The Eighth Guardian (Annum Guard)

by Meredith McCardle

  My mom was a pretty crap mother by any standard, but for some reason I’m the one who feels guilty. As if it’s my fault. I breathe and squeeze my eyes shut. Here we go. Anger, bitterness.

  Anger because “not sacrificing her art” is more important than getting better for me. Bitterness because I’ve known proper lithium dosage levels since I was seven. Anger because all the good memories from my childhood have faded away into fuzzy nothingness, to the point where now I can’t remember if they really happened or if my mind invented them as a coping mechanism. Bitterness because while most kids my age were memorizing multiplication tables, I was taking it upon myself to scour the Internet and learn the brand names for drugs such as valproate, lamotrigine, and fluoxetine.

  And mostly anger because my mom refuses to get off the damned roller coaster. Because every time I get my hopes up and think my mom will finally stick to a treatment plan, she calls it quits in less than two weeks.

  I ball up my hands into fists, then grab both edges of the tub and stand. Abe. Think about Abe. He’s waiting for me. And I’ll find a way back to him. Somehow.

  There are fresh towels hanging on the bar. Big, fluffy, white towels that smell like fabric softener. I wrap one around my wet hair, pull on purple fleece pants and a T-shirt, and tumble into bed. Abe. Think about Abe. But an image of Tyler Fertig flashes in my mind right before I close my eyes, and then my body shuts down.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  I gasp and bolt up in bed. Someone’s knocking on the door. I push out of bed, and my palm lands on the towel.

  Dammit, did I fall asleep with wet hair?

  I pull open the door. Yellow stands before me. Of course she does. She’s wearing a cardigan, a miniskirt, tights, and boots. Huge diamond studs hang from her earlobes. Her blond hair is perfectly coiffed again, pulled back with a wide headband. And I’m wearing pajamas and have a major case of bedhead.

  Yellow wrinkles her nose when she sees me and shoves a folded note into my hand. “Breakfast is at seven sharp. Alpha doesn’t like it if anyone is late. It completely slipped my mind until now that I was supposed to tell you that. Oops.”

  I glance at the clock on the dresser. 6:58. Seriously? Doesn’t anyone believe in a good night’s sleep?

  I slam the door in her face and throw open my dresser drawers. The note gets plunked on top of the dresser unopened. I grab the first sweater and pair of jeans I see, then spend all of ten seconds brushing my teeth with such force I’m surprised my gums don’t start bleeding. I shove my feet into my sneakers, stepping on the backs rather than taking the extra second required to slip my heels into them.

  I pull my still-damp hair into a messy bun as I fly down the stairs. I’m pretty sure it’s 7:00 on the dot, but I’m the last person to arrive in the dining room. Everyone else is seated, and a man dressed like a waiter is pouring coffee at all the place settings while a woman follows behind him with orange juice.

  It’s clear there’s a hierarchy here at the table, too. Alpha sits at the head, and then it trickles down from there. Epsilon is absent, but Zeta sits on Alpha’s right, and Red is on his left. Then it crisscrosses from there, from Orange to Yellow, all the way down to the one empty seat at the very end of the table.

  But the weird part—and I mean bizarre—is that half the table look like they’re waiting backstage before a community theater production. Zeta has on a brown coat, white tights, and a pair of short pants that puff out just after his knees. There’s a powdered wig sitting next to him on the table, which just seems unsanitary. Violet is wearing an electric-blue minidress with jelly shoes and a bunch of bangle bracelets. Her purple hair is teased so high it stands at least six inches above her head. Tyler—aka Blue—has on a suit with high-waisted pants and serious pinstriping. And Indigo is wearing drab gray pants with a vest and dress shoes, and these funny-looking black-and-white shoes. My mouth falls open as I scan the room.

  “Yellow,” Alpha says with a serious voice as he pours a dab of cream into his coffee. “I thought I asked you to make sure Iris knew how to dress this morning.”

  Yellow sits up straight in her chair. “I did, sir. I wrote her dress assignment on a piece of paper and hand delivered it this morning. I guess she ignored it.”

