Time Travel for Love and Profit

by Sarah Lariviere

  “Would you like to join the class?” asked a bland voice.

  I said, “Nope,” and kept reading. I felt Mr. Replacement standing there like he wanted to say something else.

  “Nephele?” he said, and I ignored him until he walked away.

  Then I felt a nibble of guilt. Why was I still being so rude to Zuluti? He wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. He just was wrong.

  I concentrated on the book. It wasn’t long until I found another interesting paradox. Would you agree that in order for a thing to move, that thing must change its position? If so, consider an arrow in flight. Would you agree that at any instant in time, that arrow can be in only one position? And would you agree that at any instant in time, everything in the universe can be in only one position? Then you agree that everything is motionless at every instant. Therefore, motion is impossible. That’s Zeno of Elea, Greek philosopher. I wasn’t sure precisely how the paradox related to my timeship, but I was stuck, motionless in a sense. It felt relevant. So I marked that page, too, and opened a book about artificial intelligence.

  I wanted to revisit the chapter about “the known unknowns” and “the unknown unknowns.” The known unknowns are the things you know you need to know to find out about your problem. Like, for instance: What was happening to people’s memories of me? Answer: Unknown. The unknown unknowns were another problem. What did I not know that I didn’t know about time travel? How would I find out?

  Airika was sitting at my lab table. She leaned over. “What are you doing, Fi?”

  I had settled on a theory about Airika. That night at the bookshop when I told her she was going to hate me? I was pretty sure she’d taken it as a challenge. Which meant Airika and I had at least one thing in common: we were both stubborn. And if there’s one thing I know about stubborn girls, it’s that you cannot discourage us. Telling someone like Airika that she’ll never reach her goal only pushes her to lace up her combat boots, grab her bow and arrow, and jump out of the moving vehicle.

  I wasn’t sure what would happen if I kept being myself with Airika, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. But I’d survived the worst already with Vera, and after all these years, I’d finally gotten over it. Besides, whatever happened, Dirk Angus 10.0 and I would be outta there in August. So I said, “I’m thinking about time travel.”

  Airika said, “Rad.”

  I felt someone watching us and turned around. Immediately, Jazz opened a book. His eyes darted back and forth. He was pseudo-reading. We hadn’t talked since he’d saved me in class that day and I’d thanked him by storming out of the room. My explode-y behavior had probably scared away the international man of mystery forever, and I didn’t blame him.

  But I wanted to thank Jeremiah. For noticing how nervous I’d been and trying to protect me.

  I could feel him pretending not to notice that I was staring at him, so I turned back around. I wasn’t sure I had the courage to talk to him.

  Not yet, anyway. Not yet.

  * * *

  —

  At lunch, Airika and I sat together. She told me she’d been working on a skating trick with spinning, and something called a suicide stop, and there was a ramp involved. It was difficult for me to picture, but she was into it.

  “Fascinating,” I said.

  Airika stabbed at her stir-fry with chopsticks. “You don’t have to pretend it’s fascinating. I know I’m boring.”

  That shocked me. “How are you boring? You’re an extra-stubborn roller genius.”

  Airika’s sky-blue eyes were wide open, like she was waiting for more.

  “Additionally,” I said, “you seem like a normal, well-adjusted person.”

  Airika flipped a chopstick across the table; it rattled to the floor. “People always think that. But they should fear me! I’m unbalanced! I throw things at walls just like you do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ve never thrown anything at a wall, or used a chopstick as a weapon. Also, the word ‘normal’ is a compliment.”

  “Shut it, Fi. Nobody wants to be normal. You’re not the only tortured soul who ever lived.”

  I said, “Shut it?”

  We both smiled. “I’ve changed my mind, Airika,” I said. “You’re all kinds of abnormal.”

  Airika’s smile was proud. “Yeah? I’ve been practicing at home in the mirror.”

  I noted once again how much Airika and I had in common. “Airika, that is aggressively weird.”

