Entanglements (7 page)

But to me Juliette beamed brightly as a shining reminder light of how ordinary my life used to be. Even my mom treated Juliette like a real teen. Me Mom eyed like I might go insane any minute. Mom was probably thinking like
father like daughter.

 
“No offense Juliette. But just piss off.” I examined a possible zit on my chin.

“If you’re angry about Billy, I’m sorry.” Her wide-eyed expression, as she fingered Billy Broadrick’s class ring hanging on a chain around her neck, was innocent and sincere. “He does stuff I can’t control sometimes.”

“Your boyfriend acting like a jerk never surprises me.” I turned and walked out of the room.

Naturally, Mom couldn’t drive me to school, and since I was major league late I couldn’t walk, so Juliette came to the rescue with her sweet yellow VW Beetle. “I don’t mind, Mom,” she had replied sweetly to my mother’s request, making my teeth grind. Needless to say, the silence of the ride rendered it more than a bit uncomfortable. When she stopped the car I didn’t even wait for her to turn it off before hopping out.

A grinning Petra waited on the sidewalk outside the school.

“I might as well be living in Iran,” Petra said as I joined her.

“Good morning to you too.”

“I’m grounded. Dad caught me sneaking into the house last night.”

“Yeah, grounded is totally like living in Iran,” I drawled.

“Right.” Petra seemed to take my words as seriously meant. “My dad is so Ayatollah. But last night was completely worth it. So totally sick.”

“Sick is the word I’d use too,” I said.

Somewhere between three a.m. and four a.m. I’d decided there must have been some kind of gas seeping into the tunnel that had caused me to hallucinate. The wall couldn’t have moved like that. But between four a.m. and five a.m. I’d decided I’d actually seen the hand. Delusion couldn’t extend that far. Besides the scratches on my arm were real.

“Chase and I are like totally together again,” Petra gushed.

“I could tell. Your tongue jammed down his throat was my first clue.”

“Just wait until you have your own cute throat to jam your tongue down, then you’ll see how I feel. Oh and here comes a potential candidate now.” Petra inclined her head to the left and I glanced over my shoulder.

Rom walked with a long and easy stride as he approached us. For a moment he didn’t seem quite real. He had on the same uniform he’d worn yesterday, except today he carried the jacket over his arm and he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Rom was quite simply mouthwatering. The fabric of the ordinary white shirt molded to his wide shoulders and broad chest like a second skin. Through the branches of the trees lining the sidewalk, rays of sunshine shone down over Rom’s head as if nature itself spotlighted him saying: look at this magnificent creature.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Petra said, her grin widening. She’d obviously seen me practically panting for the guy.

“Shut up."

She chuckled and bounced off into the building.

Rom stopped on the sidewalk in front of me. “Greetings of the morning, Kizzy.”

“Greetings,” I said, adopting his strange phraseology. Where the heck had he learned English?

“Are you in good health?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t sleep at all. That wall. That hand. What was all that?”

Rom stood silent.

“I mean the wall was moving and that hand tried to grab me. You saw it right?”

“Kizzy, I know not of what you speak,” he said.

“The hand with claws. It was there.”

Rom shook his head. “I saw no hand in the wall but your own.”

“Then how did I get this scratch?” Holding out my arm, I pointed to bandage.

“Your arm caught in a hole in the brick as you tagged the wall. You suffered injury against the sharp surface when I assisted in a pull to freedom.”

“You must think I’m crazy,” I mumbled.

I shook my head. The thought of the gas fumes again offered an explanation. The gas explanation was preferable to drooling lunacy.

Rom had been speaking and I’d missed some of it while wrapped in my own thoughts. I tuned in for the last bit. "...If you would break bread with me this evening.”

“You want to go on a date? Have dinner? Eat?” I tried to keep total shock out of my tone.

He nodded.

“With me?” I asked.

“Of who else would I speak?” He glanced around us.

“But we should talk about what happened in the tunnel.”

“I prefer discourse regarding our dinner together.”

“If you think I’m crazy, why would you want to date me?”

Rom’s smiled with that cutie pie smirk I used to think of as an arrogant lip curl.

“Your features delight my senses,” he said in his low baritone.

I could think of nothing to say to this. The guy could really deliver a compliment.

“Would seven p.m. be customary?”

Nod Kizzy, I told myself and I managed to do it. Just.

“That would be okay, I guess.” I kept my answer to a nonchalant monotone.

Franky, his red hair appearing to be on fire in the light of the sun, appeared at my side.

“Is this guy bothering you Kizzy?” He glared up at Rom as he spoke.

“No.”

“Because I can take care of him if he is,” Franky threatened.

As if he’d stand a chance in a hand-to-hand with Rom. Franky turned his gaze on me and in his eyes was something I didn’t want to see.