  I blink. That folded note Yellow shoved into my hand is sitting untouched on my dresser.

  “I was rushed for time this morning,” I say, then wince. I hate excuses. Detest them. If you make a mistake, own up, accept the consequences, and move on. Yet here I am, whining like a second grader. I wait for Alpha to call me out.

  “You can change after breakfast,” he says. “Please sit.”

  Is he mad? I can’t tell. I slide into the empty seat next to Indigo but keep my eyes trained on Tyler. He’s staring at his empty plate, but he has to feel me staring at him. Come on, Tyler, look up. I need to talk to him. I haven’t even fully scooted my chair in when the man with the coffee appears at my side. It smells like hazelnut. Gross. I hate flavored coffee. And not just because my mom loves it.

  “No, thank you, I don’t really like . . . okay, never mind,” I say as he fills the cup all the way to the top. The woman with the orange juice pitcher pauses before the crystal goblet as if asking me whether I’d like some. It’s a nice gesture. “Yes, please.”

  I pick up the juice and take a sip when I notice Yellow staring at me, a smug look on her face. She turns to Tyler on her left. “It’s shocking how much sugar is in orange juice, don’t you think?” she says. Her crystal goblet is empty.

  Tyler shrugs and tosses his napkin into his lap.

  I turn to Indigo. “This orange juice is a little tart. Would you kindly pass me the sugar?”

  Indigo squeezes his lips shut as if he’s trying not to laugh and hands me the crystal sugar dish. I take the little sterling teaspoon and drop three spoonfuls into the juice. I take a sip.

  “Well, that’s better,” I say.

  It’s not better. It’s disgusting. But I make myself suck it down like it’s a chocolate milk shake.

  Alpha clears his throat at the head of the table, and every neck in the room cranes toward him.

  “You all have your assignments for the day, I take it?”

  Every head in the room nods, with the exception of mine.

  “Excellent,” he says. “Iris. You’ll be with Zeta, just as soon as you’ve changed into something a tad more appropriate.”

  With those words the waiters bring out silver trays in batches and set them in the middle of the table. There are scrambled eggs on one platter and bacon on another. There’s also toast and potatoes and some sort of vegetable-looking thing that gets set right next to Alpha.

  I’m freaking starving. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything of substance, so I load my plate with everything that’s passed around. There isn’t an inch of my plate that isn’t covered with food. I glance up to see Yellow staring at me in horror, then stab a potato with my fork and pop it into my mouth. I chew slowly while I stare right at her, savoring every bite.

  When the waiters are taking away the plates, Alpha clears his throat. “Yellow, go help Iris get ready.”

  Yellow and I both protest at the same time.

  “What?” she says.

  “I don’t need help,” I say.

  Alpha holds up a hand. “It seems I can’t trust either of you to complete a simple task, so you do it together. Both of you, go. Ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes! I’m not a miracle worker,” Yellow says with a laugh. Then her face flushes, and she gets bug eyes, as if she can’t believe she just said that. “I mean, I’ll do my best.”

  “Ten minutes,” Alpha repeats.

  Yellow yanks me out of my chair and up the stairs. I pull my hand away because there is no way in hell I’m letting her hold it. I trudge up the stairs behind her. Yellow stops in front of my door.

  “Key!” she dem
ands, opening and closing the fingers of her outstretched hand in rapid succession.

  I hand it over, and Yellow barges in. She doesn’t look around the room, doesn’t make a single comment about how messy it is, but bounds straight to the closet. She takes out all the clothes on the right-hand side—the stuff I thought was Violet’s leftovers—and tosses them on the bed.

  “Where’s the note?” she asks.

  I point to the dresser, and she raises her eyebrows.

  “What, you don’t know how to read?”

  I have a good six, seven inches and like fifty pounds on this girl. I could snap her in half easily, even if she does have some combat training. I let that image play in my mind for a second, then walk over to the dresser and unfold the note. It says,

  NUMBER FOUR

  “Number four,” I tell her. “Don’t you already know what it says? I thought you handwrote it yourself.” I try to match the brownnosy, singsongy voice she used with Alpha.

