by Box Set
“We should keep out of bright lights,” I said. We weren’t dressed right for this era, which was obvious by what the pedestrians wore. The girls had short hair, some with small hats or headbands, and some with feathers, and loose, layered dresses that ended at the knees. Most wore waist-length jackets with fur collars. “I’m guessing we’ve landed somewhere in the 1920s.”
“Yup,” Adeline said. “The question is what year.”
I’d only ever been to the late nineteenth century and only ever in Massachusetts. I felt shaky and uncertain as I followed Adeline.
“We should go back to the school,” she said. “It’s the only place I can think of where we can get shelter for the night. Maybe find some appropriate clothes.” She led us through back alleys and down darker roads with confidence. She was only off her era by three decades and knew the street layout. I was really happy to have her along. This was so much more comforting than traveling back in time alone, especially in a new region and a new century.
“This is it,” Adeline said. “Hollywood High in the 1920s.”
I barely recognized the school. There were several buildings on the property, but they looked different from what I’d seen in the present. The main building sat facing Highland, rather than Sunset, and it was way cooler looking. Three stories with a smaller portico tucked into a larger one and each with its own set of Greek columns. I ran up the long cement steps and peered through the front door. Inside I could see a banner: Class of ’29.
“It’s 1929,” I called out. I already knew we were in the roaring twenties, but the reality of it still left me feeling stunned.
“We need to find the drama department,” Adeline said.
A house occupied the land where the future auditorium would one day be built. I followed her to the back of the building. She peeked into the windows. “Look for props and costumes.”
I cupped my hands over the glass and squinted into the dark rooms where I could barely make out rows of desks or shelves of books. Then I found one that broke the mold. It lacked the desks and there was a stage along the back wall. “Here,” I said. “This is it.”
Adeline hurried to peer inside and then said, “We need to break in.”
It was dark—time of day doesn’t always line up—and I was glad for the moonlight. I scoured the ground for a tool and spotted a large jagged stone nestled in a tuft of grass along the foundation. I locked eyes with Adeline and she nodded her chin. “Go for it.”
“Alarms?”
“Not in 1929.”
I used my pitching arm and threw the rock, wincing as the glass cracked and shards dropped to the ground.
Adeline carefully picked pieces of glass away until the hole was large enough for her to poke her arm through. She flicked the lock, then slid the window open.
Chapter Eleven
Since I was taller and more lithe than Adeline, I offered to go first. I inched through the window, aware that I might be flashing my undies, but that was the least of my worries. My wild curls got caught on the bracket, and I yelped a little as I jumped in. I spotted a floor lamp in the corner and turned it on. Its weak bulb shed a warm, cozy light. Then I unlocked the door and let Adeline inside.
The room was twice as long as it was wide. Props of various types were piled on the shelves along one wall and clothing hung on racks next to it. I immediately went to the dresses and started flipping. Up to now, we’d had the advantage of darkness to cover our contemporary dress, but that would change come morning.
There were dozens of flapper dresses, a type of dress that had no waist or emphasis on the bustline, just straight lines like a fancy bag with a hole for the neck. I held one up against my body, guesstimating that it would fit, and pulled the flapper dress over my blouse and short skirt. It was a soft creamy satin with layers of fringe, like a lampshade, from the waist down. I swiveled my hips causing the fringe to shake and shimmer. “What do you think?” I asked.
Adeline smiled. “Looks good!”
She found a blue dress similar to mine but didn’t put it on. “We need to get some sleep,” she said. “We have to make sure we’re out before the kids and teachers arrive in the morning.”
Adeline curled up on a purple chaise lounge in the corner and closed her eyes. I fell onto a green one next to it. Traveling was exhausting. I shut my eyes, shifting a few times before I floated away into dreamland.
Adeline nudged me awake at the first light of dawn.
I stretched and worked out the kinks as the events of the previous evening washed over me. I’d hoped it’d all been a bad dream, especially the part where I’d cheated on Nate, but my unfamiliar surroundings and the sight of Adeline proved that it was all too real.
Adeline shimmied into the dress she’d chosen the evening before. Unlike me, she removed the fifties-styled clothes she was wearing before putting it on.
“What should I do with these?” she asked. “I don’t think I should leave them around for someone to find.”
“There’s a trash can over there,” I said, pointing. She discarded her twenty-first century vintage fifties clothing knowing she’d get them back when she returned. It was just one of the mysterious rules of time travel. When you returned to the present, you arrived at the exact moment you left, which meant you once again wore what you had on in that moment.
“At least you have short hair already,” I said. I ran fingers through my long, dark locks. “What am I going to do with this?”
“We can make a faux bob,” Adeline said. There was a makeup table with combs and brushes, and many hair pieces hanging from hooks on the wall. “I saw a Youtube video once on how to create a short hair look. That was before I had the courage to take the scissor plunge.”
I sat on the chair in front of the mirror. Adeline split my hair into two layers and put the bottom layer into a long braid, which she then pinned up in an elongated bun at the nape of my neck. With the top layer, she did some fancy back-combing and pinned it up underneath, securing it to the braid. The end result was me looking like I had short hair.