“We don’t need him in our mc² crew do we?” he asked.

Omigod, Franky blue eyes had turned a metaphorical green. Franky had some kind of crush. On me of all people!

“It’s cool, Franky. I’m fine with Rom being on the crew.” I said. “I was just being a bitch yesterday.”

Rom snickered and I had a feeling my defense of him gave him the idea I liked him or something. Bad news. Liking someone meant total loss of leverage in the relationship, particularly if they knew you liked them.

“I gotta go or I’ll be late for homeroom.” Turning I said, “later,” and left the two of them standing in front of the school.

I ran into the building and straight into Billy Broadrick.

“If it isn’t one of the losers.” Billy chuckled. “Looks like the BQs reign supreme.”

“We didn’t lose.” I corrected him. “Rom and I got to the morgue long before you and Quinn came anywhere near the basement.”

“Prove it,” Billy challenged.

Extracting the phone from my pocket and touch flipping through my photo file, I came upon the morgue sign.

“There. See?” I held out the phone’s face toward him to display the pic.

“I don’t see any proof here.” Billy waved it away with a huff.

“What do you mean?”

“I see a sign with an arrow, not the actual morgue. Plus, there’s no tag.”

He had me there.

“Okay. Where is your proof you and Quinn were there?”

“I said so. That’s proof enough.” Billy’s face twisted into a grimace.

“Yeah, sure,” I mocked. “And pigs fly. Oh no they don’t since you’re still on the ground.”

“The crews will just have to settle this tonight.” Turning on a heel, Billy spoke over his shoulder. “Tell Senji 8 p.m. at the hospital.”

“You’re on,” I said before I remembered the clawing hand and more importantly my date. Damn.

“Wait—” I called.

Too late. Billy was gone.

Chapter Five

As Mr. Hutson, droned on I only halfway listened.

“Einstein introduced the theory of special relativity to explain an anomaly in the results of motion experiments, an inconsistency if you will. First, it had been established through experimentation that the velocity of objects was cumulative.”

“Man. That was so awesome last night,” said Senji, sitting on my left.

“So that if one threw a ball with force enough for it to travel 10 m.p.h leaving your hand from a train moving at 30 m.p.h., the ball’s velocity would be 40 m.p.h. Therefore velocity equals distance over time or v = d/t.” Mr. Hutson sent a quelling stare at Senji.

“The police almost caught me,” Senji continued over the teacher.

Franky, who’d positioned himself on my right, whispered back. “Me too. We’ll have to be careful when we go back tonight.”

“However, the speed of light, according to experiments, is a constant 186,000 miles per second independent of motion. Therefore, if someone standing still shines a flashlight, the light travels 186,000 m.p.s. And if one shines a light from a car moving at 50 m.p.h., the light still moves at 186,000 m.p.s., in the view of a person traveling in the car.” Mr. Hutson scribbled on the chalkboard and then turned back to the students.

I held my textbook up to block Mr. Hutson’s view of my face.

“I’m so not going back to the hospital tonight. Weird stuff going on there. I think there might be some dangerous gases in those tunnels.”

“Let’s say the train could move a third of the speed of light. An observer standing at the side of the road would still observe the light traveling 186,000 m.p.s. How is this paradox explained in view of the v=d/t?”

“Come on Kizzy,” Franky urged. “We have to go back there and destroy the BQs. Billy and Quinn are just too obnoxious for words.”

“The solution is that time…and even possibly distance…is relative for each observer,” Mr. Hutson said. “It is from this theory that the concept of time travel becomes possible.”

A hand went up from the kid in the seat in front of me. Mike something. A know-it-all.

“But what if someone went back in time and killed his own great grandfather?” Mike asked. “Wouldn’t that mean that he never existed? So if he never existed how could he travel back in time and kill his great grandfather?”

“Actually, that idea is called the grandfather paradox.” Mr. Hutson smiled.

“The mc² will need you since Chase and I are going on a date and won’t be there. You gotta go.” Petra spoke over my shoulder from her seat behind me.

I held up my textbook again. “At least you guys should go somewhere else other than the hospital to battle the BQs. I’m telling you there’s something funky in those tunnels that plays with your mind.”

“You mean like you get high?” Chase asked from his seat next to Petra. “That’s so cool!”

“I guess it would be okay to do the race someplace else,” Senji said. “The railroad roundhouse is awesome. We can go there instead. I’ll tell Billy.”

Mr. Hutson continued to drone. “The grandfather paradox and the theory of relativity have both been used to prove that travel
back in time
is not possible. In other words, time travel is possible, but only one-way. To the future.”

"So if we make it another place, you’ll be there. Right?” Franky asked.