The Time Travelers: Volume One

by Caroline B. Cooney

  She turned to tell her brother some of the truth, but he was not there. Tod had gone on to school. She was alone in the house. There was nothing there but the hum of the refrigerator and the click of a clock.

  Annie shivered.

  Could people come and go from real life without her noticing them? Was she too busy noticing unreal people?

  She almost tore up the note she had written to her teacher. It was too foolish.

  But instead she tucked the note in her palm, and slid her hand into her glove, and there the note lay waiting, papery and warm and full of the future. Or the past.

  Shackles work.

  Strat stared at the chains on his wrists. He was young and strong—and chained.

  He was willing to admit to anything they wanted now. He would make any promise if they’d just let him loose. “What year is it?” he asked the doctor.

  Patient does not know year, the doctor wrote in Strat’s casebook.

  “I’m fine,” Strat said to the doctor. “This is a mistake.”

  “Really? Your father chose this, you recall.”

  “I disobeyed my father. I was wrong. I won’t do it again. I’m not insane. I agree that my father knows everything.”

  “Do you?”

  “Please let me out.”

  The doctor shook his head. “You are a danger to yourself and others, Mr. Stratton.”

  Strat said, “Would you permit me more than one hour a day of exercise? Please? I promise to be good. I promise not to try to scale the walls.”

  “You are fortunate,” said the doctor, “that your father is wealthy. He has paid for a private asylum, where you will get all the help you need. Right now you need restraint, not exercise.”

  Strat’s body screamed for exercise. Every joint shrieked to be moved, every muscle cried out to be swung and changed. But arguing would go in the casebook, and the casebook decided everything. “Did I get any letters?” he said, struggling for courtesy, for a normal smile. He must look normal at all costs. “Did Harriett answer me yet?”

  The doctor smiled.

  The doctor and Ralph, the attendant, moved Strat back to the crib. He fought, but they who owned the key to the shackles were in charge, no matter how young and strong Strat was.

  The crib was an adult-size bed with barred sides and a cleverly fastened canvas lid. Strat could not get out. He could not undo the canvas. He could not sit up. It was a torture chamber with a mattress. They removed the chains once he was inside. False freedom. He could do nothing with those hands, so he used the only other tool available to him.

  Bites canvas, wrote the doctor, and then the doctor left.

  “No!” screamed Strat. “No, don’t go, please, please, please, you’re a civilized man, please …”

  The door closed behind the doctor.

  The building had been constructed as a lunatic asylum. Its walls were very thick and its doors very solid.

  Ralph the attendant smiled. The wider Ralph smiled, the more danger the patient was in.

  “Please, Ralph,” said Strat, “please let me write another letter. This will be to my sister, Devonny. I’ll give you all the money I have.”

  Ralph laughed. “I already have all the money you have.”

  Strat had no pride left. “Devonny will give you money. Just please let me have a pencil and paper.”

  Ralph walked slowly to the doctor’s desk. The other four patients in the room watched to see if Ralph would actually bring a piece of paper, a pencil, a stamp, and an envelope. If there was hope for Strat, perhaps there was hope for them too.

  Strat’s heart was pounding. If he could get Devonny to come … or Harriett … or his mother …

  But Ralph came back with Strat’s casebook. Ralph couldn’t read, of course; a lunatic asylum did not hire the sort of person who had conquered reading, but Ralph could recognize. Ralph held up the brown leather journal in which the doctor’s spidery handwriting made daily entries. Ralph turned the pages midair, so not just Strat, but also the other patients, could see each page.

  Every letter Strat had written begging for help was pasted into the notebook.

  Not one had ever been mailed.

  Sean picked Annie up in his latest vehicle. Sean was working at an auto repair shop now. He was in his glory. He no longer had to struggle to purchase cars; he could just slap on a dealer plate and drive off the lot with his prize.

  They hadn’t dated since Annie met Strat. (Not that Sean had the slightest idea who Strat was.) But Sean went right on adoring Annie, accepting the fact that he had no purpose in her life other than to give her rides in bad weather.

