The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1)

by Everett Maroon

  I got nervous thinking about it. What if I could get lost in a hallucination? What if I never came back? If the whole point was to find a way to end my illness, why was I having more seizures now? Adults sucked—always pretending to have all of the answers and then acting like nothing was wrong when clearly shit was falling apart. I didn’t want to be in the study anymore. But at the same time, I wanted to know more about the weird place that inhabited a spot in my mind. I told myself I’d go to the study again and not make a fuss, because even though there seemed to be so much bad going on there, I needed to know more. Where was this uh, mind-space? One thing I knew for sure: I wasn’t getting the whole story from Dorfman the Bearded.

  ***

  My mother watched me push the food around on my plate. “You need to eat your salad, honey,” she said. I poked at lettuce with my fork, as if I could digest it through the metal utensil.

  “Jack, come on. Do what your mother says,” my father said. I didn’t need to hear him tell me twice, not that he would have hurt me. Dad never raised a hand in anger, and good thing. If he’d been the violent type, he could have done a lot of damage. He had two of the largest, thickest hands I’d ever seen on a person. They must have weighed five pounds each. When we went fishing I had to set up all of the hooks with bait, because he just couldn’t handle little bits of squid on the tiny hooks. I didn’t know why I needed to hear my father tell me to eat lettuce; it seemed ridiculous and at the same time, I wouldn’t have taken a bite without him nudging me.

  “Your Mom says the study is going well. What do you think?” Why isn’t anyone concerned about my seizure, I wondered.

  “Other than having an episode today, it’s cool, I guess,” I said. I picked up the two blue pills next to my glass of milk and popped them in my mouth. I took two pills in the morning, two at three o’clock, two at dinner, and two before bed. As I grew I’d had to take more of them, to keep my brain waves manageable.

  “Well, Dr. Dorfman told us that may happen from time to time, but it’s a sign they’re isolating where the seizures come from.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Because why tell the dumb kid?

  Dad put down his fork and knife, studying me. “We all have something wrong with us, Jack,” he said. “If we can sort this out, great, but if not, you’re okay anyway.”

  “Thanks for the badge of approval, Dad,” I said.

  He looked at me, his eyebrows furrowed like two angry caterpillars.

  “Jack, I’m serious. Don’t mock me.”

  I nodded.

  “I just wonder why I’m doing this study, is all. I don’t like blacking out.”

  “See,” he said, picking up his fork and pointing it at Mom, who had gotten up from the table again to wipe down the kitchen counter, “he says it’s ‘cool,’ but it’s really not. Is it at least groovy?”

  “Don’t say groovy, Dad, please.”

  Before he could protest I stuffed an enormous piece of lettuce in my mouth, knowing that he wouldn’t ask me to continue while I was still chewing.

  “Well, if it takes embarrassment to get him to eat well, so be it,” he said to my mother. “You know what came into the shop today, Jack?”

  I shook my head to show him I would love to hear his answer, and was grateful he’d changed the subject. Iceberg lettuce was harder to eat fast than it looked.

  “A 1949 Chevrolet Deluxe.” This was a sweet low rider of a car, the sweeping back fading over an old-style chrome bumper, something like a 216-cubic inch, inline 6-cylinder over valve engine that sounded like a factory at high production when it fired up, but was so powerful it was the engine standard at Chevy for going on three decades. Where the engine and body work was solid on the ’49 Deluxe, the wiring faded fast and so my father probably had to start there if it was in his shop for repair or restoration.

  “Really? Who owns that?” Dad knew nearly everyone in town with an antique car because he was on the regional classic car circuit. I took another horrendous bite of salad, in a show of good faith.

  “Arnold Metchum bought it at an estate sale a couple of weeks ago, and wants to get it into running shape. The whole electrical system needs to be stripped out and redone, for starters.” Arnold had a big plot of land near the border with Kentucky where he kept his nicest showcase pieces. My favorite was a 1924 Studebaker Big 8 Wagon, even if it wasn’t a hot rod or racing car. The Big 6 was more common because it didn’t have quite enough horsepower to drag the heavier 8 frame, but I appreciated the enthusiasm for size.

