Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (4 page)

“Yeah, Joley, that does seem like a good idea,” said Finn with obvious sarcasm.

“Well bloody get on it, man, what are you waiting for?”

“She’s been busy.” Finn heard the glum, dejected sound of his own voice—pathetic, really—but he didn’t care.

“But that’s…” Joley began, and then his voice took on that stern, I’m-older-than-you-not-to-mention-British quality that always heralded a lecture. “Finnegan, you have to—”

Finn jumped in. “Look, the last time I saw her she was making out with Sam in the park. It didn’t seem like the best time to share the news that she’s, you know—
quantumly entangled
. With
me
.” He turned and abruptly left the room, offering them nothing more than a gruff, “Later,” tossed over his shoulder on the way out.

“Well that’s…strange,” Joley said, clearly surprised by his best friend.

“Right?” Bizzy agreed before she, too, headed off to bed.

CHAPTER 6

Tesla awoke with a start when her body jumped as if she’d fallen and couldn’t catch herself in time before she hit the ground. The house was silent around her. Max and their father were surely asleep, but she was alert, fully awake in an instant. She felt off, somehow. She hated waking up after falling asleep unexpectedly, the oddity of trying to place oneself correctly in time and space, but it was more than that. Her whole life felt off, and she was frustrated. She wanted to do something, fix it, but she wasn’t sure how. She got up and paced, walked to her dresser, swiped two dirty shirts onto the floor and picked up a book, put it back down, went to the window and looked out, but all she saw were dead leaves that blew down the street in the small pool of light made by the streetlamp. She checked her phone, saw that it was after midnight. Sleep was probably out of the question, and her restlessness quashed any hope of forgetting her worries in TV or video games, so Tesla slowly opened her door and made her silent way toward the attic stairs and her mother’s things, boxed up and hidden away by her father.

Just as she reached the top step, her hand raised to push open the door that was slightly ajar, Tesla froze, her breath caught in her chest and her heart beating double-time.

Someone was in the attic.

She took the last step, cautiously putting all of her weight onto her right foot, bit by bit, until she was certain no creaking floor board would betray her presence, and she leaned in the eight and a quarter inches between herself and the door jamb in order to peer, with one eye, through the two-inch crack left by the barely-open door.

Her father sat back on his heels, his back toward her, in front of one of the boxes of her mother’s things, old clothes, photographs, mementos and other odds and ends strewn about him on the floor as though he’d been digging through the box frantically, tossing items out in desperate haste to get to the bottom of it. He had paused, though—perhaps he had found what he was looking for—and held a photograph of his dead wife in his hand, studying it as if looking for a clue in her smiling face.

Tesla had actually taken a breath and opened her mouth to say—well, something. Maybe, “Dad, I miss her, too,” or “Let’s look at her things together,” or maybe even “Why don’t you ever let me see this side of you,” but before she could speak, he did.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the broken sound of it burned forever into Tesla’s memory. “I’m so, so sorry.” He sniffed once, and then squared his shoulders, and whatever internal battle he waged, Tesla knew that one side had won irrevocably when he added, “I did warn you, though. And I did what I had to do.”

Tesla backed up, breathing through her open mouth, short, shallow little gulps of air. She turned and walked down the stairs without seeing them at all, stunned, and entered her room like a zombie. She stood there for a moment, her head filled with incomprehensible static.
What had he meant? What was he sorry for? What had he done?
But a moment later she shook her head once, hard, to clear it, grabbed her messenger bag from her room and walked swiftly down the hall. She skipped the squeaky stair to the living room out of habit and let herself out the front door. It was colder than it had been earlier, and she paused a moment on the porch to blow in her hands before she put the strap of her bag over her head and across her body. She pulled her hood over her bright hair, walked quickly down the steps and broke into a jog as she headed toward the university.

