Loop

by Karen Akins

  Mom looked back and forth between us like she was waiting for the punch line.

  “Okay, whose Bree is she?”

  “No, what I mean is—”

  “What he means is I’m on a Shift from the future.” I licked my lips and waited for her response.

  “Oh.” She tossed the rag she was holding onto a laundry basket in the hall and ushered the two of us down the stairs to the living room. “Why didn’t you say so, sweetie? Did you two drop by for a snack?”

  “No.” I sank into the sofa, and Finn joined me. My eyes refused to budge from my mom for even a millisecond. I didn’t want to imagine what must happen in the next twelve hours to land my mother babbling and broken on the steps of my school. But the more I knew, the more I could help her.

  “Mom, we need to ask you some questions. Just answer honestly even if you have no idea why I’m asking or think I can’t handle it.”

  My mother’s demeanor darkened, and she glanced at Finn with a new wariness.

  “What’s going on?” She sat down opposite us.

  “Nothing. I’m fine, Mom, but I—”

  “Who is he?” She pointed to Finn who shrank back.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s a—” I looked at Finn and for the first time realized what I truly thought of him. “He’s a good guy. A really good guy.”

  I turned back to my mom and mustered my most reassuring smile.

  “I need to know what the saying ‘The Truth lies behind the enigmatic grin’ means.”

  Mom bobbed her head a few times as I was speaking, then said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “No, you … you have to.”

  “I’m sorry, sugar booger. No clue what that means.”

  “Okay, let’s try it from another angle,” said Finn. “How do you know my parents, John and Charlotte Masterson?”

  “Your parents?” She looked bewildered. “I don’t know any Mastersons.”

  “Maybe you knew my mom by her maiden name. Langston.”

  “Charlotte Langston? Now that does ring a bell.”

  Finn and I both sat up straight. I reached for his hand and squeezed it in excitement. He entwined his fingers with mine, and when I looked down I couldn’t tell which belonged to him and which belonged to me.

  Mom snapped her fingers. “No. You know who I’m thinking of? Sharla Lanksbury. You remember her, don’t you, Bree? I worked with her years ago when I first started at the Gallery.”

  No, no, no. I brushed aside my mother’s rambling and tried to bring the conversation back into focus.

  “Mom, this is important. I want you to think really hard. You have to have heard that saying before. ‘The Truth lies behind the enigmatic grin.’ Can you think of anything it might be referring to?”

  “What is this about?” Mom’s expression turned from confused back to concerned. “Is this for a school assignment?”

  “Sort of,” I said at the same time that Finn said, “No.”

  I shot him an exasperated look. Work with me here, Finn.

  Mom stood up and moved toward the kitchen. “I think I should give the Institute a call.”

  “No!” we both cried in unison, and lunged forward to pull her back to the chair.

  “Bree, what is going on? You two have exactly”—she looked up at the clock on the wall—“three minutes to explain. Then I’m getting the Institute on the speak-eazy.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath and grabbed my mother’s hand. “Finn is a friend of mine, and we realized a few days ago that you and his mom have both said that thing about Truth and the enigmatic grin. You, umm, you say it in the future, and it stuck out to me. So we need to figure out how you two know each other and what it means.”

  “You need to go further back,” said Finn.

  I shook my head, but he pointed up at the wall clock that Mom was still checking every few seconds.

  “Further back,” I said with a sharp exhale. “All right. I met Finn for the first time on this weird mission a couple weeks ago, only it was a few years ago for him. And I couldn’t find a grave for someone named Muffy van Sloot, so I—”

  “Too far,” whispered Finn. “And too confusing.”

  “Well, why don’t you take a stab at it?”

  “Bree Evelyn Bennis, that is no way to talk to a guest.” Mom shot me the you’d-better-apologize-and-I-mean-it look.

  I muttered, “I’m sorry,” to appease my mom, but Finn wasn’t even listening.

  “I was born over two hundred years ago.” He blurted it out, then stared at my mom.

  Silence.