  “Groovy,” I said.

  My father turned to Mom, who was tidying up the stovetop already, squinting at the counter to make sure she’d wiped up thoroughly. “I think he’s mocking me again.” She chuckled and sat down, placing a pitcher of iced tea on the table.

  “No really, that’s cool. And I bet you’re happy to work a Deluxe, right?”

  “I really am. I’m so sick of Pintos and Chevelles. All these crappy cars just because of the fuel crisis.” He stabbed at his meatloaf and made a cube of it with his fork. Meat cubes, mm. “Nobody in town can afford anything else, anyway. I guess it doesn’t matter. But stop by the shop if you want to help work on it. Armand and Frank like it when you come by. They get to show you things and pretend you don’t know more than they do.”

  I laughed. My father’s employees had known me ever since I was a baby. I’d always be a baby to them. It was frustrating and nice all at once.

  My mother sat down at the table. “Jack, you look tired. Maybe you should take a nap before you do your homework.”

  “I’m okay, Ma. Besides, I did most of my homework at the hospital while I waited for them to send us home.” She inspected me, like she didn’t believe me or something.

  “I’m just not sure you’d tell me if something was wrong.”

  “He’s okay, Melly,” said Dad. “He’s old enough to know when he needs to rest, right, Jack?”

  I nodded, and asked to be excused. I piled my dishes in the sink, not eager to wash them.

  Back in my room I pulled out my history textbook, reading with great boredom about the Western Expansion. I flipped through the pages; three lessons ahead always seemed more interesting than what we were on at any moment. Staring at me from the page was a black and white picture of a man on a horse in some random town. Those stones in the street. Cobblestones. That’s what I’d seen in my vision. Cobblestones. The ones I’d seen were configured in a different pattern than this, less fancy. Who knew there were different ways to stick stones in the ground? How amazing-boring.

  Was I hallucinating cobblestones because of my textbook? I didn’t know what it meant, or if it meant anything.

  ***

  My mother had noticed something wasn’t right with me soon after I started walking as a baby. I would stand, my eyes fluttering for long seconds while she waved her hands in front of me or patted me on the back, assuming I was choking in silence. I also had a habit of staring into space for whole minutes. Just as she would panic, I’d come around, either doing whatever baby thing I’d been engaged in, or with a blank look on my face that dissolved into some new interest as if I’d never been lost.

  Because she’d had this same behavior as a child herself, she knew what it was, and she took me to the pediatrician right away, insisting they help me.

  The doctor gave her a bottle of pills and a strict regimen, but wouldn’t sit down and talk to her about my diagnosis. That’s when she discovered me behind the pink living room couch, slashing my fingers with a razorblade, and declaring that I was going to be a doctor someday. We saw another doctor, this one a son of her coworker at Woolworth’s who had just finished his residency. He had carefully slicked back hair and a Timex watch, so she knew he had aspirations but wasn’t too smug with himself. He looked at the prescription bottle and ran tests on my brain so he could tell her about the nature of my specific disorder. She already knew about the haphazard firing of synapses that stole time out of my days and put me at risk as I learned t
o navigate the world.

  That began the routine of pills, crushed and covered in chocolate syrup so I would take them, and the other daily precautions. My teachers and friends’ parents were brought in by my mother on the vigilance against vulnerable alone time, so all of my episodes happened in front of other people. This did wonders for my social standing at school. I became a favorite target of freckled Kiernan Maloney, friendly neighborhood bully. At least I’d gotten good at avoiding him, for the most part.

  ***

  “Okay Jack, ready to go?” asked Dr. Dorfpoodle, who was sticking with his hair permanent for the long haul.

  I nodded that I was set to begin, and he put a hand on my shoulder. As if I was ready to bolt and run. Maybe I was.

  “You don’t have to be nervous. We’re here to make sure you’re okay.”

  I wasn’t okay the last time, I thought, but I’m here anyway, aren’t I?

  I nodded. I nodded a lot without meaning it.

  I wasn’t even surprised that shortly into the test, I was zapped out of the lab room.