She had no plan, not even a clear thought in her head. She seemed to be operating on pure emotion, her body taking her away from that house, away from her father, his grief and his guilty secrets, and all she could do was watch, as if from a distance, to see where all of this would take her. When she turned left and cut across the grass in front of the Art History building, she acknowledged to herself that she was headed toward the Bat Cave. She had felt useful, competent, even powerful last summer when they had all discovered that she alone could travel in time. But it was more than just her ability to trigger the jump, to do what nobody else could do; she had felt good because she had felt a clarity of purpose, and she had acted decisively to face her problems, even when she was afraid.

She needed to feel that way again.

Of course, she was barred from her father’s lab as well as the underground facility and the time machine that was housed there. She had expected her father to be surprised last summer when he’d learned that it was her arrhythmic heartbeat, her unique, biological signature that made the time machine work because her mother had designed it that way. She had not expected him to be so furious about it. His daughter, Greg Abbott had declared, would not be the first human subject in time travel trials, no matter what her mother had planned. It was too dangerous, he declared—they had absolutely no idea what the short or long-term effects on Tesla might be, and it was out of the question that she would ever jump again. He had been immovable. She had foolishly imagined, however briefly, that she would work with her father, that they would continue his work together, but she had been shut out and excluded and she resented it. In short, she and her dad were right back where they had started before this whole mess had begun.

What her father did not know, however, was that Tesla knew the password Bizzy and the others used to check the new security codes for the labs and the Bat Cave. A high level clearance was needed to access those facilities, and the codes were randomly changed at set intervals. Bizzy was just too nice—and seemed to have a particularly difficult time saying no to Tesla, who had asked for her password one afternoon after fencing class. Tesla had felt a little bad about it, but only for a moment; she
deserved
to be a part of this work. After all, without her, time travel was merely a distant possibility for the future. So Tesla logged in every day to make sure she knew the current code. Not that she planned to use it—all these months later and she had yet to let herself into the underground facility beneath the quad—but somehow she felt better because she
could
.

Tonight, she would. Even if all she did was sit in the control room and spin around in Bizzy’s chair. She just needed to be there. All the pain and uncertainty, her swirling, confused thoughts, the shock she’d felt overhearing her father’s tortured apology to his dead wife, were taking shape at last, and that shape was anger. A cold, bright, crystal-clear sense of outrage, and the determination to do something about it. She’d always had a temper, been quick to react, but this felt so—calculated. She was calm, and absolutely committed to getting what she wanted. Now she just needed to figure out exactly what that was.

When she got to the physics building, she let herself into the small, nondescript side entrance they had all used last summer. The outside light had been repaired since then, and she quickly, nervously tapped the day’s security code onto the keypad and hoped no one was around to see her—she wasn’t sure if having the code would preclude a charge of breaking and entering, but she didn’t want to find out. The lock clicked softly and Tesla stepped inside, but just before the door closed behind her someone grabbed it from the outside. Her heart was in her throat as she turned; the door opened wide and Sam stepped into the concrete stairwell with her and closed the door firmly behind them.

“What are you doing here?” Tesla asked, completely shocked by his sudden presence, by the grim look on his face in the stark, fluorescent light from overhead.

“I’m here to help,” he said.

“Sam, I don’t want you here.” He had treated her like crap, for no reason she could fathom, and she wasn’t in the mood to deal with it—with him, or with her feelings. She didn’t care if he knew it.

“Look, Tesla, I’m sorry about tonight. But we have to talk. Do you remember that conversation you and Finn and I had all those years ago—last summer when you jumped back to 2004, and we went to Dodie’s Diner after we stole those papers from your dad’s office?”

Tesla scowled, completely confused. “Of course I remember,” she said impatiently. “But what does that have to do with this—or with anything?”

“I need you to think for a minute. When we were at Dodie’s, the three of us, we agreed that we had an obligation to try and let the future unfold as we knew it—to not interfere or try to change things. Right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “So?”

“So, has it ever occurred to you that you might travel back in time again? And that if you did, I would be there, that younger me that you first met—in which case I—the me right here and now—would know about it because
I remember it
?”

Tesla looked confused, her dark red brows drawn together so tightly a vertical crease formed between them. And then her expression was wiped clean, her eyes opened wide. “Do you mean—”

She couldn’t finish.