  Then a sound came out of her mouth that sounded like a cross between a tru-ant and Tufty’s yowl. It took me a moment to realize it was a laugh.

  “No, really, what’s going on?” She looked back and forth between the two of us.

  I wanted nothing more than to pat my mother’s shoulder and say, Ha, ha, he’s kidding. Now can you make me an avocado sandwich on rye?

  What came out was, “It’s true. I don’t understand it either, but I need your help.”

  Mom went back to a moment of silence and then flew off her chair chattering. “So is this all to figure out a way to get him home? Or is the Institute already working on that? What am I saying? Of course they’re working on it. Well, no. What am I saying? This is beyond the Institute. Are you in trouble? Has he been decontaminated? How did he get here in the first place?”

  I waved my arms, speechless, to get my mother to stop. But she ranted on and on.

  “Mom,” I said when she paused to take a breath, “I don’t have any answers right now. And I don’t have much time. But I am in trouble. You can’t tell the Institute I was here. If you want to help, I need you to think really hard about what it could mean, the phrase I told you earlier. ‘The Truth lies behind the enigmatic grin.’ It could be something from when you were a student or from work or—”

  “It could have something to do with your microchip,” said Finn.

  Oh, blark. I buried my face in my hands.

  Mom’s head snapped up. “What did he say? Has anyone tried to tamper with your chip, Bree?”

  “Nobody’s tampering with anything, Mom.”

  “Because if someone tries to mess with your chip, you could end up—”

  “It’s okay.” I was the last person she needed to remind about the dangers of chip tinkering. I reached over and rubbed her arm. “Really. Nothing’s wrong with my chip.”

  She sank back into her chair. “You’re sure you’ve heard me say this thing about Truth and a grin? I’m racking my brain, but … nothing. Maybe it’s something I pick up in the future.”

  What future? “No, Mom. It has to be something you know about now. It has to be.”

  Tufty hopped off Finn’s lap where he’d been lounging and leapt to the mantel. One of Mom’s unfinished paintings was propped on the ledge, just a gray background with a few pale smudges. I had left the canvas there after the accident as a shrine to my mother, a testament to who Poppy Bennis was, to who I dared to hope she might be again. I had never thought much about the ragged, shredded edges until Tufty sank his claws into the frame and began kneading.

  “Tufty,” Mom and I scolded at the same time.

  A stunned expression took over my mother’s face.

  “I think I know what it means.” She clutched the arm of the chair, her nails white with excitement.

  “You know what the saying means?”

  “Yes. Well, not the whole thing. The enigmatic-grin part. It has to be—” Mom squinched up her nose and started arguing with herself. “No, that doesn’t make sense. If there was something behind it, we would have found it ages ago.”

  Both Finn and I jumped up.

  “Behind what, Mom? Behind what?”

  “Behind the—”

  But she didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence, not that I would have heard a word she said anyway.

  There was no warning, like there had been last time.
/>   No headache, not so much as a twinge.

  A bomb simply exploded in my head.

  I crumpled to the ground, shrieking and writhing in pain. In some dim corner of my mind, I was aware that Finn and my mother were at my side. I attempted to speak, to listen to what they were saying. Or, rather, screaming. But it was nothing but a muffled garble.

  Whoever wanted me back at the Institute wasn’t messing around. And they didn’t seem to care whether they brought me in alive or dead.

  chapter 26

  ALIVE. BUT BARELY.

  A solitary, dim lamp illuminated the small room where I lay heaped in the corner. My head pounded in throbbing pulses. I dragged myself upright and let out a hoarse cough. Blood flecks splattered the lamp in some kind of grotesque Rorschach, and another ribbon of red drizzled to the floor from my nose. I gagged back a rush of vomit. My body couldn’t take another one of these.

  I pinched my nostrils to stop the flow and looked around the room. When I recognized where I was, I wondered if arriving dead might have been the preferable option. A heavy weight pressed against my chest, constricting my breath. It took a moment to realize it was Finn still clinging to me, unconscious but breathing. But that wasn’t what scared the blark out of me.