  Yellow narrows her eyes at me and starts rifling through the clothes. As items go flying, I see that every hanger is numbered. One, Two, and Three get tossed on the floor, and Yellow holds up a scoop-neck dress made from yards upon yards of brocade fabric.

  “There’s no way this is going to fit.” She eyes the small dress, then looks at my midsection.

  I snatch the dress from her hands and throw it onto the bed.

  “Shut up,” I spit at her. “I’m athletic and I’m muscular and I’m strong. Stop trying to make me feel self-conscious.”

  Yellow’s eyebrows shoot up, and she gives me a look of genuine shock. She actually raises her arms in defense.

  “Hey,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to do that. Just pointing out that all your clothes were tailored based on measurements we received ahead of time; and since the black dress clearly didn’t fit, none of these will either. They’ll fix them; but for today, I’ll just pull the corset tighter.”

  She seems genuinely sorry. Maybe I overreacted just a tad. But then Yellow holds up a different hanger, one that contains an ivory, whalebone torture device.

  “I’m not wearing a corset,” I tell her.

  “Yes, you are. We’re wasting time. I need a blow dryer and a curling iron. Do you have those?”

  “I have a blow dryer.” I point to the one I’ve had since sixth grade, which is dangling on the side of the pedestal sink.

  Yellow glances into my bathroom and gives me a disgusted look. “Mine’s better. Hang on.”

  She’s out the door in a flash. I touch the corset. It’s stiff and unbreathable, and there’s no way in hell I’m wearing it. Women rebelled against corsets for a reason, and then gave birth to girls who wore pants, who then gave birth to girls who burned their bras. I would personally be undoing hundreds of years of progress by wearing that thing.

  Yellow’s back only a few seconds later. She’s holding a blow dryer, a curling iron, and the biggest makeup bag I’ve ever seen.

  “Sit,” she commands as she plugs the curling iron into an outlet by the bed. “We only have seven minutes.” She yanks out my bun, runs her fingers through my damp, wavy hair, and flicks on the dryer. She turns it off after only a few seconds.

  “You have thick hair,” she spits, as if it’s something I can control. She shoves the dryer into my hands. “Here, you dry while I start on makeup. Try not to move too much.”

  I hold the blow dryer above my head and wave it around while Yellow attacks me with black eyeliner. She throws powder at me, swishes blush on my cheeks, smears ruby-red lipstick on my lips, then grabs the blow dryer from me.

  She switches it off. “You’re too slow.” She takes the curling iron and touches it lightly with her fingers to make sure it’s hot. Then she grabs big sections of my still-damp hair and winds them around the rod. My hair sizzles as it touches the heat. She pins it up around my face as she goes.

  Finally Yellow sets down the curling iron, rips the plug out of the wall, and walks over to the bed. I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror.

  Holy crap!

  Yellow made me into a white-faced, time-traveling hooker. I don’t wear much makeup as it is, so this is complete overkill. The eyeliner is so thick I look like a raccoon, and my cheeks are bright pink. And my face. My face is white, like I’m about to perform Kabuki.

  I blink. “Yeah,” I say, “I’m pretty sure they didn’t wear makeup like this . . . wherever I’m going.”

  Yellow drops the corset to her side and shoots me a look of pure contempt. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That dress is Italian silk, and it’s very clearly colonial style. Therefore you’re dressing as a well-heeled, upper-class colonial woman, in which case you absolutely would be mimicking the fashion and beauty styles of late-eighteenth-century Europe, which, yes, means I did your makeup perfectly.”

  “I . . .” I don’t know what to say. How did Yellow know all that?

  “Stand up!” she commands. She’s holding the corset.

  “Not wearing it,” I say.

  “Fine.” She tosses it onto the bed. “You can explain that to Alpha and Zeta then. You want to fail? You want them to toss you out before you even begin?”

  I bristle as the thought of solitary confinement crosses my mind. An image forms of me pacing an eight-by-ten cell for the rest of my life, and I shudder.