“That’s exactly what I mean. You think, because it’s all you’ve experienced so far, that you and I met each other just twice in the past, until my adult self, eight years later, came to find you just a few months ago.”

Tesla could only stare at him in blue-green amazement.

“Well,
I
know that you and I met more than twice in the past, because I was there. You just haven’t done it yet. And as we all agreed that night, I haven’t told you.”

He stood quietly while she grappled with this, until she finally spoke.

“I’m going back?”

“Why are you here?” he countered. He refused to answer her, determined to tell her as little as he possibly could and still make sure it would all happen the way it already had.

“I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “I was restless, I didn’t want to be at home. My dad is…there’s something my dad isn’t telling me about my mom, about how she died, and I have so many questions—and the day was just a disaster and, well, I suddenly just had to go to the Bat Cave.”

“Tesla.” Sam looked at her with such intensity she felt she would have to turn her eyes away from his. He laid his hands on her shoulders, much as she had laid her hands on his just a few hours earlier, but he towered over her and his hands covered her shoulders, his thumbs on her collarbones. He shook her gently with each syllable he spoke. “You went back. Eight years ago tonight.”

“How can you be sure?” she asked weakly. “I mean, how do you know it was tonight?”

“I remember every detail of every time you jumped back. And it didn’t register until after I saw you tonight, that this time—this jump—you were wearing this when you arrived,” he said as he touched the hood of her black wool tunic.

“So—I’m supposed to go now? Right now?” she asked, an edge of panic in her voice.

“Yes—at least that’s what you did do,” he amended. “You told me—you will tell me, the younger me, when you arrive—that you had a shitty day and you came to get some answers about your mother.” Unexpectedly, his face was split by a wide grin. “And something about all guys being asshats, as I recall. Which I understand a little better now. And, you know, sorry.”

Thirty minutes later Tesla stood in the time machine, the mirrors in each corner, the smooth white walls all very familiar and unexpectedly comforting. Tesla touched the messenger bag at her side, quickly listing the potential assets she had with her: her wallet, with less than thirty dollars cash, a ponytail holder, chapstick, half a bag of Doritos. The pepper spray Lillian had given her last summer. And her cell phone, which would of course be about as useful as a paperweight once she’d made the jump. It wasn’t much of a tally.

Sam’s voice came through the speakers. “Are you ready?”

“I think so.” She felt like this was all a dream. It was so strange to be here again, to do this on her own and without a plan, but it seemed that she was supposed to, so….
Well, and what the hell
, she thought, her chin raised as she stuck it out a bit in unconscious defiance of everyone, grasping and feeding her anger, using it.
Let everyone fend for themselves
.
I won’t be here anymore for the lies, the games, the manipulations—at least for a while
. She wanted to tell Keisha, but there wasn’t time—still, her best friend would love this move. The thought made her smile and a deep dimple appeared in each of her smooth cheeks.

“I’m ready when you are,” she said with confidence.

“In five…four….” Sam began.

Sam watched her in the monitor, his breath caught in his chest as he wondered if he might be wrong. It had happened this night, eight years ago, he reminded himself, he was absolutely certain now. She had come back, and the time she had spent there had been—well, it had changed his life. The idea that he could love her as much as he did based on meeting her only twice—and so briefly—when he was fourteen was a stretch, but he’d let it stand because he couldn’t, he wouldn’t break the rule they had all agreed on years ago, that they would try their best not to interfere. She had told him, he remembered—she
would
tell him, his younger self, when she arrived in just a few moments—that a friend had helped her make the jump, and only later did he understand that that friend was him. And only when he realized she had been wearing that black tunic—a tunic she would not return with, he recalled—did he understand that it had been
this
night. He had just assumed it had been something they would discuss and plan, so he was unprepared, but it all made sense now. And, of course, it was fitting that he would be the one to send her straight back to himself. So he’d come to the physics building and waited for her, prepared to do whatever was necessary to make it turn out right.