  A wall of hodgepodge photographs came into sharp focus as my vision cleared. We had landed in Quigley’s office. I had to get us out of here, but the Institute would be crawling with staff and tru-ants looking for me. Air entered my lungs harder and harder with each breath. And it had nothing to do with the 170 pounds of lean muscle now nuzzling into my camisole.

  “Finn?” I poked his shoulder.

  “Whah?” He opened his eyes and looked around, then let out a muffled groan. “We’re inside your school, aren’t we?”

  “It was a six-month Shift and local. We’re lucky we didn’t end up in the Launch Room.”

  Not that Quigley’s office was any better. Probably worse. The sole, minuscule bright spot was that Quigley was currently not in said office. I wriggled out from under Finn and lifted my head to peek out the window into the darkened classroom. A shadow passed by in the hall outside.

  “Should we sneak out and try it again?” Finn asked.

  I sagged against the wall. Even that small exertion left me gasping for breath through my blood-caked lips. “This place will be on lockdown.”

  And when I thought about asking Wyck for more help, I got a blarky feeling in my gut.

  “Are you okay?” Finn steadied me and wiped my face clean.

  “I will be.” This room was the last place I wanted to be, but I didn’t think my legs would hold me yet.

  “Your mom was on to something,” said Finn, again seemingly unfazed by the forced fade. “I could tell.”

  My mom. I reached my hand out in front of me. Minutes ago it could have brushed my mother’s cheek. Now Poppy Bennis was back in a hospital bed. I closed my eyes and summoned those last few coherent moments with her.

  “Something about the grin,” I said.

  “And the ‘behind’ part, too,” said Finn. “She said, ‘If there was something behind it, we would have found it by now.’ What did she mean by that? Who’s ‘we’? And behind what?”

  “She said it out of nowhere. One minute, she had no idea what we were talking about. The next, it was like some light switched on in her brain and she started jabbering to herself about the grin and…” My eyes slid out of focus. Something had triggered my mom’s epiphany. “Tufty.”

  “Where?” Finn jumped up on his hands and knees. He felt around beneath him and peered under Quigley’s desk. “Did we accidentally bring him back?”

  “No, no, no.” I fidgeted and smoothed my hands on the floor in front of me. I had to think. All the pieces were there. I knew it. But the puzzle wasn’t fitting together. “His claws. The canvas. That was when Mom realized what the enigmatic grin is.”

  Finn pumped his pointed finger. “You’re right. What was on that painting?”

  “Nothing.” Just a plain background. A few splotches.

  The office had started to feel claustrophobic. I couldn’t think. All Quigley’s photos seemed to be staring straight at us. Or maybe laughing. That one with her and Leonardo da Vinci, especially. I was thankful I’d dropped my QuantCom at the house. It would be harder to track me. But still only a matter of time before they locked my location. Finn and I had to get out of here. I needed to put the “enigmatic grin” out of my mind and concentrate on finding another hiding place for Finn.

  Hiding place.

  “That’s it!” I squealed, and sat bolt upright like someone had zapped me with a stunner.

  Finn tumbled backward and almost brought the lamp in the corner down with him.

  “Don’t you see?” Oh, it was perfect. “He was in the Haven. The painting. He must have hidden something on the back of it. A code or a map or something. He’s the key. We have to get back to him. Leonardo’s the key!”

  While I was thinking out loud, I had stood up and begun pacing the office.

  Finn pulled me down next to him. “What are you talking about? Someone hid something on the back of one of your mom’s canvases?”

  “Huh? No, when my mom saw Tufty scratching that canvas on our mantel, she realized the saying had to do with a painting. Leonardo’s. He was a member of the Haven. There’s a picture of him and Quigley over there on the wall. Don’t you see? He has the answer to everything.”

  “Leonardo … DiCaprio?” he asked.

  “Who?” No. I had to stay focused. “Da Vinci.”

  Understanding dawned slowly across Finn’s face. He nodded.

  “The Mona Lisa,” we said in unison.

