had wrung her hands, her head bobbing back and forth between steely Mr. Pine and my feeble explanations of stolen-but-not-stolen laptops. In the end, they’d let me go with a stern but fumbling warning because they couldn’t come up with exactly what I’d done wrong.

  Mom would be home any minute, and I needed to go downstairs and shut down poor Fitz. He’d had such a work-out, probably more action than he’d seen in one day since Mr. Fitzgerald was alive.

  I trudged down the basement steps, my legs fatigued. When I reached the bottom, I just stood and stared, dumbfounded.

  Fitz was gone.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I tossed one way, then the other. I had a dream about Mr. Fitzgerald from the past, coming to the future, where he no longer existed, skipping right over the part where he’d died.

  I woke happy, convinced it was true. At five a.m., I tiptoed through the wet April grass to Mr. Fitzgerald’s house, wrapped in my old afghan. It had been a year and a half since his death, and the house had yet to be sold. He’d left it a mess, and his brother, who’d inherited it, lived in Indianapolis. I’d only ever seen him there twice. He was a cop. The opposite of Mr. Fitzgerald, he was impatient and didn’t seem to have a lot of patience for the junk in Fitz’s basement.

  I pushed open the basement window and stuck my head inside, really, truly expecting to see Mr. Fitzgerald’s long blond ponytail as he bent over, tinkering with Fitz. You don’t mind that I snagged this, do ya, Meg?

  When I saw nothing but a dark, dank, musty basement, my eyes welled with tears. Fitz was gone. Mr. Fitzgerald was gone. My dad was gone. What was the point? I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and sat right down in the wet, overgrown garden. I felt the dampness seep through my pajama pants, and I didn’t even care. I stayed there, feeling sorry for myself, until the sun peeked up over the horizon, painting the sky with streaks of pink and orange. It was a new day—hopefully, only a twenty-four-hour one.

  I slogged home, showered, and got dressed for school. Mom sat in the kitchen, sipping coffee, and I hugged her from behind. She patted my hand, and I rested my cheek on her head. We stayed that way for a while.

  “I know you’re having trouble with something, Meg. You can tell me. Or at least know that when you’re ready to tell me, I’m here. I love the kid you are, you know.”

  I didn’t reply but kissed the crown of her head, right at her part. It was gray there, where it hadn’t been before. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and banged out the back door.

  Fitz was missing. It seemed impossible. Who would know about him? Simon?

  I went through my day on autopilot, riding a conveyor belt of classes, bells, lunch, and study halls. At the final bell, I bolted to the biology lab, and, despite being worried about Fitz, I couldn’t quell the excitement. Today was Science Expo day.

  Simon met me there, and together, we hauled the rat boxes down to the gym, setting them carefully in their assigned spots. We had to show one set of rats perform the maze run and then discuss our findings. We chose Doc and Marty because they were the fastest and most consistent. Of course they were—they were mine. I couldn’t help but grin to myself. I was so stinking proud of them, those twitchy, white rats with their flicking tails.

  “What are you grinning at?” Simon teased. He seemed happy, lighter, and he nudged me with his elbow, like old times.

  “I’m just so excited. I think this experiment is so cool, because, you know, peer pressure is everywhere. I love that it’s part of the animal kingdom. It means we have no control over it.”

  “And that’s good?” Simon stopped, a crate in his hands, and raised one eyebrow at me. Suddenly adorable.

  “Yeah. It means I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I don’t have the energy to worry about the things that have been proven out of my control. So now it’s right up there with gravity and the laws of physics. I don’t worry about those things. Do you? Like, do you ever throw a ball in the air and worry that it won’t come down? No.”

  “Well, technically, gravity hasn’t been proven. It’s still a theory.” He cocked his head to the side, the goofy smile still on his face.

  “Shut up. All I mean is, peer pressure is a natural phenomenon. Can’t control it, so check it off. See?” Exasperated, I demonstrated by dropping my notebook flat on the gym floor.

  “God, you’re so weird. It’s cute.” Somehow, during my speech, he’d put down the rat crate and was now standing in front of me. Close. Quickly, without warning, he leaned down and his lips touched mine. Warm. Soft. Perfect. I closed my eyes. I leaned toward him.

  He straightened back up, looked around to make sure no one saw, then gave me a wink. This was new, this “smooth guy” Simon. Gone was the bumbling goof of the last six months.

 
I covered my mouth with the back of my hand. “That was… new.”

  The judges were making their rounds. At our table, they paused for a very long time. They were impressed; I could tell by the murmuring. I demoed our rats, Rebekah explained the experiment, and Simon discussed our conclusions. They nodded, made “hmm” noises, and recorded things on clipboards. After they’d moved on, the senior chemistry teacher, Mrs. Trainor, kept glancing back at us. They were even amused by the rats’ names.

  As they walked away, we high-fived each other, jumping up and down and squealing silently. We mulled around, observing the other booths and talking to the kids on either side of us.

  Suddenly, the din in the gymnasium grew to a soft buzz. Everyone crowded around Trina and Rowen’s booth. The judges had paused there, and Trina hit play on the TV. A jumpy camera came to life. Trina’s voice was in the background.

  “Time travel has never been successful and is often considered a scientific joke. In fact, there are no viable studies attempting time travel and no organizations devoted to exploring this technology. That is about to change right now. This right here is one of the first time travel machines. I’m going to record my first time traveling experience.”

  My blood ran cold. I scanned Trina and Rowen’s booth frantically and noticed a very tall, bulky object covered by a sheet. Oh my god. She stole Fitz!

  In the video, she was in my basement. She climbed into Fitz, and the cylinder began to spin. The video cut to Trina at school, seeming to appear out of nowhere. A camera previously set up captured the blink, something I’d never done. I’d always wondered what it looked like. I was fascinated and simultaneously wanted to vomit.

  On the recording, Trina stopped to chat with Rebekah, but I couldn’t hear what she said. This was recorded today; I could tell by their clothes. It explained why so many things were different. Why so many little details I couldn’t have intercepted hadn’t played out the way they were supposed to. Trina and I had blinked today. It was a wonder we hadn’t run into each other. I recalled the run-in in the biology lab; I had no idea if that was a future or present Trina, so maybe our future selves had run into each other. Oh, my aching head.