  Sometimes Annie was ashamed of this, but not today. She wanted her boots dry and the hem of her long dress out of the snow. “Hi, Sean.”

  “Hi, Annie. Wow. Some outfit.”

  “This is how people dress to go into New York,” said Annie defensively. She was worried about how the other girls would dress. She didn’t want to stand out or get teased. But these clothes would move across Time with her.

  “Hear from your mom?” said Sean. “She like Tokyo?”

  “Yes,” said Annie, though her last conversation with Mom had been at the airport, saying good-bye.

  (“Get us good presents, Mom,” Tod had teased, hugging his mother gently. Mom was very teary, unable to leave her children. “We’ll slaughter Miss Bartten for you,” Tod offered. “Think of the alibi you’ll have. Continents and oceans.” Mom had managed to smile. “Make it painful,” she told Tod. They shook on it.)

  What if I’m gone for a long time? thought Annie. What if Tod has to tell Mom, and she’s in Japan, and finds out I’m missing, and—

  “We’re here,” said Sean. He smiled at Annie. Sean was a very good-looking young man. It was too bad he had no personality to go with it. Annie patted Sean’s knee and Sean sighed. “How come I get pats, and never kisses?”

  “I guess I’m not feeling very romantic these days,” said Annie, which was one of her larger lies. She had thought of nothing but romance since meeting Strat. She worried about the extent and number of her lies. Was this a sign of insanity? Would she wake up one day, gently tranquilized, her scattered family gathered around her bed in a psychiatric unit?

  “See you tonight,” said Sean, and Annie was horrified. Had she promised Sean a date or something? But she needed tonight! If Time came …

  “Don’t look as if I threw up on you,” said Sean irritably. “I’m just picking you up at the 6:03 train.”

  “I might not be on it,” said Annie quickly. “I might stay at Mom’s New York apartment.”

  Sean’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t know your mother kept an apartment in New York.”

  “Ever since Dad moved out,” Annie lied. She would get caught on this one. Or maybe not. It was amazing, the number of lies you could tell without being noticed. The whole thing was in carrying it off.

  She got on the train, lifting her skirts above the slush. The rest of the class had boarded and she was last. There was an uneven number of kids, and Annie sat alone. She would have minded terribly last year; she would have been crushed and humiliated and ready to die. Now she was delighted. She could think of Time and the Strattons.

  The train lurched noisily toward Grand Central Station.

  They stopped at Greenwich and Rye and Mamaroneck. At Larchmont and New Rochelle and Mount Vernon.

  Don’t do this, Annie said to herself. You’re just going because you’re selfish and curious. Don’t pretend it’s love. You know perfectly well Strat had to marry Harriett. She needed him most. You knew it then, you know it now. Don’t you go back there and wreck that. And think of your own family. Things aren’t bad enough already?

  Annie felt much better after accusing herself of terrible things.

  Besides, Time gave her no choice, did it? It would grab her by the ankles and throw her through the century.

  And then I’ll know, thought Annie. I’ll have the answers. And that’s what everybody wants from Life. The A
nswers.

  From her chair on the glassed-in porch, Harriett looked at winter. Absolutely nothing happened in the Adirondack Mountains except weather. Frigid, twenty-below weather.

  Indoors, the coal stove was red hot and the windows had steamed up. The stove was a tall potbelly with peculiar side ridges. Moss, the nurse, had explained that it was a laundry stove, and the ledges would hold two dozen flatirons. The heating stove had exploded, Moss said, and this was the substitute. Harriett was not comforted by the thought of a stove exploding.

  But Harriett was kept outdoors, so that clear, clean, cold air would climb into her lungs and scour out the consumption. She was wrapped in blankets and furs, a hot soapstone tucked beneath her feet. She would rather be inside with an exploding stove. They could call it a cure porch if they wanted, but Harriett, personally, called it torture.