  “Of course,” Finn said, “the enigmatic grin. It all fits. She’s known for her mysterious smile.” He clapped his hands together. “There must be a hidden message on the back of it or under the paint. Something about Truth.”

  “Exactly. Wait. No.” Disappointment flooded in as quickly as my elation had. “You heard what my mom said. Art Historians have scoured that portrait for centuries. Examined it. X-rayed it. Used scans that don’t even exist in your time. If something was there, they would have found it by now. That’s what confused Mom.”

  And me.

  Finn shrugged. “So we go back and ask da Vinci ourselves.”

  I skipped the too far, too dangerous, too impossible argument.

  “Parlez-vous Italiano?” There was no telling what mishmash of languages I’d used, but it got my point across. Finn gulped and shook his head.

  “It was a good thought,” I added.

  Then I looked up at the wall of photos and realized it wouldn’t matter if Finn and I were both fluent in sixteenth-century Italian. If we sneaked back and landed in da Vinci’s kitchen. If we arrived the exact minute he put the final stroke on the portrait. We were too late before we’d even begun. Quigley had gotten to him first, when he had sketched the blarking painting.

  The arm-in-arm photo of them mocked me from its place of honor right above Quigley’s chair. Any attempt to Shift to his time would be pointless. They were in league with each other. He’d already told her any secrets in the painting. There wasn’t anything behind the enigmatic grin anymore.

  All that my mother had gone through was for nothing. I scowled. A sudden desire seized me to smash Quigley’s face. First her eyes. Then her nose. Then that stupid, smug smile.

  I stood and marched over to the wall, grabbing a stylus off her desk as I went. My legs found a new strength.

  “Bree?” Finn stood as well and looked nervously out the classroom window. “What are you doing?”

  “What I should have done a long time ago.”

  Pop. I jammed the stylus through one of her eyes.

  “Bree,” Finn hissed.

  Pop. Pop. The other eye and the nose.

  Finn rushed over and held back my hand, which had started to shake anyway. I stared at Quigley’s mouth. The lips curled into a knowing sneer. Leonardo and Quigley weren’t friends. They
were accomplices.

  My free hand formed a fist. I’d punch the whole thing in. Show Quigley what I thought of her. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would feel—

  “Amazing.” My hand dropped to my side. The last piece of the puzzle slipped into place before my eyes. Quigley had been so adamant that I not touch her frames when I was cleaning. But the da Vinci one had been crooked already, like someone had hung it in a hurry. The plaster had flaked off when I had tried to straighten it.

  I ran my fingers around the curves of the frame, prying the edges from the wall. It had been there the whole time. Inches from my grasp. Literally.

  “The Truth lies”—I gave the frame a good yank and it popped right off the wall—“behind the enigmatic grin.”

  There was nothing there.

  That wasn’t entirely true.

  There was a hole.

  Plaster flaked to the ground like snow as I stuck frantic fingers in the hollowed-out section of the wall. It was shallow, eight inches long by two inches high. And empty.

  “No, no, no. It was so perfect. I mean, it didn’t explain how both our moms had heard the saying … clue … whatever it is. Or what the Truth was. But it was sooo perfect.”

  My mix of elation and disappointment was short-lived. A soft clapping sound filled the air behind us. Finn and I whirled around. Terror.

  Dr. Quigley stood in the doorway, applauding.

  “Not bad,” she said with an appraising nod. “I knew you’d figure it out. It’s a shame you’re too late.”

  My knees went weak and I leaned against Finn for support.

  But I didn’t collapse until he took a step toward Quigley and said, “Aunt Lisa?”

  chapter 27

  APPARENTLY, I HAD SLEPT through the “What to do when you find out your traitorous pseudoboyfriend is in league with your evil History teacher” lesson in Risk Assessment 101. But, like all lessons in Risk Assessment 101, it would have gone something like this: Push-the-Blarkin’-Emergency-Fade-Button-Already. Which wasn’t very helpful in the present situation. I did the next best thing. I darted to the corner of the office, grabbed the floor lamp, and swung it around like a weapon. There was nowhere to run. I was trapped.