  Airika pumped her fist and said, “Score!”

  * * *

  —

  After school, I went to the Big Blue Wave and grabbed a chipped mug from the coffee station.

  “Can you believe Airika has a dark side?” I asked.

  “Congratulations,” said Chicago. “You got over yourself for five seconds and realized that the rest of humanity is just as confused as you.”

  Harsh. Maybe Chicago, or whatever part of me was pretending to be Chicago, liked to provoke people. Or maybe I was hearing her wrong. Either way, it was fascinating, wasn’t it? The fact that one picture could say so much?

  I felt another pang of regret for not asking Clyde Watkins about whether he thought photographs could have souls. I went to the railing and leaned over it. Dad was arranging biographies of musicians on a display in the center of the floor, building a pyramid of life stories. Mom was behind the counter unpacking boxes.

  “How’s Clyde Watkins?” I asked.

  Dad looked up. “Oh, Fi. I forgot—you were there that night. Clyde’s gone, kiddo. He met his maker.”

  “What?”

  “Clyde was in his nineties, though. That’s a fine life.”

  I clenched the railing and leaned back to stretch. More Death. It was so awful. What was the name of that river in Greek mythology, the one that divided the living and the dead? It was the color of dried blood, with blackened clouds and scrawny vultures lurking in the gnarled tree branches above it. And there was Clyde Watkins, chatting away with the gory ferryman Charon on his ride across it to the underworld, snapping photographs all the while.

  A fine life, Dad had said. And then you cross the river and it’s gone.

  But sometimes in the myths, mortals came back, didn’t they? I was rusty on the rules of Hades. That felt ironic.

  I let my head hang backward, upside down, and looked at the skylights. They were closed that afternoon; the birds were trapped outside. I stared at the glowing rectangles, watching gray clouds blow over the bookshop.

  The universe kept telling me my mission was impossible. Time ends things. Death rules time travel out. And I knew that it did—and that it didn’t. Both things felt true.

  “This statement is false,” I said. “This statement is false.”

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, Jeremiah was sitting alone on the redwood stump outside the school. His suit jacket was the color of an avocado, and he wore red jeans with the blue suede shoes. Plus, he had on his fedora. Where did he shop? Not at the mall. As I got closer, I heard him whistling a tune I recognized. It was the same tune he’d been whistling that day in the cafeteria the first time I’d seen him do a magic trick—the melody that drifted between happy and sad. This was it. The perfect opportunity to apologize.

  When I was near the stump, Jazz looked at me and his eyes were that color I’d never seen before, grape lollipop meets electric eel, and we both kept looking. He didn’t say anything. I concentrated on Airika, the happiness battering ram, for inspiration, reminded myself that I had a ticket for an August ride in a time machine and spit it out. “Hey, Jazz. Can I sit with you?”

  Yes: I asked him that.

  Jazz exhaled in a very audible manner. Like, shhhhh. Like an air mattress deflating. It was kind of an odd reaction—maybe he truly wanted nothing to do with me. I was about to reconsider my plan when he
patted the stump beside him.

  I sat. I’d been planning to apologize and flee, but something about him made me ask, “Are you okay?”

  Jazz hunched over even more, but he turned slightly toward me, his hands folded in his lap. “I’m good,” he said. “I’m always good. You?”

  I said, “Me? Oh, I’m rarely good. Usually, I’m not good. Anyway, listen. I wanted to tell you…I’m…well…” I took a deep breath. “I feel like I keep doing embarrassing things in front of you. So if you want to be friends or something, or not, or whatever, you should know that that is kind of my thing.” I tugged on the cuffs of my hoodie sleeves. Was that it? Could I flee? No, no, no. “Also, thank you for saving me the other day. I was so scared to talk in front of everyone I almost fainted, I think.”

  Jazz lifted his chin and squinted a little. “Why were you scared?”

  I shrugged. “Well, I mean, first they all look at you. Then they all laugh at you. Then you feel like crawling into bed and pulling your blanket over your head and, you know, never leaving your house again.”