  Harriett had had a cough the previous winter and spring, but most people did, so she thought little of it. Even though she felt feverish every afternoon, she said nothing. She loved the pink in her cheeks. So romantic. And she was in love, wearing the sapphire ring Strat had given her, and was thinking of nothing but marriage.

  The loss of weight, too, was delightful. Being slender and willowy was so much better than being solid. A child-woman is far more attractive than a womanly woman. It was relief to be frail, as a woman should be. All went well until one day the coughing was so severe that Harriett hemorrhaged, drenching handkerchiefs with blood.

  This was consumption. Lungs that ate the body instead of air.

  Naturally, one lied. Admit that a member of the family had consumption? Not likely. It would be the end of party invitations.

  Still, only the very best people got consumption, and of course they had to have the very best treatment. Clear Pond featured a terribly expensive and exclusive cure.

  There were “up” cottages, where patients could get out of bed, but Harriett was “on trays.” Meals were carried to her because she had to be motionless. Her lungs must never struggle. Up patients could have activities: picnics in summer and sleigh rides in winter. Poor Harriett could only obey the cure and hope to stay alive.

  Hope was strong in the heart of Harriett Ranleigh. She had plans! A life—a wonderful man—their perfect future together. Surely a cough would not end that forever.

  She was not even permitted to use a pencil, since mental exercise was known to be as tiring as physical exercise. But Harriett composed a diary in her mind, as carefully and grammatically as if somebody really would read it.

  I am afraid, she wrote in her mind. Why won’t Strat answer my letters? How could he read those sentences I dictated to Moss, and not come to me? How could he be so hard of heart?

  I am afraid of the weather too. How the wind screams. How the cold mountains stare. If I die, they will put me in that ground, and I will be cold forever. Is this your design, God? Have you chosen death for me?

  God, don’t you understand? I have a design too! I want to marry Strat and have babies and keep a home!

  But only the wind replied, shrieking around the icicles.

  They all had pet icicles; Harriett’s was three feet long, but Beanie’s was nearly four. An infinitely superior icicle, Beanie like to say smugly, as I am an infinitely superior person.

  Harriett yearned for the day’s visits. Charlie and Beanie could go skylarking and they would tell her about their activities. Charlie’s cure was going well; he was actually permitted a ten-minute walk. Charlie was so slender as to be nonexistent, but in his bright-hued winter woolens, he looked puffy and plump.

  Beanie and Charlie joined her on the glass porch, exhausted from the brief walk across the snow. Moss, the nurse, quickly tucked them into waiting furs and brought cups of hot tea to wrap cold fingers around.

  Charlie rolled himself a cigarette and promptly set fire to his own sheets. Everybody was used to this and he was thrown a snowball with which to put it out.

  Harriett whispered, “I still haven’t heard from Strat.”

  They looked at her gently. Everybody knew that her fiancé had not once written or visited. Even Harriett’s enormous fortune was not bringing Strat to her side. He was handsome. The finely framed photograph of him that she kept by her bed would have made any girl’s heart pound. Probably had. Strat, it would seem, was busy with other hearts.

  The students were packed tight in a hallway in the United Nations building listening (or pretending to listen) to a woman discuss the Middle East situation. I’d better not go through Time right now, thought Annie. We don’t need an Annie Lockwood situation.

  But nothing happened.

  They wrapped up the United Nations, they bought roasted chestnuts or cappuccino or hotdogs at sidewalk stands, they took a bus to South Street Seaport, they steeped themselves in maritime history, and nothing happened.

  Annie had been so sure Time was coming for her. The little note she had written to explain her absence was stupid and futile.

  Annie looked at the twenty kids who thought they knew her. What would they say if they found out she was trying to step across a century? What would they say if they found out she really and truly believed she could do it?

  They would lock me up, she thought. I’d be in a straitjacket.

  She glared at New York, which was doing its best for everybody except her.

  I know what! I have to get in position. I have to be on the right street, so all Time has to do is shift me through the century, not to another place.

  She knew the Manhattan address; she had found it in a society report.