“Nice job,” I said, admiringly.
She plucked a yellow headband off the wall and added it. “There,” she said. “That looks authentic.”
Adeline’s hair was short, but styled more for the fifties than the twenties. She plopped a black fitted hat on and plucked out a few blond strands, smoothing them down and tucking them in, just so. “Now for makeup,” she said. “They wore a lot of it in the twenties.”
Adeline applied makeup like it was second nature. Soon her eyes were dark and smoky, exaggerated with thick eyeliner and mascara. She applied blush in rosy round circles. I stared at her with wonder.
“How do you know what to do?”
She pointed to the wall. Several posters of what I assumed were famous actors were pinned up. Adeline looked just like the women in them.
“Do you want me to help you?” she asked.
I nodded, conceding that I was pretty clueless when it came to makeup. She went to work and by the time she was done, I barely knew my own face.
Adeline plucked a couple long necklaces from a drawer. “Here, take one of these.”
I lifted a strand of green beads carefully over my hairdo and let them fall over my chest. Adeline donned several strands of pearls.
“This is kind of fun,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, though I wasn’t sure how long it would last. We needed to get going soon and who knew what we’d find when we did. Hopefully, there would be some food involved. If it came down to it, we could hunt small birds, but I’d need to fashion a slingshot for that. It was a last resort. Thinking of food triggered a stomach growl.
Adeline chuckled. “I’m hungry, too.”
I dug through things I found lying on a bench by the door. Opening a brown bag, I pulled out an apple. “Someone left their lunch behind.”
I took a bite and passed the apple to Adeline. She chomped on it and gave it back. “There’s a sandwich,” I said. I sniffed
it. “Smells all right.”
We both jumped at the sound of the doorknob clicking. Someone was unlocking the door! Adeline and I stared wide-eyed at each other, then our time travel survival instincts kicked in and we dashed to the clothing rack and crouched behind it.
Whistling filled the room, a tune I didn’t recognize, and through a slender space between dresses, I saw a middle-aged man enter the drama room. He wore drooping trousers that narrowed to his ankles, a vest and jacket over a white shirt with a brown bow tie and a fedora on his head. He shucked off his jacket, hung it on a hook and placed his hat on the shelf above.
He turned and started walking straight toward us! I grabbed Adeline’s hand in the off chance that one of us might conveniently trip and held my breath. I tried to think of a plausible excuse as to why two strange girls would be hiding behind the dress rack. Just as he was about to reach us, he made a sudden detour to his right and stopped in front of the vanity mirror. He ducked and examined his face, running a finger over his moustache, smoothing it out, and then did the same to each of his eyebrows. He combed his hair back and hummed with satisfaction, apparently liking what he saw.
I worried he’d return to the dresses, but then he suddenly caught sight of the broken window.
He growled, “What the heck?” He stepped over to examine the damage and shook his head. “Darn kids!” Then he hurried out the door.
I straightened and groaned at the kink in my back. “That was close.”
Adeline agreed. “Let’s get out of here.”
We ducked out the door, making sure the drama teacher was out of sight, and hurried until we were off the property and safely on Hawthorne Avenue. I stopped to take it all in.
Hollywood 1929, here we come.
Chapter Twelve
We spent a couple hours taking in the sights. I mean, that was one benefit of time traveling. Who got to do this kind of sightseeing?
The sidewalks were full of women dressed in layered, straight-seamed dresses, adorned with several strands of long pearls and beads and many with feathers in their caps. There were others dressed plainer, but they still blended in. Some of the older women wore long skirts, cinched at the waist that touched boot-like shoes, and white long-sleeved blouses, their hair in buns on the top of their heads—throwbacks from the previous decade. Men strolled in suits and leather shoes, tipping their hats as they passed by.
The streets rumbled with Model Ts and the like zig-zagging around each other, dodging pedestrians and old street cars that groaned with the effort.
“My dad would love this!” Adeline said. “These old cars are in mint condition.”
“They’re not old yet, but they are cool,” I said. “I bet they’d be fun to drive.”
Adeline’s eyes glinted mischievously. “Maybe we should go for a joyride.”
I was shocked. “Steal a car?”
“Not steal. Borrow.”
I stared at her in surprise. “Do you know how to drive?”
Adeline rolled her eyes. “No. That would be hazardous. I’m just joking around.”
Hollywood was a comparatively small town in 1929 with more agricultural land and less sprawl. The hills were still in their natural state, unmarred with the extensive subdivisions found in my real time.
We happened across an orange grove, beautiful with its orange globes hanging against the dark green leaves of the trees.
“I’ve never seen an orange tree before,” I said.
“I know, hey?” Adeline said. “I’d never seen one either before my dad and I moved here from Cambridge. She swallowed. “They remind me of how thirsty I am.”
“My throat’s parched, too.” I held her gaze. “Shall we?”
She nodded and I followed her into the grove, stepping carefully through the long grass. We each plucked an orange, settled into the grass and began peeling.