  Jazz’s mouth was open, but he wasn’t saying anything. He kept it open for five to seven seconds longer than a normal person would. Then he said, “Nephele Weather.”

  I felt like I was about to be hit by a tsunami, and gripped the redwood stump so I wouldn’t fall off. Jazz was going to kiss me. I’d never felt that feeling, but I knew exactly what it was. It was imperative that I flee. I was plotting my sprint into the forest when something about Jazz switched. He scrambled his entire energy.

  He didn’t kiss me.

  He said, “Can you scoot over a little?”

  I scooted, and he stood on the stump. His lanky body towered over me.

  “Madame, follow along. For I’m going to share with you a happening delightful and uncanny. Nephele Weather, regard this fossil.” Jazz shook something out of his suit-jacket sleeve; it fell in the sandy soil.

  I was still reeling from the about-to-be-kissed feeling. Although I was not kissed. I looked at the twisted hunk in the sand. “Is that a chicken bone?”

  “Hang on.” Jazz shook his other sleeve, and several more bones fell out. “Could you grab those?”

  “Here.”

  “Excellent. So…” He twirled the bones like batons. “Actually, Nephele Weather, I have not made up the middle part of this trick yet.”

  The way the sun lit his face, I noticed a scar above his left eye. A white line. I didn’t know how I’d missed it before.

  “How did you get that scar?” I asked.

  Jazz made a dramatic, slow-motion gesture of punching himself.

  I laughed.

  Jazz didn’t. “Now I remember what I wanted to show you. See these?” He did an elaborate thing with his fingers that made the chicken bones ripple across them. I forgot what we’d been starting to talk about.

  “I see them,” I said.

  Jazz lifted his fedora and put the bones underneath. He raised his arms to the sky and said, “To the gods of loneliness. We offer you this sacrifice.” Then he tore off his hat. No bones fell out.

  I was genuinely surprised. I said, “They disappeared!”

  “Oh, but, Madame, if you wouldn’t mind, there’s something stuck…” He reached behind my ear and pulled out a necklace of knotted bones. As in, he had bent the bones, like taffy or bubblegum, and tied them together to make a chain. It was brownish and lumpy.

  “How did you do this?” I asked.

  “Magic,” said Jazz. “Vinegar may also have been involved. For you.” Jazz dangled the rattling necklace from his finger and bowed.

  I took the necklace with my pinky. “This is easily the most disgusting gift anybody has ever given me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  When he sat back down beside me, Jazz seemed much happier than he had been before. “Put it on!”

  And I was about to, running my fingertips over the knotted bones, thinking that an international man of mystery had just given me jewelry—when it hit me.

  Was there something important about this chain of knots? There was, wasn’t there?

  There was a throbbing sound, a dizzy orchestra tuning up in my brain. The curtains opened and Dirk Angus stepped into the spotlight. The spotlight was shaped like an octagon, and Dirk Angus was wearing a tuxedo jacket, holding a quivering sphere of quantum foam. He cleared his throat. Then he stretched the foam like bubblegum, folded it, poked a hole in it and tied it in a big, fat knot. Then another. Then another. Nine knots.

  A snake swallows its own tail. That tail comes out the other side. It ties itself in a knot.

  And that’s what I’d done with time. Each time I’d gone through the wormhole in the quantum foam inside my body, I’d tied a knot. That’s why I was stuck. I had accidentally tied nine knots in the fabric of time. Knots that were lodged inside me, stopping me from getting where I wanted to go.

  “Nephele?” said Jazz.

  I was breathing heavily. I felt like I could run an actual marathon. “Thank you, Jeremiah. You can’t imagine what you just showed me. I mean, I could literally—”

  We looked at each other. I was going to say, “I could literally kiss you.” And from the expression on his face, I could tell he’d read my mind.

  Now I was the one springing to my feet. I ran inside the school to find a quiet place to work until first period. I hadn’t had a breakthrough like this in years.