  Okay, so I lied when I said I was going to let Time handle it, thought Annie. So I’m going to help Time out a little. I’ll dump my bookbag, too twentieth century, put on my squishy blue hat, all ladies wore hats in the nineteenth century, and find the corner of Fifty-second Street and Fifth Avenue.

  She slid into a McDonald’s line next to Heather. Once they had been inseparable—the kind of junior-high girlfriends who cannot get through the evening without an hour on the phone. Now Heather was just Heather, a nice girl Annie had once known. “Heather,” whispered Annie, “would you give this note to the teacher after I’m out of here?”

  Heather overreacted. “What are you talking about? Annie, it’s one thing to wander off back home. This is New York City. It isn’t safe. Get a grip.”

  “I’ll be fine, I’m staying at Mom’s apartment.”

  “Your mother has an apartment in New York? I didn’t know that! Oooh, Annie, I want to stay too! Let’s do something really cool.”

  Annie had not thought of this problem. “Next time,” she said quickly. “This time I need you to cover for me.”

  Heather took the note dubiously. “Okay, but—”

  “Thanks!” Annie took a quick look to be sure the rest of the class was thinking of french fries, and not her, and they were, so she slipped out of McDonald’s, and also, she hoped, out of the twentieth century.

  Devonny Aurelia Victoria Stratton felt like kicking a dog.

  Nothing was going right.

  Every plan had failed, every person she loved was in trouble, and every hope cut down.

  Devonny held Miss Lockwood responsible. Oh! If she could get her hands around Miss Lockwood’s throat! Strangling was too good for her.

  For Anna Sophia Lockwood had existed: everybody admitted it. Even Father admitted it. He had, after all, danced with Miss Lockwood. But only Strat had insisted that Miss Lockwood had traveled through Time to be with them.

  I hate you, Anna Sophia Lockwood! thought Devonny. But I need you. “It’s now or never,” she said fiercely to Time. “You send her right now! Right this very minute! Do you hear me!”

  There was a knock at the door and Devonny nearly fainted. Did she have such power? “Yes?” she whispered.

  The door opened.

  It was not Time. It was the most dangerous person she knew.

  “Were you talking to someone?” he said, looking around the empty room.

  Talking to Time
and Miss Lockwood had put Strat in an insane asylum. Devonny must be far more careful. She managed a sweet smile, because sweetness and smiles were the only weapons a girl had in 1898. “I was practicing flirting with you,” she said. She tucked her slender, silk-gloved hand into Walker Walkley’s crooked arm, and prepared herself to lie and connive and do anything it took to save her brother.

  Annie paced Fifth Avenue, trying this side and then the other, going up the near side of Fifty-second Street, and crossing over to the far side.

  The city was relentlessly modern. Its cars and store windows, skyscrapers and fashions were maddeningly twentieth century. Ugly, pimpled steel and glass rose up to snow clouds so low that the buildings didn’t scrape the sky; they vanished into it.

  Chemical Bank, Citibank, and Japan Air. She was in her Time, all right, complete with parking meters to count car minutes.

  The pout on her mouth and the frown on her forehead made her look like a street crazy with whom sane people did not make eye contact. Had Annie said to the people so carefully avoiding her that she was looking for the previous century, their worst suspicions would have been confirmed. But she was hunting, not talking. Tod was right: in her fine black coat and her silly squashed hat, she looked like a runway model in the midst of losing her mind.

  She stepped into a lobby with green marble floors and bored uniformed men and women guarding the elevators. She read the list of companies that could be found on floors two through forty. The name Stratton was not there.

  I can’t find the Strattons in the pages of their own society gossip and I can’t find the Strattons in property records and church ledgers, but still I expect to find their name chiseled in modern buildings? I am crazy. This is proof.

  She went back out. The weather had changed in only those few seconds. The wind howled down the corridors of Manhattan and icy sidewalks sucked the heat out of Annie’s boots. The day had passed into night without stopping for dusk, and snow-swirled blackness strangled her.