  “Okay,” I mumble. I slip out of my shirt and let Yellow pull the corset over my head. It settles in around my waist, and I brace myself, knowing full well that this is going to suck.

  “Inhale,” Yellow commands, and when I do, she grabs the ribbons and pulls with such ferocity that I gasp. Before I can recover, she yanks again, and I think my ribs break. I take short, panting breaths, but that only makes my lungs hurt.

  “Can’t. Breathe.”

  “You get used to it,” Yellow says. She grabs the brocade dress and slips it over my head. I wish I hadn’t eaten so much for breakfast. This corset is squeezing it all back up my digestive tract.

  “Where do you keep jewelry?” Yellow asks.

  I point to the jewelry box on the dresser while I gasp in short breaths, trying to figure out how to breathe. The jewelry box is the same one I’ve had since I was four. It was a Christmas gift from a grandmother I’d never met. It plays music and has a little ballerina that spins around. Yellow rolls her eyes as she rifles through it.

  “You don’t have any pearls?” she asks.

  “Sorry, I must have left them at the last Junior League meeting.” I put my hands on my hips and take a slow, easy breath.

  Yellow ignores me and takes out my charm bracelet. She holds it up and flicks the little birdcage with her finger.

  “That was a gift,” I say, in case she was thinking of tossing it aside. My mind goes back to Abe, to the first Hanukkah I spent with his family—the first Hanukkah I celebrated ever—and the plain, small, black box tied with a silver ribbon and a note welcoming me to the family from Abe’s grandfather. I wasn’t much of a jewelry person, but I wore that bracelet every day. Still do. Well, except for this morning because I was too rushed.

  Yellow drops it back into the box and shuts the lid. “You have nothing period appropriate. Where’s your Annum watch?”

  I point to the bathroom, where the necklace is resting on the edge of the pedestal sink.

  “Yeah,” Yellow says. “You might want to be a little more careful with a piece of government property that cost like twenty million dollars. Try explaining that to Alpha. Oops, sorry, I dropped a wormhole down my bathroom sink.”

  My ears perk up. “Wormhole? That’s how the necklaces work?”

  “Of course it is.” Yellow hands me the necklace, and I drop it over my head. “You have, like, thirty seconds. You’d better run.”

  I can barely walk, but somehow I manage to make it down th
e stairs without falling on my face. I feel ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

  Zeta is waiting for me in the lounge, near the table with all the flowers. “Are you ready for your first mission?”

  “I thought last night was my first mission.”

  Zeta doesn’t smile. “That was your admission test. This is your first real mission. Your first Chronometric Augmentation.”

  “And I’m ready,” I tell him, even though I don’t think this is true. Shouldn’t I be brushing up on my history or learning the mechanics of time travel? I mean, even a quick briefing would be nice. But I don’t want Zeta to think I’m weak, so I say nothing.

  I crane my head toward the dining room, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tyler, but the room is now empty.

  Yellow skips down the stairs and waves to Zeta, who smiles and nods at her. His face is relaxed, as if he genuinely seems to like her. That’s bizarre. I can’t imagine how anyone could possibly like Yellow.

  She opens a pair of heavy, dark wood French doors across the hall from the dining room and slips inside. But not before I scan every inch of that room I can from where I’m standing. Tall bookshelves line the walls from floor to ceiling, and I even catch sight of one of those ladders on wheels. There are a number of desks in the middle of the room. A library. They have their own library. Of course they do.

  Zeta clears his throat. “You ready to go?”

  And then I get nervous. A bunch of little butterflies start flittering around in my stomach, which is weird because nerves are one thing I normally can control. But something about going back in time—projecting—Chronometric Augmentation, whatever—scares the crap out of me.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “1770,” Zeta says matter-of-factly. “We’re going to change the Boston Massacre.”

  “Excuse me?” I say. I blink as I try to remember my last American history class. The Boston Massacre was one of the driving forces behind the Declaration of Independence. If we change the massacre, wouldn’t that mean the colonies would never declare independence? Would we still be colonies? Am I going to look out the window and see the Union Jack flying over the Massachusetts State House? Holy shit, will there even be a state house?