  Once again I had hold of the walking stick. I felt the top part of the pole with my fingers and traced over the carved Jac in the wood. It was bright, like the last time, but I knew I had to wait to adjust to the sun. The same terrain came into relief. Hilly path, village in the valley. I saw that farther up, past the small town, the steepness settled out and at the top was the yellow farm house from before. It seemed more run down than the last time I’d hallucinated—maybe I wasn’t as consistent an imaginer as I’d thought.

  I turned around, noticing the uneven earth under my feet, and caught my breath—at the bottom of the hill more fields stretched through the valley in a green and brown checkerboard. Small white farm houses, most near bright red barns, a few with white or gray grain silos, stood out against the broad terrain. I’d seen farms beyond my suburban neighborhood, but never with such unbroken ground. I shaded my eyes against the brightness and faced the slope of the trail again. Crickets and birds harmonized all around me. There were no mechanical sounds in earshot. Birds couldn’t come anywhere near the noise level of a jet engine, of course. Which was, you know, fortunate for the other woodland creatures and all. On Friday nights at home I went to sleep with the steady sound of the local race track humming through my window. The quiet here left me too alone with my dumbass thoughts. I could try to walk my way out of here. I needed to pick a point and head there.

  Up the hill seemed better. I returned to that sensation of walking in a new way. I should be alert for a seizure. When gravity seemed shaky to me, it meant I was on a course to lose consciousness. I breathed hard, hoping to flood my brain with oxygen, and potentially stave off an episode, which was probably silly, because if I was here in this odd place I was probably seizing in the hospital clinic room. Early morning air rushed into me, crystalline somehow, refreshing. In the cloudless sky the sun and moon hung low, on a collision course. I’ve been here before. Last time.

  Unsteady as I climbed the steep hill, I bent over, plunging my walking stick into the weeds and putting my free hand on my knee to brace myself as I went. My fingers explored the sides of my kneecap, noting differences. They were smaller, less pronounced than I knew them to be. This is a vision, I told myself. Just a hallucination. It’s a seizure-dream. It’s okay to be strange in a seizure-dream. All bets are off, right?

  I straightened up and something shifted on my head. Reaching up, I removed a woven hat, frayed a little at the back. Something had taken a bite out of it. A thin brown strip of leather cinched the brim together, giving it a strong shape. Was I wearing a hat the last time I’d had a vision? I didn’t recall. Yanking my stick out of the ground, I started back up the hill. From behind me, horse hooves drowned out the bird calls. Up from the village a young girl trotted along on a brown horse, calling to the animal to slow down as she saw me clambering along.

  “Jac, you’re usually early,” she said. This must have been directed at me, since there wasn’t anyone else around. “I don’t believe I’ve ever arrived before you.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I said, huffing.

  “That’s a strange response.” She looked down at me from her perch in the saddle. “You look unwell. Do you wish to ride with me?”

  I’d never ridden a horse before and had no idea how to get up there with her.

  “I can just walk.”

  “Clearly, you are capable of walking,” she said, and she laughed, flinging her long blond hair around behind her with a whip of her head. She had on a tattered but mended dress, mostly white with blue piping, and brown ankle boots. Well she’s a strange bird, I thought.

  “Here, I’ll drop the stirrup.” With that, the girl took her feet out of the leather strap where they had been braced, and held out her hand. She pulled her dress away so I could see what I was doing. I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Good Lord, Jac, just stick your toe in the stirrup, grab the saddle, and pull yourself up.”

  I did what she said and was surprised to find myself sitting on the butt of the horse before I even knew what had happened. The girl laughed and tossed her hair again.

  “You even sit on a horse like a boy, Jacqueline. What an odd girl you are.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  GIRL?

  It took a second for what she’d said to sink in, but fortunately I didn’t say anything while I processed this information. Not like I knew how to respond or anything.

  As soon as she said “girl,” I understood all at once that I wasn’t in my own body. Yes, I was wearing scratchy trousers, an indigo button-down shirt, and a woven hat, but I wasn’t a boy. I had a braid of hair slapping my neck as we galloped along, and the bouncing of the horse made me extremely aware of which parts of my body were different here.