  * * *

  —

  In English, while the class watched a film version of Romeo and Juliet, I crunched numbers in the dark. In P.E., while the class played badminton, I faked a wrist injury and crunched numbers on the bleachers. I felt like I was on one of those cop shows where a truckful of shocking new evidence just got dumped on my desk. I saw many pots of coffee in my future. I mean, I didn’t drink coffee. But in the parallel universe where I was a cop, I was making it part of my thing.

  In science, I ignored Mr. Replacement’s attempts to get me to join some rudimentary group experiment. After class, he stopped me in the hallway. “Nephele? I’d like you to stay with me after school today.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Anyway, I can’t.”

  “But—oh, shoot,” he said. “Ack, I’ve got an appointment, too. It’ll have to be Monday. Deal?”

  I clicked my tongue and muttered, “So disorganized.”

  He said, “Pardon me? I couldn’t quite—”

  I yawned as loudly as possible.

  Have you ever been blinded by rage? I used to think that was just an expression. But it’s a real thing. I saw white whenever this guy opened his mouth. Not soothing white like crisp pillowcases in a villa in a commercial about Italian tomato sauce. Hot white, like the spots in your vision when you stare too long at a light. Hot white, like headlights racing toward you on a night street. Like someone you love melting out of existence and leaving nothing. Less than nothing. An emptiness that burns through you and scorches you with a living, breathing ache. A white hole shooting through you. A death tunnel.

  Mr. Zuluti said, “I’ll call your parents today.”

  I said, “Whatever.”

  As I walked away, I noticed Rex leaning against the lockers, wearing a black bandana and a spiked wristband. When we made eye contact, he didn’t smile. Had he been watching us? I felt uncomfortable.

  But I mean, with Mr. Replacement, I was blinded. Rex couldn’t possibly understand. I put my head down and made my way to the cafeteria.

  Friday after school, I stood facing Chicago. “Knots!” I said.

  It seemed like she was trying to meet my eye.

  “Dirk Angus keeps snagging because I accidentally tied nine knots in the fabric of time!”

  Before she could respond, I was off to Mathematics to see if we had any books on knot theory. We didn’t, which wasn’t surprising—they’re harder to sell than, y
ou know, vegan cupcake cookbooks.

  Mathematical knots are similar to the ones you tie in real life. A three-dimensional shape crosses over itself and then through to make a loop. Only in math, the ends of the shape are joined together, which makes the knot impossible to untie.

  Impossible, that is, in three dimensions.

  But with an extra dimension or two, untying a mathematical knot is a piece of cake. And multiple dimensions are something a wormhole can provide. Once I figured out what types of knots I’d tied in the quantum foam, untying them would be a vegan cupcake with coconut icing on top.

  Visualizing a math problem always helped me solve it, so I ran to the Maritime section. Sailors tie a jillion types of knots, so we had plenty of books on those.

  Yes, the bookshop has a Maritime section. The place isn’t called the Big Blue Wave for nothing.

  I researched knots until Dad closed the shop; Saturday morning, I opened it back up with him.

  Dad dropped the needle on a thrashy punk rock album with women yelling and cymbals crashing, and the music helped me think. It kept me from getting lost, or cornered, or something. Guitars screeched like they were cheering me on.

  By Saturday afternoon, I was buried in a jumble of books on the couch by the window that faced Main Street. I was looking at diagrams of knots—knots shaped like hot salted pretzels and knots shaped like chunky gold bracelets and knots shaped like some guy on Main Street’s black armband tattoo—when there was knocking on the window.

  Airika, extra tall from her roller skates, waved from the sidewalk. Behind her, Rex was standing with his arms crossed, looking through me with his geological eyes. Immediately I felt self-conscious. It was the bandana, maybe. The bandana was intimidating.

  Airika’s skates whirred as she rolled inside. “Hey, Fi. We were hoping you’d be here.”