In my own time, I never took things without paying, and I hated justifying it when I tripped, but the fact was, if I didn’t take and borrow, I wouldn’t survive. I made it a policy to only take what was absolutely necessary and to replace things when I could.
I slurped on the fruit, leaning forward over the grass as to not slush juice onto my dress. Adeline did the same and it made me smile. It felt great to have a partner in crime. Not a non-traveler I had to look out for and protect, but a person who knew. Someone skilled and adept in time-travel life. Even if I tripped home without her, I knew she’d manage on her own and get back eventually.
At least I thought I knew that.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and tossed the peels. “What if we screwed it up?”
Adeline adjusted her black cap as she eyed me. “Screwed what up?”
“The loop. I mean, I used to loop to the 1860s and you to the 1950s. We’d loop back in time and then return to our present. This accidental trip is an anomaly. It’s not part of our natural pattern.”
“Yeah?”
“So what if we don’t loop back? Or maybe we’ll loop back to an entirely different time. My particular writing class might not be the one I return to.” My imagination began to run away. I envisioned endless tripping from one year to another and never getting back home to my present. Never able to make things right with Nate. A ribbon of panic pulled against my ribs.
“Casey!” Adeline snapped her fingers. “Get a grip. We have to keep our heads.”
“I know, I know, it’s just, this is unfamiliar territory.”
“How long do you usually stay when you trip?” Adeline asked.
“It varies. Sometimes just a few hours, sometimes three or four weeks.”
“Same.” She stood and brushed grass off the back of her dress, the fringe on her layers shimmying back and forth as she did it. “Let’s just assume we’ll get back…”
Until we don’t.
“We have to find a way to make money,” I said, “if we’re going to be here for any length of time. Or find a family to help us.”
“Agreed.”
“Hey!” A man’s voice shouted through the grove. He wore overalls and had a deep tan. He pointed angrily at us.
“Busted,” Adeline said. “Let’s dash.”
We ran away from the orchard worker as fast as we could and kept running until we hit the street. We didn’t stop until we were certain no one was after us and then we bent over, panting to get our breath.
I caught Adeline’s eye, and she broke out in a cackle. Her laughter was contagious and soon I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud along with her. Not because it was funny, but because it wasn’t, and we were in such a new and scary situation, and all that stress—just made us laugh the harder.
I wiped tears from my cheeks and worked to catch my breath. “I hope we’re not going crazy.”
“Me, too,” Adeline said. “It’s only the first day.”
We eventually made it back to Hollywood Blvd, though neither of us knew exactly what we were looking for.
Adeline pointed to a building with a long brown awning that stretched over the sidewalk. “That’s Brown Derby Restaurant. Lots of stars apparently hung out there.”
Just then, a glamorous couple exited.
Adeline gasped. “That’s Mary Pickford. And Douglas Fairbanks!”
We stared at the famous couple. We weren’t the only ones gawking. All the pedestrians stopped where they were. Many shouted out the actors’ names and waved enthusiastically. The Pickford/Fairbanks duo drove away in a convertible buggy car, waving calmly, like they were used to all the attention.
Once the spectacle was over, everyone continued at their normal busy pace, like a slow-mo button had been released.
There were so many cars on the road, it was hazardous for pedestrians to cross. Policemen stood on short boxes in some of the busier intersections, directing traffic. Everyone had to look out for the streetcars that rumbled down the middle of the road in both directions. There was honking and beeping and shouting by angry drivers: road rage in its infancy.
&n
bsp; I pointed to a sidewalk sign ahead that read, “Movie Extras needed!”
“Maybe that’s our answer,” I said.
A woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, manned a small table. She had bobbed blond hair with expertly done finger waves and she puckered her red lips. She wore a green flapper dress with several long strands of pearls around her neck.
Adeline and I took a moment to make adjustments to our bedraggled appearance.
I spun around. “Do I look okay?”
She tightened a couple pins on the back of my head. “There. You look great. How about me? Is my makeup still okay?”
I studied her face. “Yup. You look good.”
“Okay,” she said with a deep breath. “Let’s roll.”
We approached the girl and smiled. “Hello,” I said.
“Ya lookin’ for movie work?” The woman spoke each word with a sharp, staccato beat. Adeline surprised me by replying with the same cadence.
“How do we sign up?”
“Ya need to be eighteen years old and available for this afternoon. It’s for three hours work and the pay is a dollar thirty.”
“Per hour?” I asked.
She flashed me a half-smile. “No, sweetheart. That’s for the whole time.”
“We’ll do it,” I said. I didn’t know how far a dollar thirty went, but it would probably buy us dinner if we weren’t fussy.
“Fine. Sign these papers.” She pushed one-page contracts across the table and gave each of us a pen. “I’m Molly Mallone, by the way. The star of the film.”
“We don’t have ID,” I said carefully.
“We lost our bags on the train,” Adeline added. Then she frowned for emphasis. “Stolen.”
“It’s fine.” Molly lit a cigarette and blew a long plume of smoke into the air. “You just have to stand around while the cameras roll. The producers don’t care. There’s a tent set up in an empty lot.” Molly recited the address. “Be there at 2:00 p.m. on the dot.”