  I tried to snap myself out of it, first by shaking my head around, which just reinforced the evidence that I had hair past my shoulders. I told myself I shouldn’t worry about it; any moment now Cheshire Cindy or Dr. Dorfpoodle would wake me up.

  At the top of the hill we came to a small red schoolhouse, with long windows on either side of a central set of steps leading into the building, but it wasn’t the school that caught my eye. Two white boys with shaved heads, wearing faded overalls and beat-up shoes pulled at the old rope attached to the flagpole, raising the flag for the day. Something about the flag was different. The stars were aligned wrong, not like the flag in my room. Before I stumbled to the ground in my attempt to dismount, I counted up the stars, multiplying the even rows of them. Forty-six. Why would I imagine a flag with forty-six stars?

  The bell rang out from the small steeple at the top of the school, and my friend yanked at my shirt sleeve.

  “What are you waiting for? Honestly, Jacqueline, you’re in a daze today.”

  I walked inside, dragging my feet, and now that I’d at last adjusted to outdoor light I was unprepared for how much darker it was in here. I walked into a desk. Two young girls giggled.

  “Good morning, Miss Jayme,” said the student who’d given me a ride to school.

  “Jacqueline, Lucille, take your seats,” said the teacher at the front. She was a tall woman, with her red hair neatly pulled back and a stern expression that obviously loved its location on her face. Twenty-five students of varying ages sat at their desks, children as young as kindergarteners and a lanky boy sporting teenage acne the oldest. Everyone had already sat down, and most had turned around to look at us. They were clean at their hands and the better part of their faces, but I could see that soil and dust clung to their hairlines, wrists, and ankles. There were more clothing patches in the room than at Clown College.

  “Nancy, Marcus, Sirus, and Myrtle, open your readers and turn to chapter six,” commanded Miss Jayme, reading from some kind of list on her desk at the front of the room. “Three grade, come here and collect your history examination, and I hope you all remembered to bring your pencils.”

  Up stood six or seven kids who walked str
aight to her desk without making a sound, and I started to worry that I could hallucinate such a frightening version of school in my own mind. Outside horses whinnied and crows called to each other, but none of the students seemed to notice. Miss Jayme handed out more instructions until each of us had an assignment. Lucille and I and two others were all doing mathematics. Apparently math is easier if it’s three grade levels below one’s current level.

  I kept sitting at my desk, and then I wondered why. If I was in my own extended dream, why not just . . . go? Instead I got distracted staring at the ink well in the corner, wondering how many children had dripped on the edges around it as they practiced their penmanship.

  I kept waiting to pop back out of this fantasy into the history of education. But I’d been sitting for at least an hour and somehow, I was still here. This was one sucky illusion if I was working on long division.

  My hands started trembling. That’s a sign of something. I can’t just sit here like an idiot.

  I bolted out the door.

  The teacher called out after me, rushing to the front of the school. I untied Lucille’s horse from his post and jumped up on him again, this time struggling to get my hips over his back because he was already galloping. He was more than happy to race off, back down the hill. I hunkered down with my arms around his thick neck, and heard Lucille’s voice, no longer so cheery: “Mrs. Jayme, she’s stealing my horse! Jacqueline, stop!”

  I looked over my shoulder and watched the already small schoolhouse shrink before the curve of the hill blocked it from view. We passed a wooded area on our right, and I listened to the horse’s hoof beats as we traveled outside the edge of the village. At the bottom of the long hill the animal slowed and then stopped to nibble on some weeds growing next to the road. Cars definitely had an advantage over this shit. I heard rushing water, so I pulled the horse’s neck toward it and we trotted over, through weeds and brambles that got thicker as we went. I had to grip the saddle tight with my thighs to keep from falling off. And once again I was reminded that I didn’t have my boy junk. My stomach considered revolting. I had passed the tree line and under the lush branches, finally felt a little more at home. Maybe these were the same woods where Sanjay, Jeannine and I relaxed after school, and I was re-crafting them here in my mind. We didn’t have a river, but we had the same humid air and cushiony, moss-covered earth. I threw myself back over the saddle and crashed to the ground. Bad, bad hallucination. The horse, for his part, seemed content to nibble at the green stuff that grew next to the tree roots.